The Thinara King

by Rebecca Lochlann

  He gave a nod and swept out one hand, prompting Chrysaleon to look up. They had reached Hesperia’s legendary apple orchard. Chrysaleon saw fruit of pure, shining gold hanging from white-flowered branches.

  A figure stood beside one of the giant trees. Branches and leaves threw filigreed shadows over her face. Even so, Chrysaleon recognized her.

  “Lady Iphiboë.” He bowed, struck by her straightforward gaze. There was no hint of the timid girl he remembered.

  She acknowledged his address with a tilt of the head, the gesture regal yet courteous. In her arms nestled a plump partridge. She placed it on the ground and shooed it forward. It spread its wings and made a short clumsy flight to Damasen.

  Chrysaleon peered again into the orchard, but in the instant his attention had been diverted by the bird, Iphiboë had slipped away.

  Damasen bent to retrieve what dangled from the bird’s beak. Chrysaleon recognized the necklace Aridela had always worn—a gift, he remembered, from this man.

  “Return this token to your lover,” Damasen said. “Defeat the oppressor. Reunite Aridela with Labyrinthos and reinstate sovereignty to its rightful guardians.” He dropped the necklace into Chrysaleon’s palm, waiting until he reacquired Chrysaleon’s attention before continuing in a low voice, almost a whisper. “Love for your queen brings infinite pain as well as joy, but if you choose honor and truth, your name will be crowned in glory beyond your comprehension. You will harness the force that brings wondrous change to the world.”

  The promise rang through Chrysaleon’s mind as he rode toward Crete’s western mountains. He experienced renewed determination at his first glimpse of the shimmering, iridescent mountain range rising, higher and higher before him, like an oath of victory.

  Crowned in glory beyond your comprehension. Chrysaleon envisioned magnificent frescoes, marble statues, bard songs so lovely they would make listeners weep.

  Yet Themiste insisted no secret corridors beneath Labyrinthos led to an underground sea. Her brow had formed a bewildered frown at his talk of an ancient war. She stroked his hair soothingly, but nothing had piqued more of a reaction from her than a sympathetic smile until he brought up the great year. It was a calculated risk, declaring that Damasen had named him the thinara king. He hadn’t understood the conversation he’d overheard in his cell. If it turned out the great-year-king was Crete’s enemy, telling the oracle such a thing could have condemned him to torture or death.

  But, remembering his family motto, Fortune favors the bold, he’d taken the chance and was pleased with the result. Shock expunged Themiste’s usual composure. She began treating him with subtle awe and a respect he had never seen her show anyone, not even Helice.

  Had he walked with Damasen in a land beyond death, or had he experienced nothing more than meaningless visions, fashioned inside a dying mind?

  One of the refugees, a goldsmith, had repaired the broken links on Aridela’s necklace. Chrysaleon held it up, letting it swing from his fingers. Sunlight reflected against the delicate crescents and scattered from the wavy lines symbolizing their labyrinth. The lapis bead mimicked the frosty blue sky.

  Man and woman will live together as they should always have done. There will be no more sacrifices.

  If he believed a god had given him this charge, his choice was clear. Who would not want to be recognized as the harbinger of endless peace?

  Disjointed segments of his will fantasized about achieving Damasen’s obvious desire. Chrysaleon wanted to believe he had the power to usher harmony into the world. From the beginning, he had vowed to end the king-sacrifice. Here was the way. All he had to do was bow to Aridela, to Goddess Athene, and swear subservience to the earth.

  You won’t do that.

  His mind spoke softly. Damasen offers you glory with death. You want glory with life. Why should you bring eternal paradise to the world if your only reward for doing so is to rot in the ground?

  He didn’t know with certainty how the necklace had come into his possession, but he would not bow away his moera to a death-dream, no matter how vivid. The Cretans might have put the trinket around his wrist when he lay unconscious. They might even have used one of their visionary concoctions to sway him to their beliefs. They had done so before. He laughed inwardly. His mind knew what he would do. No amount of excuses and justifications would change a thing.

  Chrysaleon, son of Idómeneus, heir to the High King’s throne, had been suckled on the might of Poseidon and the death of female dominance. Glory beyond comprehension lay in overthrow, a transformation of all that was. Harpalycus understood this, but he had no elegance. Harpalycus was a boar crashing through underbrush, betraying his location to every hunter.

  Had not Damasen stated that the world’s destiny wasn’t set? He had even admitted he didn’t know what might come.

  Chrysaleon hadn’t shared the revelations of his death-dream with Themiste. At first, fear of ridicule kept him silent. Now, after deliberate consideration of the bull-king’s speech, he thought the forewarning it held might be useful to his own ambitions, and the insights he’d been given could provide an advantage over the oracle of Kaphtor, or at least put him on equal footing with her.

  Damasen made no promises to end the sacrifice before my time to bleed. He wants me to help Aridela then crawl to my death, my usefulness complete.

  I will bring an end to the sacrifice on my own terms. Chrysaleon of Mycenae will not be used to the benefit of women.

  Twilight fell. He made a fire from dead olive branches. The last glow of the sun transformed gray clouds to scarlet and lavender, with hints of green and yellow. Beneath this magnificence he constructed a pyramid of stones and shot an unwary hawk from the sky. He burned its thighs in offering and knelt beside his cairn, clenching the necklace in his fist.

  “Poseidon,” he said. “Walk with me. Lead me to Aridela. Make our bond unbreakable. Help me slay Harpalycus and bring an end to the king-sacrifice.” He peered into the heavens. “Make me this great-year-king, Horse Tamer, and I will present you with the rich island of Crete. I will cover this land with temples and fill each one with your image.”

  A sudden gust of wind sent a fan of sparks into the dimming indigo sky.

  He took it for the answer he wanted. Chrysaleon wrapped himself in the cloak Neoma had given him. “Bring Aridela home,” she’d begged, clutching his arm. “I miss her. I don’t think she even knows I’m alive.” The stone that struck her during the worst of the Destruction had left a noticeable depression in her forehead, like a large, out-of-place dimple, and ongoing headaches forced her to spend time in darkened seclusion nearly every day.

  He stared at his fire, sleepless, thinking of Aridela, longing for her. A memory crept before him, one he’d forgotten, from his time near death in the cell at Labyrinthos.

  In his starved, thirsty mind, he’d experienced a vision of Menoetius transforming into a black bull, the enormous bad-tempered kind Cretans used in their ring. The beast gored him and as he lay gasping, his lifeblood seeping away, Aridela came to stand beside the bull, resting her hand on his neck in an intimate manner. She had looked down upon Chrysaleon without any emotion.

  “No,” he’d whispered, and he did so again now, his teeth and hands clenching as he gazed into the cold night sky. “Menoetius won’t defeat me.”

  He fell asleep at last, but during the night’s blackest point, he was awakened by the earth shuddering. Small creatures scurried; rocks lurched and tumbled. His horse shied and nickered. Farther away, he heard ominous, eerie echoes as an avalanche of boulders crashed into one of Crete’s many precipitous gorges.

  He stared into the night toward the mountains, aching to be among them.

  I’m coming, Aridela. I will find you.

  In the mountains, the wind seldom diminished. Icy cold, it pulsed through high pine branches, which created a constant hollow whispering. But the sun had again made an appearance. Shafts of light fell between the trees in translucent waterfalls. Aridela stepped inside one, tu
rning her face up and closing her eyes, basking in faint warmth that waged battle against the bitter wind. How much time had passed since she’d left the cave for more than the time it took to relieve herself? Cold, wind and snow had draped her mountain home in dismal, exhausting, endless gray for so long she’d feared she would forget anything else.

  Now everything felt different. Air poured through her lungs with the freshness of new milk. She followed rabbit tracks and drank from a creek, the water so cold it burned her throat and made her cough. Menoetius found her and took her hand, pulling her along imaginary paths. Leaving the tree line, they scrambled up a slippery, wind-scoured, near-vertical ascent onto a rock outcropping suspended over vast reaches of space. Mountain summits swept on every side, ridged and monumental, rising to the clouds, their feet hooked to the center of the earth. For the first time since coming here, the sky’s clarity offered a glimpse of the sea, sparkling in sunlight, and even hints of the island off the southern coast.

  “It’s beautiful,” Aridela said. “Like it’s all been scrubbed clean.”

  She stepped closer to the edge, unprepared for the surge of lightheadedness that engulfed her. She pictured herself tumbling or being pushed, falling, no way to stop, dissected by the rocks so far below. She clutched Menoetius’s arm like an oar in a stormy sea, ashamed, yet helpless against this cascade of trembling fear.

  Perhaps because her gaze had frozen downward, Menoetius didn’t seem to sense her terror. He drew her closer to the precipice. Pebbles dislodged by their scuffling steps fell. Vanished.

  “All this is ours.” He spoke low, next to her ear. “No one can find us if I don’t want them to.”

  His words were indistinct, buried beneath an onslaught of cold, white, icy dread. Never before had Aridela avoided heights. She had perched, exhilarated, on the crumbling cornice of earth at Mount Juktas’s holy shrine. She’d stretched out her arms, longing to soar to the moon. But that was before ash, fire and poison had decimated her land. Before her sister had thrown herself over a cliff much like this one, to sink into the eternal embrace of the sea. Before Helice had perished, lifeblood spurting from a sliced throat. Daring and confidence had resided comfortably within her before Chrysaleon had succumbed, in whatever horrible and unknown fashion, to Harpalycus’s evil.

  Before Harpalycus had used her like an object without value. Mere soil, as he put it, in which to grow his progeny.

  Though she drew in deep breaths, gritted her teeth, and fought to regain control, the fear raged on, making her cling to Menoetius’s arm. Her head hummed; a kaleidoscopic barrage of color blurred her sight, and the terrible thunder of her heart seemed to propel her closer to the edge.

  The innate courage Iphiboë had so envied was gone. Everything she loved was stolen and now, standing in this place of clear, naked altitude, staring into infinity, she saw her life stretch away, bearing her along like a shred of bark stripped off its tree by fiery stone wind. Tears slipped down her cheeks, hot against her skin, and she felt the old Aridela evaporate like insubstantial mist.

  Menoetius frowned as he peered into her face. He pulled her away from the edge, rubbing her arms to warm them and lessen her shivering. Bringing her close, he wrapped his woolen jerkin around her and kissed the spot he said he loved the most: at the collarbone, where throat curved into shoulder.

  “Sit,” he ordered, pointing at a flat dry spot next to a sturdy boulder. “The sun is warm and the snow melted. You can’t see over. You’re safe.” He added, “You’re always safe with me.”

  With a mouth as dry as over-baked bread, she could only nod. They sat cross-legged on the limestone rocks, on equal terms with eagles at the summit of the world.

  Menoetius, closer to the edge than she, scooped up a handful of pebbles and dropped them, one by one, over the ledge. “Seeing the sea today brought back something I’d forgotten,” he said. “An old, old memory, or a dream. I’m newly born. A woman is holding me—a goddess. She’s standing on the shore. I can hear the sea. The moon overhead is full, and glowing. She kisses me and hands me to a serving woman, who carries me through darkness into a hot chamber. There I’m given to Sorcha. There’s much anxious talk among the women. They claim I understand what they’re saying. And I do. Every word.”

  “That seems more than a dream,” Aridela said. “Could it be a gift of sight from the Moerae?”

  He shrugged. “When I was younger, I picked these pictures apart like a jackal with a carcass, but I’ve never deciphered them.”

  “My nurse used to say that when I was little, Lady Athene spoke to me. People overheard me laughing and calling someone ‘Mother.’ Someone nobody could see. I do remember believing she watched over me and walked with me.”

  Menoetius smiled. “I’ve known the truth of that since the first time I saw you.”

  “Do you remember when you saved my life in the shrine? I thought you were her—the Lady.”

  “Of course I remember,” he said, leveling her with an achingly tender gaze.

  “Menoetius, do you know why your mother left you?”

  “No.”

  “Sorcha, from the city of Ys, on the shores of Albion.”

  “I wonder if it even exists.”

  “Kaphtor established ties with Albion long ago, and trades with them. It’s there. It exists.”

  He stared at her, his expression dumfounded.

  “Once a year,” she added, “we take them silver and bronze. They give us tin.”

  He returned to dropping his pebbles, one by one, frowning slightly. Aridela listened, but she didn’t hear any strike ground. A nauseating sense of vertigo made her breathing go shallow. “Do you remember when we went up Mount Juktas and killed a wild goat?” she asked, to distract herself from the precipitous gorge yawning beneath their feet.

  “Yes. You wouldn’t stop asking me questions. Do you intend to do that again?”

  She gave a rueful smile. “I wish we could go back to those days. I hated being too young for you to notice. Still, when I think of that time I remember being perfectly happy.”

  “If we could go back, I would not leave you,” he said. “I wouldn’t return to Mycenae.” He stared over the expanse of sky, snow and summits, his dark hair blowing across his face. “The lioness wouldn’t attack. My face wouldn’t make children shriek for their mothers.”

  “I would do things differently too, if I were given another chance.”

  He sighed and dropped the rest of the pebbles, dusting off his palms. “Since we can’t change what’s done, shall we make a different pact?”

  “We have to.”

  “That day I carried you from the shrine, a vow came to me, unbidden. It sank into me as I held you. I’ve thought of this vow many times, and every time I remember the words, I want to do things as they were meant to be done. I want to change the past.”

  “Tell me the vow.”

  “For longer than you can imagine, I will be with you—”

  “In you, of you,” Aridela interrupted.

  They stared at each other, Aridela’s breathless amazement mirrored on his face. Her heart gave a strange stutter.

  He began again. “Together we—”

  “Bring forth a new world—”

  His eyes widened. “And nothing—” He stopped.

  “Will ever part us.”

  He sighed before repeating, in a near whisper, “Nothing will ever part us.”

  He brushed hair out of her eyes, but the wind, capricious and willful, returned it.

  Velchanos’s promise. But Chrysaleon was the dream-god-lover. He had said those words to her the night Velchanos merged with him on Mount Juktas and brought the statue to life. It seemed so long ago.

  Menoetius spoke the vow exactly, word for word. Had she said it aloud in her sleep? Could he be trying to deceive her? Surely what she saw in his eyes was truth. But—she’d been so certain of others, too. “Athene, my Mother,” she said. “What are you telling me?”

  “You’ve heard it too,”
he said. It wasn’t a question.

  She nodded. “The promise came over me like a blessing; I’ve never forgotten. But it wasn’t in the shrine. It was years after you left Kaphtor. I remembered the words as they formed, though—they felt familiar, as though I’d heard them before. As though it wasn’t the first time.”

  Months ago, when Themiste used the mind-link on the cliffs at Natho, she had reminded Aridela that at the beginning of the dream on Mount Juktas, the statue resembled Menoetius, not Chrysaleon. Rage had revived the memory again, in the cave, when Menoetius first bound her to the log.

  Somehow, in some way beyond her comprehension, the statue in the dream had been both men. Menoetius and Chrysaleon. And Athene had given a vow to all three, together.

  Enchantments swirled; she thought if she took her gaze from him and looked into the sky, it would be filled with rainbows, rainbows that she could dive into and swim in; the enchantments would support her and keep her from falling. Enticing flashes formed at the edge of her vision, holding every tint imaginable. Yet she couldn’t look away from Menoetius, not even for an instant.

  “I have never seen anything so blue as your eyes,” she said.

  He blinked. His gaze faltered. “If they please you, then I am glad to possess them.”

  Was that redness on his face caused from wind or embarrassment? She found herself starting to smile, and pressed her hand to his cold cheek. “But I wish I could see your face… without this beard. And I miss your hair, the way it used to be. Do you remember how long it was?”