Labyrinth Read Free

she cannot account for. She is about to descend the steps when she notices there are letters inscribed in the stone at the top. She bends down and tries to read what is written.
    Only the first three words and the last letter – N or H maybe – are legible. The others have been eroded or chipped away. Alice rubs at the dirt with her fingers and says the letters out loud. The echo of her voice sounds somehow hostile and threatening in the silence.
    “P-A-S A P-A-S… Pas a pas.”
    Step by step? Step by step what? A faint memory ripples across the surface of her unconscious mind, like a song long forgotten. Then it is gone.
    “Pas a pas, ” she whispers this time, but it means nothing. A prayer? A warning? Without knowing what follows, it makes no sense.
    Nervous now, she straightens up and descends the steps, one by one. Curiosity fights with premonition and she feels the goosebumps on her slim bare arms, from unease or the chill of the cave, she cannot say.
    Alice holds the flame high to light her way, careful not to slip or dislodge anything. At the lower level, she pauses. She takes a deep breath and then takes a step into the ebony darkness. She can just make out the back wall of the chamber.
    It’s hard to be sure at this distance that it isn’t just a trick of the light or a shadow cast by the flame, but it looks as if there is a large circular pattern of lines and semi-circles painted or carved into the rock. On the floor in front of it there is a stone table, about four feet high, like an altar.
    Fixing her eyes on the symbol on the wall to keep her bearings, Alice edges forward. Now she can see the pattern more clearly. It looks like some sort of labyrinth, although memory tells her that there is something not quite right about it. It’s not a true labyrinth. The lines do not lead to the centre, as they should. The pattern is wrong. Alice can’t account for why she’s so sure about this, only that she is right.
    Keeping her eyes trained on the labyrinth, she moves closer, closer. Her foot knocks something hard on the ground. There is a faint, hollow thump and the sound of something rolling, as if an object has shifted out of position.
    Alice looks down.
    Her legs start to tremble. The pale flame in her hand flickers. Shock steals her breath. She is standing at the edge of a shallow grave, a slight depression in the ground, no more than that. In it there are two skeletons, once human, the bones picked clean by time. The blind sockets of one skull stare up at her. The other skull, kicked out of place by her foot, is lying on its side as if turning its gaze away from her.
    The bodies have been laid out, side by side, to face the altar, like carvings on a tomb. They are symmetrical and perfectly in line, but there is nothing restful about the grave. No sense of peace. The cheekbones of one skull are crushed, crumpled inwards like a mask of papier mache. Several of the ribs of the other skeleton are snapped and jut out awkwardly, like the brittle branches of a dead tree.
    They cannot harm you.
    Determined not to give in to fear, Alice forces herself to crouch down, taking care not to disturb anything else. She runs her eyes over the grave. There is a dagger lying between the bodies, the blade dulled with age, and a few fragments of cloth. Next to it, there is a drawstring leather bag, big enough to hold a small box or a book. Alice frowns. She’s sure she’s seen something like it before, but the memory refuses to come.
    The round, white object wedged between the claw-like fingers of the smaller skeleton is so small that Alice nearly misses it. Without stopping to think if it’s the right thing to do, quickly she takes her tweezers out of her pocket. She stretches down and carefully eases it out, then holds it up to the flame, softly blowing the dust away to see better.
    It’s a small stone ring, plain and unremarkable, with a round, smooth face. It, too, is oddly familiar. Alice looks more closely. There’s