Dangerous Secrets (102 page)

“What is he?” I asked, nodding toward the
silent one.

“My brother,” Eurytos said. “He died when he
was but a boy of seventeen, a chattering, singing lad who was my dearest
friend. My lady let me bring him back to life, though he doesn’t have so much
to say now.”

Suddenly, the lingering aroma from the burnt
arrow didn’t smell so bad. I definitely didn’t want him to take his hat off or
do anything besides stand there.

“So what’s the message?”

“What?” Eurytos looked up, his hand hesitating
above the last symbol.

“You said there was a message?”

“Yes, there is. Listen well for She will not
ask you again.”

Behind him, his dead brother opened his mouth
and there emerged a voice that seemed to come rumbling from the ground like an
earthquake. “This land was opened to her will by her servant, Nausicaa, and is
promised to her servant, Eurytos. Leave and hide yourself away in some small
corner of the earth. We will not seek you further. Or stay and serve her as we
all serve her. She offers you wide dominion, leadership over her deathless
armies and eternal life.″

The dead jaws creaked shut. They had not moved
except to open, forming no words.

Eurytos smiled at me, his own cheerful identity
reasserting itself. “Take the advice of an old campaigner like yourself, Eno.
Accept this offer. The Dark Lady will keep faith with you, if you keep faith
with her. Think of it. General over an army that can never be killed, never be
beaten. Look at me. I started out as a sailor, now I will be a king.”

“Why does everyone want to be a king?” I asked.
“It’s nothing but kissing smelly babies, smacking the backs of sheep and hogs,
and endless paperwork. Sign here, seal there, count this, go to war, make
peace, and die at the hand of a son, a wife or a friend. It’s not much of a
life to my way of thinking. Better to live and die a shepherd.”

“You lack ambition. I do not. She has given me
much power and will give me more. If you refuse her, she will turn to me. I
shall not be king of only this island for long. Soon with her will, I unite all
of these lands into one force, one power. From Leros, under her midnight
standard, I will lead an army of the living and the dead. No one will stand
against me. Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia and the wild lands of Africa will all be
mine.”

You run into people like this from time to time
in my line of work.

‶
Take your share of this
power,″ Eurytos offered.
‶
Do you desire the northern lands? Thrace could be
the heart of your empire and onward until the world ends where the pine forests
go on forever. No army could withstand yours. Every man you kill is a new
recruit when the Dark Lady rules.″

‶
Who is this Dark Lady?″ I
asked.

‶
Join us and you will
know.″

For a moment, I was indeed tempted. Every man
thinks in his heart that he could out-general Theseus given half a chance or
half an army. I have been witness to enough bad military decisions to know how
an army should be run.

For a moment, a vision rose up before my eyes,
as real and sharp as a sword. I rode at the head of a vast force, greater than
all the soldiers and ships now besieging Troy. Every face, dead-eyed and
obedient, turned to me, awaiting my orders. With a sweep of my arm, they drove
down upon the white walled cities of the Inner Sea, forcing the weeping hordes
to the water′s edge. I heard the cries for mercy and laughed with a
brutal delight. I could taste the metal of blood on my lips...

I squeezed my eyes tight shut, forcing the
image from my mind. Eurytos, in thrall to his bitter Goddess, waited my answer
when he could have slain me then and there. I had to cough and spit before I
could speak again.

“We both know my part in your plans would last
right up until the moment you decided you can’t trust me. Tomorrow? Next week?
I don’t like the long-term prospects because there are no long-term prospects.
I’m staying independent.”

“You are probably right. You have a nasty moral
streak that would undoubtedly cause me nothing but headaches.” He drew one last
curved line in the sand. “My Lady said you would not accept so she granted me a
new power to show you. Look on and marvel as you die!”

The sand around us began to bubble and to
seethe like cursed porridge. Two areas remained calm, the other side of the
fire where Eurytos and his silent brother stood, and farther back, where the
hyena and boar waited by their fallen comrade. There wasn’t much calmness where
I stood but I didn’t dare give up those arrows.

The bubbling subsided for a moment, only to
grow more localized. Half a dozen or more mounds rose from the sand, cracking
open to spill out colonies of confused ants. They scurried about in black
streams, seeking for the danger that had roused them from their endless
industry.

Within a few heartbeats, they changed from
standard ant size to the size of small dogs, with saw-like and formidable jaws.
They made a high-pitched chittering sound, bunching up together, rubbing their
antennae. They began to range themselves in serried ranks, as neatly as though
they’d trained for years, while Eurytos chuckled.

“My new army!” he declared. “There are
thousands upon thousands, Eno. Die without hope, brash fool!”

The power-crazed people I meet in my line of
work often say things like that. It’s like a secret code or something. As if
you couldn′t join the villainy league or be an all-around
pain-in-the-butt without the magic words.

The ants were still growing, some already as
large as the hyena. I hadn’t planned on fighting an army today, let alone an
army that came equipped with natural shining black armor and scimitar-like jaws
that could snap a man in two.

Rank by rank, their elongated heads, each eye
as large as a pumpkin, turned toward me. I didn’t have to worry about the ranks
in the back. I’d be chopped up into ant-food long before they’d have a chance
to reach me.

With a shake of my head for the strangeness of
it all, I snatched up three arrows, thrust them into the fire and put them to
the string at the same time.

“It’s useless yet see how he fights on! Brave,
doomed, absurd Eno!”

“Great, now you’re a bard,” I said, and fired.
Not at the approaching ants but over the top of the tunnel. Then I gathered up
another three arrows and fired above the curtain of rocks to the left and once
more to the right. I only prayed I’d chosen timbers dry enough to burn swiftly
all my hope lay in speed.

I turned and ran toward the sea. The giant
ants, now as big as the late lion, raced after me, their multiple legs coping
with the sand far better than I could. Even above their screeching noises, I
could still hear Eurytos’ laughter, echoed by the hyena’s.

I also heard Eurytos when he shouted, “What is
that?” as I dove headlong for the sea.

He’d noticed that my hands were scraped and
bleeding but hadn’t asked me why. I’d spent the time between killing the snake
and arriving in the camp chopping down timbers with my sword, dragging them
into interwoven piles and adding stones on top. Stones is perhaps too small a
word...most of them were boulders. Finding the liquid fire had been lucky.
Otherwise I would have had to shoot out the wedges that held my careful
constructions together and I really hadn’t had time for fancy marksmanship once
Eurytos had conjured up his latest horror.

The intense fire burned away the dry wood,
releasing the boulders. By the time they poured down into the natural fortress
of stone, they had collected enough other stones and dirt to be avalanches.
Nothing could escape.

I turned over onto my back in the cool water to
observe. The few ants that had been close enough to follow me into the water
had drowned already. They would have floated if they’d been their natural size
but their armor had proved too heavy when scaled up to lion-size.

The rim of rocks above the tunnel had collapsed
inward just about where the hyena and boar had been. I felt sorriest for them.
They had been beasts, free and without conscience, until Eurytos had turned
them into something far worse.

I headed out toward the deeper water to swim
around the island until I could reach some place to drag myself out for a rest.
I was tired as I thought I could never be. Mostly, though, I was hungry. It had
been a long time since my last meal and I’d been busy.

Something brushed my leg under the water. A
rogue wave broke over me, sweeping me under. The water was clear, the beautiful
blue-green of chrysoprase. Clear enough to show me the giant crab propelling
itself toward me, nine sets of pincers at the ready, and one human hand.

Chapter 8

Weaponless, literally out of my element, losing
my breath from second to second, I broke the surface, gasping. The salt burned
my eyes and filled my mouth with brine. The waves slapped at me, like a trainer
in the gymnasium trying to rouse a battered boxer. They were not high or fierce
but they were relentless.

I had only seconds to realize the hopelessness
of my situation. How could I fight a crab, a thing perfectly at home in the
water? Even if Eurytos in this form needed air, which I couldn’t be sure of, I
couldn’t out-swim him. Fleeing, therefore, was out.

I inhaled deeply and threw myself back
underwater. Diving deep, I evaded his first grab at my arms. With a hard kick,
I took my legs out of range and swam under him and up. His hard shell was slick
with seaweed but I clutched onto a couple of projections where his shoulders
would have been.

A vast fore-claw, bulging with barnacles,
snapped a few inches from my face. I threw myself back to the furthest extend
of my arms. After a moment, I realized that his crab-arms couldn’t reach his
own back.

He realized it too. Turning turtle, he started
to dive. I couldn’t hang on, didn’t dare leave the air behind. I kicked for the
surface, knowing Eurytos would follow the instant he figured out I was no
longer clinging to him.

I had found out one weakness of his, but my own
were even more obvious.

I glanced around, pawing the water from my
eyes, seeing nothing but waves and sky. There was no way to orient myself. I
had no idea where I’d entered the water or even whether I was swimming toward
the land or out to sea.

Peering down, I could see my own pale body and,
underneath it, a rising darkness. Eurytos had come back.

I dove again. It was a little calmer under the
surface, where the waves did not break. In that greenish world, the white parts
of Eurytos’ shell gleamed yellow and the hand that was all remaining of his
human side looked as dead as his doubly-late brother.

He tried to catch me with it. I dodged, only to
be grasped by one of the smaller pincers. He clenched hard, bruising but not
cutting, trying to bring up the big claw to dispatch me. All the others flexed
and reached, rippling in the water.

The one that held me was the kind you don’t
even bother to get the meat from, the reward not being worth the effort. How I
wished I had some boiling water now. Even a little melted butter would be a big
help.

Using my free hand, I twisted off the small
claw, and kicked off against his inner shell. A large claw came up and though
it missed its catch, the rough inner side scraped my foot. My red blood bloomed
like a flower in the water.

I was so cold, I hardly felt it.

The problem was simple. If I had time and
plenty of breath, I could twist off all his claws, rendering him harmless. But,
as the fisherfolk know, the limbs of crabs grow back. I didn’t want to
neutralize him; I wanted to kill him. Nothing else would protect the people of
Leros...or me.

My chest was on fire. Even on rising into the
air, I couldn’t seem to draw a full breath. Opening my mouth to help my lungs
just earned me mouthful of water, making me cough and spit.

He caught me by the ankle. Pulling me down, he
began to swim deep. He didn’t want to snip me limb from limb. He wanted to
drown me, or drag me off to be another slave to whatever dark force he served.

This was it. I could pound in the general area
of his sunken head but I had no force with the weight of the water chaining my
limbs. Half-panicked, I clutched at the small scabbard at my side, forgetting
that I’d buried my last weapon in the side of the lion, remembering only that
once I’d kept a weapon there.

Yet, there was something held in the leather.
Small, harder to grasp than a stylus, it pricked my fingers as I drew it out.
The fire in my chest was all-consuming now, spreading throughout my body. I
could hardly focus on the thing I held between my thumb and fingers.

The harpy feather gleamed like lost mermaid
gold in the green light of the underwater world. It had not gone spiky or
bedraggled as most feathers will when wet. The form was as crisp as when I’d
found it that morning.

And as sharp.

It took what seemed forever for this
observation to travel the short frozen distance between my eyes and my mind.
Meanwhile, Eurytos was taking me ever deeper.

Almost lazily, I drew the feather across the
joint of the claw that held me. It separated from the arm as though they had
been but lightly joined together. The claw remain clasped around my ankle.

I began to fight my way back to the surface,
battling not only the cold and the weight but my own desire to stop the
struggle, to let the fire in my chest rage until I was ashes, to rest.

The sun shone down, making a brilliant cross
above my head, showing me the way out. With renewed strength in my heart, it
was as if I were climbing up a ladder, not swimming at all.

The painless breath I drew then was the
sweetest I had known since my very first.

Unfortunately, it was my last. No sooner had I
drawn it into lungs no longer burning, than a great force yanked me down under
the water again.

The little bit of damage I’d inflicted hadn’t
fazed him. He still had plenty of claws to catch me with and water was still
his element. He needed air but not the way I did.

All I had was the feather and desperation. My
fingers were numb, wrinkled into insensibility. I couldn’t even be sure I still
held the feather.

But I wanted another of those painless breaths.
I wanted it so much I attacked madly, without thought or plan. I did not fight
now for Leros or the king or my own anger. I fought for breath and breath
alone.

I slashed at the chitinous underbelly, slicing
through that thin but tough membrane as if it were silk. Even through the water,
I could hear Eurytos scream. I dug my hands into the opening and wrenched it
wide, splitting him in half with a jerk that seemed to tear my own muscles from
my body.

The water clouded with his fluids. I broke the
shell with a snap. Without a second glance at my destroyed enemy, I pushed one
last time for the air above.

I exploded upwards half my own length. Gasping,
choking, strangling, I fell back, floating upon the surface of the waves like
flotsam from a wrecked ship. I let the sea have its way with me, washing me
wherever it would. I had no thoughts and hardly any sensation left.

Even when the long gray shapes swam so near
that they brushed against me, I could not rouse my thoughts. Even the
triangular fin on the back could not awaken me to a sense of danger.

***

Sand gritted between my teeth and I found
myself spitting it out before I was even aware I was awake. A dream-echo
lingered in my mind. Someone had been laughing. I looked around for the crone.
I thought it had been her in my dream, thought the laughter had been that of a
young girl.

There were gulls crying and wheeling overhead.
Perhaps I’d heard them and the sound had carried over into my dreams.

I sat up, feeling the back of my head. It was
hot from the sun, but otherwise as hard as ever. My hands, though, were
cramped. The cuts were white bands of stickiness, soon to be more scars.

I found myself below the tidemark on a beach
where the white sand lay in a sweep as pure and unmarked as a length of new
linen. The sea danced with a swirl of foam a dozen yards away but I was not
tempted to dive in to rinse off the sand crusting on my body.

The breeze blowing in from the sea felt clean
on my nakedness. My clothes must have either come off in the fight or while I’d
been tumbling around in the surf. I was glad not to remember landing here,
though, judging by my relatively unscratched skin, it had been an easy landing.

Beyond the shallows, a large object broke
through the surface, landing with a splash. I jumped up, tensing, unsure for
the moment whether Eurytos’ defeat had been part of my dream or real. Or had he
been reborn yet again by the will of his dread mistress?

The dark grey dolphin powered up again, did a
flip, followed by half a dozen others, shadowing his every move. Their seeming
joy in the very act of being, their playfulness, reassured me that nothing vile
was about to emerge from the water. They clicked and sang, performing for me or
for themselves alone.

Had they brought me to shore? The Minoans have
lots of legends about swimmers saved by dolphins. Down at the docks in Knossos,
they sell souvenirs of one god or another riding around on their backs. They
can’t keep the ones of Aphrodite in stock. Not only does she protect sailors
from shipwreck, she’s depicted in the moment of her birth, fully-grown and
naked, being brought to shore by two dolphins.

I wished I could recall if they had saved me.
It would be something to tell my grandchildren about, now that it looked as if
I might actually live long enough to have some. For a few moments there,
grappling with the giant crab, I hadn’t been sure.

I drew in several deep, fully conscious
breaths. I was alive.

“Of course you are, you silly man.”

Spinning around, instinctively crouching, I
scanned the beach as far as the trees. I was alone. The light, lilting female
voice must have been in my head. Yet it had sounded close. It had sounded like
the laughter that had awakened me.

Suddenly this quiet sunlit stretch of beach
seemed less pleasant. It was too open. I wanted to get out of the eye of the
sun before it baked my head any more.

It was a long walk in bare feet to the small
village near the summit of the island, made all the longer by my searching high
and low for the harpy. Why had she done so much and then left me to face
Eurytos? She’d carried the snake’s head for me, dropped it off at the most
distracting moment, and then she’d gone. I had not heard her since.

I looked at the tops of the trees, even
whistling and making other enticing noises as if I were trying to call a dog.
All I found were lizards and some birds who startled me far more than I scared
them.

The sun was setting, turning the sky to flame,
before I’d reached the village. The sight of the yellow lights in the windows
was like a vision of home.

I knocked on the first door I saw. In the back
of my mind, I’d been hoping to see Omphale again though I knew it was foolish
to think I’d pick her house out of the seven or eight that made up the little
community.

A quavering voice called out. “Who’s there?”

“My name’s Eno. I work for the king.”

“Eno?”

There came the sound of a wooden latch
squeaking open. A shadow fell toward me as I stood in the thin strip of light
shed through the tiny width that he’d opened the door. “Hmmmm....”

The door opened wider. An old man stood there,
bent down with years or the weight of a truly remarkable beard. Thick and
white, it flowed from his chin to his wide belt like the tail of a horse. He
peered at me. “You did say Eno? Eno the Thracian?”

“Yes, venerable sir.”

He pursed his lips and frowned at me as if
trying to bring me into focus. For a moment, he looked like a petulant baby and
I was reminded of the boy Pacci.

“I never expected to see you. You were given up
for lost,” he said. “No one knew what had become of you.”

My heart faltered. I didn’t want to believe the
wild idea that occurred to me. How long had I been washing around in the sea?
Strange stories of lost men, returning after what seemed minutes only to find
that they’d been gone for years. Could this be Pacci after the passage of forty
or even fifty years? Would Omphale walk in, twisted with age, with nothing of
me in her mind but half-memory, half-tale?

I suppose my combination of hunger and
exhaustion made this bizarre idea seem not only true but inevitable.

I collapsed across the threshold. Wisely, the
old man didn’t even try to catch me. I would have flattened him.

My second waking was more pleasant than the
first. I lay before the fire, wrapped in a sheepskin rug. A red and black jug
of oinomel, that delicious mixture of honey and wine, stood beside me, the clay
inscribed with wishes for a long life. The drink soothed my throat but could
have been water for all the flavor it had.

At the far end of the single room, a woman
turned from the roughly cobbled table. “You’re awake? Good. Eat this.”

“Omphale?”

“Don’t talk; eat. Oh, I forgot the bread.”

Eggs and lamb’s kidneys mixed with herbs could
have been the rocks fed to Kronos for all the notice I took of their flavor.
Savoring food seemed to belong to another Eno.

She brought me bread, and stood gaping at the
empty skillet. “That was quick. More?”

“That old man...who was he?” Even now, looking
at her in the firelight, I couldn’t shake off the feeling that this was
Omphale’s granddaughter, not Omphale herself. The hair, the eyes, the mouth
were the same but something had changed. Her spine drooped where the girl I’d
known had held herself with pride and determination.

“He is my grandfather. He came to find me when
you fainted. Everyone else is celebrating my brother’s return as if from
death.”

“Not you?”

Her mouth firmed. “I have someone to mourn, if
you remember.”

My fears of having been gone for years faded
back into the realm of nightmare. I smiled at her for the first time.

“I remember that I didn’t thank you for a
well-timed and placed rock. If you hadn’t done that, I’d be dead too.”

“I doubt that.” She took the skillet and gave
me the plate with bread and salt. “I have some crab ready if you’d like it.”

I laughed. “No.”

Once I started to laugh it was hard to stop.
The perplexed expression on Omphale’s stern face made me laugh even harder,
despite the pain in my ribs. A healthy swig of the wine helped dull both the
pain and the laughter.