(no subject)

Title: Maze and Guard
Email: tori.siikanen@gmail.com
Fandom: Tanith Lee's Biting the Sun
Rating: M
Content: Jealousy.
Disclaimer: This is an obscure fandom, so it might not instantly click. but if you dig it, get the book. it's good. This post is a glossary to the slang, and this post is the first chapter.

10.

Maze and Guard

So then it was Kina's turn to reset the sensor array on my lightsword armour, and help me to my feet.

"You turned your back on him, you promok," he said, dusting bits of purple grass out of my attire. "You fought him like he was a little hypno-school child and then what do you do? You wander off."

"I know, I know," I muttered, edging past a throng of Jang girls ready to offer their commiserations. I bowed to them, but kept walking even when Kina wanted to stop. Scowling, he kept up with me.

"Completely selt, old ooma. You saw enough of what he'd done to me to know that he wouldn't fight with honour, and that's the only reason why he beat you."

"I know! You're right, I turned my back on him. I'm an utter thralldrap for it. I don't know what I was thinking."

"You were thinking that the fight was over," Saz said.

I spun on the ball of one foot, the other sliding back to take my balance. "Where have you been, you zaradann old thralldrap?" but I grinned to show him that I wasn't really angry, and we clasped hands in greeting, clapping each other's shoulders. "Did you see that floop-show back there? Oh. Meet Kina. Kina, Saz."

"Attlevey," they said together, and then Saz said, "Your riposte is much smoother. Obviously you've been practicing."

"Too bad his other blade got jammed," Kina agreed. "He would have taken a head shot on the first engagement."

"He could have done it just with the left hand blade," Saz said, "If it had ever occurred to practice one blade technique--"

"Attlevey, gentlemen, I'm over here," I said, and they both grinned.

"Tosky, isn't he?" Kina asked, and Saz nodded. Saz had barely said more than the politenesses to Junaya, but here he and Kina were comradeing around like they'd been to hypno-school together. I was tosky, all right.

I was jealous.

"As for where I've been," Saz, finally addressing me, "I just needed some time to myself. To--"

"Contemplate?"

His mask shifted over his smile. "Right. What were you going to do?"

"We hadn't decided," I said.

"We were just getting out of there. What were you going to do?"

"I was going to trounce some promok strutting around Ilex Park," Saz said. "But instead, let's go melee at the Adventure Palace. You both need the practice."



We decided to wait until we could get an adventure suite for the three of us alone, and supped on fire-beer and sugared ice shards to cool our mouths while Saz and Kina joked and bragged at each other.

I mostly stayed sulkily silent, but perversely egged Kina into telling some of his most notorious stories, including the time he stunted a tight, hard spiral around the Committee Spire on a dare and ended up crashing spectacularly when his antics annoyed a crystal dragon so much that it took to the air to chase him. Kina retaliated by making me tell about the time that I stole control of the scoreboard at a star-ball tournament and used it to flash a rude message about the current favourite, which enraged him so much he lost the match.

Then we lapsed comfortably into talk of lightsword fencing, and Kina confessed that he started doing it because he knew I was. Saz didn't offer to tutor him, nor did he advise him to practice in the History Tower instead of at the Adventure Palace. I was privately gratified by that preservation of me-and-Saz, at least.
But at last our suite was ready, and we followed single file into the anteroom to find out what our adventure would be. After we'd paid in advance (mandatory for a private reservation) the portal slid open and a mechanical voice announced, "One at a time, please."

So it was to be a union mission. I liked those; I liked to pit my wits and skill against the scenario alone for a while. Kina went in first. Then Saz, then I stepped into the darkness and braced against the whirling disorientation while the suite dropped me into my place in the suite.


My vantage was atop a gentle hill, and below me was a nearly ruined maze that stretched beyond the horizon. I groaned as I studied it - large as a city, the crumbling walls nearly as tall as trees that had sprouted in its paths and outgrew them, reaching for the sun that dazzled ahead.

Mazes. I'm terrible at mazes - never mind keep your hand on one wall and eventually you make it out. They're as whirling as the boutiques, and if it weren't for my Bee I'd have trouble finding my own way home.

And somehow I'd have to find Saz and Kina in that mess before we could complete our quest. We probably wouldn't even be able to complete it in one session. Would we come back to finish the job? Who knew? I shrugged and started down the hill, angling toward a break in the wall.

Halfway there, I changed my course to one of the trees that grew beside it, and stepped into the crotch of its first branching, climbing it nearly as easily as a ladder before dangling by my hands to land atop a wall. Clever, clever me - from here I could see the twists ahead, plot my course. Perhaps I'd be able to find them faster.

I shouted, and my own voice echoed back to me. I listened, but no call answered. Which way? To the centre, promok. Bravely, I set off...

And realized that mazes are only slightly less confusing when you're standing on top of the walls instead of herding yourself in the corridors below. I, who could contemplate six dimensions with the best of them, couldn't tell exactly how to plot my path.

So I kept yelling. "Attlevey! Hi! Saz, Kina!"

"Here--"

I couldn't tell whose voice, but I could tell from where, and a great farathooming time I had of navigating the walls to get there, but there was Saz, dazzlingly in battle with a horde of skeleton warriors, blades whirling in his double sword style, slashing and wheeling and driving them back. Oh, he was derisann, but I leapt from the walls with a high ululating cry and landed in their midst, dealing death to their unquiet half-lives. By the time it thinned out to a half dozen I even turned a somersault in the air before dealing a fatal blow.

"What're we supposed to do?" I asked, once we were finishing the last.

"Haven't you read the walls?"

"I climbed up them."

"Such initiative. We're to retrieve the Egg of the Land from the centre."

"Well, of course we have to go to the centre, it's a labyrinth." I blew out an exerted breath, shook my jewelled braids. "Then what?"

"That's it--I expect they'll put out a sequel adventure if it's popular enough."

"Sagas," I said, shaking my head. "These walls say anything about the Egg of the Land itself?"

"You mean other than retrieving the Egg will save the land from subjugation, as portended in ancient prophecy?"

"Yes."

"No."

"Onk," said I, and started looking for another tree to climb, as I was completely lost scrabbling between the walls.


We found Kina not long after that, and had a groshing time pitting our skills against skeleton warriors, bands of goblin raiders, and cryptic messages from beautiful ghosts. We chummed our way out of the adventure palace, and Kina loped off to go to a lightdance and meet girls. I walked awkwardly by Saz's side, as we crossed Peridot Waterway and skirted the hypno-school aged kids screeching their way to the playground side of Ilex Park.

I didn't know what to say, so I asked, "What did you think of it?"

"The labyrinth? It was all right. But not enough... going to the center, battling monsters and getting the egg, sure. But there should have been something before that."

"Like why we were doing it at all?"

"Precisely, old ooma. I thought you'd understand."

"To make it more like a real story," I said.

"But if they did, they'd have scads of complaining Jang on their hands hollering about the boring old standing around and yakking when they could be lopping off skeleton heads."

"They would," I agreed glumly. "And really, just we two could have beaten the level - though I suppose we're a little over-trained for that sort of thing--"

"I would have rathered it was just us, too. So!" Saz said, bluff and jolly. "You married while I was off contemplating."

"I did," I said carefully.

"So did I," Saz said. "Still am, actually. I have to go see her. History Tower, tomorrow?"

Next! Swimming in Ecstasy.