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  Ariande's Web

  Fred Saberhagen

  Copyright © 2000 by Fred Saberhagen

  A Tor Book

  ISBN 0-312-86629-1

  First Edition: January 2000

  CONTENT

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter One

  All through the hours of darkness there had been a howling of the wind, and perhaps of livelier things than wind, in the chimneys and around the parapets of the sprawling palace in the elder city of Kandak. A scud of low clouds kept driving in from the empty reaches of the Great Sea, across the island kingdom of Corycus. Outside the stone walls of the palace, winter's offensive from the northland seemed at last about to conquer the territory that had been occupied for several pleasant months by autumn. Inside the palace walls, a frightened king, driven to desperate steps in his efforts to cling to his throne, had spent the night attending to the efforts of his chief magician, a wrinkled and shriveled man named Creon.

  For long hours a young soldier called Alex the Half-Nameless had watched them both, the king and Creon, as they went through the recitation of spells, and the bloody sacrifice of animals, all seemingly without producing the least result. The mess of the sacrifice had been cleared away, and king and magician, conferring together in low voices, had seemed on the point of abandoning the effort, when suddenly the god they had been trying to summon stood towering over them, bleary-eyed and swaying like a drunk.

  With the first light of morning, Alex the Half-Nameless was shivering, mostly with excitement, though with the fires ignored and untended a damp cold had begun to dominate the great hall of the palace.

  Except for the business going on in front of him, it had been a night of routine guard duty, interrupted only by a couple of short latrine breaks. With his short spear in hand, Alex had spent the hours of the night standing more or less at attention with three of his comrades in arms. All four, like soldiers everywhere, were waiting to be told what to do next. A fair amount of effort had gone into trying not to think. For tonight's duty all had been ordered to wear full battle dress, including light helmet and breastplate. Greaves armored their shins above their sandaled feet, while chain mail reinforced the kilts of their uniforms. They were accustomed to the weight of their formal arms and armor, but it had been a long night, and the hardware was becoming burdensome.

  Much earlier in the night, when the king's magician had begun his efforts to evoke the god, a fire had been roaring in each of the huge hearths, one at each end of the hall, flames surging and bending as the wind drove down the chimneys. But by now the light and heat had dimmed to mere ghosts of their full selves. The only visible flame was in the north hearth, small and wispy, in the heart of a section sawn from a great log. Meanwhile, half of the torches burning in sconces on the high walls had guttered and gone out.

  Gripping his short spear, tensing and relaxing youthful muscles in an effort to generate some bodily heat, Alex, like most of the handful of other people present, was looking at King Minos on his throne at the moment when the god arrived. Two other men were standing near the throne, and naturally none of the three, not even the seated king, was more than merely human mortal. There came a moment of silence in which Alex happened to blink. At that same instant, a fierce gust of autumn wind rattled the closed shutters defending all the windows, and jostled the doors of the hall's two entrances against the latches that held them shut. And in the next moment, in the time consumed by a mere flicker of a young man's eyelids, there were four figures in his field of vision. So it seemed to the young soldier that the new arrival must have ridden the very wind to appear where he was.

  The fourth figure was no mere human being. A god was standing in front of Alex the Half-Nameless now, and a single glance was enough to tell him that this god was Dionysus.

  Like the great majority of humans anywhere in the world, Alex had never seen a god. But unlike many of his fellow mortals, he had never doubted the existence of such beings. Tonight he and the handful of others gathered in the great hall had been waiting through the hours of darkness for this amazing thing to happen—and now at last the wonder had occurred, a real deity had manifested himself.

  A swirl of mist, and a stale odor as of wet, dark, dead leaves had entered with the visitor. There sounded also, in the four corners of the hall, a murmuring of soft voices, snatches of song from invisible throats, accompanied by the music of invisible flutes. Alex could recognize details from many of the stories. By all these signs it was obvious that the being who stood before them was an avatar of Dionysus, the Twice-Born.

  But a silence had fallen over the humans gathered in the great hall. This was not quite the appearance which Alex, at least, had been expecting. The realization forced itself upon them all that the visitor was no greater in stature than humanity—there was of course no reason why he should be—and at the moment he appeared less impressive than many merely mortal men.

  The shocking and ugly fact was that Dionysus was fat. Not only fat, bloated, his once-fair skin blotched red and gray. At a closer look, Alex could see that there was gray in the god's hair and beard, and patches of both had fallen out. There were still remnants of a once-considerable beauty in that face, a comeliness now all but erased by the all-too-human ravages of age and dissipation. The cloak of the Twice-Born, which he kept tightly wrapped around his massive body, was stained and frayed.

  Judging by the strange newcomer's appearance alone, Alex might have dared to suspect that he was an impostor. But no impostor, unless he were a god himself, could have contrived such an entrance.

  As a child and youth, Alex the Half-Nameless had been fascinated by stories of the gods, and had eagerly gathered every scrap of knowledge that he could regarding them. Now it crossed his mind to wonder that the Twice-Born had not arrived in a chariot drawn by panthers, bedecked with vine branches and ivy.

  But what had actually occurred so far was quite marvelous enough to keep the young soldier staring, open-mouthed.

  Now and then, mingled with the continued wind, there was a rapid, light clopping sound, suggesting to Alex's active imagination the hooves of invisible satyrs on the paved floor.

  Greener leaves, conveying no hint of wet or darkness, were garlanded around the brow of the newcomer, entangled with the flow of his brown hair, and his right hand clutched a golden wine cup. His laughter boomed. But the longer Alex watched, the more he was convinced that there was something wrong with this divine visitor. Besides the look of bloated shabbiness, there seemed an attitude of desperation.

  King Minos was an unimpressive monarch, well into middle age. He still sat staring silently at the new arrival, and the expr
ession on the king's face was one that Alex had seen there before, that of a man accustomed to dealing with disappointment. Tonight Minos wore a gloriously brocaded robe, of scarlet interwoven with the blue of the sea, and a light gold circlet of a crown. He carried no arms, nor did anyone in the great hall, except for the small detail of soldiers.

  "Welcome, my Lord Dionysus." It was Creon, the cadaverous magician-priest, who broke the silence at last. In his sepulchral voice there was more wonder than heartiness, as he extended his hand in a ritual movement toward the god. "In the king's name, welcome."

  Dionysus did not move forward the two or three steps that would have allowed him to touch the magician's outstretched hand. The Twice-Born gave no sign that he was impressed by his welcome, or by the king's magician who claimed to be his priest, or, for that matter, by the king himself. Silently the visitor directed his world-weary gaze, in turn, at each of the humans who had been anticipating his arrival. To judge by his reaction, what he saw was no better or worse than he had expected. When the god's gray-eyed gaze fell on Alex, the main impression the young soldier received was one of exhaustion.

  "What do you know of the gods?" The voice of Dionysus was a kind of parody of a conspiratorial whisper, but still it had a resonance, and was so far the most impressive thing about his person. Again the god glanced from one human to another, as if he hoped for answers to his question not only from the king and his magician, but from their soldiers too, and even from their menial servants.

  But it was only the king who answered. After exchanging looks with his priest-adviser, Minos evidently decided that this was a time when protocol and ceremony should be minimized.

  In a tone and manner that seemed to claim his equality with the one he addressed, Minos said, "I know what it is necessary to know, Twice-Born Lord. That all of you who are now gods began your lives as mortal men and women."

  Perhaps the royal manner and tone sounded simply impertinent to Dionysus. The pudgy chin lifted. "Oh?"

  "Yes." Minos persisted bravely. "That each god or goddess whom we see on earth has attained divinity by somehow coming into possession of a Face. Yours is of course the Face of Dionysus—or do you prefer to be called Twice-Born, or by the name of Bacchus?"

  "It does not matter."

  The king nodded. Now his hands, bejeweled and soft with years of luxury, sketched a flat, small object in the air. "Each Face is a thing as clear as fine glass, they say, but with a suggestion of flow, of movement, visible inside it—is that not correct?"

  But the visitor seemed tired of the subject. He made an impatient gesture. "Why me, Minos? Of all the deities you might have tried to summon, why did you choose me?"

  The king paused, as if to consider. Then he said: "We have long worshipped you, great Dionysus. From one end of my kingdom to the other, my people have long sought your favor, with prayer, and sacrifice, and—"

  "Yes, yes. And the real reason?"

  There was a pause, in which Minos exchanged looks with his magician before answering. "The truth is, Lord Dionysus, that we chose to summon you because, of all the mighty powers who could be helpful, we thought you most likely to respond."

  "Because you thought that I was weakened, I suppose."

  There was a rustling sound, sharp but not loud, almost at the king's elbow, running up along the massive column that stood there supporting stone arches that curved above. The young soldier Alex, gaping like everyone else, began to notice a process that was already well under way, the greening of the great hall, the writhing of vines up through the stone-and-timber floor, wrapping the columns that held up the roof.

  Alex thought he heard a faint birdsong, and felt a welcome ghost of summerlike warmth. And now there was more evidence that the god had not come unattended, for some of those who had accompanied him were now taking on half-visible form, in the far corners of the great chamber, where the light was faintest. The little that Alex could see and hear of them suggested they were less human than the one who'd brought them. The soldier glimpsed what had to be a kind of satyr darting by, the upper body small, like that of a naked child, but that appearance belied by the beard that curled around the chin, and by the hairy nether parts. The creature, whatever it was, moved with great nimbleness upon two shaggy goat-legs. Now the faint voices from invisible throats, some of them sounding too high-pitched to be human, were crooning a drinking song, to the accompanying music of unseen flutes. Any suspicion that the visitor could be an impostor had long since vanished into the realm of fairy tales.

  For a moment Alex had been distracted from what Dionysus was saying. But he caught the end of it: "—right enough. Right enough, so far, as far as you go."

  And then without warning the god fell into a paroxysm of coughing that almost bent him double, a racking noise that sounded as if it might be damaging his lungs.

  The king politely ignored his guest's spasm. But, magical vines and satyrs notwithstanding, Minos gave the impression of being less and less impressed by his visitor as the interview went on. The king's own voice was gradually reverting more and more to its accustomed royal tone.

  "One day," said the king, now almost lecturing, "when you were still only a mortal man, you somehow found, or were given—or perhaps seized by force—the Face of Dionysus. That might have happened a year ago, perhaps a hundred years—"

  "Sometimes it feels a thousand," the other wheezed, when he had done with coughing.

  The monarch pressed bravely on. "—and at that time you were brave enough, or perhaps frightened enough, to put it on. The Face melted into your head, as Faces always do when people wear them. And there yours still rests at this moment, somewhere behind your eyes, as invisible as your soul. And like your soul, your spirit, it will remain with you until you . . . for the rest of your life. And as long as it is with you, you enjoy all the powers of a god."

  The Twice-Born did not seem to have been bothered by the casual suggestion that he might once have been frightened. Indeed, it did not seem impossible that he could even now be well acquainted with fear. He only nodded his head gently.

  " 'Enjoy.' Oh, I enjoy them, yes." Cough again, and cough. "You have said nothing," he observed hoarsely, "about all the pain."

  Then the visitor gestured negligently toward Creon. "Tell me, King Minos—did this adviser of yours, this self-anointed priest of mine who stands beside you—did any of your wise informants, your magicians, or perhaps they call themselves odylic experts—did even one of them tell you anything about the pain?"

  The gaunt magician frowned, but held his peace. The king said, "I am sorry if you are currently experiencing any kind of discomfort, Lord Dionysus, but I suppose it will get better. All authorities agree that gods are very hard to kill."

  "And so we are." In the left hand of Dionysus there suddenly appeared, clean out of nowhere, a sturdy wooden staff, perhaps seven feet long and thick as a man's wrist. That is the thyrsus, Alex told himself, in silent awe, recognizing an element from the stories. The shaft was ivy-covered, and tipped with a pine cone, just as in the legends and the tales.

  Dionysus was now leaning part of his considerable weight upon his staff, as if he really needed its support.

  "You should remember that," the god continued. Once more he turned his head to look around the hall. "So, this is the welcome you've arranged. Lucky for you that I place little value upon ceremony. But you're right, for now my wants are simple, I desire only a few months of peace. I must rest until the spring. As you say, things'll be better then."

  "Would you care to sit down, Lord Dionysus?" The monarch gestured courteously toward one of the empty chairs, of which there were a few nearby.

  "I'll sit when I'm ready."

  Now Alex was having a hard time taking his eyes off the thyrsus, as if with some part of his mind he could sense that power was centered there. All the mortals in the room, except for the king and his chief magician, had been impressed by the sudden appearance of the ornate staff. Alex thought there was something written on
it, thin lines of small, graven characters going up and down the wooden shaft. The writing was too small for him to read, even supposing that it had all been in the only language that he knew. Certainly no more than one of the sets of characters was in that tongue.

  Minos was speaking again. "There is nothing in this world that I want more than to provide my Lord Dionysus with a secure place to rest during the tiresome winter that is only now beginning. All the comforts, magical and, um, otherwise." The king paused for a deep breath. He seemed to have finally found the tone, the manner, that he wanted to use; one that might have been appropriate speaking to an important ambassador, a human from one of the kingdoms ringing the shore of the Great Sea.

  "But," the king continued, "there is a certain problem that must first be solved, before any of us will be able to rest in safety."

  "Ah, hum. Yes, I supposed there would be. Everyone has problems. What is yours?"

  "My brother," said Minos simply. "He wishes to take the throne away from me."

  "Oh he does, hey?" Dionysus drew himself up a little taller, straightening his shoulders. "Seems a damned unbrotherly thing to do."

  In the privacy of his own mind, where as a private soldier he entertained nearly all of his important thoughts, Alex was coming to the conclusion that what his early quest for knowledge had taught him about the nature of the gods, and what the king's brief speech had just confirmed, was very probably the truth. The one who stood before them, staff in hand, gave the impression of possessing a dual nature. The man, who was one component of that nature, was terrified, feeling that death was near, even if the god was not.

  Alex stared, with a mixture of fear and fascination, at what a great god had become—at the evidence that those who were called immortal were not, after all, immune to damage and to failure. Only the Faces were immortal, indestructible, while their wearers came and went. He remembered all the stories that were told, of all the marvels wrought by the one some called the God of Many Names. Dionysus, Bacchus, Twice-Born . . . there were indeed a host of other titles, most of which the young soldier could not now recall.