The point man trotted down the first corridor. He reached the corner and paused, waiting for his companions. When they had all reached his location, he set out again, only to disappear from sight.

"Ayieeeee!"

"Deadfall," the Geek said. "You warn them and warn them and warn them, and they still all fall into the first one. I just won a thousand gold pieces on that. Sucker bet."

The Pervect's friends hauled him out. They felt their way along more cautiously, refusing to trust the floor unless they tested it first.

The Geek's engineers had a surprise around the next corner for those who used a toe instead of magik to try out the floor. A female Pervect, in her first turn on point, prodded a tile with a cautious foot. She looked up at the sudden whistling noise above her head. A gigantic weight flattened her to the ground. The others yanked her out from underneath it and propped her up against the wall. She looked winded and bruised. The team leader spoke to her in a low voice. She waved them away. They hup-hup-hupped onward.

I turned my attention to my students. They, too, had approached the maze with caution. Pologne, the research expert, was talking, probably giving them statistics on which way to turn at each crossroads. Bee kept track of the direction they were going, navigating by the stars overhead. Melvine was at the head of the group. The deadfall took him by surprise, but his reactions were quicker than the Pervect's had been. He only dropped a foot before he caught himself and hovered over the empty square.

"Nyah, nyah, nyah," he shouted, thumbing his nose at the sky. "Is that the best you can do?"

"Boy, that kid has attitude," the Geek said, looking pleased. "The crystals caught that. Great stuff!"

"Not that way," Bunny shrieked as the team turned right. That path led through a narrow gap in shrubbery to a dead end. As the students turned back, the plants reached out thorny tendrils to grab them.

"And the Sorcerer's Apprentices have found the Throtde Vines," Schlein announced. "Will they choke, or will they get past them?"

I was distracted at that moment by a loud roar. The All-Pervects had reached the big chamber in the middle of their maze where the monster waited. The huge container rocked wildly.

Bang!

The top flew off, and a twenty-foot-long red dragon crawled out of the box, hissing and tossing its head. It spotted the Pervects, and issued a stream of fire. The Pervects backed up into the nearest niche to confer. I saw them pretending to pound something, or throttling imaginary necks as they ran over their options.

A cloud of leaves blew upward from the left half of the building. My students jogged out of the dead end, unwinding pieces of vine from their limbs. They had escaped from the Throttle Vines, and were just a few paces behind their opponents in reaching the monster's chamber in their own maze. As soon as one of them set foot in the room, lightning began to shoot out through the container's walls, smashing the urns and statuary arrayed about the walls of the small enclosure. Melvine and Pologne flew upward. The rest retreated around the nearest wall.

"Make that louder," I said, pointing at the image. "I want to hear what they're saying!"

"Is that a weather elemental?" Pologne asked Melvine as they lit down near the others.

"How should I know?" he asked. "Do you want me to go and knock on the door?"

"That sounds like a really good idea," the Pervect snarled back. "There are only a thousand dimensions inhabited by lightning-spitters. Think you can get home town and date of birth, too?"

"You're the researcher—you ask it!"

"Now, stop it, you two," Jinetta said, pushing them apart. "We need to go through that room. We haven't much time."

"Jinetta, it's breaking out," Bee said. He had been keeping an eye on the room. They all peered around the edge of the doorway. A huge catlike backside reared up out of the ruins of the container, topped by a translucent, jointed tail with a stinger. The tail plunged down and stabbed the floor, then it reared up.

ZAP!

A lightning bolt shot out of the creature's backside. It went out the door, narrowly missing the team, and impacted on the far wall, destroying the bas relief of a shepherd and some kind of woolly ruminant native to Perv.

"A Manticore!" Freezia shouted. "It's a Manticore! Oh, no!"

"All right," Jinetta said, patting the air with her hands. "We know how to deal with one. We've done it before. Everyone calm down. Stay away from its tail. Don't let it grab you in those paws. The jaws are strong, too. Freezia, are you ready to levitate? Together we might be able to lift it."

Freezia felt the air.

"The lightning's sapped the magik!" she cried. "I've only got about half of what I stored when we started."

"I'm full," Bee said. "I used magik to Cantrip over that moving floor section, but I replenished my store as soon as I did it."

"So did I," Tolk said.

"I had to use some not to fall when the trapdoor opened up," Melvine said. "And flying takes up some energy."

"That's only three of us with enough magik," Jinetta said. "Well, then, perhaps we can capture it."

"Do you see a gum-gorse tree anywhere?" Melvine asked, baring his teeth. "We're toast!"

"We don't have to make it adhere to anything," Jinetta said, remaining amazingly calm. "All we have to do is get past it. We have proven that they are easy to confuse."

"When they're drunk," Bee reminded her. "This monster's sober as a judge."

"Even after Tolk cured Evad's headache he remained slower in the uptake than we are," Jinetta countered. "We will keep his senses busy until all of us, or at least one, can pass him and get through the rest of the maze. Only one of us needs to secure the key to win!"

"Good idea," Melvine said. "What do you want us to do?"

"Ready one of your tornadoes," Jinetta instructed. "It won't matter if you have any force left after that. Freezia, use your retrieval spell to pull its tail to one side. We don't want it aiming lightning at any of us. Tolk, you're good at dodging. Keep it busy."

"What about me?" Bee asked.

"I have an idea: can you reverse your Cantrip spell to make someone clumsy?"

Bee grinned. "I never needed it before," he said. "I was always clumsy enough on my own. But I'll try."

"Ready?" Jinetta asked, holding out her hand. The others piled theirs on hers, palms down. "Break!"

The team crept over the threshold. There must have been an alarm in the floor, because the Manticore, or rather its back half, redoubled its efforts, shooting lightning bolts and jabbing around with its spike. The students had to dash to get behind chunks of fallen marble. Melvine started twirling his finger in a circle. A tiny cyclone appeared on his palm. I was impressed how much the spell had been refined over the last several weeks. He tossed it up and down as if it was a coin, and sauntered out into the center of the room.

"Hey, Manticore," Melvine taunted. "Your mother stings her own butt! The city dump called. Your new face is ready. Hey, I hear your application for village idiot was accepted."

At the sound of his voice, the Manticore's head went up and his tail went down. He spun in a circle, his lion face the very picture of joy. I noted that he had pale whiskers, one of which was bent.

"Cupy!" shouted the Manticore.

"Evad?" Melvine exclaimed, breaking out in a huge grin. He threw the mini-tornado over his shoulder, where it sputtered into nothingness. "No way!"

The huge being came loping over to seize Melvine in a big hug and roll over with him in its paws. "Oh, Cupy, good see you!"

"Evad!" The rest of the Sorcerer's Apprentices recognized the Manticore that we had extracted from the town of Humulus. They rushed over to pet and hug him. I found myself grinning like a complete idiot. The contest was in the bag now.