S. Grove - The Glass Sentence

“We are hurrying, Father.” Veressa looked at Sophia’s drawing of the nighting vine. “But we can’t afford to get lost; we must be certain of the maps before we set out.”

Burr handed a torch to Calixta. “This is the best we can do. We may burn through every scrap of our clothing before we make our way out.”

“Burn your own clothes,” Calixta muttered. “You’re certainly not burning mine.”

—4-Hour 17: Entering the Labyrinth—

AS A GROUP they passed, with faintly echoing footsteps, across the floor of the underground chamber. The fires flickered ominously, and smoke spiraled upward toward the blackened ceiling. When they reached the dark entryway at the far end, the cold air of the labyrinth reached out for them. They stood silently for a moment. “May we soon see daylight,” Veressa said, taking a deep breath.

She walked in front with her map, illuminated by Calixta’s torch, followed by Theo, Martin, and Sophia; Shadrack and Burr, with map and torch, brought up the rear. The muddy floor led to a long, straight passageway cut directly into the stone. It was clear that it had not been used in some time. Martin had to walk carefully to avoid slipping, and after a few steps he placed his hand on Theo’s shoulder to steady himself.

They reached a set of steps that led deeper underground. “Here is the first turn,” Veressa said as they reached the base of the steps, “you agree with me that we go left, Shadrack? Sophia?”

They had traced the simplest route through the labyrinth, and if Sophia’s theory was correct, then they had only to follow it to find their way out. The tunnel Veressa led them into was much narrower than the first, and the heavy stones on either side were cold to the touch. An atmosphere of chilled humidity replaced the smoky air of the prison cavern.

“This one is so much smaller,” Sophia said to Martin

“It’s what makes the tunnels so confusing,” he replied with effort. “The few soil samples I did take confirmed that they were made in many different Ages. There are various networks, some of which were deliberately integrated by human hands, others of which appear to connect entirely by chance. So, you see, it is a maze across many Ages.”

“How many?”

“No one knows. Maybe four, maybe four hundred. I myself have never been past the entryway.”

Step after step, tunnel after tunnel, they wormed their way through the dark labyrinth. It was almost as if they were walking in place—so much so that Sophia found time slipping away from her. She began counting her paces in order to keep track, and as she did, she felt mounting disbelief at how far the maze extended. As she reached two hundred and seventy paces, the air suddenly grew warmer, and someone at the front of the line exclaimed in surprise. “What have you found?” asked Shadrack.

“A crypt of some kind,” Veressa replied, waiting for the others to join her.

They had reached a low room whose stone floor was covered with indecipherable chiseled writing. The niches in the walls looked like shelves, and as Burr and Calixta held their torches aloft, Sophia saw bundles of crumbling cloth. “Burr!” Calixta exclaimed. A heavy sword lay over one of the bundles. She took it up at once and made an experimental pass. “Heavy, but perfectly effective. Thank you, friend,” Calixta murmured to the cloth bundle. Sophia gripped the silver thread in her pocket, thanking the Fates.

“There must be more.” Burr held his torch up to the other niches.

As they searched the crypt, Sophia heard a faint sound, like the distant rumble of footsteps. “Did anyone hear that?”

“Might be left over from the flash flood,” Martin said. “There will be a fair amount of readjustment going on underground.” At that moment, Burr found another sword. He eagerly claimed it, and they left the low chamber.

Beyond the crypt was a circular room with five arched entryways. Veressa checked her drawing and followed the second tunnel on the right into a narrow passage with rotting wooden floorboards. Sophia recommenced counting her steps as she watched Martin’s shoes before her. At the one hundred mark, she noticed the botanist furtively take his hand from his pocket and drop something.

“What are you doing, Martin?” Sophia asked quietly.

“Just a little experiment, dear.” She could not see his face but she imagined him winking at her. “I have seeds in my pockets.”

She was contemplating with some trepidation what kind of experiment Martin intended to perform when there was a sudden exclamation from Veressa. They had reached a dead end.

“We’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere,” Veressa said worriedly, peering at her map. Shadrack huddled with her and they compared routes. “I thought we were here.” She pointed at her paper. “Sophia?”

Sophia joined them, holding her map up to the torchlight. “We must have turned off this way by mistake,” Shadrack said, tracing downward.

“Let’s turn back, then.” Veressa’s voice was tense with frustration. “You may as well go in front for a while.”

“Very well,” he agreed, taking up the map.

They retraced their steps along two passageways, and Shadrack led them through a low tunnel whose floor curved like the inside of a pipe. Sophia counted her paces as they traveled deeper and deeper into the labyrinth. The air around them was surprisingly varied—dry and warm in some places, cold and damp in others—but the darkness remained absolute. The nighting vine grew in fitful bursts along the labyrinth walls. Climbing stubbornly over broken stones and through narrow openings, the pale vine’s map grew stunted and distorted.

All conversation slowly died away, and they trudged on in silence. Their footsteps and weary breathing transformed as they walked, amplifying in the high caverns and shrinking down to muffled rasps in the narrow corridors. The tunnels seemed to wind onward interminably, and still the labyrinth led them deeper. They paused several times so that Shadrack could consult the map, and as they stopped a fifth time, Sophia heard the sound again. “Does anyone hear that?” she asked. “It—it sounds like people running.”

“I hear it, too,” Veressa replied from behind her. “But it’s not people. It’s running water.”

Sophia shook her head, unconvinced, but said nothing. The stone walls narrowed almost to the width of Burr’s shoulders, and then, to her surprise, a break in the wall transformed the passageway. The pockmarked stone wall gave way to smooth bricks of greenish-gray, and the air felt less stale. “This is a different Age altogether,” Martin muttered, without taking his hand from Theo’s shoulder. They walked along the corridor for nearly two hundred paces, winding right repeatedly as the tunnels forked.

The sound Sophia had heard was replaced by the unmistakable sound of running water. Veressa must be right, Sophia thought. I was only hearing the water.

“Watch your step!” Shadrack called back. Sophia watched as each person before her dropped out of sight, and she realized, as Theo crouched abruptly, that they were passing through an opening in the floor. Martin eased himself into the hole and Sophia followed. Calixta handed her torch through and then jumped down. Sophia looked around, taking in the strange walls. Cut from smooth, white stone tinged with green, they had shallow depressions with curious adornments—statues calcified and stained from their long entombment. Shadrack, already leading the way along the corridor, climbed a short flight of steps through a curved archway and disappeared.

Sophia heard exclamations from those at the front of the line, and she waited impatiently. The air around them changed yet again, becoming warm and humid with a heavy, earthy smell. Then Martin stumbled out of the way ahead of her, and she found herself in a vast chamber as large as the palace dungeon. But the room had obviously never been a dungeon. As Burr walked tentatively forward with his torch, pieces of it came into view. The curved walls, where the nighting vine grew unencumbered, climbed two or three stories high. Pale statues of standing figures—men and women with long, obscured faces—stood in the walls’ niches and at intervals along a staircase that crossed the room at a diagonal. A rush of clear water ran down the steps, vanishing into a dark tunnel.