The Flame in the Maze

The Flame in the Maze
© 2015 Caitlin Sweet
Cover © 2015 by Erik Mohr
Cover and interior design by © 2015 by Samantha Beiko

All Rights Reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Sweet, Caitlin, 1970-, author
The flame in the maze / Caitlin Sweet.

Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77148-326-1 (pbk.). ISBN 978-1-77148-327-8 (pdf) ISBN 9781771483278 (epub)
I. Title.

PS8587.W387F53 2015 jC813'.6 C2015-903048-X
C2015-903049-8

CHITEEN
Toronto, Canada
www.chiteen.com
[email protected]

Edited by Samantha Beiko & Sandra Kasturi
Proofread by Elisabeth Nielsen

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.

Published with the generous assistance of the Ontario Arts Council.

Princess Ariadne of Crete has no godmark. Ariadne's mother Pasiphae can make water seep or flow from her skin, and Ariadne's father, Minos, is marked with flame, which spits and leaps from his body and makes his palm warm when he lays it against Ariadne's cheek. Two of her brothers can summon wind. Their friend Icarus is sometimes almost a bird, though he can't fly. And her half-brother Asterion, son of Pasiphae and a Priest of Poseidon—
he
turns into a bull. He is worshipped and praised for this. He is the son of a god.

Ariadne has no godmark—but she'd planned nearly everything.

When Minos's eldest son was murdered in Athens, the king demanded fourteen young Athenians as tribute, to be sent to Crete every two years. It was Ariadne who suggested to the king that the great Daedalus carve a labyrinth beneath the Goddess's mountain, where the Athenians would wander and die, according to the Goddess's desire. It was Ariadne who suggested to the king that Asterion, whom Minos hated as much as she did, be placed inside the labyrinth, too. The people would imagine this a great honour—the divine bull-boy, receiving sacrifice—but that didn't matter. He would be gone forever, soon forgotten. That mattered—and Ariadne planned it well.

But when the second group of Athenians arrived, bull-god Asterion's name was everywhere: on banners and in songs. He was more adored than ever, and Ariadne more overlooked. So, four years after Asterion and the first Athenians had been imprisoned beneath the mountain, she sent a letter to Prince Theseus of Athens. She implored him to disguise himself among the next group of Athenian sacrifices. She promised she would show him how to slay the beast beneath the mountain—and in exchange, he would take her back to Athens with him as his queen. She planned this, too.

What she didn't plan for was her father's mark-madness: the flames that once gave him power began to eat away at his flesh and his mind, and soon he became more monster than king.

And she didn't plan that Chara, palace slave and Asterion's best friend, would switch places with one of the Athenian girls and disappear into the mountain, along with Theseus.

In
The Door in the Mountain
, Ariadne thought she'd planned it all.

Now, as
The Flame in the Maze
begins, her plans are beginning to unravel, like a ball of godmarked string.

The sky above the Goddess's mountain was on fire. Manasses saw it first.

“Papa!” he called from outside the hut. “Come and look!”

Alexios set down the bowl of curds he was holding and stepped out of the lamplight and into the night. His godmark always turned darkness to silver-tinged day, for him—but
this
darkness was different. A sheet of red-orange threaded with silver lightning hung to the south. It rippled slowly and silently, blotting out the stars.

“It's fire,” Manasses whispered. He was tipping his head back, and his eyes were wide and nearly unblinking. “Godmarked fire: I can tell, because of the silver in it.”

Alexios put his hand on the child's shoulder; Manasses backed up and leaned against him. Below them in the paddock, a sheep bleated and quieted.

Alexios felt him draw a deep breath. “Is that where 'Tiria was running away from?”

After a moment, Alexios said, “I imagine so”—though she hadn't told him much more than she had his son.

“Is it where she went back to, when she left here?”

“Child,” Alexios said, too roughly, “enough ques-tions.” He remembered how she'd tried to calm him, when he was hard on the boy. How she'd squeeze his hands and make funny faces until he smiled.
I only knew her for two months
, he thought, as he already had so many times before.
How can I love her?

“I don't know,” Alexios said, as gently as he could.

She'd put her slender, scarred arms around him, the night she'd left with the bird-man, and said, “Someone needs me. An Athenian. I have to go to him.”

“Come back,” Alexios had said, his lips moving against hers with every word. “When you've healed him.” His godmark showed her to him with such beautiful, helpless clarity in the dark.

“Tell Manasses goodbye for me,” she'd said, and kissed him, and slipped away.

Manasses squirmed around to face him. The lamplight from the hut played over his forehead and cheeks. “I want her to come back, Papa. I want her here.”

Silver lightning spread like a spider's web across the flame.
Godmarked fire
, Alexios thought, and fear froze the breath in his chest.

“So do I,” he said.

“Princess.”

The first thing Ariadne thought, as she struggled awake, was,
Theseus—oh, thank the gods, I hear you; it has been far too long.
But even before she opened her eyes, she knew it wasn't Theseus—for the word had been spoken aloud, not in her head; because he'd been silent for ages, and something was definitely very wrong.

The second thing she thought, as she sat up and her vision wobbled and cleared, was,
Chara.
Chara, thank the gods you're back
—but it wasn't Chara, either. Of course it wasn't: Chara had run into the labyrinth months ago, along with Theseus and the Athenian sacrifices.

All Ariadne had heard of her were some garbled words Theseus had sent her at the very beginning: ::
Chara is here and says you . . . Chara knows the . . .
::

No: this would be the other slave, who hardly ever said anything and lurked in corners, staring with her dull, close-set eyes. The other slave, whose name she didn't know.

But it wasn't.

“Ariadne,” Queen Pasiphae said. “Get up and follow me.”

Ariadne remembered another night when her mother had needed her; just the one, so many years ago, when Ariadne had been six. Pasiphae had been in the Goddess's altar room, naked, straining to birth a baby. Ariadne's half-brother, Asterion, who was half-bull, half-boy. Asterion, marked from the beginning by his god, when none (not gods, not goddesses) had given Ariadne anything.

“Mother,” she said now, sitting up, reaching for skirt and jacket, “what is it?” She couldn't help it; her voice shook with eagerness or anger or dread or curiosity—one, all of these.

“Your father,” Pasiphae said.
Her
voice was steady and hard. “His mark-madness is worse.”

Ariadne stood up. Her vision was entirely clear, thanks to the moonlight that streamed down through the roof of the corridor beyond her chamber. She could see the painting on the wall behind the queen, though the green plant spirals looked black, and the brown fauns and hares were blurry, as if they were moving. She could see her mother's eyes glinting, along with the gold at her ears and throat. She could see her long fingers, curling and uncurling around the flounces below her girdle.

“Why do you care?” Ariadne said, steadily this time. “You haven't cared about him in years. About either of us. It's Phaidra you favour—why is
she
not helping you?”

Queen Pasiphae turned and took a step toward one of the pillars that framed the doorway. She looked over her shoulder at Ariadne. A coil of dark hair slid from its knot and settled on her shoulder like a snake on marble. “The king is a danger to all of us, now more than ever. I am thinking only of my people.” She looked away. “He refuses to speak to anyone, including me, of course. And he used to listen to you. Never to Phaidra.”

Ariadne smiled and stretched her arms above her head, because her mother was gazing at her again.
You stupid woman,
the princess thought as her heart stuttered and sped.
He promised to make me queen. He broke his promise. He burned me when I protested. How can you possibly imagine that I'd
help
him? And yet.
She smiled again—a true smile, this time.
There just may be some new thing to find out.

“Very well,” she said, running her fingertips lightly over the scars on her arms. Puckered pink ropes, scored by godfire. “Take me to him.”

Minos was standing between the stone horns where Ariadne had stood, years ago, the day he and his army had returned from the war in Athens. He was leaning out into the air above the gate, just as she had. She remembered how he'd looked that other night; the flame-bright lines of him sharpening as he drew closer. The loincloth, hair, beard and skin that hadn't burned, because his mark had protected him, even as it seared holes into the earth.

He was naked now. The loincloth had long since blackened, curled and fallen away. His jaw and cheeks showed in livid red patches through the remnants of his beard. His skull was blistered and smooth, though there were wisps of charred hair just above his ears. His godmark was consuming him because he could no longer contain it—or perhaps because he no longer wanted to.

“Husband!” Pasiphae called. He strained even farther into the wind, which whipped the flames in long, streaming lines behind him. Ariadne saw a knot of people on the steps far below, craning, staring: High Priest Hypatos; another, shorter priest; a man with a bow in one hand and an arrow in the other. “Husband, I have brought someone. Turn around. Come down from there.”

He didn't. Ariadne climbed onto a slave's shoulders, and from there to the roof. She stepped up level with the horns and laid her fingertips on one of them. It was as hot as sun-baked sand. She eased her head around the front of it and saw the king's face. She'd imagined he'd be smiling, exulting in mark-madness as she'd seen him do before—but his eyes and mouth were holes, black and gaping and wild with pain.

Father
, she thought helplessly, as if she were again the child who loved him. Then she pressed her hand against the pillar, forced the heat to clear her head, and thought,
Good
. “Look at me,” she said, over his crackling and the wind.

He turned to her. His hole-eyes didn't blink—no lids, she saw. His raw, oozing lips shaped her name, though he made no sound.

How long has it been since I saw him?
she thought.
How much longer can he possibly live?
“Come down,” she said. “Please.”

He gave a whoop and she stumbled backward. As she steadied herself, she saw the guard below nock the arrow to the bow and raise them both.

“Ariadne!” Minos bellowed. Gouts of flame spewed from his mouth and into what was left of his beard, and Ariadne choked on a waft of burned hair and flesh. He leapt down from the horns' pediment to stand before her; he seized her hands and she gasped, though she wanted to scream—
Not again, not again; no more burns!

Pasiphae was between them both, suddenly. Her own hands were silver and running with water, and she wrapped them around Minos and Ariadne's. Ariadne felt the godmarked moisture drip and seep and numb; she moaned with relief and then with anger.

Why didn't you do this for me when he hurt me last time? And why did you tend to Asterion's burns whenever he changed from bull back to boy? You hateful, cruel woman.

“Minos,” Pasiphae said in a low, urgent voice. “One of your men is below us with his bow trained on you. Others will join him soon, if you do not come down—all the way down, to the ground. We will talk more there.”

He stared at Ariadne with his empty eyes. They were weeping a thick, yellowish fluid, she saw, and she drew her hands away from her parents' so that she could wrap her arms around herself. He stared and stared, until she said, “Yes. We should get down now.” The moment the last word was spoken he was past her—two long strides and a leap, and a hissing plume of flame that faded to smoke as Pasiphae and Ariadne gazed at it.

Ariadne fell to her knees and peered over the edge of the roof. She'd never seen anyone jump, or jumped herself; she'd always clung to a pillar with her hands and feet and eased herself down with her dancer's muscles. Minos was beneath her, face-down, his limbs outstretched. “Do not fret, daughter,” Pasiphae murmured at Ariadne's shoulder. “He will get up.”

Ariadne tried to relax her clutching fingers and thought,
I don't care if he gets up.

He did, of course. His limbs twitched and snapped, and he raised his head and stared at her. His blistered lips moved. She heard nothing but wind, and her mother's breathing, but she understood.

Ariadne
.
Come down to me.

She slid down the column, unaware of muscles or effort. She knelt at his head. Tendrils of her father's smoke wove through her fingers. He laughed a spray of sparks.

“Your mother . . . wishes to speak to me of weighty . . . things.”

“I do,” Pasiphae said, above Ariadne's left shoulder.

Minos wrenched himself up—a molten caterpillar on a leaf, hovering and clinging at the same time. “Speak, Wife. It has been a long time . . . after all.”

Ariadne glanced up at her mother. The queen was bending down, her green eyes even greener in the light from his fire. “Minos. Minos King. Even your priests are demanding that you be put out of the palace. Exile on an island, they say, and my priestesses agree. Karpos is begging me to summon the kings of Phaistos or Mallia, to get their advice.”

“Karpos?” He was panting. His lower lip was dripping blood slowly onto the ground. “Who is that?”

Ariadne bit her own lip so hard that there were bits of skin between her teeth when she let go. She didn't make a sound, though, which pleased her.

“Daedalus's apprentice,” Pasiphae said, her voice suddenly very low. “The young man you have made your heir, thereby humiliating your own two sons, and me.”

And your daughter
, Ariadne thought.
Your daughter most of all.
Her scars seemed to throb, suddenly: on her arms and hands, her chest and belly. Her hands twitched to touch them but she kept them still.

“Karpos,” Minos said, his breath whistling as he panted. “How odd. What does Daedalus . . . think of this?”

Pasiphae sucked in her own breath and coughed. Ariadne dug her fingernails into her palms. “Daedalus is dead,” the queen said at last. “Are you truly so far beyond this world? Do you not remember? He and Icarus and everyone else who worked on the altar within the Great Goddess's mountain—they all died in a pirate attack more than four years ago.”

“Did they,” he said, in a low, smiling voice. “Did they indeed, Daughter?”

He swung his sightless eyes toward Ariadne, whose head spun with words:
You and I and that horrible Theron are the only ones who know they didn't die, and you know it very well; you'd be
winking
at me now, if you had eyelids—gods, no one else must know! Not my mother; not anyone. It's
our
secret and I've been keeping it close, waiting to make use of it . . . soon, perhaps, if Theseus's silence continues.

As she waited for her voice to stir in her soot-thickened throat, he waved a hand. “Never mind, my dear, never . . . mind. And what of you, my water lily, my seahorse, my Queen? What do
you
think . . . should be done with me?”

“I think,” said Pasiphae, “that you are a king, not a lizard. I think that you should get up and come with us to your Throne Room, where we will continue this discussion.”

Minos sat up, very quickly. Ariadne heard a wet ripping sound, saw gobbets of what had to be flesh glistening on the dusty ground. She tried not to look at his chest and thighs. “I will speak with Ariadne now,” he said to Pasiphae, so sharply that he almost sounded like his old self. “And I will speak with her here. Leave us.”

Water flowed from Pasiphae's hands—from all her skin, Ariadne knew, because the queen's jacket and skirt had begun to cling to her, and because her curls had gone flat against her neck and back. Her moist lips parted; Ariadne saw the tips of her perfect teeth before her lips closed again. The queen whirled and walked away from them, toward the staircase that would lead her to the royal apartments.

Minos growled a laugh, and it, too, sounded so terribly familiar.
It's just the two of you
, Ariadne thought.
Just like before, when he loved you and promised you the queenship, and you loved him. Only it's not. Remember: he betrayed you, and he is mad, and you
do not love him
.

When his laugh had faded into tendrils of silver smoke, Minos said, “They are all right—the people who worry about me. I
am
mark-mad. And my god and father, Lord Zeus, no longer wishes me to live in the world of men.”

He wasn't breathing hard, anymore. His words slid out of his cracked, blistered, bleeding mouth and he could have been sitting on his throne, leaning toward Ariadne with his fists on his knees, as he had so many times before. She closed her eyes to quell this image, or to pull it closer; she didn't know which.

“So I am going to give myself to my god.”

She opened her eyes. “When?” she whispered, when he said no more.

“In two months, on the festival of his birth.”

“Where?” Though she knew, of course.

“The place of his birth, child. The Great Goddess's mountain.” This time his laugh trembled a bit, and a tongue of silver-blue flame slithered out between his teeth. “Since Daedalus built his box inside it, the mountain has belonged more to your mother's god than it has to mine—and more to Athenians than Cretans. It is time that the people remembered Zeus. And they will, as they watch me burn myself to ash for him.”

He stood up so quickly that Ariadne had to scramble to rise with him. He moaned and doubled over. His flesh seemed to fade and thin, until it looked transparent. Rivers of fire branched and boiled and overflowed; he was Zeus's lightning and Apollo's sun, silver and gold, red and white. She felt the heat of him pulse against her own scarred skin.