by Judith Tarr
Timarete’s eyes were unreadable. “Come now. Into bed. This room is safe; there’s nothing to fear here. But don’t pass the door again until morning.”
A good part of Myrtale resisted. She was not a child any longer, to be ordered about so. But Timarete was wiser than she, and better trained, too—no matter whose fault that was.
Myrtale curled in the bed that was still warm from her aunt’s body, arms circling her middle, guarding the life that grew there. The walls enclosed a singing silence. Even the howl of the wind was faint and far away.
* * *
For once in her life, Timarete’s niece was choosing to be obedient. Timarete wondered if she should be suspicious. Probably; but she had more pressing concerns.
She laid words of guard on the door, strong enough that they left her dizzy and stumbling, but she found her feet again soon enough. She passed through the palace like a shadow and a shimmer, searching for the stench of the darker magics.
She found her fair share of those, but the youngest was a day and more old. More than one power had cast them, but they all had a scent of the witch whom she knew.
Erynna was not in the palace. If she was still in Pella, she had hidden herself well. That was no more than Myrtale had found, but Timarete looked farther and deeper than her niece had been able to.
By the time Timarete made her way back to the room in which she had left Myrtale, the palace was warded from top to bottom. A powerful blast of magic could still pierce those walls, but anything less would rebound like an arrow from a fortress wall.
She was lightheaded with exhaustion. That was a dangerous state to be in, but it was also a peculiarly magical one. If she could keep a grip on what strength and skill she had left, she might succeed in learning something she had not known before.
It was profoundly tempting to take that magic, find the enemy and wield it against her. But Timarete’s heart was uneasy. She had to be sure that Myrtale was safe—that nothing that could do her harm had hidden itself inside the wards.
Timarete could appreciate the irony of that. Time was when she would have been glad to have this troublesome child taken off her hands. But the call of blood was strong. She did not want to destroy the girl; only to keep her from destroying everyone else.
Myrtale was asleep, drawn into a knot under the coverlets of silk and fur. She had guardians: the largest house-snake Timarete had ever seen raised its head from beside Myrtale’s, eyes glittering in the lamplight. A second, much smaller and darker shape coiled against the girl’s back.
Timarete bowed to the Mother’s children. Nothing would touch Myrtale while they watched over her.
She stayed there nonetheless, sitting close by the brazier, drinking in its warmth. Visions woke in the coals, a world of shimmering fire that dissolved into chill reality.
Twenty-four
Winter broke with supernatural suddenness. One evening the cold rain fled before a colder blast of wind. The next morning the crack of cold gave way to a lingering warmth. By afternoon even the old folk who had shivered all winter beside the fire had put aside their swathings of wool and fur and hobbled out to bask in the sun.
Myrtale emerged with them, standing on the portico above the black and tumbled waters of the lake and letting the wind blow the darkness out of her spirit. No one came near her; at first she barely noticed, but as the wind died down and the warmth rose, she realized that everyone who had been coming and going down or through the portico had walked wide of her.
Her days of seclusion had done nothing to soften their hostility. Witch, they called her, not even trying to hide the signs and gestures against the evil eye. Whatever Erynna had done, they ascribed to Myrtale, and they hated her for it.
She stayed where she was, defiant at first, and then determined. They would come to see who had laid this curse on them, after Myrtale had dealt with it.
The child, who had been quiet within, stirred and kicked hard. She caught her breath and pressed her hand to her middle. For a long moment she floated with him in a warm, dim sea. The power that would fill him was not even a spark as yet, only a dream and a promise.
When she opened her eyes to the mortal world again, the sun was notably closer to the western horizon than it had been. The men she had seen departing from the palace were loping back in, flushed and filthy and full of their own splendor. Whatever they had been doing—running or fighting or racing with chariots—had pleased them well.
Those who caught her gaze on them turned away sharply; one or two even drew up a fold of mantle. Myrtale had vowed to herself that she would not give way to temper, but she had reached the edge of endurance.
She set herself in front of one who had tried to hide behind his cloak. He was a man of middle age, with grey in his beard and a look about him that spoke of a long sense of grievance with the world. Myrtale had seen him in the hall, sitting midway down the ranks of nobles, neither the highest nor the lowest of them.
Clearly he felt he should have sat higher, and that rankled in him. It was all too easy for such a man to look for blame to cast, and easier yet if he could blame a woman.
Myrtale bestowed on him her most brilliant smile. “Good evening, my lord Kleitos. Would you be so kind as to escort me to my rooms?” As she spoke, she swayed slightly, as if to belie the smile’s bravado with womanly weakness.
She felt his shudder in her own skin, but he had been well and ruthlessly trained. However he might loathe her, she was the king’s wife. With eyes flat and lips a thin line, he bowed stiffly and tilted his chin toward the door.
He was not going to gratify her with a word or a glance. She pretended not to notice. When she leaned on his arm, he went even more rigid than before, but he stopped short of flinging her off. She leaned more heavily, until he was almost carrying her. “Truly the gods have sent you to my aid,” she said, taking several breaths to do it.
People were watching. Her reluctant protector must have been outspoken about the witch from Epiros: eyes widened, heads shook. Men muttered to one another, but she could not both play her game and catch the words.
Their expressions were clear enough, and their eyes flicking from the manifest beauty of her face to the king’s child growing beneath her girdle. It was harder to hold to fear and hate when the object of both was female and young. That she was also royal and beautiful confounded them utterly.
She wanted that confusion, if it forced them to think past the curse to the truth. When Kleitos left her at the door to the women’s quarters, his relief was palpable, but the worst of his loathing had passed. She thanked him as prettily as she knew how, and left him as gratefully as, she had no doubt, he left her.
She shut the door and leaned on it. This time her weakness was not feigned. She had spent a great deal of strength in that working.
It was worth the price. The greyness in the air was perceptibly less. The hatred that battered against her defenses was slightly less potent.
After a few dozen breaths, she was able to stand again and walk. She had not been thinking on anything past the men and their follies, but her mind had made itself up.
* * *
Timarete was nowhere to be found. Myrtale quelled the quick anger: if her aunt had gone back to Epiros, she would have known it. Either Timarete was away because she chose to be, or—
Myrtale would have known if she had been abducted, too. The web of power within the palace would have screamed with it.
As she thought of that, she searched through the interwoven strands of magic both good and ill, and the spirits of the human creatures who lived within it. Then at last she found Timarete, well away from the women’s quarters, deep among the men, still and quiet behind the hall.
It was harder to find her in the flesh than in the spirit. Most of the men had gone in to dinner, but the corridors were full of slaves and servants. Their constant movement and chatter rattled Myrtale’s skull.
She nearly lost the skein of Timarete’s magic, and had to struggle to keep
her grip on it, stumbling and groping along the wall. None of the servants spared her a glance. She detected no malice there, but no interest, either.
That suited her admirably. She paused to gather her wits. Men’s voices in the hall were growing louder: the wine had begun to go round.
Thinking of wine made her dizzy. She was too far down in the magic, but she dared not rise higher, lest she lose the quarry. She walked slowly, picking her way as if blind.
The babble of voices faded from her awareness. All that was left was a sense, as near as her skin, of Philip’s strong fierce presence. He was not the one she hunted, but it comforted her to know where he was.
The hunt ended much more swiftly than she had expected. She found herself in front of what at first seemed a blank wall, until she saw the outline of a door. It was cleverly hidden, but it was not locked or barred: it opened easily to her touch.
The room beyond was small but well appointed, furnished with a couch in the Persian style, a wine-table, a carved wooden chair, and a common stool such as one might find in any poor man’s house. Timarete perched on the stool with her back to the door and her ear to the wall.
As Myrtale approached, she saw that what she had taken for a shadow on the wall was the grating of a window that looked down into the hall. The view was remarkably extensive, and so was the clarity of sound that rose up from below.
She turned toward Timarete, brow lifted. Timarete answered the unspoken question in the breath of a whisper. “Every king has a spyhole; he’s a fool if he doesn’t. Didn’t you know?”
“There’s much I don’t know,” Myrtale said more softly still. “Have you learned anything useful?”
“Not today,” said Timarete, rising from the stool and shaking out her skirts.
* * *
She left the room so quickly that she caught Myrtale flatfooted. She did not pause to let Myrtale catch her, either, but strode down the passage as she did everywhere, with head up and back straight.
In the Mother’s shrine, at last, she stopped. The men’s gods loomed in the dimness, but Timarete paid no heed to them. She bowed to the Mother, showing every sign of intending to spend the night in prayer.
Myrtale set herself between Timarete and the Mother’s image. “There’s not much time left,” she said.
“There is not,” said Timarete. “Are you ready?”
“Does it matter?”
“No,” said Timarete.
Myrtale nodded. Then: “What did you hear?”
“Nothing that matters to us,” Timarete said, “but you might get some use of the place where you found me, after this is done—if you choose.”
“You would have me spy on my husband?”
“Is it spying if he knows?”
“He knows you were there?”
Timarete shrugged slightly. “It wouldn’t surprise me. For a man, he’s not unintelligent.”
From her that was high praise. Myrtale gave it an instant’s pause. But the urgency that had awakened in her would not let her rest. “Tomorrow,” she said, “whatever comes of it, I go hunting the witch from Thessaly.”
“We’ll hunt her together,” said Timarete.
* * *
It was not as late as it might have been, nor had Philip drunk as deeply of the wine as he might have. He had been uneasy, crawling inside his skin, since shortly after his son was struck down. Some days were better than others, but tonight he was ready to damn the darkness, take a horse, and ride as far and fast as the beast could carry him.
Damned witches. He kicked open the door of his chamber, a petty thing but remarkably satisfying.
His Epirote wife sat beside the bed, wrapped in a mantle, eyes glittering in the lamplight. It was a moment before he realized that as small and close as the room was, the air felt lighter here; cleaner. The nagging unease had faded almost to nothing.
She was doing it. It felt like warmth coming off her: not the heat of passion but a gentler thing, deeper and steadier.
Odd to think of anything gentle in connection with that one. Even now, her eyes on him were fierce, with intensity enough to set a man back on his heels.
She was not here to seduce him. The rush of heat at the sight of her gave way to almost painfully clear focus.
He had never looked at a woman before as he would a man or an equal. It was a strange sensation, made more so by the haze of wine. He pulled up a stool and perched on it and looked her straight in the face. “Tell me,” he said.
She barely blinked. “I have to go away for a while. How long, I don’t know, but I intend to be back before the baby comes. Long before, if the Mother has any care for me.”
“What if I forbid you?” he asked—calmly, he thought; reasonably.
“That is not your place,” she said.
He kept his temper in hand. He was proud of himself for it. “As long as you live in my palace and carry my son, it is most certainly my place.”
Her face was blank. He wondered if she had heard him. “The air is full of lies and false memories. Those will only get worse. Try to remember the truth about me.”
“You are not going,” he said with force that should have rocked her where she sat.
Except for a slight widening of the eyes, she did not move at all. “I will come back,” she said. “Living or dead. I promise you.”
“I’ll lock you up, then,” he said, “and keep you there until my son is born.”
“Our son,” she said, “and even if you could hold me by any mortal means, that would only make it easier for our enemies to carry out their plan. They want us confined; they want us weak and frightened and subject to their will.”
“Let them,” he said. “I’ll make war on their country. I’ll kill their men and lay waste their fields and pastures. We’ll see how eager they are then to raise up a puppet king in Macedon.”
For an instant he thought she might concede that that was a sensible plan, but the moment of agreement passed; she shook her head. “You’ll only scatter your resources and anger the witches, and make it worse for all.”
“And you won’t?”
“I will hunt them down,” she said, “and rip out this sorcery by the roots.” She spoke so softly he had to strain to hear her, and yet that softness was more convincing than any shout.
As she rose, he rose also. She drew his head down for a kiss. He stiffened, then all at once, whether through her witchery or because he had never been able to resist her, he surrendered.
There was the passion he had been missing, the fiery sweetness that he so well remembered. The pressure of her belly against his, the child rolling and kicking so strongly it must have bruised her, only made the kiss more potent.
He swam up from it, sucking in air. “Don’t go,” he said.
He was pleading now. She made no effort to argue; she simply brushed her fingers across his lips as if to silence him, or else to commit their shape to memory. “Be strong,” she said. “Remember the truth of me.”
He reached for her, but she was already out of reach.
She had left the lightness and the clarity behind her like a gift. Shadows hovered beyond it, visions of a world of greyness and confusion. In it, she was shut up in the women’s quarters, and he had turned against her, and the source of his hatred was so strong and so clear that he almost could not stand against it: he came to her bed in the night, rigid with wanting her, and found her locked in passionate embrace with a huge and sickeningly supple snake.
He shook off that blatant absurdity and cast laughter in its face. “Is that the best you can do? I’ll not fret for her, then.”
He braced for a blast of fury, but the visions ran on blindly, growing dimmer as he turned his mind and heart away from them. He held in memory her face as he had last seen it, and her voice and her presence, the smell and taste of her, until they were all he saw and all he needed to see.
Twenty-five
It took most of Myrtale’s strength to leave that room and that man and walk
away without looking back. If he had called to her, she might have wavered, but it seemed he had surrendered at last to a woman’s will—perhaps for the first time since he left his mother’s breast.
Timarete waited in the shrine, all but invisible in the shadows. She was dressed for travel, even to the tall walking staff and the wanderer’s pack.
For Myrtale she had the same, and no word wasted. Myrtale had been hoping for a magical transport or at the very least a mule to ride, but it seemed they were going to walk.
She had grown soft, sitting in palaces. She suppressed a sigh and let fall her soft rich chiton and her finely woven mantle to put on the rougher garb of a pilgrim. When she matched her aunt exactly, she took up the staff and shouldered the pack.
Timarete was already in motion. She was walking toward the door, but the way was unnaturally long and the texture of the darkness had changed.
Who needed ointments and false promises of flight when one could walk through the world rather than on it? Timarete waded through the substance of things as if it had been water. Myrtale, in her wake, felt the shifting tides of magic woven through with the warmth of the Mother’s regard.
She was not hunting the enemy, not exactly, and yet she knew where Erynna was. The witch left a trail of scent in the aether, faint but distinct, like the stench of decay.
There were others with her, some so strong Myrtale gagged at them. Their trap was laid and the bait set; they waited with the patience of predators.
They would have Myrtale and the child she carried, no matter what she did or where she tried to do it. Despair was their weapon, and hopelessness, and fear. She should simply surrender and spare herself the trouble of fighting.
They were endlessly subtle and viciously inventive. Every thought she ventured to think, they were there before her. They had studied her thoroughly while she gathered such crumbs of magic as Erynna would share, the better to conquer her if she roused from the trance of misplaced trust and turned against them.