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CHAPTER 6

"Ariadne!"

The bellow of mingled rage and fear erupted in her mind with such force that Ariadne was jolted wide awake. She jerked upright, thrusting aside the gauze bed hangings so fiercely that a pole was torn loose and clattered to the floor as she leapt from the bed. The polished gypsum floor chilled her feet and she reached back blindly to seize her coverlet and draw it around her even as she took her first steps toward the door.

"Ariadne!"

This time despair filled the mental voice. Ariadne flew down the corridor, down the stairs, past her mother's chamber, and through the crooked corridor into the king's inner room. A guard at the closed doors of the outer chamber, where Minos slept in the heat of summer, called out to her but she made no answer, flying out into the corridor that led to the south portico and thence to the steps and the viaduct. A blackness had seized her spirit, a blackness that wasn't hers, that wasn't yet broken with the red lightnings of rage but soon would be.

She careened down the stairs, gasping with fright as she nearly missed a sharp turn and plunged into the slippery, curving water course that kept the torrential spring and autumn rains from wearing away the steps. There was the road. Red flickers of madness lit the edges of the blackness in her mind, but something held them back, making the blackness thicker, so thick that Ariadne could hardly breathe. The flower around her heart was fully open. The silvery mist of threads reached outward but thinned and dissipated into nothing. Her goal was too far away. She had to be nearer.

She ran like an angry blast off the ocean, but her breath was beginning to rattle in her throat and pain was lancing her side.

"Mother!" she prayed. "Help him. Help me."

The blackness in her pressed on her, made her feet leaden, but all at once she felt her hair lifted, as it lifted when she danced. Warmth and strength infused her. She felt the heavy blackness, but it no longer weighed her down. She ran faster, faster, blind in the dark but never stumbling, up the road, up Gypsades Hill, and burst into the courtyard of the shrine.

"Dionysus," she gasped.

He was sitting on the altar, naked—not at all godlike, sick and shivering, his head in his hands. She rushed to him, pulling the coverlet from her shoulders and wrapping it around him.

"Dionysus."

He looked up, blinking, grasped her wrist in a grip that made her whimper. "Not you!" he snarled. "Not you!"

Red lightning flashed through the darkness that filled her mind. "No," she cried. "You are my lord, my god. I will never do what you disapprove."

"I am your only lord, your only god!"

"My only lord. My only god," she agreed, kneeling before him and looking without fear into his staring eyes. "I love you."

The silver mist that flowed from her heartflower played over him. After a moment the grip on her wrist eased and he released her to pull the blanket tighter around his shoulders. The red streaks had faded from the black and only pain and despair echoed back from the silver threads.

"Where were you when I Called?" he asked.

"In bed. Asleep."

"Liar!" he bellowed, rising suddenly. "I looked in the bedchamber. No one slept in that bed tonight."

"No, no," Ariadne cried, rising with him and gripping his arms. "In the palace. You know I sleep in the palace, not in the shrine. I have a sister, she is only eleven and very fearful. We share a bedchamber. I told you."

"But I Saw . . . I Saw . . ." His eyes fixed over her head and his hands released the coverlet, which fell to the floor.

"What, my lord?" the woman-Ariadne asked. "Come within, where there is no wind and tell me what you Saw."

He shuddered but followed her docilely. Ariadne was greatly relieved to find that the lamps that lit the corridor had been left alight to burn through the night as she'd ordered. There was no light in the high priestess's chamber or in the bedchamber, but it took only a moment to set a wooden sliver ablaze in the lamp in the corridor and light those in the chambers.

When she released the hand by which she had led him, Dionysus stood still, staring into nothing. However, when she tried to get him into the bed, he resisted. She promptly took the blankets and offered them to him, suggesting that he sit in his chair instead. He made no reply, and it was Ariadne who wrapped the blankets around him, and, when he didn't move, led the way again. However, when he saw his chair, with its small table and glowing golden bowl beside it, he sat. She knelt before him, seeking one of his hands in the cocoon of blankets and drawing it out so she could hold it.

"You Saw?" she murmured.

He didn't look at her and his voice was hushed with horror. "A field and in the distance the Palace of Knossos. The sky was dark and there was no moon, like tonight. From the direction of the palace came a man and a woman heavily cloaked and with a hood drawn forward so I couldn't see her face—but she was small, like you."

"It was not I, my lord."

His head bent toward her when she spoke, but she didn't think he saw her. "Not tonight," he said. "There's no time in my Seeing."

He might not see her, his sight being still fixed on his Vision, but he had answered. And his voice still held horror, but there was nothing dreadful in what he described. From her previous reading of his Seeing, Ariadne knew he must spit out the whole Vision or it would return again and again and torment him into wreaking havoc.

"The man? Did you know him?" she asked.

"No, but he was not Cretan. His skin was too pale and his hair was too light. Also it was straight and cut short. He was heavier boned than a Cretan, too, with bulky shoulders as if he did much hard labor. A Greek, I think."

"Daidalos."

"You know him?"

There was a sharpness, an angry suspicion in the question that puzzled Ariadne, but she answered it with the truth because she still wasn't sure Dionysus wouldn't know if she lied. "He's my father's artificer-mage. He built the dancing floor for me. In that sense, my lord, I know him."

Now the bright blue eyes focused on her and the hand she held tightened on hers, until she drew a sharp breath in anticipation of pain. "Don't go with him! No matter what reason he gives, don't go with him."

"I will not, my lord, my god. I love only you."

The grip of his hand eased and he almost smiled, but then his eyes shifted from her face and the staring look returned. "He was carrying something," Dionysus said, "some framework I thought, draped in a cloth, and when he and the woman reached the middle of the field, he set his burden down." He hesitated and swallowed. "I don't understand," he said, piteously. "The horror of it freezes my soul, and yet there was nothing horrible in what I Saw. That was just silly, like a foolish dream."

"You Saw?" Ariadne urged softly, knowing there was no way for her to escape even if she tried to shirk her duty and refused to lift the burden of his Seeing from him.

"The woman then went under the cloth. I think she cried out faintly as if she had been hurt, but then the man pulled off the cloth and there was no woman nor was what he had carried a framework—instead the cloth covered a white cow. Is that not ridiculous?"

But his question held a note of uncertainty because Ariadne had gasped as soon as he mentioned the white cow. He paused and looked down at her. Calm spread from her small hand clasped in his. Not that she was calm. He sensed that she was frightened and horrified by what he'd said, but, oddly, that eased his own oppression. Whatever that mad Vision meant, she understood and she would explain it to him and he wouldn't be tormented by sorrow and horror any longer.

"Was that all you Saw?" she asked. She heard the thread of eagerness in her voice; she couldn't help hoping he would agree, but she wasn't surprised when he shook his head.

"No." Despite the ease she had brought him and the warmth of the blanket, he shivered. "The worst is yet to come," he admitted. "The man then disappeared and the cow began to low. Soon a magnificent white bull came running across the field, and the closer he drew the clearer I could see that it was a man's face under the horns, not a bull's. It was Poseidon's face."

"Oh, Merciful Mother, preserve us," Ariadne breathed.

"Not you!" Dionysus bellowed, pushing off the blankets and seizing Ariadne by the shoulders. "The Poseidon-bull coupled with that cow, she groaning and lowing with pleasure. Not you! I let you dance for the Mother because even we gods honor Her, but you will not be Poseidon's meat. You are my priestess. You will play no cow to that bull's lust."

"No, no," Ariadne cried. "Not me! It wasn't I! It will never be me."

"Then why is your face gray with terror?"

She closed her eyes. "Not terror, shame," she whispered. "The woman is or was my mother—and my father knows."

There was a long moment's silence. Then Dionysus said, "You know what all this means, don't you? It's all to do with Knossos and the bull from the sea, all tangled up with that first Vision that nearly drove me mad." Then, suddenly, he drew her up on his lap and pulled the blankets around them both. "You are shivering, child. I'm sorry I didn't notice you were as naked as I. Now, tell me what I have been Seeing."

The heartflower was open wide; the mist of silver threads encompassed them both and seemed to reach outward, bringing in and weaving together prophesy, knowledge, and memory. Ariadne was again aware of being two: on the surface she seemed a child who had known little love and was now almost bursting with joy because of the warm embrace, the kindness of her god; but in her deepest core she was a woman, wise with years, who could take in what the silver threads brought and had listened many times and many times soothed this most restless and dangerous being.

"You know of my father's sin in not sacrificing the bull from the sea to Poseidon," she said. "This, I believe, is his punishment for that sin."

"But why? It is almost a year since that happening. Why now?"

Ariadne sighed and snuggled closer. "Of that I'm not sure. Perhaps the bull is such a small matter to Poseidon that it went from his mind, or perhaps he thought my father was waiting for a certain time of the year when a great celebration of bull dancing is held and then he forgot about his bull. I think . . . I think something happened that reminded him of Knossos and the bull."

"That makes sense, but what fool prodded Poseidon?"

"My mother, I fear."

Dionysus drew back a little so he could look down and see her face. "Your mother?"

"When you accepted me as your priestess, the people all acclaimed me, saluted me with honor for your sake. My mother hadn't thought you would appear, had thought my consecration at your shrine would be an empty ritual. She . . . she likes praise and adulation. She envied me the salutes and the bows. She tried to call your attention to herself, but you denied her."

"So I did. I remember that. She was the woman who wouldn't leave when I said I wished to be alone with you. But what has this to do with Poseidon?"

"She wanted a god to acknowledge her also, and for the people to honor her more than they honored me, so she went to Poseidon's temple and tried to Call him—"

Dionysus burst out laughing. "I hope she chose a more reasonable time than you did. I suspect that Poseidon is even less fond of being wakened at the crack of dawn than I—after all, sometimes I am still awake at that time, not having got to bed at all."

Ariadne, all child for the moment, grinned up at him. "Oh, is that why you object to dawn ceremonies? Perhaps if you didn't dance and drink all night . . ."

He began to grin in response, but suddenly her smile disappeared and her voice faded. "What is it?" he asked. "Surely you can't object to the god of wine drinking a cup or two?"

"No, it was . . . When I Called you about all the sacrifices, I saw the woman in your bed—"

"That's enough!" he snapped. "Priestess and Mouth you may be, but you have no right—"

"No, no, my lord. I didn't mean any criticism on that subject. It just reminded me of why my father kept the bull. He wished to breed from it, for it was finer than any bull in his herd, his or any other, and a horrible notion came into my mind."

Puzzled, Dionysus frowned. Then his mouth dropped open, and a moment later he was roaring with laughter. "I didn't think Poseidon had so much sense of humor," he gasped when he could speak. "What a punishment! Minos kept Poseidon's bull to breed to his cows, so Poseidon would breed to Minos' cow."

"But it isn't funny, Lord God," Ariadne cried. "Have you forgotten the first Vision you spoke of to me? Have you forgotten the bull with a man's face, not Poseidon's face, who turned on the cows and tore them with his horns and his teeth, who killed the herdsmen who tried to save the cows and then ravaged the whole countryside?" She shuddered convulsively. "What good could come of the fruit of Poseidon's rage and my mother's ambition?"

Dionysus held her tight, comfortingly. "Ah, yes, you are a true Mouth. You've woven together the two Visions and have spoken the truth, I fear. Poseidon doesn't have any sense of humor. He'll try to make sure that his seed sets firm and that the fruit of that seed would be no blessing to Minos." He put her off his lap gently and stood her upright before him. "Now, we must set a lesser evil against a greater. I know you fear to be punished if you speak out against the will of your parents, who are also king and queen of this realm, but I'll watch and protect you if real hurt threatens you for it. You may Call me if you need me, and I will come. This time you must be my Mouth and speak this Vision aloud."

"I will," Ariadne breathed, although she was cold with fear. "I will."

Ariadne had been ready to go right then, but Dionysus had insisted she spend what remained of the night in the priestess's bedchamber and return to the palace in the morning. If his Vision had been of what would happen that night, he pointed out, it had happened already. Even if it hadn't, there was no way that she could interfere with Poseidon, and for him to meddle might bring worse upon them. If he enraged Poseidon, the Earth Shaker might bury Crete in the sea.

She had paled when he said that. Crete was not infrequently shaken by Poseidon's warnings and once had been nearly destroyed by the heaving of the earth. To comfort her, he reminded her that if his Vision was of the future, morning would be early enough to warn her mother of the evil that would follow the coupling she desired and certainly early enough to warn her to clean out her womb if she had yielded already. Ariadne accepted that with some relief. The confrontation would be bad enough in daylight; at night it would be terrible.

Having calmed her and seen her fall asleep, Dionysus took himself to Olympus where he went back to his own bed—and found he could not sleep. He wondered irritably if he was a fool. Knossos's troubles were of their own making and wouldn't shake the world at large or be noticed in Olympus, and he knew with an inner certainty that the Visions that had troubled him were ended. He no longer needed the young priestess's counsel. But with that resentful thought came an image of her sweet face with those eyes like luminous black pools full of trust. Besides, he had given his word that he would protect her, and unlike others of Olympus, he kept his word. And even the most careless Olympian protected his or her Mouth. He sighed and stopped arguing with himself. In the morning he would seek out Hermes.

He found the hazel-eyed young god, who was only a little older than he, looking over a necklet of such fantastic workmanship that it could only have been made by Hades himself. Dionysus clucked with concern and Hermes looked up at him, laughing.

"From whom did you have that?" Dionysus asked.

"I . . . er . . . from Ares, who planned to give it to Aphrodite, I suppose." He snickered, lifting the necklet so Dionysus could see it better. "I only took it to save him from a grave mistake. Can you imagine anything that would fit her less? This is for a full-bosomed, dark-eyed beauty, not for Aphrodite's fragile perfection. That man not only has iron in his thews but in his head also. Will you tell?"

"Have I ever?"

Now Hermes clicked his tongue against his upper palate. "That was very foolish," he said, his eyes dancing with mischief. "You should have said, `I won't tell if you will do for me what I desire.' Then you wouldn't need to offer me wine or any other token in exchange."

Dionysus wrinkled his nose. "I have plenty of wine, and you, no more than I, would use a threat to gain a favor from a friend. All you want is to make our elders uneasy." Then he laughed but without much amusement. "I make them uneasy enough just by being, so I don't need to prick and prod them. But some day, Hermes, you'll go too far."

Although Hermes didn't fear Dionysus because he could remove himself from that maddening presence quickly enough to save himself from frenzy or from being harmed by those in whom Dionysus had induced frenzy, he didn't like to set off his fellow mage's wild rage. Someone, even if not himself, often got hurt and Dionysus would then be sorry and ashamed. Far from fearing him, Hermes pitied Dionysus for his lack of control.

"I know this is not yours—" Hermes gestured to the necklet, which he had laid down "—so you can't be angry about that." He searched his conscience, but could find nothing and finally asked, "Have I trod on your toes somehow?"

"No, not at all." Dionysus shook his head. "Nor have I Seen anything concerning you. Only that sometimes I fear for you." His lips twisted. "There aren't so many who are willing to talk to me that I can afford to lose one. But I didn't come for idle talk. I want to know whether a translocation spell can be set upon a person."

"Certainly, if that person has power enough to invoke it," Hermes said.

"I have never lacked for power," Dionysus replied.

"You. Of course not. But you said a person." He raised his brows inquiringly. "Have you started Seeing yourself as separate people?"

Dionysus laughed. "I said that wrong. I want a translocation spell that will take me to a particular person no matter where that person happens to be."

Hermes cocked his head as if he were listening to something Dionysus had left unsaid. "A native woman, no doubt."

"The high priestess of my shrine at Knossos," Dionysus replied with a half-smile, acknowledging and denying what Hermes had implied. Then, relenting, he explained. "She's a true Mouth, both to me and to the people."

"And in danger? Your priestess? After Pentheus?"

"My hands are somewhat tied in this matter," Dionysus said. "Those to whom she will bring unwelcome news are her own father and mother, who also happen to be the king and queen of Knossos."

Hermes pushed aside the necklet with an impatient gesture and his brows knitted. "Wasn't there some trouble in Knossos some time ago? A contested kingship? I remember that Zeus decided not to meddle in it because the issue was not clear. Yes, yes. Minos was eldest but Rhadamanthys and Sarpedon were equally worthy. And eldest doesn't count much with Zeus, who was the youngest of Kronos' sons and still took the throne. Zeus was about to give his blessing to the division of Crete because he could see that the brothers would rule well together, but Hera stopped him. She said she Saw that after them chaos would follow."

"Ah, my priestess didn't know the reason but she knew of the prophecy of chaos after a divided rule. But, since Zeus wouldn't answer, Minos appealed to Poseidon."

He told Hermes the whole tale of the result of that plea. When he was done, the young god of thieves nodded. "And now Poseidon is taking his revenge. Well, he isn't the kind to put aside an affront. But why are you being bothered with the troubles of Knossos?"

"Because I have Visions of them." Dionysus shrugged. "And if I See those troubles, isn't that a sign to me from the Mother that I must do something?"

"What?" Hermes asked. "Can your Mouth tell you?"

"No. Perhaps the Mother knows, but She hasn't even given me the skill to understand what I See, and She certainly hasn't informed me of Her purpose. Only . . . She, too, loves my priestess who dances the Welcome for Her."

"Scry her for me," Hermes said then, abandoning further argument.

A gesture brought a servant who ran for a scrying bowl and dark wine. Into it Dionysus brought the image of Ariadne, not as he had first seen her, all painted and dyed and in magnificent garments, but as she'd appeared to him before the altar of the shrine, with her huge black eyes wide with concern and her flowing wealth of hair her only garment. Hermes glanced sidelong at Dionysus but said nothing, only rising and going toward the back of the house where his work chamber was.

Ariadne had wakened even earlier than Dionysus and the burden of what she must do fell upon her as soon as she opened her eyes. For a few moments, she felt that the weight was so great she wouldn't be able to get out of bed, and to add to her troubles she remembered that she had run naked from her bed in answer to Dionysus' Call. Was she to return to the palace wrapped in a bed cover? And confront her mother with a dire warning from a god in a child's kilt?

The answer to the second problem came first. If she was acting as her god's Mouth, then she could wear the dress in which she had been consecrated to him. And then the answer to the first problem came easily. There was cloth enough in the chests. A kilt and shawl could be easily devised.

Somehow finding solutions to the little problems made the real burden lighter. Ariadne rose and rang the bell that would bring the priestesses. The younger of the two appeared with a look of indignation on her face, which melted into apprehension as she bowed.

"I thought it was one of the children, priestess," she stammered. "When did you come? How . . . ?"

"The god Called me and I came," Ariadne answered, then momentarily forgetting the reason for the summons, laughed. "I came straight from my bed and without bothering to dress. I must find suitable garments to wear to return to the palace. And I would like breakfast, too."

When the food came, however, she found it hard to swallow. Only the wine, bad as it was, went down easily because it reminded her of how Dionysus had held her and warmed her. Eventually she chose, somewhat at random, one of the lengths of cloth that the elder priestess had been displaying to her while she tried to eat. A kilt was cobbled from it. Ariadne braided her hair and told the priestess that a small lamp must be left alight in the sitting room and bedchamber in the future.

"Lord Dionysus comes at his own will, it seems, and not only when he is Called," she said. "The shrine and my apartment must always be ready for him."

She left then, knowing that if she didn't go at once she would find reason after reason for not going at all, but she had learned from what had happened when she wakened. She fixed her mind on the next step. She must arrange her hair and paint her face so that she would not look like a pathetic child. Then she must dress and, yes, because it was still early and cool, she could wear a shawl over her bodice that would hide her flat chest.

A far greater problem, which she had kept pushing to the back of her mind because she had no solution, was how she would get past her mother's guards and into her presence. That, however, proved to be no problem at all. When the guard saw her with her hair dressed high, with the locks of dedication in long curls before her ears, with her eyes and lips painted, and wearing the many-flounced bell skirt in which the god had responded to her Call, his arm shot up in salute and he stepped aside.

"I see you," Ariadne responded automatically, and walked past him into her mother's antechamber. That was empty, but Ariadne could see movement in the bedchamber beyond and she walked through the drawn-back sliding doors.

"Queen Pasiphae," Ariadne said.

Her voice was not loud or shrill, which she had feared, but the two maids who were attending her mother, one dressing her hair and another drawing a line of kohl around her eye, and the third, who was holding the gown her mother would wear, all gasped and then all saluted. Pasiphae, still heavy-eyed and full-lipped, shot to her feet.

"You weren't summoned here or invited," she shrieked. "Get out!"

For the first time, Ariadne didn't flinch before her mother's rage. "The Mouth of a god needs no invitation," she replied calmly.

"Mouth of a god, indeed!" Pasiphae laughed harshly. "A babe swelled up with importance by the notice of a petty godling more like. You are nothing. You will be less than nothing soon." Her hand went to her abdomen. "I carry here a new god. One who will wipe little Dionysus from the hearts of the people, high lord and low peasant alike."

Ariadne felt the color leach from her cheeks. It was too late! She almost turned and fled, but deep within her an older, wiser woman stirred. No matter that the seed was set. A Mouth must speak her god's warning. Perhaps disaster could yet be averted.

"I am a true god's Mouth and I must speak his Vision. What you carry is no god but a curse set on Knossos by the Lord Poseidon to punish King Minos for violating his oath. The bull from the sea must be sacrificed and you must clean out your womb or great evil will come to Knossos."

"Lies!" Pasiphae screamed. "You're envious because I have received a far greater god than you. You wish to deprive me of my honor, my worship, as the mother of a god."

"The Mouth of a god cannot lie," Ariadne said. But a moment later tears sprang to her eyes, and the cold voice in which she had spoken, the voice from within, broke on a childish sob. "Mother, I beg you, don't bring this curse upon us."

Pasiphae sprang forward and slapped Ariadne so hard she staggered back. "It's not a lie! I'll bear a god! I will! I will!"

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