The Dragon's Daughter

xiii. janus

“Whoa.”

The whole room was covered in mosaic tiles. The pictures were grimy and faded, but she could still make out the colors — red, blue, green, gold. The frieze showed the Olympian gods at a feast.

Her father stood separately from the others with a bident in his hand.

There was Poseidon, with his trident, holding out grapes for Dionysus to turn into wine.

Zeus was partying with satyrs, and Hermes was flying through the air on his winged sandals. The pictures were beautiful, but they weren’t very accurate. She'd seen the gods. Hermes’s nose wasn’t that big. And Apollo's better looking in real life compared to the one there.

In the middle of the room was a three-tiered fountain. It looked like it hadn’t held water in a long time.

"What is this place?” Percy muttered. “It looks—”

"Roman,” Annabeth said. “Those mosaics are about two thousand years old.”

"But how can they be Roman?”

“The Labyrinth is a patchwork,” Annabeth said. “I told you, it’s always expanding, adding pieces. It’s the only work of architecture that grows by itself.”

“You make it sound like it’s alive.”

A groaning noise echoed from the tunnel in front of them.

“Let’s not talk about it being alive,” Grover whimpered. “Please?”

“All right,” Annabeth said. “Forward.”

“Down the hall with the bad sounds?” Tyson said. Even he looked nervous.

“Yeah,” Annabeth said. “The architecture is getting older. That’s a good sign. Daedalus’s workshop would be in the oldest part.”

That made sense. But soon the maze was toying with them — they went fifty feet (15.24 meters, you're very welcome, people who don't use the American unit system) and the tunnel turned back to cement, with brass pipes running down the sides. The walls were spray-painted with graffiti. A neon sign read MOZ RULZ.

“I’m thinking this is not Roman,” Percy said helpfully.

Annabeth took a deep breath, then forged ahead.

Every few feet the tunnels twisted and turned and branched off. The floor beneath them changed from cement to mud to bricks and back again. There was no sense to any of it. They stumbled into a wine cellar — a bunch of dusty bottles in wooden racks — like we were walking through somebody’s basement, only there was no exit above, just more tunnels leading on.

Later the ceiling turned to wooden planks, and she could hear voices above them and the creaking of footsteps, as if they were walking under some kind of bar. It was reassuring to hear people, but then again, they couldn’t get to them. They were stuck down here with no way out. Then they found our first skeleton.

He was dressed in white clothes, like some kind of uniform. A wooden crate of glass bottles sat next to him.

“A milkman,” Elora said.

“What?” Percy asked.

"They used to deliver milk.”

“Yeah, I know what they are, but… that was when my mom was little, like a million years ago. What’s he doing here?”

“Some people wander in by mistake,” Annabeth said. “Some come exploring on purpose and never make it back. A long time ago, the Cretans sent people in here as human sacrifices.”