I didn’t know how intelligent the creature was, but I hoped it had the brain capacity of a mouse and wouldn’t be able to scent us out over the stench of this place. Maybe we’d get lucky and it wouldn’t know we were here at all; I didn’t think that was likely as our luck had led us into this town.
We’d traveled at least five hundred feet into the tunnel when I detected a glow ahead of us. I squinted as I lifted the flame to see what lay ahead, but I couldn’t quite make out what it was. The light grew brighter as we approached, and the tunnel came to an end with a circular opening.
I stepped through the entrance, and my breath sucked in at the same time gasps filled the air. My flame sputtered out as I gaped at what lay beneath us.
I’d expected twists and turns through the tunnel along with offshoots that would go nowhere or circle around or maybe lead to freedom. We’d encountered only one branch, but that was because the tunnel was nothing more than the entrance to the labyrinth.
Herewas where the real fun began.
There were so many winding pathways I couldn’t focus on just one of them. They intersected each other in a crisscrossing pattern that confused me, and I hadn’t even stepped foot in the thing. I tried to follow one of the pathways, but it was impossible to stay with it for more than twenty feet.
I couldn’t begin to decide which of those pathways might lead out of here before the rows of convoluted routes disappeared over a hill that blocked out anything on the other side of it. I bit my lip as I tried not to think about the possibility there was no way out of here.
Therehadto be an exit, or I’d led all these people to their deaths.
Despite the convoluted pathways, the labyrinth was amazingly beautiful. Like the old English maze I’d expected to find, rows of hedges created the hundreds of corridors beneath the earth. Overhead, a dome of hewn rock arched over the labyrinth. That dome stretched at least two hundred yards and arced over the section of the maze I couldn’t see.
The sun couldn’t shine down here, but golden light illuminated the labyrinth and chased away the shadows of the cave. Before me, a rocky, winding pathway led down to the entrance of the maze. Once we walked down it, we’d have no idea which way to go or where we were in the maze.
We’d be as lost as a bird in a tornado the second we stepped foot in those hedges.
For a moment, I feared I might throw up as bile rose in my throat and my head spun. Part of the plan was to get enough of a head start that maybe we could find our way out of the labyrinth before the minotaur realized we were here. That was probably impossible.
When Hawk rested his hand on my shoulder, I glanced at him. I saw apprehension in his eyes, but there was also a steely resolve that straightened my spine.
“Now what?” the blue-haired demon asked.
“Now we keep going,” Hawk said.
“Into that?” a human asked.
“Do you want to turn back?” Corson inquired. “Because there is nowhere for us to go back there.”
“Except into the mouth of the minotaur,” Bale said.
I glanced into the shadows of the cave. I wasn’t sure which was worse, wandering into the maze or returning to fight the monster who so easily defeated us the other day.
Turning back is worse.
There was no way to know how much time we’d spend trapped in the labyrinth, but we wouldn’t have much time left in the town before it came for us. And now that the town was burning, we’d have less time there.
“We have to go,” I said.
Before anyone could stop me, I started down the side of the mountain. Here the rock walkway was at least ten feet wide and open all around me.
“How is this place possible?” I asked as I led the way down the winding path. “How did that beast create this world? How are therebushesgrowing under the earth and in this rocky ground?”
“The same magic the minotaur used to trap us in the town was also used to create this,” Bale said. “The labyrinth is the minotaur’s home and its creation.”
“If this is its creation,” Randy said, “then can it change it around us?”
I shuddered at the possibility and realized it might happen. If that creature had built this world, then it might be able to do anything with it, which meant we had no chance of escaping this maze.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Aisling
I had no idea where we were in the labyrinth. We’d been wandering for what felt like hours, but it could’ve been minutes or a day. All I knew was my feet hurt, the humans were exhausted, and the minotaur had returned to its cave.
