by David Bell
“He is close,” whispered the High Priestess. “I feel him close.”
“He must brave the maze and find the sacred place,” breathed Pasipha. “I feel him close.”
“He must worship the Mother with his body. She is here before us. She is here for him.”
“She is here for him. Is it the time? He has the face of a boy. Is it the time?”
“The down on his cheeks hardens. His limbs are supple and grow in strength. I have seen this. It is the time.”
“I feel him close. Her power has drawn him through the labyrinth. When he enters her sacred place he must be alone with her.”
“Alone with her, yes, he will be alone with her in this sacred place. He is to be her chosen one. Chosen to be joined with her.”
“It is the time and he is chosen. When the great star lifts to greet the moon this night he will be alone here to be joined with her. He has braved the labyrinth. He has the lineage. He is her chosen consort.”
Pasipha’s almond eyes were closed and her voice sounded like the voice of one speaking while dreaming.
“He has the lineage. The son of Akusha, once priestess to the Lady Mother, has the lineage. This night he will wear the mask and there will be the joining.”
The women all placed their hands on the sacred effigy and chanted as with one voice. “He is the chosen. He has the lineage. This night will be the night of the joining.”
The High Priestess rose from her chair and, followed by the others, paced slowly from the room. A door closed behind them. The sacred effigy stood silent, massive, waiting.
His mind was in turmoil. He, Sharesh, he was the son of Akusha. They had not looked towards his hiding place but they knew he was near, knew he must go into that room. A game like hide and seek, he had been told. He was a fool: he was the one they were seeking. He was not too young to know what was to happen to him if he stayed in this frightening place and if the Lady Pasipha came back looking for him when the great star had risen. He felt a thrill of fear. He had to escape. But the scent of the perfume was sweet. He felt it soothing his senses, calming the rapid flutter of his heart, turning his thoughts away from flight. Why not stay and learn the mystery that all had to learn when the time came? He could not deny he had felt something make him miss a heartbeat when she had come close to him in the garden. But Kallia had been there; Kallia with her gown open in a way he had not seen before. What did she feel when they said he was chosen? What was he chosen to be? Chosen as consort, the High Priestess had said. Yet she had a consort: unless something had happened to him. There were rumours of a sickness. Sharesh began to feel cold as a horrifying thought crept slowly into his mind: if he were the chosen one, might something always have to happen to the Consort? If that was to happen it could mean only one thing: he would be kept in the Palace for the rest of his life. And how long would the rest of his life be? What should he do? Who could tell him what do do? He did not ask the Lady Mother, even though she might be there in that room, waiting for him. He thought of his mother but all he could feel was the need to see her again. He shook his head, trying to clear away the languorous sweetness of the perfume. Kanesh, what had Kanesh said? The danger you do not know is not always greater than the danger that you do know. He knew now what to do: escape from this place, find Typhis and get back to the safety of the shipyard without wasting another moment. Easily said, but not easily done: he could not go back the way he had come. Very well; he would go out through the door that the departing women had used, and hope to follow them without being noticed. He entered the painted room. The eyes of the sacred white cow stared emptily at him. He had to pass closely by the smooth shiny body and could not resist running his hand along its flank. His fingernail felt a tiny crack. He stopped and looked closer. It was not a crack but a join in the wood that ran down the flank, across the belly, up again and across near the spine to meet the first join he had felt. It was a cunningly joinered panel in the side of the beast. Anyone who knew how could take it out, opening a space big enough to get inside the thing and hide away. Why would anyone want to hide inside a sacred effigy like that? There was no time to stand about thinking: he must go, and go now. He opened the door and crept out of the hall of mysteries.
Kanesh stood with the Captain of Archers on the bow deck and looked back along the ship. Potyr and the commander were talking quietly outside the stern cabin. Kanesh looked at the backs of the oarsmen bent ready to make the first heave when the command came. Many would be afraid, some would feel sick, others would be trying to stop their hands from trembling; all would be feeling intolerable tension. Most would lose all their dread when the shout came, they drew that first stroke, the helmsman yelled the time and they drove forward. The tactics were sound, Kanesh had to admit, but he had no illusions that the enemy would necessarily do what was expected of him.
“Ship ho! On the larboard bow!”
Yet another corridor, much wider than others he had followed, stretched ahead of him as far as he could see. Although it was only dimly lit, he could feel a current of fresh dry air playing on his face. He trod cautiously along on tiptoe, passing the entrances to many rooms, some lit by small lamps so that he could see they were storage rooms for jars of grain, or oil, or lengths of timber or bales of cloth on trestles and garments hanging from hooks on the walls, while others were in total dakness. Other corridors and several flights of steps led off on either side from the passage he was following, but he ignored them and kept going straight ahead, following the current of air in the hope that it would lead him out of this underground prison. Yet he heard a sound in the distance, and, thinking he might be catching up with the women, stopped to listen. It came again. He moved slowly forward and paused to listen and, cupping his ear, thought he heard the sound of children laughing, then a sound like little hands clapping. He saw a light and went on. The sounds grew louder. There was a lamp in a niche next to a doorway. The sounds were coming out of the room behind that door, sounds that children make at play. The door was closed but near the top was a hole with light shining through it. He put his eye to the hole and looked into the room. They were playing the game where one of them was blindfold and blundered about the room, arms outstretched, trying to catch the others. He had played that game many times at home. But here, although there were children creeping or dancing about, giggling or clapping to draw the attention of the blindman, it was not a child who was blindfold. It was the tall thin figure of a man in a long pale gown drawn in at the waist with a golden belt. His hands were bandaged and covering his head was a mask, a great bull’s head with gilded horns. As he turned this way and that, stretching out his bandaged hands to catch his prey, he made lowing noises like a young bull calling the herd. The children clapped their hands and laughed again and again. Sharesh could not take his eye drom the scene. It seemed so full of happiness. These were some of the chosen children; he could see that from the gowns they wore and the silver crescent pendants on their necks. A voice in his head urged him to open the door, go inside and join in the game. He stretched out his hand to push the handle and jumped in shock as something gripped his shoulder.
He twisted round in fright but the light from the room still dazzled his eye and at first he could see nothing. Then he made out a lamp incredibly rising up in front of him. Two gleaming eyes stared straight at him out of the darkness and the hairs on his head rose in horror. White teeth flashed below the eyes and he shut his eyes tight before they could sink into his throat. He heard a chuckle and opened his eyes wide. Lit now by the faint glow of the lamp, Namun’s black face grinned at him. Fright turned to fury at the trick played on him and he lashed out, but Namun was too wily to be caught and had stepped back out of reach.
“Never mind that,” he hissed. “We have to find our way out of here. I heard what the High Priestess was saying about you and the star. Come on, along here; we haven’t much time before the oil in this lamp runs out.”
“Do you know the way?”
“Yes, down her
e until we get to, wait a bit, yes, turn here.” Namun abruptly disappeared. “It’s dark; where are you? How do you know it’s this one?”
Namun reappeared and held up the lamp so that it shone on the corner where the corridor led off.
“See that? I made that mark on the way down here. I’ve put others on the wall wherever we have to take a turn. Follow my marks and we’ll get free of this place. If the lamp lasts, that is.”
They set off again down the new corridor. The lamplight picked out dark blotches in the walls that were entrances to rooms or other passages but Namun led them past all of these. At last he stopped and shone his light on the wall near a dark exit.
“See that mark? Up here, quick now, there are some steps at the end.”
“What did you have to make the marks?”
“This,” said Namun shining the lamp on his other hand which was holding a pot by a string round the neck. In the pot was a brush. “The painter gave it to me. He said it would come in useful. He wants it back.”
Sharesh lost count of the turns they made, the empty rooms they passed through, the flights of stairs they climbed. They had to creep past some doorways shielding the light of the lamp with a hand in case it revealed them to people at at work: carpenters, stone carvers, women washing clothes. Only twice did Namun make them retrace their steps to make sure the mark on the wall was his and not a patch where the stone had flaked off. The air became fresher and cooler but the lamp began to flicker and burn very low. They came to yet another turn and as Namun held up the lamp to search for his mark, the flame died out, leaving the oily acrid scent of a newly dead wick lingering in the air.
“Just when we needed it most,” said Sharesh. “Now where do we go, this way, or that way?
“Feel on the walls; here give me your hand; about this height. The paint might still be wet. Feel for it. It will be sticky so you can tell it’s not just water.”
In complete darkness they ran their hands slowly and carefully over the walls. It seemed hopeless: the surface was dry wherever they touched. They tried again, higher up and lower down.
Suddenly they shouted together. “What’s that music? Found it. This way”
“What did you say?”
“No, what did you say?”
“It’s here: found it: my mark. Feel my fingers; they’re sticky.”
“I said there’s music, chanting coming from that way.”
“Same direction; must be right. Come on, and don’t make a sound. We don’t want to be caught now.”
There was light ahead of them, the pale mysterious light of the moon that makes shadows so different from those cast by sunlight. The chanting was now very clear and coming from the direction in which they had to go. Their passage opened into a wide hall with pale wooden columns spaced along the centre and marching figures holding wine jars painted on the walls. At the far end of the hall they could see the moonlight shining on the paving on the great courtyard in the centre of the Palace. They had only to pass along the side of the hall, keeping out of sight, run down the staircase at the end, and they would be out of the maze and be free again at last.
The chanting grew louder and a line of gowned and veiled women, carrying beeswax lamps and led by the High Priestess, emerged from a side chamber and began a slow procession to the time of their chant through the hall towards the passage where Sharesh and Namun stood, frozen in the act of running free. The High Priestess came so close to them that Sharesh could see her red lips through the sheer veil that covered her face. She must see them! But she turned and led her priestesses through another doorway into a dimly lit chamber where an altar of shining white stone stood in the centre. Moonlight shone into the chamber through an opening in the ceiling and fell upon the altar. The High Priestess knelt before it and her priestesses knelt around her in a crescent facing the shining stone. The door to the chamber swung shut and muffled the sound of chanting that grew fainter in the ears of Sharesh and Namun as they sped silently past the painted wine bearers and out into into the great central courtyard. High in the night sky the great star stood below the moon.
Larboard bow? Kanesh swung round to look. It could only be their sister warship intent on being in at the finish. He climbed down from the bow deck and made his way as quickly as his limp would let him to the stern.
“He cannot see us yet but he must have our companion in sight,” said Potyr.
“Let us hope that our friend the commander out there will try the same ruse and mimic a lubber of a trader to draw the pirate on to him. If that works we will have him between the two of us.”
“Archers to the bow deck! Helmsman, I want the strongest stroke you can raise when I give the command.”
“Look: have you ever seen a trader splash oars and stagger more than that?
Although he was standing on the stern deck, Potyr was first to sight the enemy ship as she hove round the headland.
“Commander: there, on the starboard bow, twenty ship lengths away,” he said quietly.
“Great Potheidan! We have him at last!” exclaimed the commander. “Helmsman, ready.”
“Commander, hold fast, I urge you. He is intent on our companion who is acting his part well. We are nicely concealed here against these rocks. A few more strokes and he will be committed and we can then come up on his quarter where the archers will find good targets.”
The young commander’s instinct was for immediate headlong assault, but Potyr’s words had quiet authority. He glared furiously into the calm, steady eyes of a seaman older and much more experienced than himself, true, but a captain of cargo ships. Then he remembered: this man had been at Gaiduros. He bit his lip in exasperation, shrugged his shoulders and gave the order.
“Helmsman, hold fast.”
The enemy ship was in full view now, broadside on to them, but oblivious of their presence, and moving steadily in the direction of their companion who at a distance might still be mistaken for a cargo ship under full load. Kanesh headed back to the bow deck to have the best chance of being among the first boarders. Ektan clambered up to stand beside him. He wore a leather helmet and was carrying a heavy sword in one hand and a grappling hook in the other. He had painted thick black lines down his cheeks and across his forehead. Kanesh grinned at him and clapped him on the shoulder. Potyr turned his gaze to the sky. The sun was well past its highest and racing clouds obscured it most of the time. The light was beginning to fade and Potyr felt the first stirrings of anxiety that the weather might close in, and allow their quarry to elude them in gathering darkness.
Then, as always may happen at sea, everything changed with bewildering speed. The enemy ship seemed almost to stop dead in her track.
“He has seen his mistake,” said Potyr. “He’s coming about.”
The enemy made a complete reversal of course with such speed that Potyr’s face took on a grim smile of respect for fine seamanship. He turned to the commander.
“Now is your time.”
The words were hardly out of his mouth when the commander yelled the order to row at full power, target: enemy ship. In a great release of tension the helmsman let out a tremendous roar to his oarsmen and forty oars were instantly pulled with such force that the archers on the bow deck staggered backwards against each other. The enemy meanwhile had completed his turn and was running fast before the warship had worked up to full speed so that her helmsman had to keep heading off in an attempt to cross her bow or at least come up on her starboard quarter. For an agonising few moments Potyr wondered if they would be outpaced and that the enemy might even attempt to make for the strait perhaps to hug the coast until he found a nearby cove where he could wait out the storm in the hope that the warships would think better of pursuing him into the wind. They were certainly getting close to the point where the wind was driving the seas hardest through the strait. He need not have worried. The strain of their efforts earlier in the day was beginning to tell on the enemy oarsmen. Potyr saw that she was beginning to lose way and the wa
rship was rapidly gaining on her.
Kanesh and the Captain of Archers had agreed on the tactics long before they had set out in pursuit. When the warship was a ship length off the starboard quarter the archers were given the order to shoot and every man took aim on the helmsman. One arrow struck him in the temple, killing him instantly; a second lodged in his right shoulder and a third in his right hip. He was thrown against the stern cabin side, dragging the steering oar blade out of the water by the leather strap that bound the loom to his forearm. The oarsmen, still pulling in time, kept driving her on, but without aft steering she began to yaw. One of the men on the stern deck leapt to the oar, slashed the leather strap with his knife and seized the loom. Before he could thrust it back into the waves the Captain of Archers put an arrow under his shoulder that ran through his chest and pinned him to the wall of the cabin. The other archers began shooting at the starboard oarsmen at such short range that they could not miss. The training they had had in shipboard target practice that Kanesh had asked about was proving its deadly worth. Afterwards one of them told his companions who had not been on the expedition that it was as easy as skewering pigs in a pen, because there was no one with a bow on the ship to shoot back at them.
They were still not close enough to throw grappling hooks and board the enemy and the inexperience of the warship crew began to show. In a clash of oars several of them were unseated and with the others continuing to paddle, the ship began to drift away, frustrating the aim of the archers. The enemy captain appeared from the larboard side of the cabin shouting a stream of orders. From their different positions on the warship Potyr and Kanesh watched in admiration as men with axes cut the oars of dead rowers from their tholes and flung them overboard. Oarsmen shifted thwarts to balance the numbers on each side and the ship began to move ahead again. At the same time several javelins flew from the enemy ship and one struck an archer in the calf, throwing him to the deck. In the moments of confusion, the enemy captain seized the loom of the steering oar and dug it into the water. The ship would have begun to pull clear had it not been for the Captain of Archers whose arrow pierced the enemy captain’s forearm, making him lose his grip on the loom. The oar fell away from the ship leaving her with only balanced rowing as a way to steer her. It was enough to open up a gap between her and the warship and get out of range of the deadly arrows, but once the warship’s oarsmen had settled down again to their stroke she had no chance of getting away with so many of her crew dead or disabled.