Bring Down the Sun (3 page)

A great shape loomed out of the dark: the Bull of Minos with his heavy shoulders and massive horned head, dancing on a man's feet, with a man's body, and a man's phallus but great as a bull's, rampantly erect. For all his size, he was quick, and he moved with ponderous grace.

He was closer to Polyxena's dream of a man than any she had met in the waking world. His dance woke depths in her body that she had never known were there. He was dancing for her: the blunt-muzzled head turned toward her; the dark eyes fixed on her.

Even if she could have resisted him, she would not have wished to. She stepped out into the circle, where moonlight and darkness crossed one another like blades. The music quickened. The hands that gripped hers were breathtakingly strong, but she was no weaker than they—unless she chose to be.

This was the choice she wanted. This was a taste of the power she longed for. Raw as it was, it begged her to master it; to make it complete.

He seized her in the midst of the dance. She was already reaching for him. When his arms tightened, her own were locked around his middle. As he thrust, she opened to him.

Pain was pleasure. Pleasure was exquisite pain. He filled her until she was like to burst—but however huge he was, she was vast enough to contain him. She was the Mother in the living flesh. All that he was, was inextricably a part of her.

*   *   *

She lay in the dark, listening to the wind that wailed through the branches of the grove. Her little box of a room was icy cold, but she was awash in warmth. When she flung off the blankets, the chill hardly touched her bare skin.

Her breasts were taut. When her fingers brushed her nipples, she gasped; a shock of pleasure ran through her. Her hand ran down the curve of her belly to the heat below.

The memory of him was still inside her, a fullness so complete that there was no room for any lesser presence. The milk-and-water boy who slept outside her door was hardly a flicker in her awareness, even as she stepped over him. He murmured words she did not care to catch, and curled up tighter, like a puppy in a litter.

She was naked and barefoot, her only garment her hair, but the fire of the dream was with her even yet. She stepped out into the windy dark, to find that the storm had blown away and the stars were brilliant overhead.

The grove was full of voices—though not those of her dream. Those had come from outside, from watchers who had haunted her dreams for as long as she could remember, although they had never shown themselves in the waking world. These voices were born in the grove.

She had only begun to learn the language of the oracle, but on this night the Mother was in her, with all knowledge of past and present and to come. She stood beneath the Mother's tree in the clangor of bronze and the crying of wind.

Out of sound came light, and out of light came understanding. Her body followed it, dancing to the ancient rhythm.

She bowed to the skill of the priestesses who could transform this glory into words. She had not advanced so far. She could see and feel and understand, but that understanding ran too deep to express.

It was like the tapestry she had glimpsed on the priestesses' loom: darkness shot with sudden fire. The Bull of Minos was in it, and the Mother's snakes coiling together, and the old dance of body and body that gave birth to the sun in splendor.

She stamped and spun, dipped and swayed. The wind caressed her. The starlight tangled in her hair.

The sun was coming. Already it seared her skin. It swelled in her womb and shouted to be born.

She spread her arms wide and whirled until the stars spun away and the darkness came down, soft and heavy as sleep. And still the wind sang.

Three

Nikandra found her niece at sunrise, sound asleep under the Mother's tree. The wind was bitter still, though it warmed as the sun rose; but Polyxena was as warm as if she had been lying beside a fire.

She stirred at Nikandra's touch, languidly, and smiled in her dream. Nikandra shivered. The Mother's presence was so strong it had a taste, like blood and rain.

She shot a glance at Attalos. He sprang to wrap Polyxena in his own mantle and lift her in his arms. He grunted as he stood: she was not tall, but she was solid enough.

Nikandra hardened her heart. The effort would do him good. “Put her to bed,” she said, “then take her place in the temple.”

He dipped his head in obedience. Nikandra stayed for a while in the ringing of bronze and the rattle of branches, while he vanished into the temple with his burden.

From the time this child was born, Nikandra had watched and waited and prayed. The omens of her birth and the oracles that had accompanied it promised great things—terrible things, things that would destroy the Mother's rule beyond hope of restoration, and give the world over to men and their gods. Nikandra had done everything she could to turn those omens aside, to raise the girl properly and turn her toward the Mother.

If that meant concealing her from any power that might find and corrupt her, keeping her in ignorance of all that she was, and binding her magic so that she could not use it nor be used by any other, then so be it. Above all, if it meant giving her to a man to live crushed and trammeled as women were forced to live in this world, Nikandra could appreciate the irony—but she would do it. It was for Polyxena's good, and the good of the Mother's people.

But Polyxena was persistent in her refusal to follow the path prescribed for her—and it seemed the Mother was inclined to indulge her.

“It is always perilous to stand against fate,” Promeneia said.

Nikandra had not seen or heard her coming. One moment there was no one else beside the tree; then the eldest priestess was there as if she had always been, sitting on the oracle's chair, age-gnarled hands folded in her lap.

“I had thought,” Nikandra said carefully, “that you shared our visions for this child.”

“I shared your fears,” said Promeneia. “It seems the Mother's will is otherwise.”

“Why?” Nikandra cried. “Why would She suffer the end of the world She made? What profit for Her in giving it to upstart gods and fools of men? Has She lost Her power? Or merely Her mind?”

“No mortal may understand the mind of the Mother,” Promeneia said, “nor should any of us presume to try.”

Every part of Nikandra resisted that painful truth. She did not want it to be true. She would not let it.

She was not a child; she had learned through hard lessons that not everything she wished for could or even should come to pass. Nevertheless, this she could not accept. The Mother's power in the world had been fading for time out of mind. Nikandra could not and would not let her own flesh and blood destroy it.

She drew herself erect. “Mortal I may be, but I am sworn to serve the Mother with my whole heart and soul. Whatever I can do to keep Her alive in this world, I will do.”

“Surely,” said Promeneia, “and so shall we all. But this child is not meant for our order. That, the Mother has made clear.”

“What, then? What shall we do with her? We dare not open her eyes to what she is, still less reveal her to a world that will transform her into a weapon against all that the Mother has made. Shall we let her uncle dispose of her as kings do with their chattel in these darkening days?”

Promeneia's calm put Nikandra's agitation to shame. Under her dark and quiet gaze, Nikandra subsided slowly, recovering a little of her wonted equanimity.

Promeneia nodded approval. “Be still and listen. The Mother will tell you what She wants of us all.”

It was not a rebuke, nor was it meant to be, but Nikandra felt the sting of it. It struck her in her pride.

She had waged war all her life against the way of the world. This child had been meant to carry on what Nikandra had begun: the only one of her blood who had either the strength or the gifts for it. Such strength and such gifts indeed that they were perilous beyond any Nikandra had known; therefore she had kept them hidden even from the one who possessed them, and buried her in the grove where no spying eyes could find her.

The Mother, it seemed, willed otherwise. “What do we do?” Nikandra asked the last and eldest of her order—and maybe the Mother, too. “What is left for us?”

“Not all change is an ill thing,” Timarete said, taking shape in the shadow of the tree. “That one will fly high, but she's no black dove of the grove. She looks to the eagle's way.”

“For what?” Nikandra demanded. “To be the eagle's prey?”

“Or to be his mate,” said Timarete. “Is that so ill, if it continues to ward her against what else she could be and do? For us there will be another acolyte. That boy with the fair face seems willing, and the grove speaks to him.”

“He is male,” Nikandra said, meaning to end it there.

But Timarete was no more willing than the rest of the world to do as Nikandra wished. “He is willing. At least let us use him while we can, until the Mother sends someone more to your liking.”

Nikandra bit her lip. Again she knew the sharpness of rebuke. She was the youngest of the three. They did not stand on rank, for the most part, but age did teach wisdom—and the others had studied longer and searched deeper into the mysteries than she had yet begun to do.

She was not so very different from Polyxena. What she wanted, she wanted with all her heart. When it failed to come to her, she fought for it, no matter the odds.

It was bitter to think of defeat, of changing the path she had followed since the girl was born.

It would not be defeat. It would be victory of a different kind. The calamities that Nikandra had foreseen would only come to pass if Polyxena woke to the fullness of her powers. Nikandra would do whatever she must in order to prevent it.

Nikandra faced her elders who in the ancient way were her equals. “We'll use the boy, and we'll use the girl, too. We'll let her fly where the wind takes her—but the wind will blow where we direct it, and we will guard her every stroke.”

The others nodded as if Nikandra had seen what was clear to them from the beginning. She swallowed the anger that rose all too quickly; once it passed, she rested in surprising calm. She was not about to surrender—not nearly. But she could change her course if she had no other choice.

*   *   *

After the storm and the dream and the dance, it seemed to Polyxena that the world and the people around her had retreated into a kind of torpor. The boy Attalos stayed on in the temple, serving as acolyte and sharing the duties, but he made no move to claim any part of Polyxena, and no one forced her to claim him. The days ran their round as they had for as long as she could remember, with nothing new or different to distinguish them.

She was suspicious of this quiet. It had the air of a trap waiting to be sprung.

Spring ripened into summer. The rites of the Mother passed one by one. Pilgrims came and went, received their oracles and left their gifts and strengthened the gods with their belief.

Every night Polyxena dreamed. It was not always the same dream, but it had the same taste: like blood and earth and heated bronze, overlaid with a flavor that she could only call watchfulness. The Bull of Minos was in it, and the Lady of Serpents, and the voice of the Mother singing through Her creation. Polyxena would wake with her body loosed in every muscle, and one or more of the temple snakes coiled on or beside her, basking in her warmth.

One morning she came back into her body to find something round and leathery-soft nestled between her breasts. It was a serpent's egg. As she sat up, cradling it in her hands, the eldest snake, the Mother's beloved, kissed her cheek with its forked tongue and slithered away into the shadows.

She wrapped the egg in a scrap of wool and tucked it back into the fold of her tunic. It was a gift from the Mother, a sign of favor. It lightened her heart.

It was a promise, too, though of what, she could not be sure. Something new was about to be born. She had learned as a child in this temple that she had only to wait; the Mother would make all things clear.

Patience was a difficult art. She practiced it as best she could, kept the egg close and performed her duties and took her bits of freedom where she could find them. And every night she dreamed of mysteries.

Four

The egg hatched on the day of midsummer, when the day was at its longest and the night, though sweet, was short. In Dodona's temple the ancient rites were only partly observed. They sang the songs and offered the gifts of fruit and grain and danced the decorous parts of the dance, but the deep mysteries, the great dance and the sacred marriage, they passed by.

Polyxena had always found these observances both beautiful and satisfying. This year, under the influence of her dreams, she understood how hollow they were. They were honest as far as they went, and their devotion to the Mother was heartfelt, but it was only a shell of a rite.

There was more to it by far, more depth and more passion and more mystery. This bloodless ritual, this polite and pleasant celebration, left her deeply frustrated. It was not simply that she knew there was more, or that she wanted it. She needed it. Down in her heart, she lived for it.

The fire of her heart stirred the egg into life. As she lay alone in her bed, not quite so far gone that she would seek out the one man in this place—such as he was—the membrane split and the small blunt nose pushed forth, tasting the air with its tongue.

She cradled it in her palm. It was dark, all glistening black—not at all the gentle spotted creature she had expected. She had not seen its like before.

It coiled in her hand, exploring her fingers with the soft tickle of its tongue. She ran a light finger from its head down its supple body. It arched against the touch.

She smiled. Snakes were cold creatures, narrowly focused on food and intermittent mating, but the Mother loved them. So did Polyxena, for their simplicity. There was nothing complicated about a snake.