So it was her lie, too. She was in the lie, and the lie was in her, and the lie couldn’t go any farther into the dark. If she kept holding on to the lie, she could only take this last branching. It wouldn’t take her to death. It would go somewhere living and human, because there was no death for her in the labyrinth. Her brother wasn’t angry with her. He didn’t blame her. It wasn’t her fault, and he loved her, and he would never hurt her.
Anyway, she knew where it went. She had watched them dig every inch of the passage out of the ground. There were no branches. The only magic in the labyrinth was what was in it. Her, and her choice. If she followed the branching, she would come to the chamber at the end: and it would be an empty chamber, with a stagnant well, and an open hatch above that she would be able to reach. There would be no one else there. It had been three years. Her bastard half-brother had starved to death; his bones were somewhere in the passage, along with the bones of those poor workmen, and the priest, and Staphos, and soon the Athenians, who had all gotten confused and turned around in the dark. The lie would come up out of the ground with her and turn into that truth. And the people would see her come out of the ground, in the first light of morning, and they would kneel to her. Her father himself would kneel; he would make her high priestess, and she would have a voice that no woman had in Crete, and be safe and powerful, all her days.
She stood there, and then she turned around and waited while the torchlight came down the passage, until the last handful of Athenians came around. The golden one held the torch and the sword, and there were three others behind him, a young woman and two youths, all dark-haired, pale, shivering. They saw her and stopped. “Which way is it?” one of the dark-haired boys blurted, a little older than the others, and taller. “Tell us or we’ll make you!”
“There’s only one way,” Ariadne said.
“There’s a branching right there!” the girl said, a little shrill.
“No, there isn’t,” Ariadne said. She looked the golden-haired young man in the face. “There’s only one way. The branching’s in us, not in the labyrinth.”
He looked back at her, his eyes clear and brilliant as jewels, but somehow familiar after all, and then he said, “Will you lead us?”
“Theseus!” the elder boy said. “Don’t be a fool! The only way she’ll lead you is straight into the maw of whatever thing they have penned up in here.”
“Why would she help us?” the girl added. “Minos is her father; I heard them say so. Androgeos was her brother.”
Then Theseus did pause, and looked at her. “Well?” he said, quietly. “Why would you show us the way?”
“I have another brother,” Ariadne said. “And my father put him down here. If you’ll help me get him out, get away with him, then I’ll help you.”
The other three Athenians wouldn’t come. They stood at the branching, watching them go, holding the torch. The curve of the passageway swallowed them into the dark almost at once. Only Theseus came with her. She heard his footsteps following as she danced her way onward, finding the way with rhythm, the thick heavy damp smell ahead, a warm stink of sweat and musk, a breathing all around her, getting stronger, and then suddenly the wall slipped out from under her fingers, going not into a branching but into a round chamber, and there was a little brightness ahead of her. Not much, only the glimmer of starlight seeping in through the tiny grating, which she could see in darker lines against the night sky overhead and reflected in the still waters of the well.
“Minotaur,” she said softly. “Minotaur, I’m here.”