Shortly after leaving the last water chamber behind them, Albert noticed that the tunnel they were in had begun to spiral to the left. He almost turned around right then, not wanting to waste time, strength or chalk on a dead end. But a spiraling path did not necessarily have to go nowhere, and he soon found that this one did not. At the center was a small room into which three tunnels opened.
The three of them stepped out of the middle passage and considered the other two. They circled back out together, all of them wrapped around the same central point that was the room in which they now stood. Their choices were to spiral back out from this room on the inside of the tunnel they had just exited or on the outside.
Albert chose the outermost tunnel.
“I don’t get it,” Brandy said. “The Sentinel Queen brought us here. She sent us the box and showed us the way to the city. She even sent her son to make sure we were doing it right. She went to all that trouble and said it was because she was running out of time. So why didn’t she tell us how to get through this?”
Albert could not even begin to speculate. “None of this makes much sense to me,” he admitted.
“I mean, it was so important to her that we got to the labyrinth. Why? So we could die down here?”
Albert still had no idea.
They reached the end of the spiral and followed the tunnel around a sharp left turn. Ahead of them, it split into two separate passages. Albert chose the left one, marking it as he went with the same yellow line that had been following them since the labyrinth’s entrance.
He was nearly out of yellow. He’d have to choose a new color soon.
“Do you think she knows what she’s doing?” asked Brandy.
Albert looked at her, curious. “The Sentinel Queen?”
She nodded.
“Yeah. I think she must. She knew enough to know how to get both of us down here in the first place. She knew how to get us this far.”
“Do you think she could be wrong?”
Albert shrugged. “Maybe. Everybody’s wrong about something, right? I mean, maybe the reason she didn’t give us any help getting through the labyrinth is because she doesn’t know the way.”
The tunnel curved to the left and then turned sharply right, where it intersected another passage. They went straight across the intersection and in a few minutes they found themselves standing on another stone bridge, staring around them at the chasm they had crossed on the other side of the City of the Blind.
“We’re back here again?” Nicole asked.
Albert stared up into the darkness above them, as amazed by the sight as he had been the first time he saw it.
“Which one of these bridges did we cross earlier?” wondered Brandy.
“Probably none that we can see from here,” replied Albert. “There’s no telling how far this thing could stretch.”
There were a lot more bridges visible from this vantage point than there had been when they were last here. They spanned the chasm above, below and to either side, and to Albert the sight was abysmally discouraging. This place was enormous beyond comprehension. They stood over a veritable canyon with no visible bottom or top. There was no way to know how far or how high or how deep it went.
What was even the purpose of such a thing?
How were they supposed to get through a maze this size? They would be lucky if they did not starve to death in here, much less get eaten by the Caggo.
Nicole stared out into the darkness. She could not help but wonder if a pair of eyes might be watching them from some distant bridge.
“I don’t like this place,” Brandy decided.
Albert continued forward without replying. He wished that he had not chosen this path, that he had gone a different way at the last intersection. It was overwhelming. It was impossible to look out over that vast space and not feel defeated by the magnitude of their task. Surely they would never find their way out of here. They were utterly lost.
The three of them walked on, each of them feeling more lost with each step they took.