The Immortal Game

by Talia Rothschild

  It glowed with writing, and Kostas read aloud, “‘The Craftsman’s game calls from the depths.’”

  Game. The Fates must have had a hand in Kostas ending up on this journey. Galene couldn’t think of anyone better than the God of Games to be their companion for the next task. He looked up at them, a smile pulling on his face. “Daedalus. He was named the Craftsman.”

  She nodded. Glimmers of understanding and recollection showed on the others’ faces.

  “Is that all?” Demitri asked. “It doesn’t say anything about where to go.”

  “It says ‘the depths,’” Braxtus corrected.

  “Very helpful.”

  “We must just keep heading the way we are,” Galene said. “We are probably supposed to hold the course until something clearly changes.”

  “Aren’t we already in the depths?” Iyana glanced around her.

  “The sea will naturally start to get deeper,” Galene explained, “but if I remember correctly, there’s a trench somewhere at the bottom of the Aegean Sea. I’d bet that’s where we’re going to end up.” She caught the look of horror that Braxtus and Iyana exchanged.

  Demitri cracked his neck. “Goodie. Well, now that we have that to look forward to, shall we get some sleep?”

  * * *

  AS THEY ROSE to the watery light of morning, Galene drew up a map in her head. If it was correct, they should reach the trench that evening. With that in mind, the day was filled with a tense apprehension.

  Braxtus looked miserable—he clearly hadn’t slept well. Iyana didn’t look much better, but she and Demitri stayed close together, talking softly.

  Kostas kicked his sea horse over to hers.

  “Are you feeling better?” he asked.

  She nodded. This morning she had woken feeling almost completely back to normal, the aches in her joints mild. “Iyana told me you practically snatched me out of Charybdis’s jaws. Thank you.”

  A smile tugged at his mouth. “You saved me first.”

  She’d failed to save him first, too, when he was ripped away from her by the maelstrom, but she didn’t mention that. They rode beside each other in silence. She noticed his attention flickering to Braxtus, riding alone. His face was haggard, and he kept his gaze fixed on his hands, fisted in his horse’s mane.

  “How long have you and Braxtus been friends?” She kept her voice soft.

  “Several years,” he replied. “He’s one of the best gods I know.”

  Galene smiled. “Iyana had endless fun when she spent time with him. She was always happy. I always thought the two of them … I wish, really—” She shook her head, cutting herself off. “It says a lot about you that you two are so close.”

  “Thank you, Galene. I think it says a lot about Iyana that she’s such good friends with you. Getting to know you has made me feel rather foolish about not spending time with you before.”

  The warmth within her grew and she tried not to blush. She hadn’t interacted this extensively with many gods. She thought a few were handsome, but when was the last time she’d felt something for someone? Had she ever? “I believe you kept your circle quite small.” She made a face. “And my own has shrunk in recent years.”

  He looked around at the others. “They’re getting a little bigger, though.”

  “We’re a good team.” She nodded. “If I had come alone…” She trailed off, imagining how far she would have gotten—probably not even past the sirens.

  “The Fates intended this.”

  “Do you really think we’ll make it? These trials have almost killed us twice already, and Anyss is sure to be close on our tail.”

  He didn’t do her the dishonor of lying to bolster her confidence. Instead, he told her, “We’re moving as fast as we can. The sea horses give us an advantage.”

  Galene wasn’t so sure. That depended on how strong Anyss was. Galene didn’t want to underestimate her. “Anyss can manipulate water to her will … What if we have to face her at some point?”

  “Then we’ll win, together.” His eyes shone like a starlit midnight, and her heart fluttered. “Look how much we’ve already accomplished, how much you’ve already accomplished. Don’t forget that. We won’t get anywhere if we let fear and doubt corrupt us.”

  “Should we send Braxtus back, then?” Demitri’s voice cut through the water.

  “Do you have something you want to say?” Braxtus ground out, turning to look at him.

  “You’ve expressed nothing but misery at being down here.” Demitri eyed him coolly, despite Iyana’s pleading expression. “And if we hadn’t stayed on the surface, then we wouldn’t have been in so much danger from the whirlpool in the first place. We’d probably be much farther ahead and able to worry less about Anyss.”

  Galene opened her mouth to defend him, but Kostas rounded on Demitri first.

  “The only help you’ve been, Demitri, is killing those sirens, and we could have done that without you.”

  Galene debated the truth of that statement, but wasn’t about to refute it. Demitri shrugged, gave Braxtus a smirk, then turned away. Galene shared an uncomfortable glance with Iyana, then she sighed and tried to turn her thoughts elsewhere, staring back into the shifting waters.

  21

  KOSTAS

  A great, stretching pit marred the seafloor. The sides of the trench cut down into swallowing darkness and stretched out so far Kostas couldn’t see where it ended. When they had found it the evening before, he thought that might be because of the fading light, but now, in the brighter morning waters, he marveled at the sheer size of the trench.

  “Tartarus itself could be down there.” There was a quaver in Iyana’s voice.

  Galene practically glared into the blackness, her emotions tense and focused. Kostas knew she was attempting to scout it out with her gift. “I don’t sense anything out of the ordinary. But something tells me we’re in the right place.”

  “How are we going to find a game in that darkness?” Iyana questioned. “How would we even play?”

  “Or win?” Demitri muttered.

  “We will.” Galene smiled at Kostas, all confidence and courage. He paused, touched and grateful for it—their group needed it, that little spark. Braxtus’s and Iyana’s auras were nearly black with fear, Demitri’s mere shades lighter. Kostas wasn’t exactly jumping at the idea of diving in there, himself, but he took a breath.

  “What are we waiting for?” Kostas asked. With the feeling of stepping from the roof of a tall building, Kostas urged his horse forward … and down. His stomach rose. Somewhere behind him Braxtus let out a groan and someone else sucked in a breath.

  Galene urged her mount beside his, brown waves of hair rippling out behind her.

  “You’re not scared,” he stated.

  She eyed him. “I’m not exactly excited, but … I can’t help feeling pretty good after what I just accomplished.” Despite the fading light, he could see her blush. He smiled. He hadn’t needed to see it to know how she felt, but it was sweet all the same.

  “You don’t need to be so modest. Like I said yesterday, you should be proud.”

  She flashed a grin. “Along with that, I’ve never been underwater this long before. It feels so right, like it’s giving me life, energy. I don’t really know how to explain it. I’ve never been able to test my gift this much.” The joy in her aura lit his heart and soothed his worries. “I know terrible things have happened and still will, but … I’m going to try to enjoy every moment of this”—she threw out her arms—“that I can.”

  He shook his head, amazed. “You are quite the character, Galene.”

  Yellow, pink, turquoise, and rose gold made her aura a bright rainbow. Kostas let her emotions sink into him, pushing out the rest of his lingering fear as they descended into darkness. He focused on that blushing gold and pondered what his own emotions reflected. If he had an aura, what would it be showing right now? He hid a smile at the thought that it might just mirror her own.

  * * *


  IT WASN’T LONG before the dusky, deep seawater faded into midnight shadow. The dimming light stifled most conversation, and the figures of Galene and the others were barely visible, their auras the main thing keeping Kostas oriented to their whereabouts. Glowing colors of their varying emotions faintly illuminated them, from Demitri’s tension to Braxtus’s panic. Galene pushed confidently downward, the other sea horses following.

  “It got dark pretty fast,” Iyana said. The tremble in her voice hadn’t improved since the beginning of their descent.

  “We’re diving fast,” Kostas said. “Can you feel the pressure building as well?” No one answered. A human probably would have been crushed by now. He glanced at Braxtus, making out his clenched jaw. Everyone’s auras were dark—even Galene’s grew cautious now. After a moment longer, Kostas felt his sea horse slow. “What is it?”

  “A wall,” Galene replied. “I can sense it up ahead.”

  They pushed on, forward now instead of down. His sea horse whickered nervously as they moved into a suffocating darkness that Kostas had a feeling wouldn’t have eased even on the brightest of days. Goose bumps ran down his arms. He could sense the yawning emptiness around them, but still feared what he might feel if he reached out his hand.

  “Something unnatural is here,” Galene breathed. “I don’t think the sea horses can stay with us anymore.”

  Kostas heard her slide off her mount and reluctantly did the same.

  “Thank you,” Galene murmured, “and goodbye.”

  There was a swift current as the sea horses abandoned them. Kostas took in a deep breath, then kicked gently forward to Galene’s side, reaching out until his fingers met stone. From their auras of curiosity and anxiety, he saw the others reach the wall, then start feeling around.

  “So if this is it, what do we do?” Demitri asked, his voice floating to him from the right.

  Kostas’s thoughts started moving. “Spread out,” he ordered. “‘The Craftsman’s game.’ Try to feel for something matching that part of the riddle—grooves of a game board, or a doorway or tunnel.”

  “But this thing could be huge—” Demitri started.

  “If you have any better ideas, let us know.”

  Demitri clicked his tongue, but then moved away, feeling the wall with the others. Kostas went to work.

  He traced his fingers along the wall, moving back and forth and up, cursing the darkness. The search went on, done in complete silence, Kostas mindlessly keeping track of where everyone had wandered to when …

  His fingers brushed over a deep, deliberate crevice in the wall. His heart leapt, and he followed it. It ran a few feet horizontally before sharply cutting up and back in on itself, then back down to rejoin the first line, making a clear triangle.

  “I found something!” he called. “Up here, come on!” Soon they were all clustered around, feeling the engraving.

  “It’s the letter delta,” Iyana said as she moved away.

  “Daedalus’s symbol.” Kostas nodded even though she couldn’t see him.

  “Wait—is this a labyrinth?” Demitri asked. “He’s the man who made the Labyrinth for the Minotaur, right?”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Kostas replied.

  “But how do we get in?” Iyana asked.

  Kostas thought, then propelled himself forward and threw his shoulder into the triangle, gripping the grooves in the wall to anchor himself. A low, quiet grind started, then faded.

  “A little help?” he asked. The others moved around him, clinging to the wall and pushing at the triangle in any way they could. He felt the water shift, Galene using her power to aid them. The grinding started up again, this time louder. Rocks scraped over each other. Kostas grunted as his fingers slipped, but regained his grip and kept pushing.

  Light seared through cracks. Silhouettes of the others backed away from the blue-white glow of the delta. It grew brighter as the cracks widened. More appeared, outlining a huge square around the triangle, big enough to be the door to Zeus’s throne room.

  Kostas felt himself getting giddy. I get to experience the work of the Craftsman firsthand. To test myself against it.

  Scrawling words lit up against the stone inside the triangle.

  The only way out is the least likely route.

  Kostas committed the words to memory. The grinding noise didn’t cease as the entire section of the wall inched backward, then slowly slid left, behind the rock wall.

  A long, square tunnel stretched before them. The walls were silver rock emanating a soft glow: Like an Olympian, it was a light source in and of itself.

  Even through the majesty of Daedalus’s creation, the hall seemed to sneer at them, challenging and cold. Kostas tore his eyes from it and looked to his friends. The light of the walls reflected in their eyes as they each looked to him.

  He checked his quiver strap, took a breath, and crossed over the threshold. The others followed.

  The wall slid out and closed itself again, sealing them inside.

  22

  IYANA

  The unyielding chill grew stiffer. Every muscle in Iyana’s body tensed, and stress lined everyone’s faces. Galene closed her eyes.

  “What do you feel?” Iyana asked.

  “All the currents have stopped flowing. I suppose it’s to be expected in a labyrinth, but I thought … well, I thought I’d feel a little bit, enough to guess where the exit is.”

  Kostas nodded. “That would have been easier, faster, but”—he gave them a smile—“I’m God of Games, remember? All we need to do is figure out the rules of this place. You saw the next line. ‘The only way out is the least likely route.’”

  “There’s only one way to go right now.” Demitri gestured at the huge tunnel that seemed to stretch on endlessly before them.

  Kostas nodded. “We can’t waste any time.” He kicked forward, and the others followed his lead, Demitri taking Iyana’s hand.

  It took more time than Iyana would have thought, but they reached the first fork, branching off to their left and right. They stopped, staring down both shafts.

  The shaft to the right looked identical to the one they had just traveled down. The shaft to the left seemed to grow smaller, and the light from the walls was less bright. Everyone glanced at each other. There was no discussion. They chose left.

  Iyana kicked through the water with the others, searching for miniscule differences in the passageways. Sometimes the choice was obvious, but it became less and less so. Many passages, though different in lighting and width, looked equally grim to Iyana.

  With one particularly difficult choice, Braxtus suggested picking a passage at random. Kostas immediately stomped out that kind of thinking, explaining that a wrong turn could significantly set them back. No one mentioned that possibility again. From then on, voices were raised to debate whether this tunnel looked dimmer than the next, or if that one gave a more forbidding feeling than another.

  Iyana kept quiet, letting the others work out which way they thought was best.

  A few hours into the maze they hit their first dead end. Iyana’s stomach tightened. This meant they had chosen the wrong path at least once. How many mistakes had they made so far? Kostas hurried to reassure the others it was to be expected, that they needed dead ends to understand the maze, but it was clear the puzzle gnawed at him. They backtracked and tried a different tunnel, Demitri muttering that he had said that shaft was the spookiest. But it, too, led to a dead end.

  Nerves running high, they backtracked even farther to a three-way split. Iyana squinted at it, perplexed by the unfamiliar sight. But the others seemed to remember, so she followed them down another shaft. They didn’t get far, however, before they stopped at another dead end.

  Iyana pressed her lips together and looked at Kostas. His brow furrowed. “This doesn’t make sense.”

  Galene took his arm and gently turned him around. “There’s nothing for it. Let’s keep going.”

  Iyana struck out ahead of them, then
stopped dead, staring through the dim waters.

  A silver wall blocked her path. Another dead end.

  “Impossible,” she breathed.

  She felt the realization hit the others like a physical force.

  “The walls move!” Kostas gaped, swimming toward it.

  “It’s a giant trap, that’s all it is!” Braxtus turned in circles, eyes raking over the glowing walls. “This whole labyrinth can’t wait for us to die—I can feel it!”

  Panic rose in Iyana. “What … what are we supposed to do?”

  “Well, we’re not going to wait around for death!” Demitri pushed toward the wall and swung his staff at it.

  There was no crack—the weapon sank into the wall. Iyana gasped, and Demitri stared at his staff, halfway in what appeared to be silver stone. He kicked to move through the wall.

  “Wait!” Iyana rushed to get to him, but the stonework swallowed him up. She stared. It looked as real as every wall around them.

  Demitri’s head popped back through the structure, and she squeaked. “Come on, it’s just an illusion!” He seized Iyana’s hand and retreated, disappearing again. The rock rose up to greet her, and she flinched, then passed through to the other side.

  Kostas, Galene, and Braxtus erupted through behind her.

  They were all silent for a moment.

  Galene turned to Kostas. “This makes more sense.”

  He nodded, eyes glinting. Iyana could practically see the wheels spinning in his head.

  Braxtus cleared his throat. “Maybe it makes more sense, but now we’re lost. We didn’t feel every wall on the way here to make sure it was real. That first dead end—we might have been going the right way. That wall is probably fake.”

  “It was probably right at the start.” Kostas raked a hand through his tight curls. “‘The only way out is the least likely route.’ To either side.”

  Demitri cursed. “We could have passed dozens of entrances, swimming right past hidden shafts.”

  “But now that we understand the concept, can’t we logic our way out of here?” Iyana took Demitri’s hand, and he squeezed it.