Journey Into Nyx (12 page)

“They’re celebrating even with Anax injured?” Elspeth asked as she entered the pleasant warmth of the back room. Her friends had begun preparing souvlaki. Meat and vegetables on skewers sizzled over the brazier. Everyone in the room stopped and stared at Elspeth when she appeared.

“What?” Elspeth asked defensively.

Anthousa shrugged and turned back to the food. “You look different with your hair down,” she said.

Embarrassed, Elspeth plopped down beside Nikka on one of the couches. She fiddled with one of the silver metal skewers, which had a tiny winged horse on the end of it. Meletians put the symbol of Heliod on everything, even their cooking utensils. Daxos handed her a platter of food.

“Where did you put my armor?” Elspeth asked Nikka.

“Okay, first, I’m not your squire,” Nikka snapped. “Second, it’s on the table by your stupid spear. Third, if you put it back on, I will kill you myself.”

There was a stunned silence, and then the three adults burst out laughing. Even Elspeth, who had been thinking about doing precisely that.

“And since I’m not your squire, make your own souvlaki,” Nikka said with a faint smile.

“It looks pretty self-evident,” Elspeth said. “I think I can handle it.”

They ate and chatted, carefully avoiding talk of the battle. But as the music grew louder outside, Nikka became gloomier. She glared at the walls of the tent as if blaming them for not keeping the noise out. Daxos had whispered Cymede’s fate to Elspeth and Anthousa, but they had kept the news from Nikka. Even Elspeth agreed that more bad news right away might put her in a dangerous state of mind.

“This is stupid,” Nikka said, dropping her half-cooked food beside the platter. “Why are we celebrating?”

“Anax ordered his people to celebrate,” Daxos said.

“Celebrate his gutting?” Nikka snarled. “Celebrate the
deaths of all the wandering soldiers?”

“Honor the gods for your success with a revel, or else they might not give you victory in the future,” Daxos said. “Celebrate the living and honor the dead.”

Elspeth recognized the phrase from her studies in Meletis. It was a teaching of Heliod’s, and apparently Iroas’s as well. Elspeth knew Daxos meant well, but it sounded trite in the face of Nikka’s turmoil.

“Will the king live?” Anthousa asked.

“I healed him as much as I could, and then his own people took over,” Elspeth said. “I think he’ll survive.”

“People died!” Nikka practically shouted. “My father’s estate was burned to the ground.”

“Where is your father?” Anthousa asked.

“Meeting with advisors,” Nikka said. “He’s too
busy
for me tonight.”

“He said he’d come for you first thing tomorrow,” Elspeth assured her. “You don’t have to go to the celebration. Just stay in here with us.”

Nikka glared first at Elspeth and then at Daxos. “Yeah, right,” she said. “Like I want to stay here.”

There was an awkward silence, and then Anthousa changed the subject. “What is the state of the gods?” she asked.

“From what I can feel, the Silence isn’t over,” Daxos said. “Mogis broke it, as did Keranos. But I still can’t hear the other gods. I hear something strange, but it isn’t the gods.”

“What does it sound like?” Elspeth asked.

“There’s a noise like the crackle and rush of fire,” Daxos said. “Maybe it’s an echo from Keranos’s power. I’m not sure. I’ve never heard anything like it.”

There was a loud crash outside, and everyone jumped. Uproarious laughter could be heard coming from the area near the bonfire.

“Something is wrong,” Nikka blurted. “Everything just
feels wrong. Can you feel it in the air? I can’t hear that sound, Daxos. But the air feels like needles against my skin.”

Elspeth laid her hand on Nikka’s arm. “What do you mean?”

But Nikka was having none of her sympathy. She shook off Elspeth’s arm and stalked into the entry room.

“Where are you going?” Elspeth called to Nikka. She looked at Daxos and Anthousa. “Should we follow her?”

“I’m going for a walk!” Nikka screamed back.

Anthousa shook her head. “Let her be. In Setessa we would put a difficult adolescent to work or send her on a very arduous errand in the forest. Maybe you should consider that tomorrow.”

“Is it safe?” Elspeth asked Anthousa.

“I’ll take something to protect me,” shouted Nikka, who had been eavesdropping from the other room. “Leave me alone!”

“There’s not an enemy for miles,” Anthousa said.

“She’s all right,” Daxos whispered. “I think her father’s inattention hurt her most of all.”

There was a thud as Nikka fumbled with something heavy. She tried valiantly to slam the canvas door of the tent. And then she was gone.

“It’s the sense of letdown after a battle,” Anthousa said. “Young people have a harder time with the pendulum of emotions.”

“She’ll probably stroll by the dancers and end up having fun,” Daxos said.

“Speaking of dancing,” Anthousa said. She was suddenly in a hurry to leave. “I have a deep fondness for Akroan pipes and lyres. If you’ll excuse me …”

As soon as Anthousa left, Daxos came and sat beside Elspeth. They’d barely had any time to talk since he’d returned from the gorge with the sad news of Cymede. She leaned against him, and he put his arm around her shoulders.

“Did I tell you I’m glad you’re alive?” he said.

“I was going to say the same thing to you,” she replied.

“Do you want to go out there?” he asked. “Dance to the pipes?”

“Not really,” she said. “I can hear the music fine from here.”

“Do you want to talk?” he asked. His hand rested lightly on the back of her neck. She turned to him, and he grinned at her. It was an anything-is-okay-with-me grin. She took a deep breath and smiled back. Suddenly, it was like everything in the world made sense.

“I don’t want to talk,” Elspeth said. “Not even a little bit.”

She was the one who reached for him.

Outside the noise of the revel grew louder and louder. It sounded oddly systematic, almost as if it had a heartbeat of its own. The ebb and flow of raucous laughter sounded contrived, but Elspeth couldn’t pinpoint how, or why. Through a cacophony of wails and twisted laughter, her surroundings came into gradual focus. Daxos was beside her, asleep. They lay tangled together on the couch. The hour seemed late. It had been early evening when Nikka had stormed out of the tent, but now it felt like the darkest hour before dawn.

She wondered if she should sit up, but she didn’t have the will to do so. She tried to shake Daxos, but her touch was like a kitten’s whiskers against his arm. The air was tinged with spellcasting. Someone had affected her and Daxos with powerful magic. Had Nikka done another sleep spell like that disastrous day on the caravan? The girl had been upset and angry, but why would she do something like this? Besides, a sleep spell wouldn’t control the music or the escalating thud of dancers’ feet. It was more powerful than Nikka, and whatever it was, it sounded frantic and unhinged. Beside her, Daxos stirred and mumbled something. Elspeth tried to inch closer to hear him.

“Will you stay with me?” he whispered. His lips barely moved.

She wanted to answer. She wanted to say: Forever. I’ll stay with you forever. But something was wrong. Elspeth felt as though she’d drunk a flask of wine, but she’d had nothing but water. Her face was pressed into the pillow, and it felt too heavy to lift. It was as if a second, invisible skin immobilized her in an ethereal cocoon. She heard the canvas door open, and someone entered the tent. The inability to move, or even to sit up and look around, made her panic. She wanted to flail, to thrash, to rip open the walls and flee into the night. But all she could manage was breathing. And those breaths were short, sharp, and desperate.

Outside a woman screamed. It was an unearthly cry of pain. There was a growling sound, as if a beast prowled around the perimeter of the tent. Frantic shouts rang out in the distance, but sounds of music and dancing continued. The revelers must be oblivious to the threat of violence lurking on the edges of the shifting firelight.

A shadow fell over Elspeth and Daxos.

Elspeth moved then, not of her own will but as if invisible strings were attached to her shoulders. Under someone else’s control, she found herself sitting on the edge of the couch with Daxos still sprawled motionless behind her. Her hands were folded neatly in her lap with her chin lowered in enforced deference. Two people had entered the room, but she could see only their lower legs. One of them was a man, but the other had the hooves and crooked legs of a satyr. Whatever was controlling her forced her to raise her chin. And Elspeth saw the face of King Stranger, the prisoner that she’d talked to inside the Kolophon of Akros. Behind him was a man in a dark hooded cloak with gold trim. His face was obscured by shadows.

“Elspeth,” the satyr said. “It’s time you know my real name …”

“Xenagos,” she replied as he placed the information in her addled brain. The effect of his spell intensified, and her senses became hyperaware. The blue of the canvas walls stung her eyes, the wails from outside pierced her ears, and the smell of burning flesh made her nauseous. Xenagos forced her to look into his yellow eyes, and the slits of his pupils widened and expanded under her forced scrutiny. She could see the fingerprints in the red paint smeared on his chest. She could hear his raspy breath. She could sense the shard of metal lodged near his rapidly beating heart. It was an arrowhead. He, too, had been someone’s prey.

Xenagos grabbed Elspeth’s wrist and yanked her nearly off the couch while she desperately tried to dispel his magic over her. Muddled by fear and disorientation, she couldn’t shake it. Her own spells kept slipping away from her mind, as unattainable as leaves swirling in a storm.

“Where is Purphoros’s Sword?” Xenagos demanded. His minions were trashing everything as they looked for the blade. Her eyes flicked toward the wooden table where she had left it. From her vantage point on the couch, she could only see a corner of the table. But if her blade had been there, it would be clearly visible to everyone in the room.

“You thought it was in that room?” Xenagos shoved her back down on the couch. “Stupid girl. She didn’t even know it’s gone.”

The satyr motioned to the hooded figure, who stepped forward. The small fire burning in the brazier illuminated the man’s features. Elspeth would have screamed, if the satyr had permitted her the use of her mouth. The hooded figure was Sarpedon, the man she had met in the Temple of Phenax in Akros. He was the Priest of Lies who had read her mind and urged her to seek Heliod, but his handsome face had been ruined. His lips had been cut off and the skin sewn together with rough black stitches. His veiled eyes were stark and gray, like the sky before a storm.

“Phenax didn’t like the way Sarpedon handled his encounter with you, planeswalker,” Xenagos sneered. “But an oracle as powerful as he is never unclaimed for long. No vessel is too damaged for the God of the Underworld to covet for his own.”

Outside, blades clashed against each other. They sliced into flesh as desperate laughter turned to mad ravings. The discordant music was accompanied by what sounded like a pack of hounds tearing into their prey. Again, Elspeth tried to force the satyr out of her mind and recapture her free will. But the only memory she could conjure was being with Daxos at Hunter’s Crossing, and the memory of a forest gave her no power at all.

“Fortunately, Erebos was willing to share him with me,” Xenagos said. “And for such a small price. He’s wanted Daxos for such a long time.”

Elspeth tried to cry out and warn her friend. But Daxos was still not moving, and her fear for him made her weak. The satyr forced Elspeth to stand with Sarpedon directly in front of her, looking down at her with his strange gray eyes. Since he’d been claimed by Erebos, his body was filled with the air of the Underworld. When he breathed, he filled the room with poisonous despair.

The choking air of the Underworld filled Elspeth’s lungs. It reeked of dark earth, grief, and perverted desires. It was like the air in Athreos’s Shrine where the souls begged for passage away from the misery between life and death.

“Kill her,” the satyr told Sarpedon. “Kill them both. I’ll find the sword without her.”

The Priest of Lies kissed her with his mutilated mouth, and Elspeth could feel the life draining from her. Her strength and will to live leaked from her pores like water through a sieve.

“You know the futility of existence,” Xenagos said as he turned to leave. “You know what it’s like to feel lost in
the infinite. You should have found a world and made the pathetic mortals bow before you. You should have crushed your enemies beneath your feet and made them whimper at the sight of you. You should have done that … anywhere but here.”

When Xenagos was gone, the Priest of Lies clamped his hand around her throat. But Elspeth found a ledge in her mind and braced herself against it. She envisioned the storied battlefield of the Four Winds Plateau where she and Daxos had faced the hydra. She felt the wind sweeping across the open expanse. She cast off the satyr’s magic and slammed her elbow into the priest’s face.