Knossos

by Laura Gill

  Yet if she was the goddess, why could she not breathe life back into Minotauros? Why was his flesh cooling under her hands? “Kinata?” she whimpered. Was one of High Priest Aktaios’s bull priests not named Kinata? Why were the immortals silent? Was she not the goddess? They should hear her very thoughts.

  Suddenly she could not bear the silent waiting, even the touch of her attendants. Howling, she shoved away their hands and fled from them to dash down the passageway. “KEOS!” If the immortals would not answer her, if the Erinyes would not come, then she would claim her own vengeance.

  As she flew along the corridor, she hurled oil lamps from their niches. Burning oil splashed her hands, scalding them, yet she felt only exultation and an all-consuming rage. Darkness was her enemy’s friend. Run from her he might, and set his hands upon her in violence, but she would emerge fighting from the goddess’s womb of shadows and set the Labyrinth alight so that he should have nowhere to hide.

  Men accosted her on the stairs. “What’s happened, Lady Ariadne?” She recognized Captain Kerwios, whose charge was the goddess’s sanctuary. “There’s blood on your face, Mistress?” She saw his mouth move, heard his voice, but her mind refused to register his queries.

  A sentry dashed up from the lower landing where he had gone to investigate. How unworldly the man appeared to her eyes when backlit by tongues of incandescent orange flame. “Fire!”

  Cries from below called for help. Ariadne laughed. The demons who aided her treacherous consort had been exposed.

  Kerwios loosened his grasp, giving her the chance to wriggle free and dash outside. Before long, the Erinyes would deliver Keos for punishment. Ariadne knew that she must leave the womb of the earth for the open spaces of the Labyrinth where the three sisters could find her.

  How the wind was moaning! Its tendrils whipped through her hair and garments, molding her thin white gown to the contours of her body. Behind her, the goddess’s sanctuary had become an inferno. What a beautiful sight! Fire demons twirled and spread their arms toward the moon, and, imitating them, she spun, too. Prometheus had stolen fire from the immortals to give to mortals. Ariadne did not mind the theft. Fire would drive out the evil, cleansing the Labyrinth. Its warmth would caress Minotauros’s cold and lifeless limbs, a beacon, a shining thread for him to grasp and follow back to the world of the living. Lady Hekate would release him for Ariadne’s sake, because she was an aspect of the everlasting mother goddess, and Ariadne was her mortal vessel, and whatever Ariadne wished must be granted.

  “Burn!” she cried.

  As the conflagration spread, the wind demons danced with the fire demons, and propagated themselves as burning cinders, fireflies that whirled in the electric eddies of the sirokos and showered onto neighboring rooftops. Laughing, Ariadne clapped her hands. Minotauros would live again, and Keos would not escape. Already, the tokens of fire were outracing him.

  Dressed for sleep and panicked, people were running out of doors. Ariadne alone celebrated the fire. She pirouetted, she waved her arms and called out to the fire and wind demons, despite the distress of those nearby. “She has gone mad!” they cried. A fearful circle formed around her.

  The flames rose so high that night became as day. The air grew hotter, heavier with smoke, and people began coughing. Odors of burning wood and plaster mingled with the roasting of flesh. “Minotauros!” Ariadne cried. Where was her protector? Why did he not appear among those escaping from the conflagration? She had prepared the way for him, banishing the darkness. Should she have stayed with him, to compel his shade back into his body?

  “Minotauros!”

  The wind answered gibberish. Ariadne no longer saw the sirokos and fire demons dancing, only the frameworks of buildings like blackened skeletons vanishing amidst smoky flames. Everything was hot and sooty. She gasped for breath, agonizing over Minotauros’s failure to return.

  Then she knew. Goddess, oh merciful, everlasting Goddess, what evil had she done? Minotauros was ashes, bones and ashes, and the Labyrinth with its sanctuaries and altars and means by which she could have beseeched Lady Hekate to release his shade were burning, burning, disappearing before her eyes, and she had caused the destruction, thrown over the lamps, called on the Erinyes for vengeance but not life, and now there was nothing and she, misguided high priestess, had let the demons take her.

  Shrieking, she tore her hair, her dress, and then, seeing the people, the servants of the Labyrinth, recoil from her, she ran, jostled past men carrying buckets of water to douse the flames with. Too late, too late! Smoke and tears stung her eyes, limiting her vision. Heat billowed around her. The Erinyes had sent the fire demons after her, wretched destroyer of altars, and she almost welcomed the prospect of a fiery death. If she were not so weak and afraid, she might have...

  “Lady Ariadne? Ariadne!” She collided with a body that had a voice and arms to restrain her with, and though she squirmed, seeking escape—or oblivion, she did not know which—part of her was glad to have been found.

  “Minotauros?” Ariadne felt for his familiar hide, finding only greasy fabric, and no mask. Then she heard him issuing orders to unseen others: “Take those buckets to the storehouse block. Save what you can there.” A crash in the distance prompted a pained utterance. “Gods, gods, no!”

  Other voices:

  “The goddess’s sanctuary is gone!”

  “We don’t know about the ladies.”

  “People are trapped in the south dormitory!”

  “Daikantos, you must come! The fire is spreading to the town!”

  Ariadne heard the priest-architect respond, “Send a messenger to Minos. Get those people from the courtyard hauling buckets—yes, even the women and children.”

  He was not Minotauros, not her bull-man, her protector. “Forgive me, forgive!” Ariadne beat her fists against his chest. “I tried to bring him back myself. The wind demons said the flames would cleanse. They said break the lamps. They deceived me, they lied...” She hiccupped. “I left him burning. Oh, bring him back, Daikantos!”

  “Break the lamps?” Daikantos jerked her violently. Incredulity strained his voice. “What are you saying? Are you telling me you did this, you set the fire?” Then he shouted, “YOU SET THE FIRE?”

  Grabbing her roughly, he hauled her through the smoke and heat toward an unknown destination. Half-blind, stumbling on the pavement, she might as well have been trying to fumble her way through the nether world. “Daikantos!” she cried. Yet he did not speak to her again, relentlessly dragging her along even when, coughing and footsore, she needed a moment’s respite.

  At last, the air cleared somewhat, and she could see blurred flames and the darker shadows of buildings framed against the burning sky. Then she was inside a house where servants were running back and forth to the commands of a hoarse-voiced woman. She heard water sloshing on pavement, dripping down from rafters and rooftops. Scarcely had she processed the fact that the people around her were fighting the fire when an ice-cold shock drenched her from head to foot.

  Daikantos roughly unhanded her, so that she collapsed wet and shivering to the pavement. “Stesarchos!” A man’s voice obediently answered. “This wretched lunatic set the fire.” Ariadne felt a foot prod her side. Someone jostled her. Did he hate her so much? She had not meant to wreak so much chaos. “Keep her away from any lamps. The Minos and I will deal with her later.”

  *~*~*~*

  Argurios’s hands twitched with the need to strangle someone. That moon-touched, goggle-eyed little bitch! If he had ever had a reason to eliminate Ariadne, the wholesale destruction of the Labyrinth trumped them all. Even now, twelve hours after the conflagration started, the fires were still burning. The demon wind had sent cinders aloft to land on neighboring houses. Not only was his own inner court damaged, but half the town was smoldering, ruined, and who knew how many had perished?

  “You prayed for the reduction of the Labyrinth,” Wordeia stated harshly from the doorway, “and the gods have answered. What do you ha
ve—?”

  Half a second later, his fist connected with her jaw. She stumbled back with a startled cry. He shoved her against the wall. “Not another word.” Wordeia’s eyes burned with hatred, but she kept her mouth shut. Her face and clothing were stained with soot; she had been conducting a ritual in the west quarter to appease the Mistress of the Winds when the fire interrupted.

  Argurios maintained his hold for another moment to reinforce his superiority, then cautiously released his wife. “If you need something useful to do, gather your servants and attend to the storerooms. Send word to Registrar Scribe of the Dead Itamos and the priestesses of Hekate, and help with the dead. Minister to the homeless and injured.” He shook an admonishing finger at her. “Whatever you do, do not ever criticize me in such an insolent manner again. Not to my face, not behind my back, not even in your most secret thoughts, because next time I will throttle you.” Her Argive kinsmen be damned, he would not be contradicted in his own house. “Is that understood?”

  Stubborn to the last, Wordeia did not answer until he grasped her throat and squeezed. Then, her eyes bulging from a lack of oxygen, she swiftly nodded. Argurios considered killing her then and there before rejecting that idea outright. More than ever, he needed her to placate the people by performing the duties of a high priestess. “Repeat your foolish words where others can hear, spread spiteful rumors that I wanted the Labyrinth destroyed, and when the people rise against me—as they almost surely will—they will kill us all.”

  She made no reply, but Argurios saw in her eyes that she grasped the danger to herself and their sons. Fear would seal her lips. Releasing her again, he said, “Go make yourself useful.”

  Wordeia took her bruises and resentment with her. Argurios remained in his chamber, brooding, too rattled yet to deal with the officials and their demands, and the petitioners clamoring for news. Roused from his sleep, he had spent the predawn hours sending and receiving messages, and monitoring the progress of the blaze and of the bucket brigades frantically moving through the town. Only within the last hour had he been able to withdraw upstairs to offer his morning reverences at his private altar. Yet when he tried to pray he found himself scatter-brained and shaken, torn between white-hot rage and deep-rooted terror. Sometimes he wept. What morning repast Aithalos had brought from the kitchen lay untouched on the table beside his unmade bed.

  His wife’s words remained as painful barbs, for he had prayed for the Labyrinth with its bloated administration and outdated conglomeration of buildings to go away. “But not the sanctuaries!” he lamented, raking trembling fingers through his uncombed hair. Again, he sobbed. The idols on his altar remained remote, implacable.

  The immediate crisis was over, but what was he to do now? Provide relief and reassurance to the people, of course, but what beyond that? His agents reported that Priest-Architect Daikantos undertook the firefighting and recovery efforts in the Labyrinth in a rancorous mood where even his own steward and assistants feared to approach him. Argurios had already removed Ariadne from the architect’s custody, and brought her and a terrified Phaedra, who had escaped the blaze that had claimed most of their attendants, under his protection.

  What to do with Ariadne? Argurios’s agents were working to prevent those who had overheard her ravings about the fire from repeating them, but how long would it be before someone’s tongue wagged? The rumors already circulating were troublesome enough. A hideous bull-man had rampaged through the goddess’s sanctuary, attacking the girls—no, a young man desiring Ariadne’s affections had assaulted the sisters, desecrated the sanctuary, and set the fire to conceal his crime—no, the ferocious bull-man himself had started the fire before being slain in the subterranean levels by the young man. The petitioners expected Argurios to offer an explanation.

  And who was the young man? It could only have been Keos. Argurios had learned that, despite the wind, Ariadne had sent for the boy that very night. Phaedra swore that he had attacked her half-sister and fled.

  Argurios already had his agents searching Wedaneus’s house, the shepherd Boukolion’s farmstead, Anaxoitas’s counting house—any place where Keos might conceivably hide. The young man might be among the unidentified corpses recovered from the wreckage of the Labyrinth, but Argurios doubted that. In fact, he prayed that the son of his lowborn former concubine had survived, because the people and the gods, now bereft of their sanctuaries, would demand a scapegoat.

  *~*~*~*

  Fear governed Alaia’s days. She had not slept since the night of the fire, and scarcely ate enough to nourish a sick child. The house had suffered only minor damage, a scorched roof where windblown cinders had landed and caught before Wedaneus and Kassandros managed to snuff them out, but some of their neighbors had not been quite so fortunate. And the Labyrinth... Alaia shivered with dread to think of the devastation on the temple mount. Gods above, what unpardonable sins could the Knossians have committed to cause the gods to destroy the Labyrinth? Would her neighbors riot? Would they, seeking scapegoats, seek out her and her family to tear them to pieces? No matter how many times Wedaneus urged her to have courage for the children’s sakes, she felt herself unraveling.

  That the Minos’s agents had torn the premises apart three times in as many days searching for Keos did nothing to allay her fears. Alaia had been forthcoming from the beginning.

  She had no idea what had become of Keos, only what Boukolion had related in the message he sent after the winds died down: that the priests had fetched Keos from his uncle’s storm shelter and escorted him to the Labyrinth hours before the fire had started. Whether he was alive and hiding from the authorities, or lying dead and burnt beyond recognition in the rubble, she did not know.

  Surely her kin in the Registrar’s office would have told her if they had identified his corpse, unless they had forgotten. Alaia’s hands trembled so hard that she could not hold the distaff to twist the fleece into thread. Earlier, she had sloshed the house snake’s milk from its bowl with her shaking. She swallowed, drew a breath, and resolved to calm down and remain busy. Thinking horrible thoughts resolved nothing.

  Wedaneus’s mother laid her needle and thread aside. “You must eat something to maintain your strength.” She nodded toward the plate of honey-sweetened bread and white cheese she had brought. “Constant worry strips the flesh from your bones. If there is any news, Wedaneus will know. In the meantime, you just ignore the rumors. Ignorant people have nothing better to do than talk.”

  Alaia appreciated her mother-in-law’s support, for she knew she could not have borne being immured alone with her daughter in the house. Sometimes the neighbors shouted obscenities as they passed by, or threw stones at the door. She feared the day when they finally broke down the door. She feared for Wedaneus every time he went to and from the counting house. She wished he would agree to let Kassandros and Merope stay with Boukolion in the country.

  The rumors swirling around the night of the fire yielded conflicting accounts, and compounded her dread. A young man had assaulted Ariadne and her sister, then in trying to escape had killed a priest of Poseidon and set fire to cover his sacrilege. That could not be her Keos.

  Then why did she feel so perpetually cold? Why was she suddenly so afraid of the neighbors that she dreaded encountering them? Keos had expressed his hatred of Ariadne on more than one occasion. Boukolion had said that he had defied the priests who fetched him that night. Under the malevolent spell of the winds, he could have turned on Ariadne, yes, but then to kill a priest of Poseidon and torch the Labyrinth? Even if Keos had not committed blasphemy, the authorities were so certain of his guilt that if he had survived the blaze, he would never be able to come home. Should she petition the Minos and throw herself upon his mercy?

  When Wedaneus returned and heard her thoughts, he flatly told her no. “To beg for clemency would be to admit culpability when we knew nothing about the fire. We know nothing of Keos and his whereabouts. The authorities would never leave us alone if we begged for mercy.”


  Staring at her hands, she nodded. “You are right. Only, I want an end to this interminable waiting.”

  He made a sympathetic noise. “If the Minos does send for you,” he added, “then I will come with you. I am done with sitting like a fool at home while others take advantage of my wife and children.”

  *~*~*~*

  After a week spent touring the ruined Labyrinth and devastated neighborhoods of Knossos, organizing propitiatory sacrifices, food and shelter for the homeless, and receiving reports on the state of the local workshops, Argurios could no longer avoid addressing his petitioners.

  It would have been so easy to fabricate a charge of sacrilegious murder and the defilement of Labyrinth against Keos from the piecemeal accounts he had received, but he suppressed the urge. After scouring both town and countryside, his agents had not been able to locate the boy, dead or alive. Casting blame on him now would accomplish nothing except to incite the people to drag his parents from their home and slaughter them, and what benefit would that bring? As his foremost agent advised him, if the young man had survived the fire, and if there was any chance of apprehending him and appeasing the angry gods, then he must have a home and kinsmen to return to.

  As Argurios stood still to let Aithalos dress him, he smiled to reflect that the family suffered already as a result of Keos’s intransigence. Wedaneus worried over a loss of employment now that the Labyrinth’s highly-trained scribes had been well and truly evicted from their offices. Alaia had grown so fearful of retaliation that she had become a recluse, unable to attend her daily tasks.

  Closing his eyes, he relished the aroma of the perfumed oil Aithalos was combing through his hair. Cypress. It conjured images of Alaia splayed on his bed, luxurious hair pouring onto the pillows. What a shame.