* * *
I draw a bucket of water from the well to rinse myself down, then make my way through the tangled paths of the grove and into the little town, pretending to be just another drunken reveller but quite sober now, though I still feel as though I’m light as air. I find Bria in the main square, her grey robes swapped for a plain tunic, an arm around the shoulders of a dark-haired man, and sharing a wineskin while he gropes her bared right breast. When she sees me, she slaps his hand away and comes towards me.
‘There you are!’ she says, surprising me with an open-mouthed kiss, thrusting the wineskin into my hands then murmuring, ‘Get me away from this slimy creep, now.’ She waves at the man amiably enough, and he tries to follow us; I give him a firm palm off and a steely look. He sees enough in my gaze to back away, then Bria and I go looking for food.
‘I’ve been trying to tell him my lover was coming,’ Bria mutters. ‘I was about to slap him.’
She didn’t seem to have been trying all that hard, to me. And she seems to be enjoying being draped over me far more than she should. But right now the world is a beautiful place, the last tails of the sunset are a glimpse of heaven, the tart wine is ambrosia and I am the God of Love. I indulge her for the sake of blending in.
We find an overpriced street stall cooking roasted duck wrapped in grape leaves and garnished with goat’s cheese and honey, and squeeze onto a bench beside a fat, slumbering man. ‘So, how were your revels?’ she asks archly. ‘Did you get laid?’
‘None of your business,’ I reply in the same tones.
‘You did! You did the dirty – I can smell it on you!’ She pouts. ‘So it’s just me you won’t plough! That’s so…’ She gives me the sign against the Evil Eye, her horned hand held in front of her forehead, then laughs it off as a joke. ‘Did you learn anything useful?’
I shrug. Is it possible for me to tell her what Kyshanda said without revealing who I’ve been with? I need time to think about this. And actually, Kyshanda didn’t give me any information about the prophecy itself, apart from the fact that it raises questions.
The one piece of hard news I have is the true identity of Ophion, whose Theban connection may or may not be important. As a prophet, Tiresias is bound to be curious about any developments in his field. This at least I can tell Bria, dressed up as passing gossip.
She nods, showing no great surprise. ‘I thought “Ophion” was Tiresias, but I hoped I was wrong – he seldom leaves Thebes any more.’ She scowls. ‘It complicates things: he’s a bad enemy.’
‘Kopros, Bria! Are you telling me you knew we had the greatest sorcerer in history under our roof in Ithaca? When did you—?’
‘Hush! I only started working it out when I went through the stuff we found in his room,’ she replies. ‘I was never sure – and I’ve not seen him in either of those guises before…’
Either? Then I recall the legend of Tiresias changing gender. ‘So he was the aunt as well – Aiopia?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then I actually spoke with him.’ I swallow at the memory, my seemingly innocent encounter with ‘Aiopia’ now ripe with menace. ‘Tiresias was playing with us as if we were children – he must have been laughing at me the whole time. So is he some kind of body-jumper, like you?’
‘No. His powers are different again. Have you heard his tale?’
‘Something about striking two mating snakes and being turned into a woman for seven years, then turned back into a man again?’ I reply. ‘The story changes each time I hear it, and it makes no sense.’
‘I don’t know where that snake story came from either, but there’s a core of truth: we know he can change shape and gender at will. He’s pledged to Zeus, and he’s made a bitter enemy in Hera.’
‘Didn’t he once adjudicate on some argument over whether men or women have better orgasms?’
Bria snorts. ‘I could have answered that one.’ She laughs when I stare at her. ‘Yes, Ithaca,’ she purrs. ‘I can enter a male body, though it’s harder work. But why would I, when Tiresias was right: girls have way more fun.’
Well, that’s an interesting insight…
‘I heard Tiresias was struck blind by Athena?’ I ask.
‘Only for a short while,’ Bria glowers.
‘Did you have anything to do with that?’
‘Mmm,’ she muses, turning reflective. ‘I slipped into a shrine where he was reading the auspices, and put explosive powders in his brazier, but I couldn’t finish him before I was cut down. I lost a dearly loved body that night.’
Yes, and that ‘body’ lost its life, I don’t retort.
She bares her teeth vindictively and adds, ‘Still, I cost him something – ever since, whenever he prophesises, he’s struck temporarily blind. I bet he hates me.’
‘I’m sure he does,’ I agree. ‘But how was your day at the shrine?’
She grimaces. ‘Tedious! I’d forgotten how much I hate standing in stupid circles singing hymns and weaving garlands while some boring git drones on about ancient wisdom. Those old biddies should get out more.’
‘What about the new oracle?’
‘Ah,’ Bria says, brightening up. ‘I did learn a few scraps. After all the praying and flower-arranging, I got to sit with the other pilgrims and novices, and listen to the gossip. Naturally it’s all those cross-legged maidenheads can think about right now. One of their number had a falling-down fit in the main shrine and started spouting prophecies – a mere girl, no one special. Just some minor princess from Lacedaemon.’
I prick my ears at that. ‘Lacedaemon?’ I spent several years there, along with my best friend Menelaus, having the more uncouth corners knocked off my provincial hide. Not all my memories are comfortable ones either. Last year, my awakening as a theios led me and Bria to their capital city, Sparta, and a rather uncomfortable brush with the Spartan royal family. ‘Did you find out a name?’
‘Arnacia, daughter of Icarius,’ Bria says, with a shrug. ‘Did you know her, Ithaca, when you lived there? Or were you too busy scrumping apples, or whatever you got up to?’
‘I’ve met her father, Icarius.’ How could I not – that officious, greedy younger brother of King Tyndareus, always poking his nose into anything he could make a profit out of? ‘And I knew Icarius’s sons… I met Arnacia once or twice, just before I was due to go back to Ithaca.’ I recall a shy slip of a girl with large grey eyes, always whispering to her giggly little sister from behind her hand.
‘Anything else?’
‘Her father Icarius married a woman called Periboea.’
‘Aha! Now that’s a name I do know.’ Bria looks at me the way she does when she’s trying to work out how much to tell me.
‘Spit it out,’ I urge.
‘Well, let me put it this way: I’m not the only disembodied spirit that moves from body to body. Some are what you people call naiads or dryads or whatever, capable of possessing a willing numbskull. Periboea was occasionally the host body of one such “naiad”, and if she was possessed during conception, then that child will be a theios or theia. I’d say your friend Arnacia is one such.’
‘I presumed she must be a theia, if she’s a seer,’ I comment. ‘But how do we get close to her?’
‘She’s being kept in seclusion in the high priestess’s house, at the back of the sanctuary compound, and even though I’m posing as quite a senior priestess, I’ve not been permitted to see her. Half of Achaea might have arrived on the island, but as far as I can tell, there’s only a select few that High Priestess Sophronia is allowing into her confidence.’ Bria scowls. ‘There are Trojans here too, including your old pal Skaya-Mandu.’ She gives me a suspicious look. ‘I didn’t see his slimy sister though – did you?’
‘No.’ I manage to keep a straight face. ‘Not a glimpse.’ If it’s all right for Bria to hold out on me, why shouldn’t I do the same?
Bria gives me a hard stare, then shrugs. Maybe she believes me, maybe not. ‘I also heard that Sophronia has allowed Tiresia
s and Manto into the sanctuary. That’s a worry. Why has she included them? Does Arnacia’s spontaneous prophecy affect Thebes, I wonder?’
A thought occurs to me. ‘Can Tiresias recognize you if he sees you here?’
‘Men like Tiresias see deeply. There’s every chance he’ll sense something of my presence – when I inhabit a body, it creates a magical distortion that a well-trained sorcerer can pick up on. And he’ll see through your disguise in seconds.’
‘You might have mentioned that before you sent me out there,’ I point out. ‘You were fairly sure who we faced.’
Bria just shrugs evasively, and I reflect on the joys of working with her: I only ever get told half the story and she considers me expendable.
‘But we still have to try and learn about this prophecy,’ I insist. ‘And I’m not scared of Tiresias.’ I’m angry enough that this sounds convincing, even to me. ‘I’d welcome running into the murderous swine. And Arnacia might remember me from Sparta – I should be the one who goes to her.’
Bria gives me an assessing look. ‘No one gets to this Arnacia without going through some fairly formidable people, Ithaca. If you’ve got a plan, spit it out.’
So I do…
It makes her laugh, but she admits it could actually work.
5 – Arnacia
‘Once, in Delos … I saw such a one as this, the young stem of a palm tree shooting up … And, in just such a way as I gazed and gazed upon that thing, my heart held captive by wonder – for a shaft of that kind had never yet sprung from the ground – so now, lady, I am full of admiration, amazed, and I am dreadfully afraid to clasp you by the knees.’
—Homer, The Odyssey
Delos, Aegean Sea
Drunken revelry is only a few steps from drunken rioting. The art is to direct it, light the taper and watch it burn.
The next morning, we start with alcohol – lots of it. We’ve obols enough to get the whole thing started, and by now I’ve met enough of the Dionysian maenads to prompt them in the right direction: the shrine. Everyone knows there’s a holy person present, a novice who’s been touched by the Goddess Artemis and given a vision. They want to see her.
‘Let’s march on the sanctuary,’ I tell them, plying Crios and Meli and all their friends with wine, dragging along dozens and then scores more. Kyshanda isn’t here, nor am I expecting her, after she told me she’d be busy with the inner circle today – so there’s no one I need to work around. Bria joins in ebulliently, leading the chanting as the dancers gain purpose, then marching them up the hill, all the while grooming her paramour of yesterday evening, the drunken young man with groping hands, to take over as spokesman when the time comes. Within an hour, the chanting is so loud, it’s reverberating off the perimeter walls of the shrine.
‘Bring out the seer! Bring out the seer!’
By midday, there are hundreds of us, chanting, stamping feet, calling and pleading to the high priestess. Naturally she doesn’t want to bring out the seer or anything remotely like it, but she does send out a cordon of armed men, a thin line of poorly equipped priests: temples don’t normally need guards.
‘Bring out the seer! Bring out the seer!’
Bria’s in the thick of it, bellowing chants, exhorting more volume, teasing her ‘handy’ paramour into showing his fervour. His name’s Belados, and he’s so randy for her by now he’d have stormed Mycenae if she asked. He’s pushed through to the front row, stamping his feet and yowling about ‘you bastards stealing the seer from us’. The guards were initially relaxed, but now they’re seriously worried. From the back of the crowd, there’s a clear view over the sanctuary wall and up the hill, and I can see shadowy figures watching from the shrine windows. I recognize Skaya-Mandu’s profile and I wish I had my bow.
‘BRING OUT THE SEER! BRING OUT THE SEER!’
I’m fringing the press, keeping those joining in at the back lubricated with fresh wineskins, then urging them forward. Crios and Meli are in there, banging on drums. It’s an aberrant carnival teetering on the edge of violence – we just need a spark…
I edge out of the crush and hurry to the midden where I’ve concealed my knife and a bag of small clay jars I’d hidden there before dawn that morning, filled with nothing more deadly than rags laced with lamp oil. I don’t need anything else – not when I’m the son of Sisyphus, a Promethean with fire in my fingertips.
The knife tucked safely in my belt, hidden by my cloak, I find a vantage behind a wall and pull a jar the size of my fist out of the bag. I conjure a tiny spark of fire within, watch the flame take hold then light the next, working my way through the sacking bag until I have a dozen of them lined up, getting hot and smoking gently.
Then, when the time is ripe for trouble, I pick up the first, my hands immune to the heat, speak a word of command and lob it over the wall into the back of the crowd.
As it strikes the ground, smoke begins to gush from it in great clouds, spilling out and making the people at the rear shriek and convulse away. I peer over the wall, see a wave of movement ripple through the crowd as the chanting falters. Then I throw two more jars, the first pouring out a huge plume of black smoke and the next which does nothing more than emit a hollow boom.
A dozen women scream, the crowd spills forward, away from the blasts, and hits the line of men protecting the shrine. Someone swings a staff, Bria screams, ‘They’re attacking us!’ and then the whole scene goes mad. I see Belados and his drunken pals go wading into the guards, the revellers surge forward as more booms and smoke pots strike the ground behind them, driving them on.
We have our riot.
By then I’m gone, sprinting along a side street with theios speed, heading for the high wall on the northern flank of the sanctuary to the left of the gates, vaulting to the top of the man-high wall, planting my hands and flipping over, landing on my feet and still running. A few heartbeats later I’m pressed against the side of a nearby building behind a handy cypress tree, as more male priests and a motley crew of servants go thundering past to reinforce the thin cordon of guards.
Once they’re gone I peer around a corner. Not far away, a short but imperious grey-haired woman in brown robes is staring down the slope at the sanctuary wall and the rioting crowd beyond it, flanked by two figures wearing veils that cover their hair. One of them is clad in a bright red cloak, and they’re both head and shoulders taller than her. Behind them, Skaya-Mandu is snarling into the ear of his gorgeous sister. My heart thuds to see my lover so near at hand. Kyshanda looks more amused than anxious, but everyone else is stirred up.
Then a balding man I recognize strides up to the High Priestess. ‘Lady Sophronia, it’s chaos out there,’ he storms. ‘My daughter is in danger here. You can’t keep her in this… this… prison. I demand the right to take her away!’
‘I think not, Prince Icarius!’ High Priestess Sophronia snaps back. ‘This is a holy place. We will not submit to the will of a mob. She belongs to us.’
‘She belongs to me!’ Arnacia’s father retorts angrily.
‘She belongs to Apollo and Artemis,’ a melodious male voice says, in tones of unquestionable authority. One of the two tall, veiled figures turns towards Icarius, and I glimpse smooth, androgynous features: it’s a man – Tiresias, I can only assume, and perhaps his true face this time. ‘She will not be surrendered,’ he tells the high priestess.
‘It’s your Apaliunas worshippers who are rioting,’ Sophronia fumes at Skaya-Mandu.
‘Where are your soldiers?’ Skaya-Mandu snarls back. ‘Give me leave to set my own troops upon them. Blood and steel will quieten these mad-heads down!’
‘No!’ Kyshanda replies vehemently. ‘They are my brothers and sisters in worship.’
Skaya-Mandu raises a hand as if to slap her for contradicting him, and I clench my fists – he’s not changed. ‘I speak for Troy, not you!’ the Trojan prince spits. ‘Lady Sophronia, give me leave—’
‘I’ll not shed the blood of our own children,’ Sophronia maintains
. ‘We will keep them out, no more.’
With every eye on the front gate, it seems a good time to be out the back. I retreat around the corner and work my way through a series of small gardens, darting into shadows as female servants and novices bustle about, until I reach a modest but well-built house at the rear of the compound, butted against a curve in the wall on one side. I sidle around the other, on the only available path to the back.
In contrast to the ruckus out at the front of the shrine, dimly audible in the distance, all is serene here. I hear a maid bustling around inside as I pass a shuttered window. On a small rear terrace there are several stools and a table where a young woman sits alone in the sparse shade of a graceful young palm tree. She’s slim, probably around sixteen years or so, of middling height with her honey-brown hair tied severely back. Her face is resolute, handsome rather than pretty, her eyes are downcast, and her long slender fingers are deftly working an embroidery needle through a piece of cloth that covers her knees.
Visually, there’s nothing otherworldly about her, but somehow, from the way my stomach tenses and the hairs on my arms stand up, I know this is her – the new prophetess – and that it is indeed Arnacia: I can see traces of the young girl I met in Lacedaemon years ago. I notice that her skin is now tanned and lightly freckled, probably from time spent up in the mountains as an Artemis acolyte, and I like that – I’ve never believed it healthy to hide from the sunlight, the way Mother expects Ctimene to do. Light is life.
I hesitate before stepping forth: it’s possible that Arnacia knows of my involvement in the abduction of her cousin Helen last year. Or not. In royal houses, women are often not told everything. On the other hand, gossip is rife in any household and the women usually know far more than they’re supposed to.
However, I’m in disguise and expecting her to instantly trust me, even if I reveal my true identity, is still a gamble. So it’s with some trepidation that I pull Maeus’s embroidered fragment from my belt pouch and step from cover, praying she doesn’t simply scream.
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