Ariande's Web Page 15

  But the main point of the king's written message was a proposal, almost a supplication, for a meeting with me. It did not mention Ariadne, and the wording of it raised my hopes that the attempted flight had succeeded.

  The usurper and I had had very little contact with each other at any time, and none at all in the six months since Perses came to power.

  Somehow it did not concern me greatly that I had irrevocably missed my chance of escaping with the others. It seemed to me almost as if someone else had made the decision for me, knowing I would approve. Maybe I had known somehow, even when I so impulsively rescued the girl, that her presence would prevent my flight.

  Nor did I greatly dread my coming interview with the usurper. Even if Perses was aware that his monstrous nephew had aided the princess and others to get away, he was not going to kill a son of Zeus. And now, looking back, I see that there was another possible reason for my remaining where I was: I might simply have been too much afraid to leave the only home that I had ever known.

  Our meeting took place in a portion of the Labyrinth that lay quite near the place where most of the youths and maidens of the Tribute had been done to death, and from which Theseus must have made his escape.

  My uncle was wearing full battle dress, as if he thought an invasion was impending, and was attended by a bodyguard of half a dozen soldiers, all picked men from the Palace Guard. Also present was a priest of Shiva, who with his necklace of small imitation skulls was obviously trying to cultivate a similarity of appearance with his dread master.

  The monarch's rage grew as the evidence mounted that Daedalus and his son were among the missing. That made six people in all who were unaccounted for.

  "Vanished as if the earth had swallowed them." The priest decked out in imitation skulls seemed to think he had just invented a particularly apt comparison.

  "All the inducements I showered upon the man," Perses grumbled again. "I made him wealthy."

  The Artisan's simple quarters near the center of the Maze had of course been found deserted. A small room containing two small beds, and nothing special in the way of furnishings. A few of their scant belongings were lying about, but there was nothing to indicate whether the man and boy might be coming back. I saw that a satchel containing a set of fine, small tools had been opened and its contents scattered.

  "Surely he would have wanted to take his special tools with him?" I suggested helpfully.

  "Maybe they were too heavy for the balloon," muttered one of the searching officers nearby. I gave no sign that I had heard.

  The woman who sometimes cared for the child, a duty she had shared with other members of the regular Cretan palace household staff, had been going about her routine business of cleaning and preparing food. No, she could tell nothing about where the Artisan and his son might have gone. Both man and boy tended to be irregular in their habits.

  And, though he remained reluctant to admit the fact to me, Perses was forced to acknowledge that his niece Ariadne was also among those who had disappeared. No one had a clue as to where they might be now.

  My heart leaped up in joy. For me it is always easy to keep my emotions from showing in my face.

  The concern in the usurper's voice was very real when he informed me, "Princess Phaedra is greatly worried about her sister's welfare."

  For once I could easily believe that the murderer spoke the truth. "Naturally," I responded. "As I am."

  In the course of this conversation I refused to show any sign of respect to the priest, whose name was Creon. Looking him up and down, I observed, "Somehow I was expecting to see the god himself."

  "Be glad that you do not," snarled the priest.

  "Why?" the king demanded of me. "What do you want with the Lord Shiva? Some favor to ask?"

  I returned the usurper's gaze curiously. "I want nothing from him. Certainly no favor."

  The new Minos was obviously trying to repress his loathing when he looked at me; and yet, I could tell that he was impressed, almost intimidated, despite himself.

  "Asterion, you are my nephew, and I wish you well."

  "Half-nephew, at least, half-uncle."

  He was not going to try to respond to that. "They tell me you have all the understanding of a normal man. Despite the shape of your head."

  I was already angry at this man. Very angry, because of the killing of our father, the pain he had caused Ariadne, and for the lies he spread and encouraged about the Minotaur. "They tell me the same thing about you," I returned sweetly.

  At that the king's anger flamed, so that his bodyguard looked at him expectantly, and tightened their grips upon their spears, as if they anticipated an order to attack the warped creature before them, and put it out of its misery. But, as I had expected, Perses gave no such command. He had business to transact with me. Obviously there was some kind of help he wanted from the impertinent monster, and he managed to control his temper.

  Motioning Creon the priest to withdraw to a little distance, the usurper said to me, placatingly, "Your father and I were never bosom friends. But neither were we enemies."

  "Does your majesty mean my father King Minos, or my Father Zeus, the ruler of the universe?" That last was perhaps an exaggeration; though not, as I thought, by much.

  "I am speaking of my brother."

  On rare occasions in my childhood and youth I had tried to explore in dreams the question of what my foster father, or adoptive father, Minos, had really thought of me. But in truth I was afraid to learn the whole truth on that subject. Minos had not slain me in my monstrous infancy, even though my horns, already present at my birth, had cost him the life of his unfaithful queen. Of course, for a wife, especially a royal wife, to betray her husband with a mere man is one thing, and for her to bear the children of the Great Lecher Zeus is quite another. Also I found it not always easy, and sometimes quite impossible, to cause the visions of the night to develop in the exact way I wanted them to go.

  I said, "I never considered King Minos my enemy, and indeed I hardly knew him. When I heard that he was dead, the news at first had little impact. But having had half a year to think about it, I find I'm truly sorry." I paused for a moment. "Of course my sisters are still grieving deeply."

  "So are we all, my boy. So are we all." A stranger would have believed his sorrow, his willingness to be reconciled, perfectly genuine. "Now, speaking of your sisters: tell me, where is Ariadne?"

  "I do not know," I said quite honestly. Once more I could be glad of my inhuman face and voice, which make it vastly easier to conceal my emotions.

  "If you did know, Asterion, would you tell me?"

  I tried to give the impression that I was thinking the question over very seriously. "Any answer I might give you now, majesty, would be only speculation."

  The usurper, his face totally expressionless, stared at me in silence for a full ten seconds. Then he tried once more. "Also among the missing is a certain slave-girl, Clara, who is the regular attendant of the missing princess. You know the girl I mean?"

  "I may know the girl you mean, Uncle. But I don't know where she is now. Probably with Ariadne."

  I thought our noble uncle winced slightly at the familiar form of address. But he remained outwardly calm.

  "Another is a young Dian woman named Edith, one of those who were to have been honored by the Lord Shiva."

  "I have no information to give you about her either. So, am I to understand that only one of the eighteen is missing? What exactly happened? How many are still alive?"

  "Actually two of the Tribute are among the six people unaccounted for. The second is a youth named Theseus. We have learned from a servant that he held a private meeting with your younger sister, several days ago."

  "A private meeting?"

  "Yes."

  I shook my head, expressing ignorance.

  With an effort at patience, Perses went on with his list of questions. "Have you seen anything at all, since the day of the ceremony, of Daedalus, or of his child? Or of a
lost soldier, who may be wandering in the Maze?"

  So, I thought, Alex also may have got away. My horned head continued to shake slowly from side to side. "Don't tell me they are missing too? But if I do encounter any of these people, my uncle, I will inform them of your concern."

  "Make sure you do." Our noble uncle paused to draw a deep breath. "But I see you are still here."

  I inclined my head in a slight bow; let him make of that answer what he would.

  "Where were you, Asterion, when the sun came up yesterday morning?"

  I considered pretending to have difficulty remembering. But that would have been childish. "Uncle, I was busy trying to explore the world."

  The usurper leaned forward, frowning. "Trying to explore—what do you mean?"

  "In the only way possible for one whose movements are so restricted. I explore the world by means of dreams."

  It seemed to me that our uncle did not have much belief in his nephew's dreams—but likely he could easily be convinced.

  Now he said, "You and I, Prince Asterion, have not always gotten on very well together." He said it with the air of a man who had recently made a discovery that gently pained him.

  "I fear that is true, Uncle."

  "Will you believe me when I say that I would like to be your friend?"

  "How could I doubt my true king?"

  Impulsively, or so it seemed, he reached out to grasp my hand in friendship. At that moment I might have seized the opportunity to jerk him toward me and wring his neck. But moments after doing that, I too would lie dead, and Edith would be left completely unprotected. And the death of Perses would have achieved nothing, really, to my sisters' benefit. There would still be Shiva, ready to put some other human puppet on the throne.

  And still I wondered why Shiva was not present at this meeting. It seemed to me that the king, and even the chief priest Creon, might be uneasy over the same question.

  Naturally Shiva had been enraged at the disruption of the sacrifice, and the loss of some of the youths and maidens whose painful deaths would have fed his cravings. But the question kept looming larger and larger—where had the God of Destruction gone when he departed so suddenly? And, where was he now?

  Even gods—some of them might say, especially gods—had enemies. Envy and jealousy raged among them as violently as in any merely human group.

  "I see that bravery is not the Destroyer's most conspicuous quality." The people around me blanched when they heard me say those words.

  The usurper said he did not find it surprising that Shiva was not available just now for consultation, or to inspire his followers and allies. The hunt for the escapees would have to be conducted without divine assistance. The God of Destruction, before vanishing, had told Minos that he had more important things to worry about. "You must see to these details yourself. Other powers of some kind are near, I tell you!"

  But Uncle Perses and the Butcher had wasted no time before organizing a mass search of the Labyrinth for the escapees. The king also dispatched riders on cameloids, commanding that all the coasts should be watched. But it was a long, long, winding coastline, that with its many bays and promontories extended for hundreds of miles. The king's word would need at least a day to reach the farthest points of the island; and how comprehensively it would be honored was a question. Any fugitive who once got clear of the palace and the city was in a fair way for getting away entirely.

  And the king suspected that, if Daedalus was seriously involved in their escape plot, the fugitives might well enjoy some extraordinary means of transportation. "If you know the man's reputation as I do, you will worry."

  The Butcher agreed.

  And Shiva agreed, but had little thought to spare for Daedalus, or any of the other humans involved. Rather he was consumed by his suspicion that the escape was only a diversion, planned by certain other gods who were jealously trying to destroy him.

  The attempted search of the Labyrinth, by a hundred men of the Palace Guard, had achieved little but to get half a dozen of the Butcher's soldiers fairly seriously lost. In spite of some measure of planning, military discipline, and stern precautions, several of those men became separated from their comrades, and did not find their way back for several hours. By sunset on the day following the escape, almost all had been recovered, but the new Minos was left with the uncomfortable feeling that if he ever chose to deploy his soldiers in those endless passageways, an entire army could easily be swallowed up, like water flowing into sand.

  At last only one man remained unaccounted for, a certain private soldier known as Alex the Half-Nameless, last seen running after the escaping Prince Theseus. None of other members of his squad seemed to have any idea where Private Alex might have got to. Of course it was possible that he had caught up with some of the plotters, they had killed him, and his body lay undiscovered in some winding of the Maze.

  Before our conversation was quite over, an urgent report was brought to the king, concerning the finding of some parts of a balloon, and feathers, in an outlying portion of the Maze.

  "A scattering of feathers?" Creon's voice went up in an unseemly squawk.

  Several people had reported seeing a kind of balloon-shape, heading out to sea. The thing was visible only at a distance, and it was impossible to gauge its size.

  To those who knew Daedalus by reputation, it was entirely Possible that he had contrived a miraculous escape.

  Chapter Thirteen

  On emerging from the mouth of the secret tunnel, the princess and her companions immediately scanned their surroundings, looking for the best hiding place nearby. The land nearby was mostly waste, with a small marsh where the stream they had been following trickled into the sea. There were no houses in sight, and no sign of human presence, apart from a couple of narrow paths, so the danger of accidental discovery appeared to be no worse than moderate.

  A cluster of small caves offered the most convenient hiding place, and virtually the only one in the immediate vicinity. The caves were clustered forty or fifty feet above the marsh, near the top of a sandstone cliff, the highest point of land within half a mile. Within a minute or two the fugitives had scrambled up to the high ground and were established in the caves. The stream was still near enough to provide a source of water. Obviously the lack of food would soon become a problem, if they were forced to stay here for any length of time.

  Looking inland from the top of the cliff, it was easily possible to see the towers and walls of Kandak, less than four miles away. In the circumstances this was not a reassuring sight.

  The openings of the high caves also afforded a good view of the sea. Theseus, sounding confident, assured the others that it would be easy for him to spot the sail, or the hull, of the ship he was expecting to come looking for them.

  Of course the five people spent most of their time doing their best to stay out of sight, keeping their heads down in one cave or another. At any moment a patrol of soldiers might come along to take them alive and drag them back to Shiva and King Perses, or perhaps to kill some of them on the spot. Or some vessel of the Corycan navy might sail by, and spot them on the shore. Or the God of Destruction himself might finally decide to come looking for them, mounted airborne on his bull. Everyone suffered with the heat and the confinement, but the threat of a much worse fate, if they should be overtaken by Shiva or his followers, stifled protest.

  All day, at intervals of half an hour or less, Daedalus or Theseus, or sometimes both together, would emerge restlessly from a cave and crawl to the top of the small cliff. There, crouching or lying flat to avoid presenting a conspicuous silhouette against the sky, an observer had a view of the sea that was both broad and deep. Now the men searched the horizon anxiously. Once or twice during the day a distant sail came into view, but none headed for the island.

  Meanwhile the slave-girl Clara moved about restlessly, going back and forth between the two most habitable caves, until her mistress ordered her sharply to settle down somewhere and be still. At that,
Clara seemed to pull herself together and concentrated on inventing quiet games to play with the child.

  Theseus spent most of his time, between visits to the cliff top, waiting in a cave, looking moodily out to sea, or tossing pebbles, one at a time, at sparrows that came near. He never managed to hit any of them. Ariadne spent most of her time looking soulfully at the man she loved, and trying to think of ways to cheer him up.

  Icarus whined, sometimes, when Clara's games grew boring, until his father threatened to cuff him. Daedalus fretted, and drew in the sand before the entrance of the largest cave odd diagrams that none of the others could understand.

  When darkness fell, and it was no longer possible to keep a useful watch on the sea, Theseus took the princess by the hand and pulled her into the smaller of the two most easily habitable caves. At the moment the two of them had its modest space entirely to themselves. Willingly enough she allowed herself to be drawn to him, and there they lay together through the night, while no one else came near them.

  Shortly after the two lovers came together, the slave-girl Clara appeared at the entrance of the largest cave, only a few yards away, into which there now began to drift soft, eager moaning sounds made by the princess.

  "If you do not object to my presence, sir," Clara said to Daedalus.

  "I do not mind at all." The Artisan spoke in a low voice; he glanced toward his son, who, worn out by the day's adventures, was already asleep, huddled on a patch of sand where the warmth of the day's sun still lingered. Daedalus had partially covered the small boy's body with the warm sand. "I suppose your mistress is not likely to need you for anything?"

  "Not tonight, sir." The girl answered quickly and with certainty. She tilted her head, listening to the soft sounds from the other cave, and wrapped herself more tightly in what had been a fine linen dress twenty-four hours ago. The garment had sustained serious damage in the travail of the escape, and patches of Clara's smooth skin showed through holes. "She and Prince Theseus are busy keeping warm together."