A/N: I finally sat down and got to writing this chapter. My muse was breaking down over the past couple of weeks. That and I share a computer. I promise for those who are faithfully following the story, I WILL FINISH THIS STORY EVEN IF IT KILLS ME! Sorry, I was yelling. Just wanted to get my point across.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters or the movie whose plotline I am following. Otherwise, I would be the one beating off rabid fans with a stick at conventions.
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Chapter 4: Fifty-percent Chances
Dhandi looked around as she backed out of the dead end. The trouble of this maze was that all the walls looked alike, not a single tell-tale sign of where she was or which passage she came from.
It was going be confusing, she thought, when I get Halim and get out of here. I can't tell the difference.
She clenched her scarf, her fingers twirling in the loose yarn. A swooping of a strange bird of dark blue and red over her head startled her, ripping her hand away from her scarf. The bird growing smaller in the distance, Dhandi turned to her scarf, now unraveling in her hands. A frown appeared on her face as she looked sadly at her scarf. However, as she turned towards the wall behind her and the passage ahead of her, her expression lightened up.
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Dhandi rushed through the maze, the yarn of her scarf quickly unraveling behind her. She had reached a dead end, but she doubled back, collecting the yarn. As she went down the next passage, she looked at the hourglass. The black sand collecting at the bottom bulb was a third full. The sorcerer wasn't fooling about time.
She turned the corner at her left. In her head, the screaming of Halim as he was taken away in the cavern played over and over. Dhandi stared up towards the center. Eden had once told her that Mozenrath didn't show mercy to his enemies. What chances did a baby have against him when she didn't?
Eden! Dhandi thought, as she came across the yarn trail and headed backwards. Does she even know Halim and me are gone? Does anyone? Would they even think to look for us here?
Coming around the corner, her jaw nearly dropped on her feet as she saw what remained of her trail. A wall of blood red stone stood where the passage once was, the string of pink yarn clamped between the corner. Dhandi yanked the line and, with a snap, out came the end. She held up the neatly severed end and pouted.
"So much for my plan," she whined softly as she lightly knocked her head against the bricks.
"You just need to be more flexible." Dhandi spun around and two doors stood in front of her.
"Those weren't..." she began as she leaned forward and inspected the hanging door knockers. They were a pair of smiling cats, rusty bronze and pointed their façade was.
He didn't really seem like a cat-person, she thought, or even a pet-person. They're kinda cute though.
Dhandi reached her hands up to touch, when one of the cats blinked. She pulled her hands away. Her eyes narrowed inquisitively.
"Did one of you guys...talk to me a while ago?"
The cats looked at each other.
"I did," the one on the left said.
"No, you didn't!" the cat on the right snapped. "Stop lying!"
"I'm not. You stop!"
"Um, listen," Dhandi interrupted. "I need to get to the center of the maze and I see no other way besides your doors here. So, which door leads the center?"
The cats looked at each other once more.
"We can't tell you," they both replied. "Rules! However, you may guess. One door continues your journey and one door leads to DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!" The twin doorknockers moaned dramatically. Dhandi shook her head, unimpressed but grinning.
"So," she inquired, "do I have to...ask you guys?"
"You may ask only one of us a question," the one on the right replied.
"But, as a rule, one of us tells only truth," the left continued.
"And the other tells only lies." His brother finished. "So there." The left one stuck its tongue out.
Dhandi rubbed her head in thought. Her friend Babkak had a knack for riddles. He was able to answer this one riddle in nothing flat. She forgot how it goes or how he answered it. Something about a spinning mouse and why. Making riddles were her specialty; solving them was another story. She looked up at the doorknockers, making faces at each other. She then looked at the hourglass, still running at its deceptively slow pace. It wasn't that she was an idiot at riddles. It just took her time to solve it and time wasn't abundant in this case.
"Worth a shot," she said to herself after a moment of though. She turned back to the doorknockers. "One question. Cat on the right."
The right doorknocker looked up. "Yeah?"
"Answer yes or no," Dhandi stepped closer to him, "Would he-" She pointed to the left doorknocker "-tell me that his door leads to the center?"
The right doorknocker gulped as Dhandi stared him down. Dhandi was often told by Eden that if you wanted somebody to do what you want, a good long stare was effective ninety-nine percent of the time. After a long pause, the right doorknocker answered meekly, "yyyesssssss?"
"Then your door must be the one that leads to the center!" Dhandi exclaimed.
"But how are you so sure?" The left doorknocker gasped. "He could be telling the truth."
"But then you would be lying," Dhandi explained. "You both disagree and so if one of you says something, the other has to disagree and since he agreed on what you said, he would have to be the liar."
"But I could be the liar," the left added.
"Yeah, he could be the liar," the right doorknocker repeated.
"Shut up!" the left one snapped.
"There you go," Dhandi asserted. "So the door on the right lead to the center." The doorknockers looked glumly at each other as the right door screeched open.
"Thank you!" Dhandi said as she walked through. "Halim, I'm on my wa-!" The floor gave way mid-sentence as was the custom of bubble-bursting and our heroine found herself going down a massive, twisting slide and at lightning speed.
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"And the answer is, folks," Mozenrath said to the screen, inflection likened to a carnival barker, as Dhandi twisted and turned on the slide in the dark, "they both were lying!"
Xerxes sniggered at the screen as the colorful commentary continued.
"Now what lies for our heroine at the bottom? Quicksand? Rusty spikes? Poisonous snakes? Quicksand with rusty spikes AND poisonous snakes? Will this be the end of the girl? We certainly hope not, unless she was a complete IDIOT and forgot how every single darn thing I've ever taught her!"
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It was being to seem that way as Dhandi continued sliding down, no sign of slowing.
Her hands grew raw, trying to cling to the sides of the slide. However, it wasn't entirely dark. Light filtering through the odd mesh above her revealed slide and its destination- a floor of pitch black that appeared to be squirming like a sidewalk covered with worms after a rainstorm. Dhandi turned green as she propelled suddenly into the air as the slide ended.
Screaming as gravity was taking back control; a blue rope whacked her in the face. Reflexes often saving her in the past, she grabbed on the rope as she fell towards the floor. She stopped an inch above the squirming floor, before being shot back up in the air and crashing through the ceiling of overgrown vines and branches that meshed together.
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Mozenrath began to spew a raging stream of profanities as he saw the girl fly through the air from where he stood.
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The hazy sunlight blinded her for a moment as Dhandi's eyes adjusted. Opening her eyes, she saw the entire landscape the labyrinth enveloped for one short moment when she suddenly began to drop back down. Somersaulting in the air, Dhandi quickly traced the path in her mind as she crashed onto a hedge. Her body quivering in pain, she emerged from the shrubbery, scratches present on her face, twigs and needles tangled in her hair, and her already mangled scarf unraveled completely. Pocketing the remains of her scarf, she sat down and looked at the hourglass. Its top bulb was half-empty and was continuing to pour.
A weary look on her face, Dhandi slumped backwards and laid on the brick path, breathing heavily and face towards the sky.
Don't give up, she could Eden say. Dhandi smiled slightly. Everyone she ever knew had told her that at one point. Just get up. Nothing's worth anything unless you work for it.
Nothing's worth anything unless you work for it. He told her that a long time ago, when he was using her. Did he lie to her then as well when he was Amir? Dhandi shrugged as she pushed herself back up. She looked behind her, passages of blood red stone behind her, and to her front, groves upon groves of gnarled black trees stretching far.
"At least I made it this far," she told herself as she began to walk down the path. "I can make it. I got to."
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The irate Mozenrath grabbed the screen and held it in his hand, flipping through frames of past scenes like a picture book.
"She couldn't have conjured it," he muttered to himself, staring at the frame where Dhandi grabbed the blue rope. "I didn't teach her that. Maybe that...no, genies can't teach humans magic, not my type anyway."
He inspected it closer. The rope had black stripes.
Black stripes, he mused. Where have I seen them?
Then his lips fashioned a sneer as the sorcerer's fist pounded on the armrest.
"That stupid cat! Chaos!"
"You called?" Mozenrath spun around and there was the cosmic feline jester resting atop the chair's back.
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A/N: Finally got this chapter done! Sorry for delay, faithful readers, but school and a lost cat got in my way.