Ariande's Web

by Fred Saberhagen

  The time, as indicated by the rotation of the stars, had been a little past midnight when the inhuman auxiliaries of Dionysus had scooped him up into the air, and the flight lasted long enough to afford Alex the privilege of seeing the dawn in all its glory, the world and the morning coming to life over the flat immensity of the sea, the boundless domain of Lord Poseidon. By the time that daybreak was starting to wipe the stars away, he was shivering violently in the endless rush of air. The fugitive thought, but could not be sure, that some of the sprites managed to warm him a little as he flew, or at least to break the force of the wind with some invisible shielding.

  There were certain minutes when he slept, in spite of his precarious position. Each time he awakened with a start of terror, sure that Shiva had somehow overtaken him.

  Shortly after one of the awakenings, his invisible escort furnished him, somehow, with a fragile crystal goblet almost filled with wine. The drink went straight to Alex's head, with in its way a sharper impact than any cheap, throat-burning soldiers' booze he'd ever swallowed. Yet this was totally different from the last drink these Dionysians had given him, which had put him utterly to sleep. He was not sleepy now, but energized, keyed up to the brink of some extraordinary effort. When he had drained the goblet he set it down on the chariot's wooden floor. When he looked for it again a moment later, it had disappeared.

  On departing from Corycus, Alex had had the idea that the whole diminished host of Dionysian powers, or at least all those strong enough to make the journey, were accompanying the chariot. By daybreak he had a definite impression that their numbers were diminished, though he still had no clear idea of what the count should be. Perhaps, he thought, the wind of the chariot's passage could not support them all, and those who had been left out had trouble keeping up. Even as that idea occurred to Alex it seemed to him that one of the unseen beings cried out faintly, as if it were swiftly dropping behind.

  Only a few moments later he became aware of an odd-looking flight of birds, visible in the growing morning light, bearing in from the dim, gray north as if to head the chariot off.

  Perhaps five minutes after first sighting the flying things, Alex realized that they were not birds at all, at least in any ordinary sense. His blood chilled as he realized that they seemed little more than large, inhuman heads with great wings attached. Of course the true scale of size was difficult to determine, but surely such shapes lay outside the ordinary forms of nature.

  The creatures were closing upon the chariot with remarkable speed, and before Alex had time to be fully alarmed, there came a midair clash between his own half-visible escort and a dozen of the winged heads, all streaming long, tangled hair. Flying near, the attackers opened beaked mouths that shrieked and honked with laughter, then swerved away as the leopards unsheathed their claws and snarled, causing the chariot to rock wildly in its flight. A moment later, the pair of great cats had somehow increased their pace.

  Alex, on his feet again, drew whatever weapon he had, and tried to shout defiance, but the wind of flight whipped his words away so that he himself could scarcely hear them. Some of the heads and faces were more birdlike, and others more batlike, than human in design, and he thought they were built on a scale somewhat larger than humanity. Still it was hard to be sure of size, with nothing near them to judge by.

  He could feel his own hair trying to rise upon his scalp, when his eyes told him that the visitors' scalps were each thickly overgrown with a crop of hissing, writhing snakes.

  Moments later the largest of the things, wings laboring frantically, drew close enough for him to see its bloodshot eyes, squawked words at him. The language was one that Alex had never heard before, but the content of menace, the intention to inspire terror, were unmistakable. And now from the chariot's other side, another creature suddenly swooped close, near enough to strike at him, it seemed, although he could not see what weapon it might have.

  Suddenly it displayed a thin, bonelike arm, wielding a kind of twisted javelin. Evidently the damned thing had six limbs in all, counting its wings. And Alex could also see the claws in which its thin legs terminated. Another of the beings gripped in one hand what appeared to be a living snake, thick as a man's arm, and raised it like a weapon, ready to strike with the reptile's fanged and gaping mouth. Two long snake-fangs came thudding down with a hard impact, to remain embedded in the wood.

  A moment later he saw, almost too late, that the flying horror, whatever it might be, also used its beak for a weapon. A savage thrust of head and neck just missed Alex as the chariot swerved, and tore splinters from the wooden railing.

  There was no way to retreat, and no place to run. Instinctively Alex thrust back with his blade, feeling the steel go into solid flesh. Then he dealt a hacking blow, decapitating the snake, whose head stayed where it was, while the thick body writhed and fell away.

  One of the flying creatures he had struck dropped like a stone. Another, wounded, screamed and fell away, laboring to stay airborne with a damaged wing.

  Meanwhile the chariot was rocking and bouncing in midair, as if it had encountered some kind of obstacle, so Alex was terrified of being thrown out; then once more the motion of the vehicle straightened out, and it bored ahead at increased speed.

  The leopards were bounding straight for a cloud. Moments later they plunged into the insubstantial barrier and through it at high speed, so that it passed in a mere flickering of disorienting whiteness.

  A second cloud was skewered in the same way, and then, after some broad intervening spans of empty sky, a third and then a fourth. Gradually the monstrous enemy was left behind.

  Now the passenger noticed that two thin streams of smoke emerged from the wood around the two embedded fangs of the snake's detached head, to be quickly blown into nothingness by the wind of passage. Using the tip of his weapon he pried the thing loose and let the wind of passage whirl it away.

  Alex kept looking back. After the last band of clouds had been passed, he thought that the flying heads retreated, falling back farther and farther as the Eye of Apollo rose fully clear of the horizon, launching itself on its long daily passage across the sky. At last, with a reaction of relief that left him feeling weak, he allowed himself to be convinced that they had abandoned the chase and turned away. Soon they had shrunk to mere elongated dots against the far clouds on the horizon, and not long after that disappeared altogether.

  A few minutes later Alex, looking ahead and to the right, past the sported backs of the rhythmically coursing leopards, thought that he could see some kind of island, though at the distance he could not be sure that it was any more than a low-lying cloud. Details were impossible to make out.

  Abruptly the chariot altered course, so that now the cloud, or island, lay straight ahead.

  "Is that our goal?" the passenger demanded loudly of the rushing air. "The island where I am to find the Face?"

  Nothing and no one answered him.

  "What's wrong now? What's going on? Why don't you speak?"

  He had to shout his questions again and again before at last there came a few words in response: We grow weak.

  "But is that the island we want?" He was sure that they were now gradually descending.

  We must land somewhere soon, or the chariot will fall and you will perish.

  The island—now he could see that it was certainly more than a cloud—may have been farther away than Alex had first estimated, or else the great panthers' pace had slowed considerably.

  Another hour of the day wore on, and then another. With nothing below him but the trackless sea, it was hard for the weary passenger to even guess at his altitude, but he felt sure that they were considerably lower. And now at last he could see clearly some of the details of their goal. It was a mass of land with the shape of a thick, rough horseshoe, curving a strip of beach around a narrow-mouthed harbor, which at the moment held no ships.

  At this range he could still distinguish nothing that might be a Temple of Apollo. Indeed he began to g
et the impression that there were no buildings at all.

  Without warning, the chariot wavered again, not only in its course but, as the passenger thought, in its substantiality, the very reality of its existence. There was a long, horrible moment when Alex thought that he could see right through the rims of the spinning wheels, and even the floor beneath his feet. Then solidity came back, but the vehicle was rapidly losing both speed and altitude. Now abruptly the leopards and their burden plunged down at a sickening angle, the water coming closer with frightening speed. Alex gritted his teeth, then screamed unashamedly in fright.

  Keeping his eyes open, he waited until what he judged was the last possible second, then leapt clear of the plunging chariot.

  Inevitably he had misjudged the height, and endured a longer free fall and a harder splash into the sea than he had expected. Warm salt water closed over his head, and he struck out blindly. Heavy metal was dragging him down unmercifully, and he unfastened belt and harness, let go all his weapons. A moment later he had slid out of what remained of his clothing, realizing he was going to need all the buoyancy that he could get.

  Holding his mouth closed, he framed a silent prayer to Poseidon, a promise of rich sacrifice if his life should be spared. After a frighteningly long struggle he popped out on the surface, gasping. When the motion of the sea lifted him to the top of a gentle swell, he could see the island clearly, with its shoreline still a quarter of a mile away.

  Alex had never been better than an average swimmer, but fortunately the sea was calm, the surface water warm. By now the sun was well along in its climb toward the zenith. It remained high in the sky, but it seemed that a long time had passed, before Alex finally waded and crawled ashore, to lie shivering on a sand beach, his naked flesh shriveled with immersion, feeling more like a drowned rat than any kind of conquering hero, or even a useful servant on which the princess might be able to depend. When the last small wave slapped at him from behind, he felt immensely grateful for the last little push of Poseidon's helping hand, though he doubted that any conscious effort by the sea god was involved.

  All he could be reasonably certain of was that at least one powerful god, Shiva, would probably be very angry to see Dionysus returning.

  The one thing Alex had not even considered abandoning to the sea was the medallion given him by the princess, and the thin double disk of gold and silver still hung on its chain around his neck. He now raised it to his lips and kissed it fervently.

  As soon as the castaway felt a little stronger, and had distributed a few heartfelt prayers of thanksgiving among various deities, he got to his feet. Shading his eyes, he turned to scan the sea from which he had emerged. The chariot seemed to have sunk immediately, or perhaps simply disappeared on contact with the water. The two panthers had also vanished without a trace, along with the rest of his inhuman escort. He could only hope that they were not all entirely dead.

  Facing inland, he studied the thin scrubby woods beyond the beach. There were a few palm trees, and the ubiquitous laurel on the modest heights inland. There seemed to be no coconuts. Along the first edge of solid land, a few feet above the pale sand of the beach, there straggled a row of dying olive trees.

  As soon as he had recovered his breath a little, he started to explore inland.

  Alex felt a little better as the sun began to toast his back and shoulders, already heavily tanned, and his activity warmed him too. More than a day had passed since he had eaten his last meal, a poorly digested breakfast in the mess hall, in a place and among people that, if he was lucky, he would never see again.

  Here and there he found a few berries he couldn't recognize, but which looked and tasted edible. He wondered if the island held any permanent inhabitants.

  Over the next few hours, while the sun slowly declined toward the west, his wandering investigation confirmed the impressions he had gained on his approach. The island was roughly horseshoe-shaped, its outer shoreline perhaps a mile in diameter. The neat natural harbor that Alex had observed while still airborne was indeed currently unoccupied by any ships. He also discovered, to his relief, a small stream flowing right into the harbor, and he immediately bent to drink. The water was brackish close to the beach, but when he had followed it upstream for a quarter of a mile, to near the springs where it had its source, it became good and fresh.

  For the first hour or so he found himself looking frequently over his shoulder. But gradually he became convinced that he had the entire island to himself.

  He soon came to the conclusion that there were indeed no buildings anywhere, but in several places he found traces of recent human occupation, an occasional footprint and discarded bits of trash. Any place with fresh water conveniently available was likely to be visited frequently by ships.

  Thirst was evidently not going to be a problem while he was marooned here, but hunger could certainly become one. There were no cultivated plants, and what grew wild was not reassuring. Scarcity might be due, of course, to the land having been picked over by frequent visitors. There were a few mushrooms that he could recognize as edible, and some berries growing in the patch of woods that covered the island's central elevation. On the next hill he could see what looked like wild grapes, and he walked that way to investigate.

  If only he could know that the princess was somehow safe—but he could not know that. He was no closer now to being able to help her than he had been when he was lost in the Labyrinth. Assuming she had been able to escape at all, she was probably getting farther and farther away from him all the time.

  On reaching the hilltop, he discovered that the fruit of the wild vines growing there was still much too green to eat. But rummaging around among them soon led to an intriguing discovery. Almost completely hidden by the vines and the surrounding bushes of tall laurel, a few whitish bones of marble came poking out. Digging into the mass of vegetation, the castaway discovered the shattered and age-worn remnants of a building.

  There was not much of the structure left, only the skeleton of a single room, a paved floor covering a somewhat larger area, enough for two or three more rooms perhaps, and a low rim of surviving stone wall. If only this could be the temple of Apollo that the sprites had spoken of—but that possibility seemed remote in the extreme. On this island the best that Alex thought he could hope for was survival.

  At sunset, some hours after Alex's arrival on the island, one sprite came back to talk to him, much to his relief.

  He greeted his almost invisible companion joyfully. "Thank all the gods! I feared that all of you were dead."

  Not all the gods are worthy of your thanks.

  "Well then, I confine my thanks to those who are. Tell me, tell me, what of the Princess Ariadne? Did she get away from Corycus? And what of the others who were with her?"

  There was only a whispering, as of a faint wind, before the contact broke, the visitor vanished. Alex got the impression that the auxiliaries of Dionysus were grown too weak even to talk to him at all. He could only hope that now they might somehow be able to rest and regain some strength.

  "Tell me, tell me I beg you, is the princess safe?"

  But that question received no answer.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Captain Petros and his crew were eager to put out to sea again as rapidly as possible, and energetically assisted the five fugitives as they scrambled aboard. There wasn't much room on the small vessel, and comfortable spots to sit or even crouch were at a premium, but no one was complaining. Petros and his crew kept casting worried looks about, and their comments indicated that they were chronically worried about running into some ship of the Corycan navy, who were likely to demand tribute. But so far their luck was holding.

  Ariadne repeated her earlier question. "Where are we going?"

  "I have an idea or two about that," her lover said, frowning into the distance. "But Petros is right, the first thing is to get away from this coast as fast as possible."

  At first the wind was unfavorable, and a great deal of maneuve
ring with the sail was necessary. Theseus was not shy about giving the captain advice on the details of how to do this, while Daedalus grumbled that the whole design of the ship was inefficient. Petros mainly ignored the arguments of both.

  It would also be possible to man about ten oars, now that the fugitives were available to pull. Theseus and Daedalus as potential crew members added two strong men, and Ariadne volunteered herself and her slave-girl to row if necessary.

  The offer was received in bewildered silence. When the princess proudly announced that she had often rowed for sport at home, the crew looked at her without comprehension.

  In any event, the men took care of the oars, while the women contributed by keeping out of the way as much as possible. An hour of rowing was necessary before the wind came around to the right direction, and gained enough strength to be useful. The shoreline receded only slowly.

  At last the peaks of the island's small mountains disappeared under the horizon.

  The breeze kept on after sunset, and the stars provided guidance. The Princess Ariadne, clinging to her lover's arm, was in a mood to contemplate romantic tales, and she began to relate some of them, that Theseus said he had never heard. There were legends told about some of the constellations, and the role that Father Zeus was supposed to have had in creating them. One was called the Bull, and another, small and comparatively obscure, the Princess. Theseus listened, saying little, now and then nodding indulgently with approval.

  One of the crew, perhaps inspired by listening to the stories, began to twang an untuned lyre. In a surprisingly true voice he began to intone an ancient song, in which the singer bragged that he knew more than Apollo—

  "—for oft when he lies sleeping,

  I see the stars at bloody wars

  In the wounded welkin weeping—"

  Ariadne had never heard that song before. "What is the 'welkin'?" she asked, perpetually curious, hoping that at least one of her shipmates could provide the information.