The Queen of Attolia

by Megan Whalen Turner

  “Nothing,” he said. Already he was unable to bear parting with Hespira, right or wrong. Reluctantly he sent the shades to drive her mother away. Terrified, the woman fled. Stumbling out of the caves and falling to the ground in the moonlight, she sobbed for her lost child. She went back to the temple of her god and sacrificed again, begging him to restore her daughter, but he answered that the gods could not bicker over what befell mortals. This was not a helpful response, but not unexpected either. Hespira’s mother pointed out that she was not any mortal; she was his priestess and surely deserved his protection. Proas only reminded her that as his priestess she had gifts that she might use to address the difficulty herself.

  Hespira’s mother went away and waited as the long, cold winter passed. Horreon and Hespira were happy together in the dim light under the mountain. Hespira was unaware of time passing, thinking that she spent an evening there in the room by the forge, but Horreon knew. Hiding it from Hespira, he fretted. Already he loved her as he had never loved anything in his life. His father had been a cold man, jealous of his son. His mother granted his wishes from time to time, but otherwise he had rarely seen her. All his life he had known the forge and the colors of hot metal and little else. Now he wanted Hespira and no one and nothing else.

  Hespira told him stories of the world, stories of kings and queens in their palaces, plain stories about her neighbors bickering over missing chickens and the disappearing melons from one neighbor’s garden, ordinary things that he soaked up like the sunshine. She sang to him, and he listened, content.

  In the springtime Hespira’s mother wrapped her head in a shawl and bent her back under a tray of seedlings and came to Meridite’s temple here in this valley. It was the favorite of Meridite, graceful in its proportions, protected from the wind, with a forecourt surrounded by a garden almost as lovely as the gardens around the temple of Proas. Hespira’s mother came as a supplicant and offered to add her seedlings to the garden. She planted them carefully around the base of the temple, the first of the vines that grow here now. She had nurtured them from fall through the winter and invested them with the gift of growing that she had from Proas. The vines, when they were planted, quickly grew, and the tiny rootlets clung to the temple walls and slipped between the stones to loosen the mortar. When Meridite saw the damage they were doing, she ordered her priests to pull them down. But the priests could not, and the vines grew higher. The facing stones began to fall, and Meridite came to blast the vines herself and realized she could not overcome the gift of Proas.

  Irked, she went to Proas and demanded he remove the vines, but Proas declined. They were none of his doing, the vines on Meridite’s favorite temple. She must find the cause if she wanted a solution. So Meridite sought out the priestess of Proas and commanded her to remove the vines, but the priestess told the goddess the vines would die when her daughter was returned to her.

  Meridite was much taken aback. Mortals do not challenge the gods. Only once had a mortal dared and he’d been driven insane for his insolence.

  “Your daughter?” Meridite couldn’t guess whom she meant.

  “Hespira,” said the mother.

  The goddess’s mouth opened in an O of surprise. “That lovely girl,” she said. “She’s very happy, you know,” said Meridite, hoping to placate the woman.

  “Then I hope you will be happy with your shattered temple,” said the priestess, and turned her back on the goddess to go back through her doorway.

  “Dear, dear,” said Meridite. She loved her son, but she loved her temple more.

  “Come out again, you wretched woman,” said the goddess, “and we will go collect her together.” So the goddess and the girl’s mother went to the caves of the Hephestial Mountain.

  In a pool of light cast by a lamp, Horreon sat on a footstool listening to Hespira sing. She sang about the rain dropping in the spring and the grass greening, and Horreon bowed his head. “Would you miss the rain?” he asked in a low voice.

  “Yes,” said Hespira.

  “And the sun?”

  “Yes,” said Hespira.

  “Will you leave me to return to the sun and the rain?”

  “No,” she answered. “I will stay.”

  Horreon took her in his arms. Her head lay on his shoulder, and he cupped it with one large hand the way a mother cradles her child and knew that he could not keep her.

  “My mother brought you,” he said.

  “I chose to come,” said Hespira.

  “Did she bring you here from your home, or did she take you to her temple first?”

  “She brought me to her temple first.”

  “And did you eat there?”

  “No,” said Hespira, smiling into his shoulder that he would think her foolish enough to eat at his mother’s table.

  Horreon didn’t ask if she drank anything. He couldn’t bear to ask and hear the answer, and he saw no need of it.

  “Come,” he said, and led Hespira through the caverns to the cave that opened onto the mountainside.

  There they met the goddess and Hespira’s mother. Hespira’s mother ran to her, taking her daughter in her arms. Horreon looked away. He released Hespira’s hand, but she clung to his.

  “Did you worry?” she asked her mother.

  “It is a year you have been gone,” her mother told her.

  “It was an evening, no more,” protested Hespira. She turned to look at Horreon, and he looked down in shame.

  He said, “This close to the Sacred Mountain, time ebbs and flows. A current can carry you forward a year in an eye blink if you choose.”

  “And you chose?” Hespira accused, and Horreon nodded. He’d meant to carry her forward a hundred years, out of the reach of her mother forever, but had changed his mind.

  “Didn’t she suit you?” Meridite said. Looking at the girl carefully for the first time, she saw that she was not just pretty, she was clever. “Who wants a clever girl? “Just as well,” said Meridite, “that her mother wants her back.”

  “She suited too well, Mother,” said Horreon, and Meridite was startled to see that he was angry and that he was angry at her.

  “You were bringing her back,” the goddess said.

  “I was letting her go,” said Horreon, and he turned back toward his cave, but Hespira still held him.

  “Well, if you like her, keep her,” Meridite snapped. “What’s one temple to me? Just because it is my favorite, don’t think I can’t do without it.”

  “I asked for a woman who chose to be my wife,” said Horreon.

  “I chose,” said Hespira.

  “See,” said Meridite.

  “She ate nothing in your temple, Mother,” said Horreon. “What did she drink?”

  Meridite flushed as only a goddess can.

  “Nothing,” said Hespira, tugging at Horreon’s hand until he turned to look at her. “Nothing,” she assured him. “I tipped it into the basket I carried.”

  “Oh,” sniped Meridite, “you are clever.” But Horreon only stood blinking like an owl in sunlight.

  “I chose,” Hespira said again, and Horreon believed her. So Hespira took leave of her mother and returned with him to the caves of the Sacred Mountain, and the vines of Hespira’s mother grew over Meridite’s temple. When Hespira left the mountain to visit her mother, as she did from time to time, the vines were dormant, but otherwise they grew and grew until the mortar was all picked to dust and the temple fell in on itself and nothing was left but a pile of stones covered in green leaves and red flowers.

  As for Hespira and Horreon, they were mortals, but who knows how time passes at the skirt of Hephestia’s Sacred Mountain? Many believe they live still, and miners claim to hear her voice, singing to him behind the sounds of their picks.

  The magus was quiet when the story was done. He looked at Eddis with new admiration. She sat cross-legged with the open packages of food around her, quite comfortable but then a little embarrassed by his regard.

  “And Hespira’s mother?�
�� the magus asked finally. “Did she miss her daughter?”

  “Oh, she grew used to the idea,” said Eddis. “Mothers must.”

  “Alternatively, she lost her mind and wandered the caves of the mountain, endlessly calling for her daughter, and that’s what the miners hear,” said Eugenides without opening his eyes.

  “There are a number of different ways to tell the story,” Eddis admitted.

  “I didn’t realize that so much of the teller could be invested in the stories,” the magus said. He was used to the dry records of scholarship without the voice of the storyteller shaping and changing the words to suit an audience and a particular view of the world. He’d heard Eugenides tell his stories, but hadn’t realized the Thief’s interpretations were more than a personal aberration.

  “Go on,” said Eugenides with a smile, his eyes still closed. “Tell my queen she’s debasing the old myths created by superior storytellers centuries ago.”

  “I wouldn’t dare,” said the magus, shaking his head.

  “Surely they tell stories like these everywhere?” the queen asked. “You must have heard them from your nurse when you were a boy.”

  The magus shook his head. Eugenides nudged the queen. He knew that the magus had been raised by strangers when his family had died of the plague. He had been apprenticed very young, at his own request, to a scholar in the city, and when his scholarly training had not at first proven lucrative enough to support him, he had taken to soldiering. There had likely not been time for stories in his youth.

  After a pause the queen asked, “How will you occupy yourself, Magus, during your stay?”

  “Perhaps I will collect more stories,” the magus answered with a smile.

  “What about your history of the Invasion?” Eugenides asked.

  “As most of it remains in Sounis, my work on it will necessarily be curtailed,” said the magus, frowning at him.

  “I could fetch it for you,” Eugenides offered.

  “You will not!” The magus and the queen spoke together.

  Eugenides smiled again, pleased to have gotten a rise out of both of them.

  “Better I should recopy it from scratch,” said the magus.

  “You may have the library to work in,” said the queen graciously.

  Eugenides opened his eyes at last and started to sit up. “What? In my library? Have him underfoot every day?”

  “My library,” the queen reminded her Thief.

  “You’ve only yourself to blame,” the magus pointed out, smiling at the way the tables had turned.

  “Agh,” said Eugenides, lying back down and covering his face with his arm.

  Eddis smiled, relieved that his bad temper had passed for the time being.

  “Your Majesty?” The secretary of the archives waited in the doorway for Attolia to recognize him.

  She was being disturbed at a late supper she was enjoying by herself, having been too busy to eat during the day. The Mede ambassador had tried to join her, but she’d soothed his feathers and sent him away, pleading an indisposition that would allow her only clear soup and bread. “And poor food makes for poor company, Nahuseresh,” she’d warned, only half joking, and he had politely excused himself. He liked meat with his meals, and Attolia knew it. She had just dipped a little bread into her soup when Relius knocked and entered.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “The king’s magus of Sounis. He’s been located.”

  “And?”

  “He’s in Eddis, Your Majesty. He was evidently in a hunting lodge in the coastal province.”

  She waited. Only Sounis would be surprised to hear of his move to the capital. She didn’t think Relius would have interrupted her meal for a small bit of unsurprising news.

  “The queen of Eddis collected him personally,” Relius said. “She and her Thief. They evidently picnicked on the way back. They are reported to be…close.” It was the mildest term to describe the gossip that was current in the Eddisian court. Probably the affair was one of long standing and his spies had been unaware of it. If the queen of Eddis and her Thief had been pretending to be at odds with each other, it could only have been to conceal his efforts on her behalf: the destruction of Sounis’s navy and the removal of his magus.

  “Get out,” the queen ordered abruptly.

  The servants and the secretary waited outside the closed doors of the private dining room, listening to the sounds of china shattering as the dinner dishes were swept off the table and onto the floor, followed by nearby amphoras and one of the heavy carved dining chairs as the usually cold-blooded queen picked it off the ground and threw it. The silverware from the table rang for a few moments after bouncing on the tiles. “When it was quiet, the servants knocked and entered, careful not to creep in. The queen did not appreciate creeping. Attolia was once again in her chair, having righted it herself. Her hands were in her lap, and her face was impassive. She was thinking. As the servants righted the dining table and cleared away the mess, she tried to assess the danger that Eugenides had become.

  There was a new magus in Sounis to carry the news to the king. He didn’t think his tenure in the position would be lasting, and he sorely hoped to leave the post with his neck intact.

  “He was working for Eddis, then,” the king said.

  The new magus hesitated for a moment, weighing his dedication to truth against his desire not to irritate the already testy king. He was a scholar dragged into this new position by the king’s command. He was not a courtier. Against his better judgment, he chose truth.

  “I believe not, Your Majesty,” he said reluctantly.

  “Not working for Eddis? Then what the hell is he doing there? Vacationing?”

  “I believe he is not there entirely of his own volition, Your Majesty.”

  “What’s that mean?” the king asked impatiently.

  “The apprentice that reported meeting an Attolian outside the magus’s rooms, I think he was mistaken.”

  “That’s obvious enough or my magus would be in Attolia, wouldn’t he?” the king snapped.

  The new magus pressed on. “He was deliberately misled, Your Majesty. I think it was an Eddisian who intended to be taken as an Attolian and that he gave that apprentice gold to betray my predecessor for the purpose of misdirection.”

  “If you can’t say that more clearly, I can find someone else who can,” the king warned.

  The new magus struggled on. “The apprentice assumed that the Attolians had used the magus for their purposes and finished with him, that they wanted the magus betrayed and eliminated. On the contrary, I think my predecessor was quite innocent. The Thief of Eddis himself gave the apprentice the gold and did so because only if my predecessor was afraid for his life could he be induced to flee to Eddis.”

  “Eugenides? In the megaron?” Sounis had been angry enough when his magus’s apprentice had come to tell him that the magus allowed Attolian spies to wander through his hallways. That Eugenides had been in the palace was chilling. “What the hell was he doing, then?” the king snarled.

  “Well, stealing your magus, sir.”

  The king sat blinking in his chair. Then he jumped to his feet, shouting for an officer of his guard.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE MORNING AFTER HE AND the queen returned from their journey across Eddis to collect the magus, Eugenides rose early, his body aching. He rode poorly with one hand, though no worse than he had ridden with two. The queen had been content to go at a walk. People had come out on the streets of the city and down from their farms to stand by the road and watch them pass. They hadn’t cheered their queen. They weren’t a cheering population, but they’d smiled, and waved, pleased as much by the sight of Eugenides as of Eddis. Eugenides had wished for the ground to open and swallow him. Thinking of the stares, he shuddered. When his bare feet touched the cold floor, he shuddered again. The mornings were brisk in the mountains. He muttered curses under his breath as he rummaged with his hand through the neatly folded shirts in
his wardrobe. His father’s valet tidied things whenever Eugenides turned his back, and in the days he’d been away in Sounis a number of his rattier belongings had disappeared entirely.

  “Oh, how inconspicuous I will be when next I am in Attolia,” he said out loud, “dressed in Eddisian formalwear with gold frogs on the front.” He cursed again when he couldn’t find his sword without moving every last thing off the shelf across the bottom of the wardrobe. He left what he’d moved in a pile on the floor. It made the room seem more like his own.

  “I should just go back to sleep,” he grumbled, but he dragged out the sword and the sheath as well as the belt and tossed them onto his unmade bed, leaving oil stains on the covers. Someone had made sure the sword wouldn’t rust while he wasn’t using it. He opened the curtains to his room and complained—to himself; there wasn’t anyone else to listen—that it was still dark outside, but he couldn’t ignore the sunshine glowing on the peaks of the mountains across the valley. Only when he sat at his desk and reached for the hook and the metal and leather cup that fitted over the stump of his right wrist was he quiet. He sat for a moment, holding it in his hand before he put it back, and looked for the cotton sleeve he put over his arm before the prosthetic.

  He found the sleeve, but couldn’t find the small clasp that clipped the fabric to itself and kept the sleeve fitting snugly. He remembered that he’d dropped it undressing the night before and hadn’t heard it hit the floor. It was lost therefore in the pattern of the wool carpet in front of the fire and would probably take half an hour to find. Sighing, he pulled open a drawer in the desk and ran his fingers through the clutter inside until he found a substitute. He pinned on the sleeve and carefully smoothed the wrinkles from it before he gritted his teeth and pushed his arm into the leather interior of the base of the hook. It was a tight fit, in order to give him some ability to catch and pull things. If he wore it too long, the skin of his arm was white and bloodless when the hook came off, and though he’d grown calluses where it pinched, he often had blisters.