“Then why am I walking along the road with you?” she asked furiously.
“Because you would not go back if I told you to,” Orpheus said, glancing at her sidelong.
“Do not be ridiculous. It is quite clear that Jason intended me to go into the town, whatever you said.”
Orpheus shrugged again. “He is cautious. He felt there should be two of us—in case one fell into trouble, the other could summon the men from the beach, and if the trouble was enough, they could signal the ship to come in.”
“Trouble from the townsfolk, or from the prisoner trying to escape?” Eurydice asked spitefully.
“Prisoner?” Orpheus looked around quickly, as if Eurydice had seen something he had missed. “What prisoner?”
“This prisoner,” Eurydice hissed, bringing her hand hard against her chest. “This prisoner, who has paid her dues to Jason and the Argo and her crew, and who now wishes to leave the ship.”
There was a silence. Orpheus did not turn his head to look at her or make a shocked protest. He stared steadily ahead at the road and at last, softly, asked, “Why? This is too small a place. You will be safer in Colchis.”
“Because it is worth the risk to be free of you,” she said.
“Free of me!” he echoed, now sounding angry. “What have I ever done that you need to suffer danger to be free of me? Have I importuned you? Was it so hateful to you that I asked you to be my wife? You need not fear that I will try to interfere with you. I have had my fill of watching you and waiting for a crumb of kindness. By all means, if you wish to stay here, stay. I will not stop you or try to hold you.”
He lengthened his stride to the full extension of his long legs and rapidly pulled ahead. Eurydice was left with the unpalatable choices of running to keep up with him or swallowing the bitter words she had not yet spoken. She accepted the latter as the lesser of the evils, and found it more good than evil, after all, as she began to follow him slowly up the road. Perhaps the words she might have said were better swallowed, she thought. Did he not have a right to ask why she should be offended by his asking her to marry him? And could he really have been waiting for a crumb of kindness from her? Certainly it was true he had not importuned her—if he had, she would not be thinking of leaving him! Or was it all another clever ploy, a trick to bring her back to Jason’s ship?
Desiring the former enough to make her heart pound, fearing the latter with all the intensity of her desire, Eurydice felt incapable of any decision. But she did not need to make one, she told herself. For now it would serve her purpose best to try to discover what Jason wanted to know. That exercise should make clear a great many things about the town. And if she decided to stay, she could pass the information to Orpheus as her last payment on her passage.
Not long after Orpheus disappeared around a curve in the road, a farmer driving a cart came in from a side track. He looked at her curiously but without alarm and smiled when she came even with him, calling a greeting she did not understand. Unwilling to display her lack of comprehension, she smiled and nodded but kept her pace fast enough to make not speaking seem natural. A little hope rose that no one would speak any of the languages she knew—and if they did not she could not remain, of course—but she crushed it, and by the time she had passed into the marketplace she knew it was false. Most of the merchants there seemed to speak a trade dialect very similar to her own, possibly with greater sibilance and less softness, but completely comprehensible.
Having entered the square, Eurydice turned right and began to walk around the stalls. Business seemed lively, but she noticed a strange preponderance of women among the shoppers and that what men there were would glance frequently toward the north end of the square, where a wide avenue led still higher up the hill to what must be a palace. Since the tension seemed reserved to men, Eurydice put it in the back of her mind and concentrated on sensing for Power. She found a bright spot at once and idled toward the place to find an earth-witch openly offering spells for bringing blossoms into fruit and setting seed. The woman was accepted by her neighboring merchants, one of whom Eurydice heard call a question to the witch, and by the folk who passed, since they did not make signs against evil or spit. Still, there was something in the area that made Eurydice quicken her steps.
Safely by, she sought for Power again, and found, and once again sensed something very strange. This time she damped down her own Gift as much as she could and forced herself closer to the Healer. As she approached the miasma grew thicker, and she drew back while another passed before her to ask for a simple little spell for sore eyes. The Healer’s client did not hesitate at all, and the Healer, murmuring the spell and transferring it with gentle touches, also seemed unaware of the unpleasant aura. It must be something set against strangers, Eurydice thought, some magic warning. Probably it would not be safe to work any spell unless one had clearance from the authorities.
Curious, Eurydice forced herself forward once the Healer had accepted her client’s coin and she had left. “I am a stranger,” she said in trade tongue. “May I ask some questions?”
The young man glanced quickly past her at the north end of the square. “So long as no other client comes,” he said.
Eurydice took a small round of copper from her purse and laid it down. “I am a Finder,” she said. “Will I be able to use my Gift here?”
“The Gifted are not welcome, but they are not burned—so long as they do not interfere with the Lord King’s pleasure.”
“Should I veil myself?” Eurydice asked.
Even as she asked the question, she knew it was not women the king of this place sought for pleasure. The women in the marketplace—some veiled, some not—gave all their attention to their business. They did not cast anxious glances at the passage from the palace.
“As you please, but there is no need,” the healer said, looking north again. “King Amycus will not trouble you, and the market wards will hear you fairly if you make a complaint.”
“Will I need permission from the king or the headman of the town to make a place for myself in the market?” she asked.
“I did not,” the Healer said. “In fact, you can have my place here in another week. I came at the summons of a client, and when his ship returns from Drepane, he will send me back to Chacedon. I—”
His voice stopped suddenly as he glanced over at the wide avenue on the north again. Following his eyes, Eurydice saw movement up at the far end, near the palace. The Healer had jumped to his feet, pushing Eurydice back off the cloth that marked his place and held his seating cushion and one for a client. He swept everything together into a bundle and began to make his way out of the market. Several other men also began to walk toward the outer edges of the market, but most of the merchants and all of the women paid no attention.
Eurydice stared after the disappearing Healer, then shrugged and picked up her copper bit which had fallen out of the Healer’s cloth. So King Amycus liked men? But the Healer seemed an unlikely object. He was thin and weedy, without having a feminine fragility, and he was certainly no beauty. Could Amycus like Gifted men? No, too many men had watched the road north; they could not all have been Gifted. In any case, it seemed safe enough for a woman here and, unless the Healer had been lying, no particular obstacles would be cast in her path…except that ugly feeling that hung in the air around her.
She continued on slowly. Perhaps the spell marked by the unpleasant aura was only against greater magics, which was why she felt it and those with lesser Gifts did not. Ahead was a display of herbs, plants, and earths for dyeing. The strange feeling diminished a trifle as she moved away from where the Healer had cast his little spell. She threw back the hood of her cloak, which she had kept over her head, and stepped up to the counter.
“My mistress lately had a cloth dyed with a rose color from Salmydessus,” she said to the elderly man presiding over the goods. “She now wishes to dye a scarf to match. Do you have such a dye?”
“From Salmydessus? No, I do not. I
never heard that they had any special dyes. I have several fine rose colors, both from the earth and to be leached from these roots.”
He lifted a basket slightly, but put it down again when Eurydice shook her head. “My mistress thinks the sun rises in Salmydessus,” she said. “It would not matter that the color were clearer and better. If it did not come from Salmydessus she would find fault with it.”
“If she thinks the sun rises in Salmydessus,” he said, “she is back to front, as it is on the west coast of the great black sea. However, you might try Master Zetes across the square. He deals more with Thracian goods—you sound Thracian.”
It was said with a touch of contempt, but no great animosity. Eurydice thanked him for his help and started across the square. Clearly, Salmydessus was a known place to these people. The merchant had recognized the name as soon as she mentioned it and had been able to recommend another merchant who might know more. If she could get clear directions to Salmydessus for those of the Argo, she would truly be free of all obligation to them.
Midway across, she hesitated as a swirl of activity became noticeable near the opening into the northern avenue. A troop of six armed and helmeted guards had entered the marketplace. Eurydice shrank back into a group of people who had been near a cloth-monger’s stall and had turned to watch. The arrival of a group of guards at just about the time a party from a ship would be likely to reach the town and disperse in the market seemed suspicious to her. The nervousness of the Healer, who was not a native, might also be significant. There were towns, Eurydice had heard, where strangers were gathered up and sold as slaves for the benefit of the whole town, and the natives, while they might not actively help, would not warn the victims.
Chapter Thirteen
The words of the look-past-me spell trembled on Eurydice’s lips but the air seemed to thicken around her as she thought of it. She swallowed back the words. Something here did not like the use of magic and worse might befall her for casting a spell than taking a chance without one. Had the Healer been lying about the freedom to use spells? Had he bought some protection from that ugly heaviness she sensed? Was he the kind that sacrificed other Gifted to increase his own safety or the value of what he had to sell?
She watched anxiously, but caught no sight of the Healer, and the merchant who sold dyes was not looking around for her nor, seemingly, signalling the guard. Nor were they headed in her direction. In fact, they had turned the other way. The group suddenly opened its ranks and halted. Behind her, Eurydice heard some people commenting to each other in their native language. Although she could not understand what they were saying, it seemed clear to her that they thought the guards had found what they sought.
A rush of relief was followed immediately by a pang of anxiety. Was the hunt over? And then, as one of the men broke away from the group and set out up the road toward the palace again, a great hand seemed to seize her by the throat. Orpheus! Orpheus had set out to draw attention to the fact that he was a stranger in the marketplace! Run, panic shrieked inside her. Slide away into the crowd. You can be well away into the woods before they can find you. It would not be desertion, a more sane part urged. If you save yourself, you can tell the men from the boat. But even as her fear yammered at her, she had pulled up her hood again and was making her way through the crowd toward the semicircle of guards. It would do Orpheus little good if the men from the boat arrived only to fall into the same trap.
“Yes I am,” she heard Orpheus say. “From the ship now anchored in the bay. I had thought to break my journey here if your king or his nobles desired to hear my songs.”
“I know nothing of that,” the captain of the group said. “King Amycus has his own way of welcoming strangers.”
“Bards are sacred,” Orpheus said.
“To the Greeks, mayhap,” the captain retorted, laughing. “We do not make a fetish of pretty words here.”
“What would King Amycus want of me, then?” Orpheus asked. “My whole worth is in my music.”
Eurydice held her breath, expecting the captain to say he would bring a price as a male laborer if no one desired his music. But he only shook his head and the five men closed in around Orpheus directing him through the crowd, which opened to let them by but did not shrink away in fear or shame. Some followed, looking interested and amused. When they came to the opening at the edge of the market that led to the palace, they stopped and waited. Eurydice, who had followed stealthily, keeping always a group of native folk between her and the guards, shrank into the shadows of a stall.
In no long time, another group came down the road from the palace. This was much larger, a number of richly dressed men, most with scarred faces, surrounding one in a kilt, naked to the waist, but wearing a crown. A great chair, carried by a group of porters, was set down in the middle of the open road. The kilted king climbed into it, and after an exchange in the native tongue, Orpheus was pushed forward.
“It is the law of King Amycus,” one of the richly dressed men intoned, this time in trade language, “that any stranger who comes to his city must box him and bow to his superior strength.”
“I will gladly acknowledge his superior strength at once,” Orpheus said, smiling. “I am a singer, not a boxer. There is no need to challenge me.”
“Of course there is no need to challenge you,” King Amycus cried. “I am the greatest boxer in the world.” And he began to recite the names of all those he had conquered with his fists.
Eurydice drew in a long breath. When men began to boast and crow, often smooth words accepting their vainglories could gentle them, and Orpheus was an expert at smooth words. The singer had blinked at Amycus’ pronouncement of his skill in boxing, and Eurydice remembered Orpheus mentioning that Polydeuces was the acknowledged master of the art in all Greece, but he was not likely to contradict the ranting king. Still, Eurydice’s relief was changing again to fear the longer Amycus talked. He was mad, she thought, shivering and clutching her cloak tighter.
“I know you cannot prevail against me,” Amycus said finally. “Nonetheless, I am impelled to give you the opportunity to win great glory and a place among the nobles of this land.”
“Lord King,” Orpheus said, his voice gentle, musical, softly soothing. “A chance to box is no opportunity to me. I cannot box. I do not know how. My hands are for playing the cithara and the flute. I have never struck a blow with my bare hand in my life.”
“You will box with me. All strangers box with me. It is a rule of my city.”
Orpheus shook his head. “What glory can accrue to you from crushing such a one as I who has no skill in your sport? It would be a shame, not an honor, to defeat me. Great kings win great fame from the praise of bards. I travel from town to town, court to court, country to country. Let me go, and I will sing throughout the world of Amycus the boxer.”
Eurydice’s breath caught. The words could easily be taken as an offer to praise the king, but she noted the card with which Orpheus did not specify what he would say about Amycus the boxer. Unfortunately, although there were some sympathetic murmurs from the crowd, the king seemed to harbor the same suspicion that had come to Eurydice.
“You will sing with much greater sincerity of my skill and my power after you have exchanged blows with me,” Amycus roared. “I am known already far and wide for my strength. What do I care for your petty tweetings.”
But Orpheus’ voice was having an effect on the crowd. One voice cried out, “Let him go.” Another called, “He is nothing.” And still another, from far back, shouted, “Let him sing.”
Eurydice looked around nervously, wishing they would be still. It was mostly women who were calling out and she had already seen that there were no women among the group that had come with Amycus. Likely the king completely discounted women, who could not box. The men, and there were more of them than Eurydice remembered in the market, as if they had come out of hiding once Amycus had a victim in hand, looked contemptuous and relieved.
Orpheus seemed to have
realized that the sympathy of the crowd would do him more harm than good in this place. He turned his full attention to Amycus. “My lord,” he cried, “only let me play you a few lines, sing a short song—”
He reached back to bring the cithara around to the front of his body but was forestalled by a gesture from Amycus, which brought a guardsman with a bared knife pointed at Orpheus’ throat. Mad Amycus might be, Eurydice thought, but he was not unaware of Orpheus’ power. She shuddered, suddenly understanding there was no way Orpheus could win his freedom. Amycus hated any kind of power in men, even sweet persuasion, and destroyed that power by beating the man to a pulp. She shuddered again as Amycus spoke, confirming her thought.
“No, you will not sing nor play,” the king bellowed, “until you have fulfilled the rule of the city and boxed with me. Then, if you can still pull the strings with your crushed fingers and croak through your broken teeth, you may do as you like.”
I must do something, Eurydice thought wildly, but one could not cast spells in a panic—and she could hardly think of a spell to cast. She could hurl a ball of flame at Amycus, but what good would that do? She and Orpheus would be torn apart by Amycus’ armed men before they could escape. She needed something that would make everyone forget Orpheus. Should she set the whole city afire? But how would she and Orpheus escape? A whirlwind. No, that would make the same problem. She could say the spell, but she could not control the thing once it was launched.
Even as the ideas came, a weight pressed down on her so that she could hardly draw breath and her knees trembled with the effort to remain upright. Could she even get through a spell of the greater magic? And if she failed midway, the loosened power would blast her so that she would be no help to Orpheus and she would be too weak to defend herself against whoever or whatever had set the anti-magic spell. And then Orpheus lost his temper.
“Then you are no hero, but the worst kind of coward,” Orpheus cried, his clear voice ringing out through the whole square so that every head turned his way. “Only a coward would attack one who confesses himself incapable and is willing to yield. I tell you a bard is sacred. If you harm me, punishment will befall you.”
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