by Tracy Groot
The basket suddenly blurred. Blindly, Kes put in the day-old loaves and turned away from Arinna. She found a bunch of dried herbs to fiddle with. “Yes, get a piece of the scroll.”
Arinna left for Kardus’s room.
Kes dropped the herbs and dug her eyes with the heel of her hand. It didn’t take much to put her into tears. She cried all the time, it seemed, and for the most part kept it hidden. Strange to cry so much when all she felt was numb.
It felt like Father was on a trip for supplies to Hippos. He’d show up any moment, hot, sweaty, and complaining. It felt like he was visiting relatives. It didn’t feel like forever. She kept wanting to turn around. Maybe she thought she’d find him if she kept turning around.
And sometimes it wasn’t Father at all who brought the tears, but unexpected things, like Arinna’s compassion. Kes had not thought of Polonus, that a scrap from the book might be good for him.
Much had changed with Arinna. She treated Zagreus gently now, not with a stiff tolerance. She put attention to the common room, shaping it into a truly pleasant place to be. She did things like fix Kes’s hair, and pinch her when Tallis looked at her like that. She offered to make the sweetbread one day, because she had an idea to combine different spices with, of all things, date juice. The bread was surprisingly delicious.
Arinna was telling Kes how sorry she was without saying a word. She was sorry Zagreus had been nothing more to her than a cause in which she found, in the end, she did not believe. She was sorry she had lied to him for five years, letting him believe she was his mother. She was sorry for Kes, that she lost her brother to demons long ago, and lost her father in that wake. For all of this she did not speak a word. She didn’t have to.
Kes would never forget that morning after Tallis brought Zagreus home. She’d slept with the child curled beside her, clutching one another in their loss. When she rose to make bread the next morning, stepping over Shoshanna, who had slept on the pallet, she found Arinna at the breadboard in the kitchen. Kes stood uncomprehending in the doorway, because Tallis hadn’t told her Arinna was back.
How could she show her face here, how could she . . . ? But fury mingled sharply with an odd compassion, for on Arinna’s face was a defiance that dared Kes to tell her to go. Her chin was high, her jaw firm. They stared at each other for a moment, and then Arinna dusted off her hands, strode deliberately across the room, and deliberately took Kes into her arms.
Kes went rigid, because they had never touched each other before. But Arinna would not let go, even when Kes tried to pull away, and by then a fearsome swell leapt in Kes. She clutched Arinna and began to cry, crying as she’d never cried before. And by the time Arinna did release her, both faces were wet with tears.
This, the worthless servant girl who had lived with her for five years.
Arinna never explained why she came back, or why she stayed this long and dreary month. Kes did not know if she would leave—and couldn’t bear the thought of it. One thing was clear: She was no longer a servant and never would be again.
“I don’t know what this says,” Arinna said, frowning, as she came into the room with a large piece of broken-off parchment. “They could be bad words. With my luck, Polonus will read it and it’ll say, ‘Why not take bristlebane and end it all.’”
When Kes smiled, Arinna grinned. “With my luck.” Then she shouted to the back doorway, “Tallis! Come here, quick!”
Tallis ran in, alarmed, the old scholar on his heels. “What is it?”
“Read this to us.” Arinna held out the parchment.
Tallis snatched it from her, glowering. “Don’t do that to me!”
When Master Antenor saw there was no emergency, he first eyed Arinna while straightening his vest in a huff, and then told Tallis he would let the slave know they would be gone.
“We don’t know what it says.” Arinna went beside him to watch him read. She looked at the words, then anxiously at him. “We want them to be good words. It’s for Polonus.”
Tallis looked at the scrap, front and back. “You’re wrecking a good scroll. It says . . . But Patroclus, nerved for battle, dressed him down: ‘Meriones, brave as you are, why bluster on this way? Trust me, my friend, you’ll never force the Trojans back from this corpse with a few stinging . . . taunts.’”
Tallis paused. He read on silently, until Arinna nudged him.
“‘Earth may bury a man before that. Come, the proof of battle is action, proof of words, debate. No time for speeches now, it’s time to fight.’ He led the way as Meriones followed, staunch as a god. And loud as the roar goes up, when men cut timber . . .” Tallis stopped reading. He held it for a moment, then handed it to Arinna. “It ends there.”
She took the scrap and held it in both hands, very pleased. “Those are grand words. Don’t you think, Kes? They remind me of Demas. I have no idea what they mean, but they’re good enough for me.”
Tallis watched Arinna carefully fold the parchment and tuck it into the side of the basket. The words on the scrap had upset him somehow. He was lost in his thoughts, and Kes wondered what those thoughts were.
“Can Polonus still read?” Arinna asked. “Kes said he’s not like he used to be.”
Tallis didn’t hear her, and as Kes allowed herself to look on him, she drew up in surprise. Why hadn’t he gone back to Athens? Why was he still here? Portia was dead; everything was over for his investigation. Since her father died she hadn’t really noticed him. Not until now. And there he was.
Had she been turning around for him this long month? Felt like she was coming out of a long thick drowse. He had been here all along, and so had she, but as she cast about the kitchen and saw Arinna fussing with the basket, and Tallis with his thoughts, she felt as though she were not flailing blind in the dark anymore. She felt as though she had stopped turning around.
“Tallis,” she suddenly said.
He left off his thoughts and found her. And as her eyes searched his and traveled his honest face, over reposed smile wrinkles and freckles from the sun, a conversation crept into the look.
At first, as they labored up the southern slope of the el-Kursi Valley, bound for the tombs—the place everyone else skirted—Tallis couldn’t keep his mind to Antenor’s words. Not that Antenor expected a response. His was a long soliloquy of rhetorical comments, and he seemed to be enjoying himself. So Tallis left him to his speech, and as it rose and fell, he thought on Kes. That moment in the kitchen had stirred within him something unexpected, and not at all unpleasant. He wished Arinna hadn’t been there, that Antenor was not waiting for him.
She called his name. She pulled him away from a moment of doubt, to an extraordinary moment when she gazed on him, surprised, wandering his face with those eyes as if reacquainting herself. It was a surprisingly intimate moment, like she was touching his face.
He shut Kes out of his mind, for his thoughts had taken an interesting turn indeed, and he hoped Antenor took the flush in his cheeks as exertion from climbing the slope.
“. . . a floating pigsty. What a stench.”
He sniffed the air. “What, this? You haven’t smelled anything yet. This is a field of almond blossoms compared to Kardus.”
Antenor slid an uncertain look at him. “What do you mean?”
“Actually, it’s an interesting phenomenon. He smells bad enough, for neglect, but something happens when the—Evil is stirred up.”
He couldn’t say demons as easily as Kes did. It still seemed fantastical to him, the notion of netherworld entities lodged in human residence. But weren’t the gods themselves netherworld entities? Wasn’t he raised to believe in the gods? Or at least to believe in the belief of them?
“It’s the craziest thing, like a window to Hades is pried open. A stench comes, like nothing you’ve experienced. It invades your senses. It’s the essence of decay. Swampy and fetid. Pure rottenness. It’s hard to describe.”
“I think you just did,” Antenor said with a curled lip.
“Oh, it�
��s not only the smell. You get thoughts you’ve never had before when you’re around him. Horrifying thoughts. Sometimes you feel a fury for him that leaps out of nowhere, an utterly illogical fury. You want to hurt him. And sometimes you see things. Hear things.”
“This encourages me?”
Tallis glanced at him and smiled wryly. “I guess I want to prepare you.”
“Doesn’t sound like that’s possible.”
Smoking column high into the heavens. Mounds of water.
Tallis jerked his head.
Orange slanted eyes. A coursing tide of filth.
Antenor’s arm was on his. He shook him a little.
“Tallis? What’s the matter with you?” Antenor nodded to where Tallis found himself staring, the east. “What’s over there?”
What was wrong with him?
“I don’t know. I . . . thought I heard something.” He searched the east, both the earth and the sky. Nothing was there, not a glimpse of Kardus—the only thing to account for crazy mind flashes. “Antenor,” he said uneasily, “don’t be surprised if Kardus suddenly shows up.”
With a dubious look on Tallis, Antenor said, “What do you say we rest for a moment. I’m not as young as you.” He looked about and found a suitable rock.
After settling down and observing the hillsides and the Galilee, Antenor said, “It’s a brave thing you do, bringing them food when the tombs are the last place anyone will pass. Did I tell you his fame is far afield? We had a group of actors in from Alexandria the other day—Egypt! I heard them ask about the madman from Kursi. It’s rather sad, actually. Polonus once boasted of Kardus, that he’d be famous one day.”
His tone darkened. “The young fools wanted to come up and see him. I said, certainly, go ahead—and ask anyone around here if they’d do the same.” He eyed Tallis curiously. “Aren’t you afraid? Has he ever harmed you?”
Tallis wasn’t finished being unsettled by those mind flashes. Was Kardus lurking about? He didn’t see him anywhere. After warily scanning the perimeter, he finally looked about for his own rock and sat with the basket in his lap.
“No, but I never come alone. Samir comes when he can, but more and more it’s been Tavi. We bring stout sticks, and we leave the basket at the edge of the clearing. It isn’t safe to linger. You feel violence in the air.” He glanced about. “Can’t you feel it already?”
“Why don’t the authorities do something about it?” Antenor wondered.
Mounds of water. Blasting snatch of voices.
He jerked his head.
This was Kardus land. Paranoia sometimes accompanied him on the way to see the madman. Tallis resisted the urge to look east, over his shoulder. A sweat broke upon him.
“You look like a man trying not to show he is sick.” Concern was in Antenor’s voice. “Do you feel well? We don’t have to do this today.”
“I’m fine.” A version of truth would likely make Antenor leave him alone. “My last encounter with Kardus is still fresh. All my encounters with Kardus are fresh.”
“Ah. Well, as I was saying, why don’t the authorities around here do anything about him? Travel isn’t safe, people are frightened. I’ve heard reports of brutalities. . . .”
Something pressed for his attention, threatened the sense of well-being he felt in the companionship of Antenor. Antenor had a way about him that made Tallis himself feel capable. Being around him brought confidence, even a renewed sense of self-respect. He felt like a sane man around Antenor, which is why he resented this sensation, like someone incessantly tapping on his shoulder. Like Cal shaking him from a good dream.
He finally looked east. He saw nothing. Not what he felt. Looking seemed to diminish it, the way lighting a candle diminished noises of the night.
“. . . grossly bizarre incidents. Since they speak of the Kardus I once knew, I scarcely believe the tales.”
Tallis turned west and fixed on the sun, just now touching the horizon. The evening was serene. A yellow glow was on the lake; it was a lovely sight, like a golden footprint spun from the sun. It made the rest of the waters indigo purple. A few boats were out on the lake. It was a perfectly tranquil scene. What he saw contrasted sharply with what he felt, a distant hum.
“Didn’t Polonus used to shackle him, so he could do no harm? Is Polonus so bad he can’t even shackle Kardus anymore?”
“Polonus . . . ,” Tallis murmured, resting his wrists on the basket handle as he watched the lake. He determined to keep his mind to Antenor and his words. “Polonus is bad. Not nearly as bad as Kardus. He still converses, though his speech has gained a . . . sharpness. A dissonance. He may want to talk, but I don’t want to listen anymore. Not to him. He has nothing good to say. What’s in him scares me.”
“In him . . . ,” Antenor said doubtfully, shifting on his rock.
“I know. I used to think the same way. You have to be around them to understand it. At least I can be around him, if for a short time. I couldn’t do that before with Kardus.”
“What changed?”
Tallis was still looking on the lake. “Quandocumque impellunt, repelle. Don’t take it. Push back. Especially when you don’t feel like it. Especially then.”
Antenor’s face grew quizzical, and his brows drew together. He grasped his chin and said, “How do you push back at Evil?”
Tallis snorted. “Any way you can” would seem a prosaic answer to a scholar of the academy. Antenor would require more than—
He lifted his head, eyes blank on the lake. “It isn’t right.”
“Tallis?”
“It doesn’t feel right,” Tallis murmured, fingers going to his lips.
A cold wind gusted, lifting the linen cloth that covered the contents in the basket. Before he could push it down, another gust snatched the cloth and lofted it in front of him. He lunged for it, but another gust swept it off, and it tumbled down the slope. Sand swept up from the path and colored the surge of wind, a tan ribbon swirling the cloth away. Tallis rose and trotted a few steps, watching it go. He wasn’t about to dive after it. Basket in hand, he turned back to Antenor—and found himself bracing into a strong current of northeast wind.
Antenor rose, looking with Tallis to where the wind came. “Must be the Sharkiyeh,” he called over the rising howl.
“The what?” Tallis yelled back. He held the basket behind him to protect it. Grit stung his face as he squinted at the eastern sky, expecting thunderclouds—strangely, he saw only the first hint of twilight.
“It’s an eastern wind that can rise quite suddenly,” Antenor called, his toga rippling. He raised his arm to cover his face. “This is a strong one indeed!”
“What was that?” Tallis cried suddenly, staring this way and that.
“What?”
“I heard something!”
The wind howled, whistling through rock clefts and rushing through brush. Tallis stood frozen, poised to listen, heart wildly pounding. He’d heard something, he knew he had. He listened hard and heard nothing at first except the strong sound of the blowing. Then . . . a groaning on the wind. Much more than that. A monstrous groaning, a titanic sound of movement like the creaking of a great ship. Tallis slowly looked east, and his eyes tricked him then, for what he saw was not possible.
There came from the east a tempest, borne low upon the wind.
A great floating mass, like thunderheads come down, the height of a man its distance from the ground. Pigs ran wild and screaming beneath it. The ground churned with its coming; stones and grasses and bracken kicked up in a foamy boil. It came straight for Tallis. He felt a sudden freezing spray on his face, the forerunner of the storm, and from horror he could not move. Only at the last moment did he stagger aside from its path.
Heaps of water shaped the mass, rank on rank of roiling mounds. It was a fierce gale marching by—and his ears tricked him, then, for he heard voices in the gale, wailing and thrashing like the waves he saw. And in those mounded waves he saw flashes of birdlike faces, feathered elbows, black
pumping knees. The ground trembled like an earthquake as the wind thundered its forces past. And the voices . . . the voices shrieked and groaned in watery rage, rising, whirling, falling, a sound to numb his heart.
Hell was passing.
Hell was passing, and for once, Tallis was neither its destination nor in its way. He looked ahead to where it marched—the lake. There was a boat on it, heading this way, for the eastern shore of the Galilee. Other boats followed the one, and Tallis knew they’d never reach the shore for the storm heading their way.
He could neither help nor warn, and if he did, he would die, run over and kicked aside, an utterly worthless death. Better to die their target than a mere incident of war. For war went forth to the golden footprint on the sea, to the boats on the lake, and there was nothing Tallis could do but watch.
He dropped the basket and began to run alongside the tempest on the wind.
In the tombs of Kursi is a man who is raising his head.
He knows better than to turn around and see—he knows he’ll pay for it, but he does anyway, from his curiosity and from Their own. His is an animal visage turned upon the lake, eyes like a wolf with no wolf-shine in them, dead black and feral only. His face contorts in a snarl, and he rises from his crouch. A boat comes. Death is in the boat.
He comes!
We perish, we perish before the time!
Pandemonium breaks loose within.
The madman leaps. He plunges down the slope of the tombs, reaches the bottom, and races across the road. He scrambles over large beach rocks, thumps down to the gravelly wet shoreline. He races to the water’s edge, and in a many-timbred voice he roars at the boat, the scream of a monstrous bellows. In the scream is the knowledge of judgment, the certainty of damnation. He has rushed the waters like driving his belly on the pike of the enemy.
Deep within the cavern that is he, a man trembles beside a plastered-over place.
Sudden coolness above. The madman looks up. A low floating continent moving inexorably toward the boat. Help comes on the wind. Help, for Them.
