Lost in the Labyrinth, Patrice Kindl [read novel full .txt] 📗

I am sorry, though he probably did deserve to die. How glad I am that Ariadne is to be queen and not I. I could never order anyone executed.” I shuddered.

Icarus smiled. “The Lady Ariadne will have no difficulty there,” he said.

“No, she will not, and a good thing too, if she is to be a strong ruler,” I said tartly. Ariadne was my sister. Long ago we had played at dolls and dressup, and even though she no longer seemed to value my company, I loved her as best I could. I would not allow anyone to criticize her, not even Icarus.

Besides, I felt a sudden urge to quarrel with him, thinking to blot out my distress with a scalding good fight. But he would not help me. He merely said, “Yes, your sister has the stomach to be queen. You do not.” Then, pausing at the entrance to the royal chambers, he said, “How do you suppose the prince came to fall into the honey?”

“There was a little mouse in the pithos with Glaucus,” I said. “He perhaps was chasing it, to make a pet of it. He was fond of keeping small creatures in cages in his room. No doubt he climbed from a smaller pithos nearby to the large one. Then later, after he had fallen in, someone found the trapdoor open and closed it.”

Icarus nodded. He lifted his fist to his forehead in salute and left me there, alone.

When I awoke the next morning I hurried to the passageway under which Polyidus and my brother were imprisoned. It was in my mind to raise the trapdoor and secretly conduct the diviner out of the Labyrinth even though my father had expressly forbidden it. Perhaps it would be believed that Polyidus possessed magical powers beyond those he had ever demonstrated and had vanished through his own skill.

Mine was a foolish plan. I could no more spirit Polyidus away unseen than I could restore Glaucus to life. Others had gathered at the place where the young prince had met his death. A large and appreciative crowd sat listening to Polyidus bewailing his fate through cracks in the wooden trapdoor. Polyidus had not been popular.

Evidently he realized that we were present and listening, for he addressed us.

“Hear me, all of you! King Minos shall be accursed! When my lady Queen Pasiphae discovers what he has done to me, her favorite, the heavens will fall down about his shoulders. And you, you who listen to my lamentations with such glee, you shall suffer also. I tell you, I am a seer and I foresee it!”

The crowd did not appear to be much alarmed by this. His failure to foresee the prince’s death had robbed him of credibility. Seemingly aware of this, he ceased his threats and lamentations. The people gathered around the storage room waited, hopefully.

At length he demanded, “What enters this chamber?”

Those above stirred happily at this new development. What indeed could it be?

“A rat,” suggested one onlooker. Those around him nodded in agreement. It must be a rat, for what else could have made its way into a sealed apartment?

“No doubt you are in the right,” returned Polyidus. “It creeps among the shadows so that I cannot see it clearly, but it is some manner of vermin come to despoil the body, I fear. Take that, thou low and slinking thing! And that, and that!”

There came several crashing thuds from below the trapdoor, as though he were throwing stones at the wall.

A silence followed. Polyidus could be heard muttering something.

“I have killed it,” he said aloud in a tone of despair. “My doom is sealed now. May the Goddess forgive me.”

The crowd was perplexed. How should the Goddess be displeased by the death of a rat?

When they could bear it no longer, an old man leaned forward and spoke through a crack.

“What is it? What have you killed?”

“A snake,” said Polyidus dully.

“He has killed one of the sacred serpents!” someone whispered. After a shocked silence, a few elderly women dressed in black began to wring their hands and wail with great fervor.

“I thought it was a rat!” Polyidus pleaded. “Why, it was you out there who said so!”

“Sacrilege!” hissed the man who had made the suggestion. The old women began to wail louder but were hushed. Nothing so entertaining had happened for months, and the crowd wanted to hear every word.

“See where another comes,” said Polyidus.

“Do not harm it,” commanded the old man in a quavering voice, “or your fate does not bear thinking on.”

“I do it only honor,” said Polyidus. “It leaves unharmed.”

“Hello, Xenodice—come to see the fun?” inquired a voice at my ear. It was my brother Catreus, with his twin, Deucalion, beside him. “Or hear it, rather?”

“No,” I said shortly.

“Oh, well, he doesn’t mean fun, exactly,” said Deucalion easily. “Though I do think that Polyidus was a fool to have promised to restore the boy to life when he couldn’t do it.”

“He didn’t,” I protested. “He only said that he was sure Glaucus would be alive and well when he found him.”

That’s not what we heard,” said Catreus. “We heard he boasted of his ability to draw dead souls back out of the Underworld and reunite them with their bodies. If you can’t do a thing like that, it’s not clever to brag that you can to a pair of bereaved monarchs.”

“It was only that our father has never cared for Polyidus, so he put the blame on him,” I said.

“Well, we won’t grieve for him, I can tell you that,” said Deucalion. “Last year he predicted we would suffer a toss in the bull games, and so we did. We can’t help but feel that if he’d only kept his mouth shut we would have gotten off without a scratch. And now he’s gone and killed one of the sacred serpents, I hear.”

At that moment Polyidus began shouting again, and the twins shushed each other to listen.

“What happens here—?”

A long silence followed