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CHAPTER 15

Because Ariadne couldn't bear to consider the situation Dionysus' rejection had exposed, she thought about her father's revelations while she ate her evening meal and made ready for bed. She wasn't much troubled by the desire of priests of Apis for the Minotaur or the accusation of the Athenians. She was certain Minos would find all sorts of pious reasons for warding off the priests, and Athenians were always contentious, one group arguing against another. If the treaty was important, Minos would find a way to have it signed. On the other hand, Pasiphae's attempts to pervert the ritual of the Mother were frightening.

Pasiphae might be self-centered and selfish, but she had been a good queen and an even better priestess before the Minotaur had been born. She'd had a sure instinct for political possibilities and probabilities and a manner mixing arrogance and charm which, combined with her great beauty, enchanted ambassadors. As priestess, she had always known the meaning of every move of the bull dance and could interpret it faultlessly; moreover, when she sat between the sacral horns, she'd been a true avatar of the Mother.

Ariadne well knew the difference between her role and that of Pasiphae in the worship of the Mother. She was votary, representing all the people, offering prayer and sacrifice and hoping for favor; when her prayers and offering of dance were accepted, she was warmed and protected by the Mother as were all the people. Pasiphae, singing the warnings and promises in the ritual, responding to the male element, was the Mother, imbued for that time with Her Spirit to assure the regular turning of the seasons. But that had been before the Minotaur was born.

The queen seemed to have lost both abilities, even common sense, in her determination to prove the Minotaur a god—an utterly hopeless enterprise. Surely eight years of dealing with the poor creature should have taught her that, far from being a god, the Minotaur would never even be a man.

Ariadne didn't fault Pasiphae for continuing to encourage worship of the Bull God. The political advantages of a resident deity were obvious, and the Minotaur certainly looked godlike. To show him in his chair or even pacing the exposed areas of his temple could inspire awe. To try to bring him into the ritual for the Mother—aside from the blasphemy of implying that mother and son would couple to renew the year—would merely expose him for what he was: a pathetic and deformed creature, a weak-minded monster. If Pasiphae hadn't yet seen that, Ariadne feared for the queen's mind. Perhaps it was time for Minos to—

Before the thought was complete there was a chill Ariadne felt despite a burning brazier and warm covers. She lifted herself on an elbow and stared at the blackness in the shadow of the niche in the opposite wall. She could see nothing, but she knew that the shadows had formed an implacable face. For reasons she would never understand, Pasiphae was, indeed, sacred to the Mother, untouchable. Ariadne lay down again and closed her eyes. The Minotaur. Everything came back to the poor Minotaur.

As the Minotaur was the last idea in her mind before she slept, so he was the first when she woke. She remembered that she'd promised to find some pictures and tell him a story about them. She had little inclination to visit him again, but it was better than thinking about Dionysus, making herself accept the fact that he would never take her as full priestess, and deciding what she must do. She thought of sending for the chorus of dancers to fill her time, but it was too cold. Rehearsal must wait until the day grew warmer in the afternoon.

The pictures she remembered were in the storeroom, and she found them with little trouble after she had washed, dressed, and eaten. But when she held them in her hands, she realized how unsuitable they were in the light of what her father had told her. Showing such outdoor activities as pruning vines and collecting grapes might only stimulate the Minotaur's desire to be abroad.

She spent a little while longer looking through the stored items, but there was nothing she could use. Carvings offered to the shrine were usually of nymphs and satyrs cavorting—and that was another idea Ariadne didn't want to put into the Minotaur's head. While she was moving stools and peering into long chests, however, she recalled that there had been pictures on thin sheets of wood on the walls of the children's room in the palace—more practical than frescoes because they could be removed and washed when smeared by sticky little fingers.

The pictures had become so familiar over the years that she hadn't "seen" them for a long time, but perhaps they were still hanging there or perhaps Phaidra would know where they had been stored. The walls, when she reached the children's room, were bare and the room—leaping from youth to age—was inhabited by a handful of old women folding linen. Ariadne went on down the corridor, glancing in through the door of her old room on her way to the Southeastern Hall where the royal family and household usually ate and sometimes lingered to talk. To her surprise, the bedchamber wasn't empty. Phaidra was there, sitting on a stool in front of the wall shelf that held her toilet articles and staring into a small, polished bronze mirror.

"Phaidra?" Ariadne said.

Her sister turned.

"Do you remember what happened to the pictures that used to hang against the wall of the old children's room?"

Phaidra stared at her, eyes widening, and then burst into tears. Ariadne hurried to her and took her into her arms. "What's wrong, my love?" she asked.

For a little while her sister's storm of weeping was so violent that she couldn't answer, but finally she sobbed, "You only think of me as a housekeeper."

Ariadne gave her a hard squeeze and then let her go. "I'm afraid I only think of you as my darling little sister," she said. "Nothing so august as a housekeeper. Oh, Phaidra, don't you remember how terrified we both were of that woman who was in charge of the laundry? She towered over us and boomed `Dirty clothes again. Do you think I have nothing better to do than clean up little girls' messes?' "

"Well, it seems that I have nothing better to do," Phaidra said angrily. "And will have nothing better to do for the rest of my life than clean up the Minotaur's messes and attend to the household."

"Probably not," Ariadne said sympathetically. "It's what most women do. I may be priestess of a shrine, but attend to the household is what I mostly do."

"You have your shrine," Phaidra spat. "It's your place and you rule it. I have nothing that's mine. In this house I'm still the youngest child, the one who runs errands. But I'm not a child. I've passed nineteen summers. I should have been married three years ago. I should have a kingdom of my own, my own house, my own children. Instead I have been overseeing the Minotaur's clothing and meals, passing messages from mother to the servants and cooks—" she looked up at Ariadne, her eyes full of tears "—remembering where the paintings from the children's room are, where Androgeos left his sandals and Glaukos left his arrows, where the queen's rouge pot went and the king's favorite inkstick."

"Oh, dear." Ariadne sat down on the edge of the bed that had once been hers. "I know it doesn't sound like much when you say it in those terms, but you're really the most important person in the household, Phaidra. Everything would fall into disorder without you."

"Perhaps that's so, but it does me no good. Do I have a seat of honor at any feast? Am I presented to ambassadors and other visitors from foreign places? Are cups of wine lifted to my name? Who even knows my name?"

"There are very few women whose names are known by any other than their own households—and mostly those whose are, are of ill repute," Ariadne said, smiling. "I doubt more than my priests and priestesses and this family know my name. Why is it important to you that your name be known?"

"Why? If Phaidra of Knossos, daughter of King Minos, were spoken of abroad, surely some prince would come as a suitor. Who would sue to marry an unknown least daughter?"

"Do you desire to marry and go so far? You remember when Euryale and her husband were so sadly at odds three or four years ago. If father hadn't been close by and of superior strength, she might have been set aside for some young slut."

"Oh, Euryale! Such a cold stick." Phaidra glanced at Ariadne under her eyelashes. "I'd know better how to hold a man and how to make him my willing servant. I don't fear going away. I fear rotting here, as if I were buried in a grave."

Ariadne sighed. "I suppose you have told your mother?"

Phaidra didn't bother to answer that, and Ariadne sighed again.

"Then go to your father." She hesitated, then went on. "I happen to know that King Minos is in the midst of negotiating a treaty with the Athenians. It's not impossible that the formation of a marriage bond to tie in the treaty would be a welcome idea to him."

"The Athenians?" Phaidra repeated. Her eyes brightened and she lifted the bronze mirror for a quick glance. Staring into it, she added thoughtfully, "There's a prince of whom the traders who come have spoken. Theseus is his name. Hero some have called him. I wonder . . ."

"I wouldn't fix my hopes too firmly on the Athenians," Ariadne warned. "I've also heard that not all are content with this treaty and some say it's wrong to make bonds to worshipers of false gods."

"What false gods?"

"The Minotaur."

Phaidra began to laugh. "Did you think I'd be offended by anyone saying so? Or that I would make enemies by defending the beast?"

"Phaidra, don't be foolish. You needn't defend the divinity of the Minotaur, but you mustn't support any contention that he's a false god. Don't you see that what diminishes Knossos will also diminish you? Even if your husband comes to love you, the daughter of a powerful king will be of more account than the daughter of a scorned or ruined one."

"You say that whose own god has been diminished by the accursed Minotaur?"

Ariadne shook her head. "No one can diminish my god. It's his blessing that brings half the wealth of this realm. That's real. His power abides, as does the strength of the Mother. But now, while Knossos makes a firm place in trade and builds its power, the Bull God is a visible symbol of divine favor. Don't tell tales of him. Let those who will, believe him a god."

Phaidra made a moue of distaste, but nodded agreement. "Oh, I know you're right. It just makes my gorge rise to see wise and powerful men bow and pray to him. For the Mother's sake, do you know that he can't always remember to raise his kilt when he pisses? I can't tell you . . . Oh, never mind. It won't matter if I can only convince father to use me for the treaty with Athens."

"If you go, I'll miss you," Ariadne said.

"And I you."

The sisters embraced, but Ariadne felt sad. Phaidra didn't sound grief-stricken at the notion of leaving her sister behind and her embrace was perfunctory. A moment later, she felt ashamed because Phaidra said "Aha!" and told her where the paintings from the children's room were stored. Clearly her sister's mind had been attending to her needs even though she seemed absent.

Fortunately there were three scenes that Ariadne felt she could use. Two she had carried up to Phaidra's chamber and stored there where she would be able to get them easily. She took the third with her. That showed a procession toward an altar: first came a youth carrying a rhyton, and in succession behind him, a fisherman with an octopus in one hand and a fish on a line in the other, several women with unidentifiable bundles in their arms, a man carrying a dead deer over his shoulder, and last another man leading a goat to be sacrificed. The painting was done in lively colors and there were pillars behind the procession, hinting that it moved along an indoor corridor. Ariadne felt she would be able to spin out a tale for each of those in the procession, such as where the youth got the rhyton of wine and why he was bringing it as an offering and so forth for each figure.

She didn't go so far along the corridor as the Southeastern Hall but went down the stairway that connected the children's wing with the queen's apartment below. No guards stood at Pasiphae's closed door, so Ariadne assumed the queen was elsewhere in the palace. Beyond were the rooms the Minotaur occupied. The guards saw her; both smiled, and one began to open the door. Through that, she heard an attendant say the second line from the Mother's ritual slowly and carefully, making each syllable clear. Immediately the words were repeated in the deep, rumbling bass of the Minotaur . . . but mangled, consonants lost, vowels blurred. The words were recognizable—barely. Though his voice was deep and strong, it carried none of the assurance, of the restrained power that could woo and fulfill the Mother.

Ariadne drew a sharp breath, caught her lip between her teeth, and shook her head at the guard, indicating that he shouldn't yet open the door further.

"Said it!" the Minotaur exclaimed as soon as the last word of the ritual sentence was complete. "Now go out."

"My lord, you've only begun," the attendant's voice was somewhat tremulous. "Those are only the first and second lines, only the beginning of the ritual. The queen insists that you learn it all."

"Not begun. Finished. You finished. I finished. Want bull court. See bull dancing."

"My lord, my lord, please! You can't! There's no bull dancing now. That's a different ceremony at a different time. Please!" And then, in a shrill shriek of terror. "Use the torch! Stop him!"

There was a bellow of rage, another shriek, either of pain or fear. Ariadne slipped between the guards and opened the door just enough for her to enter. She pushed it closed behind her. One attendant had backed against the wall, clutching a scroll of parchment to his chest. Another was waving a burning torch in the Minotaur's face. Her half brother's lips were drawn back exposing his tearing fangs in a terrifying way and he let out another bellow. The attendant thrust the flaming torch at his muzzle, close enough for him to feel the heat. He bellowed again but backed up.

"Minotaur!" Ariadne called. "I've brought the picture I promised. There's a whole procession on it, and I'll tell you all about the offerings and the people who bring them."

The attendant jumped aside so the Minotaur could see Ariadne but kept himself and his flaming torch between the other attendant and the angry beast-man.

"Ridne."

Most of the rage was instantly gone from the deep voice. The Minotaur turned his head to look at her. His mouth relaxed, the bovine lips covering the predator's teeth. Ariadne held up the picture and walked forward slowly. The Minotaur came toward her, the attendants shrinking against the wall as he passed, but all his attention was on the brightly colored panel she held for him to see.

"Come and sit down with me and I'll tell you the story I promised," she said, and the Minotaur followed her docilely to the chairs he and the attendant had probably been using.

"Outside?" the Minotaur asked, cocking his head to bring one eye into focus on the painting.

"No, no," Ariadne said, pointing to the pillars. "You see the columns. That's a corridor or a very large chamber where a religious rite is held. You've seen the chamber of the pillars below these rooms. You've passed through it on your way to your temple."

He nodded. "Other room. Not out. Only long dark to temple."

Long dark? It sounded as if a tunnel or covered passage had been built to convey the Minotaur from his chambers to the temple. Ariadne was relieved. She had wondered how he could be kept from escaping now that his mind seemed fixed on being free if they walked him, as they had in the past, down the long stairway to the temple. Someone, it seemed, had enough sense to take precautions.

He'd been looking at the painting, turning his head from side to side to bring each eye to bear on it. "Now bring offerings to big room?" he asked. His brow wrinkled in doubt. "Like temple. Look out. See things. People." The frown grew deeper. "Like temple!"

"Yes, of course you do. And offerings to you will always be brought to your temple. Minotaur, this is a story. A story isn't true. It doesn't really happen. It's only told to pass the time. Sometimes the story did happen, but very, very long ago. See this youth? See his clothing? Such clothing hasn't been worn for many years. If this procession took place, it was when the palace was new, hundreds of years ago."

"Why story long ago?"

"When we tell stories from long ago, we remind ourselves of both good things and bad things that happened. Then we can do the good things and avoid the bad ones. This is the story of a good thing, of a procession to make offerings to a god."

"Like me?"

Ariadne didn't answer that directly, only stroked the silky fur on his shoulder. He seemed to accept that and in return bent his head to rub his cheek against her hand. So she told him about the rhyton of wine, about what was in the bundles the women carried, about the fisherman and the hunter. And when she was done, she suggested that he should keep the painting.

Suddenly the large, beautiful eyes were very sad. "Won't 'member," he said, looking away from her. "Used to 'member."

Ariadne's throat closed and she swallowed hard to clear the lump in it. "It doesn't matter, love," she said. "I'll come and tell you the stories again. The picture is bright and pretty, so keep it."

He nodded happily and went off carrying the panel into his bedchamber. Ariadne went over to the attendants, still backed against the wall.

"I wouldn't trouble him with the ritual any more," she said. Tears stood in her eyes.

"The queen . . ." the man with the torch faltered.

"Will he remember any of it when she comes?" she asked. "How can she know whether you tried to teach him or not?"

The men looked at each other, but Ariadne didn't wait to hear any answer. She had another ugly decision to make now, which she considered while walking back to Dionysus' shrine and waiting for the dancers' chorus to come for rehearsal.

She knew she wouldn't dance the welcome for the Mother if the Minotaur sang the male role instead of Minos. On his own, of course, it was impossible that the Minotaur could learn the ritual, but in her madness Pasiphae might try to find a device to let it seem he was taking that role. What Ariadne had to decide was whether she should confront the queen at once and tell her she wouldn't dance before the Minotaur—to save him from being tormented to learn the responses—or just wait and see what would happen. This year, she believed, it was too late for the queen to arrange anything and she suspected the attendants would take her suggestion for the few days remaining before the ceremony. For next year . . . She put that thought away, concentrating on changing her gown for her practice dancing skirt.

The grief that Ariadne had been warding off with her concentration on problems surrounding the Minotaur didn't fall upon her on the Mother's holy day as she had feared. The eve of the turning of the year was mild and clear, a good omen, and she knew as soon as she approached the dancing floor that Dionysus had come. Her heartflower opened, the silver strands streamed out to touch in joy and welcome the tall, broad-shouldered Cretan who waited just two steps down from the entrance. Nor was her welcome rebuffed. He saluted her as she came up the steps to take her place at the head of the dancers, and there was a wave of fists going to foreheads and right arms rising through the whole crowd. There were also nervous looks toward the dais, but Minos and Pasiphae hadn't yet come.

No cloud of ill feeling between king and queen marred the ritual either. Ariadne was aware that the full concord that had once united them was missing—each had a walled-in place inside that excluded the other—but they weren't angry or hateful. They sang with good will, and each was looking forward to some satisfaction—even if those might be mutually exclusive. For Ariadne there was no doubt that the Mother accepted her worship; she grew lighter and lighter throughout the dance, feeling the lifting of her hair, the tiny tweaks on the locks of consecration that denoted affection, and the warmth of the golden ribbons of blessing about her. And when she walked back to the shrine, Dionysus was there.

That wasn't an unmixed joy. He greeted her, spoke to her, as if that lingering kiss had never been offered, taken, and then rejected. Ariadne could almost have believed that some god had wiped the incident from his mind . . . if he hadn't been a god himself (or something like) and if he hadn't so assiduously avoided touching her. He did take her hand when they blessed the vineyards, but at the full stretch of his arm, as if to touch her body was unbearable to him.

He didn't, however, simply disappear this night as he usually did. He returned with her to her chamber, reappearing suddenly in the middle of the room with a worried frown on his face. But he didn't speak until he had walked across to his chair and seated himself.

"Will you eat, my lord?" Ariadne asked.

He nodded, but not smiling and eagerly as he did when he was hungry, more as if he wanted the food to put off some other action. Ariadne swallowed fear and put it away as she ordered that the priestesses bring a meal—the best they had—for Dionysus. She no longer needed to bother with ringing her bell; now she simply projected her will into Hagne's mind.

"The food will come soon, my lord," she said

Dionysus didn't seem to hear her. He looked at nothing in the middle of the room and said, "Chosen, you know, don't you, that the blessing of the vineyards in Crete is different from the blessing elsewhere?"

To Ariadne's surprise, his white skin was flushed with pink, so darkly flushed that the color was visible even in the soft light of the lamps. And what he said was so far from anything Ariadne had been fearing that she just blinked like a witless owl. He cleared his throat uneasily.

"Mostly," he went on, "the blessing is accomplished by . . . ah . . . coupling, by which act power is drawn from me into the priestess and from her spread into the land. I know you are very young—"

"I'm not so young as not to know about coupling," Ariadne said, fighting a losing battle with her impulse to giggle and coughing instead.

"Yes, well—"

A scratch at the door made him close his mouth. Ariadne glanced sidelong at him as she went to take the tray from Hagne and saw that his face was even redder. When she brought it back and set it on the table, the color had mostly faded, but he didn't even look at the food, only went on as if there had been no interruption.

"—that's not the point. What I wished to say to you was that there's nothing between those priestesses and me except the act to make the vineyards fertile. They aren't Mouths. They bring me no peace. I like most of them well enough before . . . before we . . . But afterward I'm sick of them."

"Because they drain you, my lord," Ariadne said. "But I know the Mother doesn't frown on the mating of man or beast. My whole dance for Her is of the renewal of life through the union of male and female. Nor is it needful that I be virgin to dance the welcome. My mother, already married to my father and having born children, danced for Her when my grandmother was queen. I'm sure She wouldn't withhold Her blessing from me if—"

"It's nothing to do with the Mother's blessing," Dionysos interrupted sharply, red again. "It's to do with . . . with . . . Men and women united in that way are . . . If they liked each other once, they do so no more."

"My lord, that can't be true," Ariadne cried, relief and horror warring inside her. Perhaps, she thought, he didn't find her personally repulsive, just anyone associated with the sexual act. But before she could pursue the thought he jumped to his feet and began to pace the room.

"It is true," he said. "All over Olympus I see it. When Hephaestus and Aphrodite were married, they hated each other. Zeus and Hera do nothing but fight. I could go on forever telling you of couples who can't bear the sight of each other. Now that they are parted, Aphrodite and Hephaestus are good friends. They talk and laugh. Eros and Aphrodite, too, have never coupled and love each other deeply, whereas Psyche nearly killed Eros—"

"That was a mistake," Ariadne protested. "And haven't you told me about Hades and Persephone, whose love is so much stronger because it is well mixed with lust. My lord, it's the people, not the act. Are Zeus and Hera really changed from what they were before they joined? My two sisters both welcomed their marriages, but Prokris couldn't be happier while Euryale is sometimes content and sometimes miserable. But I swear to you that my sisters were so before their marriages. Union with their husbands didn't change them."

"I didn't say it changed a person's nature. It's the way that nature interacts with his or her partner's. When . . . when two people . . . Everything is changed." He stopped and turned on her. "What I have with you is precious to me, Chosen."

And he was gone. Ariadne stood gaping at the spot where he had been as she had not done since the first time he had leapt elsewhere. "What I have with you is precious to me" was sweet to hear, but in the context of the preceding conversation there was the knell of doom about it. Dionysus was willing to be her friend, to come to Knossos and bless the vineyards, to laugh and talk and tell tales of Olympus and other lands. He even wanted her to come to Olympus and live with him . . . as Eros and Aphrodite lived. She bit her lips. Could she endure that? To see him take other women to his bed and never herself kiss his sweet lips, caress his beautiful milk-white body, feel his strong shaft fill her?

Why should she endure it? What he feared was nonsense. He was confusing the sickness of draining and the revulsion he felt for the women who drained him with the act of coupling itself. Surely he was. Ariadne gnawed on her lower lip again. What if he weren't simply remembering how he felt when he was sucked dry? What if his past experiences had so scarred him that he did feel revulsion for the women with whom he coupled even when they didn't drain him? Was she willing to lose his companionship entirely in an attempt to satisfy her craving for his body?

Ariadne's decision about whether to try again for a sexual relationship hung suspended over her head, like the fabled sword of Damocles. It was made no easier by the fact that she wasn't at all sure it was her decision to make because Dionysus, who returned the next evening to look over the offerings made after the blessing of the vineyards, was now acting as if the conversation between them had never taken place.

The Mother's dark image was no help at all. It was blank and unresponding when she wept before it of her desire for Dionysus—except once, when she was sure she heard a woman's indulgent laughter. But when she ceased to speak of her god, she was afflicted by a constant feeling of incompleteness, of a task unfinished. By now Ariadne was sure that feeling pertained to the Minotaur, but it wasn't strong enough to drive her into any action.

For a time after the blessing of the vines, she was able to ignore the mild prodding because she was too busy—there had been many offerings—to think about the Minotaur. And she didn't wish to think about him, poor beast. However, when she had settled with Dionysus what he wanted of the offerings, placed the fruit and meat in stasis, written the accounts, and done all the other special tasks the coming of the new year brought, Ariadne found that she couldn't keep her half brother out of her mind.

Again and again images flashed before her—images of the Minotaur's exposed fangs, the burning torch guttering in the trembling hand of one terrified attendant, images she hadn't seen, of the Minotaur trying to force the doors that guards had barred and braced. She told herself such thoughts were ridiculous; that Phaidra would have come to summon her if there were any trouble, but she was frightened. The images were like those she caught from Dionysus when he described a Vision.

Ariadne fought her apprehensions, tried to ignore a growing unease that brought her nightmares every night until, after the spring quickening of the vines, Dionysus told her to hold all offerings. He would be leaving Olympus before the ten-day was out, he said, and be away for several ten-days. Hekate, who had done him many favors, had asked him to go with her back to her homeland to settle a long-neglected problem.

Over the years since their reconciliation, Dionysus had been away other times. Ariadne had always sensed his regret in parting from her; this time, although he said he would miss her, there was as much relief as dissatisfaction in his voice. She kept her face calm with an effort, refusing to allow the tears that stung the bridge of her nose and the back of her eyes to fill her lids. The time for her decision was coming nearer.

That night she couldn't sleep. She lay in her bed as tense as a drawn wire, her eyes wandering again and again to the dark image in Her niche. Ariadne saw nothing there, but she knew that she must go to visit the Minotaur the next day.

Even so, she delayed as long as she could, lingering over her breakfast and calling Sappho to her to scry the other shrines to judge the worth of the offerings. When she had seen what was available and decided to allow the subsidiary shrines to keep what they had, she dressed in a formal gown and told the oldest priest, Kadmos, to summon the merchants who customarily bought the offerings Dionysus did not choose.

She felt a small rise of hope while doing that business during the early part of the day because the draw—a sense almost of someone tugging on her locks of consecration—of the palace seemed less. Then, just before she was about to call for her midday meal, her hair was seized and pulled with such force that she cried out in pain. And before the pang had passed, she saw the Minotaur, fangs bared, charging at Pasiphae.

"No!" Ariadne shrieked and ran.

Again the Mother lent wings to her feet. She flew down the side of Gypsades Hill, across the empty front of the Bull God's temple, and up the stairs to the palace. Barely checking her speed for the guards to let her pass, gasping for breath, knuckles digging into her side where pain stabbed through her, she passed her father's chambers. The doors were closed. It was the time of day when he received petitions in the audience chamber below. But there was noise ahead, past Pasiphae's apartment, a babble of voices and Phaidra's high-pitched shrieks refusing to do something.

A crowd of servants and guards milled in the corridor beyond the Minotaur's shut door. Ariadne stopped short, seeing in fact what her Vision had shown—the new massive bars that had been set in huge bronze slots fastened to the wall on each side of the doorway. The shock of knowing her Vision was true prolonged her hesitation. Those moments gave the servants a chance to see her and some drew back. Through the aisle they opened, she saw Pasiphae dragging Phaidra, who was screaming and struggling to be free, toward the door. The queen's face was gray-green with fear and horror, but she was trying to speak calmly.

"He's quiet now," she said, shaking Phaidra. "Just divert him long enough for Isadore to slip out. He won't harm you. He knows you bring him food."

"No!" Phaidra shrieked. "No. He's killed Isadore and you know it. He's mad with blood lust. He'll kill me, too. He must be destroyed before he breaks free and—"

"I'll go," Ariadne said, stepping forward into the aisle left by the servants.

"Ariadne!" Phaidra cried. "No, don't! He must be starved until he is weak and then killed. I tell you, he killed Isadore. He's changing. He no longer fears the fire."

"A fierce and vengeful god," Pasiphae intoned. Her eyes stared, but apparently without seeing either of her daughters. "He must be pacified."

"He's only eight years old," Ariadne said. "You provoked him and he struck out, like a child. I hope Isadore isn't dead, but even if he is, I don't believe the Minotaur will hurt me. Still—" she looked away from Pasiphae and her sister to speak directly to the guards. "Don't bar the door when I go in and open it quickly if I call to come out. If two of you hold each door, he won't be able to open it."

There was a silence while more guards were summoned. Two came forward to help with the doors and two others stood ready with pikes advanced to repel the Minotaur if he tried to rush out. One of those at the door, whose face looked familiar to Ariadne, said, "Lady, you didn't hear the scream Isadore gave. It sounded—"

"Silence!" Pasiphae commanded. "Open the door and let the priestess of Dionysus in. She has her god to protect her." A smile that held no mirth or good will curved the queen's lips, but her eyes were still unfocussed. "We'll see which god is the stronger then, won't we?"

Ariadne stared at the queen, wondering how she could hold to so silly a fixed purpose as proving the Minotaur superior to Dionysus in the face of this disaster. Still, what she said had calmed the terror that had dried Ariadne's mouth and chilled her through and through at the thought of entering the Minotaur's chamber. Dionysus wouldn't—likely couldn't—fight the Minotaur, but he could catch her in his arms and "leap" them both to safety.

The guards had been listening, ears pressed against the door, and the one who had spoken before said softly, "He's not near the door, lady."

Ariadne nodded. "Then open softly, just enough for me to slip in."

She was intent at first on sliding through as small an opening as possible and making no sound for the Minotaur's keen ears to pick up. Then she looked around for him and froze in place, just inside the door, rigid with horror. The area near her brother and the limp body of the attendant seemed to have been painted red, and the Minotaur seemed to be nuzzling at the corpse.

"Minotaur!" she shrieked.

He lifted his head and she put a hand on the doorframe to support her. For a moment her gorge rose and bile filled her throat and mouth so that she couldn't speak. The Minotaur's face was coated with blood, and a long sliver of skin and flesh hung from his mouth. She forced herself to swallow the bitterness.

"Stop!" Ariadne cried. "Men don't kill and eat other men. Stop! Stop at once!"

He heaved upright, glaring. "God!" he bellowed. "Bull God!"

He put a foot on the body, seized an arm, and without apparent effort, wrenched it off. Ariadne screamed. The Minotaur laughed.

"Sacrifice!" he said. "Gods eat men."

Shouting at him was useless. Ariadne licked her lips and swallowed. "No," she said, striving now to keep her voice steady and speak calmly. "No. Gods are kind. They help men."

She forced herself forward, shaking with horror but reminding herself that huge as he was—and he had apparently grown almost a foot taller in the ten-days she hadn't seen him—he was only eight years old. Children did strike each other and bite each other when enraged. Doubtless Pasiphae had enraged him and the attendant had intervened to save the queen. She tried to grasp his arm to pull him away from the grisly remains, but he pushed her with such strength that she flew backward and fell. The Minotaur dropped the arm he had pulled off and advanced on her. Ariadne gasped and tried to push herself backward. She tried to call out to the guards to open the door, but her throat was shut tight with terror.

"No hurt," he said in his usual bass rumble. "Sorry. Love Ridne. No hurt." He stopped, looked over his shoulder at the mangled corpse, then turned back, blinking his beautiful eyes. "Don't like? Go away. Minotaur like man flesh."

He bent and lifted her, not ungently, but his hands stained her flesh and her gown with blood. She choked and gagged. He shook his head, almost sadly, and carried her to the doors, one of which he pushed open easily against the weight of the two guards. Ariadne heard them crying out warnings, but the Minotaur didn't seem to notice. Nor did he try to get out. He merely thrust her through the opening he had made, and let the door slam shut behind her.

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Framed