"I understand. And do you have a plan for keeping yourself warm tonight?"
"Not really, sir." Her long eyelashes flickered. "But I am open to suggestions."
In the other cave, there came an interval of sleepy rest, and relaxed murmuring. "I am glad, Prince Theseus," whispered the Princess Ariadne, "that your plans for the future include me."
"Absolutely—certainly they do." His voice sounded vague and tired, as well it might, after all he had been through.
"Isn't it strange?" the young woman mused. "A year ago—six months ago—I had no idea that anything like this was going to happen."
"How could you have had?"
"Did you?"
"Did I expect to meet the woman who would become dearer to me than my own life? No."
The princess moved a little, snuggling herself more comfortably against her lover. "Where were you a year ago? I suppose you were safe at home, in your father's palace."
That brought a chuckle from Theseus. "My father doesn't have a palace."
"You said he was a king."
"Well, yes, but . . ." The prince seemed to be groping for words. "He has a nice big house. Even if he had a palace, neither he nor I would spend much time in it. We are both men with many affairs—affairs of state, I mean—to keep us busy."
Ariadne raised herself on one elbow. "I want to know all about your family. So far you've told me practically nothing. What is your mother's name? What's she like?"
"She's been dead for many years."
"Ah. Like my own mother. I'm so sorry for you. How about your brothers, sisters? Tell me everything. I can't believe I don't even know the name of your country, or how far away it is."
"All that can wait. Right now isn't it enough that we are both alive? And that we have each other?"
Theseus and the princess who loved him lay together in the soft, clean sand of the cave floor, keeping warm through the night. Ariadne kept exchanging whispers with her lover in periods of sleepy talk, between the bouts of feverish activity.
"If you don't want to talk about your family, then we can at least plan what kind of wedding we are going to have. I mean when we have finally reached your mysterious homeland."
"All in good time. You know what I would much prefer to think about right now."
"Tell me."
"This."
"Ahh."
And still later, the princess returned yet again to the subject of her lover's family and home. But the more Ariadne tried to press him for the relevant details that she so craved to hear, the more he put her off.
When she pressed harder, Theseus curtly broke off the discussion. "I don't want to talk about all that just now."
"Really? Then when?"
"When I feel we are truly safe, my princess. Then I'll be able to relax."
The best way to break off the discussion was to change the subject. Fervently Theseus protested his love for Ariadne, doing all he could to insure that she remained devoted to him. He never ceased to marvel at her beauty—for a few seconds at a time.
Privately he also marveled at the fact that she seemed really to have been a virgin—until this night. But then he supposed that was not really surprising in a princess.
Theseus slept fitfully, between bouts of passion and sleepy intervals of talk. Whenever his attention was not totally engaged with the body of the princess, he nursed his dreams and plans, which in general had little to do with her. Meanwhile he never entirely gave up watching and listening for the patrol of Minoan soldiers, who wouldn't be making much noise when they came, but would be carrying plenty of power of their own, in the form of weapons. It was important not to sleep too soundly.
Under a brilliant moon and piercing stars, Theseus stood confronting Asterion, deep inside the Maze. A night breeze whispered, and there was as always the faint sound of running water.
But he wasn't even thinking about Asterion at first. Instead his thoughts were confused, as if he were on the point of falling asleep. Theseus's next plan, now that his own survival seemed assured for the time being, was to get Ariadne away somewhere. It would have been great if he could have brought her sister away too. Then he might even have held both of the girls for ransom—though in his heart he would have been better satisfied if it had been Phaedra who had fallen in love with him at first sight, and who lay with him tonight. He thought she would have been more interesting, perhaps only because Phaedra had never paid him any attention. But he had done all in his power to seduce Ariadne, because she was clearly interested. And after all, he had no intention of ending his life as a mere sacrifice, one of a row of sacrificial dummies.
On second thought, he rather doubted that their Uncle Minos would really want either of his nieces back on Corycus, as a potential rallying point for the disaffected, once someone had been so obliging as to kidnap them. Trying to collect ransom would have been useless.
And, besides saving his own skin for the moment, Theseus wanted to find out whatever this girl knew—if she knew anything at all—about the god-Face supposedly hidden in the Labyrinth. That rumor had been passed around even among the youths and maidens of the Tribute.
Already he had tentatively questioned Clara on that subject. She had heard the same rumors as everyone else, but had been able to tell Prince Theseus nothing concrete that he did not already know.
Prince Asterion (as far as Theseus could determine, that seemed to be a genuine title, his real name) was half a head taller even than Theseus. His massive, hairy upper body was exposed above the beltline of his kilt, making Theseus, for all his muscular development, seem no larger than an ordinary man. The strange voice from the bull-throat said: "I am sorry to see that you have come carrying a sword on your visit to me, Prince Theseus."
"As a prince and a warrior, it is my business to carry a sword. Whether strange creatures approve of the practice or not."
"I only said that I am sorry. Are you a prince indeed? I know you've told my sister that you are."
Theseus made a little jerky motion with the bright blade, stirring sparks of starlight. "I am whatever I say I am. Whatever this says. Are you a prince indeed? Are you even a human being?"
"I am the brother of the woman you say you love. Does that mean nothing to you? If not, consider this: I am determined that she will take no harm through you."
Theseus made no answer to that. He was pondering whether he ought to kill the monster right away. The act would doubtless boost his reputation mightily in some quarters—but of course he would be damaged irreparably in the eyes of Ariadne, and right now that was much more important. Also, it would be much better if he were somehow able to put Asterion's powers to work for his own benefit. Taking the bull-man hostage, holding him for ransom, seemed yet another possibility. But the objections that applied to kidnapping the sisters were valid here as well. No one, except possibly Ariadne herself, was going to pay ransom to get a monster back.
In a bright glow that impressed the dreaming eyes of Theseus as intense and silvery moonlight, the two of them still faced each other, somewhere deep inside the Maze.
The odd voice from the bull's head said to him, "What you and my sister need now, prince, if you are in fact a prince, is not a sword but a ship. I am doing my best to provide one, and if all goes well it should soon be there."
But Theseus refused to be distracted. "I don't fear your powers, monster."
"Why should you? Powers? What powers?" The creature spread his vast and leathery hands, as if to show their emptiness. "The only powers that I have exist only in dreams."
Theseus was not at all sure that he ought to believe that, of the supposed son of Zeus. The prince cast a hasty, nervous glance over his right shoulder, then very quickly another over his left. He was reluctant to take his eyes off the monster before him, even for a fraction of a second, but he could not escape the uneasy feeling that the Maze was closing in ominously around him.
"Set me free," he demanded, brandishing the blade again, "or I will kill you!"
>
The monstrous hands were still spread out and empty. "I do not hold you prisoner. If you would depart from me, all you need do is turn and walk away."
This time Theseus turned fully around, but saw only the endless Labyrinth, hedging him in. The walled space in which he was standing seemed to have a million doorways, but he knew, with the certainty of dream-knowledge, that they all led nowhere. With a great cry, he spun around again to face the Minotaur, leaped forward and thrust with his sword, aiming for the middle of the barrel chest, where he supposed the heart must be. The sword plunged home; the monster went down quite easily, and lay in a great heap, leaking blood.
For a long moment the prince stood frozen, in the position in which he had finished his thrust, staring at the weapon with which he'd struck the Minotaur down. Dark blood was on the blade, running down toward the hilt when he tilted up the point. How and where had he obtained so fine a tool? He could not remember. Somewhere, somehow, he'd laid his hands on a sword of fine steel—although in the moonlight he was suddenly reminded of a weapon of his father's he'd once envied, the blade of magically hardened and toughened bronze.
Certainly what he held now was not the common sword that he had taken from a common soldier, in the midst of his desperate scramble to escape the Labyrinth. Dark blood, almost black in the moonlight, oozed onto his hand, and he shifted his grip on the sword and tried to wipe his fingers clean against his thigh, realizing as he did that he was naked. How had he come here without clothing?
The monster was dead, a mound of fallen meat, but the monster's Maze still held him prisoner.
Above him now, what had been a clear night sky was darkening, immense thunderheads rolling into position, emitting a cosmic grumbling. Beneath such power, the Labyrinth itself seemed meaningless, shorn of terror. Theseus cowered down, suddenly terrified of the wrath of Zeus—what had possessed him to actually kill a son of the Thunderer? Then he wondered, with a more immediate pang, how he was going to justify to Ariadne what he had done.
He was going to have to give her some kind of explanation, because she was already watching him—how could she be here—?
—But in fact she was, and her face came looming over him, faintly visible in starlight, as were her bare breasts. Anxiously watching her lover Theseus, calling him repeatedly by name, even as he at last broke some chain of sleep, and woke up in their hiding place in the little sandstone cave.
The night was far advanced. His hands were empty, and the only available weapon was the cheap sword that he had taken from the soldier, and even it was lying now on the other side of the narrow cave. He, Theseus, had killed nothing and no one tonight. Only in a dream, under the spell of divine Oneiros, had he been anywhere near Asterion or his Labyrinth during the past few hours.
Groggily, Theseus said, "I thought I was . . ."
"What is it, darling?"
"Dreaming," he got out. Rolled over, wiped sweat from his face, looked at her intently. But her eyes were innocent, as usual. Her body as naked and innocent as a baby's. She knew nothing of what her brother, the invader and changer of dreams, was trying to do to him.
The sky outside the cave was starting to brighten. Soon it would be time to go up on the clifftop again and look for ships.
Early on the next morning, beginning the second day of their escape, great excitement spread among the fugitives when a small ship, moving under a single sail, came to stand by just offshore.
Theseus and Daedalus crouched together atop the little cliff, squinting into the morning sunlight, holding consultation.
The Artisan said at last, "It's only a trader. Not Corycan, as far as I can tell, so I can't see that they're likely to pose us any danger."
Theseus nodded. "Come, let's go down. Make sure they see the women and the child, they'll be less suspicious of us then."
The men called to the women to bring the child and follow them. Theseus put on the cloak that he had shed during the night, Daedalus slipped on his workman's belt and apron, and both men went down to the shore to make contact with this alien captain and his crew.
Theseus, striding forward across the little strip of beach, greeted them boldly and heartily. "Good day to you, captain—and to all of you. We are five, altogether, and we require passage across the sea."
The sailors soon relaxed—these five seemed a harmless enough bunch. The captain, who introduced himself as Petros, was a short, bearded, pot-bellied man wearing a single earring, his hair and beard of curls so dark as to resist the slightest bleaching by the sun. He had a red cloth tied around his head, and was wearing a pair of shorts and a worn vest of some leather that had once been fine. He stood with arms folded, watching the approach of the three refugees with no particular surprise. Meanwhile the half-dozen men of the trader's crew stood by their captain. They were a motley group, varying in age from a white-bearded elder to a beardless boy. About half of them were armed, like their leader, with long knives or short swords.
Captain Petros looked over his prospective passengers, while the crew of the small trader regarded them with what seemed wary speculation. Then almost at once, to the fugitives' surprise, Petros promptly agreed to take them to any reasonable destination within range of his craft. And the faces of the crew showed no objection to this decision, only a kind of watchful waiting.
Theseus accepted the offer as if he had expected nothing less. But the Artisan was more circumspect. "Captain, are you accustomed to taking on odd lots of passengers?"
Under cautious questioning by Daedalus, Captain Petros offered an explanation: for the past two nights in a row, he had been promised by a strange figure in a vivid dream that his fortune would be made if he put in at this particular beach, and accepted an offer that would be made to him when he had done so. No one, especially a seafaring man, could ignore such a message.
Now Theseus was interested again. "This strange figure in the dream—did it seem entirely human?"
"Now that you mention it, no. There were great horns on its head. Why?"
"That's fine, I was just curious."
Petros explained that he had discussed the series of dreams with his crew, and by a unanimous vote they had decided to stake their fortunes that the promise he had received was true—the business of carrying cargo had not been prosperous of late.
Captain and crew were still worried, however, about the patrols of the Minoan navy, whose prowess was almost legendary. So far they had been lucky in that regard.
So it was best not to waste any time. Yes, he was willing to take them where they wished to go. "Where will that be?"
"Away from this coast, to begin with," said Theseus. "As soon as Corycus is out of sight I will consult your compass-pyx."
Nor did Petros press his new passengers as to when he might expect to receive his reward, and exactly what it was to be. All his life the captain had believed earnestly in dreams, and he expected much from this one, which had promised him great things.
Chapter Fourteen
As the chariot drawn by two swiftly pacing leopards bore Alex westward into the sky, even the practical fear of falling could not distract him from his steady anxiety about the princess.
Vertiginously he clung to the thought that the creatures of the god would not have whirled him to this giddy height simply so that they could watch him plunge to his death. Alternately, his thoughts soared with dreams of glory, in which he triumphed over some nameless, faceless enemy of the Princess Ariadne. Gradually his opponent took on the form of the king, her uncle—but in almost a year of pulling guard duty in and around the palace, Alex had seen too much of royalty to be overawed by the mere thought. Even if he had to fight against the Butcher himself, Alex could still face him.
Now he had a god as an ally, even if it was a dead god. A deity known for, among other things, his many names: among others, Dionysus, Bacchus, the Twice-Born, for which last name there was a legendary explanation. A god renowned also for the yearly cycle of growth and decline to which he and his powers seeme
d to be subject—and also for a tendency to fits of madness, sometimes bloody, in which his followers were constrained to join him.
Hastily Alex tried to think of something else. That last attribute was not one he wanted to contemplate in an ally.
The leopards paced on, their paws spurning the air, running as firmly as if they were on solid ground.
Gradually Alex came to understand that his terrifying distance from the earth was easier to bear when he did not look down. Therefore he spent much time studying the sky. He could tell by the moon and stars that the chariot was still carrying him to the west.
Several minutes passed, while his terror and confusion slowly diminished. When at last he changed position, his hand fell by accident upon something that felt like fine leather. He had discovered the reins, which had been tied around one of the carved spindles which served as support for the rail that encircled the car at about the level of the occupant's waist. But the knot of leather strips would not yield easily when Alex tugged at it, and after a minute he let the reins stay as they were, and went back to gripping the rail.
Even had he been able to establish control over his exotic team, he would have been afraid to use it. His experience at driving any kind of animals was minimal, and it seemed that the powers who had launched him on this flight were much better equipped than he was to see it to a safe conclusion.
His hand went more than once to the medallion the princess had given him.
He had been able to bring his soldier's short sword with him, and it was still vaguely comforting to be armed, though at the moment keen edges and hard metal were of no help at all.
Hours passed as he stood clinging to the rail, swaying on his feet with the motion of the speeding chariot. At last, exhausted by the tension in his muscles, he let himself slump into a sitting position, with the wooden spindles of the railing at his back. Maintaining a grip on one spindle with his hand, he let his eyes close, though he could not sleep. As long as he had no control over the direction of his flight, there was no use in even trying to see where he was going.
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