Part 3 (2/2)
Silence fell in Cloudholm. It was an abrupt change; a stillness that was something more than silence had descended. Zalazar waited, eyes down-cast, holding his breath, trying to understand.
Then he began to understand, for the last three words that he himself had spoken seemed to be echoing and re-echoing in the air. All his life he had been a poor nomad, with no family at all.
Even the flames of Helios' prison seemed to have cooled somewhat, though Zalazar did not immediately raise his head to look at them. When it seemed to him that the silence might have gone on for half an hour, he did at last look up.
He who had walked with Zalazar as his companion had at last taken the lyre from his belt, and the others were allowed to recognize him now.
Je had recoiled, cringing, herself for once down on one knee, with averted gaze. But Zalazar, for now, could look.
White teeth, inhumanly beautiful and even, smiled at him. ”Old man, you have decided well. One comes to claim the Throne in time, and Thanatos will be overcome, and your many-times-great-grandsons will have to choose again; but that is not your problem now. I send you back to Earth. Retain the youth that Je has given you-it is fitting, for a new age of the world has been ordained, though not by me. And memories, if you can, retain them too. Magic must sleep.”
Bright, half-melted s.h.i.+eld and silver garments fell softly to the floor of cloud, beside the sword. Zalazar was gone.
The bright eyes under the dark curls swept around. The G.o.d belted his lyre and unslung his bow. There was a great recessional howling as Je's demon-servant fled, and fell, and fled and fell again.
Je raised her eyes, in a last moment of defiance. The winged head of Hypnos, already hovering beside her ear, silently awaited a command.
”Sleep now, sister Je. As our father Zeus and our brothers and sisters sleep. I join you presently,”
Apollo said.
THE WHITE BULL.
He was up on the high ridge, watching the gulls ride in from over the bright sea on their motionless wings, to be borne upward as if by magic, effortlessly, when the sundazzled landscape began to rise beneath them. Thus he was probably one of the first to sight the black-sailed s.h.i.+p coming in to port.
Standing, he raised a colloused hand to brush aside his grizzled hair and shade his eyes. The vessel had the look of the craft that usually came from Athens. But those sails...
He picked up and threw over his shoulder the cloak with which he had padded rock into a comfortable chair. It was time he came down from the high ridge anyway. King Minos and some of Minos' servitors were shrewd, and perhaps it would be wiser not to watch the birds too openly or too long.
When he had picked his way down, the harbor surrounded him with its noise and activity, its usual busy mixture of naval s.h.i.+ps and cargo vessels, unloading and being worked on and taking on new cargo. On Execution Dock the sun-dried carca.s.ses of pirates, looking like poor statues, shriveled atop tall poles in the bright sun.
On the wharf where the black-sailed s.h.i.+p now moored, a small crowd had gathered and a dispute of some kind was going on. A bright-painted wagon, pulled by two white horses, had come down as scheduled from the House of the Double Axe to meet the Athenian s.h.i.+p, but none of the wagon's intended riders were getting into it as yet.
They stood on the wharf, fourteen youths and maids in a more or less compact group, wearing good clothes that seemed to have been deliberate-ly torn and dirtied. Their faces were smeared with soot and ashes as if for mourning, and most of them looked somewhat the worse for wine. They were arguing with a couple of minor officials of the House, who had come down with the wagon and a small honor guard of soldiery. It was not the argument that drew the man from the high ridge ever closer, however, but the sight of one who stood in the front of the Athenian group, half a head taller than anyone around him...
He pushed his way in through the little crowd, a gray middle-aged man with the heavy hands of an artisan and wearing heavy gold and silver ornaments on his fine white loincloth. A soldier looked round resentfully as a hard hand pushed on his shoulder, then closed his mouth and stepped aside.
”Prince Theseus.” The old workman's hands went out in a gesture of deferential greeting. ”I rejoice that the G.o.ds have brought you safe again before my eyes. How goes it with your royal father?”
The tall young man swung his eyes around and brought them rather slowly into focus. Some of the sullen anger left his begrimed face.
”Daedalus.” A nod gave back unforced respect, became almost a bow as the strong body threatened to overbalance. ”King Aegeus does well enough.”
”I saw the black sails, Prince, and feared they might bear news of tragedy.”
”All m'family in Athens are healthy as war horses, Daedalus. Or were when we sailed. The mourning is for ourselves. For our approaching...” Theseus groped hopelessly for a word.
”Immolation,” cheerfully supplied one of the other young men in ashes.
”That's it.” The Prince smiled faintly. ”So you may tell these officers that we wear what we please to our own welcome.” His dulled black eyes roamed up the stair-steps of the harbor town's white houses and warehouses and wh.o.r.ehouses, to an outlying flank of the House of the Double Axe which was just visible amid a grove of cedars at the top of the first ridge. ”Where is the school?”
”Not far beyond the portion of the House you see. Say an hour's walk.” Daedalus observed the younger man with sympathy. ”So, you find the prospect of a student's life in Crete not much to your liking.”
Around them the other branches of the argument between Cretan officials and new-comers had ceased; all were attending to the dialogue.
”Four years, Daedalus.” The princely cheeks, one whitened with an old sword-scar, puffed out in a winey belch. ”Four G.o.d-blasted years.”
”I know.” Daedalus' face wrinkled briefly with shared pain. He almost put out a hand to take the other's arm; a little too familiar, here in public.
”Prince Theseus, will you walk with me? King Minos will want to see you promptly, I expect.”
”I bear him greetings from m'father.”
”Of course. Meanwhile the officers here will help your s.h.i.+pmates on their way to find their quarters.”
Thus the ascent from the harbor turned into an informal procession, with Theseus and Daedalus walking ahead, and the small honor guard following a few paces back, irregularly accompanied by the remaining thirteen Athenians, who looked about them and perhaps wondered a little at the unceremoniousness of it all. The girls whispered a little at the freedom of the Cretan women, who, though obviously respectable as shown by their dress and att.i.tudes, strode about so boldly in the streets. The gaily decorated wagon in which the new arrivals might have ridden, rumbled uphill empty behind a pair of grateful horses. The wagon's bright paint and streamers jarred with the mock-mourning of the newcomers.
When they had climbed partway through the town, Daedalus suggested gently to his companion that the imitation mourningwould be in especially bad taste at Court today, for a real funeral was going to take place in the afternoon.
”Someone in Minos' family?”
”No. One who would have been your fellow student had he lived; in his third year at school. A Lapith.
But still.”
”Oh.” Theseus slowed his long if slightly wobbling strides and rubbed a hand across his forehead, looking at the fingers afterward. ”Now, what do I do?”
”Let us not, after all, take you to Minos right away.” Daedalus turned and with a gesture called one of the Court officials forward, saying to him: ”Arrange some better quarters for Prince Theseus than those customarily given the new students. And he and his s.h.i.+pmates will need some time to make themselves presentable before they go before the King. Meanwhile, I will seek out Minos myself and offer explanations.”
The officer's face and his quick salute showed his relief.
”DAEDALUS.” King Minos' manner was pleasant but business-like as he welcomed his engineer into a pleasant, white-walled room where at the moment his chief tax-gatherers were arguing over innumerable scrolls spread out upon stone tables. Open colonnades gave a view of blue ocean in one direction, Mount Ida in another. ”What can I do to help you out today? How goes the rock-thrower machine?” The King's once-raven hair was graying, and his bare paunch stood honestly and comfortably over the waistband of his linen loincloth. But his arms within their circlets of heavy gold looked muscular as ever, and his eyes were still keen and penetrating.
”The machine goes well enough, sire. I wait for the cattle-hides from Thrace, that are to be twisted into the sling, and I improve my waiting time by overseeing construction of the bronze s.h.i.+elds.” Actually by now the smiths and smelters were all well trained and needed little supervision; so there was time for thought whilst looking into the forge and furnace flames, time to see again the gull's effortless flight as captured by the mind and eye... ”Today, King Minos, I come before you with another matter, one that I am afraid will not wait.” He began to relate to Minos the circ.u.mstances of the Prince's arrival, leaving out neither the black sails nor the drunkenness, though they were mere details compared with the great fact of Theseus' coming to be enrolled in the school.
Minos during this recital led him into another room, out of earshot of the tax gatherers. There the King, frowning, walked restlessly, pausing to look out of a window to where preparations for the afternoon's funeral games were under way. ”How is Aegeus?” he asked, without turning.
”Prince Theseus reports his esteemed father in excellent health.”
”Daedalus, it will not do for King Aegeus' son to leave Crete with his brains addled, any more than they may be already.” The King turned. ”As has happened to a few-Cretans and Athenians and others-since the school was opened. Or to leap from a tower, like this young man we're burying today.
Not that I think the Prince would ever choose that exit.”
”Yours are words of wisdom, Sire. And no more will it be desirable for Theseus to fail publicly at an a.s.signed task, even if it be only obtaining a certificate of achievement from a school.”
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