She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and envisioned a tunnel through the rock wall that led out of the cavern. As she did that, she began to clap her hands against her thighs, pounding out a slow but regular rhythm. Then she began to sing.
Her grandmother had taught her the chant, the first words of the Siletz language that she had ever learned. It was a song to the spirits of the sea, praising the power and beauty of the waves, thanking the spirits for the bountiful gift of fish and oysters that sustained her people from one turning of the seasons to the next.
The thought of her people, the Siletz Nation, all but extinct now, nearly broke her out of the rhythm, but she focused on the words and let herself be carried along, like a leaf on the wind.
The chant was repetitive, but she gradually changed the words of the song, asking the spirits to open the door to the world beneath the sun. It was not meant as a literal prayer. She was, more than anything, hoping to get lucky and find the right words. Hopefully, the words for ‘open the magic door’ were the same in both the Mother Tongue and the language Fiona’s grandmother had taught her, but either her mental discipline was insufficient, or the words just weren’t right.
Nothing was happening.
She tried harder to visualize the rock opening up, and chanted the words again.
Without warning, something like a gust of wind pushed her forward, slamming her against the stone wall and silencing both the chant and the persistent beat she had been clapping. She felt a tightness in her inner ear, the result of a sudden change in air pressure that went from uncomfortable to agonizing in the space of a heartbeat. Before she could start to make sense of it, she was assaulted again, this time by an ear-splitting sound, like a jet engine tearing itself apart.
Is this something I did?
She turned to Pierce, who seemed equally bewildered by what was happening. The noise was coming from behind them, from out of the depths of the Labyrinth. In the dark mouth of the passage back across the bridge, she glimpsed a dull red glow, growing brighter. The maze had been transformed into a passage to Hell itself.
Then the ground heaved beneath her as the world came apart at the seams.
11
Pierce leapt forward and threw the Lion skin over Fiona as a shower of loose earth and rocks rained down. He could feel the impact of larger stones striking the thick pelt. It had weathered a storm of bullets, dissipating their ballistic velocity so effectively that he had barely noticed, but he doubted even the legendary lion hide could protect them against a Volkswagen-sized boulder. He looked out from beneath the skin’s protective shadow, searching for some refuge from the cave in. What he saw was not encouraging.
Fissures appeared in the ledge, zigzagging like lightning bolts, transforming the solid ground underfoot into a fractured and fragile web. The low persistent rumble of the collapse was briefly punctuated by a shriek of twisting metal. The bridge tore loose, along with a generous portion of the ledge, disappearing into the chasm below. Pierce barely had time to press himself and Fiona flat against the wall before the floor crumbled as well. That was when he saw an opening in the wall.
It had not been there a moment before. Either the tremor had broken through, or Fiona’s chant had worked. Regardless of the explanation, there was now a hole where there had been none. Maybe it led to salvation, maybe it led nowhere, but either option was preferable to staying put and waiting to die. He bundled Fiona into his arms and leapt into the gap.
There was no floor beneath them now, just a V-shaped crevice, widening with every passing second. Pierce felt his feet sink deeper like a wedge driven into a log. Each step was a struggle. His left foot caught and he pitched forward, Fiona’s weight pulling him off balance. She seemed to sense that he was falling and slipped free of his grasp, catching herself and steadying him. The shift was just enough to free his foot. He managed to stumble forward out of the spill, realizing only after a few steps that he was on flat ground.
“We made it!” Fiona said.
Pierce took a few more steps before Fiona’s words registered. His mouth and nose were full of grit, but the air was clearer, cooler. He staggered to a halt and lifted the Lion skin away from his eyes. Patches of scruffy grass grew across rocky terrain. He looked up, and saw stars in the black expanse overhead.
Behind them, the summit of Mount Psiloritis was outlined against the night sky, and much closer, there was a cliff face rent by a jagged crack. A plume of dust rose from the gap like a smoke signal. He wasn’t sure where they were, but given the serpentine nature of the Labyrinth, they were probably less than a mile from the entrance to the cave.
Fiona bent over beside him, hands on her knees as if on the verge of exhaustion, but laughing. While he shared her sense of relief at their escape, another emotion burned hotter.