The Elementals

by Morgan Llywelyn

Something whined at the door. A very lean, very dirty white hound crouched there, wagging its tail to placate its god for the sin of having followed him.

  The faintest spark of life crept back into Meriones’ voice as he said, “It’s all right, this is my friend’s house.” He did not think Hokar was the sort of person who would object to a dog in the house. He snapped his fingers and the hound ran to him.

  “What’s happening out there?” Hokar wanted to know.

  “It’s very bad. The air is thicker than water and cinders and other things are falling out of it. Fires are springing up everywhere. And looters,” he added, relieved that Hokar had asked no more about Knsos and Tulipa. “You should bar your door, Hokar.”

  “I can’t, it won’t close. The frame is twisted. But we’ll be all right here.”

  Meriones was not so sure. The atmosphere in the house was only slightly less foul than outside. The wind blowing across Crete from destroyed Thera was bringing not only volcanic ash and debris but poisonous gases.

  Ebisha coughed again, and again, more harshly each time.

  The three sat on Hokar’s couch, the woman in the middle and the dog crouching at their feet. They sat and waited. There was nothing else to do.

  Sounds drifted in from outside. Crashes, shouts. Then long sullen silences broken only by the howl of the wind. Then different crashes, other voices shouting.

  It might have been day or night.

  “My throat is so dry,” Ebisha gasped, reaching for the water pitcher on the table beside the couch. But the pitcher was empty. She clawed at her throat beneath the gold necklace she had slipped over her head.

  “Where’s your well?” Meriones asked Hokar. “I can go for more water.”

  “It’s a good trot down the road, in a little square half hidden by shrubbery. Not easy to find unless you know just where it is.”

  Ebisha coughed again, violently. Her eyes pleaded.

  “You go then, Hokar,” said Meriones.

  Suddenly Ebisha said, “Both of you go!”

  “But I want to be with you,” Hokar protested.

  “I shall be all right for the time it takes you to fetch water,” she insisted. “Just go now. The dog will watch over me.”

  She had grown accustomed to palace habits. At Labrys, men and women insisted on privacy when they relieved themselves. Bodily functions were circumscribed wich rituals. It had been a long time since she last emptied her bladder and it was aching dreadfully, but she was reluctant to say this aloud. If the two men would just leave her alone for a little time she could take care of herself in private.

  The more Hokar argued to stay with her, the more she urged him to go. And each time she spoke made her cough.

  At last he gave in. “But we’ll be back very soon,” he assured her as he walked, somewhat stiffly, toward the door.

  It would be good to do something other than sitting passively, he suddenly realized.

  Meriones had a last word for the dog. “Guard her well!” he ordered the hound.

  The white dog, which had started to follow him, sank back on its haunches with a disappointed whine, but stayed with Ebisha.

  Outside the house the unnatural twilight closed in upon them at once.

  There were other people at the well. A nervous scuffle had broken out. Everyone was in a hurry to fill the various water vessels they had brought. Once people waited politely at the well, each taking their turn. Not now. The eerie light, the quivering earth, the stinking air combined to strip away the patina of civilization and reveal frightened animals snarling at one another over water rights.

  One man shoved another hard. The second man staggered back against an elderly woman. She dropped the vessel she carried. It crashed on the paving stones. Glancing down, Meriones saw that it had been a finely made piece of pottery formed to resembled a leather bag with a lip, with pottery handles simulating twisted rope. Rose in color, it was decorated with a repetitive double ax motif common to Cretan ware.

  Smashed.

  As Cretan pottery was ceremoniously smashed every year in an ostentatious display of wealth intended to give employment to more potters and enhance the economy still more.

  Holding his own water pitcher against his chest, Hokar managed to edge closer to the well. Then a fight broke out in earnest. One burly man hit another in the face with his fist. In seconds, the area boiled with fury. People relieved their pent-up emotions by hitting out at whoever was nearest, for no reason at all.

  Meriones had never liked fighting. He tried to stay out of the melee, but when he saw Hokar being pummeled by a pair of men he swallowed hard and plunged forward to try to help his friend. “You leave him alone!” he yelled.

  The crowd swallowed him.

  Meriones was, however, tougher than he looked. His was a wiry and agile strength and his reflexes were quick. He gave as good as he got and found, to his surprise, that it felt good to be hitting something.

  Yelling wildly, he began to hit harder.

  The crowd at the well was so intent on their impromptu war that they did not hear other voices crying out in the town, warning of the arrival of the looters.

  Someone hit Hokar a thundering blow to the side of the head and the red world turned black. He slid down and away, into a ringing silence.

  But consciousness did not totally desert him. He could still feel the pain in his hip, and he somehow knew he was in a sitting position with his back against the cold stone of the well-curb. Confusion swirled around him like spirits swirling through the netherworld.

  His mind wandered off in a dream of its own. He envisioned the long, satisfying afternoons in the goldsmiths’ chamber at Labrys. He fancied he heard the sound of the lyre, and he smiled to himself. Sitting dazed on the shaken earth of Crete, his ears temporarily deaf to the funeral laments of a shattered civilization, he lived again at his workbench. His fists uncurled and reshaped themselves as if holding his tools. He reveled in the rich satiety of designs running through his mind, waiting for his art to give them substance.

  He thought he was watching his hands shape the gold necklace for Ebisha. He saw the shells …

  “Ebisha,” he groaned, clawing his way back to the here and now.

  Meriones was bending over him. “Hokar? Are you all right?”

  “No. Not. No.”

  “Can you get up?”

  “I don’t want to,” Hokar said with conviction even as he reached for the hand Meriones was extending.

  The pain in his hip woke afresh, but somehow he got to his feet. “What happened?”

  “The fight’s over. I think we all won. Everyone got their water and went home. I’ve been trying to get you to open your eyes for ever so long.”

  “Ebisha!”

  “We’d better get back to her,” Meriones said. “I don’t want to worry you, but I heard someone say there’s been looting not far from here.”

  “Why didn’t you leave me and go to her right away, then?”

  Meriones looked shocked. “You’re my friend. How could I leave you here with men fighting all around you? And I couldn’t carry you, you’re too big.”

  “Ebisha,” Hokar said again. This time it came out as a groan.

  He leaned on Meriones’ shoulder and reverted to the hobbling hop that was the nearest he could come to a run. The two men hurried up the road toward Hokar’s house, neither speaking. They sped through a smoky, permanent dusk. Beneath the cloud of volcanic debris no daylight could survive.

  Other survivors were still picking their way through the streets, not only of Arkhanes, but of the other cities and towns of Crete that had suffered the volcanic fury and its aftermath. They were digging at the collapsed walls, seeking friends and family, trying to identify landmarks, talking to one another—or at one another—in fragmented, disjointed snatches. Words drifted to Hokar and Meriones: “… the entire fleet … six generations to rebuild … collapsed on top of them, and no one … have you seen her? A little girl, only this high … burning, stil
l burning …

  As they neared the house with the gaping door, Hokar and Meriones slowed by mutual unspoken accord. Nothing looked any different than when they had left it.

  And yet.

  “Don’t go in there,” Meriones said suddenly. “Let me look first.” He pushed Hokar’s arm from his shoulder and advanced toward the house alone. Hokar made no move to follow him.

  Meriones was not afraid. As far as he was concerned, the worst possible thing had already happened. Nothing he might find in Hokar’s house could be as bad as seeing the tidal wave that took Tulipa.

  But Hokar was afraid. He stood frozen with anticipatory anguish.

  Meriones edged his body around the door and peered into the gloom. At first he could not see anything. Then his eyes began to make out details.

  An overturned table.

  A couch hurled halfway across the room.

  Meriones flinched in spite of himself. “Ebisha?” he whispered hesitantly.

  A voice answered him. Not a human voice. The faint whimper came from beneath an overturned table.

  Meriones flung himself down beside it. The hound lay there, thin ribs heaving, a bloody slash along them showing where the dog had been attacked with a knife. The hound tried to lick Meriones’ hand.

  “Did you fight for her?” he asked it. “Did you try to save her?” The dog whimpered again. Meriones’ heart sank.

  He knew what had happened as surely as if he had been there. Looters had stumbled across Hokar’s house and seen the gleaming necklace Ebisha wore. He glanced to one side. The flagstone with the hollow beneath it was still in place. Meriones and Hokar had hidden the gold nuggets there before they went for water, and it appeared undisturbed.

  But even in the gloom, looters would have seen Ebisha’s necklace.

  Gold. Deadly gold. Meriones stood up. “Ebisha?”

  “Is she there? Is she all right?” Hokar called anxiously from the doorway.

  Meriones knew he was not thinking clearly. He was too tired, and his brain was numbed by grief. Yet he must try to shield his friend, if he could, from an awful discovery.

  “You stay there, Hokar!” he ordered sharply. “I’ll find her, just a moment now …”

  He fumbled about the room, stumbling over furniture. The dog tried to crawl after him, then sank back and lay panting.

  Meriones came to the couch lying on the floor like a slain animal, feet upward.

  Not lying flat.

  There was something beneath it.

  Meriones took hold of two of the legs and eased the couch onto its side.

  Ebisha, a lifeless heap, had been underneath the couch.

  Meriones held his breath for one agonized moment before calling out to Hokar. Let Hokar think, for that moment longer, that she might be alive. It was a small gift to give.

  Meriones touched the dead girl’s shoulder with gentle, regretful fingers … and felt her stir beneath his touch.

  “Hokar!” he cried. “She’s here, she’s alive, come quick!”

  Hokar flung himself into the room as if he had never been injured.

  Between them they righted the couch and lifted Ebisha onto it. Some random part of Meriones’ mind noted that she was heavier than Tulipa. Bigger-boned, from a bigger race.

  Tulipa. Don’t think about her.

  Ebisha coughed and opened her eyes. “Aaannh?” she asked uncertainly.

  Meriones told her, “You’re alive, we’re here. It’s all right.”

  “Aaannh.” Her eyes closed again, satisfied.

  A hasty examination showed her to be stunned, but uninjured. Only the dog was injured. It whined pitifully, begging for Meriones’ attention.

  They had brought no water after all. Meriones had to run back to the well to fetch some. Every step of the way he expected to be attacked, but he was unchallenged.

  He filled the pitcher and ran back to Hokar’s house. Some water sloshed from the pitcher as he ran, but he arrived with most of it.

  Ebisha was awake. She lay cradled in the goldsmith’s arms. With one hand Hokar kept stroking her hair as if to assure himself she was real.

  She was coughing when Meriones entered the house. She reached eagerly for the pitcher and gulped down half its contents. She choked, spluttered, drank the rest.

  The coughing eased. She managed a wan smile. “The dog saved me. Strangers came. They saw the necklace and tried to take it from me, but the dog attacked them and fought them. They had knives, though. They would have killed us both. But then the necklace broke and they took it and ran because the dog was growling so savagely. They hurt him, but he never stopped growling!”

  Meriones went to the dog and knelt down beside it. He stroked the animal’s head tenderly. “You’re going to be all right,” he said. “We’ll take care of you. You’re safe now.” The dog thumped its tail weakly against the flagstones.

  “You’re my dog now,” Meriones added.

  The feathery tail wagged harder. He could have sworn the hound understood.

  He made another trip to the well, and got enough water to drink and to bathe the dog’s wound. He was as gentle with the hound as he had been with Tulipa, pouring all his care and concern into his task, venting his amputated love.

  They stayed in the house, waiting, but they did not know what they were waiting for. No one else bothered them. Hokar retrieved the gold nuggets from their hiding place, then seemed to lose interest in them. He sat with the package held loosely in his hands as he stared off into space.

  Meriones eyed it. A thought occurred to him. “Hokar?”

  “Mmmm?”

  “Where did you get the gold for Ebisha’s necklace?”

  There was no answer. Meriones persisted. “Did you get it the same way you got those chunks of raw gold?”

  Hokar looked down.

  “Ah.” Intuition moved through Meriones, forming a mosaic in his mind. “You stole it. And because you had stolen, you thought I would steal too.”

  Hokar said nothing.

  Meriones carried his thoughts a step further. “Tereus stole Ebisha and the others from the Islands of Mist. They were free people, but he made them slaves. There has been too much stealing. We’ve made the gods angry, that’s why this disaster has befallen us.”

  Ebisha looked intently at Meriones. “Do you think your gods did this? Do you think they are powerful enough to do this?”

  Meriones ran his hands through his hair. “They must be, how else could it happen? So we must find a way to placate them. We have to give back what was stolen.”

  “Not my gold,” Hokar said abruptly. His fingers clamped on the package in his lap. “I need this to buy Ebisha’s freedom.”

  Ebisha said in a wondering voice, “I think I’m free already. Who at the palace cares now what has become of me?”

  “She’s right,” Meriones agreed. “The pair of you could vanish completely and no one would ever ask questions. So many have vanished …” He paused, swallowed hard, went on. “If there are any ships left—and there must be—in time you could even make your way to the Islands of Mist. Take Ebisha home, return something that was stolen.”

  At the word “home” a great light dawned in Ebisha’s green eyes.

  Hokar responded to its blaze. “I suppose we could go down to the coast and ask about Tereus and the Qatil; they were due in. If we can’t find them, there will surely be other ships taking refugees out. Everyone will want to leave Crete after this.”

  “Not everyone, but many,” Meriones agreed. “I would like to leave myself. There’s nothing left for me here,” he added in a low voice.

  Ebisha clapped her hands. “Then come with us to the Islands of Mist!”

  Meriones looked at Hokar, who had believed him capable of theft. “I don’t know …”

  Hokar rightfully interpreted the musician’s dubious expression. “You must come with us,” he said. “You’re my friend. My friend forever, beyond any doubt.”

  Meriones slanted his gaze sideways, to t
he injured hound lying nearby. “And my dog?”

  Hokar laughed. “Bring him. We owe a debt to that dog.”

  “Hear that?” Meriones asked the hound. “We’re going to the Islands of Mist!”

  The dog lifted its head, wagged its tail, and grinned.

  They gathered what food they could find and a waterskin, then made a bundle of these using one of Hokar’s blankets. In the bottom of the bundle were the gold nuggets. Ebisha was assigned to carry the bundle, while Hokar leaned on her shoulder.

  Meriones carried his injured dog.

  Their waiting over, and firm in their resolve for a new beginning, the trio set out for the coast.

  They traveled through an alien landscape. In places the hot ash was knee-deep and getting deeper. Great cracks had opened in the earth. Some of these revealed fire raging in their depths, devouring debris. Scorched, singed, and shaken, the Minoan empire was in ruins.

  “The Mycenaean warlords have been waiting for an opportunity like this,” Meriones remarked, unable to walk long in silence. “When they realize what’s happened here, they’ll probably attack Crete and take over the Mediterranean.”

  Hokar was not listening. He was not interested in politics or military adventurism. His eye was drawn to a burned tree standing alone against the sky. Its twiggy, blackened branches formed an elegant pattern, like freehand filigree by a master craftsman.

  I could copy that, Hokar was thinking.

  He was so intent he did not notice the fissure in front of him until he lost his balance and swayed precariously on its brink.

  With a shriek, Ebisha grabbed for him.

  At the bottom of the fissure a roaring fire waited.

  Hokar tumbled forward.

  Ebisha caught him at the last possible moment. But she had to drop her bundle to do it.

  The bundle fell into the heart of the flames.

  “My gold!” Hokar cried in dismay, reaching toward it.

  Simultaneously, Meriones felt a stirring inside himself, like intuition. Like inspiration. His voice boomed above the roar of the fire. “Let it go!” he commanded.

  As if in response, a red-gold belch of flame soared upward, driving Hokar and Ebisha back. Meriones stood alone on the edge of the fissure. Alone with the fire.