Bull God

by Roberta Gellis

  “I don't know,” Phaidra breathed. “But I'm afraid.”

  “Where are Androgeos and Glaukos? Perhaps if they spoke to father—”

  “He sent them away. Two days ago, he sent them to the west to catch a bull.”

  “A bull! Oh, this must be to do with that accursed white bull.” Ariadne bit her lip. “Father never let mother do anything really bad or dangerous, and he was as just and honest as Hades himself ... before that bull came to shore.” Now she shuddered. “I remember when I came back from the shrine and tried to tell them that Dionysus had warned me that the bull must die, mother stopped me and turned my warning into a sign of the god's favor. And anything to do with the bull means Poseidon. Oh, dear, Dionysus said that one was better off not meddling with Poseidon.”

  “Can I hide in the shrine with you?” Phaidra asked.

  That surprised Ariadne so much that she uttered a choke of laughter. “Silly,” she said, “how can the shrine protect us?” Then the sense of her own words came to her and she shivered. “If Poseidon grows angry at mother and decides to shake the earth, perhaps the shrine wouldn't collapse. It's carved of solid rock ... No, Phaidra, think of all the people that would be hurt and killed or lose all their livelihood. We must try to find out what mother is doing, and—”

  “And what?” Phaidra asked bitterly. “If father won't interfere, how can we?” She began to cry again. “Won't your god protect you?”

  “I don't think so,” Ariadne admitted. “He warned me already not to Call him for my personal troubles and said specially not to meddle with Poseidon. But Daidalos likes me.”

  “What good is that?” Phaidra's voice grated. “He likes Icarus better and wouldn't tell him what he's doing.”

  “Yes, but if he feels what he's doing may call down a god's anger, he might send Icarus away to protect him. He wouldn't care that much about me. He might want to complain to me about our mother. I'll try. The worst that can happen is that he'll send me away.”

  Since her appetite had been killed by the little she had eaten and the anxiety her conversation with Phaidra had generated, Ariadne rose without ado and went down the nearest stair. Passing the veranda that provided the artisans with a place to sit in the shade during their rest times, she went along a short corridor to another set of steps, which led to the lowest level of the palace.

  It was cool there, and dark. Few light wells penetrated so deep and what light they gave was muted. The doors nearest the outer wall were Daidalos' and Icarus' private rooms, and Ariadne did not touch either door. She went on and soon the last scrap of light from the stairwell faded; only a few lamps lit the passage to a pair of doors that flanked the end of the corridor. Softly but firmly, she opened the door on the right, then closed it swiftly, taking care not to let the latch click. The room had been dark and silent; it wasn't empty, but no one was working there. Swallowing hard, Ariadne turned to the door on the left.

  She opened this door boldly, without the caution she had used on the other, wanting to seem assured, and stepped forward into the room. This was brilliantly lit, mostly by lamps suspended on chains from the ceiling; they glowed with a strange white light, brighter by far than the usual golden flame of burning oil, and without smoking. But Ariadne had seen those before and she spared them no more than a quick glance, sweeping her eyes over the large, cluttered room. Her first reaction was relief; her mother wasn't there. Then her eye was caught by movement. At the far extreme of the chamber in the leftmost corner, Daidalos was turning quickly to face her from behind a large table.

  Behind him, Ariadne caught a single glimpse of a shining white hide as he roared, “What are you doing here? Get out!”

  “But Daidalos—” Ariadne began.

  The hide was gone, as if it had fallen from the strange framework that had supported it. That framework seemed familiar, but it disappeared as swiftly as the white hide—had it also fallen silently to the floor?—and Ariadne had seen it too briefly to identify it firmly. In its place, rising as if she had been bent down behind the table, was Pasiphae.

  “Out!” Daidalos bellowed, rounding the table with every sign that he intended to throw Ariadne out physically if she didn't go.

  “And don't come back here,” Pasiphae added. Her lips were drawn back from her teeth in what might have been a threat or a grimace of pain. Her eyes were red-rimmed but open so wide that white showed all around the dark iris. Her hair was a rat's nest, and in the brilliant light Ariadne saw lines on her face that she had never seen before. “I swear,” Pasiphae hissed, “that if you try to interfere with me, I'll destroy you, destroy your precious shrine, drive the worship of your puny godling out of Crete altogether.”

  “Out!”

  Ariadne backed out of the doorway and pulled the door shut. Breathing in panting gasps, although not for fear of the threats against her, she leaned against the rough-worked stone between the doors. Pasiphae was mad. She pressed both hands against her lips and closed her eyes. Phaidra was right. Her mother was planning something terrible and desperate ... but what?

  When she had steadied herself, she started back along the passage to the stairwell. She climbed very slowly, still shaky from her reaction to the scene in Daidalos' workshop, thinking about what she had seen. The white hide, the framework—wood? metal? Suddenly Ariadne realized why that framework looked familiar. It was like the skeleton of a horse or a cow or ... a bull? White hide and a bull's skeleton ...

  Having reached the artisans' veranda, Ariadne sank down on one of the benches protruding from the wall to think. A false bull? Daidalos was constructing a false white bull? But for what purpose? Could Pasiphae intend to substitute it for Poseidon's real bull which she would then sacrifice as the god had demanded and thus draw his attention to her? If that were her purpose, Ariadne would certainly not interfere; there was no need of threats to ensure her cooperation. She agreed heartily that the bull from the sea had to die, no matter how angry that made Minos.

  Her mind checked on that thought, however, as she realized that sacrifice of Poseidon's bull could not be her mother's purpose. Minos had been told what Daidalos was doing and had agreed he must continue. Well, Phaidra said he looked as if his guts were being torn out, so perhaps ... Nonsense. If he had been brought to agree to the death of the bull from the sea, he would sacrifice it himself, not leave the credit to Pasiphae, and there would be no need of the false bull as a substitute.

  A substitute? Oh, sweet fields of death, could they intend to sacrifice the false bull to Poseidon? But three white bulls had already been given to the god and he was not appeased. A false bull, a thing of wickerwork and tanned hide, certainly could not fool him. Unless ... Daidalos could do magic. Could he take some hair from the bull, some saliva, sweat, a nick of flesh, and bespell it so that the aura of the false bull and the real bull were the same, then sacrifice the false bull? No, that was nonsense too. Why build a bull when there were plenty of live ones to which Daidalos might attach the aura of the bull from the sea? Or did the aura of the real bull interfere with that bespelled onto it? She cocked her head to the side. Was that why Glaukos and Androgeos had been sent to catch a bull, so no taint of the palace herds should besmirch it?

  Ariadne stared out toward Gypsades Hill, but she didn't really see it and found no comfort there. Her last thought made no more sense than those that came before. The main sticking point was Pasiphae's mad intensity on her purpose. Whether it was the sacrifice of the bull from the sea or one of the simulacra Ariadne had imagined, Ariadne could see no reward large enough to make Pasiphae so desperate nor any reason for Daidalos to be nearly as mad as Pasiphae to keep the secret. Worse still, somehow from the flower around her heart came a sense of sickness in that room, of wrongness, which Ariadne, who had visited Daidalos from time to time for various reasons, had never felt before.

  There was one more thing Ariadne could do. She could use her need to talk about clothing as an excuse to visit her father. She went to the end of the artisans' veranda and thr
ough an open pillared hall. At the end, which opened onto the south-facing veranda of Minos' chambers, the guard smiled recognition and let her pass. She saw why at once. The veranda was empty. Often Minos sat there to break his fast and even to attend to some business. It was a beautiful spot, pleasant and sheltered. And the doors were closed. Ariadne's heart sank. On a fine day like this, the doors to the outer room should be open.

  She entered the corridor that ran along the outer room and opened into the inner chamber. That door was open, but the room was empty, except for a guard. Ariadne asked if he would enquire whether her father was busy. She needed to ask about obtaining garments suitable for her position. The guard—she knew he was a high nobleman's son, but could not call his name to mind—shook his head.

  “He will see no one,” he said. “I have turned away men on serious business. Those are my orders. No one to be admitted for any purpose, until further orders are given.”

  “Is my father ill?” Ariadne asked.

  “I have not seen the physicians come,” the guard said. “Nor do I have permission to admit them if any did.”

  Realizing she could accomplish no more, Ariadne thanked him and turned away. She walked slowly through the maze of rooms and corridors until she came to the portico that faced on the bull court. There she sat on the balustrade and went over the facts in her mind, but nothing new occurred to her. Eventually she gave up, and went to find Phaidra. She told her sister what she had seen, what she had guessed, mentioned how unlikely it all seemed, and asked Phaidra what she thought of it.

  To her surprise Phaidra looked relieved. To sacrifice a false bull or a wild one instead of Poseidon's own bull was certainly dangerous because the god could take offense, she pointed out, but it was unlikely he would take such terrible offense over one bull as to shake the whole island into the sea.

  Seeing her sister somewhat happier, Ariadne didn't try to explain the sense of horror she had felt in Daidalos' workshop. Truly, she had no foreboding that their danger was from any massive retaliation Poseidon might visit on them. The horror was personal, something their mother would bring down upon them as a family rather than on Crete as a whole. That was some comfort, and Ariadne left Phaidra to her household chores and went to the shrine. She would have loved to Call Dionysus and ask his advice and for the comfort of his arm around her, but she knew that was forbidden. He had been annoyed when she Called to tell him of the offerings, as if it was her responsibility to solve such problems on her own.

  Still, there were little things to do. A few more sacrifices to put in stasis, a more careful examination of some of the old offerings that were piled in the storage room, questions to the priests and priestesses about the progress of the novices. She did what was necessary, ate a meal in lonely splendor in her chamber, and eventually went back to the palace. Nothing had changed there; no disaster had befallen them. Nor did any occur on the next day or the next. Ariadne began to worry about Androgeos and Glaukos, but they came home safe on the fourth day, bringing with them a fine, wide-horned, bellowing prisoner, angry but unharmed, to be penned beyond the house where the bull-dancers in training lived.

  The fifth day passed. Androgeos and Glaukos spent most of their time gentling the new bull—not taming it but making it sufficiently accustomed to the presence of humans not to run mad. Phaidra was still anxious, but she always was, and Ariadne found the horror that had gripped her dulling, slipping away. One cannot live on a high pitch for long, be it joy or fear. She might have begun to wonder why she had reacted so strongly to what she had seen in Daidalos' workroom ... except that her father still remained locked in his chamber and her mother seemed to have disappeared entirely.

  CHAPTER 6

  “Ariadne!”

  The bellow of mingled rage and fear erupted in her mind with such force that Ariadne was jolted wide awake. She jerked upright, thrusting aside the gauze bed hangings so fiercely that a pole was torn loose and clattered to the floor as she leapt from the bed. The polished gypsum floor chilled her feet and she reached back blindly to seize her coverlet and draw it around her even as she took her first steps toward the door.

  “Ariadne!”

  This time despair filled the mental voice. Ariadne flew down the corridor, down the stairs, past her mother's chamber, and through the crooked corridor into the king's inner room. A guard at the closed doors of the outer chamber, where Minos slept in the heat of summer, called out to her but she made no answer, flying out into the corridor that led to the south portico and thence to the steps and the viaduct. A blackness had seized her spirit, a blackness that wasn't hers, that wasn't yet broken with the red lightnings of rage but soon would be.

  She careened down the stairs, gasping with fright as she nearly missed a sharp turn and plunged into the slippery, curving water course that kept the torrential spring and autumn rains from wearing away the steps. There was the road. Red flickers of madness lit the edges of the blackness in her mind, but something held them back, making the blackness thicker, so thick that Ariadne could hardly breathe. The flower around her heart was fully open. The silvery mist of threads reached outward but thinned and dissipated into nothing. Her goal was too far away. She had to be nearer.

  She ran like an angry blast off the ocean, but her breath was beginning to rattle in her throat and pain was lancing her side.

  “Mother!” she prayed. “Help him. Help me.”

  The blackness in her pressed on her, made her feet leaden, but all at once she felt her hair lifted, as it lifted when she danced. Warmth and strength infused her. She felt the heavy blackness, but it no longer weighed her down. She ran faster, faster, blind in the dark but never stumbling, up the road, up Gypsades Hill, and burst into the courtyard of the shrine.

  “Dionysus,” she gasped.

  He was sitting on the altar, naked—not at all godlike, sick and shivering, his head in his hands. She rushed to him, pulling the coverlet from her shoulders and wrapping it around him.

  “Dionysus.”

  He looked up, blinking, grasped her wrist in a grip that made her whimper. “Not you!” he snarled. “Not you!”

  Red lightning flashed through the darkness that filled her mind. “No,” she cried. “You are my lord, my god. I will never do what you disapprove.”

  “I am your only lord, your only god!”

  “My only lord. My only god,” she agreed, kneeling before him and looking without fear into his staring eyes. “I love you.”

  The silver mist that flowed from her heartflower played over him. After a moment the grip on her wrist eased and he released her to pull the blanket tighter around his shoulders. The red streaks had faded from the black and only pain and despair echoed back from the silver threads.

  “Where were you when I Called?” he asked.

  “In bed. Asleep.”

  “Liar!” he bellowed, rising suddenly. “I looked in the bedchamber. No one slept in that bed tonight.”

  “No, no,” Ariadne cried, rising with him and gripping his arms. “In the palace. You know I sleep in the palace, not in the shrine. I have a sister, she is only eleven and very fearful. We share a bedchamber. I told you.”

  “But I Saw ... I Saw ...” His eyes fixed over her head and his hands released the coverlet, which fell to the floor.

  “What, my lord?” the woman-Ariadne asked. “Come within, where there is no wind and tell me what you Saw.”

  He shuddered but followed her docilely. Ariadne was greatly relieved to find that the lamps that lit the corridor had been left alight to burn through the night as she'd ordered. There was no light in the high priestess's chamber or in the bedchamber, but it took only a moment to set a wooden sliver ablaze in the lamp in the corridor and light those in the chambers.

  When she released the hand by which she had led him, Dionysus stood still, staring into nothing. However, when she tried to get him into the bed, he resisted. She promptly took the blankets and offered them to him, suggesting that he sit in his chair instead. He mad
e no reply, and it was Ariadne who wrapped the blankets around him, and, when he didn't move, led the way again. However, when he saw his chair, with its small table and glowing golden bowl beside it, he sat. She knelt before him, seeking one of his hands in the cocoon of blankets and drawing it out so she could hold it.

  “You Saw?” she murmured.

  He didn't look at her and his voice was hushed with horror. “A field and in the distance the Palace of Knossos. The sky was dark and there was no moon, like tonight. From the direction of the palace came a man and a woman heavily cloaked and with a hood drawn forward so I couldn't see her face—but she was small, like you.”

  “It was not I, my lord.”

  His head bent toward her when she spoke, but she didn't think he saw her. “Not tonight,” he said. “There's no time in my Seeing.”

  He might not see her, his sight being still fixed on his Vision, but he had answered. And his voice still held horror, but there was nothing dreadful in what he described. From her previous reading of his Seeing, Ariadne knew he must spit out the whole Vision or it would return again and again and torment him into wreaking havoc.

  “The man? Did you know him?” she asked.

  “No, but he was not Cretan. His skin was too pale and his hair was too light. Also it was straight and cut short. He was heavier boned than a Cretan, too, with bulky shoulders as if he did much hard labor. A Greek, I think.”

  “Daidalos.”

  “You know him?”

  There was a sharpness, an angry suspicion in the question that puzzled Ariadne, but she answered it with the truth because she still wasn't sure Dionysus wouldn't know if she lied. “He's my father's artificer-mage. He built the dancing floor for me. In that sense, my lord, I know him.”