Ariande's Web

by Fred Saberhagen

  Time passed. Ariadne sipped at the warm water in her jug. The morning sun warmed rapidly, its heat beat down upon the decks and walls, and the cabin became even less endurable. Of course there would be some way out, and if she absolutely had to have it she would close her eyes and find it. There would be a loose plank somewhere. Or—

  She sat imagining her web. When the thing was difficult to get started, as it was today, it helped to visualize a giant spider, weaving a web-pattern with concentric circles of fine strands. And then the imaginary creature growing, moving away, leaving one glistening filament to mark the path of its departure—

  The eyes of the princess suddenly came open at the sound of an alarm, if not a panic, among the skeleton crew. Their voices were not raised, but the princess could hear a rapid muttering that was all the more alarming because it was trying to be quiet.

  All the cabin walls had chinks in them, as did the overhead, and these defects had the accidental benefit of allowing a certain amount of air to circulate. Presently Ariadne, peering out through the small gaps between boards in the shoreward wall, caught her breath. A gang of men she had never seen before were approaching at a run, carrying among them a random, amateurish assortment of weapons. Each man had a white scarf tied around his upper arm, evidently as a kind of emblem or insignia; otherwise they were casually dressed as field-workers or artisans. One loosed an arrow toward the ship. She heard the impact smart against the planking.

  Looking out through a chink in the cabin wall, Ariadne could catch a glimpse of the man they were calling for, standing with folded arms on the very edge of the shore, and looking about him alertly. He was perhaps thirty years old, sandy-haired and wiry, simply clad, with nothing amateurish or showy about the sheathed sword at his side.

  A couple of the men on shore were waving torches, their flames only marginally visible in the bright sunshine. Suddenly terrified by the thought of fire, Ariadne screamed to let whoever was out there know that she was in the cabin, and pounded on the thick door with ineffective hands.

  Pegleg and the other limpers and graybeards of the skeleton crew had begun, too late, a futile effort to put out to sea. Oars clattered and clashed and fell; as far as Ariadne could tell, there was no attempt to hoist sail. Cowering unarmed in the cabin, she heard the struggle, the swearing and the screams.

  Every minute or so some excited Dian man or boy, running at full speed, would come pounding up on shore, calling for someone named Nestor and then shouting to the leader some kind of a report as to where the main body of the raiders now were, what they were doing, and how many they were. Each report, it seemed to Ariadne, was more likely than not to be contradictory of the one just preceding it. The consensus on the number of pirates who had come ashore seemed to be around two hundred.

  Applying a rule of thumb learned from experience, Nestor decided in the privacy of his own mind that if he cut that number in half he would probably be somewhere near the truth.

  "They're headed for the Temple of Apollo?" The leader was keeping deliberately calm, but he sounded mystified. "What do they expect to find there in the way of loot?"

  Ariadne could not hear the response clearly.

  "Well, maybe more are landing elsewhere, and they're using the temple as a rendezvous point. Or else they're just confused—that happens a lot. Or possibly they know something that we don't." He raised his voice in the tone of one giving a decisive order. "Let's see how well she burns!"

  The scream seemed to come bursting out of her throat without any conscious intention on her part, and it threatened to tear the top of her head off.

  She had really been locked in the cabin—a firm try on the door proved that—but moments after the scuffling was over Nestor opened the door, in response to her screams. She could see blood spattered on the deck when she came out.

  The ship was already actually on fire; at least the sail was burning spectacularly.

  She shrank back momentarily when the grinning man confronted her, not at all certain what treatment she was going to be given. But then she gritted her teeth and burst out of the cabin, regardless of whether missiles might still be flying. Ariadne had determined that if she was to die, it would not be in that miserable hole.

  The lean man called Nestor caught her effortlessly with his left hand, as she would have gone running past him, and at the same time lowered the sword that he was holding in his right. Briefly he looked past her, satisfying himself that no one else was in the cabin.

  He was not nearly as big as Theseus, she thought, but possessed of all the wiry strength he seemed to need, and moved and spoke with the same air of confidence.

  When the man who had caught her spoke to her it was in the common language that everyone who traveled much on the Great Sea, or dealt with travelers, learned to use. "You're free now, lass. Where're you from?"

  He thinks I was a prisoner, Ariadne suddenly realized. And in the next moment she realized that he was right.

  One of Nestor's men barked at her to answer.

  But Nestor only shook his head. "That's all right. After all she's been through, it's only natural that she's mightily upset."

  Then he faced back to Ariadne. "Who's the leader here, girl? Of the people who locked you up?"

  "A man called Theseus." The name came simply and automatically, and called up no emotion.

  Nor did it seem to mean anything to her questioner. "Don't know him. The two ships that got away looked Corycan."

  She nodded.

  "And what do they think they're after here?"

  Some remnant of loyalty, or maybe it was only innate stubbornness, kept her from blurting out the truth, or giving any reasonable answer. She could hear herself repeating, idiotically, "I don't know, I don't know."

  Nestor did not press her but turned away again, conferring with his men. Presently he once more turned back. "You don't talk like a slave or servant. What's your name, girl?" His voice softened. "Don't be afraid, no one will hurt you now."

  "Ariadne," said the princess softly, without thinking. And a moment later she felt a faint pang of fear for having revealed her identity, because it was more than possible that these folk would be unfriendly to the lords of Corycus. But Nestor heard the name without blinking, and it was borne in on her again how far she was from looking the part of a princess now.

  For many days, until now, Ariadne had continued to assume, without really thinking about it, that if she remained loyally with the romantic prince she had come to love so terribly (not that she could really imagine herself doing anything else), then her life, barring a few exciting and odd adventures, would continue to be that of a princess.

  But the time had now come when she could no longer make excuses for her lover, not even to herself—there was no getting around the fact that Theseus had been downright cruel to her.

  Not that Theseus had ever physically mistreated her—unless you counted his locking her in the cabin. But she could almost wish he had been moved to slap her—that would at least have shown strong personal interest.

  "I see now," she murmured to herself, "that to be a princess is really nothing in the great world. To be loved is perhaps everything—but now I doubt that Theseus loves me. If only I were a goddess—but I am not. There is no Face of Ariadne that anyone can put on—the only one who can wear the Face of Ariadne is myself."

  She, Ariadne, had her pride. She was the daughter of King Minos of Corycus—the real king, who had been unlawfully deposed and murdered—and of his true queen, Pasiphae. And she was the younger sister of Princess Phaedra; and the older sister of Prince Asterion, known to the vulgar as the Minotaur.

  In her imagination she could hear her own voice now, trying to explain all this to the man called Nestor. Meanwhile she knew quite well that it was really herself to whom she was trying to explain, how in the name of all the gods she, a princess of Corycus, had come to be here in this situation. And in any case, Nestor seemed to have given up listening to her, once he decided that she was ba
bbling.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Immediately on coming ashore, Theseus had picked out half a dozen of his men, choosing the youngest and most agile, and sent them straight for the seaside villa that practically overlooked their landing from its nearby cliff. It seemed to him that the first thing he had better do was to prevent any local people who might have seen the landing from getting away and spreading the alarm.

  The small band of fast-moving pirates went scrambling up the rocks in the gray light of dawn, soon broke into the stable behind the large house, where, shouting their reports downhill, they said they had found no one at home, but were able to report the capture of two cameloids. Shouting up the hill, Theseus quickly ordered a couple of his agile six to mount these animals in swift scouting probes. He thought it an ominous sign that the house was unoccupied. Whether any of the inhabitants might already be busy spreading the alarm he couldn't tell.

  He had come ashore with forty men, and now the thirty-odd who made up the main body of the raiding party were quickly moving inland. Theseus was already able to make out, in the distance, the classical white rectangular shape that had to be of one of the temples they were looking for.

  The band kept advancing rapidly on foot, following the course of a ravine. The bottom of this natural ditch was mostly dry, with only a puddle or two here and there along its twisted length, and the head-high cliffs of crumbling earth on either side would offer them concealment part of the way to the seaside temple. Halfway there, the ravine went twisting off inland, climbing gradually into higher country, and the attackers had to climb out of it and go running across an open pasture.

  "Let's go, lads!"

  Moving at a quick trot, some with weapons drawn, they began to cover the uneven space of land between them and their goal.

  One of the men who had gone on an impromptu scouting mission on a cameloid came back in a few minutes, driving his mount in a quick pacing run, with a report for Theseus.

  "No signs of opposition, cap'n. Saw only three, four people, all running the other way."

  "Good. Which way did Hector go?"

  "Couldn't say, chief."

  "All right. Get off that damned animal and come with us." If he'd had twenty or thirty mounted men, that would have given him a considerable advantage, but one just drew attention to the raiders' presence.

  Theseus was not making any plans beyond the moment when he was going to find himself inside the temple. Somehow he had been visualizing the treasure as lying out in the open, on an altar or table of some sort, waiting for him to come along and pick it up. He had to keep reminding himself that there was no reason to believe that getting his hands on a Face would really be that easy.

  Scanning the landscape for signs of potential opposition, he could see three or four buildings, all on hilltops, that had the look of temples of one kind or another. All were more than a mile away, and Theseus gave them no thought except to suppose they were dedicated to other gods, deities who might be expected to be neutral in this present conflict.

  Now the raiders, moving on foot, were rapidly drawing near the temple on the shore. Nearby, just a few yards inland from the formal erection of marble walls and columns, there clustered some shabby wooden outbuildings, not nearly as fine to look at. Even the most austere temple, dedicated to the most exalted god, needed a latrine nearby, if humans were going to spend much time there. Suddenly it occurred to Theseus to wonder, for the first time in his life, whether men when they became gods still required such a facility. Soon he ought to know.

  With Theseus still in the vanguard, and men bunched closely at his heels, the raiding force covered the last few yards. They went bounding across a grassy terrace, up the broad steps of Apollo's temple, and in between the massive columns. There were no doors here to be locked or broken down.

  The walls and columns, the decorated entablatures and cornices, were all of the fine local marble. The structure was only partially enclosed, standing broadly open to the sun and air, oriented less with regard to the cardinal directions than to the shape of its natural rocky base.

  On the very verge of crossing the threshold, some of the raiders hesitated before intruding upon the shaded solemnity before them. Trying to squelch this reluctance before it could get a foothold, their leader strode right in, and bellowed, "Are there any gods in here? If there are, damn you, come out and fight!"

  When Theseus shouted that, his companions looked at him, and the terror and awe they felt were briefly visible in their faces. But he roared his laughter at them, and they got on about their work.

  The handful of people already in the temple froze in place after a single look at the grinning men who were advancing toward them so rapidly with drawn swords. A moment later most of the worshipers of Apollo were running away at top speed.

  By chance the raiders had interrupted a ceremony in progress. A short procession, consisting of five or six men and boys, all but the chief priest ritually naked, had been approaching the altar. A bearded man who was evidently the priest in charge was bearing in both hands a slab of wood, and piled on the slab like food on a platter were the offal and bones of some newly slaughtered animal, the portion traditionally due the gods. Two boys in the procession were carrying strips of the edible meat, already cut up and wound onto wooden spits, ready to be cooked.

  Two of the worshipers, one of the boys and the bearded chief priest, did not get out of the way fast enough and were cut down. Terror sent the others flying out onto the seaside rocks behind the temple, past the place where the animal had just been slaughtered, and from which the smoke of the cooking fire went up. It was not the best choice of directions in which to flee, because from there their only escape from pursuers would be to hurl themselves into the sea. But today was a lucky day for those who scrambled to the rocks; this pack of raiders was not interested in hunting them down.

  Whether the tubby, bearded priest was foolhardy enough to try to stop the raiders, or whether he was simply slow, was a question that remained unanswered. When the priest lay on his back on the stone floor, with a dead acolyte beside him, Theseus tried to interrogate him on the subject of hidden treasure in the temple, but his mouth was bubbling blood, and there would be no useful answers.

  Theseus took a deep breath, stood back, and looked around.

  Temples of Apollo were common enough everywhere, but Theseus had rarely been inside one before. This one was big enough to hold perhaps a hundred worshipers, if they didn't object to a little crowding. Or weren't bothered by getting wet when it rained—most of the roof seemed to have been deliberately left off. The structure had been positioned on a rocky promontory, so three sides of it were only a few yards from sunlit water. From inside it was quite possible to hear the waves, of only ordinary size, eternally patient at their work, casually smashing at gray rock, not many yards below the portico.

  Most of the interior of the temple was one open, central space, and at one end of this, behind a wide-spaced row of marble columns, were arrayed the hearths and altars used in offering sacrifice. There were no old bloodstains here, nothing that crude in this austere environment. The actual killing of sacrificial animals would take place somewhere outside. Within the temple, everything was clean, well kept.

  The intruders stood looking around them, wasting precious moments, stalled by the lack of any evidence of treasure.

  "Where is it, chief?"

  "We'll find out."

  Other men were rummaging through a kind of cabinet on the other side of the broad interior open space, pulling out rich cloths, ritual vestments, knives for slaughtering animals, tossing them on the marble floor. One called over his shoulder, "Not here either."

  On the floor, the lungs of the dying man kept bubbling, like a kettle on a fire. Theseus's men were beginning to stand around, as if they had run out of interesting things to do. "Keep looking!" he shouted at them.

  Meanwhile the statue of Apollo, his bow in one hand, lyre in the other, looked down on the scene from a
pillar behind the altar. The marble Apollo in this case was a little more than life-sized, and executed with some skill, showing a beardless but well-muscled youth gazing into the distance. It had been crowned with a circle of real laurel, the stiff oval leaves clinging close to the marble head.

  At one side of the temple, behind the first row of towering white pillars, were a few wooden storage chests, all quickly upended and their contents turned inside out. One was empty, the others filled with common-looking cloth and various instruments of ritual. Nothing of mundane value but a few delicate tools of silver, and not enough of that for any of the men to argue when Theseus commanded them to let it be.

  The structure of bare stone, scoured by the sea wind, standing open to light and air, did not appear to offer much in the way of possible hiding places.

  He strode back into the open center of the temple, looked about him, and then pointed with his sword. "Maybe it's under the altar. Heave on this chunk of rock, you bastards, tip it over."

  So heavy was the stone, so low its center of gravity, that they wanted to drive a lever under it to make any progress; but unfortunately there was no suitable tool on hand.

  At last, with six strong men tugging and pushing, the tall stone went over with a breaking crash. And there was nothing under it, not so much as a spider or an ant, nothing at all but the blank solid stone of the floor, not even the suggestion of a hiding place, let alone treasure.

  Men swore, and blasphemed the gods. But none of their curses mentioned Shiva by name. Or Apollo, or Dionysus. It was as if an unspoken agreement existed among the men, that to speak such names just now would be pushing one's luck just a bit too far.

  "It must be in the other temple, then," Theseus muttered to himself. "The one inland." Or the possibility that Shiva had hinted at was real, and the Face was not here on the Island of Dia at all.