Island of Fire (The Age of Bronze) (22 page)

Another shriek rose from the breast of the mad priestess. Once more, she dashed about the great room, repeating the names of the goddess, both familiar and unknown. The invisible flutes trilled out their music, ever louder. Ever faster, the jingling of finger cymbals and sistrum rang out their rhythm. Panting, Ip’igéneya slowed her steps until her dancing finally came to a complete halt beside the tattered hearth. “East is no longer the birthplace of dawn and good. Death now rules the land of the sun’s birth. Turn westward, my kinsmen. It is your last hope. Forget the ancient code of
areté
. Abandon the graves of your ancestors. Save yourselves while you still can, my poor children. Go to the sinking sun, across the forbidden waters, beyond the Great Green Sea. The Divine Bull, the Divine Calf commands you. It is the will of the Great Ram, the will of Diwonúso! It is the fate spun for you by the triple goddess. Go west, toward your destiny. It is the decree of the Divine Mare, the law of the Sacred Bee, the will of Mother Diwiyána.”

With a suddenness that frightened her audience, the woman halted and fell silent for a long moment. Her shoulders drooped and she clasped a single fist to her heaving breast. “I fall. I sink down,” she whispered and collapsed in a heap of colorful linen on the stony floor of the cavern.

The echoes continued for a long time in the great chamber, still longer in the ears of the trembling pilgrims. Gradually the sounds of the trampling feet, of flutes, and of finger cymbals receded until nothing but the quiet drip of water was heard. Even the crackling fire had fallen silent. The travelers still dared not speak or move for a long while. Exhausted by the hard climb, weak from hunger and thirst, they stood, clinging to one another until their knees gave way. Seating themselves on the rough floor, they found sleep carrying them away in spite of their terror.

Diwoméde was awakened early the following morning by the priestess. “I must speak to you,” she whispered. “Come with me.”

The
qasiléyu
eased himself off the hard floor, carefully moving Dáuniya’s arm from his so as not to wake her. She stirred at the movement but did not open her eyes. Qérayan, beside her, continued to snore lightly, his young hands gripping the woman’s skirts. Diwoméde’s legs were stiff and sore from the previous day’s exertions. His muscles ached as he followed Ip’igéneya toward the back of the cavern. Just as he was afraid the darkness would swallow them, he glimpsed light around a low formation of stone. The seeress led him toward the bright point into a rather small chamber. There, a saucer-shaped lamp burned its oil, scarcely illuminating the room. It was enough that Diwoméde could make out a narrow bed toward the back, and a wooden chest painted with hunting scenes. The very ordinariness of the furnishings struck him, brushing aside the feelings of awe and fear that had lingered from the night before. The seeress might commune with shades of the dead and immortal gods at times. But clearly she was also an ordinary woman of flesh and blood, who slept when she was tired and kept her clothing in quite an ordinary chest. She could not see any more than he could without light.

Ip’igéneya gestured toward the low bed and seated herself on the chest. “You know my secret name,” she admitted brusquely, catching his gaze as he sat on the fleecy coverlet. “You and my brother Orésta are the only ones who know that I was once Agamémnon’s daughter. You two alone know that I was demanded as a sacrifice to the goddess of wild things. I have vowed never to reveal this secret to anyone else, since the people of Ak’áiwiya and Assúwa would demand vengeance against me for all of these years of drought. That is, they would blame my existence, and the anger of the Mistress of animals, for that disaster. I know that you will keep the secret of my father and my uncle’s deception of the great Lady, since your king’s guilt would reflect badly on you, too. My brother will do the same, since I could legally claim his throne, if I had a mind to. So, you see, I have nothing to fear from any mortal.”

Diwoméde sat, blinking uncomprehendingly, still foggy with sleep. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked, finally.

The priestess frowned at him, pursing her thin lips. “You have our father’s lack of insight, I see. I tell you this so that you will understand what happened here last night. My mouth recites what the god wills, not what my own heart desires, you understand. I simply did not want you to doubt me, you dull ox hoof! No man in this world can harm me, not even you.”

The
qasiléyu
found it increasingly difficult to meet her unrelenting stare. A prickling sensation crawled up his back and he felt sweat beading on his brow. Feeling that he was supposed to say something, but unable to think of anything useful, he simply muttered an obedient, “Yes,
wánasha
.”

“
Wánasha!”
Ip’igéneya repeated indignantly. “I am a seeress, not a queen! My title is Díwiya, I will have you know. I find it hard to believe that you could be a
Zéyugelo
, a southern Ak’áyan ox-driver, and still be so ignorant!
Ai
, perhaps it is not so very surprising, after all. King Agamémnon never pressed his
qasiléyus
to perform their religious duties, or to think any farther than to say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ did he?”

“Yes, Díwiya,” he said, still more quietly than before. “I mean, no.”

She did not acknowledge his remark. “Nor does Lady Diwiyána recognize her daughter Préswa’s claim on me,” she continued, her voice loud and confident. “I know this without a doubt, since the netherworld opens to me whenever I call the Great Lady’s names. My eternal servitude to her son is the only price she has asked of me. I give that to her with a willing heart. It is tragic, perhaps, but my father and mother both paid with their lives for the wrong they did to me and to the dignity of the gods. The queen of the
maináds
was not so easily placated, though. Now my younger sister has been claimed by the arrow of the mighty Artémito.” She sighed and fell silent for a long time, staring into the small flame that hovered above the oil lamp.
“Owái
, Lawodíka,” she whispered, “the wild goddess took you instead of me.”

Diwoméde shifted uncomfortably on his seat, anxious to break the silence. But he was afraid to speak and dared not leave until the seeress desired it.

Finally, Ip’igéneya took a deep breath, returning to the world of the living. When she spoke again, the authority and cold strength were gone from her voice and demeanor. No longer appearing to be a seeress at all, she told the former slave, “All the gods and goddesses are satisfied, at long last. We have appeased them all, my sister and I. As a result, the fortunes of Ak’áiwiya will begin to improve, this very year. I have seen it in a vision. You will see this for yourself, soon enough. The rains will come again in force, this winter, for the first time in nearly two decades.”

He began to frame a question, but hesitated. Then it was too late. Ip’igéneya’s demeanor changed yet again. Capturing Diwoméde’s eyes with her own, once more, she told him, “Nevertheless, you and your entire household must go west, do you hear? Can I trust you to obey? All of you must leave this country, never to return. Do you understand? This is not my command. It is the order of the gods that I give to you. There is nothing left for you in Ak’áiwiya, you see.” She cleared her throat. “Now there is only the payment for my services, to discuss.”

The former slave gulped. “But…” Icy fear gripped him in its claws. Into his mind flashed images – his previous meeting with this seeress in the distant land of her former exile, among strange men with pale,
dáimon
-like eyes and straight, red hair. Those people clad in their odd garments reappeared in his mind’s eyes, each barbarian limb encased in a leather tube, the legs as well as the arms. Most peculiar of all, those warriors’ little horses had pulled no chariots or wagons, but bore their masters on their very backs! Even their deities were barbaric, there on the northern rim of the world. The grim goddess of that region had demanded a terrible sacrifice. Her altar had cried out for human blood. He and his half-brother, Orésta, had thought themselves to be on the very banks of the Stuks, the river separating the land of the living from the land of the dead. The kinsmen had spent a long night, tethered like sacrificial lambs, meditating on those fetid waters.

The priestess in that far away land had turned out to Ip’emédeya, the miraculously preserved daughter of king Agamémnon. She had helped the two Ak’áyans, her own kinsmen, escape. But she had nursed a grudge in her cold heart, turned hard as stone in bitterness at being exiled to that foreign place. Her terror when her father had apparently prepared to slit her throat to appease Artémito, Divine Queen of the
maináds,
had shaken her deeply, to her very soul. She never forgave him, even though he had spared her, as had been his plan all along. She had cursed Agamémnon and all of Ak’áiwiya with him. Because a human sacrifice had supposedly begun the Tróyan campaign, so the war had ended with another, this one performed in fact. This second maiden had no father or uncle to save her through deception, no sanctuary in a barbarian country to flee to. This sacrificial hind, a royal princess of Tróya, had not been spared.

Diwoméde’s hands grew cold and numb at the memories. Sickness rose in his throat as he thought of those days. The youngest daughter of the Tróyan king seemed to rise before his eyes. “Kill me, then,” the shade seemed to whisper, as the princess had done, so long ago. “You Ak’áyans have already sent both of my parents and all my brothers to ‘Aidé already. Why should I hesitate to join them? Better I should leave this cursed land than be further defiled by you godless
dáimons
! Better to die than to be banished from my sacred homeland and enslaved.” Agamémnon had kept her from cursing Ak’áiwiya openly by threatening to dispose of her body at sea. So, she had closed her pale lips. True to his often unreliable word, the king had allowed her surviving female kinfolk to bury her corpse in the soil of her native land . But her older sister had called down those avenging goddesses, the Divine Furies, a few months later. Those implacable deities had assuredly returned the Ak’áyan warriors’ crimes back on their own heads ninefold, no, tenfold, as both princesses had desired.

What else could Ip’igéneya demand now but another such sacrifice, the blood of another human lamb? Truly frightened now, Diwoméde’s heart began to pound. Dáuniya was sleeping so peacefully just a few paces away, in the larger room. The thought pierced him to the very heart.

CHAPTER SEVEN

PAN

“
Ak’,
Diwoméde, do not alarm yourself,” the priestess told him brusquely. “I know that you have nothing of any substance to give me. Nor do my divine master and mistress demand blood, despite what you may hear from the lips of the ignorant, these days. What I require of you is simply this. You must vow to spread the word of my oracular power in every land that you pass.”

“I swear to do as you ask,” Diwoméde answered as quickly as he could, breathless with relief.

The woman nodded, satisfied. The gesture was also a dismissal, clearly. But he did not rise from her bed. The anguish still gripping his soul would not allow him to leave without speaking of his burden of doubt. “Tell me one more thing, Ip’igéneya.” The
qasiléyu
hesitated to put into words the thought that so troubled him.

“Yes?” she responded, with a touch of impatience.

It seemed so human an emotion that he took heart. She was kin to him, after all, a sister, after a fashion. In a voice scarcely above a whisper, he asked, “Am I to blame for our father’s death?”

Ip’igéneya blinked, utterly taken by surprise. She did not understand the question.

The words began to spill from Diwoméde’s lips without control. “When king Agamémnon first made me his
qasiléyu
, he gave me only the lowest of tasks. But in the Tróyan war, I began to gain his respect. He even acknowledged me as his son, a bastard, yes, but his son nevertheless. I made him a vow when I took my rank and I made him another when I went to Attika, as he ordered, to punish the king there for his insubordination. I…” He found it difficult to continue, as a weight pressed down on his chest and his throat closed. He seemed to be choking. “I was not at his side…I could not protect him…when Aígist’o attacked…I was not there.”

“
Ai
, yes, yes, I have heard all about that,” Ip’igéneya scoffed lightly, still puzzled, but brushing it aside. “Your assault on the Attikan capital failed, of course. They had been warned. They were ready when you came and most of your men died. Only you lived to return to Argo. So, what is the meaning of your question? How could you be to blame for the death of your king if you were not even there when he died? It was Aígist’o who killed him. Everyone knows that.”

He hung his head, unable to look into those wide, dark eyes. “But…my captivity…the fact that the Attikans prevailed against us…I cannot get it out of my mind.” His voice began to break with the intensity of the old emotion. “That defeat must have meant something, Ip’igéneya. It was the cause of Agamémnon’s death, indirectly. Was it something that I did? Did I anger some god? Is that why my attack failed?”