“Let’s all stick together,” she suggested, and everyone agreed. Jerry shrugged and then smiled.
“Reconnaissance in force, then,” he said. “We’ll all hang together.” Nevertheless, he went much more slowly. She felt— and probably they all did— horribly conspicuous in that bare valley below the empty blue sky. Finally they reached the building and could see that it was apparently deserted.
It stood at the base of a very steep slope, a small, flat-topped structure with a modern-artish sort of sculpture set on top of it and a walled enclosure in front, all built of massive gray stone blocks, the lower portions green and wet and slimy. In the center of the front wall a trickle of water ran from an algae-draped overflow into a trough where the turf had all been trampled away. From there a dry stream bed of pebbles trailed off down the valley. Without hesitation, Jerry leaned across the stinking trough and took a long drink.
“Ah!” he said, wiping his face with satisfaction. “The very best champagne! Next?”
Graham pulled his face and shook his head. “It smells like the runoff from a feed lot… not for me, thank you!” The others all seemed to agree, and Ariadne was certain that she did not want to taste that foul brew.
“There you are,” Jerry said. “You’re different; I needed that.”
“Lord knows what you’re going to catch from it, though,” she said. He smiled. “If I get back to Mera it won’t matter— and I suspect that if I don’t, it won’t matter either.” Champagne? It seemed to have put new life in him— his worried expression had turned to a half grin. He nodded up at the walls. “Let’s explore,” he said.
Steps halfway along the downstream side led up to a bronze gate and into a courtyard, most of which was occupied by a rectangular pool, the walkways around it being narrow and surrounded by low walls. The water was coated with patches of green slime and stank horribly.
“I wonder if the Department of Health inspects this?” Graham said. “You going to swim, too, Jerry?” Graham’s attempts at humor were invariably forced and ponderous, but the truce was in effect.
Jerry grinned and said, “Not today, thank you. Any of you know what that is?” He pointed to the main structure, at the hillside end. A low doorway led into darkness, a flight of stone steps in one corner led up to the roof, and on top of that was the free-form sculpture, one massive block of stone carved into two horns.
Silence.
“It’s an altar,” he said. “To the god of the spring— no, it would be a goddess, I think. They’re called horns of consecration. Stay here, Ariadne.” He walked around the end of the court and paused momentarily to peer into the darkness of the doorway, pulled back and made a nose-pinching gesture to show that it stank, ran up the steps at the side to take a quick look at the altar, came down, and went around to stand on the opposite side of the pool from them. “Look at my reflection,” he called. “What am I wearing?” Magic again! There was Jerry in his wide green trousers and cape, with the silly cap on his head, standing on the side of the pool, while at his feet was his image— a darker-brown man with black hair hanging in ringlets and wearing only…
“A loin cloth and sandals,” she said, while the men muttered curses and Maisie a prayer.
Jerry nodded, as though he had expected as much. “Can you see yourself, Ariadne?” She peered over the edge and… Good God!
Jerry laughed, and she supposed she was blushing. “You want to come around here and show the others? Well, I’ll describe it. A long red skirt, sort of conical, with a tight waist— that looks uncomfortable— and hoops of yellow on it. And a red bodice… tastefully supporting, but not concealing, the bosom.” She backed away from the revealing mirror quickly.
He walked over to the downstream end, where the overflow ran out, and sat down on the wall to study the view. The others joined him. Alongside the dry stream an obvious path led on down the valley, the road to the shrine from… from where?
“You look charming in it,” he told her, smiling, and she stuck her tongue out at him.
He stared out at the winding, grassy valley and the path. “I’m starving!” he said. “There were some charred scraps of something nasty on that altar, but I’m not quite that hungry, yet. The building is to pen the livestock before sacrifice, I think— or else it’s the slaughterhouse. It certainly smells bad enough for anything.”
“Just a minute,” Graham said, giving him a suspicious look. “You recognize that costume?” Jerry nodded and said nothing until they pestered him further.
“All right, then,” he said. “You know by now that these clothes are a faerie disguise— Ariadne and I look like natives in them, no matter where we are. None of us here can see that, because we all believe in Mera, but our reflections show what others would see. And yes, I think I know who wore those bare-breasted dresses. It fits.”
“Then where are we?” she asked.
“Well, obviously we’re not in the real world,” he said. “Not with flying horses around. This whole adventure has had a Greek flavor to it. Perhaps that was Killer’s influence, because Killer dominates anything he touches, so it may have been he who brought the demon in that particular shape last night; or it may have been you, Ariadne.” Of course she should have thought of that. “My name, you mean?” she asked, and he nodded. Why was he so cheerful again?
“Whichever of you it was, we haven’t escaped from that myth influence, obviously.” Winged horses were a Greek legend, also.
“So this is Greece?” asked Graham.
Jerry shook his head. “It isn’t any real place— if we’d had dragons last night, instead of what we got, then we would be in the equivalent of King Arthur’s Britain, I think, or the Black Forest of dwarfs and elves, or the Sweden of Beowulf and Grendel. But on those terms… no, it isn’t Greece, it’s Crete.”
“Why Crete?”
“Because that’s where the Minotaur lived.” They sat on the wall in silence for a moment.
“What’s that?” Maisie asked nervously.
“What came last night,” Jerry said. “A bull’s head and a man’s body. Greek legend. It lived in the Labyrinth at Knossos, in Crete, and it ate human flesh.”
“But didn’t some Greek kill the Minotaur?” Graham demanded.
“Certainly,” Ariadne said. “Theseus. He had help from the daughter of King Minos; she gave him a ball of gold thread to find his way out of the Labyrinth. I know that story.” Maisie and Carlo looked bewildered.
“Her name was Ariadne,” Jerry said, chuckling. “So maybe it was Ariadne who brought the Minotaur shape, or Killer fancies himself as Theseus, or else the senior demon who handles Meran affairs is most comfortable as the Minotaur. He takes other forms. He probably has a million names, but Asterios is one of them and Asterios was the name of the Minotaur. We didn’t escape last night. Ariadne sent him away mad, but we’re still in his power. Just be very glad that Alan and Lacey were rescued, right?”
“But if the Minotaur was killed by Theseus…” Graham argued.
“And St. George slew the dragon. But it was the Minotaur who came last night.”
“Then what the hell do we do now?” Carlo demanded.
“You…” Ariadne said, staring at him, then at Jerry. “You two have lost your accents!” Jerry grinned. “You’ve noticed? And someone has sacrificed a ham sandwich on the altar.”
Men! Kids’ games! A range of a quarter of a mile, he has said— she glanced around the empty landscape and then looked hard at the oblong building. Jumping up from the wall, she marched along the side of the pool to the doorway.