The Immortal Game (book 1) (38 page)

This space was about as big as the first one, and also had a corner, this time to her right. She followed it around on her hands and knees. This new space was even bigger. She could stand upright. She looked for the next corner, but there were only solid walls around her. She was stuck. There was nowhere to go but back, and back led to nothing.

The panic returned. She felt like she couldn’t breathe. She tried to open her throat by tilting her head back and letting it rest on the rock wall behind her. There, near the top of the ceiling, was another shelf. She reached up and put her hands on the edge, ready to pull up again, but this shelf was higher. She didn’t think she could pull herself up that high.

She bent her knees in the cramped space and jumped up as best she could. The awkward maneuver tipped her off balance and instead of jumping straight up she fell forward onto the hard wall before her.

She lay on the rock and laughed, partly at her lack of grace but mostly out of frustration and fear. She tried to stand again but found she couldn’t. The rock she now lay on had been straight up and down before, but it had tilted when she jumped. She had moved the rock from the inside.

It was another maze she realized, a maze in three dimensions. Instead of hallways branching right and left, this one branched right and left; up and down; backward and forward.

Would the guards notice the stone moving? She didn’t think so. The only distinguishing mark was the cutout, and it was just a small spot on the huge sphere.

She inched forward on her belly and looked down into the small space that had been above her before the stone moved. She spun her body around and lowered herself into it.

There was now an opening near the floor. She crawled through it. The low passage soon became larger. As she went along the floor began to narrow. The sides dropped away from her. Soon she was crawling along a granite platform, like a wide balance beam, that ran through a huge stone room.

She glanced down. What she saw made her knees weak. The floor of the sphere was at least twenty feet below. The open space around her was crisscrossed with dozens of narrow granite beams like the one she was on now. She winced at the thought of falling onto those hard crosspieces.

On one side the sphere was built up. It wasn’t concave, but flat. In the middle was a hole just big enough for a person to wiggle through. It glowed a faint red. Ruby’s heart quickened. She thought of the maze that led to this room and the guards posted outside. Ares was in that hole. She could feel it.

She looked at the network of granite beams around her and wondered how she could get from here to there. She walked further along the crossbar but it dropped off into nothing two feet in front of her.

She looked in every direction. There had to be a way to use her weight to make the stone move again. The nearest beam was to the right and down, at a ninety degree angle to where she was now. She might be able to reach it. She held her breath and hiked out over the hazardous space with her arms outstretched. Her body tipped, her weight landed on the beam and the stone moved on its wet perch. The beam that had been below her was now before her, flat, and right where she needed it to be.

She pulled her legs up onto the stone beam. This one was wider. She stood and walked its length. She looked for the next beam and wondered in what plane she would find it. The next beam led straight to the smooth rock wall, but the glowing hole was across the giant room from her.

She stood with her back against the cold stone and looked for her next move. The only possibility was directly above her. She stretched up and grabbed the beam. She could barely lift her weight with her arms. As she pulled, the stone moved again. The beam she had intended to walk on was now more like a smooth pole in front of her, with no way to climb it, but there was a beam in front of her she had not considered before.

One beam after another, she moved around the stone room.

…

Ruby pulled herself up to the next beam and wiped the sweat out of her eyes. She was disoriented. She looked again for the red glowing light where she thought Ares was. It was now above her and to the left. She wondered if these beams actually led there.

Beneath her she saw a crosspiece four feet below she thought she could safely jump to. If she missed she would hit five or six stone crosspieces on her way down to the hard floor below.

With no other options she decided to risk it. Again the sphere shifted under her weight and the new beam in front of her was now an uphill walk on a thin strip of rock. She put her foot down heavily with each step and soon the sphere shifted in her favor again.

She followed the beam across to the far side of the stone. Now the red glow was above her, maybe fifteen feet away. “Ares?” Her voice echoed in the large space, but there was no response.

She saw no beams that could get her closer. In front of her, along the wall of the sphere, ran a deep groove. It traveled up above her head. She ran her fingers along the trench. The beginning of it was notched.
For traction.

She put her foot in the furrows cut into the rock. She leaned forward with all her weight and pressed down. She grunted with the effort and licked a salty drop of sweat from her lips.

The sphere moved. Just a little.

She repositioned higher and tried again. The stone moved more and more, until what had been a wall in front of her became the floor beneath her. The red glow was now mere feet away. She ran along the groove with the web-like rock beams hanging in the air above her.

As she approached the hole in the floor she could see the red glow flicker and dance. Winter nights in front of a fire came to mind. She began to shiver. What had she come all this way to find? She looked tentatively into the pit. Her shivers multiplied, threatening to shake her apart.

Ares was there, lying on his side. He faced away from her, motionless, at the bottom of a clear bubble. The bubble was engulfed in flames.

She squeezed her eyes shut, too late to stop the tears, and willed for her mind to hold together. Her body had already passed out of the realm of feeling as her knees smacked against hard granite next to the hole. She tried to blink the tears away so she could see. She had to think.

The odorless flames flared up to the top of the pit. If she went into the cell she would burn. All she had with her was Artemis’s bow and arrows. She had nothing she could lower to him even if he was conscious.

Maybe she could break the bubble. But would that burn him? Or put the flames out?

If he caught fire there would be no way for her to help him. She would have to stand there and watch him burn. Not dying, just burning. But if breaking the bubble put the flames out, she could get to him.

With trembling hands she reached back for the bow. She nocked a shaky arrow, still wet with Chimera blood, and took cautious aim for the far edge of the clear bubble. She let her energy flow into the weapon. The arrow steadied. She pulled back, the muscles in her forearm tensing. She kept her sights on the exact furthest spot of the bubble from Ares and hoped the bow would be true to form and not miss its target.

She let her fingers go. The arrow seemed to leave the bow in slow motion, reflecting the red fire on its silver surface as it flew. At the same time Ares’s body shifted beneath the flames. He rolled and looked up at her. His face was covered in yellowing bruises, but his eyes were wide and obviously lucid.

Her smile was instant. Relief flooded through her in a warm wave. His look matched hers but was quickly replaced by wide eyes and a gasp she could see but not hear. His hands shot up in a defensive position, as if to ward off a demon.

Her eyes widened with fear as she saw his reaction. She had chosen wrong. The fire would continue to burn.
He
would burn.

The arrow struck. Hit its mark square. The bubble shattered and disappeared. She waited to hear him scream. But there was no sound at all. The fire had gone out. Thick tendrils of acrid black smoke wafted up out of the cell past her and into the large sphere above.

She felt the rumble at the same instant she heard Ares yell for her. “Ruby!” He looked beyond her, to the top of the sphere. She turned.

The dark tendrils of smoke gathered against the ceiling, so many stories above, coalescing into a dark form. She felt a chill and looked back to Ares.

He held out his hand. “Jump.”

She did it before she could think. And then she was on the shaking cell floor with him.

Her attention was drawn back up to the top of the sphere with her next heartbeat. The black smoke-shape was still forming. She could make out a long neck, a large body, and a massive head. A dragon.

The rumbling continued, like an earthquake. Horny protrusions grew like storm clouds on the dragon’s head. It grinned at them with pointed, razor-sharp teeth.

Ruby swallowed dry, gulping down fear.

Ares grabbed her arm. His energy flowed into her.

“Get ready to run,” he said.

Where?
She tore her eyes away from the increasingly hideous smoke dragon above them. The stone cell was cracking and breaking. The dragon was now too large for the sphere. It reared up and exploded out of the granite above its head. She felt a pull on her arm as Ares dragged her through a growing crack in the wall of the cell.

They were in the large room again. Chimeras were everywhere. Ruby held the bow and reached for her arrows, but the guards took no notice of her and Ares. They watched in stunned silence as the black smoke dragon drifted up to touch the ceiling of the room.

Ares pulled on her. As they crossed under one of the massive stone archways, Ruby looked back and wished she hadn’t. The dragon reared up, sucked in what might have been its first breath, and let loose a long, stretching fireball directed right at them. She turned her head, not wanting to see, and ran level with Ares.

Ares turned to look at her. She saw fear light in his eyes.

He swung her close and slammed her into him with enough force to knock the wind from her lungs.

She looked at him, dazed.

He pulled her along at a breakneck pace.

Her mind was a confused mix of pain, where Ares had thrown her against his body, and raw terror.

…

Ruby and Ares ran along the many branching corridors, rounding corners close and fast. All Ruby could hear was her own heartbeat and the thud of their shoes on the stone floor of Hades’s dungeon maze. She dared not look back to see if the dragon or the Chimeras were following. She simply held Ares’s hand and tried to keep up.

Ares glanced back, his eyes tight and searching. What he saw, or didn’t see, gave him hope and he slowed enough for her to gulp in a swallow of air.

A few turns later he stopped and scanned the right side of her body; the side that still ached from where he had crashed into her.

Her lungs recovered quickly thanks to so many hours of biking, but now she felt something new. Her right lower back and hip felt cold and hot at the same time. A moment later true pain set in.

Ares looked at her face. “You’re burned pretty badly.” His voice was husky and deep.

She tried to look, but he put his hand on her face and pulled her focus back to him. “We have to get out of here. How did you get in?”

“I …” she stammered. His T-shirt was ripped and dirty, his hands rough and scabbed. She looked from his hands to his bruised face. He shook his head in a way that meant,
don’t worry
. He kissed her and whispered, “Ruby, think.”

“I came down some abandoned steps,” she said in a rush. “That was so long ago, or so far away, or just too many turns past.” She glanced around, but all the gray-walled corridors looked the same. “I don’t know. I don’t even know which way we left the big room with the stone sphere.”

She thought back; the sphere; the Chimeras; Adelpha and how she drew the lizard-guard away. Her eyes widened. “We have to pick a wall and stick to it.”

The Chimera had said that to Adelpha, and she had heard the same thing once long ago. The way to solve a maze was to follow one wall to the end. “If we always keep a hand on the right wall we’ll eventually get out.”

The pain in Ruby’s hip throbbed as they walked. It blotted out the nagging ache of thirst and hunger that had returned as the adrenaline of their escape drew off.

Ares didn’t have his pack anymore. Hades had taken it. Their water was gone. So were Ares’s sword, Pan’s pipes, Eros’s torch, and Hermes’s winged sandals
.
She winced at the thought of losing the gods’ most prized possessions. Her dry lips cracked with the movement
.

Ares stopped in front of her, head cocked, listening. Then she heard it too. A distant grunt followed by a closer growl. Chimeras. They were on the move, and moving fast. It was only moments between hearing the first distant shuffles of paw or claw and the immediate sounds of bodies around the bend.

Ruby and Ares backed away down the passage, tripping over themselves. Ruby’s hand lost contact with the right wall as she turned to run. The animal noises of the Chimeras kept coming. She and Ares made random turn after random turn.

He pulled her around the next bend and brought them both up flush with the wall of a short corridor. They pressed their backs against the cool rock. The Chimeras came into sight in the next moment. Ten or twelve in all.

They didn’t look down the hall where Ares and Ruby stood, but rounded the next corner and were soon out of sight. Ares moved to peer around the bend, but came up short. His eyes darted to Ruby’s and he shook his head.

She listened, hoping for a clue of whatever it was he saw. She heard nothing, saw nothing, but then … a scurrying,
quiet as a
…

She didn’t get to finish the thought before she saw it. Not a mouse, but a rat: a rat with the large glowing eyes of a cat. Fangs poked out from the sides of its mouth, and its tail bent up and ended in a curved scorpion’s stinger.

This Chimera was small, comical even, but Ruby knew it was no joke. She reached behind her, heedless of the noise she might make, and pulled the bow forward. The Chimera looked up at her and smiled a fangy rat smile as it darted away after its brothers, eager to report her and Ares.