Wayne Batson - The Door Within

Sparkles of red rubies, green emeralds, and blue sapphires blinked and winked at Aidan from enormous dark-wood chests. There were great piles of gold and silver coins. And barrels full of sharp iron battleaxes, huge powerful-looking bows, and quivers full of arrows. Wrought-iron helmets, chain-mail gauntlets, jewel-studded war horns, broad silver shields-every imaginable precious thing seemed to be there.

Aidan turned and looked up the long, straight passage. There weren’t any riches in that direction that he could see, but if the pattern repeated itself, he should continue that way to search for a right turn. Still, he looked back left… he couldn’t decide. Every time he made up his mind to go straight, he kept thinking of things he could do with the treasure. With all that gold and stuff, surely I could bribe the Paragor Knights into letting Gwenne go… I could maybe use that shield in battle… Or, perhaps, one of the battleaxes would be nice…

Finally, he chose, and though there was a quiet, nagging feeling tugging at him to go straight, the temptation of treasure was too much. Aidan turned left and walked toward the fortune.

As he walked toward the first chest, he thought, I guess this must have been the right way after all. Then Aidan picked up a shiny gold coin from a large chest.

The ground began to tremble, and there was a thunderous, angry roar.

“Greedy fool!!” shrieked Falon, her voice again echoing from all directions.

Aidan cowered in fear, grasping his sword and looking every which way for a sign of the creature. As he looked on, the ground shook even more violently. But then Aidan noticed something: The walls of the labyrinth were changing!

The solid stone seemed to soften, and the unusual marble pattern in the walls became more regular, like interconnected squares or shingles. And right before his eyes, the huge twenty-foot walls began to lift from the cobblestone floor. They rose from the ground and began to move, twist, and bulge.

In one corner of a wall, the outline of something appeared, and something unfolded from the stone. Aidan stared and realized with dreadful certainty that it was a leg sticking out of the wall-a leg ending with a four-toed foot and razor-sharp talons.

In various other places along the other twisting walls, other legs extended. Then something locked in Aidan’s brain. He was beyond the ability to think or move. He just watched as all the walls of the labyrinth uncoiled into a monstrous, snakelike body with innumerable pairs of clawed legs. From the middle of the spiraling body arose an enormous round head, with creased ears folding backward and mingling with tufts of dark purple fur. Its eyes were moon yellow split by black, fanglike reptilian pupils. She stared down at Aidan in ravenous hunger. Her jaws opened, dribbling poisonous saliva and revealing row upon row of dagger-like teeth.

“Ssssso! You made a wrong turn, hmmm?” Falon laughed menacingly as she reared back to a great height, ready to strike.

Finally, the thought crystallized in Aidan’s fear-struck mind. The mortiwraith wasn’t in the labyrinth… the mortiwraith was the labyrinth!

A idan stood still, barely able to raise his sword a foot off the ground. It was all too clear now why no one who entered Falon’s Labyrinth ever returned. The maze wasn’t just difficult-it was alive! Falon, the largest and craftiest mortiwraith to ever live, had learned to make the coils of her tremendous serpentine body appear as stone and form the walls of the maze. Anyone who wandered in and became lost was doomed, for Falon was everywhere.

Towering over Aidan ominously, Falon prepared to strike. The monstrous beast’s haunting yellow eyes flashed, and she lunged forward. Aidan feebly held up the sword called Fury. In those bleak moments before death, Aidan’s mind raced. He wondered if he would die quickly, injected with Falon’s lethal poison, or would he feel her dagger-filled jaws close around him, piercing his flesh in a hundred places at once? Aidan closed his eyes.

“I have a question for you, young one,” said Falon, her steamy, reeking breath washing over Aidan. Opening his eyes, and glad to still be alive, Aidan saw that Falon’s enormous head was just a few feet in front of him. He backed up reflexively and found a mighty clawed hand behind him.

“The sword you carry…,” she continued. “Tell me, where did you get it, hmmm? The truth, boy, for Falon knows if you lie…”

Aidan came to his senses, and he remembered the favor the Captain had told him about. It was his only chance.

“This sword was given to me by Captain Valithor, the Captain of the Knights of Alleble and Sentinel of the King,” Aidan announced.

Falon’s eyes flashed, and her huge lips curled into a snarl. “I know the name Valithor! But he would not give up his blade to such as you!”

“Captain Valithor was killed,” Aidan’s voice cracked. “Shot with a poisoned arrow, deadly poison from one of your kind. He, he took the wound that was meant for me. Before he died, he gave me his sword and-”

“Lies!” Falon bellowed, slamming a clawed foot to the ground with a thunderous echo.

Aidan knew it was now or never-Falon was losing her temper!

“The Captain told me that you owe him a favor,” Aidan pleaded. He slowly lowered Fury to the ground in front of the creature’s great head.

“Captain Valithor said that a long time ago, he saved one of your wraithlings from some Paragor Knights who were trying to steal all of its poison. Captain Valithor said if I showed you his sword,” Aidan swallowed hard, “that you would give that favor to me!”

Falon’s demeanor changed instantly. The muscles, which tensed and rippled all over her snakelike body, relaxed. The fierce glow in her eyes paled, and her open mouth, drooling with hunger, closed with a wet snap. She crossed her two front legs and rested her chin on them.

“He and I alone know that story,” she said softly. “Had it not been for good Sir Valithor, those greedy Paragor rats would have drained my baby’s blood till there was nothing left of her. You see, our poison is not in our glands or stored in the hollows of our fangs. The poison is our blood. The servants of Paragor have nearly wiped my race from this land-and for what? So they could use our poison for their own dark purposes. One day, I will forget my fear of the sun and moon, and I will go to Paragory. In that day, I will satisfy my growing hunger for vengeance from Paragor and his brood.

“It saddens me that you speak the truth, for then the Captain has passed from this world. I owe him not only the life of my child but the preservation of my race. So I will honor him by granting you the favor. What is it you wish?”

“I just want to get through to the other side of the Black Crescent,” Aidan replied. “The Paragor Knights have taken some friends of mine, and that is where they will camp-I think.”

“Yesss… they camp there often.” Falon nodded, her enormous, shrublike black eyebrows wrinkling and her lips curling in an exasperated sneer. “I’ve watched them, many times from my caves, longing for them to camp close enough for me to get at them. Oh,… what sweet revenge that would be!”

“Why don’t you just go out after them?” Aidan asked.

“Nay, young one…,” Falon replied, shaking her head. “We mortiwraiths are cave dwellers. Longer than a few moments under the sun or the moon, and something happens to our blood. The poison within, the very life-bringing essence of it changes. And it becomes toxic to our own bodies. I would fall dead before I could exact a just price for what they have done to my kind. But,” Falon said, inhaling deeply, “if ever they venture too close on a moonless night, I will come for them. And were they to dare to enter my caves, and travel into my maze, that would be a little different… hmmm? Then, they would know the wrath of Falon!”