The Door in the Mountain (11 page)

“Daedalus.” Minos shook his head. “He built many things for me, when he was newly exiled from Athens and had promised to serve only me—but that was years ago. Why would he make this wondrous prison?”

Sweat was crawling down her spine. Her heartbeat was so loud that she thought she wouldn’t be able to hear her own words—the ones that wended their smooth, silvery way from some nameless god to her tongue. “Because you will promise him his freedom.” She turned back to her father. “You’ll say your need of him is done. You’ll tell him that there will be no more watches placed on the ships in our harbours, once he’s finished this last, great work. His exile here will be at an end.
That
is why he’ll make it for you.”

Minos crossed the floor to her. He put his hands on the back of her head, only lightly, but she felt the warmth coming from them. “But he should be punished, too,” he said softly. “For his impudence. For the lack of respect he and his accursed family have always shown me, in the home I gave them. All of them deserve to die.”

Maybe his wound has made him feverish,
Ariadne thought as she reached up to cover his hands with her own.
Maybe he’s as wounded in his mind as he was in his body
. “There must be no reason for the gods to demand your blood for his,” she said. “Send them away forever. Be rid of them—but do not kill them. There will be plenty of killing as it is.”

The king dug his fingers into her hair so hard that her eyes filled with tears. She didn’t blink them away. They gathered on her lashes and blurred his face to something strange and looming. “And what shall I do with Poseidon’s son in the meantime, daughter of mine?”

She wanted to laugh as he had, but instead she swallowed hard and set her jaw so that it wouldn’t tremble. “Honour him. Install him in the Great Goddess’s altar-room for a time, then let my mother choose a secret place far away from our palaces where, we will say, he will be safe. Let her think he is still hers.” She licked her lips and swallowed again. “Placate her now so that you can hurt her later. Do not tell her that you intend to put him in the mountain box. Surprise her with this, when she thinks she is safest. She will have to pretend to rejoice, but she will die in secret, without him.”

Minos’s teeth glinted. “Yes. She will wonder at my lenience, when I offer her this choice. And she will hate me, when I take him away forever.” His fingers grasped and groped, loosening the curls in Ariadne’s hair.

“The gods have not marked you,” he said, as her head thrummed with fire and pain, “but they speak through you. You are their instrument; their gift to me. You are a queen.”

He stepped even closer to her, and his left foot sent Daedalus’s box spinning across the floor. He held her to his heart, and as she listened to its pounding, she watched the tiny, broken bull rock and still against the stone.

“What do you think they’re going to say?” Glaucus muttered to Icarus. The royal household had assembled, at the king’s command, along with as many people of Knossos as could fit into the courtyard: thousands, it seemed, chattering, crushed up together in the wide space below and lined row upon row in the narrow ones above. Minos and Pasiphae stood upon a tall dais that Daedalus had made: it looked like stone, but was actually painted wood, mounted on wheels so that it could be rolled about. The king was leaning on an ornately carved crutch, resting his hand on the bandage wrapped tightly above his loincloth. He was gazing at the queen, who was gazing at the line of storm clouds advancing in the sky above the highest horns. Deucalion, Phaidra and Ariadne craned up at them from one side of the dais; Icarus, Glaucus and Chara from the other.

Icarus shrugged one bony shoulder. “Why would I know? It’s not as if either of them ever speaks to
me
.”

Glaucus sighed and turned to Chara. “What about you? Heard anything?”

Ariadne’s eyes were wide, fixed on her father. Chara said, “They’re planning something—the princess and the king. I followed her to his sick room without her knowing it, and I saw her go in. She stayed a long time. And yesterday, he came to
her
rooms. She dismissed me, which is strange; she usually doesn’t care when I’m around. Doesn’t notice me at all, unless she needs to be angry about something.”

“Huh,” Glaucus said. “Why didn’t you try and listen, from the outside? Isn’t that what slaves
do
?”

“There were guards!” Chara said, loudly enough that Deucalion frowned at all three of them. “Several guards,” she went on, more quietly, “and they heard her tell me to go. . . .”

“What about Asterion?” Icarus whispered. “He’s still being held in a storeroom cell; will he—”

His voice faltered as Minos raised his free hand. The crowd quieted. Chara saw Ariadne smile, and thought,
She knows everything the rest of us don’t. He’s told her, of course. Let’s see what he tells the rest of us. . . .

But Minos didn’t speak; Pasiphae did.

“Asterion,” she began, and fell silent. She closed her eyes. The High Priestess, standing on the second storey of the palace, directly above the dais, raised her hands in the sign of the horns. Hundreds of pairs of hands did the same.

I can’t make the sign to him
, Chara thought.
Gods and goddesses forgive me,
but
I’ve never been able to. He’s my
friend. She blinked at the gold and scarlet ribbons that had been threaded through the spokes of the dais’s wheels for a moment before she looked back up.

Pasiphae’s lovely eyes opened. Chara expected to see tears in them, but they were dry. “My child,” the queen continued, “my beloved Asterion, son of Lord Poseidon, is now too powerful for life among men. Many of you saw the proof of this when he struck out at the king.” She gestured at Minos but didn’t look at him. Minos bent his head, for a moment. There was a splotch of blood on his bandage, easing slowly into a new shape.

“For now,” Pasiphae said, “we have sent him back to the place in which he was born: the Great Mother’s sanctuary within this palace. He is being tended and protected by guards: two soldiers of my husband’s company, two priests of Zeus, and three priestesses of Poseidon. No one troubles him, and he troubles no one. But the boy is more and more the bull. And as he grows, his godmark will only become more unpredictable. So, in consultation with the king, I have decided that he must leave us all. He must be put somewhere secret and sacred, where only I and a few others will go.”

The crowd murmured. Someone shouted Asterion’s name; someone else sobbed. But Ariadne’s voice was loudest; it startled Chara, who hadn’t noticed her crossing the stones before the dais. “You’ve gone so white that your freckles look like stains,” the princess murmured. Chara swallowed and turned her face away from Ariadne’s gaze and her sweet, warm breath.

“So surprising, is it not? That our dear Asterion won’t be able to live among us anymore.”

You’re not surprised. You knew exactly what would happen, and you know what’s yet to come. You, and your mark-mad father.
Chara tried to keep still, but her hands trembled. She twisted them in her ridiculous skirts but the trembling didn’t stop; it spread inward, to her belly and chest.

The queen took a step back. One of the priestesses behind the dais lifted her arm to keep Pasiphae from falling.

“Silence!” Minos shouted, and the crowd’s murmuring subsided. “My thanks, Wife,” he went on. He ran his tongue across his upper teeth. Its tip was blue, flicking fire. “Your devotion to your gods and your son and your people warms my heart. And it puts me in mind of a different kind of devotion. It puts me in mind of the fourteen Athenian youths who will be delivered to us and sacrificed to the ancient gods of this island.”

Pasiphae’s eyes were closed again. Their lids were tinted violet and silver.

Like the inside of a mussel shell
, Chara thought.

“I have decided that we will not make these sacrifices at Knossos or even at Amnisos. No: we shall give them to the Mother in her mountain sanctuary, where she bore Zeus, her mightiest son.”

The crowd’s voices surged again. There was a roar in Chara’s head too, like a distant waterfall.

The king nodded, as if his people were children who’d pleased him. He held up both hands. “But the mountain sanctuary is too crude—sufficient for a stag or boar, but for noble Athenian youths? No. They require more. Zeus and the Mother demand more. And so I, Minos of Crete, shall build all of them an altar unlike any other.” He paused, then swept his orange-veined arm out toward the crowd. “Master Daedalus: step forward.”

Robes hissed on stone as the crowd parted.
He looks like he’s just drunk one of the cook’s bitter coughing draughts
, Chara thought. Daedalus’s cheeks were sucked in and his eyes squeezed almost shut. Even when he reached the foot of the dais, he didn’t open them to look at Minos. She glanced at Icarus, who was even paler than usual, and motionless.

The king’s teeth flashed in his beard. “Our renowned craftsman will build a palace beneath the Mother’s mountain. He and his workmen will fashion corridors and chambers, and an altar as large as Ariadne’s dancing ground. The fourteen Athenians will be sent in alive, and locked in, and the Goddess will decide how best to claim them. And while she decides, they will be surrounded by beauty the likes of which they will never have known before. Daedalus will see to this.”

“And then I will leave this island.” Daedalus’s first word was quiet. Every one after that was louder; the last one was nearly a shout. He threw his head back and the silver in his close-cropped hair glinted in the light that was coming from the sky, and from Minos’s hands. Chara wanted to glance at Icarus again but couldn’t.

The king continued to smile. His fingers twitched smoking paths into the air. “Yes,” he said. “And then, after all your years of service to this royal house, you will be free to go.” He lifted his own face up, as if he were straining to see all his subjects. “A year. The great sanctuary will be finished in a year—a little less, even, for King Aegeus will send the first tribute at the end of the summer, in time for the Mother’s celebration. She will bless us all. Praise the Mother!” he cried, lifting his arms. “Praise Zeus!”

“Praise the Mother!” the people called back. “Praise Zeus!”

The king banged the end of his crutch on the dais. Four slaves bent to lift a handle that might have been made from a tree trunk; they drew the dais slowly toward the staircase that led to the royal apartments, as the crowd parted and thinned. Chara watched for a moment, then turned to Icarus—but he was already steps away, his arm around his father’s waist, clinging or supporting; she couldn’t tell which.

“Well, well,” Glaucus muttered, as Icarus and Daedalus moved off into the dispersing crowd, and Pasiphae climbed the staircase with Minos limping behind her, “imagine that: Master Daedalus to earn his freedom so that fourteen other Athenians can lose theirs to the gods.”

“Indeed,” said Ariadne, and drew a deep, satisfied breath. “Such news we’ve had today! How shall we come to terms with it all? Especially the bit about our brother no longer living among us.”

No, Freckles,
Chara told herself.
Don’t.
She unclenched her fists. She tried to hold Asterion’s imagined, vanishing voice in her ears and failed.

“Well, girl,” Ariadne said, smiling down at Chara, “shall we pay a visit to my dear brother, before he is taken away for good?”

Chara didn’t answer. The princess didn’t expect her to, after all—and in any case, she wasn’t sure she would have been able to speak.

“Yes!” Glaucus said. “Let’s go see him!” but Ariadne waved her hand in a long, languid arc in front of his face. “No, no—not you. No one except me. And my slave.” She dug her fingers into Chara’s shoulder and turned her around.

The rain began to fall again, as they threaded their way across the courtyard. By the time they reached the threshold of the Great Mother’s altar-room, water had darkened the stone. The antechamber was dark too, though the painted anemones glowed as Chara had seen real anemones do, when she’d gone out with Asterion on the royal ship once, at night. The soldiers stationed at the outer columns bowed their heads to the princess. The priestess sitting on the long stone bench didn’t.

“Princess Ariadne,” the priestess said. “What is your business here?”

Ariadne smiled her dazzling, false smile. “I will see my brother.”

The priestess rose. “That would not be wise.”

Ariadne took a step toward the tall wooden screen that stood in front of the inner columns. As she did, two other priestesses appeared around either end of it. They didn’t bow their heads to her, either.

They’re her mother’s servants
, Chara thought as she watched Ariadne straighten her shoulders.
Her mother’s and Asterion’s, not hers.

“I will see him,” Ariadne said evenly. “Now.”

One of the priestesses looked very young. She held a small lamp in her left hand; her right was on the wood of the screen, digging at the double axe shapes carved in it. “Princess,” she said, a little haltingly, “he’s too much marked now, since that night when he wounded the king—turns into the bull for no reason—he’s strong and full of anger, and then he’s just a boy again, silent and strange. . . .”

“Myrrine!” The other priestesses snapped the word at the same time and the girl drew back against a pillar.

Ariadne frowned, as if she pitied Myrrine. “I thank you for this warning, but I assure you that he will do me no harm. And my mother will be pleased to hear that I have visited him in this place.”

For a moment the pattering of the rain was the only sound in the antechamber. “Very well,” the one by the bench said at last. “We will allow this—but only for you, Princess.”

The screen scraped along the floor as Myrrine tugged at it. “Thank you,” Ariadne said to her, and swept into the chamber beyond. Chara stared at her feet so that she wouldn’t have to meet the priestesses’ eyes, but the moment she was down the steps, she looked up.

Two priests were standing by the central pillar. They bowed their heads to their breasts and Ariadne nodded. Chara’s gaze leapt away from all of them. At first all she saw was lamplight and shadow swimming over the statuettes and walls and floor.
Where . . . ?
she thought—and then she saw him.

He was crouched in one of the deep offering pools, swaying slightly; his horns caught the light and scattered it up against the ceiling, where it wavered like water. Horns—not the nubs he usually had, when he was only a boy. And yet he
was
only a boy: shoulder blades and ribs protruded from his pale skin, and his hair was a tangle of gold.

He lifted his arm. Water cascaded from his hand, which was holding a votive pitcher.

No
, Chara thought,
not water
—for she smelled something sour.
Milk
. Asterion poured and poured, soaking his curls and back with the milk that was meant for the Great Mother.

“Brother.”

His head swung slowly up. He stared at Ariadne with round, black eyes that didn’t seem to be seeing her. She was about to speak again when his eyes rolled past her and found Chara. “Freckles?” His voice was rough and uncertain—a man’s, a beast’s. Chara hardly recognized it. His other hand came out of the pool, dripping and groping at air.

She ran past Ariadne and fell to her knees beside him. His slick fingers trembled in her dry ones. “Asterion,” she said quietly, “it’s all right; hush, now. . . .” For a moment she watched the milk branching like tiny rivers over the scars on his chest—and then Ariadne was wrapping her own hands around Chara’s upper arms and wrenching her away.

“You forget yourself,” the princess hissed. “You are a
slave
. How dare you presume to touch the Great Bull?”

“I don’t presume,” Chara said, so dizzy with anger that she could hardly hear herself. “He’s my
friend
.”

Ariadne slapped her across the face and Chara stumbled backward. Her cheeks and ears flamed. A strand of hair came loose from its knot and stuck between her lips.

“Out,” Ariadne said as the priests stepped away from the pillar and advanced on Chara. “You stupid, stupid girl: leave this sacred place.”

“No!” Asterion rasped. He lunged forward; milk and water sloshed over the pool’s side. “No, no, no—you mustn’t hurt her like that. . . .”

Chara managed to take three paces toward him before the priests put their hands around her arms. Ariadne walked back and forth in front of them for a moment, then stood still, blocking Chara’s view of the pool.

“Very well. Look at him once more, girl. Just this once more.”

She moved aside. Asterion was slumped over the pool’s edge with his head on the floor. Chara tried to smile at him.

“Chara.” He stretched a wet, shaking arm toward her. “Help me—I’m so lonely. . . .”

“Lonely?” As the priests took her elbows and turned her around and led her up and out, Chara heard Ariadne’s voice, fading but still too clear. “Oh, no you’re not, little brother. Not yet.”