The Ariadne Connection

COLD WIND GUSTED DOWN off the twin crags of the Phaedriades—the Shining Ones, she’d learned from her data cache—masses of shadow in the night, towering over Leeza. Swirling out of the cleft splitting them in two, wind moaned through the ruins of Delphi. A pale crescent moon floated above the jagged cliffs, dull pewter washing the slender stone columns below. An owl hooted, ghosting past on silent wings.

She shivered in her bulky layers. Owls meant death. But they were Athena’s bird, too. Maybe it was all the same, the ultimate wisdom, just let go and give in to it, looked like it was coming down for her pretty quick here, and maybe she didn’t even care any more. Turner was coming back any time now, string her up and start cutting off pieces.

She shivered again, hugging herself as she hunkered behind the rocky terrace where Damiana had put her. She couldn’t feel her feet or hands any more, and the puffy swelling at the base of her spine made it hard to snap in her Link lines. Tension quivered, ringing in her ears, but it was somehow separate, outside herself, like the auroras slithering off beyond the moonglow. She was only a hollow tube, funneling it all down the neural leads and into her portable recorder.

Second night waiting here. No sign of Ariadne. No sign of the Corybantes coming to avenge their Goddess and the tortured warrior woman. When the men would come creeping by, checking in with Damiana, she could feel the strain lapping off them. Waiting. Even the ground beneath them shivered with tension, tremors clenching the gut.

Waiting. She’d already recorded shots of the Delphi ruins, straight lines of the Apollo temple and six marching columns, the stone theater with its perfect curves cupped at the foot of the cliff. Calm, cool serenity in the midst of this bloody mess of knives and guns and quake-shattered rock. Even as she was recording it, she knew the Link could never capture this. Tall marble columns shimmering in the moonlight and shadows like ghosts in graceful robes of vanished gods. Leeza could feel them dancing, slow and stately. And she didn’t have to replay the Link to taste her drink from the ancient sacred spring. She could still hear it faintly, gurgling out of the cleft near the rocky outthrust Damiana had chosen for her vantage point.

Leeza thought about jacking out and burrowing down for a nap. But what the hell, she had plenty of unused chip space and maybe something would happen before Turner came for her. Maybe she’d really take Art to a new dimension, go out into blackness the last dying twitch of neurons imprinted. Though even that wouldn’t be a first.

Didn’t matter. She was past tired, but the edginess wouldn’t let her sleep. She rocked herself, ears ringing.

Damiana’s face, dark as the shadows of the ravine, swivelled down from the outhanging stone lip to check Leeza. Low voice, brusque, “You rest, girl.” She went back to scanning through her scope.

Leeza hugged her belly, fist clenching around the carved blue crystal she’d stolen from the island chapel, like if she could squeeze it hard enough it would call Ariadne. Somehow she could feel her out there, and she was starting to believe her own story, all the edges blurring, believe Ariadne was really coming for the jade dragon, here at the omphalos, the navel of the ancient world. She wanted to see her just once, before. . . . Tell her. What? She’s sorry?