The Flame in the Maze (29 page)

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.

“No!” Ariadne cried as Xenon straightened and walked to her. “I have no idea who you are—do not
touch
me—”

“Take me first, then,” Chara said. “I seem to be weaker than I thought.”

The giant stooped, and she wrapped her arms around his massive neck. His cheeks bristled with black hair, though there was none on his head. His eyes were nearly invisible beneath the jutting bone of his brows.

“Chara?” Asterion said from below, and she waved at him.

“I'll see you there,” she said. “Wherever that is.” And she laid her head on Xenon's chest as he bore her away from the sea.

She fell asleep, as Xenon carried her, though she hadn't realized she was sleepy. One moment she was watching the landscape, thinking,
Olive trees. Rocks. Lemon trees. Rocks. Pine trees
; the next she was on her side with her fists beneath her chin. Her muscles were aching, and her tongue was so swollen with thirst that she couldn't do anything except moan. She forced herself onto her back. Once again she stared up at the sky, which was a much deeper grey now, shot through with sickly orange.
Where am I?
—and once again she felt dizzy with not-knowing and dread.

“Lean on me,” said Asterion, very close to her. He smiled and drew her up until she was sitting against him. An old woman squatted in front of them, holding out a crude clay mug. Chara took it in her hands and gulped water that was colder than any she'd drunk before. When she was finished she looked past the woman and saw that they were inside the circle of a low stone wall. Shadow-people were leaning on the wall, staring down with wide, dark eyes.

“About time you woke up,” Ariadne said, from across the circle. There was a hearth in the centre; the smoke from the fire twisted in the air between them. “They wouldn't explain anything to us until you did.” Her last word ended in a yelp and a groan: Diokles was sitting beside her, winding cloth slowly and tightly around her injured leg, which had been splinted with a length of wood. “Stop!” she cried, and lifted her hand as if she'd strike him. He didn't flinch. His hands went still, poised over her leg.

“Truly?” the old woman said as she straightened slowly. She took two shambling steps. “Do you want to end up like me already, girl—with you still so young and pretty?”

Chara watched Ariadne swallow. “Fine,” she said at last, gesturing at Diokles without looking at him. He arched a brow and resumed wrapping.

“So,” Alphaios said. He was kneeling, as if he was about to leap up and go somewhere else. Theseus was standing beside him, his eyes on something far away.
The sea
, Chara thought.
The wrecked ship. Athens.
Then she thought,
Daedalus?
She glanced wildly around at the circle and found him, lying on his side, facing the wall. The knobs of his spine thrust against his skin. Phaidra was curled up with her head almost touching his, staring almost without blinking into the fire.

“One of you can explain,” Alphaios went on. “Now that Chara's awake.”

Pelagia crouched next to Chara and handed her a bowl of what turned out to be stew. “I'll begin,” Pelagia said. Chara hardly heard her, over the sound of her own feverish chewing. The stew was rich and thick and maybe the most delicious thing she'd ever tasted.

“There was a storm,” Pelagia said, and Ariadne snorted. “Unlike anything we'd ever seen before,” Pelagia continued, ignoring her. “And we've seen our share of storms. We watched it come, driven by gods, or godmarks. We watched, and we saw your ship being tossed on the sea like a twig.”

“Other ships have found us,” Diokles said, “some by design, and others accidentally, driven by storms. We're used to going down to the beach to wait. Xenon usually waits in the water, because he can hold out against the current. But he couldn't do that this time: the waves were just too strong.”

Chara followed his gaze and saw the giant looming on the other side of the wall, at the edge of the firelight.

Diokles turned back to the splint and Pelagia smiled at his bent head.
Maybe she's his mother,
Chara thought—because she remembered, faintly but without doubt, her own mother smiling like that at her.

“The sea tossed many of you directly onto the shore,” Pelagia said. “You, Ariadne, looked as if you were flying. We'd never seen anyone land so far up on the beach.”

Daedalus's shoulder began to twitch, over and over. Phaidra laid her hand on it, and it stilled.

Diokles said, “We waited for the sky to lighten a bit, so that we could see how many of you were alive. Many weren't. We watched the ash thicken in the water and trap the others. Xenon waded out, when the storm had blown over. It took him a long time, but he managed, and he pulled up a few who lived. He left the others.”

“The rest I know,” Theseus said, and Chara started at the hardness of his voice. “Tell me where we are. I am the Prince of Athens, and I command you to tell me this,
now
.”

Pelagia's eyes widened. Chara thought,
Ah, the mind-voice,
and the memory of its bone-deep thrumming made her shiver. “Prince of Athens,” Pelagia said, very quietly, “you are nowhere.” A strand of grey-black hair fell in front of her face and caught between her lips, but she didn't brush it away.

Diokles knotted the cloth beneath Ariadne's knee, set her leg gently on the ground, and rose. “You've washed up on an island that may never have had a name. The only names here are ours.”

“And who,” Chara said, “are you?”

His eyes glinted with reflected fire. “Exiles,” he said. “Castoffs. The unmarked and the mark-mad and the children who've been born to them.” He drew a deep breath and leaned back against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest. “Take Xenon, there. He came on a ship captained by one of those who knows where we are. He was chained; we saw the marks on his wrists and ankles, when he finally let us get close. He charged around the island for weeks, bellowing. We understood some of the words; others sounded like gibberish—but they weren't. We came to understand that his godmark was languages: too many for any other person to speak, or understand. Gradually he stopped running. And he stopped speaking.”

Xenon didn't move. The darkness was thickening, so Chara couldn't see his eyes.

“What about you?” Alphaios said to Diokles.

“I was born here, and I'm godmarked: I can make fog.”

“But no one ever needs fog,” called someone who was outside the wall.

Diokles grinned. “Right. So I'm allowed to stay.”

Silence fell, for a moment. The flames spat and leapt; Asterion drew back, away from the heat. Daedalus's foot drummed a dull, uneven pattern on the earth.

“Monsters,” Ariadne said. Asterion's hand tightened on Chara's. “You're all monsters, to live like this, away from the world.”

Pelagia shook her head. “This is
our
world. It's a fine one, too: we have sheep and goats, brought or given as gifts; we have bee hives and vegetables in rows, and nets that bulge with fish. You'll see all of this tomorrow, in whatever daylight there is.”

Ariadne went on, as if she hadn't heard the woman, “The priestesses said there were those who wanted to send my father to a place like this, where his power wouldn't frighten anyone.
They
wanted to. But now it's me who's here. I'm a princess. A princess! I danced for . . . I . . .” She pressed her hand against her mouth with a gasp.

“And Agapios was a metalworker,” Pelagia snapped. “Galene had four children. Everyone here has lost something. Everyone here is home.”

As Ariadne opened her mouth to reply, silver-white light lit the heavy clouds above them.

“What's that?” Phaidra whispered.

Diokles glanced at her. “Zenobia. She lives in the forest that covers the highest hills. We leave food for her, now and then, because we're never sure if she gets enough on her own. She's like Xenon was, except that her mark-madness hasn't passed. Sometimes she fills the sky with white fire shaped like flowers or fish, or people's faces. There are others like her, who've chosen solitude over company. We tend to them if we can.”

Ariadne lurched to her feet. Her hair was as tangled as Chara knew her own would be, once it finally grew out, but somehow the princess looked beautiful and fierce. “We'll fix the ship. Theseus! Surely there are enough of us left alive to fix it—we'll do that, and we'll leave this horrible, horrible place.”

Theseus turned to Pelagia. “We will need you,” he said. “For there are not enough of us left alive.”

Pelagia raised a brow and smiled, a little. “We'll help you with your ship and your injuries, just as we've helped those others who've come, and then gone. We'll ask you no questions—though we might wish to, given your princess, and your young man with horns.” She glanced at Asterion as she said this. His horns shone like molten gold in the firelight. “We'll see you safely on your way back to your world, whatever it may be.”

“Good,” Theseus said. “Thank you.”

For a long time, no one spoke. Chara watched the white light, and waited for thunder that never came.

Alphaios counted out the days it took to fix the ship. Every morning before he set off for the beach, he placed a stone on the wall; every evening he checked on them, as if they might have fallen or been swept away.

“What's the count now, Alphaios?” someone would call, and he'd call the number back to them. “Three.” “Five.” “Seven.”

For many of those days, Chara stayed near the huts that had been built against the hillside below the wall, which, Pelagia told them, might once have been part of an ancient temple. “Those were also here when I came,” she said on the second day, pointing at two huts with conical roofs. “But I helped build that one, and Diokles was born in it, during a winter storm.”

“Filled it up with fog, too,” said Amyntas, Diokles's father, “when he was three. Likely doesn't remember now how we shouted.”

“Oh, I do,” Diokles said over his shoulder as he trudged away with Theseus and Alphaios and Asterion, and other men and women whose names Chara didn't yet know. “You made so much noise I thought you were dying.”

Despite Pelagia and Diokles's warnings, Ariadne limped up and down the path that led from the huts to the grove of lemon trees at the foot of the hill, leaning on the crutch Diokles had made her from a gnarled length of tree root. Phaidra slept for hours at a time on ash-coated grass beside the stream that ran clear and cold from somewhere up near the hill's peak. Daedalus, though, didn't move from the place where Xenon had laid him, on the first day. He'd grunted and flailed, when people tried to lift him, and they'd left him, and he'd been motionless ever since. So Chara stayed away from the beach, at first because she felt too weak to be of any use, and then because of Daedalus.

“Drink, Master Daedalus,” she said, over and over. “Eat. Please.” She soaked bits of bread in water or goat's milk and held them to his mouth, but he only stared blindly up at her. “Close your eyes, at least. Sleep.” He stared and stared and never slept, never saw her. His breath barely stirred the woollen blanket someone had put over him.

“Why do you bother?” said Ariadne on the fifth day. She was leaning on the wall, her chin in her palms. “He's given up. He's as good as dead already.”

Chara sat back on her heels. The clouds had finally begun to thin, and the gold loops that hung from the princess's ears blazed with new sunlight. “Icarus would have wanted me to bother,” Chara said. Her voice shook, and she squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them, Ariadne was gone.

Chara walked, when she wasn't with Daedalus. She felt stronger with every day that passed, and went farther: down through the sun-dappled lemon grove and up another, steeper hill, into the thick shadows of pine trees; up, days later, to its top. Everything fell away from her there, in tiers of red earth and silver-green trees, down to the golden crescent of beach, and the tiny human figures on it. She watched them swarming around the ship, which was nothing more than a dark blot on the sand, and then she squinted past it, at the sea that seemed to have no end. There were other islands in it—small ones that blurred when she tried to see them better.
Not Crete, though
, she thought.
Not Crete, ever again
.

“It's so beautiful,” she whispered to Asterion that night. “I'll have to show you”—but he was already asleep, his head heavy on her shoulder, one of his horns cool against her throat.

On the day Alphaios called, “Nine!” a child found Chara coming back through the pine forest. The girl was as fine-boned as a bird, and had a wild fuzz of hair, and reminded Chara of herself—or what she thought she'd been. “Diokles sent me to find you,” the girl said. She was panting. “Something's wrong at the beach—the man Asterion's in trouble.”

Chara hardly felt herself move, but within moments she was past the lemon grove and running away from the huts, her breath burning in her chest.
I'm too slow
, she thought, and stumbled—but even as she did, Xenon closed in on her left and swept her up under his tree branch of an arm.

The sun was setting, when he put her down on the beach. People were clustered by one of the many fires that speckled the sand—fires with pots of various sizes hanging over them. She ran the last few paces and all the people moved aside, until only one was left.

Diokles raised a shaking arm and pointed at the dark bulk of the ship. “He's there,” he said—but Chara had already seen. Asterion was turned toward the ship. He was on all fours, pawing at the ground with a hoof that glinted with crimson light. His other arm was bent beneath him.

“He tripped,” Diokles said. “He fell, and the pot tipped—it's my mother's pot; she brought it from Thera; it's never been stable, sitting or hanging—and the boiling pitch spilled all over his arm. I thought he'd faint, but he changed into that instead, and ran around and around, roaring.”

She saw the marks he'd gouged in the sand. She followed them and knelt behind him, trying not to choke on the stench of tar. His hunched shoulders were covered in fur, and his horns were full and sweeping, dragging his head down. He'd driven the tip of the left one into a plank.

“Asterion,” she said quietly. She put a hand on his back, where it was skin, not fur, and he flinched. “Show me?”

Very slowly, he drew his bent arm out. It was patchy with fur that looked singed. The flesh between was raw and pink, blistered and oozing. She eased up beside him, her hand still on his back.

“It was so hot,” he said. His voice was low and cracked, and muffled because of the angle of his head. “I couldn't help it.” One round brown eye rolled and found her. “I'll never be able to help it.”

“I know.” Her own words splintered; she imagined salt and tar and ash making paths down her throat, to her chest.

He put his good hand on the ship's side. “It doesn't matter where I am: my god won't release me. So where will I go?”

She stood up. “Back to the village, first of all,” she said. “So that you can have those burns dealt with.”

His fur was melting back into skin, and his hoof into fingers. “I would,” he said, his voice entirely a man's, now, “except that I'm stuck.” He gave a loud, clear laugh, and she gave her snuffling one. She leaned down and wrapped her hands around his horn, and they laughed harder as she tugged and he twisted. He came free so suddenly that they both sprawled onto their backs.

“Is everything all right?” Diokles asked, from above them.

“Yes,” Chara gasped, as Asterion got to his feet.

“Yes,” he said, and then, more steadily, “Diokles. I'm sorry. Even though Pelagia said, that first night, that you'd never ask us questions, I should have warned you. I should have told you how . . . powerful my godmark was. And the moment I saw the fires and pitch, I should have gone back to the village.”

Diokles was frowning—
Though maybe just because of the light?
Chara thought hopefully. “Yes,” he said. “You should have.” He glanced at Chara. “Is there anything else you should tell us about the other godmarks among you?”

She rose. “No,” she said. “But Alphaios transforms things that once lived into other things. Theseus speaks directly into people's minds. Phaidra opens locks. One of the sailors turns water into snow, though only for an instant, and another puts lines in wood without touching it, and I think there are a few more who are marked. Ariadne and I are unmarked.” She closed her eyes briefly, against the deep copper of sunset. When she opened them she said, “And that's all. Truly.”

Asterion nodded. “It's just me—I'm the only real problem, here. I'll stay away until the ship's ready, if any of you want me to.”

After a silence that felt far too long, Diokles said, “We'll speak more of this, with the others—but come back with me, now. My father will tend to your burns.”

When Chara went to Daedalus later that night, after Asterion had fallen asleep, Ariadne was there, and Daedalus was sitting up.

“Master Daedalus!” Chara cried, crouching in front of him—but he gazed at her just as blindly as he had before, as the light from the hearth fire flickered across his face.

“When did this happen?” she asked Ariadne, who shrugged and walked toward the break in the wall.

“Just before sundown. He also ate that bit of bread you left this morning.”

“And
you
fed him.”

“Well, there was no one else here to do it, was there?” Ariadne said, and vanished into the darkness.

When Chara looked back at Daedalus, he was blinking at her.
At
her—seeing her for the first time since Crete. He made a strangled noise and she leaned forward. His breath was stale, and his unwashed skin stank, but she didn't turn away. “Say that again, Daedalus. Please.”

He made the same noise, and this time she understood. “Minnow.” One of his hands reached for her, his stony, web-wound fingers grasping at air. “Icarus,” he said.

She pressed her palm against his as tears seeped through the dirt on his cheeks.

“Fourteen!” called Alphaios from the wall.

Chara smiled at Daedalus, who was standing up to his shins in the stream. Asterion was sitting on the bank, splashing water onto his arm. The blisters had popped and the skin was less livid, but there were yet more new scars, over the old. She'd traced them, kissed them, spoken silly, rhyming words against them, as he sank his fingers into her hair.

They were sitting on the flat ground outside the wall, sharing a plate of olives with Phaidra, when the group returned from the beach. Some sat down near them, talking and stretching stiff limbs. Theseus stood, staring back the way they'd come.

“You are quiet, Prince Theseus,” Pelagia said, holding a cup out to him. He took it but didn't drink.

“Fourteen days,” he said. “Fourteen, and not many more.”

Chara glanced at Diokles, who was also standing, holding a guttering torch.

“How many?” Pelagia asked.

“Two,” Theseus said. “Three, perhaps. Our people have worked hard and well, together.”

“That they have,” said Amyntas. “Now, then: we'll provide some fruit and bread, some salted fish—but is there anything else you'll be needing for the journey?”

Phaidra stood, and Asterion, and Chara. Only Daedalus stayed as he was, the plate of olives forgotten on his lap.

“I thank you,” Theseus said, “and I accept whatever you offer—but there is one thing that remains to be done.” He turned to Alphaios. “I will need something—some proof to bring back to my father. He—all of Athens—must believe that I killed the beast.”

Alphaios nodded slowly as people murmured. Chara had told the islanders their story, at long last, the day after Asterion had changed on the beach; they knew, now, about the labyrinth, and all the ones inside it.

“Come on, then!” Ariadne cried, thrusting her way through the people between Alphaios and her. “Make something!”

For just a heartbeat, Chara was back in the labyrinth: Alphaios was kneeling, and Melaina was mocking him, and Theseus was snapping at her while Chara watched silently, full of dread and longing for Asterion, lost somewhere in all the crushing stone. She shook her head and tipped it up to the sky, which was thick with stars.

Asterion put his chin on the top of her head and wrapped his arms around her. She pressed herself into his warmth as Alphaios plucked a fish skeleton from a plate someone had left on the ground next to him and bent over it. Godlight bloomed almost immediately from his hands. Someone gave a muffled cry; a child started to wail. Alphaios rocked and the skeleton juddered, on fire with silver. The bones flowed together—but not into a blade, this time: into something that grew bigger, thicker, darker. “More,” he gasped. Someone handed him another fish skeleton, and another, and someone else passed over a clump of lemon seeds and a bunch of dried herbs. The light grew brighter and brighter, and Chara had to close her eyes, though she didn't want to. She opened them only when he gave a wrenching cry, and the light vanished.