Oracle's War

by Oracle's War (retail) (epub)

  ‘Is there no depth Tiresias will not descend to?’ I breathe.

  ‘What about the Sphinx?’ Eurybates asks. ‘The tale I heard had it that Oedipus became king by solving a riddle of the Sphinx?’

  ‘Is there such a creature?’ I ask. Bodiless spirits – from the gods down to lesser beings like naiads and dryads – I can credit. I’ve even fought a shape-shifter. But an oracular half-man, half-lion doesn’t seem possible.

  Bria nudges me. ‘The Sphinxes aren’t magical beasts – they’re a secret order of seers and sorcerers, dedicated to Zeus. They have the right to ordain kings. The tale of Oedipus and the Sphinx is just a garbled retelling of the priestly rites by which he was crowned.’

  Eurybates looks a little disappointed, but I’m happy with the explanation.

  Athena leans forward: ‘So, Tiresias got his way. Oedipus wed Jocasta, not knowing she was his mother, and thinking only that the throne was rightfully his, by ordination of the Sphinxes.’

  ‘Just as Tiresias intended,’ Bria growls. ‘That priapus has meddled in more lives than just your sister’s, Ithaca.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Athena agrees. ‘Oedipus was only eighteen, and Jocasta nearly forty, but they’d had four children by the time she worked out the incestuous truth – or was told it by Tiresias – and hung herself.’

  ‘Was it a genuine prophecy that Oedipus’s father heard?’ I wonder. ‘Because it did come true.’

  ‘It was given to him by Tiresias,’ Athena replies, with a grim smile. ‘The reality is, this whole business was a game Tiresias contrived on behalf of his patron Apollo. When Oedipus proved less amenable to Tiresias’s control than the seer had hoped, Tiresias revealed Oedipus’s incest and brought him down, then made his friend Creon regent while raising Oedipus’s and Jocasta’s sons to be his puppets, knowing he could use their prestige and theios powers as descendants of Cadmus. This way, he could continue to control Cadmus’s line.’

  ‘What was Oedipus like?’ I ask.

  ‘He was, for all his faults, a decent man; in grief at all he’d done, he blinded himself – or someone did it for him, I suspect. No prizes for guessing who. Either way he had to abdicate and go into exile. Theseus took him in but he didn’t last long, poor sod. As for Oedipus’s sons, when they became too headstrong for Tiresias’s taste, he engineered an agreement that the two boys shared the kingship by ruling for alternate years, a deliberately foolish arrangement designed to create division between the brothers which Tiresias could exploit. When Eteocles – the older by a few hours – refused to step down and allow Polynices to take his turn, the whole kingdom erupted into chaos.’

  ‘So Polynices fled to Argos,’ says Bria, picking up the tale, ‘married into the Argive royal family, and eventually persuaded the Seven to march on Thebes, as we all know. Tiresias and Creon secretly encouraged Polynices while appearing to back Eteocles. They sat watching on the walls of Thebes as the twins slaughtered each other in the battle that nearly annihilated the Argives.’

  ‘Creon and Tiresias were in harness from the start,’ I mutter.

  ‘Of course,’ Athena replies. ‘But they had intended Polynices to live, being the more easily led of the brothers. In that sense their plan failed. After the battle, Creon, with Tiresias at his elbow, resumed the throne as regent for Eteocles’s son Laodamas, who was still a child.’

  ‘And who also could be controlled,’ I put in, ‘but Laodamas has now come of age and he’s been crowned. Is there any friction between him and Creon that we can exploit?’

  Athena shakes her head. ‘Laodamas is a mighty warrior, but politics and administration bore him witless. So he’s more than happy to let Tiresias and Creon do the real ruling, while he hunts and feasts. Those two schemers are as powerful as ever.’ She fixes her cool grey eyes on Diomedes. ‘Thebes is strong. What can you offer to defeat them, son of Tydeus? Can the sons of the Seven, the Epigoni, do what their fathers failed to accomplish?’

  ‘My father succumbed to wrath, Lady,’ Diomedes mutters, bowing his head. ‘I will not fail you, as he did.’

  I look at Athena. ‘What’s he talking about?’ I say, because I’m unsure of the full story, and while I don’t want to humiliate Diomedes, if we’re going into battle together, I want to know exactly what his father did, and whether we’re likely to see a repeat performance from the son.

  The goddess’s face hardens. ‘Some acolytes of Ares teach that cannibalism makes his theioi invincible. It’s barbaric nonsense, but when the battle turned against the Seven, Tydeus – my champion – hearkened to it and hacked open the skull of Melanippus, a Theban theios, and ate his brains. All that did was make him vomit, and soon after he was cut down. Ares has crowed about my faithless champions ever since.’

  So the hints about Tydeus’s end were true… I’m sickened – and so, visibly, is Diomedes, even though he must already know the tale well. But something as hideous as that can never lose its power to appal.

  ‘I will never let you down,’ he vows, so earnestly I’m surprised the Fates don’t appear to record his words.

  We others fall silent, awkward with embarrassment, bar Athena who sits there calmly, her hands clasped in her lap. I feel for Diomedes – people, even myself, are prone to believing that sons have the same flaws as their fathers. But how often has Athena rubbed his father’s madness in his face?

  Finally Eurybates speaks up. ‘What is the strength of the Epigoni?’ he asks.

  Diomedes collects himself. ‘The sons of the Seven are now grown to manhood: we’re all hardened warriors.’

  Really? I’m struggling to keep a straight face. What battles have they hardened themselves with? Tournaments at provincial games? Fantasies played out in their own minds?

  ‘Adrastus, our king, is committed to our cause,’ Diomedes continues, ‘and our war-bands have recovered their strength.’ He slams his fist down on his knee. ‘We have never been more ready than now!’

  ‘Your numbers?’ Eurybates persists.

  Diomedes’s jaw clenches. ‘We each command thousands!’

  ‘How many thousands? Ten? Twenty?’

  ‘More! Many more!’ Diomedes shouts.

  ‘Really?’ says Athena, her voice icy.

  Diomedes gives her a miserable look, like a puppy that’s been kicked. ‘Well, maybe around, um… Well, I know of at least five thousand…’

  Only five? That’s even worse than I expected. And I’m supposed to support this attack?

  ‘Thebes has a standing army of twice that number,’ Eurybates says, looking to me for support.

  ‘It’s so,’ I confirm, trying to keep my alarm from my voice. ‘I’m friends with Menelaus, the Prince of Mycenae. His brother Agamemnon’s spies reckon the Theban walls are defended by over ten thousand men. What I’ve always been taught is that, when assaulting a major fortification, you’re best to outnumber the defenders by two to one. In this case, the ratio is reversed.’

  Diomedes looks like he wants to punch me. ‘Every one of our men is worth ten of the foe!’

  ‘They’ll have to be,’ I drawl. ‘What allies can the Epigoni draw on?’

  ‘Before this new prophecy of Arnacia’s, none,’ Athena replies. ‘No one wanted to join a doomed expedition.’

  ‘But now we know the expedition isn’t doomed.’

  ‘Mightn’t be doomed,’ Bria corrects. ‘The prophecy exhorts you to march – it doesn’t guarantee victory.’

  That, unfortunately, is true.

  ‘Right now,’ Bria goes on, ‘the only ones, bar ourselves, who know the details of Arnacia’s prophecy are the key people at Delos, Thebes and Troy. They’re not going to tell anyone outside their tight little circle, and they’ll be at pains to discredit anything we say about it.’ She leans forward excitedly. ‘But perhaps we might share this titbit with Hera’s people at Pytho. They’ll tell Agamemnon and that might persuade him to aid us?’

  ‘I could talk to Menelaus,’ I put in. ‘Agamemnon listens to him.’

  ‘Mycenae
worships Hera as their patron,’ Athena muses, ‘and her prophetess in Pytho has recently reiterated the conventional prophecy about Theban invincibility. They might be curious as to why this girl Arnacia says otherwise, but they will trust their own oracle. And they certainly won’t trust you,’ she adds, pointing her finger at me.

  It was Pytho that revealed my parentage and then set out to kill me last year. I suspect she’s right. ‘But surely Agamemnon would like to see Thebes brought low?’

  ‘He’d love to – but will he risk troops?’ Athena asks gloomily. ‘I doubt it. The Epigoni are on their own in this. No one else will risk the consequences of failure. King Piri-Yamu of Troy has a long memory for slights, and they won’t want to be on his execution list if and when he invades.’

  We all fall silent. Then Diomedes asks, ‘But Great Queen, surely Attica will side with my people? Isn’t the King of Athens one of your theioi?’

  Athena doesn’t reply immediately. ‘Attica daren’t involve herself in a war with her next-door neighbour,’ she says at last. ‘She is still weak from internal conflicts. I would it were otherwise, but I’d be a fool to risk it.’

  When Attica is her only real power base. Her decision is disappointing, but understandable.

  Diomedes bows his head. ‘I hear you, Great Queen.’

  We spend a further moment contemplating the ridiculous task we’ve set ourselves. Eurybates, once again, is the first to speak. ‘There’s something else I don’t understand about the tales of the Seven. Was not a robe or a necklace used to bribe one of the Seven into going to war?’

  Athena becomes grim-faced. ‘I said earlier that this all began with Oedipus, but I could take it back further. In earlier generations Aphrodite’s cult was aligned to that of Hephaestus, the God of Metalwork – hence their so-called ‘marriage’. But as his importance has waned, her cult has shifted alliance to Ares. Once, her priests praised Hephaestus: in their odes he was straight and fair, and Ares was a bloody-handed butcher. But gradually the tales have changed; now the Smith is spoken of as a cuckolded cripple, and it’s glorious Ares that Aphrodite lusts for.’

  The story of the adultery of Aphrodite and Ares is another popular trope for the bards, complete with ribald asides and thigh-slapping jokes. Especially when Hephaestus traps them both, in a state of what could politely be called physical concupiscence, in a golden net. But now I can see the sinister side to such tales. Ares and Aphrodite are in Zeus’s camp, seeking to become deities of both Troy and Achaea, while Hephaestus is another Achaean god struggling to stay relevant and alive.

  ‘Do you think Ares and Aphrodite will someday wipe out Hephaestus’s worship?’ I ask.

  ‘Quite possibly,’ Athena replies. ‘But for now, he’s still the Clamshell’s “husband”. He wants her back – or more accurately, he wants to be the great power he was when they were united, and knowledge and artifice were esteemed higher than warfare.’ Athena grimaces. ‘I have some sympathy, and indeed he’s proposed uniting his cult to mine. But I’ll not tie myself to a dying god.’

  There’s more to this than she’s letting on. There’s a tavern tale that the Smith tried to rape her. Given we’re talking about disembodied spirits, I’m not sure that’s possible. Though, if his avatar assailed hers…

  Athena looks directly at me, seeming to read my thoughts. ‘That didn’t happen. Not in that way. He sought alliance, I refused. The rest is propaganda.’

  How did she know what I was thinking? What else can she perceive? I hide my alarm behind a bland expression.

  Ignoring the mystified looks on the others’ faces – except Bria who smiles wryly – Athena goes on. ‘To answer Eurybates’s question, some generations ago, Hephaestus gave the Clamshell a necklace and a robe, containing a binding curse, and—’

  ‘My pardon, Lady’ Eurybates interrupts, ‘What do you mean by a “binding curse”?’

  Athena pauses imperiously, but she answers the question. ‘A binding curse is one that’s formed by tying a malignant spirit to a person, place or object, so that whoever possesses it is beset by misfortune,’ she explains. ‘They’re notoriously hard to create and destroy, but a trained mind can detect and avoid them. Hephaestus thought to trick Aphrodite by creating a pair of cursed artefacts – the robe and the necklace. They’re benign and undetectable when together, but malignant when separated. By presenting them together, temporarily inactive, he hoped to fool her, knowing her fickleness when it came to possessions – the two were bound to be separated. And fool her he did. But unexpectedly, she gave them both to her daughter by Ares, Harmonia.’

  ‘And therefore a powerful theia?’ Eurybates asks.

  ‘Exactly. She was engaged to marry one of their servants, Cadmus, King of Thebes, Oedipus’s great-great-grandfather. It seemed a glorious wedding gift, but gradually, as the two gifts were occasionally worn separately, misfortunes began to beset Harmonia, and all her descendants who possessed them.’

  ‘Oedipus’s mother Jocasta first wore the necklace without the gown the day she hung herself,’ Bria adds. ‘After that they were both put aside, heirlooms that no one felt comfortable to be around. A few of us theioi deduced their real nature.’

  ‘Polynices should have heeded those tales,’ Athena replies. ‘When his uncle Amphiaraus wavered over joining the Seven and their campaign, Aphrodite commanded Polynices to give the necklace to Eriphyle, Amphiaraus’s wife, if she persuaded her husband to join the attack. Polynices and Eriphyle were having an affair, and the Clamshell convinced them both that if Amphiaraus died, they’d be free to wed.’

  Diomedes stared. ‘I’d not heard that.’

  ‘Your father may have guessed,’ Athena told him. ‘And the Clamshell was right about Amphiaraus dying – she just neglected to mention that almost everyone else would die as well, including that poor fool Polynices. It was her pawn, Creon, along with Tiresias, who was victorious once again.’

  ‘What happened to the necklace?’ I ask.

  ‘Eriphyle still has it, though I believe she no longer wears it,’ Athena replies. ‘Even so, she still has great influence among the Epigoni, despite losing her husband and her lover in that war.’

  I’m about to question her about the robe and its whereabouts, when Diomedes butts in. ‘Alcmaeon must be told,’ he says, his voice harsh with anger. ‘He worships the memory of his father Amphiaraus. He will be appalled at his mother’s infidelity.’

  ‘I command you not to tell him,’ Athena glares. ‘Your numbers are few enough without being torn apart by an old crime.’

  ‘But she plotted with our enemies—’

  ‘No. She was duped by them – it’s not the same thing,’ Athena snaps. ‘Keep this quiet, and be wary: the necklace may still be in play. These artefacts have a way of reappearing when least wanted.’ She sighs heavily, and her face flickers momentarily back to the wizened visage of old Teliope, the avatar – possessing an avatar is tiring and difficult. But then Athena reasserts herself and her divine visage reappears. ‘Go across to Argos, and gather the Epigoni together. Tell them of Arnacia’s prophecy and persuade them to fight. Control them. Lead them. Take victory if victory is possible – but if all falls apart, abandon them. Am I understood?’

  Diomedes looks aghast. ‘My place is with my kin, in victory or defeat.’

  ‘Not since you swore to me,’ Athena says coldly. ‘I do not squander my assets.’

  Assets? I wonder when some of the scales will start to drop from his eyes, after hearing such words on her lips. Watch and learn, Diomedes, I think. This is her true nature – and she’s the most enlightened of the gods.

  But this meeting is over, as Teliope has reached the end of her strength. The goddess exhales – a long, gusting sigh that seems to take away some of her substance – and then she’s an ashen-faced Teliope again, sagging with exhaustion.

  Bria goes to aid the avatar, while Diomedes leaps to his feet, as if he would start running over to Argos right now if he could. I look across at Eurybates. We’re
so mentally attuned that I know he thinks the same as me: this has all the makings of another catastrophe.

  10 – The Epigoni

  ‘And you also, unfortunate Jocasta, had possession of the gorgeous, impious thing, and adorned your visage with its glory – alas, oh woe, on what a couch to give pleasure … [Eriphyle], wife of the vanquished seer, saw it, and at every altar and every banquet nurtured a secret, ferocious envy, if only someday she might claim the fell jewel.

  Alas, she profited not a whit from the auguries so close at hand.’

  —Statius, Thebaid 2

  Argos, Peloponnese

  Two days later, Diomedes, Bria, Eurybates and I are in Argos, seeking an audience with King Adrastus, the last of the doomed Seven. Apart from Diomedes, who’s arrived with full fanfare, we’ve approached the king on the quiet, and as far as we know, no one outside his inner circle knows we’re here.

  There will be spies – that’s inevitable – and if Tiresias has discovered we know Arnacia’s prophecy, he may well have guessed where we are by now. Nonetheless we’re being very, very careful to conceal our presence.

  After an exchange of clandestine messages, we’re finally admitted, at almost midnight on the second day after arriving in the city, into the august presence of King Adrastus. Guards are stationed outside the megaron, the great ceremonial throne room. We give them a prearranged password and enter an echoing space, dark but for a few lamps. I can barely make out the riotous paintings of fantastical animals, sea creatures, medallions, scrolls and squares full of swirling patterns that festoon the walls, ceiling and floor. I think of our own plain plastered walls back in Ithaca with a pang of homesickness.

  The Epigoni or ‘Offspring’ are standing in a half-circle around the throne, on the far side of the great, pillared hearth. Behind them cluster the king’s other champions: a dozen theioi sworn, so Diomedes has told us, to a mix of Hera, Hermes and Poseidon, Achaean gods all. There’s even a couple who follow Athena, men I’ve not yet met, who greet Bria like a revered and intimidating older sister.