The Trials of the Minotaur

Part One: The Blind Minotaur (Chapter Two)

The Minotaur was taken from her the next day, both their cries filling the summer estate, and sent to the far end of the empire to live out its days on the derelict Guthril Estate. Surys Dethcallen was banished from Colosi and exiled from all of the Dethcalla’s lands across the empire. She was accepted by a group of sibyls and their priests who worshipped on the Isle of Hizen. It was said she passed the rest of her days among them, traveling throughout the empire in her later days to spread the word of the knowledge of the sibyls.

The patriarch of Guthril was Thurir Dethcallan Drahil, a hard and bitter man, long banished to this borderland overrun by barbarians and beasts nearly as terrifying as the one delivered him by his cousin’s men. That he had to suffer the indignity of housing a monster, in addition to all the disappointments he had suffered in his life, was too much to bear, especially as the thing began to walk and come underfoot. He often beat the creature with a cane, though he dared not cause undue harm. It was on the rolls after all, and there could be no doubt they were being watched by for any misstep in this regard that could be reported back to Barthil Vulgih’s enemies in Colosi. Strangers were always stopping by the estate to inquire after the creature that had ruined the Dethcalla, and whether they were enemies or merely curious, care had to be taken.

In those early years of his life, a wet nurse was the Minotaur’s only companion. She was a barren women, exiled to the far and distant estate as well, punishment for some misdeed that the Minotaur never did discover. In spite of her initial revulsion toward him as he suckled on her breast, she came to care for him deeply, for the world had abandoned them to all but each other. As he grew she kept him apart from the other children of the estate, even the servants’ children, for they would taunt the beast mercilessly, throwing stones or beating him with sticks, sometimes at the encouragement of their parents.

Barthil Vulgih hoped that the Minotaur would meet some unfortunate end, either at the hands of marauding barbarians who raided those lands every summer, or from one of the larger beasts that were known to roam the nearby wilds. Something for which no blame could be affixed to the Dethcalla, and would allow this terrible event, which had so embarrassed their fortunes, to pass into memory and forgetfulness. Instead, the creature flourished. No matter how severe the taunts or the beatings he received, he would carry on holding his head proud and high, always keeping in his heart the fact that he was a patrician as Thurir Drahil was and as Barthil Vulgih was and would always be.

From the moment he could walk he demonstrated a prodigious strength and he soon proved to have a native intelligence to match. The nurse was the first to recognize this and she taught him to read and write, encouraging him to go to the estate’s library to pass his days. He was not given any more formal education than that, but he soon had a firm understanding of the classic philosophers and mathematicians, and it was not long before he exhausted the library’s supply of the histories as well.

Always robust, he grew to a massive size as he came of age. The mere sight of him caused strangers to tremble and be seized by an urge to flee. He was a creature of nightmare, the sort of beast prophets warned would come to bring ruin to lands, though no one believed in that sort of thing. And yet here he was, with curving horns that spanned an ordinary man’s arms. His cloven feet left prints larger than the mountain bears that lurked in forests nearby, and his hands, though human in form, were so large as to be almost unrecognizable. His voice, which had always been deep for a child’s, deepened and grew coarse as he aged to such an extent that even his common utterances resembled a man’s bellow.

His childhood tormenters now kept their distance, though he enjoyed stalking them through the estate and appearing, seemingly from nowhere, to catch them heartstoppingly unawares. He never raised a hand against them as they had against him, for even then he understood that, patrician or not, such acts would not be tolerated. The laws and standards for him would be different, no matter what the rolls said.