They had no way of knowing how long they spent in the Maze of Samnos, but several times they grew so exhausted that they simply had to lie down on the slimy stone floor and sleep for a few hours while they took turns, two at a time, to keep watch, and from this they guessed that several days were passing in the outside world.

     They ran across several patrols of up to a dozen animated skeletons or zombies, and discovered a weakness of the Eye of Millandar. It could only ward them off in the direction in which it was ‘looking'. Usually this didn't matter, as the creatures arrived marching in step from one direction only, but a couple of times two patrols arrived at once, trapping them between them, forcing Diana to try to ward off one group with her faith and the name of her Goddess, with the others standing by to fight if she failed, while Jerry held off the other group with the Eye.

     A couple of times they came across something worse than animated corpses, although after their battle with the zombies shortly before finding Zebulon's body, they would have sworn that nothing could possibly be worse. They took the form of wispy, wraithlike creatures, vaguely suggestive of transparent humanoid figures with hideously contorted faces that screamed their hatred at them as they flitted around above their heads while Shaun, cowering in terror, help up the Eye and prayed desperately that it could hold them off. What they would have done to them had they not had the Eye they had no idea, and fortunately they never found out.

     At first, Jerry tried to draw a map of the Maze, using a sheet of paper and a stick of charcoal he'd bought in Samnia, but after the first day he gave up in frustration, tearing it up and throwing it away with a scream. Every time they came to a dead end and were forced to retrace their steps, they seemed to enter a part of the Maze they had never been to before, totally unrecognisable to them, despite the fact that they must have passed that way just a few minutes before. Thomas tried scratching marks on the wall with his knife, hoping that they could keep track of their progress that way, but a few minutes after making the mark, the ever present slime on the walls had flowed down, obscuring them.

     They then tried dropping objects, but found that they had mysteriously disappeared when they went back to where they thought they'd left them. Even the bodies of skeletons and zombies that they destroyed disappeared without trace. And yet, whenever they thought they'd found a brand new stretch of corridor, one they hadn't been down before, and thought they might finally be making progress, they would come across some clue, a mark carved on the wall or a familiar object dropped on the slimy floor. Finally, they had to admit that they were hopelessly lost and ended up trying different directions more or less at random, hoping that blind luck would carry them through where logic and reason had failed.

     Time passed like a waking nightmare, one that would never end. Thomas had a vision of the six of them crawling around down here for the rest of time, while up in the daylight world above Empires rose and fell and mountains eroded away to dust. Perhaps they would still be trying to solve the impossible Maze long after all other life in the world had come to an end.

     Time lost all meaning, and he began to imagine that millions of years had already passed, that the familiar world he knew had long since passed away, to be replaced by a pitted, airless landscape as dead as the moons. Perhaps the Prince of the Undead has already conquered the world, he thought. Perhaps one day we will conquer the Maze and emerge again onto the surface, only to find that it's worse up there than it is down here. The more he thought about this, the more he began to actually fear that they might find the exit. He found himself hoping that the corridor they were following would lead to a dead end, or lead back to the comfortable and familiar parts of the Maze through which they'd passed so many times before. He caught himself with a start. Stop it! he told himself. I won't go mad! We've been down here for a few days only, and we will find the way out! We will!

     It is one of the fundamental laws of nature that, just when you think things can't possibly get any worse, they suddenly do. So it was that, just as Thomas had made his decision to emerge from the Maze with his mind and sanity intact, Shaun turned to him and said, "Tom, how much activating fluid do you have left?"

     "About half a bottle," answered Thomas.

     "Me too," added Lirenna.

     "Good," said Shaun, "'Cos I'm running out. I've got enough for another few hours or so, but no more than that. What about the rest of you?"

     Diana, Matthew and Jerry, their faces pale with fear, answered that they were also running out. The four of them had kept their glowbottles shining continually ever since entering the Maze. They knew by now how long their bottles would last on the fluid they had left, and they hadn’t dared imagine that they’d be in the Maze longer than that.

     "Alright," said Shaun. "From now on, we ration what we've got left. Di and Jerry, don't use any more. When your bottles go out, don't re-light them. Matt and I will light the way. When we run out, you light yours up again, and when you run out, one of you give your bottle to Lenny, and She and Tom'll light the way. Okay?"

      They all agreed, and soon the darkness gathered closer around them as the level of illumination was halved. Thomas prayed to every God he knew to show them the way out before they ran out of activating fluid altogether, and he heard the others muttering prayers under their breaths as well. If the Maze was this bad now, groping their way through it in total darkness would be more than any of them could take.

☆☆☆

     More time went by. Shaun and Matthew's glowbottles went dark, and Diana and Jerry lit theirs up again. A few hours later they also ran out and Jerry handed his bottle to Lirenna. Ice cold fear began to settle on each of them at the thought that they were now using the last of their precious supply. They had enough for about three more days, twice that if they cut themselves down to just one bottle for illumination, and after that their lives would be over. Never mind that they still had plenty of food left, that they'd come across basins of fresh water from which to refill their water bottles and that a supply of fresh air was somehow circulating through the Maze. None of them had the slightest doubt about what would happen when the last light went out.

     A day went past, and another, and Lirenna decided to save the rest of hers to prolong what they all saw now as inevitable. Now in the light of just one glowbottle, the circle of light was just large enough to encompass all of them, and a patrol of zombies was able to get within a few feet of them before they saw them. A day later, Thomas's bottle went dark and Lirenna lit hers again. They all knew now, with absolute certainty, that the end would come after one more day. Madness was held at bay only by the greenish radiance of a single glowbottle that failed to illuminate anything more than ten feet away.

     Unexpectedly, the corridor they were following opened out into an octagonal room forty feet across. Although they couldn't see more than a few feet into the room, Thomas was willing to bet that two other corridors led from it, and that a flight of steps led up to the great hall in which the Sceptre was kept.

     "By the Gods, No!" he cried. "We've come right back to where we started!" Then he started laughing, great roaring brays of laughter born of utter hopelessness, despair and incipient madness. The others watched him with fear mingled with pity, none of them knowing what to say and scared of breaking down themselves. Sanity was held onto by a single thin thread, and a single wrong word could break it.

     "Why are you laughing?" asked a cold, emotionless voice from the darkness. Thomas stopped laughing immediately, and stared with the others, looking for the origin of the voice. "I assure you that there is absolutely nothing to laugh about here."

     Lirenna stepped forward, holding the glowbottle up before her, and the others gathered behind her, trying to keep inside the circle of light. She came to a halt and gave a gasp of surprise as a human figure stepped into the light ahead of her, a man dressed in the archaic garments of a Sopharannan trader of the last century, and she stepped back in horror when she realised that he was transparent.

     "Who are you, and what do you want?" she asked, her voice trembling with terror.

     "It is not a question of what I want," said the apparition. "I am compelled by the power of Samnos to guard this place and prevent any living creature from passing. If I were free to do as I wished, I would be long gone from here, to my eternal rest."

     "You mean," said Thomas, hardly able to believe his ears, "You mean that this is the exit from the Maze, not the entrance?"

     "That is correct," said the spectre. "All you have to do is get past me."

     "How long have you been here?" asked Diana, fascinated despite herself. "And who were you? What did you do to deserve such a terrible punishment?"

     "I have been here for a hundred and sixty seven years," answered the spirit, "And in all that time you are the first people to get this far. I congratulate you. As to who I was, I will tell you later. We'll have plenty of time to get to know each other over the next few centuries. You can't imagine how pleasant it is to have someone besides zombies to talk to. They're such terrible conversationalists." He stepped towards them. "It won't hurt, I promise you. I'll just take your hearts in my hand and give them a gentle squeeze..."

     He fell back, hissing in surprise and hatred as Shaun held up the Eye of Millandar. "So that's how you got this far!" he snarled. "You cheated!"

     He retreated step by step as Shaun advanced, holding the Eye out in front of him. The woodsman had hoped to force him to one side, so they could all slip past, but the spectre retreated to the base of the stairs, where he stopped. "I cannot retreat any further," he said, a crafty smile on his lips. "The power of Samnos prevents me from leaving the Maze."

     "Then you'll be crushed between His power and the power of the Eye," said Shaun, taking another step forward.

      "No!" cried the three wizards and Diana together, but it was too late. The power of the Eye of Millandar was purely defensive in character. It could not be used to attack. Consequently, as Shaun took another step forward, the eye blazed with light and shattered into a million glittering shards, and with a cry of triumph the spectre sprang upon him.

     Shaun screamed as the apparition's insubstantial hand slipped into his chest. The others ran forward to help him, but found that their hands went right through the spirit's ethereal form, leaving them freezing cold and tingling.

     "Don't be impatient," said the spectre as Shaun's face turned bone white and his hands flailed around, trying in vain to get a grip on the creature. "You'll all get your turn."

     "Begone, I command you, in the name of Caroli!" cried Diana desperately, her fingers white where they gripped her silver caroli flower.

     The spirit just laughed, though, as Shaun's scream turned into a horrible gurgle. In a last, almost reflective action, he drew his sword and brought the blade swinging up, knowing that it would do no good.

     He was wrong, however. As the magical blade passed through the ghost it screamed and drew back, it's eyes glaring in hatred. Shaun collapsed as the spirit released him and Matthew grabbed the sword from his hand, waving it back and forth in front of him to keep it at bay. "Quick! Get him up the stairs!" he shouted, and Thomas obeyed, picking up the fallen woodsman and slinging him over his shoulder.

     As he started up the stairs, followed by Jerry and Lirenna, the spirit attacked again, rushing forward at Matthew with his hand outstretched. The woodsman swung the sword again, though, and the magic placed in it by the great wizard Zebulon did its work again, driving it back once more, this time with more fear than hatred in its eyes.

     Matthew backed towards the stairs with Diana beside him, keeping the sword between himself and the spirit, which stayed just out of its reach, snarling and spitting blasphemies at them. As he reached the first step, it made one final attack, this time directed at the young cleric. She jumped backwards in fear, falling on the stairs with a cry as the spectre hurled itself at her, but once more the magic sword sent it away with a scream. The woodsman pulled his sister to her feet and they hurried up the stairs before the creature could gather itself to attack again. No more attacks came, though. It had been telling the truth when it said that it could not leave the Maze, and it just stood at the bottom of the stairs, glaring up at them in hatred and fury as they climbed out of sight.

     The stairs seemed to go on forever, leading much further up than the first flight had led down. Halfway up, Shaun began showing some signs of life, becoming indignant at being carried, so Thomas let him down but kept an arm around him, helping him to climb. Finally they reached the top, and the ceiling above them opened automatically, sliding smoothly to one side. Beautiful light flooded down on them, making them blink and squint, drowning out the light from the solitary glowbottle, and it was with hearts almost bursting with joy and relief that they stepped up onto the tiled floor of the display hall.

     The carved representations of all the known Gods looked down at them from the ceiling, the good Gods seeming to beam with happiness and approval while the evil Gods scowled with fury. Diana picked out her own Goddess, Caroli the Healer, sank to her knees facing it and poured out a torrent of praise and thankfulness while the others stood around her, echoing every word. Then she turned to Samnos, whose head and shoulders dominated the ceiling, and repeated it all virtually word for word. She was unaware of the eyes of Skorvos, God of slaughter and conquest, boring into the back of her head behind her.

     "How do you feel?" she asked Shaun when she was finally finished.

     "Cold," he replied, "and a bit weak and shaky. I think I'll be all right, though."

     "Good," said the cleric, and she said a prayer over him, begging Caroli to help speed his recovery. When she'd finished he said that he felt a little better, and indeed a little colour had returned to his face, although he still wobbled a little when he tried to stand.

     "Thanks, Matt," he said, taking his sword back. "You saved my life."

     "He did more than that," said Lirenna. "He saved you from undeath."

     "Zebulon did," corrected Matthew. "The spells he put in the sword did the trick. He saved us all yet again."

     "Yes, not only we but all civilization owe him a great deal," said Diana solemnly. "I hope that, wherever he is now, he is at peace."

     Finally, she turned her attention to that which they'd come so far to find. The Sceptre of Samnos itself, standing upright on top of the short pillar between the two life-size griffin statues guarding it. Going over, she stood in front of it and gazed at it in wonder while the others gathered around.

     "Here it is, at last," she said, her heart thumping so loudly that it threatened to burst right out of her chest.

     "Well, take it then," said Thomas, as several minutes went by in which she just stared at it, as if unable to believe that her holy mission had finally been accomplished.

     She stared at him and then, reaching out with trembling hands, she picked it up.