Will Adams - The Lost Labyrinth

For Nico, the defining moment had come during a family holiday in the Peloponnese. His brother had been the class swot; he'd persuaded his father to take them on a tour of Mycenae, Epidaurus, Corinth and the other great sites. Nico had suffered from a boredom so intense that it had been a kind of torture. Then they'd visited Olympia, site of the ancient games. This had been long before the tourist boom, of course; they'd been the only ones there. More damned ruins! What did people see in the things? He'd mooched off by himself, had come across a tall grassed bank, a short arched passageway cut into it. He'd walked through it and had emerged shockingly into the ancient stadium. He could remember that moment still, the dazzle of the rising sun, the grassed banks for the crowds, the whole arena infused with a spirit of celebration, competition, achievement. Of greatness. He'd never really understood until that moment what people had meant by atmosphere. He'd never believed in ghosts. But all that had changed in a single heartbeat. His dream of becoming an Olympic athlete had been born at that moment; and when that dream had failed him, he'd turned to archaeology instead, because his love of ancient Greece had been born that day too.

He owed that love to his parents.

The ringing, when finally it began, seemed longer and deeper than usual, as though time itself were being distended. He almost hung up on the fifth ring, but then it was picked up and it was too late. A man's voice. 'Hello?' he said.

'Hello, father,' said Nico, his mouth sticky and dry. 'It's me.'

A silence ensued; an incredulous silence, if silence can have such a quality. Then: 'Nico?'

'Yes.' The silence grew and grew. Too much time had passed. This had been a mistake. 'I'm sorry,' he blurted out. 'I shouldn't have-'

'No!' said his father. 'Don't hang up. Please. I beg you.'

'I wanted to talk to you,' said Nico. 'I wanted to see you. I thought maybe lunch.'

'Of course. Your mother and I…that is, we were having friends over. The Milonas. You remember them?'

'Yes.'

'We'll put them off. They won't mind.'

'Not on my account. But maybe I could join you. I'd like to see them. It's been a long time.'

'Of course. Of course. I'll go tell your mother now. She'll want to make sure we have enough. And Nico…'

'Yes?' He waited, but his father said no more. It took Nico several seconds to realise it was because he couldn't speak without betraying himself. It was strange and rather shocking to hear his father weep. He'd always seemed the embodiment of strength. 'It's okay,' he told him.

'It's not okay,' sobbed his father. 'It's not. It's not. Forgive me, Nico. You have to forgive me.'

'I forgive you, father. And I'll see you for lunch. Ask mother to do some of her spanakopites. I can't tell you how I've missed them.' He put the phone down then stared down at his hands in surprise, the way they were shaking. Then something splashed into his palm, and he realised he was weeping too.

Inside the cave, Gaille waited for Mikhail; but moments stretched into minutes and still he didn't come. Her adrenal surge ebbed; her arms and shoulders began to ache from the tension and from gripping the pickaxe handle too tight. She tried to loosen her grip, only to discover that her palms had glued to the wood with congealed blood. She must have torn them open on the thorns or the shale. She pulled them free one at a time, the reopened cuts stinging like lashes.

She risked a glance along the throat of the cave to its mouth. Motes danced with midges in the circle of sunshine, but there was no sign of Mikhail. She felt a flutter of hope. Perhaps he'd given up, realising that her position was impregnable. Perhaps rescue had arrived. Or perhaps he was simply waiting for curiosity to get the better of her. Her eyes had adjusted a little to the gloom. She could see things now that had previously been hidden. A generator with its pearly white plastic tank; an orange electrical cable snaking off it; a wooden crate on the floor beside it. She took another glance to make sure Mikhail hadn't returned, then hurried to the crate and rummaged through it for anything useful. Old water bottles filled with fuel that left their distinctive stench on her hands. A torch, heavy with batteries. She turned it on, found another replica Phaistos disc in the crate, reminding her of the triangle and wavy line she'd seen carved in the rock. She looked for those symbols now and found them at the very centre of one of the spirals, suggesting the disc was a map of some kind, one side of which led here. She looked at the spiral on the obverse side. There was a rosette at its heart, symbol of Minoan royalty. She set the disc back down and shone the torch upon the nearest wall, where faint traces of ancient paintings showed upon the rock, then up at the high jagged ceiling and finally at the rear of the cave, where a passage vanished into the darkness. She considered going to look for somewhere to hide, but decided against. The cave mouth was defensible, but once Mikhail got inside, she'd be lost.

The torch beam started to dim, the batteries evidently weak, for all their weight. She turned it off again, its light too valuable to squander, then put it back in the crate and returned to her post. Her hopes began to rise as the minutes passed and there was still no sign of Mikhail. But then she heard noises outside, and those hopes came crashing back to earth. The cave grew darker again. 'Getting lonely yet?' he asked.

'Leave me alone.'

'It's lovely out here. Lots of nice moss for you to lie on.'

'Go away.'

'I have to do this, you know. I gave your boyfriend my word. I always keep my word.'

His assault was coming. She could tell it from the excitement in his voice. She tightened her grip on the pickaxe, lifted it above her head, prepared herself to bring it down. One shot, she prayed silently. That's all I ask.

Scuffling in the passage, then a glimpse of his head beneath his baseball cap. She didn't hesitate, she smashed the pickaxe down. But to her horror his head simply tumbled away across the cave, coming to rest on its side, and it was Iain looking up at her, not Mikhail. She shrieked and dropped the pickaxe just as Mikhail appeared, his blood-smeared knife in his hand. She turned and fled blindly into the cave. The floor was slick; her feet flew from beneath her, she careened down a short abrasive chute, her elbow and knee banging, her head hitting rock. She staggered up, fumbled her way along a wall, small pools of drip-water on the floor seeping through the thin canvas of her shoes, cold as fear upon her soles.

Behind her, she heard the rip and stutter of Mikhail hauling at the generator's starter-rope. The engine caught first time and lamps began to glow all around, robbing her of the sanctuary of darkness, and leaving her at Mikhail's mercy.

Knox's legs were jellied with fatigue, his ankles turning with painful regularity on the loose rocks that he used as stepping stones to cross the thick tangle of thorny shrubs. It felt like he'd been circling the escarpment for hours, though it could only in truth have been twenty minutes. The terrain near the cliff edge was so difficult that it forced him out wide, denying him the chance to monitor what was going on below. But eventually he reached the marker he'd given himself-an outcrop of rock like a pine-cone lying on its side-and he cut back to the escarpment rim to find himself high above the yellow sea of gorse, the clearing visible a little to his below, though without any sign of life.

What now?

His breath was whistling in his throat; a stitch jabbed in his side and at his bruised ribs. He got down onto his knees then lay on his front and leaned out over the edge to examine the cliff-face beneath him for a manageable way down. What he saw could have been better, but it could have been worse too. The top third was almost sheer, but it was craggy enough to offer plentiful holds, even for an inexperienced climber like himself. Beneath that, it grew incrementally less steep to a slope of loose earth and shale that fed straight into the gorse.