The Blood Star

by Nicholas Guild

  I must have looked puzzled, for he laughed.

  “You talk like an Athenian. Have you no sibyls near Athens? This one is mad, mad since childhood. She killed her mother being born and came into the world with her right hand closed in a fist—no one has ever succeeded in getting her to open it. She sits under a chaste tree, talking gibberish to herself, but sometimes, if you leave an offering of food and wait until sunset, she speaks with the voice of Phoebos Apollo. Though mad, she gives good advice when the fit is on her and can be trusted.”

  “Where will I find her?”

  “As I said, on the trail south. If you leave when the sun rises you will find her in plenty of time before it sets again. It is a pretty place she has chosen for herself, and good land, though no one would dare to claim it while she is there.”

  “I will do as you recommend, my friend. I thank you.”

  As soon as I had mentioned the sibyl, Selana was eager to come with me. And if Selana went, it meant that Enkidu would follow, and finally even Kephalos agreed to accompany us, which meant that Ganymedes had to come. Thus we decided we would make it into an occasion. We would bring food and wine for five days and sleep in the open like soldiers.

  The next morning, while the sky was still a pale gray, we left Naxos and followed the line of hills south. It was an easy walk and the trail was well marked and crossed here and there by small streams the waters of which were always cold and delicious. Every few hours Kephalos would complain most bitterly that he had to sit down and rest, yet in spite of these interruptions we kept to a good pace.

  At last, in the middle of the afternoon, we came to a place where a large patch of high, level ground was surrounded on three sides by meadow. Behind it was a long slope leading up to a chain of rocky and forbidding looking mountains. To the east, perhaps a two hours’ walk, was the sea.

  In the center of the plateau was a tree with at least seven trunks, each twisted about at odd angles like the tentacles of a sea anemone. I was sure I had never seen another like it, and still it seemed strangely familiar.

  Beneath the tree sat hunched a filthy creature, fleshless as if from long starvation, half-naked in a tunic of greasy rags, watching our approach through eyes that seemed to burn like embers. She could have been any age between fifteen and fifty—it was difficult even to be sure she was a woman. She was the sibyl.

  “She frightens me,” Selana murmured, clinging to my arm as if preparing to hide behind me.

  “Then she must belong to the gods, for I did not think any mortal creature was able to frighten you.”

  “She does.”

  We set down our packs at a suitably respectful distance and waited. At last, at sunset, I took out a pair of wooden bowls, filling one with wine and the other with dried meat.

  “This I will concede to you, Master.” Kephalos relieved me of the open wine jar and lifted it to his lips. “I too dislike the look of her and, besides, you have had more experience than I with these sacred mysteries. I would not dream of interfering.”

  I took the bowls in my two hands and approached the sibyl. When there were perhaps three paces separating us I knelt on the ground and set the bowls down before her. All the while her gaze never left me—she did not even glance at my offerings. Her clenched hand she carried to her breast. She stared at me through her tangled hair as if somehow she had been expecting this visit but was not sure whether I had come for good or ill. Neither was I.

  “Holy One, I am here as a petitioner,” I said, opening my hands in supplication. “If you have any word for me, speak it.”

  Almost at once her eyes went wide, as if with the most appalling terror.

  “Ashair!” she shouted breathlessly. “Ashair! ASHair!”

  It was the birthmark she saw, the bloody stain on the inside of my right palm. I know she only wanted to call it a star, but in her strange, strangled voice it sounded as if she called the god’s name.

  “Ashair.”

  Slowly, the hand came down from her bosom until she seemed to hold it under my gaze. This hand, which had been clenched since birth, then began to open.

  Each finger loosened, as if by a separate act of will. If I had pried them apart with the point of a sword I might have been acting in kindness, for the very bones seemed to be breaking under the strain. As her hand opened she whimpered in pain and the tears rolled down her face like drops of blood.

  At last the sibyl looked up into my face, half to reproach me and half beseeching my pity, and a gold coin the size of a man’s thumb rolled out from between her fingers and fell to the soft earth.

  Will this be enough? her eyes seemed to ask. Is this the task the gods have set for me?

  I picked up the coin, turning it over. On one side was the image of a coiled serpent, and on the other an owl.

  And the tree had been the one I had seen in my vision, my waking dream. An owl had perched in its branches and around its base had coiled a serpent. It was all fulfilled now. I had been granted the sign for which I searched.

  “Thank you, Holy One—you have answered my every hope.”

  The coin, since it was a sacred thing, I dropped into her lap. Then I rose and went back to the others.

  “We need go no farther,” I told Kephalos. “Tomorrow we will return to Naxos, and the next day I shall see King Ducerius and I shall purchase all the land that can be seen from that tree. I will not disturb the sibyl, but it is here that the god intends me to settle.”

  “It seems you have disturbed her already, Lord,” Kephalos answered. “Turn and look.”

  Sure enough, she had risen to her feet and was making her lame way toward the mountains.

  There was a farmer who claimed to have seen her a few days after we did, and local legend has it that she climbed up Mount Aetna and threw herself into the fiery crater. I cannot speak for the truth of these stories. I only know that I never set eyes on her again.

  XXII

  In those days Sicily boasted many kings. Ducerius, who called himself Master of the Sicels, claimed sovereignty over the eastern half of the island, but other kings ignored his pretensions and he was able to maintain his authority only within the territory between Mount Aetna and the sea, and hardly at all over the Greek settlers who had been arriving in a steady trickle for the last fifty years.

  Perhaps to compensate, his rule over his own subjects was rapacious and cruel. So harsh was he that the native peoples often preferred slavery under the Greeks, who hold all other races in great contempt, calling them “barbarians,” to liberty under their own lord. The Greeks, they said, at least allowed them bread to eat.

  And it was to Ducerius I went to buy the land wherein the god had pledged I was to lay down my bones.

  Like the Greek kings of antiquity, he dwelt in an acropolis, a stone-walled fortress atop a bare, rocky hill. It was an ancient structure, perhaps dating from a time when his ancestors could call themselves Masters of the Sicels with a better right, and the soldier in me could not but admire its defenses. Over the main gate was carved a pair of female lions fighting over the carcass of a dead faun. It seemed a fitting enough emblem.

  As I crossed the central courtyard I was struck by the noise of the place. It sounded like the Street of Adad back in Nineveh, and I had only to look about me to see why. Between the main watchtowers there were at least six forges scattering sparks over the hardpacked earth, and the beat of the metalsmiths’ hammers made the air tremble like the surface of a pond across which the wind blows. Within these walls Ducerius controlled the working of bronze inside his domain, and this was both the source of his power over his own subjects and the reason for his cautious hostility toward the Greeks—the Sicels he could overawe with his weapons, but the Greeks understood the art of working iron.

  I walked through the great wooden doors of the palace—so safe did Ducerius feel himself here that they were not even guarded—and, after elbowing my way through the usual mob of courtiers, idling soldiers and favor-seekers, I presented myself to a gray-
haired chamberlain who stood absently scratching his bosom with a bony right hand as he stared into space. When I spoke to him he seemed vexed at the interruption, and his eyebrows almost crossed in annoyance.

  You are a petitioner?” he asked, in a voice like a reed flute, his tone suggesting that an answer in the affirmative would justify him in dismissing me from existence. “What is it you wish of the Great King?”

  My friend the tavern keeper had explained how matters stood at court, and so I was prepared. The chamberlain had a large pocket in the front of his tunic and into it I dropped a small leather purse containing the prescribed number of silver coins.

  “I wish to purchase a tract of land,” I said. “I hope to farm it and live there by my own labor.”

  The chamberlain wrinkled his nose, as if at the offensive odor of sweat.

  “You are, of course, a Greek.”

  I nodded. I even smiled, although doubtless his object had been to insult me—what else could he have imagined I was, since our whole conversation had been carried forward in that tongue?

  “I will inquire whether the King will consent to an audience. Be patient, for he is occupied with affairs of state. Doubtless it will be some little time.”

  He was not mistaken, for I waited for several hours there in that vast and crowded hallway, the walls of which bore the painted images of men in armor and women dancing naked in front of strange and terrible gods, before I was finally admitted into the royal presence. But at last, in the middle of the afternoon, when my legs ached from standing, the gray-haired chamberlain returned and, without a word, beckoned that I should follow him.

  The king sat on a wooden throne in a room no wider than ten or twelve paces. He was dressed in a blue robe that looked as if it had come from the loom that morning, but his black hair and beard were matted and greasy looking. He had the face of a man in late middle age who had kept his strength, with a heavy brow and cheekbones that stood out as brown knobs.

  His eyes, however, had that haunted look I have seen before in rulers who know no law but their own will and cannot govern even that. They were the eyes of a man who would condemn a peasant to die for holding back five measures of grain to feed his family.

  “What is it you want of me?” he asked sulkily. There was a half empty cup of wine on a table at his right hand and a slave waited behind him with a jar, yet the king, it seemed, did not drink to make himself merry. He glowered at me savagely from beneath his eyebrows, as if with the next breath he might order my head struck off.

  I had had my foot on the necks of mightier rulers than he and therefore was not overly impressed. “I wish to purchase land, Great King. I have found a place that pleases me and I mean to farm it.”

  “What place?”

  I told him and he blinked suddenly, as if he had been startled awake.

  “Have you no respect for your own gods?” he asked. “The sibyl takes her ease there and will not care to be disturbed.”

  “She has vacated the site for me. It seems it is the gods’ will I should have that land and no other.”

  “Indeed—and are you on such intimate terms with the gods?”

  I did not answer, and this appeared to unsettle Ducerius. Kings are not used to silence, and they are cautious around men whom they cannot frighten.

  “I have granted you an audience merely from courtesy,” he went on at last, quite as if he had never asked his question. “For it is not my will to sell any more land in these domains. If better judgment had been shown in my father’s time, we would today be less troubled with foreigners.”

  He waved his hand, dismissing me.

  “Great King,” I said, without moving, “I mean to have what the gods have promised me. I take my oath that I will still be here when you have seen fit to grant what I ask.”

  I raised my hand, and the sight of it made Ducerius open his eyes in wide amazement, as if the stain on the palm had been fresh blood.

  But he grew calm quickly enough.

  “Then you will have a long wait,” he said.

  One of his guards made as if to take me by the arm, but I brushed the lout off and went of my own will to take up my vigil again in the hallway, wondering if I had made a foolish boast.

  At last, in the evening, the great doors were shut and I was dismissed into the courtyard. There, after the forges had grown quiet and the soldiers had either found their beds or trickled into the village in search of women or a wine jar, I spent the night wrapped in a blanket, sleeping in snatches and sharing a fire with a small group of prisoners, four men still showing the raw marks of the lash across their backs. They were Sicel peasants who had hidden grain from the king’s tax gatherers and in the morning would suffer execution by being hurled from the citadel walls to the rocks below.

  Knowing the ways of royal courts, where a measure of a king’s greatness is the time one wastes waiting for an audience with him, I had brought with me food and a goatskin bag of wine, and this I shared out among the condemned men. They sat shackled together with copper chains, silent, giving the impression that they had grown indifferent to death when most probably their minds had only become numb with terror.

  There was silence while they passed the goatskin among them, but wine loosens men’s tongues while it dulls the sharp edge of fear. Soon one of them turned to me and said, with tears in his voice, “I find it hard to believe that by this time tomorrow my sons shall have collected my ashes into an urn. How will they live when the king has taken my land? Who will feed my wife and take her breasts in his hands? It is a bitter thing to die.”

  Thus did I pass the night within Ducerius’ walls, watching the firelight play over the faces of men who had lost everything except their hunger for life.

  In the morning the chamberlain came outside to fetch me. Somehow I was not surprised to see him.

  “The king will see you now,” he said. I followed him back into the same audience chamber, where Ducerius sat in the same blue robe—he might not have risen from his throne through the whole night.

  “It is true that the sibyl has departed,” he said, his voice hardly more than a whisper. “I have consulted with my magicians, and they think that, since it seems you bear the mark of some god, perhaps it would be best. . . How much of this land do you have it in mind to claim?”

  “From the mountains to the sea, and as far north and south as the eye will carry.”

  “So much as that?”

  “So much as that.”

  “How much will you pay for it?”

  “Three drachma a plethron—say, two thousand drachma.”

  It was a good price and he could not argue with it. I could see he would have liked to, but he could not. I think he would have sold the land at any price I offered, for he was afraid. Thus he would have to find some other way to assert himself.

  “It is a large plot for a man to farm alone,” he said.

  “I will not be alone.”

  “No?” He laughed. I could not imagine why. “Then, since you are a Greek, I will only tax you at the rate of one measure of wheat in five,” he said. “And a like proportion of whatever you may harvest in olives or wine.”

  I shook my head, not so much in refusal as in recognition of the impossibility of meeting such a demand, as if it violated some law of nature.

  “It would be better to settle at one measure in ten, Great King, since that is as much as I will be able to afford without rendering the entire scheme pointless.”

  For a long moment he studied my face, as if trying to puzzle out some answer hidden there—or perhaps only to discover some weakness in me. But I meant to have the land, whether he agreed or not. It is possible he understood as much.

  At last he raised his hand and let it fall back to the arm of his throne, a gesture I took to mean he had accepted my terms.

  “Since the gods seem to favor you, and since it is as much as you are able to pay—or, more likely, as much as you find it perfectly convenient to pay. . .

 
“May the gods, who are so much your friends, deliver decent men from the avarice of Greeks!” he shouted all at once, and with startling earnestness. “Settle with my chamberlain. . . What did you say your name was?”

  “I did not, Great King, but it is Tiglath Ashur.”

  “I will remember you, Tiglath Ashur.”

  We parted then, each knowing he had found an enemy in the other. Outside, in the bright sunshine of morning, I saw that the king’s prisoners had already met their punishment.

  . . . . .

  “You have a gift for antagonizing powerful men,” Kephalos said, after I had told him of my meeting with Ducerius. “It is the trait you share with all the nobly born—nothing in life has ever taught you the wisdom of humility. I see trouble, Master.”

  “Trouble is a thing of which we have had much recent experience, my friend. We will meet it when it comes.”

  And, indeed, I did not wish to think of Ducerius just then. As I took the winding, narrow path down from his acropolis I had seen the corpses of the peasants he had ordered hurled to their deaths, still twisted by their final agony, left to lie on the stones below as a warning. Perhaps by now their families had been allowed to reclaim them, but in my mind’s eye their blood was still fresh.

  Kephalos let it be known in Naxos that our ship was for sale, and within six days he had duped a local shopkeeper with dreams of becoming a merchant prince into paying four hundred drachma for it. Thus, even after I had paid Ducerius, we still had enough money to buy a few tents to live in, tools, seed, a goat for milk, ducks and chickens and two pair of workhorses, with some left over to keep us in bread and wine until the land might begin to show a profit. We had made a beginning.