The Pandora Curse (Greek Myth Series Book 4) (8 page)

“I am glad you agreed to my decision,” Nikolai announced with a smile. “And you will see that having me as your advisor will be very beneficial indeed.”

“This is not the kind of advising I agreed to. And I only let your decision to ride that nag go unchallenged to show I was grateful for what you did in the courtyard.”

“I may have helped you from swooning and humiliating yourself in front of the crowd, but it was by your own decision you did not hurt the king. It seems to me you are battling the Furies as well as yourself. Does this mean you are ready to change your ways?”

She’d never known defeat before today. Nikolai seemed to be pushing it in her face and reminding her that her doubts were only making her weak. She wasn’t a weak warrior. And she didn’t know what was happening to her lately. Since this man entered her life, she’d been questioning and doubting every action she took.

She’d been ignoring the Furies, something she’d learned not to do years ago. Was he right? Did she need to change? She pushed the idea from her mind, not liking the way it felt to be vulnerable. She’d been embarrassed by her actions earlier. Her change of heart had only made things worse. Now her own men looked at her as if she were insane, and she, herself, started wondering if mayhap she was. She didn’t need Nikolai complicating things further with his questions.

Vara didn’t answer. Instead, she looked at his horse and shook her head.

“If that nag doesn’t keep up with the rest,” she warned, “I swear I’ll cook her for dinner.”

Nikolai’s horse reared up in outrage, almost as if it could understand her threat. Nikolai, taken by surprise, held on to the reins trying to gain control. Then in a puff of hoofbeaten dust from the road, the old nag darted forward, leading the pack.

Six

Midday came, and after a long, hard day of travel, Nikolai’s horse could no longer keep up with the group. Vara rode back to meet him, anger blazing in her eyes.

“I told you that horse was too slow. You’ve put us behind by nearly half a day by insisting to ride this nag.”

“She’s just not used to such long distances. I’m sure she’ll be fine once we make camp for the night and rest.” Nikolai ran a hand over the horse’s head. He could feel Baruch quivering beneath him, and wasn’t sure he’d done the right thing by suggesting he take this shape.

“I’ll show you how to ride a horse. Now switch mounts with me.”

“No, I don’t think that’d be a good idea.”

She obviously didn’t like taking no for an answer. She hopped from her horse to his without touching the ground and settled herself in the saddle in front of him.

“Go on, now. Get on my horse. It’s the fastest one here. With a little coaxing, I’ll have this horse moving like it should. Sometimes it’s the rider, not the horse who needs to be trained.”

“So you’re saying I don’t know how to ride?” Nikolai almost found her accusations amusing. He’d been riding since the day he could sit up on his own. If there was one thing he wouldn’t be accused of, it was not knowing how to handle a horse.

“I’m just saying that you could use a little polishing up.”

“I think not, Conqueror.” With a leap equal to hers, he left his horse and landed on hers. Her eyes followed, and surprise shown within them.

“I didn’t think you could do that.”

“There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me. Now we’ll see who is going to be left in the dust.”

Eager to show off his riding skills, he pulled back on the reins and caused the horse to stand on two legs. With a nod of his head, he was off, leading the entourage in a matter of minutes.

He laughed to himself when he thought of how angry Vara must be that she was in the rear and not able to make the horse move faster. He’d be surprised if she caught up to them by nightfall.

It wasn’t long before he heard an unfamiliar pounding of hoofs upon the earth behind him. He looked over his shoulder in surprise to see Vara, kicking her heels into Baruch’s side, making the old horse run faster than he ever thought it could. The look on the horse’s face was one of despair and pain. That’s when he knew he never should have switched mounts.

“Yaw! Yaw!” shouted Vara, slapping the horse on the hind end. She pulled up next to him, and Nikolai noted the foam dripping from Baruch’s mouth.

“I told you I could make any horse go fast,” she said smugly. “Even this old nag.”

“I see.” Nikolai slowed his horse to a walk. “And as you see, I do know how to ride.”

“Yes.” She smiled and nodded as if she were pleased. “You ride better than any of my men. No one has ever been able to control my horse but me.”

“And you didn’t think to mention this before?”

“Well, perhaps it slipped my mind.”

“Or perhaps you wanted to see me fall on my face?”

She reached out and touched him on the cheek. Her skin was soft, her caress caring, not cold and cruel as he’d expected.

“No. I would never want that. A face as handsome as yours should not be fallen upon.”

Nikolai might have gotten caught up in the moment of her sudden shift from aggressiveness to passiveness if it hadn’t been for the
save me
pitiful whinny of Baruch.

“I think we should stop and make camp for the night,” suggested Nikolai.

“Yes,” agreed Zetes coming up to join them. “The hounds have run hard all day. It would be wise to rest them.”

She looked from the corner of her eye at Nikolai. “Are you advising this, seer?”

“I advise you only to make the right decision,” he answered. “To think of your men and the animals as well as your own needs.”

“All right,” she answered slowly. “I suppose I haven’t been thinking of the others. Or the animals. Zetes, tell the men to make camp and start the cook fires. I am so hungry, I could eat a horse.”

Baruch’s eyes opened wide, and with the last bit of energy, he reared up on two legs and pawed the air. Vara, taken by surprise, fell backward, and would have fallen off the horse if Nikolai hadn’t thrown an arm around her waist and hauled her to his own mount.

“That damned horse,” she said in anger, and Nikolai noticed her eyes turn black. “I’ll kill it, I swear. I’ll make it suffer. I’ll - ”

Nikolai did the only thing he could think of to silence her. He kissed her. And when he pulled back, her eyes were closed and her lips parted like the petals of a flower opening to the morning sun. It was so hard to believe this was the same woman who had just been threatening to eat his horse. He would never get used to her curse, and her sudden shifts from meanness to kindness and back again. He wondered how she handled it. He jumped off the horse and took Baruch’s reins.

“I’ll tend to the horse and meet you in camp soon.”

She opened her eyes and licked her lips. “Yes,” she said, looking around at her men who hadn’t missed Nikolai’s action. “Yes, that will be fine.”

She directed her horse to the front of the group, leading them to the site where they would make camp.

Nikolai led Baruch out of sight of the others, stopping next to a creek. He removed his pack from the animal’s back. Immediately, Baruch shifted back into form, gasping for breath and rubbing his sides.

“I guess shifting into a horse wasn’t the best of ideas.” Nikolai dug through his things for a rag which he dipped into the water, wrung out, and held against Baruch’s forehead.

“It’s that girl! I am cursed, Niko,” said Baruch. “First she stabs my tail, then she sits on me, and now she’s about killed me by jabbing her heels into my sides and slapping me with her hand.”

“I am sorry about that, Baruch. If I’d have known she was going to do that, I never would have let her ride you. But either way, you must remember that Vara is not acting of her own free will. She has
The Pandora Curse
. She can’t help but be this way. Try to see her good side.”

“And which side would that be? The front or back of her hand?” He rubbed his back end where she had slapped him.

“The inside, Baruch. Deep inside. But it is so hidden that nobody knows it’s there. Not even her. Just give me a chance to do my job, and you’ll see a side of Vara that you’ve never seen before. I promise.”

“Ohhhhh, owwwww, I hurt,” he complained. “I don’t like shifting into female forms in any shape or way. I am a male and will not portray an old nag ever again.”

“Fair enough.” Nikolai smiled and patted Baruch on the back. The little minion jumped and groaned. “Mayhap you should go to Hera and have her heal you again.”

“I will.” Baruch handed the cloth back to Nikolai. “But when I come back, I will not be shifting back into the shape of a horse. So find an excuse why I disappeared.”

“Leave that to me.” Nikolai closed his pack. “And make sure you return before the start of the competition games.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll find you.” Baruch twirled around and turned into a green mist, heading up for the sky and disappearing.

“Nikolai?” Vara led her horse through the brush to meet him. “Who are you talking to? And where is your horse?”

Nikolai checked the color of her eyes before he answered. Silver. Good. She wasn’t under the curse.

“I let the horse go. It was just slowing us down, like you said. It was very old and not much use anyway. I never should have taken it to begin with.”

Her face lit up with a smile. “I told you not to, but you didn’t listen.”

“Aye.” He squeezed the rag again, rinsing it in the water.

She tied her horse’s reins to a tree, and bent down to join him.

“So who were you talking to?” she asked, scanning the surroundings. “Yourself?”

“Yes,” he lied, not knowing what else to say. “I often do that. It helps me to think.”

“Really?” There was a soft and caring tone to her word. She settled herself on the ground at the bank of the river. “I thought I was the only one who did that.”

He settled himself next to her, feeling like she was an entirely different person than the woman who had just threatened to eat his horse. He saw a softness in her eyes that he had never noticed before. And a light shining through the color like a silver lining of a storm cloud. When the fires of Tartarus weren’t blazing within her, she was really very comely, not just the outside, but from deeper within. There was a goodness somewhere inside her, struggling to get out. Though he’d had his doubts at first, he knew now he had to help her. He thought about the times when he felt trapped. Alone. Abandoned. He saw all these things in Vara’s eyes now. He needed to know more about her. If he could get her to confide in him, he may just be able to convince her to give up her vices.

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” he asked, wondering if there were others like her.

“No,” she answered with a shake of her head. “Do you?”

“No.” He looked down to the ground, picking up a stick and drawing in the dirt. “I am an only child. Or at least from the union of Tiomoid and Hera I am. I was unwanted. Once Hera discovered Zeus didn’t care that she’d coupled with a human, she wanted nothing to do with me.”

“I’m sorry.” In her voice he heard that she truly meant it. It was comforting to know such a harsh, unpredictable woman had sympathy hidden away in her heart.

“Is your father still alive?” she asked.

“Aye. But I know not where. He married a human woman when I was about twelve. But Hera’s jealousy did not let this marriage continue.”

“What did she do? Punish him?”

“You could say that. She killed my father’s wife in envy. He was so wounded by this, that he left to live the life of a recluse somewhere in the mountains.”

“So he abandoned you?”

“Yes and no. I know he loved me, but just needed to mourn. I also know seeing me reminded him of the goddess who took his wife’s life. He left me with the goddess Demeter. He knew the mother of all nature would not allow me to perish. Demeter called for Hera to come claim me, but Hera ignored her.”

“I had no idea you had such a sad childhood.”

She took his hand in hers, and comfort spread through Nikolai’s body. It felt good. It felt right. And he liked talking with and being in contact with Vara when she was in this state of mind.

“Since you are a demi-god,” she continued, “I would have thought life would be noble and exciting. Full of adventure and glory.”

“Well, it wasn’t,” he admitted with a sigh. “I left Demeter and traveled with a band of entertainers until I was confident enough to be on my own. I would go to castles and fairs and look into my crystal sphere and tell fortunes of the future.”

“Well, surely that was exciting?”

“Not when the people feared me. Once they found out I was Hera’s son, they wanted nothing to do with me. They thought she would do to their wives what she’d done to my father’s.”

“So you were an outcast, too.”

“Aye.” For some reason, admitting to her how he felt, broke down a wall between them. She reached out to him with her words, with her questions that he knew had a lot to do with her own childhood. He longed to know more about her. It seemed her hesitance to kill the king stemmed from something the girl Agatha awoke in her memory.

“Tell me about your childhood, Vara.”

She looked away, and for a moment he thought he saw a tear in her eye. But if so, she wouldn’t let him know it.

“Please,” he added. He could feel a tenseness in the air and almost regretted asking. He didn’t think she was going to answer, but to his surprise, she did.

“There’s nothing to tell. My mother one day became so jealous and angry with my father, that she killed him.”

“What?” He stiffened and barely breathed. No one should ever have to experience that. “Please, tell me this isn’t true.” He daringly put his arm around her shoulder, and felt her rigidness slowly disappear as her body relaxed under his touch.

“It is true. But it wasn’t her fault, you see. It was
The Pandora Curse
in action. She couldn’t help her feelings of jealousy or anger. When she saw in the distance a young maiden smile at my father and place a kiss on his cheek, she assumed he loved the maiden, not her. In actuality, my father had just saved the girl from a poisonous snake. She was only thanking him for her life.

My mother did not have good judgment. Nor did she have good vision. She should have known my father was always loyal, but still, her jealousy drove her mad. She wanted the girl to be punished. She aimed with her bow and arrow, but her aim was not true. Instead, the arrow hit and killed my father. When she came closer to confront the maiden, she realized her mistake.”

She looked up to him with pain showing in her eyes. This time he was sure he saw a tear.

“What do you mean, Vara?”

She smiled slightly. “I like when you call me Vara instead of Conqueror. And what I mean, is that the young girl was really me. My mother killed the man she loved, and nearly killed her daughter as well.