The Returned, Part III Page 12

He closed his eyes and reached out.

  His inner sight carried him quickly across the surface of New Thallon, checking the entire area, keeping the idea of Robin locked into his mind. That mental picture, he knew, would guide him right to her. Assuming she was still on the planet.

  It turned out that she was. An image of her leapt into his consciousness. He saw her walking across the spaceport, looking around nervously. She was carrying Cwansi in her arms. She was wearing gloves to cover her hands and a hood pulled far forward to obscure her face. That didn’t matter to McHenry. She could have been wearing a sign that said HI, I’M ROBIN! and she would have been as evident to him.

  He imagined himself next to her, and then he was. Q’s power might be keeping him on the planet’s surface, but at least he could still transport himself around New Thallon.

  Robin took a couple more steps and then became aware that she wasn’t alone. She turned, stepped back, and gasped when she saw him. “Where the—how did you—”

  “Two excellent half-questions,” said McHenry. “Let me ask you one: Where do you think you’re going?”

  “I’ve booked passage off New Thallon. You don’t have to fight for me if I’m not here.”

  “What in the world makes you think you’ll be allowed to leave?”

  She nodded toward the people who were briskly walking past them, paying them no mind. “No one’s noticed,” she said. “No one’s stopping me. You’d be risking yourself for no purpose.”

  “It’s my decision.”

  “No, it’s Q’s decision,” she said heatedly. “You’re doing what he wants you to do. All I have to do is get the hell off this world, and he won’t be able to force you to do anything.”

  “It won’t be that easy.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I do,” he told her. “There’s no way it can be. Not when you’re dealing with something that has the power of Q.”

  She pulled on his arm with her free hand. “Come with me.”

  “We’re not going to be able to go. You don’t understand.”

  She released her hold on him. “I’m going. Come with me or stay here. It’s up to you.”

  “Actually it’s not,” he said, and he inclined his head behind her. “Take a look.”

  She turned to see what he was staring at, and her jaw dropped.

  An array of Thallonian soldiers was approaching from all sides, their weapons leveled. Various citizens, having no clue what was going on, scrambled to get out of their way.

  “Told you,” he said softly.

  “Robin Lefler!” one of them called. McHenry assumed that he was the ranking officer. He was certainly the largest of them, and his attention was focused on Robin. When he noticed that McHenry was standing there, he seemed to hesitate, but then he steeled himself. Clearing his throat, he said, “We have been sent by Shintar Han to collect you and escort you to the coliseum.”

  “I’m leaving,” she said. “You can’t stop me.”

  “You aren’t, and I’m reasonably sure we can.”

  “Can you stop him?” She nodded toward McHenry.

  “He can’t,” Mark told her, “but Q can. And you can bet that that’s exactly what’s going to happen. Any ship that we attempt to board is not going to go anywhere. Q can ground every ship here with just a passing thought. I swear to you, Robin, this is not the way. We can’t get off this world by just getting on a ship and going, no matter how much you may want that to be so.”

  “Then what are we supposed to do? What Q wants us to?!” Anger lines creased her face. “I can’t believe you’re just giving in to him, Mark.”

  “I’m not giving in. I’m just acknowledging that he’s in a position of greater power than we are. And if you weren’t so obsessed with trying to protect me, you’d realize it, too. Here’s what’s going to happen: We’re going to go with these men, and they’re going to take us to the coliseum, and we’ll see what happens there.”

  She gripped the front of his shirt tightly and pulled him close to her face. “You’ll die. That’s what’ll happen.”

  “Maybe. Maybe we all will. Or maybe none of us will. But we won’t know until we go there and see how it all turns out.”

  Robin slowly managed to get control of herself. “All right. Fine. We’ll do it your way. But I swear, Mark, if you die in this stupid coliseum, I’m gonna kill you.”

  ii.

  MCHENRY COULDN’T BELIEVE what he was gazing at. On some level, he supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. This was, after all, something that had been crafted by a being who was effectively a god. There was, to the best of McHenry’s knowledge, nothing that was beyond his abilities. Yet he couldn’t help his reaction.

  He was staring at an exact replica of the Colosseum, the original Flavian Amphitheater. McHenry had actually gone to see it as a tourist many years before, but this one was not missing huge chunks of it because of earthquakes and the various damages that nature had inflicted upon it. This thing looked as though the Caesars had just finished constructing it. The perimeter of the outer wall, doubtless constructed of thousands of tons of stone, seemed to be something like six hundred meters, and it stood around fifty meters high. From within he heard the shouting of thousands upon thousands of voices. He wondered if there were real Thallonians in there or creations that Q had conjured up from the ether in order to fill the seats. There was no way of knowing until he got in there.

  They stood outside for a moment and then one of the soldiers said, with what seemed graciousness, “My lady, the Awesome desires to have you and your son seated near him.”

  “Why doesn’t he just blink me up there?” said Robin.

  The soldier seemed a bit surprised at the suggestion. “He could if you desired him to, I suppose. But he seemed to feel that you would be more comfortable going up there yourself.”

  “Go with him, Robin,” said Mark. “Let’s play it his way for now.”

  She paused for a moment, then reached up to the back of his neck and pulled his head forward. She kissed him passionately. Cwansi burbled.

  “Be careful,” she said.

  “I always am.”

  He watched as the soldiers escorted Robin away, and then he squared his shoulders and looked at his escorts. He took quiet pleasure in the fact that they seemed quite nervous every time they looked at him. Some of them were actually making an effort to stare in another direction so that they wouldn’t have to make eye contact with him.

  They were afraid of him.

  Once upon a time, McHenry would have been appalled at the notion of scaring anyone. Now he found that he took deep satisfaction in it.

  Be careful. Going down that path, you could wind up turning into Q. You don’t need that attitude.

  Yet he couldn’t help it. Probably because of the stress of the situation that he was in, he was genuinely delighted to have at least some measure of control.

  The soldiers started walking, and one of them gestured for McHenry to follow them. He did so, striding with confidence, as if he were their ruler.

  They guided him not to the main entrance but rather a side entrance. This led into a series of tunnels that ran beneath the coliseum. He could hear the shouts and cheers from above and wondered yet again if this was a crowd created from scratch by Q. That was a rather intimidating notion, but since he’d already seen Q conjure up an entire Roman legion, he supposed it wasn’t all that surprising.

  They were stomping their feet rhythmically. The pounding was becoming so consistent and so loud that, as McHenry walked, he saw bits of dirt falling from the ceiling overhead. The soldiers were glancing up nervously, and one of them muttered, loudly enough for McHenry to hear, “I hope they don’t bring this place crashing down around us. Stupid way to die.”

  “You’ll die,” said McHenry cheerfully. “I can just disappear from your midst anyti
me I want.”

  Several of them fired annoyed glances at him when he reminded them of that. He smiled at them and winked, just to anger them further. It worked, because they turned away from him and resolutely refused to stare at him.

  McHenry saw the last rays of the setting sun filtering through a vast closed door ahead of them. He knew immediately what it was: the entrance to the coliseum itself. This is insane. I’m trapped in an insane nightmare, he thought grimly, his confidence abruptly dissipating. He had no idea what to expect when he passed through the gates; all he knew was that his existence, Robin’s, and Cwansi’s depended on his surviving it.

  Two soldiers stepped forward and grabbed the large handles on the huge wooden double doors that were in front of him. They stepped back, yanking the doors wide. McHenry took a deep breath and let it out slowly to steady his nerves as the warm air from outside washed over him. And then he strode forward.

  He was surprised at what he saw. He had expected a vast, flat plain to greet him, the standard battleground of the Flavian Ampitheater. It wasn’t there. Instead the entire area was covered in upright towers of stone standing ten feet high. Immediately he realized what it was: a maze. There was a vast maze that covered the entirety of the coliseum’s grounds. He had no idea why that was, but he was reasonably sure he didn’t like it.

  His eyes flickered to the far side and he spotted what he assumed to be the imperial seats. Q was seated there, and Robin and Cwansi were next to him. Q was wearing a toga that was swathed in purple, the color of royalty. That figured. There was no sign of Shintar Han. He likely didn’t have the nerve to show up.

  McHenry stared around the interior of the coliseum at the crowds. There had to be at least fifty thousand people there, shouting and cheering. His eyes narrowed and he started seeing people he recognized. They were people whom he had helped restore to full health. When they saw him enter through the double doors, they started cheering and waving eagerly at him, obviously desperate to see him triumph in whatever it was that Q was going to inflict.

  Slowly Q got to his feet. He was so far away that McHenry had originally assumed he wouldn’t be able to hear him if he spoke. But when Q started talking, his voice bounced around the interior of the coliseum, easily audible.

  “My good people!” his voice boomed. “For those of you who are unaware: I am the Awesome. It is not a name that I normally adopt, but I suppose that for those of you here, it is the name that you are accustomed to hearing. So, for your benefit—because I am a generous god—I will address you using that name. Thallonians, I—the Awesome—have crafted a genuine spectacle for you. We are faced with the question of what to do with this woman, Robin Lefler, and her son, Cwansi.”

  “Free them!” someone shouted, and others started taking up the call. The words “Free them!” rebounded through the interior of the coliseum.

  But just as quickly a countercall started. “Kill them!” someone else shouted, and other Thallonians began repeating the words. McHenry had no idea how genuine that was. Perhaps they were people on Shintar Han’s payroll, or maybe Q was somehow compelling them to cry out for Robin’s death. Either way, the shouts ran counter to each other, and within moments—aside from the word “them”—it was impossible to distinguish how the crowd’s sentiments were playing out.

  Q allowed the bellowing to continue for long moments before raising his hands, indicating that they should be quiet. Silence immediately fell upon the coliseum. “I have decided to let the fates decide what will happen to them, and those fates are to be represented in the efforts of this gentleman, Mister Mark McHenry. Mark, do you accept the challenge presented to you this evening?”

  “I wasn’t aware I had a choice,” said McHenry.

  “You don’t,” said Q. “You see the maze before you?”

  “Kind of hard to miss.”

  “You are to enter the maze and defeat the challenge within.”

  “And what would that challenge be?”

  “You’ll have to find that out for yourself,” Q said. “Still, there is no reason to make this unduly difficult for you.”

  There was a burst of light and suddenly there was a sword in McHenry’s hand. It was a gladius, an ancient style of Roman blade. It was about a meter long, sharp on either side. It had a knobbed pommel so it was fairly easy for McHenry to hold, and it weighed about a kilogram. He swung it back and forth, and it made a hissing noise in the air. He thrust forward with it experimentally. “This is good,” he said. “Wouldn’t mind a phaser, though.”

  If Q heard his mumbled comment, he didn’t acknowledge it. “Enter the labyrinth, McHenry, and good luck to you.”

  “Yeah. Great,” Mark said.

  He walked into the labyrinth.

  Immediately his ability to see any part of the coliseum vanished. Instead, all he could see were the walls of the labyrinth that towered around him.

  He had no idea where he was supposed to go. He seemed to remember that when you were in a maze, you were always supposed to go to the right at any turn and that was how you worked your way through it. Or was that to the left? He couldn’t recall for sure. He stuck with right since that seemed correct, but he wished he knew more.

  He remembered the old days when he never got lost. His sense of direction was so unassailable that he always knew where he was in the galaxy and could find his way around with no difficulty. But now he felt as if there were a cloud over his head, obscuring his ability to see anything. He knew that it was Q’s doing; it was extremely frustrating that Q was able to shut him down so easily.

  But then he rallied. “Fine, close off my ability. I’ll still beat you.”

  He kept moving, and then, as his feet crossed the dirt path beneath his feet, he became aware of a noise in the distance. It was a low growling sound, and he wondered what it was he was heading toward. A lion? A tiger? It definitely was not making human sounds. That worried McHenry, because he figured that if he had a human or Thallonian opponent, he could outthink him. If he was going up against an animal, however, that was going to present a bit more of a challenge. Animals were pure instinct, and simple dodges or sidesteps wouldn’t be enough.

  That’s the wrong attitude. Stay focused on what you can accomplish. You can do this. Robin is counting on you.

  Whatever he was approaching, it was getting louder. Perhaps it smelled him coming. Did it smell fear? McHenry didn’t think so. He was so focused on what he had to accomplish that fear didn’t factor in. He was nothing but determined.

  The ground was starting to shake beneath him. That was disconcerting. Whatever it was he was facing, it was heavy enough that the ground trembled as it moved. McHenry stopped advancing, keeping his sword level, flattening his back against the nearest wall. His position provided him a good sight line, so that nothing would be able to just spring up and attack him.

  The roar grew louder and louder, and McHenry waited, fighting to maintain his patience. He saw something cast a shadow from around the corner. It wasn’t an animal, that much was sure. It was walking upright. On the other hand, it could be some sort of bear, so maybe it was an animal after all.

  It stepped into view, and McHenry was stunned.

  Its legs and torso were fully human. It was clad only in a loincloth that was edged with gold.

  But its head was shaped like a bull’s.

  A minotaur? Is he kidding?

  That’s what it was. It stood a full two meters tall, and its mouth was twisted in an animalistic snarl as it roared defiance. Its eyes were not like a cow’s but rather a shark’s, for they were black and soulless. Its head swung from side to side. Some sort of mist blew out of its nose, as if it were a cold day and the heat was rolling off its body. Its nostrils flared as it searched the air, trying to discern where McHenry was hiding.

  Then its head snapped around. Its dark eyes settled on McHenry, who was standing only three meters away. I
t let out a loud snort, pawed the ground for a moment, and then charged straight at Mark.

  McHenry vaulted to the side and the creature plowed directly into the wall headfirst. For a moment McHenry hoped that the impact would cause the creature to knock itself cold, but no such luck. It spun, snarling, and came at him again.

  McHenry swung his sword downward, but the minotaur stopped just short, causing him to miss the creature entirely. Then it started moving again and crashed into Mark before he could swing the sword back again. It picked him up in its powerful hands and slammed him against the wall, jolting McHenry so violently that he lost his grip on his sword. In the distance, the crowd roared.

  McHenry’s arms were pinned, but his feet were free. He brought his heels up and slammed them into the creature’s gut. The minotaur let out a startled gasp, and McHenry drove his feet forward several more times. The repeated impact caused the minotaur to lose its grip on McHenry, and he fell to the floor. The minotaur whirled to face him, and McHenry backrolled, grabbing the sword and leaping to his feet to face the thing once more.

  His mind went back to the ancient tales. He remembered that the Athenian hero Theseus had killed the Minotaur of Crete. Some stories said that he had done it by grabbing the horns and twisting the beast’s head so that its neck snapped. Most claimed that he used a sword, but he couldn’t recall any tricks that Theseus had used in combat. He’d just employed the sword to kill the monster, end of story.

  The minotaur advanced on him, and McHenry backed up, swinging the sword back and forth. The blade didn’t appear to deter the creature. It wasn’t watching the blade at all; instead, all its attention was focused on McHenry, clearly trying to time his swings and determine the best moment to attack.

  Suddenly the shouting of the crowd changed. There were now cries of alarm. There was much too much noise for McHenry to discern what anyone was saying, but it was clear they were genuinely upset. He instantly discerned that it wasn’t because of him. He was sure that at least some of them were worried about him, but something else was causing their reaction, and he didn’t know what it was.