Theta

by Lizzy Ford

  “If you forgot it, or were forced to forget it, do you really want to remember it?”

  I was quiet, pensive. It was very unlike me to want to share my internal angst with anyone, but if I ever chose to do so, I could think of no one capable of understanding better than Menelaus.

  “I am … conflicted,” I said finally. “About what I was, what I am, and what I should become. The beast is my good side, and I fear my human side. I know what that part of me is capable of. Once, four thousand years ago, I needed to be the military commander and the ruthless ruler. Those traits were prized in that era. I do not need that side of me now, but it feels dominant.”

  “And you think learning your name will resolve this conflict you feel?” Menelaus frowned.

  “I hope learning my name will show me the path I was meant to be on before I learned all I know now.”

  “You want to go back to the beginning.”

  “I want to understand my beginning and therefore, hopefully myself.”

  “Your time came before mine by a millennia, maybe longer.” He appeared thoughtful. “I do not possess this plaque you insist you must find. If a goddess sent you for that specific purpose, it’s likely it never existed at all.”

  “I now believe I was meant to find you.”

  “Perhaps.” He smiled. “Many of the names I have recorded have not been spoken of in thousands of years. Do you really wish to know?”

  “I do.”

  “Is it not enough to learn you are not human at all?” Menelaus pressed, his eyes flashing from dark brown to light and back to dark. “Is there not freedom in being able to choose the name you wish, and to become the man you want to be, instead of being confined by the past?”

  “Do you know my name and bait me, or is this a philosophical question only?” I asked, growing agitated with his stalling.

  “Neither. I wish only to prepare you in case I don’t have the information you seek.”

  “I will deal with this possibility if it should arrive,” I replied.

  “My records are in the trunk in my room.” He glanced towards the doorway to his bedroom and lifted his eyebrows.

  I shot up and crossed the living area, entering his room. “Did you and Artemis plot this meeting between us?” I called as I moved.

  “Plot? No. She said she was sending someone to visit me, and that I should not help you, unless you seemed worthy.”

  “She did not tell me this was a test.”

  “It would be less like a test, if you knew,” he pointed out.

  “Has she forgiven you then for Troy, since you helped sack the city of her brother?” I snapped.

  “No. And neither has Apollo.” Menelaus’ laugh was deep and loud and hard enough to shake his frail body.

  Spotting the trunk, I knelt and opened it. It contained computer equipment and a box containing several thumb drives.

  “Bring all the drives,” he called.

  “How do you have a laptop when you have no electricity?” I asked.

  “There’s a generator in my closet. Turn it on, after you bring me my computer.”

  I placed his laptop beside him, along with the thumb drives, then went to the closet. The generator whirred to life with the touch of a button, and I returned to the living room. Restless, I couldn’t sit still when I was this close to knowing the truth about who I was. I paced behind the couch as his slow laptop came to life. Menelaus plugged in one thumb drive, searched its contents, ejected it and inserted another.

  He went through five while I paced.

  “If you cannot be still, fetch the pouch from the trunk,” he said.

  I returned to his room and pulled a heavy pouch made of leather the size of a large notebook out of the trunk. I sat across from him.

  “What is this?” I asked and placed it on the cushion beside him.

  “It’s a plaque. Not yours,” he added quickly. “I took it from my brother’s tomb.”

  “Where is your brother?”

  “He was placed on Apollo’s temple in Attica for a thousand years before Apollo moved his primary temple to Rome, then Paris then London. Last I heard, Agamemnon was on his temple in New York.”

  My thoughts went to the temple guardians who had been decimated when the gods declared war on the human world, five years before. I hoped to free those stone grotesques that were left in DC and couldn’t help wondering how many of my fellow Bloodline members had been killed by those they protected.

  “You were born exactly four thousand years ago, or within a centuries or two of that number?” Menelaus asked, peering at me over the top of his laptop.

  “I would say at least four thousand,” I replied.

  He shook his head. “My records end thirty eight hundred years ago.” He twisted his laptop to show me the chart he had created listing the names and dates of Bloodline members.

  My heart toppled to my feet. Until that moment, I didn’t realize how much I wanted him to have the answer.

  “Artemis might remember,” he said. “Have you not asked her?”

  “To ask a favor of a god or goddess is to incur a debt I do not want.”

  “For every one they give, they take ten back.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You’re a free man.”

  I glanced up.

  “Choose your own name,” Menelaus said with a smile. “Who do you want to be?”

  I didn’t know. “Maybe it shouldn’t matter.”

  “A name is just a name. I would have liked to replace mine with another after the Trojan Wars.” He stretched for the plaque.

  I handed it to him.

  Menelaus removed it from its protective covering with old, gnarled hands and held it up. I had not seen this ancient writing in four millennia.

  Agamemnon, who sacked the city of Troy and died a protector of Apollo

  “When my brother turned to stone, Apollo made him sit before this plaque for a hundred years before moving him to a temple. Our Bloodline has been sworn to Apollo since that time,” Menelaus said. His features softened as he gazed at the chiseled, stone plaque. His eyes had changed again to light brown. “We stood watch over Pythia, Attica and every other sacred city of Apollo. We guarded his temples, his bastards, his cities and treasures. For a thousand years, our Bloodline married his Oracles at his direction. He sought the successor to his first Oracle of Pythia, the strongest Oracle in history, who opened the gate that allowed the gods and goddesses to enter our world.”

  I tilted my head, my instincts tingling.

  “He probably thought he could outsmart the Fates and breed an Oracle sworn only to him, as a member of the Bloodline. The gods are mad with their need for power,” Menelaus said. “It never happened in all the time I watched.”

  “The Bloodline protected Oracles.”

  “Oracles are the domain of Apollo, and we are their protectors. We protected everything in his domain, until Greece united and wars among gods and clans no longer existed. The Oracles became revered and treasured four centuries ago. At that point, our protection wasn’t needed.”

  I sat back, dwelling on this news. The Bloodline was born to rule and to protect. The more I thought, the less it seemed like a coincidence that Alessandra had chosen me, twelve years ago. Did some part of her know I was destined to protect her?

  The weight of my confusion was starting to lift. I was bound by the blood of my being to protect her. I was her guardian, not a butcher.

  Of all I’d been told, the one fact I couldn’t quite move past was the idea I was a true monster. Never, during the time I had known what I was, did I believe it possible I had never been fully human to start off with.

  “Artemis knew I wouldn’t find what she claimed I would,” I said, struggling with what to think of my journey. My anger towards her softened. She had answered the question I needed answered about who I was, and it had nothing to do with my name. “She knew why I had to be here.”

  In fact, I no longer cared what anyone called me.
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br />   “To break the curses placed upon us all by Apollo,” Menelaus said with a nod.

  “What?” I asked.

  “She sent you here to learn what you have to do to free our Bloodline.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Have you never asked yourself why he is included in the oath you take, before you turn to stone?” Menelaus asked.

  “I took no such oath. I became stone the evening I was told I had a healthy son,” I replied.

  “It’s a trick of the gods. After the first curse of Apollo, no one in the Bloodline was willing to volunteer, because no one wanted to be turned to stone for all eternity. The original pact called for us to choose to serve the gods as guardians, after we had born heirs. When no one would volunteer, the gods changed the terms and created a secret invocation that tricked the Bloodline members into fulfilling their oaths. They worked through their priests and priestesses to ensure the members of the Bloodline always spoke the invocation, even if it were broken up over the course of a lifetime,” Menelaus said.

  “I know this. I warned the current member of the Bloodline on the throne not to speak. But I never knew the exact words.”

  “Until the debt to Apollo is repaid, I pledge myself to stone,” he said.

  In that moment, I felt more disgust and loathing for the gods and goddesses than I ever had.

  “You are here, instead of stone. Apollo chose you. Out of the thousands of members of the Bloodline, you were selected to serve him and to repay the debt our kind owe him.”

  I had never considered the idea Alessandra was able to animate me only because the patron god of Oracles – who was also the patron god of my Bloodline – wished for it to be so. We were destined to meet, destined to bond, destined to fight beside one another in the war that was coming.

  “Tell me,” Menelaus said. “What service could Apollo possibly need of you?”

  “Protecting Alessandra,” I whispered. “The Oracle of Delphi who awoke me. She’s the strongest Oracle since the first, ten thousand years ago. She bears the sign of the double omega.”

  Menelaus leaned forward, eyes keen. “From the prophecy. The gods have long anticipated the fulfillment of this prophecy.”

  “I have only heard pieces of it. The second coming of a great Oracle, the double omega, and the end of the worlds,” I said.

  “The prophecy foretells a great war that will determine the fates of all worlds, not just ours,” Menelaus explained. “It does not specify that this war occurs between humanity and the gods. It does specify a great battle the last of the Oracles must fight, and whether or not she wins will determine what happens to all of existence.”

  I shifted in my seat. The hunch I’d been slowly cultivating over the course of the past week with Menelaus was all but proven by this answer. He knew too many details about the Bloodline, the forgotten past, and the prophecy for him to be one of my successors. I wasn’t dealing solely with a member of the Bloodline.

  “Why do you hesitate to protect her?” Menelaus asked, further solidifying my instinct.

  Whether it was a distant relative or an earthbound god asking, I decided to answer truthfully. “I fear myself around her. I fear what I am capable of and that I will hurt her because of who and what I am.”

  “We are guardians and kings. We are also beasts. Who better to protect her from yourself than you?” he challenged.

  “Is it that easy?”

  “It never is when a beautiful woman is involved. I destroyed the greatest city in antiquity over a beautiful woman.”

  With a half-smile, I gazed at the plaque. It contained nothing I expected to find and hinted at everything I needed to know. My thoughts were on Alessandra and also on Phoibe. “If I can’t repay this debt, what will happen if a member of the Bloodline never says the invocation at all?”

  “I imagine he would never turn to stone and never die.”

  “Would he become a monster?’

  “It has never happened that one of our kind was not turned into his natural form, or failed to speak the invocation. Several hundred years ago, a member of the Bloodline morphed into his beast form after a sea storm destroyed his ship and left him wounded and stranded in the ocean. In one instance, when the Bloodline bearer was a woman, she transformed when her life and the life of her young child was in danger. It’s possible trauma can cause the transformation for the first time. Our true nature is dormant but instinctive, even if we transform once and turn to stone the next moment.”

  From what I knew of the Silent Queen, who had not spoken since I warned her of the curse twelve years ago, she had lived a fairly sheltered life, more so after Theodocia became her guardian. I doubted Phoibe experienced the kind of trauma that might trigger a sudden transformation into a beast, and I hoped to talk to her before anything remotely traumatic had a chance to happen to her.

  With another glance at the plaque, I rose. I had answers to questions I never thought I’d understand, and could no longer fight the compulsion to return to DC. Fulfilling the debt to Apollo would save Alessandra and free the Bloodline from stone. Too many lives depended upon me for me not to find a way to mesh the two sides of me, and I dared not spend any more time here than I had already.

  “Are you well enough to care for yourself?” I asked the ancient king starting to doze on the couch.

  His eyes opened. “I have been here for thirty five hundred years. I’m not going anywhere,” Menelaus responded. His eyes closed again, and he leaned his head back.

  With a glance at his dogs, I hesitated. The urge to return to DC was strong, but the insistent instinct not to leave Menelaus remained. Was it because I suspected he had channeled a god whose favor and knowledge I might need? Out of loyalty to the only family member I had ever met?

  Or … the shrewd side of me that cared nothing for family and loyalty but understood how valuable Menelaus could be on my side of the war that was coming.

  “Come with me,” I said.

  He lifted his head and gazed at me. “I cannot walk.”

  “We’ll travel ten times the distance by night as we could walking by day.”

  “Won’t I slow your progress?”

  “Come with me, Menelaus. An Oracle, and a member of our Bloodline, are both in danger.”

  “The Silent Queen,” he said. “I’ve seen her on the television.”

  “You can help me break the curse and free our family.”

  This caught his attention, and he studied me intently for a long minute. “I would like that, but I am not the Spartan king I once was.”

  “I know what blood runs through our veins. You are every bit the Spartan king you once were, with the wisdom of a sage,” I replied. “One more journey. It’s all I ask. This time, we won’t be cursed for bringing down the walls of the world’s greatest city, and the beautiful woman within those walls won’t end up in someone else’s arms.”

  He laughed. “You make a convincing case.” Shifting into a sitting position, he nodded slowly. “If you wish me to come, we cannot leave before tonight. The man who brings me bread will be by later today. I will send my boys with him.”

  My belief Menelaus had not exhausted his usefulness trumped my desire to leave immediately. Aside from the opportunist in me that knew what Menelaus brought to the table, I enjoyed his presence. He was the only other person like me in the world, and that meant something to the same part of me that crossed the ocean to find my name.

  “Will you pick the best of the herbs from the garden? I will send them with the boys,” Menelaus requested.

  With a nod, I left the cottage on the shallow cliffs and circled the cottage. The sea breeze ruffled my hair and the herbs in the elevated garden beds. I plucked up a basket and began to collect herbs as requested.

  “If you have any more secrets, Artemis, I’d appreciate you telling me without sending me so far away,” I said as I worked.

  My sense of urgency was growing. Being half beast gave me stamina, agility and strength far beyon
d that of a normal human, but patience was a learned trait that took great effort. The return trip would pass much faster, now that I had experienced the journey here and knew how to travel efficiently.

  I’m coming, Alessandra. I thought. And I’m pretty sure I’m bringing Apollo with me.

  Chapter Eight: Silent Queen

  “Do you want him muzzled?” Herakles asked.

  I glanced up from the report in my hands. I could count on one hand the days I’d received good news since leaving the city. Today was one of those rare days. Over the past two weeks, my army had shifted from scraping by to being able to store food in preparation for a long campaign. In a month, we’d have the stockpile of food we needed to survive a winter at war.

  Today was a good day.

  I nodded once.

  Herakles smiled, as he did each time I requested the presence of Kyros-Paeon but refused to allow the god to speak. As little as I wanted to admit it, the physician to the gods was one of the reasons my army had turned a corner. Illnesses and injuries had disappeared. Everyone who should have been actively engaged in daily activities, or preparing for our future, was capable of performing his or her duties. We had reached a point no army in history ever had: our staffing was at one hundred percent.

  Even so, I would never trust a parasite like Paeon. He traveled with me whenever I left camp, not to help me if injured, but to prevent him from sweet-talking any more guards into allowing him extra privileges he didn’t deserve. People were grateful to him, which I reluctantly understood. But they didn’t know what I did about the gods. Keeping him at my side was my way of protecting my people from their kind hearts.

  I returned the lengthy report to the low-ranking soldier standing patiently beside me. My armies were in good shape, compared to where we’d been upon arriving here. It was as much a testament to Kyros-Paeon as it was to Herakles, who worked tirelessly to ensure the people were taken care of, while I mapped out our strategy for the next six months.

  Herakles led Kyros-Paeon into the motor pool. I didn’t miss how others greeted the parasitic, with smiles and handshakes and on occasion, hugs. While gagged, he responded with eyes that glowed with happiness. He was comfortable here, and he had managed to garner more respect – and sweets, which were rare – in his short time here than I had since leaving the city.