Spiral: Book One of the Spiral in Time (52 page)

The last time Sabrann awakened Akmu-en-Swnw was there, with a frown on his brown Egyptian face. She was shivering and burning hot at the same time. He drew off her tunic—another of his—soaked with sweat, and placed a heavy linen sheet over her and then a blanket. He laid herb-scented cloths on her forehead and wrapped something hot and stinging around her chest. Her body shook with great chills.

She drifted along, sinking deeper and deeper into a feverish dream.

A face blurred above her. Whose? She remembered falling. Forever falling toward the dark water and her skin stinging as she plunged into the ocean.

Carloi was there, next to her; they fell together and both sank deep into the water. His eyes were wide open and he looked at her with a surprised expression. As they drifted away from each other, her fingers reached out and touched his hand, trying to grab hold. But he slipped away. She followed his eyes until he disappeared. Then cold water filled every part of her body as she floated, suspended and alone, her tunic billowing out, her eyes closed.

In the fever, she found a memory, almost gone. Something was pulling her up through the dark, through the cold.

She looked up. A light shown into the depths, pale like the sun’s rays; but below her, in the deep, it was night. Someone’s arm wrapped around her, guiding her back to the surface of the world.

It pulled her, unwilling, back into life.

CHAPTER 34

Carloi was dead. It was all they talked of—muttering, hissing in anger, and cursing in low voices. But they all agreed: he died because the offering bowls were empty. Even the gods were angry and had almost killed the girl.

The specter of death lay like a film over the seamen’s eyes, usually concerned only with the wind in the sails. No one thought Carloi was the thief; his fear of the gods and dying were well known. So the thief still lived.

A gray fog off the coast of Tartessos suited the mood of the
Astarte
as grim comments passed among the crew. They gave each other suspicious glances as they set about preparing to enter the Bay of Gadir. Whose life would be claimed next?

The fog hovered. Mistakes were made. There would have to be justice soon or they would never make it to Carthage.

The accusatory looks grew more pointed. But not towards Sabrann, the one who survived. Somehow—Hero loved to talk—the word had spread that she was a seer. Whenever a seaman saw her, he kept his distance and respectfully bowed his head. Seers were both sacred and feared.

The ocean water coughed up, her fever gone, and face leeched of color, Sabrann sat wrapped in a blanket in the doorway of the Admiral’s cabin. Forbidden to go outside, she was guarded like some treasure to be kept safe from thieves. From now until Carthage, the Admiral ordered, she must always be attended by someone: Hero, Akmu, or Adonibaal. Glas was thought not strong enough to be her protector. But from what? Or whom?

With bleak eyes, Sabrann watched them prepare to land. She tried to remember the face she had last seen before the ocean claimed her. But all were dark-haired and olive- skinned, and looked much alike. One of them had saved her and brought her back from the depths—back to be a slave again. Paralyzed by fear, her memory of what happened was confused, parts gone. She remembered a dark face, someone tried to stop her from falling. Carloi drifting away! Unknown hands and arms pulling her up. She tried to fill in the missing parts and then stopped. It no longer mattered.

She was glad she didn’t know which one. She would spit in his eye.

They cast furtive looks in her direction. Some blamed her for old Carloi’s death, and rightly so, she thought, though it was his kindness that killed him. She had died and then the gods sent her back. To what? She felt scrubbed and naked, uncovered as a newborn, but there was no mother to comfort her.

She touched the tattoo on her cheek; the water had not erased that. And Rosmerta! Sabrann felt a surge of the old, familiar anger. The wind blew over her skin and she shivered, but not from cold.

She turned from the small doorway and glanced at Hero. He sat writing at the Admiral’s table and looking up, smiled a mischievous boy’s smile. Her heart leaped. She wanted his hands to touch her and warm her chilled skin. A deep longing filled her heart and she quickly looked away. She had kept her secret hidden deep in her heart. But Rosmerta had known. Sabrann gazed at the coast and tried to forget.

Before they could see Gadir, the ship silently passed a small island where, the captain said, an oracle dwelled in a cave. Fishermen and traders, seamen and captains crawled into that cave on hands and knees to hear the oracle’s words before setting out into the ocean. Perched on the edge of the unknown, the Oracle of Gadir offered divine counsel to all, and some hope, perhaps, of returning.

Suddenly, Sabrann thought of Broicsech, who could read someone’s future, concealed and hidden inside a bloody sacrifice. The vision of the double heart from the lamb still haunted her dreams. She peered at the rocky island and wanted the oracle’s words for herself—not for a safe return here!—but to find her way back to Albion. Then she would ask Broicsech herself what that sign meant. And who had sent the Gaesatae to kill everyone? All the answers to her questions were kept in Albion.

The fog drifted up like veils lifting, and the sky brightened with a yellow glow. An offshore breeze carried a fleeting scent of cooking oil and fish—land was near. The air warmed and smelled of pitch and wood burning. From far off, a cock crowed.

An air of hope blew through the ship.

The crew swarmed on deck—excited, hungry and thirsty. The
Astarte
glided into the channel that led to Gadir, sitting at the mouth of a great river, where silver had poured down from the mountains of Tartessos, and greedy Phoenician captains cast new anchors of solid silver when their cargo holds were too full to hold anymore. This portal to Iberia’s silver mountains had made the homeland Phoenician city of Tyre rich. Now Tyre was dead, conquered by the Persians, and Carthage—the new city—claimed everything abandoned in the western Great Sea.

For the parched and hungry seamen of the
Astarte
, the riches of Gadir were food and drink. Like men lusting for silver or gold, visions of feasts floated in the air above the crew working the ship: daydreams of purple figs and mahogany-tinted sugary dates, of soft mounds of bread and pyramids of rich black olives and tart red pomegranates. And wine flowing everywhere—the blood of grapes, intoxicating and sweet.

The port lay on the small island of
Erytheia
, shielded by reefs and sand bars. On the far western point of the island city, the ship slid cautiously past sharp, guardian barriers of shale, past an ancient temple devoted to the ship’s namesake, the goddess Astarte. The old Phoenicians from Tyre had built it, eternally thankful to reach the edge of the world and not fall off.

As they passed, thankful seamen knelt on the deck and prayed to Astarte: daughter of El, Queen of the Night, Goddess of Tyre and old Ugarit, and sacred prostitutes. She granted fertility and bestowed love. All manner of a woman’s power was worshiped in this one goddess.

Soon they would go to her temple and make great offerings and sacrifices for their safe arrival. The end of their journey was finally near; Carthage was but five days away.

“Sabrann!” A voice roused her.

High above the ship, Glas clambered up the mainmast rope ladder, faithfully following Thombaii the carpenter. He waved. Even with a weak leg, he somehow managed to lift himself up ladders and climb down hatches. He spent all his time now with Thombaii. His fair skin grew tanned. The crew, after the first few weeks of getting used to seeing his malformed head and leg, seemed to pay little attention to his deformities.

Sabrann watched him with a troubled eye and knew what was worrying her: he didn’t cry anymore. Was it so easy for him to forget? He went about the ship, always trailing after the carpenter and laughing. Glas had even won over Isis and scurried about doing his errands and taking gifts of food to the Admiral, for Isis had squirreled away a small jar of honey and a few pomegranates, still fresh, wrapped in their thin clay coverings. Glas searched deep in the hold for the last few grains of lentils for Isis to make into thin gruel. His cheerful nature had softened the rough edges of Isis’s cranky mien.

“How goes it,
mo caraid
?” she asked him one night. “Are the seamen kind to you? And Thombaii?” She knew he never left the carpenter’s side.

Glas nodded his head. He gave her no real answer. “I like the water. And fixing things.”

Yet, sometimes, she saw the way his eyes paused and gazed over the boundless horizon the
Astarte
endlessly sailed upon. There was a quickening then, a gleam to his eye, brief as a falling star.

A breeze might catch his sun-bleached hair, and he would look up. An uncertain look came over his face, as though he saw beyond and the sight emptied him of his old thoughts. His face changed then, and it seemed nothing filled the void. He saw something that she, who gazed into other people’s lives, could not fathom.

He seemed happy. But without Maigrid? He dearly loved his mother. At first, after they were saved by the dolphins, he cried every night, muffling his tears under the covers. But that had stopped in the last few weeks.

She could not conceal her own sadness. This morning when he brought her a bowl of gruel, he found her weeping. He frowned and gave her a hug.

He was silent as he sat down beside her. She looked over and saw his eyes were closed; his lips moving. He was talking to himself, under his breath.

“Who are you talking to?”

“Mam.” A chill came over Sabrann.

“She came and told me to stop crying. Sometimes, she comes at night and tells me secrets. When I wake up, I don’t want to cry anymore.” His eyes drifted off to the horizon. When he turned back to her, they were blank, his face expressionless like people she had seen who were empty-headed, crazed.

Why had he stopped caring? She felt alone. A tear ran down her cheek. He was drifting away from her, and she could not stop him. Soon he would be simple-minded and not even care if he was sold as a slave.

It would kill him to be a slave. Deformed, he would be beaten and abused. Somehow, she must keep him free. She stroked the back of his hand. Secrets, he said. She wondered at that. What was happening to him? Perhaps he was just homesick.

“I miss her, too,” she said. “But, remember, I will always take care of you. And I will get us home to Mai Dun.”

He laughed. “Home is far away. But we are here. And there is danger. I can help.” He stood abruptly and left her to finish his chores.

Sabrann stared after him. He spoke in puzzles, not like the Glas of old. The old Glas was fading, even though outwardly his brilliant smile and essential good nature remained. Now he did not want to look back. He only seemed to see the day before him, the endless horizon of the ocean that consoled by never changing; never going away as had all the people he loved.

Her chest ached with pain at the thought of losing him. His life had always been woven into her own. He was her soul friend and she rarely thought about his twisted body, his malformed head. Now she wondered. Had he been more damaged at birth than anyone knew? Had the gods already taken him?

Was he simple-minded now? It seemed the death of all he knew had erased his interest in the past. Except for Maigrid. And she was here, he said.

Well, who was she to question that? Maigrid had come to her in that horrible moment in the slave hut and saved her. She had heard Maigrid’s voice speak to her:
Carenta—
dear one—she said. Sabrann cherished that name and Maigrid’s voice—it meant she was still loved.

Now Sabrann knew love reached past dying. So perhaps Glas, in his pain, had called his mother’s love to him. She hoped so. Perhaps Maigrid’s love had saved them both.

The ship, anchored and tied to a stone pier, joyously received the food and drink of all their dreams. Baskets of bread and fruit, skins of wine and succulent roasted meat flowed from the shore to the
Astarte
. The thanksgiving procession to Astarte’s temple began, solemn and festive at the same time. Happy, stomachs full, the seamen of the
Astarte
sang and danced their way through the rough streets of Gadir, past pillared stone houses and small straw-and-clay huts with people at work in their doorways. Even Isis joyously beat his small drum and smiled. Someone played a bone flute; a clay whistle shrieked. The noise heralded their approach and roused flocks of black birds from their trees. Puffs of dark red dust trailed in the procession’s wake.