Elven Star – The Death Gate Cycle 2. Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman

Haplo moved inside through the aft hatch, walked the ship’s passageways until he came to the bridge. Here, he gazed about in satisfaction, sensing the full power of the runes come to a focus, converge at this point.

He had junked all the elaborate machines devised by the elves to aid in navigation and steering. The bridge, located in the dragon’s “breast,” was now a large, spacious chamber, empty except for a comfortable chair and a round, obsidian globe resting on the deck.

Haplo walked over to the globe, crouched down to inspect it critically. He was careful not to touch it. The runes carved into the obsidian’s surface were so extremely sensitive that even a whisper of breath across them might activate the magic and launch the vessel prematurely.

The Patryn studied the sigla, going over the magic in his mind. The flight, navigation, and protection spells were complex. It took him hours to run through the entire recitation, and he was stiff and sore from lack of movement at the conclusion, but he was satisfied. He had not found a single flaw.

Haplo stood up, grunting, and flexed his aching muscles. Seating himself in the chair, he looked out upon the city he would soon be leaving. A tongue swiped wetly across his hand.

“What is it, boy?” Haplo glanced down at a nondescript, gangly black dog with white markings. “Think I forgot you?”

The dog grinned and wagged its tail. Bored, it had fallen asleep during the inspection of the steering stone and was pleased to have its master pay attention to it again. White eyebrows, slanting above clear brown eyes, gave the animal an unusually intelligent expression. Haplo stroked the dog’s silky ears, gazed unseeing out at the world spread before him. . . .

.. . The Lord of the Nexus walked the streets of his world-a world built for him by his enemies, precious to him because of that very fact. Every finely chiseled marble pillar, every towering granite spire, every graceful minaret or sleek temple dome was a monument to the Sartan, a monument to irony. The lord was fond of walking among them and laughing silently to himself.

The lord did not often laugh aloud. It is a noticeable trait among those imprisoned in the Labyrinth that they rarely laugh and when they do, the laughter never brightens their eyes. Even those who have escaped the hellish prison and have entered the wondrous realm of the Nexus do not laugh. Upon their arrival through the Last Gate, they are met by the Lord of the Nexus, who was the first to escape. He says to them only two words.

“Never forget.”

The Patryns do not forget. They do not forget those of their race still trapped within the Labyrinth. They do not forget friends and family who died by the violence of magic gone paranoid. They do not forget the wounds they themselves suffered. They, too, laugh silently when they walk the streets of the Nexus. And when they meet their lord, they bow before him in reverence. He is the only one of them who dares go back into the Labyrinth.

And even for him, the return is not easy.

No one knows the lord’s background. He never speaks of it, and he is a man not easily approached or questioned. No one knows his age, although it is speculated, from certain things he has said, to be well beyond ninety gates. [13] The lord is a man of keen, cold, sharp intelligence His skills in magic are held in awe by his people, whose own skills would rank them as demigods in the worlds beyond. He has been back to the Labyrinth many, many times since his escape, reentering that hell to carve out safe havens for his people with his magic. And each time, before he enters, this cold and calculating man feels a tremor shake his body. It takes an effort of will for him to go back through that Last Gate. There is always the fear, deep in his mind, that this time the Labyrinth will win. This time it will destroy him. This time, he will never find his way back out.

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