The Flame in the Maze (23 page)

It was supposed to be easy: a few days' travel along a well-known path; a careful approach to the summer palace, his identity hidden by the shepherd's cloak; a whispered word to a sympathetic slave, or perhaps to Phaidra herself, if he could find her alone.

He hadn't counted on the storm.

The sky over the sea was clear, when he climbed up the cliff steps. But as he took his first few eager paces inland, he saw that clouds were massing above the mountains. Mere moments later, lightning lit them a boiling purple, and he felt thunder buzzing against the soles of his feet.

“No,” he muttered. “No, no, no: Sky God, don't do this; don't keep me from this.”

The rain didn't start gently: it sheeted from a cracked-open sky. He saw only what the lightning flashes showed him: his own talons, on hands and feet; flattened grass and churned red mud.
Stop walking
, he told himself.
Wait this out. If you get lost you'll end up losing time.
But he didn't stop. If anything, he moved faster: the storm's power and the vastness of the hidden sky called feathers up from his skin in prickly waves, from his ankles to his neck. He heard a gull scream and tipped back his head to answer it.
No
, he thought faintly,
you're losing yourself.

He tried to fly once, when he ran into what his hands and then the lightning told him was a rock outcrop. He scrabbled up its slippery ridges and threw himself off, and for a moment the wind lifted his wings and silver filled his eyes—for a longer moment than ever before, surely—but no: he fell, and lay panting on the muddy ground.

After that he simply wandered. He had no idea where his taloned feet were leading him. His belly ached. His arms and legs bristled with feathers that hadn't sunk back into his flesh because they were still growing. All that plucking? A mark soon, at last, to be fulfilled? He didn't know; he knew only that his hunger was so vast that it swam before his eyes like an extra layer of rain. He stumbled and righted himself and hardly noticed.
Meat
, he thought, the palace and Phaidra and the Goddess's mountain forgotten.
Too hungry; I need
meat
.

The storm passed, after a time. The sky went from purple to yellow to blue. The clouds thinned and scattered. Hours since he'd left the cave; maybe days. He remembered darkness. He remembered lying down in wet grass and slurping mud. Now he lay blinking up at the sharp, wheeling shape of a bird
.
Wind raised goosebumps among his feathers. He felt so sick that he didn't want to move—and yet he remembered. He had to get up.

The landscape was completely strange to him. He was on a flat place among jagged peaks; he'd climbed without knowing it, probably to be closer to the sky he couldn't ever reach. He thought he recognized the shape of the Goddess's mountain, but wasn't sure—his vision was blurred—o gods and finches, where
was
he?

As he stood there, dizzy and helpless, he smelled blood.

He followed the smell, though he didn't see where he was going. It was like the storm: his feet led him, though his eyes were blind. His belly was the sky, yawning and reaching, the only thing he knew.

The bleeding creature was lying in a stream. The water was so icy that he started, as if waking from a dream he'd thought was real. He was kneeling in the water, which was shallow and quick and full of boulders. There was a sheep caught between two of these boulders. It was sprawled, limp and wet, its wool turned pink with blood. Icarus crawled toward it, wincing as smaller stones tore at the skin of his knees and calves. He stood to reach down for the sheep—and then he saw the boy.

He was eight or nine, with a thatch of dark hair and enormous eyes that went even wider when they saw Icarus. The boy tugged desperately at his own leg. His ankle, Icarus saw with sudden clarity, was trapped beneath one of the boulders.

Must eat
, Icarus thought. He said, “Don't be afraid.”

“I'm not,” the boy said in a high, quavering voice. He swallowed. “Even though you look very, very odd.”

Icarus imagined what the boy was seeing: a man-shape covered in feathers of various lengths. A mouth distended and pointed into a fleshy beak. Fingers scaled and hinged like talons. Mad, ravenous, round little eyes.

“Yes,” Icarus said. Words would keep his hunger at bay, at least for a time. “I'm glad you're not afraid, because that means you'll let me help you. What's your name? Mine's Icarus.”
Why did you tell him your real name?
he thought.
So hungry; so careless.
The boy swallowed again. “Manasses. I'm nine, but I'm small for my age, so you'll be able to pick me up, even though your arms are very odd.” He bit his lower lip. “I already said words like that, didn't I? Papa says I talk too much. He likes silence, but 'Tiria seems to like it when I talk. My foot hurts a lot. I thought the water would freeze it, but it still hurts.”

The smell of the sheep's blood was making Icarus feel ill, now. His throat was dry. When he stooped to lift Manasses, his vision went briefly black, but as soon as the boy's arms went around his neck, the world returned.

“Where's your home?” Icarus asked, thinking,
Please, all the gods, not far: I need to get to the palace; need to find Phaidra and head for the Goddess's mountain.

Manasses gestured at what looked like a very distant peak. “Will you fly me there?”

Icarus settled the boy on his hip and took a few steps, each less wobbly than the last. “No.”

“Why not? You have feathers. And a sort-of beak. You're a man-bird; you should be able to fly.”

“I . . . cannot.” His breath was already rasping. He was so hungry. “I have only part . . . of a godmark.”

“You're lucky. I have none. Papa's mark comes from Athene: he can see as well as an owl, at night. He told me that my mother could turn brown grass green from beneath. She died birthing me. I guess the sheep have never had such good pasture since.”

Icarus made a huffing noise.

“I don't mind being unmarked. Papa doesn't either. He says the gods can still favour or punish unmarked people. He says no one even needs priests or priestesses to explain things. Are you angry that your god didn't make you a real man-bird?”

“Sometimes,” Icarus gasped, and then, “Manasses . . . I can't talk while I'm . . . carrying you . . .”

The boy nodded. “All right,” he said, and shifted in Icarus's arms so that, for a brief moment, he felt lighter.

“I hope Papa isn't angry at me because Thirsty Girl died. He and 'Tiria were in the cheese-making hut by the lower pasture, and he made me be in charge of the flocks—the sheep and the goats—and I was so tired! But I only fell asleep for a minute. And I knew where the ewe had gone as soon as I woke up—she always wanders off to the river. That's why 'Tiria calls her Thirsty Girl. Papa's never beaten me, but he makes me do extra chores when he's angry. This hill seemed shorter when I ran down it! My foot feels like it's really big. Big and hot. Look—there's the path! Follow it and you'll see the upper pasture, and our hut is just there, too. I hope Papa isn't angry at me. . . .”

The hut looked like the other one Icarus had found: an enormous beehive made of rough-hewn slabs of stone. A fuzz of blossom-spotted grass covered its pointed tip. Through a haze of dizziness and dancing black spots, he saw a man standing in front of the open door, squinting into the light of the sun that was setting behind another distant peak. Behind the man was someone wearing a skirt and jacket, so she had to be a girl—and yet her hair was as short and fuzzy as the grass on the roof. She and the man ran toward Icarus, the man silently, the girl calling Manasses's name.

The man took the boy carefully from Icarus, who crumpled to his knees. He blinked up at them and saw Manasses wrap his arms and one leg around his father. The other leg, with its injured ankle, dangled. The shepherd didn't look away from Icarus.

“His name's Icarus,” Manasses mumbled against his father's neck. “He's a man-bird but he can't fly. He carried me all the way from the river. Thirsty Girl fell on the rocks in the river and so did I, and she's dead, and my ankle hurts a lot. Please don't beat me.”

The man continued to stare down at Icarus. “Thank you,” he said at last. His voice was quiet, rough-edged as the stone. Manasses whimpered, and his injured foot twitched. “Come inside,” the man said, and Icarus stumbled to his feet. He thought of saying,
No—there's somewhere I should have been, days ago
. But when he imagined what would come after—another long, dizzy, famished walk—he followed.

The hut was cool and dim and smelled of cheese. At first Icarus held his breath to keep the smell at bay, because it turned his stomach as the sheep's blood had, once the fever of his hunger had passed. But when he sat on the bench at the table and saw a bowl there, full of curds and honey, his hunger returned.

“Eat,” the girl said as she slid a wooden spoon to him. Her eyes seemed huge because she had so little hair. He ate, wishing she weren't watching him fumble with the spoon—and then she wasn't; she was watching the father bend over Manasses, on one of the two sleeping platforms. Icarus lowered his head to the bowl and used his talon-tipped fingers to shovel the cheese into his mouth. His head and vision cleared. He could see the swirls of honey in the cheese; the whorls of wood grain in table and spoon; the muted reds and blues and yellows of the coverlet on the other sleeping platform.

“Let me see him.” Her voice was barely a whisper, but Icarus looked up. The girl—Tiria, he assumed—was standing behind the shepherd. Her hands were clenching and unclenching at her sides. Her fingers and palms were pulsing with silver godlight. “Alexios. Please. I need . . .”

Alexios turned to her. His eyes reflected her silver as they widened. “Sotiria—what is this?”

She knelt beside him, clasping her hands in her lap. “I can't help it—it's my godmark—I have to heal him. Asclepius demands it.”

Manasses's eyes were wider than his father's. “Why didn't you tell me you could do that?”

“I thought my god might let me live without it for a time. I was foolish.” Icarus saw her straighten her shoulders as she looked at Alexios. “I will take the pain away from him and take it on myself. I likely won't cry out; I've borne worse. Although my own ankle will be broken, you won't be able to do anything to help. My body will take care of itself.”

Icarus's heartbeat stuttered, then raced. He hardly felt the new feathers that thrust suddenly at his skin from beneath.

“Your scars,” Alexios said slowly.

She smiled. “The ones you've never asked about. Yes. It's a difficult mark, but it gives me great joy.”

Alexios lifted his hand and laid it lightly against her cheek. She leaned into it, her eyes closed.
He loves her.
This thought cut through all the others crowding Icarus's head.
And she loves him. She must be seventeen, eighteen; he, no younger than thirty, though perhaps the lines on his face are from the sun, only.

The silver was spreading from her hands to her elbows, brighter than the dying light outside. Silver veins branched from shoulders to neck to cheeks; silver hairs lifted along her arms.

Icarus hardly breathed as she wrapped her fingers around Manasses's ankle. The boy started but made no sound. She was still—
A statue
, thought Icarus,
though not one of Karpos's, of course, which seem to move
. All the sun was gone now, and Alexios didn't get up to light the lantern that was sitting on the table. Godlight rippled into the darkness in long, lingering waves. Silence throbbed in Icarus's ears—until Manasses gave a whoop. He scrambled to sit up, grinning, waving his leg in the air.

“It's better!” he cried. He leapt off his sleeping platform and jumped up and down. “You made it better, 'Tiria! It hardly took you any time at all!”

The last of the silver waves quivered against the stone and vanished. Icarus was gasping as if he'd been trying to fly. He saw nothing but shadows and remembered, suddenly, that Alexios could see in the dark like an owl. As Icarus's own eyes adjusted, the shepherd lifted Sotiria. She wrapped her arms around his neck as Manasses had. Alexios carried her past Icarus, and he saw her eyes, black and white and shining with tears.

Alexios set her down on the other sleeping platform and said, “There must be something I can do to ease your pain. Though you say there is not.”

“You could get me some wine,” she said. “That's all.”

Alexios gave Icarus some too, in a cool, lumpy clay cup. “Stay here tonight, if you wish,” the shepherd said.

Icarus took a quick, bitter sip and coughed. “Thank you,” he said when his throat was clear. “I will be gone before the sun is up.”
And not alone, if the gods are good
.
Which they often aren't.

Alexios lay down beside Manasses and drew a blanket over them both. The boy murmured something and giggled, and his father hushed him. There was silence for a time, until Manasses said, in a dramatic whisper, “'Tiria, could you have healed Thirsty One?”

Icarus could see her shadow on the ledge above him. It didn't stir even a little as she said, “No. Just people.”

Icarus listened as Alexios's and Manasses's breathing slowed. He couldn't hear Sotiria's at all. When he rose, his thigh feathers made a hissing noise that he was sure would wake the child, at least. But the sleep-breathing continued. He straightened slowly, wincing; his latest attempt to fly had raised the usual bruises. He leaned carefully toward Sotiria's sleeping platform, and as he leaned, she sat up.

“Icarus.” He tried to draw back but she reached out and closed her hand around his wrist. No silver; just her fingers digging invisibly, inexorably into his flesh. “Take me outside, now,” she murmured, “so they won't hear.”