The Flame in the Maze

by Caitlin Sweet

They stared at her. She thought she saw Karpos frown, before he looked back down into the courtyard.

  “Princess,” the High Priestess snapped, “how dare you speak thus of—”

  “I shall deal with my daughter.”

  Her voice is actually trembling, Ariadne thought—and then, in a surge of strength that swept away her fear, But it doesn’t matter: I’ll be leaving here soon; she won’t be able to punish me for long. “Leave us, now,” the queen continued, waving her hand at the priestess. “I shall consider what you have said. I shall—”

  Just then the world lifted.

  It’s like being on a ship, Ariadne thought as the stones beneath her rippled and rose. After the ripple there was a sickening, lurching fall. She was on her knees; Pasiphae was standing, her arms flailing wildly; the priestess was on her back; Deucalion and Karpos were clinging to pillars, which were swaying back and forth like masts. A ship in a gale—and the wind was screaming, tearing at hair and clothing, and at the breath that Ariadne wanted to be a scream of her own. Great slabs of stone shifted, atop the columns; they teetered and plunged down into the courtyard, where other people had begun to shout. Minos’s fire billowed up and out, surging through the tipping columns.

  Ariadne tried to cry out again as flames licked over her old scars. She crawled. Phaidra, Phaidra—must get her now; must get out before the palace crushes all of us—

  She scrabbled to her feet, once she was past her mother. Two long, unsteady strides brought her to Phaidra’s doorway; two more carried her inside.

  “Phaidra!” she shrieked, above the din of wind and stone. “Phaidra!” No answer. No one. Just crumpling painted walls—green sprays of fern and purple thistles, cracking apart and raining down on the ragged floor.

  She turned and stumbled back out to the corridor—and as she did, the wind died and the ground steadied. Stone continued to fall, in the stillness: blocks and shards of it, thudding or pattering like hard rain. Screams turned to sobbing and moaning and shouted names that sounded like questions.

  Ariadne stepped over a gaping rent in the floor. The High Priestess hadn’t moved—she was on her back, her arms flung wide—but now a slab of stone hid her from the waist down. Her mouth was working soundlessly, trickling blood. Deucalion was bleeding too, from a gash on his forehead; he was wiping at his eyes with a crimson hand while Karpos held both his shoulders. Pasiphae was standing tall and straight. Only her earrings were moving—swinging in arcs that grew smaller as Ariadne watched; glinting in the quiet sunlight.

  “People of the Father!”

  If Ariadne hadn’t known better, she’d have thought that Minos was himself again. His voice was deep and smooth, which made her think, dizzily, of the polished black pipes in the Goddess’s mountain.

  “People of the Father, come here to me!”

  Pasiphae and Karpos glanced at each other, then picked their way over the rubble to what remained of the steps.

  Ariadne followed them. Maybe Phaidra’s down there too; we’ll leave while everything’s still in chaos. She stood on a slanted step near the bottom and scanned the crowd that was gathering around the courtyard’s edges, away from the king’s fire, which sprang from his reaching arms in pulses like breathing.

  “It is Zeus!” he cried, as Pasiphae went to stand as close to him as she could. “He has called to me, as he promised he would. This was his sign, and his punishment; I have waited too long. I cannot wait until the festival; I must give myself to him now.”

  “But Husband, you—”

  “Make the procession ready immediately.”

  The king walked past Pasiphae, leaving black, smoking lines in the fallen stone and churned earth. She raised dripping hands but didn’t touch him; the black lines smudged and ran. When he had gone out under the remnants of the gate, she called, “Hypatos! Come!” and the High Priest stumbled after her.

  “Sister.” Ariadne sucked in her breath when Glaucus spoke, from right behind her. She glanced at her brother over her shoulder. He was digging the end of his painted stick under a piece of stone: the tip of one of the horns had that lined the palace’s top storey. Stupid stick, Ariadne thought. I hope it snaps. But it didn’t, and Glaucus kept chipping at the dirt under the stone, his eyes darting and wide. Blood was dribbling down his nose from a cut on his forehead, but he didn’t wipe it away.

  “You’ll come, won’t you?” he went on. “To the mountain?”

  She coughed dust and smoke from her throat. Oh, I’ll go. I’ll be there long before you are. “Yes. Why wouldn’t I?”

  He scowled. “I just . . . you know. Our father hurt you. I wasn’t sure you’d want to see this.”

  “Oh, but I do.” She smiled. Someone was calling to her in a soft, sad voice, from somewhere close: “Princess—help me . . . help . . .” Ariadne didn’t look around. She held up her own arms so that the cloth fell away from them; she gazed at the scars that still seemed to be bubbling, alive on her skin. How I’d love to watch you burn, Father. But I have a prince to rescue.

  When she lowered her arms, she saw Phaidra crawling up from the shattered staircase that led to the storerooms.

  Chapter Five

  Phaidra had only just ducked out of the tunnel behind the great jar when the earth began to shake. She stood up and took a single pace. The jar shattered behind her, then another, and another; shards pelted her, cutting the backs of her legs and her neck as she fell; grain pelted her too, hard and stinging as hail. She lay on her side with her arms over her head, watching the floor ripple away from her in a long, straight line, like a snake preparing to strike. People were screaming, somewhere above her.

  First the empty cave, she thought. Now this. What are you planning, gods and goddesses of Crete?

  As she huddled away from the heaving, cracking earth and the gouts of steam, she tried to remember leaving the cave. She couldn’t. She did remember saying Icarus’s name over and over, in her head or maybe aloud, probably as she followed the tunnel back to the palace. She didn’t remember the tunnel, either. I’ll likely remember this, she thought, and a strange laugh rose and died in her throat.

  After the ground quieted, she sat up. Pain tore up her back and arms and neck; when she reached behind her to pat at these places, her hands came away slick with blood. Her breath hissed through her gritted teeth. She eased herself onto her uninjured hands and crawled carefully over tumbled stones. Dust hung in the air, and sunlight shone through the dust in places that had been closed, before. Holes everywhere, above and beneath her. Patches of sky, and cracks so deep she imagined she’d fall out the bottom of the world, if she slipped.

  By the time she’d crawled to the top of the steps to the courtyard, the pain was a dull throb. She paused, her gaze skittering across the wreckage: churned earth and slabs of stone; her father’s burning body; other people, crying, groaning, gabbling, or still.

  Then Minos’s voice silenced everything. Phaidra didn’t watch him as he spoke; she watched the queen, who stood near him, holding out her godmarked skin to his. Mother, Phaidra thought, when Minos finished talking and limped away, out beneath the western gate (one great scarlet pillar fallen; the frieze above shattered and partly gone). Mother—why do you still love him?

  “Phaidra!”

  Gods and goddesses of Crete, Phaidra thought as her body sagged, too late, toward the ground. Please don’t let this happen.

  Ariadne’s shadow fell across her. “You’re bleeding.”

  “Yes,” Phaidra said. She struggled to stand and managed not to moan. “I noticed.”

  Her sister’s eyes narrowed in that way that used to turn Phaidra’s insides to water. “Why were you down there?” she said, gesturing to the remnants of the steps. “No, wait: I know. You went to see him, though you swore to me you wouldn’t.”

  “Ariadne,” Phaidra began, cursing her fear, groping for words, “I was only—”

&nbs
p; “Never mind,” Ariadne snapped. “I have no desire to think of him, or his crippled father, ever again. You and I have to go, now. To the Goddess’s mountain.”

  Phaidra gaped at her sister, blood and pain forgotten. “Why now? Why not wait and go with everyone else in Father’s procession?”

  “Because we’re going to get that door open by ourselves. We’re going to rescue our brother before Father can destroy everything.”

  Phaidra felt her rebellious insides tighten. “You’re a liar, Ariadne. You have no desire to save Asterion. What’s really going on?” Her shoulders hunched, her body reacting to words she hadn’t even known she was thinking. She waited for a slap, or a sharp tug on her hair, or fingernails raking more bloody lines into her flesh—but Ariadne just frowned at her as if she weren’t really seeing her.

  “Does it matter?” Ariadne said. Her voice was as far away as her gaze. “We’re going to help. Icarus and Daedalus didn’t care at all. We do.”

  An almost unbearably vivid certainty gripped Phaidra: They do care, even if Icarus said they didn’t. Maybe he and Daedalus escaped somehow, right after Ariadne told them about Asterion and Chara. Maybe they’ve gone to the Goddess’s mountain. And now I will go there, too.

  “Very well,” she said steadily. “How do you intend to get Asterion out, once I let you in?”

  “This.” Ariadne’s eyes were keen again, as she drew an enormous ball of string from beneath her girdle. When the cloth fell back over it, stone dust puffed and scattered. “We’ll attach it to the entrance and let it out as we go. It’s not godmarked, as Theseus’s is, but it may be long enough, and lead us back again.”

  Someone screamed from across the courtyard. Silver-gold light bloomed a moment later; a godmarked, healing light, perhaps, or a numbing one, at least. The pain of Phaidra’s own wounds returned, throbbing from the surface of her skin deep into everything that lay underneath.

  “Was it ever the gods’ will, to build the mountain temple?” She could barely hear herself. Ariadne’s chuckle, though, seemed loud.

  “Not for you to know, Sister. Now, let’s go.”

  The statue of Androgeus had fallen face-down onto the dancing ground. One of his arms was bent at a terrible angle; if this hadn’t been Karpos’s work, the marble would have shattered.“No,” Ariadne whispered. She was staring at the dancing ground: its uprooted, broken stones, jumbled among the clods of earth in a meaningless pattern. Her eyes shone.

  Tears? Phaidra thought incredulously—though what she said was, “Hurry! Before he sees us, or Mother comes out.” She tugged at Ariadne’s skirt and her sister started, as if she were waking. She dragged a hand over her eyes.

  “Yes,” she said, her gaze once more sliding past Phaidra, to some invisible place inside her own head. “Hurry.”

  They didn’t speak, on their way to the Goddess’s mountain. Ariadne walked ahead, kicking up puffs of dust that stung Phaidra’s eyes and nose. The morning sun slanted to afternoon. The sea turned from smooth, polished gold to angry grey as a wind blew up, gathering clouds. Ariadne stopped once or twice, hands on hips, cursing under her breath.

  She thinks she should be in a palanquin, thought Phaidra. She thinks slaves should be sweating so that she wouldn’t have to.

  When they came to the place where the path branched away from the road, Phaidra saw that the path had become churned earth—rocks and dirt loosened by the quake. Ariadne picked her way onto its grassy edge. Phaidra lengthened her stride until she passed her sister. It was the same as it had been the other two times, even though there were no musicians or dancers now, no banners snapping or Athenian slaves shuffling along in their masks and robes. The mountain door called to her, as it always had. She felt her blood stirring to silver, as she got closer: her god urging her to go to the lock and wish it open, as she had the one on Ariadne’s puzzle box, so long ago. The one Daedalus had made for her. Icarus had been beside Phaidra that day, gangly and young, the layers of his strange hair dimming and brightening in the light that had streamed into the palace after the storm. Asterion had been there, too. And Chara, dressed in unaccustomed finery so that she could be given as a birthday gift to Ariadne. They’d watched as Phaidra’s godmark had flowed through her fingers for the first time. There had been a tiny metal bull at the centre of the puzzle box. Phaidra had opened it; she’d seen it first.

  She was nearly running as she crested the rise that she knew would bring her within sight of the great lock.

  Icarus was standing in front of the doors. Icarus: the lines of his body blurred and sharpened by feathers. She stumbled to a halt and saw that there was someone with him. The someone had short, dark hair and was wearing a woman’s skirt and jacket. Phaidra looked at her, at him, at the big door and the small one and the lock that lurked above everything. The edges of both doors were warped, and strips of metal had been sheared into coils that hung down—but the lock was intact.

  “Godsblood,” Ariadne whispered from right behind her.

  Phaidra walked. She felt her sister drawing up beside her; she saw her at the edges of her vision, smudged by the shadows that were more dusk, now, than storm. They arrived at the door together, both of them skirting the saw-toothed rocks that had been stripped from the mountainside by the quake.

  “You,” Ariadne said. If she’d lifted her hand she could have clawed at Icarus’s downy cheek. He wasn’t looking at her, though: he was gazing at Phaidra. His eyes were so bright that she wanted to close her own—but she didn’t. She looked back at him, as the lock sang of silver and promise.

  Ariadne rounded on Phaidra, her eyes alight with rage. “And you! You let them out after all!”

  Icarus stepped forward with a hissing of feathers. “She didn’t. We got out ourselves. We planned it for years.” He squawked a laugh and tipped his head up at the mountain’s peak. The smoke was white against the darkening blue of the sky. “We thought we’d fly together to the island, then away.”

  “And you still may,” the girl said. Phaidra’s chest ached when she saw the girl’s gentle gaze on his face, and her soft hand on his shoulder. Scars crisscrossed this hand, and her arm. Her other hand, Phaidra noticed, was swollen and lumpy, its knuckles a raw, bloodied pink.

  “And who are you?” Ariadne snapped.

  The girl’s large eyes rose to Ariadne’s. “Sotiria.”

  The princess frowned. “I remember . . .” She sucked in her breath. “You’re an Athenian—Chara and I visited your cell the night before the third procession! Your hair was long and tangled then.” She laughed almost as Icarus had. “She switched places with you. She went to you to plan it, even as I went to him.”

  “To him?” Icarus repeated. The second word cracked. Phaidra thought, Ah—so he’s not in love with this Sotiria girl; it’s still Ariadne he wants. You should have known. Do not be a weakling about it. She squeezed her eyes shut.

  Ariadne reached up and touched the edge of the lock. “And why did you come here, bird-man?”

  His lips and shoulder twitched. “The earth moved. I thought . . . I hoped the lock would have broken. I hoped the door would be hanging open; that we’d be able to go inside and find them.”

  “And it isn’t,” Ariadne said, waving her free hand. “It isn’t hanging open. So we need to get it open, and see whether Zeus’s earth-shaking has made a way for us, inside.”

  “Why so desperate, Princess?” Icarus said.

  And Phaidra said, as steadily as she could, “Yes—why, Sister? I’m not sure you really answered, when I first asked you this.”

  “How dare you?” Ariadne said. Her hand clenched on the lock. “How dare you ask me to explain myself? You—”

  “Stop.” Sotiria spoke quietly, but they all turned to her. She was looking back down the path, and they followed her gaze. The sky behind them was throbbing with orange.

  “The procession,” Ariadne said. “The king. A
lready?” She gripped Phaidra’s wrist and dragged it up to the lock. “Open it now.”

  Phaidra glanced at Icarus, who smiled at her with his twisted, purple lips. She smiled back, then stood up on her toes and placed her palms and fingertips on the lock. The silver flowed immediately. It coursed over the metal and into the air around it; it shimmered when the lock sprang open. The low door opened too, with a muffled clang.

  “Yes!” Ariadne tugged on it until it swung wide. She knelt, her hands out, seeking air, and the others crouched behind her.

  There was no air. No opening. The doorway was blocked by three slabs of stone that might have been placed deliberately, so neatly did they fit together. No space atop or around them; no spaces between—just seams to show they were separate pieces.

  “No,” Icarus said. He put a hand on Phaidra’s back and pressed. She could feel it shaking. Its stubby feathers prickled her, reminded her that she was covered in cuts. She didn’t move.

  Ariadne lunged forward with a shriek. She pounded her fists against the stone, growling and panting.

  “Stop,” Sotiria said again—loudly, this time. She hunched over, curling her fingers (even the broken-looking ones) into her palms, flinching every time Ariadne’s hands hit the stone. She looks like she’s in pain, Phaidra thought. Ariadne’s pain?

  Ariadne kept hammering at the blocks. “I need him!” she cried, and the stone darkened with her spit. “Godsblood—let me in! I need him!”

  Who? Phaidra wanted to ask—but instead she turned and took Icarus’s hand in both her own.

  “We have to go,” he said.

  Phaidra nodded. “Where?”

  “There are lava tubes near the top—pipes. I tried to reach them once, with Chara, and it didn’t work—but the earthquake may have loosened things, up there. It has to have somewhere.” He glanced back down at the orange stain in the sky. “Yes. We go up. And we leave your sister here—because if I have to have anything more to do with her, I’ll probably kill her.”