Oracle (23 page)

‘Why me, when you have brought no other man?’ It was the first time he had spoken since she had taken his hand and led him into the cave.

The cave smelled of damp and dust and bats and something else: blood, he thought. How many freshly killed sacrifices had been brought in here?

For a moment the hag said nothing. And then she said, ‘Because I heard you sing. Because you waited. Because I trust you.’

‘Trust me?’

She turned to face him. They had gone so far that almost all the light was gone. Only the grey dust on her face showed in the darkness. ‘I trust you not to tell what you have seen; to leave when you have seen that she is happy. To not look back.’

‘Why can’t I look back?’

‘If you look back you might know the way in again. This is a place of women, not for men. I trust you to look down so you don’t see where you are going. You can come here once. No more.’

The words came from the depths of his being. ‘If Euridice is happy—if she wants to stay—I promise I will go. I won’t come back.’

‘Good.’

She began to guide him again, feeling the way now with her hands against the rock. He could sense rather than see passages leading off from the cave they were in: each twisted into the earth with a whisper of wind, the scent of darkness, rock and dust.

For a moment he wondered if she was leading him to sacrifice, if a dagger would come from the darkness, deep into his heart, spilling his blood for the Mother just as Euridice’s might have been spilled a season ago. But somehow, for some reason, he trusted her, as she had trusted him.

He’d keep his promise. But how could Euridice still want to stay here, hidden in this darkness? Even if they had candles, torches…she was a creature of the light. How could she live cramped up inside a dark mountain?

She would see him and then she’d take his hand. They’d come away together, ride Pegasus back from the gorge, into the sun.

All at once he was aware of light. Daylight, not candle light: white light, not the yellow or red of flames. It grew brighter, then brighter still. He could see the sides of the cave now, hung with cobwebs. A bat fluttered above them, then plunged back into the dark.

The cave narrowed. The hag slipped around a ledge, smooth at the top from years of clothes brushing it. Nikko followed her, then stopped.

He stared into a world of daylight, trees and laughter.

Cliffs surrounded them, high and sheer. Sunlight poured in like wine into a goblet. Despite its depth this space was far larger than the gorge.

How was such a secret world possible? And then he realised. Once perhaps, this had been a cave too, the most massive he could conceive, but the ceiling had fallen in. Now it was a stronghold, sheltered from the world.

He looked around. It was as big as Mycenae, perhaps. They had come out by a grove of olive trees; there was a patch of barley stubble nearby, with pigeons pecking at the fallen grain. The cry of goats, the smell of baking bread. Laughter beyond the olive trees. Women’s laughter…

He found himself almost running through the trees, toward the laughter, vaguely aware the old woman followed him. Suddenly she caught his sleeve. ‘That is the maiden’s dance. They are welcoming the spring. Go no further, boy. It is forbidden.’

He nodded. He could make out the shapes of dancing women now, not grey like the hag, but bright dresses of red and cream and yellow, long hair swirling like their skirts as they clapped and laughed. Each one wore the gold apron of the Mother.

Was Euridice one of them? They were still too far away to see, and the trees obscured his view. Behind the dancers he could see stone huts, painted like the moon gold of the Mother.

The hag looked at him. ‘Well?’

‘This is it?’ The question sounded stupid even to himself. ‘The temple of the Mother?’

The hag bent her head toward the ground, and raised both fists in the symbol of devotion. ‘What better place to have the Mother’s temple than within the earth itself?’

They were the same words she had used before. But now they made sense.

‘You live here?’

‘Yes. This is how we worship the Mother, boy. Not with blood and sacrifices, but by celebrating the best that the earth can give: the grain, the cheese, the grapes, the pomegranate juice.’ She smiled again, this time with pity. ‘There are no men here. No husbands to give orders. No pain of childbirth, no starving that your children might eat. We have the gifts that those outside give to the Mother; we have our own oil, our cheese, our bread. No wars, no need to shiver inside a wooden wall, frightened of the wolves at night, or bandits raiding. Here there is peace and plenty. Always.’

And laughter, he thought. ‘Do you dance a lot?’ he asked suddenly.

‘Oh yes, boy. We dance. Euridice, your friend—she loves to dance.’ The hag smiled. ‘She has taught us a lot since she has been here, just as we have taught her too.’

And she is happy here, he thought. No one has imprisoned her. She’s no sacrifice on the rock. She has found the place she was meant for.

He had waited for nothing.

‘Well?’ There was surprising sympathy in the old eyes. ‘Do you want to find her, boy? Ask her to come back into the world outside?’

‘No.’ Why make her feel guilty, worried for him? Why remind her of past pain? There’s one thing though, he thought, that Euridice must miss.

Pegasus. A horse to ride, to dance with. Surely, he thought, this place had grazing enough for a horse too. Or maybe the supplicants could be prevailed upon to bring hay.

‘May I leave my horse here?’ he asked.

The hag looked surprised. ‘As a sacrifice for the Mother?’

‘No!’ The thought of Pegasus’s guts steaming on the altar stone made him shiver. ‘As a gift for Euridice. If this is a place for happiness, she’ll be happier with a horse.’ They should just about manage to squeeze her through the cave, he thought.

The hag smiled at that. ‘I think you’re right. Have you seen enough?’

‘Take me back,’ he said.

He felt her fingers around his again, bony and firm.

‘Go and find your sister, boy.’ The hag patted his arm. ‘Yes, Euridice told us about her, and we have asked the supplicants. We may be hidden from the world here, but it is surprising how much of the world comes to us. Your sister is at a place called Delphi.’

He stared. ‘I know Delphi. I went there, years ago, to perform for their king.’ Or headman, he thought, for it was a small place, for a man to call himself a king. Small, and well to the north of Mycenae—the perfect place for the High King to rid himself of an unwelcome oracle. Nikko could even vaguely remember Delphi’s king—a small man, as though a small king suited a small town, with intense eyes, following the butterfly dance.

They had reached the lip of rock again, leading into the cave under the mountain, the way back into the gorge, where Pegasus waited, cropping at her grass. The hag nodded. ‘Then you know where to go. Now do not look back.’

No,’ said Nikko softly. ‘I won’t look back.’

She took his hand again, and led him into the darkness.

He walked to Delphi.

The town was not far south of the Temple—he and Euridice had already passed within a few days’ walk of it without realising.

The hag gave him directions; to follow the stream down the valley to the coast, instead of trying to clamber across mountains still topped with winter snow, and negotiate rivers swollen with thaw water. There was a winding track from the tiny fishing town of Krissa, just wide enough for people and ponies, up through the cliffs, for Delphi too was in the mountains: not in a valley, but perched on the mountain as though hung between the sea and sky.

He had come up that path before, after sailing from Mycenae to Koranou and then to Krissa.

That time he had come in a ship with a gold ram’s head at the prow. There had been chairs and bearers to carry him and Thetis up the mountain. He had been much younger then, and still not a good enough horseman for the Chamberlain to risk his riding an unfamiliar track. He had worn fine red wool trousers and tunic, with a cloak of bearskin, for Delphi could be cold. Thetis had worn silk, huddled under bearskin too in her litter, smiling across at him in delight, pointing at a mob
of egrets flapping lazily above the ground, or an eagle, riding the wind.

Now he came on foot, alone. His trousers and tunic were ripped leather, stripped from a dead man, though his palace kilt was in the pack on his back, along with his jewels and gold. He carried the sword at his side, and the spear in his hand. He had left the bow for Euridice. It took years to learn to be a bowman; he doubted he would ever bother to acquire the skill.

You could walk from Krissa up to Delphi in a day, when the days were long—if you left early and were a good walker. But he camped a little way from the town, rather than arrive at dusk, an unknown man asking admittance to their gates.

He lit a fire only after dark, when the smoke would not be seen—no sense attracting bandits now. He warmed himself and cooked the fish he’d bartered for a leg of goat down at Krissa.

For the first time since he’d left the Temple his thoughts were more of Thetis than Euridice.

What would he find when he reached Delphi? What had happened to his sister during the long autumn, winter and spring? Was she some man’s slave, crying soundlessly into her pillow after he had gone to sleep, whose life he might have to buy with the jewels in his pack? Or perhaps the mistress of the King, or one of his sons? Had the King of Delphi kept her to dance to impress his neighbours, his own Butterfly of Mycenae?

Was there anyone to catch her now, or did she dance alone? How had she fared without her brother to protect her?

He bit his lip, finally allowing himself to think a thought as sharp as tin.

The months travelling with Euridice—including even his journey here alone—had been in some ways the simplest of his life, despite hard ground and snarling winds. No rules to obey, no pattern to keep to: just to sleep, to eat, to hunt when and as he wished.

Freedom to see the clouds trickle across the sky; to stand and watch a fox playing with her cubs, with no need to kill her for food (fox meat was foul) or for her fur, but just to watch. To be, and nothing else.

This might be the last night of his life to be alone to watch the stars, with no responsibilities to gnaw him. He hadn’t just stopped the extra night to make it easier to gain admittance in the morning.

Those stars shone above him, tiny flares among the black, like the flashes of brightness through the trees as he’d watched the women’s dance…

He thrust that image away. He wouldn’t think of Euridice tonight, or of the Mother. Even she was absent from the sky this evening. The moon spinners had wound up her skirts, and wouldn’t start unwinding them till tomorrow.

Tomorrow, when he’d see his sister once again.

Finally, he slept.

The shaking ground woke him up. For a moment he was back in Mycenae: the High King’s head was bouncing down toward him. He blinked. Mycenae was gone, and the shaking earth was still.

Had he dreamed it? Or had there really been an
earthquake? Probably the latter, he thought. He had felt a couple of tremors the day before, often the prelude to a bigger quake. He hoped nothing at Delphi had been damaged.

An ice spear plunged through his heart. What if he’d come so far, only to find his sister killed in an earthquake like the one that she’d predicted?

Was their fate bound up with earthquakes? If he hadn’t stopped here last night he might have been with her.

Stop it, he told himself. Your mind is too filled with drama—the earthquakes, the escape from Mycenae, the thunder wave. Remember there are years when nothing happens at all, except the Mother’s seasons, the old dying and the young being born.

He looked around him. The larks were singing, the morning mists rolling back below him. The mountains above were still dressed with snow. The air felt so crisp it might snap, like toasted flatbread. He put on his clothes with care; the gold-trimmed kilt and golden belt from Mycenae that he had carried for so long, wrapped in the saddle blanket. The fine wool cloth, the rich dyes, the complex patterns at the hem showed him to be a person of importance, not some scapegoat cast out from his village. He had used his knife to shave his chest and trim his beard the night before too. Only the wealthy, with their bronze mirrors—soft city boys, Euridice would say—shaved.

But he was not the boy from Mycenae now. He wore his sword on his belt, and carried his spear. He draped the bearskin cloak around his shoulders, and fastened it with his brooch of rare sky iron, put on his gold bracelets
and necklaces, then tied the pouch of gems under his kilt. The rest—his pack, his extra blankets, his sling, a goatskin bag of flour—he left behind a bush. Let them wonder in Delphi how he came there. The more the mystery, the greater power he might have to persuade the King to let him save his sister.

He swallowed the last of his fish, and headed back to the trail to Delphi.

It was a thin track, at times cut into the cliff itself. Water seeped from crevices like tiny smiles. Bushes clung to the steep rocks, their tips nibbled and torn. Goat country, he thought, like the village he’d come from. Then he turned another corner, and there was Delphi.

Dew melted from the ground in a sparkle of mist. He had a sudden memory of another morning, another mountain just like this, another quest to help his sister.

It was strangely like his old home—the snow sitting like curled hair over the mountain tops, the call of goats, even the stream that ran singing down the mountain. But this stockade was bigger, stretching far up the slope.

He could even see some of the houses higher up—a big red stone building, with painted lintels and a terrace, that must be the ‘palace’ of Delphi’s King. It was the highest house in the village except for one, a much smaller house built right against the mountain’s cliff, which seemed to form part of Delphi’s defences. This house too was painted red, with yellow lintels. It must have been painted more recently than the palace, for the colours glowed from the hillside like a torch’s flare at night.

Something
baa
ed at him. He turned to find a goat looking at him with a mixture of disdain and curiousity,
and a small boy—much like he had been, but grubbier—who was just plain curious.

Nikko smiled. ‘Good day.’

The boy stared, as though he hadn’t expected such a richly dressed stranger to speak. Behind him other goats, white and black and red, appeared from the bushes. The boy pressed his fist to his forehead then ran back to the goats, muttering to them with an accent Nikko found hard to understand.

Nikko walked toward the town.

Larks threw themselves through the singing air. The gates were open. There were no guards, just a few girls and women sitting together on a doorstep, grinding flour in their quirns, or twisting wool on their distaffs, gossiping in the sunshine. They too looked at him curiously, then modestly dropped their gaze.

There was no sign of damage from the quake this morning, if there had been one: no woman with her hair over her face, keening for those she’d lost.

He nodded to the women politely, in case one was peering up at him from under her lashes, then walked between the houses, up the hill to the palace.

Where were Delphi’s men? Out hunting? But no town ever emptied itself entirely of men. So many would scare the game, for one thing.

On a raiding party, after neighbour’s cattle, or a war? But the women wouldn’t look so relaxed if their men had headed out to battle.

The track between the houses was crooked. It was hard to see the palace till he was nearly there, at the tiled courtyard below the terrace, so like Mycenae that he
smiled. The King had obviously decided to make a tiny version of the High King’s palace for himself.

There was still no one around. But he could smell bread cooking, and roasting meat spiced with oregano.

He climbed the stairs up to the terrace. ‘Is anybody there?’

A woman bustled out: a servant by the look of her, wrinkled as a dried fig. But her clothes were wool, not goatskin, and her hair was tied back in an embroidered woollen cloth. This might not be Mycenae, but it was a far wealthier town than his village.

‘My lord?’ She had assessed him with one swift glance, then looked at the ground politely. ‘The others are up at the Pythia’s, my lord.’

He blinked at her. ‘The others?’

‘The others from Mycenae, my lord,’ she said patiently, obviously recognising his Mycenaean style of dress. She gestured up to the bright stone house by the cliff. ‘They left here only a little time ago.’ She looked at him more curiously, and perhaps suspiciously. ‘You were here last night, my lord? I don’t remember you.’

‘I was delayed on the road,’ he said easily, keeping his face smiling while he tried to think. Mycenae!

He had thought that he’d be safe. In the chaos of Mycenae after the King’s death, few would have wondered about Nikko the acrobat; and those might have assumed he was dead, hidden forever under the rubble of the walls.

These men would recognise him.

What were men from Mycanae doing here at all? Tribute time was autumn, not summer. Had they come
to put Thetis to death for forecasting the death of the High King? The roads from Mycenae to Delphi would have been closed by snow until recently. Perhaps it was only now that the guards had been able to reach here, to carry out the new High King’s instructions.

There was no point asking the servant what was happening. He might as well start looking where she indicated: the men from Mycenae could be here for only one thing.

Thetis.

He nodded his thanks to the servant, ran down the steps and began to stride up the mountain.

To the Pythia’s.