by Jo Graham
“You are not a priest,” I said. “And yet you saw something.”
Neas nodded tightly, and I saw that he was afraid, not merely unsettled.
“What did you see?” I asked. “It may be that it has bearing on your quest, on the journey you must take to be king.”
Neas shook his head. “I have no idea. I hope not. And yet it was the strangest thing...”
“What did you see?” I asked.
Neas glanced back at the mountain, at the sea. “I was on watch last night, and everything was still. It was very dark, and I might have dozed off, I don’t know. But I woke suddenly because I heard the sound of oars. I thought I saw ships. I could hear them in the darkness. They were moving under oar, and I was about to shout the alarm, thinking it was some remnant of the great fleet, until I took a better look. They weren’t like any warships I’ve ever seen, though they were clearly warships. They had several banks of oars, nested one above the other, and they were huge, twice or three times the length of Seven Sisters. They were rounding the point, almost under the snout of the mountain, and the men were pulling like they were going into the Underworld themselves. I could hear the drums and the voices of their captains, the sound of the oars in the water, as real as anything.” Neas’ eyes were unfocused, as though he were still dreaming.
“What happened then?” I asked.
“The whole thing was lit by eerie light, as though the sky was on fire. And then I saw that it was.” Neas shook his head. “The mountain was burning. The ships were coming toward us, toward a harbor town that was burning. People were rushing the docks, wading out into the sea holding their children over their heads while fire rained down from above. I could hear the commands being shouted on the decks, the ships getting as close in as they could. One of the ships caught fire and burned. They were picking up swimmers in the water. And for a moment I saw...” He stopped.
“What did you see?” I asked gently, as though he were an acolyte and I feared to break the spell.
“I saw myself,” he said.
A chill ran through me.
“A young man on the aft deck of one of the big ships. He was wearing a bronze breastplate of some strange design over a scarlet tunic, but he was bareheaded, with brown hair cut short and a scar across his forehead. He was shouting out orders, trying to get alongside one of the big stone docks to pick up people. They were trying to back oars without breaking the lower bank against the dock. There were stones floating on the top of the waves like foam. A piece of burning stone landed right beside him and he just stepped over it. He was doing his duty, but all the while I thought he was looking for someone, someone he didn’t see on the dock.” Neas broke off and looked at me, blue eyes very bright. “Lady, can you tell me if this is something that will happen? And why I have dreamed this with my eyes wide open?”
“It may happen,” I said. “But not for a very long time. As to why...” I spread my hands. “Perhaps it is that he was also reaching for you. After all, you have rescued people from a burning city aboard a warship under oar before. Perhaps the you that is to come was reaching back to you now, trying to remember across the River and draw from your wisdom. You are his memory, and he is your vision.”
Neas shook his head. “That’s very deep water for me.”
“Yes,” I said. “Even I can do no more than guess at the meaning of this. And perhaps we won’t understand for many years to come.”
Neas nodded. “Then we must go on with what lies ahead.” He looked up. “It is time to be king.”
“Yes, my prince,” I said. “It is.”
WE SAILED around the point, between the islands and the mountain. It reared above me, its sides green with summer, pastures and trees and dells all shades of green, lovely against the azure water. The day was cloudless and calm.
On the other side was a little village almost on the slopes, vineyards terraced into the mountain’s side. The villagers ran in terror when they saw the ships, and it took until the sun was high to get them back and convince them that we wanted to trade.
“We need a place to camp,” I said to Xandros, who was speaking to them in his ever-improving Shardan. “And ask them if there is a cave.”
I knew exactly in the conversation when he did it. A hush came over the crowd. Xandros looked around. Finally an old woman, her white hair partially covered by a shawl, spoke. As she did, she looked at me.
Xandros translated. “She wants to know if you seek Sybil’s cave,” he said.
“I do,” I said, looking her in the eye.
“Sybil is dead,” she said through Xandros. “She died two years ago in the summer. She can give you no counsel.”
“I am Sybil to these people,” I said. “I am eleven years in Her service, and I have known the Mysteries. I am seeking Her cave.”
The old woman looked at me. They all looked at me. I did not look the part, not with a young baby at my breast and my hair loose, my face unpainted. The townspeople did not speak.
I met the old woman’s eyes. “Mother,” I said, “will you not tell me?”
She nodded fractionally.
Xandros translated for her. “She says she will send her grandson to show you the way, but he will not go into the cave. She says you will not want to take the child. It is very steep.”
I nodded. “Thank you, Mother.”
The boy came forward, a clean-limbed boy about twelve or so.
I handed Markai to Tia. “If you wouldn’t mind watching him a little while,” I said.
She nodded. “It’s fine. Don’t be too long. I can feed him, but he’ll want you.”
THE CAVE was hard to find. The opening was in the shadow of a crag, just beneath a plateau in one of the cliffs overlooking a steep ravine. The mouth of the cave looked like a deeper shadow. I would not have seen it if I hadn’t known what I was looking for.
I told the boy he could go, and across the language barrier must have made it plain enough, for he took off like a hare, back to normal places. I stood in the shadow of the rocks on the steep path.
“Great Lady,” I said. “You have led Your handmaiden here, to this sacred place. If it is Your will that I should not disturb the silence of this Shrine, please let me know so. Otherwise I will know that I am doing as You intend. I will bring the son of Aphrodite Cythera here, that he may be king over the People in accordance with Your will. If I have misunderstood, please pardon my ignorance and teach me what Your wishes are.” I stood in the silence. Around me the light tan rocks were riddled with lichen, pockmarked. The mountain slumbered.
I set my foot over the threshold and into the cave.
At first it seemed much like the one I had grown up in, except that the first chamber was smaller and a cleft in the roof meant that some light came in and that it was not truly entirely underground. There was a blackened fire pit, but the ashes were gone. No one had lived here for several years. There were no pots, no goods of any kind. I wondered if they had been buried with the old Sybil, and how long it would be before one came again, called to this place by blood or magic.
I walked through to the entrance in the back.
A long corridor not quite tall enough for me to walk upright was before me, cutting straight ahead into the earth.
I took off my shoes and laid them at the door. Yes, above were the hooks laboriously drilled into the stone to hang the veil. “A womb, a gate, a tomb,” I whispered. I understood it better now than when Pythia had explained it. Birth and death, death and birth. It was a cave, a tomb, a birth canal. I walked into the darkness, trailing my hand along the wall and counting my steps.
Sixty steps without turns or side corridors. Behind me the light had shrunk to a lozenge of white. The cave opened into a great chamber, as tall as a temple, as wide as a hall. Five passages led from it. I sighed. I was going to have to learn this cave step by step. And that would take some time. A week or more, if I were going to make certain that nothing went amiss in the rites. I should have to artificially block off
some of the passages so that no one went wandering during the rites since I did not know all of the turns underground. Given the honeycomb consistency of the stone, there might be hundreds of turns and crosspassages, some of them with dangerous drops. It would take time. I must do the work alone. No one except me and my acolyte could come in here. And my acolyte was a toddling child who still nursed.
“Great Lady,” I said aloud to the echoing ceiling. “Great Lady, when the moon wanes I will bring Aeneas son of Anchises to Your halls. Thank You.”
I turned and went out into the sun. This would require preparation, and my son would be hungry.
THE WORK took every bit of two weeks to complete. The People camped on the beach near the town of Cumai, the village nearest the Shrine. Each day I went and prepared, a few hours at a time, while Markai stayed with Tia. He could go half the morning without nursing, but still ate at least seven times in a day. He seemed as big as Kianna had been at twice his age.
On the day of the dark moon, Markai laughed for the first time. Then when it seemed to delight me, he did it again, his round dark eyes fixed on my face. I held him close and kissed his plump little belly, smelling the sweet baby scent of him, laughing in return.
Neas cleared his throat. He stood nearby, washed and bathed, his hair clean and shining, wearing a clean tunic. “Lady,” he said, “I’ve chosen my two companions for the road. Xandros and Maris have pride of place, and neither will surrender it.”
I nodded. “Very well, then. I will come and speak to them.”
I stood in the sun and spoke to the captains, while the People assembled around them. “Aeneas son of Anchises,” I said, “are you determined to take this road?”
Neas nodded. “I am,” he said. “I will walk to the very Underworld itself, that I may seek counsel of the Shades and the blessings of the kings of Wilusa That Was. Does the door lie open?”
“It is easy to descend to the Underworld,” I said, “to pass Night’s Door. It’s returning that’s the hard part. Many heroes and sons of heroes have tried, and many have failed.”
“I will try Night’s Door,” Neas said. He looked to Xandros on his right, Maris on his left. “My companions and I will try, for I would hold conversation with Anchises and the other fathers of my line.”
I looked at the three of them. “You will eat no food this day, and will drink nothing besides water. When the sun has set, you will come to the Shrine following the path I have marked.” I met Xandros’ eyes, knowing as I did how he did not like the unknown. “Know that there is no shame if you choose not to come, for the Underworld is not a place for living men.”
Neas nodded. “We will come, Lady.”
THEY CAME. The sky was dark, for no moon shone tonight, and a bank of clouds was rolling in from over the sea. I waited within the first cave, a fire before me in the restored fire pit, my face painted and my hair pinned with ancient copper pins, brought from the islands who knew how many years ago. I heard their feet on the path before they were close, Maris stumbling and swearing in the dark, Neas rebuking him not to go near the edge.
I was waiting for them.
“Prince Aeneas,” I said, and I saw them jump, though they had been expecting me. “Why have you sought Sybil, you and your companions?”
They came through the door and stood before me, armed and dressed as fighting men, each in their best.
“Because I would be king,” Neas said. “If I am to lead the People, I must be king.”
“If you are worthy,” I said, turning my head away and cutting one outlined eye at him. “Sit.”
They came and crouched around the fire together.
I reached back and brought forth incense for the fire, myrrh and frankincense from Egypt, bay and star of the sea from the cliffs above the Shrine. The leaves crackled in the flame. The myrrh gave off heady smoke.
From beside me I lifted a stone bowl, one of the things I had found in the dark corners of the Shrine, old beyond measure. “Drink,” I said.
It looked like blood.
It was red wine steeped with the berries from the golden bough, steeped since we left Scylla and I knew that I would need this.
Neas drank first, then passed the bowl to Xandros, then to Maris. Last, I took one swallow. My head should be clearer than theirs, and I would have to nurse the child tomorrow.
I poured the dregs into the fire in libation and they steamed. And I began the songs. How Theseus went into the labyrinth and in the coils of the earth met the Minotaur, how he slew him there and returned, following Ariadne’s thread. How beneath the earth he became king, and knew it in fact when journeying home he forgot to raise the white sail. Seeing black sails raised for mourning still, his father cast himself from the heights, and Theseus became king.
I saw their eyes fix, wide and dark. The floor seemed far away beneath my feet. I stood.
“Take off your swords,” I said. “Take off your armor. They will avail you nothing against the beasts of the Underworld. Take off those symbols of pride, your bracelets and your linen worked with embroidery. You must go into Death as you came from it, naked as a child.”
They disrobed awkwardly, and I knew it was working. Maris shivered in the cold.
“Come,” I said, “if you are resolved on this.” I lifted the veil and stepped into the dark. “Come.”
Neas was behind me. “I am coming,” he said.
Sixty steps in pitch blackness. I counted them. It was an eternity to them. I heard them breathing behind me. I walked faster, so that when I stepped out into the center of the great hollow they would not touch me when they stumbled out confused into the wide-open space.
“Son of Anchises,” I whispered, and the whisper ran round and round the room. “Son of Anchises, what brings you to the River?”
And I saw it. I saw the barge poling toward us in the darkness, the ferryman with his skeletal hands.
Neas stepped forward. “I am come seeking my father, who passed this way before me.”
“You are not dead,” the ferryman said.
“I have come with the golden bough,” Neas said, and it seemed to me that he held it in his hand again, as he had in the wood.
“Then you may cross,” the ferryman said. “You and your companions.”
We poled out onto the dark water and it lapped around the boat with many voices.
“Twice we cross the River,” I said. “When we die, we cross this River, which is the Styx. And when we are born we cross the other River, which is Lethe.”
“Memory,” Neas said.
“For memory is sweet and full of delight, and if we do not leave it we cannot live,” I said.
“Memory is bitter,” Xandros said. “And if we carried it we would be mad.”
“That too,” I said.
“And still I would rather remember,” Neas said. “I would take the bitter with the sweet.”
“Ah,” Xandros said, “But you are the son of a goddess.”
“Here is the shore,” I said, and it seemed we stepped off onto parched soil. The ferry melted into mist behind us. “We are in Death’s land. We have passed Night’s Door.”
DEATH’S KINGDOM
We walked through a dark wood. Overhead the stars were shining. The tall cypress trees muttered together in the wind.
“What is this place?” Neas said.
“This is the place that never was,” I said. “The land where the sun has never shone, where the moon has never risen. Here we live in starlight.”
“It’s beautiful,” Xandros said, and there was wonder in his voice. “It reminds me of the mountains behind Byblos, where the great cedars are.” He stumbled a little against me.
Far off in the woods we heard a dove call, and then a voice. “Xandros?”
I turned.
Ashterah was standing at the edge of the wood, her long skirts made of silver, her face lit with longing and surprise, as radiant as I had seen her in the Great Temple of Byblos.
Xandros started.
“Wait!” Xandros ran after her. “Ashterah, wait!”
Neas leaped forward after him, but I caught his arm. Xandros vanished into the shadows of the trees, into the wood as though he had never been.
“Why do you stop me?” Neas said. “We have to find him.”
“No,” I said, though there was a pain in my breast. “He has found what he seeks.” I drew him by the arm and we walked on.
The sky lightened. The sun rose over the Egyptian desert, over the Red Lands of the west. Far overhead a desert falcon hunted in the still skies. The first rays of the sun turned the sands orange beneath our feet.
Maris sank to the ground, covering his eyes. “No,” he whispered.
Neas knelt beside him. “Get up, my brother,” he said. “Come now.”
“No...” Maris moaned, and sank to the ground insensible.
“We must carry him,” Neas said, getting his arm about Maris and trying to lift him.
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “He has found what he seeks. I do not know what pain he met in Egypt, but it is here.”
Neas stood and his face was pale. “Then I know what is to come,” he said.
Before us were the banks of the Nile, the green fields and the walls of Memphis. We walked toward the city.
The walls were empty. The streets were empty. Trees swayed in the river breeze, awnings were spread against the heat of the day, but there were no people, no beasts. The markets were silent, wares displayed on tables. The wells were uncapped and filled with water, but there were no women drawing water, no animals drinking. Everything was still. The sun beat down on white streets, on palaces shining like burnished bronze.
Silently, Neas took my hand.
“This is a hazardous place,” I said. “The sleeping city.”
“For us both,” he said.
I looked, and there was the temple. The doors stood open. I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye, and went to the doors.