Deathstalker

here. He chose to let me live. Whether that was an act of kindness or one last twist of the knife, I still am not sure. I lived on here, building my hall and gathering my dead. I even found a use for the human dead left behind. They have made good eating down the centuries, over and over, and even after endless recycling they are still pleasing to the palate. But you have heard enough from me. The Madness Maze is waiting for you. If you're ready, I'll take you to the entrance and entrust you to its tender mercies.'

'What exactly is the Maze?' said Owen. 'Do you understand what it does, and why?'

'I've been studying it for centuries,' said the Wolfling. 'From a cautious distance. And I'm no nearer understanding it now than I ever was. Aliens built it, though it was sometimes credited to us, but if they had a specific purpose in mind, they have never returned to tell me of it, and they left no testament. They came and left long before my time, or Humanity's. The Maze has killed most of the people who entered it. Perhaps you'll have better luck. And if not… I give you my word that if I can recover your remains, you will not go to waste.'

He grinned his disturbing grin again and stalked out of the Hall of the Fallen. The others trailed after him, muttering among themselves. Owen moved in close beside Giles.

'Has he really been eating people all this time?'

'Wouldn't surprise me. Wulf always had a unique sense of humor.'

'And all those bodies in the Hall of the Fallen; there's no sign of stasis fields there. Why haven't they decayed over the centuries?'

Giles looked at him. 'I told you. The Wolflings were immortal.'

He strode on, and Owen decided very firmly that he was going to change the subject. 'The more I hear about the Maze, the less I understand. The Wolfling said it killed people. Why is it so important to you that we go through it?'

'The Maze is a test,' said Giles. 'If you pass the test, you live. Everything else is just hearsay. If you want its history. Moon could tell you more than I could.'

'I have never seen the Maze, but every Hadenman knows its story,' said Moon. He didn't look round as Owen moved up beside him, but his voice was calm and even. 'The history of the Maze is the history of my people. A long time ago, scientists came here, into the Darkvoid, in search of the Maze and the Wolfling who guarded it. One by one they passed through the Maze, and though many died and more went insane, the survivors emerged greater than they had been. These few scientists created the laboratories of Haden, founts of wonders and marvels beyond anything ever seen in the Empire. They worked at incredible speed, cold and perfect thoughts moving through their newly opened minds, and together they created the first Hadenmen. The laboratories worked day and night, first to produce clones by the thousand from the genetic templates of their creators, and then to turn those blank organic slates into augmented men, superior men. Hadenmen. Finally the scientists made themselves into Hadenmen and led their children out into the Empire in search of their destiny. And that was the first Crusade.

'The Empire sought to use us at first, in its little wars and rivalries, but they quickly grew afraid of us. We were learning so much, of what we could and might do, working wonders and conquering all who stood against us. And everywhere we went we brought the gift of transformation. Of man into Hadenman. We were Gods of the Genetic Church, and people came to us in ever-increasing numbers. The Empire tried to stop them, but they could not stop what we had become. We were the ultimate destiny of Humanity, the merging of man and machine into a whole far greater than the sum of its parts. What the Maze had begun, we had completed. And so we began the second Crusade, to transform the whole Empire into what we had become.

'The Empire fought back. They had been split into warring factions for so long that we considered them weak and easy prey, but in fear of us they put aside their differences, and we found ourselves facing a single, determined Empire, with all its power and resources. We were superior, but they were many, and in the end we fell before their might. The survivors fled back to Haden, in the dark, and lay themselves down to sleep the sleep of centuries in the Tomb of the Hadenmen. So that time might pass without them, and they might emerge into a future Empire more ready to accept their clear superiority. And those few of us left behind, denied the peace of sleep and sanctuary, made what lives we could in a human Empire, growing gradually weaker and more human all the while. Surviving, when it would have been so easy to lie down and die, so that one of us might yet find their way back to lost Haden and awaken the sleepers once again to glory and destiny. Our time has come round once more, and this time we shall fight on until we are successful, or we are all dead.

'And all of this, because a few men walked through the Maze, and it changed them. Tell me, Deathstalkers: what do you think you will become, if you survive the Maze? What new destiny will you steer Humanity toward?'

Owen looked at him silently for a long moment, and then fell back to rejoin his ancestor. 'I don't think I've ever heard him say so much at one time since I met him. Coming home has made him positively chatty. You, on the other hand, haven't told me one damn thing you didn't have to. Why is it so important for us to go through the Maze? What do you expect to happen?'

'We will become greater than we are,' said Giles. 'We can't remain as we are and hope to survive. The Empire will kill us. Our only hope is to take a step into the dark, and hope it forges us into a new kind of humanity. Someone or something capable of standing against an entire Empire.'

'And if that something isn't human anymore?' said Hazel.

Giles smiled suddenly. 'Then the Empire had better pray we're pacifists.'

* * *

And finally they came to the Madness Maze, and stopped to stare at it. The forest came to a sudden halt, as though thrown back by the sheer alien presence of the Maze. It seemed straightforward enough: a simple pattern of tall steel walls, shining and shimmering. It was only after Owen had looked at it for a while that he realized it wasn't simple at all, but subtle and intricate, like the folded convolutions of the human brain. There were no obvious traps or dangers, only the steel walls and the narrow paths between them. The walls were twelve feet tall, but only a fraction of an inch thick. Owen went to touch one and only snatched his hand back just in time. The steel was deathly cold, so cold frost had already formed on his fingertips. Owen retreated to a cautious distance and breathed heavily on his fingers. Above the Maze there was only darkness, untouched by the shimmering glow of the walls.

The maze lay stretched out before him like a sleeping predator, too wide to go around, and beyond it lay the Tomb of the Hadenmen. Owen scowled. He still wasn't sure how he felt about the Tomb. Whatever the Maze did or didn't do to him, he was going to need the army of augmented men if his rebellion against the Empire was to stand any chance. But could he take the risk of unleashing a force he couldn't hope to control; an army of living weapons dedicated to toppling the Empire in the name of their own superiority? Owen had no love for the Empire, but he was still human, and that gave him certain responsibilities. He shrugged angrily. The Empire had backed him into this corner; they would have to live with the consequences. And he would just have to hope the Maze gave him the ability to control whatever he let loose upon the universe.

He glanced round at his companions, who were still silently studying the Maze. Hazel was glaring at the entrance, as though daring anything to come out, and unconsciously hefting the heaviest of her guns. Ruby Journey was casually polishing her sword blade with a piece of rag while keeping a wary eye on Hazel. Jack Random was frowning thoughtfully, his lips pursed as he looked from one steel wall to another, as though in search of some detail that would give him an insight into their nature. Tobias Moon stood a little to one side, arms folded across his chest, his glowing golden eyes staring right through the Maze to the Tomb beyond. The Wolfling was sniffing the air cautiously, as though checking for signs of an approaching storm. And Giles Deathstalker was studying the Maze as though it was a worthy opponent in some as yet undetermined game. Owen took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It didn't calm him nearly as much as he'd hoped. Giles had described entering the Maze as a step into the dark, and that was exactly how Owen saw it. There could be anything waiting inside the Maze. Anything at all. But he had to go in. The Empire could be here at any time, and he'd run out of places to hide. The Devil before and the Devil behind, and damned no matter what he did.

'I don't know about the rest of you,' said Random, 'but this thing disturbs the hell out of me. Are you sure there isn't some way around it?'

'No,' said Moon. 'My people surrounded their city with all kinds of lethal unpleasantness, all of which are no doubt still in excellent working condition. My people built it to last. They wanted to be sure their rest would be undisturbed.'