Bring Down the Sun (10 page)

Erynna tumbled backward with a cry. The earth shifted to catch her.

She lay on the edge of the precipice, all laughter gone from her. Her eyes were open and aware; her breath came light and hard.

When Myrtale touched her, she flinched. Myrtale pulled her back onto more solid ground. “Don't do that again,” Myrtale said mildly.

Erynna shuddered so hard her teeth clacked together. “I … may not have as much to teach you as I thought.”

“You have everything to teach me,” Myrtale said. “What I did was all instinct. It needs knowledge. Skill. Discipline. I learned that in the temple; it's none the less true for that the priestesses taught me.”

Erynna nodded. Her shaking had subsided. “They did train you well, all things considered. And now you know what is in you. What I have to teach, for the most part I can teach wherever we are. But for the first lessons, which are most dangerous, we had best be apart from the world.”

“For how long?” said Myrtale.

“As long as necessary,” Erynna answered. “A few days, we can hope.”

Myrtale looked down into the valley. It seemed as if days had passed, but the sun had barely marked the passage of an hour since she began to ascend the ridge. The games below the palace wall had shifted from footraces to races on horseback. After that they would contest with weapons.

Men had a ceaseless thirst to be the best—the fastest, the strongest. Women were not supposed to care for that, not in the old world and not in this one.

Myrtale must not be a woman, then, because she wanted to be more than any woman had ever been, or any man, either. She had everything a woman had, and greatest of all, the power to bear a child. But she had a man's strength of will, or what was reckoned a man's in these days.

She turned back to Erynna. “Go. Fetch what we'll need. I'll wait for you here.”

Erynna did not ask why Myrtale would not go back into Dodona. She simply nodded and began the steep descent.

*   *   *

Myrtale lay on the top of the world, basking like a snake in the sun. She had gone out of the queen's house to demand that her uncle give her to the Macedonian king. She still wanted that, but the world had shifted perceptibly.

She could not be among familiar people or in familiar places until she knew herself again. Nikandra had asked her if she was strong enough to hold her own against Philip. She knew she was—but here against the sky, she knew also that strength alone was not enough.

Erynna would give her what she needed. No doubt Thessaly would expect something in return. That was always so in this world or any other.

When the reckoning came, Myrtale would pay it. Maybe not as the Thessalians expected—but that would be as it would be. They were the eyes she had felt on her back all her life, the watchers in the shadows who had followed her wherever she went. They were the reason why the Mother's priestesses had raised her in ignorance, warded and shielded her so that she knew nothing of what she was.

They had been biding their time, waiting to slip beneath those walls, hoping to suborn her strength and turn it to their own purposes. That was as clear as the pattern of the games below her and the hawk's flight above.

All of them, witches and priestesses alike, had taken her for a fool—as if ignorance and innocence were the same, and stupidity ran side by side with it.

She smiled. It was not a smile any of them would have been comfortable to see. They needed her, or none would have taken such pains either to corrupt her or to keep her from being corrupted.

She had had enough of living her life as her aunt would wish. These people, too, might hope to use her for their own ends. She would use them instead. She would be no one's tool, or weapon, either.

Twelve

“Do you think she'll see sense?” Arybbas asked as Polyxena—who since she returned from Samothrace had insisted she was Myrtale—stalked off with rather impressive dignity. Troas had been teaching her to carry herself like a queen.

Nikandra had to admit she did it well. “I think Philip will be persistent. He's a man who loves to conquer women, and our niece is worth conquering. As for her … she'll give way in the end. It won't be easy or quick, but she's no fool, either.”

“Still,” Arybbas said, dithering as he too often did, “it's as good a match as this world knows. He'll treat her well for our alliance's sake, if nothing else. We'll gain much from it and lose little.”

“Unless he comes to set his own man on your throne.”

“That's not his way,” said Arybbas.

“True enough,” she said. “It's simpler to bind an ally with obligations until he's no more than a vassal. He'll do that to you.”

“Maybe,” Arybbas said, “and maybe I'm stronger than I look.”

Nikandra hissed at him. “You're as much a fool as she is.”

“I'm a king of this world,” he said. “To you and your world I owe service by ancient custom, but at the day's end, I owe my first service to Epiros. Macedon offers us significant advantages in return for our niece's hand.”

“All men have their weaknesses.”

“As do women,” he said. “Yours, sister, is to see only what will keep your world alive. Tell me the truth: whom does that profit but you?”

“It profits every woman,” said Nikandra, “and every man who has a kind heart and a gentle hand.”

“That's a fine dream until the armies come with fire and sword, and kill all your gentle men and rape your women. These are hard times. Our niece sees that clearly—and she is prepared to turn them to her advantage.”

“She is not your property. If she belongs to anyone, it is the temple. If you have any wits at all, you will see that she marries within Epiros, and that she stays where she is safe.”

“Is she really safe here?” Arybbas demanded. “Is she, sister? Won't she be more thoroughly distracted if she has a strong husband instead of the weakling you're trying to force on her? I would think you'd want her under a man's thumb, if all your fears are true and not simply a ruse to keep her in your power.”

He had never come so close to defiance before. Nikandra had never pressed him so hard, either, or asked him to choose between his kingdom and his duty to the Mother.

She could press harder, but if she did, she would lose him. However aggravated she was, she did not want that. He was saying no more than she had thought for herself; though she was not about to let him know it.

She let him go, for the moment. His relief was palpable, but no less so than her own.

*   *   *

Nikandra chose to bury herself in duties rather than seethe in frustration. The deeper her unease, the more assiduously she fled from it, until she had almost convinced herself that there was nothing to fear.

On the third day after she had gone to the king's house, after Timarete had gone out to serve the oracle, young Attalos found her at prayer within the temple. He shuffled his feet and cleared his throat and did everything possible to draw her attention without speaking a word.

He was a rather effective distraction. She sighed heavily and rose from the floor where she had been lying on the hard-tamped earth. “Yes?” she said.

He was a gentle creature, the perfect image of a man from the old time. Just then, his humble diffidence set her teeth on edge. “Lady, if you please, the Lady Promeneia is asking for you.

Nikandra's temper did not cool at all, but she no longer cared what Attalos was or was not. Promeneia was bedridden still; the queen had sent women to look after her, and women of the town had come one by one, some to sit with her, others to offer what knowledge they had of herbs and healing.

That morning the two women who attended her had familiar faces: they were of the old families and kept as much to the old ways as they could. One sat spinning, singing softly to herself. The other knelt by the bed, where Promeneia was sitting up.

It would not be long now, Nikandra thought dispassionately. As grimly as Promeneia clung to life, the flesh had nearly melted from her bones.

Her eyes were dark and wide. They were not seeing this world any longer, although as they turned toward Nikandra, they sparked with recognition. “Don't,” she said. “Don't go after her.”

Nikandra frowned. “What—”

“Don't pursue her. She'll only be more determined to thwart you.

There was no need to ask whom Promeneia meant. Everything came back to Polyxena, Myrtale, whoever and whatever she was.

“Where is she?” Nikandra asked as gently as she could manage. “What has she done?”

“Let her be,” said Promeneia.

Nikandra clasped the cold, gaunt hands. “Please, lady. Tell me what you see.”

“Open your eyes,” Promeneia said, “and see.”

“Lady, I can't—”

“Turn and look ahead,” said Promeneia. “The old days are gone. The Mother gives us these to make of as we will. That child knows. She was born knowing. You have much to learn from her.”

“Lady—”

“Open your eyes,” Promeneia said.

The breath was leaving her. Her hands were deathly cold. Nikandra cried out to her, as if any mortal voice could stop her.

She had let go, upright as she was. The earth sighed at her leaving. Outside in the grove, the Mother's tree sang her dirge with a hundred tongues of bronze.

It was not Myrtale's fault. There was no reason for the anger that rose in Nikandra, swelling over her and breaking like a wave.

With great care she lowered the lifeless body to the bed. The two attendants looked on in shock. She who was nearer threw back her head and keened, the long wailing sound that sent a soul on its way to the Mother.

It emptied Nikandra's mind of words or thoughts or sense. There was a moment when she could have stopped it, could have brought back all the troubles that had weighed her down.

The moment passed. She gave herself up to the purity of grief.

*   *   *

In the face of death, time's passing had no meaning. The sun passed the zenith and set; the stars followed, and the moon on its changeful track. There were duties in the midst of it, inextricably woven with it.

For a while Nikandra forgot her troublesome niece. With Timarete she saw the rites performed and the body entrusted to the earth within the grove. There was no pyre to turn flesh and bones to ash; they buried Promeneia as she was, wrapped in a linen shroud.

No stone marked the grave. Those who attended her took care not to remember under which tree she lay. She belonged to the Mother now; her name passed to her who was now the eldest, and that name to the youngest, who had been Nikandra and was now Timarete.

There was, for now, no new Nikandra. Attalos who had served loyally since spring was male and could not take that place. Somewhere in the city or the kingdom there must be a young woman who could serve the Mother as priestesses had served Her for time out of mind.

It would not be Polyxena. She was gone, swallowed up in the woman called Myrtale, whose whole hope and ambition was to be a king's wife; and that, however it galled her aunt, was a better prospect by far than what else she might have aimed for. The new Timarete might dream of winning her back, but in the hard light of day she knew those dreams were false.

It seemed a part of those dreams, or nightmares if she would see them so, that she made her way to the Mother's tree the morning after Promeneia was laid in the earth, to find the king's messenger waiting. “Lady,” the man said, “have you seen the Lady Myrtale?”

His voice tried to be empty of emotion, but Timarete's hackles rose. “How long?” she asked. “When did she go?”

The messenger looked a little startled, but then he settled: remembering what she was, no doubt. “We think six days, lady. Before the games ended, and before the Lady died.”

The apprehension that Timarete had been denying uncoiled now and raised its head. Surely her vigilance had not failed so signally. Surely the gods did not mock her so.

And yet … “No one looked for her? No one noticed she was gone?”

“Lady,” the messenger said a little desperately, “please come. The king is waiting.”

Timarete did not trouble the man further. Whatever she had to ask, Arybbas would answer. And by the Mother, that answer would be to her liking, or stars would fall.

*   *   *

After that urgent summons, the king was not waiting when Timarete came to the palace. The queen, however, was. “They've gone hunting her,” she said before Timarete could ask.

“Where do they think she's gone?”

“They're sure she's run off to Macedon,” said Troas.

“Are you?”

Troas' white shoulders lifted in a shrug. “It's likely. My husband has been dragging his feet, and she's not known for her patience.”

Timarete nodded. It did seem likely. But something felt odd. It might be a rumble in the earth; or it was the Mother, speaking almost too softly to be heard.

Her heart had gone still and cold. While she hid behind grief and denial, what was left of her guardianship had crumbled away. Now the girl was gone.

She had not gone alone. That understanding came too little and too late. Everything Timarete had done to prevent this had proved futile. If anything, it had made matters worse.

Whoever and whatever had taken the girl, the tides of time and fate were shifting. Whether for good or ill, Timarete could not tell—and that troubled her, too, after all her forebodings.

Surely she could not have misread the omens so badly. And yet …

“Will you hunt, too, aunt?” Troas asked. “I'm thinking you'll find her more easily than a pack of men in full cry.”

Maybe, thought Timarete, there was nothing to fear. Maybe Myrtale had simply run off as the men believed. The Mother knew, she had done it before when she could not have her way.

But with the Macedonian envoy in Dodona, she had only to throw herself on his mercy and let him carry her off to his king. It made no sense for her to vanish without a word.