Oracles of Delphi

by Marie Savage

“And you were her guardian and protector. Now she’s dead, and you feel like you failed her once again. Because no matter what you ever did, you were always a failure. And no matter how much you tried to make her, she never loved you. And no matter how hard you tried to replace that love with women from ports scattered around the Middle Sea, it never filled that hole, it was never what you wanted, it was never what she so obviously, so spitefully, withheld from you every single day of your life.”

  He peered up at Diokles with bloodshot eyes. “First a considerate lover and now a philosopher. What’s gotten into Delphi’s most beloved blackguard?”

  Diokles didn’t answer. He stood and looked out the half-open window. A dazzling shaft of morning light split the room in two. The ground was covered in a light dusting of snow and Delphi, clothed in a mantle of white, seemed pure and holy. He closed the shutter. Nikos lay back on the bed, his face hidden in the crook of his arm.

  “I remember the first time I saw you,” Diokles said. “It was at the Kastalian Spring. It wasn’t too long after the earthquake, after the rest of my family was killed when our house was flattened. I must have been six or seven, and I was living with my uncle.” He chuckled. “You were so fat, with a big round belly like a puppy. Always at your mothers’ heels. But she never paid you any attention. You would call to her and she would ignore you. You would pluck at her hem and she would kick you away like you were a dog underfoot. So I picked you up and asked my uncle if I could keep you. Like a stray, I guess.”

  Nikos was still, and Diokles wondered if he’d gone back to sleep. “I always thought of you as the little brother I lost, but maybe I wasn’t such a good older brother,” Diokles’ voice was rough. He cleared his throat and walked to the door. “This thing with Charis. I don’t know how she was playing you, but I know you and I know when a woman is involved, you’re willing to be played. More than that, I don’t want to know. That’s over. She’s dead and we can’t do anything about it except figure out who moved her up to the theater and how to keep you out of trouble. As for your mother, I hated the sight of her, and I’m glad she’s dead. But if you want me to help you find her killer, I’ll do whatever you need.”

  “Zeus,” was all Nikos could choke out. He didn’t think he could take much more. Not only had he been tempted to cheat Diokles and Kleomon for a taste of Charis, he’d been double-crossed, threatened with blackmail, and he’d ended up with two dead bodies on his hands. Now, his mother was dead, too, and that conniving, grasping Kalliope couldn’t wait to get her hooks in him, and now Diokles of Delphi, renowned rogue and owner of the Dolphin’s Cove, stood before him professing a brotherly love that no one who knew him would imagine possible. He couldn’t think straight.

  On his way back to Delphi from the farmhouse, he had turned everything over in his mind a thousand times, but nothing made sense. What could anyone have to gain by stripping Charis naked and moving her body up to the theater? Why, if someone had seen him leave Charis on the steps of the temple, hadn’t they accused him of murder, or at least, tried to blackmail him? Why would anyone want to kill his mother—or, the better question was, why would anyone want to kill her at this particular time? Did Phoibe really have the sight as she claimed? Had she been right all along? Were the priests trying to discredit and destroy Gaia’s cult?

  No, that didn’t make sense. He agreed with Eumelia, priestess of Argos, that the powerful priests of Apollon had nothing to fear from a few scattered priestesses of Gaia. But there were only two things connecting Charis with Melanippe, the cult of Gaia and Nikos of Dodona. The only person who had anything to gain by hurting both was Kleomon. But would he have enlisted Diokles to help him? No! But who else had admitted over and over again that they couldn’t wait to see Melanippe dead? Maybe Diokles was involved after all. The harder Nikos had dug his heels into his mount’s flanks, the faster they had flown over the snowy road and the more convinced he was that Kleomon and Diokles were behind everything.

  It didn’t make any sense, but after seeing Kalliope leering at him over his mother’s body, he desperately needed someone to blame. He had stormed into Diokles room, yanked Aphro off him, and laid into him like, well, like a madman. And Diokles had taken it. He had never raised a hand to him. Then after Nikos had stormed around Diokles’ room, he laid waste to his own and destroyed several of the most delicate pots Palamedes had ever thrown and painted. Then he slid to the floor, refused to think about Althaia of Athens, and drank himself into oblivion.

  Now Nikos knew Diokles was telling the truth. So he was back to square one with no idea who to blame. Except himself.

  “About the wrecked rooms, the broken chairs, and the shattered pots…,” Nikos said.

  “Yes?”

  “Put it on my tab.”

  “With pleasure,” Diokles pulled the door shut.

  Chapter Forty

  “I am doing everything propriety demands,” Phoibe fumed as Georgios and her mother, Rhea, listened helplessly. “Personal invitations to the funeral were sent to Philon and Kleomon. All the priestesses, even Eumelia of Argos, will have a part in the ceremony. Kalliope will sing the elegy for Melanippe while Nikos lights her pyre, but I will light Charis’s pyre and sing her elegy. It’s my right and I will not give it up.” She glared at her lover and her mother. Ever since Georgios returned from his unsuccessful journey to find Charis’s brother with her own mother instead, the two of them had been against her, questioning every decision she made. And she had no Charis to back her up, no Melanippe to bolster her confidence.

  “No one is asking you to give it up. All we are asking is if it is too much for you.” Georgios’ voice was soft as his fingertips smoothed the damp tendrils plastered to Phoibe’s fevered brow. He sat on her bed and held her still-trembling body against his.

  “I am not an invalid. My visions are not so debilitating, my sanity not so compromised that I cannot fulfill my duties. I know how it looks, that this one was—”

  “Daughter,” Rhea said, “we do not question your sanity.” Rhea raised a cup of wine to Phoibe’s lips and nodded imperceptibly at Georgios. “We know you cannot control when the goddess seizes you, or what messages you receive during your epilēpsía. Your visions are beyond our understanding. But we fear for your safety. We fear that when the goddess takes you, you will hurt yourself. Your control is weakening. We see it. I believe even you must feel it, you must know it.”

  “What more do you want from me?” Phoibe pleaded. She was lost, blind, groping in the dark without her guides. Charis, murdered. Melanippe, murdered. She was next. She felt it. And yet, she knew Georgios and her mother were right, too. It was all true, everything they said. Her visions were coming unbidden and they were no longer sent by Gaia alone. Ever since the morning at the Sacred Grove, the morning Apollon stole into her mind, ever since he took possession of her body and soul, she had known she was defeated. But she had not thought the battle would be lost so quickly.

  “All we ask is that you not overburden yourself,” Georgios murmured.

  “I must sing the elegy, it is my final farewell.”

  “We understand that, but—”

  “And tossing a torch on a pyre is hardly a taxing feat,” Phoibe continued, her voice heavy with exhaustion and tinged with bitterness.

  “Drink, Phoibe. The wine will do you good.” Rhea again raised the cup and Phoibe drank deeply.

  “We fear the priests’ presence will agitate you, perhaps even incite a vision as violent as the one you just had.” Georgios’ words were soft, like a lover’s whispered endearments.

  “We fear not only for your safety, but also for the dignity of the Pythia of Gaia,” Rhea added. “And we fear that in your vision state you will do or say something you will regret. Something that will damage the Oracle of Gaia. Do you want Philon and Kleomon to think you are losing control? Do you want to give them an advantage over you?”

  “I am not so far gone.” Phoibe slapped the cup away. Wine splattered down the front of her gown as the
cup clattered to the floor and shattered into blood-red shards. She struggled to stand and held to her bedstead for balance. “I am the only one protecting the Oracle of Gaia, and you don’t even see it! You say, ‘Apollon has always been greedy, has always wanted Delphi to himself.’ But I tell you it is different now. Melanippe saw it in her visions. Charis saw it in the bright light of day. She understood Philon and his hatred, his constant manipulating and endless plotting, and Kleomon and his appetites, his all-consuming greed. And now you are plotting against me, you doubt me, have always doubted me.”

  “We are not plotting against you,” Rhea reached out to soothe her daughter.

  Phoibe slapped her mother’s hand away. “You doubted I could become the Pythia. ‘Never before in the long history of our line has this honor been bestowed,’” Phoibe mocked. “You said it as if I would be just one more in a long line of failures. Well now the honor has been bestowed—on me! I am the Pythia and yet you question my motives, you question my sanity. And you,” she rounded on Georgios, pushing him back on the bed, “you never wanted me to be Pythia. You were always content with less. Always asking why I wanted it, why I needed it. Always wanting to take me away from Delphi even though Delphi is my destiny. You say you love me, but you don’t even know me. I am the one with the power and you two stand before me chastising me as if I were a child.”

  “Phoibe—” Georgios started.

  “I will do this tonight,” she sobbed as her legs buckled beneath her. She struggled to stay on her feet. “I will see this ceremony through and I will honor them.” She swayed and Georgios leapt up and caught her before she crumpled to the floor. “I swear … I will show you … show you both … I can do this—”

  Like the shattered cup, Georgios’ heart broke into a thousand bloody shards. The pain of seeing all his worst fears unfold before him was worse than any beating he ever suffered in the pankration. He cradled her in his arms as easily as if she had been a child. But she wasn’t. He knew that. She was the flesh and blood woman he loved and she was slowly but surely leaving him. His broad back bent over the bed as Rhea pulled down the blankets. He laid Phoibe on her feather-filled pallet and brushed the hair out of her glazed eyes. He had seen those eyes blinded by unknowing oblivion as the goddess possessed her body and soul. And he had lost himself in them countless times as he clasped her body to his, joined as man and woman in ecstatic, rapturous death. That was his religion. Phoibe was his goddess. He would be a shade without her. He bent and brushed his lips across hers, breathing in the scent of sweat, wine and poppy juice.

  “How long will she sleep?”

  “Only a few hours,” Rhea replied. “Enough to clear her mind and restore her strength.

  “This was her third vision in two days. I almost didn’t get to her in time. She was thrashing, clawing at me, calling me names—”

  “I came running as soon as her attendant found me.”

  “By the gods, Rhea, she thought I was… I don’t even know if I can say it.”

  “Come, Georgios. We must both know what we are dealing with if we are to determine how to help her.”

  “She threw herself at me, tried to rip off my clothes,” he said as he held out his arms to show the bloodied tracks her nails had furrowed into his skin. “She pushed herself onto me, grabbed me and begged me to take her, to take her again—” He choked on the words, forcing himself to get them out, “She was down on her knees, pulling at me, pleading with me to get it over with, to allow her to fulfill her destiny.”

  “But the prophecy—”

  “Gaia forgive me, but her mind is failing her. Somehow she believes she is fulfilling the prophecy, but it can’t be! I don’t understand.” He sank on to the bed. “She said it was already over.” He looked up at Phoibe’s mother. “Rhea, she called me Apollon.”

  “Apollon! That’s not possible. The prophecy says: ‘She will see the Oracles of Apollon and Gaia united or she will see them destroyed and the Sacred Precinct claimed by yet another.’”

  “Damn the prophecy and damn Sofia! It never made sense. Never! Even if he had a thousand years, Sokrates himself couldn’t have parsed one iota of logic in it. It was just the mindless babbling of yet another delusional woman who thinks the gods speak through her. This has ruined her, Rhea. Your daughter is lost. This foolish prophecy is devouring her from the inside out. She was fevered, ranting, her speech garbled, but I swear on my grave, she believes Apollon cannot defeat the goddess without destroying himself. And she has pledged herself to his destruction—even if it means her own destruction. Somewhere deep inside, she sees this and her mind is bent by this one thought, that she is the instrument by which the prophecy will be fulfilled, that her time will mark the beginning of the end of both Oracles of Delphi and that she will be the last Pythia of Gaia.”

  “Can it really be true?” Rhea looked down at her sleeping daughter and began to weep. “She is the daughter in whom all our hopes have been fulfilled. If Phoibe is unable to do her duties, who will take her place? There are so few attendants and they are all so young. None have the sight like Phoibe has, like Sofia had. Is our time really past?”

  Silent tears spilled down Georgios’ broad cheeks. “She is fighting it, Rhea. She is fighting hard. But in her visions she has given up; she has already given herself to Apollon and by doing so she has sealed the fate of both the god and the goddess. She believes she is the end. That something new may come, but that Apollon and Gaia are finished.”

  “This cannot be what the prophecy meant. Who can imagine the Sacred Precinct without Gaia, Apollon, and Dionysos. There is no one god who is both healer like Apollon and resurrected like Dionysos, who is both son of Zeus and mother of all creation. This god does not exist. No one god can manifest all these attributes.”

  Georgios had heard enough. His gripped Rhea’s shoulders and shook her hard. “I don’t care about your gods or goddesses. I don’t give a damn who claims the Sacred Precinct and for all I care, Mount Olympos can crumble into the sea. Phoibe is the only goddess I want. She is my only life, and I will do everything in my power to prevent anyone or anything from destroying her.” He turned and stormed out of the room leaving Rhea stunned and a hallway full of eavesdropping attendants crying in his wake.

  Chapter Forty-one

  “I suppose we must travel up to the funeral together.” Philon leaned against the doorway to Kleomon’s apartment in the temple complex.

  “I don’t like it any more than you do, but, as you always say, we must do our duty.” Kleomon didn’t turn around. He was busy adjusting the laurel wreath on his brow and admiring himself in the looking glass. “The Pythia is going with us as well, I assume. You’ve made all the arrangements?”

  “As usual.”

  “Always the efficient bureaucrat.”

  “Someone has to do it, and that someone always seems to be me.”

  “It took a while, but I learned that every time I make a suggestion or even try to get involved, I am slapped down like an unruly slave. So now I leave all the details to you and spend my time on happier pursuits. By the way, how are the arrangements going for the re-dedication of the theater? I hope Melanippe’s funeral hasn’t thrown a kink in your planning. It’s only two days away, remember.”

  “Menandros, Heraklios, and I have the ceremony well in hand.”

  “Wonderful. That leaves me free to keep my hands occupied in more, shall we say, satisfying ways.”

  “I was thinking, Kleomon,” Philon said, “perhaps we can put our little conversation from the other day behind us. It appears the mystery of the girl on the theater altar will remain just that, a mystery.”

  “When those damned priestesses are no longer causing trouble and when my groin is no longer black and blue from your knee, we can put it behind us.”

  “I guess the elderly heal more slowly. At least, at your age, you can be comforted by the fact that your manhood was not threatened. I imagine a good, satisfying fuck is nothing more than a distant memory for yo
u.”

  “Imagine what you want, since that’s all you have now that the worms are the only things delighting in your sweet Sofia.”

  Philon felt the bile in his throat. The number of stars in the sky did not compare to the number of times he had wished Kleomon dead. “At any rate,” he said, “Theron has bigger fish to fry now that Melanippe has tumbled to her death.”

  “Melanippe was a witch and a harpy,” Kleomon turned to face Philon, “but she no more tumbled to her death than I can fly up to the Korycian Cave.”

  “She was also a blind, sick old woman who could have easily slipped on an icy path and landed head first in a ravine full of rocks.”

  Kleomon turned to look at Philon. “No doubt that’s what the murderer wants us all to think.”

  “Where were you yesterday morning?” Philon asked nonchalantly.

  “Right here. Entertaining. You can ask Palamedes. I called him in to show off one of his latest works. It’s a beautiful piece. Would fetch a small fortune if it weren’t reserved for the temple treasury. And how about you? Were you tossing a bitter old woman in a ditch or off enjoying one of your mysterious meetings with your new nymph?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, Philon,” Kleomon laughed heartily. “You think I’m stupid, but I know all about your meetings with your new protégé. Sounds like she’s a bit too young for your taste, though. And too skinny. A bit boyish. More to my liking, I think. Perhaps you would introduce us, to make amends for my ill-treatment. Oh!” Kleomon looked down at his lap and rubbed his hand over his crotch, “Looks like my manhood has recovered after all.”

  Philon prided himself on his ability to show no emotion. It was a skill and an art. To breathe normally and look straight at the object of your distress while imagining all the ways in which you could make him or her suffer. He had imagined plenty of ways to make Kleomon suffer. He could tic them off right now, one by one, to calm himself. First he would—no, it was too much bother. Kleomon was not worth it. He was simply a nuisance, nothing more. For now.