The Flame in the Maze (8 page)

Salt and sweetness; things that stuck in Polymnia's teeth before she swallowed them, so convulsively that she nearly gagged. She heard the snuffling and choking of others around her but didn't look at anything except what was in her hands. When she could eat no more (suddenly so full she felt sick), she stumbled to her feet and over to the water. She stepped into its stream and leaned her head back. Water on her face and running down her head and back; water in her mouth, so fresh and cool it almost hurt her, and distant sunlight in her eyes.

When she finally backed away, Kosmas was behind her. He smiled at her, before he took her place, just as he'd smiled at her when he'd made the first mark with his obsidian flake.
Very
well
, she thought this time.
You can have your hope, now that we're going to survive a little longer. Some of us, anyway—
and
she glanced at Zenais, who was slumped against the wall by the corridor they'd come in from, with Ligeia kneeling beside her.

Asterion was crouched between two of the jars. He was chewing slowly, frowning as if he were in pain. Polymnia thought,
Be brave; speak to him
and walked over to stand above him.

“Is something wrong?” she asked. She could feel the sweat crawling across her skin already; salt water gnawing away at fresh, as if she'd never stood beneath the stream.

He lifted his eyes, which were wide, and darted from her face to the food and over to the mouths of the three other corridors that led out of the chamber. “This food won't be enough for me. Not forever.” His voice was low and rough; she hadn't heard him speak since she'd killed the lizard for him, and she had no idea how long ago that had been. “I'll need more.” He stared back down at the fish in his hands: pale grey, bumpy with salt, shredded into long, thin pieces by his teeth.

“What will you need more of?” she said, though she knew. She remembered his roar, after he'd tasted the lizard. Remembered what he'd said, after their fall: “I might hurt you.”

“Fresh meat.” He tossed his head; she saw the golden hair around his horns go thick and dark. His lips were darker too: purplish-brown, straining into a different shape. “They put me here because they knew how much it would hurt. The heat, all the time . . . My body will always be trying to be the bull's. It's only been a little while, but the hunger . . . it's . . . it's ridiculous, is what it is. Bulls eat
grass
—and yet this godmark is so strong that it makes me long for flesh.” He put his head on his knees; she watched a shudder take him, from horns to shoulders to legs to cloven feet. She heard him murmur something—Chara, maybe, or Charis—a girl's name, in any case—and felt herself flush with sudden jealousy.
He's beautiful
, she thought, staring at his sweat-slick skin, with its latticework of scars. Her own skin rose in bumps, from arms to chest to the insides of her thighs.

“It's all right,” she said, knowing it wasn't. “You'll find a way.”
A way to
what
, stupid girl? You see: you should never, ever speak. If you must make a noise, just sing, like Father told you. Smile and sing and pretend to be strong.

He raised his head and looked at her, though not really. “Said the jelly to the ray, ‘You will always find a way.' And the ray said, ‘I have charms—but I'll never have your arms.'” He smiled, though not at her.

Before she could think of something else to say, Kosmas called, “Look—another message!”

This one had been cut into the columns that flanked another of the corridor mouths. Polymnia read the words, with Asterion behind her.

“He didn't know I'd be here too,” Asterion said, so softly that only Polymnia heard him. “No one told him—not my father, not my sister. Master Daedalus would never have let this happen to me. Icarus would never . . .” He stumbled back to the altar and sat down with a moan on the lowest step.

“Comfort,” Ligeia said with a snort. She was kneeling beside Zenais, waving a fig beside her gaping mouth. “Yes, that's what I'd call this. Comfort. Come
on
, Zenais: try to eat. Just a bite?”

Zenais ground her cheek against the wall (a row of looping vines and flowers: green, scarlet, gold) and mumbled something. “Come
on
!” Ligeia shouted, and stuck the fig between the other girl's lips. Zenais's body lashed and she vomited a thick, dark stream of something, down the front of her already filthy robe.

“Enough!” cried Kosmas. He pulled Ligeia's shoulders until she fell back against his legs. She clawed at his hands, panting and snarling. Asterion moaned again. Zenais cried in thick, wracking sobs.

“Help me,” Kosmas said to Asterion. They tipped one of the smaller storage jars carefully onto its side, emptied it of oatcakes and shuffled it between them to the place where the falling water struck the floor and vanished. They positioned it beneath the stream. It was full before the shafts of sunlight had dimmed above them. Kosmas pulled off his robe; Polymnia watched Ligeia's eyes as they leapt over the gleaming ridges and hollows of his body. He angled the water jar so that water poured out in a steady stream, onto the cloth. When it was soaked, he took it over to Zenais and ran it gently over her cheeks and across her forehead. She whimpered and strained toward the cloth. When he laid it against her wound she screamed.

Not long afterward, when everything was quiet, the last of the outside light ebbed away. Other light bloomed: green-blue sprays of glowing plants, maybe moss or lichen—
Something short and fuzzy
, Polymnia thought as she sank down beside Zenais.
Something that would make my fingertips smell like earth
.
Something the colour of the dress my mistress gave me after I calmed that calf that kept trying to bolt from the altar.
Other lights flickered up the length of the columns and along the carved walls: golden specks that seemed to weave like fireflies, blurring in the steam from the falling water.

“We should never leave here,” Kosmas said.

The shadow of Ligeia's shaking head leapt up the wall behind her. “We'll have to. We'll go mad if we don't.”

“What does madness matter if the other option is to get lost and starve?”

Kosmas stood and stared upward. Asterion leaned forward, rocking slowly.

“There has to be a way to reach those pipes,” Kosmas said. “We could stack the jars, or collect rocks—big ones. We could use some of the stalactites in that huge chamber of them, if we could find our way back there. And we could: we marked it.”

“No,” Asterion said, without raising his head. “We'd need fifty jars, and some way of attaching them so they wouldn't fall. And anyway, the pipes are like glass, and they're on an angle; even if we
did
reach one of them, there'd be nothing to hold onto. We'd slide right back down again and break our necks. No: Master Daedalus made this place for survival, not escape.”

Ligeia had begun pacing around them all in long, loping, scuffing strides. Zenais's breath was rough and wet in her chest.
Stop!
Polymnia wanted to cry. Instead she sang. They turned to her. They went still. Her godmark wove silver threads into the flickering gold and the dark.

“She's dead.”

Ligeia was hunched over Zenais. Ligeia's shoulders were shaking; none of Zenais was moving at all.

Kosmas fell so heavily that Polymnia imagined she heard his knee bones cracking. She wasn't looking at him, though, nor at the others. She was watching Asterion, who was crawling behind the row of jars. His head was down, and the tips of his horns were drawing lazy sparks from the altar's stone.

A long time later, Kosmas said, “We'll have to do something with her body.” His voice shook a bit.

Polymnia shifted her gaze in time to see Ligeia drag a hand under her nose. She was bubbling and sniffling, holding Zenais's wrist in her other hand.
Yes
, Polymnia thought.
Be sad
.

“The bridge,” Ligeia said. Somehow her voice didn't shake. “We should throw her over. We have to.”

“Yes,” Kosmas said. “But we can't send her to Hades like this.”

When he put his hands on the remains of Zenais's robe, the cloth fell away. He tore the skirt of his own robe into strips and dipped them in the water urn. He used them, one at a time, to wash her: her stubbly head, her face, her neck, her breasts. Ligeia gave a half-hearted snort when he reached her belly.

“What's the point, if you're just going to throw her off a bridge?”

He didn't answer. He washed Zenais's thighs, then stopped, the cloth strip poised and dripping above her calves. Her wound gaped, dark and ragged, still oozing. Polymnia could smell it, even from halfway across the chamber. At last he laid two strips over the wound. He pressed them flat, very gently, as if he were afraid of hurting her. He washed her feet, set the soiled strips aside, and lifted her. Her head lolled; he raised his shoulder so that she was lying against it.

Asterion moaned, behind the jars.

“You're doing it now?” Ligeia said. “Already?”

Kosmas was walking toward the corridor that would take him to the bridge. “Why would we wait?” he said over his shoulder. He glanced from Ligeia to Polymnia. “Are you coming?”

Polymnia shook her head, but Ligeia said, “Yes: wait!” As she did, Kosmas stepped into the corridor, and the world split apart in metal screeching and grinding stone. He drew sharply back into the altar chamber as the corridor's mouth disappeared, its firefly-lit darkness replaced with a dead-end wall. The wall didn't stay, though: it crawled down into a hole that had opened in the ground, as invisible gears shrieked and invisible chains pulled. Polymnia whirled to look where Kosmas was looking: at the second doorway, and the third, and at the changing spaces beyond them.

“What's happening?” Polymnia thought Ligeia was probably screaming, because her mouth was gaping and the tendons in her neck were standing out—but her words were barely audible. By the time the other noises faded, moments later, Ligeia was on her knees in the bloodied spot where Zenais had lain. “What,” she said again, her chest heaving, “is happening?”

Kosmas's arms were shaking—perhaps from shock; perhaps just because Zenais's body was heavy. “This must have been the plan,” he said slowly. “To give the Goddess's victims some rest, some food, then take all that comfort away by changing everything. Asterion: does that sound right? Does that sound like your Master Daedalus?”

Asterion didn't uncurl himself from behind the jars. From where she was standing, Polymnia saw one of his horns, dipping and swinging. “Maybe this is the best place to be,” he said in a tight, dry voice. “Maybe he wanted people to stay here and not go wandering back out again, where they might come to harm.”

Kosmas blew out his breath and set Zenais back on the ground. He sat down beside her and let his shoulders lift and fall. “Whatever the reason: I don't know what to do, any more. I thought it would be enough to mark our path—but now the marks are gone.”

“We stay here for a bit,” Ligeia said. “The beast's right: this is a good place.”

Don't call him that
, Polymnia thought, but didn't say. She edged around the steps so that she could see Asterion's lowered face and rounded back. His spine jutted. Muscles bunched in his thighs. His scars, purple, pink and white, were like the marks she'd watched her mistress's scribe make on Egyptian paper, but far more beautiful.

“Fine,” Kosmas said. “But we'll have to go out there and see what it looks like—because we'll have to take care of Zenais's body somehow, and soon.”

“Of course,” Ligeia said. Polymnia couldn't see her, or Kosmas, or the thing that had been Zenais. She saw only Asterion, who had wrapped his arms around himself. He dragged his head up, and she shrank from the helpless fear in his round dark eyes.

Polymnia woke that night to more of Ligeia's screaming.
Another lizard?
she thought muzzily—except that this scream rose and rose and ended in a wolf's howl.

At first, blinking and squinting, Polymnia saw nothing but a blur of silver. A few blinks later, she saw Ligeia on all fours, straining her head and shoulders upward. It was the godlight pouring from her mouth that was turning the air and stone to silver. The air, the stone—and the horned beast crouched over the shadow of Zenais's body.

Asterion's head was the bull's, but his hands were the boy's. They were tearing, tugging, lifting things to his muzzle: long, wet, slippery things.

Ligeia's howl stuttered and died, and Kosmas yelled into the silence. The bull-boy raised his head. He dropped what he was clutching and flexed his fingers, which fused immediately into hooves. His back arched, and fur spread from shoulders to back to buttocks. He pawed at the ground and gave a bellow that thrummed through the altar stone and up through Polymnia's feet.

“
Monster!
” Ligeia's voice was still partly godmarked—rough and low, as if she were in pain. She had risen into a crouch, brandishing her obsidian shard. The bull bellowed once more, and she sprang forward.

“No!” Kosmas cried, and lunged for her even as the bull lowered his head and charged. Ligeia screamed in her own voice as the bull bore down on her. She dodged, and one of his horns grazed her side. Her robe tore; blood branched from a jagged cut on her ribcage.

“Ligeia—run!” shouted Kosmas from the doorway farthest from her. He turned and looked wildly at Polymnia, who'd retreated to another doorway.
No
, she told herself.
You can't leave Asterion. You're the only one who understands him. He needs you.
And yet
, she thought, as he spun and charged again, and Ligeia whirled and made for the third doorway,
he's beyond you, for now. He'll only know you when his hunger and rage have passed and he's a boy again—so run—

“
Run!
”

—go, and return as soon as he's quiet—

Ligeia disappeared beyond her doorway. Kosmas cast one more frenzied look at Polymnia and ducked away into darkness.

She turned to face the bull, who was turning to her. His breath was whuffing, and she imagined she could feel it, despite the broad expanse of ground between them—she could feel it, hot on her face and stubbly head.

For a moment, one of his brown eyes was on her and they were both still. She had time to think,
He
does
know me!
before his horns dipped and one of his hooves struck sparks from the stone. He let out another bellow and leapt, and she stumbled backward into a corridor.
It's all right: he won't fit; I'll just stay here for a bit.
Except that, as he made for her, she saw that he
would
fit—and at last she dragged her body around so that she was facing a dim, strange tunnel, and she ran as his hooves and breath pursued her.

This new tunnel was thick with steam: scalding jets of it, which filled her eyes with tears and her throat with coughing. The walls glowed with splotches of green light, but they were smudged and diffuse and showed her almost nothing. Steps fell suddenly away beneath her and she sprawled onto a polished floor; he was close, closer, as she struggled to rise.
Why does it matter? You're going to die in here anyway—so stop. Give yourself to this god. Nothing matters except him.
But she was up once more, slipping along the floor—obsidian, she saw, in the blurry green spaces between the steam.

She heard his hooves clatter and slide and continue, closer.

The path forked; she saw another opening, which was very tall and narrow. She moaned as she threw herself toward it and wriggled in, sideways. The bull was only moments behind her; he wheeled and tipped, righted himself with his head facing hers. He was all darkness, except for his horns, which lit the steam with shifting silver and gold. He
thrust his head into the opening and pushed until his nose was a hand's breadth from her face. It stuck there. She watched his nostrils flare; she saw that they were slick with blood, and that the fur below his chin was matted with it. She felt his breath, and it was as hot as she'd known it would be. It lapped at her cheek, calling her out to him, and she dug her fingernails into the rock and her teeth into her lip.
No
, she thought, as he pawed and grunted.
I don't want to die. I want to be with him.

Her heart hammered in her chest and behind her eyes. Sweat flowed in rivulets from her scalp and down across all her skin. She itched, inside and out. She felt her own breath, caught and squeezed by the rock walls and his closeness. They stood for minutes or hours or forever—until a wolf's howl rose and twined between them, with the steam.

The bull snorted and wrenched his head from side to side.
Don't go
, Polymnia thought, even as he withdrew from the opening and relief turned her limbs to water.
I'll find you
, she thought, as the sound of his hooves faded and she eased herself out.
I will find you
.

As it turned out, she barely found her own way back to the altar chamber. The moment she stood and stepped into the bank of steam that filled the corridor, she heard gears catch and grind and felt the obsidian floor beneath her shudder. She ran a few paces, crying out helplessly, knowing that it was too late.

A smooth marble wall had descended from the ceiling where the doorway to the altar chamber had been. She pounded on it, thinking
Asterion
every time her skin hit the stone—thinking only about him, and not the jars of olives and figs and water. Not the holes that poured sunlight and fresh air down into their prison.

Enough
, she thought at last. She leaned her cheek against the marble, which was deliciously cool, and craned up at the ceiling. The steam was thick, and it took a moment for some deep, hot thread of wind to trace a clear path through it. She saw a metal loop hanging directly above her head, and reached up to pull it before she could wonder whether she should. Wood creaked and whined, and she scrambled backward as a ladder unfurled and swung heavily where she'd been.

She stared at it, shaking her head as if it had spoken.
Go a different way
, she thought—because maybe there was some other, faster path back to where he was. But there wasn't—of course there wasn't; there was only another wall, this one bumpy with carvings of nautilus shells and cresting waves that looked as if they were moving in the sickly green light.

The rope of the ladder was coarse against her palms. She clutched it as she swung, close to the ground but abruptly dizzy. When she felt steadier she pulled herself up the eight rungs. There was no steam at the top; she gazed down at it, roiling and dense, and almost laughed because she seemed to have no body except for her grasping hands and her sweat-slick head. Above her was a jagged hole filled with light that was as bright and rippling as sun. Her heart raced as she tilted her face toward it, even though the rest of her knew it was just more of Master Daedalus's godmarked work. She took a breath and hauled herself up. Her already tattered robe snagged on the hole's teeth, and she grunted as she tore it free.

The sun was an enormous glass globe filled with golden flames so bright that she couldn't see how it had been suspended. She closed her eyes a bit, so that she could imagine that it really was the sun, hot and low, surrounded by a sky that was made of air, not rock.
Enough
, she told herself, opening her eyes as wide as she could. This
is your place now. Yours and his.

She set off into the light. Tiny, hard things cracked under her bare feet; she guessed without looking at them that they were the bones of white cave creatures like the lizard she'd caught for him. Perhaps these had died fleeing the false sun. When she reached a wall with three doorways in it, she leaned over to brush the creatures' remnants from her skin. The tunnel beyond one doorway was dark, and another was a sickly yellow; the last flickered with fire she knew was real. She chose the last.

After only a few steps she wondered if she'd chosen wisely; heat surged against her flesh and into her lungs in stifling waves.
He'd be all bull in an instant, if he were here with me
—but this thought made her ache with longing and fear, so she concentrated on her own tight breathing, and the way the tunnel's earthen floor was sloping down toward the light. She was soaked with sweat by the time it opened into a cavern vaster than any she'd yet seen beneath the mountain. A cavern of rock that looked red, because its floor was a lake of fire with a scorched black island at its centre.