The Thinara King

by Rebecca Lochlann

  She was grateful, for as much as she wanted him in return, she couldn’t stop her mind from conjuring images of Harpalycus. Of atrocities. Of pain.

  To blot them out, she said, “Chrysaleon told me about the mauling.”

  He didn’t reply for so long she thought she’d offended him.

  “What did he say?” he finally asked.

  “That a lioness with cubs attacked you, and he killed her. He told me you shared your blood after, and swore loyalty. That you became blood brothers.”

  Again he fell silent. The ember-glow subsided so they lay in near darkness. “Forgive me,” she said.

  “That was how he earned his title, ‘Lion killer of Mycenae.’”

  She felt his chest expand as he inhaled. “After I met you the first time,” he said, so quietly she tilted her head to better hear him, “a month after I returned home, he and I slipped away from our chores and lessons, and went off with the intent to kill lion or boar. It was Chrysaleon’s idea. We believed we were blessed by gods, and thought ourselves indestructible.”

  She ran along the scar with the tip of one finger, eyebrow to mouth. Mouth to eyebrow. Then she moved to his temple and stroked through his hair.

  “Her breath was suffocating,” he said. “I remember little else. I can’t even tell you how the attack started. I’m told she charged out of the cave where we’d tracked her. I was nearest. How she disarmed me, what she did, how I survived—all that’s left are flashes. Images.”

  Aridela’s fingers trailed down his cheek to his chest and followed the path of each scar she found.

  “At first, there was pain. She clawed me, bit me, as you can see. But it all goes black when I try to remember more. Chrysaleon jumped on her and stabbed her.”

  A set of four parallel ridges led from his belly toward his groin.

  “He pulled her off after he killed her. I could breathe again. I remember that, how happy I was to breathe.”

  Scars crisscrossed his palms. Aridela imagined him trying to protect his face from her teeth. She kissed one then the other. In return he seized her cheeks and kissed her on the mouth, long and thoroughly.

  “Tell me more,” she said when he gave her the chance.

  “I do have one memory. It’s cloudy, like a dream. I’m walking up a hill. At the top are three women, waiting for me. They turn me back. They say my tasks aren’t finished. One of the women promises to wait for me.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what it means or if it even happened. The next clear thing I remember after that is Chrysaleon binding the worst of my wounds with strips from his tunic. Two slaves were helping him. He forced me to make the vow before he would allow them to carry me home. ‘We are sons of Idómeneus the High King,’ he said. ‘Nothing can separate us but death. Your blood in my veins, mine in yours.’ He pressed his wound against mine. Then he cut the heart from the lioness and squeezed the blood into my mouth. He said her power would belong to me.”

  He paused again, long enough to press his palm flat against hers and interlace their fingers. “But it was Chrysaleon. His will alone kept me alive.”

  “I’ve wondered what I see in your eyes.” Aridela returned his grip. “It’s her. The lioness. She lives still, inside you.”

  He kissed the hollow in her throat and ran his tongue up to her earlobe, birthing a shiver that nearly defeated her resistance.

  “She attacks you from within,” she whispered.

  He lifted his face and gave a bitter laugh. “Idómeneus was enraged. Had Chrysaleon not suffered already from so many wounds, he would have been whipped halfway to the land of shadows. I spent half a month on my back fighting fever and the loss of blood.”

  “You believe Athene caused this attack?” Her heart was still racing. She could scarcely remember what they were talking about. She wanted him to kiss her again, and traced the outline of his lips.

  “Yes. To punish me.” He slid his palm along her arm, so close to her breast, but not touching, still holding himself in check.

  “For what?”

  “For leaving you.”

  Her throat closed and she struggled to speak. “I wanted to die I missed you so much.”

  They lay, hands entwined. Aridela turned slightly toward him, mesmerized by the rhythmic tangled beating of their hearts, and the way she could feel his voice through her chest. But the unbearable memories weren’t yet vanquished. They clotted in her stomach, waiting to spring up in attack.

  “I thought many times about the child-princess of Crete during my tiresome recovery,” he said. “How she tried to hide her tears the day I left, and shared that story about her father and the necklace he’d given her. I thought of her through the years, wondered how she fared, listened for any gossip about Crete. When I returned with Chrysaleon I hoped to glimpse her, but I wasn’t sure I wanted her to see me. She might be frightened, or pitying.”

  “I’ve had to face my ignorance since you and your brother came here. Much time was wasted, in so many ways.”

  He made light of it with a careless laugh, yet she felt his muscles constrict.

  “Not long after,” he said, “Chrysaleon brought the cubs to Mycenae. There were two, both female. As I regained my strength, we fed and cared for them. They’re still there, if Mycenae is. The king likes to watch his concubines lead them around on jeweled leashes.”

  Scarlet ember-light flickered across the rock walls. Menoetius rested one hand on her hip.

  “I know what I owe my brother,” he said.

  His fingers traced between her breasts and over her stomach, his gaze following.

  “I never thought we would be like this,” he said. “You were his. I thought this could never happen.”

  “Kiss me.”

  The way he kissed her was tender yet lustful, conveying so much of need yet also devotion. Menoetius was a hardened warrior. But when he kissed her, he became Carmanor, the untroubled youth with the easy smile.

  She longed to forget that beyond the cave walls lay destruction and overthrow. Murder, betrayal, lies.

  An unwanted baby.

  But she couldn’t. Not quite.

  Aridela of Kaphtor, immersed in careless arrogance, thinking herself too keen and clever to ever be fooled, had been manipulated, not only by her own mother and probably Themiste, but also Lycus, Menoetius, and perhaps… perhaps Chrysaleon, who had kissed her with love and devotion too, or so she had believed. Now she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of anything.

  Menoetius lied when it suited him, and he had reason to undermine her feelings for his brother. She thought back to the night of the Destruction, how Chrysaleon had pulled her from the cracks in the earth and used his body to shield her from the horrors at Phaistos. Menoetius didn’t know how that night had changed everything between them, had deepened and honed what had been untested. She wouldn’t allow her memories to be spoiled by another man’s jealousy. She wouldn’t be malleable like Callisti’s priestess. From now on, she would maintain control over her emotions and her body. No man would touch her until she found an unassailable method of discerning lies from truth.

  Still, knowing how he’d suffered, she wanted to be careful. She had to be, for his sake.

  “I am empty as a broken crock,” she said. “You should have a woman who can return your love, as Selene does. Don’t care for me, Menoetius.”

  He met her gaze, frowning, his mouth reforming into its more familiar tenseness.

  “The paradise that was Kaphtor is gone.” She swallowed the hurt those words caused. “Vengeance is all that’s left of me now.”

  “That isn’t true.”

  “You cannot turn back the days. Neither of us can change what’s been done. Let me go.”

  His grip squeezed, almost cutting off the blood flow in her hand. “Have you not been listening to me?”

  “Yes… but I—”

  “I will bind you to this pallet until the day of your death,” he said recklessly.

  She didn’t believe it. The threat was weightle
ss, hollow. She couldn’t help an almost tender laugh. “You’ll tether me like a goat? That is your image of victory?” She almost added, My love, but managed to suppress it.

  He lowered his face. Kissed her throat, lingering and ardent, then without warning bit her. His body pressed hard against hers. Her blood rushed like ocean tides in response. It was impossible. She wasn’t strong enough to resist. Her heart thundered, her pulses raced; tears filled her eyes. Her arms crept around his neck as though they had their own will, even as Harpalycus reared in agonizing clarity, blotting out Menoetius, replacing his warm, seductive, beguiling form with one that was cold, hated and feared.

  It was too soon. In truth, she didn’t know if love could ever again be separated from torture and humiliation.

  She pushed at him, biting her lips to keep the torment hidden.

  He seized her hand and brought it to his face. He pressed his mouth to the underside of her wrist, where the burn, shaped like bull’s horns, had marred her skin since birth. It tingled at his caress.

  “I feel the lie of your words,” he said. “The truth your body cannot hide.”

  His lips upon her skin obliterated conscious thought and the memory of speech. All that remained was the swift, consummating pulse beat, radiating outward from her wrist like the heat of the sun through her skin, muscles, and blood.

  He put his mouth close to her ear as she breathed rapidly, almost lost. Almost.

  “I will have victory, Aridela,” he whispered.

  Themiste’s men stole a mainland chariot-horse from Harpalycus’s soldiers and offered it to Chrysaleon. He accepted gratefully, knowing his journey would be much hastened.

  Neoma provided him with leather boots, a bow and arrows, a dagger, food, and a skin of water, as well as a flood of pleas to return her cousin.

  Traveling south and west, he skirted the Ida range along its southern foothills. By edging along the steeper, wilder crevasses and gorges, he disguised his movements from enemy patrols that branched out daily from the ruined palace of Phaistos and Knossos.

  Treacherous snowdrifts and ice slowed his pace, though impatience made him long to spur his horse onward. The streams he crossed were frozen solid. Wind blew continually, but accustomed as he was to Mycenae’s winters and heated by determination, he hunched deeper into his quilted cloak and continued on.

  The death-vision drifted alongside, making him itch with need and resolve. It remained so clear that he fancied if he stopped and looked behind him, he could step back into it. Yet Themiste insisted she never led him beneath the city of Knossos, or rode with him on the backs of gryphons, or swam with him through foamy ocean waves to the green orchards of Hesperia. Athene’s grace may have sent you there, she had said. Perhaps to learn some lesson. I, too, have experienced visions of compelling power.

  Yet he recalled with scathing clarity the snake she’d worn like a necklace and the gryphon’s rippling muscles between his thighs. He could hear the echoing drip of water in the underground caverns and taste Themiste’s sweet flesh in his mouth. The serene, youthful face of Damasen, Aridela’s father, remained distinct, along with every word he’d uttered as the two walked through Hesperia’s mossy green glades.

  Since Chrysaleon had regained consciousness, he had examined each word, every inflection and expression—no matter how fleeting, in his attempts to determine what course to take.

  Damasen had described a future of grim possibilities.

  “I see a time when new gods will be fashioned and worship of the Mother will be unknown,” the bull-king said. “Mortals who cling to the old ways will be hounded, slaughtered.”

  Chrysaleon said nothing, though he thought the god sounded remarkably like his own father.

  “The female will be considered the substance of corruption, and every manner of evil toward her will be overlooked. Uninitiated maidens will be defiled in violence, forced to bear offspring against their will. The customs and beliefs of your ancestry, Prince Chrysaleon, will spread. As harsh as they are now, they will be further perverted. No longer will property and name pass from mother to daughter as has always been done, but from father to son. Fertile women will serve as tools to increase the wealth of their fathers. Those too old for childbearing will be discarded or used as slaves.”

  A fawn approached, still shaky on its delicate long legs. Damasen caressed its ears before returning his attention to Chrysaleon. They walked on, the fawn gamboling behind.

  “The deeds and stories of women will vanish,” Damasen said. “Everything they create or accomplish will be forgotten, and history will listen only to men. If your world chooses this future, wickedness will hold sway. All that has been holy since time began will be devalued. Finally, an age will come when woman will embrace her own degradation. Spring will vanish. The ground will crack and burn. Oceans will rise. Mortals will procreate until forests and fields stagger beneath the weight of human flesh and there will not be a single wild place left anywhere. Water will dry up, crops will fail. Disease will spread. Then, Prince, the earth will be crucified, and you will all die.”

  Chrysaleon maintained a stoic expression. He fully expected Damasen to bring up his father’s secret council, Boreas, the clandestine meetings, the subtle manipulations designed to assist the rise of a future very like the one he described. But his people didn’t want disease and starvation. They wanted order, power. What any man craved.

  Time passed. The youth remained calm. No accusations were thrown. Though divine in some fashion, apparently he could not see into Chrysaleon’s mind, or he would know Chrysaleon had been raised to despise female authority, nurtured to defeat it if he could, by any method or means.

  As he worked his way toward the western mountains where he hoped to find Aridela, Chrysaleon’s own words, spoken carelessly, returned to his mind.

  If the man who wins Iphiboë comes from the Argolid, she’ll rank no higher than a slave.

  Something else struck Chrysaleon as odd. Damasen spoke as though Chrysaleon would somehow experience this bleak future.

  Damasen beckoned to the fawn’s shy mother. “This is the path upon which the world is now set,” he said. “You stand at the junction. Unless the present course is diverted, much suffering will occur.”

  “My lord?”

  Damasen faced him, one fine black brow lifting.

  “Why do you speak as if I have any part in these events?”

  Damasen’s gaze changed then. It turned piercing, filled with understanding and cold insight. Chrysaleon clenched his hands and fought a surge of terror, for he sensed his secrets lying naked and transparent between them.

  “Have you not listened to my words? The future is never determined. I tell you the worst I have seen so that you may go forth and construct a new road. The fate I have described need not occur. You are the leavening for change. You, Chrysaleon of Mycenae, can guide the people of your world into paradise, with Aridela at your side.”

  Chrysaleon gathered his courage and glanced at the bull-king’s face. He was surprised to see a faint smile. Damasen walked on, bending to pluck a cluster of lavender. The uneasy instant passed. Chrysaleon drew in a deep breath and swallowed.

  His mind flailed. Even in this infinite place, whether dream or reality, it was difficult to understand such mysteries. Needing to compose his thoughts, he turned away from the king to admire the scenery. To his right, above the tree line, there was a smooth-topped mountain ridge; odd, how rounded the summits were.

  He blinked rapidly, because for the slightest instant, he thought the ridge had moved.

  His mouth fell open. What he had assumed were high implacable cliffs, undulated, compressed then stretched. As he turned, slowly, half frozen with astonishment, he saw the head of an enormous serpent rise above the trees and peer down at him, its tongue flicking. It was a terrifying sight.

  Damasen placed his hand on Chrysaleon’s shoulder. “He will not harm you,” he said. “Ladon watches over the orchard.”

  “Oh,” Chrysale
on stuttered. “Oh.”

  Damasen smiled and spoke again.

  “Evil will find its strongest foothold at Athens,” he said, holding the aromatic flowers to his nose. “Secret brotherhoods will reshape the character of Lady Athene into a hater of women. Zeus will rise to ascendance. It will be claimed that Zeus existed before Athene and in fact gave birth to her. Athene’s true origins will disappear. Her children, Velchanos and Niachero, will seem to vanish. Her name meaning will be rewritten. ‘I have come from myself’ will turn into ‘She who has never known man.’ From Athens, change will engulf the world.”

  “Athens?” Half relieved, Chrysaleon grasped at the familiar name. “We at Mycenae give no thought to that pile of mud and hovels. Nothing of moment will ever come from there. Mycenae leads the mainland and always will.”

  Only after he spoke these rash words did he hear the insult, and the threat, within them. But even as he fashioned a quick lie—they cannot honor the Lady as a Mycenaean does—Damasen, with another ambiguous smile, changed the subject.

  “I have seen another path for your world, and it can be easily achieved. Search out my daughter, Zagreus. Bind yourself to no other. Together, you and she can strengthen fealty to the Lady and bring peace. In that end, man and woman will live together as they should always have done. There will be no more sacrifices. The days of halcyon will reign.”

  “Crete’s consorts will be allowed to live out their lives?”

  “The king-sacrifice grew from observance of the life and death of seasons and crops, and their rebirth after winter rains. It generated from desire to participate in the ecstasy of the life force, to give homage and become one through imitation. My Lady allows the free will that conceived the sacrifice, and honors these heroes with divinity in their own right, but it was never her requirement.” He leveled Chrysaleon with a solemn stare. “You, Zagreus, at the rising of Iakchos, are marked to descend into the labyrinth, and die as I did.”

  Chrysaleon swallowed a lump of uneasy anger.

  “I feared my death as any mortal does,” Damasen said. “But it was nothing like what I expected. I swam in warm green seas, surrounded by creatures with the faces and breasts of women and the bodies of seals. I heard the mourning cries of those who loved me. I wanted to reassure them, but could not. I was cleansed of doubts and attachments in moonlight and saltwater. These women led me to a wondrous underwater city carved of seashells and stone that glows like the moon. When I was ready to release your world from my heart, they brought me to this place, Hesperia. Soon, you will know for yourself.”