Shadows on the Aegean (70 page)

Choking at the stench, she pulled off the wooden seating and a breeze rushed up, stirring her hair and making her gag with
the smell. The opening was wide enough for him, but high off the ground. How would she lift him so far? Carefully she untied
the sash, then Ileana picked up his legs and dangled them in the hole that fell straight into the channel beneath the island.

She pulled and yanked his heavy body upward onto the latrine seat. He wasn’t going! Once she had tied his sash tight around
his chest and under his arms, Ileana climbed on the stone support, straddling the hole. Standing on the ledge, she had to
duck because of the torch burning above. His legs were down the aperture, his torso falling backward—all she need do was move
him forward and nature’s force would tug him down.

Pulling on the sash, she leaned his body forward, still not enough. Ileana crouched, grasping him around the waist, scooting
him.

Niko’s hands tangled in her hair as he laughed, a rasping, wicked cackle. “You go with me, Ileana. I will finally prove my
devotion to Phoebus.”

In the eyeblink she had, Ileana kicked his back, hitting the shallow knife wound Phoebus had made. Niko’s scream deafened
her, and she stepped back, leaping from the stone to the ground. He teetered moment, then slid downward with a grunt.

Shaking, Ileana looked inside the latrine hole. Fingers clenched the side, elegant, blood-caked fingers. Then a hand appeared
and she heard him groaning to pull himself up. The same hand that had held her breasts, cupped her sex, now sought to kill
her.

She grabbed the torch from above and brought it down on his hands. His scream echoed in the shaft, but he didn’t let go. His
purple eyes were black with hatred as he pulled himself higher, his white blond hair swirling over his shoulders. “You
skeela
,” he hissed.

Ileana stretched out the torch, touching the locks of his moon-light-colored hair, igniting the young body that had served
her. “My passion has set you afire,” she whispered as the flame took hold. Niko swatted as his eyebrows caught fire, losing
his grip.

His agonized scream stayed in the air long after his burning body fell.

The scent of his burned flesh stayed in the air even longer.

P
LASTER WAS RAINING DOWN ON
C
HLOE’S HEAD
, chalk rising from her running feet. Hacking and coughing, she ran down a corridor that seemed alive. Aztlan must be having
another earthquake! She wasn’t looking and tripped, her shriek bouncing around her as she slid down a well, Ping-Ponging from
wall to wall, and landing in a heap on the ground. The still ground.

Thank God.

Rising, checking that all parts moved, Chloe looked up. For the first time she could see. This must be the very bottom, she
thought. Hopefully she was far away from Irmentis. Chloe couldn’t even voice what she thought of the huntress. The ground
shook again, but it was a faint tremor, and Chloe ignored it. She must be on the outside rim of the Labyrinth. The only way
she’d ever followed mazes was from the center out. From the outside in, she always got confused.

She could see up the chalk-white passageways that opened suddenly and spat the unfortunates down here. She looked around,
wondering what she could set afire if she found tinder. Cammy always said that Twinkies made great torches. Chloe had told
that one to the guys in her outfit, and once they’d stopped laughing and set a few afire, they’d taken her words a bit more
seriously.

Her stomach growled, and Chloe realized if she had Twinkies, it would be a hard choice between lighting them and eating them.

Since Aztlan was running short on Twinkies, how could she get light? How would she know which way she’d come?

A memory of hunting in East Texas hit Chloe powerfully. Her grandmother Mimi’s second husband (she’d lost the first one when
she was very young) was a strapping oilman named Jack. He’d adored Mimi, spoiled her children like his own. Aside from Mimi,
his other passion was hunting. Chloe, as she had gotten older, had never understood how such a gentle man could be so bloodthirsty.
Jack had hunted and fished all over the world: safaris in Africa, expeditions to Canada and Australia, even China. One day
he’d taken his little granddaughter out on his ranch to share the finer points of how man outwitted beast.

He’d probably get on really well with Irmentis
.

Chloe had liked getting to see the animals. Up close, not like a zoo. But pencil on paper had made too much noise for a deer’s
sensitive ear, so she’d had to sit motionless and quiet. It had been torture for a seven-year-old, until she’d realized that
if she paid a lot of attention, she could draw them from memory later.

So after Jack had taught her how to find animals at their watering holes, he’d showed her how to track. Scat told the tale.

It was a disgusting option, Chloe thought. But it would answer both questions: one, she would know where she’d gone, and two,
if she could light it, it would burn.

My Mimi is rolling in her grave, Chloe thought, blushing despite it all.

Irmentis would also be able to find her, but then again, she’d had no difficulty finding Chloe before, so leaving a more visible
trail would hardly matter. Was she starting to chew on my fingers when… Chloe shuddered and walked to the first spot she needed
to mark.

For the first time in her life, Chloe wished she were male. She could use the aim. If she could point, this would be easy.
No wonder females never marked territory!

Walking from one end of the tunnel to the other, she marked and marked.
I feel like a torn in heat!
Immediately it was useful, since she backtracked on herself twice. It was amazing how the acrid scent was instantly identifiable,
especially in this darkness.
Okh, what levels have I sunk to?

Survival of the fittest was a grim, gross thing.

The next question was, how to get up to the other layers of the maze?

The earthquake threw her across the room, showering chalk and rock on her body, silencing her questions.

A
ZTLAN’S LAND BRIDGE ALWAYS PROVOKED QUESTIONS:
How was it created? How could it stay? The answers were buried within the earth’s history. The two islands had been one,
and as the lagoon shaped, it eroded the connecting land to such a degree that a suspension-style bridge was formed.

Today, far beneath the earth, the Aegean microplate subducted at an angle to the African plate. For a few moments the whole
Aegean plate twisted on a bias, tearing the earth and sending panicky fissures throughout the landmass from which these islands
rose.

On Aztlan and Kallistae, the stable legs of the land bridge shifted, and a massive crack appeared on a diagonal from northwest
to southeast. The two man-made footbridges fell first, casting the few hardy souls who were crossing them into the gorge between
the islands.

Some citizens were crossing the land bridge to the island of Aztlan, hoping to wait in the pyramid, certain that Apis would
protect them from his wrath.

A mother, her son’s tiny hand in hers, had broken into a run when she felt the quake hit the land bridge. Hundreds of years
of erosion had taken their toll, and the bridge began crumbling. People collided—those who saw the crack widen and the others
radiating out from it, and those who saw the pyramid and imagined safety there.

Screams, shouts, and cries were lost under the mighty roar of Apis, and the earth moved as though trying to throw them all
off. The mother hung tightly to the hand of her son as the ground gave way a step ahead of her. With a grace and determination
she’d never known she possessed, she jumped forward.

The bridge shattered, huge pieces of rock and earth falling to the crashing waters below, people like ants struggling to stay
on the horizontal, even when it joined the iridescent waters of the sea.

Those on the mountain watched in horror, considering themselves safe, as the bridge that had linked the two islands fell into
the now bottomless depths of Therio Sea. A sense of isolation settled on them as they watched their countrymen die at the
hand of Apis Earthshaker.

The mother had been fortunate; one hand grasped roots, her legs dangled over the edge. Her child was wheezing with fear, swung
between heaven and earth, safe only in his mother’s slippery grasp. With a strength and ferocity that only maternity gives,
she heaved her right arm up, screaming at her child to grab hold with one hand and climb over her. He was a dumpling of a
three-year-old, fussy most times, with pudgy cheeks and plaintive brown eyes. His feet found purchase, and she encouraged
him to walk up, high, keep walking, and she would catch up. “Don’t stop walking!”

Dirt dried her tears, muffled her screams, as she felt herself slide and felt his little hand let go of hers. He called for
her, and she stifled her cry as another length of root was pulled from the ground. With both hands now she tried to pull herself
up, but she was too weak, too heavy.

“Go on, Akilez,” she ordered her son. “Walk on!
Manoula
loves you.” Pain ripped through her arms and she tried to kick upward, to pull herself higher, but her corselet was too tight
and her skirts too cumbersome.

Her son was crying as she slid another length of root. The waves were closer now, a vicious mouth to chew and swallow her.
Not my baby! she thought. He was her birthchild, not yet gone to the Clan of the Wave that would one day claim him. Pulling
her face from the earth, she began to sing, shouting up to him, encouraging him to sing too as he walked toward the big gold
building.

The pain eased as she heard his voice grow stronger. “Go on now,” she cried. The tremble began, she felt it in the plant she
held, in the portion of Aztlan that would be her
tholos
. “Run go sing for the priests!” she screamed. “Run!”

His voice was submerged in the final dance of death, beneath the roar of the waves, the crush of rock, and her own screams
as she fell into the sea.

S
OMEONE WAS BANGING ON
C
HLOE’S HEAD
. When she finally came to, she had only a moment to shield herself and roll out of the way of the falling rock. Up, she had
to get up. On instinct, she crawled forward and entered the chute that led upward, to what she hoped was the entrance. Bracing
her arms and legs so that she fit like a chimney sweep, Chloe began to inch her way up.