“Yes, my dear friend,” Cassiopeia answered kindly as she too looked up, “I believe he does. Not even the gods could be so heartless to not allow him to.” She held out her hands, caught a few raindrops, and let out a pained smile. “And he weeps in great joy because of it.”
Cassiopeia was indeed a vain creature, but she knew empathy better than most. Made a widow herself a handful of years after Andromeda was born, her own torment by way of tragedy had taught her well.
In both shaking hands, Komnena loosely held a lit torch. The bright flame the torch gave off was one of the few sources of bright light that now disturbed the dark, silent night. Thousands of still shocked mourners waiting for Komnena to set ablaze the final perished being, they all stared at this single brilliant point of light and spoke not a word.
The grieving widow motioned for the twins to rise. The young girls did so and slowly walked the few steps to Nicephorus’ body. With unsteady hands and no doubt trembling hearts, they stood next to their fallen father. Penthesilea placed the cup of tea to his side and Melanippe did the same with the basket of towels. They now turned to Komnena. With a hand held out to their mother, they invited her to join them. It was time to say goodbye.
Halfway to a standing position, Komnena crumpled to the avenue. Marseea, as well as others, gasped. As if Komnena could no longer feel her legs, try as she might, they did not allow her to stand. She tried once again, collapsed, and cried out a sharp moan – a sudden gust of wind blew across the avenue. This gust the sharpest chill Marseea had ever felt; she could feel a great wave of grief sweep over the jaggedly broken widow. As if an Orca had embedded his clamped jaws deep into her torso, Komnena began to twist and turn in every direction.
Each next moan was a sliver of suffering sharper than the last; after a flurry of these moans, Komnena could hold in her sorrow no longer. Even louder than when Hezekiah had told her of Nicephorus’ death, she ripped her head back and cried out to the dark, starless sky.
“NOOOOOO! You cannot take him! He is not yours to take! NOOOOOO! No, no, no, no, NO!” Komnena dropped the torch, collapsed forward, and buried her head in her quivering hands.
As the twins rushed to their dejected mother, sudden shouts to those rascals high above threw them to the ground.
“YOU HORRID, HEATHEN GODS!” the still kneeling Komnena screamed with her fists to the air. “The first day of my own death, I will tear your heavenly wretchedness from you! I will drink the mist that pours down the rains and devour the stars from which you were born! I will smash your spirits into dust! I HATE YOU! DO YOU HEAR ME! I HATE YOU ALL!”
As quickly as the outburst started, it ended. Komnena again buried her head in her hands and wept uncontrollably.
“As much as it allows itself,” Marseea said softly, “my heart aches for your loss, my companion.”
As Komnena’s torment swept over them, Marseea could sense a pair of eyes upon her. She looked down at the Heart of Terra Australis. The scarlet gem acted as would a mirror and reflected the last flickers of fires all about – Diedrika did indeed stare at her. Marseea fought the urge to meet the Mermaid queen’s gaze. Her lips trembled as she whispered more kind words for Komnena and calculating eyes held tears in place as would a waterlogged sponge.
“Please, Mother, please,” Melanippe begged through her sobs, “Father is waiting.” With these words and Penthesilea’s gestures of encouragement, the darling siblings convinced their mother to reclaim the fallen torch.
Komnena stammered forward and set ablaze the kindling around Nicephorus’ body. Finally able to fulfill its sole duty, fuel and oiled cloth right away caught fire. The light sprinkling of rain now turned into a steady downpour.
A sudden fear tore through Marseea – Komnena now leaned toward the burning funeral pyre. Would the motherly wretch dare thrust herself into the crackling blaze?
Ready to rush out to pull Komnena away, wandering, needing fingers calmed Marseea’s fluttering heart. As if they could sense their queen’s fear, each daughter tightly grasped one of her mother’s hands.
“Don’t follow him,” Penthesilea cried into her mother’s scarlet robes. “You are all we have left.”
Komnena stepped back, dropped to her knees once more, and the twins leaned into her. Six arms desperately missing the two strongest ones wrapped around each other and the three wept together as if one.
Dancing flames transformed into a monstrous fireball. The last Sapien male now one more star in the heavens, Marseea truly grasped the pitiful future – more specifically the lack of it – of the once dominant race. Newborn Sapiens now impossible, the future bleak indeed, this last generation would live to see its own extinction.
Diedrika still stared at her. This Mermaid queen, no doubt, found watching the miserable Sapien one a fascinating exercise.
“For our loved ones, for our kind,” Marseea said in little more than a whisper, “… it was not supposed to end this way.”
Words of this newfound hopeless reality were for no one in particular. A pained blink of her eyes finally let loose the twin pools that drenched them. Very much not wanting to, she slowly met Diedrika’s gaze. Marseea knew better than to expect a touch of sympathy the Mermaid queen was incapable of offering, yet hoped for it anyway.
You fool, Marseea! To stare back at you with that blank face scrapes the depths of her compassion.
Diedrika’s voice was soft, yet as unfeeling as stone: “‘Sapiens in their native, virgin form holding sway over every creature of every land they touch’ … Desdessandra’s prophecy is not looking so good these days.” So brash, so true, Diedrika’s tongue inflicted a stinging wound as if the sharpest of blades dipped in hot coals.
Marseea winced as she felt its deep burn. Speechless and rightly so, she turned her head away from the callous Mermaid. Although brazen for the moment, of what Diedrika spoke was perfect truth. As a nation, as a race, as a people, the timelessness of the centuries looked on as Sapiens – with the utmost precision – squandered their privileged existence.
*****
Desdessandra … there would never be another like her. Nor should there be. Coming close to doing so then, the world just might break if there ever was. A hopelessly flawed sorceress with goddess-like ability no age had seen before or since, Marseea could barely imagine such power let alone wield it. Desdessandra’s great skill with magic so evident, her peers chose her as the youngest ever Triumvirate member of the long ago dissolved Magic Guild of the Sapien Realm.
The daughter of Queen Medea, Desdessandra was the creator of not just one, but two races of creatures. One born from enraged malice caused by jealousy, the other spawned in a heroic quest for redemption; she was the unintended mother of the Mermaids and, with the help of her brother, the fire-starter Hephaestus, the deliberate creator of the Centaurs.
Two millennia ago, her heterochromatic eyes of orange and blue struck fear in the hearts of foes and demanded caution from friends. The contrast of Desdessandra’s striking eyes told of a hidden scale balanced upon her shoulders. Wickedness on one side of her mortal self offset an equally weighted compassion on the other. In the end, her charcoal black hair foretold the side of this scale the wispy feather of jealousy and forgiveness would eventually fall.
The best years of her charmed life equally spent and equally ahead of her, this life turned tragic. The petty philandering of her betrothed, Kassandros, unleashed in her an evil flurry of vengeance. Cursing his newfound love, the beautiful commoner Thessalonika, was the first step onto a disastrous path of ruin – a prison cell became her home thereafter. Three short years after his sister’s apex, Hephaestus collected what was left of her.
A myth Sapien parents told their children as a bedtime story grew to a legend believed by some, only to become certain fact to all. Let out of her earthly prison, Desdessandra was forever free to extract an eternal revenge on any soul who had a helping hand in her downfall. Kassandros, the vain, selfish cheat she was to marry; Deianira, her wicked rival from the M
agic Guild from adolescence; the mighty general, Eurytion, who came within a whisper of striking her down; the Queen Mother who abandoned her until her final night of decay – with Hades craftily pulling the puppet strings as Persephone howled out in glee, this was Desdessandra’s Underworld now. Those who scorned or hurt her were just dead in it.
Hephaestus would carry on for another five centuries. This was but one of many shocking predictions made by Desdessandra to come true. During these five centuries, in one way or another, he had a hand in nearly every notable happening in Terra Australis. One event, a fulfilled promise Hephaestus made to Desdessandra the night she passed, stood above all others. A shocking secret hidden from all but a select few since ––
Had the time finally come to reveal it?
The most desperate of times now upon her kind, a grand temptation begged of Marseea to partake of it. Only she and Komnena knew of Desdessandra’s true prophecy. From a young age, all others had learned – and openly laughed at – the very misleading short version: ‘Sapiens in their native, virgin form will someday hold sway over every creature of every land they touch’ – this was simply the result, NOT the path to do so. Only the true prophecy revealed such a path. The fleshy stones gathered all around her, Marseea would need just the right mix of death, destruction, and chaos to lay this path properly for all to march down. And at just the right time.
Every Mermaid ever born owned a scrap of the same malice Desdessandra buried deep inside Thessalonika that fateful night. It was especially strong in Diedrika. The young queen beyond ambitious and the fiercely loyal King Judiascar at her side – the risk was overwhelming.
And oh so tempting!
But could the most watchful of schemes many years in the making both temper and unleash Diedrika’s dominating will in just the right manner? Was such a grand plot even possible? Marseea would need to take care, great care, if she hoped to make it so. To keep a newborn safe while holding him with tongs glowing red would be easier – but she had to try. The reward could not be greater. Failure could not be more dreadful.
And just what would be the ruinous result if Marseea failed?
Quite simply, that Desdessandra’s timeless revenge would not only befall the world of the dead, but of the living as well.
Chapter Nine
LAYING DOWN THE LAW
Regents rise and cities fall; all the while historians dutifully scribe when and how. Little more than a quarter of the way through my reign, I have done many deeds most would consider great – more to the point, near impossible. It is not in my nature to be humble, yet I do not parade such deeds – THAT is the task for a historian. Thrust into our world by Poseidon to seek out and fulfill a greater purpose than all others, this blissful burden gives me both a strength and will few can imagine and only I possess. To be a part of history mere child’s play … I WAS BORN TO DOMINATE IT!
– Diedrika, Mermaid Queen
– Mid-Fall, Year 4,241 KT[11]
A day that took five years to reach after her reign began, but would lay nearly every brick along the path of what was to come, had finally arrived. For it would be on this one day when Diedrika would impose her will on not only the Centaurs, but on her own kind as well. A pike length away from her, she looked down upon the three Centaurs in the same way the most regal of royals would do so upon the most useless of rabble.
“The Alpha Centauri,” the Centaur Chiron began, “have once again asked me to express their disappointment. They plead with you to reconsider your tradition of not respecting theirs.”
Diedrika slid off Judiascar, landed on the soft, overgrown grasses of the empty stadium, and made her way toward the shifty Huaxia. She wore her crown and white stola atop a tight-fitting, long-sleeved purple tunic. Diedrika had never met with a Chiron in the presence of the three members of the Alpha Centauri nor would she. When the time came for rulers or emissaries to address the Centaur leader, it was tradition for the Chiron and his three blind counselors to do so at the top of a single skyward tower to the rear of Lacanesia. And always at sunset. It was here where the spoiled trio wasted their days in blissful sightlessness.
Poseidon’s tail – what a FARCE!
“I have told you and your council before, Ruòkelián,” Diedrika said confidently, “leader to leader is how business between nations too important for emissaries is done. Today, tomorrow, until my last day as regent, I will refuse to do so any differently.”
“I will remind them.” The Chiron’s unsteady voice turned hopeful and greedily so. “The caravans with the fall harvest to last us through winter are on their way, yes?”
For longer than anyone still lived, with each new harvest, Mermaids provided Centaurs with a little more seafood than the year before. After Diedrika assumed the throne, however, she put an end to such needless goodwill. The bountiful seafood harvests carried east were many times more than the fruits, vegetables, and prepared meats sent west; Centaurs were supposed to earn the difference, but in recent years had rarely done so. Gryphons had already paid enterprising Centaurs to rebuild their own district badly damaged by the dam breach five years ago. Also not helping their cause: At both Atagartis and the Mermaid prefecture in Antediluvium, there was little to repair and even less left to build.
“They are,” Diedrika returned slowly, “for the most part.”
“For the most part – what does this mean?” her unequal peer gasped.
Diedrika took her time as she began to circle the wary Chiron, his historian, and new lead general, Seneferre. She cared little for the historian and not at all for Ruòkelián, but Seneferre had always impressed her.
Such size, such strength, but rarely hasty – he was much like a Gryphon!
Like many well off Nubians, Seneferre wore a thin, gold helmet molded over his shaved scalp. At its front was a crest of twin upright cobras made from emeralds and rubies encrusted in more gold. Even with this helmet, a tight-fitting white caparison across his horizontal back, and blue tunic to cover his vertical one, Diedrika could still see the deep scars those horrible claws had left behind.
Across from them, Judiascar and Xavier, the newly christened lead Gryphon general, looked on as Penelope dutifully scribed away.
As Diedrika continued to circle her prey, she took in the still unrepaired ruins of the stadium and amphitheater. For now, workers focused on finishing repairs to the great dam that would once again provide water for every district. “By late spring of the coming year at the latest,” Horus had assured the regents. The weather was cool enough to warrant extra layers, but the sun shined brightly. Diedrika’s circle now complete, a grin swept across her face as if brought about by the pleasant breeze. This wide smile was a perfect ruse, of course, for what would come next.
“Every day without fail – from early spring until late fall – dozens of Centaur fishing ships drop their nets on the edge of the seas we claimed long ago. And a good many sail far past this edge. Although it amuses them on some days to do so, on most others my Orca and Gryphon patrols grow tired of chasing your fishing ships from our waters. Every league[12] from land until glacier marked by a towering beacon so high and bright a blind man could see them – you know where our borders begin, Ruòkelián!” As she came close to the Huaxia Chiron, a glow emanated from palms not together, but still far apart. “As have they, I too grow tired of this game Centaur anglers seem a little too eager to play.” Diedrika retreated until again next to Judiascar. “A seafood harvest ten percent less than last year – this is the penalty for past incursions, Chiron!”
“But, Great Queen, please ––” Ruòkelián began to babble.
“Prepare to hear the penalties for future ones!”
These harshly spoken words her queue, Penelope stored her bamboo strips and stylus in her pack. She then came forth, handed a scroll of parchment to the Chiron, and unfurled in her hands an exact copy. This was more the task for a messenger than a historian, but the forthcoming decree was just too important.
“A decree,
” Penelope began with her chin held high, “given on behalf of Queen Diedrika on this 35th day of autumn in year 4,241 of the Knowing Time … please listen well, my lords. ‘In response to repeated breaches of Mermaid waters, it is declared that no vessel – fishing or otherwise – is to pass onto our side of the northern sea ever again. Anyone captured who does so and is determined guilty will face a ten-year prison sentence behind the walls of Atagartis. Neither station nor need will be grounds to reduce this sentence.’”
“This is in no way f ––”
“‘Furthermore,’” Penelope interrupted with a raised voice, “‘for any trespasser caught, a charge of espionage will follow. It will be the burden of the accused to prove that he or she is not a spy.’” She lowered her voice. “I need not explain what the penalty is for this offense.”
This second part was really at the clever insistence of her royal court, but Diedrika claimed it as her own. For one convicted of spying, death was the ONLY punishment.
“No, never!” the Chiron shouted. “I will not allow it!” Ruòkelián looked from side to side and appeared on the verge of outright panic. His historian and green general of sculpted brown offered no comfort.
“And it is most certainly in your power to do so!” Diedrika squealed happily. Her face then turned hard. “But may I remind you that Atagartis is hungry as well.” She raised her hands to the air. “No doubt a hero’s welcome awaits the queen who returns home with every scrap of seafood she departed with.”
“You are giving us less than last year – again,” Ruòkelián mumbled in disbelief.
To Diedrika’s pleasure, he sported the haggard frown of just one more she inflicted her unbending will upon. But this was almost too easy. She had no idea how this weak-willed Huaxia ever became Chiron in the first place. The crusty, but capable Nubian who greeted her at her coronation had died soon after.
The Gift From Poseidon: When Gods Walked Among Us (Volume 2) Page 11