Bring Down the Sun (20 page)

The room beyond was small but well appointed, furnished with a couch in the Persian style, a wine-table, a carved wooden chair, and a common stool such as one might find in any poor man's house. Timarete perched on the stool with her back to the door and her ear to the wall.

As Myrtale approached, she saw that what she had taken for a shadow on the wall was the grating of a window that looked down into the hall. The view was remarkably extensive, and so was the clarity of sound that rose up from below.

She turned toward Timarete, brow lifted. Timarete answered the unspoken question in the breath of a whisper. “Every king has a spyhole; he's a fool if he doesn't. Didn't you know?”

“There's much I don't know,” Myrtale said more softly still. “Have you learned anything useful?”

“Not today,” said Timarete, rising from the stool and shaking out her skirts.

*   *   *

She left the room so quickly that she caught Myrtale flatfooted. She did not pause to let Myrtale catch her, either, but strode down the passage as she did everywhere, with head up and back straight.

In the Mother's shrine, at last, she stopped. The men's gods loomed in the dimness, but Timarete paid no heed to them. She bowed to the Mother, showing every sign of intending to spend the night in prayer.

Myrtale set herself between Timarete and the Mother's image. “There's not much time left,” she said.

“There is not,” said Timarete. “Are you ready?”

“Does it matter?”

“No,” said Timarete.

Myrtale nodded. Then: “What did you hear?”

“Nothing that matters to us,” Timarete said, “but you might get some use of the place where you found me, after this is done—if you choose.”

“You would have me spy on my husband?”

“Is it spying if he knows?”

“He knows you were there?”

Timarete shrugged slightly. “It wouldn't surprise me. For a man, he's not unintelligent.”

From her that was high praise. Myrtale gave it an instant's pause. But the urgency that had awakened in her would not let her rest. “Tomorrow,” she said, “whatever comes of it, I go hunting the witch from Thessaly.”

“We'll hunt her together,” said Timarete.

*   *   *

It was not as late as it might have been, nor had Philip drunk as deeply of the wine as he might have. He had been uneasy, crawling inside his skin, since shortly after his son was struck down. Some days were better than others, but tonight he was ready to damn the darkness, take a horse, and ride as far and fast as the beast could carry him.

Damned witches. He kicked open the door of his chamber, a petty thing but remarkably satisfying.

His Epirote wife sat beside the bed, wrapped in a mantle, eyes glittering in the lamplight. It was a moment before he realized that as small and close as the room was, the air felt lighter here; cleaner. The nagging unease had faded almost to nothing.

She was doing it. It felt like warmth coming off her: not the heat of passion but a gentler thing, deeper and steadier.

Odd to think of anything gentle in connection with that one. Even now, her eyes on him were fierce, with intensity enough to set a man back on his heels.

She was not here to seduce him. The rush of heat at the sight of her gave way to almost painfully clear focus.

He had never looked at a woman before as he would a man or an equal. It was a strange sensation, made more so by the haze of wine. He pulled up a stool and perched on it and looked her straight in the face. “Tell me,” he said.

She barely blinked. “I have to go away for a while. How long, I don't know, but I intend to be back before the baby comes. Long before, if the Mother has any care for me.”

“What if I forbid you?” he asked—calmly, he thought; reasonably.

“That is not your place,” she said.

He kept his temper in hand. He was proud of himself for it. “As long as you live in my palace and carry my son, it is most certainly my place.”

Her face was blank. He wondered if she had heard him. “The air is full of lies and false memories. Those will only get worse. Try to remember the truth about me.”

“You are not going,” he said with force that should have rocked her where she sat.

Except for a slight widening of the eyes, she did not move at all. “I will come back,” she said. “Living or dead. I promise you.”

“I'll lock you up, then,” he said, “and keep you there until my son is born.”

“Our son,” she said, “and even if you could hold me by any mortal means, that would only make it easier for our enemies to carry out their plan. They want us confined; they want us weak and frightened and subject to their will.”

“Let them,” he said. “I'll make war on their country. I'll kill their men and lay waste their fields and pastures. We'll see how eager they are then to raise up a puppet king in Macedon.”

For an instant he thought she might concede that that was a sensible plan, but the moment of agreement passed; she shook her head. “You'll only scatter your resources and anger the witches, and make it worse for all.”

“And you won't?”

“I will hunt them down,” she said, “and rip out this sorcery by the roots.” She spoke so softly he had to strain to hear her, and yet that softness was more convincing than any shout.

As she rose, he rose also. She drew his head down for a kiss. He stiffened, then all at once, whether through her witchery or because he had never been able to resist her, he surrendered.

There was the passion he had been missing, the fiery sweetness that he so well remembered. The pressure of her belly against his, the child rolling and kicking so strongly it must have bruised her, only made the kiss more potent.

He swam up from it, sucking in air. “Don't go,” he said.

He was pleading now. She made no effort to argue; she simply brushed her fingers across his lips as if to silence him, or else to commit their shape to memory. “Be strong,” she said. “Remember the truth of me.”

He reached for her, but she was already out of reach.

She had left the lightness and the clarity behind her like a gift. Shadows hovered beyond it, visions of a world of greyness and confusion. In it, she was shut up in the women's quarters, and he had turned against her, and the source of his hatred was so strong and so clear that he almost could not stand against it: he came to her bed in the night, rigid with wanting her, and found her locked in passionate embrace with a huge and sickeningly supple snake.

He shook off that blatant absurdity and cast laughter in its face. “Is that the best you can do? I'll not fret for her, then.”

He braced for a blast of fury, but the visions ran on blindly, growing dimmer as he turned his mind and heart away from them. He held in memory her face as he had last seen it, and her voice and her presence, the smell and taste of her, until they were all he saw and all he needed to see.

Twenty-five

It took most of Myrtale's strength to leave that room and that man and walk away without looking back. If he had called to her, she might have wavered, but it seemed he had surrendered at last to a woman's will—perhaps for the first time since he left his mother's breast.

Timarete waited in the shrine, all but invisible in the shadows. She was dressed for travel, even to the tall walking staff and the wanderer's pack.

For Myrtale she had the same, and no word wasted. Myrtale had been hoping for a magical transport or at the very least a mule to ride, but it seemed they were going to walk.

She had grown soft, sitting in palaces. She suppressed a sigh and let fall her soft rich chiton and her finely woven mantle to put on the rougher garb of a pilgrim. When she matched her aunt exactly, she took up the staff and shouldered the pack.

Timarete was already in motion. She was walking toward the door, but the way was unnaturally long and the texture of the darkness had changed.

Who needed ointments and false promises of flight when one could walk through the world rather than on it? Timarete waded through the substance of things as if it had been water. Myrtale, in her wake, felt the shifting tides of magic woven through with the warmth of the Mother's regard.

She was not hunting the enemy, not exactly, and yet she knew where Erynna was. The witch left a trail of scent in the aether, faint but distinct, like the stench of decay.

There were others with her, some so strong Myrtale gagged at them. Their trap was laid and the bait set; they waited with the patience of predators.

They would have Myrtale and the child she carried, no matter what she did or where she tried to do it. Despair was their weapon, and hopelessness, and fear. She should simply surrender and spare herself the trouble of fighting.

They were endlessly subtle and viciously inventive. Every thought she ventured to think, they were there before her. They had studied her thoroughly while she gathered such crumbs of magic as Erynna would share, the better to conquer her if she roused from the trance of misplaced trust and turned against them.

There was no use in either guilt or shame. Myrtale had done what she had done. Her child was still safe. Pella was as well protected as she or her aunt could manage.

They had passed beyond the palace and the city into featureless darkness. No stars or moon guided them; no road stretched before them. They floated in a sea of nothingness.

The dark was full of visions, surging and seething on the edge of sight. Flocks of shadows crowded in close; they chattered as the shades of the dead were said to do. Living women flew like birds above them, circling in the fitful light, singing an eerie song.

There was madness in that song. It stripped Myrtale of wits and sense, and bade fair to leave her as empty as the world into which she had fallen.

Timarete's hand gripped hers with bruising force. But stronger than that was the child within her, battering against the walls of the womb as if he would leap forth in full armor with spear in hand.

Pain was real. Pain was the world. It brought back the stars and set her feet on a hard and stony road.

Jagged peaks loomed above her. They had no names that she knew. The stars were all strange. The air was brutally cold, with a tang of iron.

Water roared below. A river ran through the gorge, cutting deep into the sheer walls. For a dizzy moment she thought it was a river of blood, so strong was the strangeness in the air, but such sanity as she had trickled back; she smelled the cold clarity of water.

The river's voice was manifold. Amid the roaring she heard shrieks and growls and what sounded like snatches of words, as if bodies tumbled in the torrent.

She could see nothing but mountains and stars, but her aunt's grip was strong still, her hand warm and blessedly alive. That warmth brought a memory of sunlight into this black and deadly place.

Myrtale realized she was crouching as if against a rain of blows. She straightened slowly. Her body ached; the child had quieted, although he was restless still.

He was not afraid, but his unease thrummed in her. She pressed her hands to the curve of her belly, willing reassurance into him. Those who had laid this trap wanted him alive; they would not harm him while he lay in the womb.

That was true, but she walled off the rest of the thought: that Myrtale needed only to be warm and breathing in order to bring him to birthing. What the witches had done to Arrhidaios, they could do to her. Witless, senseless, and pliable, she would be no more than a vessel for their puppet king.

The horror of that all but overwhelmed her. Almost too late, she recoiled from this latest of many subtle spells.

Dear Mother, they knew her too well; she was too weak, too young, too ill-schooled. She should never have come here, never have challenged them. She should have stayed in Pella.

“Stop.” Timarete's voice cracked like a whip. Slow light dawned in the chasm, laying bare the stark cliffs and the turbulence of the river.

They stood on a shelf of rock midway down the crag. Behind them was darkness absolute—but it breathed. Myrtale shuddered with sudden cold.

Wherever they had been, Timarete's lone word had brought them to living earth and familiar sky. A cavern opened in the crag. With no evidence of either fear or hesitation, Timarete stepped into the darkness.

Myrtale dug in her heels, but her aunt's grip was relentless. Stone remained solid underfoot; in the dark she heard the river's roar fading with unnatural rapidity, until she stumbled forward in whispering quiet.

The walls closed in: the air grew thicker and the floor rougher. Timarete's pace slowed, which was merciful: more than once, Myrtale lost her footing and nearly fell.

The way, which had been level, began gradually to ascend. Her breath came harder; her sight, if she had had any, would have begun to dim.

This was eerily like the ascent of the Mysteries on Samothrace, but there was a profound difference in it. That had been blessed in all its parts. This was anything but blessed, and deadly dangerous.

When Myrtale could not have borne the burden of her body for another step, sudden light dazzled her. It was the barest glimmer ahead, but as her aunt drew her onward, it brightened to the pallor of moonlight, although there was no moon tonight.

The sound of water rose again, but softer, less a roar now than a whisper. With it came the scent of greenery, the sharpness of bay and thyme. Cool night air wafted over her.

The light revealed itself to be a lamp encased in pale stone. A handful of tall pale men rose from where they had been sitting. Myrtale remembered none of their names but one, but their family she did indeed remember: the Hymenides, those last remnants of the old people from the vale of Acheron.

Young Attalos would not look directly at her, though she caught the flash of his glance. His brothers were equally shy, or maybe that was veiled contempt. They bowed low to Timarete.