Shimmering Splendor

by Roberta Gellis

  “Ah,” Eros said innocently, “I did not know that, but I think I will save my sacrifice to the goddess for her own place.”

  The older man glanced at Eros, but did not reply. He might have been saving his breath for the climb, which was steeper at this point, but Eros did not think so. Nor did Eros think Erasmion was much troubled by the king’s sanction against Aphrodite’s temple, of which he was certain Erasmion was aware. His teeth set for a moment, but he reined in his anger on Aphrodite’s behalf. An older man might not have any reason to call on Aphrodite—she was one to whom mostly the young prayed—so Erasmion might think little of the interdict against her temple. That was Anerios’s sin, and Anerios would pay.

  Doubtless that would have a chastening effect on all, even those like Erasmion, who did not feel the worship of Aphrodite pertinent to their own lives. That they worship and make sacrifice was not necessary; that they respect and refrain from insult was. When they saw Anerios made ridiculous by love of a repulsive object, the men’s general good opinion of the king would drive home the lesson that it was unwise and unsafe to scorn Aphrodite even if she could not throw thunderbolts.

  The torchlight paled as a sharp curve in the road showed an area free of trees. Less concentrated on the path itself, Eros now heard the sound of the sea and when they came to the open area, he drew his breath as he looked out and down at the ocean. It was a glistening silver, picking up the light far to the east, too faint yet to show color, where the earliest glimmering of dawn appeared, and decorated closer to the shore with tossing fillets of white.

  “Do you have no high lookouts in your mountains,” Erasmion asked.

  “More than enough,” Eros replied, “and less safe than this. But we do not have the sea below, no more than a narrow river walled in by another mountain. Here…one can see to forever.”

  “Unless the fog rolls in,” the cheerful voice that had spoken in the beginning said. “Then you can fall off, right into forever.”

  “I thank the gods there was no fog this night,” Eros said. “With what looked like a straight road under my feet, I might have walked right off the mountain. I am accustomed to fog and to mountains, but none of ours have roads. I will be more cautious in the future. I could have sat with the bear until morning, but I did not think I would be in danger coming down, once I saw the road.”

  They turned away from the edge and began to climb again. The light grew stronger as they walked, and they came at last to the clearing, where, to Eros’s relief, the dead bear still lay across the altar stone.

  Erasmion was the one to draw breath as they approached the animal. “Having been attacked once by a monster like this, did you not fear to go into the forest?

  Eros shrugged. “I am a good archer and a fair swordsman, and I am used to hunting wild beasts.”

  The men looked at him. He stood a head taller than the tallest of them and when he threw aside his cloak and pulled off his chiton to save it from being stained with blood and other muck, as the others were doing, they flicked sidelong glances at the smooth muscle that played under his skin. All were shivering as Eros plucked out the three arrows that had lodged in the beast, but once they started skinning, the effort of shifting the heavy body and slicing through the hide, then plying knives to free the hide from the flesh, warmed them well enough. By the time the sun was well up, they were all sweating freely and making frequent trips to the spring that welled out of a rise of rock beyond the altar stone.

  When they had the skin free, Eros took it aside and washed it thoroughly, taking particular care to clean away all the corruption from the side of the head. He began to scrape away the tissue on the inner side also, but he had not progressed far before three of the men were finished butchering the body. The other three came back from the woods bearing armloads and cloaks full of fresh leaves. These they layered in the bottom of the cart to keep the butchered meat clean and also used to cover the pieces and the sacks into which they had gathered the offal for the pigs and the dogs. Above that Eros laid the skin, and over all they placed a clean cloth wet with the cold water of the spring.

  The mule and cart were then moved into the shade and the men set about cleaning the altar and the area around it. Eros himself washed the stone while several of the men gathered any scraps they had missed. A small fire was then set on the stone, the gatherings drenched in oil and set ablaze. The clean ashes were brushed away, leaving all decent for future sacrifices.

  When they were about to go, Erasmion stopped suddenly and asked, “Don’t you want to leave a haunch as a thank offering?”

  Eros shook his head. The bear was probably too old and tough to please Aphrodite’s palate, and in any case, he had no way to let her know he had left it for her. To do that, he would have to go to the temple to tell the priestess to tell the scryer when she felt the “call”. A trip to the temple would not endear him to Anerios, and even if he went in secret, by the time Aphrodite learned of its presence and could collect it with a translocation spell, the meat would be rotted and no good to anyone.

  “I do not make blood sacrifice,” he said. “I left a brace of rabbits and five doves on Aphrodite’s altar in Pherae when I was there. I will wait. If I think I have some hope of succeeding with the Lady Psyche, I will make a greater sacrifice—”

  “Her temple is not—” one of the men began.

  “You are wise,” Erasmion interrupted. “The Lady Psyche is hard to please. If you see a chance of success, then will be soon enough to make sacrifice.”

  Eros thought about that interchange as they started down the mountain. Clearly the interdict of Aphrodite’s temple was common knowledge. Equally clearly, it was not only Erasmion who did not consider that sacrilege, although the older and wiser man, while not prepared to oppose the king, would prefer that the news did not spread. Eros had plenty of time to control the anger that rose in him over the contempt shown for his friend because the trip down the mountain was no swifter than the climb up. They could go no faster than the mule, and the laden cart had to be braked all the way to prevent it from rolling into the mule’s hindquarters. It was mid-afternoon when they came back to the little settlement; by then Eros was tired and glad to accept the offer of a second meal and a bed in which to make up for his lost sleep.

  He woke much refreshed and pleased to learn that news of his “wondrous feat” had been sent down the mountain to Iolkas, and that King Anerios had sent one of his own sons to extend an invitation to the “mighty hunter” to be his guest and to receive his thanks for ridding the road to the altar on Pelion of a menace. Although Eros said he was ready to start at once, Damianos begged him not to deprive the people of the village of a feast of bear meat which would avenge them in small part for the hurt the animal had done them.

  To this Eros agreed, smiling and confessing that he had felt a yen for bear steak ever since he had seen the creature. It was true enough, but it had also occurred to him that arriving in the middle of the night would deprive him of an effective entrance in company with the remains of his kill.

  * * *

  He succeeded rather better in that purpose than he had expected, for the king himself came out onto the porch facing the great court of the palace when they arrived in Iolkas during the afternoon of the following day. Eros paused a step ahead of the cart, which displayed the bearskin spread over the sidewalls, and bowed while young Damianos rushed up the few steps to whisper in his father’s ear, imparting, Eros was sure, the false lineage he had devised for himself.

  “Lord Atomos,” King Anerios said, “we welcome you joyfully, as much in relief at your safe arrival in our palace after so dangerous an adventure as in gratitude for being freed from the depredations of a monster.”

  “I am glad of your welcome, King Anerios,” Eros replied. “But I must admit I did not seek out the beast to kill it. It sought me, and I had little choice.”

  “Your modesty becomes you,” Anerios said, smiling.

  “Will you permit my servants to take
the cart, prepare the meat, and begin the tanning of the hide?”

  “With gratitude,” Eros said. “Please use the meat for whatever purpose seems best to you. The hide I would like to present formally.”

  Anerios smiled and Eros wondered if the king thought he would be the recipient. Eros, of course, intended the bearskin for Aphrodite. It would make a perfect trap when he told Aierios he intended it for a sacrifice to the goddess for help in gaining Psyche’s favor. Doubtless Anerios would forbid him to offer sacrifice at the temple; then he could cry aloud of sacrilege. But Damianos had not had time in that brief whisper to tell his father that Atomos was yet another suitor for Psyche’s hand.

  He focused his attention as the king gestured. Anerios was asking him to come within and be refreshed after his long journey. Eros accepted the invitation, with quite genuine gratitude, too. He was gritty and sticky, and even Damianos’s best manners could not keep him from occasionally turning his head away from Eros’s aroma.

  That need was the first attended to, Damianos himself leading Eros to a colonnaded porch to the right. They turned left through a doorway opposite a stair and then immediately right into a short corridor that led to a cool dressing room with benches around the walls and tall racks holding soft, thick drying cloths. Through an open doorway Eros heard the splashing of water into what he fondly hoped was a tub deep enough to immerse himself.

  After Damianos told him he would return when his guest had bathed, Eros lost no time in shedding his pack, belt, and weapons, dropping his soiled clothing to the floor and snatching up one of the cloths. At the doorway of the bathing chamber, he stopped and almost backed up, suppressing a simultaneous impulse to throw the cloth he was carrying over his head. However, no astonished cries of joy and submission came from the three women who were filling the tub when they saw him. The eldest smiled politely enough as she invited him to step into the bath, but her smile was only polite, nothing more. Even the two younger women showed only the faintest flicker of interest—and more curiosity in a stranger than real interest in a man.

  Their calm acceptance reminded Eros of his disguise and he came forward with confidence, allowing the women to bathe and anoint him and finding occasion when he thanked them for their service to say the name “Atomos” to reinforce the spell. He felt no change beyond the slightest drain of power and relaxed further. Zeus’s illusions were truly the best; apparently he could count on the disguise remaining stable for more than a day without reinforcement.

  * * *

  He found Damianos waiting in the antechamber with a handsome chiton and cloak, which he begged Atomos to accept as a small token of his father’s gratitude.

  “I thank you as messenger, your father as giver,” Eros said, smiling and casting aside the drying cloth. As he drew on the fresh chiton and closed his own belt about it, he went on, “I am especially grateful because I brought no fine garments with me. I do have in my pack a kilt that does not smell of sweat and dead bear. It is the formal dress of my own people, but I do not know whether a kilt is acceptable in Iolkas.”

  “Were you not offered giftings on your way?” Damianos asked in a rather shocked voice.

  “Yes, indeed,” Eros replied hastily. He had forgotten the native practice of offering gifts to “noble” guests, and if he had truly come on foot, he would have collected a wagonload of offerings by now. “But if I could do so without offense, I returned them, or offered them at the next place of guesting. On so long a journey, for so uncertain a purpose, it seemed foolish to burden myself with different styles of dress.” He patted the pouch that hung from his belt. “I brought the wherewithal to buy appropriate clothing, in case your sister was still free and your father should favor me with his approval.”

  Damianos sighed. “I do not think my father will forbid you to address Psyche. Between us, Atomos, the king would be glad to see her settled.”

  “Is she such a shrew that he cannot command her to accept the man he thinks most suitable?” Eros asked, half laughing.

  “She is not a shrew at all,” Damianos said with a wry smile. “She just explains to you how much more trouble would be caused by doing what would make her unhappy—and she’s right, too.”

  “You mean she looks into your eyes and your brains are melted to mush by her beauty?”

  “Oh, no.” Damianos shook his head vigorously. “I am her brother and I am so accustomed I hardly see her. Anyway she could always get her way and she was not always a beauty. In fact, she was the ugliest little child—”

  “Not always a beauty,” Eros echoed, blinking.

  Damianos shrugged. “Horexea and Enstiktia—those are my elder sisters—were both pretty children. Psyche was the baby, but she was tall and skinny and clumsy and she was no pleasure to look upon. Her eyes were too big, her nose and chin too small—her face was all wrong.” He laughed without humor. “I suppose one grew into the habit of not looking closely at Psyche.”

  “Then how did she become what she is? By sorcery?”

  “I am sure not,” Damianos replied a trifle stiffly. “We have no great sorcerers in Iolkas, and Psyche did not begin to study sorcery herself until after we realized how beautiful she had grown. No one really noticed her looks until a visitor tried to take her by force. She fought him off and came crying to my father and he looked at her—hardly believing that anyone could want her enough…” He made a gesture of helplessness. “And he saw what she had become.”

  “I am growing more and more eager to meet this marvel,” Eros said, having barely prevented himself from exclaiming in surprise when Damianos admitted that his sister had studied sorcery.

  The native people did not usually welcome the Gifted among them. Some drove them out. Some killed them. Some allowed them to practice because of a mixture of fear and desire to use their abilities. Iolkas seemed to be of the last type, but even so, to permit a daughter of the king to study sorcery was unusual. How strongly Gifted was this Psyche? He would know when he met her, Eros thought. Many of the Gifted, he among them, could sense the ability in others and could nearly always sense the use of power. For him a spell always had a visual aspect, so if Psyche were enhancing her appearance, he would “see” it as an aura—but the ability was a sword that cut two ways. Would Psyche “see” or “smell” his disguise?

  He worried the point, replying by instinct to Damianos’s next few remarks. It had occurred to him that if Psyche had created her own beauty and maintained the illusion day and night for years, she must be very powerful. The drain of being Atomos was slight and he could sustain the illusion for several days, perhaps even for several weeks—but for years? And if Psyche were strong enough to do that, would Aphrodite’s spell be strong enough to affect her? The moment of doubt passed as swiftly as it had come, and Eros smiled. He had remembered that Aphrodite’s spells were strong enough to make even Zeus act the fool.

  Fortunately, the smile was appropriate as Damianos gestured widely to the portico of the great central building of Anerios’s palace. Eros said something complimentary about the smooth plastered pillars—those in Olympus were of marble polished until it was as smooth as silk—to go with his smile and Damianos glowed with pleasure. As they passed into the vestibule, Eros saw several beds already standing against the wall, recalled that one of those, or perhaps a new one, would be his, and barely managed to repress a grimace. He was accustomed to his privacy and had forgotten until this moment that guesting with natives offered little of Olympus’s graces.

  He hoped Damianos had not noticed the faint change in expression and was reassured as they entered the megaron. The light was dimmer, and Damianos was looking eagerly ahead toward the central hearth—Eros stifled a sigh; another discomfort he had forgotten was the meandering smoke that managed to avoid the smokehole in the roof. Damianos had hesitated, his eyes scanning the already well-filled benches. Eros’s eyes went beyond to the lesser folk, sitting on their cloaks on the floor, but not so crowded together as to make trouble for the servants, who
were setting small polished tables by the benches of the greater folk. And then Damianos led him toward an empty bench, right beside the throne chair of King Anerios.

  A swift glance around told Eros that no woman was present. Iolkas might not drive out its Gifted, but adhered to the custom of native folk in not sharing their meals with their women. Eros had another brief struggle with his expression when he thought of the reaction of the female mages of Olympus to such a practice. Even Zeus’s lightnings would pale in the blasts that would correct such manners.

  Of course, the native people did not know the power of the Mother and thus gave less honor to women. Eros felt a twinge of guilt as he returned Anerios’s greeting and took his seat. The great mages of Olympus had intruded themselves between the common people and the Mother, usurping the worship owed the true Goddess. And he was aiding and abetting that practice by enforcing Aphrodite’s will. Not that the Mother cared for worship. She was not so petty and small-minded as a mage. Eros restrained a shudder. She had Her own set of weights for Her strange scales.

  For his purposes, he told himself, the custom was a benefit. He would find it easier to examine one victim at a time. He lifted his cup—a very fine one of silver hammered thin and engraved with an intricate pattern—which a servant had filled, poured a few drops in libation, and proceeded to respond to Anerios’s polite questions by describing his “homeland” and his “journey”. He had remembered the passion of the native people for hearing of happenings in other courts and cities and had come prepared with tales gleaned from Aphrodite’s temples and her gossip with other mages.

  Between bits of news from Cellae, Pella, Doliche, and Pherae, they ate. And ate. More accustomed to the small dainty meals with which Aphrodite coaxed his minimal appetite, Eros found himself grateful to be able to cover how much less he ate than the others with talking. When he ran out of news, there was the tale of the killing of the great bear. Eros blushed as he related it to cheers from the listeners, hoping that Atomos’s dark skin would conceal his embarrassment. The telling was taking much longer than the event. He would have been hooted out of the hall in Olympus for making so much of what had been a plain necessity, not an act of heroism, but these folk delighted in hyperbole.