There was no decision now, no choice to make. He let Letitia go, clutched his blade with both hands, swept it in a quick and deadly arc at the fellow coming on his right.
The Foxer looked stunned, grabbed his throat and tumbled to the floor. Finn knew he'd done his best, done what he could, and knew if he took one out, the other would surely bring him down. He stepped back, stumbled, felt the blade strike, felt it bite into his splint.
Finn had seldom known such agony in his life. His weapon was lost, but he didn't greatly care, for Letitia was gone, out of his sight. Through a veil of awful pain, he gazed up at his foe, saw the Foxer grin, saw him raise his sword for the final deadly blow-
— closed his eyes, opened them again to an unearthly howl, saw the Foxer stagger, saw him reel, saw blood begin to spout, saw, in a wonder, a deadly, disembodied head. Saw, an instant after that, a blade thrust through the Foxer's back and out his chest.
The Foxer collapsed. Sabatino drew out his sword, bent down and tore Julia loose from the grisly remains of a nose.
“I believe this is yours,” Sabatino said, holding the lizard well away, tossing it to Finn. “I'd clean it up if I were you. Can you stand? Where'd the pretty go?”
Sabatino looked weary, bloodied, somewhat out of sorts. Finn dropped Julia's head in his pocket, along with her other parts. Julia rattled and complained, snapping at empty air.
“Thanks for your help,” Finn said, “I'm busy right now. I don't know where she is, she's gone. I've got to find her. Sabatino? Can you give me a hand? Your father, did he make it all right?”
“I'm afraid not. Couldn't get to him. Bastards already did him in.”
“What did they-”
“You don't want to know. Father was mean at heart, crazy as a goose. But no one deserves a fate as cruel as that.”
“I'm sorry for your loss. If you could help me to my feet …”
Sabatino shook his head. “If she ran back there, friend, I fear she's a goner as well. We'd never get her out. Best we try and save ourselves. I doubt we can even handle that.”
“I guess you didn't hear. I'm not leaving without Letitia Louise.”
“Ah, you're serious, I presume. Let's get you up, then. Won't do a bit of good, but I suppose we could try.”
Finn gave him a long and thoughtful look. “I feel I should be straight with you. There's no reason you have to go too. You won't win favor with me, don't think you will. I despise you for an arrogant lout, and a liar to boot. Nothing you can do to change that.”
“One thing you forget,” Sabatino said, with a nasty grin. “If you don't happen to make it out, craftsman, I win the lovely prize …”
51
Merely standing near the dread machine was enough to fry a brave man's soul. Ducking through the clang and the clatter of that terrible maze, fighting the shriek and the throb and the clamor that howled through his head was a hundred-fold worse than Finn had imagined only moments before.
Madness waited there in the hot, churning bowels of the thing, a thing that had likely drained his love, stripped her of her reason, sucked her mind dry.
One instant Sabatino was beside him, the next he was gone. The Foxers were nowhere in sight. Perhaps they'd sated their fury on the hapless old man, Finn thought. Or maybe they were smart enough not to go near the thing at all.
Once more he squeezed through the vile convolution of fat, distended coils, countless tunnels of soiled and sullied glass, foul viscera that wound their way through the tangle, through the snarl of the device.
And, as ever, through the filth and the splatter, there was something almost heard, something almost seen, a blur of dark motion rushing swiftly about within.
“Letitia!”
“Sabatino!”
A hopeless cry, his voice all but lost in the din.
Finn made his way through shuttering cogs and wheezing gears, through the tremble and the quaver and the roar, the awesome emanations shrieking through his head.
Unsteady on his feet, he nearly stumbled again, caught himself, and-
— there and then it struck, hit him like a great enormous fist, a wall that wasn't there, a wall he couldn't see.
He shook himself, dazed, dazzled, stupefied. The machine was still there, but there was something else as well, something vaguely sketched, like a shimmer, like a veil, like a thousand panes of crystal that shimmered in impossible light.
The sight made him queasy, made him want to retch. The rapid oscillation numbed his sense of balance, his sense of far and near. Finn took a step, and UP swept him over, DOWN jerked him back to his right and to his left, turning him in directions he'd never seen before.
He shouted, flailed about, but no words came out. He was spinning, whirling like a top, but he couldn't move a bit. A face he'd never seen before loomed up at him, grinned and disappeared. Another, and another after that, one face atop the next moving so incredibly fast they seemed to be made of molten wax.
The faces vanished.
Finn vanished as well …
“You're coming apart,” Finn cried out in alarm, “you're just-going everywhere!”
Sabatino was gone, lost in a blink. Finn saw him dash through a bright crystal pane, followed him over a flat, endless-
FINN?
PLEASE
Help
ME
FINN …!
“Letitia? Letitia Louise!”
“Don't waste your time. It's not allowed here.”
“You don't know, you don't know where here is.”
“Here is where you are. Here is where you're going, here is where you've been.”
