Keepers of the Labyrinth (16 page)

26

H
oratio fingered the fleece and buckles on the special bag he had been given to hold the Icarus Folio. He saw the opportunity to use it, to fill it, slipping from his grasp.

“So this is the way to the nebulous chamber,” Felice said, running her hand along the map.

Horatio felt a bolt of rage fill him. “What is the purpose of going forward without the key?” he said, pulling his hand from the bag. “We can't get out. Right now we don't need directions, Felice. We need to pursue and retrieve.”

His sister stopped, her eyes flicking to him and away. Horatio felt his face heat up. Was she judging him? She always had a way of doing that. He was too emotional, too illogical, she would say. But now, here, he was the only one
with
any logic.

“We need to find the key, not the nebulous chamber,” he said. “We need to find the keepers and take the key back.”

“I understand that—”

“Then do something,” Horatio bellowed. “You're the one who's good at navigating. That's your skill, isn't it? Where are we?”

“The cartograph predates this section,” Felice said, rolling the map up. “The rooms—I don't see one they could have slipped into. So”—she turned looking at three paths that split off in front of them—“the question is, which way did they go?” She stepped forward and perked up her ears, then turned back the way they came. “And yet, I hear something behind us.”

Horatio stared at her. “Let's retrace our steps,” she said.

Horatio looked both ways. He grasped the pendant around his neck. He didn't hear anything. Not behind them, anyway. He listened closely to the corridors. He listened to the hum of the labyrinth. He listened for the songs of Zeus walking through the passageways, ruling over his tribe.

He heard a skitter. Felt a footfall? Felt the pull, the tingle of energy, and turned toward the far right passage.

“I think that passageway ends there,” Felice said. “Let's turn back. That won't take you anywhere, brother.”

“Your doubt blinds you, Fe,” he said.

“I am confident I hear something,” Felice said. “Back toward the outer passage.”

The problem with Felice, he thought, was that when she was the least confident, she overcompensated by acting overly confident. Horatio felt the pull of the lord calling him on.

He took another step and placed his hand on his satchel. He closed his eyes and invoked Zeus' presence, picturing the god walking the chambers of this labyrinth long, long ago. The lord could lead him straight to them. He stepped into the darkened hallway, the flashlight illuminating a narrowing passage. It would be a perfect place for them to hide: no sign of oil wells to lay flame to. No light to guide their way. They could snuff out a torch and blend into the shadows quite comfortably. Horatio walked along it, trying to see into its depths, but too entranced by the curve at the far end, he hadn't notice the lack of stonework below. He hadn't noticed the large hole. Not until his foot curled over a loose edge. He fought to stay upright, but the more he scrambled, the more the floor disappeared from beneath him. His hands reached out, but caught nothing. And then he fell, down, down, down, onto hard ground, the flashlight flying from his grasp and burying its light in the wall.

27

T
he girls hurried down the hallway, Lil taking the time to run the torch over every door, sending crackling cobwebs fleeing toward the stone.

They took a left, and Lil spotted a labrys. This one seemed to be constructed of pebbles and shells, layered on top of one another. Above the door was a stained-glass window. It showed a picture of a woman along with a ship boasting a flag that held a set of bull horns.

Lil lowered her torch, revealing several tablets hanging from leather thongs. Each of the tablets was a rectangle about the length of a forearm and twice as wide. They followed the same pattern as before, and Lil scanned quickly to the bottom, where she saw the English.

Charlie pulled her notepad from her pocket and began scribbling as Lil read aloud.

“Here lay Eu
ropa, Zeus' stolen b
ride,

Carried forth
her brother's trade,
just to stay alive.

Find Europa's story
, patterned side by
side.

Finish what is
started in the olde
st archive.”

Lil raised the torch, looking for the sconce in the wall. It was broken off, but there was still a metal piece protruding from the stone. Lil reached up and grabbed it. It was jagged against her palm, but she wound her hand around it and yanked it down. The wall to their right opened, the bricks spinning and twisting over one another until they came to rest in the shape of an archway. The room sent a chilly breath over them, bending the torchlight as Lil forced herself inside. There was something eerily pleasant about this chamber, though. An unmistakably sweet smell emanated from it. Something like honey and flowers.

“What is that?” Sydney said as the torch illuminated the room. Lil knew what she was talking about right away. There, a few feet in front of them, was a large, knobby growth, as though a tumor had bubbled up from the floor. She stepped toward it tentatively, peering at it from every angle, bending the light to it with a shaking hand. As she circled, she feared what she might find on the other side. But the only thing that stared back at her was more of the same. It wasn't moving. Lil reached out to it, ran her fingertips along the hard coating. The honey scent was stronger now. And as Lil took her hand away, she realized that it wasn't bubbling up from the floor. It was sinking into it.

“Wax,” she said, feeling it on her fingertips. “It's a giant candle.” It smelled just like the candles upstairs. Beeswax, Lil thought. She placed the torch to the wick, and it burst to life. The archway behind them closed. The bricks spun and swiveled back into place until there was no way of telling that a door had ever been there at all. Lil's body coursed with adrenaline as her eyes surveyed the dark room. Forward, the only way to go.

“More light,” Charlie said from the shadows. Lil moved to her. There in the corner of the room was another candle, sliding its way down the wall. She placed the torch to it and then worked her way clockwise, lighting one after another, her eyes widening as each candle revealed the chamber more.

Stone shelves rose from floor to ceiling. They were striped with what could have been mistaken for the bindings of books but were the stone ends of tablets. Between each set of shelves stood an arched alcove, giving the room the air of a library with reading nooks. Lil saw that there were candles within the alcoves themselves and as she lit them one by one, she saw that little benches occupied each space beneath fading wall frescos.

“This one's different from the others,” Lil said as she reached the far end of the room. She held the torch aloft and looked into it.

Instead of a bench there was a bed. It was made of stone from foot to frame, but with a topping of matted fibers. She pressed her hand into it momentarily, then jerked it back, wondering what animal might have decided to take refuge in the hay.

“It's an archive,” Charlie said from behind her. She turned to see Charlie select one of the tablets from the wall. “An actual archive. What is this script?” She looked from corner to corner. “It's almost as if this room was used as a study.” She pressed the tablet back into place. “A long, long time ago.” Then she looked from one alcove to the next. “These urns, these benches,” she said, shaking her head. “You wouldn't see them so well preserved even in a museum.”

Lil looked at her. She looked at the artifacts. She thought about the Minotaur chamber, and now Europa, an eerie feeling coming over her. “Are you suggesting that Europa lived here?”

Charlie nodded. “I don't know. Someone did. Didn't Colleen say that myth and history had intersected because it had all been handed down orally? Maybe Europa was real. Maybe she stood here?”

Lil's back bristled with nerves.

“You're joking, right?” Sydney said. “They didn't exist. It was mythology. Fake by definition.”

Kat stared at a tapestry that seemed woven from reeds between two of the alcoves. “‘Everything you think you know, abandons you within,'” she whispered.

“Indeed,” Charlie said, talking faster now. “Archaeologists didn't believe that Troy existed before Schliemann uncovered it below a modern city. They knew the story, they had the
Iliad,
but they thought it was mythology, folklore, until they found the artifacts.”

“Then why wouldn't this be uncovered? If this is real, wouldn't it be important to have in a museum?” Sydney said, shaking her head in disbelief.

“Well, that's just it,” Lil said, her mind spinning. She clutched the disk. “Maybe no one wants it to be. Whatever's down here must be important”—she glanced at the door—“for people to die over it. To hunt us for it.”

Charlie spun. “History revealed?”

“Treasure?” Kat said.

Secrets? Lil wondered.

Charlie looked down at her paper and surveyed the room once more. She stopped as she glanced over Lil's shoulder. “Over here,” she said, walking to the other side of the room.

There was a nook that they'd missed. One right next to where they'd entered. Lil followed Charlie, ducking into the musty alcove. This one had a desk in it. A simple one, built into the stone wall. A candle sat atop it and Lil set the torch to the wick, lighting the scene with a fiery glow. From the center of the desk rose what looked like the inner workings of a broken typewriter, but old, made of stone and wood. Instead of keys, it had just six levers. Six little catapult-type arms that lay against the table. Each arm was topped with a round wooden holder. The first three holders already held what looked like stone stamps. The second three were empty. And in the top part of the mechanism, where a piece of paper might be on a typewriter, sat a rectangular wooden frame. It was filled halfway with clay, and imprinted in the clay were three symbols, marked there by the stamps in the first three holders. Lil peered at them. A shell, three parallel squiggly lines and then what looked like a yoke. She immediately recognized them. How many times had she traced them as she stared at her mother's necklace? The disk at her side was just a replica of the same. She lifted it, comparing the two. What did one have to do with the other?

Charlie pulled the seat from beneath the desk and sat down. She took a deep breath and set the notepad in front of her. “‘Here lay Europa, Zeus' stolen bride . . . Carried forth her brother's trade, just to stay alive.' Europa's brother was Cadmus. He was known for introducing the alphabet to the Greek world.”

Kat picked up one of the stone stamps from the top of a pile at the edge of the desk. She tilted it between her index finger and thumb. She lined it up with one of the levers at the base of the old typewriter. “It's as if these are letters or characters. Except you would have to switch them out regularly depending on what you are trying to write.” She scrutinized the symbols. “Which would make sense if Europa was, in fact, a scribe. But was she?”

“Je ne sais pas,”
Charlie said, tilting her head to the side. “They didn't talk much about Europa in the myths. I only remember that she was enamored with a bull, Zeus in disguise, who carried her across the sea on his back to Crete. But this is different. Perhaps this is her true story?”

Lil stared down at the riddle. “It says, ‘patterned side by side.'” She scanned the desk. “I don't see a pattern. Do you see a pattern?”

Sydney leaned over the pile of stamps as Kat placed the one she was holding back at the top. “Not particularly.”

Lil stared at the incomplete tablet. She looked at the disk. Perhaps when they had said the disk was a “key” they meant it was a key to a puzzle. She saw the yoke. She spotted the three squiggly lines. She saw the shell on the outer edge, but none of them seemed to line up. It was like using a code to decipher a code.

“I don't see a pattern, either,” Lil said, dropping the disk to swing around her neck once more.

“But the shell—” Charlie said, touching the indentation with her fingertips. “Didn't we just . . .” She spun toward the interior of the chamber. “There.”

Charlie pointed over Lil's shoulder. Lil turned.

“Where?” Lil said, searching the first fresco. There was Europa. She was standing under a tree, smiling.

“See?” Charlie said, pointing at the keystone above it.

They crossed to it and Lil lifted the torch higher. As she did, she saw a shell imprinted on it.

“That's the first symbol,” Lil said.

If they were supposed to finish her story, and that one was the first symbol on the tablet, then it must be the beginning. She perused the scene. “Before she is taken by Zeus. She must be home? On this beach?” She moved toward the next fresco.

“Then,” Charlie said, “she gets abducted by Zeus in the form of a bull and carried across the sea.”

“This is where your story falls apart,” Sydney said, “the human-animal love affairs.” But as they peered into the alcove, Lil could see a man—not a bull—standing by a ship that boasted a flag with bull horns.

The keystone above this alcove showed the three squiggly lines.

“The lines depicting their journey across the water?” Kat said. “But instead of on the back of a bull like Colleen was telling us about, it was on a ship.”

“Maybe,” Charlie said, snapping her pen cap on and off with vigor. “Crete is known for its bull worship and bull history. I remember reading that when they had earthquakes, they blamed it on the bull within the ground, shaking his horns in a fury.”

“So it wasn't an animal-human love affair after all?” Sydney said.

“Perhaps the story was confused when it was handed down because Cretans were simply known as bulls,” Charlie explained.

Lil considered the fresco and the story. It was easy enough for a story to change in a single afternoon around town. How much would it change through time? It sounded possible. More possible than the mythology.

“That actually makes me feel a little better,” Sydney said.

Charlie moved to the next alcove. Lil looked up at the yoke on the keystone and below at the fresco. Europa was standing, her bound wrists raised to the sky.

“The third symbol,” Charlie said, scribbling in her notebook. “It looks like a yoke . . . Must symbolize her captivity.”

“But I thought she fell in love with Zeus as a bull?” Kat said.

Charlie shook her head. “Depends who you are reading. The romantics would say ‘fell in love' or ‘wooed'; other sources would say ‘abducted.'”

“That's a little different,” Kat said.

Lil watched Europa's face in the flickering light. It seemed to twitch with pain. If these old frescoes were telling a true story, it was an awfully sad one.

“That's the last symbol in the wooden holders,” Sydney said, moving back to the desk. “We have the shell, the lines depicting water and the yoke depicting captivity. What is the next part of the story? What is the next symbol?”

Lil saw her spread the stamps out and examine them before she, Charlie and Kat moved to the next alcove.

The keystone showed a circle around a figure of a woman. “Birth,” Charlie said without hesitation. “She bore Minos, one of the most famed figures on Crete.”

“What is the symbol exactly?” Sydney said from across the room.

“A woman in a circle,” Charlie said.

“Got it!” Sydney said, picking up one of the stone stamps. She hesitated, the stamp hovering over the wooden arm. Lil could read her thoughts. What would happen if it was the wrong choice? Was it engineered like the automaton? Or like the arrows in the trap?

“What if—” Kat started.

“I don't know,” Lil said. “It has to be the right answer.”

Sydney nodded. “We don't have many other options and this makes the most sense.”

“Go ahead and put it in,” Charlie said, scribbling on her notepad as she made her way to the next alcove.

Sydney took a deep breath and placed the stamp into the wooden arm. Lil couldn't help but brace herself as it clicked into place, her eyes darting around the room, waiting for something to happen, to spring out at them, for the walls to start moving, for javelins to come piercing up through the floor. When nothing changed, there was an audible sigh of relief among them. They hurried to the next alcove.