After wiping off the sweat and blood and verifying there are no more dog-sized bats attached to the ceiling, a quick survey reveals three exits from the room. Already, I can see that something has changed the labyrinth during the fight. After the T-Junction, we had come from a series of rough cave-like rooms. Each of the three exits goes out in a tall hallway. Each exit reveals the same type of passage. The walls are assembled from square stacked stones. These hallways were constructed - not carved out, not natural. The torches are on the walls as before, but uniform, much more refined looking, with steel shafts, straight and polished.

  “Which way?” Sadie asks.

  Which way is an excellent question. I would say we take the path of the greatest resistance, but these three paths all look identical. This labyrinth and its magical geometry is the work of some arcane madman or a genius. Probably both.

  “Stay here,” I say. “I’m going to go in further and see if there’s another passage or feature up each one.

  I jog up the passage. The walls are huge square stones, set without mortar, placed offset row to row with some impressive precision and stonemasonry. I doubt I could wedge a coin in the space between them. The torches gleam, gently tapered shafts held in steel hardware bolted to the walls. This way must lead to the nice neighborhood.

  I turn. I can’t see Sadie back at the entrance. That means I’ve gone far enough. I jog back.

  The reason I couldn’t see Sadie is that she’s not at the entrance. She’s staring up one of the other passageways across the chamber.

  “Something up that way?” I ask.

  She screams and turns. “What in Hades are you doing, Dom? You told me you were coming right back! Don’t sneak up on me!”

  “I only went in a couple of hundred steps,” I say. “Came right back. It was a straight hall the whole way. Did you hear something up this passage instead?”

  She glances up the passage and back at me. “Dom. This is the passage you went up. I haven’t moved. You came from somewhere else.”

  I look up the passage. I went that way. And came out another way. “Magic,” I sigh.

  This is the point where I have to stop trying to think about it, stop trying to wrap my brain around it, because I’m fairly sure if I examine this too closely, I will go insane.

  “We have to go up the hall and not turn back to this room,” I decide.

  She nods, content with the non-explanation.

  We head down the hall, Baco bringing up the rear. He smells too bad for us to be downwind, so he takes the back.

  We must be over 200 paces out when the extremely high-ceilinged hall opens up into a cavernous chamber unlike anything we have come across.

  This place is big enough to hold a football field, if not two. The walls have huge, inset pillars, a classic grooved design like the Parthenon. I’ll never know what grade Hassan got for that project. The ceiling has to be at least fifty feet up. There are torches attached to each pillar, providing a feeble and uneven light. There are enough torches to provide fairly decent lighting. In my mind, I picture myself taking one and a trap door opening beneath me to a pool full of crocodiles. I’ll leave them until we really need the light.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  The floor is made of giant flagstones of marble, cut and fit with precision. This is not the damp maze or the torchlit hallways. This is something else. Civilized. Sadie’s hooves clop loudly on the hard floor, a long reverberation after each step.

  Long benches or half walls ring the room, as if it could be a meeting place or arena. Each bench is a solid slab of what might be patterned white marble run through with streaks of gray, waist high. If they aren’t part of the floor they’re immovable, because they would weigh tons each. The cooling air moves gently around us, probably pushed by some pressure changes from being underground. If I had a cape, it would sway nicely. Now I have to find a cape.

  “Dom,” she whispers, a smart move considering the repeating echoes. “I don’t like this.”

  I nod. She’s right. There’s something disturbing about being in such a huge, arena-sized space after hours of winding hallways with a few chambers. The hallways led us here. There could have been no other place to go.

  Why? Did the labyrinth need us to come this way? Did the system decide? Is this a trap and there actually were other ways out of the bat cave and I haven’t yet figured out some puzzle?

  “Whoso enters?”

  The voice is a woman, commanding and clear. It reverberates off the walls and I can’t tell where the starting source was. I freeze. I realize my options are limited. Run, surrender, or—

  I draw the stake from my belt, extend it to a spear and hold it in a ready position diagonally across my body.

  “You threaten me?” the voice echoes through the cavern, clearly angered. I get the impression she’s older than me by her tone. “You invade my home and then you threaten me?”

  “Apologies,” I call out. “We had no other choice. Our paths all led here.”

  “Had no choice? Like the sun that rises, the rain that falls?”

  I peer to the bench blocks around the room, searching. “I guess?”

  “Then you understand, as the rock is thrown, it must fall. It has no choice.”

  “Exactly,” I say, moving only my eyes, scanning the giant arena. I see her half the arena away, between the walls and the benches, she’s slowly making her way toward us.

  “One thirty,” I whisper to Sadie, indicating she’s slightly to our right.

  “I think it’s later,” she says.

  I tried to use military clock positioning with someone who probably only uses sundials. I twist at my waist, pointing to the woman with my spear tip so Sadie sees her. Of course, the element of surprise is gone. Sorry, Sun Tzu.

  There’s a low laugh, but it’s not like she’s amused by anything. “And now, you threaten me.”

  “We’re passing by,” I call. I stand my spear up, butt to the floor, almost at attention. I get it. We wandered into her house and I’m pointing a spear at her. I can see how that might be a problem. “We need to get through.”

  She gets closer, staying by the outer wall on the other side of the benches. It’s a lithe woman in a white toga, not so different from Sadie’s. She has long black hair, not quite straight, going down past her shoulders. She slinks when she moves, the poise of a runway model and a pale face with a classically sharp nose and chin. Not my type, but not ugly. She stops, at the edge of where I’m comfortable throwing my javelin.

  “No choisss,” she says, slow enough that the word practically ends in a hiss.

  “We really didn’t,” I say, judging the distance.

  “Oh,” she says, followed by the humorless laugh again. “I didn’t mean you. I mean you understand that I have no choice.”

  She snaps her fingers. I had been so fixated on concentrating on her position that I didn’t see the three Sirens that drop from the ceiling by the other side of the arena. I can immediately tell they are her bondlings. Not that I see a chain connecting them or anything, but I can tell.

  “Dom, we have to get out of here,” Sadie insists, taking a step back. “We can look for another passage. Maybe if we go back, it’s a different place again.”

  “Lady,” I say, readying the spear, trying to figure if she’s a threat or if only the Sirens are.

  “Dom, please,” Sadie says.

  The woman laughs, this time with glee. “No choisss!” slides out from behind the bench, revealing the extended snake tail that is the lower half of her body, and draws a golden curved sword from over her shoulder.