The Trials of the Minotaur

Part Two: The Oracle's Mortification (Chapter Twelve)

The Minotaur had not yet fallen asleep when the screams reached his ears, startling him from his bed. He stayed rooted to the floor as the cries disappeared above him, visions of Thedeo's army storming the temple and laying it to ruin paralyzing him. He still had not moved when the final scream, louder than all that had come before, sounded. Nor did he in the silence that followed, a quiet that told its own tale. He knew he should be heading below, summoning Velthar and Galrice and attempting to flee, if that were still possible. But he did not, for the greater part of him wanted this charade ended at last, so that he could descend to that greater peace where his sleep would be unmarred and the days endless.

Velthar entered his chamber a moment later, bowing before the god. The Minotaur could smell sweat upon him. “I have done as you asked,” he said.

“What is that?” He could not keep the fear from sounding in his voice.

There was a pause and then the Sufferer spoke. “I have done as you showed me in the vision. I have removed the demon host and her spawn.”

The Minotaur felt his blood go still. What have I created? A madman, truly.

“I shall see to the preparations for the coming of the new god.”

All the Minotaur could summon in that moment was, “I am grateful.”

It was enough; Velthar left him to his own thoughts, which were few, an absolute emptiness enveloping his being. It was as though his blindness had extended to consume his entire being. He heard nothing, smelled nothing, felt nothing. When he emerged from the spell of his reverie, his heart was so filled with despair he could not even weep, could not rage or curse, could only sit in the terrible silence. This was the moment for flight, he knew. The path to the gates he could recall from his dreams, and he thought himself strong enough still to overpower the guards on watch. And if not, so be it. Better that than to persist amidst such lunacy, all committed in his name.

What stayed his hand was the thought of Velthar sending Galrice over the tower’s edge to her death. What had possessed the Sufferer? Had his fits at last overwhelmed his greater faculties? From his thoughts grew a rage, the likes of which he had not felt since the first days of his exile from Rheadd. Those terrible days, when his entire mind had been consumed with what had been done to his women and servants and to him as well. He had been helpless then to stop it, all those who had conspired against him ensuring that. Now, though he was blind, he was not without means. The god could still speak through him, and Thedeo was still to come. He would see to it.

That night he did not sleep, his anger burning like a torch in his soul. He did not leave his chambers the next morning, as he normally did, keeping vigil in Galrice’s memory in the Rheadd manner and plotting his next steps. The gods would surely not forgive his inaction now, not after the months he had spent harvesting the sorrow of others with his lies. Late in the day, as he was in the midst of his prayers to the true gods, Velthar arrived to tell him that Thedeo had arrived.

“It was as you prophesied,” the Sufferer said, his voice ringing out. The Minotaur resisted the urge to tear him limb from limb, though he sorely wanted to, and instead said nothing. Death was too kind a punishment for the man, he had decided. He would see this whole temple brought to the ground so that all the Sufferer had built would lie in ruin.

He received Thedeo atop the tower, a mist wetting both their brows, the breeze cutting. The barbarian king wept at the sight of the god. From his dreams the Minotaur knew that Thedeo had been changed irrevocably by the purge he had embarked on. He had visited a reign of terror upon his own subjects and his own suspicions had eaten at him until he was but a shadow of his former person. His hair, once a lustrous brown that shone in the glare of the sun, was now white, and his face was nearly as bloodless. He walked differently now, the Minotaur noticed as he approached, sounding like a man who had entered into his last feeble years. He did not doubt that it was so.