Escape from Enoch

Part Four

Part Four – The Labyrinth

Who dares tread the Spirals?

The next few moments passed in a blur for Tzer. Nitzotz led him through the gate, down the narrow streets, always away from the garden and towards the outer walls. A strange obscuring darkness, deeper than night and unsettlingly thicker than ordinary air, fell over the streets. It was some trick of Caine or his sorcerers, maybe, but Nitzotz seemed to have no difficulty seeing through it. Neither did Tzer, for that matter. He spared it little thought as they hastened on, glad that the same sorcery muffled their footsteps and silenced everything except the warning bell.

Once, a hulking overseer stopped them, but he bowed and stepped aside when Nitzotz put one hand to the mark of the Stargazer upon her brow and curtly commanded it. If he wondered why a common slave such as Tzer was escorting a lord’s student, he didn’t let the question escape his thick skull.

Tzer could see the black bile mixed with his blood, but he didn’t lash out at the obscenity. In part because he knew it would only make matters worse for them, mainly because he was preoccupied with matters inside his own head. As they hastened through the pitch-black city, strange images ceaselessly flared and faded in his mind’s eye. Many times he saw a black serpent and a crimson falcon. The serpent was wound around the world, protecting instead of crushing. The bird he saw over and over, as if it had latched on to his very soul with its gleaming talons. Its bright shadow stretched over the entire world. He saw eight unfamiliar faces, each bearing a golden mark on their brow. Most were dark like him but two had a strange pallor, a healthy one unlike the Seers. All of them were familiar somehow even though he’d never seen any of them before. And most of all he saw a mountain that became an eagle, or an eagle that became a mountain. An eagle that looked a little like a mountain, a mountain that looked a little like an eagle. He had to go there, he knew. He had to go there and of course he had to bring Nitzotz with him. They would be safe there.

If they could get there.

“Where are we going?” Tzer asked as Nitzotz paused in a narrow space between two windowless houses. The great black gates, carved with strange signs and decorated with the bodies of sacrifices, were to the left, more or less. But there was no chance they could escape that way. Even a dozen Moon Beasts lacked the strength to break them – they had attempted it twice in Tzer’s memory and many more times in slave stories. The guardians were even more formidable than the gates.

“This way,” Nitzotz whispered back. She took him by the hand and led him through a maze of narrow passages until they came to an empty circular courtyard. In the center, there was a low well made of blocks of basalt. This part of the city was untouched by the clinging darkness.

Tzer looked around nervously. That was not reassuring.

“We must go down the well,” Nitzotz whispered.

That was even worse.

“What’s at the bottom?”

“Escape,” Nitzotz said. “But only if we hurry,” Nitzotz said. “This is the only way we survive. You have to trust me.”

“I do, but...” Tzer took a deep breath. “I do. But I’ll go first.”

Nitzotz smiled and kissed him quickly. Smiling despite the circumstances, Tzer began to climb down the well. The basalt blocks were uncomfortably cold and slick, but with plenty of jagged gaps and protrusions that made climbing easy enough, albeit painful.

The well was deep and dry. When Tzer finally reached the bottom and looked up, he could barely see Nitzotz peering down at him. “Hurry!” he hissed.

“I’m coming,” Nitzotz said. She clambered over the rim of the well and began to climb down. The young sage lacked Tzer’s strength and agility, but she had a strange knack for putting her hands and feet exactly where they needed to go. Tzer reached up and lowered her the last few feet. Only then did he take a good look around.

Tzer had never been at the bottom of a well before, but he doubted many of them looked like this one. The well ended in a broad circular room with a not-quite-flat floor. There were curved passages leading off in two different directions. The young slave looked up. The stones lining the bottom of the well shaft were carved with strange, unsettling symbols. They seemed to shift and writhe if Tzer looked at them too long and out of the corner of his eye even if he didn’t.

“None of Caine’s kind can pass through this way,” Nitzotz whispered before pulling Tzer away from the maddingly enticing glyphs.

“What is this place?” Tzer asked, likewise in a whisper.

“The Spirals,” Nitzotz said. Then she held one finger against her lips.

Tzer had nothing more to say. The Spirals, the Labyrinth, the Serpent’s Black Tongue... He knew little about the twisting tunnels beneath Enoch. Stories whispered by the slaves said it was even older than the city, that the three-fold spirals had been dug by Lilith or the Adversary himself, that the deepest tunnels would lead one out of Creation and into the Shadows below or even the Chaos beyond. Now and then, Caine or one of the lesser lords would throw a slave down. The only things that ever came up were screams, and those never for long.

“Heaven help us,” Tzer whispered, offering up a sincere prayer for the first time he could remember.

Heaven heard.

The Voice answered.

This was one of Ziana’s sanctuaries, once. The Kinslayer has befouled it, yet another sin to weigh against him in the End.

To hear the sadness in the Voice was like drinking from a bottomless pool of grief. Tzer shivered and bowed his head for a moment.

Beware the Abomination. He was one of Ziana’s servants, once. He has been befouled, too.

Hearing that, Tzer looked up. As he did, a light flared up in the darkness at the far side of the room. Tzer put a hand in front of his face for a second as his eyes adjusted.

Nitzotz had torn part of the bottom of her tunic off and wrapped it around a lone bone, then somehow set it to burn. “This way,” she murmured, beckoning with her empty hand. “Up and out.”

Sure enough, the tunnel she led him into did seem to be sloping upwards, ever so slowly. Tzer did his best not to tread on the many bones underfoot, both out of respect for the fallen and for fear of alerting whatever had slain them.

The walls here were carved, too, but not at all like the well. These markings were older and wholesome to the eye. They reminded Tzer of the walls of the Green Pyramid. Long ago, someone, perhaps Ilyes or perhaps even Enoch, had carved the walls with a thousand pictures, scenes from the life of Caine, of his coming into Enoch, of his claiming of the kingship and his acclamation as a god in defiance of the One Above, and the long cruel years since then. But these scenes were unfamiliar to him, unlike the Battle of Zillah and Abzim or the Banquet of Azura (where Irad and the other elder gods feasted on one of their own, Azura the Faithless) or any of the others on the green walls.

Here was a flower of many colors encircled by a pair of entwined spirals, one red and one black. Something about the flower suggested it was made of crystal. Tzer couldn’t help but reach out and touch one of the brightly colored petals. As he did, he felt his fingertip warm and heard a voice – not the Voice, but something like it, faint, distant, amused. It said We are the dreams that came with you out of the Garden. Do not forget us. As it spoke, the flower changed, becoming first a butterfly and then some sort of guardian beast, like a lion with the head and wings of a bird.

“What is it?” Nitzotz asked as she stopped and looked back.

Tzer gestured at the stone. There he saw a simple carved image of a flower... or perhaps a tree. “There was... it...”

we are the dreams

“Nothing.”

He followed Nitzotz along the curved path. After a few minutes, it was undeniable that they were going up. Up towards where, though? If there was an exit besides the well, no one had ever used it as far as Tzer had heard. And the story of such an escape would certainly have been told despite the fear of whips and fangs.

As they rounded yet another curve in the path, Tzer came face to face with another wall painting. This one showed a tall, regal looking woman garbed in pale robes surrounded by darkness. Far behind her, there was a white shore beneath a pale sun. Tzer glanced at Nitzotz. She was looking at him.

“Quickly,” she said.

Tzer smiled and then touched the hem of the woman’s white robes. Once again, he heard a voice. I am the Lady in the Shadows, waiting to guide the broken. I will welcome you.

Hearing that, Tzer shivered and fearfully put a hand to his brow. He didn’t look to see if this picture changed, too. He didn’t want to see what it might become, what it might foretell.

***

Hurray! You made it to the end of the chapter — I hope you enjoyed it! Please let me know what you think. Thank you!