Thrice Bound

by Roberta Gellis

  Hekate was herself so exhausted that she found nothing peculiar in Kabeiros' statement or that Dionysos agreed with him at once and went off to his own chamber. She, too, went to bed and was delighted and gratified when the dog leapt up and snuggled down beside her. Soothed and comforted, she drifted asleep, deeper and more quietly asleep than she had slept since working on the Minotaur's maze.

  She hadn't known how tired she was, how much she needed sleep, until past noon she was wakened by Kabeiros pulling the blanket off her and poking her with his cold, wet nose.

  "What?" she mumbled sleepily.

  *I know why the apprentice wears a mask,* Kabeiros almost shouted into her mind.

  "So?" Hekate sat up, yawning, and pulled the blanket back over her. "I'm glad one puzzle is solved."

  *You won't be when you learn the answer,* Kabeiros snapped. *That blockhead with near no Talent was chosen because he's the living image of the prince. I got into the palace early this morning—*

  "You did what?" Hekate shrieked.

  *Be still,* Kabeiros said sharply. *I am a man grown and no fool. And if you want to know why I went without telling you, I'm tired of you behaving as if I were a witless dog and trying to stop me from doing what I am peculiarly suited to do by this curse I carry.*

  "But—"

  *But me no buts. There was no danger for me. The worst that could have befallen was that I would be driven out before I learned what I wanted to know, but that didn't happen. I went in before dawn under a delivery wagon. If anyone saw me, they didn't think me important enough to mention. For at least four candlemarks I had the place to myself except for a sleepy guard or two. It's a big palace, but I can smell my own trail so I don't retrace my steps. There's no new magic in the whole mess of buildings.*

  "No new magic? How can that be?"

  *The only way I know it can be is that you-know-who isn't there. If he were ensorcelling the prince, I would certainly have smelled that—and I saw the prince. I got quite close to him by sneaking behind the throne. He didn't smell of magic.*

  *And you're sure there's no magic workroom . . . *

  *There may be a hidden cellar somewhere. I was down the main cellars with someone fetching wine for fast breaking. I was down the dungeons, which, believe it or not, are totally empty.*

  *Oh, I believe it,* Hekate thought back bitterly. *I'm sure within hours of being taken prisoner, no matter how minor the crime, any man, woman, or child ended up yielding up life-force to him.*

  The dog shivered his skin as if ridding it of pests. *I forgot that.* Kabeiros sighed gustily. *Well, as I said, there may be some hidden place, but I did cover the palace thoroughly and there wasn't a smell of magic except some remnants in the king's apartment. The prince hasn't moved in there yet.*

  "No magic," Hekate muttered. "No workroom. Not at his house nor at the palace. Where is he? What is he doing?"

  *Preparing to change bodies,* Kabeiros said. *Don't you see what the prince and the apprentice having virtually one face means?*

  "What?" Hekate cried, jerking more upright so that the blanket she had drawn back over her when she sat up fell away from her naked breasts.

  Kabeiros looked away. *What do you mean `what'? It was the first thing I told you when I woke you.*

  "Maybe my body was awake, but my mind was still asleep. Anyway I was so shocked at hearing that you went to the palace that everything else went right out of my head. I didn't properly understand . . ."

  Her voice faded. Slowly she got out of bed and began her morning activities. She chewed a green twig of lemon and brushed her teeth; she washed her mouth with wine; she washed her face and hands—later on an ordinary day she would have gone to the bathhouse; she drew on an Egyptian robe of thin linen and belted it around her; she combed her hair. Automatically she got the little remaining food from the shelf and ate some hard bread with cheese and olives.

  After she had swallowed the last bite, she turned to Kabeiros and said, "Of course there was no need to ensorcel the prince. The prince will die in the tomb with all the others. You-know-who will seize the body of the apprentice using the tremendous outpouring of life-force that the deaths will provide. The old body, the advisor, will also die and will take with it the hatreds that he has generated in all these years of evil. The apprentice, wearing the prince's face and clothing and carrying his mind and will is the only one who will emerge from the tomb."

  *I thought so too,* Kabeiros agreed, *although I'm not sure exactly how he will explain how he survived.*

  "I wouldn't," Hekate said with twisted lips. "I would say something like `A great force struck me and then I felt a warmth and a pulling and I followed a soft and beautiful light and when I opened my eyes all the others were dead . . . ' And maybe some `oh, woe is me, that I live when all my friends and advisors are gone.' Maybe someone else will come up with an explanation, and what odds do you want to lay that the dead prince's face under the apprentice's mask will have suffered some severe damage."

  *No odds on a sure thing.* Kabeiros shivered his skin again. *Well, at least none of it will happen. Let's wake Dionysos and get to the advisor's house so you can change or destroy whatever is in that amphora.*

  "We won't need Dionysos. If he isn't there, I don't have to worry about anyone detecting my aura, so no one's mind needs to be clouded. I'll just go in wearing the look-by-me spell. You can stay with the apprentice. Don't try to keep him away from the workroom, just bark when you're outside the door so I know he's coming in and can get out of the way. I'd be interested to see what, if anything, he does with that amphora."

  Getting in with the look-by-me spell was easier said than done, however. When she came to the door, Hekate found it blocked. Kabeiros had already trotted through and he stopped halfway across the kitchen to look back at her.

  *What is it?* he asked, coming back to the door.

  *Warded against magic,* she said.

  *Can't be,* Kabeiros said. *All the servants are under compulsion spells and all the officials, too.*

  *He must have tagged his own spells so the ward recognizes them. I don't have time to try to find the tag and duplicate it. Tell me when the kitchen is clear of servants. I'll just walk in and reinvoke the look-by-me.*

  It wasn't a long wait, but even after she dismissed the spell that concealed her, Hekate couldn't enter. *Worse,* she said to Kabeiros. *It's warded against those with power. Maybe, if the apprentice's Talent is so weak, against power of a certain level—to keep out other mages, I guess.* She sighed. *I'll have to undo the spell and hope there's no alarm to warn him.*

  *Can you undo it and then redo it quickly? If you are quick enough, even if there is an alarm, it will appear and disappear so fast he might not notice.*

  *A good thought. I'll try.*

  Still, it took time to examine the ward, make another as close to the first as possible, dispell the ward, step into the empty kitchen, and reestablish the ward. She could only pray that Perses would not come to this house again, or that he wouldn't bother to check the wards and thus possibly recognize the replaced ward as her work.

  Midmorning Hekate finally dimissed Perses' ward, stepped into the kitchen, reinvoked the ward, and then reinvoked the look-by-me spell. She was not quite in time. A dull-eyed servant was in the doorway of the kitchen when her spell took hold. He looked at the empty space beside her for as much as ten heartbeats. Hekate waited for him to cry out, but his gaze slid away to the top of the table, on which he laid the platter he had gone out to get.

  Letting her breath trickle out softly, Hekate followed Kabeiros, who had been waiting in the shadowed passageway, to the workroom. For the next few candlemarks, during which she was only trying to understand what spell had been used, she was nearly uninterrupted. The apprentice came to the workroom only once; Kabeiros barked; Hekate dismissed the spells she had been using and backed into an empty corner.

  The apprentice entered and to Hekate's and Kabeiros' surprise shut the dog out. He then unlocked a concealed cabi
net with a key from around his neck and took from it a short black rod that radiated power. Hekate nodded. The power source Kabeiros had sensed. The apprentice approached the amphora, touched it, and whispered a word Hekate could not catch. Then he whispered again, held the rod against his forehead for a count of ten. Finally he replaced it in the cabinet, relocked it and, smiling, went out to join the dog.

  First Hekate had to restrain a sigh of relief when she saw why the spells on the apprentice and the amphora were fresh and strong; her father didn't need to be near to renew them. Then a too-familiar chill ran over her. Her father also had the ability to feed power into an inanimate article and let someone else use that power source. If he knew that, what else . . . She buried that idea, which could only increase her fear, and went back to the amphora.

  The spells on it reduced her anxiety again by being very simple. So simple, in fact, that she became acutely anxious and spent several candlemarks studying what scarcely needed half a candlemark's attention. The magical seal was just that, a seal that would prevent anyone from touching the contents of the jar, plus, as Hekate had suspected, a spell for stability, so the jar couldn't be tipped over or moved from where it stood. She could hardly believe that Perses would not take greater precautions.

  Then she felt foolish for her doubts. What need was there for greater precaution? No one entered that house except those already under compulsion spells. There was nothing to attract a casual thief to the workroom or the amphora and probably most were too afraid to try to steal from Perses' house anyway. And as for other mages, there were the wards against them, but Hekate suspected they had seldom been tested. The other mages might fear Perses even more than thieves.

  The simplicity was deceptive, too, she found. The two spells were twined together. She spent several more candlemarks finding a way to alter the seal spell without touching the stability spell so she could withdraw a sample of the liquid in the amphora. She then carefully smoothed over the breach she had made, hoping, since the spell that held the vessel steady had not been touched, that Perses would simply dismiss both spells together when he came to use the amphora . . . if he survived and she didn't. Hekate took a short, deep breath, held it for a moment and then sent to Kabeiros that she had what she wanted and was leaving.

  *Go, and quickly,* he responded. *Some officials are coming and if we don't need to take the chance they will see us, so much the better. They are compelled to follow his plans, but most can still think. I will slip away as soon as they arrive. The apprentice will be too busy until they are gone to miss me. I'll follow you home soon.*

  When he arrived, he found Hekate sitting at their table regarding the innocent-looking wine she had brought from Perses' workroom with some puzzlement. The remains of the evening meal she had shared with Dionysos were pushed carefully away to the other end of the table, as far as possible from the small cup she had taken from Perses' house. Dionysos made some sharp remark to Kabeiros about being left out of the "fun" when he let him in, but Hekate didn't look up.

  "It's laced with a very virulent poison," she muttered as much to herself as to her companions, although plainly she had been waiting for Kabeiros, "as I suspected it would be, but there's a spell on it too."

  "What kind of spell?" Dionysos asked, sitting down at the far end of the table again.

  Kabeiros came to sit beside Hekate, but she waved him away. "Just in case it spills or splashes. I think it would work through the skin as well as if swallowed."

  "Is it the spell that makes that possible?" Dionysos asked.

  That Hermes! Hekate thought. He was infecting her innocent Dionysos with his own insatiable curiosity. On his own, Dionysos had little interest in magic, being content with his own Gifts and the simplest of spells, like making fire and preserving offerings made to him with stasis. She had to grin, suspecting that when they returned to Olympus—a little shiver of fear that she would not see Olympus again ran down her spine, but she ignored it—Hermes would be their first visitor, demanding the tale of their adventures in the greatest detail.

  "No, not the spell," she said. "The virulence is the nature of the poison itself. As to the spell . . . it seems to be some kind of youth-preserving spell. What that can have to do with such a poison . . ." She bit her lip, then said, "Catch me a rat, Kabeiros. I want it alive."

  *Yech!* Kabeiros exclaimed, *I hate to catch rats and having one squirming around in my mouth isn't my favorite pastime.* But he rose obediently and Dionysos let him out.

  Rats were common enough in the alleys of Byblos and it didn't take long for Kabeiros to find what he wanted. When he returned, the food was cleared from the table and the cup of poison stood alone near Hekate's chair.

  *Where do you want it?* he asked, leaping onto the chair that Dionysos had used so the rat in his mouth was well above the table level.

  "There." Hekate pointed almost directly below where he was. "Lift your head high. There are wards." Kabeiros put his front paws on the table and stretched up. "Yes, right there. Drop it."

  The rat fell to the table top and lay panting. Its fur was matted and mangy. It had lost an ear and part of its tail. There was an ulcer that had eaten away part of one cheek and other sores on its body.

  Dionysos came over and peered down at it. "That's the worst looking rat I ever saw in my life," he said. "And I've seen plenty of them in the storage sheds and vineyards. Actually, they're kind of nice creatures, not vicious if they aren't cornered. I like their beady little eyes and clever ways. If only they weren't so destructive . . ."

  Kabeiros was pawing at his mouth. He jumped down and went to his water bowl to lap water and let it run out of his mouth again. *It's the worst tasting one too, but I looked for something that wouldn't mind dying, since I assume Hekate plans to poison it.*

  "Yes." She couldn't help smiling at Kabeiros. "If the poison works as swiftly as it should, you will have given the poor creature a `grace' it surely needs. I hope it has life enough in it to eat."

  *That's what it was doing when I caught it.*

  It was, indeed, enough alive to eat and struggled upright when Hekate put into its invisible cage a piece of bread with a few drops of the poisoned wine on it. In fact, despite its dilapidated appearance, the creature had a very healthy appetite. The bread disappeared in a few heartbeats' time. In less time than it took to eat, the rat let out a thin, high screech and began to convulse.

  Dionysos stepped back from the table with a look of distress. Hekate was surprised. She had seen him take part in tearing apart alive a human sacrifice—but that was in an orgiastic frenzy, and he had later hated what he had done. Kabeiros lifted his head and shook the remaining water out of his mouth.

  "It will be dead in a moment," Hekate assured them.

  Only it wasn't dead in a moment. The keening continued. The convulsions intensified until it was clear that the poor rat's bones were snapping in their violence.

  *Kill it!* Kabeiros roared. *Kill it at once!*

  Dionysos had already drawn his knife. Shuddering, Hekate dismissed the wards that had confined the rat, and Dionysos cut off its head. In the silence that followed, all three stared at each other with dilated eyes.

  "That was what he planned for the attendants and officals?" Dionysos breathed. He drew in on himself with horror. "How long . . . ?"

  "I don't know," Hekate whispered. Her eyes were full of tears. "That's what the spell did . . . it didn't let the rat die."

  *What are you going to do?*

  For a little while, Hekate just stood, staring down into the cup of poison and shivering. Then the shivering stopped. She cocked her head to the side, nibbled softly on her lower lip. Suddenly her eyes lit up and she grinned. "If the poison were destroyed and the spell left intact, what do you think would happen?" she asked.

  The dog lolled out his tongue to laugh. *I suppose all those intended victims would live long and healthy lives.*

  Dionysos chuckled. "A fitting solution."

  "Yes, but I'll need two mo
re rats," Hekate said, her expression alight with mischief. "Only this time, get me two young healthy ones—only be sure they are of the same sex. Mother knows, I wouldn't want those breeding if this spell should happen to be a long-lasting one."

  "Why two?" Dionysos wanted to know.

  "Well, if I don't get the amount of antidote right or if my memory is at fault about the antidote . . . or if the antidote doesn't work, one might die, but I won't let it suffer. If it shrieks, I'll kill it instantly."

  *You don't sound very sure about this antidote.*

  Hekate shrugged. "The poison usually works so fast there's no time to administer an antidote. However, it did work in cases where a person got so tiny a dose that the poison wasn't instantly fatal. It is only a rat, after all."

  *Yes—" the dog managed a comical grimace "—but I have to catch them and bring them back alive.*

  Two nice, healthy, sleek young rats were soon settled into warded spots on the table—which Dionysos remarked with a wrinkled nose would have to be thoroughly cleaned before they could eat on it again. By the time the second one was imprisoned, Hekate had rummaged through the things she had purchased in her guise as an Egyptian trader in medicinals. There were herbs, there were amulets, there were well-stoppered flasks of many-colored liquids, there were packets of fine-ground solids, some of which looked like sand but smelled quite different. A selection of these now sat on the table not far from Perses' cup of poisoned wine. Hekate sighed with relief.

  "I have all that I need," she said. "There's no sense in you both sitting up and watching me prepare the antidote. Probably it will take me all night. Go to bed."

  For once neither Dionysos nor Kabeiros argued. They knew they would be of no help and that watching Hekate grind, boil, filter, and mix would be of little interest since neither had the least notion of what she was doing. Dionysos did leave his door open so that he would hear if Hekate called him; Kabeiros merely stretched out on her bed. Once both stirred because of a high-pitched squeal, but the sound stopped so quickly that neither really woke.

  In the morning, the poisoned wine was gone from the cup and a slender flask that could be easily concealed within the flowing robes of an Egyptian woman stood beside the empty cup on the table. At the other end, two wonderfully handsome rats groomed their shining fur and wiggled their little pink noses. As Dionysos and Kabeiros approached the table, the rats tensed and ran to hide but the wards confined them, and in a remarkably short time their efforts to escape ended.