Page 9 of The Labyrinth and the Threaded Daughter

A series of roars erupted from behind Corin. He whipped his head around and cursed. So much for going backwards to avoid the man.

The sound reminded him of a Stymphalian Bird. He had faced them years ago when a few attacked an orphanage in Knossos, and he had hoped to never face them again after that.

Corin glanced back to the man who had already turned and began to walk without him. Corin could either follow this mysterious figure or risk running into a Stymphalian Bird once again, and he knew his answer easily, even if he hated the decision.

Corin followed blindly, at a much quicker pace than he had moved before this encounter. Despite the mysterious man’s limp, he moved quite quickly. Perhaps he wanted to avoid the monster just as much.

“I knew you would follow,” the man laughed. “The stone knows, and I know now. It could be great to fight a beast, but I don’t think the stone wants a fight. Not with metal. Not now.”

The man spoke as if he hadn’t had to form a proper sentence in ages, and it grated at Corin’s mind. He was willingly—well, somewhat willingly—following behind a figure that seemed mad with time, and he hated how his choices had narrowed so much in such a short amount of time in the maze.

As they hurried away, Corin’s eyes caught on the edge of the man’s cloak. It was dull, grayed with time, but clear. A spiral. Three of them.

The mark of an heir.

Elder, the man had said. This man was Corin’s elder. An heir that had been long lost to the stone.

“How long…”

“You ask and you shall know, but fear is powerful.”

Corin blinked. He wasn’t sure what to make of that statement, whether to be grateful for an answer or afraid of what it could be. “How long… have you been down here?”

The man laughed again, though it was softer this time. “Long enough to forget the sky.”

IV

Corin followed behind his mysterious kin at a careful distance, close enough that he would not lose the strange man in the winding corridors but far enough that he could still run if needed.

The man walked with an uneven gait, sometimes favoring his left leg, sometimes not at all, as though the pain of his distorted ankle was an inconsistent memory. He murmured to himself as they went, words half-formed and disconnected, occasionally stopping mid-step to tilt his head and listen to the stone. When he did, the golden veins along the walls glowed brightly like the maze was paying close attention and welcoming the man.

At a particular cross in the path, the man took a moment to study the passage before pulling out a torch from somewhere behind the solid stone. He somehow lit it with a swipe of his boney fingers across the top, the fire appearing as if erupting from his fingertips. Corin was glad for the light to lead their way and decided he didn’t want to question this mysterious man’s abilities too much.

An heir, Corin thought again, staring at the spiral mark on his clothes. Once.

Corin tried to think back to his lessons to identify who this figure was. It had been a bit over a century since an heir hadn’t made it out of the Labyrinth, and that had been… Taleon, he thought. His great, great, great, great uncle. The Labyrinth had never opened up to release him, and he had been stuck inside. At least, that’s what the legends said.

Corin knew that didn’t necessarily mean this man was Taleon. Looking at the figure walking in front of him, more doubt crept into his mind. The man was injured, surely, and ghostly looking, but if he was Taleon, he would have been over a century old. There was no way he could have survived that long within these halls.

If the possibility was that this somehow was Taleon who had survived all these years, logic would dictate that it could be someone even older through time that got stuck. Or perhaps it was someone else from Knossos who stumbled into the Labyrinth unintentionally, like the debris lining the halls, and had gotten lost in the walls.

Corin wasn’t sure which thought unsettled him more than the darkness.

They passed through a long corridor where the ceiling dipped far too low, forcing Corin to duck, and if it weren’t for the torch lighting the way, Corin surely would have knocked his head into the stone. The man—Taleon, possibly—didn’t slow. He did not seem to notice the change at all, slipping through the space as if his body remembered dimensions Corin could not see.

Corin cleared his throat. “Your name… are you Taleon?”

The Labyrinth seemed to groan from around them. A few pebbles shook loose from the walls, and a rather large one hit Corin in the middle of his forehead.

“Ah,” the old man chuckled, “it’s been a long time since I’ve heard my name. Too long. Maybe the word sounds different now.”

So it was him. His kin. His elder.

Corin blinked. “You’re… My name is–”

“Names, names. Aren’t they such a fickle thing?”

“Are they?”