Out Today: The Lion in the Labyrinth and Other Stories by Jane Jago

Every action provokes consequences. These stories delve into the consequences of unthinking action. We begin with a reimagining of the Myth of the Minotaur…

The Lion in the Labyrinth

In the black basalt rock beneath the palace, there exists a labyrinth so complex that no-one has ever fathomed its secrets. It was made, they say, by those whose machinations broke the sanity of the Great Lion and petrified a hundred hundred janissaries whose duty it had been to guard the Golden Throne and its occupant.
Whatever the truth may be, the Labyrinth had imprisoned The Lion for as long as even the sphinx could remember. The maddened king was contained by wards of strong magic as well as by locks and stone walls…
It was the first day of a new year and a young girl in a rose-coloured gown, with the black silk of her hair unbound about her, was pushed unceremoniously through the door of the labyrinth. Those who closed the door behind her with a clang had no pity for youth and beauty. The Labyrinth was her fate, as it had been the fate of so many before her. A young body would satisfy the lust of the king’s beast and her blood would feed the clamouring stones.
But something went wrong. No screams rent the air and the channels in the rocky floor ran only with clear water.
How could it be that a female capable of surviving the lusts of the Labyrinth had slid past the eyes of The Family? There was disquiet. This creature was not what they had bargained for at all. Too intelligent. Too independent. Too sharply unafraid. It shouldn’t have mattered that she survived, even though she wasn’t meant to be any more than a tasty morsel to temporarily slake the bloodlust of the Great Lion and quench the thirst of the unknowable tunnels in which he dwelt. It shouldn’t have mattered.
It wasn’t as if all the women died. Through the centuries one or two had survived, through guile or pure luck. She, like them, should have been given a present of money and sent away. But this was different, The Lion called her his queen, and the Labyrinth knew her name.
So it mattered. She mattered, and everything she did mattered.
She knew no fear of The Lion and he doted on her. The watchers looked on in unbelief as his beast curled about her slender form. They said he laid his head among her silken skirts and purred like a kitten.
The Dark Master, who ruled the kingdom until such time as the stone janissaries reclaimed their fleshly bodies and a new Lion arose to claim the Golden Throne, thought to refuse her entry to the Labyrinth. But when the appointed time came, and he would have stayed with his grimoires and arcane manuscripts, he found his feet taking him to the iron-bound door and his palm touching the lock stone through no volition of his own. The Labyrinth decreed that she be allowed to enter, and as long as she lived he would admit her each evening will he or nil he.

You can keep reading The Lion in the Labyrinth and Other Stories by Jane Jago as it is out now on Kindle and in paperback.