The Elementals (13 page)
Authors: Morgan Llywelyn
Carambis arrived in a painted sedan chair befitting his station.
He was a bulky man, obese by Cretan standards, with a jowly face and a voice that gurgled upward from deep in his belly. The glitter of his eyes betokened a lustful nature, and Tereus shrewdly presented Ebisha to him first.
He was a bulky man, obese by Cretan standards, with a jowly face and a voice that gurgled upward from deep in his belly. The glitter of his eyes betokened a lustful nature, and Tereus shrewdly presented Ebisha to him first.
“Ah, this is a gem,” Carambis agreed. “She looks like something from a lapidary's workbench. Silver skin, jade eyes.”
Tereus said, “I understand the wife of The Minos collects exotic handmaidens? Think how she would prize this one!”
Carambis circled Ebisha, then signaled for her to be stripped. She stood with her head up, watching not Carambis, but Tereus. Aside from faded briar scratches on her legs and rope burns on her wrists, her body was unflawed.
But Tereus did not see her beauty. He saw instead a proud wooden galley, fresh from the boatbuilders, and felt the deck beneath his feet. One of those new ribbed coasters, with space for thirty oarmen and a square sail for long-distance voyaging.
The bargaining for Ebisha was so intense it made Meriones uncomfortable. He left the room, joining Tulipa in the courtyard. “What will our share be?” she asked him at once.
“I don't know. It depends on how much Tereus makes, I suppose.”
“Didn't you agree to a sum in advance?”
“How could I?”
Tulipa's lips formed a thin line. “You are an idiot.”
But Meriones was not thinking of profit. He was feeling guilty, as if he had somehow betrayed the girl with green eyes and the others. The blood in their veins flowed, to a small extent, in his. He heard its voice crying out.
In time the negotiations for Ebisha were concluded, and one by one the others were examined, argued over, sold. The day grew stiflingly hot. When Tereus noticed how heavily Carambis was sweating, he insisted they conclude their business in the courtyard and ordered Tulipa to bring them cool drinks.
“I'm not his slave,” Tulipa muttered. But she brought the drinks.
By this time there was only one captive left to sell. Tereus had saved his prize until last.
“Look at this creature!” he enthused. “Is there not a divine madness in his eyes? This man is a high priest among his own kind, a sorcerer without equal.”
Carambis looked skeptically at the old man. “What is this? Do you think we have any use at the House of the Double Axes for skinny old sticks like this one? It is you who are mad, Tereus.”
“You don't understand, Carambis. I have with my own eyes seen the priests of the Islands of Mist exhibit abilities beyond the range of mortal men. The female pharoah in Egypt would pay any price I asked for this creature, but I ⦠ah, have no authority to take the
Qatil
to Egypt.”
Qatil
to Egypt.”
Carambis smiled an oily smile. “I understand your situation perfectly. But I never buy fruit without taking a bite of it first.” He folded his arms across his ample chest. “If he is as good as you say he is, have him do something right now. Prove your claim.”
The scene that ensued was painful to all concerned. Tereus gave orders, Meriones translated them to the best of his ability, and the seamen struck the old priest when he stood immobile, indifferent, turned to stone.
“I think you're trying to sell me a deaf-mute by pretending he's something else,” Carambis accused Tereus. “This deal begins to stink in my nostrils. Do not try to swindle me, or you will find no safe harbor in Kn
sos.”
sos.”“But this priest is worth a fortune!” Tereus protested, feeling the decks of his own ship fading away beneath his feet. “Meriones here says he can make the sun stop shining just by casting some sort of spell.”
Carambis curled his lip. “If that's true he's too dangerous to have at the palace, and if you lie he's not worth a sack of meal. Either way, I want nothing to do with him. He's your problem; you brought him, you dispose of him. But not to the House of the Double Axes. As for the rest of this lot, I'll send men to collect them before dark and you'll be paid for them once they're in our custody.”
Tereus simmered with anger. He bit back the words he wanted to say, however. It would be foolish to make an enemy of Carambis if he ever hoped to sell slaves to the palace again.
When the Master of Slaves had departed in his sedan chair, Tereus rounded on Meriones. “Why did you fail me? Why didn't you make that wretched old fool perform!”
Meriones held his hands palm upward in a placating gesture. “I did my best.”
“Your best is no good, then. And I've lost a lot of money. That
old man is of no value except as a diviner or sorcerer for a king's household. I might be able to sell him to one of the princes of Malliaâthough I doubt it. I can't waste time trying, I'm due at Byblos.”
old man is of no value except as a diviner or sorcerer for a king's household. I might be able to sell him to one of the princes of Malliaâthough I doubt it. I can't waste time trying, I'm due at Byblos.”
“What will become of him, then?”
Tereus shrugged. “We'll throw him overboard,” he said casually. “As soon as we're at sea again.”
“No! You mustn't! I mean ⦠I did my best ⦠he is an intractable old man ⦠but you mustn't kill him because I failed ⦔ His words somersaulted over each other. Then he stopped. He drew in a sharp breath, his eyes lighting with inspiration. “There is a Cretan colony on the island of Thera.”
“What of it? It's not even on my usual route,” Tereus said. “My owner avoids them, they have a nasty reputation.”
“But they're very wealthy,” Meriones argued, “and their number includes scholars and wizards and all sorts of strange people who are reputed to do remarkable things. Why not take the old priest to Thera and try to sell him to them? It is the one place that might value him. I'm almost certain of it.”
“What do you know about anything?” the Thracian sneered. “You're a bumbling fool, Meriones, and I'd be another to take any advice from you.”
Meriones replied, miserably, “I never wanted to be involved in this anyway. I was only doing a favor for a friend.”
“Then you can't expect much recompense in return,” the Thracian said abruptly. “I'm willing to pay you for the food and the use of your house, but that's all.”
Meriones felt his heart sink. What would Tulipa say?
Tereus gave Jaha Fe and his men orders to stay with the captives until they were collected, then bring the payment to the ship. This done, he stalked out of the house, dragging the old priest with him like a goat to the slaughter.
Meriones watched with a pained expression. At the last moment, Tereus relented enough to call back, “Oh, all right, if I get something for this old fool on the island of Thera, I'll see that you receive a share. But I don't expect to make a fortune for him in Atlantis.”
Meriones went to the palace next day without his usual jaunty gait. The white hound ran out to meet him, recognized his depression, and sat down in the road, whining.
“I'm sorry, Meriones,”
Hokar said when he had heard the entire story. “I thought it would be a good opportunity, I didn't know it would turn out badly.”
Hokar said when he had heard the entire story. “I thought it would be a good opportunity, I didn't know it would turn out badly.”
“My wife isn't speaking to me. and that old man will be killed unless the Atlanteans buy him.”
“They will,” Hokar said confidently. “Those Cretans on Thera will buy anything that's truly unusual.”
“They won't know he's unusual unless he shows them.”
“Ah, they'll make him show them. They have ways, in Atlantis,” Hokar added mysteriously.
“What ways?”
“I don't actually know. I've just heard whispers.”
Meriones nodded. “We've all heard whispers. But no one knows very much about what they do over there.”
“I for one don't want to know,” Hokar told him. “I'm more interested in that girl you mentioned. Tell me about her.”
Meriones tried to describe Ebisha, but his words could not bring her to life. “I'll play her for you instead,” he told Hokar, taking up his lyre.
He stroked a delicate melody with a recurring throb like a beating heart. The music was as lovely as any he had ever played, with the exception of the songs he had composed for Tulipa in their first days together.
Craftsmen wandered in from other chambers and stood in rapt silence, listening.
When Meriones finished playing, Hokar said, “If that is Ebisha, I want to see her.”
But no one saw Ebisha for a while. She had vanished into a perfumed opulence where even slaves lived lives of comparative luxury, and would not reappear until she had been refined and polished into a work of art worthy of the queen's service.
Knowing her destiny, Meriones did not worry about her. But sometimes at night as he lay sleepless, with Tulipa's rigid back like a wall turned to him, he thought of the old man. He did not know the old man's name, even. Ebisha had refused to tell it, saying, “Names of holy men belong to the tribe. Not for use by strangers.”
An old man stolen from his home, his dignity assaulted, his scrawny body lashed by some slavemaster's whip â¦
Then Meriones remembered the priest's eyes, and he shivered and pulled the bedclothes over his head, though the night was hot.
Meanwhile word of his newly lyrical music reached the ears of Santhos, and he found himself reassigned to the royal apartments. He hated leaving Hokar. They promised to meet from time to time in the mazes of Labrys.
One scorching morning when the perfumed air lay heavy in the halls and even the liveliest courtiers were lethargic, Meriones was sent to the queen's megaron, the pillared “public room” in the center of her suite.
There he saw Ebisha again.
She knelt beside the queen, holding open an olivewood casket inlaid with ivory, from which the wife of The Minos was selecting jewelry. The queen pointed to a rope of pearls spaced with carnelian and lapis lazuli. The pearls were the perfect accompaniment to the bodice the wife of The Minos wore, an exquisite garment dyed in royal Tyrian purple. To obtain that dye a thousand tiny sea creatures had been crushed in their shells. The bodice might be worn only once; the queen rarely repeated her costumes.
But Meriones was not looking at the queen. He was staring in admiration at Ebisha, who was very changed.
The briar scratches and rope burns were healed. Her nails were smoothed, shaped, painted carmine. Her oiled hair was twisted and curled into a fanciful sculpture, revealing the elegance of her skull shape. She was dressed in the height of Cretan fashion. An ankle-length skirt of pleated tiers in contrasting colors fell from a tight belt, while her upper body was naked except for a shortsleeved, tight-fitting bodice that encircled her bare breasts like a frame.
Feeling Meriones' eyes on her she turned toward him, recognized him, smiled.
The queen signaled to Meriones to play. When he responded with his latest composition she clapped her hands with pleasure. “What a lovely song! I have not heard it before, it is like water tinkling.” She rippled her fingers descriptively through the air. “Is it your own creation?” she asked Meriones.
“Yes, lady. I call it âGreen-Eyed Girl.'” Glancing at Ebisha, Meriones saw her smile again, pleased.
The queen followed his glance. “Well done,” she commented. “Green is my favorite color, as that scoundrel Carambis knows. He found this green-eyed girl for me and paid a pretty price, I suspect.
But we are well pleased with her. Play us some more of your music now.
But we are well pleased with her. Play us some more of your music now.
During the long, hot day, Meriones found several opportunities for snatches of conversation with Ebisha. He was surprised to discover she had already acquired a rudimentary understanding of the New Tongue. She insisted on using it with him, trying to improve herself. It was hard not to laugh at her grammar, but her eagerness impressed him.
Once she said, “I hear from my grandsire.”
Meriones stiffened. “How?”
“He has ways. He gets word to me.”
“Where is he?”
“On an island called Thera.”
Meriones was relieved. “That's good, he's safe, then.”
The girl frowned. “Not safe. They hurt him when he does not give them his gift. But he cannot give it to them. It is his, you see? It is not theirs. His, for his people.”
Meriones did not see. But he hated the thought of men on Thera abusing the old man. “What about you?” he asked Ebisha the next time they could talk together. “Are you happy here?”
“Happy?” She puzzled over the word. “I am not free. So I am not happy. But I am not cold, or wet, or hungry. So is good. Some good. Is wonderful place, here. Is magic here.”
“Magic?” Meriones thought she misunderstood the meaning of the word.
“Oh yes. The queen walks through that doorway to her water closet, she calls it. She sits on stone there. Her droppings are carried away by water poured through drains. Is magic, yes?” Ebisha smiled her radiant smile at Meriones.
“Yes,” he echoed, chuckling.
When he was with Ebisha, Meriones' normally buoyant spirits returned.
Although he missed Hokar and the goldsmiths' chambers, he could not deny that he was infinitely more comfortable in the royal apartments. The queen's megaron was exquisitely furnished with gilded benches, tiled floors, mosaics on every wall. The ceiling was decorated with spirals of plaster as perfectly formed as seashells. Ebisha commented many times on their beauty.
By prior arrangement, Meriones and Hokar met in the palace gardens one twilit evening as both were on their way home. The goldsmith related what little gossip he knew; Meriones told him of life in the queen's megaron, and of Ebisha.
“I'd still like to see her,” Hokar confided. “That music you used to describe her has haunted me ever since.”
His opportunity came soon enough. An ambassador presented the queen with a delicate gold pectoral, a gift from one royal family to another. Somehow it was dropped and the shape of the soft gold was distorted on the hard floor. The queen ordered a goldsmith sent quickly to her apartments, to repair the pectoral before the ambassador should see it.
The task fell to Hokar. He entered the megaron in the company of the Master of Craftsmen, rehearsing the words of thanks he would say to the queen if the opportunity arose.
Then he saw Ebisha, and all words went out of his head.
There was discussion about the pectoral. “⦠A tap with the hammer, here, and perhaps the slightest twist just there ⦔ and Hokar nodded his head and set his hands to their task, but they worked without a conscious thought to guide them. Hokar's true attention was concentrated on the girl.
When the pectoral was repaired to the queen's satisfaction, he forgot to thank her humbly for the honor. He left the megaron with his eyes filled with Ebisha.
Hokar sought out Meriones every chance he got, always to talk about Ebisha. “How is she? Did she notice me, do you think? What is she like?”
Meriones ransacked his memory for tidbits about the girl. When he mentioned her admiration for the plaster spirals on the ceiling of the megaron, Hokar was excited. “I shall make a piece of jewelry for her! And you will give it to her, Meriones. And tell her it comes from me.”
Another favor. Meriones wriggled uncomfortably. “It isn't really appropriate, Hokar. To give gifts to slaves, I mean. Nor for me to be the carrier either. You seeâ”
“Nonsense, it's just a small token, who could object? In a way you're responsible for her being here, Meriones. You should want her to be happy. And a gift will make her happy. How can you refuse?”
How indeed? Meriones asked himself gloomily as he walked home later, through a stifling heat so intense it threatened to press the air from his lungs.
It was worse than the heat wave last year. It was worse than any weather he could ever remember.
When he reached his house he entered eagerly, longing for its cool darkness. But the air inside was stuffy and still, hardly less unpleasant than outside. Passing through to the courtyard, he found Tulipa lying on a pallet under the olive tree with a cloth dipped in cool water pressed to her forehead.
“The heat gives me a headache,” she greeted him. “Be quiet.”
“I wasn't going to say anything. Is there something I can do for you?”
“Make the heat stop,” she replied petulantly.
But no one could make the heat stop. Day by day it mounted, fraying nerves, spoiling food. Tulipa's headache had become so constant he no longer questioned its reality. It was not a device she used to make him feel guilty. She was in real pain. Dark circles appeared under her eyes and she could not eat. She did not even have the energy to scold him.
He grew increasingly worried about her. She was losing all her pretty roundness; her bones showed through the skin of her face, strangely reminding Meriones of the skull-like visage of the old priest from the Islands of Mist.
The more ill Tulipa became, the more Meriones recalled how dear she had been to him in their early days together, when he had been as enchanted by her as Hokar was by Ebisha.
He went to every physician in Kn
sos, and every herbalist, seeking help for his wife. But nothing stopped her headaches.
sos, and every herbalist, seeking help for his wife. But nothing stopped her headaches.When he played his lyre in the queen's megaron he was distracted and it showed in his performance.
“What is wrong with you?” Ebisha whispered to him. “The queen frowns when you play. Does not sound the same now.”
“My wife is sick and I'm worried about her.”
“She has a pain?”
“In her head.”
“Ah.” Ebisha nodded. “My grandsire could heal.”
“Much good that does me!” Meriones burst out before he could stop himself. The heat was getting to everyone.
Next day, Hokar met him at the Sun Gate and pressed an object wrapped in linen into his hands. “Give this to Ebisha, and tell her it's from me.”
He had to wait for his chance. At last came a time when the megaron was briefly all but deserted, its usual throng of chattering, chirping courtiers gone to bathe in the pools or lie panting on their beds. Ebisha remained, and Meriones beckoned her to join him behind one of the pillars. “I have a gift for you from Hokar the goldsmith.”
“Who?” But she took the parcel and unwrapped it.
Then she gasped. “Look!” She held up a necklace as fine as spiderweb, made of tiny gold links. Spaced along the chain at regular intervals were six miniature gold nautilus shells, repeating the spiral design in the ceiling of the queen's megaron.
The gold flashed in Ebisha's fingers. “It is the metal of the sun!” she cried.
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