Book Two of the Travelers Read Online Free Page B

the puzzle. She couldn’t very well quit now.
    Aja tried to calm herself, breathing deeply.
    Suddenly the grinding noise started again. This time the sound was slightly different and seemed to come from a different place. For a moment she imagined the walls were closing in, preparing to smash her like a bug.
    Wait! Light. She could see light—a thin crack, widening slightly at one corner of the room.
    The walls were moving! The chamber was opening. As soon as she could, she squeezed out past the still-moving gap between the walls. She found herself in a long stone passage lit by flickering torches lodged in recesses along the wall.
    On the walls were carved images. A strange, simian creature recurred in each carving. That must be the Beast that King Hruth had talked about earlier. In each picture the Beast was eating people, tearing them limb from limb, trampling over their bodies.
    â€œYuk!” Aja said. To think all this nutty stuff came right out of Nak’s imagination. You thought you knew somebody and—
    The grinding stopped once more. Suddenly the silence seemed extraordinarily intense. She’d never experienced silence like this before. There was literally no sound atall. She could actually hear her own heartbeat, the rush of the blood.
    She was breathing very fast, she noticed.
    There was a stale, pungent odor in the air. Then she heard something. A loud rustling noise, like a bag of meat being dragged along a floor.
    Then a loud, inhuman scream.
    The Beast. It was the Beast of the maze. And it was coming for her. She looked behind her. Where before there had been a tiny chamber, now there were three more passages running off in three directions. All three passages seemed more or less identical. Each one had some kind of symbol carved into the rock over the entrance. The passages ran off into the murky distance, until the torch light died out.
    She looked over her shoulder. Two yellow eyes appeared around the distant corner at the end of the corridor. A gleam of light on long sharp teeth. The Beast! It was hunched over, walking on two powerful hind legs. Its hair was long and matted. The Beast resembled a monkey, but was much larger and stronger than a person. Its human-looking hands were tipped with long curved talons.
    Dread ran through her like a spike between the shoulder blades. She began running, fear driving away all sensation of pain in her ankle. The scream followed her. As she ran down the corridor, other corridors branched off from it. She could hear the thudding of the Beast’s feet, growing closer and closer. It was obviously faster than she was.
    As big as it was, she could probably turn cornersfaster. She turned into another corridor. Then another. Then another. She found herself running past a row of barred cells. Inside the cells were old men, bearded, broken down.
    â€œYou’ll never make it!” they all shouted. “You’re doomed!”
    Thanks for the encouragement , she thought. She knew it was all part of Nak’s plan to psych her out. But still. It was creepy!
    â€œDoomed!” they moaned. “Doomed!”
    She passed the cells and ended up in another corridor. This one was more brightly lit. On the walls, these carvings were bigger, clearer. Above each picture of the Beast was a symbol, some kind of alphabet or pictogram—similar to the ones she’d noticed in the first passageway. It was like nothing she’d ever seen in a history book though. She studied the symbol for a moment, looking for a pattern. Then she realized that now was no time to be messing with puzzles.
    She stopped, listened.
    Nothing.
    No pounding footsteps behind her. No dragging noises. No screaming. She began tiptoeing forward. She must have shaken it!
    At the far end, the corridor turned left.
    She peered around the corner.
    Crouched there, not ten feet away, was the Beast. Its head was lowered, resting its weight on the knuckles of one massive hand, its nose