Shadows on the Aegean (54 page)

“Clan of the Flame!”
Hreesos
shouted. The citizens went wild. One by one the chieftains laid their staves down on the table. The Cult of the Snake was
noticeably missing, but before anyone could ask, Minos and his priests were ushering them out.

It was the time for the Bull Dance.

Chloe ran back to Selena.

P
HOEBUS STOOD, HIS SWEATY HANDS CLUTCHING THE RAILING
. Ileana stood beside him, the proud tilt of her breast pressing into his bare arm. Arus was on the other side, watching their
naked relatives as they ran from the room.

“You will be down there next Council,” Arus said. His huge arms were crossed, and Phoebus wondered briefly how Arus felt:
he was one of
Hreesos’
offspring, but he had never had a chance at Zelos’ position, not being born of the mother-goddess. Would that be how Eumelos
felt?

For decans sounds of screams, running feet, and hooves had drifted back to the assembled group. The citizens outside and around
the island had feasted, waiting for news of the outcome. Phoebus could eat almost nothing, though he tore at the meat viciously,
as befitted a man about to be blooded. Niko had refused meat, a distant expression in his eyes.

Talos now limped forward to accept the court’s cheers and the Council’s vow to provide his clan products for free the remainder
of the year. Phoebus knew it was his turn. He had trained a lifetime for this. Adrenaline raced like fire through his veins,
and he slipped down the stairs, where the priests stood waiting for him. He was stripped bare, his sex massaged to full strength,
his hair freed, and the ritual boot put on his foot, laced up his calf. Wearing the traditional boot was a challenge, the
one thing for which he’d not been allowed to prepare.

They handed him the short, vicious ceremonial blade and a double circle shield. Priests hustled the bull into the outside
ring, while the nobility watched the Rising Golden walk in proud nudity from the interior of the Council chamber, through
the obsidian tunnels, down, down into the actual bull ring.

Phoebus stood while he was showered with praise and flowers. The crowd was a sun-limned border of lumps and angles. The bull
dancers, orphaned children, had entertained earlier in the ring, and smears of blood stood out on the sand floor, testament
to the intensity of this diversion. Phoebus turned and gazed at the bull, trapped behind gates. He tensed his muscles, then
jerked his chin toward the priests. He was ready.

If he survived unscathed, he would be tested further, the same testing the Spiralmaster Cheftu had endured. Once he passed
those tests, he would become the Sacred One, learning his kingly duties during a year of abstinence: no meat, no wine, no
sex. His energies would be focused. He would deny himself the pleasures of the flesh—save for mating with Ileana, if that
could be called pleasure. Thus he would prove his worthiness as
Hreesos
, the Golden One, purified and selected for the work of serving Aztlan. It was the process by which man alchemized into more
than mortal.

Today, however, he could kill, couple, and feast.

The bull charged at him and Phoebus dodged, using the reflection of his blade’s handle to distract the creature at the last
minute. Phoebus dropped his shield, clenching the short knife between his teeth. They circled, measuring each other, communicating
from brown bovine eyes to pale human eyes the truth that only one would leave the arena alive. The sun came from an angle,
the heat intensifying as it gathered in the black lava stone walls. Phoebus tried to keep the light behind him, blinding the
bull, but the bull moved too fast and often Phoebus was the one blinded.

The bull charged again, backing Phoebus into the corner. As he’d practiced all his life, Phoebus grabbed its horns, flipping
himself with the upward motion of the bull’s head, touching on its back, then flipping off, landing on the ground.
He was a wave, crashing on the shore
. The boot hampered the grace of his movement a little, but no one realized it. The crowd went wild, and for a few seconds
Phoebus relished the chant of his name. The bull charged, and Phoebus twisted over its back.

It charged again, and Phoebus feinted, then leapt, landing lightly on its other side. He was getting used to the boot now,
the imbalance was beginning to feel normal, and his other leg was compensating for it. The court’s excitement thundered in
his veins as he rolled and dodged, tossing himself over the beast’s powerful back.

Sweat blinded him, and Phoebus rubbed his forehead, having only an eyeblink of time to dodge the bull, forcing himself to
roll beneath it during its charge.

The crowd went wild, and the air was filled with a rain of flower petals on the arena.

Phoebus was so hard, so full, he thought he would burst. The bull screamed at him: kill or be killed. The dance was complete;
now it was death. He stopped moving, catching his breath, watching the creature’s eyes. His trainer always said there would
be a warning flicker in the bull’s eyes the very breath before it came in for the kill.

Wiping sweaty hands on his thighs, Phoebus crouched. The beast came, full speed, its head lowered and eyes gleaming with blood
lust. Phoebus reached out for its horns, almost lying on its face, flipped and twisted his body over its head, and landed
on its neck, his legs spread wide, riding on its shoulders.

He slit its throat with the knife, his body low over the creature, flat between its horns. He tightened his thighs, digging
his bare and booted feet into the animal’s large chest as it bellowed its death cry. Hair and sweat marred Phoebus’ view,
but he could feel the lifeblood of the creature, hot and thick, pour over his leg and foot.

Livid with pain, the bull bucked and fought to rid itself of Phoebus’ weight. His hand gripped the sweaty fur on its neck,
and Phoebus held on, his legs tight even as he lost his seat, even as the bull turned and twisted, its bellowing and roaring
echoing back from the black walls a hundred times.

Finally the bull fell to its knees, jarring Phoebus as it nodded, sluggishly trying to get free. It stopped moving, collapsing
heavily, and Phoebus leapt off a heartbeat before his leg was crushed.

Every muscle in Phoebus’ body trembled, his breath was loud in his ears, and he felt the same rush that came just before climaxing.
He wiped his hands in the dust, looking up at the crowd. They chanted his name like a prayer, and he closed his eyes, welcoming
the homage of his people. He had been born for this adoration.

The priests came out, bearing large basins. Phoebus had severed the bull’s jugular, and now the priests stood while he cut
off the bull’s head, spattering his body and face with crimson. The warm blood was poured into the copper and gold vessels,
and Phoebus knelt before the priests.

The Minos came out, dressed again as a priest, and poured the blood of the beast on Phoebus. It coated him from the top of
his golden head down his tanned body, mantling the stiffness of his erection. He closed his eyes as it dripped off his nose
onto the ground. The warm copper smell both sickened and enticed him.

“Hail, Phoebus!” Minos cried.

“Hail, Phoebus!
Hreesos
Phoebus! Hail, Phoebus!” The crowd took up the chant deafeningly.

“Rising Golden Bull! Take the powers of Apis into yourself!” Minos shouted.

Phoebus drank the offered cup of blood.

The crowd screamed.

“Take the strength of Apis into yourself!”

Phoebus ate the offered bloody, raw meat.

The crowd roared.

“Take the fertility of Apis into yourself!”

The crowd applauded, and Phoebus accepted the still warm testicle. Hiding his revulsion, he slit the pocket and drank the
creamy fluid. Swallowing quickly so he wouldn’t gag, he was baptized again in blood.

The priest’s words were lost on the crowd, frenzied at the sight of the golden prince, standing aroused in the blood of his
victim. The primal urges in the polished ladies and nobles of Aztlan were rising.

Huge basins of blood would be placed throughout the arena for the populace. Each citizen would dip their cloth in the life
of Apis and place his mark on their forehead, praying the blessing of blood would protect him or her throughout the coming
year. Nobles would receive the bull’s blood, and they would partake of its flesh.

The organs were saved for the priesthood, the brain for the Golden and his selected
hequetai
alone.

Thousands filed into lines to walk by the basins. They chanted Phoebus’ name, and he felt the wind dry the blood on his body
as he walked from the arena.

As he entered the darkness of the tunnel, his heart was still pounding, his erection throbbing, and his ears ringing with
the sound of his name.
Hreesos
Phoebus. The blood had dried into a thin skin, and as he ducked under one of the black lava beams, he felt the drying coating
crack.

He had succeeded. He’d leapt on time, his turns were tight enough. Not even a scratch! Giddiness was rising like a bubble
within him, and he wanted a woman, badly. In the distance he saw a priest; would he know where the nearest Coil Dancer was?

If only it were Irmentis, her body bared to his gaze, her eyes glowing with invitation.

The priest took Phoebus’ blood-caked wrist and led him to a blank wall.

Concealing his movements, the priest pressed part of the stone and a faint whirring noise echoed through the black tunnel.
Phoebus watched as an even darker square opened. They stepped in and began walking up. Then the floor angled downward. Phoebus
could see nothing; he kept his hands on the shoulders of the priest before him, sensing the changes in the flooring. They’d
walked for what seemed whole rotations of the sun, when the priest stopped. He’d still not said a word.

Another click and whir.

The scent of fresh blood filled his nostrils. Phoebus stepped into the space alone. The priest shut the door behind him, and
Phoebus breathed deeply.

“Step forward,
Hreesos
,” Zelos, his
pateeras
, said.

It was suddenly light, and Phoebus blinked at the harshness. “You enter the sacred threshold of the priests,” his father said,
stepping forward. His blond hair caught the light, and Phoebus was struck with how young and handsome Zelos still was. He
glanced around at the handful of men who flanked his father. They were all that remained of Zelos’
hequetai?

“Come,
Hreesos
, sit,” his father said, indicating a leather stool. Phoebus sat down hesitantly, and the low murmur of voices filled the
room. The body of the bull he’d killed in the warm sunshine lay in a trench before him. The head sat before his seat.

“Take the organ and cut it up, serve a piece to each man you want in your cabinet,”
Pateeras
instructed in an undertone. “Take the largest portion for yourself, but do not eat it until you have received the oracle
of the Minos.” Phoebus took the head and, with set jaw and watching audience, extracted the warm mass of brain.

He was having difficulty focusing, but still the brain pieces looked strange. It was filled with holes, unlike anything he’d
ever seen in his experiments with the Spiralmaster. The Spiralmaster! Phoebus looked over the company carefully; the Egyptian
did not defile this gathering with his presence. No one Phoebus’ age was here, just a bunch of old men.
“Pateeras,”
he whispered, “is this what the brain looks like?”

Hreesos
stared at it. “It looks the same as what I have eaten every summer for nineteen summers. Have no fear, Phoebus. Eat it. Take
the strength of Apis into yourself.”

Phoebus sliced it.

The Minos stepped forward. Intoning a lengthy prayer in the founding language of Aztlan, he offered the horns back to Apis.
Two other priests stood to the side as he gutted the bull, then flung its entrails against a huge gold plate at Phoebus’ feet.
The priests lit more lamps, and Phoebus saw the lengths of twisted intestine. The Minos’ eyes were shut as he moved back and
forth.

The incense that filled the room was making Phoebus feel lightheaded, and he desperately hung on to the details: the contrast
of deep bloody red against the gold; the masked face of the Minos and how ridiculous the huge bull’s head looked atop his
shriveled body. They needed a high priest who looked the role, Phoebus thought. Young and virile, the epitome of Apis.

The man was speaking, his voice high-pitched and slurred. Zelos laid a hand on Phoebus’ shoulder. “He is a frightened old
man and speaks nonsense sometimes. We have nothing to fear.”

Phoebus shook his head in agreement, but the thoughts tickled the back of his consciousness. They had everything to fear:
earthquakes, eruptions, plague. The Minos suddenly screamed and fell convulsing to the floor.

Leaping to his feet, Phoebus stared as the other priests carried the old man from the room. The nobles were speaking, casting
wary glances toward Phoebus. What had happened? The hair on Phoebus’ neck had risen from that shriek. He turned to Zelos,
whose face was ashen in the light. “What does this mean?”