The traps designed to surprise the unwary were ingenious. In those passages where the floor did not drop open, the ceiling collapsed. The bottoms of most of the pits in the floor were studded with sharpened stakes, although several pits housed assorted reptiles – all venomous and all bad tempered. Once, when the designer of the labyrinth had evidently grown bored with pits and falling ceilings, the walls smashed forcefully together.

‘There’s something wrong here,’ Kurik said, even as yet another despairing shriek echoed through the maze from behind them where the soldiers who had burst into the throne room were exploring side corridors.

‘Things seem to be going rather well to me,’ Kalten said.

‘These soldiers live here, Kalten,’ the squire said, ‘and they don’t seem to be any more familiar with this labyrinth than we are. We’ve just run out of prisoners again. I think it’s time to consider a few things. Let’s not make any blunders.’

They gathered in the centre of the corridor. ‘This doesn’t make any sense, you know,’ Kurik told them.

‘Coming to Zemoch?’ Kalten said. ‘I could have told you that back in Chyrellos.’

Kurik ignored that. ‘We’ve been following a trail of blood spots on the floor, and that trail is still stretching on out in front of us – right down the middle of a torch-lit corridor.’ He scraped one foot at a large blood-spot on the floor. ‘If someone were really bleeding this hard, he would have been dead a long time ago.’

Talen bent, touched one finger to a glistening red spot on the floor and then touched the finger to his tongue. He spat. ‘It isn’t blood,’ he said.

‘What is it?’ Kalten asked.

‘I don’t know, but it isn’t blood.’

‘We’ve been bamboozled then,’ Ulath said sourly. ‘I was beginning to wonder about that. What’s worse, we’re trapped in here. We can’t even turn around and follow the torches back because we’ve been busily moving torches for the past half-hour or more.’

‘This is what’s known in logic as “defining the problem”,’ Bevier said with a weak smile. ‘I think the next step is called “finding a solution”.’

‘I’m no expert at it,’ Kalten admitted, ‘but I don’t think we’re going to be able to logic our way out of this.’

‘Why not use the rings?’ Berit suggested. ‘Couldn’t Sparhawk just blow a hole straight through the maze?’

‘The passages are mostly barrel-vaults, Berit,’ Kurik said. ‘If we start blowing holes in the walls, we’ll have the ceiling down on our heads.’

‘What a shame,’ Kalten sighed. ‘So many good ideas have to be discarded simply because they won’t work.’

‘Are we absolutely bent on solving the riddle of the maze?’ Talen asked them. ‘I mean, does finding the solution have some sort of religious significance?’

‘None that I know of,’ Tynian replied.