Poul Anderson - The Dancer from Atlantis

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.”

They embraced. His mouth and hands were less clumsy than they had been the first few times, and she used every skill that hers possessed. Inwardly she was cold with destiny. What flutterings went through her were because she was on her way to Duncan.

“Now, nymph, now,” he said low in his throat.

Usually she had let herself enjoy their encounters. Why not? They were a small reason, among larger ones, for luring him in the first place—to be free of that hunger, at least, while she waited half prisoner in Athens. In the beginning he was awed and bewildered. (Diores had encouraged him when the older man noticed what was developing. The admiral would like few things better than having a trusty follower live with, watch, and, if need be, curb this woman whose part and power in the world were unknown but were beyond doubt witchy and none too friendly.) Later Peneleos gained confidence; but he stayed kind to her in his self-centered Achaean fashion. She liked him well enough.

Tonight she must give him all her art and none of her feeling. She must bring him to a calm and happy drowsiness but not let it glide into natural slumber.

The lamp was guttering when she raised herself on an elbow. “Rest, my lover,” she crooned, over and over, and her fingers moved on his body in slow rhythm and when the gaze she had trapped began to turn glassy she began blinking her own eyes in exact tune with his heartbeat.

He went quickly under. Already in the grove he had not been hard to lay the Sleep on. That fact had caused her to choose him among the unwed men she regularly saw, and seduce him, after her plan had taken vague shape. Each time thereafter that she ensorcelled him—in guise of lulling him or easing a headache or bringing on a pleasant dream—made the next time easier. She was sure he followed the command she always gave: Do not tell anyone about this that we are doing together; it is a dear and holy secret between us; rather, forget that I did more than murmur to you, until ‘I do it again.

Now she sat staring down at him in the wan, flickering light. His features were too firmly made to fall slack, but something had gone out of them and out of the half-closed eyes. It had not gone far, though. It lay back in the dark-ness of the skull, like one of those snakes fed by Keftiu householders who believed their dead came home in that form. After hours it would rouse and uncoil; and the wrong sounds could bring it instantly awake and striking.

In the Sleep you believed and did what you were told, up to a point—and she thought her repeated suggestions that he acted out had driven that point further up than it stood in most men—but you would not do anything that your undeceived waking self would recognize as wrong or dangerous. She must be totally careful tonight.