Dark Enchantment (24 page)

‘I need to talk to you!’ I gasped as I found him alone in his sleeping chamber. ‘Oh, Asterion, I don’t know what to do! I’m torn!’

He rose with a growl. ‘A week! It’s been a week you’ve left me here in the dark. You’ve not even showed your face when I was given to eat!’

‘So?’ I was confused by his anger – what right did he have to expect me to wait upon him, as if I were his slave girl? ‘I’ve been busy. The tribute has arrived and – oh Asterion, what should I do? I have fallen in love!’

‘Love?’ he said, idiotically.

‘With a man I may not marry. It’s wonderful but it’s horrible too – nothing seems under my control any more – I feel like I’m being torn open!’

‘
Love?
’ he snarled. ‘You love … someone? That is a joke, isn’t it? Does he know?’

‘Know what?’ At the time I had no idea why he was so angry. My stupidity astonishes me now.

‘That you are no maiden? That you are my whore? That you can’t be satisfied by a normal man? That you come down here
over
and over again, desperate to suck and ride the cock of a
monster
?’

‘Shut up!’ I squealed, horrified. ‘Don’t say that to me!’

‘Why not?’ he thundered. ‘It’s true, isn’t it?’

‘I am the daughter of the King!’ I spat. ‘You may not –’

‘The King? Well, let me show you what the daughter of a king is good for.’ He seized me bodily and threw me on my hands and knees, mashing my face down into the damp straw with a heavy hand. He tossed my skirt up over my back to bare my upraised bottom, and then he mounted me. I pushed back onto his thick cock, squealing, and he fucked me savagely – first in the hole that had been so recently anointed by the man I loved, then up my arse, filling me with his foaming ejaculate.

I came both times. Bucking, twisting, opening myself to the phallus my body knew best and wanted most, but even as I screamed my rage and my release my true love’s face and form were in my mind’s eye.

Because of what had happened, I went back to the Prince the morning before he was to be confined to the Palace Below. Down at the dock the black-sailed vessel waited, rigged and provisioned for sailing but refusing to depart for Athens until it might take the Prince’s body home to his father for burial. He’d asked to be allowed to make a sacrifice to Athene upon the household altar, and I found him as he was tending the flames. The guards were at the end of their shift and dozing where they stood against the red-painted pillars.

I came in close enough to speak to him in a low voice. ‘When they close the door on you tonight, kneel down and feel along on the hinge side of the wall. You will find a ball of woollen thread like this.’ I showed him the one in my hand, red as the blood on the altar stone. ‘Tie one end to the door – on a peg, a
knothole,
something. You cannot stay by the door; that is where Asterion will come looking for you. Before he finds you, you must find the sword I have concealed. It is not far, but you will be in absolute darkness, and the rooms are irregular with many exits. You must not lose your way. Unravel the thread as you go; if you reach the end you have gone too far, so return and start again. But be quick! Stick to the right wall. You want the second exit, third, first, third, sixth. Be careful; it is harder to count in the dark than you think. Can you remember the numbers?’

He repeated them to me.

‘Good. You will find yourself in a chamber. In it is a … wooden cow, the size of life. It opens up along the side, where it is hinged.’ I paused to lick my lips. I’d once when small asked Asterion what the cow was, because it seemed so strange to have a carved effigy, faced in hide to look just like a real creature, forgotten and mouldering in the basement. He had replied ‘My mother,’ before grumbling off into the dark – which was nonsense of course, besides being a joke in poor taste. ‘Inside it is padded but all turned to nests by mice. The sword will be under all the mess. Later I will find you and lead you to a secret way out.’

‘What about a lamp?’

‘I can’t bring you a light, not beforehand. Asterion would find it. You must fight him in the dark.’

He nodded. His eyes seemed to burn. ‘Thank you, Ariadne.’

‘For this you will take me away with you, back to Athens,’ I said. ‘You will marry me.’

He nodded. ‘Yes. Just as you wish. You will be the heroine of Athens for helping me end this barbaric ritual.’

I still thought he used the word ‘barbaric’ too freely, but I forgave him for the sake of his smile and his blue eyes. From now on my happiness was twined with his. ‘My heart will be with you, my love,’ I promised.

He nodded. ‘And my life depends on you, beloved. Remember that. Remember that I will love you and take you with me. The ship is ready to sail at a moment’s notice. You must not let me down.’

I nodded, tears welling in my eyes. Despite my fear for him I was full to bursting with happiness. Isn’t this the most precious gift a girl can receive – the love of the man to whom she has offered her heart?

That night at moonrise we gathered as we did every month to witness the immuring. The Prince acquitted himself better than most, striding to the door with head held high and a confident, easy gait. His skin gleamed; he’d had himself oiled as in preparation for a wrestling match. He glanced over at the royal party coolly – his gaze lingering, I thought, upon me – and refused the draught of poppy-infused wine offered by the priest of Poseidon. The beams of the door were knocked off with hammers, and a cordon of torch-bearing soldiers pushed it wide and examined the immediate interior. I knew the passage well, though I’d only ever approached the door from inside the basement, and knew what the Prince was seeing: from here a flight of steps plunged down into impenetrable blackness. The torch flames fluttered in the draught from the tunnels below.

There was no previous offering to remove this time.

Quickly, the guards urged the Prince to descend and secured the doors behind him. Then we went, as we did every month, to make an offering of a bull calf to Poseidon upon the family altar. It was a duty I could not escape from, but as I stood watching the priests lay the requisite body parts upon the embers I strained to hear any noise from beneath my feet. There was silence. I imagined the Prince groping his way along the wall in utter darkness, the ball of wool turning in his hand, the thread unwinding between his fingers, counting
under
his breath and dreading to hear the ominous snort of breath or the stamp of feet nearby. I ached to be with him, knowing my place was at his side. Like him I was feeling my way forwards into an unseen future, unravelling the thread of my destiny. Ordinary people may blunder about randomly, but like my Prince I had a path to find, the sure knowledge of a purpose. We are special like that, some of us. History sits upon our shoulders, and as we unwind our days we are brought to the goal the gods have devised for us. Only when we look back along the thread do we wonder at how intricate and winding a path has brought us here.

As soon as I could I took my leave of the family and retired to my room. Taking a lit oil lamp in the palm of my hand I hurried to my secret entrance and climbed down the rubble slope into the Palace Below. The little wick cast only a small light, illuminating the indistinguishable rock walls and the pieces of abandoned rubbish that provided the only landmarks: a pile of worm-eaten timber here, a heap of fleece all gone to yellow mould there, a spill of bones, a basket with the bottom worn through, a broken loom …

The wooden cow. I reached its chamber, breathless, and cast about. I knew which entrance the Prince should have reached this place from, but examination revealed no sign of him or of the red thread he should have been trailing. Biting my lip I worked the latch on the cow’s flank and lifted the lid. The interior stank of mice. I plunged my hand into the mass of fluff that was all that was left of the silk-lined cushioning and my fingers found the cold hardness of bronze. The sword was still there.

Fear made me feel cold.

I pulled out the sword, its blade only a little longer than my forearm, and wrapped it loosely in my himation. I had little idea what to do now, other than knowing it was late, that the
Prince
should already have been here, and that it was up to me to find him. I took up the lamp again and stole from the chamber, heading towards the stair.

I found the trail of red thread only two rooms away. It led off in the wrong direction. I caught it up from the floor with my fingers and hurried, my bronze burden clutched awkwardly in the crook of my elbow. Two more low doorways, a dogleg to the right, and there was the end of the thread: a little tangle of wool discarded in the centre of the floor. The room was empty. I stopped, holding my breath and staring into the doorways that gaped black and blind about me.

There: a noise. A groan.

My little circle of light pushed back the thick dark as I stepped over the threshold. Forms blossomed into view: limbs glossed with oil and sweat and bulging with strain, clutching hands, a bowed head of black curls. The Prince had listened to my warnings; he did not cry out, though he raised a face wide-eyed and slack-jawed with anguish as he responded to my light. Asterion’s great bulk loomed over his crouched form, hands on his shoulders, ploughing hard between his arse cheeks. His rhythm was regular and inexorable. I stopped, transfixed. The look on the Prince’s face was extraordinary – torment certainly, but something more than mere pain and humiliation. This was the moment, I thought. This was what he had dreamt of all his life, the beast that had haunted his sweating nights and ruthless days, the apex of his destiny. This was what the gods had brought him here for.

Slowly I moved forwards, mesmerised by the long fluid strokes, by the sense of power and domination. I could smell them now: oil and sweat and a masculine heat. I could hear the Prince’s soft groan at every thrust and the slap of Asterion’s flesh against his. I could see the ripple of muscles in Asterion’s widely braced thighs and the heave of his chest.
With
each thrust he snorted down his nose. The Prince’s eyes rolled, half closing in shame. Sweat and olive oil were hanging in droplets from his jawline. I imagined him colliding with Asterion in the pitch blackness and the two of them grappling for purchase, hands sliding over slick flesh, muscle mass against muscle mass, until the inevitable penetration was achieved.

Oh, I knew what it was like to take that huge phallus up my rear passage. I could imagine only too clearly the sensations the Prince must be feeling.

Then Asterion paused in his rutting. His eyes turned upon me. I wondered what he would do; I had never intruded upon his time with others before. Was he still angry with me?

What he did was reach forwards, take the Prince by the shoulders and pull him upright, so that that lithe torso was framed against Asterion’s bulkier chest. The change in angle brought no relief clearly; the Prince’s mouth shaped an unvoiced cry of shock as that thick root shifted within him. But what it did was reveal the Athenian’s own phallus, which was upright and as stiff as a spear shaft. From his new position, holding the Prince immobile, Asterion resumed his punishing thrusts. Completely entranced I dropped to my knees before the two of them, laying the lamp upon the ground. I bent low in worship and offered the Prince’s swollen glans my open mouth. It took only my breath, my enveloping kiss, the swirl of my tongue across his contours to trigger his eruption. Crying out, he poured his hot seed over my tongue in such copious quantities that it ran out of the corner of my mouth and, as I pulled away, thinking him done, one last pulse brought the final produce of his testes welling from the eye of his phallus and oozing down his shaft like a milky tear.

He tasted salty, like the sea. Like sorrow.

Then, even as the Prince sagged in his arms, Asterion’s
climax
was upon him and he came with two savage thrusts and a long roar that made my ears ring and the echoes reverberate through the rooms of Palace Below. I stared in awe, seed wet on my parted lips. Emptying himself into the Athenian’s bowels, he shut his eyes and his head sagged. The grip of his knotted forearm loosened upon the chest of the man he held. Seizing that moment as Asterion relaxed, the Prince of Athens reached down and pulled the sword from the folds of my bundled cloak. Raising it over his shoulder, he plunged it down behind him – straight and true and deep between Asterion’s collarbone and neck.

His second roar was only a gurgle. Then he collapsed. I put my hands over my mouth and stared and stared and stared.

The Prince took me away with him on his ship, but he did not take me home to Athens. I had seen too much.

This island was named as Naxos on their map, I think. It is uncultivated, so far as I can tell, and there aren’t even goats to nibble back the scrub. I am the only human soul on the place, though there are sometimes noises that I cannot identify out there in the undergrowth. Perhaps it’s wild boar or bears. I hardly care any more.

There is one building: a small and crumbling shrine dedicated to Dionysus. I worked that out from the friezes depicting grapevines and satyrs. In the inner chamber of the shrine are propped huge sealed vessels full of wine. I think they have been left here over many years because some of the amphorae are unrecognisable under dust.

Last night I dreamt I heard flutes.

Can one survive on wine alone? Perhaps I will live long enough to see the worshippers arrive with their next offerings, in weeks or months to come. Certainly there’s more than enough wine to dull my hunger and my hurt, for the moment.
Perhaps
I will drink my fill and step off the edge of the cliff sometime soon.

Or perhaps I will continue to lie here and weep, knowing myself cursed. Knowing that I deserve this punishment because I betrayed my family and my King, all for a handsome face and a heart as hollow as the central chamber of the labyrinth. I thought I loved Theseus, Prince of Athens. I thought my desire for him outweighed everything else in the world. For false and unrequited love I betrayed to his death the one man who truly cared for me: Asterion, my half-brother, the Minotaur.