“Me?” she said blankly.
“Yes. Like the other Ariadne, Theseus’ Ariadne. It said that if Jerry wants to go by daylight, then Ariadne will help.” He shrugged.
“A ball of thread? Why would that help if all we want to do is get to the middle? Theseus used the thread to come back out.” He shook his head apologetically. “It wouldn’t say more. I brought a ball of twine for you, but I don’t understand either.” Jerry looked around the others. “What do the rest of you think? Do we go with fire, and sword, and faerie to fight the demon or do we try to sneak by the monster as innocent sacrifices?” No one wanted to speak first, but then Carlo looked up and said, “I like to see what I’m doing. I don’t like the dead-of-night scat.” A mean look came into his face, and he added, “Why fight when you can get what you want by other means?”
Graham put on the pompous expression that meant he was going to lecture someone on responsibilities. He said. “How can you hesitate? Obviously you take a sword and fight it like a man. The other way you will be surrendering to whatever the local authorities choose to do with you— that’s crazy.” Maisie nodded in loyal agreement.
Jerry looked at Ariadne. She was thinking of the monster in the doorway— the gloating, the triumph, the strength, and the grotesquely exaggerated maleness. Would it not be better to try to outwit a monster than fight a demon? And anything was preferable in daylight.
“I think I agree with Carlo,” she said.
He nodded and turned to Killer. “No silver swords, then. Christians to the lions.” At least lions did not rape their victims first— or was that during?
Killer looked pleased— why? “My friend,” he said. “I would come with you if I could, but the Oracle made me promise.” He might be worried that Jerry would doubt his courage. He hesitated as though about to say something more, and then did not.
“I’d rather you didn’t,” Jerry said gruffly. “I have enough on my conscience.” Killer nodded sadly, then put a hand on the step and vaulted sideways, landing almost at the doorway. “I have local clothes for you,” he said and vanished inside.
Jerry slouched over the wall and leaned on it, gazing glumly at the green-brown hillside. Ariadne joined him.
“Jerry?” she asked quietly. “Are you quite sure that you can trust Killer?” He looked at her sideways, bleakly. “We must trust him.”
“It’s just that I thought he looked shifty, there at the end.” Jerry shook his head and turned away. Then he said, “No. Trust is a funny thing, Ariadne. He would steal his best friend’s wife or help himself to anything he fancies and he likes dangerous practical jokes, like bricks on top of doors, but those are Meran things— they don’t matter there. But he wouldn’t betray me. Not Outside. Never.” She was not satisfied. “He wasn’t lying at the end?”
“No,” Jerry said, and sighed. “He was lying all the way through. Almost nothing he said was the truth. That’s why we have to trust him.”
Twelve
THE CROWD ROARED…
Ariadne stood on the platform, a bronze rail in front of her, facing an amphitheater under a blistering furnace of a sun, wearing nothing.
It couldn’t possibly be happening to her. But it was.
Fortunately, she was drunk.
Three days in a dungeon had been bad enough. Three days in a dungeon with Maisie no, that wasn’t fair. She’d been very, very glad of Maisie’s company, and each had consoled the other. It would have been much worse alone, and there could have been worse people to share a dungeon with. Not really a bad kid, Maisie, short on brains, but well-meaning. She’d been cursed with an incredible body in what was still— this was twentieth century reality she was thinking of now, not this legendary Bronze Age fantasy— still a man’s world and had managed to handle that problem well enough to be still a virgin when she got Graham to the altar, which was certainly more than she, Ariadne, had managed. Not a bad kid, just not good enough or old enough to be mother to Lacey and Alan; she was certainly welcome to Graham.
The primping and preening… after three days in that dungeon, they’d been dragged out before dawn, taken to a sort of bathhouse, and there been groomed by a team of giggling female slaves— deloused, bathed, then dried and rubbed until they glowed, and massaged with warm oil so scented with poppy that it had made her head swim, but had felt great. Their hair had been curled with hot bronze tools, the blond locks being treated as one of the wonders of the world, although their shortness was obviously regarded as scandalous. Their eyes, lashes, and brows had been painted with black stuff, their toenails and fingernails varnished, and their nipples rouged. That should have warned her about the dress requirements. Then wreaths of flowers had been braided into their hair. She had expected the fancy garments to appear then.
They had put a coat of blue paint on her breasts and green paint on Maisie’s— much more paint— and a matching stripe on their backs, and that had been it. She had a vague idea why they were different colors and she did not want to think about it.
Drunk, but not her fault. Just drunk enough to keep her from fainting from terror.
The amphitheater was as big as some football stadiums she’d seen, made all of stone. Squinting against the sunlight, she ignored the center itself and looked at the stands. The place was not full, but there were several thousand people there. Curiously, there were no seats; each level seemed to be flanked by a low wall, which would stop people falling into the row in front, of course, but it seemed a strange way to watch a show. Many spectators were sitting on those dividers, but that meant they had to twist around to see what was going on down in the arena itself.
After the bath and beauty treatment, Maisie and she had been taken to another room and offered a meal of four or five dishes that they had hardly touched. The platters themselves had been incredible, solid gold plate so embossed with intricate designs that she had been tempted to throw the contents on the floor just to be able to admire the artwork. But the food had not appealed— salt fish, something that was probably sliced octopus, and a sort of grain mash like the stuff she fed to chickens. After a few sample mouthfuls she had decided that they were all spiced to heaven and heavily salted, and their purpose, therefore, must be to make them drink, so she had pushed them all away and warned Maisie.
That had provoked vast consternation and whispered discussion among all the slaves and the fancily dressed women who were probably priestesses. There had been long harangues, then, in the gibberish language, and even threats, and gestures that they must drink and eat, especially drink. When they still refused, several butch-type female slaves had been brought in, and a large funnel produced. The threat had been obvious, and so both had yielded and drunk as required— two drafts apiece from enormous gold goblets almost too heavy to lift.
So she was off the wagon, and the world had a familiar, enjoyable vagueness to it again. Lousy wine. And the volume! She needed to go again already, but perhaps that was nerves.
The crowd roared…
She half turned in time to see Maisie being brought out and marched up to stand beside her at the rail, facing the amphitheater, blinking in the sunlight, and bombed to the earlobes.
Ariadne gave Maisie a grin to cheer her up. “Wave to the nice people,” she said, “and see what happens.” She hadn’t dared— she was too crushed by her nakedness before this huge throng.
Maisie stuck our her dainty chin. “And why not?” she said. She was drunk and in the past she had won beauty contests wearing little more than this; so she threw up her arms in a salute. That sort of gesture made Maisie bounce spectacularly.