The Trials of the Minotaur

Part Three: The Wondrous Beast (Chapter Nine)

The Minotaur refused to speak another word in the presence of the Doctor, even as he arranged engagements at the Academies of Idyhin and some other nearby cities. If he was to be treated as no more than a beast then he would act as one, he decided, and let the Doctor's claims that he was a wondrous creature be proven false. He sat in his cage in glowering silence, his anger palpable and vibrating to the audiences of the lecture hall or salon as Doctor Eid spoke of his amazing discovery and the strange, barbaric land he had come from. The Minotaur tried not to listen to these speeches, tried to will himself into oblivion in those moments, but he failed, especially when the questions from the audience began, and gradually he started to understand something of what was being said, making his slavery all the worse.

His plan to deny the Doctor the value of his speech, the wonder that it would no doubt inspire, failed utterly. The Doctor's lectures were a huge success, he was praised and feted everywhere they went, and soon he had received an invite from the Academy in Piufenh to display the creature there and lecture on all his travels. It was almost not to be believed, so rapid was the Doctor's ascension among the respectable and learned men of Huiam. How long the Doctor had imagined such moments of triumph as he was experiencing?

“It is as though my whole life has been in preparation for this time,” he told the Minotaur on more than one occasion. He could not resist speaking to the creature, especially as they spent all their days together, his success inextricably bound to the sullen and mute beast. To return from his long self-imposed exile and to be feted as one of the great explorers of the age was beyond belief, especially after the hard months of imprisonment he had endured at the hands of the bandits. This too became part of his tale, along with the discovery of the beast, though that part was transformed, along with his years spent selling vials of colored water to unsuspecting barbarians, to something more befitting the man of learning and culture he aspired to be.

The Doctor's joy at these developments was tempered by his need to keep the beast within his sight at all times. All depended on the creature, he knew, and he trusted no one, not the philosophers and nobles who came to his talks, and certainly not the Minotaur himself. It became an obsession that he could not relieve himself of, even for a moment. He slept beside the cage, even when the Academies forced him to use their stables to store the creature, took all his meals in sight of it, and he insisted that every soiree and function that followed his lectures be held in the same hall where the Minotaur was displayed. He would rarely stray from beside the cage even during these celebrations, nor would he allow even the most esteemed and honored members of the Academies to get too close, claiming that the beast was unpredictable and not to be trusted. For all the praise he received, and as much as he believed he was deserving of it and more, he knew that without the Minotaur he would be but another rogue adventurer returned home with a half-believed tale to tell.

As soon as he received word of the Piufenh Academy's invitation, the Doctor set to making the arrangements for their journey, spending coin he did not have. He hired a substantial guard to ensure that the Minotaur could neither escape nor be taken from him, as well as buying himself the finest of clothes so that his reappearance in the imperial capital would be as splendorous as he had always imagined. To allay these expenses he stopped in every town and city along the way, delivering his lecture and displaying the creature to great excitement, perfecting the story he would tell once he reached the imperial capital.

It took them two weeks to reach the capital, and by then word of the good Doctor and his wondrous beast had spread even among the commoners of the city. A great crowd met him at the gates of Piufenh upon his arrival. He passed within, surrounded by this swelling retinue that conducted him to the Academy, where he stood atop the balcony where public lectures were given and promised that there would be public showings of the beast so that all might see it. That night, having had no time to rest and recover from his journey, the Doctor spoke before the learned men of the Academy, many of them the same honored thinkers he had idolized in his childhood, and was received with rapturous praise.

After his talk, and the soiree that followed, the Doctor, still electric from the excitement of all the commendations he had been given by the gathered luminaries, was unable to sleep. He paced about the Cabinet of Wonder, where the Academy had placed the Minotaur's cage, giving it a position of honor amongst its many awe-inspiring exhibits. There was a tentacled sea monster here, carefully preserved in a brine, the skeleton of two-headed man there and many other strange and malformed creatures. The Minotaur was at one with them, an oddity of nature, singular and amazing. He was oblivious to his surroundings, though, lying on the floor of his hated prison, listening to the footsteps of the man who had betrayed him.

At last the Doctor could contain his excitement no longer and he approached the cage. “One of the Empress' philosophers was in attendance this evening,” he said, speaking in the barbarian tongue they shared.

The Minotaur did not stir from where he lay.

“My good friend, I am certain we will be asked before her. After that there will be public audiences. We shall be the talk of all the empire.”

The Doctor was overcome by the energy that was coursing through him, all his thoughts colliding at once in his mind, and he could not stop himself from moving. He left the Minotaur to go inspect a fossil of an unfathomably massive and elongated lizard, the Dragon of Bui, named so for the man who had discovered its remains. The beast, Doctor Eid knew, would be named after him in all the books that were sure to be written on the subject. He would need to think of a proper name for it, something more descriptive than “beast” or “creature.” The thought of such a task delighted him as well. There would be volumes to be written, and perhaps a Society of Discovery to found.

He returned to the cage, where the creature's breathing had subsided into a steady rhythm. He wondered if the beast was asleep. The Doctor smiled, thinking now of the days to come, the triumphs that would fill the hours, and he whispered, so as not to wake his captive, “My good friend, when this is done, when I have been justly rewarded and given a post here at the Academy, I shall free you. You can go where you please.”

The Minotaur was not asleep, and he heard the good Doctor's words. They left him cold with rage, only deepening the hatred he felt for this man. He would accept nothing from the Doctor, not even freedom. He would find a means to push aside this proffered hand and spit upon his face.

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This is the thirtieth chapter of the Trials of the Minotaur. I will post a chapter a week (there are over 30), but if you enjoy what you're reading and don't want to wait, you can buy this book at Amazon, Kobo, and Smashwords. Thanks for reading.