by Judith Tarr
It was not his own earth, his Black Land, nor yet the Red Land that bordered it. But it was earth. It would suffice.
VI
Kemni rose at last, well dusted with sand, staggering on ground that did not rock and sway like a ship’s deck, and found himself the center of a circle of stares. Every idler and hanger-on in this port seemed fascinated by his sandy and unstable self.
And there before them all was a woman of beauty to break the heart. She looked, somewhat, like Iphikleia; but all Cretans looked like one another. She was smaller, a delicate handful, and her breasts were even sweeter. He could have circled her waist with his two hands.
Iphikleia he dreamed of, and burned for when he woke. This was beyond dreaming. This, he would die for.
She must be a goddess, or a goddess’ image. And yet she regarded him with such a look of pure and wicked delight that he caught himself grinning like a fool. She laughed, sweet as water bubbling from a spring, and brushed the sand from his shoulders. “Oh!” she said. “Such a lovely gift the sea has brought to me. Where do you come from, beautiful man?”
“He comes from Egypt,” Iphikleia’s clear voice said from just behind him, “and he comes from their king.”
“All the better,” the stranger said. “Come, beautiful man! Come to the palace with me.”
Kemni did not think he could have resisted, even if he had wanted to. She had taken him by the hand, easy and trusting as a child, but no one of all those about looked on her as such. They were as dazzled as he was, and as helpless against her.
Of all the ways he had thought to come to the palace of the Labyrinth, this was the least conceivable: walking hand in hand with this most beautiful of women, listening to her light sweet chatter. He was dimly aware of a city around him, white walls, streets paved with smooth stones and glimmering shells, flashes of bright color everywhere his eye happened to glance: a tumble of flowers down a wall, vivid paint along a portico, a gleam of gold in shadow. And everywhere there were people, slender, with black ringlets worn long, and wide dark eyes. But clearest then and always to his memory was her face lifted to his, for she came only as high as his chin, and her voice running on.
“My name is Ariana,” she said. “I was born up there, in a high white room that looks out past a spire of stone to the sea. I have the sea in my blood. Is it true what they say, that Egyptians have sand there, and river mud?”
Kemni laughed before he thought, half amused, half taken aback. “That is one way of putting it,” he said.
“You speak our language very well,” said Ariana. “Iphikleia taught you, I suppose. She’s a fine teacher.”
“She is very . . . severe,” Kemni said.
Ariana’s laughter rippled to the blue heaven. “She likes people to think that. It comes of being such a scapegrace as a child—she tries to make up for it by being the most dignified of women. But I know,” said Ariana, “that she’s really as wild as ever. Did she run about Egypt as she used to run about here?”
Kemni opened his mouth to deny that, but shut it again. He could not help but remember how she had come onto the ship in Memphis, slipping aboard under cover of darkness, and refusing to say exactly where she had been or what she had been doing.
“You see,” said Ariana, skipping a little as she led him on up the steep narrow street. “Never believe her when she frowns and threatens lightnings.”
“Not even when she speaks for her gods?” Kemni asked a little wickedly.
“She speaks for Earth Mother,” said Ariana, “but you’ll always know when she does that. You have eyes that can see.”
Kemni stilled—a great deal within, a little without; but she tugged him onward.
“Come, beautiful man! We’ve a fair walk ahead of us.”
They were almost to the top of what, he realized with dizzy suddenness, was quite a steep ascent. The white houses marched away below them to the blue gleam of the sea. The way leveled ahead, but then began to climb again, up and up to a dizzying height.
They would not, thank all the gods, be compelled to walk so far or so high. People were waiting, servants with bright curious eyes, standing beside an elegant and gold-bedecked chair such as, in Egypt, kings and great lords rode in before their people. Ariana stepped neatly into it, arranged her tiered skirts, and smiled at Kemni. “Well? Are you coming?”
Kemni had ridden in such a chair a time or two, for honor or for the weakness of a wound. One had carried him away from the battle for Avaris, until he was laid in one of the king’s boats and carried half-conscious down the river. But he had never ridden so, face to face and knee brushing knee with a woman as beautiful as a goddess.
Her chatter relieved him of any need to be good company. It washed over him as the servants lifted the chair onto strong shoulders and began the climb to the Labyrinth. It was long and in places so steep he clutched the sides of the chair and prayed, while Ariana laughed at him.
Yet at length it came to an end. The sun had begun visibly to sink. The bearers were panting, their sweat pungent and yet rather pleasant. And there above them was a wall, white as seafoam, white as the clouds that scudded in the blue heaven. All along the summit of it were the images of horns, sharp white curve like the new moon, or like the horns of the bull that they all worshipped here. And along its face was carved or limned or painted the labrys, the double-headed axe.
There was a gate just ahead of them, wide and high and crowned with the horns of the Bull. Guards stood on either side of it, tall as men went here, broad and strong, armed with the double axe.
Kemni’s middle tightened. He was a poor object to be seen in a palace, crusted still with sand, no wig on his close-cropped head, and a kilt that had seen the worst of wind and salt. But Ariana was his guide and his defense.
They bowed as the chair passed, those tall guards in their high helmets; bowed to the ground. It might be for Kemni, but he rather thoroughly doubted it. Ariana rode past them with her head high, prattling on as if she passed this gate and these guards every day.
And so she must. She was a power here, or he had lost all sense of courts and kings.
Such strange power, this beautiful child who went abroad all unguarded, and took a fancy to a stranger, and brought him with her through the gate of the Bull, into the house of the Double Axe.
~~~
Kemni was no stranger to palaces. He had walked in that of Memphis and that of Thebes; even in that of Avaris where the Retenu ruled. He had walked on pavements that were old in the dawn of the world.
This palace was not old as an Egyptian would think of it. If anything it was rather raw with newness. Nor was it as vast as that of Thebes, as lofty or as deeply weighted with awe. And yet it had its own power, and its own unmistakable majesty.
It was a maze within, a great gleaming ramble of buildings all over the summit of that high hill. Ariana knew it as Kemni had known the thickets of reeds outside his father’s house, every twist and complex turn of it. She led him unwavering though he was all turned about, to a house among the many, set amid a garden. There was a pool to bathe in, and servants to wait on him, and a bed to rest in if he should be so minded. There was even a wonder, water that flowed into basins at the turning of a lever, to wash in or to relieve oneself: remarkable, and a great game, to watch the water flow and stop, flow and stop.
She left him there alone and made it clear that he was not to follow. But she had promised to come back for him. He clung to that, here where there was nothing that he knew, and nothing that was his own. Everything of his was still on the ship, as far as he could tell.
If this was a plot, a conspiracy to separate him from his own people, catch him alone and so destroy him, it had succeeded admirably. He could huddle in a corner, stiff with fear, or he could let himself be waited on by these deft and bright-eyed servants. They were all young, youths and slender maidens, dressed alike in a scrap of kilt, with their long hair caught up in a scarlet fillet. They were not slaves—that much he could tell, as
bold as their eyes were, and their commentary as they cleaned and shaved and made him presentable. They did not, perhaps, know that he understood their language, or if they did, they did not care.
In Egypt he was reckoned good to look at, though he had never reckoned himself a beauty. Here they cared less for perfection, and more, as they averred, for the whole of a man’s self. For some reason beyond his fathoming, perhaps only because Ariana found him beautiful, they were delighted with him. They loved the warm red-brown of his skin, so different from their olive darkness. They were a little taken aback at his hair, cropped short for comfort under a wig, but they marveled at his long dark eyes. They marked the shape of him, how he was not so wide in the shoulders or so narrow in the middle as they, but wide enough and narrow enough to be pleasing. And they had a great deal to say of his manly organ, which he had never reckoned to be anything remarkable—but they did not crop the foreskin here for cleanliness and for sacrifice to the gods. They pointed and stared and giggled, and one bold creature took it in her hand and fondled it as if she had every right in the world.
He could grow angry if he tried, or if they persisted. But they went on to other wonders, dried him and wrapped him in a kilt after the Cretan fashion, and put tall boots on his feet—more marvels there, as narrow as those were. Elegant, they said. That was the word they repeated to one another. He was elegant, as if that were a great virtue.
He did not feel elegant. He was clean and dressed and tidy, but he felt oddly rumpled and annoyed. He was not accustomed to servants who spoke so frankly over a lord’s head—or over his nether parts.
They invited him to rest in the wide bed, in a room full of the song of the sea—strange, that, for the sea was rather far away, out of sight if not of scent and sound. But he was not minded to do their bidding in that. He went out instead into the garden.
On that side a parapet walled it. Kemni found himself atop a high terrace, looking down a steep descent to the rocky defiles and brief levels of inland Crete. It was a wild prospect, strange and not particularly hospitable, and nothing at all like his own country.
He shivered. He had not been truly warm since he left the Delta of Egypt. Here, even in the sun, the wind was chill. It sang from the sea, and the sea’s cold heart was in it.
Soft warmth fell about him. He spun, startled, to find Iphikleia standing behind him, and a mantle around his shoulders, wool the color of sea and sky, lined with cream-pale fleece.
She was even more forbidding after the bright memory of Ariana, and even less delightful a companion. But she had brought the mantle, as no one else had thought to do. He wrapped himself in it, savoring the warmth, and yes, the beauty of it, too. “This is a mantle for a king,” he said. “I thank you.”
She shrugged a little and came to stand beside him, resting her hands on the parapet. “We can’t have you taking your death of cold before you even speak with the king,” she said.
Such concern for his welfare, he thought wryly. “And when will I speak with the king?” he inquired.
Again, she shrugged. “When the king is ready, he’ll summon you.”
“Ah,” said Kemni. He knew kings. “And what am I to do with myself while I wait for him?”
“Anything you like,” said Iphikleia.
“Murder? Rapine? Murrain among the cattle?”
Did her eye glint at the sally? He never could tell, with her. “Anything within the laws,” she said.
“Then,” he said, “will you be my guide? I’d like to wander a bit, if I may.”
“I am not a servant,” she said. “I doubt you know what I am.”
“A priestess,” he said. “A princess. I come to speak for the king of Egypt. I may be far beneath you in myself, but my king is rather above you.”
“Is he?” She lifted her chin. “Very well. I see how ignorant you are of our ways—and your accent is still abominable. You might ask for wine and be given a chamberpot. I’ll play guide. Come.”
Gracious she was not, but he was not looking for grace. He wanted the knowledge of one who had run wild over these hills as a child, and who had not—whatever she might wish him to think—forgotten a fingerbreadth of it.
In her company he was considerably less diverted, and considerably more inclined to notice where he was and what he was looking at. And yet he was aware, always, of her presence, like the warmth of the mantle on his skin. She did not call him beautiful, nor much of anything else either. But she knew where the best wine was, and the most splendid view of the island and even, distantly, the sea; the finest avenue of noble houses and the richest pasture of the famous cattle. She even knew where there were horses.
There were not many. Kemni counted four handfuls of them, mostly mares and foals. The stallion was old and much scarred with ancient battles. But they were horses, and they were sacred. “They belong to Earthshaker,” Iphikleia said with a gesture that averted evil from the name. “He accepts the sacrifice of the Bull, and cherishes the dance. But we call him Lord of Horses. He was given them, you see, long ago, before ever our foremothers came to this island, by his mother who made them.”
“I had heard,” Kemni said, “that he made them.”
“So men would have you think,” Iphikleia said. “No; Horse Goddess made them. He had them from her as a gift. They bless this land. They embody his promise: that while they live and thrive, his hand will never fall on us.”
“They protect you,” Kemni said. He watched the horses in their field, as they grazed and played and—yes, over yonder, mated. “They threaten us. The Retenu—”
“The Retenu have turned them into a weapon,” she said. “But a weapon serves any hand that can wield it.”
“Yes,” he said. “I’ve thought of that. By the gods, I’ve thought of it. But now, in front of them, to dream that we can wield this one . . .”
“Are you afraid of them?” she asked him.
“No,” he said. And that was the truth. They were large, but oxen could be larger. They were not as gentle as oxen, but neither were they as fierce as crocodiles, or near as deadly.
She walked past him into the field. Some of the horses raised their heads. One or two of the youngest came to investigate, bright-eyed with curiosity. She greeted them as one who knew well their ways, walking at ease among them.
Kemni had never seen horses so close, except in battle. These were not coming at him to destroy him. They took little notice of him in the main. They were animals, that was all, engrossed in their own concerns.
“Could I learn,” he asked with beating heart, “to understand them?”
“You could try,” she said.
“Then I shall,” he said. He spoke with more courage than he actually had, but he did not try to take the words back once they were out. Iphikleia’s glance betrayed how well she read him.
Better she read this than what he dreamed of nights.
He sighed faintly. She was in among the horses, smoothing manes, scratching necks, fending off inquisitive noses. He gathered his courage and plunged in behind her.
It was difficult. He could not help but remember how he had known horses, drawing chariots in battle, trampling the bodies of his own people. His uncle, his uncle’s sons, had died beneath those hooves and those cruel wheels, crushed and torn till the embalmers were sore taxed to restore them to a semblance of their living selves. When he found them past the Field of Flowers, if he should be so blessed, he hoped that they would have been healed; or their life everlasting would be a poor and tormented thing.
These were not horses of war. Cretans did their fighting on shipboard. Their horses were sacred beasts, cherished, pampered, and driven only in festivals. They were peaceable creatures. They smelled of grass and sea-salt, clean air and something rather pleasant that was all their own.
His hands lingered on smooth necks and rounded rumps. Their manes were thick and tangled. He worked the knots out of one, a dun mare with a dark colt at heel. The colt nibbled at his mantle, snorting a little
at the scent of wool and fleece.
“You need less to understand these horses,” Iphikleia said, “than to master them. Understanding is easy enough. Mastery may be beyond you.”
“I can try,” he said, “if someone will teach me. Since it seems I’ll be cooling my heels for a while on this most splendid of islands.”
Her brows arched. “Ah. After all, you have a courtier’s speech. Who would have thought it?”
“Not I,” he said. “Find me a teacher and I’ll let you be.”
“We shall see,” said Iphikleia.
VII
Kemni dined alone in the house that, it seemed, he had been given. Servants waited on him and fed him royally, but none of them was inclined toward conversation. He thought of demanding company, of asking that he be shown to Naukrates’ house, or taken to some gathering of the court. But he was more weary than he had known, with all his travels, and then tramping hither and yon about the island.
Iphikleia was gone, she had not deigned to say where. She had simply left him at the door, just at dusk, and gone wherever it pleased her to go. She had not waited to be invited in, nor given him occasion to ask.
Certainly he could not quarrel with the dinner he was fed, or the wine that went with it. Both were superb, prepared and served with impeccable grace. Nor were they excessively strange. Someone perhaps had made an effort to feed him as he was accustomed to be fed.
When he had eaten and drunk his fill, a servant with a lamp led him to the bedchamber. The man made to help him undress, but Kemni sent him away. He could perfectly well shed kilt and belt and boots by himself, and fall onto the broad expanse of the bed.
It was too broad, and much too soft with cushions and coverlets. He could not sleep in such luxury; he had never known it.
Something stirred amid the coverlets. He started and half-leaped to his feet. Light laughter followed him.
There was a woman—a girl—in the bed, tousled and heavy-eyed as if she had been sleeping, but bright enough, and laughing as she rose up out of a nest of cushions. She was utterly exquisite in the Cretan fashion, with her big round eyes and her masses of curly black hair and her waist so tiny he marveled, even as taken aback as he was. He could see every bit of it. She was as bare as she was born.