Bull God

by Roberta Gellis

  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.

  CHAPTER 19

  Beyond the corridor connecting Pasiphae's apartment with Minos', the living quarters of the palace were a shambles. Ariadne was aware that she should be sunk in a heap, screaming incoherently. Indeed, she was aware of a place deep inside her that was knotted tight around that screaming, that terror and horror, but for this moment she was able to command herself—and more than that, she could force closed her heartflower and seal that part of her mind that Called Dionysus.

  Bodies littered the floors of the two chambers she could see and the corridor was full of splinters from the burst bars of the door. King Minos had disappeared as soon as they entered the Minotaur's corridor and he saw the strewn bodies, but Ariadne never thought he had run off in fear. She was afraid he had gone to summon an armed troop.

  She swallowed hard as the screaming rose, threatening to force its way up her throat. Would the attack rouse the Minotaur to greater fury? She wasn't certain he could be killed. There was, she feared, that much of a god in him. He'd occasionally hurt himself when he was a child, once cut himself badly when playing with a knife, and the wounds had healed miraculously, closing and sealing themselves. Dionysus said it was a result of the spell that made possible the mating of a bull's head and a man's body.

  The thought of an attack made her shudder when she heard a distant noise, thinking at first it was the shouting of armed men readying to fight. Then she realized that she was hearing screams and shouts mingled with the bellowing of the Minotaur. The sound was coming toward her. Ariadne caught her breath, panicked herself until she made out that the bellows were not mindless roars of rage; the Minotaur was shouting, “Out. How out?”

  She realized he must instinctively have turned away from Pasiphae's apartment, to which he had been taken as a child, followed the fleeing servants who cared for that part of the palace, and come to the dead end of the outer walls. There had been a door, but Pasiphae had had it sealed up when she moved the Minotaur there—not to keep him in, then, but to keep the curious out. At least the frustration hadn't driven him into incoherent rage. He could still speak.

  “Minotaur—” she cast her voice at him. “Come to Ridne. You are lost. Minotaur, come to Ridne.”

  At first she thought what she said had been lost in all the other cries, but the Minotaur was attuned to what he heard as her voice and he separated that from the terrified squawks and gasps of those who ran before him.

  “Where?” he roared.

  “Let those people go away,” Ariadne projected. “Then I will come to you.”

  But even as she spoke she was walking in the direction of the diminishing noise. A weeping woman passed her and then a man staggered by, holding to the wall for support, then two more women blanched with terror but unhurt. Beyond them, Ariadne saw two men lying in the corridor, one of them in a pool of blood. They must have been struck down when the Minotaur started in that direction. And then she saw the Minotaur, saw that he carefully avoided stepping on the bodies—and his face was clean!

  Relieved of the fear that the blood was from a torn-out throat, Ariadne glanced again at the fallen man and saw that he had struck his head. The Minotaur had not deliberately harmed him. She glanced behind her down the corridor with senses no longer paralyzed with horror and terror and realized that those she had at first thought were dead were mostly moving. A few were bruised and bleeding, whimpering with pain or fear, but many were unhurt, some trying to cower into the smallest space and others trying to crawl away along the walls. The carnage was mostly accidental. Ariadne put out her hand and the Minotaur took it eagerly and gently in his.

  “What are you doing here, love?” she asked softly.

  “Want out.”

  Ariadne shook her head slowly. “There's no way out from here,” she said, and tears filled her eyes. Likely there was no way out anywhere now for the poor Minotaur.

  He looked bewildered.

  “Are you lost, love? Would you like to come with me to your chamber? It's nearly time to go to the temple, but I could tell you a story if you wish.”

  “Story!”

  “Then come,” Ariadne said, smiling as well as she could.

  Minos found them in the Minotaur's apartment, the Bull God sitting meekly in his chair while Ariadne propped before him a picture of a chamber with two children playing with a ball. Ariadne caught a single glimpse of the king and behind him Daidalos, then both men ducked out of sight. She sent a brief fervent prayer of thanks to the Mother that the king had sought out the magician rather than his soldiers.

  Now she glanced repeatedly at the doorway, but her voice didn't hesitate as she described what the children had done before they were allowed to play with the ball. The Minotaur liked simple stories, the simpler the be
tter. Minos came into view again and gestured toward the iron gate that opened the stairway and passage to the temple. Ariadne found a place to put the word temple into her story. Minos put his head around the edge of the door and nodded violently.

  “And when they had played with the ball for some time,” Ariadne said, “a servant came—” she pointed to a vague figure in the background “—and told the children it was time to go to the temple.”

  “Temple?”

  “Yes. Would you like to go to the temple now?”

  “Where Feda?”

  “Oh, Phaidra isn't coming today. She hurt her foot and must rest it. I'll open the gate for you.”

  He stood up at once. Ariadne spoke the command; the walls of the stair were suddenly lit with mage lights; she pushed open the gate. As soon as the Minotaur had gone through and started down the stairs, she heard Minos ordering someone behind him to run quickly to the temple and get the priests and priestesses to dance. Ariadne sat down limply and began to cry softly.

  At first she paid no attention when Minos brought Daidalos into the room, but she looked up when a heated argument began and noticed Icarus, Daidalos' son, shrinking into the shadows. The king demanded that the door be replaced by a spell; the artificer, who did look pale and drawn, protested that the greatest magician in the world couldn't serve in so many ways.

  Ariadne drew close and after a moment surreptitiously touched Daidalos' arm. He looked angry at the interruption, but then saw it was not Icarus, who often tried to soften his manner. Ariadne nodded infinitesimally; Daidalos caught the gesture and understood that she would empower the spell. He made some diminishing protests and then began to chant and gesture, touching the doorframe. Ariadne felt the hairs on her skin lift slightly and saw the air warp around Daidalos' hands and then appear to sink into the walls.

  By the time the spell was done, those hands were trembling badly and Daidalos' mouth was set in a grim line. “I have set the spell as you demanded, King Minos, but I can't fulfill your last order. I could build what you first asked; it is mostly done, except for the roofing, but to move the whole thing underground is a work for the Lord Hades, not for a mere mortal.”