The palm crossing her head reminded her of the new white streaks which had come into her locks this winter. On Atlantis, those tresses shone like a midnight sky.
“Anyway,” Oleg said, “remember, we’ve kept our mouths shut to the Athenians. They don’t know the future. If they believe anything, it’s that they’re bound to get friendlier with Knossos.
“For proof, consider that Theseus won’t be leading this expedition though he instigated it. His idea must be to bleed off as. much. Achaean restlessness as possible while he’s away. If he looked, for ruin to strike Crete, would he hie himself there?”
“That was the news which frightened me till I had to seek you, Oleg.” Erissa stared at the bulkhead. “When the prince made known that he would be among the next hostages—”
The Russian nodded. “Yes, I’ve heard Duncan’s notion. I worried too for a while. But then I thought, first, Theseus and what malcontents and crooks he might gather, what could they do in the Minos’ own city except get themselves killed? Second, like I said, he’s got no reason to think the Labyrinth will face trouble from the elements. Third, if he hopes to dicker for a better standing in the Thalassocracy, what shrewder way than to settle down some years in an honored post, where they’ll try to win his good will against the day he goes home? Fourth, I wouldn’t be surprised if Gathon, again, dropped hints it’d pay him to come. You see, if Duncan’s warned the Minos about Theseus, it’s purely natural for the Minos to want Theseus in the Labyrinth where they can keep an eye on him. And fifth, lass, this dromon’s going to be the flagship of the Tyrrhenian outing. Admiral Diores will travel on it, and keep an eye on him.”
He hugged her lightly. “Yes, we’re in a dangerous world,” he said. “It never was anything else, and never will be. But I do believe you’ve reason to feel some cheer.”
He would have been glad to entertain her a while, but when she failed to convince him he was wrong, she excused herself as fast as. possible. Walking back to Athens, she found a cypress grove along the road where she could hide and weep.
She hoped no one could tell that when she continued.
Driving a chariot of Diores his chieftain, Peneleos was among the warriors who had gone forth to summon men off their scattered farmsteads. He returned on the day after Erissa’s visit to Oleg: shouting for joy as he clattered up the Acropolis, horses tramping, bronze gleaming, cloak blowing behind him with speed, his own half-naked attendants toiling, afoot in his dust. Erissa was in the crowd of underlings who stopped work to watch the splendid spectacle. Light off his helmet and breastplate speared his eyes.
Now? she thought. This very night?
Quite likely. Uldin is back too, sulkier than I dared await.
She felt acutely aware of everything around her, shadows between cobblestones, flies over an odorous dungheap by the stables, silver-gray of shakes on the palace roof and of sunlit smoke rising from them, a yelping dog, gowns and tunics surrounding her—though the wearers were only other objects, their words only other noises. Her thoughts moved coolly above, observing, weighing, fitting together. Beneath lay that sense of fate which had risen in her during, the winter.
Briefly, yesterday, she had hoped, just a tiny bit ... Well she would not surrender. She knew Theseus’ voyage to Knossos was in the pattern. She did not know how, or know what the Ariadne might have to do with it. She had been unable to persuade Oleg that those two were in conspiracy Doubtless her failure was itself part of the pattern, whose weaving went on But she knew that, one way or another, she would rejoin Duncan before the end. For over the months, staring into mirrors, groping in a haze of half-recollections, she had come to recognize a face among those which were around her at that final moment: and it was her own.
Was she herself. then, the witch who had taken the last hours out of those memories which were to nourish her over the years?
Why would she do so? Would she? It did not make sense. And thus it might be the one loose thread that, by her refusal to do the thing, she could seize to unravel the whole web. If she, cast back into this age after another quarter century, knew what she in this house could tell her younger self.
During her life with Dagonas, she had inquired of travelers as earnestly as of any of the remaining Keftiu: What happened? They told her different versions, which mostly had the same skeleton. Theseus and the other hostages were newly in Knossos when earthquake smote and the sea destroyed the Minoan fleet. He gathered people (whom he claimed an oracle had told him to organize) and seized the shattered capital by force. His own ships and those of his allies, spared because they had been far out to sea, arrived shortly after to reinforce him. Having imposed his will on what was left of the main Cretan cities, he went home, taking the Ariadne along. Many stories said she did not appear to have left unwillingly.
In the past—her past, which lay futureward of today-Erissa had considered that unlikely. It didn’t fit what she had known of Lydra. Besides, Theseus showed at Naxos that the priestess was nothing to him. Poor creature, she ended her days in a mystery cult, one of those ancient dark faiths whose devotees gave themselves by turn to orgy and torture. Theseus went on to unite a large mainland domain under his rule. The news that he came at last to an unhappy end of his own was colorless consolation.
Erissa nodded. The pattern was clearing before her. It had been clearing throughout the winter, as Diores traveled back and forth between Athens and Atlantis. The Ariadne must in truth be aiding Theseus, just as in those dim traditions Duncan had related. No doubt the disclosures out of time had inspired her.
But Erissa could not say this aloud—accusations would only earn her a slit throat—and Oleg and Uldin were nearly always off on their business, and when, they were at the palace she was never alone with either of them, and she could scarcely hope to repeat her trick of the Periboean grove, suspicious as the court was of her.
Yesterday, when most men of the royal household were gone, she had seized the opportunity to seek out Oleg. But she had failed to make the Russian comprehend how a mere story told by one who claimed to be an exile from the future (and did, to be sure, have some remarkable things to show) could affect people who believed in fate. Oleg did not his curious god forbade him. Theseus and Lydra—who wanted faith in their high and liberating destiny—would stake everything they had, the life of the whole Athenian kingly house and state, on what Oleg could only see as an insane gamble that everything would work out exactly right. Since he knew Theseus, Diores, and the rest were hard-headed men like himself, he cast aside Erissa’s fears.
Moreover, while he appreciated what he had seen of Cretan refinement and might well prefer to live there; and while he was fond of her; what really was her country to him? If he could not go home, he could make a new life in Greece. He had already started.
That busyness had helped keep him from thinking about the pattern. Erissa, immured in the round of an Achaean woman, had had ample chances to brood, puzzle out a few of the paradoxes, and slowly weave her own web whose threads she must soon draw together.
Yes, most likely this very night.
Peneleos came to their room earlier after sunset than she had expected. She rose, smiling, shaking back her hair across the Egyptian shift he had given her. “I thought you would think late in the hall after being afield,” she greeted.
He laughed. The lamplight showed him big, thickly muscled, face, a trifle wine-flushed but eyes bright and posture steady. Beneath the yellow locks, that face was boyishly round and soft of beard. “Tomorrow night I may,” he said. “But I’ve missed you more than any feasting.”