The Door in the Mountain (12 page)

Daedalus and his workmen left Knossos for the Goddess’s mountain a week after Pasiphae and Minos’s speeches. Asterion left, too, by a different road.

The riots had ended. A few people still hung about the courtyard, but their torches were fireflies, not molten streamers.

“I miss the shouting,” Ariadne said to Chara as they stood on the roof, far above the two processions that were forming at the eastern and southern gates.

Chara didn’t speak, afraid that if she did, Ariadne would send her away. The princess had invited her here merely to gloat, after all—and this was the only (the last?) place she would be able to see him.

“The shouting,” Ariadne said with a slow smile. “The excitement. And all of that will leave with Asterion today. Now. But you already know this, my dear, do you not?”

Chara stayed silent. She watched Daedalus’s long line of men wind away along the eastern road; men with axes and shovels and strange, rolling machines that sounded like thunder. She followed Ariadne’s eyes, when they strayed down to the king and queen, standing so close to each other that their shoulders touched, and then back up to Icarus, who was perched two sets of horns over, staring at his father’s shrinking figure. But these were fleeting images to Chara. It was the southern road that mattered.

They’d put Asterion in a palanquin: a great, lurching, wooden thing with a latched door and no windows. Two burly slaves held the cross-bars. Two priestesses walked ahead and two behind, each of them holding scarlet and gold banners—but that was all.

Why not just have him taken away at night, if he’s to leave for his secret place with so little ceremony?
Chara thought—but then she saw the queen’s head turning to watch this second, smaller procession.
This is for her.
Her heart began to pound.
And, though she doesn’t know it, for me.

“Mistress,” she said. Ariadne didn’t look at her. “Lady,” Chara said, more loudly, and the princess grunted. “I do not feel well. It is the height, perhaps. . . .”

“Get down, then,” Ariadne said. Her eyes were on her father, whose blazing made the sunset pale. “I do not need you here, anyway. But girl,” she added, “if you are not ready to help me prepare for dinner, I will have you flogged. Do not take it into your head to go . . . wandering.”

She knows
, Chara thought as she slid to the ground, scraping her palms and elbows in her haste.
She
wants
me to go after him. And I will, even so.

She waited in the shadow of the great cypress that grew by the south gate’s pillars until the palanquin was out of sight and the crowd’s eyes had all turned to Daedalus’s procession. It was still coiling eastward; she could hear the creaking of the machines and the tramping of feet. The sun was slanting sharply now, turning the ground to bronze. The marks of the palanquin bearers’ and priestesses’ feet made a long, clear, burnished trail along this road which, Chara knew, branched into three just beyond her sight.

Go
, she told herself.
Even if the princess isn’t watching, she’ll find a reason to punish you. Just go, so you’ll be sure which way they’re taking him. And don’t think at all about what’ll happen after that.

The calfskin boots Ariadne insisted that she wear were too tight and too hot, so she left them under the cypress and walked barefoot onto the southern road. At first her back and neck prickled, as if the entire palace were staring at her—but after a few moments she heard a great, distant cheer go up: no doubt the crowd watching the endless line of workmen dwindle, at last. She walked faster, through the bronze light that had begun, suddenly, to dim.
No
, she thought,
it can’t already be night
. She glanced back and up and saw a mass of cloud boiling across the western sky. Pink-gold drowned in black.

She looped her skirts up around her girdle and ran.

By the time she reached the crossroads, the rain was so thick that she could barely make out any of the three branches, let alone the one that had once been dry and marked. She let her skirts fall and the cloth clung immediately to her legs. Her toes dug into mud.

“You!” she cried to the teeming air. “All you gods and goddesses who saw fit not to mark me when I was a child—please,
please
favour me now, just a little, and show me which way they took him. Please!” She spat out a sodden strand of hair and yelled something else that was just a high, broken sound, not words.

“Chara?”

She whirled, nearly tripping on the tangled skirt. Icarus was standing behind her. Rain was plastering his hair to his cheeks and neck. “I saw you from the roof,” he said, his voice loud and crackly. “Which way did they take him?”

She shook her head. Cupped her elbows with her palms, as water trickled between her shoulder blades. “I don’t know—but I’ll find out. No matter how secret it is, I will.”

He nodded and wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. They went back to Knossos together, slowly, bent against the warm, dark rain.

“Taller,” Minos said.

Ariadne smiled as Karpos’s eyes narrowed. He’d been working so hard, these past few months, carving a statue of Androgeus even as Daedalus carved out the Goddess’s mountain. Yet every time Karpos came close to finishing something (a torso, a leg and foot, a lock of hair, the crease of an eyelid), Minos stopped him. “There is a flaw, just there, where the middle knuckle rises,” he said once, and, weeks later, “His chest is not broad enough. He is not
good
enough—start again.”

This was Karpos’s third attempt at a likeness of the prince, and it was finished, except for the painting. It was pale and perfect, and Ariadne knew that if she touched it, it would feel as warm and yielding as flesh.

“Yes,” the king said again, more loudly, “he must be taller.”

Ariadne saw Karpos’s chisel shake in his lowered hand. The statue was exactly as tall as Androgeus had been.

Minos stared intently at the marble. “Also,” he said, gesturing with one orange-lined hand at the walls of Daedalus’s outdoor workshop, “this is the wrong place for the crafting of his likeness. He must be seen by all Knossians as he takes shape. You will move your marble blocks to the flat place just beyond Ariadne’s dancing ground. Perhaps the people’s gaze will inspire you to be more rigorous about your art.”

Karpos opened his mouth. Ariadne wanted to clap like a delighted child at his anger and helplessness. When he glanced at her she nodded at him serenely. “My father speaks wisely,” she said. His mouth snapped shut. “And I look forward to watching with my people as you honour my beloved brother.”

She followed the slaves as they pulled a new, unworked block of marble over her dancing ground. Her chest felt tight, but it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling—just a vast, spreading one that made her breathing shallow. “He
was
beloved, you know,” she murmured to her own slave, who was walking beside her, scuffing her already dirty feet in the dust. “Especially by Asterion.”

Chara didn’t look up, but Ariadne was certain she saw the girl’s shoulders stiffen. “Yes, Princess,” she said. Her voice was so even that Ariadne’s lovely, vast feeling shrank a bit.

“I imagine,” the princess continued, “that Asterion would have been the most excited of all of us, to watch Androgeus’s likeness taking shape. Poor Asterion. If only he were not hidden away in some deep and secret place. If only we could simply walk beneath his doorway and take his hand and lead him out with us, to see this.”

Chara did look up, now. Her strange grey eyes were unblinking. “Yes, Princess,” she said quietly. “If only.”

Say something else
, Ariadne commanded herself.
Say something that will make her cringe.
But she didn’t. She leaned down a little and set her fingers to the wall, as the slaves hauled on their ropes, and the marble that would perhaps, finally, become Androgeus lurched forward. Daedalus’s tiny bulls—some warm, some cool—moved beneath her fingertips.

“Some what?”

Chara sighed and scraped hair away from her sweat-slick face. “‘Some deep and secret place.’ That’s what she said.”

Icarus scratched his knees. He and Chara were crouching between the great stone horns that faced the western entrance and the dancing ground. The moment they’d climbed up (Icarus using his ball of humming metal string, of course, and Chara following more slowly, with hands and feet and nothing else), feathers had begun to sprout all over his arms and legs.

His body wants to fly so badly
, Chara had thought, as she so often did.
Why does his god taunt him like this?

“How can we be sure the princess even knows where he is?”

Chara nudged him with her bony left shoulder. His feathers had nearly disappeared beneath his skin; only their soft tops brushed her. “Don’t pretend to be stupid. I’m sure her mother told her father, who told her. The entire family probably knows.”

“Glaucus doesn’t. I asked, and he said so. He’s a terrible liar, so it’s true.”

Chara blew out her breath so gustily that the curls pressed against her forehead nearly stirred. “Godmarked oysters, Icarus: you’re talking, but you can’t stop staring at
her
!”

He set his chin on his knees and rocked from side to side. A flush seeped up his neck to his cheeks but he didn’t look away from Ariadne, who was standing on the palace steps. Her arms were crossed; even from so far above, Chara could see the princess’s fingers drumming as she watched Karpos shouting and motioning to the slaves who were positioning the marble. A single strand of hair stirred on the bare, bronzed swell of her breasts.

“I can’t,” Icarus said. “But I can talk to you while I’m doing it. So. Somewhere deep and secret.”

Karpos waved the slaves away and picked up his hammer and chisel. Icarus blinked with every blow. Chara forced her own eyes to stay open. Showers of marble dust blurred in the sunlight.

“Yes,” she said. “Like . . .”

“Caves.”

Icarus shuffled his feet on the stone until he was facing her. His thin, pale brows arched.

“Yes.” Chara stood up so quickly that her head spun and she had to lean against the carved horn beside her. “Why didn’t I think of this the moment they took him away? Artemis’s cave-shrine isn’t far; Lysippa told me she went there once and it took her barely an hour!”

Icarus’s twisted lips curled even more. “If I could actually fly, I’d be there and back in less—and I’ve walked there often enough, myself.”

“So you know your way around, inside?”

He shrugged. “A bit. It’s not a very big cave. So—when will we leave?”

“Ariadne always notices if I’m not nearby—so, tonight. She sleeps like the dead. If we’re back by dawn, she’ll have no idea I ever left.”

“Tonight.” He stood up beside her, hunched over, as always. His gaze was on the princess again.

“Icarus,” Chara said, “if you’re so besotted with her that you’d rather not help me, I’ll—”

He held up a bony hand. “No. I want to know where they’re keeping Asterion. What they’re doing to him.” He blinked as he turned to her. “I’m coming with you.”

“Good.” She touched one of his talon-tipped fingers. He flinched but didn’t pull away. “Bring a lamp.”

The cave seemed much farther away, in the dark. Chara’s lamp cast a shivering, circular glow on the ground by her feet, but lit nothing beyond that. Icarus had brought another light: a cylinder that seemed to be made of shell, which shone a soft, pulsing blue. “Your father’s invention, of course,” she’d said to him when they met by the eastern gate, and he’d bobbed his head in a nod.

They spoke a little, at first—“It’s so strange, being outside the palace at night”; “Oh? I go out at night all the time. I don’t know why. Maybe I think the darkness will help me change”—but soon fell silent. Their breathing, and the scuffing of their bare feet, sounded painfully loud.

I should sing
, Chara thought,
just quietly—or hum, at least.
“Anemone of mine/I’ve left you far behind . . .”

“We’re nearly there,” Icarus said at last. The moon had moved in the sky above them, but she had no idea how long they’d been walking. She recognized nothing until he held up his blue light and she saw a jagged edge of hillside. “The priestesses come just after dawn. There’ll be no one to get past now—lucky for us.”

“You know so much,” she said, and he shrugged.

“I told you: I come out here all the time. Mostly to try to fly, by jumping off that.” He gestured at the lip of the outcrop above them.

The entrance to the cave was a tall, thin cleft in the rock. In front of it was a row of three-legged bowls. Chara bent down and brushed her fingers across them. Ash and blossoms, ghostly in the blue glow, floated and settled on her skin and on the ground.

“If you come here all the time,” she said, as softly as she could because her own voice felt coarse in her throat, “and you’ve been inside before, you
should
go first.”

She saw the quick glint of his smile. “Follow me, my Lady.”

The air inside was cool. Chara took a deep breath and tasted this air, and her pulse quickened. She ducked but still felt the rock plucking at her curls. It pressed against her shoulders, too—prickly, pitted, slippery with damp. The lamp shook in her hand and orange light rippled over the lumpy earth. Somewhere far and deep, something screeched.

She stepped on Icarus’s heel and they stumbled, then righted themselves. His blue glow and her orange leapt and twined around them.

“Sorry,” she gasped. Her voice returned to her, over and over, as if it had plunged into the passage ahead and found a much larger space.
Asterion
, she thought, as she straightened and steadied her hand,
you’re here. If it weren’t for the echoes and the bat squeaks I’d be able to hear you calling me.

She ran forward, around Icarus, into the much larger space. The ground was smooth, the ceiling invisible, the walls just shadows curving at the edges of the light. Wings blurred into a black, twisting, disappearing column above her, but she barely glanced up. She ran for the sunken altar pool. He had to be there, crouching in fresh water, ringed by tall, flat-topped stones; he had to be there, perhaps bound, waiting for a priestess to come, with food—but it was Chara instead, and he would tip his golden head back when he saw her, and his horns would throw beautiful weaving reflections onto the rock. . . .

The pool was empty. She stared down at its unruffled water and felt tears thickening in her throat.

“Chara?”

She turned to Icarus with a smile that felt mostly steady. “Let’s keep looking,” she said, and he nodded and blinked.

The passageway that snaked out of the chamber soon split into two. “Which way?” she said, and watched his eyes flit from one entrance to the other.

“I’ve n-never been this far,” he said, and swallowed. “I’ve only ever been to the pool, never past it.”

“But you told me . . . Oh, never mind. We better not get lost.” She pointed at the entrance on the right. “This way. I guess.”

They walked for what felt like a very long time, until his blue light washed over a writhing mass of snakes. They both fell back—but after a moment she laughed breathlessly and slipped past him to put her hand on the stone. Flat, smooth heads, motionless ribbon tongues, notched scales.

Have you eaten the Great Goddess?
she thought, then frowned as her hand traced their shapes up and up and still didn’t feel the end of them.

“It seems to be a wall,” he said.

“It does indeed. Ah well.” She drummed her fingers on a tapered point of tail and sighed. “Back we go.”

This time they took the other passage, which in turn split into three. They encountered a second wall, this one a single, enormous carving of an octopus, and Chara thought,
You poor, trapped ocean thing.
As they retraced their steps yet again, she muttered to Icarus, “‘Not a very big cave,’ you said. Not very big.” He cleared his throat but said nothing.

They found two chambers, off different corridors. One held only dripping moss and mud; the other, a row of unlit braziers and clay figurines of double axes and bulls’ horns, set into natural ledges in the rock. She caught her breath, when she saw the figurines; Poseidon’s objects, and so Asterion’s, too. But there was no sign of him.

After another hour, or possibly more, Icarus called Chara’s name, from many paces behind her. She held up her lamp. Its light was flickering wildly now, dying.

“What is it?” Her voice was pinched and small.

His chin jabbed at his chest. His own light, as strong and lovely as ever, trembled. “We’re lost.”

She opened her mouth to say something annoyed or cheerful, but instead she said, “I know.” She sagged against the wall and listened to the words echoing in a horrible new silence. “I had no idea it would be so complicated in here! Neither did
you
—and you made me think you’d been in here before!” More words, to fill the silence. “I thought there’d be one passageway leading to an altar chamber. We should have brought some thread! Tied it to the entrance—I even heard a priest’s acolyte talking about this once, when he was telling another one not to get lost . . .” She pushed away Icarus’s hand, which he was waving about near her shoulder, perhaps attempting to pat it. “And why are we even
here
? Ariadne mentioned somewhere deep, but there are other caves. Why did I think it would be this one? How can I be sure he’s even
in
a cave?”