Burdens of the Dead

by Mercedes Lackey

  Technically, Trebizond was an independent state. But they paid tribute to the Ilkhan. It looked like the illusion of independence might be being suspended. Right now that seemed like a good idea, if it got rid of the Baitini.

  But it was still not a good idea to go to his window to look, because a watcher could, all to easily, take that opportunity to shoot him. Was a prisoner less free because the guards were changed?

  At least the prisoner might get more reliable meals. Privileges perhaps. And would not have to fear the guards would be suborned.

  Constantinople

  Since her worshipper had left the city that now stood at the tear the Earth-Shaker had made in her gates, Hekate had walked there with her dogs more often than just at full moon. More than merely walking, she paid attention to the city around her, to the people, to their doings, even though they seemed at times incomprehensible. She was a goddess, she had no limitations except those she chose to impose on herself. Eventually, she would comprehend.

  She also began to roam across the fringes of the lands of her people, the parts that had survived the deluge, the ones that still might contain some of the bloodlines of those that had sought shelter there. The world had changed a great deal, but some things not at all. Robbers and murderers still watched the crossroads. She’d been aware of Antimo’s libation, and watched and given him guidance. She had welcomed the fact that his action had caused another to copy him, and had graciously allowed the second man to share in her protection. Already…she felt just a little stronger.

  And then one night, to her surprise, found she had another human pouring a stoup of wine out at the cross-roads, asking for her guidance. She heard his desperate question clearly, as she turned her feet towards him. In the way of a goddess, she was beside him before he had completed it.

  “Do I go on to my mother or back to Eleni?”

  She recognized him. It was the young farmer who had been on his way to market on the same road as Antimo, the one she had extended her hand to because he had copied Antimo. Thrace had once been hers, and although he spoke Greek, well, worship was worship. And this was clearly worship; he understood what he was doing.

  “Eleni is your wife?”she asked, from out of the shadows.

  He started. “I didn’t see you there, Kyria. Yes, my wife. Our baby is near. I…I just wondered whether to go home or go on to my mother. Either way, I will make one of them unhappy, and this is not a time to make either unhappy.”

  “Go this way,” she said, pointing. She walked with him a little way too, with her dogs. He too could see her. That was interesting. He had deliberately invoked her. That was even more interesting.

  She inspected his thoughts, gravely. His mind was troubled not so much with the path to choose, but with one of her other aspects, that of birthing. So much so that he confided in a total stranger, chance met, or so he thought, at a crossroads. “Eleni and my mother…they don’t see eye-to-eye. And she lost her own mother when she was young. So I can’t turn to her mother. But we’re far out. Old Zathos farmed the land next to us, but he died last year and his boys have yet to come back from the sea. Before her time comes I must get her closer to the midwife in Thasaski. If she would stay with my mother…”

  He was troubled by a problem that he could see no answer to. “But she will not. There is only my cousin. And how do I know when to take her to Thasaski? If she stays in the house of my cousin, there will be no space for me. And the animals on the farm?” He spoke of the small concerns of peasant farmer. Who would milk the goats? See to the hens?”

  Hekate had not been the goddess of warriors and great kings. She’d been the confidant of just these sorts of people. Small farmers, hunters, herdsmen. She’d been the goddess of their concerns; no one had ever called on her for victory in war, but rather, for victory over a threatened harvest. It was something of a shock to find the same kinds of people were still here, even if the gate had failed and flooded the lowlands that had been the center of her worship. Yet here they still were, though the people of the city seemed opaque to her, and so much else had changed.

  She bent her mind to his problems. The peasant’s wife’s time was not supposedly that near, but Hekate had her ways of seeing, and…

  It was a good thing he had invoked her.

  She went with him to the cottage. It was a humble little place with the mountain behind it, and the stream close by for water, laughing across the rocks. Nature had put a hard sill of rock there, so a little rich pocket of good earth was retained, while most of the mountainside was stony and not productive. It was a beautiful spot, if lonely. They ran the last part of the journey to the cottage, because they could hear in the distance that his wife was calling, desperately.

  They arrived to find a very young woman on the verge of tears. Her waters had broken, and having been too proud and in too much conflict with her mother-in-law to ask for help before, now she wanted, with a terrible desperation, to go to the village, to the midwife. She was too inexperienced to know it was far too late for such a journey. But she was also afraid, too afraid to want to know or to care just what her husband had been doing on the mountainside with a tall woman with two red-eared dogs.

  Hekate looked at her with her wise, old eyes. Read the signs as others might a book, for this too had been a part of her purview, in the days before the gate broke and the waters came. “It is too late for the village. The babe is on his way.” She gestured imperiously towards the hut. “Come.”

  The wife looked at her with relief and disbelief. “You…you are midwife? Spiro brought home a midwife? He is…”

  A pain silenced her and she gasped instead of speaking.

  Hekate had been an actual midwife too, as well as the goddess of childbirth, and it as just as well that she was here and had experience to draw on, and her magics too. The baby was coming early. It was a first child, and it was not going to be an easy birth. In fact, without She who opens, it would have also been a last birth, with mother and babe going to Aidoneus’s shadowy land.

  But that would not happen today. All because a young farmer had poured a libation.

  “Be calm,” she said. “Now come inside.”

  The woman grasped her belly in both hands and stooped to enter the house, obedient, and glad to be so.

  Hekate pointed at the peasant. “Go and bring me yarrow, and the root of the valerian plant. Be off with you.” She needed neither herb, but she wanted to examine the mother properly, and the spells she needed were not aided by male presence.

  It was apparent that both of them needed to be told what to do. “I…I am not very good with herbs,” he said, wringing his hands. “Eleni does that kind of thing.”

  Hekate shook her head. What was the world coming to? “You must learn better in the future. Who will gather herbs for healing if your Eleni is herself ill? But do not fear.”

  She called one of the dogs. “Here, Ravener. Take him and show him,” Hekate said to the dog. She turned back to the farmer. “He will point with his nose. You will gather the whole plant, root and all, that he points to, I will separate what I need. Now go.” She turned back to the dog. “And bring me some Lad’s Love too. There are fleas.”

  So he went, following the dog, and left Hekate to her delicate task.

  * * *

  When he came back she set him to boiling water to make an infusion of the yarrow, and to chopping up the Lad’s Love and scattering it on the floor. He needed to be kept busy and out of the way. It was always thus with young fathers; older ones, seasoned ones, might actually be useful, but young ones? Good only for fretting if you did not keep them busy.

  Hekate worked her magic loosening cartilage, and easing muscle, dilating, and helping the young woman to breathe and to push. Still, this was going to be hard. Hekate knew she was going to be here well into the night.

  In the midnight hour the child was born. And with that first cry Hekate bound herself again to the mortals she had left behind.

  It hurt of course,
bringing back memories of her own children, prisoner of her faithless lover. But that was hardly this grateful peasant girl’s fault, as she stared lovingly at the babe being put to her breast.

  So, there it was. She had a people again. And two—maybe three—worshippers. There might be more. She had taken up her ancient responsibilities. And though it hurt…perhaps it was a hurt like birthing, that would bring something good into the world.

  But there were practical things to deal with now. Hekate had already taken steps to deal with the bleeding and possible infection, and the baby’s first attempts at suckling would help. Once the placenta was out, the babe was warm and asleep, and the exhausted young mother close to joining her in sleep, Hekate’s work was done.

  She called the husband, who was pacing outside, watched by the dogs. “Now, your question is answered; now you can go back to where we met, and choose the other path, and go to your mother. Tell her she has a grandson. He is well and strong and has fine lungs. Tell her to come at once, and that your wife called for her. I think that will do much to reconcile the two of them. Your mother needs grandchildren, and your wife needs help.”

  He bowed respectfully. “Yes Kyria.” He paused a moment. “Kyria…who are you?”

  “I am Hekate, She of the Cross-roads and Gateways. Childbirth, the Hunt, and the Darkness were mine once.” She swept the night’s darkness around her and left by the third way, as the astonished young farmer scrambled for a drop of wine to pour when he reached that crossroads again.

  The dogs seemed happier, somehow.

  Chapter 24

  Corfu

  Benito and the Old Fox had engineered everything quite carefully, with information gathered from the tritons. Getting the Venetian Fleet to sail east in the teeth of winter was still plausible. The Venetian sailors trusted Benito Valdosta, they assumed that he had at least a personal audience with the powers of nature. Besides, what storm would dare to stop the man? If he said they should leave Corfu in the middle of a tempest, they’d be there, manning the oars. But the fleets of Genoa and Aragon were a different matter entirely. Benito knew once they got snug at anchor or hauled up on the spit outside the little Arsenal, they’d be hell to shift. Once they had sailed together, perhaps. And Canea, while safe as an anchorage, would be the least welcoming port in the entire Mediterranean to a Genovese fleet without a Venetian guard, after Admiral Mosco’s failed and bloody attack on the port. Thus, they had to meet the fleet at sea, before they had begun to head for Corfu. This had meant a dog-leg over to the Italian coast, as the Genovese were planning to cling to it after coming through the straits of Messina

  To meet a fleet at sea was always a dangerous and awkward thing. Any sensible admiral would avoid it if the wind would allow them to do so. You could see mastheads and sails a great distance off, well before one could see the identity of the same. And the Venetian fleet was plainly large. So, being informed by tritons as to where they were and what heading the combined fleet of Aragon and Genoa were on, a small galliot with the Winged Lion emblazoned on its sails was sent ahead to convey polite messages that the Venetian fleet was bearing towards them.

  It was still a very stiff meeting, on board the flagship. The admirals of the Genovese and Aragonese vessels were the most unhappy guests one could imagine, and the atmosphere in the crowded captain’s cabin was decidedly frigid.

  “We were given to understand,” said Admiral Borana, not quite refusing a glass of fine Veneto red, “that we would overwinter in Corfu.” If his tone had been any stiffer Benito could have planed the splinters out of it and used it for deck-planking. Though it was daylight, the shutters were all closed against a bitter wind, and the ship’s lantern above the table they had gathered about swung with just enough energy to serve as a warning, making the shadows on their faces shift with every swing. Forbidding old faces, most clean-shaven, though the Aragonese had a little beard.

  Benito nodded. “Yes. So was everyone. We have been reliably informed that the emperor Alexis is preparing himself to meet us then. So we thought we’d arrive early. When he wasn’t expecting us.”

  The Aragonese admiral looked like he was about to explode. Benito smiled in what he hoped was a soothing fashion.

  It obviously wasn’t.

  “You deceived us! Your allies! We cannot work with such deception.”

  “The news only reached us when you were already at sea. And you may ask Admiral Douro. It was as much of a surprise to us as it is to you,” said Duke Enrico Dell’este, smoothly, soothingly.

  “We’ll have to sail back to Naples,” said Borana. “It’s not safe to have vessels out at sea in midwinter.”

  Benito cleared his throat. “Then you and your crews will surely die, M’Lord Borana. There is a very large storm front to the west. We are making haste for Canea.”

  Borana looked at him as if he were mad. Not that Benito blamed him. “Storm? How can you know that?”

  “We have certain magical warnings and methods,” said Benito, apologetically. “Nothing of witchery! This has the blessing of the Hypatians on it. That was how we knew where to find you. As our allies we wished to protect you. If you join us we can at least attempt to keep you safe. We may divert to Cerigo.”

  Venice had safe ports on various Greek islands. The Genovese had lesser advantages. And ships flying the Genovese flag would not be permitted to enter those ports.

  A fleet might pretend to sail under the Genovese admiral…but here, in practice, and certainly in Canea, they would sail under Venetian orders. The sooner they became accustomed to the idea the better, Benito thought wryly. He wasn’t about to fight this battle in their manner. He needed to win and get home to his wife and daughter, in as little time as possible. These fools would drag this war out for years.

  Hades

  In Aidoneus’ shadowy halls beneath her flowering almond tree Maria looked into the shadow-warp and weave, looking out as if through rain-streaked windows onto the hills and sunshine in the distance. The loom of the Fates allowed her to see what she wished to see, and that was one of the things that Aidoneus had granted to her, to keep her less restive, more content. She had—as one did in this shadowy place where her purpose was to give life—time to gaze as she pleased. And anyway, she’d have made time for this. She needed, as any mother does, to watch and see how her daughter did without her. If she’d not had this—well… But Aidoneus evidently knew this and gave it without being asked.

  The answer shocked her a little, and then cheered her. ‘Lessi was laughing and content. Maria watched as she ran as fast as her plump little legs would carry her down the long, turkey-carpeted halls of the Casa Montescue. It made her smile to realize that the child, her child, the daughter of a poor canal-brat, was being fostered and tended to in the sort of place she used to look at without seeing, because she knew she could never, ever so much as tie up her boat at their mooring. To think that her daughter would be so at home and at ease there! It was a blessing, a real blessing. ‘Lessi would never go hungry, never need to be tied to the boat to keep from falling in the water. She could run and play and be spoiled as much as Maria would spoil her, were she there now.

  She watched as ‘Lessi hugged Marco. How she teased Kat. How she played peek-a-boo with a woman that Maria had never seen before. And strangely, how she waved to her mother. She knows I am here watching, thought Maria, comforted and yet puzzled. She resolved to ask Aidoneus about it. She was curious about the new woman too. There was something…odd about her.

  Without her calling, the god was suddenly there, at her side, as if her thoughts had called him. Maybe they had. Gods could do that sort of thing. He gazed at the shadow-threads of the loom and nodded his handsome head.

  “She has lost a child,” Aidoneus explained. “You do not see the colors fully yet. But there is an aura. Deep unhappiness. Betrayal. And your daughter…I do not know why she can see you. The very young see things which older minds shut out. But so long as she can do this, you need not be afraid she will fo
rget you, for she will see you every day.”

  Resolutely, Maria did not look at Benito. She did take a broad peek at the entire fleet. But she had a bargain to honor. For this four months she was the bride of the Lord of the Underworld, queen and life of his bleak kingdom. She’d made her bargains and she lived by them, even among the dead. So she looked instead at Corfu, at the empty shipyard and then again at Venice. Marco was studying a book of some heathen script with Alessia on his knee, and a lithe, balding man with a well-used sword instructing him. Maria looked very carefully at the stranger. Listened in too, as she could. He had something of the look of Caesare about him, of the professional mercenary. But he did know a great deal about medicine.

  Out of curiosity, when her daughter was asleep she turned her gaze through the shadows to the great city Benito was heading for. There could be nothing wrong in that, surely? She thought, faintly guilty. He wasn’t there yet. It was a great place girded with walls and towers, and the sea on two sides. But the image was harder to resolve. Instead she kept finding herself staring at a tall woman with tears running down her cheeks. She wore a type of dress that Maria had never seen the like of, and clasped around her throat a complex neck piece of jet and gold. At her right and left hand, like a pair of guardians, were a pair of dogs with red ears and bright eyes. They saw her; she could tell by the intensity of their gaze. But they did not alert their mistress.

  She tried to look past the woman, and failed. Who was she? And why did she stand between Maria and her view of the city?

  “Hekate,” said Aidoneus. “Her mark on the weave of fates there is very strong. She was a powerful goddess once.”

  Maria looked up at him. “Hekate? I thought she was the queen of witchcraft or something.”

  Aidoneus shook his head. “She a goddess, and very old. She is associated with powerful magics, but those were merely the attributes of one of her aspects. She was once the guardian of gateways and crossroads, lady of the night, of the hunt, and of childbirth. Very powerful and much loved among her own people. But when the Earth-Shaker came, she could not defend them. He broke down the natural wall that kept the sea from them, and flooded them. Most died. She still weeps for them, and for her lost child and her murdered son. I have felt her stirring lately, after long eons. She walks the crossroads again. She may even take up her guardianship of the gateways of the dead. Had she been watching, your earthly lover would have had to pass her guardians on the lake called Acheroussia.” He looked thoughtful. “I wonder why? It would take something quite powerful to make her cease her mourning and turn her eyes to the mortal world again.”