Looking over the door and its intricate lock, Alex's left eye, armed with the vision of Dionysus, showed him some meaningless color variations, but nothing special that he could interpret in any useful way.
But Ariadne could see more. Now, standing near the locked door, she reported a vision of a thread of her imaginary web-stuff, weaving its way through the intricacies of the lock.
She frowned, squeezing her eyes more tightly shut. "It is as if the thread were attached to some invisible, impalpable needle. And as soon as it has been pulled all the way through, the trapdoor swings up and open . . . I can see no more beyond that."
And of course the door in the real world remained solidly closed and locked.
Somewhere under the earth, quite nearby, a murmur of unseen water could be heard. To the Artisan it was obvious that the nearby streams must be channeled past this spot in conduits, or even wholly contained in round copper pipes, as if here, over a kind of fissure in the earth, they might otherwise be in danger of plunging all the way to the Underworld, never to be seen again by mortal eyes.
Daedalus muttered to himself, "And of course there may well be—there probably is—more to the trick than appears on the surface."
To Alex, what appeared on the surface certainly seemed challenging enough.
The lightning-symbol of Zeus was not the only carving in the rock. Around the circular rim of the broad depression ran a lengthy inscription. The seven lines of symbols, each seemingly in a different tongue, reminded Alex of the words carved in the wall of the ruined temple on the Isle of Refuge.
When he looked at these letters through the eye of Dionysus, he could read what amounted to the same verse seven times. Alex recited:
" 'Who would hold in his hand what lies below
Must subtly plan and gently go.
The key required is a supple strand
One might think only a thread of sand—'
"—and there it breaks off."
The Artisan nodded slowly. "Then the inscription confirms the princess's vision. To solve this puzzle we must thread a string, or length of fine yarn, or some equivalent, all the way through the shell. That is the only kind of key that is meant to fit this lock."
"And I doubt that even you can make a thread out of loose sand, or a key either."
"So it would seem. But let me think about it for a bit."
Dionysus was the first to admit that cleverness in problem-solving was not his own strong point. It might be within his power to transform the vault and all that it contained into a mass of living growth—but he feared that would blur and probably destroy whatever secrets it might now contain.
His residence within the Labyrinth had allowed him to begin to appreciate its strangeness. Therefore he was not surprised that a marvel like this locked door had lain almost under his feet for several months, without his ever suspecting its existence.
"We can try digging down here beside the door," Sarpedon suggested tentatively.
Bigger tools were soon brought from the Artisan's old workshop. But digging in the hard and solid rock was going to be difficult at best. And the very first attempt along that line ended in frightening failure.
Daedalus himself tried first, hitting the shell-like structure with a sharp steel chisel, driven by a hammer of moderate weight. The chisel slipped away, and sudden tremors went coursing through all the surrounding earth.
Someone let out an involuntary cry, and clutched the rough stones of a shortened wall for support. But the wall was swaying noticeably too.
"Hold up, no more of that!"
The lock itself was not even scratched; the unknown material from which it had been made was extremely hard and tough.
By now one of the loyal soldiers had brought the Artisan his bag of small tools, or such of them as could be found, and he tried one of them against the mechanism, and then another. But this preliminary poking and probing accomplished nothing either.
"The entry passage, where our key of sand must enter, is no thicker than a baby's finger, and intricately curved."
Daedalus found it simply too hard to see clearly, to get a good look at the problem. "I must have some air to breathe in here, and room to turn around. And give me some light!"
The Artisan ordered the low overhead to be broken away, opening the tunnel-like passage to the plaza above it. The soldiers set to energetically, fracturing ancient stonework and tossing away the fragments. If anyone takes notice of our noise, thought Alex, well, let them. Dionysus feared no opponent except Shiva or some other malignant god—and he expected, fatalistically, that the ones he truly feared would come when they were ready, noise or not.
A couple of the upper walls in the immediate vicinity were also knocked down, and the ivy and laurel growing on them cleared away. The loyal guardsmen, eager to serve the princesses, broke and slashed and heaved with a good will. The moon, almost full, shone down on the secret door from the western sky, an hour or so after midnight.
Now, with steadier, better light available, the mysterious encircling inscriptions became a more insistent presence.
Now the Artisan gave the impression of settling in comfortably, to do a job.
"We must hurry!" the princess burst out impulsively.
Such urgings made no impression on him. "Did you ever see a lock like that? I've never seen one in my life before." Coming from Daedalus, that was an impressive statement indeed.
Now it could be clearly seen that the key part of the puzzle was shaped like a shell of the many-chambered nautilus, or some very similar seashell. It might have been a real shell of some obviously mutant creature, heavily bioengineered in ages past.
No one could forget that a single hammer-blow, directly on the lock, had provoked a serious shaking of the earth beneath them.
"Open it by gentle means, I pray you, Daedalus!"
"It seems I must use subtle means, or none at all." And Daedalus growled at his would-be helpers to stop standing in his light, keep quiet, and let him work.
Transparent forms came whispering in the air, and then Silenus took solid shape, as real as a cameloid and almost as odorous as a goat. Sometimes Alex thought it would be an excellent idea to rid himself of Silenus permanently, but such Dionysan memories as were readily available offered no encouragement for such a hope. The satyr murmured a warning that the Princess Phaedra had just been placed under house arrest, confined to her apartment in the palace.
Leaving Daedalus to begin his task, with Sarpedon and the squad of loyal soldiers as protection, Alex set out with Ariadne to rescue her sister.
At first he hesitated. "You might be safer if I left you here—"
"But nowhere will be safe until we win. Come, and I will find my sister." And once more the princess assumed the role of guide, deviating from the marked route to take an even shorter pathway to the right side of the palace.
Alex was also quite familiar with the interior of the palace, having pulled interior guard duty many times within that rambling structure. Certainly he could find his way without difficulty to the private quarters of the princesses, though he had never actually been inside those rooms.
Now when he approached and entered those corridors and rooms, exerting his power to clear a path, they underwent a transformation similar to that which had happened aboard the pirate ship, when the powers of Dionysus had it in their grip. Around the advancing god, stone columns sprouted branches and green leaves. What had been an iron grillwork, recently installed, had become a screen of gentle branches, easily brushed aside.
Some of the soldiers and servants here greeted Dionysus as their savior, while others fled in terror. Alex could hear one of the mercenaries cry out, "No one's paying me enough to battle a god. Let them fight it out among themselves."
Chapter Thirty-Two
Phaedra started up in wonder when Dionysus suddenly appeared at the door of her apartment. Joyfully she recognized Ariadne at the god's side. "Sister, is it you? Thank all the gods!"
"Not a
ll of them are against us, Phaedra. You are free, for the time being at least." The two young women fell into each other's arms.
"Praise be to the good gods!" Phaedra cried.
"I promise I will offer a worthy sacrifice," her sister said. "To one of them, at least." She looked over her shoulder toward Alex, who had withdrawn a few paces and was keeping watch.
The older sister said, "My life was about to be sacrificed for nothing, and I thank you for returning it to me."
"You are entirely welcome. Now we must be on our way."
"Where?"
"Back into the Labyrinth. I have much to tell you as we walk, and much I want to hear from you as well."
Dionysus had transported Nestor into the city in the chariot, and dropped him off in an alley near the waterfront, where it seemed likely he would soon be able to make contact with some of the mercenaries imported by King Perses.
Nestor found this chariot ride mercifully much shorter than the previous one. It also helped that the trip was conducted over land, practically at ground level. Observing the countryside as well as he could by night, Nestor saw that the state of roads and fences showed that it was, or recently had been, a prosperous land—even if the prosperity had been founded, over generations, on tribute and taxes extracted from other kingdoms on the shores of the Great Sea, mostly by the powerful Corycan navy. What he could see of the land had the lush, innocent look of a country that had forgotten, if it had ever known, what it was to be invaded and despoiled.
Well, if civil war erupted here, as now seemed practically inevitable, there were plenty of lessons in horror soon to be taught.
Nestor's biggest personal worry at the moment was that among the villagers welcoming the returning princess might have been one or more secret supporters of Shiva and Perses. That would mean his own arrival on the island would soon be reported, and much increased the odds that as soon as he showed his face in the city he was going to be arrested.
The locals had warned him that a curfew had been declared in Kandak, and though he arrived a little after midnight, he was forced to lie low until sunup. At least this enabled him to get a few hours' sleep.
Once the sky brightened with morning, and the streets began to be busy again, Nestor emerged from hiding and bought some fresh melon and fried cakes from a vendor. The man seemed surprised that this hard-looking foreigner paid without dispute. He was willing enough to vent his displeasure with foreign mercenaries in general—present company of course excepted—but he could provide little in the way of specific information.
Munching a fried cake, Nestor strolled around, getting his bearings. It would be an interesting city to return to someday, as a man of peace.
He walked with a touch of arrogance, nothing furtive in his manner. And he saw, here and there on the streets and in the markets, other men with the air of self-confident strangers. Some of these were simply merchants and sailors, as might be expected in any busy seaport; but some had a definitely military look.
Nestor sat for a while on the quay, chewing a wad of the leaf favored by many seafaring men, and at intervals thoughtfully spitting the yellow juice, observing the traffic in the harbor. Only those people attempting to board ships were being stopped and questioned. Among the many vessels visible, he was able to spot a familiar ship or two, belonging to colleagues, with some of whom he was on good terms.
An hour or two after sunrise, on one of the streets adjacent to the waterfront, Nestor recognized one or two of the men he saw on shore as colleagues with whom he'd had dealings in the past.
He had parted with one of these on particularly good terms, and he chose this one to approach now.
"Hello, Rafe."
The man turned and looked at him in mild surprise. "Nestor. I see Perses is really working at this business of beefing up his army."
What more natural than that they'd turn almost automatically into a tavern to share a drink and exchange ideas about their new jobs. It was a little early in the day for serious drinking, but Rafe said he'd discovered yesterday that the beer in this establishment was not too bad.
"Glad you came to Corycus?" Nestor inquired cheerfully.
The other shrugged. "It's a job. What about you?"
Nestor naturally had to remain closemouthed about his own supposed job here on Corycus.
His companion was not surprised. "Can't talk much about it, hey? That's all right."
"What about you? I've not seen anything of this King Perses yet, have you?" Rather leaving the implication that the god Shiva might have hired him.
"Not much, one quick meeting in the palace. But so far he's paid on schedule, and I'm content."
But Rafe was pessimistic about the prospects for success. "When a king must hire foreign troops to keep down his own people, my thought is he's not long for this world."
"Who else is here?"
On leaving the tavern, half an hour later, the two men went their separate ways.
Nestor thought that if his mission in Kandak went sour, he might want to seek out the Labyrinth as a place of refuge. In there he might have a powerful friend in the person of the Minotaur.
Alex had cautioned him, "Don't be, ah, put off by his appearance."
Thinking about that, Nestor could not repress a slight inward shudder. But he'd certainly run to embrace a monster rather than face Shiva or interrogation in a dungeon.
Alex/Dionysus had been introduced to Phaedra, and he and the princesses were threading their way back into the Labyrinth, when the sprites, who seemed to live almost always on the verge of one kind of frenzy or another, brought Alex word that Shiva was approaching.
Lord, thy enemy approaches with the speed of the whirlwind, and in terrible wrath. He cries that he will burn to a cinder this body you now wear, and recover thy immortal Face!
"We must see to it that he does nothing of the kind," said Dionysus.
Alex's chief concern now, when a deadly battle with Shiva seemed only minutes away at most, was to arrange some kind of protection for Princess Ariadne, and for her sister. The best expedient currently available seemed to be to send Phaedra and Ariadne into the Maze, to rejoin Daedalus. The Artisan might profit from the younger sister's help once more, and whatever powers were guarding him would protect the princesses as well.
And, even as Ariadne and Phaedra entered the Labyrinth once more, they felt the earth quiver and lurch beneath their feet.
Ariadne, frightened as she was, was still very confident of her own ability to locate some safe hiding place for herself and her sister within the Maze. Finding her way in the predawn darkness was no problem, not with the strands of her web always ready, behind her eyelids, to offer guidance.
Not many days ago, she had guided Theseus through these windings. Then she had imagined that she was escaping to freedom and adventure. The idea that the Face of Zeus might be nearby had never entered her mind—nor had many other things of great importance. Like a child, like a fool, she had believed with all her heart in her great true love, that brave and handsome Theseus was devoted to her, that in his arms she might find everything that she would ever need. . . .
What an idiot she had been! And she was really frightened now.
But it would not do to show that fright. Grabbing her older sister by the hand, she tugged her ever onward, deeper and deeper into the engulfing Labyrinth.
Phaedra had lived near the Maze almost all her life, and yet had seldom set foot in any part of it. Now she found its high, curving walls and constricted spaces frightening and unfamiliar. She hesitated briefly, protesting, "May we not become hopelessly lost?"
"That, at least, will not happen." The younger sister was calmly certain.
"Why not? We've made so many turns already, that for all I can tell, we might round the next corner and find ourselves right back in the grounds of the palace, with Shiva waiting, and Uncle Perses grinning at us."
Ariadne paused in her flight, giving both of them a chance to catch their breath. She decided that i
t was time at last that she explained a few things to her half-sister. "We haven't talked about this for a long time. But you must remember that I have a talent for finding things—and, which may not be so obvious, for hiding them. So we can be reasonably confident of being on the right track."
"What are we looking for, besides a place of safety? You strongly implied that there was something else."
"Something I never thought to look for, in all the years I traveled through these passageways."
"And that is?"
"It might be dangerous for you to know."
At this point Phaedra was not going to insist. "You were always good at finding, Ariadne. I remember having one or two long talks with you about that. But that you were good at concealment as well—that is something I never noticed."
"Perhaps because I concealed the fact." It was a sober answer, and the half-smile died from Phaedra's face. "Now watch, and I will do my best to conceal us both." Closing her eyes, the younger sister took the older by the hand and led her forward.
"You are walking with your eyes closed," the elder whispered.
Ariadne nodded silently, not breaking the rhythm of her stride.
I, Asterion, had been asleep most of the night; in my case, of course, sleeping does not mean I was inactive. I hoped that Sarpedon had accomplished the mission I had entrusted to him; but my dreams had brought me no reassurance on that point, and therefore I could not be sure.
To say that I had devoted that night's precious dream-time to a continued search for Edith would be exaggerating. But while roaming the visionary corridors of night I kept my eyes open for any sign of her, and I nursed hopes. It was perfectly possible that she might still be somewhere nearby. There were certainly convolutions within the Maze that I had never seen. There were whole sections, acres in extent, where for years, for centuries perhaps, no human feet, not even mine, had ever trod. As a child I had often thought that some day, if I could live long enough, I would have memorized every room and space and passageway. I suppose I might possibly have achieved that end had I made it my life's work. But the world of dreams was an even vaster puzzle, and also more intriguing, and most of my hopes and plans were invested there.
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