Sunrise on the Mediterranean (12 page)

“HaDerkato?”

I motioned for Tamera to enter. She left me a breakfast of fish grilled with tiny little sweet onions. Scallions? The meal
was delicious, though it hurt to hold the plate after a moment. I set it down and looked around, trying to orient myself.

Who, what, when, where, and why were my questions, and I hadn’t a single answer. Had these people come from the ashes of the
time period I’d lived in before, in Aztlan? Had I moved forward in time? No one seemed to know the name of Pharaoh, so that
checkpoint was ineffective. All in all, I was firmly adrift, waiting for Cheftu to chance across my pathway. I shifted and
saw a priest wielding a spear poke his head around the corner.

My chains were figurative but effective. They hadn’t even given me shoes!

Tamera mixed me some concoction involving salt water, a raw egg, coriander leaf, and something else. Whatever it was, it eased
some of my aching. Gingerly I climbed into a bath, then submitted to having my hair brushed and oiled while my legs were waxed.

The Pelesti were not as conscious about hygiene as either the Egyptians or the Azlantu. However, I was. Plucking and shaving
and waxing had become a way of life for me, one I wasn’t anxious to give up. However, it was agony with bruises. I settled
for a minimum of service because I’m a wimp when it comes to pain.

Even bathing, I wasn’t alone.

By noon I was clothed, jeweled, coiffed, and painted. I was eating some raisins and bread when Tamera came in, a contingency
of priestesses behind her. They were all wearing fish masks and fish body cloaks. Tamera handed me the same garment, telling
me that I was now one of their order, a goddess to serve Dagon as they each served him while mortal.

Again, more of the incongruous story thinking. No one seemed to find it odd that I didn’t know what to do, that I didn’t know
what prayers to say or even what the ritual was. They must have assumed I was a stupid goddess, but all were so agog at my
passing the tightrope ritual that they were willing to overlook some things. Thank the goddess!

This fish garb was definitely a fashion don’t; however, I had no choice. I put it on, slipped the mask over my head, then
went out to wait for El’i, my chauffeur.

The Pelesti were between growing seasons and had nothing to do. Therefore the
serenim
had created mass entertainment to keep the people happy. Today there were gladiator teams. That wasn’t the term they used,
but my lexicon had shown enough pictures of matinee movie stars in short dresses and helmets that I’d gotten the idea.

Rather than stay in the sheltered comfort of the Temple of Dagon, we sat outside, grouped around a central stage beneath the
trees. As
haDerkato
I had a throne next to Takala and Yamir. The youngest son, Wadia, who was about fourteen years old, sat at my feet, passing
grapes and olives back to me as though they were popcorn.

Six men emerged from one side of the sandy pit, six from the other side. A priest, wearing his official fish robe, invoked
the gods and goddesses to observe this challenge. Then he bowed away, and the teams attacked.

Slicing, hacking, stabbing, and jabbing, they tried, with a passion, to kill each other. I clenched my teeth, letting my vision
fuzz so that I didn’t actually see anything but also didn’t raise questions by cowering beneath my chair, which I would have
very much liked to do.

First blood brought a roar from the audience, compounding the intensity. Men and women spectators were equally involved. I
didn’t doubt some bookie waited outside the gates for the tallies.

By midafternoon the sand was bloody, everyone was dead, and we were headed home. I felt sick to my stomach; I’d just seen
eleven men slaughter each other. What had happened to my soul? What had possessed me to stay?

Fear. Fear of being alone, fear of being lonely. It was a scary, unknown world. By playing along, I survived. At least that
was my rationalization.

We mounted our sturdy carts and trundled back to the palace. I was ushered into the feast along with everyone else. Dinner
was served, a mash of corn with patties of corn shaped into fish. We were halfway through when I heard a shout.

“HaDerkato
, for you!” Tamera declared.

I looked up, horrified. The surviving gladiator beamed at me, holding a tray in his outstretched arms. A tray with the open,
staring eyes, the scream-gaped mouth, and the severed neck of the final combatant. The man’s head was being delivered to me
on a platter!

Corn refilled my mouth; what could I do?
Dear God, please help me!

I looked away, into the gaze of the gladiator.

His bronze-eyed gaze. Black hair fell over his broad shoulders. He gleamed with oils from his postslaughter bath. He was dressed
in the pointed kilt of the Pelesti, the lower half of his face obscured by beard. I looked back into his luminescent eyes,
my heart racing.

Could it be? “Sea-Mistress,” the king Yamir said, “it is customary to reward the winner with a kiss.”

The gladiator slid the tray with the head onto my table, next to my dinner. I raised my face, knowing that if it were Cheftu,
if he had stepped into the body of this person, I would recognize his kiss.

First the gladiator brushed my lips with his, then he seized me in a bear hug, pulling me across the table. He was rough,
stabbing his tongue into my mouth repeatedly, crushing my shoulders, and pressing my lips so hard that I felt the impressions
of his teeth. I saw stars from the pain of my shoulder.

This was not Cheftu.

The oaf released me and I fell back, stunned.

The Pelesti cheered; they were a cheery sort. The gladiator grinned, revealing that the teeth he’d pressed against my mouth
were the only four he had. I suppressed a shudder. My gaze fell on the tray, into the muddy gaze of the unfortunate man. I
told myself it was all wax. Just a reproduction. Not real. Not real, Chloe.

Wadia was examining the head, lifting its hair, looking in its ears, with the transchronological fascination that teenage
boys have for the gruesome. The blood had left my cheeks. I felt horrible. Please don’t let me throw up, I pleaded with the
universe. “Take it to Dagon,” I whispered. “Offer it to the sea,” I told Tamera.

They loved the idea, so a group, dancing and singing, trooped off to the shore, the head held like a banner above them.

They left the bloodstained tray for me. I gestured for Tamera. “Get rid of it,” I said. “I return to the temple.”

“May the goddess bless your sleep.”

May the goddess keep me from having nightmares, I thought as I climbed into the cart.

I
WOKE UP IN ANOTHER TOWN
. Not a physical change in location, but the cheeriness and playfulness of the city had been replaced overnight with somber
faces and battle readiness. Highlanders had been sighted, peering down from their mountainous strongholds. It was the first
sign of spring, I was told.

“They fear to meet us on the plains,” Wadia bragged later. We’d eaten dinner together; now we sat outside beneath the stars.
More than anyone else, Wadia and I got along. He was a teenager; they were universal. “If they met with us on the plains,
our chariots could beat them.”

“They don’t have chariots?”

“Lo
, not even horses.”

“How do they move about, then?” I asked, plucking a fig from the bowl. It was the season for figs, a welcome change from the
corn-and-scallion diet.

I got seafood only for breakfast.

“They swarm like bees,” he said, his hands moving parallel to each other, imitating the swarm. “Then bzzzz, down from the
forests of their god, swooping on our men! Bzzzz! They sting us again and again.”

“But they don’t have horses?”

“In the hills, it’s deadlier to have horses,” he explained to me slowly. “They get stuck, they can’t get good footing.

They can’t move like bees. The highlanders don’t even have good weaponry.”

“So why be fearful?” I asked as I sucked the seeds from my fig.

He looked at me with an expression I recalled giving my parents when they were being too obtuse for words. “Bees can kill,
even when they are little, even when their stingers are small, because they are fierce.”

“Bees? Are fierce?”

“Have you ever tried to take anything from a bee?” he asked me.

No, I actually hadn’t. I tried to avoid bees. “So they swarm and sting you,” I said.

“They also have a powerful god, so that they win battles, through divine intervention. Their god is mighty, he’s vicious.”

“Then why don’t you, I don’t know, worship him instead? If he’s more powerful than Dagon?” Halfway through my statement I
realized that what I was saying approximated blasphemy. I held my breath.

“Their god only lets the highlanders worship him. He doesn’t want any other people.”

A god who wasn’t interested in proselytizing? This was new.

“So we try to stay away from their highlands, they keep out of our lowlands.” He looked away. His profile was like his brother’s,
with a prominent nose. Unlike Yamir, though, he had a matching chin that already fit his face. He was a teen, but he had none
of the awkwardness of youth. His voice was low. “They are so unspeakable, they are so much refuse, that they even burned our
teraphim.”

Here we go with the statuettes, I thought. I wonder if I could just make some from the local clay, save us all a lot of pain
and suffering. “Their god doesn’t want you to worship him, so what kind of divine intervention did he use? What’s the point?”

Wadia grinned. He loved telling stories. Though he was next in line for the throne, he had the spirit of a scholar. Or a stand-up
comic. He began,
“Lifnay …”

My lexicon held up a card that said “ ‘Before’ or ‘Once upon a time.’ ”

“… the lion who now roams the mountains was but a cub.”

Why couldn’t anyone with a Middle Eastern street address ever speak directly? They would be mute if it weren’t for metaphors.
I nodded for Wadia to continue.

“There was another ruler, Labayu. He was the first king to unite the highlanders. He was really big,” Wadia said. “Even taller
than you. He brought battle against us, agreeing to have a champion fight for the honor of the highlands, versus a champion
for our honor.” He sucked the seeds from his fig, then continued.

I tried to reconcile my idea of Lancelot jousting with the image of a man in a kilt.

“It is an accepted way,” Wadia said. “If every time there was a war we sent out the entire army, then there would be no one
to wed the women or plow the fields. The Pelesti would die out.” He shrugged, his thin shoulders jabbing through the wool
of his cloak.

That made sense. My biggest, baddest guy fights yours, and everyone else watches. Less muss, less fuss. But what did the rest
of the soldiers do? “So what happened?” I asked.

“We picked the largest of our men, the champion, a giant. Five times undefeated!” he said, holding up his hand. “Five times!”

“Their champion was better?”
“Ach!
They sent a child! A little boy, no older than I am now! Smaller than me. It was embarrassing. Labayu wanted to ridicule
us.”

The hair on the back of my neck started to stiffen. A child and a giant?

“He was not even a soldier, just a kid, a scrawny little runt at that!”

“Maybe, maybe they had no one else better?” I offered, knowing that I was lying.

Wadia gave me another of those looks. I think he’d learned them from his mother, the wide Takala-dagon. “Sending a child to
fight our champion was a horrible insult. Not only to us, but to our families, to our god, and especially to the
serenim.”
He paused, a storyteller in the middle of his tale. “No one was angrier than the champion, though.” He lowered his voice.
“Now the champion isn’t the tallest tree in the forest, anyway. He rages, he fumes. He breaks furniture, rips off the legs
of a nearby cat, he’s so furious.”

He ripped the legs off a cat? Was that a figure of speech? I grimaced.

“He calls to the heavens, protesting this dishonor.” Wadia frowned. “We were trying to be honorable, pitting champion against
champion. It’s fair.” He shook his head, picking at the stem of a fig. “Our honor is diminished by their behavior.” He sighed
deeply. “Highlanders are a wild, uncivilized bunch.” He suddenly sounded so mature—but he should— he was going to be the next
king. It was a weird paradigm.

“Did your champion fight this boy, despite the dishonor?”

Wadia sucked the last bit of fig juice from his fingertips. “It was over with one blow. One divine gust of their god’s breath
and That One, that little boy, had felled our champion. It was a disgrace.”

My fig suddenly had the flavor of a golf ball. I could barely find my voice. “Was, uh, Goliath your champion’s name?”

He raised his head sharply. “Gol’i’at,
ken.
How did you know?”

Omigod, omigod.
I swallowed hard. Go-lee-at. “I’m a goddess, remember?”

“That little boy slew our giant Gol’i’at, then he went on to fight for his ruler, Labayu. That One was dismissed from Labayu’s
court, so for a while he was a mercenary for our brother
seren
, Akshish of Gath. When Labayu died in battle with Akshish and the other
serenim
, That One turned against us. Now he rules the highlands, but he is wily, untrustworthy.” Wadia leaned in. “He has no honor,
he doesn’t respect the laws of the land, or the heavens. He slights the other gods and he tramples our people and traditions.
He looks to the sea, to the cities we trade with, for conquest.” He leaned closer to me, his voice barely above a whisper.
“He wants our smelting secrets.”