The Door in the Mountain

by Caitlin Sweet

  “Princess,” said a voice from the corridor, and Ariadne’s head snapped up. Karpos was leaning against a pillar, his arms crossed. A lamp sat at his feet. “What are you doing here?”

  “I . . .” She cleared the roughness from her throat and stood up. Now her back ached but she still didn’t stoop. “I wished to think of Daedalus where he did so much of his work. Since I wasn’t at the harbour to see him go.”

  “Weren’t you? I didn’t notice.”

  “Liar.”

  He shrugged and pushed off the pillar. “Now ask me why I’m here.” She frowned and he chuckled. “You won’t, will you, now that I’ve told you to. Though of course you’re wondering.”

  “Hardly. You were Daedalus’s apprentice—of course you wish to visit this place, too. To remember him, surrounded by his things.”

  “My things,” Karpos said. He ran his hand over the spine of a sea creature that lay on one of the long tables. He picked up a metal lizard and wound it. When he set it down, it squeaked and clanked its way in and out of the sea creature’s ribs.

  “Your father announced it to everyone, almost as soon as the ship was out of the harbour: I’m to have everything—the machines, the marble—everything, here and at Knossos.”

  Ariadne tried to shrug as casually as he had. “And so? You were his most talented apprentice. It’s no surprise that my father wishes you to carry on in his place.”

  “Maybe not. But the king said something else. Something like: ‘You, who have used your godmark to immortalize my son Androgeus, are destined to be more than just a master artisan. You may begin in the workshops, but the gods have told me that you will end in rooms far more grand than these.’” Three paces brought Karpos so close to her that she could have reached out and wrapped one of his dark curls around her finger. “You understand your father’s thinking, Lady,” he said, very softly. “Tell me what he meant.”

  She was dizzy, swaying; her head was full of whispers. “The gods spoke to him of this,” she heard herself say. “Now you must wait for them to speak to you.”

  She fell sideways. He caught her; his hand was around her arm, and it was hot, which was strange—surely godmarked silver felt cool? “Princess,” he said in a thick, far-off voice, and she wrenched her arm away and stumbled from the chamber as the lizard clacked and clanked behind her.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  One night after the ship had gone, as the court was preparing for its return to Knossos, a messenger stumbled into the receiving chamber and fell to his knees before the king. Looking at him, Ariadne remembered the one who’d brought news of Androgeus’s death. Many messengers had presented themselves to the king in the years since, of course—but this one, like that other, wasn’t simply breathless: he was trembling and pale.

  Minos rose, sweeping his arms out as if to balance himself on the air. He smiled, as Pasiphae twisted her hands in her lap. Her earrings tinkled in the silence.

  “Speak, man!” the king said. The messenger coughed and retched, then pushed himself to his feet. His bare chest shone with sweat. Ariadne moved her gaze from it to his wide belt, cinched taut against the muscles of his belly. She glanced back at his face, which was unremarkable except for its wide-eyed fear.

  “My King,” the messenger gasped, “I bear news from the Chanian port. The ship—”

  “Which one?” Minos said, turning his head to cast an amused eye over everyone assembled in the room. “I have several.”

  “The ship that carried the great Daedalus,” the messenger said. His chest was still heaving, but he spoke more evenly. “The great Daedalus and all the men who laboured with him beneath the Goddess’s mountain. The ship was lost, and all its passengers with it—pirates, my King. . . .”

  For a moment Ariadne thought that the earth was shaking—the hard, stony earth that Daedalus himself had once told her was lined with fire. It rose and fell gently and she lurched forward, nearly into Minos’s back.

  “Princess?” her slave said, and she grasped Ariadne’s arm just as Karpos had, only days before. When Ariadne turned to her, she saw that the slave’s eyes were huge and unblinking, trembling with tears that had not yet fallen.

  “Don’t touch me,” Ariadne snapped at her, as she should have at Karpos. She thrust at Chara’s hand until it was gone. The earth’s movements subsided. She stepped up beside her father and tipped her head so that she could see his face.

  “How are you so certain?” Minos snapped.

  “There were witnesses—fishermen close to shore who saw your great ship, and the other ship that intercepted it: a pirate vessel without paint or patterned sails. Men swarmed onto the deck. There was screaming—yet no treasures were thrown from ship to ship, and soon yours, my King, was set ablaze. The fishermen could do nothing, at first, except watch men jump into the sea. As your ship sank and the other moved away, the fishermen drew their own crafts closer, to see whether anyone had survived. In the end they pulled only one from the waves.”

  The king’s eyes narrowed and he breathed a single, coiling stream of smoke. “A survivor.” His voice was tight.

  “Yes,” the messenger said, “but he died too, just one hour later.”

  Minos smiled. His teeth flickered white and scarlet.

  “Father,” Ariadne murmured, “stop smiling; it is not seemly. . . .”

  “Poor Daedalus,” he said, still smiling. “Poor Daedalus, released at last from his long exile, only to perish at the hands of pirates seeking riches that did not exist. Except, of course, for the ones contained within his great and complex mind.” He waved a hand. Cinders settled on Ariadne’s left foot.

  “Master Karpos shall drape his workrooms and creations in cloth, to honour his master’s memory.”

  Ariadne glanced sidelong at Karpos, who was leaning against a wall. The paint on it was crimson and blue; his skin was grey. As she watched, he put his hands over his face. Behind her, the slave girl made a small, pinched sound.

  “Yes,” the king continued, “We shall mourn Daedalus and his wife and their blighted bird-child.”

  Ariadne was too hot. Because of her father’s heat—yes, that—nothing else.

  “My Lady.” Ariadne groaned as the slave’s voice murmured again, into her left ear. “Princess. One of your father’s men is here—Theron. He says you must go with him.”

  Ariadne rolled onto her side and blinked at the girl’s shadow. “No,” she snapped. The word echoed and faded in the darkness.

  “Yes, Princess,” Chara said quietly. “Theron says that the king demands it.”

  “Is that so?” Ariadne slid her legs off the bed and rose. “Theron!” she called into the corridor. “Come here to me.”

  “But Princess,” the slave hissed, “you are not dressed—you should not—”

  Ariadne waved her to silence. “Theron!” she called again.

  A man stepped beneath the door lintel. His torch flame guttered in a wind gentle enough to be Glaucus’s.

  Her pulse was suddenly racing. She held up her arms and Chara drew a jacket along them and fastened it at her waist and across her breasts. Theron’s eyes roved across her skin. He was as old as her father, and his cheeks were pitted with scars.

  As ugly as the surface of the moon that Daedalus showed me once, through his long-glass, she thought. I should have this wretch punished for staring at me—and yet she smiled a little, as she slipped her legs slowly into her skirt.

  “So,” she said, “my father requires my presence.”

  Theron nodded slowly. “He does, my Lady.” His voice was low and rough. He smiled back at her, just a little.

  “Enough,” Ariadne said to the slave, who was fiddling with her girdle, “I am ready.”

  At Knossos it would have taken half the night to get from the royal apartments to the underground storerooms, but here it was a matter of two short staircases and one long one. As she followed the wavering torchl
ight, she imagined Asterion here, casting his distended bull-shadow on the jars and the damp stone walls.

  He must have felt the ceiling pressing down on him, in that first cave, she thought. He must have thought it a prison. Maybe he’s remembering it now, inside the mountain, and wondering at his own foolishness.

  Theron led her past a row of doorways, to three storage jars. They were twice as tall as he was, and bulbously round in the middle. A dark red-painted octopus writhed up one; a school of green flying fish leapt up the other two.

  Theron knelt and traced his finger along a seam between two flagstones. “What you are about to see is secret, Lady. Your father the king will tell you: you must not speak of it. I have sworn a blood oath that I will not.”

  “Indeed,” she said, her voice steady though her heartbeat, suddenly, was not. “And how can a row of jars and a wall be secret?”

  He glanced up over his shoulder at her. The lamplight pooled in his scars. “Princess. Have you no faith in your father?” He smiled his small, insolent smile again, and bent back to the floor. She heard his fingertip dragging. His breathing was raspy, breathy, like an old man’s. “Where are you, now,” he muttered, and leaned forward until his head had nearly disappeared between two of the jars. “Ha!” he cried, and flicked his hand upward with a flourish. Ariadne saw a glint of metal—something protruding from the floor—and then gears ground, deep within the wall, and stone dragged against stone.

  The wall opened.

  Ariadne picked up the lamp and crouched behind Theron. Even in the light, she could see nothing but black, empty space. “Ah,” she said. “So this secret is the work of the great Daedalus. May the gods grant him the peace he deserves.”

  The man laughed harshly. “May they indeed, Lady,” he said. “Now, then. After you.”

  She drew breath to order him in first, but something in his narrowed, glittering eyes made her press her lips together instead. She crouched and moved past him. The edges of the opening tugged at her hair, and a dank, cool wind raised gooseflesh on her arms. She felt the stone beneath her become dirt, and tried not to recoil.

  “Come on, Princess,” Theron said. He was far too close to her, but she didn’t command him to step back. “Can’t keep your father waiting.”

  Once beneath the wall, she eased herself up until she was standing. He emerged beside her. The lamp’s glow fell on walls that looked crumpled—unworked rock, not stone—and a ceiling strung with roots.

  Ariadne plucked her calfskin boots out of the dirt, one after the other. Don’t stand still. Turn around—get back to the opening. “No,” she said, “I will not walk here. Take me to my father by another way.”

  “This is the only way, Lady. I am sorry for your discomfort.” But he wasn’t; he was leering at her in the part-light, leaning close.

  She held her skirt as far above the dirt as she could without pulling it over her head. “Very well. Quickly, then, at least.”

  The passage twisted and rose and dipped and rose again, endlessly. It must be as long as the road between Knossos and Amnisos, she thought. Sometimes she had to rush to catch up to Theron and his bobbing light; once she stumbled over a root and into his back and he steadied her with damp, lingering hands.

  “Tired?” he murmured. His breath stank of old wine. “Care to rest?”

  Enough of this, she thought. She wrenched herself away and pushed him forward with a grunt.

  “My father,” she panted. “The king. Remember?” His laughter echoed around her as he led her onward.

  This will never end. I’ll starve, in here—and imagine that: even Asterion gets food, in his box! And then there’s Theron. I’ll have to kill him somehow. A rock? Yes: a knee to the groin and a rock to the back of the head when he goes down. . . . Maybe my father never did ask to see me. Maybe this was all Theron’s doing from the start. Maybe I should just curl up now and—

  “Here we are, Princess. Well, come on then. You’ve been slow; kept him waiting too long.”

  Theron slid his hands up the rock to the mossy roof and pushed. Dirt hissed down onto Ariadne and she shook her head, stamped to get it off her shoulders. When she looked up again, all but his legs had disappeared. She watched them vanish too, into a space of darkness and stars.

  “Up you come.” He was leaning through the trap door, his hands extended. She saw no way except these hands, which she took as her insides roiled. He hoisted her up and into air so fresh and clean that she breathed it in in great gulps that made her cough. She stood up very tall and tipped her face to the sky.

  “Go on, then,” Theron said. “Over that way, to the cliff. I wait here, by his command.”

  She tossed her head so that the glossy snakes of her hair slithered across her back. “A shame,” she said. “I believe I was beginning to fall in love with you.”

  His eyes were slits. His hands tightened into fists. “Careful, Princess,” he said softly. “Careful, pretty girl.”

  “No,” she said. “You be careful. My father would punish you if I told him of your impudence.”

  She walked away from him, her strides long, as if she knew where she was. A wide swath of grass with jagged hills behind and a lip of cliff ahead. The sea below, stained with moonlight. She knew much of the land around the summer palace, but not this.

  Minos was standing at the cliff’s edge. At first he was nothing but a fire-veined shadow against the black sky, but when she saw him her pace and pulse quickened.

  “Father,” she said when she was close enough to make out his real, solid shape, “what is this—what do you want with me now, here . . . ?” She had meant to sound imperious, but as her voice trailed into silence she knew she was just a little girl, waiting in the dark for a king to turn to her.

  He did, slowly. His eyes were orange, rippling circles with black embers at their hearts.

  “You and I made a secret plan, once.” She felt each word puff against her cheeks like steam. “Together. And then, because I wanted to, I made one by myself.”

  She swallowed. Her throat was tight. The wind felt cool on her skin, in the spaces between his words.

  “I will show you what I planned without you, because I wanted to. There,” he said, pointing down. “There is where you start.”

  She sat with her legs over the edge. Her heels kicked against the cliff face as she craned up at him.

  “Yes,” the king said, his smile red. “Just there.”

  Icarus would have loved it up here, she thought. With his grasping toes and his ball of humming string . . . She turned quickly around and lowered herself down, poking at the rock with her toes. She found the first foothold almost immediately but had to stretch to find the second. They were shallow and she slipped several times, clutching the indentations with fingers she could tell were bleeding. She didn’t look down until she was standing on rock, not merely clinging to it. A ledge, she saw when she inched around to face the sea. Three steps forward would take her over.

  Father, she thought as her teeth chattered, what is this?

  A rope bounced off the cliff by her left shoulder. She crept right as Minos slid down to stand beside her.

  “I am not so young and spry as you,” he said. “Once was. Not now. Need a rope.” She heard it sizzle as he unwrapped his hands, and held her breath so that she wouldn’t smell its acrid burning. “Look at us, Daughter! Look at where we stand, above the vast, dark waters of our land. A rhyme!” he cried, and laughed mad, swirling sparks into the night.

  She cleared her throat so that her voice wouldn’t tremble. “You did not bring me here to gaze at the sea. Please tell me what we are really doing.”

  “Of course,” he said, abruptly solemn. “Over there. To your right. Step carefully—yes, good—one more . . . now put down your hand. Do you feel it?”

  She felt metal, rough with rust. Another door, she realized as she knelt and looked. At the level of her knees, if she had be
en standing; tiny and rounded, with rusted bolts and a rusted lock.

  Her father leaned past her and inserted a stubby key into the lock. The door screeched as he pulled it open. “Close, now,” he said. He touched her cheek with his palm. She didn’t flinch at the heat.

  She’d had to crouch to enter the tunnel behind the jars, but here she had to crawl. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d crawled. On the ground of the ring, perhaps, when she’d been a child learning to bull-dance and had fallen and needed to scrabble out of the way of the beast’s churning legs? But she’d hardly ever fallen, and the ring had been smooth and cool, not dirty and prickly with stones as this place was. Minos’s glow from behind her flickered off a low, curving ceiling and root-encrusted walls—much narrower than the others had been, tonight—and an opening—thank Zeus, a space not that far ahead where she could stand and stretch and brush the dirt from her legs and hands.

  It was a cavern, and it soared far, far above her, glittering with crystal veins and hardened drippings of something that looked gold in the godlight. She craned up at it as Minos straightened beside her. The light grew brighter and steadier then, and she shifted her gaze back down and saw bodies on the floor.

  There were three of them, lying on their sides against the cavern’s far wall. Their wrist and ankle bonds had been tied together so that their backs were bowed inward. They’d been arranged in a row with their faces all pointing the same way. They looked like three empty mussel shells. Minos gestured at them with one silver-red hand.

  “Go closer, Daughter. Go and see this secret that is now ours.”

  She walked over to them. The king’s light followed her. It played over their faces: Icarus’s, Daedalus’s, Naucrate’s. Their skin was streaked with dirt and dried black blood. Their eyes glistened as they rolled their heads to look at her.