The Reign of Wizardry (19 page)

He had studied the tiny object, that afternoon. To the eye it was no more than a common seal cylinder, cut of dead-black steatite, pierced lengthwise. Its design, engraved with an exquisite perfection, showed a bull-headed giant, seated on a throne, with men and women kneeling.

Was this, really, the wall of wizardry? His mind had dwelt upon the riddle. Had
Ariadne told the truth about its power? Could it really give him Knossos? If the Dark One himself did not exist, what power could lie in a mere picture?

The green-eyed loveliness of Ariadne had haunted Theseus, through all the dark passages of the Labyrinth. He couldn’t make up his mind about her. She had been a scornful enemy—yet she had risked much to give him the Falling Star, so had saved
his life.

Vessel of Cybele, she should know the illusion of love. In her thousand years or so, she must have loved too many men for any one to matter greatly. She was a member of the strange pantheon of Crete, and she knew that he planned to shatter her world. It was sheerest madness, he knew, to hope for any aid from her.

Yet the talisman was hanging at his throat, and her red-haired loveliness
was smiling at him. Something mocked him, from her smile. Theseus tried to thrust it from his mind, and whispered to his sixty in the shadow of Knossos:

“We must destroy Minos, all his priests and warlocks, and the giant of brass. Daedalus must die—he is the most terrible wizard! But spare the slaves, the artisans, and all the common people—set them free with the word that there is no Dark One!”

“Aye, Captain Firebrand,” whispered the one-eyed Tirynthian.

“There are two others you must spare,” ordered Theseus. “One of them is Ariadne, the daughter of Minos, who is the vessel of Cybele—she gave me the Falling Star, to slay the Dark One.

“The other to be saved—if we happen to find him—is a small Babylonian wizard, called Snish, the cobbler—because he is my friend.”

The pirates were well
versed in the methods of raids by night. The sixty came up the hill as silently as shadows, and reached the artisan’s entrance. There was a short, savage battle with the Etruscans in the wardroom, but the most of them died before they were fully awake. Snatching new arms from the arsenal there, the sixty fought their way into the corridors beyond.

“There is no Dark One!” The battle cry pealed
through the ancient halls. “Theseus, the Firebrand, destroyed him! Join us, to take the loot of Knossos! For the gods are doomed!”

Bewildered men and women swarmed excitedly out into the halls and fled again. A few of the palace artisans came to join Theseus, but most of them were too startled to do anything at all. Sleepy, swearing Etruscan soldiers and black lancer-priests gathered hastily
at points of vantage ahead.

Five stories high and six acres in extent, with its maze of courts and light wells and corridors and stairs and magazines, a thousand years in the building, Knossos was itself a second Labyrinth, as confusing as the limestone galleries of the Dark One’s cavern temple.

Theseus himself was lost. But the artisans, and a slave who had served in the imperial household,
pointed out the way toward the apartments of Minos. The sixty crushed through the stubborn groups of priests and Etruscans, fighting toward it.

The quick success of the raid began to seem slightly ominous to Theseus. His men met no barriers of wizardry, caught no glimpse of brazen Talos. And they pushed through to the megaron of Minos.

The Etruscans had gathered at the entrance for a final desperate
stand. But elation of victory had turned the Falling Star to a darting flame of death, and the pirates followed it as they had done in a hundred other fights. The last Etruscan
fell, and Theseus led his band through the splendid frescoed hall and into the bedchamber of Minos.

The startled ruler sat up on his magnificent canopied couch. Trembling and pale, his fat hands dragged the fine Egyptian
linen up about his pink fat body, as if it could shield him from the dripping sword of Theseus.

The round baby-face had turned pale as the clutching hands, and it was not dimpled now. The little blue eyes had lost their merry twinkle, and terror glazed them. Thin and shuddering, the woman-voice shrilled:

“Spare me, Captain Firebrand! Spare my life, and all I have is yours to take. My treasury,
my fleet, my empire! Only spare my life!”

Theseus held his lifted sword. He had come to kill a warlock. Here was only a fat old man, quaking with fear. Anger crackled in his voice: “Find a weapon! Fight for your throne!”

But Minos had gone speechless. A gross mass of pink flesh, he tumbled out of bed and sprawled, quivering and gasping, on the rugs. The light of the torches flickered over him.
Theseus still withheld the sword.

“So this is the god Minos?” Scorn choked him. “The warlock who has reigned a thousand years, whose double ax is feared in Egypt and Cathay!” The Falling Star trembled in his hand. “I came here to kill you, Minos—to end the reign of wizardry. But I have never struck a kneeling, weeping man—”

“But I have, Captain Firebrand!” Vorkos, the one-eyed Tirynthian, strode
forward. “Lend me your blade!”

He snatched the Falling Star. The bright steel hissed down. Severed cleanly, the white head of Minos rolled away from the gross quaking body, stared up mutely.

Head and body changed!

The Tirynthian dropped the Falling Star, staggered backward. Muttering fearfully, the pirates began to retreat toward the door. Theseus picked up the sword. He snatched a torch from
a shuddering hand and bent to examine the thing that had been Minos.

Body and head were yellowed, waxen-pale, shrunk almost to naked bones. The body had been nearly bloodless—only a few black drops spilled from the severed arteries and veins. Only sorcery, Theseus knew, could have kept life in such a frame.

And the corpse—most incredible thing—was a woman’s!

Theseus strove to put down the crawling
fear that hideous sight had set in him. He tried to hold the steel blade steady in his hand, gulped vainly at the dry hoarseness in his throat.

“See!” he croaked at his apprehensive followers. “Minos is dead!” He pointed with the black-dripping blade, and it trembled. “And he was no god. He wasn’t even a man. He was only an old, old woman!”

He moved with the torch toward the door. “We have conquered
the gods of Crete!” He licked at his dry lips and tried again to swallow that hoarseness. “We have earned the loot of Knossos!”

“No, Captain Firebrand.” The voice of the one-eyed cook was a rasp of dread. “The victory isn’t won! For there is still the giant of brass, whose great feet can tramp us like vermin. There is still the wizard Daedalus, whose very glance can poison men. And still the
daughter of Minos, who is a goddess and a sorceress.”

Theseus dragged his eyes away from the shriveled, yellowed thing that had been Minos. “Ariadne is my friend—my lover,” his dry whisper rasped. “Once she saved my life. Now we must find her—for her sorcery can aid us against the brass man and the wizard Daedalus.”

He wiped the Falling Star and led his apprehensive band out of the splendid
bedchamber of Minos, Dripping the scant black drops, the withered yellow body of the old, old woman lay still on the floor behind them.

O
UT IN
the planless maze of piled-up rooms and halls and stairs, where one chamber might be two steps above another, or three below, Theseus seized the dusty black pigtails of a palace stonecutter, who had joined them, and menaced him with the Falling Star, demanding:

“Where are the chambers of Ariadne?”

The frightened artisan shuddered, promised voicelessly to show the way.

All
the palace was buzzing now, a disturbed human hive. Lamps and torches flared down dusky corridors. Men and women and children, slaves and free artisans who dwelt and labored in the vast pile, were screaming, running everywhere. Theseus and his men came upon a dozen more Minoan priests striving to barricade a passage, and fought again.

The steel sword led the pirates through the barrier, and every
lancer died. But a coldness of dread was creeping up the spine of Theseus. It seemed to him again that success had been too easy.

Something was queerly wrong. A dozen riddles haunted him. Why had they met so few armed men—unless the palace was a trap? Where was Talos? What stand would Ariadne take? And what could he expect of the wall of wizardry? Why—most ghastly puzzle of all!—had Minos changed
so strangely after he was dead?

The stonecutter led them to the spacious rich apartments of Ariadne. A sound of weeping met them, and they came upon a dozen red-clad temple girls. They were armed with bows and daggers, but they made no fight.

Theseus burst past them into the bedchamber. He tore aside the curtains, ripped the silken cover from the couch, flung open a great painted coffer, peered
into the bath beyond. Ariadne was gone.

He seized one of the weeping girls by her scented hair, brushed her throat with the tip of the Falling Star, and asked the whereabouts of her mistress. The girl was speechless with fear.

“The goddess is gone!” she whispered at last. “She has fled—we don’t know where!”

Theseus released the girl, stood baffled.

“Captain Firebrand!” That thin nasal croak
was familiar. Theseus turned swiftly toward the doorway, found the squat form of Snish. The little Babylonian’s yellow eyes were popping out with apprehension; teeth chattered in his huge mouth. “Captain Firebrand!”

“Snish—my friend!” Theseus greeted him with a relieved grin. “You’ve nothing to fear—my men have orders not to harm you. You’re all right? How did you escape, that night at the grove?”

The little wizard waddled toward him, eagerly. “One of Ariadne’s temple girls took a liking to me,” he wheezed, “and kept me hidden.” His enormous smirk showed huge yellow
teeth. “Within limits, my small arts are useful in love!” The nasal voice sank. “Master, I have brought you a message from the goddess herself.”

Theseus felt a little eager shudder. “From Ariadne?” He stepped closer to Snish.
“What is the message?”

The voice of Snish became a nasal whisper: “She is waiting in a tower on the roof. She begs you to come to her. I’ll show you the way. You must leave your men behind.”

For an instant Theseus stood still, weighing the Falling Star in his hands. He listened to the increasing ominous humming that filled the palace, looked from his grim, red-stained followers back to the pop-eyed
frog face of Snish.

Decision steadied the sword. “Wait for me,” he told the one-eyed cook. “But, if I have not returned in the time it would take a bard to sing the battle song of Tiryns, take what loot you can carry and rejoin Cyron.”

“Aye, Captain,” muttered Vorkos. “But beware these warlocks!”

Turning to follow Snish: “Hasten!” whispered Theseus.

Waddling swiftly, the little wizard led
him through a net of corridors and stairs and connected rooms so intricate that Theseus lost sense of direction. At last, pressing open a door where no joint had been visible, Snish led the way up a dark winding flight.

Abruptly, at that hidden door, all the humming confusion of the alarmed palace was left behind. There was no sound on that black stone stair—but the very silence was tense, menacing.

Theseus held the torch high with one hand and clutched his naked sword with the other. His companions, he knew, could never follow him here. He was alone. His blade touched the puffing little wizard.

“If this is betrayal, Snish,” he rasped the warning, “you shall be the first to die!”

The little Babylonian looked back against the torchlight, his seamed brown face both aggrieved and frightened.

“Master!” His nasal voice quivered huskily. “When I have risked my life to bring this message, can’t you trust me?” He shuddered to a long noisy sob, blew his nose. “Haven’t I proved myself? Haven’t I saved your life a dozen times?”

“Perhaps,” said Theseus. “Lead on—swiftly. I have warned you!”

The dark stair brought them up, at last, through the floor of a huge dim room. Dust set Snish to coughing,
and the flaring torch cast eerie shadows into cobwebbed corners. Theseus peered hastily about, wondering.

The lofty walls were covered with racks of sealed, labeled jars that held papyrus scrolls. Stacked clay tablets made brown mountains. Long shelves were covered with odd-shaped vessels of metal, pottery, and glass. Sturdy, blackened benches bore implements of glass and polished metal, such
as Theseus had never seen.

Perched upon a great, polished silver ball, that rose above a confusion of twisted black rods, gleaming copper wires and shimmering mirrors, was a huge black vulture. The bird’s carrion reek filled the room. It moved a bald red head, following them with a flaming, malignant black eye.

Theseus set the trembling point of his sword against the back of Snish. “Wait!” he
gasped. “What place is this?”

There was something curiously froglike in the little wizard’s startled jump.

“This is the workshop of Daedalus, called the artificer,” he croaked. “But trust me, master—and put away your sword!” His popping yellow eyes blinked earnestly. “Truly, I am guiding you to the goddess. There is only one more flight to climb.”

“Lead on,” rapped Theseus. “But if we meet
the warlock—he dies!”

The vulture made a raucous, startling scream, and the sinister eye followed them across the long dusty room. The torch found a narrow stair, and Snish led the way upward again. They came out upon a parapeted roof beneath the moon, and a gust of cold wind extinguished the burned-out torch.

Theseus stared ahead, speechless.

Before them, gleaming under the moon, was such
a thing as he had never glimpsed or imagined. It was vaguely like a ship, for there were broad sails of white linen, and slender yards of polished wood, and rigging of thin, bright wire. But the sails lay horizontal. The thing rested upon flimsy-seeming wheels. There was no proper hull, but only a tiny cabin, in the midst of the spidery web of wood and cloth and metal. A door opened in that cabin.