The Flame in the Maze Read Online Free PDF

both—”
    â€œStarve us?” Icarus said. “In the two months before the king gives himself to the mountain?”
    The pressure was inside her head, throbbing, turning her vision flat and white. When it cleared a little she saw Daedalus, straining up from his knees. “Ih-oh,” he said, with his tongueless mouth, and she knew with a horrible, vivid certainty that the word was “Minnow”—that name he’d called her, in his workshop without a roof, and in the sunlit corridors of Knossos, when she was a child and he was the master with hands of godmarked silver. “Ih-oh”—beseeching, sad, not quite hopeless.
    Ariadne picked up her lamp and went to the corridor. She moved with a care that she knew looked exaggerated, but it was better than running. She crawled to the door and seized its handle. For a long, cold moment she thought that Phaidra had locked her in, but then the door swung open with a scream that made her grind her teeth. She crawled more quickly, because the wind was so fresh, and Icarus might be behind her, reaching out his talons to push past her into the night.
    Ariadne stood up on the ledge, as shakily as a child learning to walk. When she turned back to pull the door closed, Phaidra was in front of it, her arms spread wide.
    â€œHe didn’t want you, did he?” Phaidra’s fingers twitched. Golden hair blew against her cheeks and across her lips.
    â€œOh, he wanted me.”
    Phaidra continued, as if Ariadne hadn’t spoken. “And he wouldn’t help you, just as I won’t.”
    â€œClose the door,” Ariadne snapped. “Do it now, before one of them attacks us and gets free.” Phaidra narrowed her eyes and half-smiled. Ariadne had never seen this expression on her sister’s face before: quiet and calculating; older.
    â€œClose it or by all the gods and goddesses I
will
hurt you.”
    Phaidra’s arms dropped to her sides. She bent over and pulled hard on the handle. “Good,” Ariadne said. “Now lock it—quickly.”
    The silver from Phaidra’s hands lit the ledge and the cliffside and the air above the sea. It flowed from skin to metal and stone, and Ariadne drew closer so that it fell on her, too. It blazed so suddenly that she was blinded. She heard the metal within the lock
click
, and her eyes cleared.
    The godlight had already dimmed. Wisps of it flickered along Phaidra’s fingers and pooled in her palm, then snuffed out. The girl rose and went to the cliff steps.
    â€œPhaidra! Wait!”—but Phaidra didn’t.
    Ariadne tucked her skirts up into her girdle and followed her, very slowly; the lantern left her with only one hand, and the moments when it was only her feet that held her to the cliff left her breathless and dizzy. By the time she reached the top, her sister was already far away, and Ariadne had to run to catch up.
    â€œWait, I said!” She put out a hand and grasped at Phaidra’s arm. Phaidra halted but didn’t turn. “Remember,” Ariadne continued, trying to sound as if she hadn’t had to rush, “if you tell, if you return to him, he will only end up suffering. Swear to me you will not do these things.”
    At last Phaidra looked at her. She was still wearing that half-smile; still a woman, not a child, considering something clever and secret. She said nothing—just shook Ariadne’s hand away and slipped off again, like godlight fading in the grass.

Chapter Three
    Ariadne heard Karpos before she saw him: the ringing of his chisel on marble; the tap-tap of his hammer—and, somehow, the silver of his godmark, twining through the other sounds.
A
statue
, she thought as she walked toward the doorway of his workshop.
A big one; I can hear it in the way he strikes the stone
.
    This workshop was much smaller than the ones Master Daedalus had left Karpos at Knossos; he’d had to push workbenches and stools and strange