Voyage of the Snake Lady
VOYAGE
OF THE
SNAKE LADY
THERESA TOMLINSON
For my mother, Joan Johnston
Contents
C
ASSANDRA SAT BESIDE
a dark pool, still as a stone, staring into the water. Chryse, the Mouse Boy, sat with her, watching, concerned at the intensity he saw in her face. Many feared the quiet priestess with the strange mismatched eyes who’d once been princess of the ruined city of Troy, but not twelve-year-old Chryse.
Some years had passed since a warship that had once belonged to the great conqueror Agamemnon had sailed in sight of the tiny island of Sminthe. The Mouse Boy could remember only too well how his mother Chryseis, priestess of the sun god, had snatched him up into her arms and run with him to hide in the cave of Apollo, close to the beach. She’d clamped her hand over his mouth so hard that it hurt; but it hadn’t been for very long. They’d watched from the shelter of the cave as a small boat was rowed toward the shore. Two men jumped out and splashed through the shallows as they dragged the vessel up onto the sand. They had quickly ditched their cargo and rowed back toward the warship.
When she saw the cargo they’d left, Chryseis had cried out with doubt and then joy. She’d released her child and left him to toddle after her, while she ran down the beach, her arms open wide. The cargo had been the Trojan princess, left on the beach, her few belongings stashed in a sack.
Since then the three of them had lived peacefully together in the island temple of Sminthean Apollo, two priestesses and a child whose only playmates were mice.
But now, as Chryse watched the color fade from Cassandra’s cheeks, he felt a growing unease. The pool darkened to inky blackness, leaving the water still and mirrorlike, while strange and magical pictures moved in its shimmering depths. Chryse could see the pictures, but he wasn’t sure what they meant. He held his breath and watched the magic, while some of his mouse friends ran up his back and paused for a moment on his shoulders, their tiny whiskers trembling, ears alert.
“What is it?” he asked them.
He suddenly felt sure that the mice were giving him some sort of warning; then he saw that a small trickle of blood crept down from Cassandra’s nose. The princess ignored it—her whole attention was fixed on what she saw in the water; but the mice stretched their snouts up toward Chryse’s ears and he heard their thin, starlike voices speaking to him in the squeaky language that only he seemed to understand.
Chryse got up and started running back toward the temple, while a dark gray shadow made up of many tiny racing bodies swirled about his feet, for wherever he went his mice went, too. “Mother!” he shouted. “Mother, come! The princess needs you! The mice are telling me this—you must come.”
Chryseis appeared in the archway at the side of the temple and ran quickly down the flight of stone steps, but when she saw the blood on Cassandra’s gown she slowed down, making herself speak in a low, calm voice. “Princess,” she whispered. “Princess, come back to us! It is not good for you to go where you have gone!”
She moved steadily toward her friend, but now every step was careful and measured. “Princess,” she whispered, putting out her hands to gently touch Cassandra, ignoring the flow of blood that marked them both. “Dear friend, come back to us!”
At last Cassandra blinked and tore her eyes away from the pool; she spoke with agitation. “I have seen them!” she cried. “Iphigenia! Myrina and her young daughter! They are in terrible trouble . . . taken prisoner on a boat, their ankles roped, stripped of all weapons . . . Myrina’s snake mirror gone . . . surrounded by dark waves.”
“Who is doing this?” Chryseis asked, her voice low and fearful.
Cassandra shook her head. “Achaean ships! I know that black shape on their banners; it is Achilles’ standard! The sign of the ant!”
Chryse looked scared. He had heard stories of Achilles, the dreaded warrior who’d fought for the Achaeans in the war against Troy.
“But Achilles is dead,” Chryseis reminded her friend firmly.
Cassandra nodded. “It is his son—Neoptolemus!” She spoke with certainty now, but turned to her friend in deep distress. “What can we do?”
Chryseis shook her head and hugged her friend tightly, stroking her hair. “Nothing . . . there is nothing we can do—but watch and wait and have faith in those we love. Iphigenia is not the helpless child that you once knew; she is a priestess now and warrior trained. Myrina is the greatest survivor of us all; I swear they will rue the day they took our Snake Lady and her Moon Riders aboard their boat.”
M
YRINA GRITTED HER
teeth; the rocking of the galley made her feel sick. All the captive women were in great discomfort, crammed into narrow corridors beneath the thwarts, stowed like baggage around the edges of the ship. Myrina’s daughter Tamsin clung to her, white faced, but there was little that she could do to comfort the child in that confined space. They were roped together by the ankles, Iphigenia on one side of her and Coronilla on the other; only the young girls were free. Myrina hugged Tamsin tightly. Keeping her daughter safe must be her main purpose now, but she was concerned about Coronilla, who was suffering from a battered head and seemed to be falling into a deathlike sleep.
Despite everything, Myrina felt that she must make one last farewell. “I may never see this land again,” she muttered. She twisted around so that she could look up through the oar holes, as the galley pulled away from the shore. Though her view was restricted, she managed to glimpse two grave markers standing out stark on the horizon. She had raised those markers herself—one for Hati, her grandmother, and the other for Atisha, the old leader of the Moon Riders. Both old women had died within a few days of each other in the Month of Falling Leaves. Myrina had taken their ashes from the pyre and buried them side by side above the River Thermodon.
“Good-bye, Hati, warrior grandmother,” she whispered. “Good-bye, Atisha, wise old woman. Though I crouch here in shame I salute you both: you will always be here with me in my heart.” Then she said fiercely, “I am glad you are not here to see what has become of the once-honored Moon Riders!”
As the two boats moved farther away from the shore, she craned her neck to see the other riverbank, searching for yet another marker. Myrina’s horse Isatis had been her faithful companion since the blue-black foal was born into her arms when she was five. Myrina had seen only thirteen springs when she’d ridden away from her home tent on Isatis’s back to join the Moon Riders, warrior priestesses of Earth Mother Maa.
But both horse and rider had suffered many years of hard struggle since then, and as they grew older together, Isatis had developed a breathing sickness that gradually made every movement difficult. When the sight of the suffering mare became too much, it was Myrina herself who’d hammered a sharpened spearpoint into Isatis’s forehead, so that death came instantly. Her friends had offered to relieve her of the terrible job, but for no other Moon Rider would Isatis drop her head in perfect trust and stillness. So Myrina had forced herself to strike the one powerful blow. She had cremated the carcass and buried Isatis’s ashes along with the fine snake-patterned harness that her father had made.
At last, as she craned her neck, she saw the hillock on the shore with the small cairn of stones piled up carefully to mark the spot. Her lips twisted with bitterness and it was hard to get the words out, but they had to be said: “Sleep well, my brave Isatis.” She lifted her hand from Tamsin’s head in salute.
Deep anger at what had happened kept her eyes dry. Two hundred and fifty women had lived with their children beside the River Thermodon; they were all that was left of the Moon Riders, who’d long been respected for their sacred dancing and warrior skills. Many of the women had once been slaves in the city of Troy, but they had escaped and regained their sense of worth and dignity by joining the ranks of the Moon Riders. Their Achaean enemies had feared these warrior women and called them Amazons, but they’d lived peacefully enough during these years, in harmony with the fisher folk who inhabited that shoreline by the Thermodon. Then, in the Month of New Leaves, news had come of a fleet of warships sailing northward through the Bosphorus into the Black Sea, bearing the much-feared symbol of the ant. Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, had recovered from the long struggle of the Trojan War and, being still an energetic man, he came raiding along the southern coast, looting all those who’d tried to defend the city of Troy and the Anatolian tribal lands.
Myrina had set up a system of beacons to give warning of their approach. When at last Neoptolemus arrived, it had been in a light, fast flagship, and though he’d sailed close to the land at the mouth of the Thermodon, he’d looked carefully at the landing places and then sailed on. There had been a day of uncertainty and then relief followed, for it seemed that they were not worth the trouble of an attack. But the following morning black dots appeared on the horizon and the sea soon darkened with the shapes of sails, while Myrina rushed to reorganize their defenses. Neoptolemus had sailed ahead of a huge navy, spying out the land, leaving the real dirty work to his followers.
When the battle came at last, both warrior priestesses and fisher folk fought bravely, but this new generation of Achaeans were huge in number. Jealous of their fathers’ stories of the Trojan War, they burned with their own desire for adventure and riches. Moon Riders who did not die fighting were taken captive, their boy children slaughtered before their eyes. Among the young girls who had survived were Leti and Fara, but their mothers had died in the battle, and now the older Moon Riders tried hard to care for them and watch them with motherly concern.
The horses had been slaughtered, too, for the seafaring Achaeans had little use for the beasts. The captives were stripped of their weapons, their sheep and goats herded aboard the young Ant Man’s ships, while the main fleet sailed onward to the west, still eager for more plunder, leaving two smaller vessels packed with prisoners to be taken they knew not where.
Myrina muttered angrily, reminding herself sternly that her tribe was nomadic and had always roamed from pasture to pasture. Home was a tent, family, and comrades; home could be wherever you made it. “I am Mazagardi born! What does it matter where I go?”
Tamsin had at last fallen asleep, exhausted, her arms wrapped tightly about her mother. Myrina gently wiped a smear of blood from the corner of her child’s bruised mouth. Though she could feel nothing but anger, she forced herself to remember that some of those she loved remained; she must think fast to save what she could. She put one arm around Coronilla, trying to make her more comfortable. Others had survived the battle; though many, like Coronilla, were in a bad way. Myrina’s own body was covered in cuts and bruises, but she considered herself lucky. Tamsin was a fair weight to support in these cramped conditions, but she took comfort from the heavy warmth of her daughter leaning on her shoulder—her seven-year-old lived, when so many others had been slaughtered. Then suddenly she looked about her in panic. Where was Phoebe? Her niece was the much-loved child of her sister Reseda, killed along with most of the Mazagardi tribe while the war for the city of Troy raged all about them.
“Phoebe! Phoebe!” Myrina shouted urgently.
“She is here—Akasya has her safe!” Iphigenia answered.
Myrina leaned across and saw them farther down the corridor. Phoebe’s head was resting against Akasya’s shoulder, though she looked bruised and pale. Myrina had ordered the young girl to stay inside the home tent, but Phoebe had crept out in the middle of the battle and wounded many an Achaean by raining down arrows from the hillside. Eventually one of them had crept up behind her and felled her with a heavy blow to the head.
“Will she live?” Myrina did not like the stillness of the young girl or the sight of dried blood among her matted curls.
“Her head is battered, but she breathes steadily,” Akasya promised. “Do not fear, Snake Lady, I will take good care of her.”
“If it were not for these two who call me Mother and this rope, by Maa, I swear I’d throw myself into the sea,” Myrina said. “They cast my mirror into their melting pot—and all my power has melted with it! Father made it for me with such tenderness and care when I went with the Moon Riders.”
Iphigenia shook her head. “You are mistaken, Snake Lady.” She spoke with calm determination. “Your power does not lie in a mirror, beautiful and magical though it was. Your father’s tenderness and care is always there in your heart. I still have the mirror that the Princess Cassandra gave me, hidden away inside my robe; it is yours to use whenever you wish. Close your eyes now and rest.”
Myrina was calmed and touched by Iphigenia’s generosity. A Moon Rider’s mirror was her most precious possession, and Iphigenia treasured the gleaming black round of obsidian that Cassandra had given her long ago. The offer to share it showed the deepest love and trust.
“I must not give up all hope!” she agreed.
“No, you must not,” Iphigenia said. “Have you noted the ship’s figurehead?”
Myrina strained to see the prow of the ship, high above the foredeck. For a moment she glimpsed the head and shoulders of a woman carved in wood, a crescent moon on her brow; then she quickly understood. “Artemis.” It was to the Achaeans’ huntress goddess that Iphigenia had been dedicated as a child. The crescent moon had long been the symbol of the Moon Riders, too.
Iphigenia nodded. “This ship is named for the Moon Lady.”
“You think that bodes well for us?”
“Oh yes! We have often agreed that the Achaeans’ Moon Lady is close to the moon aspect of Earth Mother Maa. And I saw that the other ship is named for her twin brother, the sun god.”
“Apollo—the god of our friend Chryseis?”
“You see”—Iphigenia nodded again sleepily—“things are better than they seem. Let us trust that the Moon Lady and her brother will protect us while we are in their ships. You have not slept for two days and nights, so put your head on my shoulder and let sleep give us the strength that we need.”
“I wish I felt as certain of this protection as you do!” Myrina grumbled, but she knew that she must acknowledge her own exhaustion and accept that at the moment she was helpless. At last she lowered her head like an obedient child to rest on her friend’s slim shoulder, her eyelids so heavy that they would not stay open anymore.
They woke with the morning sun and for a moment Myrina could not think where she was. Her body ached in every part, and foul-tasting fluid rose in her throat; then terrible memories flooded back. She looked beside her at Coronilla, who murmured words that meant nothing, while Tamsin whimpered as she woke.
“It’s all right, Young Lizard,” Myrina murmured automatically. “Snake Mother’s here!”
Iphigenia woke, blinking up at the sun as it shot over the bows, and groaned as she shuffled around in the confined space, trying to ease her cramping muscles.
“We’ve been in trouble before,” Myrina said, “but I don’t know how we’re going to get out of this!”
She struggled hard to force back the despair again, gently smoothing Tamsin’s hair away from her face. The child did not weep or wail as she woke and remembered what had happened, but stretched her limbs a little. “I am hungry, Snake Mother,” she said. “When did we last eat?”
“That’s my young lizard.” Myrina smiled at her with fierce pride. “We must eat to survive.”