The Elementals

by Morgan Llywelyn

  “I know. The cooks made up countless platters of food to pass among the spectators. Fish, mostly. My clothes still reek of it. But what has the wrestling to do with your trouble?”

  “The craftsmen were given permission to attend, and everyone in our chambers went. Except me. I stayed behind, crouched down behind my workbench so no one would notice.”

  Meriones felt a cold hand squeeze his heart. “Why?”

  Hokar would not meet his eyes. “Ebisha.” His shoulders slumped. Then he burst out, “I can think of nothing else, Meriones! She fills my mind the way my work used to!

  “She said she would be my woman if she was free, but I know it would be very costly to buy her from the palace. So I stole what should be enough gold from our supplies. I buried it in the terraced gardens. They were deserted for once; everyone was at the wrestling. I did not dare keep it on me in case the loss was discovered and we were searched. Then I joined the others at the Great Central Court. No one noticed I had not been there all along.

  “The theft was discovered almost as soon as we returned to our chambers. They thought someone might have come in from outside and taken the gold, but they couldn’t be sure. They searched us, and I suspect they sent men to our homes to search us again when we arrived at the end of the day.

  “That’s why I didn’t go home tonight. I couldn’t face another search. My hands have begun shaking.”

  “I’m not surprised! I don’t know how you managed to do it in the first place.”

  “It wasn’t that difficult. The gold wasn’t locked away.”

  I suppose not, Meriones thought. Theft had never been a problem in the palace. It was well known that anyone caught stealing simply vanished, and there were whispered rumors of some horrible fate that awaited them deep in the bowels of Labrys, lost forever amid its labyrinthine twistings and turnings. The fear of the unknown kept most people at the palace honest.

  Unfortunately, the Thracian’s desire for a woman had outweighed his fear—for a while. The fear appeared to be catching up with him now. He had gone very white around the eyes and his hands were, indeed, shaking.

  “I don’t know how I can help you,” Meriones told the unfortunate man.

  “Would you if you could?”

  Without thinking, the musician nodded assent.

  “You can,” Hokar said eagerly, “because no one would have any reason to suspect you, you haven’t been near our chambers for a while. I’ll tell you just where I hid the gold. You watch for your chance and retrieve it for me and hide it in a safer place. The gardens were just a temporary solution. The gardeners might dig there any time and find it.”

  “But you can’t take raw gold to Carambis and offer to buy Ebisha with it! Everyone will know exactly how you came by it!”

  “I’m not going to approach Carambis at all. I’ve thought it out. We’ll take the gold to Tereus the next time he puts in at Knõsos. I’ll allow him a large cut of it, and he will use the rest to buy Ebisha himself. Once she’s out of Labrys she and I will leave Crete on board the Qatil and make a new home for ourselves far away somewhere. An artisan can always find work.”

  “This is madness, Hokar,” Meriones said flatly. “You have no right to ask me to get involved.”

  “I thought you were my friend,” the other chided him. “In Thrace, friendship is sacred to the death. Is it not that way on Crete? Is it not that way with you?” Hokar knew when a metal lacked the tensile strength to hold firm under the hammer. Meriones would give in if pressed hard enough. “Think what I will lose if I am caught, Meriones! Would you have my death on your conscience?”

  Meriones squirmed. “Don’t put it that way.”

  “Then say you’ll help me.”

  Meriones had a vision of the great bull being led in for sacrifice, its piebald hide washed and gleaming, flowers wreathing its neck. He remembered the way the bull had lifted its head and looked with sad eyes at the inevitability of the ax.

  “I’ll help you,” he said at last. “But you’d better go home now. It’s better if we’re not seen as being too friendly from now on.”

  “I’m afraid to go home. If any of The Minos’ men are there I might give myself away, coming in so late. So nervous.”

  “Drink enough of my wine to slur your speech and relax you,” Meriones instructed, thinking fast. “If there are guards tell them you’ve been at a party. Laugh a lot. Seem carefree. You can do it, if you drink enough beforehand.”

  Hokar’s beard split in a grin. “I knew I could rely on you, Meriones. The gods put you in my path.”

  “I wish the gods would put someone in my path to help me,” Meriones muttered to himself. Hokar, intent on his own problems, paid no attention.

  The musician fed the goldsmith wine until the man’s speech slurred convincingly, then sent him on his way. “Now remember to act much drunker than you are,” he instructed. “And cheerful. Unworried. That’s the important part. You must act as if you have nothing at all to feel guilty about. You’ve just been having a wonderful time at a party.”

  He pushed Hokar out the door and watched, worrying, as his friend weaved his way up the narrow street and out of sight. Hokar was clutching the last jug of Meriones’ wine in his fist.

  The musician’s inspiration saved the goldsmith. There were guards from the palace waiting at his house to search him again. When he arrived, however, he was so drunk and seemed so jovial they could not believe he was guilty of anything more than overindulgence. He even insisted they share his jug of wine with him.

  “We’ve had a long wait for nothing,” one of the men said. “It’s the least we deserve.” They leaned against Hokar’s wall and drank the last of the wine before returning to Labrys.

  Meanwhile Tulipa lay on her bed and dreamed. The pain’s easing had left her prey to a curious hallucination. She thought it was the season of the Festival of the Snake, the time sacred to females.

  The wombs of donkeys would be swelling with foals. New kids would soon be suckling the milk goats. It was the season, in her fevered mind, of fertility. Pilgrimages would be made to the inland mountains to conduct the rites sacred to the Good Goddess. Men were excluded as long lines of women snaked up the slopes, carrying torches and singing.

  Tulipa imagined herself among them, begging the boon of motherhood. She thought she felt a cosmic response shudder through her barren belly.

  In the darkness of predawn she became aware of Meriones lying beside her. “We’re going to have a child,” she murmured.

  He was instantly awake. “What did you say?”

  But she had sunk back into her dreams. When he tried to question her she muttered crossly, not remembering.

  Could it be possible? Meriones felt a jolt of joy. A child!

  Suddenly the future became very precious to him.

  He bitterly regretted promising to help Hokar. What if they were caught?

  He went to Phrixus’ house to ask Dendria to stay with Tulipa for the day. “She might be with child,” he explained. “I don’t want her to be alone.”

  Dendria raised her plucked eyebrows. “Tulipa, with child? I shouldn’t think so.”

  “I’m not certain. But she might be. And I’m very worried about her.”

  “If you’re that worried you should stay with her yourself,” retorted Dendria, who had better things to do.

  But Meriones dared not stay home. He did not fear the wrath of Santhos as much as he feared doing something unusual that might cause suspicion.

  To his relief, Dendria reluctantly agreed to keep an eye on Tulipa. Only a little late, Meriones hurried off toward the palace, forcing himself to his usual jaunty gait, even whistling a little, as if he had not a care in the world.

  He had not gone very far before he encountered the white hound. The dog stood with its head cocked on one side, not completely fooled.

  “Come on,” Meriones coaxed. “Walk with me.” He snapped his fingers and made cajoling noises.

  The dog cocked its head o
n the other side, but then it came. The two walked on together. The dog was panting already, its red tongue lolling.

  As they climbed up from the city toward the palace, Meriones glanced back as he often did to enjoy the view. Almost the entire Cretan fleet, largest in the Mediterranean, was in. The ships’ captains were waiting for a freshening wind to blow along the northern coast.

  But the air was leaden and still. There was a sullen haze to the north. The fleet which was Crete’s pride and power would stay where it was until Poseidon showed a more amiable face.

  Somewhere on the sea Tereus is heading for Crete, Meriones thought to himself. I’ll need to retrieve the gold and have it ready for him when he arrives.

  “My cousin’s current trading voyage is just to the major ports of call in the Mediterranean and Aegean,” Hokar had said. “He will return to Knõsos before long.”

  So they did not have much time.

  “This is going to be dangerous,” Meriones said under his breath to the dog.

  The hound wagged his tail. With a last glance at the ships and the sea, Meriones set off again, springing upward from the soles of his feet as if he had not a care in the world.

  No one could see the thoughts roiling in his head.

  According to Hokar, the gold had been hastily buried in a shallow hole beneath a red-flowering bush that smelled of honey. The bush was to the left of the steps leading down to the largest of the many pools in the terraced gardens.

  The gardens were popular with courtiers and visitors to the palace alike. As long as daylight lasted, there were usually a number of people wandering through them.

  But as Hokar had pointed out, “Now that you are assigned to the cooks you arrive very early and leave very late. If you know a way to reach the kitchens by going through the gardens, you could actually be there when it’s dark and no one else is around. I could never do that. We arrive later and leave earlier. And besides, they will be watching us. No one will be watching you. Get the gold for me, Meriones, and hide it in a safer place until Tereus gets here.”

  Meriones did indeed know how to reach the kitchens by way of the terraced gardens, but it was a highly circuitous route. One he might have to explain if he was questioned.

  As he walked along, he had a flash of inspiration.

  “I’ll say I’m picking flowers to garnish the royal platters!” he told the dog.

  By the time he reached the palace a sultry heat was already building up. With a casual salute to the guard, and a farewell pat to the white hound, Meriones entered the Sun Gate. But he did not follow his usual route. Instead he trotted briskly down endless passageways, up stairs, around corners, across courtyards, until at last he reached the garden.

  To his disappointment, other people were already there. The time he had spent arranging for Dendria to stay with Tulipa had cost him; the sun had risen before he ever left Knõsos. He had no chance of getting the gold this morning. But he plucked flowers just the same and took them to the cooks, to establish his story.

  The cooks were delighted. Garnishing food with flowers at once became the fashion in the House of the Double Axes.

  That night Meriones left by the same route, but once again he found people still loitering in the gardens, trying to find a breath of air in the darkness.

  To his dismay, when he reached home Tulipa was alone. “I sent Dendria away,” she said in a petulant tone. “Her voice cuts into my head like a knife into a melon. I wish we could go away, Meriones. Really go away, I mean. To someplace cool. To the mountains …” She sighed.

  “The heat will break soon, everyone says so. It can’t go on much longer like this. The Minos has offered sacrifices to be made to Poseidon in exchange for cool winds from the sea.”

  “I think the gods are angry with us, Meriones,” Tulipa replied. “It will take more than sacrifices to placate them. Look at me. You must have done something to make the gods angry and I am being punished.” Weak tears of self-pity crept down Tulipa’s sunken cheeks.

  Meriones was frantic. He had done everything he could think of to help his wife; he was doing all he could to help his friend; neither situation was getting better. He felt caught, trapped, helpless.

  He was exhausted, but he could not sleep. At last he left his wife alone in their sweat-soaked bed and went down to lie on the cool paving stones of the courtyard for a few hours, until the light of the false dawn summoned him back to the palace.

  The stones were hard and unyielding, but they had already given up their heat. They soaked up his body heat instead, giving him a measure of relief.

  Lying pressed against the ground in his courtyard. Meriones was one of the first to feel the rumbling deep in the earth that signaled the awakening of the gods.

  11

  En route to Knsos again in hopes of exchanging a cargo of oil and spices for Cretan pottery, Tereus was still dreaming of his own ship. He had come to hate every plank of the Qatil because it belonged to someone else.

  He considered his prospects. The men in the Cretan colony that called itself Atlantis had been willing to buy the old priest, so Tereus had left the man on the island of Thera with them. But they had not paid much for him. They said he was an unknown quantity whose worth would have to be proved.

  By now, Tereus told himself, they should have found ways to force that old savage to reveal his talents.

  And if he’s as good as I think he is, they might now be willing to buy more like him. We could discuss their commissioning me to go back to the Islands of Mist and capture other sorcerers. It could be enormously profitable.

  Yes indeed.

  If the old man has proved himself.

  Tereus made a decision.

  “We’re going to call in to Thera again before we go to Crete,” he informed his helmsman. “I have some enquiries to make.”

  The helmsman did not like the sulfurous look of the sky toward Thera, but he knew better than to argue with Tereus. He changed course at once.

  At first the blue sea hissed as always, running past the prow. Then it grew sluggish, almost oily. They were making slow headway in spite of their best efforts. But even when the air became gritty and his crew started coughing, Tereus insisted they hold to their course. If a man protested, he felt the lash of Jaha Fe’s whip across his shoulders.

  They began meeting other vessels coming out from Thera. Luxurious pleasure galleys as well as ordinary fishing boats, everyone of them packed with white-faced, staring people whose household goods were piled around them. It appeared to be a migration, as if the population of Thera had in some common madness decided to take to the sea.

  Leaning on the rail of the Qatil, Tereus stared down at them. No one waved to him. No one called a greeting. Some of the women, he observed, were crying.

  A larger vessel, a trader like the Qatil, approached. Its captain was an old acquaintance with whom Tereus had shared wenches and wine in many ports. He hailed the other ship and it drew alongside.

  The Qatil put down a boat so Tereus could go over to the other ship.

  Its captain wasted no time with pleasantries. “Everyone who can lay hands on a boat is leaving Thera,” he told Tereus. “They would rather be at sea than wait on the island to face the wrath of the god.”

  “What god?”

  “Ennosigaion. Earth-Shaker! For days he has been growling underground, and Zeus supports him with a rain of ashes from the sky. The air stinks like rotten eggs. Thera is unsafe, Tereus. I implore you, turn your ship about and come away with us before it gets any worse.”

  Tereus looked toward the island barely visible through the murky air. Its solitary peak thrust upward from the sea like a warning finger. For the first time he recognized a certain malevolence to the shape. Near the southern tip of Thera was the commercial town of Akrotiri, mercantile hub for the sprawling Atlantean colony that had expanded up the slopes to command sweeping views toward their native Crete.

  Akrotiri; abandoned. Atlantis … a cold worm stirred in Tereus’ be
lly.

  “The gods cannot threaten me,” he said to the other captain with too hearty a laugh. But as soon as he was on board the Qatil again Tereus gave the order to put about and make for Crete. The helmsman responded gladly.

  There was not a breath of wind to stir the sail. Oars were their only power now. The sweating oarsmen labored, grunting, impelled by a nameless fear. Jaha Fe no longer needed to use the lash on them. In the sullen, lowering light, they were doing their best to leave Thera behind them.

  On Crete, Meriones was also doing his best that morning. After several frustrating days when he had found someone in the gardens every time he passed through, today he found the gardens deserted. People were being kept under roofs by the persistent grit that fell like rain from the sky.

  Meriones hurried to the bush Hokar had described. Crouching down, he dug with feverish fingers into the soft earth at the bush’s roots. It was volcanic soil, friable and loose, and offered little resistance. He scrabbled hurriedly. In a moment more he had the package in his hands.

  He glanced nervously around to see if anyone was watching. The gardens were still deserted.

  Meriones stood up. The package was both bulky and heavy. But when he sucked in his belly as hard as he could, he was just able to thrust it down between his belt and his flesh, where it would be somewhat hidden by his embroidered apron.

  If anyone looked closely his shape would have seemed very suspicious. But no one was paying any attention to Meriones that morning.

  For several days the people of Crete had been living in a state of accelerating apprehension. Poseidon was flexing his muscles and rippling the earth from one end of the island to the other. Meriones had felt the first tremors as he tried to sleep in his courtyard. Since then, subterranean movement had become almost constant. From long experience, Cretans knew how to build to withstand the milder attacks of the Shaker’s temper, but the continual rumblings were wearing everyone’s nerves. Dogs howled. Goats went dry. Children awakened crying.