The Mask of Circe

by Henry Kuttner

  I nodded. It was curious how completely that panic had drained out of me, perhaps in the catharsis of the chase itself, perhaps in some snapping of the link that had given Jason’s mind ascendency over mine.

  And yet the fear was not gone completely. Far back, deep down, the formless shadow still crouched. Jason knew things I did not—yet. And perhaps he had reason for terror. Perhaps soon I too might know it.

  Panyr nodded at me as if he had been watching the thought-processes move through my mind. He grinned, flirting his short tail, took a couple of prancing steps beside the water. He glanced down at it

  “Drink,” he said. “You must be thirsty, after all that running. Bathe if you like. I’ll keep guard.”

  Guard against what? I wondered, but did not ask. I needed time to marshal my bewildered thoughts.

  First I drank, and then dropped my clothing from me and lowered myself into the icy waters. Panyr laughed at my involuntary gasp and shudder. The pool was not large enough for swimming, but I scooped up handsful of sand and scrubbed my skin until it burned. I was washing away the sweat of fear—of Jason’s fear, not mine.

  I was thinking, too. But I found no answer. Not until I had emerged from the pool and was dressed again, and sat down on the moss to look at the satyr searchingly.

  “Well,” he said prosaically, “Circe had a fine welcome from her lover. You ran like a frightened hare. I never had much love for Jason, but if you are he—”

  I said, “I’m not Jason. I remember Jason’s life, but three thousand years have passed in my world since he died. New nations have risen, new tongues are spoken.” I paused there, startled, realizing for the first time that I was speaking the old Greek with effortless fluency, and with an accent quite different from the one I had learned at the university. Jason’s memories, couched in Jason’s tongue and flowing from my lips?

  “You speak well enough,” Panyr said, chewing a grass-blade. He rolled over on his stomach and kicked at the moss with one hoof. “Your world and mine are linked somehow, strangely. I don’t know how, nor do I care, really. There’s little the goat-men do care for.” A gleam showed yellow in his eyes. “Well, a few things. The hunt, and—we’re a free people. The hand of man is never raised against us, now. We walk in any city, in any forest, without harm. I might be a useful friend to you, Jason.”

  “I think I may need friends,” I said. “You could begin by telling me what really happened back there in the temple. And why I’m here.”

  Panyr leaned toward the pool and ruffled the waters with one hand. He stared down. “The naiad is silent,” he said with a sideward glance at me. “Well, there are heroes aplenty, and great deeds and mighty gods in the annals of this world. But the heroes are all long dead, and most of the gods with them. We fauns are not gods. Perhaps it’s the weakness in you I like, Jason. You’re no strutting hero. Perhaps it was the way you ran. Ohe, by my Father, how you ran! How your heels spumed the earth!” And the faun lay back and bellowed with rather embarrassing merriment.

  I could not repress a grin. I knew what a picture I must have made, fleeing through the forest. “You may have many days of laughter ahead of you, then,” I said. “Judging from what I’ve seen of this world of yours, I expect I may do a good deal of running.”

  Panyr’s shouts redoubled. Finally he sat up, wiping his eyes and still chuckling. “A man who can laugh at himself—” he said. “The heroes never knew how. Perhaps it means you’re not a hero, but—”

  “Of course,” I interrupted him, “when I have a little more knowledge and a weapon of some sort, in that case, others may do the running.”

  ”That too I like,” Panyr said.

  “What was it that really happened in the temple?” I demanded, tired of circumlocutions. “Was the priestess Circe? Or was it a mask?”

  He shrugged. “Who knows? I never wore it! I only know that since the first Circe died, whenever the priestess who prays in her name wears it, that priestess speaks with the same age-old voice and looks out with the same eyes that Odysseus once knew. When she lifts the mask, she is herself—as you saw. But something in the mask remains alive and haunted by an old, old love and an old hate—something that was Circe once and cannot rest. Because of Jason. You tell me what it was—or ask me no more questions.”

  “I don’t know what it was!” I said despairingly.

  “You’re here, though.” He scratched the curls at the root of his left horn and showed his teeth in a grin. “You’re here, and I think for a purpose. A pity you chose the wrong time to answer the Circe’s summons. If it had been I, I’d have answered when she was forty years younger. She was a pretty thing in those days. Oh, not for me. There are dryads enough to keep Panyr busy. But if the Circe had called me as she called you, I’d have come sooner. Or later. If the young Circe were alive, now, it might be worth your while to find her.”

  “The young Circe?” I echoed.

  “You saw how old the Old Circe is. Drawing very near her end, if you ask me. I was a young buck when Hecate’s curse was laid on Jason, and I’ve seen many Circes come and go since then. I forget how many—one loses count after one’s old friends go. As for the newest Circe—well, she was worth the seeing. But the priests of Helios slew her three days ago.” He cocked his homed head and grinned at me.

  “You don’t seem to care very much,” I said. “Helios—what’s that?”

  “Apollo’s fortress, the golden city, where they worship the Ram with fire and blood. There’s an old war between Hecate and Apollo. Legend said it could never have been lost or won until the Argo brought Jason back—which is why you’re here, I suppose. Wars between gods are not for me, but I hear the rumors.”

  “You talk as if Circe had remembered Jason for a long while,” I said slowly, trying to sort out a modicum of sense from his rambling. “The truth is that she’ll never rest until she reaches him again through—through me? Then that summons you speak of must have been unanswered for a long time.”

  “A very long time. The lives of many priestesses who wore the Mask and called in Circe’s name. While the memories of the dead Jason slept, perhaps, deep in the minds of many generations in your own world. Until somehow, something awoke in you.”

  “But what do they want of me?”

  “Hecate had a plan. I think it meant marching on Helios. But the plan hinged on Jason, and she was not sure. She knew the old Jason, and she must have seen him running sometime in the past!”

  “You know Hecate’s plans so well,” I said bluntly. “Are you a priest of hers?”

  He laughed and slapped a furry thigh half in derision. “A priest—Panyr? I lived here before the first Circe came. I remember Circe herself, and Odysseus and all his swine. I’ve met Hermes walking over this very grass, not touching it, you understand, just skimming over the tips of the blades.” His yellow eyes half closed and he sighed. “Well, those were great days. That was before the mists came and the gods went, and all things changed.”

  “Tell me what they want of me—do you know?” I asked without much hope of information. It was difficult enough getting the basic matters straight, without following up every lead he offered me, grinning in his curly beard. His mind seemed to leap from subject to subject with goatlike agility.

  But when he wanted to be clear, he could be. This time he chose to answer.

  “Jason swore an oath before Hecate’s altar, long ago,” he said obliquely. “He broke the oath. Do you remember that? He went to Circe afterward, to ask a favor of her. That was the real Circe, of course, when she still lived. Something strange happened between them. No one understands that, except perhaps yourself. What was it that set Circe on fire for you? What was it made her hate you as hotly as she loved you? Hecate’s curse and Circe’s love and hate have not died to this day. I think your coming will round the circle out and you may have difficult deeds to do before you’re free again. There’s one thing to remember—unless you find the young Circe, you’ll know no
peace.”

  “The young Circe? But—”

  “Oh, yes, the priests of Helios slew her. I told you that.” He grinned again and then sprang suddenly to his feet, hoofs clicking briskly together. His eyes glanced across my shoulder toward the trees.

  ”You have an urgent engagement just now,” he told me, looking down into my eyes with an expression I could not read. “If you’re Jason and a hero, you have my heartiest blessing. If you’re not—well, I’d like you better, but your chances are worse. Let me give you two more words of wisdom before I go.”

  He bent down, and his yellow gaze caught mine with a compelling stare. “Without the young Circe,” he said, “you’ll never know peace. Remember that. As for the other thing—” He sprang suddenly away from me with a goatish bound, his tail twitching. Over one bare brown shoulder he gave me a parting grin. “As for the other thing,” he called, “—never trust a goat-man!”

  It was too late. He meant it to be too late. Even as a shock of tardy alarm shot through me and I tried in vain to turn and rise in one motion on the slippery grass, I caught the flash of golden armor directly at my side, a blade poised overhead between me and the misty sky.

  Panyr had done his work well. His laughter, his rambling talk had very efficiently covered any sounds that might have come to me in warning from behind. I had time for one dazzling glimpse of a man above me and of others crowding in at his back.

  Then the sword fell…

  A long period of darkness followed, and then I became aware of voices speaking nearby.

  “—turned the flat of your blade? You should have killed him!”

  “Kill Jason? You fool, what would the high priest say?”

  “If he’s Jason, all Apollo asks is his quick death.”

  “Not yet. Not until the young Circe—”

  “The young Circe died on Apollo’s altar three days ago.”

  “Did you see it? Do you believe all you hear, young fool?”

  ”Everyone knows she died—”

  “Does Jason know? Phrontis wants him alive, because of her. We’re to let him escape, do you understand that? He must be let free and unharmed when we get ashore. I know my orders.”

  “All the same, if—”

  Hold your tongue and do as you’re told. That’s all you’re fit for.”

  “What I say is, we shouldn’t trust that faun. If he betrayed Jason, won’t he betray us too? Everyone knows you can’t trust a faun.”

  “Believe me, my lad, the faun knew what he was doing. In the long run I think he works for Hecate. Perhaps Hecate herself wills us to capture this Jason. That’s not our affair. The ways of the gods are outside human understanding. Be silent now. I think this Jason is stirring.”

  “Shall I give him another thwack to keep him quiet?”

  “Put your sword away. Is that the only use of heads? Be silent or I’ll crack yours.”

  I rolled over blindly on a hard surface that rose and fell gently. For one nostalgic moment I had a feeling of terrible longing, a hopeless yearning for the ghostly ship of Thessaly that had sunk beneath me in these strange waters. Jason, mourning for his lost Argo.

  This was not the Argo, but it was a ship. And as my mind came back to me, burdened with the memories of Jason’s mind, I heard in the wind the far, faint braying of trumpets, not Triton’s conch, but a brazen crying, importunate and menacing.

  I opened my eyes. Bright golden decks blazed around me. Two men in dazzling mail, silhouetted against the blue sky, watched me disinterestedly. There must have been a second galley following the Argo, I thought in confusion. One we had rammed and sank, but there was this ship still in waiting offshore.

  One of the men above me lifted a quizzical eyebrow and met my eyes.

  “We’ll be in Helios in half an hour,” he said. “I wouldn’t be in your shoes for a good sum, Jason of Iolcus.”

  Chapter V

  Priests of Apollo

  Veiling mists parted, and for the second time I looked on Helios—Helios, burning with beauty, bright as the ardor of the sun-god himself. Trumpets called from its walls. I heard the bireme’s overseer shout, whips cracked and the ship leaped forward toward the golden quays of Apollo’s city.

  Roughly my bright-mailed guardians hurried me down the gangplank to the pier. Anger was rising in me, perhaps the beginnings of rebellion, but I was too interested just now to protest. The city was a strange and fascinating place, lifting behind its bright walls in a series of multiformed roofs.

  For a moment a familiar shivering and the icy sweat of Jason’s memories swept me—the locked door in my mind opened and Jason’s thoughts surged in. I thought, There will be darkness upon Helios soon.

  The sound of trumpets shattered that foreboding. Shrill and high from the towering walls it rang. And Jason’s fear walked with me as I stepped forward toward the gateway to Apollo’s citadel.

  Greek the city was—but more than Greek, too. Somewhere along the line of its culture it had turned a little away from the classic foundations, and there were hints of strange and fascinating newness blending with the familiar Greek simplicities of design.

  Nowhere was this clearer to the eye than in the great golden temple in the heart of Helios. Gold it could not be, I told myself, unless the transmuting of metals was one of these people’s secrets, but gold it seemed to the eye, as the galleys had been golden, dazzling, impossible to look at except obliquely. Three hundred feet high those glittering walls loomed, straight and unadorned except by their own brilliance. I did not need to be told that this was a god’s house—Apollo the Sim.

  Strangely, we did not move directly toward that shining building. The streets were thronged and narrow. Strange faces stared at me. And then, suddenly, I was no longer in the custody of the bireme’s mailed men.

  Their firm grip had vanished from my elbows. The street lay crowded and impersonal before me. For this instant I was free to run, if I chose to run. But remembering those voices overheard in the daze of my awakening, I stood still, rapid thoughts moving through my brain.

  I was tired of being a pawn in the hands of these unknown forces. They thought I was wholly Jason, with Jason’s full memories. They thought I knew where to run. Well, I did not know.

  “Hanged if I’ll play into their hands,” I told myself angrily. “Let them take over, for I don’t know the rules of the game! They want me to run. Well, we’ll see what they do if I won’t run. I want a talk with this high priest of theirs. I’ll wait and see.”

  So I stood motionless while the crowd eddied around me, curiously glancing at my strange clothing as they passed. And in a moment or two I saw a gold-helmed head peering at me from around the corner of a building. Almost laughing—for this game had its ridiculous side—I crossed the street toward him. Another soldier stood behind him.

  “Let’s go on to the temple,” I said calmly. “I want a talk with this—Phrontis, did you call him? Will you lead, or shall I?”

  The man scowled at me. Then a reluctant grin creased his face. He shrugged and pointed me on toward the looming walls of Apollo’s golden house. In silence we three trudged toward it through the crowds.

  We went up a ramp where a great gate creaked solemnly open to admit us. We passed through a doorway like a chasm in the gold. Then we were hurrying along hallways broad as city streets, and as crowded with courtiers and priests and men in armor that was pure gold to look at. No one noticed us. Jason’s coming to Helios was apparently secret from these busy throngs.

  Many races moved among the tall Greeks here, Nubians, Orientals in jeweled turbans, slave girls in bright tunics, young acolytes to priesthood, every age and condition of humanity seemed to swarm in the golden halls—from slim, pale Scythian courtesan to black-bearded Persian fighting-man.

  We turned down what would have been an alleyway had these great streets been open to the sky, moved rapidly among more furtive denizens of the temple, and my guides paused before a grilled
door, while the elder drew the hilt of his dagger across the grille, swiftly, twice over, making the iron ring with a sharp, vibrant music.

  Without a sound of hinges the door swung open. A violent shove upon my back thrust me stumbling forward. I got my footing again in a dim place inside, hearing the clang of the door behind me.

  Then a girl’s voice murmured, “Will my lord please to follow me?”

  I looked down. A little Nubian girl with the silver collar of a Helot clasped about her slim, dark neck was smiling up at me, her teeth very bright in her pretty, polished-ebony face. She wore a turban and brief tunic of pale blue, and her feet were bare and ankleted with silver bells. She looked like someone’s pampered servant, as she no doubt was. There was faint impudence in her smile, and she bad a pretty, delicate face. Behind her another girl, golden-skinned and slant-eyed above her slave collar, watched me in silence.

  “This way, my lord,” the Nubian murmured, and went tinkling away down the dim hall. The other girl bent her head to me and fell in at my heels as I turned to follow.

  There was only darkness at the end of the hall. No door, no hangings, no wall, but darkness like thick mist. My small guide paused before it and looked up at me with a gleam of teeth and eyes in the dimness.

  “My lord will await the high priest of Apollo,” she told me, “here in the high priest’s private chambers. Will my lord please to enter?” And she put out a silver-braceleted arm and—drew back the darkness.

  It was mist, but it folded away to her touch like cloth. No, not to her touch. I looked closer to be sure. It seemed to retreat beneath her hand, so that her gesture was like a command that it draw back—and it did. I walked forward under an opening tom in the dark by her gesture. Light poured softly through from beyond. I paused on the threshold.

  The room before me was Greek again, but with a difference. White columns ringed the room, with darkness hanging between them like the darkness at the portal through which I had passed. Overhead were clouds, pale, billowing clouds faintly rosy as if touched by the first hint of sunset or dawn. Slowly, drowsily they were moving, and between them now and then I caught glimpses of a blue mosaic ceiling in which points of brilliance glittered like stars.