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.”
Two handmaids came forward. As they guided her off the dais, Chrysaleon realized she was blind. The three stepped into the shadows behind the throne. Chrysaleon rose, thinking himself dismissed, but Daphoenissa stopped and turned. In a measured voice she said, “Slay the Lady’s Earth Bull and rule until the sun and moon shift into perfect alignment.”
The air grew still and silent. It felt like her blank, expressionless eyes were boring a hole in his forehead.
“Then you will die, Lion of Mycenae.”
Aridela weathered a punishing morning in the judgment chamber, one strident with arguments, claims, supplications, and the usual tiresome accusations.
She was in trouble with her council. All but her aunt Oneaea had survived Harpalycus’s invasion; most were now angry because Aridela had allowed Chrysaleon to leave Kaphtor. His father’s death and the obligations that event placed upon him compelled him to remain at Mycenae longer than he’d expected, and for that, the council blamed her. As though she knew all along this would happen— as though she’d planned it. A few of the members declared they were happy to discard him, and hoped he would never return, but the common people adored their sacred king. Not a day passed without a bombardment of peasants and handmaids asking for news and wanting to know when their Zagreus would again walk upon Kaphtor’s soil.
Tired, exasperated, cringing beneath the pounding throb of a headache, Aridela finally dismissed everyone, including her retinue, and went off in search of peace and quiet. She soon found herself wandering the gardens adjacent to the breakfast hall. It was hard not to think of how it used to be— the scent, life, color, the swift flash of larks, swallows, doves, and the occasional visit from an eagle or kestrel. It was painful to remember how often she, in the company of her mother and sister, had played here when she was little. This was where she’d made love to Chrysaleon before he sailed to Mycenae, and where the baby she now carried was sown.
The first time Harpalycus attacked her was in this garden. He’d given her a glimpse of the evil inside him. If only she could have seen what was to come. She would have had him put to death then and there.
Kaphtor’s gardens, once famed throughout the islands and mainland, were now little more than bare earth. Dead limbs and ash-smothered foliage had been hauled away, but the laborers were too busy elsewhere to plant anything new.
She made her way toward one of the few surviving trees, a maple, standing in isolation near the far wall. As she came closer, she spotted a man squatting on the ground beneath its branches. Turquoise shadows showed her the rim of one ear, a fall of dark hair carelessly tied back, and bent shoulders covered by a quilted tunic, for the mornings were still chilly.
One of the gardeners, no doubt. Disappointed, she chose to walk on and not disturb his work, though she’d hoped to spend whatever brief time she could steal sitting in solitude, listening to breezes play amongst the maple’s leaves.
His head lifted. As he perused the canopy above, she recognized that profile. It was Menoetius. Flooded with guilt and uneasy conscience, she took a few steps backward, as unobtrusively as possible, but it was too late. He turned and looked at her, silent for one instant too long before saying, “Aridela.”
She floundered for a greeting, but he moved them past the awkward silence by motioning her over. “You must see this.”
Reluctantly, she approached and stood beside him, surprised when he reached up and clasped her fingers.
She’d made every effort to appear strong, happy, and confident since the day Chrysaleon left for the mainland. Since she always seemed to be mired in clusters of priestesses, councilors, friends, hangers-on, or handmaids, there hadn’t been much time to indulge in self-pity.
But lodged inside, continually pricking at her thoughts, was the awareness that every morning brought closer the rise of Iakchos; each night that passed with Chrysaleon far away at Mycenae was one less they could be together. Twice during the council meeting, she’d caught herself recklessly daydreaming of covert methods to prevent or postpone the king-sacrifice.
Menoetius’s casual gesture stabbed her in wretchedness and dissipated her control. She bit her lip, harder than she intended, breaking the skin and tasting blood, but the pain helped her maintain composure.
He had been courteous, if remote, since their return from the Araden mountains. He’d never reproached her. Perhaps he was as embarrassed as she about their intimacies, and glad to have been wrong about Chrysaleon’s death, pleased to see her reunited with her rightful consort.
“What must I see?” she asked, fortified by these reassuring thoughts.
He gave her one of his very rare smiles and tugged on her hand.
She knelt. Almost hidden by shade and a few tufts of grass, several delicate pinkish-tinged flowers were sprouting. They were wild lilies, common in the old days, but these were the first she’d seen since the Destruction. Their petals pointed sharply toward the sky like miniature flames. A few had opened, revealing deep yellow centers.
Elation and relief welled, liberating her from grief, though she still sensed its lingering gloomy presence.
It was easy to believe the old adage that pregnancy caused unpredictable and sudden changes in mood.
She laughed. “Shall we construct a shrine?”
“A temple.”
She allowed the weight of the council meeting, Chrysaleon’s absence, and her guilt to slide away as she and her accomplice settled on the ground like sentinels, circling and protecting these frail symbols of recovery. Even her headache eased. “Do you think Kaphtor will ever be as it was?” She smoothed the earth gently with the tips of her fingers. “It’s been months, yet hardly anything grows.”
“Your hair has grown.”
She self-consciously lifted a hand to her head.
His smile and a hiked brow mocked her feminine embarrassment. “The land will recover as well,” he said without a hint of doubt.
“Elasa and the eastern regions have been abandoned,” she reminded him.
“But the wheat in Messara shows astounding growth.”
“Yes,” she said. “They think the ash contains some invaluable elemental property. I hope it’s true.”
“What will you do with this garden? I remember how much you loved it.”
“I want an arbor fashioned of grapevines.” She envisioned it as she gazed over the barren paths. “It will take a long time to mature, but when it does, it will be heavy with grapes, covered with leaves, woven through with flowers and herbs. I will make this garden a place of refuge, one that every land will try to imitate.”
He nodded, and looked pleased.
They fell into comfortable silence. Aridela relaxed, no longer fearing he would raise unpleasant subjects. As sunlight pierced the last remaining threads of mist and the chill retreated, she was soon overwhelmed with the need to sleep, another bothersome mark of pregnancy. She leaned against the maple’s trunk, her cheek pillowed in the crook of her arm. Closing her eyes, she listened to doves coo, leaves rustle, and branches creak, as she’d longed to do all morning. Menoetius’s quiet presence sparked memories of their cave in the western mountains, of waking in the night and seeing him wrapped in his magnificent tiger skin on the other side of the fire pit. If she made any sound, no matter how slight, he always opened his eyes, leaving her to wonder if he ever got any rest. Somehow, though they rarely spoke, his regard enveloped her in a sense of safety and comfort that lulled her back to sleep.
Only he would ever know how deeply she’d dropped into hopelessness and despair, how she’d prayed for death, or how the cave shadows had persecuted her— at least in her imagination. Only Menoetius would ever know how far she’d come since.
But for him, she would have returned to Ch
rysaleon still contaminated by Harpalycus’s torture. She would have gone on idealizing death, and might have continued to seek it. She loved Chrysaleon for his heroism and courage, his determination, his ardor, but she knew the sort of wounds seared into her by the Usurper were beyond his ability to grasp or heal. They would have festered. They might have consumed her. It was Menoetius, wounded himself, who understood. It was he who convinced her that no matter what Harpalycus did, he failed to touch her in any way that mattered. Because of Menoetius, she released the shame, the rage, and hatred. She returned to Chrysaleon with her old fierce strength and resolve, very nearly the Aridela he had always known.
When she thought back on how it all unfolded, she saw the blessing in being sent into the mountains, to live in seclusion with the one person who knew how to mend her. What if Selene had taken her to Knossos right away? What if she hadn’t had the benefit of Menoetius’s own unique pathos, which in turn created his perfect empathy? Things might have turned out very differently.
It was ironic. She owed not only her present happiness to this man, but her very life, and the life of the baby growing inside her. She wanted to tell him how grateful she was, but she feared her confession might make him think something had changed, when it couldn’t— not as long as Chrysaleon lived. It might spoil the easy, relaxed camaraderie they were enjoying now. It could propel them back into the pain of that last day in the mountain cave.
There was another reason, a memory from that day, which stopped her tongue. He’d said something that had gone on haunting her, something she’d never confronted him about or revealed to anyone else.
Do you think I’ve never raped a woman?
She only knew him here, on her island. Could he be so different at Mycenae? The image of Menoetius, brutalizing, outraging, a woman as Harpalycus had done to her threw everything she thought she knew about him into doubt.
Yet, as she’d told herself many times, he hadn’t harmed her. She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t demanded an explanation immediately— maybe because of the intensity of his anger. Now so much time had passed, she didn’t know how to ask, and little by little, the question had expanded in her mind to encompass Chrysaleon as well. She had heard ugly rumors about mainlanders, and all the war-loving tribes who burned the land, from Ephesus to Selene’s country and beyond. It was said that Mycenaeans in particular employed all manner of atrocities to subjugate and seize power— that they used rape to further crush the spirit of their defeated enemies. It was hard not to believe such tales after Harpalycus.
The possibility of her beloved consort engaging in such horror made her feel sick and acutely disloyal. She reminded herself that when it came to rumors, every mouth added a little to increase their audience’s shock, until truth and facts were lost beneath imagination and exaggeration.
Aridela rested her free hand on her stomach and deliberately turned her mind to the coming child. Lady, bring me a daughter, she prayed as she created fantasies of wavy golden hair and eyes like Chrysaleon’s too. Her daydreams brought back Chrysaleon’s many tendernesses, his vows of love, his poetry. How could I have known before I came here, he’d said, that your waist would fit my hands like it was made for them? That your body would mold into mine and mine into yours as though we were twined within the same womb? And there would always be the indelible memory of how he’d shielded her with his own body during the Destruction.
Remembering his words of love caused her mind to again take up the war with her heart.
I don’t want him to die. I can’t let him die.
Perhaps he would defy his vow and stay in Mycenae. Part of her wanted him to. At least he would be alive, even if she never saw him again, even if his abandonment forced them to be enemies and brought humiliation upon her.
Such thoughts were a betrayal, sacrilege, and selfish. They might draw the rage of Athene. But her heart didn’t seem to care about consequences.
She opened her eyes. Menoetius now leaned against the trunk beside her, looking up through the maple’s branches. This side of his face was nearly flawless— only one narrow ridge of scar running along his jaw. Seeing it brought memories of the handsome youth he’d once been, and their time together, before Chrysaleon.
“I wish I could know your mother,” she said. “I wish she would come back.”
He glanced at her before returning his gaze to the leafy awning. “I’m going there— to Ys. When Chrysaleon returns.”
“What?”
His gaze remained fixed. He didn’t speak.
“No.” She cleared her throat and ordered herself to display more queenly control. “I know you’ve always wanted to find her. But it’s so far.” Logic suggested it would make things easier, in a way, if he left. With time and his absence, her guilt might lessen. She might forget the mountains. The cave. That last day.
But even as she made this rational judgment, she heard herself say, “Kaphtor needs you.” She kept her voice even and impersonal. “This child I bear will need your wisdom and guidance.” She stopped herself from adding, When its father is gone.
His jaw clenched. How well she remembered that habit of his from the mountain cave. Caught up in her misery and grief, she’d reviled him, called him a coward. He’d never returned her abuse but his jaw clamped, over and over again, as he fought for control over his anger.
It was hard not to reach up and press her fingers against that tensed spot. Hard not to say, I will need you. She forced herself to swallow the words. The confession of love she’d once made followed by her abandonment spoiled any hope of real trust between them. Yet, despite their misunderstandings and discomfort, despite hardly ever seeing him, she always knew he was there, somewhere, in the corridors or chambers of Labyrinthos. She relied on knowing he was there, that she could call him and he would come. Menoetius was a man who would keep his vows. In a strange way he’d proven that when he’d bound her in the cave. It would have been easier to let her run away and be done with her.
Nothing can ever part us, he’d stated that day on the precarious cliff, before Chrysaleon found them. Chrysaleon parted them effortlessly, the instant she heard his voice.
As Menoetius turned toward her, she had a sudden, startling revelation. Her mind felt as though it was soaring, higher and higher, into the heavens.
Drifts of shadow, speckled with sunlight, cast just the right clarity, imbuing the incredible color of his eyes, like jeweled blue fire.
When very young, she’d enjoyed a strange, solitary intimacy with a friend no one but she could see, a lady she called ‘Mother.’ She’d forgotten all that long ago, but now those memories returned.
The eyes looking at her from Menoetius’s face carried her back to those distant days. They were the eyes of that beloved companion.
She took a steadying breath. His shrewd gaze must not discern the unraveling of her determination. It would always be this way— a struggle to deny the part of her that needed him in a way Chrysaleon would see as betrayal.
“Forgive me.” She pressed her palm against his. “I’m being selfish. The mystery of Sorcha calls you. You want to go, to discover your own glory, apart from Mycenae and Kaphtor. We will miss you. You will always be remembered for the sacrifices you made.”
“Sacrifices?” His head jerked. He stiffened and pulled his hand free.
Oh, Menoetius, you are so much more complicated than your brother. It takes only a smile or lovemaking to please him. You wind and tangle like the labyrinth that leads to the holy Earth Bull.
“I want to give you the honor you deserve,” she said. “You’re my brother, as you are Chrysaleon’s.”
He blinked, drew in a breath, and returned his gaze to the sky.
She’d made things worse. His body looked rigid, his shoulders tight.
“I’m always tired but I haven’t been sleeping well,” she said. “Would you stay with me here? It’s peaceful, and no one would dare disturb me with such a fierce guardian.” She took his hand again, lacing her fingers thro
ugh his with a conciliatory smile.
He hesitated, then seemed to relax. “I will let no one molest you.”
She closed her eyes and again rested her head on her arm. Sleep had been elusive, easily disrupted by the slightest sound, leaving her weary and out-of-sorts.
Mistress, give me strength, she prayed as she had that last day in the cave. Help me do as you wish.
The dream began, as it often did, with her bull leap, and Chrysaleon lifting his dagger in salute. That triumph faded and she woke in an unfamiliar place. She saw a circle of faint starlight far above, but everything around her was impenetrable blackness. When she extended her arms she encountered a cold, encircling barrier that felt and smelled like wet wood, and she stood in a puddle of water.
She cupped her hands around her mouth. “Is anyone there?”
A muffled sound filtered through the walls of her prison, a low growl, reminiscent of the lions Helice kept in the halcyon days before fire and ash burned away the golden age of Kaphtor.
Again she searched, more desperately, for any crack or imperfection that might provide a means to escape.
“There is no way out.”
Water splashed over her ankles as she swung around. “Iphiboë,” she cried. “Is it you?”
Hugging her sister was like grasping a cloud. Iphiboë disintegrated then reformed when Aridela stepped away.
“Iphiboë, where have you been?”
“Cocooned within peace.” Even her sister’s voice sounded insubstantial, like the softest breeze. “I’ve returned to tell you what you need to know. It’s hard for you, little sister, to do nothing. Did not your inflexible will force the warrior Menoetius to bind you in the cave?”
“What good does doing nothing bring? Shouldn’t we strive to create our fates, to fulfill our moera?”
The light around Iphiboë shimmered like the fine netting, covered with crystals and polished disks, that hung over Aridela’s bed. “A war began the night of the Destruction, and it will last longer than you can dream. If you could see the length and breadth of this war, you would lose hope. That is why my Mistress hides the future from you— from all her children. You stand at the center. Yet you must deaden your nature and do nothing. It is for those who have defiled her to construct the bridge back. You are the promise. The quest. In striving for you they will return to her bosom, and bring the world with them. It is the only way.”
In the Moon of Asterion (The Child of the Erinyes) Page 5
