The Flame in the Maze (11 page)

Polymnia no longer counted the marks on the wall, after she'd made a new one. When she tried, her vision and fingers faltered—and anyway, she was starting to forget some of the words that went with the numbers. When she gazed at the marks, though, she knew that the door in the mountain would soon open again—so she kept digging her obsidian into stone, day after day.

She sang and cut. She cooked and stacked. She carried and stacked again, as rain pattered or sun wavered. She gathered up the figs and loaves and fish when they fell. She watched him—she always did, whether he was feeding (his fingers the only human things about him), or hunkered down with his furred head in the waterfall, his thick tongue lapping. She waited for him when he wasn't there; she arranged figs and salt fish and bread, while she waited, and nibbled some herself, when she remembered to. Sometimes pictures from another world bloomed behind her eyes: the sun setting over a harbour crowded with ships; a kitchen full of cooks and slaves and steam that smelled of soup and roasting meat. She saw the pictures, but she was forgetting the names for what she saw, just as she was forgetting numbers. She smiled and sang and stopped trying to count or remember.

For a long time he came and went, as he had since the beginning. He fed and slept, paced the perimeter of the altar chamber, gazed at her with his god-eyes, then disappeared for time she was able to measure as weeks. She never spoke to him, not even when he had a human mouth and could maybe have answered, and he was silent too, and always distant, even if he was close.

Until one night. She assumed it was spring, because the world above was often stormy. It had just stormed, in fact: thunder outside that the mountain seemed to answer with its own rumblings, and lightning that turned the chamber's stone ceiling white. Polymnia had closed her eyes and smiled because she could see the white behind her lids, flashing just before the ground shook. She looked for him, between flashes, but he wasn't there. When the storm passed, she stretched out on her robe and slept.

She woke to his hands on her skin. He was mostly a boy—but not a boy, anymore: a man, so much taller and broader than he had been when they'd fallen together—and he was straddling her, touching her breasts and belly with his hands while his foot-hooves jittered on the stone. His bull's head dipped and she felt hot breath on her face and whimpered, because she was so full of hunger for him that she felt no fear. He pawed at her hair, so long and smooth again, and flattened his palms on it, on either side of her head, so that she couldn't move it at all. He raised himself up and thrust into her and she cried out and wrapped her hands around his scarred, straining arms.

Just that one thrust—and he changed. His bull's muzzle shortened and his fur turned to flesh. In a moment he was a man, gazing down at her with his head bobbing and swaying under the weight of his horns. “Son of Poseidon,” she said raggedly, and he groaned and pulled out of her and away. He crouched with his arms wound around his knees, panting, staring at her with a man's eyes.

“God's son?” she whispered.

His eyebrows rose and his eyes widened and he laughed a short, sharp laugh. Before she could reach for him he scrambled and stood. He ran from her, beneath a high-up blur of light that might have been the moon.

This time she wasn't patient, and she didn't wait for him to return. She went down corridors and into every chamber she could find. She cursed the gears when they shifted and kept her away from the altar chamber, because maybe he'd gone back there while she was somewhere else—but she kept looking, imagining that five days, six, seven, had passed. Imagining weeks. She heard nothing of him—no hoofbeats or breathing that might be close or far away—but she could feel him with her, a silver spark beneath the mountain, whirling just beyond the light her own spark made.

When she finally found her way back to the chamber, it was empty.

There were no more storms. Summer, then. The old Polymnia had hated summers in the slaughterhouse, when the heat had made the regular stench and sweat unbearable. The new Polymnia drew the Goddess's heat up through her skin and into her head. She thought about the god's body on hers, in hers, and knew that that could not be the only time.
My love
, she thought, as her chest ached with tears.
Why did you run from me?

He still hadn't come back when the door in the mountain opened again.
Two more years
, some part of her thought;
I knew it would be soon
.

She rose. She shook with the need to run to them—to the newest Athenians, whose cries she could already hear, snaking through the Goddess's tunnels like blood through veins. But the corridor wasn't right. She waited. She washed in the waterfall, her skin puckering, and brushed her hair out with her fingers as she stood drying. She slipped Korinna's robe over her head and thought,
Lucky there's a fresh batch: I'll be needing a cleaner one of these.

She was calmer by the time the corridor changed, three days later. As it settled, she slipped her obsidian blade into the cloth belt at her waist and stood up very tall, pulling her shoulders and head back.
I'll hunt for you, again, my god
, she thought.
You must be so hungry; this will bring you back.
She said, as if they were already in front of her, “Greetings, Athenians.” She cleared her throat. “Greetings, Athenians. I am Polymnia. Do not be afraid.”

She smiled and stepped between the columns.

Chara didn't mean to scream. She knew where she was going, after all; she knew she was going to fall. But the sound came from her throat anyway, as the mountain darkness seized her and pulled her down. She screamed and flailed, and fear dissolved any strength she might have felt on the other side of the great metal door.

Ariadne came to her, as she fell. Ariadne, not Asterion—and even breathless with wind and terror, Chara fought against this. But there she was: the princess, scowling, wrenching at all the tiny knots Chara had just made in her hair. The princess, simpering at Karpos; raising her hand to strike Chara; crying out Chara's name as she ran into the labyrinth.

All these images vanished when she landed. She lay on her back gazing up into an explosion of gold and crimson sparks. Her fingers clawed at something that felt like moss, and something else that felt like stone. She flexed her toes and rotated her ankles, as she began to hear again. Sobbing, very close, and screaming, farther away—or maybe the sounds were coming from the same place; all of them leapt and blurred.

“Quiet, now: Sotiria will help,” Chara heard someone say, from right beside her. But when she took a deep breath and sat up, she was by herself.

All right, then
, she thought as she looked around.
Here you are
.

She was on a ledge that was indeed thick with green-brown moss. Above her stretched a wall glowing with tiny Daedalus-lamps and gleaming with Daedalus-metal—cables, which began to move before she could decide what to do next. The ledge lurched beneath her. It moved down, down; she stretched to peer over the side, though her bones and skin hurt so much she wondered how she could move at all. She saw darkness, and steam that coiled up toward her. Her hands slipped; her body was running with sweat. The steam thickened and scalded her cheeks and lungs as the ledge crept lower. She tried to swallow and couldn't; she retched and vomited a string of bile onto the moss.

Asterion
, she thought.
Asterion, Asterion, O all the gods and giant clams—Asterion. . .
.

When the ledge bumped against floor, she pushed herself to her feet. The world tipped around her, but only for a moment. She was aching and bruised—but that was all. She stood and breathed smoke and heat and slow, new calm.

Her ledge had come to rest in a corridor. There was a smooth wall to her left; to her right, the corridor stretched away into more steam-clotted darkness. Urns were set along it at intervals—one fallen and cracked in half, and past it two more, upright. Beyond the second, Chara saw people.

“That other ledge!” said the same voice that had spoken before. “It's down! Maybe Sotiria's on it—she has to be—we need her—Sotiria? Is that you?”

Chara pushed herself away from the wall and stepped off her ledge. She walked a few careful paces, into the flickering light of the wall lamps. A girl gaped at her. A boy was kneeling beside the girl, cradling his left arm. And Theseus was near them both, his golden brows drawn together in a puzzled frown.

“Who are
you
?” the girl demanded.

Before Chara could answer, Theseus said, “I remember: you are the Princess Ariadne's slave.”

“Yes,” Chara said. “I'm also Chara, daughter of Pherenike.”

The girl lurched for her and grasped her robe, twisting it tight in her fists. “How did you get here? Where's Sotiria?
Where is Sotiria
?”

“Melaina,” Theseus snapped. “Enough.” He stepped forward and put his hands over hers; he held them until she let Chara go. “Explain, Chara,” he said, and suddenly she heard him in her mind too, speaking words that she could feel all the way down to her bones: ::
Daughter of Pherenike: tell us why you are here
.::

She was shaking. She wondered how long she'd been shaking. Somehow, though, her voice was steady. “I arranged with Sotiria to take her place. I need to find Asterion.”

Melaina scowled and opened her mouth, but Theseus spoke before she could. “Asterion. The monster.”

“No,” Chara said, and swallowed around a hard knot of tears. “Asterion, Pasiphae's son, and Poseidon's, and even Minos's. Princess Ariadne's half-brother. My friend.”

Theseus's eyes gleamed as he looked at her. “The Princess Ariadne told me nothing of a half-brother—only that this was a vile, murderous creature; she begged me to come here, promised me aid, so that I might rid the world of him.”

“She begged you for something else, too.” Chara wanted to curl herself into a dark corner and sleep. She wanted to run somewhere, everywhere, shrieking Asterion's name until he called back to her. “I wrote the letter to you,” she went on. “For Ariadne. I know she asked that you take her away from here, once you'd killed Asterion. I know she expects you to someday make her queen of Athens.”

The hum of Theseus's mind-voice splintered and crackled, and Chara closed her eyes for a moment.

“Well, well,” Melaina growled. “How very interesting. Tell me, O Prince: are you intending to do as the Cretan whore wishes?”

The boy blinked and slid his wide-eyed gaze to Chara. His mouth was wide too; he looked so much like a fish that she felt a laugh push away the tears in her throat. She bit her lower lip hard enough that she tasted blood, and both laughter and tears vanished.

“I intended,” Theseus said, his own voice slow and deep, “to kill the monster that has been killing Athenians.”

Chara shook her head, half expecting tangled curls to fall across her eyes, as they always did—except that no, of course, her skull was rough with stubble and razor cuts. “You can't. My Lord—Theseus—please trust me. If he's . . . if we find him still alive, please let me go to him before you try to use that knife Ariadne gave you.”

“Ah,” Melaina said, “so she gave you a knife, did she? And what else?”

Theseus's eyes were on Chara again, as narrow as the boy's were round. “Tell her,” Theseus said. “Since you were there when the princess gave me these things.”

Chara sucked the last of the blood from the inside of her lip and looked at Melaina. “A ball of string.” She watched the other girl's lips twist into a sneer. “A ball of string fashioned by the great Master Daedalus, whose godmark is in everything he makes. Perhaps the prince will show it to you.”

Careful
, she told herself;
he
is
a prince—the prince of your enemies, no less—don't be
rude
. Then she thought, with a rush of something like abandon, like hope:
It doesn't matter. We're all prisoners, here.

Theseus let the sleeve fall away from his right arm. The ball of string was attached to his bicep, the hooked end of it looped around and through the rest of the ball. Chara imagined him squeezing it between his arm and body, as the priestesses prodded him toward the mountain door.

Melaina reached out a finger, touched the string, pulled the finger sharply back. “Yes,” Chara said, “it's warm, and it vibrates. I used to think it was alive, somehow. It goes on and on and on, even when you're sure the other end will have to appear soon, because you've trailed it all through the palace.” Asterion and Icarus laughing as they ran around corners and down steps, holding the hooked end; Chara panting, trying to catch up, holding the ball that grew smaller but didn't ever run out.

“We'll secure it here, somewhere,” Theseus said. He walked back to the wall and craned up at the invisible door.

The boy, who had been very quiet, said in a quavering voice, “It won't help, though, will it? There's no way of getting up there again, even if the string did lead us all the way through the labyrinth and back.”

“There would be,” Chara said. “The hook on the end—it's weighted, and when it finds nooks and crannies it clings. You can climb it.” She remembered Icarus sending the string whistling through the air to the top of the waterfall outside Knossos. She remembered him climbing swiftly, and Asterion trying to go after him—except he'd fallen with a
thump
that knocked his breath out, so that his laughter sounded like an old man's wheezing. “We'll be able to get up there.”

Theseus tossed the hook; it fell back toward him and he had to leap aside so that it wouldn't hit him. The string whined as it re-spooled itself.

Chara cleared her throat. “Would you like me to do it? I've had some practice with it.”

He grunted and handed her the ball. As it warmed her palm she forgot all the times she'd watched Icarus use it successfully; all she could see was him standing beneath the polished black pipes on the slope above and outside where she was now, spinning and throwing, spinning and throwing, uselessly.
And now here I am, my poor, lost friend
, she thought with a sickening surge of fear and giddiness.
Inside
.

The corridor was only wide enough for her to swing it in arcs, rather than full circles—and yet the first time she let it go, it flew and stuck in a spot far up the wall. Theseus grunted.

“Excellent,” Melaina said, “but now what? Will we wait another two years for the door to open again, then charge out with the bull-thing's head and hope everyone lets us pass?”

Chara glanced at Theseus, who smiled a little. “I suppose you know this part too, slave of Ariadne?”

“No. But I can guess. You'll call Ariadne with your mind-voice, when you're ready. And she'll come with her sister, the Princess Phaidra, whose godmark lets her open locks. Either that, or she'll get the key from her father—assuming Daedalus even had one made.”

“Yes,” Theseus said. “Something like that.”

“Except you'll do this without the bull's head.”

He shook his own head. “That cannot be. It is my task. I have promised.”

“Promised Ariadne, who lied to you, who didn't tell you what he was! Please—”

“Enough!” the boy cried. His voice cracked. “I'm hurt, and so are you, Melaina! We can't stay here forever—we need to find food and water. I heard there'd be food and water, for the beast!”

Melaina grunted and took two steps away from them, favouring her left ankle. “Alphaios speaks sense, for once. Pull on your godmarked string, my Lord, and let's be off.”

A long, silent look passed between Melaina and Theseus. At last he said, “You are hurt; let me carry you.”

“No.” The word wobbled, just a little. Melaina turned away from all of them and limped off into the corridor.

Theseus followed her, and Alphaios—after a glance over his shoulder at Chara—followed him. She took as deep a breath as she could of the hot, thick air. Before she moved, Theseus's mind-voice was in her again, drumming like bull's hooves on packed earth.

::
I will think on what you have told me. I can promise you nothing more.
::

Thank you
, she thought, even though she knew he couldn't hear her. She went after them, into Asterion's mountain.

“What's that?” Alphaios whispered. They'd been walking for hours—or so Chara's body was telling her, with its hunger, thirst, and weariness—through chambers and corridors, into dead ends that sent them shuffling back again, along the length of Icarus's string. Only one of these places had been utterly dark, forcing them to crawl around on hard-packed dirt, looking for doorways that ended up being only knee-high. Every other space had had light sources of some kind: darting ones that looked like sparks or fireflies; small gold ones that flickered, set in rows. But the light that Alphaios was gesturing at, reflected on a wall at the end of their corridor, was the bright white of noon sun on stone and didn't flicker at all.

“Perhaps we have already come to the centre of Master Daedalus's creation,” Theseus murmured. “Perhaps the monster awaits us here.” He turned to Chara. “Hold this,” he said as he handed her the string. “I may need both of my hands.”

She wrapped her fingers around the ball. Its humming turned into a buzz when she closed both her hands around it.
No
, she thought.
Asterion's not there; I'd know if he was.

Theseus crouched and reached under his robe. “Ah,” Chara said, when his hand emerged holding Daedalus's blade. “There it is.”

Melaina gave a low whistle as the blade snicked to its full length. “And a most impressive gift it is. I'm glad we won't have to saw at her brother's neck with a shard of—”

“Stop talking,” Alphaios hissed, and, though she shot him a spiteful look, she did.

They flattened their backs against the corridor's wall—rough, unfinished rock, veined with crystal that caught the white light and spun it into tiny rainbows. “Stay behind me,” Theseus murmured, “except for you, Melaina. You must be ready to cast your darkness on whatever waits for us.”

“Yes, my Prince,” Melaina said, too sweetly.
Gods and mussels
, Chara thought,
Ariadne would have flogged me senseless, if I'd spoken to her like that.