IGMS Issue 22 (5 page)

But how did these things point to the whereabouts of Antlion's new Labyrinth? I memorized as many details as I could, from the architecture of the stone gate, to the stance of the Wooden Horse, to the petals of mulberry flowers upon the branch she held.

So enthralled in the puzzle, I almost did not notice the light in the room change. When my shadow suddenly grew large and shifted on the tapestry, I ducked Moon's swing towards my head with his oil lamp staff. The lamp missed my head but broke against the tapestry, spilling burning oil onto the silk and setting it afire.

My assailant dropped the staff and drew a knife. I threw my full weight into a low tackle, sending him reeling backward, but he managed a cut at my throat. The sharp edge sliced into my jugular.

The wound would have been grievous had I not still been wearing Mafeo's image. Instead, the form I borrowed from the silk unraveled, shielding me from the otherwise devastating cut. As I regained my previous shape, the wound to my throat vanished. I kicked Moon in the stomach, knocking him stumbling backward.

Moon steadied himself and threw the knife. I turned just in time, avoiding the steel sinking into my chest but taking its bite on my left upper arm. I gritted my teeth and grabbed his abandoned staff, but the fire behind me was spreading fast, the smoke stinging my eyes.

He drew another knife, but suddenly he startled as his own stolen form unraveled. Bee's Drone. He had infiltrated Antlion's home and meant to kill me as well as my spies. A stiletto clattered to the floor behind him.

My tearing eyes caught a glimpse of Luca on the portico.

Caught between Luca and me, Moon sped through the interior door and into House Sandglass. I hastened after him, but the only trace of him was the mask of the Moon abandoned on the floor of the corridor.

"Should we go after him?" Luca asked.

I shook my head. The fire would soon grow deadly if I didn't alert Antlion and his masquerade guests. I raised my voice and shouted
Fire
.

Frantic shouts and footfalls rose from below.

"I thought I told you to stay in the gondola."

"Father's first rule: protect you even if I must disobey your orders," Luca confessed.

I smiled. Mafeo would say that. "Remind me later that I owe Antlion a book."

Once we were safely back on water, I tended to the wound on my arm. I retrieved a hidden piece of amber and held it in my left hand. It was too dark to see if it was the one with the midge or the gnat trapped inside, but either way, the amber held bottled Lightning. I drew the jewel's Lightning up my arm and imagined my arm whole. Shaped by my thoughts, the magic closed the cut.

"What a night of marvels," Luca said. "Is this how you stave off death?"

"We can still die. Thank you for saving my life."

Drone must have overheard everything, which meant he knew I was going after the mithridate. "You know Venice better than I, Luca." I relayed what I discovered to him. "What do the clues in the tapestry mean?"

Luca asked for more details, and after a while gave his opinion. "There's a walled town on the mainland, like Troy, west of here called Padua. They say that its legendary founder was Antenor, a Trojan."

"What else?" I asked, unsure if that alone pointed to the Labyrinth.

"The tongue. The town's Basilica is named after their patron saint, Saint Anthony of Padua," Luca said. "Legend has it that Saint Anthony's body inside the Basilica had turned to dust, all except his tongue, which is still fresh and untouched."

Saint Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of lost things. Antlion
would
find perverse delight in that.

"Padua it is."

Hours later, Luca and I stood in a circle of lamplight, gazing up at the great wooden horse on the grounds of the Palazzo Capodilista in Padua.

The majestic wooden horse before us had been built for a fairground joust in 1466 by the order of Annibale Capodilista. Though the horse had not been designed by Donatello, it bore many similarities to the bronze equestrian statue of Gattamelata in the Piazza del Santo in Venice. I would not be surprised if Antlion had a hand in its construction or even claimed Donatello as a past identity. The tapestry might not have led us directly to the Labyrinth, but I gambled that the next clue lay with the great beast.

"Where do we start?" Luca asked.

I considered the possibilities. The horse, easily the height of three men, stood upon a wooden base that made it taller still. The base and the horse itself had been designed for men to enter and hide for the purpose of the joust. Its head and tail had not withstood the passing of the years well, appearing damaged.

I thought back to Cassandra's tongue in the painting, a deviation from classical myth. "Let's try the mouth. Give me a hand."

I climbed onto Luca's shoulders and pulled myself onto the horse's back. I could not easily reach the horse's mouth unless I hung one-handed from the horse's neck, but I had built this body strong and acrobatic: perfect for such a challenge. Gripping its wooden mane, I swung myself towards its mouth and grabbed onto its jaw. Searching inside with my fingers, I found a piece of hardwood that came loose.

I let go of the horse's neck and dropped to the ground. Inscribed upon the hardwood plaque was a phrase in
Venesiàn
. "
To find the paths in darkness, raise your eyes to the stars
." I smiled. "If you were an astronomer at the University of Padua, Luca, where would you look to the stars?"

"Someplace high?"

"Exactly, the tallest tower in Padua. Come, let's find these paths in darkness."

The highest tower in Padua stood in the southern outskirts of town, once part of the old Castle. Situated near where two of Padua's canals met, it had served as a prison in the past.

Luca and I found our way into the tower cellar where I found a loose stone high on one wall. When I pressed the stone, a hidden door shuddered open.

Taking the lamp from Luca, I peered inside. A small antechamber, with a single earth passage leading into the depths. Luca tried to follow me into the antechamber, but I stopped him.

"Too dangerous. If I do not return by dawn, assume I am dead and go back to Venice."

"You know I'd just come after you again," Luca said. "Besides, if the killer followed us, I'll be safer with you."

I lit a torch with flame from his lamp. "Then do exactly as I say: step where I step, touch nothing without leave, and --"

"-- and keep you in sight. You taught Father that too."

I grinned. "Then you know I mean it."

Paved earthen tunnels lay beyond the antechamber. To trace our path, I held a piece of amber to the torchlight and gazed at the gnat caught within. I borrowed a lick of its power to mark my path in a carmine tattoo on the back of my right hand, tracing our route as we ventured deeper.

Luca followed my instructions precisely. "It seems safe thus far."

"Only because we've stepped around three pitfalls." I pointed out the edges of the one we just passed. "There will be deadlier traps."

Together, we stalked the winding corridors beneath Padua. Deeper into the maze, hewn stone lined the passages. By my reckoning, we had traveled so far underground that we stood somewhere beneath Padua's university. It would not surprise me in the least to learn that Antlion had laid the foundations for the Paduan Labyrinth ages ago when the university was founded. He and his minions had centuries to perfect the maze.

A tunnel led us to a stone door carved with the symbol of the Winged Lion of Venice. I studied the door from three paces back. Was it another mock portal, or a trapped gateway leading deeper into the maze?

"Another dead end?" Luca asked.

"You tell me."

I took the lamp from Luca. He knelt to examine the door without touching it, then the tiles in the floor. "Since Antlion would need to visit his vault, the true path would show signs of his passage. By the way the door's constructed, it should pull towards us, but I see no scratch marks on the floor. This is a dead end."

"Your reasoning is excellent, Luca. But what of the trap?"

Luca frowned and examined the door again. "Faint stains on the door, darker ones in the groove of the symbol. Blood." He looked up. "A twin stain on the ceiling. I see. A catch holds the hinged marble slab above in place, and when a thief tries the door, the swinging slab crushes him between the stones."

"Let's try a different passage." I touched amber and inked this branch of the maze as impassable with a blue tattoo.

We returned the way we came to a corridor we had passed earlier. The tunnel, covered in spider-webs, gave an impression of disuse, but could Antlion have somehow woven the webs? It would be an effective way to mislead a would-be thief. After all, our power to change shapes came from bugs and the like, leeching magic from amber and silk. Given Antlion's genius, he might know a way to command a legion of spiders.

I burned away the webs with my torch and entered the passage, inking the new path on my skin with another spark of Lightning. Luca followed. More webs concealed a bend in the passageway. I touched my torch to the webs again, but as they burned, I caught gleams of objects falling from crevices in the ceiling. Glass!

I dropped the torch and stumbled to my knees, grabbing for the falling vials. But they were too far apart. My free hand snatched one of the delicate vials, but the other --

Luca caught the second vial inches above the ground.

We caught our breaths and exchanged glances.

A colourless liquid rippled within the sealed vials. The pretty containers, most certainly made from Murano glass, had threads of white silk tied around their necks. Clever of Antlion to hide the threads among the webs, knowing the touch of flame or a rough tug might make the vials fall and break.

Luca took up the torch. "What's in them?"

"Antlion loves alchemy. Had the glass shattered, no doubt the concoction's fumes would have overcome or killed us." I took the vial from Luca and put both against a wall, out of the path of a stray foot.

The tunnel snaked for twenty paces before ending at a flight of stairs leading down to another stone door. Did the door below conceal another trap?

"Wait at the top," I said, taking the torch back.

I descended the stairs with caution. No loose stones or hidden threads on the way down, eleven steps in all. I studied the new stone door from the last step, not yet ready to set foot on the lower landing.

The jambs and lintel framing the plain door bore stone roundels carved with heraldic beasts. They numbered eleven, three above and four on either side.

The roundels on the left jamb, from lowest to highest: Eagle. Winged Lion. Horse. Goat.

Continuing on the lintel, from left to right: Dog. Panther. Serpent.

Finally, to the right, from top to bottom: Double-headed Eagle. Dragon. Minotaur. Unicorn.

"What did you find?" Luca called from the top of the stairs.

"Symbols. They may be the key to opening the door." The roundels had been designed to be turned, not pressed. Surely one would unlock the door, while the others delivered death.

I searched the surroundings again. If I knew the manner of the trap, I might better understand the puzzle of the heraldic beasts.

The ceiling did not seem to hide a swinging slab as before. The floor looked solid and unlikely to give way. I took a tentative step onto the landing, ready to leap back onto the stairs.

Nothing.

I knelt and examined the stairs. Each step had borne my full weight, but it took a careful eye to notice that the rise of the steps were not natural stone. Linen canvas painted to resemble bare rock concealed the true stone. A convincing illusion. I used my dagger to cut away a swath of cloth from the fourth step from the bottom to see what hid beneath.

The step had a line of seven round holes cut into it, oddly spaced, each the width of a large thumb. I could not see what lay on the other side, but had an inkling as to their true purpose. I had once admired Antlion's designs for giant crossbows, but those same arbalests could mean my death here. Antlion likely set such weapons under the stairs, rigged to impale someone who twisted the wrong symbol.

I told Luca my suspicions. Together, we tore the canvas away. Eleven steps, seven holes each, made for a terrifying storm of arrows.

"Ten roundels might lead to death, and one to the treasures beyond. Luca, do these symbols mean anything to you?"

Luca considered the symbols in turn. "A few. This is the heraldic device of Lombardia. This Eagle here's for Friuli. And the Winged Lion of Venice of course."

"The Winged Lion's too obvious." Antlion could be counting on the thief to choose the symbol of Saint Mark. "The Minotaur, beast of Crete, once the guardian of the ancient Labyrinth. Again, an obvious choice. But the Panther -- myths tell that the traitor Antenor helped Odysseus open the gates of Troy. To reward his betrayal, Antenor's house, marked by a panther skin hung above the door, had been spared in the sack of Troy. That must mean Padua."

Luca frowned. "It seems too simple. Why not pick a random image?"