by Tracy Groot
VII
A COOL WIND CAME DOWN from the heights and made the climb more bracing, especially for a man with recently broken ribs.
Tallis left the road and the few travelers bound for Damascus when they came to the southern slope of the el-Kursi Valley. He’d gotten a ride in a peddler’s cart when the peddler stopped at the inn for refreshment. The ride had saved him a few steps, to be sure, but the wind coming down from the heights would challenge what rest he had taken. There was no path up this slope, but at least the way wasn’t difficult. Small rock croppings gave easy purchase, and otherwise-tall spring grasses were trampled by the herd of pigs he’d seen grazing the other day.
He had smelled the herd before he saw it and had to press his sleeve on his face when he passed. Apparently the herdsmen favored this rocky terrain. He now caught the familiar smell on the wind, but mercifully, it wasn’t as strong today. He hoped the herd had moved on, hoped it was nowhere near where Polonus lived.
East of the tombs of Kursi, Kes had said. Tallis tried to keep his course just that. He’d strolled the tombs once, in unwary abandon, and Tyche the goddess of fortune had favored him: he had had no encounter with the madman. The goddess could see fit to conceal him once more until he found Polonus.
When a sweat broke on his body, he stopped halfway up the slope to sit down and rest. He pressed his sleeve to his forehead and rested his arms on his knees to have a look around. He was actually quite curious to see Kardus—and wasn’t sure if he was ready. He had a stout respect for the unpredictability in such a man. He’d read too much; he’d seen too much. Who knew what a madman would do next?
What if madness were passed on?
Tallis had long been haunted by a vagary that perhaps the madness of his mother had tainted his blood: madness, dormant in his veins. He never wanted to think on it, for fear the thinking would stir it up and lend it power. Nor could he look away, not anymore. Though his mother had been a rather inward woman, as long as he knew her, she had been kind and good, and that was the horror of it. In the end, she was mad. Didn’t he suppose himself to be kind and maybe a little good? What prevented him from going the way of his mother? If only she were all bad. She was bad. She was also kind and good.
Did Alexander ever fear that the madness of his mother lay in wait in his blood? For all the thoughts he’d had of Alexander, this was a new one. Olympias had danced at midnight on the mountains too. Had she ever participated in the sacred rite? The books never said she went that far, none that he had read. They said only that she writhed in the revels until the frenzies came and the spirit of Dionysus possessed her. What horror attended his incarnation then? How should the books have read?
Alexander, did you have a little brother? Was your mother mad, like mine?
Olympias’s family claimed to be descended from god-men: from Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, and from Helenus, son of Priam—king of Troy. Perhaps to later explain the singularity of her son, Olympias had claimed to be impregnated by Zeus, at the clap of a thunderbolt during a storm. If this was true—and only the credulous would believe it—then Alexander was a son of the gods.
At times Alexander used the belief of the credulous to gain his own advantage, tactician that he was, but mostly he worked to counter it, especially among the men with whom he fought his campaigns. Though no one was likely to ask Tallis what he loved best about Alexander, he had an answer ready.
“He tried hard to be as one of them, accepted not as king, let alone the son of a god, but as brother,” Tallis answered the nonexistent questioner aloud. “As fellow soldier.” His efforts, like eating the same food, visiting the wounded, and comparing battle tales, had won their hearts. He never wished to be elevated in their sight, save for the respect necessary to command. Once when he was wounded in the leg with an arrow, he dryly commented, “It is no ichor I bleed.” Ichor, the blood of the gods.
Things like this had come down through the ages and seized Tallis’s imagination. The battle strategies alone were legendary. And though his brilliance was something to be admired, Tallis never thought it was gods-bestowed as much as learned from his remarkable father, Philip of Macedon. In studying Alexander, he had become fascinated with Philip. Philip made the magnificent army and handed it down to Alexander. Philip saw something special in his son and hired the great Aristotle to tutor him—maybe the smartest thing he had ever done. Philip once told Alexander, “My boy, you must find a kingdom big enough for your ambitions. Macedonia is just too small for you.”
Tallis wondered, if the fever had not killed him at thirty-two, what sort of man would Alexander have been at sixty-four? Alexander, so passionate, he who wanted a taste of everything, who ached to see what lay around the bend. If not the fever, would his own zeal have burned him up? How would the world be different today if Alexander had lived?
Aristarchus, Callimachus’s colleague, had long thought Tallis a fool for taking after Alexander so—he liked it better when Tallis applied himself to ridding the world of the Maenads. Called that a worthwhile obsession. Said it actually accomplished something, unlike pining for a leader who was probably as corrupt as any other king. Aristarchus said learn of Alexander, but not enough to teach him.
Why he steadily worked to chip at Tallis’s respect for Alexander, Tallis did not know. He hated the way the pinched man lay in wait to pounce on his opinions. Aristarchus was so cynical even his mouth was twisted in a permanent grimace. Why Callimachus kept him around was another reason Tallis loved Callimachus—the loved man felt sorry for the unloved man.
Cal tried to make Tallis see the good in Aristarchus, and Tallis told Cal he could see just fine and saw nothing he liked. Always dour, always stuffing the atmosphere with counterisms. Always happy to be contrary. True, Aristarchus had an odd acumen. He’d shuffle past a conversation, toss in one comment to make the ones he’d interrupted stare after him, and he’d change the course of their discussion entirely.
Tallis found himself smiling. “You won’t cure me of him, Aristarchus. And I’ll teach of him someday.” The thought brought a pleasant flutter: Tallis of Athens . . . Alexander’s historian.
He rose, wincing at the soreness in his chest, and pulled up his tunic to have a look. Kes had bound his ribs firmly, enough that breathing was a compact affair. But it did make mobility easier, and hopefully would make the bones knit—
Without warning, his senses leapt.
He gazed at the bandages, wondering why his stomach plummeted, who had thrown the damp on the sun. . . .
He let the tunic drop. Turn around, look up the slope, it’s right behind you. Sluggish with inexplicable terror, he slowly looked over his shoulder.
A dark crouching form shut out the sun.
Immobile, Tallis stared at the backlit form. Then the form screamed, gusting fumes over Tallis, and his mind went blind.
Midnight orange. Cadent steps and moving skirts. Serene smiles, sharpening to bug-eyed grimaces. The celebrants did not know their faces had changed, one moment joyous and lovely—the next turn in the steps showed faces stupid and grotesque, with thick-lipped lurid grins and huge unequal eyes, drunk with evil nonsense. Black winged things moved among them in their dance, huge tar caterpillars flowing.
He heard the form scrabble backward up the slope, heard animal grunts of terror attend its retreat. The grunts crescendoed to an undulating scream, and it echoed in the valley. The scream paused at the top of the hill, then ran away, trailing jaggedly off, leaving behind a bruised silence.
Dampness slid from the sun. Sensibility crept back.
Tallis put out a hand as he sank to the earth. Gods, the scream. There was hell in it. And the smell—Ah, gods! The smell had rolled over him like a belch from Hades.
The man was covered in filth like he was painted in it. Filth is all he wore, not a stitch of clothing. He could not see the face—it was backlit by the sun. Tallis only had an afterimage of wild hair. He couldn’t see much for the roaring of the presence.
This was Kardus
?
Tallis looked slowly up the slope. In the weak afterflush of terror, he panted, “I know you. I know you.”
That was the force of the meeting, not the horror of the pathetic individual he had seen, but the primordial presence transcending him. He recognized it. He knew the presence. Everything he felt in the Theban grove, he felt in the man.
And gods, what was this? He felt for his stomach. Something had answered the presence. He didn’t imagine it then—when he had wept on the shore of the Galilee, something had dislodged within. He felt more than terror at the presence in Kardus; he felt deep revulsion. Clean hatred. Whatever it was, it was grossly affronted by—and just as primordial as—the opposing presence.
“Follow pain to the truth, Tallis,” Callimachus once said. “Let it hurt until it leads you to where it is.”
Tallis had denied the pain because it was too much to bear. Today, he let it hurt. Follow pain to the truth. What was the truth? He rubbed his belly. He could not say what had answered the Evil. He wanted to define the clean hatred, he wanted to see it clearly so he could direct it, or obey it. But he felt it settle.
As Samir had settled.
Presently, when the remnants of his human fear had faded and strength had returned to his limbs, and that was a very long time, he rose and began to climb the slope again.
He found Polonus’s home only when he had looked too far to the east and come back to the tombs. He had mistaken the home of Polonus for a tomb itself—it was built into the hillside like some of them. A short dark passageway, flanked with curved walls of rock, led down a few steps. A stone beam carved into the bedrock overhung the dark door, and over the beam grew long patches of untrimmed grasses. It probably was a tomb once, converted into a home. Tallis looked around the graveyard, at the rock mounds that served for Polonus’s front yard, and at the other tomb against the rounded curve of the hillside just past this.
“Do you have the neighbors over often?” he muttered. He could think of a few other places he’d rather live.
He’d taken a second look at the place when he noticed the small shed, then again when he saw a cistern. Then he saw other evidence of habitation. A folded-up stool against the wall in the passageway, a cup on the ground next to the stool. He found a fire pit behind the shed with a grate hanging from a metal tripod. The fire pit was cold, though it looked recently used. The place felt as if the owner had gone away for a while. The shed door was closed; the door in the passageway was closed. People didn’t close their doors unless it was night or they’d be gone for a time. They didn’t let a fire pit grow cold. The herbs growing in a few pots behind the shed looked thirsty.
Tallis called around softly for Polonus, but no one answered. He stood in front of the door, debating whether he should go in. Before the debate was over he stepped down and nudged the door. It pushed easily inward.
“Polonus?”
The door began to swing back to him. He pushed it all the way open and found a stone doorstop.
It was a small room. When he stepped out of the path of light, the sun reached halfway in. The more the sun dropped west, the more the room would be illumined. Polonus likely did most of his work in the afternoon, and it was evident this former tomb was the home of a scholar. Tallis saw scrolls everywhere he looked.
The first thing he really noticed was the smell. It was earthy and stony and ancient all at once. It wasn’t unpleasant, exactly, but disturbing. If this place had been a tomb, maybe he was breathing the dust of the dead.
The elevated recess carved into the bedrock at the back of the room had to be the place Polonus slept: it had in it a thin pallet and a flat pillow at one end. How could he sleep there? It was a bed for the dead. Did people once kneel there to honor their dead, to pray to them or to their gods? Did they imagine the place would one day become a desecration? Maybe Polonus had to clear out the remains of the former occupant to make his own bed. The thought made Tallis shudder.
A desk with a stool behind it was in the path of the sunlight, situated near the sleeping place. Polonus had arranged it at an angle to take full advantage of the sun’s path. A wide woven mat went down the center of the room from the doorway to the bed.
Tallis slipped off his sandals at the doorway and stepped onto the mat. He went to the desk. Ink stains in the grain of the wood. Scratches from too sharp a pen nib, perhaps in an emphatic moment. He came around the desk and settled on the stool. He looked out the passageway, and knew why Polonus had put the desk here—not only for the sunlight, but also for the bit of the Galilee he could see through the narrow doorway.
The glance outside prickled his neck hairs. Kardus was roaming around out there, he with hell attending him. May Tyche be pleased to let him roam far from this place.
The desk was wide and solid, the surface smooth with a venerable patina. In the right corner was a trio of stoppered ink pots, a vase of styli near them. There were scraps of parchment with handwriting on them, placed in deliberate spots like reminder notes. A closed wooden tablet, a diptych likely filled with wax, lay on the left. Next to it was a half-unwound papyrus roll, the dowels askew to prevent the paper from scrolling up.
Tallis studied the room from behind the desk.
On the inside left of the door was a cylindrical container full of papyrus rolls. On hooks above it hung an old tunic, a pair of shackles, and a few leather scroll carriers. The left side of the room had a long shelf built into the wall, about as high as a man’s sore ribs, loaded with scrolls. Beneath the shelf was a stone bench lining the entire wall. Perhaps this had been a family tomb, and the lesser members of the family had rested on the stone bench. Instead of desiccated bodies, and Tallis didn’t much like the image, the bench was filled with an assortment of odds and ends. Crockery, a few sacks likely filled with grain or beans. Some small tools, leather lacings.
The shelf above was filled with neatly stacked scrolls. A smaller stack was apart from the rest, tight and fresh rolls of papyri without dowels, waiting for ink. There was a stack of tablets and a stack of parchment, likely from Pergamon by its trimmed, quality look. Why so many rolls of fresh papyri, why the quantity of parchment? Why so much for one man? It would take six months of constant printing to fill one scroll alone. There was enough on that shelf to supply a . . . school.
He realized he was looking at the remains of the Academy of Socrates. This place was still a tomb.
The smell of the papyri was part of the room smell, he realized. He loved the odor, though some did not find it so appealing. To Tallis, it was Homer and Sophocles, Plato and Menander. What notes would he find in the margins of the scrolls? There is where he would find Polonus. There is where a scholar dwelled, in what he wrote in the margins of the texts of great men. He had penned enough of his own outrages and agreements in the margins of such scrolls.
He looked at the pieces of papyrus bordering the edge of the desk. They were quotes, he realized. Passages. Meaningful sayings not to be forgotten. No wonder Tallis liked this desk—it reminded him of his own back in his apartment at the house of Callimachus. It even had a mound of wax the size of a coin next to the ink pots, stuck with a few nails. Tallis worked one out to look at the point. Polonus kept the nails filed to a needlepoint for picking out debris in the papyri when an unsuspecting pen nib ran into minute obstructions.
“My kind of finicky,” Tallis murmured. He looked at one of the notes in his hand.
Call no man happy until he is dead.
“Cheerful.”
If there is a way into madness, logic says there is a way out.
Tallis considered it and shrugged. “Agreed.”
The next was longer. The first part of it was carefully printed, the second was scrawled. The first part read: The man who fights the gods does not live long.—Homer. Scrawled emphatically below it was The man who does not fight the gods should not live.—Polonus. The word not was underscored three times. Polonus was underscored once.
Tallis smiled. “I think I like this fellow.�
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The last note was written in smaller print. How dangerous it is to solve a great problem with a small answer. And below it in very small print, All my answers have been small.
Tallis carefully replaced the pieces of parchment.
He hooked his fingers on the edge of the desk, and his gaze slid to the wooden diptych tablet. How far would he go, prying into another man’s business? He eyed the tablet, then pushed aside the scroll to clear a path for it. Finally, he pulled the tablet over and flipped it open.
He wasn’t sure what he was reading at first. The left side of the diptych had a numerated feel to the lines scratched into the amber wax, like a list. The right side seemed a compilation—a gathering of thoughts, perhaps direct conclusions to the list on the left. He started with the left plate.
Chambari tribe, wise woman Cosomatura.
Referral to the shaman, Shamash-Adwar.
Trepanning.
Temple of Asclepius—enkoimesis incubatio.
Leeches.
Oracle at Delphi.
Reversal at Scythopolis. Disinvitation of the paredros.
Trepanning—drilling holes in the head. Enkoimesis incubatio—sleeping overnight in a temple to procure the favor of a god. Sometimes people chained themselves to an altar to wrangle a healing from a god for a loved one or for oneself. The temple of Asclepius on Cos was world renowned for its healing center. The physicians there were the best in the world.
Tallis felt a chill at the last line of the plate. Disinvitation of the paredros. And at Scythopolis, no less—surely at the temple of Dionysus. The paredros was like Socrates’ daimon, it was a close enough comparison. Tallis had read enough old curse tablets to know some people actually invited evil to cohabit with them, for whatever purpose they wished to achieve.
He slowly raised his eyes to the entrance and the bit of Galilee. All he needed right now was a wild form resounding with hell to darken that entrance. He would be blocked in. “Fortune favor the terrified,” he mumbled.
