Killing Pythagoras (Mediterranean Prize Winner 2015)

by Marcos Chicot

  Crisipo had watched Glaucus in horror as he took the rods out of the fire to test their temperature. Finally, the moment arrived when he pulled out a red-hot rod and began to advance toward Crisipo. Up to that point, the Sybarite had behaved like a host apologizing for any unintentional inconvenience. Now, however, as he approached Crisipo there was no longer any pretense. His face radiated sadism, the intense desire to inflict pain.

  On the battlefield, Crisipo had never been a coward, but now he felt he would faint with terror. His vision blurred, the world tilted dizzyingly, and his head fell forward on his chest.

  React! a voice inside him shouted.

  If he didn’t act at once all would be lost. He sensed that the Sybarite would be very expert at prolonging his suffering without actually killing him. He had already covered half the distance to Crisipo. Only a few more steps and the flesh of his cheeks, his neck, maybe even his eyes would begin to char.

  On the edge of collapse, Crisipo bent his head down as far as he could and grabbed the edge of his tunic with his lips.

  Valiant Ares, give me strength.

  In the seam of his tunic his lips felt a small lump. He held it with his teeth and ripped the material. The contents fell on his tongue and Crisipo swallowed as fast as he could.

  It’s done.

  With his head resting on his chest, he could see Glaucus’ feet coming toward him. It didn’t matter. He could already feel his tongue contracting, his throat constricting as if a fist were squeezing it from the inside. His breathing became labored. When he attempted to draw breath, he produced a whistle which in a matter of seconds became a groan of agony. From the unnatural contraction of his neck muscles, Glaucus must have guessed what had happened. He rushed to Crisipo and slapped him in an attempt to make him spit out the poison. It was too late. With a yell of rage, he hit him again. Crisipo barely noticed, his attention on the all-consuming reality that he was about to die, and by so doing would save his lord and master.

  “Spit it out!”

  The Sybarite grabbed him by the hair and lifted his head.

  “Spit it out!”

  When Glaucus saw that Crisipo’s jaw and lips had seized like his neck, he tried to push the red-hot rod into his mouth to pry it open. The flesh on his lips scorched with a rapid sizzle and the metal clashed against his teeth.

  “Stop!”

  Akenon pulled Glaucus by the arm. The rod fell to the ground. Crisipo, tied to the chair, had his head flung back. White foam began to bubble from his mouth. One of the guards gripped Akenon’s forearm, but he broke free with a hard shove. He took Crisipo’s head in both hands.

  White mandrake root.

  The symptoms were unmistakable. It was the same poison that had killed Cleomenides and Daaruk.

  “Tell us where he is!”

  The scorched lips convulsed, as if Crisipo wanted to say something. Akenon tried desperately to catch a word. A second later, through the foam that augured instant death, Crisipo’s mouth managed, despite its agony, to transmit his message.

  In a gesture that froze on his face as life left him, his burnt lips curved upward in a smile of triumph.

  CHAPTER 90

  July 11th, 510 B.C.

  In the privacy of his room, Aristomachus held his breath as he analyzed the masked man’s method for calculating the approximation to the quotient. His small, spare body leaned so far over the parchments it looked as if he would fall on top of them. He ran a hand over the fringe of gray, unkempt hair that crowned his head. When he leaned it on the desk again, he saw his hand was shaking. He felt annoyance, as he often did, at not being able to control that outward sign of his fearful nature.

  He had been examining the parchments for several days, completely fascinated, as much by the discovery that the mysterious masked man had made regarding the quotient as by the other extraordinary discoveries demonstrated throughout. Right now, he was studying the process used to obtain the square root of two[7]. He had never seen anything like it, and it astounded as much as disquieted him.

  It’s… It’s magnificent.

  The process surprised him by being both efficient and straightforward. It started from a simple fraction which closely approximated the square root of two: 7/5. Then that fraction was inverted (5/7) and multiplied by two (10/7). The resulting fraction was another approximation to the square root of two, and indicated that a much closer result would be the mid-point between the two approximations, which was then calculated. Using that result, the process was repeated[8]. The method was simple: starting with a fraction, you doubled its inverse and found the mean. The result was brilliant.

  Aristomachus went over every element in the parchments again and again, anxious to absorb the vast knowledge they contained as well as to find a clue that might lead to his enemy. He needed to do something for Pythagoras after letting him down twice in a row. The first time had been when Orestes died. Someone had needed to go to the Council then to represent the School until Pythagoras returned from Neapolis. Aristomachus had attended to read the communiqué, but after Cylon’s attacks he had locked himself away in the community, leaving Milo to face the Council alone.

  The second fact that made him feel ashamed was when the expedition to Sybaris was arranged, to get Glaucus to give them the method for the quotient. I was weak and cowardly. He should have been the one to go and not Evander, since he was the grand master with the most outstanding mathematical abilities, second only to Pythagoras himself.

  And now to the masked man as well, he openly admitted.

  He redoubled his concentration on the parchments in the hope of discovering a clue, some hint as to who could have created such astonishing work. His intuition told him there was much more than met the eye. He sensed that in spite of forcing his abilities to the maximum he was only scratching the surface.

  His desire to help Pythagoras sprang exclusively from the adoration he felt for his master. It never crossed his mind that he might be elected successor. In fact, it would have caused him sleepless nights to know that Pythagoras’ current idea was to establish a committee of succession, in which Aristomachus would be responsible for the academic branch of the School.

  Once more, he carefully reviewed the operations that used fractions to calculate the square root of two.

  How many steps would be needed in this process to arrive at a fraction that is the precise square root of two?

  Aristomachus’ reflections were interrupted by a knock on the door. He raised his head, unsure whether he had heard anything.

  There was another knock.

  He got up, his joints creaking, and winced in pain. He rubbed his knee, then walked slowly to the door. When he opened it, one of his disciples was standing there with something in his hand.

  “Master Aristomachus, this just arrived for you.”

  Aristomachus took it apprehensively. It was a slim, cloth package tied with a string. There was no marking on it to indicate where it had come from.

  “Do you know who it’s from?”

  “No, master. I already asked the messenger, but it appears to have been handed to him anonymously.”

  Aristomachus looked at the package suspiciously, trying to guess its contents.

  “Thank you,” he grunted as he closed the door.

  He placed the package on the table and cut the string.

  When he removed the cloth, he saw it contained a parchment folded in half. He stared at it for a while without touching it. Suddenly, he felt the temperature in the room drop by several degrees, and sensed someone behind him. Aristomachus quickly looked over his shoulder.

  He was alone.

  Open it, it’s just a parchment, he reproached himself.

  The first thing he saw when he unfolded it was the pentacle. It was a relief to find the symbol Pythagoreans used to greet and acknowledge one another. He had thought…

  What’s this?!

  The pentacle was inverted in relation to the text. His breathing quickened and he began reading
, his hands shaking uncontrollably.

  Brother Aristomachus, it gives me great joy to greet you again.

  Instantly, he was certain the letter was from the masked man and it was someone he knew. His vision blurred and he had to steady himself on the edge of the table. His mind was in a ferment, imagining memories with that man: it was someone he had had friendly conversations with, someone whose power hadn’t shown itself back then as forcefully as it was doing now. Someone…

  He forced himself to keep reading.

  You must be wondering how many steps there are in my process of approximation to the square root of two.

  Aristomachus stifled a cry and dropped the parchment as if it had burned his fingers. He heard the echo of laughter and turned hysterically in all directions. By Pythagoras and Apollo, how could a letter tell him what he was thinking at the exact moment he received it? He jumped up from his chair and paced from wall to wall, grinding his teeth.

  I’m not reading anymore.

  He paused at the door and looked at the table, shaking his head vigorously. The wisest thing would be to get rid of the parchment, but he felt a strange and powerful attraction to it. He crossed the room and picked it up again.

  It was a letter and a mathematical treatise all in one. Aristomachus continued reading, his face filling with fear as he glimpsed a dark abyss behind the symbols and diagrams. It became harder and harder to decipher them, but he didn’t need to understand everything to realize the implications.

  When he reached the middle of the message, he fell to his knees without knowing it. His eyes continued to scan the horror before him as if of their own volition, indifferent to his terror. He felt a gloomy, dense darkness coiling within him, reaching into his mind.

  He managed to close his eyes before he got to the end, but it was already too late.

  He had understood too much.

  CHAPTER 91

  July 11th, 510 B.C.

  The Council session that day had left Pythagoras seriously concerned. Even though his presence was enough to keep Cylon in line, there was no denying that the Crotonian continued to gain strength.

  He opened his eyes and contemplated the eternal flame in front of the statue of Hestia in the Temple of the Muses.

  We have too many loose ends, and all of them are worrying.

  The masked man was still at large and now he had the monster Boreas. Glaucus seemed to have settled down, but not before he had handed over a mountain of gold to his enemy, and his combination of power and instability continued to be an underlying threat. Cylon became more daring by the day, attracting new supporters, apparently aided by the masked man’s gold. His own succession was a difficult proposition given that he had lost several of his best men, though he hoped to solve the problem with the idea of the committee. And, finally, his plans to expand the School had come to a dead stop when he had had to postpone the Roman initiative.

  Pythagoras put a hand closer to the flames and felt the waves of heat. There was another matter bothering him: Akenon had been missing since the previous day. After much investigation, he had learned that he had been seen leaving on horseback along the northern road. Could he have gone to Sybaris again? Why had he said nothing beforehand? It all seemed to indicate an urgent departure, and that made Pythagoras uneasy.

  He thought he heard commotion outside and turned to the door. The sounds of a distant disturbance reached his ears and he hurried out. He heard his name being shouted and his heart contracted.

  His bodyguards were only a few yards from the temple. Some disciples ran toward him, calling at the top of their lungs. Pythagoras heard the word “fire” just as he saw a column of smoke rising from the communal buildings.

  “Run for water,” he ordered the disciples who had come to get him.

  He noticed there were already several masters organizing a human chain to transport water, and he hastened to the building the smoke was issuing from. Despite having always been in excellent shape, he now felt exhausted after running barely a hundred yards. In the last weeks he had aged several years.

  I hope no one’s hurt, he thought as he went through the door and into the courtyard.

  When he saw where the fire was coming from he froze.

  It’s Aristomachus’ room!

  He advanced until he was within a few feet of the blaze, trying not to think the worst. The fire was under control but there were still flames in what was left of the ceiling. Smoke billowed so thickly through the open door it was impossible to see.

  When he tried to get closer, someone took his arm and held him back. He turned and saw it was Evander. The master didn’t seem injured, but his tunic was ripped and his body blackened from the smoke.

  “Master, we have to wait.”

  “Do we know where Aristomachus is?” asked Pythagoras intently.

  “I haven’t seen him…” Evander paused, shaking his head. “The door was blocked from the inside. I knocked it down myself, but it was impossible to go in and I couldn’t see anything.”

  Pythagoras looked for a moment at the fire and joined Evander in the human chain that was transporting water, throwing it into the bedroom. When the smoke abated a little, they decided to go in. A warm vapor enveloped them, smelling of damp ashes. The ceiling had caved in and the floor was covered with smoking fragments of wood.

  They saw a body on the ground.

  Pythagoras kneeled in the ashes and scrutinized the face, but was unable to identify it.

  “Help me get him out,” he said urgently.

  He pulled a piece of wood out of the way and took the body by its feet. Evander picked it up by the arms, and between them they carried it out. It weighed almost nothing.

  Many disciples had congregated outside the fire-ravaged room. In silence, they stood back to allow Evander and Pythagoras through. When they laid the body face up on the sandy ground of the courtyard, all doubts were dispelled. It was Aristomachus. His body was charred, but the part of his face that had been resting on the ground was intact. It revealed an expression of suffering and sadness that was painful to contemplate.

  “There’s something in his hand,” Evander said hoarsely.

  Pythagoras continued to stare at his dead friend’s face, trying to hold back his grief. It was impossible to read his expression. Finally, he looked away and focused on Aristomachus’ hand, which was clutching what appeared to be a dirty parchment.

  “How could it not have burned?” asked Evander as Pythagoras prised it from the stiff hand.

  The philosopher shook his head in answer. It surprised him as well. Aristomachus’ hand was burned, but the document had survived. Although it was dirty and burnt around some of its edges, most of the contents were legible. Pythagoras turned it around, looked at it, disconcerted, then turned it right way up again.

  An inverted pentacle!

  His eyes scanned the same text Aristomachus had perused an hour earlier. Pythagoras’ powers of comprehension were superior, so the abyss and the darkness conjured up by the document enveloped him faster. His face blanched until it was as white as his hair, and he had to lean on Evander’s shoulder to keep himself upright. He stammered an excuse and left his disciples and Aristomachus’ corpse.

  He needed to continue reading alone.

  CHAPTER 92

  July 16th, 510 B.C.

  The masked man was unusually restless.

  This meeting could result in a dramatic step forward for my plans.

  He was standing with his back against a wall. The dim light in the enclosure came from a single oil lamp which rested on the ground. High above him, the walls disappeared into the darkness. Tellus, the influential popular leader from Sybaris, stood next to him. He was a man whose appearance often caused mistaken first impressions. He looked harmless and had a tendency to get lost in his thoughts, but when he spoke in public he was transformed. His gestures became energetic and his ringing voice transmitted such enthusiasm it galvanized everyone who heard him.

  His main weak
ness is excessive prudence, thought the masked man as he observed him.

  Probably as a result of being so cautious, Tellus had spent years conspiring in the shadows, without ever taking action…until now.

  The masked man silently watched Tellus as he paced back and forth. The Sybarite leader kept rubbing his hands together, murmuring in an inaudible tone. In front of them was a wide curtain, which would soon be opened. On the other side was a large room packed with two hundred expectant men, each of them attending on behalf of a good number of Sybarites.

  In all, they represented close to twenty thousand men.

  There’s no doubt, Crisipo’s best move was finding Tellus, the masked man told himself with a grunt of satisfaction. Tellus had saved him many months’ work and a huge amount of gold.

  The building where the meeting was being held was a granary. They had improvised a stage—a simple wooden platform—and behind that, with strips of wood and cloth, a curtain, to create the separate room where the masked man and Tellus waited. The granary had a rear door. Guarding it were Boreas and two of Tellus’ bodyguards, who looked like seven-year-old boys beside the giant. In the silent forest surrounding them, some twenty guards patrolled, invisible in the darkness of the night.

  Behind the curtain, the excited din of the audience was growing louder. The two men were just waiting for one of Tellus’ men to confirm that all the invitees had arrived.

  Four days earlier, the masked man had gone with Boreas to the meeting place arranged with Cylon. Every day, the Crotonian politician sent a guard to a safe place so they could communicate. On that occasion, the masked man wanted to know the outcome of the letter he had sent Aristomachus the previous day.

  “Aristomachus perished in a fire,” the guard told him. He smiled under the mask, but the guard’s next words wiped the smile from his face. “Cylon asked me to deliver another piece of information. We’ve just learned that Akenon detained Crisipo and took him to Glaucus’ palace. There he was tortured until he died.”