Stone-Walkers

Overview

The Stone-Walkers are the natives of the Flux Maze, the labyrinth that rearranges itself around whoever is inside. They are part of the Maze, able to merge with its stone and pass through its walls. They act as guides and as traps at once, testing whether a traveller is fit to pass, and the Maze's students come to learn from them.

Appearance

A Stone-Walker has a person's shape and size, heavier in the shoulder. Its skin is polished granite, grey flecked with black and pink, cool and smooth to the touch, with fine seams at the joints. Its eyes glow the warm orange of the magma veins that run through the Maze's walls, and a faint glow shows in its seams when it is angered or deep in thought.

It moves with a fluid, gliding motion, untroubled by floors that tilt and walls that slide, and when it steps into a wall the stone takes it like water closing over a diver, with a soft grinding sigh. It is silent and observant, and smells of wet stone and iron.

Habitat and Range

They live throughout the Maze and within its walls, and are seen most near the paths visitors take. A Maze holds a scattering of them, and the settlements within its walls, reachable only by those who know the song of the stone, live by their leave.

Behaviour and Temperament

Stone-Walkers are silent and observant, and when they speak it is in riddles. They value adaptability and the ability to listen to the stone, and they think outsiders rigid and clumsy. A traveller who forces a way, curses the walls, or tries to map the Maze as if it stood still finds a Stone-Walker leading them deeper; one who waits, listens, and moves with the shifting is shown a way out. They do not explain which they are doing.

Abilities

They merge with stone and move through walls, and are unaffected by the Maze's shifting. They draw sustenance from the motion of the rock, the kinetic energy of stone grinding on stone. They seem to know where the Maze will open next, and some can hum the song of the stone that keeps a path open for a while.

Life Cycle

Stone-Walkers are said to come out of the Maze's walls as the Maze itself grows. Some believe the Lost, whom the Maze takes into its stone, come out again as Stone-Walkers; nothing confirms it. They seem to live as long as their Maze.

Uses and Dangers

They are the only guides through the Maze worth having, and students of their way of moving come from far away to learn it. Their test is the danger: one who fails it may be left in a closing corridor.

Lore and Belief

Miners and quarrymen say a Stone-Walker is the mountain watching them, and leave a little bread at the face before they cut new rock. Riddles credited to the Stone-Walkers pass among travellers, and most of them are invented.

Where It Appears

• The Flux Maze
• the Writers' Guide chapter The Resonant Zones and its glossary