Garden of Lies by Amanda Quick Read Free Book Online Page A

With every step he was increasingly certain that he had chosen the wrong path. He was doomed to wander the caverns of night until he dropped dead or went mad.
    He sat up quickly on the edge of the bed, rubbed his face with both hands and then got to his feet. He turned up a gas lamp and checked the time. It was nearly four o’clock in the morning. He tried to focus. He knew that the dream was his mind’s way of telling him that he needed to rethink some of his logic.
    He needed to walk the labyrinth.
    He pulled on a pair of trousers, took his dressing gown off the wall hook and picked up the key ring he kept beside his bed. He left the bedroom and went downstairs. Opening a door off the kitchen, he descended a set of stone steps into the basement.
    The vaulted chambers beneath the ground floor of the house were very old. Much of the masonry work was medieval in origin but there were other sections that dated from the days when the Romans had controlled Britain. It was easy enough to distinguish the two eras if one paid attention. The Roman construction work was orderly and refined—the bricks well made, uniformly shaped and aligned with great precision. In comparison, the masonry of later generations was nothing short of sloppy. Nevertheless, it had all stood the test of time. He wondered if modern construction would hold up as well centuries from now.
    At the foot of the underground steps he picked up a lantern and lit it. He continued down a low-ceilinged stone corridor and stopped in front of a thick wooden door.
    Selecting a key on the iron ring, he opened the door, moved into the chamber and set the lamp on the small table near the door.
    The glary light illuminated the pattern of blue tiles set into the stone floor. The tile path formed an intricate, convoluted pattern that eventually led to the center. Some would have said that it looked like a maze. But a maze, with its many pathways that ended in dead ends, was designed as a puzzle, created to confuse and bewilder. His labyrinth had only a single entrance and one true path that eventually brought the seeker to the center of the complicated design.
    The very act of walking the labyrinth was a form of meditation requiring concentration and focus. The exercise helped him to see patterns hidden in chaos.
    Here in this chamber there were no stone walls and no paintings lining the path so he created the illusion in his mind. He tightened his concentration until he could see only the ribbon of tiles beneath his feet.
    When he was ready he walked the path through the invisible caverns of his mind. He could hear the whispers of the old dread that had threatened to rob him of his sanity. The unnerving voices were always there, waiting for him, when he began the journey. It did no good to try to suppress them. Instead, as he had been taught, he acknowledged them from the perspective of a disinterested onlooker and returned his focus to the pattern.
    Time did not matter when he walked the labyrinth. If he tried to hurry the meditative process he would not see the pattern. It was only when he ceased to care about finding the answer that it would come to him.
    He concentrated on each tile, noting how it was connected to the one that had gone before and the one that came after. With each step he went deeper into his thoughts, deeper into the complex pattern.
    And then he was there in the very heart of the labyrinth. He opened his mind and saw a truth that he had known from the start—Ursula Kern might be on the verge of putting herself in harm’s way.
    He contemplated another glittering shard of knowledge—allowing Ursula Kern into his life came with a degree of risk. She had the power to alter the balance of his carefully constructed world. The truly harrowing part was that the prospect of taking the risk thrilled him.
    The words of the Master of the Labyrinth whispered through his mind. “There are many paths to many answers. Some paths must be walked