Ariande's Web

by Fred Saberhagen

  My own previous excursions beyond the walls of the Labyrinth had all been brief, and unaccompanied, impulsive midnight dartings into a world that I had never really known outside of dreams. My last such sortie had been years ago, and my memories of the world that I had seen outside were old and hazy, like troubled dreams.

  This time, as on those earlier occasions, I naturally waited until after dark. And as before, I carried no ball of string to help me find my way back through the mysterious city to my home. I planned to go much farther this time than I had ever gone before, but this time I had a guide to help me, and in any case I was willing to rely on my own sense of direction.

  Meanwhile, my sister, having bidden her brother and her slave farewell, turned away to make her way home to the palace alone. I had no more fear of Ariadne's ever getting lost in the Maze than I did of losing my own way. From our real father she had her own special inheritance, which fortunately for her was far less conspicuous and troublesome than mine.

  Now, walking beside Clara, I made an effort to observe more details of her true appearance, but the effort was thwarted by her mask and the clothes she had put on.

  My escort's costume was of colors considerably brighter than my own—but that she should draw attention away from me was, of course, a key part of Ariadne's plan. Clara's mask was of papier-mâché or something of the kind, and it altered the shape of her whole head, though it gave her feline rather than bovine form—of course there was no need for her to match me in that way.

  From the sound of my companion's occasional laughter behind her mask, from the feel of her hand when I took it to guide her through certain turns of the passages, I thought that she was still a little afraid of me. She had seen me often enough in the company of her mistress, but this was the first time the two of us had ever been alone.

  Now that darkness had fallen, had already become impenetrably thick in some of the roofed areas, the Maze was more confusing than ever. Once, as I led her down a byway that must have looked particularly unpromising, I am sure that my companion started to ask me if I knew where I was going. But then she bit her tongue and did not fairly launch the question.

  As we walked, I described to the girl a certain winter night that I remembered very clearly. One night, several winters ago, when snow fell briefly, out of a cold and moonless, starless sky, swirling and drifting in the roofless stretches of the endless passageways. That had been the first and only snow that my waking eyes had ever seen, excepting the occasional white stain along the crest of the distant mountain ridge. Several times, on that long-past night, even I had begun to be confused about directions.

  My girl-companion evidently did not know what to say in response to my little story. Eventually she murmured something. I took her small hand in my great gloved one as we walked, and being a slave she made no effort to pull her hand away. She asked, brightly enough, "Where are we going? I mean once we are out in the city?"

  "I'm not sure. Perhaps I'll leave the final decision on that up to you. I want a place where I can see many people, face to face. And where it is likely that they will all accept me as a man in costume."

  Clara was ready with a suggestion. "I know a place where many of the soldiers, the enlisted men, go when they're off duty. At night during the Festival, there will be many fantastic costumes there."

  "What Festival is this?"

  "Quite a new one, I think. It's been proclaimed, in connection with the Tribute."

  I asked her, "And have you been to this place of celebration with the soldiers? Is one of them perhaps your lover?"

  "I am a slave, Lord Asterion." Clara raised a hand to finger her silver collar, beneath the concealing fabric of her costume.

  "I know that, but does that mean that you can have no lover?"

  "My Lord Asterion's questions are too profound for me to understand. I would be overwhelmed, if my lord was suggesting that he and I—"

  "No, nothing like that. I have no lovers, in the way that we are talking about. I want and need none. I thought my sister would have told you that much about me."

  "No, Lord Asterion. My lady has told me very little. Only that the stories that you are some kind of a cruel monster are all utter nonsense—not that I would have believed them in any case, when I saw how she regards you."

  "That's good." For a moment I thought of asking Clara to tell me exactly what some of those stories said; but quickly I decided I did not really want to know. "Lead on."

  The doorway, or gateway, through which we left the Labyrinth that night was one of those that I knew were generally unlocked and unguarded, and so indeed we found it. Somewhat to my surprise, I noticed now that this high-arched portal was no longer furnished with any real door at all. Holes in the masonry showed where bolts must once have secured strong hinges. The only hindrance to intruders was what I took to be a warning, graven over the arched opening, on the outside of the high wall. The message was written in what appeared to be three languages, all so old that I was unable to read any of them. In passing I reminded myself to come back here sometime in a dream; then, more likely than not, I would be able to decipher all the words.

  When my companion and I had emerged from the Maze and were standing in an open street, it was dark and at the moment almost unoccupied except for ourselves. Turning to my left, I could see the palace, less than a mile away. The huge, daunting House of the Hammer (as it was sometimes called, for what reason I know not), level after level of it rising up, lights burning on certain corners of the roof, and in many of its windows. Having visited that building in many dreams, I felt I knew it very well.

  Indeed, I supposed it very probable that I had been born inside it, but that of course I could not remember.

  No one has ever told me the detailed story of my birth, nor had I ever sought to learn it. When in dream-life I found my steps tending in that direction, I always shied away.

  Looking in the opposite direction from the palace, Clara and I could see out over the harbor, where there were berths for many mighty ships of war, as well as the bottoms of a busy trade. Most of those berths were empty now, but there was moonlight enough for me to see a scattering of ships, skeletal masts and spars, furled sails. Including some moored biremes. Here and there the orange flame of some warning beacon burned. If the whole world did not fear Minos, as they had once feared his predecessors, at least most of the people who knew him did. Of course, as always, a great part of his formidable navy was at sea.

  As soon as we were fairly out of the Maze, Clara seemed to lose all her remaining timidity regarding the Minotaur who walked beside her. Now she was eager for a party, and held my hand quite willingly.

  "I wonder—" I said aloud.

  "Lord Asterion?"

  "I was only wondering how many thousand people live here in Kandak. I've heard that it is one of the great cities of the world, but that saying may be only local pride."

  "Lord, I have no idea how many there may be."

  I still thought it strange that I had lived in the capital of my native land, or more precisely beside it, my whole life, and still had no idea what the number was.

  We moved on. Tentatively exploring the darkened streets, steering a course neither directly toward the palace nor away from it, Clara and I were drawn to a scene of music and laughter.

  Parties of laughing folk went by us in the street, and on impulse I tugged my partner into following one such group.

  There were cameloids in the streets of the city, pacing on their great soft feet, some being ridden swiftly, and others swaying slowly under heavy cargo. Draft cameloids, one-humped droms even taller and heavier than the others, pulled the heavier carriages and carts. I knew that these were common animals, but in waking life my eyes had never seen the like before.

  From behind the high gates and fences guarding private homes, dogs barked at me as we passed. I hesitated, but Clara murmured reassuringly, "They would bark at anyone."

  The group of people on foot we had begun to follow s
oon turned in through the gateway of a private house—no place for me there, certainly. But my companion knew where she wanted to go, to another building in another street, and in a few more minutes we had reached the place. There was the sound of laughter, and the rich smells of roasting meat and fresh-baked pastry, to me unappetizing. Torchlight came spilling out through all the doors and windows that pierced a certain white adobe wall, while most of the neighborhood around remained in darkness.

  A door in the middle of the wall stood wide open. Ducking my head and turning, to get my horns in through the doorway, I entered the hall. I thought that something in the overall shape of the building suggested an earlier history as a temple, but the walls were scarred where symbols must have been chiseled away, and I could not tell which god it had sought to honor. Later, I thought, when we were outside again, I would ask Clara.

  Inside the crowded room, the music of drums and strings throbbed loudly, and unclothed bodies whirled in a wild dance. Not professional entertainers, but free folk, mostly of the working classes, dancing for their own amusement. There sounded the lyre, Apollo's instrument. Torches and braziers flared, somehow cleverly made to burn with flames of different colors. Laughter went up in many voices. I was almost entranced. Never, except in dreams, had I even seen so many people in the same place at the same time. I supposed there might have been a hundred in one room. This was not a haunt of the wealthy. I thought a number of the men were soldiers, as Clara had foretold, young enlisted men out of uniform for their night's revelry.

  Along the walls of the room and in its corners there were tables, with people sitting at them, some consuming wine and food. Moving close to the broad table where drinks were being poured and handed out, I heard disturbing comments, and saw startling sights, including a number of people costumed even more spectacularly than I was myself.

  Looking closely, I observed that one or two of them were actually versions of the Minotaur, larger and fiercer-looking than I had ever been, with long horns carved of wood or bone. The mouth of one of their great masks sprouted predatory fangs.

  And again, something about the shape of the scarred walls nagged at my attention. "I still wonder," I murmured to the girl beside me, "what god they once served here, whose house we are in? Not Apollo. And not Bacchus, surely." I was sure that Bacchus, one of whose other names is Dionysus, was proscribed in every quarter of the island, and had been for the last six months.

  Clara said in a low voice, "They might once have served the Twice-Born. I have heard that when the new king came to power, he sent his soldiers here and they tore the place apart; they wouldn't say what they were looking for."

  "There are many gods whose interests lie in the same general direction as those of Dionysus. Priapus would do, or any of half a dozen others."

  On entering the hall, I had rather foolishly hoped no one would notice me. But even in this gathering, my appearance was more conspicuous, and drew more attention, than I would have wished. This was so even if the other Minotaurs were more monstrous than I.

  Fortunately, Ariadne had remembered to give the slave-girl coins, trusting her more than me to understand the details of using money. Presently something to drink, carried in a strange flagon, appeared on the broad table before me. I should mention that I was not entirely unused to wine; Ariadne had brought me some from time to time, and in the old days it had sometimes come, in small glasses, suitable for my youth, with the official meals that were then sent out to me from the palace. That an intoxicating drink would be served in this establishment suggested Bacchus once again. Beside me a loudmouthed man had now ceased haranguing the world long enough to empty a flagon of foaming beer. I had heard that the new god of Corycus frowned on most kinds of merriment; well, people were not going to give up wine, let Shiva threaten as much as he liked.

  The noise, the press of the crowd around me, more solid than in any dream, tended to be confusing. I had emptied my first flagon of wine and started on another before it occurred to me that if I drank or ate anything, I risked revealing that my mouth was mobile flesh, not part of a lifeless mask.

  But the hesitation was only momentary. To the Underworld with it! I was going to enjoy the wine.

  The unaccustomed drink produced a swaying of the room, a roaring in my ears. I had to wait for a long moment, until everything began to settle down again. Then I banged the empty flagon on the table, and made a bull-sound deep in my throat. I wanted to drink still more, and yet I was afraid.

  Only now, with the drink beginning to act upon my senses, did I begin to pay attention to a large mirror, hanging on the wall behind the long table where the drinks were poured. The broad, smooth glass was as long as the table itself, and from that position it reflected all the dim lights of the large, low room.

  Looking at my image in the mirror, I beheld a figure seven feet tall, weighing, as I knew, a little over three hundred pounds. Two sharp horns on the head, large brown eyes set wide apart, on a long bull-like face, now painted in stripes and dots that struggled to give a look of artificiality. Muffled in the great shirt were massive shoulders and arms, the latter terminating in hands that were trying to hide their almost inhuman size in grotesque and fancy gloves. The face and most of the body (now concealed by my costume) was covered with short cattle-hair.

  The removal of a glove, the better to deal with a drinking glass, revealed long fingers, heavy nails.

  But my gaze kept coming back to the reflected image of my face. Here it was, at last exposed for everyone to see, and had been ever since I entered the hall. But no one had really seen it yet.

  Standing in the middle of such a crowd, it was hard to know what to think, what to do next. In all my life, my waking eyes had never seen more than six or eight people at one time at close range, and fewer still had ever seen me. Men and women were almost as unfamiliar in a mass as cameloids. Now to be surrounded, almost imprisoned by swarming humans, was more unsettling than I had expected it would be.

  One of the young women, whose costume, or rather lack of one, suggested that she was a hired entertainer, put a hand upon my arm, only to withdrew it suddenly, a moment later. She must have felt skin that had the touch of fur, of something very much like cattle-hide.

  Suddenly brutal voices rose up nearby, and I feared that my disguise had been somehow penetrated—but no, it was only being ridiculed, by drunken celebrants.

  "What is it, man or monster?"

  "Not very convincing, if it's supposed to be the Minotaur."

  I turned toward the voices, but could find no words. Looking back at the situation now, I can see that my lack of ready speech must have only encouraged those who were looking for an opportunity to torment a victim.

  "Hey, cow-face!" The speaker was large, though not, of course, as large as I. He was in costume too, some kind of parody of a military officer—not, of course, of the Minoan Palace Guard.

  I was being picked on, first from one side, then another. Emboldened by drink, I shouted back at them. My voice, tolerably human when I am calm, sometimes escapes control when I am greatly excited, making a braying noise. What words I might have used have escaped my memory now. Certainly I meant them as insults, but I lacked all skill in such matters, and perhaps I only sounded stupid.

  "Your mask is uglier than mine," was perhaps my best attempt, addressed as it was to a lounger who, like myself, wore none.

  With that, the space around me grew ominously quiet. Clara had taken me by the arm, and was trying, first gently and then fiercely, to tug me away. But even when she pulled with all her strength, it was hardly possible for her to move me. And some accidental surging of the crowd in our immediate area had made the press so thick that quick movement was hardly possible.

  The tugging and shoving grew more violent. My tormentors and I were thrust together. It would have been hard to pinpoint a moment when the fight began. Someone swung into my midriff with a clumsy fist; I scarcely felt the blow.

  This was not why I had come here. Neither r
eality nor my world of dreams had prepared me for anything of the kind.

  I had, and have, no particular skill in personal combat. I could send bad dreams upon someone I hated—if I hated anyone—but that is all. But the sending of dreams required me first to go to sleep, and at the moment that was not feasible.

  Some of the men who joined the brawl were soldiers, off duty and here to spend their pay, and some were not. Several were armed, though weapons were not drawn at first. One struck me with his fist, a much harder blow than the first attempt, and I struck back, and he went down, flat on his back.

  My own more serious armament, such as it is, is always ready. When the brawl started, one of my opponents grabbed the bull by the horns, no doubt with the intention of tearing off my mask. What kind of shock he experienced when he discovered that the horns were of one piece with my skull, I do not know. Perhaps he was too far gone in wine to notice. I am no skilled fighter, but I am very strong, and my temper is not always mild. With an awkward heave of my bull's neck and shoulders I cast him loose, so that his body flew across the room, sweeping a table clean, reducing a chair beyond to kindling.

  Someone else came at me with a weapon, and I saw the gleam of steel, but a young man whom I took to be a soldier, though now out of uniform, intervened on my side of the fight, helping to protect my companion. Clara, her mask dislodged in the scuffling, was huddling on the floor, trying to protect her head with folded arms. I hurled a chair at the man with the drawn knife, and he was seen no more.

  "Call the Watch! Call the Watch!" First one voice, then three or four, were bawling.

  The brawl had not become a general riot yet, but neither was it over. I realized that I had no choice but to flee, back to the Labyrinth. Quite possibly some of those in the room realized my true identity, but there was no general awareness, or alarm that the monster had actually come out. Those who screamed that they had seen the Minotaur were laughed to silence by others convinced that the witnesses had mistaken one of the cruder costumes for the real thing.