Black Ships (28 page)

Neas raised one eyebrow. “And did you?”

“No,” I said. “I could see nothing for her.”

He sighed. “They marry their kin in the Royal House of Egypt,” he said. “They think nothing of giving a girl of nine to her uncle. And the marriage must be consummated as quickly as possible if there is to be an heir. Her son was born when she was eleven. She conceived before she even showed her first blood. Such things are not done in Wilusa. For an uncle to take his niece when she is still a child would be a blasphemy and a crime.”

“The gods do not forbid things without cause,” I said. “Often the child dies when the mother is so young, and sometimes she dies as well.”

Neas climbed down onto the rocks in the stream, picking at the moss that grew there, his face turned away from me. “She was strange and beautiful, as clever as a man, as charming as the moon, and as changeable. One moment she would be playful and the next sad.” He lifted up a piece of moss and examined it as though it were fascinating, his eyes on anything but my face. “One day she would embrace me with ardor and the next curse me and send me from her. She would call me barbarian and pet me as though I were one of her cats, showing my manhood to her servants and handmaidens and showing how it stood in her hand like a goat’s, and the next moment she would tell me that I was her soul and that she loved me above all others.” He shook his head and looked up at me. “I don’t understand it.”

“Neither do I,” I said, and my voice was even though my heart was chilled within me. “Sometimes women are so. Often it is when there has been some great hurt, but I know no help for it except time and kindness.”

“I tried to be kind,” he said. “Not just because she held all our fates in her hand, though she did. But she was beautiful and stricken, and I thought that perhaps...” He stopped. “Did you know that she threatened you?”

“Why?” I asked.

“She threatened all the People at the end. She said that she would not allow me to love someone more than her. She asked me if I would love her still if she had Wilos killed, or my father, or you or Xandros or Amynter. I said that I would, but I would never look upon her again without tears, and, Sybil, you cannot imagine the fear that took my heart!” Neas looked away from me. “She cried and said that she would never do it. That it was lover’s folly for her to be so jealous. But how could I be certain? She had the power to do it. And she liked hurting me to see if I would love her still.”

Anger boiled in me. If I had seen Basetamon I should have broken all my oaths to shed no blood. But that was not what Neas needed to hear, so I said nothing.

“She said I had too much pride, and she would break it. And so she would have one of her servant girls torment me. And then she would slap the girl and send her away, hang upon me with tears and sorrow. Then she would be as calm and as clever and as quick as her brother, sitting in council as though she were Pharaoh. She would praise my wits to the generals and bid them obey me.”

I reached toward his shoulder and saw him flinch, then deliberately allow me to touch his arm. I pulled my hand away. “Neas,” I said, “Basetamon did much wrong.”

“She did not mean to,” Neas said. “She was haunted and spirit driven. And she was sad.”

“Yes,” I said, striving to order my thoughts. “But she still did much wrong. And you were wise not to trust her with the lives of the People.”

He nodded. “I know. Each moon she went farther and farther. I don’t know where it would have ended.”

“It ended with you leaving,” I said. “As was wise. What healing the gods may send her will come in their own time.” I put my arm around his shoulder, feeling him tense like Tia, holding him as though he were Tia. “And they will send it to you as well. My dear prince, you have done everything that you could.”

“I wish I were not a prince,” he said.

“I know,” I said. “But in that you have no choice. The gods have given the People into your hands, and you have held us all together and kept us safe. You are our king.”

“I know,” he said, and bent his head.

“You know that you must be, don’t you?” I asked quietly.

Neas nodded. He looked at me and his eyes were dry. “Yes. There is no other way.”

I sighed, thinking of what must come, and what I must do. “What do you know of how kings are made?”

“There has never been a king of the People in my lifetime, since Priam was killed when I was a child. I know there is something, some sacred mystery, but I do not know what.”

“You told me on the Island of the Dead that you felt like Theseus running the turns of the labyrinth, remember? That’s an old story, and a true one. All kings must descend to the Underworld, into the realms of sorrow and grief, to Death’s doorstep. If She judges them worthy, they return. Otherwise, they are swallowed up by the realms of Night.” I looked at Neas, and took his hand. “Two companions may come with him to face the Shades, and Ariadne, Her Handmaiden, will guide him. But sometimes long before the hero ever walks into Night’s Door he begins the long road that goes to the Underworld. He knows death and defeat and sorrow uncalculated.”

“He runs the labyrinth,” Neas said. “And I have run. And always you have guided me, and Xandros has been my true companion.”

“Yes,” I said. “And when you make that descent in truth, we will be there. You will not face the Shades alone. When you return, you will not be king alone.” It took no oracle to say what Xandros’ choice would be—he would go to the very depths of the Underworld for Neas, faithful as always, never counting the cost.

Neas nodded, and his face was taut but not fearful. “And Wilos? Will he someday have to face Night’s Door?”

“If he is to be king,” I said.

He shook his head. “I could not wish that on any man, much less my own son.”

“Dear Neas,” I said. “You cannot fight your son’s battles for him. He will not be a little boy, but a grown man with his own sorrows and his own victories. And he will not be alone. Perhaps Kianna, or some child still unborn, will guide him or walk beside him as a true companion.”

His eyes slid to my middle. “Ah, I thought so. Does Xandros know?”

“Yes,” I said.

“He had better do what’s right,” Neas said.

I laughed. “You sound like I am your daughter!”

“You are my friend,” he said, and clasped my hand wrist to wrist as though I were a captain and a man.

I squeezed back. “Yes,” I said, “and shall be to the world’s ending.”

Together we walked back to the People.

W
E SAILED
from Scylla on a beautiful spring morning, leaving the ashes of our fires on the beach where the waves would wash them away.

The weather didn’t hold. We followed the coast north, flanking the smoking mountain and coming toward the straits where the Shardana had told Xandros that the island of Scylla almost touched the mainland. We were in sight of the straits when the heavens opened and all the rains came down.

Xandros tied himself to the tiller, and I sat in the bow cabin with Tia, Polyra, and her son, Kianna on my heaving lap. Kianna kept up a low, steady whine to make sure we understood that she didn’t like it at all, stopped only when her mouth was actually plugged by her mother’s breast.

After a while I thought I would surely be sick. I went on deck and met Kos coming down the ship.

“Get back inside!” he yelled over the wind.

“In a moment!” I said. “What are you doing?”

Kos leaned close to me so that I could hear him. “I’m going up on the bow to yell across to
Seven Sisters
! We can’t row into this! Our oarsmen are exhausted and we’re not making any way. We need to turn and get the wind behind us.”

“We won’t make the mainland then!” I yelled.

“Lady, at this rate we just need to make Scylla! We’ve got to get out of this! Sooner or later we’re going to take one of these waves broadside!”

I nodded. “I’ll go back in.”

I heard him yelling across and related to the others what was happening. We felt the ship turn, the chant change as we turned downwind, the song stop as the sail rose halfway and the wind caught it. A moment later I heard Bai’s oar coming into the rest position outside the door.

I stuck my head out again. Bai was leaning on his oar, his head hanging and the rain running down his bare back. The old arrow scar stood out pale on his chest. “We’ve turned?” I asked.

He nodded. “We can’t keep it up,” he panted. “We’ve got to turn back.”

Night came while we let the winds push us. It wasn’t the worst storm I had seen, but at dawn when I came on deck to rolling seas and scudding clouds I saw a familiar mountain off to my right, the familiar shape of a headland and beach.

I went up the ship and stood beside Xandros, taking him watered wine.

He gulped it down, his hands still on the tiller while I held it to his lips.

“We’re back,” I said.

He nodded. “There’s where we burned Anchises. Right back where we were. A lot of effort for nothing.”

Behind us I saw both
Seven Sisters
and
Pearl
loping along. “At least nobody seems to be damaged. I would guess that the Lady of the Sea wanted us to return. That there is some unfinished business here. But I do not know what it is.”

“You don’t?”

“No,” I said, forestalling him. “And no, it’s not a curse! I just think She wants us to do something. I need to find out what.”

THE GOLDEN BOUGH

W
hen the rain ended Neas built an altar of tumbled stones on the beach and sacrificed to the Lady of the Sea. We had no lambs or goats, so it was flame and some of the myrrh Basetamon had given me. I assured Neas that myrrh was perfectly suitable for the goddess, and that in Egypt this was her accustomed food. Just to be safe, he poured out wine in libation as well.

“Great Lady,” he prayed aloud. “Merciful mother of the seas and all the creatures therein, of all the birds that fly above it, You have brought us back to this place and we do not understand why. If You will show us, we will do our best to fulfill whatever it is that You ask of us. We will stay here nine days in Your honor, as we did for Anchises, and at the end of that time we will sail with Your blessing.”

Nine days, I thought, would surely be enough for the wind to change. And surely long enough for Her to manifest Her will.

And so we rested.

On the second day Wilos came to me while I was helping Tia clean fish for roasting. He stood shyly beside me and waited until I looked up.

“Yes, Wilos?” I asked.

“I found something,” he said. “And I don’t know, but it might be the thing.”

“The thing?” I asked.

“The thing we’re here for,” he said. “I found it. I think it’s a cave where a monster lives.”

“A cave where a monster lives?” I frowned. There were some shallow caves up on the headland, and along the steep banks where the stream came down to the sea, but we had stayed here eleven days in all now without seeing anything more dangerous than a fox. Perhaps there were bears, but with all the hunting we had been doing, if there were bears surely our men would have seen signs of them by now.

Wilos shifted from foot to foot. “Will you come and bring my father?”

I brought not only Neas but Xandros, Kos, and Bai too, all of them with their swords and a couple of hefty spears. Bai also brought his bow. Neas didn’t want Wilos to come, but I pointed out that he had to show us the way, and Xandros said that he wasn’t too young for a bear hunt, provided he stayed well back, and he couldn’t be any more trouble than me. Which was true. I was getting close to seven moons gone, and growing heavy and uncomfortable.

Quietly we went up the course of the stream. The day was warm, and we walked for more than an hour. The sound of the sea faded into the distance. I began to wish I had reconsidered coming. Along the banks of the stream it was mostly rocks here, and the trees were small and stunted.

“There,” Wilos said, and pointed.

The stream flowed through a small ravine, and up on the sides of the slope there was a grove of oak trees, their young leaves casting a dappled shade over the opening of a cave. I waited beside the stream with Wilos while Neas, Xandros, Kos, and Bai climbed up and investigated. They were gone a long time before Kos came out and called to us. “It’s safe. You can come up!”

“What’s there?” I called. If there was nothing, they would have all just come back down.

I climbed up. It was getting hot, and I was glad of the shade at the top. Wilos ran up ahead of me.

“What have you found?” I asked.

“It’s all right,” Neas said. “There’s nothing alive here.”

“The bones of a monster,” Xandros said. He looked like he wished he were somewhere else.

“Come and see what you think,” Neas said.

I stepped forward, letting my eyes adjust to the dim light. On the floor of the cave was a skeleton, the legs and feet still buried in the floor of the cave. It had ribs like a man, and I would have thought it was human if I had not seen the head. I knelt down beside it. Its skull was enormous and bulged in all the wrong places, with massive ridges of bone above its eyes and a jaw that jutted forward, a few worn square teeth still intact. I reached out and touched it very gently. The bone was as smooth and as cold as stone.

“See here?” Bai said. He lifted a stone that had laid beside it, sharpened on one side, whorls of white marking the striations in the flint. “It’s some kind of ax or chopper.”

I reached for it. “It is,” I said. “I’ve seen people use stone choppers way up in the mountains above Pylos. Poor people who can’t afford bronze.”

“There isn’t any metal here that I’ve seen,” Neas said.

I turned back to the skeleton, pushing the dirt away from the ribs with my fingers. It looked like a man, almost.

“What is it?” Xandros said. “A Cyclops?”

“Maybe,” I said. “But he had two eyes.” My hands touched one rib, traced the reddish stains across it. “And he had friends. They sprinkled his body with ochre and laid him out.”

“How do you know that?” Neas asked.

“The stains on his bones,” I said. “It’s how we bury priests. And the servants of the Lady of the Dead. We do not go to the fire, but sleep in the deep caves just like this.”

They had laid him out. No corpse just fell into this position of repose, lying on his back with his ax beside his hand, his body sprinkled with ochre. Perhaps they had combed his hair on his shoulders, laid flowers around his body, cut locks of their hair to place on his breast. I could almost see it, and for a moment I thought I did. Strange, ugly people, but with drums and the wailing of women as they laid him here in the cave. Someone’s lover, someone’s father, someone’s son. Had someone sung the Descent?

Xandros was edging toward the door. “I don’t think we should be here,” he said.

“If this is a sacred grave spot, we shouldn’t be,” Neas said. “The last thing we need is for the Lady of the Dead to be displeased with us.”

“She will not be,” I said. “If you want to go out you can. I will rebury what is left and sing the Descent for him.”

“I’ll help you,” Wilos said.

“No,” said Neas.

“I found him,” Wilos said, looking up at his father. “And you can’t expect the Lady to bury him by herself. She’s pregnant!”

Neas’ mouth twitched, but he couldn’t refute his son’s gallantry. “All right. Help Sybil, if you will. Is that fine with you?”

“Wilos will be a big help,” I assured him. “And there is no danger.”

Xandros looked clearly skeptical, but they all went out. The bright sun shone in through the cave door, lighting Wilos’ fair hair in an aureole around his head.

“Thank you for staying, Prince Wilos,” I said. “If you can help me move the dirt from that corner over here so we can cover him.” I put his ax back beside him.

Wilos started digging with a will, carrying dirt in his tunic. I was certain that Lide would have something to say about laundry, but I said nothing.

The boy helped me pack the dirt down over his ribs and chest again. His little hands were brown and strong. “Do you think he was killed?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t see any broken bones or anything splintered. And he’s missing most of his teeth, except a few that are very, very worn. See?” I showed him as we worked. “I think he was an old man.”

“Like my grandfather,” Wilos said.

“Yes,” I said. I knew that he missed Anchises greatly. And that was no bad thing. Anchises was missed because he had been loved by his only grandchild.

“Do you think he was a king?”

“He might have been,” I said. “Or a priest.”

“I wish I could be a priest,” Wilos said.

I looked up at his composed child’s face, watching his own hands as he worked. “Do you?” I asked quietly. He was her grandson as well, Lysisippa the daughter of Priam who had been servant to the Lady of the Sea.

“Uh-huh. But I have to be a prince instead.”

“You could be both, you know,” I said. “Some of the gods have priests who do other things. And a king has to be a little bit of a priest.”

“Will I be a king?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Someday when you are as old as your father is now, you will be our king and you will keep the People safe like your father does.”

“That sounds really hard,” he said, mounding the dirt softly over the skull’s eyeholes.

“It is,” I said. “Being a king is really hard. But you’ll have people to help you.”

“Like who?”

“Like Kianna,” I said.

Wilos snorted. “Kianna’s a baby. She’s not much help.”

“She won’t be a baby then. She’ll be Sybil, the Handmaiden of the Lady of the Dead. And she’ll help you like I help your father.”

He thought about that for a minute. “Will she be pretty?”

“I imagine so,” I said. Kianna was a beautiful child, as I had known she would be, with red-gold hair and great gray eyes, creamy skin freckled in the sun.

“Lide says she’s a smart baby,” Wilos said. “Maybe I should marry her. I mean, if she’s smart and pretty and she’s going to help me be king.”

“Those are very important things to think of,” I said, wondering how much talk Wilos had heard in Egypt, and how much Anchises had said. “It’s important for a king to marry the right person. But I don’t think you can marry Kianna, because she’s going to be Sybil.”

I patted the last of the dirt down. “Now I need to sing the Descent. Can you drum on the ground with your hands and help me?”

Wilos nodded, and I began the Descent, the long high part that comes at the beginning, and then the lower part of the lament. When I got to the change, Wilos came in singing above me, his little boy’s voice as true and as clear as his father’s, soaring over mine like a skylark. We finished together.

“I didn’t know you knew that,” I said.

He shrugged. “I’ve heard you sing it a lot.”

“I suppose I have.” I got ready to stand up. Too many times to have sung the Descent in so few months.

“Can I be a priest too? Besides a king?” he asked.

I looked down at him sitting in the stray sunbeams, shaking out his dirty shirt. His grandmother was Cythera, and his great-aunt was Kassandra, perhaps the greatest oracle the People have known. It was in his blood, in his very bones. And he was the firstborn, born to be a prince. Such things were not done in the City, but we were in the City no longer.

“Yes, Wilos,” I said. “You will be a priest too. You will be a priest of the king of the gods, and king of the People as well. There is no reason why you can’t do both at once.”

I reached for his hand and we walked out of the cave together.

In the grove of trees outside the men were practicing target shooting. Bai had his bow out, and they were taking turns trying to hit a particular tree trunk. Xandros was fairly horrible, and they had stopped and were standing around joking while Xandros hunted in the underbrush for his arrow.

He found it and brought it back to Kos. “You do better,” he said, thrusting the arrow at him.

“Easily, my friend, easily,” Kos said, fitting the arrow to the bow and aiming up at the tree.

Neas grabbed his arm. “Wait!” he said.

There was a flash of white in the trees. A pair of white doves flew circling through the air, alighting on the branch they had targeted.

Kos lowered the bow, and we all let out a breath.

“Doves,” Neas said in a hushed voice. “We asked My Mother for a sign. There was a pair of white doves that nested in the eaves of the Great Temple of the Lady of the Sea where I was as a child. I remember them. I used to feed them pieces of bread and they would come to me. One of them would even land on my shoulder. It’s the sign. She knew I would remember.”

The doves sat on the branch, looking down at us. Then they took wing together, fluttering through the leaves and coming to rest a little ways away. Neas walked forward. They did not startle, only waited until he came near.

When he was beneath them he looked up. “What is it you are here to show me?” he asked.

They took off in a flurry of wings and he followed.

Six times they took flight and flew a little ways before alighting again, and six times we all followed through the sun-dappled wood, into the shade of a great oak as wide around as Neas and Xandros standing together. The doves alighted in its lower branches. I looked up. The doves cooed.

Twined around the branch were pale green leaves, a cluster of hanging golden berries, delicate and small.

“The golden bough,” I whispered.

Neas looked at me.

“It is for kingship,” I said. “To pass Night’s Door into the Underworld and return unharmed we need those berries, for they are sacred to Death’s Queen. They do not grow in Egypt, and only rarely in Akaiawa. You must get the bough without harming it. This is what the Lady of the Sea has brought you here to do.”

“It’s five times the height of a man up in the air!” Kos said. “There’s no climbing that tree.”

Neas’ eyes went to Wilos’ dirty tunic, then to the tree above.

“Son,” he said, “take off your tunic and hold it between your hands the way you carried dirt, and stand beneath that branch.” He reached for Bai’s bow.

The doves took off, spiraling from the grove into the sky.

Carefully, Neas chose out the straightest arrow. None of us breathed while he fitted it to the string and pulled the bow taut.

The arrow flashed upward. It pierced the stem of the bough where it held to the oak, and the bundle of leaves and berries dropped into Wilos’ shirt.