The Bull from the Sea by Mary Renault

There was even comfort in it.
    “You are the heir of my death. I cannot give it to my people. Our line was sent as the curse of Thebes; God grant that my sons are childless.” His voice had hate in it; for a moment I glimpsed him in his prime, a red man with pale fierce eyes. But the flame died quickly. “To you, Theseus, and your land, I give my death and my blessing.”
    “But,” I whispered, “they stoned you at the altar.”
    “Why not?” He was calm and reasoning. “I killed my father.”
    We were among the boulders. He threaded them without much help, seeming to feel them before the touch. My fear was sinking from my head to gripe my belly; I slipped away from him and voided it, and felt light and cold, but a little better. Coming back I steered him to clearer ground, and said, “Fate was your master. You did these things unknowing. Men have done worse at less cost.”
    He smiled. Even as I was, it awed me. “So I said always, till I became a man.”
    We had come to the edge of the horseshoe dip, and the fear in me was saying, “Be anywhere but here.” My head felt so empty it must float away; women say it is so before they swoon. So I thought, “I can no more. The god will take me or leave me, I am in his hand.” And I leaned upon a boulder, as limp as a wrung-out rag. But he still talked on.
    “I was reared Polybios’ son. But I never favored him; it was talked of, and I heard. And when I asked the god at Delphi, his only answer was a warning. ‘You will kill the planter of your seed and sow the field you grew in.’ So. Did I not know that every man or woman past forty must be my father or mother now, before the god? I knew. When the redbeard cursed me from his chariot’s road and poked me with his spear, and the woman laughed beside him, did I not remember? Oh, yes. But my wrath was sweet to me. All my life, I could never forego my anger. ‘Only this once,’ I thought. ‘The gods will wait for one day.’ So I killed him and his foot-runners, for my battle-fury made me as strong as three. The woman was in the chariot, fumbling with the reins. I remembered her laughter. So I dragged her down, and threw her across her husband’s corpse.”
    His words roosted in my mind like crows in a dead tree. I was so spent, I hardly shuddered.
    “And later, when I rode as a victor into Thebes, shaven and washed and garlanded, she met my eyes and said nothing. She had only seen me in my anger; blood and rage and the grime of the dusty road will change a man. She was not sure. And the soft bright look of the wolf-bitch at the new leader of the pack … It is Theban law, that the King rules by right of marriage. To be a king, to be a king … I gave her a stranger’s greeting. I never told, she asked no questions. Never, until the end.”
    I heard these dreadful words; but they came to me like children weeping. For the presence of the god was pressing on my skull, and up the soles of my feet and through my loins from the tingling rock. I stood upright, as if his arm had thrust me forward. My fear was quenched in solemn awe. I was out of myself, only a string for his sounding; I knew what it is to be priest as well as king.
    The blind man stood where I had guided him, a little below me in the trough of the holy hoofprint, his face looking to the earth. I said, “Be free of it. Go in peace to the house of Hades. Father Poseidon, Earth-Holder, accept the offering!”
    Even while I spoke, the birds flew upward screaming, and the dogs howled. I saw him stretch out his hands in prayer to the gods below; and then I saw no more. Deep down under, the hill’s core gave a great grinding jar. I lost my footing, and slipped among falling stones and shale, till I fetched up against the roots of a fir tree, sticking up naked from the earth. Close by I heard a mighty, bounding thud, another, and a heavy settling. At once the earthquake-sickness left me; my heart stilled, and my head was clear. It was like waking from a