opening that seemed to lead into a kind of living space decorated with crude wall paintings that looked as if they’d been made in blood. The stink of filth and death was powerful, and Drake knew it must be where the Minotaur slept.
“Let’s go,” Sully said. “Let’s finish this.”
In moments they had reached the end of the corridor. It couldn’t have been more than sixty feet in length, so short that the beams of the surviving mercenaries’ flashlights still provided some illumination back on the stairs. At the end of the corridor was a heavy wooden door with iron bands holding the thick planks together. They had encountered nothing like this in the other labyrinths, but Drake noticed the age of the wood and realized the door had been added within the past century or so, as if in this one place the hooded men had acknowledged the passage of time. It didn’t jibe with the Minotaur’s savagery, this tiny concession to civilization.
And there was light under the door.
“What the hell—?” Drake began.
Henriksen handed Sully his flashlight and tried the latch. The door opened, swinging inward, and Henriksen gave it a shove with his gun. Empty-handed, Drake felt more vulnerable than ever, but as the door swung wide, he forgot about protecting himself—forgot almost everything.
Consistent with Daedalus’s design, there were three steps down, but this room dwarfed any of the other worship chambers they had seen. Fires burned in braziers set at intervals that went deep into the cave. A pair of iron chandeliers hung from chains hooked to the ceiling, fat white candles burning brightly. But even all that light could illuminate only a portion of the shadowed cave, which seemed to be some bizarre combination of vault and sepulcher.
The treasure of Daedalus lined the walls and filled the dark recesses at the back of the cave. Stone jars and vases overflowed with gold coins struck in ancient Greece and Egypt, with gem-encrusted headpieces and golden necklaces and gleaming scepters. A solid gold crocodile three feet in length must have come from the Temple of Sobek. And in the middle of it all, on a pedestal, stood a golden statue of a Minotaur, its horns massive shards of ruby.
In a single glance, Drake drank in the forgotten majesty of the place and the enormity of the secret truths it confirmed. But a moment was all he allowed himself, for the menace in that cave was far more dominant than its promise.
In the middle of the floor were three stone tombs, massive things like sarcophagi but with a Chinese influence on the design and the engravings. Beyond the three tombs, a small cluster of people waited, watching the intruders with eyes full of fear and loathing. There were three hooded men—one guardian for each tomb, perhaps. A woman stood in their midst, tall and veiled, the firelight throwing shadows across what little of her face was visible. Her eyes seemed to flicker yellow like the Minotaur’s. Behind her was an altar above which were shelves arrayed with vases and chalices. Upon the altar were drying white flowers, fragments of bone, and a variety of small stone cups. One cup had spilled a coppery powder across the pale stone.
The Mistress of the Labyrinth. It could be no one else.
Yet Drake’s gaze was drawn past her, to the right of the three tombs, where a withered monster lay ailing on a wooden pallet, swaddled in thick woolen blankets. Its eyes were opalescent, blind and seeking, and its ugly, wrinkled, misshapen head was covered with scabs and the stains of age. Once it had been a Minotaur, but now it was only a pitiful, mindless old man on the verge of death.
“We should never have come here,” Jada whispered.
Drake understood. The scene wrenched at his heart so powerfully that for a moment he allowed himself to forget more than two thousand years of slavery, torture, and murder. And then the mistress of the fourth—and last—labyrinth pointed one trembling finger at them and barked an order with a sneer of such cruelty and disdain that he could feel the venom in her.
The hooded men attacked, leaping on top of the three tombs and launching themselves through the air. Henriksen fired, but the black-clothed protector was too fast, twisting and lunging. The two careened to the ground and fell, struggling, onto the floor. Henriksen’s gun skidded away across the stone.
Jada shot the one nearest her. The bullet struck his shoulder and spun him around, but