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CHAPTER 18

The stair was finished first, within a ten-day, the entrance into the Minotaur's bedchamber closed with a heavy iron gate. This locked and unlocked with a magic key when the mage lights that lit the stair as well as the passage were turned off and on. Phaidra controlled them with a word of command.

At first she refused to enter the Minotaur's room without Ariadne, so Ariadne was also bound into the spell, but a ten-day in which no one had been hurt had reassured Phaidra. In addition, her father's flat statement that he wouldn't propose her as a wife to Theseus, prince of Athens, to seal the treaty if she wouldn't perform that task and bring the Minotaur's meals had bought her obedience.

But three ten-days later another incident occurred. One of the men under death sentence tried to find a way to freedom down the stairway, which Phaidra left open until the Minotaur returned. The Minotaur heard him coming into the back of the temple and then saw him trying to sneak past the invisible barrier. He watched, mouth open in laughter, as the increasingly frantic man pushed and clawed at the solid nothing blocking off the doorway. Then he rose and came forward to grasp the man, who shrieked with pain and terror.

"Priest?" he bellowed.

The crowd of worshipers who had come to gaze on the Bull God sighed and stirred uncertainly. It was rare for the Minotaur to move until he tired of the procession of those with offerings and simply went away. He looked out at the priests, who had stilled at the sound of his voice but now, hearing the man's cries as the Minotaur's fingers dug into his shoulder, desperately resumed their leaping and gyrating in their glittering costumes. He turned his head to look at the priestesses, also garbed in sparkling splendor, who were frantically rattling sistra and blowing pipes, whirling in place.

"No priest!" he roared, stuck his fingers under the man's chin, and ripped off his face.

The crowd heaved, some screaming and shrinking back, others shouting with excitement and trying to force their way forward. The priests and priestesses redoubled their efforts, past experience telling them that their motions and the hypnotic shimmer of their garments usually quieted their god when he was restless. The Minotaur looked out at them for a moment and then carried the body of his victim, unable to cry out but still pumping blood, into the back of the temple. What the priests heard drove them to even more frenzied dancing and the priestesses added their voices to the music of sistra and pipes to drown out the sounds.

To the worshipers and the priests and priestesses, the Bull God's personal defense of the sanctity of his temple left no doubt of his power and awareness. Their worship, half curiosity in the past, gained conviction. News of what had happened spread over Crete like wildfire in a dry summer, met mariners at the docks, and drifted over the seas to foreign lands.

The Egyptians abandoned any notion of adopting the Bull God; they liked their deities safely immured in a human pharaoh, frozen into statues, or in the more manageable living forms of their sacred beasts. In Athens, seething with internal factions, the news was unimportant, except to one group, bitterly opposed to King Aigeus and his son Theseus, who claimed that Cretans practiced human sacrifice and connected that abomination to the treaty with Knossos. Since the diplomatic mission to make the treaty had already departed they hoped to shake King Aigeus's rule.

Minos had news of the death within moments of the event, but did nothing. Within him was a mingling of triumph and terror. The Minotaur had placed his own populace more firmly in his hand than ever—but for how long? What would happen when he ran out of condemned criminals? Crete wasn't a violent place; there were few who merited the death penalty and he was known as a just judge. But the Minotaur couldn't care for himself. He needed servants, and only those condemned to death could now serve him. Minos knew that pronouncing death sentences to supply the Minotaur, would turn the people against him, the distant terror of a god's disapproval being less fearful than the near one of an unjust king.

Gnawing his lips, Minos considered his alternatives, and at last the frown smoothed from his brow. Yes, the Bull God, having confirmed the divine right of Minos and Pasiphae by being born in the flesh, had now matured into his full godhead. Like Zeus, Apollo, Dionysus, and others, who had been raised in infancy by mortals, the Minotaur would now go to his own place. He would disappear and show himself only at unexpected and infrequent intervals. Minos congratulated himself on his foresight in the arrangement made with Daidalos. He didn't speak to Pasiphae about his plans; she would have to bow to necessity.

Phaidra had hysterics when the Minotaur returned covered with clotted blood and with scraps of raw flesh caught in his fur, but he simply picked her up and thrust her out when the guards opened the door in response to her shrieks. That had one good effect. Phaidra was finally convinced that the Minotaur wouldn't hurt her, whatever he did to others. She returned to the chamber calmly and ordered the two women servants to groom the Minotaur's fur. The next day a new condemned criminal took the place of the dead man.

When Ariadne heard, she wept, but she didn't go to the palace. All her mind's eyes could see was the Minotaur's blood-clotted face, the strip of flesh hanging from his jaw. The Minotaur and his fate were far beyond her now. She would still do what she could for her poor, deformed brother, for the little boy more and more lost in the beast, but she was no longer concerned as a priestess. The Minotaur would never be brought to sit before the sacral horns when she danced for the Mother, not even by any artifice devised by Daidalos and Pasiphae.

There were, of course, no more attempts to escape through the temple, and ten times the number of worshipers crowded the temple precincts. If they came in the expectation of new horrors, they were disappointed. The Minotaur seemed content to sit in his chair at his regular times of appearance quietly watching the dancing priests and listening to the music of the priestesses.

Then Ariadne forgot all about the Minotaur because Dionysus returned. He was in a strange mood, mingling exuberance with moments of thoughtful horror mixed with satisfaction. He would not tell her what he had done, other than to say that Hekate had been successful in her purpose, but he had remembered her taste for hearing about strange lands and really paid attention while he, Hekate, and Kabeiros had been traveling.

"We could not leap from place to place after we passed Troja because Hermes had not been to those lands. So we went by ship." His blue eyes were wide with remembered astonishment. "Mother, that was unsettling. It's very strange to have the floor under your feet move about. Unsettling to the stomach, too."

Ariadne laughed heartily. Most Cretans were accustomed to travel by ship, and she had been sailing many times. But the god Dionysus had been seasick. How very ungodlike. How very human. He frowned at her, probably having expected sympathy, but there was no change in the feeling of the tendrils that touched him. Ariadne was surprised and almost disappointed. He wasn't being precipitated into an unreasonable and ungovernable rage by a minor irritation. Did that mean she was less necessary to him?

"I couldn't eat for three days," Dionysus said indignantly. "You think that's funny?"

"Well . . ." she temporized, relieved that he had received no hint of her new anxiety. "I know it wasn't funny to you. It's happened to me, too. One does feel as if one were like to die, but island people grow accustomed to the sea. You did grow accustomed, didn't you?"

"Yes." He shrugged away her amusement. "And the ports were wonderful. There were goods I've never seen before. Look."

He thrust his hand into the bosom of his tunic and drew out a soft leather sack. Within was another, smaller cloth bag that spilled into his hand earrings and a necklet of glowing stones, green with a dark stripe. He leaned forward, thrust his hand into the best light, and turned his wrist. The dark stripe moved as the position of the setting changed.

"How beautiful," Ariadne said.

"Cat's eyes they're called. And these—" Another cloth bag opened to show misty red stones with a bright silver star imprisoned. "For you."

He held them out to her and Ariadne, forgetting her doubt and Aphrodite's revelation, leaned forward and kissed him. He drew back and turned his head. Ariadne didn't open her hand to take the gift. He dropped the stones on the table beside his chair.

"I have more," he said. "Beautiful cloth and two books I found written in the Trade Tongue that tell of lands beyond where Hekate took me. They're in Olympus. Will you come and look at them?"

"Not yet," Ariadne said, swallowing resentment despite the evidence that he had been thinking about her all the time he was away. He would give her anything—except what she really wanted. "When the Mother releases me, I will come."

He disappeared then and Ariadne was frightened. She took the jewels and alternately wore the cat's eyes and the star rubies, praying he would return and see that she did appreciate what he had given her. On the third day—she was wearing the cat's eyes—he did come back. He said nothing about her necklet and earrings, but he was cheerful and full of tales of what he had seen and done. Ariadne was careful not to touch him.

Three more ten-days passed and then a new problem arose, but this one wasn't of the Minotaur's making. Daidalos told King Minos that he could no longer maintain the mage lights in the stairway and passage and the magical seal on the Minotaur's temple. Minos was furious, but even he had to acknowledge that for once Daidalos was not crying before he was hurt. The man was gaunt and gray with the drain on his power.

Phaidra came running to Ariadne with the news, begging for help. She told Ariadne that the delegation from Athens had come a few days earlier and they had seemed pleased at the suggestion of a blood bond to seal the treaty and even more pleased when Minos presented her as a suitable wife for Theseus. One of them was even painting a portrait of her to take to the prince. If the Minotaur should either not appear or break loose and do something terrible, she wept, the treaty would be set aside and her life would be ruined!

Because she had achieved the independence and freedom that Phaidra craved, Ariadne couldn't help being sympathetic. She didn't like to trouble Dionysus with her family's problems, but concern for her sister drove Ariadne to mention Phaidra's fears and ask if he knew how to increase Daidalos' power.

At first he didn't answer, seeming to look out through the shaft window at the lengthening shadows. Ariadne suppressed a sigh, thinking he was ignoring her request, but then she saw his fixed expression, that his eyes were blind, and she realized Dionysus wasn't staring at shadows but into a private place of his own.

"She will," he said, "but not yet."

The statement as it stood made no sense, but Ariadne's silver mist brought her the awareness that it referred to Phaidra's marriage to Theseus. About to thank Dionysus for the assurance, she was struck dumb as his continuing Vision seized her and she hung above a crowd of battling men.

They didn't have the lissome form of Cretans, being bulky of body, light-haired, fair of skin. Achaeans then. And fighting each other. She knew at once with that understanding that came to the Mouth of a god, that the treaty was the cause of the strife. Then, with a feeling of time speeding past, several ten-days or even months, the image changed to a broad harbor rapidly filling with ships—and these were Cretan, long, slender, swift, black ships, warships, their sides hung with shields, their oars flashing as the ships drove forward. And behind the oarsmen, brighter pricks of light from the polished bronze blades of swords and javelins held ready in the hands of the soldiers the ships carried.

"No," Ariadne breathed.

Her protest had no effect on the images that filled her mind. She saw the ships drive to shore, the Athenians come down to resist the landing, but in no unified force. Some fought the invaders, others shouted and gestured at each other while they charged, delaying their defense. Nor were they any match for the Cretans in numbers, for most of their strong young men were out on the lands surrounding the city.

More and more Cretans poured ashore. They drove the armed men before them; they broke open the doors of the houses as they passed and herded out the women and the children, who were sent back to the ships under guard. They broke into well-organized groups, most going beyond the city to capture the men who were farming. Other groups entered the palace and raged through that also, dragging out an old man in rich robes, whom they brought to the wide porch and forced to bid his fighters to lay down their arms.

Something in the Vision struck Ariadne as false, although Dionysus always Saw the truth. This didn't fit with what she had heard about the Athenians, who were said to be ferocious fighters and most passionate in defense of their land. In this battle they seemed half-hearted, and King Aigeus, known for his pride, seemed ashamed, willing to yield. But she couldn't fully consider what was wrong. An overriding horror drove the images from her mind.

"Minos will go to war to force the treaty on them," she said, as sense came back into Dionysus' expression. "But why?" she cried. "Have he and Pasiphae gone mad?" Then, as if physically drawn, her eyes shifted to the wall behind which the Mother's image stood. "No," she breathed, "no. It was growing in them both from the moment the white bull from the sea answered my father's prayer. And then you came to your shrine for the first time in generations. They saw themselves as specially favored of the gods, singled out to rule. Crete was not large enough to satisfy them. Hubris. It is hubris." She looked into Dionysus's eyes. "But why? Why does the Mother continue to protect Pasiphae?"

He shook his head. "She hasn't Shown me that, and for myself . . . I'm only a man." Then he shook himself, like a dog casting water from his fur, ridding himself of the remnants of Seeing. "So the Vision was of King Minos going to war . . ."

His brow furrowed on the words and Ariadne became aware of a deep sadness drifting through the silver mist that joined them. "You don't like war," she said softly.

He looked puzzled. "I don't," he agreed. "Armies trample the vines and use the wine for ugly purposes. But it's not the thought of war that makes me sad. Something else. Something I didn't See or don't remember that made the Athenians hesitate to defend themselves. . . ." He shrugged. "If it was withheld from me, it won't haunt my sleep. You are looking beyond what I Saw and fear the Minotaur broke free of Daidalos' binding and the Athenians refused to make the treaty. But my Vision says that nothing will deter King Minos from this war so I suppose it doesn't matter if Daidalos' gate fails—"

"Dionysus!" Ariadne exclaimed, forgetting in her exasperation the feeling that the Vision was somehow false. "It would certainly matter to the person the Minotaur attacked and tore apart."

"Oh." He had the grace to look a trifle shamefaced. "But there's nothing I can do to increase Daidalos' power. The ability to use power is born into a person and the Mother grants power as She wills." He pursed his lips. "You have power enough. What I can do is to teach you how to transfer power to a set spell and I think Daidalos must have used one or more set spells for the lights and to block that doorway. You'll find them in the walls for the mage lights, I think, and around the frame of the doorway for the invisible wall."

The technique was more difficult to learn than calling forth a spell from among the leaves of her heartflower, and Dionysus, not sure he approved of what she would be doing but not willing to refuse her request for help or set limits on her use of her own power (no Olympian interfered with another in that way), left her to struggle with the problem alone.

To Ariadne the power to use a spell was intangible and had always come with the spell itself, hidden within the bright silver bubble. Eventually she found it, a dull golden glow that supported the bright bubble, like a drab background against which the colors of a fresco or a ceramic piece sparkled. Having identified the power that drove the spells, Ariadne could get no further because she needed to rehearse the dancers for the ritual of the spring equinox.

Except for the fact that Dionysus couldn't come—he was promised to a special new ritual far to the East, one Ariadne suspected he and Hekate had substituted for some other worship of which they didn't approve—the celebration was pure pleasure. The weather was mild and dry, the dancing especially joyous, the king and queen seemed at peace with each other if remote, and Ariadne had the inner warmth of Dionysus' promise to join her in blessing the fields. She also had Phaidra's delighted blessing; most of the Athenian delegation attended the ritual and were openly approving.

The blessing of the fields was at once a joy and a disappointment. Dionysus was there, not only in body but in spirit. He behaved like a mischievous sprite, playing hide and seek among the vines, leaving silly tokens tangled in the leaves, and once he even kissed her—but it was not the kind of kiss after which one hurries home to bed. Despite this distraction, Ariadne forced herself to "look" for the power that came flooding into her and to try to manipulate it.

A ten-day later Ariadne had learned to pull power from her heartflower without touching any of the spells. When she was satisfied, she went to the palace and reinforced Daidalos' spells, working backward from the door of the temple to the metal gate on the stair. She told no one, in case her attempt failed, but what she had done could not remain secret from those who worked magic. The next day, Daidalos—who already looked less strained and gray—came to the shrine and asked to speak to her.

"Thank you," he said, and nodded brusquely when he was admitted to her chamber.

"For what?" Ariadne asked.

"For empowering the spells on the mage lights and locks. If you're trying to tell me you didn't do that, I can't believe you. Your touch is all through the magic. I've watched you dance many times. Do you think I can't recognize the feel and taste of your power? Let's not spar with each other. Why did you do it?"

"Because my sister was afraid the spells would fail and loose the Minotaur. She didn't want any untoward event to disturb the Athenian delegation."

"I owe you less, then, but I still owe you. Can you continue to support the spells?"

"For a time," Ariadne said.

She didn't wish to admit to Daidalos that the drain on her had been nothing and the power was fully replaced as soon as she went to stand before the dark image and ask for the Mother's blessing. Daidalos was said to be violently envious of those who might be rivals; it was hinted that the crime that had driven him from his original home was that he had thrown to his death off the walls of that city, an assistant, who equaled and might have surpassed him.

She didn't fool him on that score either. She saw the way his eyes assessed her own, the color in her cheeks, the steadiness of her hands. She had powered the spells the previous night; if she were drained, the marks should be on her. But this time he didn't challenge her. There was a hint of calculation in his expression; that was all.

"Good enough." He nodded again. "Your obligation to your sister should be over by the ides of April, as I have heard the Athenian delegation will depart then or a few days sooner. Nonetheless, I believe it will be necessary for you to hold the spells longer. I have a project in hand that will remove the need for those safeguards, but I can't finish it soon and I'll be most grateful to you if you can help me that long."

"If Dionysus will support me that long, I'll help."

"Dionysus?" Daidalos smiled, but his eyes shifted away from hers.

Before she could reply, he quickly thanked her again for her help, repeated that he would be in her debt, and took his leave. Ariadne was mildly annoyed. Plainly Daidalos didn't believe her power came through her god; he thought Dionysus was concealing the true source from her to better hold her in thrall, but Daidalos was too envious to tell her the truth.

The irritation didn't last long because as she reviewed what the magic maker had said, curiosity took its place. A project that would eliminate the need for keeping the Minotaur locked in his apartment? But nothing could change the Minotaur's inability to control himself or increase his ability to think, so he couldn't be allowed freedom. Yet freedom was what he wanted.

Had Daidalos conceived of a compromise? Ariadne had a vision of a small house in a high-walled garden where the Minotaur could walk and see the sky and trees and flowers. He might be happy in such a place, even as the beast overtook the man. She sat up straighter. Was such a hope not reasonable? If the house were attached to his temple—and Ariadne had seen signs of work behind the temple—the king and queen could still arrange for the Minotaur's presence there. Awe of the god made flesh would still bring people and encourage the offerings. Minos and Pasiphae would lose nothing and the Bull God would be easier to manage.

She thought about the hopeful idea from time to time, and even went one day to talk to Icarus and plead with him to suggest the notion, but she was diverted to another problem a few days later when Phaidra came to bewail the departure of the Athenian embassy. Phaidra was uneasy because they had left earlier than they planned but more bereft because with the Athenians gone she again dwindled back to the last and least daughter.

Phaidra had flourished in the sunlight of the Athenians' praise and admiration. She told Ariadne with a proud lift of her head that two of the men had been so complimentary to her about her courage in serving so fierce a god as the Minotaur that she had begun to hope they would ask to take her with them to marry their prince. But they'd been hurried away before they could make the suggestion to her father.

Whatever they desired, they couldn't take her, Ariadne had replied, automatically soothing Phaidra. There was a strict protocol for a treaty marriage. Only Ariadne didn't think the praise, which had blinded Phaidra to everything but the flattery, had anything to do with the marriage. She had a suspicion that what the Athenians wanted was to hear more of the Minotaur, and she was much afraid that Phaidra hadn't been as circumspect as she should have been in speaking of her half brother, perhaps making him worse than he was to enhance her own value.

All too soon, however, anything Phaidra had said faded into insignificance. Not four days after the departure of the Athenians, the Minotaur burst free of his confinement with an ease that made it plain no ordinary walls or doors, barred or not, could contain him.

The cause was ridiculous. As Ariadne had warned them, he asked his servant-criminals regularly when he could go out. Mostly they told him about the next time he was scheduled to visit the temple. Occasionally he roared a protest and demanded to go now, usually to some totally unsuitable place. The only defense the servants had was to show him that they couldn't go out either.

Unfortunately one of the women who now served the Minotaur had been a courtesan; she'd been condemned for murdering several besotted clients to collect legacies they had promised her. Her first move when brought to serve the Minotaur had been to groom him, hoping he would be favorably impressed, but when she realized he regarded her no more than he regarded his combs and brushes, she transferred her attentions to the door guards, with whom she flirted each time the door was opened to admit Phaidra or a meal or for laundry to be delivered or returned.

The guards were less resistant than the Minotaur, and when she promised her experienced favors, two who were guarding the door weakened. They didn't promise her freedom, only the small change of coming out to couple with each of them. Neither expected a long lovemaking and both were sure when they let her out early one morning that no one had seen her leave and that they could get her back inside before anyone knew she had been out.

Those inside, however, all saw her depart. Her fellow prisoners made no protest; they knew she understood that they would betray her to Phaidra if she didn't provide some advantage for them, and they were content. No one thought about the Minotaur, who had eaten his usual bowl of raw meat and bread and was sitting in his chair and staring, with his head tilted to the side, at one of the pictures Ariadne had left. They knew how slow and simple his mind was; they knew he hardly remembered anything from one moment to the next. It didn't occur to any of them that the desire to go out of those rooms, to be free, went deep enough into his consciousness never to be forgotten.

The Minotaur saw the courtesan leave and stared at the door for a few moments. The servants couldn't go out. He couldn't. But the servant did go out. The Minotaur rose and went to the door.

He tapped on it lightly, as she had tapped, and said, "Out. Now out."

A manservant hurried forward. "My lord," he said, "you know we can't go out. In a little while your sister will come and open the gate to the temple."

"Saw go out," the Minotaur said. "Now go out."

The servant dared to grasp his arm. The Minotaur pushed him away. The man flew across the room and crashed into the wall, after which he lay stunned.

"Out," the Minotaur roared, and pounded on the door.

The single guard outside ran to the chamber across the corridor where his fellow had taken the courtesan. As he flung open the door, he heard behind him the sound of splintering wood. Turning, eyes and mouth wide with disbelief, he saw the bars bend and then burst apart, the lock rip out of the wood, the doors fly open. For one moment he saw the Minotaur—huge, his head less than a handspan below the lintel. By instinct he leveled his bronze-tipped spear.

The thrust the Minotaur had exerted on the doors to break the bars and the lock impelled him forward when the resistance gave way. He hardly saw the little man across the corridor, but he came up against the spear and felt a stab of pain as it slid along his side. He bellowed and swung his arm. Spear and man were swept away, but another man appeared in the doorway. The Minotaur didn't know it was a second man. To him the first had returned defiantly. He ripped away the weapon the man held, broke the shaft, and thrust the splintered wood right through the annoying creature's chest. It made a large hole from which blood poured. The Minotaur sniffed, but he wasn't hungry and cast the body away.

A shrill screech offended his keen hearing. He grasped at the sound, caught a falling body, and squeezed the thin, vibrating neck from which the noise was coming. That noise stopped but others began. In the corridor were more servant people, screaming, pushing, some striving toward him, most trying to run away. Going out?

"Out!" the Minotaur roared, and set out after those who were running, who screamed louder and retreated before him.

His stride was longer, quicker. He overtook a man, grasped him and shook him, bellowing, "Out." There was a small snapping noise and the man was limp in his hands. He threw him down, angry now, and ran to catch another.

Minos was still in his bedchamber when chaos broke out in the corridor. He looked up, frowning, to be confronted by a white-faced guard, who gasped, "The Minotaur is loose," and fled out the doors onto the portico. Minos followed him with only the slightest hesitation, but he wasn't fleeing mindlessly. He ran around the southeast house, down the slope of the hill toward the road that bridged the river. He ran easily, with the long strides and steady, deep breathing of a man who has kept up his training as a warrior. Nonetheless, Gypsades Hill tried his strength, and he was gasping as he ran through the always-open gate, past Dionysus' altar, and burst into Ariadne's chamber.

"The Minotaur is loose," he said.

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Framed