Oracle

by Jackie French

  Then suddenly stillness again. The world was silent, apart from the drop of tiles, and the yells and cries of people.

  Thetis let the High King’s hand go. She stood still and quiet, dazed, thought Nikko. How had she sensed the earthquake? And then he realised, remembering the quake so many years ago, how she had seen the birds rise into the air.

  That’s what she saw a few moments ago, thought Nikko. That’s why she jumped onto the parapet, to watch the birds. She realised the King was vulnerable beneath the overhang. He was about to try to get to her again, but something about the way she stood held him back.

  Suddenly one of the kings kneeled—not to the High King, but to Thetis. Then all the rest were kneeling too, their fists held to their foreheads in respect, as though she were a priestess of the Mother who had delivered a prophecy. Even the King’s son kneeled.

  All kneeled except her brother, and the High King.

  She is a priestess, thought Nikko. At least, she performs the rites with Xurtis. But this was not a warning from the Mother. This was just a girl who watched, who knew how birds and horses behaved before an earthquake.

  ‘My friends, you see how my Butterfly protects me even when—’ the High King began. But Thetis held up her hand for silence.

  The quiet this time was made up of breaths indrawn sharply at such rudeness to the King.

  She stepped up to the parapet again. And for the first time in Mycenae, she spoke.

  ‘The Earth Mother is coming!’

  Nikko would have expected her voice to sound cracked, like a sword left so long unpolished it had turned rusty. But instead it was his sister’s voice, just as he remembered it, a little higher, a little stronger, but still the same.

  Thetis lifted up her arms. Her wings fluttered in the dust. ‘The earthquake will come again! Fiercer and more powerful! Not today, and not tomorrow, but it is coming soon! Run! Or even the High King will die!’

  No one moved, or spoke. Thetis let her arms drop. She blinked, as though suddenly aware of where she was, and what she had said. She stood limply on the parapet, her wings dropping at her sides.

  What had she seen this time? he wondered. He peered through the settling dust, trying to see the birds. But even the pigeons had abandoned Mycenae. They must know the worst was still to come.

  The High King moved first. He gestured to the guards. Two of them grabbed Thetis by the arms and hauled her out.

  Dimly Nikko was aware of Dora sobbing, down on the rubble-strewn staircase.

  What has Thetis done to us? he thought, prophesying the death of the High King?

  For now the King was holding up a goblet. He held it high, then tipped out the contents onto the tiles below. ‘An offering to the Mother,’ he cried, ‘who preserved us this time, and will preserve the walls of Mycenae forever. The House of the Lion has stood as long as men remember. And it still will!’

  The crowd cheered. What else could the petty kings and the great lords do? thought Nikko. But the sound seemed forced, as though they were remembering the swords of the guards, and the soldiers who could burn their towns.

  He had been forgotten. He slipped through the guests as quietly as he could. He had to get to Thetis! Any moment now the High King would give another order to his guards. Somehow he had to get her to safety, convince the guards perhaps that it was he who carried the orders from the King.

  If they ran down to the stables now, before any order to stop them could be given…

  He dodged around the debris. The servants were filling goblets again now, and passing honey cakes. More torches were being brought out, turning the growing darkness into light. Nikko slipped into the shadows, then out into the corridor.

  The Chamberlain was waiting for him. Nikko tried to slip past, but the old man grabbed his wrist. He was surprisingly strong.

  ‘Wait,’ he said.

  Nikko wrenched his wrist free. ‘I need to find my sister!’

  ‘You need,’ said the Chamberlain quietly, ‘to stay exactly where you are. Do you know what harm your sister might have done?’

  ‘I know she saved the High King’s life tonight!’

  ‘And for that reason she has saved her own life too. And yours, and your guardians’.’

  Nikko grabbed the man’s robe. ‘Where is she?’

  The Chamberlain stared at him till Nikko released the cloth. ‘Whatever kindnesses you may think I have done for you, I have done at my master’s request. But this is a gift I give to you myself, Nikko, advice I would give my son if I had one. Stay here until whatever must be done is finished.’

  ‘If you would do me a kindness, sir, then tell me where she is!’

  ‘I am my master’s servant. Understand me, boy. Nothing I do—nothing—will ever be against his interests. You will wait here.’ He gestured to an alcove, containing a small, three-legged stool. A statue had stood there, thought Nikko with half his mind. It must have crashed in the earthquake, for he could see shards on the tiled floor.

  Suddenly his anger at the Chamberlain vanished. The man did his duty, as Nikko did his duty to his sister. They had more in common than he had ever realised before. ‘I am sorry, sir,’ said Nikko quietly. ‘I am going to find Thetis.’

  ‘I am sorry too. Believe me, boy, I truly am.’ The Chamberlain clapped his hands. Guards stepped into view at either end of the corridor, wearing leathers and carrying swords and spears and knives.

  ‘You will wait here,’ said the Chamberlain quietly. ‘Or you will fight the King’s army by yourself, and die.’

  For a moment Nikko even considered it. If he moved quickly the guards might not have time to throw their spears. He could leap over them, perhaps, dodging their knives.

  But it was a dream. Impossible. And if he was killed now or, even worse, imprisoned, he could be no help to Thetis.

  So Nikko sat. He watched as the Chamberlain walked through the lines of guards, back toward the High King. Seeking instructions, thought Nikko. Or making suggestions.

  What would the Chamberlain suggest the High King do? Where were Orkestres and Dora? Were they too being held?

  When would the next earthquake strike?

  And so he sat there, on his stool, while the guards watched him, their faces silent, their hands on their swords.

  CHAPTER 32

  ‘They’ve gone,’ said Euridice.

  The guards had marched him back to their quarters. Dawn was a grim shadow on the horizon, though Nikko felt years had passed instead of one circuit of the moon. He had run to Thetis’s room, knowing it would be empty, but needing to check. There had been no one in Orkestres and Dora’s room, either, nor in their practice chamber. Even the fires that usually burned in the hearths were dead black coals. He held his hand over them. They were nearly cold.

  At last he ran back along the terrace to Euridice’s chamber. Light flickered there, through the gaps in the shutters, from a slush lamp on either side of the bed. She was there, then, at least, and not asleep. Armed men moved in the darkness as he approached her door. Were they guarding him, or only Euridice?

  Perhaps, thought Nikko, it’s better not to ask. Perhaps if he acted as though he were free, they would allow him to move about the palace or the town.

  Euridice sat on her bed, the shackles trailing from her ankles onto the floor. Even now Nikko was struck by how beautiful she looked. She had washed the make-up off, and brushed her hair. Once more she looked like nothing that could ever have grown up in the sheltered confines of the city walls.

  She looked up at him, through her cloud of hair. ‘Nikko, I’m sorry. I couldn’t help—’

  ‘I know,’ he said shortly. He was the one who should have moved faster, to stop Thetis before she spoke. He was the one who knew the danger of her voice.

  A sound shuddered through the darkness outside. For a moment Nikko thought it was the next earthquake, and then the noise came more sharply. Thunder. All at once a storm like a fist pounded down on Mycenae. Water gushed across the terrace outside, cree
ping under the wooden doors till it reached the edges of the bearskin mat.

  ‘I saw them take her.’

  ‘The Chamberlain wouldn’t tell me where she’s been taken.’ Nikko’s voice sounded strange, even to himself: empty, wooden. He took a breath. He had to know. ‘Did they hurt her?’

  Euridice shook her head. ‘She seemed willing to go. She was crying, but she ordered the guards to pack her things.’

  Nikko stared. ‘Thetis ordered them? She’s still speaking?’

  ‘Not Thetis. Dora.’

  Nikko looked at his hands, splayed on his knees. Such strong hands now. But not strong enough to save his sister. ‘So they took them both. What about Orkestres? Did they take him too?’

  Euridice was silent. Nikko looked up at her, surprised to see tears in her eyes.

  ‘You don’t know?’ she whispered.

  He shook his head. ‘Know what?’

  ‘About Orkestres?’

  Suddenly Nikko did know. His arms and legs felt cold, the hairs rising as though a snow wind blew. But he just said, ‘No.’

  Euridice’s chains rattled as she reached a hand to touch him, then drew back when the chain pulled tight before she could reach his arm. ‘I…we saw it happen. The guards wanted to watch the show. I…I could see it from where I was standing, so they hadn’t yet taken me back to our rooms yet…and afterward—well, they were terrified. I saw—’ She stopped, unwilling to hurt him more.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘The staircase wall toppled. It crushed Orkestres…from his chest down. Dora ran up to him. He lifted his arm…I thought it meant that he was all right. But he just touched Dora’s hair, and said something. Then she bent over him with a cry, and I knew that he was dead.’

  Neither spoke for a moment, and then she said, ‘He was smiling. I could see that, Nikko. But the stones about him were all red.’

  So he died performing, like his father, thought Nikko dumbly. One more death to make the High King smile.

  There were no words. The man who had cared for him as his father never had was dead, crushed in the rubble. The woman who loved him as a mother: gone. His sister: vanished, disgraced. He tried not to think what they might have done to her. He knew that once the images sliced into his mind he would no longer be able to bear it, would curl on the floor tiles howling like a dog.

  He glanced up at Euridice. Tears rolled down her cheeks; her hands were too tightly tethered to wipe them off. He reached over and brushed them from her face. Her skin was soft.

  ‘Nikko! Don’t you see?’ Euridice’s voice was urgent. She leaned toward him, till stopped by her chains. ‘It’s good that they’ve taken Dora too. All Thetis’s costumes are gone—I asked one of the servants to look. Even Dora’s dye pots must have been packed.’

  Nikko looked at her blankly. His mind and heart felt crammed, as though nothing more could fit inside.

  ‘Don’t you see? They wouldn’t take her costumes if they were going to kill her. Wherever they’ve taken her it’s been with honour, with her own people. She saved the King in front of the highest men in all the kingdom. He can’t kill her—or even treat her with dishonour.’

  ‘He can just send her away. Without me.’ The last two words were almost impossible to say.

  ‘It makes sense—if you’re a king. Nikko, think! Think what you’d have done if you were him! If you’d gone with Thetis you could send word back to Mycenae, tell everyone what she says next. You could even come back and tell people yourself. He can’t risk that! Who knows what Thetis will predict after this? She’s too powerful a symbol. She has to vanish—and she can’t if you are with her, unless they chain you, which would dishonour her and you. Nikko, listen to me.’ Euridice’s voice was the gentlest he’d ever heard it. ‘At least she is safe. And you are still free.’

  ‘Free! I’m no more free than you are!’ It was the first time he had admitted it, even to himself. He held up his wrists. ‘I may not wear chains. But the only reason for my life has gone, and there is nothing I can do about it.’

  Euridice drew back slightly. ‘The only reason—’

  ‘My sister.’ His voice was a whisper now. ‘Ever since she was born, ever since I brought her back from the mountain—that’s been my life. Caring for her, watching out for her—’

  ‘Catching her in the dance.’

  Nikko nodded. ‘And now I’m nothing.’

  Euridice looked at him strangely. ‘You really feel that?’

  Nikko nodded.

  ‘Then you are a fool! You think your life is looking after your sister? Then do it! Or,’ she added softly, ‘find a life of your own.’

  ‘I have no right to a life of my own. Not till Thetis is safe. I have to escape.’

  ‘How?’

  He lowered his voice, in case the guards had drawn closer to listen. ‘The same way I have been planning for you. The only way out without being seen is to climb the cliff behind the palace. They guard the gate and the walls, but an acrobat could scale the palace roof, and then the cliffs.’

  ‘Then what? How will you know where to go? What about the snow-filled roads, the freezing mountain passes you told me about, the soldiers of a dozen kings?’

  He stared. She gave an almost smile. ‘All the reasons you gave me why I should wait, and not try to escape too soon. Lull them into a sense of security, you said.’

  For the first time he felt the tumult in his mind calm down. ‘You think I should do that too?’

  ‘Of course. What’s good for the doe is good for the buck, Nikko. Let them think you’ve accepted the King’s decision.’ She shrugged. ‘Pretend to be tamed, Nikko. Wait, and listen. There’ll be gossip when the guards return. Everyone in the place will be whispering about it.’

  ‘If I am still in the palace.’ He met her eyes. ‘My life is in the hands of the High King. Tomorrow I may be sold as a rower in a galley. I was Thetis’s catcher. I’m an acrobat of sorts, a fair musician. But without Thetis—’ it hurt his pride to admit it’ ‘—I’m not good enough to be a regular performer for the High King.’

  ‘Then work out a new act! With me!’

  He stared at her. ‘With you?’

  ‘Why not? The King has lost his Butterfly. So we’ll give him something to replace her. An act that will drive all thoughts of Thetis from the court. You and me, on a live horse this time. No one will ever have seen anything like it!’

  ‘No one can be as great as Thetis!’

  ‘Is that her brother talking? Or the coward who cannot face a life alone?’

  ‘I am no coward.’

  ‘Then dance. Perform with me.’

  He stared at her. ‘Why do you care?’

  She flushed. ‘Because you saved me. I owe you that.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘Because you are the only friend I have. Is that enough?’

  He felt a smile begin to creep across his face. ‘Even though I’m not a horse?’

  ‘You would be more handsome with four legs and a tail. Nikko, we can do it! You saw how they cheered me tonight.’ Euridice’s face was alive and urgent. ‘Think what we could create together. Perhaps we’ll never be as great as Thetis. But we’ll still be more wonderful than anything any other performer can give them. Especially,’ she added softly, ‘on a horse.’

  ‘They’ll never give you a live horse.’

  ‘Perhaps they will, after my act yesterday. You’ll have to convince the Chamberlain you don’t plan to escape, and that I can’t escape either. Not if we perform down in the courtyard, in front of the palace terrace, with guards along the street, and the Lion Gate closed.’ The longing in her voice seemed to scorch the room. ‘We will practise on the wooden horse—with guards watching, so they know there is no trickery involved. Then in two, no, three days’ time, the afternoon feast before the visitors leave—we will give them a show that no man living will ever forget.’

  They have seen that today, thought Nikko. But he didn’t say it.

  ‘I’ll try,’ he
said instead. Euridice’s words had warmed him. He’d thought his heart had been too cold to feel. Suddenly his brain seemed to come alive as well. And what Euridice said made sense. He needed to live. To stay at the palace, to learn where Thetis had been taken. And then I’ll escape, he thought. But not like a thief in the night, clambering up a cliff. I’ll have time to plan, to steal a horse perhaps…

  Euridice smiled at him. ‘One day,’ she said, strangely echoing his thoughts, ‘we’ll both escape.’ A thought seemed to strike her. ‘Nikko, Thetis said there’ll be another earthquake, that the House of the Lion will fall.’

  She looked at him urgently. ‘Could she be right? She foresaw the tremor yesterday. Could she be right again?’

  ‘Yes.’ He said it without thinking, with no need at all to consider. Thetis watched. And when she spoke—back in the days when she did speak—it had always been the truth.

  ‘Then another earthquake is coming soon. A bigger one. A time of chaos maybe. A time when we can both escape. Think of that. Plan for that!’

  ‘A time when we both may die too.’ Like Orkestres, under the stones.

  He stood up. It was time to grieve. Not for Thetis—he refused to grieve for her. She was safe. She had to be safe! But for the man who had been his father, and much more.

  Euridice snorted. ‘We don’t have to plan for being dead. Death takes care of itself. But I need a horse, and for that we need to please the King. When he has let me ride once he may let me ride again…and again and again until I can ride my way to freedom. And then,’ she smiled at him in the flickering light of the oil lights, ‘I will complete my destiny. And you can find your sister.’

  CHAPTER 33