MacRoscope (39 page)

The fellow had been carrying the torch instead of his shield, and had tried instinctively to block — with the torch. Ivo’s blade, coming into the sphere of light, struck both hand and face, sickeningly. The torch flew out and rolled on the ground, providing him a passing glimpse of what he had wrought; then the spreading blood extinguished the fire messily.

The shallow steps were as nothing. He was down them and away, running into the city, without being aware of the motions. Behind him the torches milled and followed, like angry bees searching for their mission.

The streets were dark. He charged down the nearest, panting already, heedless of the direction or possible obstacles. He made a right-angle turn at the first intersection, angled again — and found himself as lost as the torches.

He was surrounded by three-story houses closely set, boxlike and gloomy. He could not see whether any had windows or doors without approaching closely, but was sure entry would gain him nothing but further outcry. Where could he go? He had no money — was not even certain they used it here — and no home. The night was not cold — yet — but he did not want to wander about indefinitely.

Suddenly the torches confronted him again. The temple troops had not given up the search; indeed, they were combing the city for him. He ran dismally before them, ashamed of the blood already on his sword. He had not meant to kill the man, only to drive him back, perhaps to wound him superficially. He had to believe that.

His own wound was sodden under the dragging loops of his tunic, still squeezing out plasma with every motion he made, he was sure. That was another reason he had to find sanctuary.

Where, where? He could not even flee to the countryside, for Tyre was an island — a walled island.

Torches were coming down two alleys of the next intersection. He could see by their massed brilliance that the houses were richer than he had thought. Though the ground-level exterior walls of most were of blank stucco, the upper stories were of wood with small square window openings, and some even had balustrades supported by miniature palm columns. Not slum housing, certainly.

The next intersection was torched on three sides, including the street behind him. Ivo ran in the one direction permitted him, thankful that they had not quite sealed him off entirely. Yet even if he eluded them, he saw no long-range salvation. He could not run much longer.

“Fugitive!”

It was a woman’s voice, pitched low but with excellent carrying quality. Ivo rotated to face it, hauling up the tainted blade defensively.

“Fugitive — here!” the voice repeated urgently. “Come quickly, before they see you.”

He had to trust her. He ran toward the caped figure standing upon a tiny terrace.

“The blood!” she exclaimed disapprovingly. “You have left a trail of blood!”

So that was how they had boxed him in so readily! He could not see it himself, but they obviously could, with the torches. Had he any chance at all?

“Perhaps I can still help you,” she said. “Come inside.”

He stumbled in the door she stood beside — in this case, a hole in the wall covered by a length of hide or canvas — and found himself within a small and dirty vestibule. The walls were covered by crumbling brown plaster. Not a domicile of wealth, obviously — yet he could hardly be choosy!

The woman closed the entrance and led him to a small interior court. She was young and tall — very tall for this locale — and quite fair of feature, and the cloak hardly concealed her voluptuousness of form. He wondered dully whether she could be a prostitute. If so, she would turn him out quickly enough when she discovered that he had no money or barter.

“We must stop the blood,” she said. “I know an empty house where they will not find us tonight. But we can’t let the blood betray us.” She peeled back the cloth that had become a soggy bandage and began sponging off the wound.

“Who are you?” he demanded. “Why do you help me?”

“I am Aia. I do not worship Melqart, nor do I like human sacrifice.”

She bound his arm with a rough cloth. Ivo hesitated to inspect the compress closely, certain that it was not very clean. Something nagged him about her statement, but he could not, in his present fuddled state, pin it down. Perhaps it was that opposition to a particular policy or religion should not necessarily lead one to risk one’s own well-being in that connection? There ought to be a stronger, more primitive motive.

Still, there was the adage about gift-horses — if they had horses here.

“And,” she said, “I need help myself, to escape from this foul city. Alone, I would soon be pressed into slavery.”

Oh. Nothing like a male fugitive for such assistance! Someone whose imperative for rapid escape was guaranteed.

If that were her case — and there now seemed to be no reason to question it — their needs could very well coincide.

“Do you trust yourself to a stranger?” he asked her anyway. “A criminal, for all you know, a rapist, even a murderer?”

“Do you desire to murder me?”

“No.”

“Then there is no harm you can do me.”

Oh.

“Now we must hurry. The temple guards will find this house very soon.” She showed him to the back exit and peered at the street. Torches were passing.

“And who are you?” she inquired as they waited.

“Ivarch of Merica. I was taken in by a ship and brought before Mattan for interrogation.”

“Mattan,” she said darkly. “He is notorious. Soft spoken but never to be trusted. A dabbler in past events.”

An apt assessment. “What I don’t understand is why he sent me to be sacrificed. How could he get information that way?”

She shrugged. “Mattan is Mattan. Come — they are past.”

So they were, for the moment. Soon they would discover the termination of the bloodstain trail on the other side of the house and backtrack. Aia led him into the dark street, guiding him past irregularities and obstructions while he sheltered the sword under his tunic. She seemed to have an inherent sensitivity to danger, knowing where the temple patrols were likely to be and how to avoid them. In half an hour they were comfortably ensconced in the house she had spoken of: empty, yes, but very well stocked.

Ivo ripped off the remaining shreds of his tunic and cleaned up in the well-appointed bath. He had not expected any drainage facilities, but this had a wooden pipe leading down and out, and the floor was of pink cement set with little marble cubes. As elegant as anything of the twentieth century, except for the lack of heated or running water.

Then he had to beg Aia’s help to don a new tunic, hoping she would not be outraged by the request. She obliged without comment, fortunately.

The remainder of the house was simply executed: several rectangular rooms without architectural pretensions. The foundation was stone cleverly fitted together with a minimum of cement, giving way to bricks with occasional upright slabs of stone for strength, and finally to straight wood. The cedar paneling of the upper rooms was handsome but not ornate and there were no objects of art. The owner, apparently conforming to Phoenician taste, had no personal interest in elegance, with the exception of clothing. The house was stocked with an array of material fully as splendid as that of Mattan’s residence: multicolored cloaks, tunics and skirts, heavily embroidered. Some were of wool, others of fine linen. Purple was predominant, and he seemed to remember that Tyre had been famous for its purple dye. Even the pointed caps were richly hued.

Aia served him a tremendous and welcome meal: smoked goatmeat, olives, figs, date wine, honey and pastries made from unidentified grains, finishing off with whole pomegranates. It was almost too rich for him, after his day of hunger, but he disciplined his appetite and filled his stomach without reaction. “How did you know of this place?” he asked her as he pried out the juicy pomegranate morsels. “Won’t the owner object?”

“The owner is a rich merchant who is on the mainland this week negotiating a shipment of cedarwood,” she said. “And of course he is checking into the labors of his mainland slaves who make jewelry and statuettes of foreign gods.”

“Strange — I have seen nothing like that around here.”

“Oh, he has good craftsmen — but of course such baubles are for export only. Fine workmanship brings a better price, you see.”

“Even for religious artifacts? I should think—”

“Look,” she said. She got up gracefully and pulled aside a curtain. Behind was a voluptuous statuette of a female, with bulging stomach and ponderous breasts, flanked by two sphinxes. “Astarte,” she said. “I’ll show you how to milk her.”

She fetched a cup of goat milk and poured it carefully into a hole in the goddess’s head. Then she took a brand from the main fire and touched it to the mossy kindling beneath the statue. The flame caught, warming the entire metal figure.

Suddenly milk spouted from the nipples of the hanging breasts, to pour into a bowl held upon the goddess’s belly. Ivo stared, fascinated and a little repelled, though he realized there was nothing either magical or obscene about it.

“The heat melts the wax plugs,” Aia explained. “The worshipers don’t know that, though. Great moneymaker, I understand.”

“But to commercialize other people’s religion—”

“Oh, he patronizes his own religion too, never fear. He pays graft to the temple and buys small boys for his pleasures. When he tires of one, he donates that lad to Melqart. He is considered extremely devout.”

Ivo, his conscience eased, did not inquire into the matter further. This was as good a domicile to raid as any. “How long are we safe here?”

“No more than a day. Tomorrow night we must leave the city, for they will surely be watching and nowhere in Tyre is there permanent security from the temple.”

When the meal was done she took the lamp — a simple clay saucer, undecorated, with a single pinched beak for the wick — and showed him to the sleeping compartment, where soft pelts were piled upon straw. It looked delightful.

Ivo flung himself down in the bed gratefully… but soon discovered that he had company. “Even the best of ships come into port at night,” she murmured.

She had removed her cloak and other apparel and snuggled under the pelts beside him, close, and he learned that his original estimate of her physical properties had erred conservatively. She was scented with a heavy perfume he could not identify, apart from its effluence of sex appeal, and she was as lithe and sleek as a panther.

Ivo was tired, but he had had a good afternoon’s sleep in the temple and was recovering nicely from his more recent wounds and exertions. Aia had taken good care of him, and the flesh injury of his left arm only hurt when he banged it. He felt, all in all, adequate to the occasion — except for one detail.

“My ship docks elsewhere,” he said. Then, not wishing to hurt her feelings by too blunt a statement, he tried to explain: “I love another woman, and have no inclination to embrace any but her. I mean no offense to you.”

“Your wife?” she asked alertly.

“No.”

“Your concubine.”

“No.”

“It is hard to see what she offers, then, that I do not. You have a very handsome ship, and I have a comfortable port. If we are to travel together—”

“I
love
her. Don’t you understand?”

She gazed speculatively at him, the lamplight flickering against the wall behind her head and touching her hair with reddish highlights. “What is her name?”

What harm was there in the truth, here? “Afra,” he said, and felt a kind of relief in the confession. “Her name is Afra, and she doesn’t love me and I have no right to her, no right at all, but I love her.”

“I loved a man once,” Aia said, “but he died. Then I saw how foolish it was to depend on such a thing. Love protects nothing, it only restricts pleasure. Take pleasure in me; she will not suffer.” A pause. “Or is she near?”

“No. She is thousands of years away.”

“Thousands of
years
!” It had been a slip, but he saw that it bothered her only momentarily, since of course she did not understand the connection. “By foot or by ship?”

“By ship,” he said, no longer worrying about misunderstandings.

“Then you will never possess her again.” She looked at him a moment more. “But how did you get here, so long a journey? You are still young.”

“My gods are very powerful.”

“Oh.” She pondered a little longer. “If the gods of the Canaanite had been stronger, I might have had my lover back.”

“How so?” He was not particularly curious about her tragedy, but wanted to divert the conversation from both her immediately amorous intent and her queries about his travels.

“I tried to follow the way of the gods, as Anat brought back Aliyan,” she said. “But it didn’t work.”

“I am not familiar with those names.”

“You must come from
very
far away,” she murmured. “I will tell you: El was the supreme god of the Canaanite: El the Bull, the Sun. His wife was Asherat-of-the-sea, mother-goddess. Together they begat Baal, god of the mountains, and of the storm and the rain.”

“Very interesting,” Ivo remarked absently, wondering what he had let himself in for. “How does that relate to your—”

“I’m
telling
you, lover-to-be. Baal’s son was Aliyan. The two of them entered into a struggle with Mot of the summer heat, who resides deep in the womb of the earth. They did not return, so Anat went in after them. She was Aliyan’s sister and his wife, of course.”

“Of course.” What was a little incest, between gods? “All in the family.”

“Yes. She found Aliyan’s body in the abode of the dead, and carried it to the height of Saphon and buried him there with many sacrifices. That’s what I did with my lover. I fixed him a very nice stone coffin—”

“I understand.”

She took the hint and returned to the mythological narrative. “Then Anat killed Mot, who had killed her husband. With a sickle she cut him, with a winnow she winnowed him; she scattered his flesh in the field, and he was dead.”

“I’m sure he was.”

“Then she brought Aliyan back to life and set him on Mot’s throne. And that was the way the seasons began again. When she killed Mot, that was the annual harvest, of course.”