Authors: Gene Wolfe
Afterward, we walked hand in hand by moonlight. "I know you," she told me. "No wonder I had that dream! I'm in love with you."
Her name is Anysia.
"Diokles the gymnastes sent me," she said, and pressed some coins into my hand. "Here's what he gave. Return it to him—or keep it yourself if you like."
I slept well after she had gone, but not for long, I think. Now I am awake again; the sun is not yet above the mountaintops.
FORTY
For the Sake of Days Past
ELATA IS KIND TO ME, partly because I have promised the Huntress that a race will end as she wishes—or so the ghost said. After I read what I had written, I asked who Elata was. Io explained that we met her, and Hegesistratus her husband, in the north; Io called him a mantis, as the ghost had. Elata, it seems, was the woman with the wine of whom I wrote.
"They're here with a five-tests man from Zakunthios, and to consult the oracle. Zakunthios isn't big enough to have someone in every event, the way Rope does."
She wanted to know whether I recalled meeting with Elata in the grove. I admitted I did not, but said that I had read of it here, at which she blushed. "Elata thought she might be able to cheer you up," she told me, "so I said that if it would make you better it was all right with me. And you really
are
better, but I think it's the special food. Kichesippos had a big fight with Diokles about that, and Amyklos looked like he was getting ready to fight both of them. He says more barley and no meat at all."
I told her that I would eat whatever my physicians wished, if only it would help me remember.
"It isn't that now," Io said. "It's just to help you feel better, and I think it's working, a little. You're writing more in your book, and that's a good sign."
Io said, too, that this Hegesistratus is eager to see me but will not come to our pavilion. He is afraid of the Rope Makers. There is a truce everywhere in Hellas in honor of the games, but he does not trust them even so.
The Huntress is a goddess, Io says. She knows nothing of a promise I made her, but she says I may have taken an oath at her temple in Rope. The black man would not let Io and Polos go to the temple with me.
He and his wife will accompany Pasicrates, Tisamenus, and me this morning, when we go into Dolphins with Diokles to have our names entered in the rolls. Now we are waiting for Diokles.
While waiting I have read about many past days.
"Pharetra, 'bow-case,' is as like it as any word I know, though she laughed at me."
My heart leaped when I read that. What has become of her? Perhaps she died of her wound.
Tisamenus came to speak with the black man and me. I know that Io does not like him, but he seems friendly and polite, and everyone defers to him because he is said to be an illustrious mantis. "Last night I conferred with Trioditis concerning you," he told me. "She will do all that lies in her power to aid you, provided you do all that lies in yours to aid Rope. 'The queen must win,' she said, 'and thus the queen must lose.' Does that convey any meaning to you?"
I shook my head, and so did the black man.
"I feel certain it is Queen Gorgo, her priestess, who must win," Tisamenus told us. "When you drive for our prince regent, sir, you will represent her as well. The rest we must strive to understand.
"By favor of divine Trioditis you are improved," Tisamenus continued. "Your thoughts, I hope, haven't turned to the taking of your own life?"
I did not reply, at which the black man stared at me.
Tisamenus said gently, "When the soul has been overwhelmed by grief, sir, as yours has been, a man does nothing that he is not compelled to do, for then he believes that nothing can help him. At such times, he is no danger to himself or anyone else. But as the claws fall away, hope—the final horror, if I may say it, from that deadly box the gods packed for men—hope returns. It is then that his family and friends must watch a man, because he's apt to think that by putting an end to his life he'll put an end to his sorrows."
I confessed then that such thoughts had sometimes stirred in me.
"Never trust them, sir." Kindly, he laid his hand upon my knee. "Trust me instead. I've trafficked with many ghosts, and they are less happy even than we, and envy us. I've heard that while you crossed the barbarian lands you journeyed for a time in the company of Hegesistratus the Tellidian?"
I nodded, recalling what Io had said about him.
Tisamenus shook his head. "He is a great mantis, sir, and is now counted by some the head of our clan, though he dare not show his face in Elis. But he is consumed with malice, sir. I am his kinsman, and I find those words as bitter as gall in my mouth. Yet they are true. He is the sworn foe of Rope, and has said that he will destroy it, if it does not destroy him."
Here the black man made several quick gestures. I did not understand most of them, but one certainly represented a dagger plunged into his own chest.
"It's true," Tisamenus told us, "that Rope imprisoned him, and that he escaped as you describe." He heaved a sigh. "With what infinite patience the gods labor to teach us! We speak at times of a man who will stop at nothing; I have not infrequently spoken thus myself. And yet it never strikes us, when we must deal with such a man, that he will, in fact, stop at nothing."
Tisamenus pierced me with his eyes. "But he had slandered our city, sir—your own and mine. You forget, hmm? You haven't forgotten, I hope, that you've been proclaimed a resident of the most glorious city in Hellas?"
The truth is that I remember nothing of that, but out of politeness I said, "Certainly not."
"And I"—Tisamenus touched his chest—"I have been granted a like privilege. We're her adopted sons, sir, both of us. You will have heard before this, no doubt, that the noble Pasicrates desires to marry in order that he may adopt the little barbarian called Polos. Tell me, sir, who owes the greater loyalty to his father? Is it the son of his body, or one he has adopted?"
I said that I supposed the adopted son owed more, for his father had been his rescuer as well.
"Nicely reasoned, sir! Consider my position, then, if you will. I was in Elis, where I still maintain the house that once I shared with my wife, for the Italoan Festival. There, too, was my cousin, leveling the grossest insults and the vilest slanders against the very city that had a short time before honored me by making me her son. What was I to do? Sit silent and appear by my silence to consent? I essayed a response to his defamations, and was shouted down by men I had known—had numbered among my friends, in fact—since boyhood. In desperation, I dispatched a letter to our patron and another to my good friend Cyklos, both carried by the swiftest of my slaves. In them I recounted what I had seen and heard, and urged that they warn my cousin that he was making enemies of many who would greatly have preferred to be his friends. Would you not have done the same?"
I agreed that I would, though I would probably have gone to Rope myself to hurry things along.
"Just so, sir. As it happened, the prince regent had not yet returned to the city, but Cyklos dispatched several trusted officers to reason with my cousin. They came as a delegation, you understand, and not a military force. I believe there were five or six all told. Elis welcomed them, and when they found that nothing they could say would sway my cousin, they invited him to visit Rope, where he might speak with Cyklos in person, pointing out that he had never troubled to see for himself the modest place to which he had imputed so much evil. He demurred; they insisted, and at last, having received permission from the magistrates, placed him under restraint and carried him to Rope by main force. Do you know how criminals are commonly confined, sir, in Rope?"
I did not, nor did the black man.
"They are flung into pits, sir, and afterward their food is thrown down to them. Nothing of the sort, you may be sure, was done to my ill-mannered cousin. Instead Cyklos himself, one of the most distinguished men in our city, welcomed him as a guest in his own home, though he was later forced to confine him when he insisted upon leaving at once.
"As I was about to say, I think it likely that my cousin is responsible for the sorrow that oppresses you. It is more than possible that he has charmed you in some way. I wished to speak with you now because I have heard that he is here for the games. I trust that you recall his appearance? If not, your friend can point him out to you."
When I wrote that which stands above, I had no notion that we would in fact encounter this man, who seems generally to be called Hegesistratus of Elis, so quickly. Diokles came (which was why I stopped writing), and we went to the place where the judges of the games sit to receive those who wish to take part—we were a great throng, come as I soon learned not only from all parts of Hellas, but from every other place where the Hellenes' tongue is spoken.
In this courtyard in Dolphins many were examined at length, for the rule is that only Hellenes may compete. The black man's wife told me, in fact, that he had been anxious to take part in the stadion and the javelin throwing, but had been told that he could not, though he had offered to pay his own fees. We waited there for some while before we were permitted to address one of the hellanodikai.
This man knew Diokles and greeted him by name. Diokles in turn introduced the rest of us and explained that the black man understood that he would not be allowed to compete, but that he wished to study the way in which the games were conducted with an eye to establishing a similar event among his own countrymen. Pasicrates's name was entered on three rolls as soon as his fees had been paid.
"Are you a Hellene?" the hellanodikas asked after looking long at my face.
I said, "Certainly," and explained as Tisamenus and Diokles had instructed me that I had been made a citizen of Rope.
"That's bronze-bound, Agatharchos," Diokles declared when I had finished. "I got it straight from King Pausanias. I wasn't going to take him on until I did."
"I see." The hellanodikas fingered his beard.
"He will drive His Highness's chariot," Tisamenus told him. "I myself have been made a Rope Maker, as you may know already; I am commonly called Tisamenus of Elis. The noble Pasicrates, a Rope Maker by birth, will vouch for him as well, I feel certain."
All eyes turned toward the one-armed man, who said with the intonation of a serpent, "He is a resident of my city—but he is no Hellene."
At these words, I saw something I would never have thought to see. Tisamenus whirled and raised his fist to the one-armed man, who backed away with fear naked upon his face.
Deftly, Diokles stepped between them. "A little rivalry, Agatharchos. You understand."
The hellanodikas shrugged. "Better than I want to. Latros Spartathen, if you're really a Hellene, let's hear you spout some poetry." I confessed that I did not remember any. "Come, now. You must know something. How about this:
" 'For thee, my son, I wept my life away; For thee through Hell's eternal dungeons stray; Nor came my fate by lingering pains and slow,
Nor bent the silver-shafted queen her bow;
No dire disease bereaved me of my breath; Thou, thou, my son, wert my disease and death;
Unkindly with my love my son conspired,
For thee I lived, for absent thee expired.' "
Sorrow swept me away—a moaning wind. My eyes filled with tears; I could only shake my head.
"Sir," Tisamenus whispered, "you must speak now, and speak poetry, or—Cyklos does not regard you kindly."
The palace rose before me, tier upon tier. Frantically I hurried from image to image—a man with the head of a crocodile, another with that of a hawk.
"Well?" the hellanodikas inquired.
I tried to repeat what he had said about the silver-shafted queen, though I did not know then—and do not know now—what it meant. For an instant, I seemed to glimpse her behind him, her smooth, fair face aglow above his black hair. From somewhere or noplace the half-remembered rhymes rose to my lips:
"You golden lyre, Apollo's and the muses',
Your tune commands the dance, your tone he uses,
When master of the warbling choir,
He lifts the crystal voices higher."
Faintly I heard someone shout, "What... ?
Latro!"
"You quench the bolt, the lightning's fearful fire,
The eagle rests his wings, that never tire;
To hear you shaken by your song,
Fell Ares quits the spear-proud throng."
"Latro, it's me, Pindaros!" Though he is older than I by ten years at least, and smaller, too, he wrapped me in a bear's embrace and lifted me off my feet.
"Will drive for His Highness in the chariot race," muttered the hellanodikas as he wrote. "Boxer. Pankratiast."
Pindaros and the black man danced, swinging each other like stones in a sling.
FORTY-ONE
The God Himself Shall Rule
THUS IT WAS DECIDED AFTER much argument. Pharetra is going tomorrow, with her queen, Themistocles, Hegesistratus, and the rest. Meanwhile, a score of travelers arrive each time I draw breath; and it is the talk of the town—still more so of the great camp beyond it that spreads ever wider. When Pindaros invited us to join him over wine, I doubted that there was a drop left in Dolphins, or a single place to sit; but he guided us to the inn where he stays whenever he comes here.
"Which is every four years," he told us, "each time they hold the games. I haven't won as yet, but I have high hopes—very high—for this year. And it's good publicity."
Thinking him too old for the footraces, I asked whether he boxed. He and Diokles laughed about that. (Pasicrates and the mantis were not with us, though Pindaros had invited them both. Pasicrates would not stay, while Tisamenus, I would guess, did not wish him to speak with the prince alone.)
Over our wine, Diokles and Pindaros explained the structure of the games to me. There are to be trials of music as well as strength and swiftness. For a time I ceased this writing to ask Diokles about their order again, which Kichesippos allowed; this is to be relied upon.