The Hadassah Covenant

by Robert Holdstock

  To show each other that they would abide by their word, each war chief sacrificed a favourite horse. The entrails were burned and the mane and its strip of hide cut from each, scraped of flesh and presented to the other as a belt. This bond in horse-hair was a powerful one. The carcasses of the horses were quartered and salted, the food for kings for the next few days.

  The dust from Bolgios’s train clouded the sky until twilight, long after the earth had ceased to shake. We settled down for the night, but Brennos sent riders to rouse us all before dawn and we ate and drank on the hoof. Each day was the same, until the gleaming slopes of Mount Parnassus lit up the horizon, a beacon, beckoning to the invader.

  The last time I had seen Parnassus was during the year of its first inauguration as a sanctuary. Being in Greek Land, where numbers mattered, I entertained myself by working out precisely how many years ago that had been. Eighteen hundred! Eighteen hundred years in the past of my life. The valleys had echoed and shuddered to the wailing of bronze trumpets and the thunder of skin drums. The slopes of the mountain had crawled with screaming women; the air had been heavy with the blood of butchered goats and rams. I remembered how the river that flowed between the hills had been tinged with pink, and had smelled of death.

  It was silent, now, save for the rumble of horses and chariots turning slowly towards the deep pass that guarded the oracle of Apollo. We had crossed the wide plain known as Crisa without difficulty. Old traps and defences, scattered over the foothills, had proved no problem either. I rode ahead of the main column, with Elkavar and Tairon, and felt the first cool flow of breeze from the snow-capped mountain of Parnassus itself. It had seemed small in the distance, but its steep slopes now towered above us, and the air echoed with each movement of our horses.

  We rode carefully, skirting the great mountain’s flanks, and came into the gorge that led to Delphi itself. Sheer walls of shining rock almost blinded us. The land ahead might have been cut in two by a sword. Gloom and shadow were all that could be seen against the sparkling brilliance of the cliffs. The river curled through stands of ancient olive trees, themselves shimmering silver as if with frost.

  At dawn, part of the hills glowed rose-red, and it was there that Apollo had carved out the caves that would become his sanctuary. I knew where to look, which winding path to follow between the marbled shrines and sacred groves, and soon, as we rode ahead of the main army, we could see another strip of gleaming metal. This was not the ancient rock of the cloven gorge, however, but the last defenders of the oracle, two hundred Greekland veterans prepared to die for their god.

  A report came back that they were all wearing the bull-hide belt. They would fight to the death, then; no retreat was possible for them in this world. They had taken an oath to that effect.

  A storm cloud suddenly swept across the edge of the cliffs, darkening the gorge. The hoplites clattered swords on shields, a sound that rose in volume as it echoed through the valley. They seemed to slip like trickles of water in all directions, taking up defensive positions.

  They would not hold against the ponderous horde of men which even now was riding slowly into sight of its goal.

  * * *

  Brennos fell upon the oracle at Delphi in a fury of iron, with a thousand elite horsemen and gaesatae, and forty wagons to carry back the ‘dead in gold and silver’ who were imprisoned in the mountain.

  The steep valley was fragrant with burning censers. Every path, every statue, every deep entry into the hill, every tree had its own smoking tripod, an invocation to Apollo to protect the sanctuary.

  Brennos had them smashed; he hacked branches from the trees and made them into burnt offerings; he pulled down marble figures which had stood in their niches for a thousand years, watching the valley and the mountain crags. He instructed his men to shout abuse at the snakes they couldn’t see but which he assured them were worming just below the surface of the earth.

  He had bragged that he would cut the head from the Pythia, as she was called, the terrifying old woman who sat, veiled, in front of the sulphurous clefts in the rock and pronounced the oracles from Apollo. To hear him talk was to summon an image of the mistress of the oracle as some form of gorgon, endlessly spitting snakes from her twisted mouth. In fact, the Pythia—more likely a young woman, and vulnerable, easily influenced by Delphi’s corrupt priesthood—had fled long before the army had raised its dust in the north. Disappointed, but undaunted, Brennos cut the head from a youthful hoplite, shaved its cheeks with his knife and plaited its hair, then daubed ochre on lips and eyes. He presented the trophy to his commanders, later declaring how her ‘age’ had been shed like the skin of the snake she was; then he oiled and bagged the gruesome cut before the stubble could grow through the skin and give away his trick.

  Now Brennos found the truth to the story that the Persians had looted the sanctuary before him. Almost all of what he had come in search of had long since gone east. It might still be found in the temples and palaces there. More likely, Alessandros of Makedonia, who had destroyed the Persians soon after their invasion of Greek Land, would have melted down the treasure for spoil and payment of his army. All of this, a generation ago; Brennos’s dream of bringing back the Sacred Dead—if truthful dream it was—now corrupted into the cash and coin of the living.

  He sent riders to Achichoros with this news; Achichoros would almost have reached the Hellespont by now, the narrow gulf between the two lands at the southern extreme of the Black Ocean. The ruins of Persia lay beyond. His crusade would be broader than he was expecting.

  Bolgios was not at Delphi either. He had taken several thousand men and turned north and west, to the oak sanctuary at Dodona, looting the land on the way.

  The Greeklanders were in disarray. Their small armies fell back across the straits to Achaea, Jason’s land of old, to wait for the shaking of the earth to cease.

  Apollo did not protect his oracle that day, though the Greeklanders would claim otherwise long after Brennos was food for ravens. But only two carts were filled with what, clearly, had once been looted from the lands of the keltoi. Four other carts were filled with further spoil, but in truth, it was a mean treasure with which to reward so vast an army.

  Brennos knew it, and sent word to Bolgios to ‘take everything and anything’, silks, sapphires, polished stones, bronze, even ceramics.

  ‘Everything that glitters!’

  There would be a great many hungry eyes scouring the treasure carts for their share.

  * * *

  I watched the pillage of Delphi from across the valley, in the airy ruins of a small building that had once served as the quarters for the soldiers who guarded the priests and the Pythia. Elkavar played softly on his pipes, trying to compose ‘a haunting song that will illuminate the heroic and tragic nature of this place’. And failing.

  Conan returned quite quickly with the news that there was little to pillage. And Tairon, it seemed, had entered the caves of the oracle itself, more out of intrigue than greed, and when he later found us on the hill, he was puzzled.

  The air was warm. The shouting from across the valley was shrill but distant. It was almost peaceful.

  Tairon tethered his horse and crouched down beside me, rubbing his arms as if he was cold. ‘There is a labyrinth of great complexity inside the mountain,’ he said. ‘Chamber after chamber, passages spiralling inwards, but leading outwards. It’s a wonderful place! I feel completely at home. It connects with other oracles, I’m sure of it. I hear different winds blowing, and the creaking of oaks, and the smell of pine resin. And it connects to a place in my own land. I know the fragrance of my own land. There are traps and blind alleys. And a great deal of poor quality gold and fine obsidian, beautiful carvings, all stored in deep niches. Those bastards will haul it off, I expect, but they will never find it all.’

  Elkavar asked if he had seen any sign of Jason, and the Cretan nodded, taking off his green-plumed helmet and pointing along the path close to which we crouched, to where it ran deepe
r into the valley.

  ‘I think I saw him. He’s wearing keltoi armour again. He was fighting two Greeklanders.’

  * * *

  Two dying hoplites, crawling into shelter, suggested where Jason might have gone. We ran quickly to a row of white columns which marked an entry into the mountain and found the man. He was standing, sword in hand, gaze fixed on the faraway, across the valley. He was wistful, perhaps sad. He was indeed wearing the colourful clothes of one of Brennos’s army who had failed in the quest. A third Greeklander lay curled at his feet, shaking slightly as the spirit was drawn away from him. Jason himself was bleeding from a cut to the arm, and Elkavar used a short length of leather to bind the wound. I kept at a discreet distance.

  ‘I don’t know what my son looks like,’ he whispered absently, then glanced at Elkavar, narrow-eyed and fierce. ‘Does he look like me, I wonder? But then, what do I look like? I have no idea of my face. I leave that pleasure for those who can’t avoid it. You must help me search for him, Elkavar. He’s somewhere on that hill. I feel it strongly.’ He laughed, though without humour. ‘I’m anxious. Can you imagine that? After all this time: to be so close to my son … and I’m anxious. What if he doesn’t recognise me? What if he’s inherited his mother’s anger? You must stay close. You were there when that betraying sorcerer talked to him. You’ll recognise him. He’ll talk to you. And you can perform the reintroduction. It may take him some time to believe who I am.’

  ‘Merlin is here,’ Elkavar said softly.

  Jason cursed, glanced at me furiously, the sword pointing to my head. ‘I will never understand! What games are you playing? Stay away from me. Nowhere near me! I no longer know who you are.’

  The valley had become quiet, the long morning of fury finished. The sound of horses galloping back to the main army was still a rumble in the ground. Light caught the armour of the invaders as they ran back, carrying whatever they had found. The white tunics and bright horse-hair plumes of the dead Greeklanders scattered the hills. Cries of greeting, hailing and newly discovered trophy echoed briefly, the answering calls like distant music.

  Delphi was almost silent.

  And it was against this sudden stillness that I saw Orgetorix.

  He was with another man, also dressed in the patchwork leather armour of the Hyperborean Celts. The two men slipped from the deep cover of rocks, across the valley, and ran lightly up the winding road to the complex of marbled buildings that contained and masked the oracle itself.

  ‘There!’ I shouted. ‘Orgetorix. And one other.’

  For a moment, Jason stood as still as one of the shattered statues, staring across the distance at the remote figures, drawing in every detail as if this might be his only glimpse of the young man who had crossed Time and yet was again almost in his grasp. Then he barked an order to Elkavar and Tairon and ran down the rugged and thorny hillside. If he was aware that I followed, he made no comment at that moment. He was blocking me from his mind.

  ‘I knew he’d be here!’ Jason shouted as we waded across the river, and with Tairon leading—he was the swiftest of us—ascended the cobbled road to the gates and courtyards that in turn opened to the barren cleft in the mountain’s face. Here, the stench of sulphurous gas was strong; it gusted from the slit of the cave like a gorgon’s breath. Indeed, perhaps remembering Perseus’s account of Medusa, Jason picked up a discarded, round shield, kissed it and raised it to cover the lower part of his face.

  Jason led the way into the cave. With Tairon, I listened for the sound of movement other than his, but there was only the kiss of the sour breath of the hill. Tairon seemed as puzzled as was I, but he had already briefly explored this system of dimly lit passages and led us to where the coiled statue of the Python guarded the way deeper.

  We went deeper, and for a while the loudest sound was Jason’s laboured, excited breathing.

  A sudden movement in the unlit gloom of a tunnel to the left of us startled us all. A torch flared brilliantly and Jason growled in his throat as a woman stepped towards him, breasts and belly bared, eyes shining above a black veil, hair tied in long, sparkling ringlets.

  Something in the way she moved, perhaps, or the glimmer in her eyes, but an echo of memory, at least, blew sudden insight and horror into Jason’s mind.

  In that moment he half knew, half sensed who it was who came towards him, and recoiled at the thought, taking an involuntary step backwards, shaking his head. I heard him murmur, ‘No. Oh no … Not here…’

  And then he cried out like a wounded animal, a wail of pain and fury as Medea tore away her veil to expose pale, ageing features, her cruel grim smile.

  Without looking round at me, Jason stabbed his sword towards me, shouting, ‘You knew! You must have done.’

  Once again I had no answer for him. I suspect my tongue was tied again, as it had been tied all that time ago in Iolkos; and as my eyes had been confused at Thermopylae.

  Medea was in her element, relishing the stunned and shaking man before her. ‘Go back, Jason,’ she shouted in a hollow voice, made all the more ringing by the cavernous system of passages. ‘There is nothing for you here. All that you see is mine, still mine to love. You will never claim your sons.’

  ‘Try to stop me!’ Jason roared, but at that moment the two young men stepped from behind her. Jason gasped, hesitated in his step, then half lifted his hand towards them. The flame from the torch cast a flickering, eerie light on their solemn faces. All I could think was: Kinos? Here? This was not right. My stomach tightened in nervous anticipation. I called quickly to Orgetorix. He should have recognised me, but he was silent: blank.

  Then Medea turned and ran, extinguishing the light, the two young warriors pacing effortlessly beside her into the darkness.

  Elkavar grabbed one of the fluttering, poorly charged torches that smouldered nearby. And in an echo of that dreadful pursuit through the palace in Iolkos, I ran again with Jason to save his sons from their mother.

  She led us deep into the mountain, racing through the branching passages as if these were a natural home to her. Her laughter echoed and taunted. And her voice was an agony of insult:

  ‘You should have stayed in the lake for all the good this chase will do you. I made a promise, Jason, that you would never touch your sons again.’ There was a moment’s silence. ‘But you can have their ghosts,’ she finished eerily.

  She was suddenly there, framed in the darkness of the corridor, the torch again alight, held high into the narrow cleft above her head. Orgetorix and his brother stepped in front of her, each face a mask of hatred.

  ‘Go to daddy,’ Medea said, and this time her laugh was furtive, almost sad. Flame streamed after her as she ran further into the labyrinth, leaving the two young men.

  Jason said, ‘There’s something wrong. What is it, Merlin? Use a little of your magic to tell me…’

  ‘I can’t,’ I whispered, almost in despair. My thoughts swirled and blurred as I tried to summon a little enchantment. But Medea knew how to cast the net that blocked my charm.

  ‘Of course you can,’ Jason murmured with a sneer. The words hurt. The next words struck me like a hammer. ‘But then, why should you? You and she are cut from the same heart. Too long in the lake. The gods blinded me to your deceit.’

  ‘No!’ I whispered. ‘No deceit. I swear.’

  My own words rang hollow. I had not told him what I knew. But why? Why had I kept quiet about Medea? It’s for the best. For the best, I remembered telling myself.

  A second later, his sons took two more steps towards us and Jason, despite his confusion, involuntarily moved to greet them. Then, like snakeskins, the gleam of illusion fell away to reveal Medea’s trickery. The two dead Greeklanders, faces fish-belly white and gaping, stood for a moment or two more, then crumpled in their own gore, the last breaths whining from crushed lungs.

  Jason sank slowly to his knees, fists clenched, eyes closed, the scream of disappointment that was so near to his mouth suppressed by pure will. Blood came
from his lips; and then words, softly spoken, ‘O gods, damn her! Damn her for ever! Father Zeus, burn her bones inside her; Lord Hades, hang her with her own bowels!’

  He fell forward, then seemed to come to his senses. I heard him mutter, ‘Apollo! Mielikki! Argo! Let me see him. Just for a few minutes. Then I promise the lake can have me back. Mielikki. Mielikki … if you have influence in the heavens, speak for me now. The lake can take me I back…’

  He had begun to draw into himself, to hunch down like a dying man.

  I stepped towards him, wanting to reach a comforting arm, but I drew back, afraid to touch him.

  Still ‘blind’, I couldn’t see the source of what happened next.

  Jason seemed to hear a voice. He stood up, clutched sword and shield tightly, leaned forward into the darkness and began to breathe heavily, as if in anticipation. A heartbeat later the tunnel of rock closed around him a mouth consuming a piece of meat. A gust of sour air made me turn my face away. Elkavar and Tairon had their arms across their mouths, staring perplexed at the place where Jason had disappeared.

  The tunnel was normal again, though we could hear the echoing sound of a man running.

  Elkavar turned to me. ‘Should we follow?’

  There would be little point. The Apollonian spirit of Delphi had aided Jason. It would have no reason to aid us as well.

  But Tairon was a ‘walker-in-labyrinths’. He met my gaze, perhaps thinking just what I was thinking—that he might pursue Jason far enough to discover where, among the many outlets of this oracle, the resurrected Greeklander might emerge.