“Lady,” Eurydice breathed, trembling, “please Lady. She will strike Orpheus so the serpent can bite Jason. Please let me protect him.”
Nothing came, no warmth, no anger. Perhaps through her terror Eurydice felt a touch of exasperation, a greater being’s irritation with an importunate child. That was no comfort. The Mother Goddess was sometimes merciful, but the Maiden was a Huntress and did not shy away from destruction. The Maiden also might well feel that Eurydice would be better off without the distracting presence of a man.
Desperately, Eurydice sought within herself for enough Power to block a spell, gathering it until her body felt cold and stiff—but it was already too late. Despite her bound hands, Medea had managed to gesture at Orpheus. Eurydice’s breath choked with fear; but she dared not cry out. If the enchantment Orpheus had bound around the serpent was broken, it would most probably lunge where its attention was fixed. Although Jason was closer, Orpheus was the more likely target. Then tears of relief misted her eyes. She saw Orpheus’ body jerk; perhaps he had also drawn a sharp breath when his amulet had burned him, but his hands did not miss a note.
Medea stood staring at her target as if she could not believe her eyes. She gestured again and Orpheus’ teeth caught his lip, but his fingers moved without hesitation and his eyes remained fixed on the serpent, which had drawn as close to the shore, as close to Orpheus, as it could.
Jason was almost in touching distance of the creature, but it never looked toward him and now he was standing so still that it was not likely he would be noticed. Eurydice looked fearfully at Medea and saw that the scarf that had bound her wrists had undone itself and lay at her feet so she could gesture more freely. She was staring at Orpheus, her lips moving. With her eyes fixed on the sorceress, Eurydice bent down and scrabbled on the ground for a stone to throw. Unfortunately the earth was thick with many years’ layering of fallen leaves. There were no stones, but her hand fell upon a dead branch.
If she had dared come out of the woods, Eurydice would have run up to Medea and hit her on the head, but she was afraid the sense of the spell she wore would break through the enchantment Orpheus had woven about the serpent. Eurydice poised her stick to throw, hoping if she hit Medea just before the spell was released she would break Medea’s concentration, make her lose control of the spell and that the backlash would hurt her enough to keep Orpheus safe. Only when she saw wide-eyed rage and disbelief break the fixed concentration on Medea’s face did Eurydice realize she had missed her moment. Medea had cast her spell without a single gesture. Now, however, she took a quick step toward Orpheus as her hands lifted. One curled into a fist, opened, threw; the other drew a knife.
In the instant that Medea had raised her fist and started to move forward, Eurydice had banished her deafness—she had to watch Medea, but as long as she could hear Orpheus playing, he was unhurt. Simultaneously she cast her stick, not at Medea’s head but just before her feet. Everything else seemed to happen at once. At Medea’s throwing gesture, Orpheus’ hands had at last faltered on a single note. Before Eurydice could look toward him, Medea, knife in hand, had stumbled over the stick that struck her ankle. She shrieked as she fell to the ground.
Instantly, the serpent’s mouth opened and it emitted a hissing roar so loud that Eurydice’s hands flew to her ears. However, the sound checked almost as soon as it began, choked on an audible clashing of teeth, and ended in a whistling screech. A single flashing glance toward Jason showed him pulling his arm back from a throwing position and reaching for his sword as he leapt backward to escape the serpent’s reach. But the creature did not attempt to strike at him. As Eurydice had feared, it struck toward Orpheus—no, not toward Orpheus, toward Medea! Plainly, she felt the threat, for she had struggled upright and was screaming words too fast for Eurydice to catch the sounds. The serpent struck again, it’s strange, human-looking eyes full of hate, and then, slowly, it began to sink back into the water.
Eurydice was just about to sigh with relief, when a scream of utter fury rang though the clearing. Medea tore her eyes from the slowly receding serpent, whirled around and sprang at Orpheus, her knife raised high. Unable to swing his cithara behind him and more unwilling to expose his instrument than his body to her attack, Orpheus bent over the cithara and turned his back to the knife blow. Eurydice screamed and ran forward, knowing she would be too late, but there was no need. Jason had seized Medea around the waist with one hand and her wrist with the other.
“Medea!” he cried.
Eurydice clung to a convenient tree, gasping for breath but grateful that her shriek had been covered by Medea’s. In fact, she thought, tempted to cover her ears again, she could have gone on screaming. No one would have heard her pitiful efforts compared with the bellows that were coming from Medea’s throat. Orpheus straightened up and turned around, looking more surprised than angry.
“You fool!” she raged. “Idiot! Whoreson! Why did you bring that marplot with you?”
“Because he never mars my plots,” Jason said, smiling.
Medea burst into tears. “Why did you not let the serpent bite you? I would have saved your life, and you would have been king of Colchis, happy forever.”
“Let the serpent bite me?” Jason repeated. He was still smiling, almost fondly. “Now why would you want me to do that?”
One arm held her tight to him, the other wrested her knife from her hand. She did not fight to hold it. Eurydice almost shouted a warning. Now that the serpent would soon be asleep, she could use her magic more freely, but before she could decide what warning a “disembodied voice” might give, Jason had brought Medea’s knife around in a wide swing—as if her release of the weapon had freed his arm too suddenly—and struck her violently on the temple with the hilt. Her eyes rolled up in her head and she sagged bonelessly against his arm. He laid her down on the grass with more care than Eurydice had expected, straightening her limbs and drawing her garments under her smoothly so they would not bruise her. He looked at the scarf on the ground, then shrugged.
“Why in the world did she go for me with a knife?” Orpheus asked, coming to look down at Medea. “I thought she would be delighted when I made it possible for you to put that thing to sleep without hurting it—or yourself.”
“You heard her,” Jason replied, but absently, since his eyes were on where the serpent had sunk into the water. “She wanted it to bite me.”
“That’s crazy!” Orpheus exclaimed. “If she wanted you dead, she could have accomplished it in a hundred easier ways.”
Jason grinned broadly. “Oh, she doesn’t want me dead. I wouldn’t have died. Didn’t you listen? She said she would have saved my life, and I would have been king of Colchis and happy forever. Maybe the serpent’s poison would have made me a sorcerer or made me invulnerable—or maybe it would have destroyed my will.”
Orpheus stepped back, looking disgusted, but Jason looked down at Medea smiling. “She does like having her own way, my Medea,” he said fondly. Then he turned away from her briskly, first to strike Orpheus gently on the shoulder and then to embrace him. “But we managed to get around her. It does not matter in any case. I do not wish to be king of Colchis. Yolcos is enough for me.” He grinned again. “Never mind Medea. I can manage her. Look.”
He pointed toward the water, and Eurydice walked forward to see better. There, beneath the surface with the serpent’s black head across it, lay the golden fleece. Eurydice felt her eyebrows rise. That had been an enormous animal, unless the fleece had stretched over the years, and it certainly was golden. Even dimmed by the water that ran over it, it was a glittering glory. Jason sighed and Orpheus frowned.
“I do not believe Medea told the truth about you and me being able to get it out of the water.”
“No.” Jason chuckled. “I do not believe it either, but she expected, I suppose, that neither of us would be in any condition to argue.”
“Jason—” Orpheus began.
“No, do not worry about me,” Jason said. “I told yo
u before—I can deal with Medea. I am quite impervious to her spells.” His mouth twisted wryly. “Aietes made me invulnerable to her, but I do not think she would try to use a spell against me anyhow. She never has. A spell can be lifted or wear thin with time, and I do not think she could bear what I would feel toward her if it did. The serpent’s venom was something else.”
Then he turned away from Orpheus and called aloud. Eurydice was not surprised when Mopsus answered, and she drew back toward the side of the clearing where she would be out of the way of the men. She did not want any of them to walk into her by accident or to need to keep dodging them as they moved around. She was worried about Jason’s belief that Aietes’ spell or token would keep him safe from Medea’s spellcasting. Aietes himself had not been safe from his daughter’s magic. She sat down against a tree where she could see everything and mulled over whether she should warn Jason—who would not believe her and would want to know how she discovered Aietes had warded him against Medea’s spelling. A waste of time and breath, she thought, watching idly as the men cautiously set grappling hooks into the golden fleece and tried to pull it out from under the serpent.
This, it soon became apparent, was impossible. The creature was not only lying across it, but the lower part of its body was wrapped around the fleece, which was too stiff with gold to bend easily. The men tried anyway, but somnolent as the serpent was, its coils only tightened around its charge. Then they tried to drag the whole thing, fleece and serpent, out of the water where it might be possible to unwind the creature from the prize it protected. This too, was impossible. Deep below the level at which the fleece was fastened with leather ties, the body of the serpent was somehow fixed into the riverbed.
One of the men, Euphemos, who had a remarkable ability to maneuver in and under water and seemed able to breathe it, dove down to discover where the creature was rooted. Perhaps his prodding disturbed it or the potion had just worn off, and it began to come to life. Waveringly, it lifted its head out of the water. A shout brought Castor with a loop at the end of a coil of rope, which he cleverly passed around the serpent’s head and drew tight so it could not open its mouth. When it felt the restriction, it began to thrash violently. Castor was flung about like a stone tied to a string until his brother and two others grabbed him and the rope and dragged the head down. Even that did not subdue the creature, which began to undulate in the water so strongly that Euphemos was thrown up out of the river nearly unconscious and two other men had to rescue him. But one of the ties that held the fleece to strong metal hooks was torn free.
Jason’s lips thinned, and he snarled an obscenity. He was trying not to hurt the serpent because Medea wanted it saved, Eurydice thought, surprised again but ready to acknowledge now that Jason did feel fondness as well as a desire to own her. Then another tie was torn loose and the men holding the rope around the serpent’s head had to call for help. Jason sighed and stepped forward, drawing his sword.
He struck once. Blood burst from the neck just behind the head and the thing whined, its big eyes wide and staring, the thick lashes glistening—with tears? Eurydice jumped up, torn with pity, but it was too late. Jason had struck again, harder, his sword falling true in the cut his first blow had opened. A fountain of blood shot skyward accompanied by a shriek that rang through the clearing and Eurydice’s head. Orpheus clapped his hands to his ears to shut out an agony in the sound he could not bear. Medea screamed and struggled upright, her eyes still glazed but her hands holding—not her head where Jason had hit her—her neck, screaming, screaming, screaming. Jason struck again and the head jerked free. Medea dropped to the ground like a stone.
Chapter Twenty-two
Jason had stopped only long enough to urge his men to get the golden fleece out of the water before he ran to Medea’s side. Eurydice noticed with a little thrill of horror that Jason actually examined Medea’s neck, but he saw it was without blemish. He lifted her into his arms with considerable tenderness and began to stroke her face and hair and call gently to her. Eurydice edged closer, feeling she needed to hear this exchange.
Very soon Medea’s eyes opened and almost at once widened until Eurydice thought they would fall out of her head. “You fool!” she whispered. “You have killed us.”
“No, no one is hurt, beyond a few bruises, except the serpent,” Jason said. “I am sorry about the creature. I did try to get the fleece without harming it, but the potion did not hold it long enough. It began to endanger my men—
If Medea heard what he said, she did not react to it. “Do you not understand?” she asked in that same, fearful whisper. “My bond with Aietes through the serpent died when you killed the beast. My father is free! I cannot control him any longer! He will kill us.”
“Will he?” Jason asked, then sat Medea up and shook her gently. “I want the truth now, not the half lies you thought had deceived me. They never did, Medea, but I have not charged you with your deception because—because I want you, even knowing what you are. But this is important. I know Aietes will not be pleased that I have the fleece. On the other hand, I have killed the serpent—”
“He would have killed you as soon as the serpent was dead. The bulls would have trampled you. He will never let you take the fleece—and he will kill me. You do not know what I did to him to keep him from coming with us.”
Eurydice shuddered, recalling the shriek that rang through the whole palace, the howls of psychic torment. She saw Jason’s lips twist and knew he remembered, too, but he only stared at Medea’s pallid face for a long moment, then nodded Eurydice, too, thought that this time Medea was truly frightened and was telling the truth, nor was Eurydice much surprised to see a very faint look of satisfaction on Jason’s face as he turned from Medea to look at his men. He had always intended to take Medea back to Yolcos with him. Now he could do so without argument.
Medea became aware of the men at the same moment; they had, Eurydice thought, been unusually quiet about their work. The fleece was out of the water, the men having simply hacked the serpent apart anywhere its body interfered. They were hitching pulling ropes to the places where the thongs had held the fleece in the water.
“Where did they come from?” Medea cried.
“They followed us,” Jason said, smiling.
“That is impossible,” Medea protested, shaking her head. “The path is bespelled. They could not have found it nor stayed upon it.”
“Then Eurydice’s amulets must have worked.”
“The kitchen-spell witch?” Medea breathed, her pupils contracted to pinpoints.
Jason’s smile broadened, and he pulled her closer and kissed her. “I am not quite so trusting and foolish as I let you believe, although I am quite wildly in love with you. You will be the most beautiful, the most powerful, queen in Greece. You did not think, my love, that I would leave you behind?”
Eurydice hardly heard Jason’s first words because she was so furious at him for having exposed her power to Medea. It was clear enough that Jason’s kiss had not appeased her; she had come out of the kiss with her lips lifted in a snarl, and her expression did not soften for Jason’s sweet words. Then Eurydice had to stifle a laugh. Why should she be angry? Jason had just arranged for her not to sail on the Argo.
“Not as foolish as I thought?” Medea spat. “You are an idiot! How do you think you will get that fleece aboard your ship? How do you think you will get me aboard the Argo or yourself? I tell you Aietes will kill us—and all your precious men, too. Do you think you can drag that thing through the streets of Colchis to the harbor?”
“No, love, of course not,” Jason said, his voice smooth as silk and only quivering slightly with laughter. “The Argo is coming to us up this river as far as it is navigable. You and I and the golden fleece will all sail safely away from Colchis without ever coming near your father. Mopsus has already sent some men downstream to hail the ship.”
“But how could they find the mouth of the river? Oh, I see. More of the accursed witch’s amulets.”
“Eurydice is not an accursed witch.” Orpheus’ voice was so cold and hard it made Eurydice jump. She drew a little farther back to be out of anyone’s direct line of sight.
Jason cast his eyes up in exasperation as Orpheus spoke and started to tighten his arms around Medea, but he was too late. She sprang to her feet, hands formed into claws, and launched herself at Orpheus, who raised an arm to hold her off but did not flinch away. Eurydice promptly stuck a foot into Medea’s way and with considerable pleasure watched her stumble to her hands and knees. Jason, who had leapt up after Medea, caught her in his arms, and on the pretense of helping her to her feet, held on to her. Eurydice noticed that angry as she was, Medea did not fight to free herself.
“What do you want, Orpheus?” Jason was clearly annoyed.
“If the ship is coming upriver and will not return to Colchis, I must go and fetch Eurydice. She is waiting for me in the inn.”
“But Eurydice wanted to stay in Colchis,” Jason snapped. “That was our agreement, that I was to bring her to Colchis.”
“You know she cannot stay in Colchis now,” Orpheus said.
“Why not?” Medea asked. “My father hardly knows she is alive. It is the fleece and us he will want, not a little witch who does kitchen spells. She will be safe in Colchis. Besides, I do not want her aboard the ship with me.”
“Eurydice is my woman.” Orpheus’ voice rose angrily. “We are pledged and you know it, Jason. She has done more for you— What do you think would have happened to us, you and I, if the men had not been able to follow us and we tried to get the fleece?” His eyes shifted to Medea and he added purposefully, “In what condition would you be if Eurydice’s amulet had not protected me against the spells Medea used to stop my playing and free the serpent?”
Jason did not say that Medea would have protected them; he did not even look at her. Instead, his eyes flicked to the crewmen, who had stopped to listen when Orpheus’ voice rose. “All I said was that I believed Eurydice wished to stay in Colchis,” he snapped. “If she has changed her mind, she has said nothing to me about it. But if she has, she is as welcome as any member of the crew to come aboard.”
Enchanted Fire Page 39
