We might be able to do something. If we were very lucky, it might even be the right thing.
Peter said all this to me, and then I repeated it to him with all the tone and frenzy of conviction. So we encouraged ourselves. Both of us knew that each of us was sick with anxiety and apprehension, and each of us was very busy concealing it from the other. “Oh, yes,” we seemed to say, “this is perfectly possible. Of course we will get on with it at once,” while our stomachs hurt and a smelly sweat oozed on skins already damp. Even I could smell us. A fustigar could have followed us for leagues. We stank of fear, and everything we saw and heard made it clear how late it was to attempt anything at all. If we failed, we died with the world. And even if we succeeded, there was no guarantee we would survive the effort.
I had been inside the Maze once before, only just inside a shallow edge. Cernaby of the Soul had showed me one way in and one way out, and now that Peter and I were going in together, it seemed wise to start by retracing those earlier steps. To get the flavor, so to speak. Or rather, to let Peter get the flavor, since I was afraid I already had it. A flavor of confusion, mostly. Of connections just out of reach. At any rate, after an affectionate and—if we’re honest about it—bravely-hiding-our-true-feelings-for-fear-of-frightening-ourselves embrace, we went in hand in hand by the same path I had tried before, an easy path making a shortloop into the Maze and out again, the entrance and exit only a few paces apart along the road.
We took one step . . .
. . . To find ourselves upon a height, sharp with wind. Below lay a cliff-edged bowl carpeted in spring green, sun glinting on the western rim of stone, the depths still in shadow. From above came an enormous screaming, mightier than any fleshy voice, metal on air, burning gasses, hot shrieking wind.
Down from above a silver spearhead, falling butt end first, buoyed on its bellowing, gas-farting rear, down into the green. I smelled the burning; trees burst into flame; the grass crisped into ash; smoke billowed into the morning. Then quiet. A feeling of dread; dread and excitement, curiosity and pain. Mixed.
A door opened high on the silver spearhead, and a strange creature came out. It was too thick through to be normal. Too thin from side to side and too thick from back to front. Not star-shaped, as would have been normal. Limbs oddly jointed. Naked-faced. Not attractive. Ugly, rather. It called with a weak little voice into the shadowed bowl. Um, um, blah, um. Uttering nonsense. Um, um, blah. I knew what it was saying but could not understand a word. A nasty little human creature, an invader, and I could not understand a word.
I shook myself, frightened, grasping Peter’s arm and hanging on as though I were drowning. I had not seen that creature through my own eyes but through the eyes of the world. Through Lom’s eyes. I gasped, blinked, tried to find myself in all this.
“Jinian . . . Jinian?” He was shaking me gently, looking at me with that tender concern he showed sometimes, the kind that made my heart turn over and stop beating.
“It’s all right,” I breathed. “It’s all right. Let’s get out of here.” I tugged him to our left along the rim of the cliff, toward the grove of midnight trees. He followed me reluctantly, eyes turned back to watch that silvery vehicle in its patch of burned grass. Just before we reached the tree, the silver vessel disappeared from the green bowl below and we heard the howling begin high above us. As we stepped into the shadow, I looked up. It was coming down again. Below us in the valley the green meadow was untouched; the blackened scar had vanished. “What?” Peter started to say.
“Shh,” I said. “Just come on a few more steps, then we’ll figure it out.” I was shaken. When I had been here before, I had merely observed, not been battered about by these waves of feeling.
We stepped out from the shadow of the tree onto the Wastes of Bleer. The place was unmistakable; a high plateau, barren and drear, with the contorted shapes of the Wind’s Bones all around. `Thorn bush and devil’s spear and great Wind’s Bones. There was no feeling here, only a waiting numbness.
“Quick,” I said to Peter, moving toward the crevasse I remembered from the time before. “Before it comes down on our heads.” Above us, out of a clear sky, a moon was falling at us, burning bright, soundlessly, hideously plunging out of the east. He looked up, gasped, almost fell as I pulled him down into the hole . . .
. . . Into the great, gray temple I remembered from last time. Outside the walls, the menacing roar of many voices. Above us, a great -vacancy, an enormous height. Smoke rising. Somewhere doors opening and closing, the sound far away and vague, as though heard inattentively. Shadowy forms moving around us, back and forth across the immense nave. Two pedestals were toppled against the wall, the lamp that had evidently rested on one of them lay at my feet. Beside the other fallen pedestal was a great book, its leaves crumpled.
Before I could stop him, Peter broke from my side and ran to a carved stone monument that loomed beneath one of the high windows. He was up in it in a moment, neck craned to peer through the opening. I remember being surprised that he Shifted a little as he went, making spidery arms and legs for himself. Somehow I had felt our Talents would not work in the Maze. There was no time to consider it. I cried out, “Peter, don’t. . .
