Shadows on the Aegean

by Suzanne Frank

  The Scholomance was reserved for Aztlan’s brightest clansmen and -women. Intent on exploring every aspect of life in the mind and body, the Scholomance had created the astronomical pavement of the Daedaledion in Knossos and collected an extensive menagerie on Aztlan Island. No clan distinctions existed within the Scholomance; all of its adepts became Clan of the Spiral.

  Education, like most things in Aztlan, was a dance. This dance led through the labyrinth of the mind. One set of steps formed by rote and ritual complemented another set composed of imagination and experimentation. The same steps executed from differing angles produced two utterly different dances. Agility, suppleness, strength of body and mind were required with both. This versatility and elegance of thought characterized the mind of a Scholomancer.

  Phoebus and Niko had met in the Scholomance when they were five summers old. From the first they had been close. Phoebus, aware of his destiny even then, had been suffering over the loss—the murder—of his mother and the separation from his clan sister, Irmentis. Niko had been painfully shy. His natural curiosity was winning out against the protective shield he’d worn for his earliest years against his instinctive realization that he was not like the other clan children.

  The Rising Golden flattened himself against the wall as a group of children raced past, screaming and pushing. The walkways were narrow and open. A fall to the ground would be fatal, yet boys Eumelos’ age ran on, oblivious of the danger. Older scholars sat along the wall, drank wine, and argued. A Scholomancer would debate any topic at any time; the purpose was to learn how to turn a problem around and find the solution hidden within.

  Phoebus stepped into the darkened room of his mentor. The old man was nowhere about, so Phoebus went to the painting of a door, pressed the hidden catches behind a panel in the correct pattern, and waited as it opened slowly. Spiralmaster was in his lab.

  The smells of al-khem wafted up the stairs, burning Phoebus’ eyes and throat. He walked carefully in the near darkness. The steps were worn smooth and he had fallen before, his leather sandals sliding out from him. Landing in an undignified heap at Imhotep’s door had been a humiliating way to start the day. Phoebus held on to the railing.

  Unlike the wide, square staircases of the outer rooms, this one coiled around in on itself. True to his title, Spiralmaster was a master of every tool, technique, skill, and discipline ever pursued at the Scholomance. His skills were as intercoiled, complex, and mysterious as the inside of a shell.

  Phoebus paused outside the door, straightening his attire. Spiralmaster was also fastidious.

  “Enter, Rising One!” Spiralmaster called. “How I loathe when you are indecisive! There is work to do!”

  Phoebus pushed open the door, and the Spiralmaster turned to him. Though he labored in the service of Hreesos and Aztlan, the Spiralmaster had been born Egyptian. Myth said that his ancestor, the first great Imhotep, had been birthed in a tumultuous time for Aztlan. He’d stolen Aztlan’s secrets of al-khem and used them to wheedle his way into the court of Pharaoh Khufu.

  Forever after, Imhotep I’s pyramids were called Egyptian. Imhotep had stayed, reared a family full of more Imhoteps. The generations of magi had alternated between serving the courts of Egypt and the courts of Aztlan. The Spiralmaster stayed here, his oldest son in Egypt, and another in Hattai. Aztlan’s Imhotep and his eldest son hated each other.

  Spiralmaster was wizened, but still very, very tall. Despite the many years working in this laboratory in the bowels of the Scholomance, his skin was ruddy and dark. His head was shaved, elaborate tattoos carefully drawn on his scalp and down his back. His enormous earlobes were weighted with earrings that shot white and blue fire from unknown, unfaceted stones. Lengths of brilliantly patterned cloth wrapped over his narrowed shoulders and around his waist, their fringed edges brushing his sandals.

  Recently, Phoebus thought, he looked even thinner.

  The seal of the Clan of the Spiral, of which he was chieftain, hung against his wrinkled chest. Other seals, vials, and papyri scrolls dangled from a cord around his scrawny waist.

  Phoebus greeted him respectfully. No one knew the age of the Spiralmaster, but the animation in his eyes made him seem the compatriot of every young dreamer who walked through the door. Imhotep lurched as he turned, and Phoebus watched as a vial fell to the ground and shattered. The Spiralmaster ignored it.

  Fastidious Spiralmaster leaned against a broad table, his shoulder apparently twisted, his feet surrounded by shards of glass. Phoebus kept his features carefully blank.

  “Are you practiced?”

  “Aye, master.”

  “You know that I cannot teach you more. Either it is inherent knowledge at this point or you are truly not fit to rule.”

  Phoebus’ felt his cheeks redden. “I am prepared.”

  “Do you know the formulas?”

  Phoebus gaze dropped. One misstep and he would die. “I am prepared,” he repeated.

  Spiralmaster peered into Phoebus’ eyes. The older man turned away. “Then let us discuss what happens after the ritual.”

  “Just so,” Phoebus said, taking position next to one of the long tables in the room. “Tell me, what does happen?”

  Spiralmaster turned away, catching himself abruptly before he fell on the shattered vial. His eyes glittered. “You have plans for a new city?”

  It was a leading question, one the Council was certain to ask. Phoebus felt a tingle of anticipation. This city was his best chance to make a mark, a lasting mark, on Aztlan. “Aye. Between Mount Apollo and Echo. It is a perfect natural port. Easier for foreigners to sail there than to enter the lagoon.”

  Spiralmaster shook his head in agreement.

  “Chieftain Atenis is dealing with the decoration of the city,” Phoebus continued. “I’ve spoken to Talos and he assures me that the new metal he is working on will resist corrosion.”

  Spiralmaster motioned for him to continue.

  “Well, other than receiving approval from the Council on moving clan families there, it is done.”

  Spiralmaster cracked his knuckles, a sure sign of pondering. “My old brain is tired, boy. Tell me again, why do you need this?”

  Phoebus hid his smile. Spiralmaster’s brain was sharper than any dozen young Scholomancers, but this was an easy way for Phoebus to practice what he was going to say to the Council. “In building Prostatevo, we put the best the empire has to offer in one place. No longer will chieftains have to travel to all ten clans; instead they can trade whatever they need in one centralized location.”

  Pacing, Phoebus elaborated. “Each section of the city will be dedicated to one clan. Within that section members of that clan will live and work, communicating with the clan’s seat in order to arrange shipping routes.”

  “It is a radical idea. We haven’t had people live apart from their whole clan in generations of summers,” Spiralmaster said, his delivery obviously mocking Chieftain Nekros.

  “Visitors to our empire will see the effectiveness of Aztlantu rule: the uniformly built city, the skill of the artisans and workers, a modern port, and a beautiful temple to Kela. All this will symbolize and epitomize the might of Aztlan.”

  “What about Apis?”

  Phoebus turned. “There is no Nostril of the Bull on which to build. Those who seek to pay homage to Apis can travel easily by boat to the Pyramid of Days on Mount Stronghyle or they can go overland to Mount Apollo.”

  Spiralmaster sat in silence, and Phoebus waited. “You didn’t answer the question about the radical—”

  “Aye!” Phoebus sighed deeply. “It is a new reign, Council members. I am Hreesos. Prostatevo will bring greater prosperity to our empire. It shall be done.”

  Spiralmaster chuckled. “Nekros won’t like you for that—he’s losing a brother after all—but he will respect you.”

  Phoebus approached the table where Spiralmaster had been working. “What are you doing?”

  “It’s the elixir.”

  “Jus—”
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  “Before you say anything, boy, I want you to know how close we are.”

  Phoebus looked at the vials and bottles of dried animal and vegetable matter. “It cannot be done,” he said.

  Spiralmaster growled low in Egyptian and pulled Phoebus behind him. They walked to the darkest corner of the room, and Spiralmaster proudly turned back a curtain.

  A pig lay on its side, breathing shallowly. Its eyes were glazed, but it was alive.

  Phoebus felt a chill run through him. “You did it?”

  “Aye. The broken child’s blood beats inside the pig’s body.”

  Sunset before yesterday, a child had fallen from the cliff. His neck had snapped, but a low ledge had prevented his body from being dashed on the rocks. While his blood still flowed, Spiralmaster had attempted to transfer it into the body of a pig. The two essences were the closest, he felt. The elixir would bond them through al-khem, a pig with the blood of a human.

  It was obscene. It was fascinating.

  “Has it moved? Can it?” Phoebus asked.

  “Now that we know we can move the blood of a child into a pig, I want to know if the reverse is also true,” Spiralmaster said.

  “Is the pig going to live, actually be able to eat and rejoin his herd?”

  Spiralmaster prodded the pig with a long, trembling finger. The pig grunted but did not move. “If blood can be shared from one creature to another, then life can indefinitely be sustained. Life is in the blood.”

  “My master,” Phoebus said, “are you saying you could share blood from man to man?”

  Spiralmaster fixed his dark gaze on Phoebus. “If we can give fresh, live blood to a dying, nay, even a dead creature, then we can revive it.”

  “You think to revive the dead with living blood?” Spiralmaster ignored him, and Phoebus shuddered, offering a prayer to Kela for protection.

  “Spiralmaster! Spiralmaster!” The cry was fear filled and impatient. Phoebus helped the older man into the other room. A scribe, his eyes wide, sweat streaking down his cheeks, quickly greeted them both. “Master, you must come. A great illness has overtaken my bloodfather!”

  Laboriously they climbed into traveling chairs; Phoebus dared not leave Spiralmaster’s side—at times the mage could barely walk. They were carried through the maze of rooms in the palace, down the hill, and across the bridge into the city of Daphne. The scribe, a budding Scholomancer, was the son of an Aztlantu merchant. The villa was huge, surrounded by a vineyard flowing down the terraced hillside to the sea.

  Women clustered around the central fireplace, watching the man lying in richly dyed linens. None of them would step close to the sickbed. “When did this happen?” Spiralmaster asked.

  “He has not been himself these past days,” said an older woman Phoebus guessed was the merchant’s wife. “He’s been unable to eat, unable to sleep. He insisted on going to the harbor, and he collapsed on the pier yesterday. He has been like this ever since.”

  Phoebus knelt, touching the man’s forehead. No fever, no sweat. “Any sign of wounds or bites?” Spiralmaster asked.

  “Nothing, my master,” the woman said. “We have bathed him and oiled him.”

  They are ready for him to die, Phoebus thought.

  The woman continued speaking. “He doesn’t speak, just laughs and stares.” The patient was motionless, his gaze unfocused as he stared up at the painted ceiling. As they watched, his throat moved convulsively, fighting for air.

  “Check his esophagus,” Spiralmaster commanded.

  Phoebus knelt, and opened the man’s mouth, turning his head away at the patient’sputrid breath. In a frenzy of motion, the patient shuddered, kicking blindly, pushing Phoebus away and laughing … a maniacal, eerie sound. Spiralmaster pulled Phoebus back.

  “What did the Kela-Tenata say?” Phoebus asked.

  “She gave him an infusion of moonstone and asked us the same questions you ask. My masters, what is wrong?”

  “Why isn’t she here?” Phoebus asked Spiralmaster in an undertone. This man was obviously dying, he’d had his lustral bath to ensure his entry to the Isles of the Blessed, yet his healer had left before doing everything possible?

  “She said there was much illness in the city today. Even while here, three messages came for her,” the merchant’s wife said.

  Phoebus and the Spiralmaster requested privacy. “Have you seen this before, master?” Phoebus said, expecting the answer to be nay.

  “Aye.”

  “What? When?”

  Spiralmaster staggered to a carved stone chair, leaning against it as though he couldn’t bend properly to sit. “Something is affecting Hreesos ’ cabinet members.”

  Phoebus’ skin prickled.

  “They are dying like flowers. One day full of health and drooping the next day. Dead on the third.” Spiralmaster gestured to the prone figure. “Most of them succumb like this, drowning in their own lungs, or starving because they cannot swallow.”

  As if on cue, the man began to choke, his face purpling, his eyes pleading. Before they could call his family or medicate him, he was gone. “Kalo taxidi,” Spiralmaster said, closing the man’s staring eyes. “Summon his women to prepare the kollyva.”

  Phoebus, shaken by the suddenness of the man’s demise, stepped into the next room. “Your master requires his meal, he has begun his journey,” he said carefully.

  The women began to cry. For the next nine nights they would prepare his favorite foods, so that as he journeyed through to the next world he would not hunger. It was the final honor his family gave him.

  Phoebus turned to the window, the weak sunlight falling on the street outside, two children playing noisily on the ground. The Clan Olimpi had a far different, a far more explicit final honor.

  The Rising Golden shuddered.

  CHAPTER 4

  CAPHTOR

  THE MOON WAS WANING, the landscape misted with silver. Firelight flickered over the assembled women and the naked body of the young bride. Painted wedding designs now covered most of her body, transforming her firm young flesh into the mysterious and divine. Mystic symbols of crescents, horns, sacral knots, and birds were woven together with labyrinthine patterns.

  Sibylla felt the night air on her bare breasts, her hair against her exposed back. With a prayer to Kela she threw the herbs into the fire, their sweetness and tang carried on sparks into the heavens. Tonight was the night of Kela’s blood. The night of purification. Tomorrow was the start of everything new.

  For the bride it would be entering into her husband’s bed, for others it would be the last week before greeting Kela. The seasons were changing. Already the wind was warmer, the sun shone longer. A new beginning could be seen everywhere in the land.

  She felt the fire’s warmth on her skin, heating her front, making her back feel colder. Tonight, for some reason, she felt unfamiliar with herself. Her body seemed excruciatingly sensitive—she felt every frail hair on her body, every spot of skin. She burned for something, an indefinable lust. Sibylla rubbed her face. Tonight was about joy and ecstasy, not for thought and reason.

  Carefully she chewed a laurel leaf, throwing her head back as she felt the night embrace her. She turned her back to the fire, knowing her body was limned with light. Raising her voice, she began to sing, moving her body slowly, praising Kela’s wisdom for forming woman. The steps that had once come thoughtlessly seemed slow and awkward tonight, and her mind felt uneasy within itself. I’m definitely going to take dance lessons next chance I get, she heard her mind say.

  Others joined in. Naked women: old, young, pregnant, withered. With wine in their veins and joy in their souls they sought a spiritual freedom in dance. More women came from the shadows, more voices joined, each singing her own song, the resulting dissonance a dimension of beauty unquestioned and accepted.

  Slowly they moved around the fire, passing the wineskin, reveling in the sensations. The dance grew faster, moving in a tighter circle, their fluid movements becoming one. Sibylla felt an a
rm around her waist and gripped the shoulders of the woman next to her as they moved in a flurry of sweat and scent, celebrating the mystery of themselves.

  Closest to the fire the young bride danced alone, learning her body, teaching herself to recognize the sensuality within her. Her elders watched as she practiced a seduction of her new husband. Amid laughter and suggestive comments, the matrons demonstrated alluring looks and sensuous gestures. Sibylla laughed, thriving on the feeling of community, the sense of belonging. Yet she was confused. She had danced like this almost every moon of her life. Why did it feel so sacred tonight? Why did it seem so rare?

  The circle grew slower as the bride’s dancing grew more frenzied. As she was approaching completion, her mother and grandmother stepped forward, soothing her, stopping her. Now she would have no fear of marriage, no terror of what the night would bring. Indeed, it would be a feat to keep her from rushing the young groom! She had learned how to conjure passion, a sacred gift.

  The hills were darkly gray and the moon small when the group fell asleep on the ground. Sibylla huddled beside the dying fire, staring up at the mass of stars, aching. Something significant and internal was missing. She hugged herself in the night, wondering for what or whom she grieved.

  “Mistress?”

  An old woman stood above her. Age had not been kind or gracious to her body or face, but her eyes were soft in the predawn darkness. “You are lost,” the woman said, awkwardly sitting down beside Sibylla. Her words touched the oracle, and Sibylla began to weep. Old arms wrapped a cloak around her and pulled her close, rocking her gently, speaking nonsensical words of comfort. Sibylla cried all the harder. She hadn’t felt the nurturing love of another woman in so long. It was almost like having Mimi again, her mind said. Before Sibylla could ask who Mimi was, a flood of sorrow submerged her and she grieved in a grandmother’s arms.