Dangerous Secrets (96 page)

I remembered that I was there to search for
Nausicaa and now had more reason than ever to find her.

The door to the inner chambers swung inwards a
few inches then stopped, blocked by something that gave only a little when I
pushed. I wasn’t about to poke my unprotected head into the gap to be target
practice for some long-dead archer. So I slashed through the soft brass hinges,
picked up the door as a shield, and went in low.

Just enough light came through the doorway to
show a body lying at my feet. One glance told me the woman had been dead some
time. I didn’t take a second look. She must have been pretty once.

I continued in toward the rooms toward the back
of the temple. High windows let in plenty of light, now, but I still peered
into rooms before entering them and kept my ears sharpened for any noises. A
door banging to and fro almost wound up wearing my sword as a knocker.

Finally, at the extreme end of the building, I
found the other priestesses. They lay in pathetic, jumbled heaps around the
base of an oracle’s throne. One’s fingers, twisted and swollen with rheumatism,
clutched at the stone as though to tear it to shreds.

Nausicaa sat there, as upright as a caryatid
holding a roof, her cloak thrown back over the chair. The same symbols that the
king’s cloak had borne were embroidered lavishly over the red lining. The
brilliant gold thread still glittered in places, though much of it was
tarnished and blackened as though burnt.

I was so interested in these details that I
hardly noticed that, like the king, Nausicaa was naked. Her white sagging flesh
showed long scarlet scratches and deep purple bruises, clustering most thickly
around her throat as though someone had nearly succeeded in throttling her.

She lifted her head and tried to focus on me.
“Hail, Thracian,” she said, her voice soft and delicate. Her eyes were wide
with pupils so dark I could see my reflection. Blood stained her teeth and had
trickled from the corner of her mouth, turning shiny as it dried.

I knelt down beside her but she still looked at
me as though I stood a long way off. “Is it you doing these things, Nausicaa?
How are you doing them?”

“A test, that’s all. New powers need to be
tested...and such powers. Like nothing I’ve ever known. I have been given my
birthright. Justice at last.” She sighed as though replete with some vile
pleasure, though she still did not move.

“Where did you get these powers?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Her soft voice
died away. She smiled shyly like a young girl, her eyelids fluttering as she
tried to keep me in focus. Then she spoke again, in the same harsh voice I
thought I′d just silenced.

‶
This is only the start of it.
Soon all my armies will flood the world, making my daughters their queens, and
the terror of their coming will make me stronger yet. I will stand where I
belong, Queen over All as I was promised. No one can stop me now. I have been
kept from it too long already by a fool like you. You foolish men think you
know so much....″

She coughed and then sighed, a long breath that
smelled of the grave. The blood cracked and fell from her chin. But blood dries
only when it has stopped flowing.

“Queen of where? Queen of what?”

“You will know! You will bow down to me,
Thracian. And when you do, perhaps I shall spare you after all. You may be more
useful to me than you think!” She began to laugh, the low insane sound I’d
heard coming from the triple-mouthed head. I jumped up and grasped her by the
shoulders. Her head fell back limply, her eyes glazing. She was dead. One of
the reanimated priestesses must have done for her before I ever got there.

But if that was true....

“Who, then, have I been talking to?”

***

Perhaps only the need to reclaim their
wandering dead could have brought the villagers out so far from their homes.
They had seen the graves open and, though many cowered inside their homes, some
had followed their loved ones. Their weeping was more pitiable than the dead.

Some blamed me and a fisherman ran toward me
with hard fists clenched. I made no attempt to defend myself. After all, he
hardly came up to my shoulder and he was only in danger of bruising his
knuckles on my armor. But bruised knuckles take one’s mind off a bruised heart.

After the fisherman threw few more wild swings,
Phandros, of all people, persuaded the poor fellow to see to his late wife and
to take a swig of the local wine which the king’s clerk had brought along,
showing great forethought.

“What did happen here?” young King Temas asked.
The evidence he’d seen had sobered him more quickly than a dunk in the cold
sea.

I explained as concisely as I could. My task
was all the easier as I couldn’t explain much. “I wish I had more answers for
you but I’ve never seen anything this loathsome before. I deal in magical
creatures and figuring out what crimes mortals commit but this...this smells of
witchcraft.”

“As does my father’s death?”

The young king had seen his father’s body
carried out from the temple, but had given no more sign of distress than a
shake of his head. “My father had been odd of late, Eno. Taciturn, hardly
eating, but drinking heavily. He did not share his thoughts with me. He
considered me little more than a foolish boy, playing at being a prince, not
yet worthy to serve as his right hand.”

“I think he was wrong,” I said. “You’re no
weakling.”

He shrugged off the compliment.
‶
There
must be a reason for these nightmarish happenings. What did she say to you,
again?”

I told him.

“It makes no sense. I’ve known Nausicaa since I
was a...since I was born. She wasn’t a warm-hearted woman by any means but she
never seemed interested even in ordinary religion let alone any occult matters.
She used to say ‘let the Gods take care of their own business; I have beds to
make.’

“How long has it been since regular temple
services have been held?”

“We had extra prayers and sacrifices when the
harpy came but most people have been too frightened to come here lately. There
have been reports that the harpy has been seen hovering in this area.”

“Really? That might be useful.”

He didn’t seem to hear me. “I wonder who killed
the priestesses. Their deaths grieve me almost as much as my father’s. They
were good women; they didn’t deserve this.”

“It may have been Nausicaa. They would have
trusted her, a woman like themselves.”

“They would have trusted my father as well.
They weren’t strangers; they were born here. I will ask among the servants
whether any of them accompanied him up here.”

I put my hand on his shoulder. It was thin, a
boy’s, but the expression on his face was that of a man facing a sad reality.
“I doubt it was your father. As virgin priestesses of Artemis, they would never
see him alone.”

“True. Then you think it was Nausicaa?”

I had not mentioned my idea that Nausicaa had
left her body sometime before I reached her. I now wondered just how long ago
Nausicaa had departed. An illness, a poison, could leave a husk of a body all
ready for some one, or some thing to move in. When questioned, the prince
recalled that Nausicaa had suffered a fall and a blow to the head in the
winter, just six months before the king had changed so much in his ways. I had
known strange alterations to take place in men after receiving a strong blow to
the head, almost strong enough to cause death. I’d never heard of such changes
spreading to other people, though.

“I hope that with both Nausicaa and your father
dead, these strange happenings will stop.” I suppose I could have been more
tactful.

“I hope you are right,” Temas said after the
color returned to his face.

“The thread between them, whatever it was, is
broken. The creature I saw in the temple is gone and if it was indeed Nausicaa
bringing this ruin on Leros, she is dead now.”

“We will know for sure if the harpy leaves. I
shall ask if anyone has heard or seen it lately.”

I took the renewed outbreak of weeping from the
villagers when the bodies of the priestesses came out as a sign that my room
would be preferred to my company, I returned to the woods beyond the clearing,
glad to get out into the fresh, moving air.

Magic always gives me a headache, clustered
right between my eyes. It′s the same sort of strain I might feel at a
party, when the host and his best friend have quarreled but are trying not to
show it. The veiled hints and splashes of venom make everyone uneasy, even
those who aren′t sharp enough to pick up on the reason until too much
wine makes everything clear. Secrets, hidden power, twisted emotions turning
the commonplace into vileness. I breathed deeply, shook all over like a dog,
and went to find some place quiet to think.

I had no more sense of the dryad′s
presence, though I stopped a moment by her tree. She′d known that death
waited in the temple, feeling it in the same way she felt the warmth of the sun
or the coolness of the earth beneath these roots. But it had not been my death,
after all. I wanted her to see that.

I went deeper into the woods, picking my way
through the questing roots until I could no longer see the temple. The sighing
of the wind in the branches mingled with the whisper of the sea, not far from
here. I must be near the cliffs but I wanted rest more than I wanted a glimpse
of the sea. I yawned, wondering if Jori was still there.

I unlaced my armor and lay back into the warm
green embrace of the earth. What I really needed was a water-butt to sink into
or at least a few dippers of spring water but I was still on edge. I knew I was
half-listening for someone to start screaming.

What was going on here on Leros? Was Nausicaa
the font of these magic events and would they indeed cease now that she was
dead? I couldn’t believe it despite my suggestion to King Temas that it was so.

This whole affair wore witchcraft like a tribal
tattoo. Who had been master and who was the disciple in the rituals that
Nausicaa and the late King had performed? Considering that the King had died
first, I felt that Nausicaa had led him into it, not the other way around.
Whether she killed him herself or induced him to do it was of less importance
than the reason. Had he served his purpose?

The problem was that I didn’t know enough about
these dark things. My field is sword-swinging, bone-crunching, and
monster-mangling. Magic traps and tricks could often be overcome by the use of
force and those that couldn’t were, at least, created by a fellow human mind
and so were comprehensible. This didn’t feel like that. That triple-head, for
instance...that was big magic. Not even the Egyptians could pull off something
like that.

I was trying not to say the word ‘Goddess’ even
to myself. But it kept recurring to me, while I tried to think of other possibilities.
It was like having a bad tooth which twinges even when left strictly alone.

So far in my career, I′d met monsters,
human and otherwise, and a good few minor supernatural creatures, like the
dryad and a centaur I′d met once in a house of ill-fame. I’d managed thus
far not to tangle with the Gods. I wanted to keep it that way.

I certainly didn′t want to deal with a
God gone mad, yet I was afraid, desperately afraid, that might have been what I
had met in the temple. But which one? Who was She Who Opens The Gates? It had a
grandiose sound but I′d never heard of any Hellenic God or Goddess using
that title. And what gates, where?

A little motion caught my eye. A field mouse,
sleekly white and brown, was trundling across the grass. He or she stopped to
look at me, going up on hind legs to sniff the air, whiskers twitching.
Deciding I was harmless or perhaps only thinking I was a new kind of rock, it
hurried away.

Somehow, I felt better. Whatever horror had
inhabited the temple would be cleansed away and the proper Goddess would again
inhabit it. No doubt the island would return to normal after I finished the job
I’d come to do. One harpy, captured; one kingdom back to the proper business of
‘beggar my neighbor’ and ‘it’s a fine bright Tuesday morning; who do I want to
make war on today?’

I listened to the wind playing tag in the grass
and decided a little nap was in order.

I woke up at dew-fall, a deep sigh escaping my
chest. The nearly-full moon turned the whole sky to silver, framed by the tops
of the trees. I took it as a good omen for the return of Artemis to her temple.

Then I yawned widely, stretching out my arms to
their maximum reach, and touched feathers.

Chapter 4

Harpies are bird-women, often sent as a
punishment against those who have offended the Gods. Zeus is especially fond of
sending them to pursue some poor soul. They snatch food from the hands of their
victims, leaving just enough to keep alive but never enough to satisfy the
gnawing of hunger. They despoil all the rest of the food with vomit and
excrement. In the end, with luck, the victim goes insane before he starves to
death.

The last ones I fought were like bats with
leathery wings and curving sharp teeth. They were less interested in the
buffet-trap I’d spread than in biting my neck. But I′d worn an
iron-collar anointed with the juice of some garlic flowers and they
hadn′t harmed me, though I will never forget the pungent swamp-gas smell
of their breath.

I believe, in fact, that there are two classes
of harpy – some created when a dragon’s blood splattered on burning rocks from
a volcano. Others came into being when the bright brass blood fell on clouds.

So a feather was good news to me. I hate
fighting in an iron collar.

Nevertheless, I was glad I’d only unlaced my
armor, not taken it off. I didn’t want to reenact the liver-gnawing punishment
of Prometheus today or any day.

The moon had set but there was no feeling of
dawn at hand. The darkness seemed to huddle on the ground in pools. Yet here,
among the thickly clustered trees, a little patch of light flickered like the
play of sun through leaves, just where I’d put my hand. I drew it in and the
light came too.

I examined the feather by its own light. It was
the color of burnished bronze lit by pale flame, like a lamp burning low. The
light that shone from it brightened near the tip. Yet it was a genuine feather,
light, hollow and flexible.

No one had mentioned that the harpy glowed in
the dark. Maybe they’d all been too afraid to come out at night since it
arrived.

I ran a finger along the delicately serrated
edge then quickly stuck my finger in my mouth, tasting my own blood. The
feather was sharp!

Getting up, I went to investigate. The more
concentrated glow turned out to be fluffy down and several full feathers, one
bent and another missing about a third of one side. There was a faint, greasy
smell like chicken cooked in oil.

I looked around. Where had the feathers come
from? It took me longer than I like to admit to look up as one would logically
do.

The tree nearest to the little glowing pile of
feathers had a massive trunk. A patriarch of tree-kind, probably the tallest in
Leros. The bark looked like plates of armor fitted together, thick seams
running between the joins. I squinted up the length and saw, dimly, another
glow about three-quarters of the way up.

Even I could not quite reach all the way around
the massive trunk. Slipping off my sandals, I dug my toes and fingers into the
bark and climbed up to where I felt a thick branch over my head. From there it
was easy, even in the dark. A reach, a pull, a swing with extended legs and I
soon reached my goal.

About halfway up, I’d begun to hear a low,
rhythmic rumble, growing louder as I climbed. With that in mind, I’d worked my
way around to the far side of the trunk from the glow. I’d shared enough
barracks to know snoring when I heard it.

The pine needle clusters didn’t offer much
cover as I peered through them. A nest as large as a human′s bed took up
the space where three branches came together. It was built from a variety of leaves,
a sheep’s fleece, and feathers all laid together more or less neatly in a
hammock made from the twisted ropes of a fishing net.

In the center, curled up, lay a strange figure,
much smaller than I would have guessed. I had no trouble seeing details in the
soft glow that emanated from the creature. The harpy slept with its head tucked
under a wing, the feathers spread wide.

Traders with Africa report strange flightless
birds with long naked legs whose kick can disembowel a man. The harpy also had
long legs, covered with small shell-shaped feathers, ending in narrow feet with
five gleaming claws. Longer feathers covered the rest of it, shading from a
deep bronze, almost crimson, to the palest gold.

If I had the cage waiting down below, with Jori
standing by to slam the door closed, I might have made a play right then. As it
was, now that I knew where to find it, I could come back in a few days, right
after taking care of the rogue guards. This job was going to be easy money
after all.

Then someone bellowed my name.

It shattered the silence like the roar of a
minotaur. The urgent, buzzing note in it set up echoes in my head of all the
other times I’d been called in desperation.

“Eno! Eno!”

This cry was followed by another sound, one
that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up and wave. A softer sound,
wordless but interrogatory. The sound of a creature roused suddenly from sleep
and wondering what all the fuss was about.

Not really wanting to, I looked down into the
nest and a pair of eyes looked back.

The face was pale and fair with a nose, not a
beak, and lips. Close-fitting feathers covered the head but the face and neck
were human...more or less. The feathers rose again from the abdomen to cover
the bosom, tightly following undoubtedly feminine curves as though the creature
had been dipped in gold.

It got its legs underneath it, spreading
immense wings up and out as though to leap into the sky. But it stared at me,
unblinkingly, trying perhaps to figure out what kind of animal I was. I’d seen
owls look like that but never with long-lashed blue eyes.

I could have stabbed it to the heart with a
single blow but I did not even think of it until later. I stared back, my mouth
as dry as a castaway’s after three weeks at sea. I’d seen many weird and
wonderful things in my life, but I’d never felt the power of enchantment so
strongly as I did at that moment. She looked as though she might speak; there
was so much emotion in her face.

Then whatever blasted soul was calling my name
did it again, louder and closer. The harpy gave an answering cry, less
piercing, less lonely, than before, at least to my ears. Then it took flight,
with one powerful beat of those huge wings. The backwash of air nearly shook me
from my hold.

I watched the golden glowing shape rise like a
flaming arrow into the first light of dawn and wondered if it would ever
return.

I wouldn’t have cared to descend while it was
still dark but with the fast-brightening day to help me, it was a simple matter
to come down. “I’m here,” I said, when my feet touched the ground.

There was no reply but the sighing of the
morning breeze.

A rustle behind me made me turn abruptly, hands
spread for combat.

A pile of leaves was pushed aside and Phandros
sat up, brushing off those that clung to his arms and beard. “I heard the
harpy. Did you see it?”

“How did you bury yourself so quickly?” Even if
he’d begun the moment I’d begun to climb down the tree, I couldn’t see how he
managed it in the time.

He didn’t answer, though his face reddened. He
bent down and retrieved something about as long as his foot from the leaf mold.
I took it from his hand. It was a cone, a roughly rolled piece of papyrus
paper, punctured with a piece of twig to hold the edge of the paper closed. The
buzzing sound must be caused by the passage of the air setting the edges to
rattling.

“Clever,” I said,

“Just a child’s toy, really, but useful
sometimes. Makes a sound like a ram’s horn if you play it right. And, of
course, it amplifies the voice.”

“Fascinating. Why were you calling me?”

Behind his beard, Phandros looked grave.
“There’s been a challenge sent to you.”

“To me?”

“Word of your deeds has spread throughout the
island like fire. There were actually vendors in the market this morning; they
are so certain you will be the one to kill the harpy.”

I decided to keep my recent failure to do just
that a secret for now. “Your chance to buy pickled eggs again relieves my
mind,” I said. “What about this challenge?”

“Eurytos shows you his thumb and declares you
his enemy. Leave Leros by noon and you will be permitted to leave unharmed.
Stay and you will face your doom.”

“And Eurytos is....?”

His graying brows lifted. “The former guard
captain.”

“Oh, yes. Sorry, hard night. How did you come
by these sweet words of welcome?”

“His second in command waylaid a fisherman in
the woods on the far side of the island and passed on his master’s words. The
fisherman told a goat-girl who told her mother as they gathered mushrooms. She
told her husband who told me.”

“Busy woods for so early in the day. That
fisherman wouldn’t happen to have been visited by a miracle...say, his fish
turning into cash just after meeting this brigand?”

“You have guessed correctly, Eno,” Phandros
said. “Some villagers have been supplying the rebels, it’s true. Extra obols
are not easy to find on Leros these days. I have wondered where Eurytos is
getting his funds.”

I was thinking. “With so many mouths chewing on
this message, it’s possible Eurytos did no more than send me civil greetings.
Warlike words, worthless deeds. I should pay him a visit.”

“He is no courtier,” Phandros began.

“After breakfast, I think,” I said. “I did not
dine last night. I could eat a Leviathan. Raw!”

As I fastened my sandals, I found my thoughts
less busy with the truculent captain and more focused on Phandros. I had heard
soldier’s tales of men who could silently and swiftly dig hiding places out of
bare earth, concealing themselves in less time that anyone could believe
possible. They could stay hidden for long periods without moving, without
hunger or thirst. I’d never met anyone who’d actually witnessed this feat; it
was all third or fourth hand. A man’s grandfather had told a tale or a the
friend of a cousin had sworn on his mother′s grave that he’d seen it. Now
I wondered if I had become one of those who are the ‘they’ in ‘they say’.

I had sat down on the root of the large tree on
purpose. Steathily, I slid the unbroken feather into my short scabbard, behind
my sword. It might be worthless except to shave with but I wanted a remembrance
of what other wonders I had seen that morning.

Starting the walk back, I glanced curiously at
Phandros. He really was a weedy specimen, the sort of man who went on getting
drier and thinner year by year until he either splintered like a twig or turned
into leather. He could have been thirty-five; he could have been sixty.
‶
Just
how long have you served here, Phandros?″

‶
Almost six years, though it
seems less. I came as tutor to the prince.″

No old family retainer, he. I wondered again
why Phandros had chosen to return here from Athens. Loyalty? It seemed like a
lot of loyalty for six years′ service. No family or ancestry bound him
here.

‶
The king put much trust in you,
then?″

His slightly pop eyes wandered from path to
sky.
‶
Some,
some. He was not trusting man. Leros being a small island, there was no need
for dozens of hangers-on. A pleasant court, though. Always someone about to
drink or dice with. Then, of course, when the harpy came, even the best of
those fled.″

‶
But you stayed on.″

‶
I had nowhere else to go. No
money. No acquaintance. There may be some pupils who will give an honored place
to their old tutors but most turn on their heel the moment their scholarship is
done. Few indeed wish to be reminded of their schoolboy days once they are
grown.″

Probably true. Being self-taught, I could never
escape from my teacher.

‶
You came here during the late
Queen′s time, then?″

A smile moved in his beard.
‶
Ah,
Queen Amymone. Delightful woman. Kindly, beautiful...really an ideal woman in
every respect.″ He proclaimed some poetry, stopping and taking a
rhetorical pose as taught in the best academies.

I idly scratched the back of my neck and waited
for him to finish. With a decent semblance of modesty, he broke off, adding
‵
Written
on the occasion of her last anniversary. She was pleased to offer me a word or
two of praise for it.″

‶
I′m not much of a
poet,″ I confessed.
‶
Some people like it.″

‶
The king preferred music to
poetry. He was a fine harpist. He could have made a good living at it, had the
Fates not chosen to make him a king. Indeed, the Queen deigned to tell me once
that it was their shared love of music that changed their marriage -- arranged
by their fathers, of course -- from a mere royal match into something richer
and more rare.″

‶
A love affair?″

‶
Assuredly. As passionate as any
from legend. You would not, perhaps, have understood my reference in the fourth
line without knowing that the king often referred to himself as Orpheus and his
queen as Eurydice.″

Orpheus whose god-like gift of music had
charmed the birds from the trees and maids from their clothing could have had
married any woman but he′d chosen the radiant Eurydice, only to lose her
within a short time to the sting of an adder. He′d tried to rescue her
from the world of Death, charming the triple-headed Guard Dog Cerebus with his
lyre and slipping past the shaded dead. But he′d ultimately failed, as he
perhaps had always been fated to fail.

‶
The king must have been
devastated by her death,″ I said.

Phandros nodded heavily, his beard like a wave
on his chest.
‶
For
a time, we feared for his reason. Even after he ceased to weep, it was long
before he recovered the tone of his mind. Even so, I cannot recall him ever
laughing again. Well, not until his last night.″