Hero for Hire (5 page)

I remembered that I was there to search for Nausicaa and now had more reason than ever to find her.

The door to the inner chambers swung inwards a few inches then stopped, blocked by something that gave only a little when I pushed. I wasn’t about to poke my unprotected head into the gap to be target practice for some long-dead archer. So I slashed through the soft brass hinges, picked up the door as a shield, and went in low.

Just enough light came through the doorway to show a body lying at my feet. One glance told me the woman had been dead some time. I didn’t take a second look. She must have been pretty once.

I continued in toward the rooms toward the back of the temple. High windows let in plenty of light, now, but I still peered into rooms before entering them and kept my ears sharpened for any noises. A door banging to and fro almost wound up wearing my sword as a knocker.

Finally, at the extreme end of the building, I found the other priestesses. They lay in pathetic, jumbled heaps around the base of an oracle’s throne. One’s fingers, twisted and swollen with rheumatism, clutched at the stone as though to tear it to shreds.

Nausicaa sat there, as upright as a caryatid holding a roof, her cloak thrown back over the chair. The same symbols that the king’s cloak had borne were embroidered lavishly over the red lining. The brilliant gold thread still glittered in places, though much of it was tarnished and blackened as though burnt.

I was so interested in these details that I hardly noticed that, like the king, Nausicaa was naked. Her white sagging flesh showed long scarlet scratches and deep purple bruises, clustering most thickly around her throat as though someone had nearly succeeded in throttling her.

She lifted her head and tried to focus on me. “Hail, Thracian,” she said, her voice soft and delicate. Her eyes were wide with pupils so dark I could see my reflection. Blood stained her teeth and had trickled from the corner of her mouth, turning shiny as it dried.

I knelt down beside her but she still looked at me as though I stood a long way off. “Is it you doing these things, Nausicaa? How are you doing them?”

“A test, that’s all. New powers need to be tested...and such powers. Like nothing I’ve ever known. I have been given my birthright. Justice at last.” She sighed as though replete with some vile pleasure, though she still did not move.

“Where did you get these powers?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Her soft voice died away. She smiled shyly like a young girl, her eyelids fluttering as she tried to keep me in focus. Then she spoke again, in the same harsh voice I thought I'd just silenced.

"This is only the start of it. Soon all my armies will flood the world, making my daughters their queens, and the terror of their coming will make me stronger yet. I will stand where I belong, Queen over All as I was promised. No one can stop me now. I have been kept from it too long already by a fool like you. You foolish men think you know so much...."

She coughed and then sighed, a long breath that smelled of the grave. The blood cracked and fell from her chin. But blood dries only when it has stopped flowing.

“Queen of where? Queen of what?”

“You will know! You will bow down to me, Thracian. And when you do, perhaps I shall spare you after all. You may be more useful to me than you think!” She began to laugh, the low insane sound I’d heard coming from the triple-mouthed head. I jumped up and grasped her by the shoulders. Her head fell back limply, her eyes glazing. She was dead. One of the reanimated priestesses must have done for her before I ever got there.

But if that was true....

“Who, then, have I been talking to?”

* * *

Perhaps only the need to reclaim their wandering dead could have brought the villagers out so far from their homes. They had seen the graves open and, though many cowered inside their homes, some had followed their loved ones. Their weeping was more pitiable than the dead.

Some blamed me and a fisherman ran toward me with hard fists clenched. I made no attempt to defend myself. After all, he hardly came up to my shoulder and he was only in danger of bruising his knuckles on my armor. But bruised knuckles take one’s mind off a bruised heart.

After the fisherman threw few more wild swings, Phandros, of all people, persuaded the poor fellow to see to his late wife and to take a swig of the local wine which the king’s clerk had brought along, showing great forethought.

“What did happen here?” young King Temas asked. The evidence he’d seen had sobered him more quickly than a dunk in the cold sea.

I explained as concisely as I could. My task was all the easier as I couldn’t explain much. “I wish I had more answers for you but I’ve never seen anything this loathsome before. I deal in magical creatures and figuring out what crimes mortals commit but this...this smells of witchcraft.”

“As does my father’s death?”

The young king had seen his father’s body carried out from the temple, but had given no more sign of distress than a shake of his head. “My father had been odd of late, Eno. Taciturn, hardly eating, but drinking heavily. He did not share his thoughts with me. He considered me little more than a foolish boy, playing at being a prince, not yet worthy to serve as his right hand.”

“I think he was wrong,” I said. “You’re no weakling.”

He shrugged off the compliment. "There must be a reason for these nightmarish happenings. What did she say to you, again?”

I told him.

“It makes no sense. I’ve known Nausicaa since I was a...since I was born. She wasn’t a warm-hearted woman by any means but she never seemed interested even in ordinary religion let alone any occult matters. She used to say ‘let the Gods take care of their own business; I have beds to make.’

“How long has it been since regular temple services have been held?”

“We had extra prayers and sacrifices when the harpy came but most people have been too frightened to come here lately. There have been reports that the harpy has been seen hovering in this area.”

“Really? That might be useful.”

He didn’t seem to hear me. “I wonder who killed the priestesses. Their deaths grieve me almost as much as my father’s. They were good women; they didn’t deserve this.”

“It may have been Nausicaa. They would have trusted her, a woman like themselves.”

“They would have trusted my father as well. They weren’t strangers; they were born here. I will ask among the servants whether any of them accompanied him up here.”

I put my hand on his shoulder. It was thin, a boy’s, but the expression on his face was that of a man facing a sad reality. “I doubt it was your father. As virgin priestesses of Artemis, they would never see him alone.”

“True. Then you think it was Nausicaa?”

I had not mentioned my idea that Nausicaa had left her body sometime before I reached her. I now wondered just how long ago Nausicaa had departed. An illness, a poison, could leave a husk of a body all ready for someone, or something to move in. When questioned, the prince recalled that Nausicaa had suffered a fall and a blow to the head in the winter, just six months before the king had changed so much in his ways. I had known strange alterations to take place in men after receiving a strong blow to the head, almost strong enough to cause death. I’d never heard of such changes spreading to other people, though.

“I hope that with both Nausicaa and your father dead, these strange happenings will stop.” I suppose I could have been more tactful.

“I hope you are right,” Temas said after the color returned to his face.

“The thread between them, whatever is was, is broken. The creature I saw in the temple is gone and if it was indeed Nausicaa bringing this ruin on Leros, she is dead now.”

“We will know for sure if the harpy leaves. I shall ask if anyone has heard or seen it lately.”

I took the renewed outbreak of weeping from the villagers when the bodies of the priestesses came out as a sign that my room would be preferred to my company, I returned to the woods beyond the clearing, glad to get out into the fresh, moving air.

Magic always gives me a headache, clustered right between my eyes. It's the same sort of strain I might feel at a party, when the host and his best friend have quarreled but are trying not to show it. The veiled hints and splashes of venom make everyone uneasy, even those who aren't sharp enough to pick up on the reason until too much wine makes everything clear. Secrets, hidden power, twisted emotions turning the commonplace into vileness. I breathed deeply, shook all over like a dog, and went to find some place quiet to think.

I had no more sense of the dryad's presence, though I stopped a moment by her tree. She'd known that death waited in the temple, feeling it in the same way she felt the warmth of the sun or the coolness of the earth beneath these roots. But it had not been my death, after all. I wanted her to see that.

I went deeper into the woods, picking my way through the questing roots until I could no longer see the temple. The sighing of the wind in the branches mingled with the whisper of the sea, not far from here. I must be near the cliffs but I wanted rest more than I wanted a glimpse of the sea. I yawned, wondering if Jori was still there.

I unlaced my armor and lay back into the warm green embrace of the earth. What I really needed was a water-butt to sink into or at least a few dippers of spring water but I was still on edge. I knew I was half-listening for someone to start screaming.

What was going on here on Leros? Was Nausicaa the font of these magic events and would they indeed cease now that she was dead? I couldn’t believe it despite my suggestion to King Temas that it was so.

This whole affair wore witchcraft like a tribal tattoo. Who had been master and who was the disciple in the rituals that Nausicaa and the late King had performed? Considering that the King had died first, I felt that Nausicaa had led him into it, not the other way around. Whether she killed him herself or induced him to do it was of less importance than the reason. Had he served his purpose?

The problem was that I didn’t know enough about these dark things. My field is sword-swinging, bone-crunching, and monster-mangling. Magic traps and tricks could often be overcome by the use of force and those that couldn’t were, at least, created by a fellow human mind and so were comprehensible. This didn’t feel like that. That triple-head, for instance...that was big magic. Not even the Egyptians could pull off something like that.

I was trying not to say the word ‘Goddess’ even to myself. But it kept recurring to me, while I tried to think of other possibilities. It was like having a bad tooth which twinges even when left strictly alone.

So far in my career, I'd met monsters, human and otherwise, and a good few minor supernatural creatures, like the dryad and a centaur I'd met once in a house of ill-fame. I’d managed thus far not to tangle with the Gods. I wanted to keep it that way.

I certainly didn't want to deal with a God gone mad, yet I was afraid, desperately afraid, that might have been what I had met in the temple. But which one? Who was She Who Opens The Gates? It had a grandiose sound but I'd never heard of any Hellenic God or Goddess using that title. And what gates, where?

A little motion caught my eye. A field mouse, sleekly white and brown, was trundling across the grass. He or she stopped to look at me, going up on hind legs to sniff the air, whiskers twitching. Deciding I was harmless or perhaps only thinking I was a new kind of rock, it hurried away.

Somehow, I felt better. Whatever horror had inhabited the temple would be cleansed away and the proper Goddess would again inhabit it. No doubt the island would return to normal after I finished the job I’d come to do. One harpy, captured; one kingdom back to the proper business of ‘beggar my neighbor’ and ‘it’s a fine bright Tuesday morning; who do I want to make war on today?’

I listened to the wind playing tag in the grass and decided a little nap was in order.

I woke up at dew-fall, a deep sigh escaping my chest. The nearly-full moon turned the whole sky to silver, framed by the tops of the trees. I took it as a good omen for the return of Artemis to her temple.

Then I yawned widely, stretching out my arms to their maximum reach, and touched feathers.

Harpies are bird-women, often sent as a punishment against those who have offended the Gods. Zeus is especially fond of sending them to pursue some poor soul. They snatch food from the hands of their victims, leaving just enough to keep alive but never enough to satisfy the gnawing of hunger. They despoil all the rest of the food with vomit and excrement. In the end, with luck, the victim goes insane before he starves to death.

The last ones I fought were like bats with leathery wings and curving sharp teeth. They were less interested in the buffet-trap I’d spread than in biting my neck. But I'd worn an iron-collar anointed with the juice of some garlic flowers and they hadn't harmed me, though I will never forget the pungent swamp-gas smell of their breath.

I believe, in fact, that there are two classes of harpy – some created when a dragon’s blood splattered on burning rocks from a volcano. Others came into being when the bright brass blood fell on clouds.

So a feather was good news to me. I hate fighting in an iron collar.

Nevertheless, I was glad I’d only unlaced my armor, not taken it off. I didn’t want to reenact the liver-gnawing punishment of Prometheus today or any day.

The moon had set but there was no feeling of dawn at hand. The darkness seemed to huddle on the ground in pools. Yet here, among the thickly clustered trees, a little patch of light flickered like the play of sun through leaves, just where I’d put my hand. I drew it in and the light came too.

I examined the feather by its own light. It was the color of burnished bronze lit by pale flame, like a lamp burning low. The light that shone from it brightened near the tip. Yet it was a genuine feather, light, hollow and flexible.

No one had mentioned that the harpy glowed in the dark. Maybe they’d all been too afraid to come out at night since it arrived.

I ran a finger along the delicately serrated edge then quickly stuck my finger in my mouth, tasting my own blood. The feather was sharp!

Getting up, I went to investigate. The more concentrated glow turned out to be fluffy down and several full feathers, one bent and another missing about a third of one side. There was a faint, greasy smell like chicken cooked in oil.

I looked around. Where had the feathers come from? It took me longer than I like to admit to look up as one would logically do.

The tree nearest to the little glowing pile of feathers had a massive trunk. A patriarch of tree-kind, probably the tallest in Leros. The bark looked like plates of armor fitted together, thick seams running between the joins. I squinted up the length and saw, dimly, another glow about three-quarters of the way up.

Even I could not quite reach all the way around the massive trunk. Slipping off my sandals, I dug my toes and fingers into the bark and climbed up to where I felt a thick branch over my head. From there it was easy, even in the dark. A reach, a pull, a swing with extended legs and I soon reached my goal.

About halfway up, I’d begun to hear a low, rhythmic rumble, growing louder as I climbed. With that in mind, I’d worked my way around to the far side of the trunk from the glow. I’d shared enough barracks to know snoring when I heard it.

The pine needle clusters didn’t offer much cover as I peered through them. A nest as large as a human's bed took up the space where three branches came together. It was built from a variety of leaves, a sheep’s fleece, and feathers all laid together more or less neatly in a hammock made from the twisted ropes of a fishing net.

In the center, curled up, lay a strange figure, much smaller than I would have guessed. I had no trouble seeing details in the soft glow that emanated from the creature. The harpy slept with its head tucked under a wing, the feathers spread wide.

Traders with Africa report strange flightless birds with long naked legs whose kick can disembowel a man. The harpy also had long legs, covered with small shell-shaped feathers, ending in narrow feet with five gleaming claws. Longer feathers covered the rest of it, shading from a deep bronze, almost crimson, to the palest gold.

If I had the cage waiting down below, with Jori standing by to slam the door closed, I might have made a play right then. As it was, now that I knew where to find it, I could come back in a few days, right after taking care of the rogue guards. This job was going to be easy money after all.

Then someone bellowed my name.

It shattered the silence like the roar of a minotaur. The urgent, buzzing note in it set up echoes in my head of all the other times I’d been called in desperation.

“Eno! Eno!”

This cry was followed by another sound, one that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up and wave. A softer sound, wordless but interrogatory. The sound of a creature roused suddenly from sleep and wondering what all the fuss was about.

Not really wanting to, I looked down into the nest and a pair of eyes looked back.

The face was pale and fair with a nose, not a beak, and lips. Close-fitting feathers covered the head but the face and neck were human...more or less. The feathers rose again from the abdomen to cover the bosom, tightly following undoubtedly feminine curves as though the creature had been dipped in gold.

It got its legs underneath it, spreading immense wings up and out as though to leap into the sky. But it stared at me, unblinkingly, trying perhaps to figure out what kind of animal I was. I’d seen owls look like that but never with long-lashed blue eyes.

I could have stabbed it to the heart with a single blow but I did not even think of it until later. I stared back, my mouth as dry as a castaway’s after three weeks at sea. I’d seen many weird and wonderful things in my life, but I’d never felt the power of enchantment so strongly as I did at that moment. She looked as though she might speak; there was so much emotion in her face.

Then whatever blasted soul was calling my name did it again, louder and closer. The harpy gave an answering cry, less piercing, less lonely, than before, at least to my ears. Then it took flight, with one powerful beat of those huge wings. The backwash of air nearly shook me from my hold.

I watched the golden glowing shape rise like a flaming arrow into the first light of dawn and wondered if it would ever return.

I wouldn’t have cared to descend while it was still dark but with the fast-brightening day to help me, it was a simple matter to come down. “I’m here,” I said, when my feet touched the ground.

There was no reply but the sighing of the morning breeze.

A rustle behind me made me turn abruptly, hands spread for combat.

A pile of leaves was pushed aside and Phandros sat up, brushing off those that clung to his arms and beard. “I heard the harpy. Did you see it?”

“How did you bury yourself so quickly?” Even if he’d begun the moment I’d begun to climb down the tree, I couldn’t see how he managed it in the time.

He didn’t answer, though his face reddened. He bent down and retrieved something about as long as his foot from the leaf mold. I took it from his hand. It was a cone, a roughly rolled piece of papyrus paper, punctured with a piece of twig to hold the edge of the paper closed. The buzzing sound must be caused by the passage of the air setting the edges to rattling.

“Clever,” I said,

“Just a child’s toy, really, but useful sometimes. Makes a sound like a ram’s horn if you play it right. And, of course, it amplifies the voice.”

“Fascinating. Why were you calling me?”

Behind his beard, Phandros looked grave. “There’s been a challenge sent to you.”

“To me?”

“Word of your deeds has spread throughout the island like fire. There were actually vendors in the market this morning; they are so certain you will be the one to kill the harpy.”

I decided to keep my recent failure to do just that a secret for now. “Your chance to buy pickled eggs again relieves my mind,” I said. “What about this challenge?”

“Eurytos shows you his thumb and declares you his enemy. Leave Leros by noon and you will be permitted to leave unharmed. Stay and you will face your doom.”

“And Eurytos is....?”

His graying brows lifted. “The former guard captain.”

“Oh, yes. Sorry, hard night. How did you come by these sweet words of welcome?”
“His second in command waylaid a fisherman in the woods on the far side of the island and passed on his master’s words. The fisherman told a goatgirl who told her mother as they gathered mushrooms. She told her husband who told me.”

“Busy woods for so early in the day. That fisherman wouldn’t happen to have been visited by a miracle...say, his fish turning into cash just after meeting this brigand?”

“You have guessed correctly, Eno,” Phandros said. “Some villagers have been supplying the rebels, it’s true. Extra obols are not easy to find on Leros these days. I have wondered where Eurytos is getting his funds.”

I was thinking. “With so many mouths chewing on this message, its possible Eurytos did no more than send me civil greetings. Warlike words, worthless deeds. I should pay him a visit.”

“He is no courtier,” Phandros began.

“After breakfast, I think,” I said. “I did not dine last night. I could eat a Leviathan. Raw!”

As I fastened my sandals, I found my thoughts less busy with the truculent captain and more focused on Phandros. I had heard soldier’s tales of men who could silently and swiftly dig hiding places out of bare earth, concealing themselves in less time that anyone could believe possible. They could stay hidden for long periods without moving, without hunger or thirst. I’d never met anyone who’d actually witnessed this feat; it was all third or fourth hand. A man’s grandfather had told a tale or the friend of a cousin had sworn on his mother's grave that he’d seen it. Now I wondered if I had become one of those who are the ‘they’ in ‘they say’.

I had sat down on the root of the large tree on purpose. Steathily, I slid the unbroken feather into my short scabbard, behind my sword. It might be worthless except to shave with but I wanted a remembrance of what other wonders I had seen that morning.

Starting the walk back, I glanced curiously at Phandros. He really was a weedy specimen, the sort of man who went on getting drier and thinner year by year until he either splintered like a twig or turned into leather. He could have been thirty-five; he could have been sixty. "Just how long have you served here, Phandros?"

"Almost six years, though it seems less. I came as tutor to the prince."

No old family retainer, he. I wondered again why Phandros had chosen to return here from Athens. Loyalty? It seemed like a lot of loyalty for six years' service. No family or ancestry bound him here.

"The king put much trust in you, then?"

His slightly pop eyes wandered from path to sky. "Some, some. He was not a trusting man. Leros being a small island, there was no need for dozens of hangers-on. A pleasant court, though. Always someone about to drink or dice with. Then, of course, when the harpy came, even the best of those fled."

"But you stayed on."

"I had nowhere else to go. No money. No acquaintance. There may be some pupils who will give an honored place to their old tutors but most turn on their heel the moment their scholarship is done. Few indeed wish to be reminded of their schoolboy days once they are grown."

Probably true. Being self-taught, I could never escape from my teacher.

"You came here during the late Queen's time, then?"

A smile moved in his beard. "Ah, Queen Amymone. Delightful woman. Kindly, beautiful...really an ideal woman in every respect." He proclaimed some poetry, stopping and taking a rhetorical pose as taught in the best academies.

I idly scratched the back of my neck and waited for him to finish. With a decent semblance of modesty, he broke off, adding 'Written on the occasion of her last anniversary. She was pleased to offer me a word or two of praise for it."

"I'm not much of a poet," I confessed. "Some people like it."

"The king preferred music to poetry. He was a fine harpist. He could have made a good living at it, had the Fates not chosen to make him a king. Indeed, the Queen deigned to tell me once that it was their shared love of music that changed their marriage -- arranged by their fathers, of course -- from a mere royal match into something richer and more rare."

"A love affair?"

"Assuredly. As passionate as any from legend. You would not, perhaps, have understood my reference in the fourth line without knowing that the king often referred to himself as Orpheus and his queen as Eurydice."

Orpheus whose god-like gift of music had charmed the birds from the trees and maids from their clothing could have had married any woman but he'd chosen the radiant Eurydice, only to lose her within a short time to the sting of an adder. He'd tried to rescue her from the world of Death, charming the triple-headed Guard Dog Cerberus with his lyre and slipping past the shaded dead. But he'd ultimately failed, as he perhaps had always been fated to fail.

"The king must have been devastated by her death," I said.

Phandros nodded heavily, his beard like a wave on his chest. "For a time, we feared for his reason. Even after he ceased to weep, it was long before he recovered the tone of his mind. Even so, I cannot recall him ever laughing again. Well, not until his last night."