In the Moon of Asterion

by Rebecca Lochlann

  Chrysaleon felt as worn as if he’d run a grueling footrace only to finish last. “I wish Harpalycus still lived. I would skin him, piece by piece, and revel in his screams. I feel him laughing at me from the shadowlands. He murdered my father and somehow, managed to escape my vengeance.”

  Alexiare nodded. “Ah.”

  “I cannot believe the king is gone.”

  “It’s a testament to his strength that he forestalled the poison as long as he did.”

  Chrysaleon paced, repeatedly fisting his hands as he thought of the tortures he would like to inflict on the dead prince of Tiryns.

  “Is that all?” Alexiare frowned as he watched Chrysaleon stalk. “I thought you resigned to your father’s death. Does something else trouble you? Perhaps I could help.” He hobbled to the table, poured a cup of mead, and handed it over.

  Chrysaleon leveled a speculative stare at his slave as he accepted the drink. “You lived on that god-cursed island. You’ve made it clear how much you admire them. Where do your loyalties lie?”

  Alexiare bowed stiffly; that and his sharp exhale betrayed his annoyance. “Your father trusted me more than his own council. Have I not kept your secrets?”

  Releasing an explosive sigh, Chrysaleon sank into the carved olive wood chair next to the hearth fire and swallowed the mead in one gulp. “Then tell me, old man. What does a king do, when he makes a vow he cannot keep?”

  “What is the nature of this vow?”

  “The oldest one— the fate of all Crete’s consorts. I knelt before them and swore I would die for the land. The people trust me. If I muster my armies and invade, I’ll have to kill Aridela. If I don’t, neither she nor her people will stop until a dagger finds my heart.”

  Alexiare showed no sign of surprise, other than the slight lift of one brow. “My lord, you can either die in the sacrifice, or refuse and declare war against your wife.”

  Chrysaleon laughed cynically. “This oath hangs over me like a blood curse.” He rose and paced again, corner to corner. “The Cretans believe the bull-king becomes joined to Athene and achieves everlasting paradise. His spirit is reborn in the new crops. But I have no wish to enter paradise yet or return as a stalk of barley. Why did I agree to this? Was it lust, as Menoetius and my father claim? The day I watched her leap that bull, I think I would have agreed to anything. I didn’t consider the future. I never pondered how quickly the months would pass. Harpalycus and the cursed Destruction have stolen much from me….”

  Throwing himself into the chair, Chrysaleon raked through his beard and snarled his resentment. “Fuck.”

  Alexiare picked up another cup, but instead of pouring a drink, he merely transferred it from one hand to the other. “King-sacrifice is a most holy custom, my lord, more ancient than you know. The land’s fortune centers around the death and rebirth of the year-god. Until the earthshakings, fires, floods, and frost, Kaphtor was blessed in every circumstance. They believed this abundance sprang from their unfailing performance of the sacrifice. Once, in fact, it was believed necessary to conduct it twice a year, at each solstice.” He paused, his shoulders slumping, and sighed. “Man’s nature strives for power and leadership, but in these lands, becoming the most powerful man also means certain youthful death. Of course you want to change this tradition, my lord. For you, this is not the way things should be.”

  Chrysaleon’s hands cupped the boar’s heads carved into the chair’s armrests. His fingertips traced their sharp tusks. “Someone must have given me one of those potions they’re so fond of there. What else could explain how swiftly and easily she enslaved me?” Disgust wormed like serpent venom through his veins. “Those slaves at the bullring could have put anything in the wine I drank that day.”

  “I should have tried harder to prevent you from getting caught up in their ways. You did promise me you wouldn’t… but I should have known that for you, the challenge would be irresistible.”

  Chrysaleon glared at him.

  “Forgive me, my lord.” Alexiare lifted his hands in a placating manner. “Though the rituals and beliefs of our two lands seem similar, they are not. Here, the Lady is subservient to Hippos Poseidon and his young brother, Zeus. Not so on Crete. There she rules supreme. She has no husband, and males give their lives in service to her.”

  Alexiare’s eyes began to water. He coughed in severe, hoarse expulsions. Without asking permission, he poured mead into the cup he held and drank deeply. It helped only a little, but he wiped away what spilled into his beard and rasped on. “You were born to rule by might over a land of warriors and horsemen. Dying in a dark labyrinth, unarmed and helpless, can never be your moera. The men of Kaphtor seek out this fate. They see it as the greatest glory they can ever achieve. But not you, my lord, no. This is not the right end for you.”

  “It’s more than that.” Chrysaleon held Alexiare’s gaze. “When I sailed to Crete, I had no premonition of my father’s death. The citadel was secure. Now all he won depends on me, for Idómeneus was right about Gelanor. If I bow to my fate, the Kindred Kings will lay siege. They’ll steal my throne in half a year. Gelanor doesn’t understand the lengths men will go to win what they want.”

  “His is a peaceful nature. Prince Gelanor is more suited to composing songs and breeding horses than making war.”

  Restless frustration nagged Chrysaleon back to his feet. He picked up the sword he’d used in Crete’s labyrinth and frowned at the hilt, with its carved ibex and stylistically curved horns. “Aridela was pregnant when I found her in the Araden mountains.”

  “She was?”

  He nodded. “She ended its life somehow. Women’s mysteries.” He stabbed the point of the sword into the tabletop. “Harpalycus forced her, and she would not bear what could have been his.”

  “My lord.” Alexiare couldn’t hide his shock and dismay. “I am sorry to hear it.”

  Chrysaleon gritted his teeth and clenched his fists as rage thundered through him. “He did it to ruin her for me. Otherwise, he would have killed her.”

  “Do not let him succeed.” Alexiare kept his voice low.

  There was no answer Chrysaleon could make. The old man knew him, knew Harpalycus’s attack was one that would spoil any other woman in his master’s eyes. But it wasn’t so easy to dismiss her, the queen of Crete, as if she were any woman.

  He hadn’t been told very much about what Harpalycus had done, nor had he asked. Though his desire for Aridela remained powerful, it was becoming harder to deny the faint aversion that had begun to chew at the edges of his thoughts when they were together.

  He yanked the sword out of the tabletop and pointed it at his slave. “Today a messenger brought me news that her womb has again quickened. This time there is no doubt about the father. I want that child. I want to be surrounded by our children.”

  “Ah.” Alexiare grinned and drew in a deep breath, obviously relieved. “Happy tidings and good fortune. See? Harpalycus is dead and you are alive, fathering children and ruling as High King over all the Kindred.”

  The statement, meant to bolster him, had only a brief effect. “My thoughts are like a madman’s,” Chrysaleon said. “They offer no peace. Do I stay here? Demand Aridela join me and give up her throne?”

  Alexiare’s wheezing escalated, betraying his anxiety. “She will never do that.”

  “So I must relinquish my father’s kingdom to Menoetius and become Crete’s sacrifice. Laughed at by the Kindred as a woman’s plaything, led to my own docile murder at the rise of Iakchos.” He stared at the pelt of the lioness on his wall. The creature had tried to slay his bastard brother, but Chrysaleon killed it instead. His warriors had hung it on their prince’s bedchamber wall as trophy and reminder of his victory. He crossed to it, running his fingers over the stiff, dusty coat. “Am I to kill Menoetius?” It sounded strange in his ears, speaking such a thing. A shiver ran through him. He shrank from the idea, yet was oddly attracted to it at the same time. Like a bothersome conscience, Menoetius made him feel edgy, uncomfort
able… inferior. “Is that what the king was trying to tell me before he died?”

  “Your choices are not easy, my lord. You could disavow your union in the interest of Mycenae. Aridela can keep her queenship. Your brother need not die. I don’t think she would bring her armies here to force your hand, even if she still had power enough to do so. They can find a new king. Those who have never trusted you might even welcome such an event.”

  Chrysaleon found himself grinding his teeth again. He breathed in and out, seeking to disperse the irritation inflamed by his slave’s suggestion. “If I did that, the Kindred would believe me afraid. Afraid of a woman, hiding behind my throne to escape her.” He pressed his knuckles against the flutter of the tic beneath his eye. “And I would lose Crete. If Aridela succeeds in returning strength and power to her island, it would forever needle me, what I let slip away.” He paused as his words echoed through his mind. More than losing Crete would needle him, if he faced the truth. “Live my life without Aridela?” he said, considering it, then shook his head decisively. “What you suggest is a death sentence. Every bit as much as the other.” He turned away, feeling the lie of his words even as he glimpsed the cynicism on Alexiare’s face. He’d never managed to fool the old man. Life wasn’t a tragic play performed in a marketplace. He could live without Aridela, in luxury, with power, and there would be women in plenty. But he didn’t want to. Even if it meant he had to murder Menoetius. Even if it meant others had to die. He wanted what he wanted. Aside from that, there were many who would believe him cursed if he defied his sworn destiny. All eyes would be upon him, waiting for the wrath of the gods to rend him into bloody, screaming fragments. Much as he wanted to dismiss such notions, he couldn’t. Not after what he’d witnessed and endured on Crete.

  Furiously scraping back his hair, he said, “Everything comes down to one knot I cannot untangle. I must live and die as my moera decrees, and the queen of Crete must live at my side. The only way I can see to unravel the knot is for Aridela to voluntarily end the sacrifice.” Peering into the smoke-blackened rafters, he gave another humorless laugh. “And how, by all the gods, can I make that happen?”

  He smashed his fists against the pelt. The unyielding stone beneath sent a brutal shock up his arms and into his shoulders. “Why doesn’t she agonize over this as I do?”

  Alexiare shuffled toward him. “All Cretans believe Queen Aridela is a descendant of the Lady. I’m certain she doesn’t wish for your death— her love and respect for you are clear. But the sacrifice is part of her as much as the beat of her heart.” He paused. His voice lowered. “Long years have I lived on the Rock of Mycenae. Before that, it was Kaphtor, and before that, Ephesus. The things I’ve seen have left me skeptical. I no longer believe sacrificing the bull-king makes the crops grow. Nor do I believe gods and goddesses punish and reward us according to their whims. There is simply life, my lord. Then death. It’s easy to see around us. In some lands, men rule over women. They worship powerful gods but have never heard of Poseidon. In others, women are proclaimed as embodiments of a fertile mother-earth, but the names of their goddesses are foreign to us. We are locked in an endless, petty struggle, though surely we must have been designed to complement and support each other.”

  “You only say that because you weren’t there. The fire didn’t sear your throat. You didn’t watch bodies swell and burst. Never again can I dismiss the gods after living through that night.” Even as he spoke, Chrysaleon remembered the dead hero, Damasen, who described what life would become when the Lady was forgotten. Alexiare’s conjecturing returned Damasen’s prophecies, word for word.

  The female will be considered the substance of corruption, and every manner of evil toward her will be overlooked.

  “Of course, my lord.” Alexiare bowed his head, but almost immediately smiled. “This is the adventure my mother promised me. I feel it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Alexiare’s eyes gleamed beneath his wildly twining brows. “Before she died, she told me if I remained in Mycenae I would have an adventure, and that it would change the course of the world.” He retrieved the poker and bent to refresh the sputtering fire. “I want to offer you another choice, my lord, one I doubt you’ve considered. You may not find it to your taste, and I must give it more thought. But I have the glimmerings of an idea.”

  “If you suggest I slip a dagger between Aridela’s ribs while she sleeps, I’ll throw you over the balcony.”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “Then why wouldn’t I like it?”

  “Because you are a man who will run to the forefront of battle beating his shield, shouting to draw your enemy. You’re not one to work the actions of others through shadows, secrets, and trickery.” Tears streamed over Alexiare’s cheeks in his struggle to speak. By the end, his voice was nearly inaudible.

  Chrysaleon frowned. “I’m tired, and you’re prattling.”

  “You always have been impatient. I believe the means of defeating the king-sacrifice require tact and subtlety. I wonder if you’re capable of controlling your nature to achieve your aim. My lord.”

  Chastised, Chrysaleon could think of no retort, and merely stared, astounded, at his slave’s audacity.

  “I want you to live your life, to see your children grow.” Alexiare was forced to whisper now. “And I want to help the queen. She mustn’t realize as an old woman that she put you to death for nothing. I can think of no way for you to win but through cunning strategy. Can you deceive her, and every other person on Crete? It’s the only way— I am certain of it.”

  Chrysaleon paused. “Tell me more,” he said at last.

  The funeral games lasted a fortnight. The swearing of loyalty by the Kindred took most of another. Kings and their retinues crowded into every spot big enough to hold a pallet or clump of straw.

  Chrysaleon faced and fought warriors and princes who hoped to defeat him and seize the High King’s throne. The games, contests, and punishing Harpalycus’s father, King Lycomedes of Tiryns, left hardly any time for plotting, missing Aridela, or even thoughts of his own approaching death.

  When at last it was finished, winter had slipped into a lush, cool spring. Chrysaleon and his slave journeyed to the holy shrine near Sparta, for Alexiare thought they should begin with whatever prophecies the famed oracle might give, and construct a plan based on her revelations. That way, if the gods existed, perhaps they would be appeased.

  Oracles had served here as priestesses to Mother Gaia for countless centuries, but in one of the villages they passed through, they learned that Spartan warriors, in a training sortie, had lately overthrown the shrine. Now priests managed the rites in the names of Poseidon and Zeus, and the oracle lived more as a prisoner than a revered prophetess.

  Warm, sunny weather heralded their arrival. Crested hoopoes sang beside a river sparked with gold, and delicate poplar leaves fluttered in ecstatic breezes.

  No one cared that he was High King of Mycenae. He and Alexiare had to wait their turn while other votaries underwent the required purifications.

  At last two boys approached and led them to a quiet pooling in the river. White-robed maidens, never lifting shy eyes from their task, bathed them, rubbed unguents into their skin, and led them to a rock cleft from which a spring bubbled. Both drank purifying water from bronze ladles hanging on hooks. The girls placed fillets of apple-spray on their heads and pointed to a narrow, well-worn path between the rocks.

  The track was steep and slippery, forcing Chrysaleon to hold Alexiare’s arm so the old man wouldn’t lose his balance. Eventually, they came to a dark slit-like opening leading into the cave.

  Strong incense permeated the air inside. A boy in a pristine tunic gestured to yet another opening in the stone beyond.

  Once they entered the inner sanctum, they saw the oracle, she who the boy called ‘Daphoenissa.’ She sat upon an impressive gypsum throne— one larger even than Aridela’s.

  Smoke drifted, translucent in the glimmer
of cresset lamps. A python’s thick body coiled around the throne, its head resting on the woman’s bare feet.

  Chrysaleon caught the faintest whiff of blood beneath the incense.

  Daphoenissa appeared to be asleep. But when Chrysaleon’s sandal grazed the edge of a stone, she opened her eyes and stared at him without blinking. Her eyes were cold and colorless, very much like the serpent’s. Tilting her head infinitesimally, she drew in a breath as though scenting him.

  “Your desire travels to me on the wings of my doves,” she said, her voice echoing slightly. “You are the king who would rule beyond his appointed time.”

  Chrysaleon knelt, furious that he couldn’t suppress a flush. “I am,” he said through gritted teeth. He refused to believe she had some omnipotent power— one of her attendants must have told her he was on the way up. But how did she know his predicament?

  She rose. The hem of her long white gown rippled as the disturbed python lifted its head. “What can you offer in return for this gift?”

  “I have land, gold, precious oils, ivory, spices. I have ships and warriors. Horses.”

  “Such things are meaningless to the Immortals.”

  “What do they want of me?”

  “Something that could make death beneath the light of Iakchos seem easy in comparison.”

  “I will give anything the gods require.”

  Alexiare pinched his arm and spoke a soft warning, but Chrysaleon shook him off. He sensed the woman’s contempt. He would rather die in her serpent’s suffocating embrace than show hesitation or fear. No wonder the short-tempered Spartans had subjugated her.

  She watched him without expression, as though giving him an opportunity to change his mind. Slowly, her head slanted the opposite direction from before, and one of her fine dark brows peaked. Again she breathed in. He felt her slicing through his soul.

  “Women use curses to make themselves appear powerful,” he said to Alexiare from the corner of his mouth.

  Stretching out her arms, Daphoenissa stared above their heads into the cavern’s echoing depths. “The king who would overturn his vows must lie with the moon upon the earth. One shall spring from the holy womb who will devastate the most ancient of rituals.”