In the Labyrinth of Drakes

by Marie Brennan

  The large one was the procession of offerings. This was laid out in the customary manner of Draconean art, with the human figures a fraction the size of the dragon-headed ones, and all standing in the peculiar combination of profile and facing posture that looks so odd when one is used to modern techniques of perspective. The procession stretched out in horizontal rows, each one separated from the rest by a decorative band filled with writing. “Prayers?” I murmured to myself, laying down lines with a quick hand. The inscriptions I made no attempt to replicate; those would be better done as rubbings. “Or some kind of proclamation, perhaps?”

  There was a good deal more writing on the left-hand wall, this time arranged in vertical columns, with each character painted in red. It was exceedingly strange, seeing the bright colours in this chamber, not only in the murals but on the statues. Close examination of other relics had shown that at least some Draconean statues used to be painted; but we are accustomed to seeing them as plain stone, and this has given their civilization an austere quality in our imaginations. Now, however, we had proof that they had loved colour as much as modern man.

  I resorted to quick scribbles to represent the writing on that mural, putting my main effort into the egg that sat at the bottom, underneath the red columns and atop an elaborate altar-like shape. Again, rubbings would be more helpful in the short term than me drawing every character by hand. The murals to either side of the door I bypassed for the time being; Suhail, Andrew, and Tom were too much in the way.

  That left me with the right-hand wall, which is the one I had the most interest in to begin with. This one showed actual dragons, which are much less common in Draconean art; most of their decorations depict humans or dragon-headed figures. But two winged reptiles dominated the upper part of the wall, flanking yet another inscription, and I was very keen to study them more closely.

  My first thought, when I saw them the previous day, was that they might depict the kind of dragon this civilization had bred—a variety that seemed to have since gone extinct. If that were the case, however, then the breed in question had not been much different from our modern desert drakes. The creatures on the wall looked a good deal like the ones I had been chasing and feeding all year, allowing for a certain amount of artistic license: their scales were painted in gold leaf, making them far brighter and more splendid than any real beast, and the odd perspective of the Draconean style made them look rather like flowers squashed flat between the pages of a book.

  But they had the broad, delicate ruffs I knew so well, and the fan-like vanes on their tails. I was forced to conclude they were indeed the familiar breed, or at least their very close cousins. If those had been hatched here, then it meant two things: first, that the Draconeans had raised more than one variety of dragon (for I was certain the kind we had found on Rahuahane were not desert drakes); and second, that an ancient civilization had succeeded where Tom and I had failed.

  It was a disheartening thought, and no amount of telling myself that it was silly to feel disheartened in the middle of such a tremendous discovery changed my mood. I devoted myself to documenting this wall with assiduous care … and that is when I noticed something peculiar.

  Even with all our lamps, the light was less than ideal. I picked one up and carried it to the wall, so I might get a closer look. “Oy!” Andrew said. “I need that, or I’m going to lose my place!”

  “Put your finger on it for now,” I said, distracted. “This dragon’s foot is wrong.”

  The silence from behind me was disbelieving. Then Tom said, “Wrong how?”

  “It’s on backward. As if the seamstress wasn’t paying attention, and sewed it on upside down.”

  Andrew snorted. “It’s Draconean art. It always looks strange.”

  By then I had gone to the other dragon. “This one, too. Their feet ought to be facing toward the edges of the wall, even if the claws dangle. Instead they’re cocked inward, as if—”

  “As if pointing at something.” Suhail had gone outside again to pray. The month of fasting was supposed to be a time of piety; even if he was not observing the fast itself, he felt obliged to attend to his devotions—all the more so because he was spending the intervening time in a heathen temple. He had returned while I was distracted, and came now to stand just behind my left shoulder.

  “And their scales are wrong, too,” I said. “That is—the entire depiction of their scales is very stylized, but we are used to that. I mean that even for the style, they are on upside down. But only on these hind legs.”

  We had brought measuring tape with us. Tom fetched it and, with Suhail’s assistance, stretched it out to form a line from the left-hand dragon’s foot. He said, “I don’t know exactly what angle we should follow, here. The top of the foot? The medial line of the metatarsals? It makes a difference.”

  The two dragons were not perfectly symmetrical; their feet were not cocked to the same degree, meaning that any lines we drew from them would not intersect in the middle of the wall. The left was cocked higher than the right, skewing the intersection to the right as well. I said, “All we need is for it to direct us to the correct area. Once we have that—”

  I had only just begun to run my hands over the wall. But the tip of my index finger brushed something—not anything noteworthy; only the irregular shape left between the carved marks of a character—and when it did so, the stone shifted slightly. On instinct, I pressed, and the bit of stone slid into the wall.

  Something clicked.

  I had crouched to search, and now shied back with such alacrity that I landed on my rump. Above me, with a clatter of chain and a ponderous, grinding sound, a portion of the wall swung inward.

  Less than ten centimeters. It shuddered to a halt after that, its mechanism corroded and clogged with the slow accumulation of grit. But it was a secret door, and it had opened.

  With slow care, Suhail knelt at my side. I think his intention was to help me to my feet; but having knelt, he stayed there, his hands on my shoulders, staring at the door. As if his knees, like mine, had gone too weak to bear weight.

  Andrew whispered, “I knew it.”

  His faith had been stronger than mine. We had searched for this thing; we had assembled arguments for the possibility of its existence. But theories are one thing, and proof quite another. And if the invaders had not found this door—as it seemed they had not—

  Then whatever lay beyond it would be pristine. A Draconean site, wholly untouched since ancient times.

  I got to my feet, then helped Suhail up. He was still staring at the wall, hardly blinking. I licked my lips, swallowed, then inhaled deeply and said, “I for one am very eager to know what is beyond that door.”

  Tom looked to Suhail, but my husband seemed to have lost the power of speech. “Well?” Tom asked. “Will it damage anything if we force the door open?”

  The question brought Suhail to rationality once more. “It might,” he said, in a shallow, cautious voice. “From the sound, I think the mechanism is stone and bronze, which is why it survived; wood or rope would have snapped at the first pressure. But it is not working smoothly any longer. We may not be able to close the door again.”

  Then he blinked and drew what I think was his first real breath since he returned from his prayers. “Whatever we find in there,” he said, fixing each of us with his gaze, “we must not touch it. No matter what it may be. We may look only. Then we will close the door if we can, and go back to Qurrat, before this treasure lures us into stupidity or starvation.”

  “Or both.” I reminded myself to keep breathing. It was remarkably easy to forget. “All of this, of course, presupposes we can get the door open.”

  Tom and Andrew put their shoulders to it, both of them being stronger than Suhail. The panel made very unpleasant noises as it moved, but move it did. The wall proved to be approximately twenty centimeters thick, and beyond it was darkness. When the gap was large enough for my hand, I put a match through, as Suhail had done at the staircase, to te
st the air.

  His voice trembling, he asked, “Can you see anything?”

  “No,” I said. “Not from only a match’s flame. But the air is good.”

  The men redoubled their efforts. Soon, however, the door ground to a halt … and the gap it left was not very large.

  Andrew made an anguished noise. “We can’t just leave it like this! To hell with the mural—do we have a hammer? We could smash the edges off—”

  “No!” Suhail yelped.

  I stepped up to the crack and measured myself against it. “I think I can fit through. It will be tight, but possible.”

  I should not have looked at my husband when I said that. His expression was that of a man who has glimpsed Paradise, and been told he may not enter. Contrition gripped my heart: as tremendous as this moment was for me, of the two of us, I was not the archaeologist. How would I feel if he went on to see some new kind of dragon, while I stayed behind? “Never mind,” I said. “It has waited this long; it can wait a while longer.”

  “No,” Suhail said again, this time in a softer voice. “We cannot leave without knowing, and I will not destroy this door just to see. If you can fit through, then go.”

  Tom sighed when I turned to him. “I would say, Do you think that’s safe?—but I know what your answer would be. If this turns out to lead into the back end of a drake’s lair, though, please do think twice before settling down to sketch it.”

  Andrew said only, “You are both my most favourite and least favourite sister in the world right now.”

  I was, of course, his only sister. Squaring my shoulders, I addressed the task of sliding through that narrow gap.

  I had to exhale completely to fit through, and lost a button even so. It was a tight enough squeeze that I suffered a moment of worry as to what would happen if I got stuck. But then I was through, and Suhail passed along my notebook and pencil and one of the lamps. Before handing me the latter, he took my hand and kissed it, his body blocking this from the sight of the others. In a voice meant only for me, he murmured, “Come back and tell me of wonders.”

  “I will,” I said, and turned to face the next step.

  I was in a narrow corridor, running parallel to the wall. Suhail had been right; the hidden chamber lay back in the direction of the entrance. Not far ahead, the passage descended in another staircase, to a level below that of the previous room. By my calculation, the lower level must be at least halfway down the plateau.

  For the sake of my companions, I called these details out to them. “There are murals here, too,” I said. “Painted, like the ones in the room, not the plain ones in the first corridor. All of gods—there are no human or dragon figures here that I can see.” A mischievous impulse seized me, and I added, “Shall I stay and draw them, before continuing on?”

  The chorus of “No!” from behind me bid fair to shake dust from the ceiling, but it also made me smile and fortified me for the mystery ahead. When I raised my lamp, my hand no longer shook.

  At the base of the steps, the corridor turned right again. Here, however, there was no door. The moment I rounded the corner, my lamp threw its light forward, and the chamber returned it in glory.

  Even in its heyday, the hatching pit on Rahuahane must have been a rough, provincial thing. What I saw here was the exemplar: a square chamber carved and painted in the finest detail, with steps in the center leading up to a low, round platform. Unlike the room above, this one was still furnished. There were tables, stands, vases and bowls; gold and alabaster, coloured enamel and precious wood … an immeasurable treasure of unbroken Draconean artifacts.

  Almost unbroken. One of the low tables had been upset, its dishes knocked to the floor. When I advanced into the room, I understood why.

  Empty fragments of eggshell lay in the sand-lined center of the pit. There were no skeletons: of course there would not be. Those would have fallen to dust after the hatchlings died. Stains and a few bones from what looked like birds remained in or around some of the dishes; undoubtedly the ravenous newborns had devoured every scrap they could while they waited for their caretakers to return. Left alone, hunting for more sustenance, one of them must have knocked over the table. But the bottle atop it had held some kind of oil, not food, and its contents had spilled out to soak the bare earthen floor.

  My lamplight fell upon marks pressed into the earth.

  They were tracks. Footprints, left behind by the newly hatched dragons, as they wandered back and forth in search of food that would never come.

  THE HATCHING CHAMBER

  Later on, I was objective. I drew the tracks, measured them, took casts and tried to work out how many different individuals had trodden in that patch of oil-soaked ground. They were a priceless scientific discovery, and I valued them as such.

  In that moment, however, I was not objective in the least. I envisioned the history that had transpired here—little hatchlings abandoned on the day of rebellion, starving to death in this beautiful and lifeless chamber—and I wept, tears rolling silently down my face. The Draconeans had never truly been people to me, only an ancient civilization who worshipped and bred dragons and therefore posed some intriguing puzzles. But the bodies up above had been people, individual men who lived and died; and the tracks here told the story of lives that had vanished without any other trace. Whatever had happened in the Labyrinth of Drakes, so many ages ago, it had carried a dreadful cost.

  I do not know how long I stood there, my tears drying on my face. After a while the thought came to me that I was wasting precious water, crying like that; and so I came back to my senses. I hurried to the foot of the stairs and called up, “Are you still there?”

  Suhail’s answer was impatient, disbelieving, and full of love. “Where do you think we would have gone?”

  “There is a hatching chamber,” I said as I came up the stairs, my voice catching a little. My knees trembled, but I refrained from putting my hand on the wall, lest I mar something. “It is untouched. Very much so. It looks as if there were eggs abandoned here, which eventually hatched, but the dragons themselves never made it out. I will want to search for teeth and talons—anything that may have survived.”

  “Those should tell us whether it was in fact desert drakes they were breeding,” Tom said, full of excitement. He had undoubtedly been looking at the murals and drawing the same conclusions I had.

  “Indeed,” I said, reaching the top corridor. Suhail held his hand out through the gap, and I went to grasp it—but then I stopped short. “Hullo there,” I said, diverted. “What’s this?”

  I had not taken a very good look at the back of the door when I first came through. Now that I did, I saw a piece of rock wedged under the bottom edge. Its faces were fresh enough that I thought we had broken it free in pushing open the door; it had then fallen into a spot where it prevented the door from opening any farther.

  “What do you see?” Suhail demanded, in the tone of one who is about to perish of curiosity.

  I pulled the stone free and said, “Try the door again.”

  Andrew threw himself against the panel almost before I was done speaking, and the door grated open a little more. It still did not go far … but it went far enough. Through the newly widened gap, I could see Andrew standing with his hands on his hips, glaring at me. “You couldn’t have looked behind the door before you wandered off to make discoveries without us?”

  I would never have told him this at the time (and have debated admitting it now)—but a part of me was glad he had not been there when I found the chamber, for then he would have seen me weep for ancient hatchlings. I was not even certain I wanted to share so private a moment with Tom. But Suhail brushed the marks of tears from my cheeks with a gentle hand, and I smiled up at him. “Come. Let me show you wonders.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Return to the Watchers’ Heart—My reputation changes—Lieutenant Marton’s report—Quite a lot of spit—My theory—Changes at home—Four times as much

  Much of what happene
d after that is extremely public knowledge. We sealed the site—even going so far as to carry that pile of sand back up to the top and pour it into the staircase—and returned to Qurrat. Through a heroic effort of will, neither Tom, nor Andrew, nor I breathed a word about what we had found in the Labyrinth. This was to give Suhail time to secure the place properly—a task which ultimately took him to the court of the caliph in Sarmizi. I went there myself much later, but was glad not to face the ruler of Akhia during this delicate phase; as my faithful readers know well, I do not like dealing with politicians.

  The Labyrinth is not incapable of supporting human habitation, even in summer. Rather, maintaining a presence there requires a tremendous outlay of resources. This the caliph was happy to provide, once he understood the value of what we had discovered. Before the winter rains came, an expedition returned to the Watchers’ Heart (as the site has become known) to record it properly and begin clearing the hatching room of its treasures.

  Suhail led this expedition, of course, and I went with him, to collect any remnants of the ancient hatchlings. (Tom remained in Qurrat to oversee the House of Dragons and its transition to a less military purpose.) Jake accompanied us as well, having arrived in Akhia shortly before the excavation team departed. I did not tell him our destination until we were safely away from civilization, and found my caution abundantly justified: he whooped and danced about so much, he fell off his camel and broke his left arm. This put only the most negligible damper on his spirits, for he had Suhail as his new stepfather, he was out of school, and we were taking him to see a treasure out of legend. It lacked only the sea to make his happiness complete.

  Of the archaeological treasures taken from the Watchers’ Heart you can read elsewhere, in abundance. Where my own work is concerned, I found less than I expected, and more. Less in the sense that there were no teeth, no claws, and only a scattering of delicate scales. But that very lack told me that what had hatched there were almost certainly not desert drakes.