Elementary

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Aristodemus is dead!” The boy skidded to a stop. “And my father—” He gulped, new tears cutting a pathway through the dirt on his cheeks.

  Kyria remembered that he was called Picus, son of a Roman who came to Kumae with the exiled King Tarquin, and stayed on as one of the tyrant’s guards. Kyria reached out, but he stood rigid, at fourteen too old to accept comfort, but not old enough to deny his need.

  “Thymoteles has seized the citadel.” Archilaus was shaking, but his voice was calm. “You women and the boys must go. They will want Picus because of his father, Polycritos because he is my student, and Lysander and Nicolaus, whose fathers are foreign merchants, to hold for ransom. But I can keep them talking while you pack and get away.”

  “No, master!” Polycritos said hoarsely. “You must get away. I’ve heard my father and his friends talking over their wine. It was always what they were going to do someday, but now that day’s here. They hate you—hate everyone the tyrant favored. I must be the one to stay.”

  “But he’ll punish you—” Archilaus began.

  “Tie me up!” said the boy. “Decide where you’ll go, and I’ll tell him you went the other way.”

  “It’s a good plan,” Kyria agreed, slinging her bundles over one shoulder and sliding one arm through the handle of her basket.

  “Please, master.” Polycritos was weeping now. “My father has shamed our house. At least let me do this for you!”

  Kyria settled Empedocles on one hip. “Nicolaus and Picus, there’s rope in the kitchen. Get it, and pack a basket with all the food you can find. We’ll make for the harbor. Do as Polycritos says and come after us.” She turned to her parents. “Please follow me!”

  Had he been present, her husband could have summoned spirits of the Air to add a compulsion to his words, but the emotion behind Kyria’s appeal was enough to sweep her mother through the door. Eudocia seized her husband’s hand. Still protesting, he let himself be pulled down the narrow lane. The ruddy glow above the acropolis gave enough light to show their way.

  “The mercenaries stopped to loot,” breathed her father as he stumbled along. “I tried to save some of the scrolls, but the soldiers were between me and the library . . .”

  And were the books more important than your family? Kyria bit back the question, knowing that her father would probably reply that, unlike the scrolls, his family could run away. And hadn’t she just proved him right, after all?

  “May the gods keep them too busy playing with the tyrant’s possessions to look for his friends!” she replied.

  As they neared the corner, she heard footsteps and stiffened, but it was only Nicolaus and Picus, bundles thumping against their backs as they ran. Ahead, a door opened, and lamplight spilled out across the stony lane. The house Aristodemus had given his philosopher was at the very edge of the heights that looked west toward the long, straight stretch of beach and the Tyrrhenian Sea. The tyrant’s favorites were abandoning their mansions now. Kyria glimpsed bright cloth and a glint of gold as people pushed through the doorway. One of them was weeping; another mumbled angrily.

  “It’s Telarchos!” her father cried, and looked surprised when Kyria held him back. “He’s a warrior! He’ll protect us!”

  “Not against such odds,” she hissed in reply. “He’ll try to fight, and anyone with him will be killed. Let them go.” She nodded as Telarchos’ household started off in the direction of the Processional Way. “Everyone who takes that route will distract the rebels from looking for us here.”

  Kyria held them back until the other fugitives had rounded the corner and even the sound of weeping had faded away.

  “Lady of the Citadel, guide us,” she whispered as an owl swept overhead on silent wings.

  The houses of Kumae’s citizens sprawled down the hillside between the acropolis and the bay in a warren of passageways. Memory led her down the narrow street beside Telarchos’ mansion. Their cook’s daughter and she had gone that way once when they were children, eager to spy on the Dionysian festival. They made their way through an alley, then endured a tense moment waiting for another babbling group to pass before they returned to the road.

  “Hsst!” Nicolaus, who was in the lead, turned suddenly into a narrow passage between a shed and a donkey pen, waving at the others to follow. Behind them, the regular tramp of hobnailed sandals rang against stone. Kyria pressed herself against the wall, willing the shadows to enfold them. She could hear her mother’s harsh breathing, her father’s whispered affirmations of divine harmony. Even Empedocles held still. If he was indeed mute, she could only be grateful for it now.

  “Etruscans!” Nicolaus shaped the word as the shadows of cone-shaped helmets jerked along the wall. “Thymoteles hired them.”

  “Barbarians!” muttered Archilaus. “Students and teachers are noncombatants—sacred to the gods!”

  “Not always.” Nicolaus stifled a grin. “Picus grabbed a bronze vase and brained the man who stabbed his father. That’s another reason they might be after us.” They all held their breaths as the patrol marched by.

  “They’ve cut us off from the harbor,” Kyria observed when the soldiers had passed. “We’ll have to get to one of the northern gates and work our way around past the lake.”

  “But that is a dreadful place! Birds that fly over it fall dead from the sky,” Eudocia exclaimed. “No one in their senses goes near.”

  “Then they won’t be looking for us there,” Kyria said stoutly. Meto and she had ventured there once, and her nose wrinkled even at the memory, but there was a path though the trees that lined the rim. “If we skirt the lake and head for the fishing village by Baios’ tomb, we can hire a boat.” The coins that would have paid for her passage on a merchant vessel should be more than enough to bribe a fisherman to carry them across the bay. It was not a perfect plan, but no one had come with anything better. Shifting Empedocles to rest against her shoulder, she stepped back onto the road.

  • • •

  By the time they slipped through the small gate that the refuse collectors used, flames were devouring the acropolis. They were far from the only party leaving the city, but no one else took the road to the lake that reflected the bloody sky. Lake Avernus was a gloomy place even at noon, black beneath the shadow of the trees that lined its shores and an oily gray in the sun. It was the only water Kyria had ever encountered that made her want to flee. She had never seen a bird drop from the sky above it, but few swam there. The peasants said that Odysseus had come here once, seeking the ghost of his father, and later Aeneas stopped by on his way to Latium. At midnight, it was a place of terror where gibbering spirits rode the wind to the gate of Hades, which must surely be somewhere nearby.

  The citadel was still burning when the fugitives huddled to rest beneath a stand of pines. The fallen needles had a dry, musty smell.

  “I hope it all burns!” muttered Picus. “My father will have a noble pyre!” Through the tangle of branches they could see the stark silhouette of the acropolis against a sky of flame. The glow illuminated the faces of her companions. Except for Empedocles, who bounced in her arms, pointing, they were all marked by fatigue and fear.

  “How did the rebels get past the tyrant’s guards?” she asked.

  “Xenocrite let them in!” spat Nicolaus.

  “She is the daughter of one of the exiled nobles,” explained Eudocia, “but she always seemed happy with the luxuries Aristodemus gave her.”

  “She said that she would rather carry earth like the other women, if it was for her father, than lie in a usurper’s soft bed,” answered Archilaus. “Thymoteles cut Aristodemus’ throat before he could answer her.”

  “Hermes, God of Travelers, help us!” whispered Eudocia. “I hoped we would be safe here for the rest of our lives.”

  Kyria patted her mother’s hand, understanding how hard this flight must be for a woman who rarely left her home.

/>   “Pythagoras taught that impermanence is the nature of all things physical,” said her father sternly. “In other lands, men look at the earth and think it eternal, but here, where water burns and the land itself rises and falls like the sea, we cannot deny that his words were true. Even our bodies are only temporary habitations. The soul moves from one to another until it is perfected.”

  But bodies are precious, too, thought Kyria, acutely conscious of the warm weight of the child in her arms. I do not care who Empedocles was before, or who he will be. I know only that the body he wears now came from my own, and I will give my last drop of blood to preserve it. If her child never spoke a word, the bright spirit that burned within him could still bring light to the world.

  “Is the fishers’ village far?” whispered Lysander in the silence that followed.

  “We could reach it by dawn,” said Nicolaus, “but some of the nobles that Aristodemus banished live there.”

  “The rebels will still be in the city,” said Kyria. “If the villagers will not help us, we can buy food and continue on.”

  “Fisherfolk live all along the bay,” her father said calmly. “We will find another village.”

  “But not until we have light,” said Kyria. “We should eat something now, and get whatever rest we can.”

  • • •

  Dawn brought a smoke-dimmed sky and a muggy heat, as if summer were already here. From the knob of ocher stone where the citadel still smoldered, a land scored by canyons and craters stretched westward. Men called them the fields of fire, though except for the places where sulfurous vapors burst from the earth, there was rich soil.

  The track they followed wound south, crossing a hillside where a few goats grazed and buttercups glowed in the ripening grass. Farther off, tall cypresses stood like green columns for a roofless temple, framing a glimpse of sparkling blue bay. It would have been a lovely day for a walk if not for the smoke in the air, but as the sun rose, the wind shifted, bringing the scent of the sea.

  Empedocles wriggled until Kyria set him down. She untied the cord that bound her peplos below her breasts to make a leash for him. Though her mother frowned, he had run off too many times to go free. His tongue might lag, but there was nothing wrong with his legs.

  The day grew warmer. Kyria settled into a mindless progress, retaining just enough focus to keep hold of Empedocles’ leash, when Lysander pulled on her sleeve.

  “I hear hoofbeats!”

  Nico knelt and laid his ear to the earth. “Horses! More than one. They must have gotten them from the citadel.”

  Kyria cast a quick look around. The pines edging the road could give no cover. They were widely spaced, their branches bushing out like a sunshade well over the height of a man. Where the slope fell away beyond them, brush covered the hill.

  “Down there!” she cried, grabbing the child. Stiff twigs tore at skin and gown as they slid down the bank, but when the first of the horsemen rounded the bend, all of the fugitives were out of sight, nursing their scratches as they crouched among the leathery leaves.

  The horsemen laughed and passed a wineskin back and forth. They wore odd bits of looted finery, and ambling behind them was a laden mule.

  “We’re too late,” wailed Eudocia when they had gone.

  “No,” said her husband. “We are saved. If we had made it to the village, we would be there now, waiting as the fisherman got his boat ready for sea.”

  “If we had found someone willing to take us at all,” added Picus grimly.

  “The gods are watching over us!” exclaimed Lysander. “We would have fallen right into their hands.”

  “But if we cannot go to the village, what will we do?” Eudocia’s voice wavered, but she was not weeping. Indeed, she was holding up better than Kyria had expected.

  “Go back to the fork,” Archilaus replied. “That road follows the shore.”

  Kyria shaded her eyes with her hand. Before them lay a rolling countryside of dull green brush and pasture where the grass was ripening to gold. Some five leagues to the east, the double peaks of Vesouvios floated on the horizon. She had to believe that somewhere along the curving coastline they would find a ship. Empedocles was already scrambling back up the slope. With a sigh, she followed him.

  • • •

  The fugitives kept moving throughout that day. For a time the road edged the coast, but they found no one with a boat big enough to carry all of them. Now the track led inland. The boys ranged ahead to watch for other travelers, and the more identifiable members of the party were usually able to hide before they were seen. From time to time they saw shepherds on the hillside, but by the time any news got to the rebels, surely the fugitives would be gone.

  As the sun sank westward, their footsteps slowed. Empedocles’ enthusiasm for running had failed long ago. Kyria’s nostrils flared at a whiff of sulfur on the wind. “You’re tired, little man.” She jiggled him in her arms, wondering how much farther she could carry him.

  “What cannot be changed must be endured,” said her father, but he, too, sounded weary.

  The country here was ridged and broken, good only for goats. She hoped they would find a source of good water soon. The last spring had had an odd mineral taste, and the nymph was a sickly creature who snarled at her.

  “How much will Thymoteles care that you escaped?” she asked softly.

  Archilaus’ brow furrowed. “Logically, their first concern should be to secure the city.” The tall cypresses laid bars of shadow across his face as they passed.

  “But most men are not logical, I have heard you say—”

  He sighed. “Some of them desire to obliterate everything Aristodemus achieved.”

  “And you fear they will identify the tyrant’s philosopher with the tyrant?”

  “Perhaps, though the gods know Aristodemus was not willing to learn very much from me. But Thymoteles has a more practical reason to want me out of the way. I told him that if he murdered Aristodemus instead of giving him a trial, his name would be despised in every city where Greek is spoken.”

  “And he knows that you will bear witness against him if you live,” Kyria said.

  She had no illusions regarding their fate if they were captured. Her parents would be killed. She herself would fetch a good price in a slave market somewhere far away. And her son—would she see his bright spirit extinguished by fetters, or watch him die as Andromache had watched when her child was thrown from the walls of Troy?

  Her arms tightened protectively around Empodecles, who stirred. His eyes grew bright as he looked around him. Ahead, the road crossed a ridge of land that swelled upward, where the rim of a caldera showed above the trees. When they came to the crest, they paused.

  “Master, is that the place you spoke of, where Hephaestus has his forge?” asked Lysander.

  “Or Hestia her cauldron.” Archilaus smiled. “Vesouvios is another.” He nodded toward the distant mountain.

  “And Aitne in Sikelia, where I live now,” added Kyria. For some time she had been feeling a deep throbbing beneath the ground. When she extended her awareness downward, she sensed water, but it was strangely blended with earth and fire. This is a country for Titans or gods, not men, she thought with a sudden unease. I want to go back to the sea.

  “What’s that?” Picus was looking back the way they had come. A moving haze of dust veiled the road.

  “Lysander, you have the best eyes.” Nico lifted him. “What do you see?”

  “Mounted soldiers,” the boy squeaked, “coming fast!”

  “Get off the road!” To the left, there was a gap in the brush. Kyria started downward, her sandals slipping in the loose pale soil, and the others followed.

  It was no more than a goat track, winding down through a tangle of scrub oak mixed with myrtle and buckthorn. The aroma of sun-warmed sage scented the air. When the path began to climb
again, she paused to peer back through the branches. The horsemen still pounded along the dusty road. Sunlight glinted from their pointed helms.

  Etruscans . . . They would not give up easily. Despite the heat of the sun, she shivered.

  Above them, a few pines stood stark against the sky. They climbed toward them until suddenly the path fell sharply away, and they found themselves on the rim of the caldera. Most of the crater floor was a wasteland of bubbling mud and tumbled stone where only plumes of vapor grew, but on the western side, there was a green grove. The smell of sulfur drifted up on the wind.

  “Hestia help us!” moaned her mother. “This place belongs to the gods. We cannot go there!”

  “I’d rather trust to the mercy of the gods than men,” Kyria replied.

  The place might be holy, but someone came here, for when they reached the base of the slope, they found that the path joined a road whose ruts were overgrown with grass. At the edge of the woods stood an altar of honey-colored stone that looked as if it had been there since the gods imprisoned the Titans underground. Archilaus bent to trace the weathered inscription.

  “To Hestia and Hephaestus . . .” He straightened. “Holy ones, if ever we escape this peril, I promise you an offering.”

  Now that they were on level ground, Kyria could set Empedocles down. As he trotted alongside, her spirit as well as her back muscles began to ease. Green grasses waved beneath oak and olive and the glossy-leafed unedo, whose pebbled fruits were just beginning to swell. She glimpsed the cliffs that rimmed the crater above the trees.

  The boys came dashing back from their explorations to show her a rivulet that formed a small pool. Kyria scooped up cool water, feeling senses that had been deadened by fatigue revive.

  “Nymphs of this forest pool,” she whispered, “I thank you!”

  Sunlight struck the water as a breeze stirred the branches, and shifting focus showed her a shimmer of opalescent forms and flickering wings. Empedocles sat down suddenly, eyes wide. Then he pointed and laughed. He could see them! She had suspected it, but this was the first time the child had been in a place where the sprites could so easily appear.