Delilah: A Novel (36 page)

Fear now traveled the high roads; Samson’s shadow, silent and deadly. And who would believe that shadow truly belonged not to Samson, but to Derceto?

All my life I had heard the Seer of En-dor whispered of as the most powerful of all those who Saw Beyond. I had envisioned a rich shrine, beautiful and imposing; I had imagined She Who Saw decked with gems and garbed as richly as a goddess.

Instead, at the end of my journey, I faced an uneven path that I followed to a narrow opening in a rocky hillside. Just outside the cave sat a small girl setting white pebbles in a circle; she looked up as I slowly approached, and then pointed to the dark doorway.

“Am I to go in?” I asked, but the child simply went back to playing with the white pebbles. I looked behind me down the path; large tumbled boulders hid my escort from my sight. I could go back or I could enter the cave. I drew a deep breath and stepped forward, into darkness.

I never did see the cave clearly. Even when my eyes adapted themselves to the dim light, I could make out only the banked fire on an ancient stone hearth, and the figure of a woman crouched beside the smoldering wood. Smoke permeated the air, rich and bitter; laurel burned in the fire, or myrrh. Smoke and darkness embraced me, oddly comforting. I was safe here, as safe as I had been while I grew in my mother’s womb . . .

“Did you come to stand forever in my doorway? Come in or go away.”

The Seer’s voice held no emotion, nor did she turn to look at me. I stepped carefully forward, until I stood beside her. Neither young nor old, nor half-mad from the burden of great power, the Seer seemed no more than any mortal woman. Now that I stood close, I saw that she sat cross-legged, and that she had laurel leaves piled in her lap. As I watched, she took a handful of the leaves and dropped them onto the slow fire. Flames hungrily ate the leaves, sending even more smoke surging upward.

“Ask your question, Priestess,” she said.

“You know—” I began, and stopped. Of course the Seer knew why I had come. Why else, but to learn my future? Doubtless she knew who I was, and perhaps even why I stood here now.

“You are here. Ask.” She tossed another handful of laurel leaves upon the hearth. Smoke swirled through the cave, and with each breath we drew its heady power into our bodies. “Ask, Dark One. What would you know?”

I had thought hard and long on this; had formed the question I would ask She Who Saw with the care of a seal-carver etching an image into flawless crystal. I had repeated the words a dozen times a day as I journeyed here, until I knew my petition by heart, knew it as well as I knew the prayers to Atargatis.
Reveal to me how I may avenge my heart-sister and her daughter. Show me how I may unveil Derceto’s evil. Show me the way to my future with the man my heart desires
.

But now I remembered nothing.

And into the smoke and silence, I heard my voice speaking words that were not my own. “I would know Samson’s fate.”

The words seemed to swirl upward into the smoke; I longed to breathe them back in, but it was too late. The question had been asked—and I longed to know what future awaited Samson.
His fate is mine, now
.

The Seer nodded, and held her hands over the smoky fire. “Show me Samson. Show me the Son of the Sun.”

The smoke coiled, darkened; the Seer keened as if mourning a child. When she spoke again, her words echoed against the stone surrounding us. “The Son of the Sun. Bound by a woman, he will destroy a god. Night comes when the Sun dies. Go now, Night’s Daughter. It is not yet time for you here.”

Then silence. At last I realized the Seer had left only her body here; her spirit walked among the ghosts of past and future. She would say no more to me now.

En-dor not only granted me an answer I did not yet understand, but unbound a power I had not known I possessed. When I returned to Ascalon, to the Great House of Atargatis, and bowed before the High Priestess before looking straight into her lying eyes, I knew that Derceto feared me now.
She is afraid I will learn the truth, all she has done to bring me to this moment
. Derceto would do anything to keep me her willing weapon against Samson.
Oh, yes, I can now ask whatsoever I desire, and it will be granted
.

“Well, Delilah?” Derceto asked. “Did the Seer at En-dor reveal what you must do?”

“Yes, High Priestess. Everything I must do was revealed. Grant what I ask, and I will do what must be done.”

“Ask,” was all she said, but it was enough.

I smiled, and began to speak. “First, I will need your blessing, High Priestess. And then I will require jewels and fine garments and a cook who can prepare rich dishes well. And I will need a house, a house in the Valley of Sorek . . .”

“The Valley of Sorek,” I had decreed, and so it was there, in that lush wild garden, that the Temple’s trap was set.

Of the lands that belonged to the Temple, I chose an extravagant, frivolous pleasure-palace that lay upon the southern bank of the glittering River Sorek. Beyond the gilt-edged wall surrounding the house, fields of poppies spread bright as blood. A grove of pomegranate trees
shaded the southern wall, and the small cinnamon-sweet roses of Damascus grew in the sheltered gardens.

Opulent as a queen’s court, lavishly painted and tiled and gilded; whatever clean beauty the dwelling might have possessed was hidden as completely as a priestess behind her painted mask. No one offered any objection when I stared at the sun blazing on the gold-tipped elephant tusks arching above the courtyard gate and said,

“This one.”

Those two words set the Temple’s plan, my plan, into motion. I neither knew nor cared who dwelt within the river-palace, or where they would go, now that I had claimed this property for my own use.

Nor did I think the Temple cared overmuch. I had chosen as I had been expected to choose—a palace that was a treasure in itself, whose riches would dazzle princes. A mere man would be overwhelmed. But I knew Samson would not be dazzled; Samson would see the palace for what it was. A snare.

But the snare was not crafted to catch Samson, but his enemies—and mine.

I knew I must take care, for Derceto was no fool. I must seem to work wholehearted to do Derceto’s bidding. There are many ways to seduce a man, to bend him to the Lady’s will. Knowing myself watched, I began with the most obvious. Derceto expected me to offer myself to Samson, to seduce him with my body. So that was how I would begin. As long as the High Priestess believed me to be wholly her creature, Samson and I would be safe together.

Safe to plan our vengeance against those who had sent Aylah to her death.

The palace I had chosen had been created for pleasure alone. A summer dwelling rich with open colonnades and latticed windows, it had gardens planted to reveal their beauty at certain times, or in certain light. There was a Moon Garden, in which only white flowers grew; by day the garden seemed dull, lifeless. But it came alive by night. When the
moon rose full, the white flowers glowed in its silver light like pearls, became mirrors of the moon.

But the Sun Garden was my favorite. There every flower glowed yellow as sunlight: day lilies and narcissus and iris, bright little suns against the cool green of their leaves. Just to stand within its brightness warmed my heart.

Much of the house had been built of cedar, and the sharp clean scent of that wood underlay the extravagant perfumes of frankincense and nard. Many of the walls had been painted with scenes of pretty women dancing or handsome men hunting. On the wall of one of the long open colonnades, blue monkeys picked pale yellow crocuses.

Sometimes it seemed to me that not even a handspan of the palace’s walls had been left unadorned. What was not painted was set with tiles of brilliant red, blue, and yellow. Exuberant, finely carved patterns swirled over cedar pillars. Gateways were inlaid with silver, or with lapis, or with ivory. So much of that precious material adorned the palace that the dwelling had been named for it: the House of Ivory.

I liked the name; it reminded me of the Ivory Gate at the heart of Our Lady’s House. And in spite of all the hatred and cold anger I felt for the High Priestess, I still loved Bright Atargatis. I had lost my heart-sister, and my trust in the Temple, but not my goddess. That faith, at least, I still possessed.

“Like a panther Delilah hunted Samson; like a serpent she beguiled him. And even Samson, stronger than a hundred men, was weaker than one frail woman . . .”

To the end of his long life, Orev never forgot how the dark dancer had claimed Samson’s future as if the days of his life belonged to her by right. Delilah had used no guile to ensnare him; no wiles to keep him. She had merely waited, patient as time, until Samson came to her.

The news that Delilah Moondancer, priestess in the Great House of Atargatis, had left Ascalon to dwell in the ivory palace in the Valley of Sorek traveled swiftly. When the tale reached Samson’s ears, he said,

“I go to the House of Ivory. Do you come with me, Orev?”

A chill slid through Orev’s bones. “Don’t, Samson. There is nothing there for you.”

“You’re wrong, friend harper. You heard her name. Now they have sent her whom my heart seeks.”

“They’ve sent a trap, Samson.”

“Yes.” Samson shrugged. “That’s a small matter.”

“It will be a great matter when the Philistines take you. They’ll chain you to a rock out in the harbor and leave you there for the fish to feast upon.”

Samson laughed—but his laughter was no longer the joyous sound it had been before he lost wife and child to fire. “You worry too much.”

“And you don’t worry enough. Forget about Delilah. Do you think those who rule Ascalon’s Temple have sent her because they believe they owe you another wife?” Orev knew speaking so brutally carried risks; he counted on Samson’s innate honesty and inability to lie even to himself.

For a moment Samson closed his eyes, shook his head as if to banish cruel memories. Then he said, “No, I think as you do—that the House of Atargatis has sent another weapon against me.” He gazed down the river valley to the west, as if he could see the House of Ivory before him. “But I told you, it doesn’t matter. I go to meet my fate. Come or not, as you choose.”

She stood waiting within a window, as if she knew not only that he would come to her, but when. Samson strode through the garden as if he had walked its path many times, and stopped, looking up at her.

“I am here,” he said, and she leaned upon the window’s ledge, gazed down into his eyes.

“Wait,” she said, and withdrew into the shadows behind her. A few moments later she came out to him, moving cat-soft, cat-supple, into the sunlit garden. She wore nothing but a skirt of blue-green silk sewn with peacocks’ eyes and a scarlet girdle knotted about her hips; the girdle’s long tassels fell almost to her ankles. A small coral fish upon a golden chain lay between her bare breasts. Samson reached out and laid his fingers gently upon the coral amulet.

“You wear Aylah’s charm.”

“Yes.” She lifted her hand, curled her fingers over his. “The High Priestess gave it to me, so that I might always look upon the amulet and remember how my heart-sister died.” She pulled away, held up her hand, the coral fish resting upon her palm. “Look upon it now, Samson. What do you see?”

Samson looked, and something changed in his face; the sun darkened. “I see truth,” he said. “What do you see?”

“I, too, see truth.” Delilah had tilted her hand and let the amulet slide back down between her breasts. “Come in to me, and we will share our truths. I have waited long days and nights for you, Sun of my heart.”

No, Delilah had needed nothing to ensnare Samson—nothing but herself.

At first I was uneasy with him—I, Delilah Moondancer, Full Moon of Atargatis who had been the Goddess for a dozen men, felt fear coil beneath my heart. For this time I was not acting as Our Lady; no goddess used my body as Her own. Now, with Samson, I was only Delilah, a woman he desired and who desired him.

I felt lost, afraid, as if all my hard-learned skills had vanished. Would I please him? Would he think me a poor substitute for Aylah? Aylah, whom we both had loved, in our different ways . . .

So when I beckoned Samson into my bedchamber, I trembled as if I were a maiden again, and he the first man I had ever seen. When I took his hand, his warmth seemed to burn my cold skin. It took no great wisdom for him to see my heart-sickness.

When I sat upon the leopard-skins that covered the bed, and urged him to lie beside me, he merely sat next to me and put an arm about my shoulders. He touched my cheek, gently, and I flinched as if burned. “Do not tremble so,” he said. “You need not fear, I shall not force myself upon you. I thought you wished this, but if you do not—”

“I do,” I said, and then, willing myself to tell at least some truth, “But I fear I will not please you.”

Samson laughed, softly. “It is I who should fear I will not please you—you, the most desired priestess in Ascalon.”

“Only because Aylah chose you over the Temple.” I longed to know if he favored his memories of Aylah over me; I knew I should not ask. Whether he said yes or no, I would hate him for it. So I did not question him—not then. I drew a deep breath, felt the false amulet lying warm against my skin. “Samson, there are things I must tell you—”

He slid his fingers down my throat, between my bare breasts, touched the coral fish. “And things I must tell you. But must they be said now?”

My skin burned where his fingers had traced a path. “No.” My heart beat so hard I could only whisper my words. “No. Later will be time enough. Later.”

After that, we did not speak; there was no need for words between us. At last I held my golden hero in my arms, and I forgot all else. And for once, as I lay with a man, I was only Delilah, and not a vessel for my goddess. I shall always be glad that I remembered to lay wreaths of poppies and roses at Her feet each morning, that I gave thanks to Her for Her gift of human love.