Uncharted The Fourth Labyrinth - By Christopher Golden Page 0,104
an eyebrow. “Someone was listening. Let me back up, though. The temple at Knossos was built around 1700 B.C., the same era in which the Egyptians built Crocodile City. But what’s become clear here is that these cities were already under way or already built by the time the labyrinths were constructed. We’re putting our best guess at around 1550 B.C. Knossos came first. Daedalus tried to impress Minos—or Midas—in order to win his approval so that he could marry Ariadne. But one entire wall of the Chinese worship chamber on Thera is given over to telling the story, and it’s clear that Daedalus only met Ariadne when he went to the king with his plans to build the labyrinth.”
Henriksen grunted. “The labyrinth came first.”
Olivia nodded. “It did.”
“So what was Daedalus? The traveling inventor?” Drake asked. “He just wandered around the ancient world saying, ‘Hey, want me to build you something cool?’ ”
“He was an alchemist, of course,” Olivia said, her smile genuine for once.
“That’s crap,” Jada snorted.
Corelli hit a key on the laptop, and an image appeared on the monitor screen on the rear wall of the cabin, showing several paintings and a lot of ancient Chinese characters.
“The people who wrote this disagree,” Corelli said.
Drake stared at him. “Relax, junior. The grown-ups are talking.”
Corelli froze, his features practically turning to stone. For a moment, Drake thought he might lunge across the table or pull a weapon, but then Olivia put a firm hand on his arm and he relaxed, forcing a smile.
“Go on, then. Why don’t you tell me what it says?” Corelli said.
Drake shrugged. “It’s all chicken scratches to me,” he said, looking back at Olivia. “But I know a little bit about alchemists. You can’t make gold.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Henriksen said. He pointed to the screen. “They believed it could be done, and they believed Daedalus could do it.”
Olivia leaned back in her chair. “Exactly.”
“So Daedalus was a snake-oil salesman,” Jada said. “He didn’t fulfill a need; he invented it.”
Drake glanced down at Luka Hzujak’s journal, which had been in the center of the table since they’d entered. He picked it up and flipped to the first maze sketches he found, and then he looked up at Jada, ignoring the others.
“Your father had figured that part out, I think.”
“Why do you say that?” Olivia asked.
Drake ignored her, opened the book, and leaned over to show Jada a page where Luka had titled one maze drawing “The Labyrinth of Anygod.”
Jada’s eyes were bright as she lifted her gaze. “He knew.” She looked at Olivia and Corelli and then turned to Henriksen. “Daedalus went to the kings and high priests with the labyrinth design and claimed he could make them all as much gold as they could ever want. And he promised them that the labyrinth would be the perfect treasury, a place for them to store their own gold where it could never be stolen.”
“And then he stole it,” Drake said, grinning. “The lovable bastard.”
“You can’t know that,” Olivia sniffed.
“Sure we can,” Drake said. “It makes sense. Dionysus, Poseidon—Sobek? The crocodile god? Daedalus would dedicate his labyrinth to whichever god was best loved where he wanted to build. Real estate developers do basically the same thing every damn day.”
Olivia and Henriksen studied each other a moment, and then Henriksen nodded. Once again, Drake felt sure they were hiding something. Not all of this stuff about Daedalus, because he sensed their excitement about the revelations that Yablonski’s translations had turned up. But they had a piece of the puzzle they weren’t sharing.
“It could be,” Olivia said.
“What else did your supergeek turn up?” Drake asked.
Corelli hit another key. More of the flowers that had been a part of the design throughout the labyrinth under the fortress and the Minotaur.
“There are about a dozen flowers this could be,” Corelli said. “The research team thinks it’s most likely something called false hellebore or white hellebore. They’re poisonous.”
Drake had been wondering why he’d take an interest until Corelli mentioned poison, and then he saw the thug’s eyes light up. The information had stuck with him because he had a fascination with ways to hurt and kill people. Drake had met his kind before and didn’t like the unpredictable quality they brought to the table.
Olivia typed a couple of things. Images flashed by, ending with the large painting of the Chinese hell—Diyu—that they’d found in the chamber.
“Obviously the labyrinth on Thera was begun later than the other three,” Olivia said. “It may be that