Several other bones struck that uneven surface, and some of them remained there. Not even by extending the point of the sword as far as it would reach, could Theseus touch anything. But, at last, when his ears and the tossed bones had told him all they could, he crouched and swung his arms and leaped flatfootedly.
For an instant he thought that he was falling short, and he had a hideous sick awareness of the deep black abyss beneath. Then he came sprawling down upon an uneven point of rock, and slid, and at last caught himself upon its projections.
Creeping at first upon bruised hands and torn knees, Theseus explored the ledge to which he had leaped. It was a narrow spur of rock, he found, thrusting out toward the bottom of that black stair.
The way through the dwelling of the Dark One was clearly thick-set with peril. The most of those thrust into the Labyrinth, he thought, must perish in this chasm he has passed.
Was the justice of the Dark One merely—death?
Lying there on the jagged damp spur, waiting for breath and strength, Theseus tried to recall all his knowledge of the Dark One. The deity was sometimes represented, he knew, as a gigantic monstrous thing, half bull and half human. For a moment he shuddered with dread of some such fearful entity. But he gripped the Falling Star.
“We have killed bulls,” he whispered to the blade, “and men! Why not the Dark One?”
He rose to bare bleeding feet and started climbing the spur, tapping with the point of the sword like a blind man with a cane. Sharp edges cut his feet again, and his naked body shivered and grew numb with cold.
The spur brought him to a sheer ragged wall. There was no ledge that he could follow to either side, and he thought that this path had led to nowhere but death.
But he was alive, and hope would not die in him. Presently his exploring fingers found a slanted fissure, and he began to climb, carrying the Falling Star in his teeth. Progress was slow. His limbs were soon trembling with the strain of lifting his body by inadequate purchases. He felt that he was near the limit of exhaustion, when he came to a roof that jutted out above his head.
There was no passage upward.
He knew that he had no strength to climb back to the spur—nor was there much reason to return. Presently, he thought, his aching fingers and toes would relax and slip. There would be another splash, unheard, from that black water.
He clung to the rock, however, and a breath of stale unsunned air touched his face like a ghostly wing. He clambered aside, and the current became stronger. He reached the lip of a narrow passage, and pulled himself through it, and came to a flat place where he could rest.
For a long time he lay there, breathing wearily, rubbing at aching muscles. At last he tried to rise, and drove his head painfully against the tip of a sharp stalactite, and crept on hands and knees to explore this new cavern.
He followed a winding gallery of water-carved limestone, that presently became tall enough so that he could walk again, and tap his way with the sword. There were narrow fissures that he could just squirm through, abrupt drops that he clambered down or skirted, cold pools that he had to swim.
Stone and water had fashioned strange formations. One, that his lacerated hands explored, was shaped queerly like an immense bull’s head. A projecting boulder formed the head itself, and two curving stalagmites were like horns. The rock mass beneath held an odd suggestion of a gigantic human body.
That strange natural symbol of the Dark One stood in a wide cavity in a long endless gallery. Theseus dislodged a limestone fragment. The rattle of it rolled ominously against an unseen vault, and came back queerly amplified, so that it sounded like the far-off bellow of a monstrous bull.
The cave was a natural temple. If indeed, Theseus thought, he was destined to meet the Dark One, it should have been here. He was shuddering to an uncontrollable sense of super-normal dread. But nothing tangible challenged him.
At last he found an exit, and went on.
For an endless time, Theseus wandered through unending passages. He squirmed through fissures that tore his skin. He leaped unseen crevasses. For a space he was hungry, and the hunger passed, leaving only a light-headed weakness. Once he slept, woke chilled and stiff. Thirst tortured him, and he drank from a bitter pool.
Always he went on.
Then his foot knocked a pebble over a ledge, and the sound rolled above him, swelled into an angry bellow. He felt an ominous familiarity in the contours of the slope beneath his feet. And his groping fingers found that rugged anthropomorphic stone that had the head and horns of a colossal bull.
With a cold sickness in his heart, and a tremor of unquenchable terror, he knew that all his wanderings had brought him around a futile circle, back to this dark temple that was older than the race of men.
Had the Dark One been his guide?
A strong heart and the Falling Star might prevail against wood and brass and even wizardry—but not against the nameless, formless, voiceless shadow of power that haunted this unceasing dark.
So Theseus was hopelessly thinking, when a fearful voice spoke to him. It reverberated against the unseen vault, swelled until it was as mighty as the bellow of some colossal bull, and yet articulated words:
“Welcome, mortal, to my eternal abode! I have waited long for you. For I am hungered from fasting, and I thirst for a man’s blood.”
Theseus stood lifeless. That supernal bellowing voice held an incredible familiarity. Something moved in the darkness, however, before he could grasp that impossible recognition. It rushed upon him.
In a blind instinctive effort at defense, the nerveless arm of Theseus flung up the Falling Star. It rang against something hard. Something smooth and round and pointed came thrusting past sword and arm, and stabbed into his side.
It was like a monstrous goring horn.
EIGHTEEN
THAT TERRIBLE horn grazed his naked flesh and lunged again. But Theseus automatically fended the second thrust away from his body with the Falling Star. For the horn came in like a heavy pike, and the instinct of many battles taught him how to deal with it, even in the darkness.
The Dark One fought like a man. Even the little grunt of effort, as the horn made its third ripping thrust, sounded queerly human—until the echo of the unseen dome amplified it into a far-off bellow.
Grim confidence returned to Theseus. A god that fought like a man could be slain like a man. He gripped the steel sword, let that smooth lunging point slide once more past his body, and thrust where a man must be to hold it.
But his foot, as he thrust, slipped into an unseen hole. He dropped forward on his face. His sword hand struck a sharp edge of rock, and the blade went clattering out of his fingers.
Pain from his ankle sickened him. He dragged himself back to his knees, groping desperately for the sword. He found only cold blades of stone. Cold dread stiffened him as he heard feet rush toward him, felt that lunging horn.
“Now, mortal Cretan!” That rolling, distorted bellow was still mockingly familiar. “Die to feed your god!”
Theseus dropped flat again, let the weapon pass above him.
“I’m no Cretan,” he gasped. “And we Greeks have a different rule of hospitality—it is the guest who must be fed!” His voice became a whispered prayer. “Here, Falling Star!”
The echoes rolled into silence, and a startled hush filled the cavern, until:
“Greek?” breathed the other voice. “Falling Star?” The whisper was human, anxious, breathless. “You … you aren’t—You can’t be … Captain-Firebrand?”
Abruptly, Theseus recognized that haunting familiarity. “Cyron!” he cried. “Gamecock—it’s you!”
That long, heavy horn clattered on the rocks—and shattered, so that Theseus knew that it had been only a loose stalactite—and the Dorian pirate lifted him into a hairy embrace.
“It’s good to find you, Captain,” sobbed the Gamecock. “Even though you have cost me a meal!”
“Better to find you,” returned Theseus. “For I though
t—half thought—that you really were the Dark One!”
“So I planned for every man they send down here to believe,” whispered Cyron. “That ruse is all that has kept me alive, through the years since that metal giant dropped me through the portal—how many years has it been, Captain, since my ship was taken?”
“No years,” Theseus told him. “It’s little more than two moons since I sailed our prize to meet the Cretan fleet with that little Babylonian wizard—remember him?”
“Two moons!” gasped the Gamecock. “No more than two moons? Captain Firebrand, I’ve been lost in this frightful darkness for half a lifetime, surely. The cold and wet of these slimy, stinking caves have made an old man of me. Else the horn of the Dark One would have gored you through with the first lunge!”
“And you have met no Dark One,” whispered Theseus, “save yourself?”
“I was half dead with terror,” Cyron said, “when that metal monster tossed me into the Labyrinth. All the warlocks had promised me that their god would be waiting to devour me. But in all the years—or the two moons, if it can be so brief a time—there has been no god here but myself. I have played the Dark One only because even here a man must eat.”
Theseus had found the Falling Star. His fingers caressed the polished pattern of the inlay in the cold hilt, the smooth clinging edge of the blade. In a soft, breathless voice he said: “Then there is no Dark One?”
“Not here, Captain Firebrand,” said Cyron. “Though I had been crawling and leaping and climbing through these haunted galleries for half a lifetime—so it seemed—before I guessed it.”
His fingers were touching the arms and the shoulders and the face of Theseus, like those of one blind. “It is good to find you, Captain,” he whispered.
“So there is no Dark One!” Theseus murmured softly.
“Some chance freak of water and stone must have made this half likeness of a bull-headed man,” Cyron said. “And some ancient Cretan, lost in these caves, found it. He was already afraid, and his own frightened cry echoed into the bellow of an angry bull. So the Dark One was born! Or so at least, after this weary time, the truth seems to me.”
Theseus gripped the Falling Star. “The Dark One is a lie!” A newborn power rang in his voice. “All the sway of Crete—all the dominion of wizardry—is built upon a lie! It is fear that sits upon the throne of Minos. Fear that is the blade of wizardry. And fear without cause!”
He stood up, clutching the sword. “This truth is the weapon I have sought, Gamecock. We shall carry it back to the world above. For it is the sword that can scatter all the minions of Minos. It is the torch that can fire the wizardry of Knossos!”
Cyron grunted cynically. “Minos would not encourage you to speak,” he said. “Nor would his subjects dare believe your blasphemy.” He sat down on the wet stone. “Anyhow, it is an idle question, because we can’t get out.”
“We can try,” said Theseus. “Now we have a reason.”
“For all this time I’ve had a reason,” muttered Cyron. “And I’ve tried. There’s no way out. None save the portal through which we entered—and only the brass giant can open that.”
Theseus rubbed at the stubble on his chin. “There’s another way,” he said. “You’ve just proved it.”
“I?” Hope struggled with Cyron’s doubt. “How?”
“When you spoke of the birth of the Dark One. Before the Dark One was known, you said, some lost Cretan must have wandered unwittingly into this evil temple.”
“Well?” said Cyron.
“He didn’t wander through the passage by which we entered,” Theseus told him, “because that is a hewn stair that must have been planned by architects and cut by the labor of many men. Their masters must have known of the cavern already. So there must be an older, natural entrance!”
The Dorian grunted hopelessly. “Perhaps there is—or was two thousand years ago. But we’ve no way of finding it. I have followed a hundred winding passages away from this place of the Dark One—and always, in the end, here I am again!”
His teeth chattered, and his voice sank hoarsely. “Sometimes, Captain Firebrand, I think there is a real evil power in this horned stone, that guides men here to die, for the cavern floor about it is spongy with rotting bones.”
Cold, shuddering, his fingers gripped the arm of Theseus. “Perhaps there is a Dark One!” he muttered. “Perhaps the deity merely lets us deny him for a jest, until, after a thousand blind circles, he brings us back to lay our bones before him.”
“Don’t say that—for there is no Dark One!” But the voice of Theseus trembled uneasily. “Come—at least, we can search for a way.”
“I’ll wait for you here,” muttered Cyron. “In a day or two—with the Dark One for a guide—you’ll be back—and thinking you had almost escaped.” He grunted. “Perhaps when you come—if the warlocks have fed their god again—I’ll have meat for you.”
Theseus was silent for a little time. “I think I know how to find the way,” he whispered at last. “The Falling Star will guide us!”
“A sword!” muttered Cyron. “It can’t speak!”
“It has guided me across the desert and across the sea,” Theseus told him. “My father told me that the metal of it fell out of the northward sky. And still, when it is hung by a hair, its point seeks the North Star.”
Cyron grunted doubtfully. “Perhaps you can tell the directions, as you used to at sea,” he muttered, “but what good is that, when we don’t know which way to go?”
“Perhaps,” Theseus said slowly, “I do. Anyhow, the Dark One will not turn us back unawares.”
Cyron rose reluctantly. “Then lead the way,” he said gloomily. “It will be a long one, for men stumbling in the dark. And probably—in spite of your sword—it will end here before this evil figure.”
Theseus had pulled a single long hair from his head. He tied it carefully around the steel blade, at the little nick where it balanced. He waited patiently for the swinging sword to come to rest, then touched it with his fingers.
“This is the way that we must go.” He held the blade, for Cyron to feel its direction. “On beyond the horned rock.”
The Dorian followed him. It was not easy to hold any direction, even approximately. They came to blind endings, had to turn back, swing the blade again, try another corridor.
They both were weak from hunger, shuddering and stiff and numb with cold. Raw feet left unseen blood upon the rocks. Sharp ledges cut their naked bodies.
Cyron wanted to turn back. “I was never the resolute man that you are, Firebrand,” he muttered. “I like a good fight—but a good meal more. And, if I go back to the Dark One, Minos will send me one. You are too hard, Firebrand. You are hard, bright metal, like your blade—hard enough to fight the gods.”
“And,” Theseus whispered grimly, “to conquer them!”
“Then go on,” Cyron told him. “I am turning back.”
“Not now, Gamecock,” said Theseus, and touched him with the Falling Star’s point. “You are coming with me—one way or another.”
Cyron started, rose stiffly. “Then I’ll come alive,” he gasped apprehensively. “Put away the sword! I know you jest, Firebrand—hope you jest.” His teeth chattered. “But you’re a hard man and set on your purpose. I’ll come with you!”
They climbed on, through endless dripping passages. They swam foul black pools and crawled on their faces through slimy crevices, explored blind pockets and retraced their way, and forever swung the sword again to keep the same direction.
Then the time came when Cyron fell and would not rise again. “I’m done, Captain Firebrand,” he whispered feebly. “Slit my throat and drink my blood, and you can go on. But I am done. There may be a way—but only light could show it to us.”
“Then,” Theseus said, “we shall have light.”
Wrapped about his neck, where it was dry from his body heat, he had carried the papyrus scroll in which Ariadne had concealed the Falling Star. Tucked in it was a
hard flint pebble, that he had brought from the cave of that monstrous stone.
He shredded a corner of the scroll, struck sparks from the flint with the Falling Star’s hilt. The papyrus smoldered, burst into flame—the first gleam that Theseus had seen in all the Labyrinth.
“Light!” sobbed Cyron. “A light!”
“The book of the dead,” said Theseus. “But it can guide the living.”
They went on. Theseus extinguished the tiny torch, when it had shown them a possible path. A dozen times he lit it, and put it out—and always watched the smoke. At last there was a feeble drift aside. They followed it. And when the little flame went out again, the dark was not complete. There was a gray, lingering gleam.
Day!
Breathless and trembling, they climbed toward it. But a great boulder, sometime in the ages, had slipped to block the passage. The narrow open fissure would not admit their bodies.
Weak with exhaustion and want, ill with despair, they lay down under that tiny precious light. Slowly it faded above them, and there was only darkness. It seemed to Theseus, drifting into dull oblivion, that this must be the last night.
But he woke, presently, filled with a new hope and strength. A pale ghostly light was filtering again through the fissure, and it guided the point of the Falling Star. Weathered stone chipped and crumbled, and presently Theseus shook the inert limp form of Cyron. “Come on,” he whispered. “The way is open.”
His words roused the sleeping Dorian, magically. They squeezed through the passage that Theseus had cut, and climbed ragged lips of stone, and came out into a tiny beehive building.
Precious white moonlight poured through the pointed entrance arch. It washed the rush-covered floor, and flooded a tiny altar, where lay offerings of dates and barley cakes, a piece of smoked fish, a bowl of pickled olives, and a jar of sour wine.
“Where—” gasped Cyron. “What—” He fell before the altar, snatched the fish.
“This is the shrine of Cybele,” Theseus told him. “The Cretans believe that their goddess was born of the earth and the Dark One, through the way we have come, to be the mother—” His mouth was full of dates, and he spoke no more.
The Reign of Wizardry Page 13
