Song of Princes (Homeric Chronicles #1) (4 page)

The seer eyed a gold encrusted stool but didn’t sit.

“I will permit it.” The queen made a graceful indication toward the stool. “I insist.”

Moments lingered over long awaiting the king, and Hecuba suppressed a heavy sigh, as dread scurried up her spine like a scorpion searching for the precise spot to drive its stinger home. Hecuba caressed the swell of her belly, her hands finding thin comfort in the heavy roundedness of her body. The baby kicked its presence into the waiting doom.
I know little one. I know.
She cradled her hands beneath her belly to hide the shaking as her blood shivered through her veins. When Hecuba thought she would scream from waiting, Priam burst through the door, his voice booming into the polished chamber.

“What news Iphicrates? Is my wife well? Is all well with our son?” With less than seven strides, he crossed the room. Iphicrates hurried to stand and scrape low before his king.

“My lord,” the seer stumbled for the right words. “There is no easy way to tell you this.” The prophet’s courage faltered in Priam’s presence. “Perhaps, I should put more thought into my divination.”

“The accuracy of your prophesying has not been called into question. Speak what you have foreseen. We will endure what words spill forth.”

“I think perhaps you cannot,” Iphicrates uttered.

The king growled. “Speak.”

Iphicrates exhaled the rest in one hurried breath, “The burning birth represents the doom that follows this child.” He watched the queen’s eyes widened as he continued. “The smoke represents the doom of Troy. The unborn child, this prince, will herald the annihilation of our city. Because of him, Troy will burn to the ground.”

Priam nodded his head in understanding, his pain hidden behind the mask of a king. “Go, Iphicrates. I will hear no more.”

“My lord.” The seer bowed low again full of apology. “You must hear all.”

“Your dark words steel my joy seer. What more can you say than this?” Priam asked.

Hecuba’s tears flowed freely now, soaking her cheeks in salty rivers. “There must be some other meaning than this? It cannot be as you say.”

“You must take the child as soon as he’s born and…,” Iphicrates’ voice trailed off. What he needed to say might get him killed. Messengers bearing tidings of lesser consequence often found themselves with their heads detached from their necks. “All who seek do not receive words of comfort. They only bristle when my words do not suit them.”

“Do what?” demanded Priam. “What are you saying?”

The last two words croaked from the seer’s mouth, “Kill him.”

“No!” Hecuba roared like a lioness. “No!” She still refused to believe what she’d heard. She wished now that she’d kept her dream to herself and told neither Priam nor the seer.
Why? Why did I not listen to my first instinct?
“He’s wrong. He must have the signs wrong.”

Priam looked to the seer for assurance. Iphicrates lowered his eyes. He had spoken. He stood silently praying that Apollo would save him should Priam decide to take a blade and open his throat.

“Speak to no one of this. Or I will have your tongue cut out,” the king commanded.

Iphicrates uttered not a single word, nor did he create even the slightest noise as he backed out of the room. He liked his tongue just where it lay—in his mouth behind his teeth.

When the seer left, Hecuba flung herself on the bed and sobbed. She curled her knees up as far as they would go and wrapped her arms around her belly. Her every instinct told her to protect the child growing inside her. The child wasn’t even born and Fate already declared his life would bring only misery and death. The unfairness stabbed at her heart. The revelation of the unwelcomed words suffocated her hopes and dreams for this second son.

Priam sat next to his wife in silence. He didn’t know if words existed with enough power to ease the burden and grief of the divination. As king, he knew what the prophecy demanded, as a father and husband; he didn't know if he could actually carry out what Iphicrates said the gods demanded.
What if the seer is wrong? I will have killed my son for nothing. But, if that old man is right…we all suffer and Troy burns.

Priam stroked his wife’s brow with a gentle hand. In the moment, he saw no need to force his wife into acceptance of this omen, not just yet. “Hecuba?”

“Why our son, Priam? Why would the gods burden a child with such a heavy Fate? He is to be a prince of Troy.”

“I suggest we remain unmoved by Iphicrates’ words. Trust me, my love, I will cut out more than his tongue should he speak of this to anyone outside the temple. Let us hold hope he is mistaken. I will allow no harm to touch our son…if it can be helped.” Priam’s duty and his love tore him into equal halves. The gods were never concerned with fairness, only obedience and homage. It didn’t feel like much of a choice. The gods used humans for their own amusements, and sometimes their humors fell nothing short of cruelty. “Sleep, my dear. Rest. I’ll return this evening.”

“Where are you going?” Hecuba asked

“To seek wiser counsel than my own.”

“You must not let anything happen to our son.”

“I will have Tessa bring Hektor to you. Rest first. Compose yourself. No need to worry the boy.”

Priam walked quickly to the door. Hecuba heard him thundering directives in the hall. She knew his concern for her was paramount in his heart. She also knew that Priam would decide their fates as king, not as husband or father. She knew her husband’s loyalty would always lay with his first mistress, the city he ruled over, Troy. Grief consumed her and she slept.

“MAMA? MAMA WAKE
up now.”  Little Hektor’s face peered over the edge of his mother’s bed.  He put his chubby hand on her arm. “Mama?”

Hecuba opened her eyes to see her eldest child. Hektor was a glorious boy. His eyes shone like two polished stones of lapis lazuli, a gift from the gods from her family’s side. The rest of him exuded Priam’s stock. Black curls framing a rounded face with a recognizable square jaw waiting for age to take form. He inherited the slight dip in the middle of his tiny chin from his father’s side and the bump of Priam’s strong nose already revealed itself on Hektor’s face. Hecuba loved her son’s contagious lopsided smile the most. Whenever Hektor asked his father why they both shared the same chin, Priam regaled him with stories of how the gods touched all those of true royal blood with the same mark. A mark of honor. The mark of the princes and kings of Troy. Hecuba saw nothing but complete and utter perfection in her first born son.

She gently placed a hand over his. “I am awake now, Hektor. Tell me, what have you been doing all morning?”

He lifted his brow, rounding his eyes as large as possible. “I was in the stables with Xenos. Helping with the horses.”

“As a prince should. What else did you do?”

Hektor’s face lit up. “I rode Ares.” He took pride in his first horse. Priam purchased the stallion as a colt from the southern Troad where the finest war horses were bred. The colt’s sleek obsidian coat and the luminous white crescent stamped on its forehead set him apart from all the other colts in the royal stable. Hektor and Ares had become inseparable. Life existed this way for the princes of Troy. The Trojan tradition of breaking horses was a gift admired far and wide, reaching even across the storming seas. Some worlds revered their fast ships and others their monuments stretching toward the heavens, but the Trojans venerated their magnificent horses. A warrior’s worth extended to the mount he rode into battle. Honor and nobility bonded the rider and the steed. And for a sacred few, the god Apollo gifted the ability of communicating directly with the majestic beasts by whispering secret words into their ears. The gift had not come to Hektor, but she had hoped it might be granted the son she now carried, but the seer’s words were slowly turning her prayers to dust.

“And how is mighty Ares?”

“He grows strong, mama. He ate all the oats I carried to him.”

“Did you ride long, then, this morning?”

“Yes.” Hektor’s gaze fell to the floor. “But I fell off.” Hecuba tilted her son’s chin up. “Xenos told me all warriors fall off sometimes, even princes.”

Hecuba sensed the disappointment in his voice. “The horse master speaks truth. With my own eyes I have seen your father tossed more times than I have fingers.” She smiled holding up both hands showing all ten fingers. She wiggled each one for emphasis.

Hektor squinted in disbelief at his mother. “My father fell off that many times?”

“Yes,” the queen laughed. “Yes, he has. Breaking horses is difficult when you do not grow up together as you and Mighty Ares have. Some horses never feel the weight of a man until they are already grown. They are wild, free spirited beasts.”

Hektor smiled and shrugged his little shoulders. “Someday, I will break the horses.”

“Yes, you will son. As a prince should.”

“And learn to fight.” The boy’s eyes sparkled with the anticipation only an innocent could have. Little Hektor spoke of war as a game he’d play and run back to his mother’s arms. A pain gripped the queen’s heart when he spoke of his youthful desire to ride into battle alongside his father. Suddenly, a sliver of white light struck her vision, widening to images of...
Hektor, grown, lying in the dust. Women weeping and wailing.
The moment passed as quickly as it had come. She dismissed the experience as a worry that all mothers and wives must bear. Their men, proud warriors, heeding the call to battle, to hold their shields and spears aloft, to scream out their blood lust of battle to Ares with roaring courage…to charge headlong into the face of possible death. Some would die, some would live. It was the way of things. No one was spared the agony. Not even a queen.

“Someday, you shall.” She pulled his little head toward hers and kissed him on top of his curls. He smelled of hay. “You will be a great warrior someday, my little Hektor, breaker of horses, my golden prince.”

Hektor wrinkled his nose at his mother and crossed his slender arms on his chest.

“I am not little.”

Hecuba smiled softly. “Only to me, sweet boy.” Hektor leapt into his mother’s bed. She tickled him under his arms. Rounds of cheerful giggles bounced across the floor and echoed out the open windows.
Oh Priam, you knew just what I needed
. Hecuba forced all the frightening prospects for the future out of her mind. She poured her affection and joy into the moment with her son laughing next to her.

PRIAM WALKED ALONE
through the city he loved, the stone streets winding toward the citadel’s center where Apollo’s temple stood. The city’s inhabitants regaled the patron god’s part in building their fortress home in songs and festivals. It honored the god to exist so prominently among the people. The temple’s dazzling marble pillars towered to dizzying heights set against the expanse of the heavens. Paintings of gods and goddesses and their heroic deeds spiraled every marble column from cap to base around the outer perimeter of the temple. On each corner, a magnificent sculpture of Apollo held up the temple’s roof as the structure rested on each statue’s shoulders. A relief carved depicting Apollo and Poseidon building Troy’s great ramparts adorned the great pediment above the temple’s entrance and black marble paved the entry. Priam passed beneath the great triangle and entered Apollo’s sacred space. Priam thought of his legacy, his immortality. For him, it lay in the hope that his descendants depicted his life in some glorious measure on a wall or column or in a song of his great deeds. And so far, there had been nothing so grand in gesture or deed to bring any measure of fame. Kings would always rise to power, but none as powerful or enduring as the city herself. Troy stood as the only immortal link in his world. He must protect it. He wanted Iphicrates’ foretelling proven wrong by Apollo’s high priestess. His world with Hecuba depended on saving his son.

Priam entered Apollo’s temple deeply troubled. He walked to the cella to make an offering on the plinth stone. He set down a small basket of pearls and a shimmering gold crown of laurel leaves. The extravagant votive revealed the extent of his wounded heart. He wondered why Apollo betrayed him. Secretly, he thought perhaps he took too much pleasure from his mortal life.
Have I not made all sacrifices? Conducted all necessary festivals?
And now by divination of Iphicrates, Priam found his own hand forced to pay a price more valuable than the lavish votive offering he brought. The life of a prince in exchange for a handful of pearls and gold seemed an iniquitous exchange.
Would Apollo take anything less than the blood he demanded?
At that moment, it occurred to him how precious the life of this unborn child was. Priam possessed more gold and treasure than any king in Asia. He would give all, if necessary, to save his son. An errant pearl bounced behind the wall of blue curtains where Apollo’s secrets floated as whispers into the ears of eager priests. Sheer blue fabric shielded the adyton from direct gaze preserving the sanctity and the absolute mystery of the god. Priam heard the pearl roll to silence.
I have not brought nearly enough. I cannot carry the entire treasury on my back
, he argued with himself as fear and doubt threatened to overtake him.

A priestess with hair as pale as summer honey emerged with the errant pearl in her palm. Her dark gray eyes looked on him with pity. “I believe this is for the votive my lord offers.” Her whispered greeting sounded around him. Priam detected no movement from her lips at all.