Ariande's Web

by Fred Saberhagen

  Presently all eighteen had been served the ritual draught, and the soldiers began the business of escorting the people of the Tribute to the place where they were to die.

  As the march got under way, following the marked route through the Labyrinth, Alex wondered if Shiva would be waiting for them up ahead. It seemed likely.

  He wondered also if Theseus would recognize him, and decided that was highly unlikely.

  Even if the princess had mentioned Alex to her lover, at one of their secret meetings, there would have been no point in her describing the soldier who was to accompany them on their getaway.

  Alex wondered again what had caused the princess and Daedalus to choose this exact time, the very hour of the sacrifice, for the escape. Not that it was up to a mere private soldier to question anything such folk decided; but he had once tentatively raised the question with Clara.

  It might have been troubling her too, for she'd had a kind of answer ready. "The Lord Asterion says that the time that seems the worst may sometimes be the best. We go when the Lord Shiva will not interfere."

  That was too much for Alex to understand. Why would Shiva not interfere, when everyone knew he would be present at the ritual? He could only hope that the dreaming bull-man knew what he was doing.

  And at the moment when the squad of soldiers, and the eighteen victims they were escorting, reached the cleared site where the sacrifice was to take place, Shiva was very much present, reclining nude in a throne-like chair of silk and leather, on the very stage of the sacrifice.

  The scene of the planned sacrifice was the recently constructed small amphitheater, with concentric semicircles of seats, enough to hold forty or fifty people, far more than it seemed were going to be needed today. Facing them, a kind of elaborate altar, built upon a stage.

  The very complexity of the arrangement suggested ominously that today's sacrificial harvest would not be gathered by means of a swift roasting with the Third Eye. Alex supposed that might be too quick and bloodless to produce the desired effect on victims and onlookers, and even in the celebrant himself. There were human beings, he knew, who took great pleasure in inflicting pain; and he supposed that the same was true of certain gods.

  Shining cages of a peculiar construction had been set up. Also, at the base of the scaffolding, a kind of holding pen, crudely constructed, in which the prisoners were evidently meant to wait until their turns came to mount the stage.

  The sun had been barely at the horizon when the younger princess, attended only by her usual companion, Clara, walked out of the princess's suite of rooms in the palace.

  In the freshening morning light, the two young women traversed one corridor of the huge palace, went down some stairs, and then followed another long, broad hall. Here and there, as usual, were soldiers of the Palace Guard, on duty. But none of them was the man Clara was watching for. To cover all the guard posts, it was necessary to make a circuit of the ground floor, and this they did. And now they had almost reached the exit.

  They had entered the last corridor on the ground floor before she touched the princess on the arm, something she ordinarily did only in private. "Where is Alex?" Clara dared to whisper.

  "I don't know," came the soft-voiced answer. "I haven't seen him anywhere. I'm not going to stop and look for him, we haven't time."

  "But my lady . . ."

  "No. Either he'll find a way to catch up with us, or he won't. There can be no more delays."

  "If he dies today," the princess added, obviously no longer speaking about Alex the Half-Nameless, "I will die too."

  "Don't say that, my lady!" Clara seemed near tears with fear and worry, and her mistress grimly ordered her to smile. With an effort the slave-girl got herself under control.

  Past another pair of soldiers at the door—neither of them the man they hoped to see—and the young women were out of the palace altogether, walking in new morning light, over well-tended grass now glistening with dew. And now the familiar entrance to the Labyrinth loomed close ahead, open and unguarded. And then they were in among its windings, out of sight of the rest of the world.

  It occurred to Alex, as he quivered in suspense, trying to look calm while waiting for Theseus to make his break, that no one among the group of plotters had really considered the possibility of doing anything to help the other seventeen scheduled victims. It would have been inconceivable to get them all away, even had they not been more than half-stupefied with drugged wine.

  Of course, if a man could somehow set them all loose, running in a panic, that might well create a distraction to help a chosen few to get away . . .

  Without much hope, Alex tried to come up with good possibilities. Setting them loose, even for a little while, would entail opening certain doors in the Labyrinth which the priests of Shiva wanted to keep closed; leading or driving the sacrificial victims down alternate paths, so that confusion reigned, and time and effort would be required to get them back.

  * * *

  Having left the palace and its grounds behind them, Ariadne and Clara were now traversing the Labyrinth by means of the marked path, about a mile and a half in its frequently curving length. Perses in his crown and formal robes would soon be coming along this way—it was how he was wont to travel to and fro between his palace and the center of the Maze. And then the intended victims, under guard. There were of course many intersections, and sometimes the chosen route went under or over crossing passageways.

  Daedalus no doubt had traversed the intricacies of this way several times, when he came to the island and was set to work, and when Perses called him out to give a progress report.

  This way was marked through the Maze by painted spikes driven into the pavement.

  The princess and her attendant followed this first portion of the route each time they went to visit the Prince Asterion. And today, as on most other days, on reaching a certain point, Ariadne calmly turned aside, as if she were going to one of her regular meetings with her brother.

  From this point on, she walked part of the time with her eyes closed, relying on the web-strands of her inner vision. And during the intervals when her lids were shut, her small feet in their sturdy sandals moved as surely as before.

  Presently, after a look back to make sure that she and Clara were unobserved, she turned aside again, leaving the route that usually brought them to Asterion. The two women were now on a way that, if all went well, would take them to Theseus.

  The king and Creon were also traveling the marked path. They had the two women briefly in sight ahead of them, and naturally assumed that they were going to see Asterion.

  King Perses, dressed in rich ceremonial garments, had given few signs as to whether he expected to enjoy the forthcoming spectacle or not. Not that Perses had any real choice; Shiva would certainly insist upon his being there in any case.

  "I suppose, lord, that neither of your nieces are going to attend today's ceremony?"

  "So they have both informed me."

  "I don't know what the Lord Shiva will think."

  Perses frowned, but considered this was not the proper time for a real test of wills. "Really, Creon, I don't know why their presence should make any difference to him."

  When the king arrived on the scene, well after dawn (no one really expected any elaborately planned event to start sharply at the scheduled time), he found Shiva waiting, surrounded by his priests. The emaciated body of the God of Destruction was perched on an improvised throne that was higher if not more glorious than the one in the great hall of the palace.

  Only the cages were higher than the throne, in fact almost directly above it, so that if Shiva, his scrawny frame lounging naked in a silk and leather chair below, wished to luxuriate in the rain of blood from them he had only to move his body slightly.

  The god shifted his position, as if he were growing impatient.

  The mortal king, who was now arriving with Creon at his side, would have to be content with a place of secondary importance.

 
The Butcher and perhaps a dozen lesser officers were in eager attendance, occupying portions of two rows of seats. Alex and the rest of the cohort of the Palace Guard had been deployed casually around the space.

  I, Asterion, having taken leave of Daedalus and his son, trotted quickly back through the Labyrinth, to a vantage point I had been careful to select beforehand, which would provide me with a good view of the actual site of the sacrifice. I suppose that if I had applied to Perses for permission to attend, it would have been easily and even eagerly granted. But of course I had not thought of doing so, any more than the usurper had thought of volunteering an invitation.

  One of the refinements of the Maze, known to comparatively few, is the existence of movable panels, which on casual inspection are indistinguishable from sections of a certain type of solid wall. With strength only a little beyond that of an ordinary man, it is not hard to move the panels, and the judicious shifting of a few of them can, if the shifter knows what he is doing, redesign whole regions of the Labyrinth.

  In the current situation my object was not so ambitious. I was using a loose panel, carved into a kind of lattice-shape, to block off a short section of passage. Peering through this latticework, and the screen of greenery which came attached to it, I expected to be able to look on at the ceremony without being seen.

  I would not have been surprised to observe, on the newly-constructed stage, blood drained by stone knives in the hands of priests. I feared that if my monstrous shape were suddenly to appear before the doomed ones, even drugged as they were, total panic would be inevitable. Of course, just such an effect could have been calculated as part of our escape plan. My form would not only be monstrous in their eyes, but the very shape of all the nightmares that the Maze engendered. But when it was desirable to create confusion, then total panic was just what we wanted.

  I had known in a general way what was going to happen. Still, I was utterly horrified when the details actually began to take place right before my waking eyes.

  The first of the eighteen, still glassy-eyed with drugs, was separated from the group, stripped of his ceremonial garments and led up the steps to the stage, from which another skeletal stair to the small, twin cages above. A young woman soon followed.

  Now both of the iron-ribbed torture chambers were occupied, almost above Shiva's throne. From every side of the interior of each cage, sharp dagger-blades projected toward the naked victim there confined, the clearance between skin and dagger-point being never more than a few inches. None of the blades were long enough to inflict a single, fatal wound.

  Now one of the priests approached on a catwalk outside the cages, carrying a bar of iron whose free end was heated red. The object soon became plain—recoiling involuntarily from the hot iron, the victim's body would inevitably be punctured repeatedly by the sharp blade-points that drained their blood, one small wound at a time. Life would run out slowly, with the trickling blood that ran to bathe the God of Destruction who was taking his ease below.

  The eyes of almost everyone were on the hot iron in the torturer's hand. The eyes of Alex were still on Theseus, who had pasted a foolish smile upon his face, and stumbled about restlessly among the other intended victims, singing as they sang.

  Then, choosing his moment with superb skill, Theseus abandoned his pretense of being drugged.

  The sergeant spoke to him sharply. "Get back in line. Where d'you think you're—?"

  Despite Alex's determination to be ready, still Theseus moved so fast that the young soldier was very nearly taken by surprise.

  An armed sergeant moved quickly to block Theseus, who did not shy from contact as the soldier must have expected. Instead, the prince, already running at full speed, lowered his shoulder into the sergeant's midriff, knocking him down, and with almost the same fluid motion grabbed up the short sword that had fallen from his hand.

  Then Theseus went bounding and climbing over a wall, under his own power. He threw the weapon he had just captured up and over the wall ahead of him. Then, with one more explosion of strength, he was up and over after it.

  And Alex was running at full speed after him.

  Watching from behind my screen, I saw that the alarm caught Shiva in something of an awkward position in his silk-and-leather chair, just beginning to enjoy the bath of young blood that trickled on him from above. The God of Destruction was immediately convinced that his life was in great danger. I saw him leap into action, calling the bull Nandi seemingly out of nowhere and jumping on the creature's back. It seemed that with decisive action he might have recaptured Theseus in short order; but my dream-omens were proven accurate. Shiva's purpose was only to break away and take flight, and in a moment he and his mount were dwindling together in the distant sky.

  Meanwhile, Theseus had escaped, as far as I could tell, without the need for any last-minute heroics on my part. But before I could turn away, I beheld something else that froze me in my tracks. A young woman whose name I did not know, one of the eighteen, inadequately drugged and running desperately, seemed to be appealing to me for help.

  No dream, and of course no conscious effort to foresee possibilities had ever warned me that such a thing might happen, and for just a moment I cursed mentally the chain of decisions and impulses that had caused me to become so entangled in the real world.

  When seen from its other end, the short spur of passageway at whose end I waited was, to all appearances, a dead blind alley, and so no guard had been posted at its entrance. But the girl by running into it did put herself momentarily out of sight of the watchers in the tiers of seats (who of course were themselves just out of my field of vision). She came running toward me as if she believed, or trusted, that a way to salvation must exist somewhere, as if unaware or unwilling to believe what her eyes reported, that only a few feet ahead a solid barrier walled her in.

  In such circumstances, I suppose it was impossible for me to do anything but what I did.

  Behind the one who had awakened to reality, the other drugged ones were groaning and moaning now, turning and trying to stumble away as a vague consciousness of what was happening began to get through to them. Others had been made so happy by the drugged wine that they kept on singing.

  Many of the guards had run after Theseus (I had noted that Alex was first among them), and everyone had witnessed the shocking fact of Shiva's taking flight. Only a few soldiers were left at the scene of sacrifice, and the rest of the scheduled victims were largely forgotten in the uproar. Not that any of them actually got away, but some were not retaken for many hours.

  Bursting from my place of hiding, I charged at full speed, brushing past the petrified girl in the narrow passage. A moment later I had smashed my horned head into the torso of the unready priest, so that the stone knife fell from the man's hand and his gored body, much less massive than my own, went flying.

  * * *

  The priest of Shiva I had so brutally struck down lay flat on his back, blood already puddling under him. Whether he would survive to accuse me I did not know, nor at the moment did I much care. In the open space beyond the stub of passageway, men and women were running to and fro, none of them yet paying me any attention. The noise of mass panic suggested that I still might have a few moments in which to act. It was quite possible that no one but the priest and girl had noticed my rash interference.

  The girl I had just saved had slumped to the pavement. Bending swiftly, I scooped the drugged and helpless figure up into my arms, and carried her away.

  Having quickly regained my original hiding place, I stopped and turned to restore the screen-barricade that made the stub of passageway look like it was blocked. Then, gently carrying the girl, I turned away and raced on.

  Behind me, the sounds of panic and of rage lingered in the morning air, fading only slowly.

  Theseus, having vaulted over the wall, came down catlike on his sandaled feet, steadying into a fighting crouch, ready to spring. But he was utterly alone. He found himself now in another passage, prac
tically indistinguishable from the one from which he had just departed so precipitously. There was the sword he had just captured, lying on the pavement where his toss had landed it, and he hastened to grab the weapon up.

  A hasty glance to right and left, and away he ran. There was no one here to guide him, but he had not been relying on that anyway. It was ingrained in him never to trust that people were going to do anything they promised.

  Ariadne had given a list of directions to memorize and follow—turn right, right again, then left at the next corner, and left again, after a longer run than either of the two preceding.

  The whispered words were carved into his memory. Then you will see a kind of alcove on your right. Turn into it, though it looks like a dead end, and behind the column in the rear you will discover a small door. Come through that door, and someone will be waiting for you.

  If anyone had noticed him going over the wall, then almost certainly some pursuit would follow. But they would have to spend a little time in scrambling to get over, especially if they carried weapons.

  The tumult behind him was increasing in volume, but so far no one was right on his tail. He could hear voices shouting in confusion, and screams that spoke all too eloquently of blood and death.

  Theseus sprinted on.

  Chapter Ten

  Theseus, running as fast as he could through the memorized list of turns, rounded a corner in the Labyrinth to find Ariadne and Clara hastening toward him. Smothering a cry of joy, the princess threw herself into her lover's arms. Moments later, she was leading him and Clara on a sinuous path toward the place where they were to meet Daedalus. Ariadne's eyes were closed at least half the time, as she strode surefootedly ahead.

  The prince had not yet noticed this fact. "How can you find anything in this place?" he demanded, after the third or fourth additional branching of the ways. "My head is spinning already."