The Face of Apollo

by Fred Saberhagen

  And Jeremy, walking alone through the gallery, cutting be­tween the long rows of divinities at a location remote from where his tour had broken off, came to an abrupt stop. He had suddenly recognized, portrayed in art, a certain figure that had appeared to him in dreams. In dreams, he had taken the figure for an al­ternate version of himself.

  Probably he hadn't seen this one before because it occupied its own large niche, standing in what amounted to a shrine, a place of honor at least equal to that which had been allotted the God of War.

  Jeremy's feet shuffled, drawing him around in front of the statue, to where he could read the name. The carven symbols reached his eyes with almost dull inevitability. It was of course the name he had been expecting to discover. What he felt was not surprise but rather the recognition of something he had known for a long time—almost since the day of his union with the In­truder—but had been steadfastly refusing to think about.

  He stood there for so long that some clerk in passing asked him what was wrong.

  Fifteen

  In Jeremy's left eye, the rounded white marble arms and shoulders of Apollo's statue glowed with a subtle patina. Its colors were subtle and rich, and there were a great many of them.

  Persistent rumors still had it that the Lord of Light had re­cently been slain. The latest in the way of secret whispers was that his followers expected him to be reborn, that among the gods rebirth followed death almost inevitably.

  The legend carved at the base of Apollo's statue described a god of "distance, death, terror, and awe," "divine distance," "crops and herds," "Alexikakos," Averter of Evil.

  Another name for this strange deity was Phoibos, meaning "the Shining One." And yet another was Far-Worker. A very powerful deity and very strange, even in the varied company in which the statue stood.

  Jeremy found himself fascinated by the face on this statue. It had much in common with a great number of other representa­tions of Apollo, secondary portraits and carvings in other rooms of the gallery and library.

  The best of these portrayals was very like, though not pre­cisely identical with, a certain face that had of late become ex­tremely familiar to Jeremy in dreams. It was almost like an unexpected encounter with a friend: a beardless youth, his oth­erwise nude body draped in a white cloak, of powerful build and godlike beauty, wearing a bow and a quiver of arrows slung on his back and carrying a small stringed musical instrument in his right hand. The expression on the face, resonating with some­thing inside Jeremy's own head, was one of distant, urbane amusement.

  The boy felt an eerie chill. It is you indeed, he thought—as if it might now, at last, be really possible for him to converse with the Intruder in his own head.

  There came no direct answer, which was a relief.

  Carlotta said to Jeremy: "The gods know you're not really cut out to be a servant; you're much too bright. When I first saw you in your canoe, plastered with mud, your clothes unspeak­able ... I naturally assumed you'd no formal education at all."

  "Formal?"

  His questioner considered that, then shook his head. "Some­times, Jonathan, I think that you're pretending to be stupid. The question is, have you ever been to school? With such skill as you display at reading, in music ..."

  Jeremy admitted vaguely to having had some education, let­ting his hearers assume it had gone well beyond the reality of half a dozen years in a village school. So, he thought, it would seem natural for him to know a little more about the world.

  He had to take continual care not to display too much skill or knowledge in any subject.

  What Jeremy saw of the students' lives here, particularly the younger ones in the dormitories, where he would inevitably be sent to live if he became a student, did not make the prospect of his own attendance seem that attractive.

  Nor were the benefits supposedly available at the end of the Academic years of schooling particularly attractive.

  And what glimpses he had, from outside, of classroom activ­ity aroused no enthusiasm in him either.

  No one at the Academy thought it particularly odd that the servants' quarters should be better than the students'. Jeremy just assumed from what he saw and heard that the students were a lower social class. He was surprised that anyone who had his welfare at heart should urge him to become a student.

  And the lyre was intriguing, too. Jeremy had seen several differ­ent versions amid a clutter of diverse musical instruments lying around at various places in the Academy.

  He was sure that servants ought not to be playing around with these things. But for the moment, he was unobserved.

  Unable to resist the temptation, Jeremy picked one up and at­tempted to play it. His left arm cradled it automatically, in what seemed the natural and obvious position, while the fingers of his right hand strummed.

  Carlotta owned a similar instrument and sometimes played it to amuse her master.

  Jeremy Redthorn had never had musical training of any kind. He enjoyed listening to most kinds of music but was at a loss when it came to making any. But now his right hand immediately and instinctively began to pluck out a haunting melody.

  The people who happened to hear him play, the first time he picked up a lyre, were not tremendously impressed. Neither were any of them musical. They merely assumed that the odd-looking boy had somewhere learned to play, after a fashion. Well, he clearly had a certain talent for it and would be able to entertain his master of an evening.

  Andy Ferrante, visiting Jeremy in his alcove when he had an hour to spare, heard some more strumming and commented that his friend played well, then added: "But then I may be wrong— my mom told me I'm tone-deaf."

  That evening in the Scholar's rooms Carlotta, while waiting for her master to come back from a faculty dinner, heard Jeremy play for the first time. Jeremy had picked up the lyre again with some vague idea of practicing, but it was soon evident that he needed no practice. Probably, he thought, he never would. She was so impressed that he thought it would be a good time to raise a subject that had been bothering him.

  He put the instrument aside. "Carlotta?"

  "Yes?"

  "When I first met you, I didn't know what your collar meant. I thought it was only a decoration. What I'm trying to say is that I'm sorry that you ..."

  Her green eyes were quietly fierce. "And now you think that you know what my collar means?" When he started to say some­thing, she interrupted, bending forward to seize him by the arm. "Have you ever been a slave, Jonathan?"

  "No. And my real name's not Jonathan."

  Her look said that at this stage she didn't give a damn what his name was. "If you have never been a slave, then you still know nothing about my collar and what it means."

  "He'd set you free if you asked."

  "Ha! Not likely. Not at the risk of offending the sultan."

  "If you just... ran away, I don't think he'd—"

  "You know as little about Scholar Lugard as you do about me. And let me tell you this: if and when I run, I will never be re­taken."

  "Is that what you plan to do?"

  "If it were, do you suppose I'd tell you?"

  He looked at her for a moment in silence, then asked: "Why did you once tell me to call you 'Lady'?"

  Her voice changed, becoming almost small and meek. "I'm surprised that you remember that."

  "I don't remember if I ever actually called you that. But I thought you deserved it."

  "Well, I wanted to hear how it sounded. And I... wanted to impress you, and I thought I might someday need your help "

  "What kind of help?"

  Her only answer to that was another question of her own. "Who are you? You've already told me your name isn't really Jonathan."

  "It's Jeremy." Since Thanatos had already seen him and must know who he was, what risk was there in telling a girl that much of the truth?

  "All right. Who are you, Jeremy? Something more than a sim­ple fisherboy from up the river."

  "Whoever I am, I still want to
be your friend." And he fought down a strong urge to question Carlotta about the ebony and ivory box she'd smuggled away from the ruined temple. Right now the last thing he wanted or needed was involvement with an­other secret treasure. "I've told you my real name—Jeremy Redthorn. I really did come down the river, to the place where you met me. All my close relatives were poor, were peasants and vinedressers, and all of them are really dead."

  "I'm sorry about them. But there's got to be more to you than that. I would dearly like to know your secrets, Jeremy Redthorn. And I still think you have another name than that."

  "I don't understand."

  "Don't you? Also, I believe you are of higher birth than you pretend. Or, perhaps, even higher than you know."

  "I promise you again, my birth was as humble as you can imagine. But . . . lately I've been thinking about such matters. Where you're born makes less difference than most people think."

  "You might as well say that wealth and titles make no differ­ence."

  His curiosity flared up. "What about your birth?"

  "My parents were poor, but they were not slaves." Carlotta seemed to think that summed up all there was to say about them.

  It was on the next evening that the lives of everyone in the house­hold were suddenly and drastically changed.

  It began with a vague impertinence on the slave girl's part, the kind of thing that Jeremy had known the Scholar to ignore a hundred times before. But not this time. Arnobius put down his pen and swung round in his chair to face Carlotta. "My dear, you and I do not get on as well as we once did. In fact, in recent days it seems to me that we are not getting on at all."

  She tried feebly to give him some witty answer.

  The Scholar shook his head, not really bothered by the words—he could be, often was, indifferent to those. But Car­lotta had come to be objectionable on some deeper level.

  He said, unsmiling: "I'm giving you to John. He tells me he's been interested in you for some time. And you and I no longer get on very well."

  Carlotta had put out a hand to steady herself on the table but otherwise was standing very still. "My lord. You don't mean it."

  "Consider it a fact." He turned back to his desk. "I'll make out the paperwork tomorrow."

  "Is there paperwork for me to do, my lord?" She didn't seem to have really grasped it yet.

  "No, not in this case. This is one paper I must handle myself." He went on writing.

  The silence lasted for several seconds before Carlotta said: "My lord, it isn't funny."

  "Not meant to be funny, girl. I said I'm giving you to Lord John. I've put up with this attitude of yours long enough. You can leave your things here until he has a place ready for you to move into. Oh, of course you may keep . . . whatever trinkets I may have given you." His right hand made a dismissive gesture.

  The girl stood as if she were paralyzed. John meanwhile sat re­garding her happily, hopefully, as if someone had just given him a fine riding camel or hunting dog.

  After a single glance at him, Carlotta turned away and ran out of the room.

  "She's not going to do anything silly, is she?" John asked the world. No one replied.

  Carlotta did not return for several hours, and when Jeremy saw her again she was looking shaken and thoughtful.

  Jeremy now nursed a secret hope that Carlotta might now de­cide to resume her affair with him, as an act of rebellion against being given away, passed from one man to another like a hunt­ing dog.

  Jeremy thought that the Dark Youth hidden in his head was now intent on matters he considered more momentous than se­duction. But the Intruder was certainly not averse to attractive women.

  When Ferrante heard what had happened to Carlotta, he re­acted more strongly than Jeremy might have expected him to, his sympathies with the girl.

  Several weeks went by. Jeremy learned to play the role of servant that was expected of him, well enough to get by. It helped a great deal that Arnobius was anything but a demanding master; in fact, he tended sometimes to forget the existence of his servants, and of other people as well.

  One way or another, Jeremy had plenty of free time in which to tread the green lawns and the halls of echoing marble.

  Free time also in which he might easily have become involved with other girls and women about the place—or with a certain male professor. All of these found themselves fascinated by the odd-looking lad. Had it not been for the threat of Thanatos hanging over his head, Jeremy Redthorn would have enmeshed himself in affairs with the females; but as matters stood, the threat of doom hung heavily enough to crush desire. He could not shake the image of Thanatos, waiting for him, biding his time, playing for some unknown reason a game of cat and mouse.

  Other people than Jeremy were beginning now to be seriously worried about Scholar Margaret Chalandon, who had left on an expedition to the Mountain of the Oracle before he arrived at the Academy. Word from her small party was long overdue.

  Simmering warfare in the region had of course put a stop to much ordinary activity. But the struggle for power involving the Harbor Lord and other potentates intruded only indirectly on the grounds of the Academy.

  Forests visible in the distance, on the high slopes miles inland from the bay and harbor, made patches of changing colors. Au­tumn in this subtropical latitude was gently making its presence known.

  For a servant to spend as much time as Jeremy did in hanging around the Academic centers of the place was rare indeed. Of course, he as a personal assistant had status somewhat above that of the household help and maintenance workers. But he to­tally lacked Academic rank—several times he had to explain that he was not even a research assistant. Odd looks were di­rected his way, and his behavior would certainly have been frowned on by the authorities—unless, of course, he should be there legitimately on business for his master. His master was a man whom few cared to annoy. And much of the time the ser­vant's business was indeed genuine; there was always at least one book or scroll that needed borrowing or returning. But Jeremy knew an urge, perhaps unreasonable, to keep on visiting the li­brary. The place fascinated him; there were endless new things to be seen and heard, and with the grafted Eye and Ear and Mem­ory of Apollo to help him he thought he could understand many of the new things and come tantalizingly close to grasping oth­ers. It was hard to resist coming back to search among the books at every opportunity. It was as if the knowledge he gained in this way was truly his, and he had the irrational idea that it might somehow cushion his fall if the dreaded tumble into Apollonian depths ever came.

  He could easily imagine Arnobius at some point growing angry or indifferent and discharging him. But as a freeman he couldn't simply be given away. Certainly Jeremy had no wish to spend the rest of his life serving meals and picking up clothes, but it was a notably easier existence than laboring for Uncle Hum­bert or robbing henhouses up and down the river. It would do quite nicely until he'd figured out how to meet his sworn obliga­tion Sal had trusted him with before she died. What was going to happen to him if and when he managed to do that was some­thing he didn't want to think about.

  There had been no lessening of his thirst for vengeance on Sal's killers—and those who had earlier dealt with his parents in the same way. But Jeremy knew almost nothing about the indi­viduals responsible, except that they were Lord Kalakh's soldiers and servants. And a man couldn't sustain himself on a craving for revenge and nothing else. At least, Jeremy felt sure that he could not.

  Guiltily he realized that the details of Sal's appearance were starting to grow blurred in his memory. It was becoming hard to call to mind the exact sound of her voice. But he told himself that the essentials of what she had been would never fade in his remembrance.

  He also felt a strong sympathy for Carlotta, but there seemed to be nothing he could do to help.

  Over the course of weeks Jeremy encountered a number of young students. Though he seldom or never had serious talk with them, he overheard many of their conversations.

>   Now and then Ferrante came into Jeremy's curtained niche and sat down and talked about his background and his wish that he could be something other than a soldier. Jeremy liked the young man and came near telling him too much. More often, they met and talked somewhere outside the apartment.

  Jeremy's acquaintance with Ferrante was growing into friend­ship. He learned that the young soldier, like the great majority of the population, had been brought up on a farm. Jeremy could readily understand that the other had run away from home at fif­teen and enlisted in the Harbor Lord's army to seek adventure.

  The military bodyguard was quartered in a small set of rooms one floor up from the Scholar's suite. The sergeant in charge had a room to himself.

  Jeremy's manners, his knowledge of etiquette, practically nonex­istent by Academic standards, would have needed a lot of pol­ishing to make him an acceptable servant—except that the magic of Apollo now and then put appropriate words into his mouth and seemed to make his head bow or boldly lift, his hands move in gestures of suitable humility and occasional eloquence that Je­remy himself did not begin to understand. Grace and authority were there. And his natively keen inborn intelligence soon caught on to the idea that he ought to trust these impulses when they came, not fight them.

  Meanwhile Arnobius paid little heed to how any servants be­haved, as long as they provided him with certain essentials, at minimal inconvenience on his own part.

  Now and then Jeremy caught a glimpse, at some distance, of the man he now recognized as the avatar of Thanatos. The man's col­leagues were now addressing him as Professor Tamarack. It was indeed the same man who, on leaving the area just after Alexan­der was killed, had saluted Apollo, in what Jeremy had inter­preted as a gesture of scorn, contempt, and threat.

  Once, as they gazed at each other across the width of the li­brary, Tamarack, smiling, repeated the gesture in minimal form. In return, Jeremy could only stare. Then he walked slowly away, with the feeling that he was doomed.