If this is your first time reading with us, go to the archives at right, click the second arrow and the title Chapter One will drop down. Double click on that chapter and read it first, then proceed with the remainder of the book in order by clicking down the arrows.
The Labyrinth
© Jeannie St. John Taylor
The Labyrinth
“For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; he is to be feared above all gods.
For all the gods of the people are worthless idols, but the LORD made the heavens.” Psalm 96: 4, 5
The shoulder-width passage into the interior of the cave sloped steadily downward. Atarah, exhausted and cradling the baby in the sling, moved like a sleepwalker a short distance ahead of the slave. She held the torch aloft, illuminating the passage. Shua carried leftovers from the stash near the mouth of the cave in a leather goat-hide pouch. Already they’d finished most of the water and were growing increasingly thirsty. Each time they came to an intersecting tunnel they stopped to listen and smell for water, but after hours of walking they’d found nothing.
Atarah traced the light along the walls and remained alert for any signs scratched into the rock. She held onto the hope that a long-ago traveler might have incised directions to an exit into one of the walls, but she didn’t know what she searched for and she found nothing. When a stone jutted up in the middle of the path, she aimed the light at it to keep Shua from stumbling.
Thirst got harder and harder to ignore. Every time the baby started to twist and shriek in her arms, she allowed him to teethe on the square of wine-soaked knotted fabric she’d torn from the sling. She hated to sedate him, but keeping him safe and alive exceeded every other concern.
Shadows dogged their way, leaping and dancing on the walls beside them like ferocious beasts. Without an outside light source, the inky blackness ahead and behind swirled with nameless terrors. Was exhaustion magnifying Atarah’s fears or did real dangers lurk in the darkness?
The child sleeping against her bosom felt heavier by the moment. Now and then she paused to arch her back, hands on her waist, while she rolled her aching neck and shoulders. The temporary relief only managed to call Atarah’s attention to painful blisters on her feet and make her resentful of Shua whose feet seemed uninjured.
“Don’t your feet hurt?” Atarah asked over her shoulder after one such rest.
Before Shua could answer a sudden gust of cold wind whooshed past Atarah’s face from a natural tube in the rock. With it came the acrid odor of ash.
“Air from outside.” Atarah shivered and fought back a coughing spell. “At least we won’t suffocate.” Atarah bent to lift the strap of her sandal from a sore spot and every muscle complained. What she wouldn’t give for one sip of water.
“Let’s stop and rest,” Shua suggested.
“Can’t.” Atarah swept the light in a circle so Shua could see that the narrow passage overhead still sloped downward. “We have to keep going.”
“We need to rest.” Now the slave sounded whiney.
“We have to find water.” Atarah trudged on without pausing, numb with exhaustion. She chided herself for answering to a slave.
“You have no idea where you’re going,” Shua said.
At the slave’s uncharacteristic criticism, irritation tightened Atarah’s chest, making breathing more difficult. She bent forward and allowed herself to cough for a few moments before she started walking again. In the past Shua would have never spoken out against her. And in the past Atarah would have punished her if she did. But Atarah could sense things changing. She needed the slave in a whole different way now. Gadreel’s survival might depend on the two woman working together.
Shua, accustomed to grueling work, still seemed able to function normally. Atarah wouldn’t be able to go much longer without collapsing. What would she do if the slave rebelled? She decided not to reprimand her.
“Need me to carry the baby?” Shua asked.
“I’m fine.” Atarah’s heart thumped in her ears and she leaned against the wall coughing again, working up something from deep in her lungs. She could feel cold air on her bare toes. She closed her eyes, taking a moment to summon memories of the Dream. She needed to experience the Light anew. To relive the comfort the Dream offered. But she was almost too exhausted to pull up the memory.
What had the Light said? Fear not! Was there actually a god behind the Dream, helping her? She couldn’t be sure, but suddenly she was certain of one thing: She could do this. With the Light’s help, she would be victorious over whatever lay ahead.
Holding her torch in the direction of the air blowing across her feet she saw another tube in the opposite wall, slightly larger than the first and close to the floor. “I don’t smell so much ash in the air now. I wonder what that means?”
“I think we’re on the far side of the mountain,” Shua said.
“Maybe the ash didn’t cross the mountain?”
“It’s possible. The tunnels zigzag. We could have walked back and forth across the length of the city a hundred times by now.”
Atarah forced herself to start walking. “If I don’t get moving I won’t be able to.”
An hour later, the passage dropped to chest height and Atarah had to bend over to navigate the cramped space. Scratched into the walls on either side of her, stick figures danced along toward a black hole at the end of the passage. Mixed emotions of apprehension and hope trembled through Atarah. She paused at the hole, suddenly afraid to continue.
“Look at that!” she whispered to Shua. “What do you think is on the other side?”
The slave came up beside her, peering through the dim light toward the hole. “Could be dangerous. This place could be booby trapped.”
“Have to find out sometime.” Atarah crept forward then stopped again. “You take Gadreel. Just in case. If something happens to me . . . ” Her voice trailed off mid-sentence. She had no idea what to tell Shua to do should anything happen to her.
Atarah took a deep breath and thrust her torch into the hole. It opened into a chamber larger than the Room of Candles in Atarah’s home. The smooth level floor of quarried stone was flanked by columns carved from natural rock that stretched toward a high ceiling. At the far end of the room, a coffin-like stone box rested in front of the cave wall. Nearby, a fire pit stacked with wood waited for the touch of a flame. Located three cubits from the fire-pit a spring bubbled from a small round hand-hewn pool and flowed into a trench before tumbling over rocks and exiting through the wall.
“Water!” Atarah grabbed Gadreel from Shua and the two women ran toward the spring laughing. After they drank their fill, Atarah turned in a circle, gazing around and above her where arches connected the columns. “How . . . ? What?” She couldn’t see into the dark recesses beyond the columns.
“I found more torches!” Shua called from one of the columns. “Piled on the floor over here. This is amazing! ”
Atarah touched her flame to one of the newly-discovered torches then wedged hers into a crevice. “There’s a seal by the entrance. We need to close off the hole so Dagaar can’t get in.” The slave joined her and they drove against the stone with every bit of their remaining strength, much as they’d done when they opened the triangle exit through the city wall. The rock slid down the channel cut for it and slammed into place, sealing off the exit. Atarah collapsed onto the floor breathing hard. Wonderfully exhausted.
Sweat drenched Shua’s face and hair, but she was smiling.
“You think Dagaar can dislodge the stone?” Atarah asked between rasping breaths.
“Can’t. Seals can only be moved from one side. We’re safe.” Shua ambled into the room with a radiant smile, gaping at the architecture reverently. “It’s really true!” Her voice swelled with awe, her teeth gleamed white in the light. “It’s really here!”
“What’s here?” Atarah asked. Earlier, Shua had only hinted at what she expected to find in the underground.
“All this.” The slave gestured around. “I wanted to believe we’d find what they said because it was our only chance to live. But I didn’t know for sure.” Shua’s eyes danced in the flickering light. “I only knew about the escape – the ledge and the wall. I’d heard rumors about everything else and prayed they were accurate, but I was really scared.” She glanced at Atarah apologetically. “I expected we’d die down here.”
Her voice quieted to an awed whisper. “But the gods saved us. Praise the gods! I wonder if all the rest of it is true?”
“If the rest of what is true? What else do you know about this place.”
“Nothing, really.”
By the time Atarah fed Gadreel the last of the cheese, Shua had fallen asleep in a sitting position with an unlit torch across her knees. Several other torches burned from niches chipped into the columns.
Atarah marveled at the reversal of roles – the slave should be the one awake and working. On the other hand, Atarah had insisted she preferred to care for Gadreel herself, and she did. She cherished every moment with the boy.
Besides, anxiety deep inside her constantly worried over his safety.
So Atarah had instructed the slave to check out the room and Shua obeyed without objection. As always. The slave lit one of the torches piled beside a column and moved to explore the perimeter. Within a few moments she called out that she’d located three more passages leading away from the chamber, then returned to relax near Atarah.
Next thing Atarah knew she heard snoring. The sound brought a smile to Atarah’s lips. Maybe Shua didn’t have as much energy left as Atarah had supposed.
With every movement slowed by drowsiness, Atarah settled the baby on the emptied goat pouch between the fire pit and the stone coffin-shaped box. The fur inside the pouch would furnish Gadreel with a comfortable bed for the night and she was so tired she could easily sleep on the hard floor. She took hold of the slave’s shoulders and gently lowered her to the ground. Shua didn’t flutter an eyelid.
After arranging herself beside the baby, Atarah removed the rough brown outer garb Mother had given her earlier and spread the cover over the two of them for warmth.
She had no idea how long she slept, but when she opened her eyes a fire crackled in the pit and the slave sat by the spring with Gadreel on her lap, wiping his face. Atarah lay still, taking in her surroundings. The lid of the stone box stood askew. It must have made a deafening scraping noise when Shua moved it, but Atarah hadn’t heard a thing.
Light from torches flickered around the room, glinting off the burbling water and bouncing from column to column. Floral fragrance from an unidentified source mingled with the sooty smell of fire and the murmur of water. The temperature, comfortable the night before, felt downright cozy this morning.
Or was it morning? Who could tell the time of day or night without outside light? Of course Atarah didn’t really care what time of day or night it was as long as Gadreel remained safe.
She sighed with contentment, happiness enfolding her like a cloud. Gadreel belonged to her now. Nympha had given up any claim to him when she chose to offer him for sacrifice and Atarah felt no guilt for taking him . . . for rescuing him. None.
Together she and the slave would find a safe place to settle -- maybe in the land of Shua’s birth. They’d both marry handsome men who loved them desperately and Atarah would raise Gadreel as her own. No one in the distant land would ever guess the truth, just as Mother planned.
Mother.
Atarah’s eyes misted over, but she shook off the emotion and focused on her surroundings. With the additional light from the fire, she could see more detail. Someone had decorated the columns in the same style as the ones at the front of the temple of Gug. Who had constructed this room and why? On the trek here Atarah had assumed the passages had been hollowed by a volcanic eruption in eons past. Now she wondered. In many places, the walls bore chisel marks. And of course no natural force had formed the columns. What purpose did this place serve?
Straining against sore muscles, Atarah moaned and pushed up to onto her elbows. “You’re awake!” Shua smiled.
“What is this place?” At the sound of Atarah’s voice, Gadreel broke free of the slave and crawled to his aunt.
“This is a temple.”
Atarah tried to lean forward to welcome the toddler properly, but her body wouldn’t respond quickly enough and he fell into her midsection, giggling. She kissed him from head to toe, pausing to puff a loud raspberry onto his tummy.
“He smells clean!”
“Spring water and soap. Plus, I found scented oil.”
“Soap? Oil? How?”
“I told you, this is a temple.”
With a sickening feeling, Atarah realized she’d avoided the temple in the city for years and now she was trapped in a temple below ground. “I don’t understand. Who built this?” Built might not be the appropriate word since someone had hewn it from solid rock.
“Slave legend says a volcano formed the original tubes, then over the years slaves chiseled out endless additional tunnels. I never knew if it was true. There’s supposed to be a whole complex down here.” Shua’s face shone with wonder.
She angled her head toward the stone box. “I found everything we’ll need in there. We can survive for weeks.” She approached Atarah with a brown pottery bowl filled with mint-scented hot liquid. “Tea.”
“Tea!?” For the first time Atarah noticed a metal pan boiling by the fire. She held the steaming cup with both hands, enjoying the aroma. “Mmmmm.”
“Look at this.” With twinkling eyes the slave handed Atarah a strip of dried lamb with fruit and nuts pounded into it. “I already fed Gadreel .”
“Luxury!” Atarah savored the chewy jerked meat which tasted better than the melons and roasted pheasant she feasted on daily back home. She carefully sipped the tea. “Delicious.”
Not until the food settled and strength began to flow through her did the illogic of the whole situation strike Atarah. Alarm mingled with suspicion and curiosity. “Shua, how did all this get here?”
“Slaves.” Shua motioned Atarah to follow her to the stone box. “For the gods.” A loud scraping sounded as the slave shoved the lid open further. “Look!” She pointed at rows of pottery jars sealed with wax. Lifting one, she showed Atarah words that had been pressed into wet clay before the pot was fired. “The outside of each pot tells what’s inside. This one says ‘olives.’”
She picked up jar after jar, handing them to Atarah who read them before gingerly setting them on the floor. “Sweetened fruit paste, salt, smoked meat, nuts, corn, wheat, rice. We could survive for months!”
“Wait till you see this!” The slave hurried to one set of columns and her muffled voice floated out from behind the first one. “I found pans for cooking, but I’ve only explored a little bit so far.” She poked out her head waving a long stick with a lump on one end. “Hundreds of torches. Praise the gods for providing!” More banging came from further down the row of columns. “There are storage pits all along here.”
With the slave’s exclamations of gratitude, questions gnawed at Atarah. Were the gods responsible for their good fortune? Were the gods good and not bad? Had her father had been right all along? Had she been wrong? Maybe she could she have avoided all this pain by simply going to the temple as requested.
Balancing the baby on her hip, she absently picked up a lighted torch and meandered down the long row of columns. She needed to think. She squared her shoulders and shook her head to dispel convoluted thoughts. No, it had not been wrong to rescue her precious Gadreel. The gods had wrongly commanded his death.
“Don’t!” Shua warned, but it was too late.
Directly ahead, from an alcove hollowed in the cave wall, an enormous pile of human skulls stared out at Atarah. She smelled musty decay. Horrified, she stumbled backward nearly dropping the baby, a strangled cry caught in her throat.
Shua hurried to guide Atarah back into the central portion of the room. “I’m so sorry.”
“Human sacrifices?” Atarah trembled visibly.
“Probably.”
Against her will, Atarah’s gaze slid to the stone coffin. “The rust-colored stain on the coffin . . . human blood?”
The slave’s silence answered for her, helping Atarah understand beyond any doubt that she had not been mistaken about the evil of temple worship.
“We have to get out of here.” Atarah strode to the side of the room. “Where are the passages you found last night? Can you find the way out?”
“I know how to get out of this room, but that’s all. If all the legends are true, miles of paths crisscross this place.”
“Miles?” Why hadn’t it registered in her brain when Shua told her that earlier? Atarah had probably closed her mind to the facts because she hadn’t wanted to hear them. “We could stay lost down here for years.”
Shua averted her eyes. “I told you, there’s supposed to be a whole complex down here. Passages. Temples. Living quarters.”
“People live down here?” Apprehension dampened Atarah’s palms.
“I don’t think so. Escaped slaves use it for temporary hiding.”
“That’s why the food?”
“Yes . . . and for worship, of course.” Shua’s eyes locked on the ground. “Mostly for worship.”
“Do you have any idea how to get out?”
“If we keep following the tunnels down one of them is supposed to come out somewhere at the base of the mountain.”
“One of them?” Suspicion wound like a snake around Atarah’s mind. “What about the other tunnels? I saw some smaller ones that angled up.”
“They say some just stop.” The slave adjusted her clothing, still avoiding eye contact. “But some lead up to secret escapes from houses.”
Heat rose into Atarah’s face, but she forced herself to speak calmly. “Is there an escape somewhere in my home?”
“I don’t know of one.”
“Does Dagaar?”
Shua lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “It’s all very secret.”
“But every single tunnel affords a potential way for him to locate us.” Atarah was angry, but at whom? Shua had done her best. She’d gotten the baby and Atarah to relative safety the only way she knew how.
“We’re safe down here.” Shua rushed her words in an obvious attempt to appease her mistress. “I know a slave who fled over the ledge the way we came. She never returned and I know she made it out.”
“How do you know your friend isn’t part of that pile of bones over there?” Atarah nodded toward the column that blocked her view of the skulls. It was a cruel thing to say, but right now she had other things to worry about. “You risked our lives by not sharing information soon enough.”
The slave’s expression froze into the placid mask typical of abused slaves, a look Atarah had never seen on her slave before. “You were asleep. Drugged. There was nothing else for us to do.”
Us. That’s right. Mother had helped formulate the plan.
And Shua had done her best, was still doing her best. She was, after all, a slave and unaccustomed to a take-charge role. Atarah rocked the baby, who was again crying, back and forth, her mind spinning around the problem in time to the blood swishing in her temples. She forced herself to speak gently. “I guess we couldn’t have just pranced out the city gate in full view of everyone.” Almost an apology.
“Exactly.” Shua’s voice was flat.
A fat mouse scurried across the floor close to her feet. Gadreel spotted the furry creature and giggled.
Atarah set him down so the mouse could entertain him while she carefully retraced the last few hours in her mind. She remembered the slave’s fear of heights and the food and water they’d found inside the cave mouth. Shua hated the ledge as much as Atarah, and yet the slave had traveled its distance at least once to stash supplies.
“Well, it won’t help to fret,” Atarah said, suddenly tired. “We need to stay alert while we rest and eat.” If they attempted to leave now they could wander the underground passages endlessly. Now was time to relax and tend to wounds. But mostly, Atarah needed time to think what to do next.
A second mouse joined the first and the baby reached out chubby hands, laughing. Atarah smiled at his innocent joy. “We can spare a few crumbs to feed Gadreel’s pets,” she told her slave as she crumbled the last bit of bread onto the floor. Another rodent scuttled over to enjoy the treat with the first two. Gadreel giggled with delight.
“Bring the soap.” Atarah sat by the spring and submerged her feet while she watched the baby. “And oil.” She leaned back on her elbows, allowing the icy water to flow over her feet, numbing her blisters. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the slave wipe a tear. Atarah closed her eyes and slowed her breathing. She needed to stop blaming the slave.
After a few minutes, Atarah swallowed her pride enough to speak. “You saved our lives.” It was as close to an apology as Shua would ever get from her. “From now on, we’ll take turns sleeping so one of us can always be on guard for intruders.” Staying agitated would lead to bad decisions. Atarah needed to keep her wits about her.
“Come here, sweetie.” Atarah patted the floor beside her and beckoned Gadreel.
When he crawled over, one of the mice followed. She pulled the happy baby onto her lap. The mouse stayed, apparently unafraid, so she opened her palm. What could it hurt for Gadreel to have a little companion? “Come here, little mouse.”
The mouse crawled into her hand. But instead of the soft, cuddly creature she expected, the mouse felt hard. Squirmy. “Ick!’ She screamed and tossed the nasty creature.
She made eye contact with the slave. After a long silence, they burst out laughing at the same time.
“Horrid thing.” Atarah shuddered, still laughing.
“Shoo. Shoo.” Shua rushed at the mice, shooing them with the backs of her hands. They scattered and disappeared into the darkness. She ambled over looking reflective and sat down by her mistress. “Remember how much snakes like him, too. Why do you suppose all those creatures are attracted to Gadreel?”
“Weird, isn’t it? Think he has a special gift? Could it have something to do with his heritage?” Atarah shivered again. No, she wouldn’t think negative thoughts. She dismissed worry from her mind as she nuzzled the baby’s curls and kissed his rosy cheeks. How strange that she could feel happier in this cursed place than she’d felt in her entire life above ground.
An hour later, Atarah had washed her own cuts and her body and face shone with fragrant oil. It felt good. The aroma of Shua’s corn cakes sizzling over the fire added to Atarah’s contentment. Though she didn’t mention it to the slave, the seed of a realization that she must learn to care for herself and the baby had sprouted in Atarah.
She had just requested Shua show her how to grind corn with a mortar and pestle when she heard the voices.
