by D. S. Murphy
“Isn’t it?” I asked. “I mean, I have the Fates’ powers, right? Isn’t there something I can do?”
“We don’t yet understand your powers, or what you’re capable of,” Able said. “You can see the threads and effect their bearers, like what you did in this very room to Mist. That alone makes you dangerous, and useful. But we still don’t know if you can actually use the shears to sever a thread – we need to test that first.”
“Test it? How?”
“You’ll have to cut the thread of something powerful.”
“You mean someone, don’t you?” I said, crossing my arms. “Can we leave the murder for after breakfast at least?”
“And then, we need to strengthen your resolve,” Able continued, ignoring me. “So you won’t miss the next opportunity you’re presented with, assuming we ever get another chance.”
“What about Zeus’s spell?” I asked, changing the subject. “How do we break it – he said it was Mesopotamian. Shouldn’t we start there?”
Able frowned and rubbed his hands together. “Stephanie is looking for a way to break the spell. Although, the easier thing would be to remove the problem.”
Blood drained from my face. Remove the problem. Somehow I knew he was talking about Sitri.
“Don’t you dare. I want to find a way to save them, not kill them. If anything happens to Sitri, accidental or otherwise, I’m done.”
“It won’t matter if we wait too long,” Stephanie said, with an infuriating shrug. “Humans die so quickly anyway.”
“But that’s no reason to hurry,” Able cautioned. “Zeus is counting on you to panic, to make foolish decisions, to rush back into battle, unprepared and ill-equipped. That, I cannot allow. You will not leave Nevah again without my permission, is that understood?”
I smirked. I basically grew up without a father figure; it was the first time someone had ever tried to ground me.
“Fine, whatever,” I frowned.
“Was there something else?” Stephanie asked.
I wanted to be angry at Able for punishing Sitri, and making him sleep outside, when it totally wasn’t his fault. But defending him now would show how much I cared about him, and I didn’t want to make things worse.
Instead I headed down to the training barracks. If Able wanted me to train, at least I could blow off some steam. It was already busy. I brought my sword this time, the short dagger with the ruby and the twisting serpents, but the trainer handed me a wooden sword instead. Even that was virtually useless in my hands. The extent of my training so far had been “shoot, then stab.” There were kids at Nevah who could fence circles around me, and they did. An hour later I was bruised and sweating. I’d been smacked by wooden swords so often my limbs felt numb.
I could block a few moves before someone dealt me a killing blow, but my attacks were too slow and clumsy. The only way I could win a real fight was to cheat. I was supposed to be Able’s secret weapon, and I was getting destroyed. Everyone here was better than me.
Finally I gave up and decided to use my power. I would simply pinch my opponent’s thread – gently, but firmly – rendering them immobile. Then I’d move in for a kill strike. I felt bad at first, it seemed so unfair, but I saw other kids using their powers as well.
Plus, I realized, there was some kind of competition going on. After each match, the winners would move up and face each other. After a few winning bouts, I moved from the beginner’s mat, a sky blue color, to one that was bright red and much larger. The opponents got meaner and tougher. I felt guilty using my trick instead of doing any real fighting, but I’d already taken so much abuse I could barely lift my sword. In the beginning, I’d at least pretended to try for a while even though I could quickly end the match, but when facing someone twice my size, letting them land even one blow seemed dangerous.
Despite my cowardice, a crowd grew in size along with my opponents. Eventually I was moved outside to fight some of the more advanced players, and I noticed half the training hall followed outside to watch. Instead of a colored mat, the new arena was the round space in front of the moon-shaped amphitheater. I spotted Curt and Chiron on the opposing side, rubbing chalk into their palms. I was confused at first about which one I was facing, when they both picked up their weapons. Two centaurs, on a team. Against me. Curt smiled and beat his sword against his shield. Chiron pulled back the bow of his arrow.
I lifted a shield just in time, and heard two arrows sink into the wood. The force made me stumble backward. Holy shit. This was getting dangerous. I was pretty sure Chiron wouldn’t accidentally shoot me. On the other hand, he was thousands of years old, and we had state of the art healing at Nevah. Who knew what he would or wouldn’t do. Each time I tried to poke my head out, another arrow hit my shield. Chiron kept me pinned down with his bow and arrow, while Curt charged forward, wielding a sword in each hand. They planned to end this quickly. In a real battle, I’d probably be dead already. I grabbed Chiron’s thread with one hand, which stopped the shower of arrows, but realized too late I was now completely defenseless.
Previously, I’d just pinched the string with one hand and stabbed with the other. But that wasn’t going to work against two opponents. As Curt came rushing at me I panicked, dropping my sword and reaching for his string with my other hand – but he was moving too quickly, and his sword looked really sharp. I ducked into a roll, hitting the ground hard, barely keeping my fist clenched around Chiron’s thread. I could feel him resisting my grasp; it felt like I was holding a live bee. He was powerful, and I knew I couldn’t hold him for long. My arm started to tremble with exertion.
I spun around and reached for Curt’s thread as he came around for another pass, halting his momentum. He raised up on his hind legs, grasping at his throat as I pulled his thread backward. I’d stopped the immediate threat, but now both my hands were full and my sword was lying several feet away. I sat on my fists in the dirt, refusing to give up the advantage, but after a few minutes I was trembling and dripping with sweat. Finally I let both threads go and lay back with my arms extended, gasping for breath and utterly exposed. Curt came up next to me and planted a sword in the dirt near my neck. Then he reached down and offered me a hand up.
“Nice match, sister. I’ve been clotheslined before, but never quite like that.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “did it hurt?”
“Only my pride,” he said. “We all use our gifts to press for an advantage. Don’t feel sorry for your enemies. Win by whatever means necessary.”
That reminded me of something Heph said, and I remembered his trick with the super magnet installed on the wall of the armory. Still, I wasn’t proud that my only move seemed so underhanded. Jessie brought me a can of lemon soda, and I spotted Sarah behind her on the steps of the amphitheater, along with a sizable crowd.
“You were watching?” I asked, wiping the sweat off my brow and leaving a streak of dirt across my forehead.
“Are you kidding? My best friend fighting two centaurs? Highlight of my week.”
“Thanks,” I grinned. It was nice to see Jessie almost herself again. I rolled the ice-cold can over the back of my neck to cool down, then popped the tab and drank it greedily.
“So now what?” Jessie asked.
“I lost,” I said. “I think that means I can take a break, since I’m no longer in rotation. Let’s go see if Heph has any junk for us.”
“About damn time,” Jessie said, her eyes lighting up. “Who needs to fight when you’ve got sorcery?”
We found Maddie first, then headed for the workshop together. Heph was wearing large goggles and welding joints together for some kind of battle ax. Jessie paused at the door, her eyes going soft at the sight of Heph’s glistening abs. He often worked without his shirt on, in the heat of the fire. It was funny to think of him as the runt of the litter, whom Hera had disowned for being marginally crippled.
“Sam said to ask you about a junk pile,” I said, once he noticed us and pulled off his protective gear
.
“Anything you’re not using,” Maddie added.
“What for?” he asked.
“Maybe the seekers can squeeze some magic from your discard pile,” I said.
“Maybe they can,” Heph said, looking thoughtful and rubbing his soft beard with one hand. “I make gear and weapons that enhance natural abilities. There’s so much energy at Nevah that even useless scraps probably hold more magic than they’re used to seeing. You’re welcome to poke around in storage as well.”
“Also, can you put a shirt on or something?” Jessie said. “Not everyone is used to hanging out with divine specimens.” His eyes widened, and then he grinned, pulling on a light sweater that clung to his form.
He led us around back, to a chained cellar door. It groaned as undid the chains and swung it open. A set of wide marble stairs led downwards. I was expecting a basement, but this place was like a mausoleum. Heph lit a few torches and handed one to each of us. The hallway was wide enough for us to walk side by side, but in some places it was completely blocked by cobwebs. Heph thrust the torch forward to burn them away. Sarah held back, as dark shapes skittered into the corners, and I grabbed her hand.
“Here it is,” Heph said, unlocking another door. He gestured into the room. Shiny bits of metal fragments made waist-high piles. “All the best weapons and armor we keep in the armory. Any leftover bits or scraps I toss down here. It’s mostly scrap metal and junk.”
Maddie’s eyes lit up.
“One man’s garbage is another woman’s treasure,” she said. The room was large as a basketball court, but made of massive stones and arched ceilings.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing further down the hall. Rows of doorways lined the passage, each marked by a life-size statue. They looked like the statues in the room with the glowing family tree upstairs.
“Storage chambers,” Heph said. “One for each of us.”
“What’s in them?” Jessie said.
“Votives, mostly.” I frowned in confusion, and Heph explained.
“Each of us had thousands of temples, grottos, and sacred places throughout the ancient world. As people started turning away from the old gods, and towards Zeus’s monotheism – his followers raided the temples, and melted everything down to decorate his churches.”
“We grabbed what we could before leaving for here. People would travel from all over to present offerings to the gods and goddesses. We don’t really have any need for it, but we didn’t want to just give it away, either, or let it be desecrated by Zeus’s followers. It reminds of an earlier time, when we were loved. When humans worshipped us and believed in us.”
“Can we look?” Sarah asked. Heph frowned thoughtfully.
“I don’t think anyone has been down here in centuries. And there’s probably not much magic you can use. But this stuff, it’s personal, almost like a diary. I think you’d better get permission from the others before rooting around in their stuff.”
“But,” he said, pulling out a large bronze key.
“I can give you access to mine. I attracted a unique brand of zealot. The visionaries, the inventors. Often they’d leave mockups of their projects, but a lot of them were half baked ideas, and they were actually praying for inspiration or that missing link to complete it... unfortunately most of them were hoping for magic to fill in the blanks that science couldn’t – I helped where I could.”
“I can also give you access to Tori’s chamber,” he said. “We are married after all, and I’m pretty sure she won’t mind. But don’t touch anything, just to be safe. I don’t know what’s in there. Tori’s followers were more dangerous. Love will make people do crazy things.”
I didn’t know what we were looking for, so I drifted aimlessly among the piles in Heph’s room – a lot of ancient manuscripts and scrolls I was afraid to even touch, for fear they’d crumble into dust. There were tall shelves of books, and utensils that looked like a chemistry set; silver and polished glasses, tubes and fans and wheels. I picked up a small winged sculpture that looked like an airplane, complete with a cockpit.
“Some kid left that for me in 300 BC,” Heph smiled. “Ahead of his time, I guess.”
Maddie poked around with a tool that looked like a dowsing rod, and tried on a large monocle that made her eye seem huge, but then she headed back to the first room with Able’s scrap heap.
Jessie was still looking through the books in Heph’s room when Sarah and I entered Tori’s chamber. Unlike Heph’s, which was sparse and bare – truly a storage room – Tori’s was decorated with wide swaths of purple fabric hanging from the ceiling, leather couches and fake ferns. Leopard skin rugs covered the floor, at least what I could see of it. The rest of the room was filled with little sculptures of men and women, and thousands of small scrolls tied with string. Most were naked, and some of the couples were openly pornographic. I tried to cover Sarah’s eyes but she shoved my hand away.
“These look ancient,” I said, picking one up. “How did they survive?”
“I built a mechanism to regulate the air and temperate. Plus, I think being in Nevah has an anti-aging effect; there’s so much power, even inanimate objects age well. I remember Dion being frustrated about it. When we first got here he planted acres of grapes, brewed his first batch and left it down here in his storage room for nearly a century.”
“What happened?” Sarah asked.
“Nothing – the wine tasted as fresh as the day he’d made it. It really pissed him off. Now he just imports European vintage.”
On a table in the back were piles of the small dolls. Some had painted faces, but most were little more than a stick with eyes, and a note tied around it with a bit of string.
“What are all these?” I asked.
“Love potions mainly, and spells.”
“I thought the gods didn’t use magic?” I asked.
“They don’t, but their followers do. Religion wasn’t the same then as it is today. In the old days, people supplicated the gods for favors. They left offerings to get our attention: to save their crop or business; to heal their loved ones; to increase their knowledge, skill or ability. People prayed for things they wanted. And they bartered with something of value, something they cared about.”
“The bigger the sacrifice, the bigger the magic,” I said, remembering the well. Only those who live without can look within.
“What’s the one thing every human wants, more than anything else?” Heph asked. “To be loved. Tori’s temples would fill up with notes and spells like this, almost monthly. She only kept the ones that moved her, or tickled her fancy. She used to read the funny ones to us at dinner.”
I moved deeper into the room, towards a dark corner. It seemed to resist my vision, getting darker as I approached, and the space bloomed outwards deceptively. The hairs on my arms stood up, and I shivered. Sarah froze next to me.
“You feel that?” I asked.
She nodded silently, fixing me with her large eyes. There was magic here. But it was old, and like nothing I’d ever felt. It tasted like bitter tears and lost hope. I unfocused my eyes, even though I knew there couldn’t be any threads down here, not of anything living at least.
But there was a subtle glow among the pile. I reached deeper and pulled out an onyx statue, rimmed with gold paint. It was more refined than most of the others, a young man it looked like. Some kind of hieroglyphs were carved across his chest and torso, they almost reminded me of Puriel’s marks. A tight red cord was wrapped so tightly around the statue, covering so much of the surface, it looked almost like a little mummy. When I picked it up, I could feel the magic, like ants crawling over my wrist.
Somehow I knew it was what I was looking for. I didn’t know why, but I couldn’t let it go. There were other statues I realized, bound like this in knotted threads. Some were older, and the thread was broken off, or just a few wisps of frayed string left in the deep grooves, etched into the figurines.
“What’s this say?” I asked Heph, holding up t
he statue.
“Hold on, it’s been awhile. Egyptian. Coptic, I think. It’s a love spell.”
He brought it out into the hall for more light, mumbled the words in the original language one time, then translated it slowly into English.
“Needle in the flame, needle in the fire, pierce his thoughts, make him writhe, agonize his heart if he turns from me. I to you, you to me, Fate has linked our destiny. I bind you to my heart, faithful you will be. You will love none other, I bind you to me.”
6
I shuddered, and crossed my arms, suddenly feeling cold in the underground chamber. That wasn’t a love spell, it was a curse. But the idea of it, a binding spell, was similar to what Zeus had me do with the braided hair and the apple. I grabbed the black statue and the parchment, and ran down the hall to show Jessie.
“I thought you said he learned it in Mesopotamia?” she said, inspecting the hieroglyphs on the onyx statue.
“Yeah, but string, binding, fate? It has to be similar, related even – maybe someone knows this kind of magic.”
“You should ask Maddie,” Jessie said, handing the statue back to me. I frowned, clutching the statue. Jessie was the only one outside the family that knew about the binding spell, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to extend the secret to a wider circle – especially with Sarah so close by. But I needed help, so I decided to ask Maddie without filling her in on all the details. I found her half buried in a pile of metal scraps; she’d already piled a sizable stack of junk near the door.
“Do you know what this is?” I asked, holding up the doll. I had Heph recite the words again, memorizing them this time, as Maddie ran her fingers over the etched hieroglyphs.
“It looks like a voodoo doll. You make an effigy, and instead of sticking pins in it, you tie a string around it and whisper some words. It’s mostly superstition.”
“You mean it doesn’t work?” I asked.
“Here’s the thing,” Maddie said. “Seekers look for magical objects; we take that power and harness it, and use it for novel applications. But without skills and training, it’s hard to track down rare artifacts. Most people rely on the hope and wish kind of spirituality – like tossing a coin into a well. It probably won’t work, because there’s no real magic, except the ritual concentrates our attention. Human beings have tiny concentrations of organic energy, not quite magic in itself, but if we focus it on one clear objective, with repetition and force of will, sometimes it’s enough. That’s why early spells just used knots and rope; later that tradition became the beads of a rosary. If this energy is concentrated and harnessed, especially among large communities, it can be enough to effect real change; but it’s unreliable and a ton of effort.”