by Tanith Lee
“Hush.” she said. There was a slight impatience on her. She put her hand to her necklace and touched the stones, as if to chide them. “Listen to me, Klyton. I had warning of the eagle. I foresaw it, sweeping down. That was before we came here. My son’s destiny was already set. And the eagle—you suppose it yours, do you? You’re arrogant, Klyton. The eagle is the Sun’s.”
She saw plainly how he began to shake. He lowered his head once more. The knife dropped out of his shaking hand with a clatter from which the shadows of the room seemed to rear away.
“I meant to be done with myself. He was my friend—I loved him— I’d have given my life for him—to speak those words and then—”
“You think the gods are harsh,” she said softly, clearly, “but the gods are neither kind nor cruel. I think these emotions are unknown to them, or have other, lesser, names. Do we weep for the fly we swat away?”
“Udrombis,” he said.
She let his breach of etiquette and courtesy go by, as she would let go by all the rest.
It was not his work, what had come to Amdysos. Klyton loved him, would maybe have preferred to die in his place. Crow Claw had shown her, and perhaps for this, the future.
He was weeping now, the sobs rocking him, like a child.
She had seen Akreon weep, when their first son had died. And she had smelled this smell of labor, sweat and flame, on Akreon, just the same, after a battle when, unable to wait, he had tumbled her, and she had gloried in him, in his life. As if—as if she had known.
Udrombis rose. Klyton had slashed off the marvel of his hair. He had brought a knife so she might order him at once to die. He knew her well enough. He had trusted her with the fact of his sin, believing she would construct his death. So honorable he was, and clear as water.
“Stand up,” she said.
He got to his feet, taller than she, larger than she, the tears of his green eyes red-jeweled as the coals in the fire. He could not speak and she put her arms about him. Then he lowered his head and wept into her neck, into her black hair now all turning grey and white, as she felt it do, under her skin.
“You must go to the shrine,” she said, “and be absolved there. Make my son the correct offerings. He will be across Tithaxeli now, and ready to receive them. Don’t doubt he’ll forgive you. What are a few harsh words against a life of loyalty? You were like two brothers from one womb.” He nodded, burrowing in her shoulder, his tears so wet, his hands upon her arms so strong. “Trust no one else with it but Torca. He will be discreet. Tell him, the Queen asks it, too.”
She thought, here after all remained one son. The one she had not borne but loved, with Amdysos. Glardor was nothing, and Pherox was gone. Though Pherox had left boys, they were children. But now in her arms, Akreon’s strength made flesh. Akreon. Her lord, her love.
She did not acknowledge what she had thought. It was sloughed from her in a second.
She held him one further moment, then put him away. She said, firmly, “Stop this, now. There’s no darkness between us. Go directly to the shrine and make your peace with my son.”
We returned to Oceaxis in the rain. Mudslides slipped to the road. The storms were fearful. Such weather at this season had not been recorded for a hundred years, or more. No one was astounded. A terrible thing had happened, and would be attended by terrors and mishaps.
Men searched the northern borders of Akhemony. A man who had a vision of Amdysos, lying unharmed and as if asleep in a fiery nest, in volcanic Ipyra, was examined by priests. But even so, crossing into the north, no sign, no sight was, found. The giant eagle had itself not been seen again. But it was known well enough what such raptors did with snatched prey. They killed it, and fed.
For the younger son of a King, only forty days of mourning were given. We observed them.
I was brought two new garments, one the color of soured cream, and one dappled like the skin of a fawn. The court women went barefoot—and I, who always did so.
Of course, he had forgotten me. I expected nothing else.
Since Stabia did not invite me to the Hall or to her rooms, I stayed in my own place. I paced the chambers back and forth. That sound, of my silver feet, that whisper, like a snake—
It was Ermias, who went about among her friends, where, now, it was not suitable I go, who brought me the stories. Klyton, it seemed, had stayed behind at Airis, making offer ings for the dead. Awed, Ermias was also sulky. She wanted her lover back. She sensed what had happened would annul their affair. Just as I, in secret, sensed it, for myself.
Glardor came back to Oceaxis for the funeral ceremony. There was no body to cremate, as it had been with Pherox.
Instead we remained in the temple for three hours, as offerings were made and prayers spoken for the shade of Amdysos, so young and fair, a warrior and prince, the son of Akreon, Sun of a Sun. For Pherox, as a child, I had been spared this.
I sat in my chair; that was allowed me. I watched the beautiful animals, two pure white cows, and one crimson, a black bull for Thon, five snowy rams, brought wreathed and proud to the altar, and there immolated, for the benefit of Amdysos’s soul.
So much death, for a death.
Women fainted from emotion and standing. Udrombis stood like a statue. It was Klyton who spoke the oration. I had not expected this, not known he had returned.
He did not take very long, no longer, I suppose, than custom demanded. I heard no word he spoke, and cannot now recall them, but they would have been ritual words, of Amdysos’s valor and worth. Klyton was steady. His hands were steady as he poured the wine for his half brother.
Klyton’s beauty, which now must be lost to me for ever, was unreal, like a painting or a gem set into something rigid. He was like a god. And gods, I knew then, were never to be touched. Yet too, he was hollow. Had his spirit followed Amdysos down? Left only the body—
His hair was trimmed, and I missed its length. I think he saw no one.
And, as I say, I knew that he had forgotten me. I watched him without any fear, without any excitement or even quickening.
Ermias put her soapstone statue of Daia out. Although I did not question this, she said to me, “She played with and used me ill.” Amdysos might have warned her, you should not, whatever the provocation, be sharp with the gods.
Torca stood just inside the shrine, listening to the bees.
Something strange had happened, although after the events which went before, this strangeness seemed very mild. The unseasonal rains must have ousted the bees from their house among the orchards and fields of the plain. They came up the hill in an angry swarm, depleted and small, for they had lost many members in the downpour. Into the shrine they went, and took refuge among the rafters behind the altar of the god. Here still they clung, murmuring, crawling on the beams. Now and then two or three might buzz about the space. They were sacred to the god, and also to Phaidix. No one had touched them.
The bees had been in the sanctuary through the night, when Klyton stood here with Torca.
Torca had heard Klyton’s confession. At first, Torca’s tough heart had ached for Klyton. The gods knew, such a curse spoken to a friend before battle, if the friend should then be lost, was a stone to carry always, however far from the mind you pushed it. But then Torca saw that Klyton had accepted his cleansing, risen from it washed and whole. This surprised Torca. He had not thought the prince shallow. For though religion should console and heal, it was not to be in one split second, save for the most devout or naive. Klyton was neither.
And, though he seemed restored, Klyton did not quite come back. He was not entirely present. Even when they gave for the soul of Amdysos the ghost’s nourishment of blood and honey, milk and wine.
At the end, Klyton had thanked Torca, taking his hand. He made a handsome gift to the god, as before.
Torca thought then of the eagle feathers scattered by the cell, where Klyton had slept for his dream. Klyton had not revealed the dream—one did not. It was between him and the god.
“They like the honey,” said Torca. “A good omen. Their kind will form a comb of sweetness for Amdysos in the Lower Lands.”
“Yes,” said Klyton. He watched the bees.
In the dim, dark light of the night shrine with the rain lashing outside, they had shone gold and silver, the sheens of the Sun and the moon. While in from the outer world, wet and shaking herself, walked Phaidix’s white cat.
When she meowed, Klyton turned. Looking at her perfect face with its silvery eyes, he seemed to have some thought, and then he was closed again, complete.
Klyton said, after a moment, “When I had the dream here, it promised me something. The Race—but I didn’t have the Race.”
“No one had the Race.”
“That’s true. But then, I was promised, I seemed promised —more.”
“The God doesn’t break faith,” said Torca. “But you must always be sure you haven’t misheard him.”
“Yes,” Klyton said.
Torca left him towards dawn, to see out the last of the watch for Amdysos, and went to his own cell, where a paper had come from Akreon’s Consort, Udrombis.
Her language, as he anticipated, was subtle and polite, but she told him she entrusted him too with the task of questioning those priests from the caverns of the Race, who might have overheard any words Klyton had spoken. No other chariot, it seemed, had been near. Torca was glad. Udrombis would have wished to be sure. And this … might have meant other things. He did not think she would have insulted him by asking him to become her assassin.
But neither did he relish work as spy. Unlike Klyton, she had had no qualms in putting service on him. For Udrombis, one knew, the Sun House rose paramount. And she valued Klyton, it seemed, like her own.
The priests when he tested them were ignorant. Half tranced by the ritual and the drugs of the caves, they had heard nothing above the pound of hooves, the clash of metal and thundering echoes.
Torca wrote to Udrombis in careful terms—being very certain she should behold all of them as unknowing. He wondered briefly if he was in any personal danger, seeing he had undertaken Klyton’s purification. But that was not her way. She had trusted him, and thought him, therefore, useful—retainable.
For the bees, they would perhaps make their comb again inside the shrine. It might be inconvenient, and soon enough it was. As the rain dried, and hot days returned with a lion-like ferocity, a priest was stung on the arm, which sting swelled up like a bladder and sent him delirious for three hours, a sacred number of the god.
2
Days went by. The rain ended and an awful heat began. Soon even the palace noticed its effects. The fruit that was served was overripe or withered. There was a dearth of milk, or it was too thin and tasted bad. Insects burst out where the flowers and fruits had been. My slave, Nimi, ran to and fro all day till she dropped, wielding her swatter and fan. By night, the filmy curtains were drawn fast about my bed, beyond which I heard the whine of poisoned things seeking me.
The Lakesea looked so still, as if partly thickened, like a sauce. The gulls called with raucous mocking laughter.
There was a sickness in the town.
Stabia sent me a letter. She reminded me, for my own sake, I must be seen in the Great Hall at dinner, and at the Sunset Offering. I perceive this was her thoughtfulness for me, and she was good to recollect it. At the time it seemed to me she only desired me to suffer worse. I had though enough sense left to go, forcing my way up the enormous stair, with Ermias behind, gasping in the oven-hot cinders of each day.
In the Hall I saw nothing, only looking stupidly about, trammelled by Stabia’s old cautions against “forwardness.” Trying, nevertheless, to find him. I did not even know why. Perhaps only as sometimes the blind hanker after the Sun’s light, although they cannot anymore witness it. I knew I could now mean nothing to Klyton.
In fact, he was not there. He had gone with a force to Melmia, on Glardor’s command. Once-restive Sirma was Melmia’s neighbor.
At the dinners, I did everything Stabia had inculcated in me that I should. I ate a little, though I did not want it, and praised the cooks who had been able to contrive sweetmeats from the difficult fruit, drank sparingly, seemed to attend to the important harpers and dancing troops.
One royal woman certainly did not come to the Hall. I had heard her extraordinary keening once—lament was not done quite in this way in Akhemony, the crying never so loud. I had thought her voice to start with was that of a gull.
Elakti, Amdysos’s spear-wife, who had caused him so much mundane trouble, performed alone the noisy prolonged rites of Ipyran widows, rending out her hair, ripping her cheeks and bared breasts with her nails, even cutting her left arm to let blood fall for him to Thon’s country below. There began to be another tale, that she was pregnant again and had been shown early by a sign. Amdysos had left in her his burgeoning seed.
Kelbalba came for my massage, as she had always done since I started to walk. Sometimes she worked longer and hurt me, saying I was neglectful of my exercises. I was. She brought me little treats to eat, cakes bought in the town market, sound apples and ripe figs from pockets in the hills, which almost no one else could get. I did my best with them.
“Don’t be so sad,” she said. “He’ll be back.”
“No,” I said. “Everything has altered.”
“That doesn’t alter. That undone thing between a man and a girl.”
She took to oiling the turtle, and made me rub the shell to a mirror’s gleam.
Ermias accepted a new lover. He was a youngish noble and gave her outrageous gifts she should not perhaps openly have worn, a gold necklace with a polished diamond, a ring with a rare black pearl. He had heard she had belonged to a Sun Prince.
Glardor hurried away again to his estates.
They had sacrificed a white horse to the Sun, as they regularly did in Ipyra. Here it was, like Elakti’s rites, not usual.
I did not see the sacrifice, I am glad to say. It was performed at night, under the moon invoked as Anki, so Phaidix also should take note.
In my little garden, rogue roots and fierce weeds had almost obscured her altar. Brown ruined apples lay in the grass, devoured by wasps and flies. Nimi had found a dead cat among the trees.
A curious sense of waiting, as if for the sunset sounding of gongs, lay with the boiling dregs of summer on the land.
Like any sensible farmer, Glardor spent all day now, sunrise to set, tending to his scorching fields and vine stocks.
A large, bronzed man in a sleeveless tunic and straw hat, he was as ever most at home there, working among his freedmen and slaves. It had been related they called him only Father, as servants did with the master on the farms of nobodies in the back hills.
His Sun-Consort had also absented herself from the court to go with him. That big, blonde, greedy woman, who seemed to find no fault with anyone, had had enough of Oceaxis. She had no time for the extended ceremonies, the gossip and games. She preferred her loom. The outcome of the Race had upset her, too—someone reported she had exclaimed such things did not happen to ordinary people.
Some cows had got loose and in among the grain. It was an old story. Glardor and three of his freedmen went into the field and ushered them out. The grass was so burnt up now, they were already bringing the cattle fodder, but the blackened corn had enticed them.
As they got through, the cows and men, into the pasture, four or five bees flew up from a bush by the gate.
No one thought anything of it until Glardor clapped a hand to his neck. A dead bee tumbled away in a powder of saffron and black.
The senior freedman came to look, but Glardor waved him off. “It’s nothing. Poor bee, she lost her life for that.”
Five minutes lat
er, Glardor said his throat was sore. He breathed very quickly, and the freedman saw his neck had swollen abnormally on the right side.
Glardor climbed on his donkey to ride back up to the house, but presently he turned very red and began to gasp for breath. They held him up and beat the donkey till it trotted. By the time they reached the farm, he had lost consciousness.
Glardor’s wife had been singing with her woman at the hearth, cooking the midday meal. Now she rushed out, and kneeling in the dust on the track, where they had laid him, she held her husband’s hand. A physician was brought from the village, and said the beesting had swollen up Glardor’s windpipe, and it must be pierced with a reed to let Glardor breathe. Glardor opened his eyes and somehow whispered the man might try. Then he indicated to the freedman the physician must not be harmed if he failed.
The reed went in, but either it was too late or missed the vital spot. A few minutes after, Glardor went into convulsions and died.
Only when he was quite dead did the Sun-Consort begin to weep. She had stayed dry-eyed not to inconvenience her dying husband nor alarm him further.
In Oceaxis she was, until then, generally sneered at behind the hand. Silly tales were told of her stupidity and bucolic preferences. Now they said she rose up stonily weeping, like an ancient queen, and spoke over the King at once a prayer of farewell, commending him to the god Below, binding herself with a vow that she would never love or turn to any other man, until she and Glardor should meet again, beyond the River.
3
Because he was swimming under the coolish water, for a while he did not understand there was a commotion up above. He took it for the water drumming in his ears.
When he surfaced, he thought the fat captain had been chastising—unfairly and again—a slave: the dropped tray, spilled wine, and nuts rolling on the green marble perimeter of the bathhouse pool. Then he saw the faces.
Klyton gripped hold of the rim and pulled himself out. He was naked, but most of them were. All but the messenger.