The Flame in the Maze Read Free Page A

together, so that she wouldn’t gape. “But that is ridiculous! I—”
    â€œMy King?” High Priest Hypatos was standing between the pillars of the gate, the bowman behind him. Ariadne blinked at the priest. His honey-coloured eyes looked like tiny, unlit coals. His beard, wrapped in golden thread, was so slick that Ariadne imagined she could see the olive oil dripping from it to the front of his black tunic. He could summon lightning and earth-cracking thunder, when Zeus wished it. Even when Hypatos wasn’t using his godmark, he was storm, lowering and dark.
    Minos’s bald head spewed flame as he turned. He lowered himself into a crouch as if he meant to spring, but he didn’t; he shimmered, still and silent.
    â€œMy King,” Hypatos said again, stepping forward. “Please. Let us escort you somewhere—a place where you will be able to rest, beyond the prying eyes of your people.”
    â€œThey fear me.” Minos spoke so quietly that even Ariadne, who was so close to him, had to strain to hear him. “You fear me. Perhaps even my wife fears me. None of you will
make
me go; none of you would dare provoke my god or me that way. Isn’t that right, Hypatos?”
    Minos’s light reflected off the priest’s eyes and turned them from coal to liquid gold. The two men stared at one another for what seemed like a very long time, until Hypatos blinked and looked down at his feet. “It is,” he said. Such short words, but it took them a while to rumble into silence.
    â€œMy Lord King,” Minos said, as if instructing a child.
    Ariadne fell back a pace, dizzy with heat and dread and even excitement, because this almost always came with dread. Just as Hypatos opened his mouth to say something, though, her head filled with another voice.
::
Princess! Listen . . . see what we . . .
::
    Suddenly it was not just Theseus’s words, throbbing behind her eyes and along her veins: it was images, too. This had never happened before, in all these long months, and he’d never warned her that it would, and she felt herself fall as the pictures came:
a vast cavern ringed with pillars and gaping corridor mouths and no ceiling; a girl—no, a woman who
was
a girl, the last time Ariadne saw her, but who was now changed, except for the wild fall of her red hair; and Chara—Chara, by the gods, her own hair just a dark fuzz; Chara, crouched with her dirty, bleeding hands held before her . . . And something—something enormous and distended, with horns that shone bronze in a strange, rippling light—
    Asterion
, some part of Ariadne breathed.
    Theseus said, ::
We can’t keep him a . . . why did you not tell me what you
did
to . . .
::
    Chara was crying; her freckles looked smudged and blotchy. The red-haired woman was screaming, though Ariadne couldn’t hear her: just Theseus, shouting words that crackled and hissed and fell away as the bull-boy—the bull-
man
—who was her half-brother lowered his horns and charged—
    â€œDaughter? Ariadne? Little Queen?”
    She was curled on her side. She heard whimpering and knew it had to be from her, because Theseus’s voice was silent and Minos was talking—talking, talking as his godfire lapped at her skin. She didn’t open her eyes, which were full of wavering, dying lines that might have been a pillar or a horn.
    â€œPrincess? Ariadne? Can you hear me, little love? I heard you—heard you cry out and fall—Ariadne?”
    Theseus hasn’t killed Asterion, as I commanded him to,
she thought dimly.
So I must get into the labyrinth
.
He promised to take me away with him. I need him. I need to get in—and I need to get
up
, right now.
    She opened her eyes as she pulled herself to her knees. The world tipped and steadied. Sickness bubbled into her throat when she stood, but she swallowed it. Her father gazed up at her with his black, unblinking eyes.
    â€œI am