Bull God Page 2

  Ariadne's eyes flashed over the heads of the priestesses to the witnesses below: her mother, half smiling with satisfaction because it was not she who would be exposed to no purpose; her father, serious, perhaps hopeful but ready to accept the lack of response; Androgeos, eyes lowered, head turned slightly away, sympathetic enough to desire not to see her shame but helpless; the courtiers, already whispering, mildly contemptuous. Well, she would not be shamed. Her hands rose and pushed the priestesses away.

  “The ritual is for me to perform,” she cried.

  She saw the shock in their faces, heard gasps and cries from the people ranged below the dais, saw the glance each priestess gave the other to judge whether they should seize her and force her. Then a strong voice came from behind.

  “I have come.”

  The crowd cried out with one voice and Ariadne spun on her heel to look across the altar at the painting of the god. It still glowed on the wall, the right hand of the god holding a vine from which depended a cluster of ripe grapes and the left resting lightly on the shoulder of a young satyr, who nuzzled his horned head against one of the god's thighs while one cleft hoof rubbed shyly the back of a goatlike hairy leg. Now before it stood a living being—living, but not a man, Ariadne thought. She had never seen a man so tall or so strong, with the skin exposed by his scant tunic the color of milk and hair seemingly of coiled gold wires.

  “Dionysus,” she whispered, stretching her hands toward him over the altar.

  He stared at her, his too-large eyes open wider than she had seen them in the scrying bowl, but his face bore no more expression than that of the painting behind him. Ariadne heard two soft thumps. The priestesses had fallen to the floor, either in obeisance or in a faint. She wondered whether Dionysus was waiting for her to flatten herself and press her face to the floor and felt bitterly disappointed. The sweet smile that had drawn that last Calling from her had held nothing of that kind of pride.

  From the waiting crowd came gasps and whimpers, rustles, as robes stiff with jewels and metal-thread embroidery creased and crumpled while their wearers sank to the floor, but Ariadne didn't, couldn't, move. And then the god did. He whispered a word she didn't understand and made a gesture, and the sounds from behind her were cut off as if a door had closed.

  “You Called me?” he asked.

  “Yes, Lord Dionysus,” she whispered, tears in her trembling voice. “It is the ritual. It is done at each change of season.”

  “I heard no Call last solstice nor for many, many years before that.”

  “That was while the old priestess, my father's mother, served your shrine. I don't know what she did wrong that you didn't hear her. She died and I was chosen to take her place.” She swallowed. She couldn't say that she had wanted him to come. A god might be able to read her heart; if he learned she was lying . . . “I performed the ritual very exactly.”

  “But you are only a little girl, a child. How dare they offer me so unripe a fruit.”

  His eyes passed over her to stare at the kneeling worshipers beyond. Although his face still showed little, Ariadne heard the fury in his voice and terror caught at her. She had no idea what would be done to her if he rejected her. That had never happened in all the time the shrine had existed. He had come in the distant past, and the wines of Crete had been prized and praised in every land. Then the priestess died and some past queen had wanted the glory of being Dionysus' priestess as well as queen. In that she failed, for the god hadn't come to her Calling nor to the following queen/priestesses, but he had never rejected a priestess.

  If her father did not sacrifice her there at the altar, Ariadne thought, the people would tear her to bits. She drew her hands back from their reach toward the god and clasped them desperately under her barely swelling breasts. Tears began to course down her cheeks, smearing the kohl that lined her eyes. She hadn't felt ready for mating, but surely that would be better than to be turned away.

  “I'm not unripe,” she sobbed. “My moon times have come. I'm ready for marriage. Oh, don't turn me away, my lord. The people will tear me to bits for displeasing you.”

  “Tear you to bits ...”

  Something flickered behind his eyes—knowledge of such frenzies? Horror? Ariadne began to tremble as she remembered the stories about the winter worship, not that in the shrine but out on the hills and in the forests when it was said the followers of Dionysus went mad and tore beasts and men apart with teeth and nails. When he hadn't come to the shrine, had he led those worshipers? The breath caught in her throat as he suddenly strode forward, stepped onto the altar, and pulled her up beside him.

  “Don't weep, child,” he said, putting an arm gently around her shoulders and drawing her close. “I won't harm you. You don't displease me. But those who chose so unfit a sacrifice—”

  Relief made her bold enough to glance up at him. He was again looking out at the crowd of people. His eyes were clear blue, very pale, bright and hard as polished gems—mad and merciless. And in them Ariadne Saw, but not with her eyes, father and mother, brother and courtiers, all gone mad, striking and tearing at each other, covered with blood.

  She couldn't bear to look and couldn't look away. Fear made her sick. Her stomach churned; her heart pounded so hard she felt a tearing pain around it—pain so great she sagged against Dionysus' side. He looked down and the Vision of chaos faded. Instead she Saw a covering around her heart unfold, like the petals of a strange flower. They held the beating heart at their center, and as that flower pulsed, a mist of gently swaying silver strands flowed out toward Dionysus. When they touched him, she breathed in deeply as feeling and knowledge flowed back along the strands to her.

  Had less happened to her that day, had she not seen a god appear and heard him speak to her, she wouldn't have believed what she felt and saw inside her head. Awe made her receptive. She knew she had received a Gift, given when she was consecrated to make her a true priestess. Through that Gift she could read her god's will and she knew that he felt belittled and abused, and that his Power was to make those who scorned him punish themselves through holy frenzy. But it was understanding that had come to her through those tenuous silver strands, not fear. Her weakness had distracted him. The people were still safe.

  “My lord,” she cried softly, gripping his arm with one hand and winding the other in his tunic, “there was no one else. I am the eldest virgin daughter of the king. You were offered the best my father and mother had to give.”

  “The eldest virgin daughter,” he repeated, now looking down at her, his voice puzzled rather than angry. “Is that the custom?”

  “A royal virgin,” Ariadne said, smiling up at him tremulously. “Is that not your demand? If it isn't, I will make clear what you do desire to my father and have it written in the records of the shrine so there is no mistake in the future. But I hope you won't turn me away. Please? I wish to serve you. I am ready. Truly I am.”

  He laughed suddenly, made a gesture as if he were drawing a line around them, and said, “Epikaloumai melanotes.”

  Ariadne's sight seemed to dim, not as if ill had befallen her eyes, but as if someone had drawn a very thin gray silk curtain between her and the others. The priestesses had backed to the very edge of the dais and were still down on their faces, but her father and brother and some of the others were now standing and saluting the god. She saw that their mouths were moving, speaking or praying, but she couldn't hear them, and she realized that she had been seeing that for some time without “noticing” it.

  “What is it?” she asked, clinging tighter to Dionysus. “What have you done to them?”

  “Nothing at all,” he said. “I didn't wish them to hear what I said to you—it's no business of the common folk to hear what a god says to his priestess—so I put a wall of silence around us. And then I added a wall of darkness. Do they think we of Olympus are animals that we couple in public?”

  She could feel the blood rush into her face as excitement and anxiety twisted together quickened her heartb
eat. “Then you will take me?”

  He laughed again, softly, and that smile of infinite sweetness changed his eyes so that, still bright, they did not glare or look hard. “As my priestess, yes, and gladly, but I cannot couple with a little maid who should be playing with toys in the nursery.”

  Tears filled her eyes again. “They will not understand. They expect to see the god sowing the land in the person of his priestess.”

  “I never did!” he said indignantly, stepping down off the altar and lifting Ariadne down as if being on it might trap him into an action he rejected. “Even with my chosen priestess, whom I dearly loved, and she was a woman in her middle years. I never coupled with her in the sight of all.”

  Ariadne shrugged, surprised that she should feel so disappointed by his refusal to take her after all her earlier fears. “I don't know where they came by the notion, but they believe that the fertility of the land is bound to the coupling of the god and the priestess.”

  His eyes narrowed. “And they will punish you if I do not perform like a rutting beast?”

  “I will have failed my purpose,” she said very softly. “There will be no assurance of a rich crop of sweet grapes, of wine that is sweet and potent with no bite and sourness of acid—”

  “We don't need to couple for that. You are a priestess who can Call me. When you do so, I will come and run along the hillsides and dance among the casks.”

  “Will you?”

  He smiled down at her. “Your eyes are like dark stars. They are black as obsidian and yet so bright! Yes, I will bless the vines and the wine.” Then his lips thinned. “But I will not copulate with you before their eyes for their lascivious entertainment.”

  She knew it wasn't safe to press him further and yet it might be equally dangerous to let him leave without some proof of what he had promised. She glanced out toward the people, most still kneeling and all in attitudes of prayer. They couldn't hear what she and Dionysus said, he had told her—and then she noticed that gray film and remembered that he had said they couldn't see either.

  “My lord,” she whispered, “I can see your worshipers, but you said they couldn't see or hear us.”

  “They cannot.”

  She joined her hands prayerfully before her small breasts again. “Then they cannot know what we have been doing, can they? Oh, my lord, would it outrage you just to be seen naked with me?”

  He looked at her, eyes half lidded and kind again. “You're a clever little minx. If that will satisfy them and confirm you as my priestess, I'm willing. Let the fools believe what they will.”

  His hands went to the heavy gold brooch that held his tunic at the shoulder and pulled it loose. The cloth dropped down exposing his broad chest, not bare as Cretan men's chests were—either by nature or by plucking—but with an inverted triangle of golden curls stretching between and a little above his nipples. The point was at the end of his breastbone, and from it grew a narrow band of sleek blond hair that reached down toward his navel. Ariadne had started to undo the laces of her bodice, but her fingers lay idle as she watched him untie his belt. He caught the tunic as it slid down his body and tossed it on the foot of the altar.

  When he turned back to her, she was still staring at him and he said, “Are you afraid? I promise I won't hurt you.”

  “You are beautiful,” she said. “I don't fear you. I am your priestess. You are my god. You won't harm me.”

  She didn't know what he read in her face, but he looked pleased, and what she said was true. It was the right thing to say, too, at least to this god, because he came close, smiling.

  “Let me help you,” he offered.

  “Is it right for a god to wait upon his handmaiden?” she asked anxiously.

  He only laughed in response, but she dropped her hands submissively and let him undo the laces of her bodice and then the ties of her belt and skirt. The heavy garment fell into a heap and she stepped over it, wriggling out of the bodice, which she dropped unceremoniously atop the skirt. It didn't occur to her as she took his hand and drew him back upon the altar that she didn't feel the smallest flicker of discomfort.

  “Shall we lie down?” she asked.

  “Why not?” he said, grinning, and then, “You atop me. I would mash you like trampled grapes if I lay on you.”

  She giggled. “Oh no. Jests are made of men who allow their wives to take that role, and the god must plow the earth.” He looked rebellious, and she flung her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. “I'll come to no harm. You can support yourself on your arms, and we can rise at once as you remove the blackness.”

  He nodded brusquely and Ariadne lay down on the cold stone. He knelt beside her, then straddled her, and she thought how terrified she would have been if he had simply taken her. Now the brief moment that he covered her with his body was a warm joy and she would have held him to her if she hadn't been afraid to anger him. She did grip him for an instant as a roar of sound suddenly smote her, but she let her arms fall away as Dionysus pulled free and rose, realizing that he had dismissed the wall of silence as well as that of darkness and the crowd was screaming with joy and enthusiasm. Then he reached down and helped her up.

  With a hand on her shoulder, he turned to face those before the dais and the two priestesses, who still knelt at the edge. “This is my Chosen, my priestess,” he said. “Let her be honored among you. Let her word be as mine, and when it passes her lips, let it be obeyed.”

  “Yes, lord,” Minos cried, his fist to his forehead.

  Behind him a strong voice began a song of thanksgiving. Ariadne was pleased by the satisfaction she saw in her father's face and a little amused by the astonishment on that of her brother. Her mother looked stunned, and she kept casting quick glances around her as if to assess the sincerity of the worshipers. Ariadne thought it was real enough. After all, they had seen Dionysus appear from thin air, they had seen him cast a pall of darkness between himself and them. Two miracles were not to be lightly dismissed. And there was his appearance, too. Ready to burst with joy, she laid her hand over his and squeezed it gently. He looked down at her.

  As the song died, Dionysus raised his hand. “I accept your worship and am well pleased with my priestess. Now you may leave so I may commune with her in private.”

  The two priestesses scrambled to their feet and sidled around the edge of the dais toward the door to the left of the painting, but from the very front of the crowd there was a sound of protest that drew Ariadne's eyes. Her own widened as she saw Pasiphae pulling free of her father's hand on her arm, lifting her own hand toward Dionysus, and smiling her most seductive smile.

  “Lord God,” she murmured, “I—”

  “Go,” Dionysus broke in. “I wish to be alone with my priestess.”

  “But I should be—”

  Dionysus lifted his hand. Suddenly Ariadne was again aware of those silvery strands that reached from her to Dionysus and they transmitted a strange feeling. A tingling? A gathering of weight that was without weight? Ariadne remembered she had felt that—that Power—when Dionysus cast the spell of darkness. She felt danger too, and knew he was about to be rid of what, to him, was a minor nuisance. She drew breath hastily to cry for mercy, but Minos had turned back and now pulled his wife roughly away toward the gates that closed off the grounds of the shrine.

  Ariadne saw that Pasiphae didn't go willingly. She dragged back and kept looking over her shoulder, her eyes flicking from Ariadne to Dionysus. Ariadne felt chilled and pressed herself against Dionysus' side. That look bode no good for her. She shivered as Pasiphae went through the gate, the very last to leave, still looking back. Then she felt Dionysus gesture, and the gates swung shut.

  CHAPTER 2

  “You had better put some clothing on,” Dionysus said.

  Ariadne looked up at him, startled, because her shivering had all to do with her mother and nothing to do with the cold, but now that he had reminded her she realized that the early morning air was chilly. Obediently, if a little rel
uctantly, she detached herself from his side, wrapped her skirt around her and pulled on her bodice. Then she knelt down and raised her hands.

  “I'm ready to hear your commands and obey, Lord Dionysus.”

  He had taken up his tunic, fastened the shoulder with the brooch, and pulled it on. As he belted it, he turned to look at her and laughed aloud. “When everyone else fell on their faces, you stood looking at me as if you smelled bad fish. Now you're on your knees ready to obey any command.”

  Ariadne grinned. The expression might not be respectful, but she knew a teasing tone when she heard it. Her brother Androgeos was an unmerciful tease. “That was because you looked so kind when you smiled at me in the scrying bowl and when you came you seemed proud and cold. I didn't wish to be priestess to a cold, proud god. I was disappointed—but I know I didn't look at you as if I smelled bad fish. For one thing, you smell wonderful, sharp and sweet, like certain lilies in the sun; for another—” she looked up at him through her long, black lashes “—I was too frightened even to fall to the floor. It's not every day that a god appears in front of his altar.”

  “Maybe not, but don't kneel to me now. I have no orders to give you, only a mild complaint to make.”

  Ariadne stood up at once and hung her head. “My Lord God,” she whispered, “I am very, very sorry you don't think me fit to make sacrifice to you and fulfill you.” Then she looked up and clasped her hands prayerfully. “I beg you not to desert me. I swear I will grow up as fast as ever I can so I can truly be your priestess. Let me serve you. I—I love you.”

  Dionysus, who seemed to be about to wave away her prayer, looked startled at her final words. Then he frowned a little and shook his head. “You mistake me,” he said. “I wasn't going to complain about your youth. That doesn't matter any more. I am well content with you as my priestess. But do you have to have these ceremonies so early in the morning?” His expression was now pained, his voice plaintive. “The sun was barely up when you Called me. I was still in bed, and I didn't even get to wash my face or comb my hair—or have any breakfast—before I had to come here.”