'Then why leave the Maze open?' said Hazel, frowning.
'Because the Maze created the Hadenmen,' said the Wolfling. 'It scares them. Possibly the only thing that ever did.'
'I'm going back to the ship,' said Ruby Journey, sheathing her sword. 'I never signed on for this. I don't want to change. I like the way I am just fine.'
'You can't back out now, Ruby,' said Hazel.
'Watch me.'
'I'm afraid it's no longer possible for any of you to return to the Standing,' said Ozymandius in all their ears. 'An Imperial starcruiser has dropped out of hyperspace and assumed orbit around the planet. And it's a big bastard, too. Its sensors immediately discovered the Standing, and the castle has been forced to raise its shields. If it were to drop them long enough to transfer any of you back on board, I have no doubt the
'Never mind protecting your silicon ass!' said Ruby. 'Get us the hell out of here! Do something!'
'What would be the point?' said Giles. 'Where could we go that they wouldn't follow us? Our only hope is to pass through the Maze and wake the Hadenmen. Don't tell me you're afraid, bounty hunter?'
'All right, I won't tell you, but someone's bound to notice. Only the foolish and the dead are never afraid, and I have no intention of becoming either. There are too many unknowns here. I don't like the odds.'
'I've faced worse odds than this in my time,' said Random. 'Of course, I got my ass kicked quite a few times. You stick with me, Ruby. I'll hold your hand if things get scary.'
'You so much as lay one finger on me,' said Ruby coldly, 'and I will personally cut it off and make you eat it. Same goes for anyone else.'
'I believe her,' said Owen, and Hazel nodded solemnly.
'Enough talk,' said Moon. 'My people are waiting.'
He strode forward into the entrance of the Madness Maze and was immediately lost to sight. The others watched, half-tensed for some angry reaction within the Maze, but the moment dragged on and nothing happened. They all looked at each other, but there was nothing left to say, so one by one they entered the Maze, until they were gone, with nothing to show they had ever been there.
Owen Deathstalker entered the Maze cautiously, disrupter in one hand, sword in the other. Up close, the bright shimmering of the steel walls was almost painful, no matter how he scrunched up his eyes. Static sparked on the air around him and rustled in his hair. It was bitter cold in the Maze, and his breath steamed on the air before him. He shivered despite himself and immediately looked back, ready to make some remark so his companions wouldn't think he was shivering from fear, and only then realized he was completely alone. He quickly retraced his steps, but although he had only made a few twists and turns in the Maze, he couldn't find his way back to his friends or the entrance. He called out, and his voice echoed loudly in the silence, but there was no reply. He started to shout again, then stopped himself. He had a strong feeling someone or something was listening, and it wasn't any of his companions. He activated his comm implant and subvocalized his message, just in case.
'This is Owen. Can anyone hear me? Can anyone hear me? Please respond. Oz, can you hear me? Oz, are you there?'
There was no sound at all over his implant, not even static. He was on his own. He scowled, hefted his gun and his sword, and moved on, heading deeper into the Maze. At first he checked the floor for hidden trapdoors and the walls for hidden mechanisms, but slowly it came to him that the Maze's secrets would be more subtle than that. He tried taking only left-hand turns, and then left followed by right, but finally he made his choices at random in response to some deeper, more receptive instinct.
Time passed, until he had no idea of how far he'd come or how far the Maze stretched. He forgot about the Imperial starcruiser, or even why he'd entered the Maze in the first place. There were only the steel walls and the twists and turns of the path, leading him remorselessly on toward something momentous. It seemed to him he could hear breathing, slow and steady and gigantic, gusting about him like a warm, wet breeze. And above and beyond that, the regular distant thudding of an enormous heart. Neither of them were in any way real, and he knew it; it was just his mind trying to interpret something new in ways he could understand. The feeling of being watched was stronger than ever, only there was more to it than that. It was as though the Maze was somehow alive and aware of his presence in it. Not like a rat in a scientist's test, or an antibody in a bloodstream, but more as though he was the final component in an equation that had never before been completed. He put his sword and gun away and wandered on, drawn by something, or the promise of something, he could not name. He saw faces and heard voices, there were lights and sounds, and images from his past surged around him like a returning tide, implacable and unrelenting.
He met the Wolfling for the first time again, half man and half beast, made not begotten, and then abandoned by his creators because he was so much more than they had intended. Owen would never have done such a thing. He had always wanted children, but never considered himself worthy of them. He wanted them to have a real father, not like the distant authority figure that was all he'd ever known.
Again he saw Giles for the first time, held in his shimmering pillar of light like an insect trapped in amber, ancestor and legend and so much more. More and less than Owen had imagined him to be. The great warrior he had been trained to emulate since he was a child; a perfection never to be equaled. A tired old man in greasy furs, burdened by successes and failures alike, guilty of mass murder, clinging desperately to the honor of the Deathstalker Clan.
Owen fought his way through the deadly jungles of Shandrakor, virulent with life, red in tooth and claw, horrid shapes out of nightmares that came at him from every side. Fighting back with sword and gun. Fighting on because there was nothing else to do. He could not, would not, turn and run while his companions needed him.
Back, back. Once again he walked the narrow cobbled streets of Mistport, snow crunching under his boots, the fog like a pearly gray sea. He met Ruby Journey, cold and fearsome, and Jack Random, so much more fallibly human than his legend. He knelt on the blood-spattered snow beside a young girl wrapped in tattered furs. She sobbed hopelessly over her mutilated legs, and there was so much blood. His arms were crimson with it to the elbows, and it dripped from his fingers. She was just a child. And for all his strength and skills and status, he was helpless to do anything for her to undo the terrible thing he'd done to her.
He stood his ground, alone and beleaguered by a pack of blood-hungry killers, so that Hazel might have a chance to escape. He cut and hacked and watched them die beneath his blade, but there were just too many of them, and in the end they dragged him down. And part of him said he deserved it. He fought on anyway. It was all he knew how to do. And then Hazel returned with Moon to save him. The Hadenman. Boogeyman. To be watched and studied but never, ever trusted.
He fought his own guards on the grassy hillsides of Virimonde, cutting down familiar faces suffused with rage and greed. He killed his mistress, Cathy DeVries, and held her in his arms as she died. He'd cared for her, but when the moment came, he cut her down without hesitating. That was how he'd been trained. Historian. Warrior. Fighter. Killer.
He talked with his father, revered head of the Deathstalker Clan, who had time for everyone and everything but his own son. Owen wanted to love him, tried to admire him, but always they were separated by different visions of faith and strength and honor. Bound by blood, thrust apart by politics, Owen never knew how important his father was to him until he was gone, and he was left alone in a hostile world. He ran away to Virimonde, hiding in his histories, hoping not to be noticed. Wanting no part of the politics and intrigues that had killed his father. Wanting to be a scholar, not a warrior, closing his ears to what he didn't want to hear.
Owen's thoughts swirled backward, faster and faster, pausing here and there at important moments and faces. The passing moments of his life that gave it shape and meaning, held up before him so that he could understand them and choose which were really important. Back and back, deeper and deeper. Courage. Love. Honor. Until he reached the inner core, where all things are decided. He looked back over his life, from beginning to end, seeing everything clearly for the first time, and embraced what was really important to him. To be a warrior and a man of honor, defined by duties willingly accepted, in the defense of friends and a cherished cause, to protect those who suffered and punish the guilty. To fight to see an end to fighting, to care for those the Empire had persecuted, to be a hero to those in need.
To be a Deathstalker.
The Madness Maze took the man called Owen Deathstalker, reduced him to his essentials and then rebuilt
