Oracle's War

by Oracle's War (retail) (epub)

  We remove our cloaks by the door, along with the brimmed hats that have shadowed our faces and hidden our hair, mine once again a blazing red thanks to some vinegar and hot water. A guard leads us across the painted plaster floor, to be announced before King Adrastus, a greybeard with a stocky figure softening in the middle and a crippled foot, a legacy of the Theban battle.

  ‘Greetings, in the name of the Seven,’ Adrastus says in reply. His voice has a haunted quality, and I immediately sense unresolved guilt.

  He’s the only survivor when all his brothers in arms perished. Every night he wonders why…

  Adrastus indicates a sturdy, younger version of himself. ‘This is Aegialaus, my son and heir.’

  Aegialaus gives Bria and me a peremptory nod, not bothering to acknowledge Eurybates – the keryx is only a servant in his eyes. ‘I greet you, as the eldest here, after my father,’ the young man proclaims, earning sideways glances from the others. Being oldest, being strongest, being fastest, being ‘best’ – it clearly matters keenly to all of the Epigoni, but especially to him.

  The young man standing beside Aegialaus half raises a hand in diffident greeting. He’s lean and tall, and his nervous air makes him seem even younger than he must be. ‘I am Prince Thersander,’ he states, ‘son of King Polynices. Thebes is my birthright.’ His words carry an edge of bravado, but his whole body is suffused with the tension of a man perpetually ready to block a blow. Already I can tell there’s enmity between him and Aegialaus – I’m guessing that Aegialaus’s proclamation that he’s the eldest of their generation was mostly aimed at him.

  Rivalries, unresolved guilt… Great.

  The next three Epigoni in the circle – Euryalus, Promachus and Sthenelus – all bark out their names and proclaim themselves ready and willing to take back Thebes or die trying. All are theioi, of course, and have the arrogance of men who know they’re better than the rest of mankind.

  ‘And I’m Alcmaeon,’ the dark-haired man on Adrastus’s left says. I see immediately why Athena warned about keeping him ignorant of his mother’s infidelity: he’s a seething piece of young manhood, but cold and dark where the others seem to be firebrands. He claps a similar looking man beside him on the shoulder, with long black hair and intense green eyes. ‘This is my brother Amphilochus. If you’re another set of liars trying to provoke us into a suicidal war, I’ll cut your tongues out.’

  The other Epigoni assure us, like the chorus line at a religious festival, that they will flay us, burn us or disembowel us, if we speak false.

  If Alcmaeon is the ‘Charioteer’ of Arnacia’s prophecy, it doesn’t look like we’ll be marching anywhere. That comment about ‘suicidal war’ makes his position very clear.

  But his hatred for Thebes, unspoken though it is, is also palpable. Regardless, it feels like we’re stepping into the middle of a clan feud.

  I look around, measuring faces, and suddenly realize there’s a woman present – she’s sitting against the wall where she can see and hear everything, and she’s clad in plain widow’s white… except for a rather lovely gold necklace clustered with small beads of blue lapis lazuli. She has to be the dowager, Eriphyle, thin as a reed, with a severe face and hair corded tightly into greying braids wrapped round her head. Yet there’s a curious aura of youth and beauty about her that compels the eye – a need to glance at her, and then gaze.

  ‘Eriphyle,’ Bria greets her coldly. ‘I’m surprised you have the gall to wear that thing here.’

  I catch my breath as I realize Bria’s meaning: it’s the necklace, the cursed necklace of Harmonia, wrought by Hephaestus for Aphrodite. So Athena was wrong about Eriphyle putting the necklace aside. It’s truly beautiful, but why is she wearing it? Does she know it’s cursed? And is its curse active here?

  Alcmaeon rises to his mother’s defence. ‘My mother is our soul,’ he snarls. ‘Speak another word against her and I’ll take my blade to you.’ The other Epigoni chorus agreement.

  That’s nice – chopping us up is the one thing they can agree on.

  Eriphyle glares back at Bria, her chin high. ‘Liars have come here before,’ she says, in a disdainful voice. ‘We’ve vowed to make short shrift of those that seek to mislead us again.’

  ‘Even if the long-awaited time for revenge has come?’ Bria asks, addressing Adrastus.

  ‘That time will never come,’ Alcmaeon snaps, echoed by his brother Amphilochus.

  ‘Aye, the prophecies say we’re doomed if we march,’ Thersander says. ‘Has anything changed?’ Despite his gloomy words, he’s watching us keenly. He really wants this war, just as his father craved the first one. He’s just afraid of losing it.

  ‘Nothing has changed,’ says Eriphyle. ‘What proofs can you offer that you’re not here to lure my beloved kindred into another trap?’

  Bria goes to reply, but Diomedes pre-empts her: ‘I was there when we hypnotized the seeress and heard her words. They are true prophecy, perhaps the only true words spoken by the seers on this matter. We, the Argives, have been lied to before, yes, but these people speak the truth. I will swear to their authenticity, in the name of Athena herself.’

  Bold words, from a young man who still doesn’t know Bria or me particularly well.

  ‘So why is this new prophecy not common knowledge?’ Alcmaeon demands.

  ‘The words are so dangerous to our enemies, they’ve conspired to keep them secret,’ Diomedes replies.

  They lean forward – even Eriphyle, her judgemental eyes darting to and fro – as Bria takes them through Arnacia’s secret prophecy and how we’ve interpreted it. I’m watching them all closely, seeing how many of these young men’s eyes light up at the exhortation to march on a secretly vulnerable Thebes.

  Bria leaves out Diomedes’s interpretation of the Charioteer, aware that Alcmaeon is utterly opposed to the whole expedition. We’re going to have to sneak up on that argument.

  ‘This woman claims you are the Man of Fire,’ Adrastus says to me. ‘Why?’

  In answer, I raise my left hand and let flames kindle on my fingertips; the Epigoni react with murmurs of interest, but all are theioi and have doubtless seen similar feats before. ‘My mother is descended from Hermes, who has an affinity to fire,’ I tell them, which is true – though it’s not the Messenger that gave me this power. I’d prefer my true connections aren’t known.

  If any present guess otherwise, they choose not to say.

  Alcmaeon has been constantly glancing at his mother Eriphyle – they all have. Is that the necklace’s influence? ‘What about the final stanza?’ he demands.

  Bria shakes her head at Diomedes – too late: ‘You are the Charioteer,’ he tells Alcmaeon eagerly. ‘If you lead us, the Epigoni will be victorious.’

  The megaron erupts with noise.

  ‘It’s my war!’ Thersander shouts. ‘Thebes belongs to me!’

  ‘I lead!’ Prince Aegialaus bellows. ‘I am eldest of my generation, and the only son of the King of Argos!’

  Euryalus, Promachus and Sthenelus join in, endorsing one claim or another. Even Diomedes is shouting about his own status. No wonder they’ve not managed to march yet – they can’t even agree on the basics.

  Then Eriphyle’s voice cuts through the babble, her tone cold, funereal. ‘My husband went to war on a promise of victory, only to die. Then we learnt the Seven were misled, that the oracles had said they were doomed to fail.’

  ‘But this new prophecy gives us hope,’ argues Diomedes.

  Alcmaeon scowls. ‘Hope will be the death of us.’

  ‘Our honour demands—’

  ‘Don’t give me “honour”,’ Alcmaeon roars, going face to face with Diomedes, their jutting chins almost touching. ‘The poorest man in Argos is happier than we are, because of this impossible task that “honour” demands of us! Better we forget this damnable duty and live, for our own children and the peace and prosperity of this kingdom.’

  I don’t like Alcmaeon, though barely two weeks ago I would have agreed wholehear
tedly with him on this. Laertes spent my early years teaching me that a strong peace is better than any war.

  But I also believe in Arnacia’s words. If we don’t destroy Thebes, the Thebans will open the doors to Troy, and the Achaea I know and love will cease to exist. And the biggest threat we face comes, not from the Thebans and their Trojan friends, but from the gods who manipulate and embolden them: Apollo, Aphrodite, Ares, great Zeus himself, who will exterminate anyone who threatens their dominance.

  Is Alcmaeon the right man to face up to the gods? Or even to lead this rabble?

  ‘For my part,’ I call out, ‘those words say that the Charioteer is a unifier, one who can drive the army forward.’ I have a loud voice, and when roused I can shout most men down.

  But they ignore me. Alcmaeon and his brother square off against Aegialaus, Thersander stamps his foot like a petulant boy and Adrastus just puts his head in his hands. I swear the king is on the verge of tears.

  All the while, Eriphyle sits against the wall like one of the Fates, the necklace gleaming at her throat, seemingly indifferent. It strikes me that this paralysis is not only what she wants, but what she’s engineered. She fears another disastrous war and wants the past buried – which, given her devious and underhand role in the previous campaign, is understandable. And there’s something else at play, some power emanating from her, that goes beyond the manipulative grasp an ageing matriarch can wield over her extended family…

  The necklace, no doubt.

  ‘Father?’ Aegialaus pleads to the shaking, silent king, ‘This is our war. My war! It’s my destiny to lead it!’

  Adrastus lifts his haunted, hopeless visage. I sense the struggle inside him; for ten years he’s been tormented by the guilt of outliving his friends and family, knowing that only by returning to Thebes will any of it be given meaning. But he fears he’s dooming the rest of his kindred to the same fate as his brothers and cousins.

  The princes see his irresolution and turn back to their own squabbling.

  ‘Thebes is mine!’ Thersander shrieks.

  ‘Yours?’ Aegialaus sneers. ‘Never! I lead! I’ll be first to break the gates of Thebes!’

  ‘Then you’ll be doing it on your own,’ Alcmaeon snarls, and stamps out.

  I turn to Bria. ‘Well, this is splendid,’ I say loudly. ‘No wonder their revenge on Thebes is going so well!’

  There’s a certain type of person for whom sarcasm can be an effective goad, challenging them to act better than they have been.

  Apparently no one like that is present here.

  But they do let us leave without flaying us alive…

  * * *

  Typically, instead of employing all the honest ways we could try to resolve this impasse, Bria suggests a dirty trick. Without a better suggestion, I go along with it – she’s going to do it anyway.

  Which is why, a few hours before dawn the following night, we’re grave robbing. The sky is black, strewn with stars, and we’re in an open field outside the walls, a commoners’ graveyard with stone grave markers, small stelae carved with figures in shallow relief or local Argive symbols I’m not familiar with. The graves have been hollowed out of the solid rock beneath, oblong cist tombs that mostly harbour bones and little more. Their covering slabs are pocked with little libation holes where offerings can be poured through, into the packed earth below.

  There’s nothing to differentiate the grave we’re plundering from a hundred others. But Bria is certain its stele marks the one we need. The only light is a faint oil lamp, mostly shielded from prying eyes by the covering slabs we’ve already pulled up, so only this grave is dimly lit. I’m currently five feet down inside the tomb and sweating heavily as I dig, while Bria keeps watch and criticizes my technique.

  Bria’s reasoning is this: Hephaestus gave Harmonia, bride of Cadmus, two great gifts, the robe and necklace. Together, they are benign. But separated, they’re malignant. Under the dreamlike logic of these things, the spirits that animate them won’t rest. They’re hateful things, and want to destroy any that use them, but they also want to be at peace.

  Bria says the robe is calling to the necklace – the cursed necklace around Eriphyle’s throat. If we bring them together, the malign influence of the necklace is neutralized, and the Epigoni will find harmony. And she says that the robe is in this grave. How she knows, I have no idea.

  How much of what we saw of Eriphyle was really her nature, and how much the curse, I wonder? I pick at the tale, trying to disentangle it and piece it together anew: ten years ago, the would-be King of Thebes, Polynices, gave his secret lover Eriphyle the necklace, and asked her to persuade her cuckolded husband to go to war. Both men died, but Eriphyle still lives, the dowager who controls the whole court from the shadows, and her son Alcmaeon in particular.

  Bria believes that Alcmaeon’s love will turn to hate if he learns of her past infidelities and manipulations; she says that, despite his feelings for Eriphyle, he reveres the memory of his father more.

  Amid this blended web of secrets and jealousies and betrayal, one fact stands out: Eriphyle is the key. We need her to change her mind, so she’ll persuade Alcmaeon to go to war. And to do that, Bria says we need the robe.

  ‘You’d better be right,’ I tell Bria, shovelling another clump of earth out of the hole. ‘What if it’s not in here?’

  She’s sitting cross-legged beside the defiled grave, her skirt barely covering her thighs – that’s deliberate. A few hours ago, she said if I can recover the robe, she’s going to kiss me senseless, as if that’s going to motivate me. Ever since then, she’s been quizzing me on my time among Dionysus’s maenads. I’m sensing jealousy.

  ‘When you came back from having fun that afternoon on Delos, you were floating on air,’ she teases. ‘Who was it? Come on, tell me!’

  ‘Blond girl, tall, curvy,’ I tell her, shovelling another spadesful and deliberately spraying her with dirt.

  ‘Not your type,’ Bria observes. She’s in just such a body right now. ‘Otherwise you’d be all over me.’

  ‘You are not my type,’ I remind her. ‘I’m agnostic on looks, as long as a girl seems interesting and fun.’

  ‘I’m lots of fun. Everyone knows that,’ she sniffs. ‘Was that Trojan princess among the maenads?’

  ‘Didn’t see her.’

  ‘Pah,’ she scowls. ‘If you’ve been screwing her, Athena’s going to string you up by the balls. And that’s nothing to what that Trojan bitch’s twin brother would do to you if he knew.’

  ‘I didn’t see Kyshanda,’ I reiterate.

  Bria wrinkles her nose. ‘You’re a useless liar, Ithaca.’

  ‘Remind me again why we’re plundering this particular grave?’

  Bria rolls her eyes. ‘Changing the subject, are we? And why, might I ask?’

  I keep digging.

  ‘Very well, Ithaca, have it your own way.’ She settles herself on the stele. ‘I heard that Jocasta, as a suicide, couldn’t be buried in the royal tombs at Thebes. But she couldn’t be buried anywhere else near Thebes either, because the graves of the rich attract grave robbers. So the Thebans called in an Egyptian embalmer who preserved her corpse and placed her in a wooden box – the type the Egyptians call a “mumia”. It was brought south when Polynices fled Thebes after his brother expelled him, and buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave – right here.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because I was his mistress at the time,’ Bria replies offhandedly.

  ‘Who? Polynices?’ I throw her a look. ‘How old are you?’

  ‘A lady never tells – and a gentleman never asks.’ She raps her fingers thoughtfully on the stele. ‘Polynices was an insecure, paranoid rat. But on the bright side, I was screwing Tydeus as well, and he was pleasingly randy. Good times.’

  ‘You slept with Diomedes’s father?’ This time I pause to stare. ‘Dear gods, you’re not his mother, are you?’

  ‘Now that would have been interesting. But no, Tydeus married Adras
tus’s daughter the moment the girl bled. He probably had to share the bed with her dolls, but it didn’t stop her popping out a son in double time.’

  I wrinkle my nose and accidentally fling more dirt at her. ‘Oops, sorry.’

  As I bury my shovel again, there’s a hollow thud. The bronze blade has hit something wooden. Bria gives an excited squeak and slithers into the grave to help me clear the lid.

  Those Achaeans who can’t afford chamber tombs just wrap a body in cloth, lay the grave goods around it and cover the whole lot with dirt. But the Egyptians have strange customs – Eurybates was born and raised there and has described how they desiccate their corpses somehow, and if someone’s rich, embalm them for eternity, placing the body in a wooden box. He tells ghost stories of souls trapped in bodies beneath the sands, preying on grave robbers centuries after they’re buried.

  So it’s not with great enthusiasm that I perch beside the lid. It’s relief-carved in the shape of a woman, and painted bright colours, the pigments disintegrating as the dirt eats them away. I give Bria a doubtful look as she holds the oil lamp overhead.

  I don’t like this, but I take my dagger from its sheath and prise open the lid…

  Nervous tension is not always wasted energy – it’s what powers your reactions when whatever you’re dreading comes to pass. As I pull the lid open, something moves inside. After that everything is a blur of reflex and terror.

  The head of a snake rears out of the wooden sarcophagus and flies at me – just as my dagger shoots upwards, slamming into the underside of the serpent’s head and punching right up through the brain pan.

  But the cursed thing won’t die. It’s twice as long as my body and it slams into me, coils thick as my thighs lashing around my legs as it hisses and snaps at my face, only kept at bay by the dagger through the head that should have killed the damned beast. I topple beneath its weight, managing somehow, with all my strength, to keep the coils from my throat, but they settle round my chest and squeeze. I gasp for help but Bria seems uncharacteristically frozen in shock.