Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Theseus stood in front of a dark hole in the side of a cliff. At his back, Queen Hippolyta loomed in full battle armor, complete with a chainmail tunic and leather bracers. Swordmaidens spread out in an arc on either side and behind her.
Queen Hippolyta’s expression remained cold, hard, as she stared Theseus down. “This is your first trial, King Theseus. Inside the labyrinth in the depths of our island lurks a monster. Find it, kill it, and bring its head back to me.”
As expected, one of the trials would involve the famed labyrinth. At least Marco had managed to glean some information on it. Go forward, always down, and never left or right. That sounded easy enough. He would have to hope he would stumble across the monster if he followed Marco’s instructions.
A swordmaiden stepped forward and held out Theseus’s sword.
“And if I fail?” Theseus claimed the sword and buckled the belt around his waist.
“You die.” Queen Hippolyta’s hard face didn’t soften. Her dark eyes didn’t warm. If she hoped that he would win her hand, she didn’t show it. “If the monster doesn’t get you, the labyrinth will. I hope you designated someone as your heir before you left your Court.”
A shiver traced down Theseus’s back, though he refused to let her words get to him. He would survive. There was no other option.
Instead, he gave her a grin. “Any hints that you would care to share, Your Majesty?”
Her glare managed to turn even colder. “No.”
Theseus might have been making progress with the handmaid Ariadne when she brought him his meals, but Queen Hippolyta was a different story. From the time he’d been thrown into the dungeon three days ago, he hadn’t seen her again until she had him hauled out and marched to this hole.
He had expected that Queen Hippolyta might be hostile to the idea of marrying him, but facing that hostility was something else entirely.
He needed her to protect his Court, not plot to stab him in the back the first chance she got.
The last thing he wanted to do was end up in a marriage as unhappy and unpleasant as King Oberon and Queen Titania’s.
Should he give up? Call off this attempt to win her hand?
Yet did he dare return to his Court without this warrior woman at his side, knowing the battle that was to come?
“Do you have any last words, King Theseus?” Queen Hippolyta drew her sword, as if prepared to force him to enter the labyrinth.
He was the king over the greatest library found in any realm, yet he couldn’t think of anything sufficiently grand to say right then. Besides, these weren’t going to be his last words. He wasn’t going to die down there.
Instead of stating something melodramatic, he shrugged and strode toward the entrance to the labyrinth as casually as he could manage. “If my steward Philostrate shows up with a stack of paperwork while I’m gone, tell him I’ll deal with it when I get back.”
Really? That was what he was going to go with?
Instructions about paperwork. Theseus suppressed a sigh and stepped into the coolness of the labyrinth.
Could he sound any more like a boring king from a scholarly court?
Probably not someone Queen Hippolyta would find interesting.
She most likely hoped more than ever that this labyrinth or its monster would dispatch him.
The tunnel continued downward for several yards before it ended in a round room, lit from the entrance behind and above him. Three passageways branched from the room.
This was it. The beginning of the labyrinth.
Even as he stood there, the walls in front of him shifted with the grinding of stone and haze of dust. By the time the dust cleared, five passages now faced him instead of three.
Now that would make this complicated. Was the center passage the same one that had been in the center before? Or had the tunnels completely rearranged? Even if he scratched arrows on the wall or floor, the labyrinth might shift whatever markings he left.
A scuffing sound came from the passage on the far left.
Theseus whirled, drawing his sword as he went. Would it be so easy that the monster would just walk right up to him?
A figure in white stepped from the tunnel, her hands raised and her golden hair vibrant even in the low light. As she stepped farther into the light, he could see that she wore a sword buckled at her waist.
“Ariadne? What are you doing here?” Theseus sheathed his sword.
“I’ve come to help.” Ariadne lowered her hands, resting one hand on the hilt of her sword and the other on her hip next to a pouch hanging from her belt. “You’ll never survive without help.”
“Succumbing to my charms after all?” Theseus smirked, gesturing at himself.
“No. I’m doing this for the Library.” She gave him that raised eyebrow smirk right back. “If you don’t want my help, I’ll leave. Enjoy wandering the unending labyrinth until you die.”
“If you don’t mind braving a monster and this labyrinth, you’re welcome to come.” Theseus waved to the passageways. Even as they stood there, the passageways shifted again. Now seven tunnels faced them. “Do you have any wisdom to share about navigating this place?”
Would what she told him match what Marco had found? If it didn’t, would that mean that Ariadne was lying to him to mislead him? Or that Marco’s research had been flawed?
It was hard to imagine that Head Librarian Marco would present Theseus with unreliable facts. He was meticulous when it came to research.
“As you might have surmised, marking the walls or floor won’t work.
The best way is to go forward, always down, and never left or right.
” Ariadne reached into the pouch at her side and pulled out a ball of what looked like yarn.
“But it also takes this. Yarn spun from the golden fleece of the sheep found in the highest, most rugged peaks of the Court of Stone. The magic of this yarn will keep the passages we enter from shifting, and we’ll be able to follow it back out when we are done. ”
What was he to make of that? Was the addition of the yarn necessary? Or was it a trick?
So far, Ariadne hadn’t poisoned him while he ate. And she had been a pleasant enough companion when she talked with him while he ate his meals.
He didn’t dare trust her. But that didn’t mean he had to actively distrust her either. He could just go along warily until she proved herself one way or the other.
“Getting back out sounds good.” Theseus studied the nine tunnels now facing them. He pointed toward the passageway in the center. “Let’s go.”
Ariadne tied the end of the yarn to a sconce holding a torch.
Theseus claimed the torch and led the way toward the tunnel. Ariadne kept pace, unrolling the ball of yarn while she went.
As they stepped into the tunnel, Theseus could feel a shiver in the stone walls around him, as if they longed to move once again.
He held out his free hand to Ariadne. “We don’t want to get separated.”
She eyed his outstretched hand for a moment before she slid her fingers to clasp his. She had a surprisingly strong grip, her fingers calloused.
Why did his heart pound harder at the touch of her hand in his? As if her nearness did something to him inside.
As they strode down the tunnel, their footsteps echoed against the stones. The torch crackled and popped.
It was too silent. Perhaps it would be wiser to remain alert, but Theseus couldn’t help glancing back at Ariadne. “Can you tell me anything about this monster?”
“Not much.” Ariadne shrugged. “Are you worried?”
“Just wondering what I should be looking for. A giant snake. A basilisk. A cockatrice. A bad bowl of porridge.” Theseus peeked around a corner before he passed the tunnel branching to their left.
Ariadne gave a small snort of laughter. “Nothing as terrible as a bad bowl of porridge. I’ve heard the monster has horns.”
Horns. That would make this an interesting fight.
Theseus wracked his memory, trying to come up with a list of monsters with horns.
There were quite a few, though the fact that the monster had to be small enough to fit inside the labyrinth narrowed the list somewhat.
Was it a giant bull? A horned snake? A chimera?
Theseus glanced over his shoulder again. “Tell me. What brought you to the Court of Swordmaidens?”
“I was born to a former swordmaiden, though I grew up in the Court of Sand.” Ariadne’s shrug tugged on his hand. She was looking back as she twisted her hand to let out another loop of the magical yarn from its ball. “I always knew I would come here eventually.”
“A former swordmaiden?” Theseus glanced around as they entered another intersection with seven branching tunnels. He kept going straight through to the center one.
Ariadne’s hand briefly stilled on the yarn before she twisted it to unloop another section of the magical thread. “There is no place on this island for a married swordmaiden since men are forbidden to live here. My mother had to leave when her hand was won by my father.”
Theseus halted so suddenly that Ariadne crashed into his back. He glanced over his shoulder at her, his mind churning.
If a married swordmaiden was forced to leave their Court, what would that mean for Queen Hippolyta if he won her hand? Was this a tradition of their Court that the married women had to leave, or was it merely a result of the tradition that men could not live on their island?
If it was the former, then his plan had been flawed from the beginning. Even if he won Hippolyta’s hand, she would lose her crown and her Court, and he would have a wife without any warriors to save the Great Library, unless the new queen felt enough fealty for her former queen to still aid them.