I could not tell what it was at first that awakened me. Asterius, for a wonder, was silent. An absolute stillness seemed to have fallen over the Labyrinth. The lamp was out, and I could scarcely see my hand held up before my face.
As I lay there, wondering why I was awake, I heard it again: a soft, stealthy bumping against the leg of the couch I slept on. I peered over the edge but could see nothing. I disliked feeling for the source of the noise. It might so easily be a rat—but it didn’t sound quite like an animal. Finally, hesitantly, I ran my hand down the side of the bed. Just above the floor I encountered something I did not understand: a fine wire or string, tautly stretched.
It moved under my fingers.
I snatched my hand back. For a moment I lay motionless, utterly perplexed. Then I understood. The great ball of linen thread I had spun lay on the floor. The end of that thread passed through a narrow gap between the bed and a heavy grain bin. The noise I heard was the clew of thread slowly unraveling, rolling this way and that, trapped behind the bed and the grain bin.
I leapt out of bed. My foot struck Maira where she lay sleeping on the floor.
“Get up!” I whispered harshly, bending down to shake the girl by the shoulder. “Get up now!”
She did not respond. I slapped her face and she mumbled faintly, then subsided into sleep again.
Terrified, I hurried to my brother’s side. He lay as still and unresponsive as Maira, but my groping fingers could find no wound. He still breathed. I disturbed his slumber only enough so that he twisted into another position and began to snore.
Already guessing what I would find, I crept over to the doorway and found the servant who was supposed to be keeping watch slumped over, deep in sleep.
The wine. Maira and the servant had had at least two glasses each, while I had only tasted mine, not liking the flavor. Asterius did not drink wine, but perhaps—yes, it could have been concealed in the little grain cake prepared especially for him.
I thought of Ariadne drugging her servant’s wine. Now I knew why she had not come to demand the key. In some way she had learned that I did not have it, that I had decided not to help. And now—
There was a faint noise here in the doorway, barely perceptible over Asterius’s snores. I bent down, feeling along the opening.
The thread stretched from my bedside out through the door. The noise I had heard was the slight scraping of thread against stone. Ariadne had entered the Bull Pen while we slept, picked up the end of the thread, and walked away holding it, the ball unwinding behind.
Why? That I could guess easily enough. She would descend to Theseus’s cell and give him the free end. Then, while she crept out to the harbor to secure the ship and supplies she must have waiting there, Theseus would be able to find his way to the Bull Pen.
I was furious. Perhaps I did not think as clearly as I should have, but I was too angry to think, to ask myself the motive for doing such a thing.
It was reasonable that Ariadne would wish to free her lover, even that she would wish to escape with him. But the only reason for the clew of thread that occurred to me was to allow Theseus to travel in the dark, through unknown passageways, to where my brother and his protectors lay in a drugged sleep.
Oh, it was cruel, it was hard! Any regret I felt for leaving Theseus to his fate and any affection I felt for Ariadne dropped away from me now. “Why should she revenge herself on Asterius? I could understand and accept anger directed at me, but of all the actors in this tragedy, Asterius at least was wholly innocent.
I thought for a brief moment of feeling around in the dark until I found the lamp. There might be hot coals in a fire pit somewhere along the way, and light would be most welcome. But I dared not spare the time. I didn’t know how close Ariadne was to reaching Theseus or whether or not she had possession of the key.
After all, what did the darkness matter to me? I too had the clew of thread for a guide. I circled my index finger and thumb around it and walked forward, letting it slide unhindered through my fingers. I had no desire to signal to Ariadne that someone else walked the Labyrinth behind her.
I soon adjusted my pace so that it matched hers; the thread lay unmoving in my hand. At first I traveled well-known territory; even in the blackness I knew where I was. Soon, however, I descended a staircase I did not recognize, and then another, plunging deeper into the earth than I had ever known that the maze descended. At last I walked down a hall so narrow my shoulders nearly brushed the wall on each side. The floors under my naked feet were earthen, not stone, and crumbs of broken masonry underfoot made my progress painful and uncertain.
I remembered what Ariadne had said about how she could sense the ancient dead there underneath the Labyrinth, and the hairs stood up on the nape of my neck. It was true; I also felt them, I also heard them. Surely, for instance, there was something looming off to the side just ahead. I could see nothing, but I paused, so certain was I that something waited there in the pitchy black.
Yet while I stood motionless, Ariadne walked closer and closer to the enemy. I sighed and stepped forward.
Powerful arms wrapped around me and a hand clamped over my mouth before I could scream. In my shock I dropped
