The Firebrand

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

But you are as powerless now as your Sun Lord, she thought frantically.

  “Listen, then,” she said, trying to silence her beating heart with the pressure of her clasped hands at her bosom. “The Earth Shaker has overthrown the Sun Lord as He will overthrow our city. We will feel Earth Shaker’s rage more strongly than we ever have before. Not a wall, not a house, not a gate, not the palace itself will escape.

  “Warn the people to flee, even into the arms of the Akhaians! Cover the cooking fires; make sure no lamp is near to the stores of pitch or oil. Let no one remain within doors, lest his body be broken by falling stone.”

  Khryse said sternly, turning toward the women, “We may still have a little time. Go quickly and release the serpents, any that have not taken flight already. Then two of you go to the palace and inform the King and Queen that we have had evil omens and bid them flee to open ground. They may not heed, but we must do what we can.”

  “It will avail nothing,” Kassandra cried out, trying to stop herself even as she spoke. “None can escape the wrath of Poseidon! Let the women take refuge in the Temple of the Maiden; She may have some pity on us.”

  “Yes, go,” Khryse said to the women. “Take the children there, and remain beneath the open sky till the quake subsides ; there perhaps you can hide from our foes if they break into the city. There are great spoils to loot in Troy, and they may not climb that far.” He held Kassandra as she began to recover her senses; in her head there were sharp pain and a drowning sensation, as if she looked out at the world from deep underwater. “I must go, Kassandra, and do what I can to spread the warning. Do you want that soothing draft? Will you take shelter in the Sun Lord’s courts or will you go down to the town? What can I do to aid you?”

  She found that Khryse’s voice came to her as if across the plains and legions of the dead; but when she spoke, her own voice was calm.

  “Thank you, Elder Brother, I need nothing. Go and do what you must, and I will go and make certain my child is safe.”

  Khryse walked away, and Kassandra went to her room. Honey slept there, still curled in blankets, but Kassandra noted that the snake was gone. Wiser than humans, it had sought refuge in some secret place known only to the serpentkind. Kassandra bent and gently shook the child, waking her. Honey put her arms up to be lifted, and Kassandra dressed her quickly. Somehow she had to get the child safely out of Troy before the invaders broke through the walls.

  She said, “Come, darling,” and took Honey’s hand. “We must go quickly.”

  Honey looked confused, but obediently trotted along beside Kassandra as they crossed the compound. Hurrying up toward the Maiden’s Temple with Honey’s hand in hers, she stumbled, and strong hands picked her up.

  “Kassandra,” said Aeneas, “it has come. This was your warning?”

  “I thought you had left the city,” she said, trying to steady her voice.

  “Surely you cannot stay now,” he said. “Come with me; I shall find a ship bound for Crete—”

  “No,” she said. “Come—quickly. The Gods have forsaken Troy.”

  She led him swiftly into the innermost shrine of the Maiden’s Temple; there were a few priestesses there, and she cried out to them: “Quickly, extinguish all the torches—yes, even the sacred flame! The Gods have deserted us!”

  She herself, releasing Honey’s hand, took the last torch and crushed out the fire that burned before the Maiden, and as the priestesses were rushing out of doors, she tore down the curtain.

  “Aeneas, this is the most sacred object in all of Troy; take it.” She drew forth the ancient statue, the Palladium, and wrapped it in her veil. “Carry it across the seas, wherever you may go. Build an altar to the Goddess and establish the sacred fire. Tell the truth of Troy.” He moved as if to draw away the veil and behold the sacred object, but she stayed his hand.

  “No, no man must look upon it,” she said. “Swear you will carry it to a new Temple and there consign it to a priestess of the Mother. Swear!” she repeated, and Aeneas looked into her eyes.

  “I swear,” he said. “Kassandra, you can have no further reason to remain. Come with me—a priestess should be the one to take this beyond the seas.”

  He bent to embrace her; she kissed him wildly, then drew back.

  “It cannot be,” she said; “my fate lies here. It is yours to leave Troy unwounded and alive. But go at once, and all our hopes and all our Gods go with you.”

  “You must not stay here—” he began.

  “I pledge to you, I shall leave Troy before the sun rises again,” she said. “It is not death that awaits me; but I am not free to go with you. The Gods have decreed otherwise.”

  He kissed her again and took the wrapped bundle.

  “I swear it by my own divine lineage,” he said. “I will do your will—and Hers.”

  Kassandra’s eyes blurred with tears as he hurried out of the Temple.

  She had hardly crossed the court when inside her head she heard a great roar. The ground swayed beneath her feet; she stumbled and fell with Honey in her arms, and lay still, her body pressed against the suddenly unstable earth which rippled and bounced beneath them. Her only emotion was not fear but rage: Earth Mother, why do You let Your sons play this way with what You have made?

  The movement seemed to go on forever, under the frightened sobs of the child in her arms. Then it subsided, and she realized that the sun was still only a fraction above the horizon; the quake could hardly have lasted more than a few moments. Honey’s crying had subsided to a soft hiccuping.

  Kassandra looked behind her, and saw that the sound she had heard had been the walls of the Sun Lord’s house collapsing inward. Hardly a building in the enclosure was still standing. Of the main building where they dwelt, no more than a heap of rubble was left. Certainly nothing could be salvaged from there. There was a muffled screaming; someone had been trapped inside under the fallen stones. Kassandra looked helplessly at the pile—she could not with all her strength have budged a single stone—and very soon the sound ceased.

  Somewhere in the gardens, a bird began to sing.

  Did this mean it was over?

  As if in answer, the ground seemed to shudder and rock again, and then was still. Stunned, Kassandra walked toward the vantage point where last night she had looked down on the plain.

  The great gate and front wall of Troy had fallen, and in the midst of the battered rubble of wall and gate, Kassandra saw the wooden Horse lying, one leg raised grotesquely as if it had indeed kicked the wall down with its great hooves. The torches had set the scaffolding on fire and it was burning fiercely; but against the Horse itself, the flames licked in vain. Flames were rising from the poorer quarter with its wooden houses. It was the vision she had seen first as a child, the vision no one had believed: Troy was burning.

  Through the gap in the fallen wall, Akhaian soldiers were already pouring in in floods, rushing into still unfallen houses and leaving laden with everything they could carry. Where could she hide? More important, where could she take Honey? One building within the compound of the Sun Lord’s house was still standing: the shrine. There might be food there, remnants of the offerings of the day before. She was conscious, to her own shock, of a sudden fierce hunger. She went inside, and paused: if there should be another quake, the building might collapse. Then she saw that the statue of the Sun Lord had fallen, and beneath it, crushed, lay a human figure. Approaching with a numb curiosity—there was nothing to be done—she saw that it was Khryse who lay there.

  At last, she thought; now the God has truly struck him down. She knelt beside the fallen man, closing the wide-open eyes, then rose and passed on.

  In the room behind the statue, where the offerings were kept, she found loaves of bread—quite stale, but she ate one, dividing it with the little girl, who seemed stunned and did not cry. She thrust another into the fold of her robe—she might need it—and stopped to consider. The Akhaians were already plundering the lower town. Had the palace fallen? Had they all been k
illed—her parents, Andromache, Helen? Were there any Trojan soldiers left alive to halt the sack? Or were she and her child the only ones left alive to watch the devastation?

  She listened for any sound that would prompt her to think that someone else remained alive in the Sun Lord’s house, but there was only silence. Perhaps people still lived in the palace below. Had they heard the warning in time to get out into the courts or gardens?

  Although the sun was now quite warm, she shivered. Her warm shawl—every stitch of her clothing except the shift she stood in—was buried in the ruins of the Sun Lord’s Temple.

  She should go down to the palace; although she was aware of the Akhaian soldiers in the city, she was desperately anxious to know if her mother still lived. She picked up Honey and began to run down the street.

  The way was blocked with rubble and the debris of partly fallen houses: the people she met were mostly stunned-looking women, like herself half-clad and barefoot, and a few half-armed soldiers who had risen early to join Deiphobos. When they saw she was heading for the palace, they followed her.

  The palace had not collapsed. The front doors had, and some of the carvings had fallen away, but the walls were still standing, and there was no sign of fire. As she approached she heard a loud wailing, and, recognizing her mother’s voice, began to run. On the flagstones of the forecourt, heaved up and uneven now, she saw Priam lying—dead or senseless: she could not tell. Hecuba bent beside him, wailing; Helen, wrapped in a cloak, Nikos at her side, and Andromache, clutching Astyanax in her arms, were with her.

  Andromache raised her eyes to Kassandra and said fiercely, “Are you content, Kassandra, that the doom you prophesied has come on us?”

  “Oh, hush!” said Helen. “Don’t talk like a fool, Andromache. Kassandra tried to warn us, that is all. I am sure she would rather have left all this unspoken. I am glad to see you unharmed, Sister.” She embraced Kassandra, and after a moment, Andromache followed suit.

  “How is it with Father?” asked Kassandra. She went and bent over her mother, gently lifting her up. “Come, Mother, we must take refuge in the Maiden’s Temple.”

  “No! No, I will stay with my lord and King,” Hecuba protested, her wails turning to sobbing.

  Andromache embraced her, and then Astyanax came and put his arms around Hecuba, saying, “Don’t weep, Grandmother; if any harm has come to Grandfather the King, then I will look after you.”

  “Hush, love,” Helen said, as Kassandra knelt beside her father, taking the cold hand in hers, and raised a closed eyelid. There was not the faintest stir of motion or life; the eyes were already filmed over. She knew she should join Hecuba in ritual keening, but she only sighed and let his hand fall from hers.

  “I am sorry, Mother,” she said. “He is dead.”

  Hecuba’s cries began again. Kassandra said urgently, “Mother, there is no time for that; Akhaian soldiers are in the city.”

  “But how can that be?” Hecuba asked.

  “The walls were broken in the earthquake,” Kassandra explained, desperately wondering if they were all lacking in wits, or senseless with shock—had they heard nothing? “Already they are plundering in the streets, and they will surely lose little time in coming here. Where is Deiphobos?”

  “I think he must be dead,” Helen said. “We heard Mother cry out that Father had fallen down in a fit, or a faint. We came at once, and Deiphobos carried him out of his room into the court here, then ran back seeking his own mother. Then the first shock came and the floors fell in and I think some of the roof as well. I had snatched up Nikos and ran out with him after Deiphobos.”

  “And so we six are alive,” said Kassandra, “but we must hide somewhere, unless we wish to fall into the hands of the soldiers. I do not know what is the Akhaian custom with captive women, and I do not think I wish to.”

  “Oh, Helen has nothing to fear from them,” said Andromache, staring fixedly at the Argive woman. “Her husband will soon be here to claim her, I am sure, and deck her in all the jewels of Troy and lead her home in triumph. How fortunate for you that Deiphobos died just in time—not that you care.”

  Kassandra was appalled at her spite.

  “This is no time to quarrel, Sister; we should be glad if one of us need not fear capture. Shall we take refuge in the house of the Maiden? That is where we sent the women from the Sun Lord’s house and I am sure it is still whole.” She put her arm around Hecuba and said, “Come, let us go.”

  “No, I stay with my King and my lord,” said the old woman stubbornly, dropping again to her knees beside Priam’s body.

  “Mother, do you truly believe that Father would want you to stay here to be captured by some Akhaian lord?” Kassandra asked in exasperation.

  “He was a soldier to his death; I will not abandon him the moment he has fallen,” Hecuba insisted. “You are a young woman; go and take shelter somewhere they will not find you, if there is such a place in Troy. I stay with my lord; Helen will be with me. Even the Akhaians would offer no insult to the Queen of Troy. We have fallen to a God and not to them.”

  Kassandra wished she felt half that sure. But they could already hear the soldiers approaching, and she seized Honey’s hand. Astyanax was in Andromache’s arms, protesting, struggling to get down, but his mother paid no attention.

  “Let us hide in one of these mean houses along here; they would never think of looking in here, where there would be nothing to plunder,” Andromache suggested, but Kassandra shook her head.

  “I will entrust myself and my daughter to the Maiden of Troy. If our Gods have deserted us, perhaps the Goddesses will not.”

  “As you wish,” Andromache murmured. “I no longer believe in any Gods. Farewell, then. Good fortune to you.” She wedged herself into the smallest and dirtiest of the houses, and Kassandra, with Honey, ran on up the hill, to the highest point of Troy, where the Maiden’s Temple stood untouched, the statue in the forecourt still unfallen. Kassandra quickly set Honey down and flung herself at the feet of the statue; surely no man, not even an Akhaian barbarian, would venture to make bold with any woman who took refuge here.

  She heard the voices of the other women in one of the inner rooms. In a moment she would join them.

  “Ah, there she is!” It was a cry of triumph in the barbarian tongue of the soldiers. Two armored men burst in the door. “I wondered where all the women had gone.”

  “This one will do for me; it’s the princess, Priam’s daughter. She’s a prophetess and a virgin of Apollo—but if Apollo had wanted to protect His virgins, He’d have done it. You want to check in the inside room for some more of them?”

  “No,” replied the other, “I’ll take the little one. When people think they’re big enough, they’re too old for my taste. Come here, little girl. I’ve got something nice for you.”

  Kassandra turned in horror, to see a giant soldier beckoning to Honey. “No!” she shrieked. “She’s only a baby! No, no—”

  “I like them that way,” said the big soldier, grinning, and made a lunge at the child, ripping away her dress. Kassandra flew at him, using nails and teeth to tear Honey from his arms; a savage kick sent her flying half senseless into a corner of the room. She heard Honey screaming, but could not move; her limbs were so heavy she could not stir a finger. She felt the other man seize her and struggled violently; a blow across the face from the man’s arm sent her back as all the strength poured out of her like sand from a torn sack.

  She kept on hearing Honey’s helpless cries until, even more terribly, they stopped. She was aware—though she could neither move nor speak—when the man tore away her shift and shoved her down onto the marble paving.

  Goddess! Will you let this happen in Your very shrine before Your eyes? she implored—and then in shock remembered: she no longer honored the Immortals; why should the Maiden protect her?

  But Honey has done no wrong, and she is a baby! If the Maiden sees this and cannot prevent it She is no Goddess. And if She can and will not—


  Then fierce pain ripped her apart as the man thrust violently into her, and she felt darkness closing in on her.

  She felt herself step out of her pain-racked body, conscious of the man still jerking away at her limp form, of Honey naked and torn, bleeding on the stone, still moving a little, whimpering through bruised lips. She rose and moved away, stepping over the flat and featureless plain. The sun had dimmed into the grayness that was all that was here. She walked down through the plain that was, and was not, the city of Troy where the wooden horse had kicked down the walls and, though no longer on its feet, rose still whole and nightmarish over the dead city.

  She saw others on this plain: Akhaian soldiers, a few of the Trojans. They seemed confused, looking about for a leader. Then she saw Deiphobos, half clad, still carrying his mother in his arms, his face and hands singed with fire. So they had died together, as Helen had suspected.

  He tried to call to her, but she had no wish to speak to him. She turned and hurried the other way, wondering what had happened to Andromache.

  There was Astyanax, his head bleeding, his clothing torn. He looked stunned, but as she watched, his face brightened, and he began to run across the plain, crying out in joy. She saw him swept up into Hector’s arms and smothered in kisses. So Hector had claimed his son; she was not surprised that the Akhaian soldiers had not let him live. Andromache would grieve; she did not know that her son was with his father, as Hector had promised. Kassandra hoped the child had not known too much terror before he met his end on an Akhaian spear—or had they hurled him from the walls?

  Then she saw Priam, standing tall and imposing as she remembered him from when she was a little girl. He smiled at her and said, “The city’s gone, isn’t it? I suppose we’re all dead, then?”

  “Yes, I think so,” she said.

  “Where’s your mother, my dear? Not along yet? Well, I’ll wait for her here,” he said, gathering himself together to look around. “Oh! There’s Hector and the boy . . .”

  “Yes, Father,” she said, feeling a lump in her throat; he sounded so happy.