The Reign of Wizardry (12 page)

“Scourge them out!”

But Theseus lifted a protesting arm.

“Stop! I called them to follow me. For they are the people of Crete, and they are going to be the new rulers. I claim the throne for them. I warn you now that the reign of the warlocks and the Dark One is ended!”

White-robe and black looked at one another. The gnarled dark face was inscrutable
as the dimpled rosy one. It seemed to Theseus, however, that an unholy glee had flamed for a moment in the hollow black eyes of Daedalus. But Minos smiled again.

“Let them stay,” he said softly, “and see their god!”

The kneeling priests began a low, solemn chant, in the secret tongue. The wizard Daedalus, his hollow voice choked and snarling, called:

“Come forward, Gothung the Northman. Receive
the vestments of Minos, take your divine bride, accept the double ax of the Dark One, and assume your place among the gods.”

Striving to conceal a shiver of apprehension, Theseus went forward to the altar. At a signal from Daedalus, he knelt before it. Chanting in the secret tongue, the warlock lifted the white robe from the shoulders of Minos, draped it over him. The priests were abruptly silent.
Rising, Theseus felt a hush of expectancy, saw eyes seek a dark doorway beyond the altar.

He looked, and Ariadne entered. She carried a silver lamp, and its rays shone red in the glory of her hair, white on her proud face, green on her long, loose robe. The white dove was fluttering on her shoulder. She came around the altar, and walked with a regal grace toward Theseus.

Theseus watched her
face. It was white, frozen. Her features were cold as some lovely marble statue’s, her green eyes dark and frosty with a scornful hate. She paused before Theseus,
looking beyond him. The sepulchral voice of Daedalus croaked:

“Through Ariadne, who is her vessel, daughter of Minos and sorceress of the serpent, the All-Mother Cybele takes him who was Gothung the Northman to be her honored husband,
and welcomes him into the circle of the gods.”

Ariadne stood proud and straight before Theseus, and still her cold angry eyes refused to see him. The dark claws of Daedalus lifted away the loose robe. She was left in a sea-green gown, whose tight scanty bodice revealed all her womanly splendor.

The deep rusty voice of Daedalus rang hollowly: “Do you, Ariadne, the vessel of Cybele, take this
new god to your heart?”

The white dove fluttered back to the shoulder of Ariadne, and the silver serpent writhed about her waist. Its eyes were crimson gems, Theseus saw, that glittered evilly. Her golden voice faint and cold, she said: “I take him.”

Theseus stood still, and saw a pale flush come up into her white skin. He relaxed a little, and dared to grin at her helpless wrath. Things were
proceeding unexpectedly well. But Daedalus croaked at Ariadne:

“Then greet the new god with a wifely kiss—for you are now his bride.”

The face of Ariadne went whitely tense, and the green eyes flamed. Theseus grinned again.

“We have already quarreled over the duties of motherhood,” he told Daedalus. “Let us now forgive her womanly temper. I shall find time presently to teach her the obligations
of a wife.”

The warlock’s gnarled face twisted into a black mask of hate. His sunken smoldering eyes stared for a long time at Theseus, as if their sinister power would consume him. At last he turned, shaken as if with a stifled fury, to the stone ax on the altar.

“Being the hand of the Dark One,” he croaked hoarsely, “I offer the new Minos the sacred ax, whose twin blades are the crafts of
war and the arts of peace, that is the token of the Dark One’s regency.” He reached for the worn ancient haft, but:

“Stop!” hissed the silken voice of Minos. “He is not yet a god!”

There was something impish in the rosy, dimpled smile, and the merry little eyes sparkled with an unwonted glee. Pink and stout without his robe, Minos bounced to the side of his daughter, whispered softly.

Apprehensively
watching, Theseus saw the frigid white features of Ariadne break into a dazzling smile. She looked back at him, and her green eyes flamed a merciless triumph. Eagerly, her golden voice pealed:

“Wait! I see my duty. The new god shall have the salutation that is due him!”

Eagerly, she came back to Theseus. The white dove fluttered for balance, and ruby eyes glittered from the twisting serpent-girdle.
Smooth and white and warm, her arms slid around the tense shoulders of Theseus.

“My divine master!” Her voice was a golden taunt, suave mockery shone in her long green eyes. “A kiss!”

Theseus knew that Minos had trapped him. Desperately he sought escape. He caught the smooth shoulders of Ariadne, thrust her roughly back.

“You refused it,” he said. “Now wait till I am ready.”

But Minos smiled
his pink baby-smile, and the blue eyes twinkled. And Theseus discovered abruptly that he was held fast by unseen bonds, as he had been in the arena.

“Now, my lord.” The eyes of Ariadne sparkled. “One kiss!”

Her long white body pressed close to his again, and he could make no move. Deliberately, her hot red lips sought his own, clung. Theseus abruptly felt the slackening of her arms, the new
looseness of the white robe of Minos. And Ariadne stepped back from him, with mimic astonishment on her white face.

“Who are you, redhead?” her whisper mocked him. “And where is the godly spouse of Cybele?”

Released from those fetters of wizardry, Theseus looked despairingly down at his hands. They were lean and tanned—his own, not the huge sunburned hams of the Northman. They clenched, impotently.

He heard the soft faint tinkle of the laughter of Minos.

“Here, Talos!” whispered the silken woman-voice. “Here is the prisoner you have sought—the pirate Firebrand! He has stolen my robe! Seize him! Throw him into the deepest dungeon, to await the justice of the Dark One.”

With a triumphant snarling sound, Daedalus tore the white robe from Theseus, wrapped it back about the pink pudgy
shoulders
of Minos. The ruler was trembling with soft laughter, and the small merry eyes were almost hidden in his rosy smile.

“But we were placing my successor on the throne,” he sobbed through the laughter. “Where is the Northman?”

The floor creaked, as Talos strode toward Theseus. In the instant that was left to him, Theseus seized Ariadne, crushed her long body against him so hard she gasped with
pain. “This is not the end,” he breathed, “my bride!”

Deep within him, however, he feared that it was. He recalled the calm wager of Minos on Gothung. Suddenly he was certain that the rosy, jovial little warlock had penetrated his guise at the beginning, that his victory in the arena and this delayed exposure had been but an idle gambit—a game to break the tedium that thirty generations of life
must become.

The hot resistless hand of Talos crushed down on the arm of Theseus, dragged him away. Looking back, he saw that Minos still quivered with laughter. Ariadne was staring after him with a curious startled expression, her face white as the fluttering dove.

T
HE DUNGEON
, lost somewhere beneath the rambling maze of Knossos, was not unlike that in which Theseus had awaited the games. A square, granite-lined pit, sunk deep in living rock, it was damp with dripping water, cold with a bonepiercing chill, foul with old decay. Theseus was alone in it.

No faintest ray of light, however, reached the pit to mark the passing days. No sound filtered
to it from the life above. Theseus knew there must be guards somewhere in the stone-hewn passages above, but he heard no voice or step. The dungeon was a tomb of living death.

Lying in that other pit, before the games, Theseus had boasted that a man might escape from such a place—if he had to. Now, Theseus saw, he had to. And he tried the plan that he had made.

He had waited endlessly for the
guards to come with food. But no food was brought. He seemed as completely isolated as if he had been the only man alive. The justice of the Dark One, apparently, began with solitary starvation.

Theseus felt sure that it must be someone’s duty, however, to ascertain from time to time if he still survived. And, when every hope of finding escape by the strength of his own hands was gone, he began
calling at intervals into the blackness above:

“Ten talents of silver for a message to Admiral Phaistro!”

Ten talents of silver was four times a man’s weight of the most precious metal. One talent was vast wealth. Ten was enough to excite the cupidity of any man. But the voice of Theseus rang hollowly against the bare, hard stone, and died into silence, and there was no response.

He called
the words again and again, until his voice was gone. He slept, woke, croaked his hoarse appeal, slept and woke again, and whispered it. Time was short, he knew, when his strength and sanity would last to carry out the plan.

“Naked one, what silver have you?”

At first he could not believe that he had heard that cautious, fearful whisper. He lay still, trembling and breathless on the harsh cold
stone. It came again, faintly:

“Doomed one, where is your silver?”

It was real! Theseus tried to quiet his sick shuddering, sought voice and strength and cunning. Chilled with dread of some blunder that might destroy this last tiny hope, he gasped into the dark:

“I have two hundred talents of silver—besides three hundred of gold, and twice that weight of bronze and tin, and forty jars filled
with cut stones and jewelry—that Captain Firebrand took from a hundred rich ships of Crete and Egypt and the northern cities. It is buried on an island, and guarded with a wizard’s spell, and only the wizard and I can find it.”

There was silence in the darkness. Theseus shivered to a fear that he had failed, that the guard had gone away. But at last the whisper came:

“All the silver in the world,
pirate—and all the gold and bronze and tin—would not buy one day of freedom for you. For the guard who set you free would doom himself to the justice of the Dark One. And all the treasure in the world could not save a man from the warlocks and the gods.”

“But I don’t seek escape,” whispered Theseus. “I wish
merely to bargain for a service. If I am going to the Labyrinth, I have no need of that
treasure on the island. I am willing to betray its hiding place, for a service.”

“What,” came the fearful whisper from above, “is that service?”

“It is one that Admiral Phaistro alone can render.” Theseus brought bitterness into his voice. “I was betrayed by one of my officers—a man who had been my best friend. He seized command of my ship, and set me adrift on the helpless hulk to be wrecked
on the rocks of Crete. I wish to bargain for revenge against the Dorian pirate, called Cyron the Game-cock. Only the admiral can give me that.”

Black silence. A drop of water fell with a tinkling crash into a cold foul pool. Again silence. A sob of breath from above, and a muttered curse, as if avarice and fear battled in the guard. Doubtfully, at last:

“How do I get mine?”

“You can trust Phaistro,”
urged Theseus. “If he comes here, the secret will be worth ten talents.”

“Or my life!” came the mutter. Silence again, and the shattering ring of another water drop. “The admiral has need of your hoard,” came the yielding whisper. “I’ll tell him to come—if he dares!”

Theseus shuddered with hope, turned weak again.

“Wait!” he called. “Tell Phaistro also that it is useless for him to come, unless
he can find and bring with him a certain Babylonian cobbler, who has lately arrived in Ekoros. The cobbler is a squat little yellow-brown man, with the features of a frog. His name is Snish.”

“But what,” hoarsely whispered the unseen guard, “is the need of a cobbler?”

“The cobbler is also a wizard,” breathed Theseus, “and my friend. He aided me to bury the hoard, and guarded it with his arts.
Neither of us can find it, or give directions for the finding of it, alone. For each possesses only half the secret. That is the spell.”

“I shall tell the admiral,” promised the guard. “But, pirate, if this is all a lie—” The threat died in his throat, and he muttered: “What further injury can be done a man already awaiting the justice of the Dark One?”

There was silence. The drops of water
crashed, loud as the fall of crystal towers. The shattering falls were far apart. The
nerves of Theseus grew taut as he waited for each, and his body jerked to the shock, and again he waited through another tense eternity.

A cold shadow of apprehension lay across his spinning, weary brain. For there was, in fact, no such buried hoard. All the loot of the pirate crew, in the time he had been with
them, had not amounted to half of what he had enumerated. But a tithe of that had fallen to the share of Captain Firebrand. And he had spent it with a free hand in the markets and the wine shops of a dozen cities, had flung it, more freely yet, to people in want from the wars and the taxations of Minos.

“All Cretans are liars.” That was a proverb spoken from Thebes to Troy. A race of liars might
well become adept at detecting falsehood. But this invention was now his sole hope of life, and the reeling brain of Theseus clung to it grimly.

Once he dropped into sleep. He dreamed that he had safely mounted the throne of Minos, that lovely Ariadne was his own. But she fled from him, into the Labyrinth of the Dark One. He followed, and found her amid the horrors of that dark, cavernous space,
and kissed her. And she changed in his arms to Snish.

The crash of a water drop awoke him, a nerve-shattering avalanche of toppling crystal peaks. He lay on the wet, foul stone, and waited in an agony of tension. The drops crashed and crashed again, measuring intolerable ages.

Theseus thought that he was dreaming again, when he heard the scrape of a foot above. But there were cautious whispers
and the muffled clatter of a sword striking stone. Lowered fearfully, he heard the precise, familiar voice of Admiral Phaistro:

“Captain Firebrand?”

“Yes!” Theseus gasped for breath. “Admiral—”

“Silence!” The voice was stifled, frightened. “We’ll come down to you.”