The Firebrand

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  She stopped herself by main force, actually clamping her hands across her lips. Priam scowled at her in anger and disgust.

  “Haven’t we had enough of this, Kassandra?” he demanded. “Even at your mother’s dinner table? Can’t you even make up your mind which God is to destroy the city? I really think you must be mad.”

  She could not speak; the lump in her throat was so great that it took all her strength merely to breathe. She swallowed and felt tears flooding down her face. Helen came and wiped her face with her veil, and the tenderness in the gesture disarmed Kassandra so that she could only stare at her brother’s wife and whisper, “It is you He will destroy.”

  “My poor girl,” Hecuba said, “the Gods still torment you with these visions. Leave her alone, Helen; there is nothing you can do for her. Kassandra, get back to the Temple; among your companions there, I am sure that the priests have remedies against such seizures as this.”

  Priam said firmly, “Never again prophesy here, Kassandra. I have spoken; so let it be done.”

  Unable to control her sobbing, Kassandra rose and ran out of the hall, fleeing up through the streets. After a time she became aware of footsteps following her upward, and she redoubled her pace, but the steps quickened to follow her, and then gentle hands seized her and brought her to a stop.

  “What’s the matter, Kassandra?” asked a man’s voice. She gasped in panic, and at first struggled wildly against his grasp; then, realizing it was Aeneas who held her, she relaxed and stood silent. “Can’t you tell me?” he asked. “What’s really wrong?”

  “You know what they say: that I am mad,” she said dully.

  “I don’t believe that for a moment,” Aeneas said. “Tormented by a God, perhaps; but not mad, nor anything like it.”

  “I don’t know the difference,” she said. “And I cannot keep silent; when the Sight comes to me, I must speak. . . .” She heard her own voice shaking so that the words were almost indistinguishable.

  “Perhaps,” Aeneas said gently, his arm around her, “all those who see farther than the rest of us are considered mad by those who can see no farther than tomorrow’s breakfast. When you ran away, I was afraid for you—afraid you would fall and hurt yourself. I do not for a moment believe that your wits are astray—you seem perfectly sensible to me; nor do I see why it should be considered madness to warn our people that the Gods are eager to destroy us. Ever since I came to Troy it has seemed to me that we are under the shadow of one angry Immortal or more, and I too seem to smell the danger of destruction on every wind.”

  He kissed her gently on the cheek. “Now, can you tell me what it is that you see?”

  She looked him straight in the eye, filled suddenly with certainty. “I have seen that you will survive the danger; I have seen you leave Troy alive and unwounded.”

  He patted her shoulder gently. “That is good to know, of course. But that is not why I asked you. Come, let me take you up to the Sun Lord’s house.” They climbed silently for a few moments. Then he said, “You truly feel there is no hope for Troy in this war?”

  “I knew that the moment Paris brought Helen here,” she said, “and believe me, this is not malice; I have come to love Helen dearly, as if she were my own sister born. I knew it when Paris entered Troy’s walls at the Games; Hector was right to wish to send him away, but for the wrong reasons. Hector feared that Paris would try to make himself King; but that was not the danger. . . .”

  Aeneas stroked her cheek. He said, “I do not share your Sight, Kassandra, but I trust you; you are speaking the truth. You may be mistaken, but you are not doing this from malice or from madness. And if this is what you see, of course you must say what the Gods have given you to say.” They had reached the Temple gate; he embraced her and said, “When you speak, I will listen always, I promise you.”

  “I think,” Kassandra said, “that some Immortal began this war—but I think Aphrodite has had Her chance to aid or to destroy us; and now it seems to us that it is not She, but the strife of other Gods that threatens us. When Father said that no mortal could pull down the walls of Troy, I knew he spoke the truth. It will not be to the hands of the Akhaians that we will fall, but to the hands of the Gods; and I do not know why They should destroy our city.”

  “Maybe,” said Aeneas, “the Gods do not need reasons for what They do.”

  She whispered, “That is what I am beginning to fear.”

  2

  THE CLIMATE of Troy was considerably warmer than that of Colchis; the serpents Kassandra had brought from Imandra’s city were more active here, and she spent much of her time caring for them.

  For this reason, she did not hear immediately when the Council determined that neither Paris nor Menelaus had won the duel, but that a truce would be proclaimed while it considered the matter further. Kassandra knew it would make no particular difference—both sides were resolved to continue fighting—so she paid little heed. She was still concerned with the serpents when the word came that the fighting had been resumed. Later, someone told her that the truce had been broken when one of the Argive captains—later claiming that the Maiden Goddess had prompted him—had shot an arrow at Priam, which pierced his best robe and came near to killing him.

  A few days later, from the safety of the wall, she and the other palace women watched the gathering of Hector’s forces, both chariots and armed foot soldiers. She heard among the women that Aeneas had accepted a challenge from Diomedes, the Akhaian who had fought with Glaucus.

  Creusa did not take it very seriously.

  “I have not heard that Diomedes is a fighter to worry about,” she said. “This nonsense about exchanging gifts—what was that except an excuse for talking instead of fighting?”

  “I would not count on that too much,” said Helen. “Granted, that day they were both playing a game; but I have seen Diomedes when he is really set for fighting, and I think perhaps he is stronger than Aeneas.”

  “Are you trying to frighten me, Helen?” Creusa asked. “Are you jealous?”

  “My dear,” Helen said, “believe me, I have no interest in anyone’s husband but my own.”

  “Which one?” asked Creusa unkindly. “Two lay claim to you, and no one in Troy talks of any other woman.”

  “I am not to blame if they have nothing to do but mind the affairs of their betters,” Helen said. “Tell me, is there any woman in Troy who claims I have spoken one word to her husband that could not be repeated before my mother and his?”

  “I do not say that,” Creusa muttered, “but you seem to take pleasure in showing yourself to all men as the Goddess—”

  “Then your quarrel is with Her and not with me, Creusa; I am not to blame for what She does.”

  “I suppose not—” Creusa began, but Kassandra interrupted.

  “Of course not; don’t be silly, Creusa. Is it not bad enough that the men down there are at war? If we women begin to fight with one another too, there will be no good sense left anywhere in Troy.”

  “If the Gods and the Goddesses are quarreling, how are we to remain free of entanglement?” asked Andromache. “I think perhaps the Gods take pleasure in seeing us fight, as They take pleasure in fighting Themselves. I know Hector’s greatest pleasure is battle; if this war stopped tomorrow, he would weep.”

  “What troubles me is that he seems to welcome it,” Helen said. “One would think he sought to be possessed by Ares. Kassandra, you are a priestess; is it true that men can be possessed by their Gods?”

  She thought of Khryse and said, “It’s true enough, but I do not know how or why it happens. Not, I think, merely by their wishing for it. Helen, I have seen you overshadowed by the Goddess. How can it be brought on?”

  “Why, don’t tell me that you wish to show yourself as Aphrodite?” Helen said, laughing. “I thought you were one of Her foes.”

  Kassandra made a pious gesture.

  “May it be far from me to be the foe of any Immortal,” she said. “I do not serve Her, for it seems to me
that the Beautiful One is not a Goddess as Earth Mother and Serpent Mother and even the Maiden are Goddesses.”

  “When is a Goddess not a Goddess?” asked Helen with a droll smile. “I don’t think I understand you, Kassandra.”

  “I mean that the Goddesses of your Akhaian folk are different from the Goddesses of our people,” Kassandra said. “Your Maiden Goddess—the warrior, Athene—She is just such a Goddess as a man would invent, because they say She was not born of any woman but sprang in full armor from the head and the mind of Zeus; yet, for all Her weapons, She is a girl with all the domestic virtues, who would make some God a good wife. She tends to Her spinning and weaving and is patron of the vines, both the olive and the grape. Would not a man create a warrior maiden just like this—brave and virtuous, but still obedient to the greatest of Gods? And your Hera—She is like our Earth Goddess, but your people call Her only the wife of Zeus Almighty and say She is subject to Him in all things, while to us Earth Mother is all-powerful in Herself. She brings forth all things, but Her sons and Her lovers come and go, and She takes whom She will; when the God of Death took Her daughter, She brought the very Earth to a standstill, so that it neither bore nor brought forth fruit. . . .”

  “But we too have an Earth Lady,” said Helen: “Demeter. When Hades took Her daughter, She brought, they say, a winter of fearful cold and dark; and in the end Zeus said that the girl must return to her mother—”

  “Exactly,” Andromache interrupted. “They say that even Earth Mother is under obedience of this great Zeus. But there’s no sense to it. Why should the Earth Goddess, who was before all else and all-powerful, be subject to any man or any God?”

  “Well, if you are going to argue as to which of the Gods is most powerful,” Helen said, “is it not the forces of love which can disrupt all else in men’s lives—and women’s too—and make them blind to all else—”

  “Create disorder and disruption, you mean,” Kassandra said.

  “You speak that way only because you have never come under Aphrodite’s sway, Kassandra,” said Andromache, “and if you defy Her, She will make you suffer for it.”

  Surely this was true; Kassandra remembered the shocking conflict she had felt in Aeneas’ arms. You do not know She is already making me suffer. But she could not speak of that, not to any of the women here.

  “May that be far from me,” Kassandra said. “I defy no one—certainly no Immortal.” Yet even as she spoke she remembered that Khryse had called her defiance a defiance of Apollo’s self. Was it so, or was he only—like all men—vengeful against a woman who would not serve him and his lust? And she had—if only in a dream—defied Aphrodite’s power.

  “Even Apollo Sun Lord,” she said, with a little thrill of dread, as if she flung a challenge even in the Sun Lord’s face, “is said to have slain Serpent Mother, and taken from Her Her power. Yet surely of all men, he who slays the woman from whom he sprang is most wicked—and would the Immortals allow in a God what is most wicked in man? Were this true, Apollo would be no God but the most evil of fiends—which He surely is not.”

  “And as for Earth Mother creating a year in which no fruit or flowers came forth, and no crops would bear,” Helen said, “in the year in which Atlantis sank beneath the ocean, so my mother’s father’s father said, there were great earthquakes, and great clouds of ash covered the sun; in that year, it might be said, there was no summer, for the very foundations of the earth had been shaken. But whether it was the doing of any God, who can say? It would not be surprising if men thought that Earth Mother had betrayed them, and sought to put an end to Her misbehavior by giving Her an overlord who would make Her serve men as She ought.”

  “I do not think,” Creusa interrupted nervously, “it is well for us to stand here questioning the ways of the Immortals. They do not look to men to make an accounting of what They do, and if we seek to question Them, They may seek to punish us for it.”

  “Oh, nonsense!” Kassandra said. “If They were as stupid and jealous of Their power as all that, why would anyone serve Them at all?”

  “Do you, who are sworn to serve the Gods, not fear Them at all?” Andromache asked.

  “I fear the Gods,” Kassandra said, “not what men say They are.”

  In THE Sun Lord’s house, the serpents—so Phyllida told her when Kassandra went to see her charges—seemed unusually disturbed. Some of them withdrew and would not come to be handled or even bathed; others were drowsy and sluggish. As she went from one to another, trying to decide what was troubling them, she remembered the earthquake when Meliantha had died. Was this a warning of just such another blow from the hand of Poseidon?

  I should send a message to the palace, she thought; but when she had last spoken prophecy there, she had been mocked and taunted, and Priam had forbidden her to speak it again. I would not be believed if I did send a warning, she thought. And then she knew, without the shadow of a doubt, that she must not refuse to hear the voice which sent her the warning. Not that she could do anything to stay the hand of whatever God might send the earthquake, but that some of the worst of its fury might be averted. Distraught, she caught up a cloak and cried to Phyllida to try to soothe the serpents in whatever way she could. Phyllida had put her own son and Honey to bed, each of them hugging a restless snake. As Kassandra bent to caress each of the children, her mind filled with pictures of the roof collapsing; she swiftly gave orders that beds be made up for them in the courtyard, where if any building should fall, they would not be crushed beneath it.

  Then she ran into the courtyard and cried out, “O Lord Apollo! Hold off the hand of Thy brother who shakes the earth! Thy serpents have given me Thy warning; let all Thy servants hear!”

  People came running out at her cries. Khryse demanded, “What is happening? Are you ill? Are you smitten by the hand of the God?”

  Kassandra fought to control the intolerable shaking of her body. She struggled to speak rationally, make her words even.

  “The serpents in the Sun Lord’s house have given me warning,” she shouted, knowing that she sounded distraught, or worse. “As they did when Meliantha died, they are restless and trying to escape; the earth will shake before morning. Whatever is precious must be rescued; and none should sleep beneath a roof this night, lest it fall upon them.”

  “She is mad,” Khryse said. “We have known for many years that she raves in prophecy.”

  “All the same,” said one of the elder priests, “whatever she may or may not know of the Gods, in Colchis she learned the ways of serpent-lore from a mistress of that art. If the serpents have given her warning—”

  Charis commanded, “The warning is given; we may not disregard it. Do what you will, or suffer the consequences; as for me and mine, I will make my bed under the open sky, which will not fall upon us yet, at least.”

  The sky was already dark; torches were brought, and the priestesses went quickly about the task of removing out-of-doors anything that might be endangered by the falling of stone or walls. Khryse still grumbled; it was to his advantage, she knew, to have it thought that nothing she said was true.

  She ran toward the gates. “Open the doors,” she cried. “I go to warn the folk of the city, and Priam’s palace!”

  “No!” Khryse cried out. “Stop her!” He stepped toward her, and reached out to grab her arms, to prevent her forcibly from leaving the Temple. “If warning must be given, sound the alarm; that will bring the folk out of their houses without making it seem that we are all God-smitten and bestirred without reason except a foolish girl’s dreams.”

  “Touch me at your peril! I go as the Gods determined, to warn them!”

  Her cry shocked him enough that he let her go, and she darted through the door before he could stop her. Once in the street, she screamed at the top of her voice: “Take heed! The serpents of the Sun Lord have given warning: the earth will shake! Take such shelter as ye can find! Let none sleep beneath roofs, lest they fall!”

  People, roused by her cries,
came flooding out their doors. Driven by a terrible urgency, she ran on, calling out her warning over and over. She heard behind her cries and shouts, some saying, “Hark to the warning of Apollo’s priestess,” and others grumbling, “She is cursed by the God; why should we believe her?”

  It was as if she were filled with fire: she was driven, burning with the heat of the warning that cried and raged within her. She fled down the streets, shrieking her warning over and over again. When she came to awareness of where she was, she was standing in the forecourt of the palace, her throat raw, and a dozen or more of the palace folk were standing and staring at her. Hoarsely she gasped out her tale.

  “Let none sleep under a roof; the God will shake the land and buildings will fall—will fall. . . . Helen, your children . . . Paris . . .” She grabbed his shoulders; he thrust her away roughly.

  “Enough of this! I swear, Kassandra, I have heard too much of your evil prophecies! I will silence you with my own hands!”

  His hands clasped around her neck; her consciousness wavered, and almost with relief she felt the hovering darkness take her in a great burst of light exploding somewhere inside her head.

  HER THROAT ached; she put her hand weakly to it. A gentle voice said, “Lie still. Take a little of this.”

  She sipped at the wine, coughed and choked, but the insistent hand stayed until she swallowed again. It cleared her head; she was lying on the flagstones, and her head felt as if it had been cloven with an ax. Aeneas bent over her and said, “It’s all right. Paris tried to choke you, but Hector and I stopped him. If anyone can be called mad—”

  “But I must speak with him,” she insisted. “It is his children—Helen’s . . .”

  “I’m sorry,” Aeneas said, “Priam has ordered all the palace folk to bed; he says you have disturbed them all too many times and has forbidden anyone to listen to you. But if it is of any comfort to you, I have ordered Creusa to sleep out in the courtyard with the baby; and I think Hector has heeded you, too, for he says that whatever you may or may not know of the ways of the Gods, you know the ways of serpents. Now drink a little more of this and let me take you back to the Sun Lord’s house. Or if you will, you may stay here and share a bed with Creusa and the baby.”