The Door in the Mountain (24 page)

Thick, rank-smelling fluid dribbled from Minos’s mouth when he smiled. “Your sister is the only key,” he said. “I commanded Master Daedalus not to fashion any other.”

“What?” Ariadne forced herself to press her lips together, so that she wouldn’t gape. “But that’s . . . that’s ridiculous! I—”

“My King?” High Priest Hypatos was standing between the pillars of the gate, the bowman behind him. Ariadne blinked at the priest, and saw that 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.

“My King,” Hypatos said again, stepping forward. “Please. Let us escort you somewhere—a place where you will be able to rest, beyond the range of the prying eyes of your people.”

“They 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.

“My 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, down a corridor. 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—

“Daughter? 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.

“Princess? Ariadne? Can you hear me, little love? I heard you—heard you cry out and fall—Ariadne?”

I must get into the labyrinth
, she thought.
I commanded Theseus to kill Asterion and he hasn’t—he may fail. So I must save the great Athenian hero, because only he can save me. He promised to take me away with him. He promised. 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 down. Her father gazed up at her with his black, unblinking eyes; Hypatos and the bowman gazed at her.

“I am fine,” she said loudly, so that they would all hear her. “It was just the heat, making me weak. Your godmark, Father—it is a powerful thing. You know this.”

No
, she thought,
oh, no indeed: I was listening to Theseus
.
Theseus, son of Aegeus, king of Athens, whom you blame for your own son’s murder. Theseus, who
will
get me off this island. Would you kill me, if you knew? Would you burn me to ash, then yourself?

“Yes,” Minos said gently. “I know this. I have hurt you in so many ways, and do not deserve your forgiveness. When I am gone, you will no longer have to endure it. The gods will soon grant all of us peace.”

I’ll be gone long before then, you miserable man,
she thought. “Yes,” she said. “I am sure they will.” She smiled at him, though he wouldn’t be able to see this, and she smiled at Hypatos, who would, and then she walked away from them.

The Door in the Mountain
© 2014 by Caitlin Sweet
Cover artwork © 2014 by Erik Mohr
Interior design © 2014 by Erik Mohr

All rights reserved.

Published by ChiZine Publications

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.

EPub Edition MAY 2014 ISBN: 978-1-77148-192-2

All rights reserved under all applicable International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen.

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CHIZINE PUBLICATIONS
Toronto, Canada
www.chizinepub.com
[email protected]

Edited by Sandra Kasturi
Copyedited and proofread by Christie DiIorio

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.

Caitlin Sweet has written three other novels:
A Telling of Stars
(2003),
The Silences of Home
(2005), and
The Pattern Scars
(2011).
The Door in the Mountain
is her first book for young adults. Its yet-to-be-named sequel will be published in 2015.

When not writing, Caitlin teaches writing at U of T’s School of Continuing Studies. When not writing or teaching, she works for the Ontario Government. She lives with her family in a Magic Bungalow, which (in addition to cats, fish, a disabled rabbit, a hamster and a mouse) supports an enormous number of raccoons, a couple of opossums and one large groundhog.

Find her online at
www.caitlinsweet.com
.

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