The Flame in the Maze
Page 28
“What’s that?” Alphaios said hoarsely. “What’s the king holding?”
It looked tiny, from the ship. Tiny and slender, shuddering with firelight as the king drew it off his shoulder.
Daedalus’s silver-feathered glide ended in a plunge. He was in the water by the ship; men swarmed to the side, reaching with hands and oars.
Still too far above, Icarus rose and spun and sputtered.
“It’s a bow,” Asterion said. “Oh, gods. It’s a bow.”
Minos raised the bow, which was burning. He loosed an arrow. It coursed with his flame, as it arced down into the waves.
Phaidra screamed, “Icarus!”, and for a moment he was flying again, straight and true, toward her. But then he twisted, spine to the waves, face to the sky, wings churning.
Minos loosed another arrow, and it caught him in the chest.
So many voices rose, but Chara hardly heard them. The sound in her ears was white and red, and it spread out beyond her and changed the colour of the sky. The only clean, clear spot was where Icarus was falling. She could see every point of kindled flame, every feather that blackened. She could see his beak becoming nose and lips, and his wings becoming hands. At the last, she could see his eyes, dull and fixed on nothing.
He landed far from the ship, with a splash and a hissing of water and steam.
Phaidra’s voice shattered Chara’s white and red. “Get him out! Get him out!” She was leaning too far out over the boat’s side, her arms flailing, only one foot on the deck. As Theseus pulled her back, Chara rose (she hadn’t even noticed that she’d sat) and stumbled over to her.
“He’s dead,” Chara said, gripping Phaidra’s wrist. “He died as he fell.”
Phaidra’s mouth was gaping. Spittle dripped down her chin and scattered in the wind. Her hands were like claws on the wood.
A flaming arrow lodged in the deck behind them. Men shouted and stamped at it as another arrow hissed over all of them and into the water off the stern. Suddenly there were gobbets of fire among the arrows: bits of spinning, streaming flame that sent everyone on deck sprawling or dodging.
“Turn about! Turn!” someone shouted.
“The wind isn’t right!” shouted someone else. “We’ll never come around in time!”
Chara felt Phaidra’s arms slacken and caught her as she slumped. Chara crouched, holding her hands, and gazed back up. Minos was nearly invisible within his own fire. She saw his fingers, extended above his head; she watched sparks detach themselves from them and grow, grow, until they hung above him. His fingers closed, and the fire sped out and down, toward the ship: so much fire, turning the sky to a boiling, blazing sea.
The figures on the cliff trembled in heat and maybe, Chara thought, her own tears, but she saw the queen put one hand on Deucalion’s arm and one on Glaucus’s; saw the three of them step even closer to the edge. Silver poured from their mouths and swept out into the flame.
A new wind rose, and the current beneath the waves shifted. “No!” someone near Chara yelled—for the wind was bearing the king’s flame toward them even more quickly. Before it reached them, the sky above the cliff darkened, behind his glow. Heavy black clouds took shape from nowhere; heavy black rain poured down in sheets that advanced behind the fire and doused it, and then the ship.
Chara rubbed her eyes clear and whispered, “The princes’ wind. The queen’s water. They’re helping us?”
The ship lifted and plunged, as it turned. The waves rose taller and taller, as dark as the rain beneath their foaming white tops. The last of the flame scattered and drowned, and the ship cut a fresh, clear path into the sea. The cliff was receding so swiftly that Minos looked like a blurry setting sun.
Asterion braced himself on the side next to Chara and raised both his arms. Through the rain and spray, she saw the tiny figures of Glaucus and Deucalion raise their own. She thought that Glaucus might be jumping up and down, but she couldn’t be sure. It was all dwindling—the rain and fire, the cliff, the people, the mountain, the palaces and huts and waterfalls.
She felt Asterion leave the side and turned, herself. He was struggling up the slick, tilting deck to Daedalus, his horns catching the sunlight that was returning. Oh, gods, Chara thought. You cruel, bloody gods—and she followed.
Daedalus was lying on his side in the damp wreckage of his wings. As Chara crawled to him she wondered whether he’d even seen Icarus fall—but then she reached him and looked at his eyes and knew that he had. Asterion eased the bindings off one of his arms and started to pull the sodden feathers away, but his long-fingered hand lashed out and wrenched them back again.
“Master Daedalus,” Asterion began. “Master—”
Daedalus rolled onto his back, pulling the remnants of the wings around him like a cloak. He stared past them at the empty blue of the sky as the ship bore them south and west and away.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
For two days they sailed through calm, open water. The sky stayed blue; at night, it was thick with stars that also lit the sea. Dolphins leapt and chittered. Islands smudged the horizon, but the ship’s course didn’t change.
“This wasn’t the route we wanted,” one of the sailors said to Theseus. “I’m sorry it will take us so long to return to Athens.”
“It cannot be helped,” Theseus said. He smiled at the man, who stared at his own feet, shifting them awkwardly on the boards. They love him, Chara thought. I’m sure he speaks strong, princely, reassuring words into their minds. Now that he’s not in ours, anymore. Even the hum of his mind-voice was gone—from her head and Alphaios’s, at least.
Near dusk on the second day, she heard Alphaios say to Theseus, “What are we going to do with her? Surely you won’t bring her back to Athens with us?”
Theseus didn’t look over at Ariadne, who was standing very straight at the prow, where she’d been for most of the two days. She looked as if she were trying to smell Athens on the wind.
Theseus didn’t answer Alphaios. Instead he sat down beside Phaidra and took one of her limp hands in both of his. Her gaze flickered up to his, then down again.
“What’s wrong with him?” Alphaios muttered to Chara. “Why won’t he do anything?”
Chara let out a long, slow breath and licked salt from her lips. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s waiting for the gods to decide for him.”
“Or maybe,” Asterion said, his eyes steady on Ariadne’s back, “she frightens him, too.”
The third day dawned grey and sullen. “When will we be there?” Ariadne said, to no one in particular. “When? Because I can’t—”
“Look,” Asterion said. The word shook.
Chara turned with the others, to face back the way they’d come. The horizon there was alight with a crimson that blossomed and spread upward within moments. “The Goddess’s mountain,” she whispered, as Phaidra cried out, beside her. “The king.” It took him this long, she thought. Three days. Maybe because he wanted more sacrifices, after Icarus—or dancing, singing, speeches. Maybe because it wasn’t so easy, after all, to sacrifice himself.
An explosion lifted the sea. The ship seemed to leap and hover, just as Icarus had; then it plunged back into the surging waves. Chara fell—they all did—and lay sprawled on the deck, gasping, gazing at Asterion. He was pale and wide-eyed, but he scrambled up first, and held out his hand to her.
The crimson sky was filling with darkness. Smoke, she thought, clutching and leaning as the ship continued to pitch. Whatever’s left of the mountain.
“Polymnia,” Asterion said—not to her, or anyone. She covered his gripping hand with her own and he pulled his away.
Theseus was on Phaidra’s other side. He narrowed his eyes at the smoke, which had already consumed the fire. “The king has given himself to his god, at last,” he said, turning to Phaidra. When he put his hands on hers she flinched and sagged against Chara, her eye
s closed. Asterion grasped her forearm and she opened her eyes.
“Our brothers?” she whispered. “Our mother?”
As he shook his head, the ship surged up and tipped. For just a moment, Chara was in the air, touching nothing at all. Not like when Icarus carried me, when I saw his feathers in the light, and the land, and the sea—but now the sea was washing over the deck, over her, because she’d landed with a jarring thump. The water was cold, and it stung cuts she hadn’t known she had. She scrabbled at the soaked boards and slid, Asterion beside her, his legs tangling with hers. Daedalus tumbled by them in a blur of sodden, trailing feathers.
“Row!” the captain roared from somewhere. That won’t help, Chara thought: the ship wasn’t levelling off or righting itself—it was bucking once more, sending them back into the air and onto hands and knees and bellies, slipping, helpless. A wind rose, as they struggled. It lashed at the sail, which sailors swarmed to tie down. It battered Chara’s skin with scalding breath and cinders, and drowned all of their cries with its own howling. She lay with her arms over her head and pressed her eyes shut so that all she could see was darkness—but only for a moment, because the wind lifted and threw the ship yet again, and she tumbled, scrabbling and reaching for something that would keep her still. Up and down, sideways and down, in the screaming and the heat: ears that heard and skin that felt, but eyes that saw nothing but night. She tried to draw enough breath to scream—his name; she wouldn’t lose him now—but something came at her in the night, and struck her so hard that she didn’t have time for any more fear.
The silence sounded thick.
She opened her eyes and saw only sky. It wasn’t black or fiery: it was a thick, sluggish grey. Ash, thought some part of her that was still able to think. Whatever’s left of the mountain. She remembered having thought this before—not long ago? On the ship. Just before the storm.
Where am I now?
Before she could move to find out, a face eased into sight above her. “Told you she was waking up.” The voice wobbled and warped. Chara rolled her head on the ground and felt water pop, unsettlingly deep in her head.
“This one is too,” said another voice—very clearly, now that the water was gone.
The face dipped closer. It was a young man’s: sun-browned, laced with wrinkles around the eyes, which were brown and wide with curiosity. He brushed a long strand of hair away from these eyes and said, “So—who are you?”
Chara tried to say her own name, but suddenly there was water in her throat too, and she choked and choked—no breath; no space inside her body for anything except thick, burning fluid. Hands took her by the shoulders and turned her onto her side. They pummelled her back, between her shoulder blades, and the fluid came out in a short, violent rush.
“Chara,” she gasped. “And who are you?”
His smile filled her with such relief that she had to close her eyes, just for a moment. “Diokles,” he said. “And if you can sit up, you’ll see Pelagia. And Xenon. Oh, and the people you already know, of course.”
She sat up too quickly; Diokles grasped her shoulders again, as she tipped backward. Her vision swam with grey: sky and water; the sand that sloped down to the water and clumped between her toes. In a blink or two, the sand turned to a dull gold. She looked up and saw Asterion, who was sitting too far away from her, hunched over with his horns nearly touching the sand.
She tried to stand, but her legs were too weak. She crawled to him instead, past people she hardly saw, and said his name when she was nearly there. He lifted his head. His cheeks were as grey as the sky; his cheeks, and the rest of him, except for his horns. “Freckles,” he said, and coughed until he was wheezing. He reached for her, when he’d quieted. Pulled her in against him and pressed his lips to her forehead. His skin was rough.
“Chara?” called Alphaios. His voice was high and quavery. She stirred and saw him reeling toward them. His face was also coated in grey, except for the blood that was streaming from his brow and down along his nose.
“Careful!” cried a woman from behind him. “You’ve hit your head.”
“You have,” Chara said, when Alphaios sat down with a thump beside them. “You’re bleeding.”
Alphaios grinned. “I know.” He laughed then, and she did too, even though she wasn’t sure why.
“You’re both mad,” Asterion said, but she could hear his smile.
They stopped laughing when Diokles called, “This one’s injured, too.” He was bending over someone, and Theseus was standing above them both. Chara didn’t recognize the prince, at first: he was even greyer than Alphaios and Asterion were. She finally glanced down at herself and saw that she was covered in the same thing they were—a mud-like substance that was cracking, now, as it dried.
Asterion rose, drawing her up with him. She leaned into him, and they walked very slowly toward Theseus. Every time her heels and toes met the sand, she felt stronger—strong enough to look around at the beach: at the sailors clustered near the shore, and the ones still lying on the ground; at the long arm of rock that enclosed the harbour where Minos and Pasiphae’s storm had driven them, and the place where the rock gave way to hills patched with green that seemed too bright, against the grey. At Diokles and a woman who was maybe the queen’s age, and Ariadne, splayed on her back near them, her eyes fixed and glassy.
“Princess,” Theseus said. Chara saw Diokles and the woman raise their eyebrows at each other. “Ariadne. Can you hear me?”
She’s dead, Chara thought, thank the gods—and her gut heaved, even though there was nothing more inside her to spew out.
“Ariadne?” Asterion knelt. Chara felt a different roiling in her gut as she watched him put his hand to his sister’s cheek. He didn’t leave it there: he slapped her so hard that all the grey mud flew off his arm in a stinging spatter.
Ariadne sucked in one rasping breath, and another, and coughed as the rest of them had. She blinked and opened her eyes even wider, and fastened them on him.
“I knew you wouldn’t go so quietly,” Asterion said. “Sister.”
She struggled to sit up, and got as far as her elbows before Diokles put a hand on her shoulder to keep her still. “Gently,” he said. “Look at your leg.”
Chara looked too, and winced. Ariadne screamed. Her right calf was bent behind her, as if she’d been trying to turn around when she fell. She thrust at Diokles, who rocked back on his heels, and wrapped her hands around the ankle. With another cry, she wrenched it out straight. She gnawed on her lower lip as she pulled herself forward.
“Don’t,” the woman said, “I’m sure it’s broken.”
“Pelagia’s right,” said Diokles, “you’ll only make it worse if you—”
“Who are you?” Ariadne spat, twisting to face them. “Other than fools who don’t know who I am? I will get up; I will get back to the ship.”
She did get up. She teetered, flapping her arms as she had when she used to mock Icarus. She tried to put weight on her right foot; Chara heard the hiss of her breath, in and out, and watched her fingers flex into claws. Slowly, hissing with every movement, she hopped down to the shore. The rest of them followed her, even more slowly. Chara kept her eyes on Ariadne’s uninjured leg. Go on—give out, she thought, and, No, no—stay straight.
“I’ve never seen anything like her,” Diokles said, so admiringly that Chara snorted—but then Ariadne reached the shore and gave a ragged cry, and Chara finally looked away from her, toward the water.
Except that it wasn’t water: it was ash, as thick as the sky, choking the waves. A soup of it pushed sluggishly up onto the sand and retreated, leaving a long, thick, dirty line. The ship was on its side in what should have been the shallows. The mast had snapped; a forest of oars stuck up out of the sludge around it. There were bodies too, Chara saw, with terrible slowness. Arms sticking up as the oars were. Faces jutting above the grey, like rocks.
Ariadne dragged her matted hair away from her face with both hands. “We’ll never get there.” Her voice sounded loud, even though she was barely speaking above a whisper. “The gods are angry at us. We’ll never get to Athens.”
“We?” Alphaios said. “We? Prince Theseus: tell her—”
A guttural sound tangled with Alphaios’s words, and all of them except Ariadne turned toward it. Daedalus was crouched some distance away, where the sand curved to match the arc of the rock arm. His feathers were gone, as was his loincloth; he was naked, rocking slowly, his spindly cave fingers stretched in front of his eyes. Phaidra was sitting cross-legged beside him. How did I forget about them? Chara thought. I should go to them now—I should try to help—but they looked so far away, and she was so tired; she stayed where she was.
Alphaios cleared his throat and looked back at Theseus. “My Prince?” Alphaios said—but Theseus was walking away from them, weaving a little, his head slumped to his chest.
Chara shifted her gaze from Daedalus to Diokles. She put a hand on his arm and squeezed. “Please tell us what happened. Tell us where we are.”
He exchanged another glance with Pelagia and nodded once, as if she’d used a mind-voice. “We will—but not yet. Let us take you to a place where we can tend to your injuries—where you can wash and rest.”
Chara heard Polymnia’s voice beneath his, promising them the same things—but it was no more than a fading echo.
Asterion said, “Is it far from here? Because some of us may not be ready for a long walk.”
Diokles smiled at Ariadne, whose gaze had finally moved from the ship to him. “Don’t worry. Xenon will carry them.”
A giant of a man stepped forward and bowed. His legs, as big around as the boles of ancient trees, were ash-covered up to mid-thigh. He went into the sea and brought us out, Chara thought, and she remembered the flame and the wind and the wild tipping of the deck. She sank to her knees in the sand.