Thirty-one

When Dionysus took the leopards' reins again, Ariadne, Daedalus, Sarpedon, and Nestor were aboard the chariot with him. Alex held the vehicle at or near ground level on their swift foray into the city, only going airborne when fences, walls, or the occasional building presented obstacles in the most direct route.

Ariadne repeated her web-spinning search at intervals as they drew closer and closer to the city of Kandak, and the adjoining Maze and palace. Her findings steadily confirmed what Asterion had told Sarpedon—the place they sought lay somewhere near the center of the Labyrinth.

The Artisan's ride in the chariot, and the prospect of being able to come to grips with a supremely challenging problem, freed him from the last traces of shyness in the presence of the god. Daedalus grumbled briefly about the stresses of the flight that he had just endured. But actually he did not seem displeased by his near-kidnapping. He told the princess that in a way he had been sorry when they had left Corycus several days ago, feeling that he was abandoning puzzles unsolved, secrets undiscovered, somewhere in the monstrous Maze.

Princess Ariadne was reluctant to try to use her powers to probe into the affairs of Zeus. Perhaps, she thought, she was afraid to be brought closer to the man who had been wearing that Face when she and Asterion were conceived.

But she dared not ignore the possibility that the overwhelming power of the Thunderer was almost within reach, ready to be taken. With gods and a king against her, help of that magnitude was desperately needed, to save her own life, and her sister's, and above all the life of the god she had so suddenly come to love.

When Ariadne in secret silence, in the privacy behind her closed eyelids, asked the oracle of her webs to show her the best way to keep the love of Dionysus, she received no answer at all.

This upset her so much that she could not keep from blurting it out to Alex. "What does Dionysus have to say about that?" she concluded.

He took her in his arms and answered immediately. "That only means that there is no way you can lose my love. As long as my spirit lives, it will be yours."

The chariot had covered a mile or more before either of them was ready to speak again. Then Alex whispered in her ear, so close that the other passengers could not hear. "There is something we should decide now, my love. If we do discover the Face of Zeus, who is going to put it on?"

And she whispered back, "There is at least one man with us who I think can be trusted."

Daedalus, when he was offered the chance, declined—Alex was not surprised, having already heard the Artisan express his reluctance ever to be a god.

Ariadne knew the moment might come when she herself would have to put on the Thunderer's Face, if that should prove to be the only way to deprive the enemy of its powers. She feared such a transformation would cost her the love of Alex/Dionysus—but she would make that sacrifice, if necessary to save his life. Again she and Dionysus conversed in low whispers.

The princess said, "Perhaps, if and when Daedalus is confronted with the reality, he will change his mind."

"Perhaps. In any case, we must find the Face before any of us can put it on."

Meanwhile, Alex continued to wonder what had become of Shiva. He kept turning his head, searching the night sky with Dionysian vision. What was distracting the Destroyer, keeping him occupied with other matters? Could he possibly be waiting simply until he had all of his chief enemies in one place, subject to one blast of destruction?

A journey that would have taken many hours of steady travel by wagon or cameloid, from the high hills to near the center of the Labyrinth, was accomplished in less than half an hour. The time could have been much less had Alex not stopped several times to observe conditions, and once to drop off Nestor in a deserted alley near the waterfront, where he assumed that when daylight came he would find it easy to mingle with imported mercenaries.

The observations en route revealed evidence of military repression in several portions of the island. It seemed that numbers of people had been arrested. Alex saw bodies hanging at a crossroads; the dead wore placards accusing them of treason to the great god Shiva. If anything like a rebellion had actually been attempted, so far it was evidently going badly for the rebels.

When at last the chariot began to skim low over the Maze's twisting walls and narrow passages, Ariadne kept a sharp eye open for her brother. But she saw nothing of Asterion before they began to descend, guided by her private visions, to land near the center of the Labyrinth.

They found a squad of soldiers present, men of the Palace Guard gathered nervously in torchlight, who, after a moment's shocked retreat, came forward again to unanimously welcome the princess and pledge her their loyalty. The presence of Sarpedon, whom they all knew, helped put the men at ease. Some of them recognized Alex, despite his apotheosis, and he propped one foot up on the chariot rail and made them a little speech.

"When I joined the Guard, my friends, I remember the recruiter told me I had a great future ahead of me. Well . . ." With a gesture he indicated the chariot, and the princess at his side. After a moment's silence, the men burst into a roar of laughter.

Disembarking from the chariot, leaving it waiting in the space that had been cleared for Shiva's sacrifice, Alex and Daedalus advanced on foot under the guidance of the princess, with most of the squad of soldiers following.

The time was now a little after midnight, and Dionysus called upon his invisible entourage to provide some light. Bright flames that gave no heat were soon dancing erratically across the pavement and along the enclosing walls.

Ariadne's web-spinning vision brought her party closer and closer to the spot she sought.

It was on a lower level, almost below the central space where Shiva's stage of sacrifice had been erected, certainly one of the most-traveled sections of the Labyrinth. And at first glance there seemed nothing to distinguish this spot from any other, though the eye of Dionysus, when he looked at it steadily, noted certain subtle peculiarities.

The soldiers were set to digging, moving earth. Busy hands were excavating a cavity that had been filled with rubble, deeply saucer-shaped and perhaps twelve feet across.

As the underlying basin of solid rock was cleared, gradually a strange configuration was revealed.

Getting his first good look at the mystery, Daedalus said nothing for what seemed, to his nervous companions, a long time indeed.

Curtly he dispatched one of the squad of loyal soldiers to his old quarters to look for a certain bag of small tools, telling the man where he thought it could be found. Everything he'd left behind had been ransacked and scattered by the new king's agents, in a fruitless search for clues to where he might have fled, but his small tools would have been meaningless to those angry searchers, and though they had been scattered most of them were still there.

Then, gesturing at the problem before them, the Artisan invited comment by his associates. "How would you describe this?"

The center of the revealed pit was a round concavity about two yards in diameter, a series of concentric rings, like the design on an archer's target, with the innermost circle the lowest. At the very center was what seemed obviously a door, a circular panel no more than about two feet wide, set in the lowest spot of the floor. A single massive hinge was visible, as was a handle of bronze with which to lift it open.

"The door must swing up, not down," said Alex, stating the obvious.

"Of course," the princess agreed. "Look at the hinge."

"But the lock keeps it from opening," the god observed.

Daedalus gave him a look that was far from worshipful. "To prevent a door from opening is generally what the designer has in mind when he creates a lock."

The solid rock near the hinge had been carved with the lightning-symbol that was sometimes used to represent Zeus.

Looking over the door and its intricate lock, Alex's left eye, armed with the vision of Dionysus, showed him some meaningless color variations, but nothing special that he could interpret in any useful way.

But Ariadne could see more. Now, standing near the locked door, she reported a vision of a thread of her imaginary web-stuff, weaving its way through the intricacies of the lock.

She frowned, squeezing her eyes more tightly shut. "It is as if the thread were attached to some invisible, impalpable needle. And as soon as it has been pulled all the way through, the trapdoor swings up and open . . . I can see no more beyond that."

And of course the door in the real world remained solidly closed and locked.

Somewhere under the earth, quite nearby, a murmur of unseen water could be heard. To the Artisan it was obvious that the nearby streams must be channeled past this spot in conduits, or even wholly contained in round copper pipes, as if here, over a kind of fissure in the earth, they might otherwise be in danger of plunging all the way to the Underworld, never to be seen again by mortal eyes.

Daedalus muttered to himself, "And of course there may well be—there probably is—more to the trick than appears on the surface."

To Alex, what appeared on the surface certainly seemed challenging enough.

The lightning-symbol of Zeus was not the only carving in the rock. Around the circular rim of the broad depression ran a lengthy inscription. The seven lines of symbols, each seemingly in a different tongue, reminded Alex of the words carved in the wall of the ruined temple on the Isle of Refuge.

When he looked at these letters through the eye of Dionysus, he could read what amounted to the same verse seven times. Alex recited:

" 'Who would hold in his hand what lies below

Must subtly plan and gently go.

The key required is a supple strand

One might think only a thread of sand—'

"—and there it breaks off."

The Artisan nodded slowly. "Then the inscription confirms the princess's vision. To solve this puzzle we must thread a string, or length of fine yarn, or some equivalent, all the way through the shell. That is the only kind of key that is meant to fit this lock."

"And I doubt that even you can make a thread out of loose sand, or a key either."

"So it would seem. But let me think about it for a bit."

Dionysus was the first to admit that cleverness in problem-solving was not his own strong point. It might be within his power to transform the vault and all that it contained into a mass of living growth—but he feared that would blur and probably destroy whatever secrets it might now contain.

His residence within the Labyrinth had allowed him to begin to appreciate its strangeness. Therefore he was not surprised that a marvel like this locked door had lain almost under his feet for several months, without his ever suspecting its existence.

"We can try digging down here beside the door," Sarpedon suggested tentatively.

Bigger tools were soon brought from the Artisan's old workshop. But digging in the hard and solid rock was going to be difficult at best. And the very first attempt along that line ended in frightening failure.

Daedalus himself tried first, hitting the shell-like structure with a sharp steel chisel, driven by a hammer of moderate weight. The chisel slipped away, and sudden tremors went coursing through all the surrounding earth.

Someone let out an involuntary cry, and clutched the rough stones of a shortened wall for support. But the wall was swaying noticeably too.

"Hold up, no more of that!"

The lock itself was not even scratched; the unknown material from which it had been made was extremely hard and tough.

By now one of the loyal soldiers had brought the Artisan his bag of small tools, or such of them as could be found, and he tried one of them against the mechanism, and then another. But this preliminary poking and probing accomplished nothing either.

"The entry passage, where our key of sand must enter, is no thicker than a baby's finger, and intricately curved."

Daedalus found it simply too hard to see clearly, to get a good look at the problem. "I must have some air to breathe in here, and room to turn around. And give me some light!"

The Artisan ordered the low overhead to be broken away, opening the tunnel-like passage to the plaza above it. The soldiers set to energetically, fracturing ancient stonework and tossing away the fragments. If anyone takes notice of our noise, thought Alex, well, let them. Dionysus feared no opponent except Shiva or some other malignant god—and he expected, fatalistically, that the ones he truly feared would come when they were ready, noise or not.

A couple of the upper walls in the immediate vicinity were also knocked down, and the ivy and laurel growing on them cleared away. The loyal guardsmen, eager to serve the princesses, broke and slashed and heaved with a good will. The moon, almost full, shone down on the secret door from the western sky, an hour or so after midnight.

Now, with steadier, better light available, the mysterious encircling inscriptions became a more insistent presence.

Now the Artisan gave the impression of settling in comfortably, to do a job.

"We must hurry!" the princess burst out impulsively.

Such urgings made no impression on him. "Did you ever see a lock like that? I've never seen one in my life before." Coming from Daedalus, that was an impressive statement indeed.

Now it could be clearly seen that the key part of the puzzle was shaped like a shell of the many-chambered nautilus, or some very similar seashell. It might have been a real shell of some obviously mutant creature, heavily bioengineered in ages past.

No one could forget that a single hammer-blow, directly on the lock, had provoked a serious shaking of the earth beneath them.

"Open it by gentle means, I pray you, Daedalus!"

"It seems I must use subtle means, or none at all." And Daedalus growled at his would-be helpers to stop standing in his light, keep quiet, and let him work.

Transparent forms came whispering in the air, and then Silenus took solid shape, as real as a cameloid and almost as odorous as a goat. Sometimes Alex thought it would be an excellent idea to rid himself of Silenus permanently, but such Dionysan memories as were readily available offered no encouragement for such a hope. The satyr murmured a warning that the Princess Phaedra had just been placed under house arrest, confined to her apartment in the palace.

Leaving Daedalus to begin his task, with Sarpedon and the squad of loyal soldiers as protection, Alex set out with Ariadne to rescue her sister.

At first he hesitated. "You might be safer if I left you here—"

"But nowhere will be safe until we win. Come, and I will find my sister." And once more the princess assumed the role of guide, deviating from the marked route to take an even shorter pathway to the right side of the palace.

Alex was also quite familiar with the interior of the palace, having pulled interior guard duty many times within that rambling structure. Certainly he could find his way without difficulty to the private quarters of the princesses, though he had never actually been inside those rooms.

Now when he approached and entered those corridors and rooms, exerting his power to clear a path, they underwent a transformation similar to that which had happened aboard the pirate ship, when the powers of Dionysus had it in their grip. Around the advancing god, stone columns sprouted branches and green leaves. What had been an iron grillwork, recently installed, had become a screen of gentle branches, easily brushed aside.

Some of the soldiers and servants here greeted Dionysus as their savior, while others fled in terror. Alex could hear one of the mercenaries cry out, "No one's paying me enough to battle a god. Let them fight it out among themselves."