Poul Anderson by The Dancer from Atlantis

Author:The Dancer from Atlantis [Atlantis, The Dancer from]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-11-24T11:24:24+00:00

“Do we indeed know what their will is?” Theseus put in. “The oracle could mean the very opposite of what my lord Voice suggests. A warning of disaster if, once more, an unnatural union is made.” The teeth flashed in his beard.

Gathon stiffened at the hardly veiled reference to a dirty story the Achaeans told about how the first Minotaur was begotten. “My sovereign will not be pleased if he learns that a word intended for him has been withheld like a pair of helmets?’ he said.

Impasse. Neither side wanted the other to have the castaways, their possibly revolutionary skills and their surely enormous mana. Nor did either want an open quarrel, yet.

Diores stepped forward. He raised his arm. A smile creased his leathery visage. “My lords,” he said.

“My friends. Will you hear me?” The prince nodded. “I’m just an old skipper and horsebreeder,” Diores continued. “I don’t have your wise heads nor your deep learning. Still, sometimes a clever man stands by the steering oar trying to figure out what’s ahead of him and gets nowhere till his dolt of a shipmate swarms up the mast and takes a look. Right?”

He beamed and gestured, playing to his audience. “Well, now,” he drawled through seething rain, yammering wind, spitting flames, “what have we got here? On the one hand, we have that the gods have naught against these good folk dwelling amongst us Athenians, seeing as how nothing bad has happened because of that. Right? On the other hand, we have that the Minos is entitled to see them too—if it’s not dangerous—and we think maybe the gods gave ‘em their sailing orders today. We think.” He laid a finger alongside his nose. “Do we know? These be shoal waters, mates, and a lee shore. I say row slow and take soundings … also for the sake of the Keftiu, Voice Gathon.”

“What do you propose?” the Cretan asked impatiently.

“Why, I’ll say it straight out, like a blunt-spoken old woodenhead does. Let’s first learn what those think who know more about the gods, and especial-like the Keftiu gods, than we do here. I mean the Ariadne and her council on Atlantis—”

Theseus sat bolt upright. His hand cracked down on his knee. The breath rushed between his lips.

Reid wondered why he was thus immediately kindled to enthusiasm.

“—and I mean further that we shouldn’t risk sending the lot of ‘em, the more so when stormy season is on us. Why not just one who’ll speak for his friends, which friends I hope include everybody here tonight? And—m-m-m, wouldn’t y’ say Duncan would be best to go? I mean, he’s the wisest of ‘ern, no offense to Uldin and Oleg. Nor to lady Erissa when she hears about my remarks. Thing is, she don’t know anything the Ariadne don’t. But Duncan comes from the farthest country; he was the man who could understand what the dying wizard had to tell; he can make fire spurt in his fingers; 1 don’t know what all else, except that they look to him for advice about mysteries, and rightly, I’m sure.

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