Authors: Fred Saberhagen
All was soon in readiness for the separation of our two ships, and not much time was wasted in farewells. Thera lay about forty miles almost due south, and we aboard the Athenian vessel sailed in that direction, interrupting our voyage only once to put into a cove on another small island, where we looked for fresh water and tried to replenish our food supplies.
Two of our men went off foraging on land, while others fished. None of the native population appeared. We dined well that evening, the shore party having returned with a few domestic geese, which the King of Athens accepted as his due from whatever inhabitants this island might possess. The wine was passed around the fire that night, and the bawdy jokes went with it. My friend the Phoenician and the pair of adventurers who had come with him from his crew were soon convinced that this king was not the stuffy type.
It was early the next day when Thera rose over the horizon ahead of us, and late afternoon when we drew close to it. This supposed abode of the gods was not quite so big an island as Naxos, but at a distance there was a certain resemblance. Thera looked like little more than a single mountain rising from the sea, double-peaked and surrounded by a thick platform of lowlands that gradually came into view as we sailed closer. Here, as on Sicily, one of the first features to become visible during an approach by sea was a volcano, from which a faint thread of smoke ascended to heaven. None of us knew what this fiery mountain might be named.
There was no visible evidence of any intelligent activity, either human or divine, as we surveyed the island from the sea. Darkness was approaching and we postponed our exploration until tomorrow. The weather was so calm that night that we could lie at anchor on a shoal. The stars as always wheeled overhead, and we picked out the eternal figures of gods and monsters in their majestic posings, and wondered as men will wonder about their influence on humanity.
At dawn we raised our anchor and set sail again; in a matter of half a day we were able to circumnavigate the island entirely, despite some unfavorable winds.
There was only one harbor on Thera, a small one, with no traffic at all to be seen at its mouth.
By now murmurs had begun among the crew that it would be good to have a man with wings scout ahead on approaching such an ominous place as this abode of gods, innocent and peaceful though the island looked in the full sunshine. There was no hint as yet among the sailors of any real refusal to obey their king and captain; they still loved and feared Theseus more than they could fear any mere stories and rumors.
For my part, I needed no muttered hints. If we were really going to put into the harbor of Thera—and I had no doubt that we were—then I preferred making my first approach from aloft, where my own chances of escape, at least, ought to be much better. The truth was that I had the choice of doing this myself, or loaning my wings to whichever crew member might happen to be approximately my size. Under the circumstances I preferred to take the lead.
Anyway, none of my shipmates were rushing forward to volunteer. And I had another reason for preferring to use the wings myself, thinking that a clumsy neophyte would almost certainly damage them. Surely some powerful gods had been on my side on Naxos, that I had managed to bring away my wings unhurt from that orgy.
Still it was with considerable misgivings that I strapped my wax-and-leather pinions once more to my shoulders, and leaped overboard, this time launching myself from the small elevation of the prow. As before, I had to beat the air smartly to keep my feet from dragging in the water. But once launched, I easily attained a good altitude and set my course for the center of the island, while a small and rather nervous cheer went up behind me.
Soon I decided to deviate somewhat from the direct course toward the central mountains, thinking that it would be wiser and more productive to survey the whole extent of the island from a moderate altitude before approaching the peaks.
It was soon evident to me, from the appearance of some scattered habitations and cultivated fields, that a few humans at least still remained on Thera. When presently I caught a glimpse of some of these people, they did indeed look somewhat more civilized than the current residents of Naxos.
Some of these Therans showed so little curiosity at seeing me fly overhead that my own curiosity was aroused by them in turn. I landed near a small village, in an effort to discover how great their familiarity might be with flying men in general.
The villagers eyed me timidly when I approached them on foot, yet held their ground. Thus encouraged, I questioned them, and learned that they had adapted well to what they described as the almost continuous presence, for many years now, of gods and goddesses upon their island. At least the situation had left them virtually free of any worry about merely human brigands and oppressors, as none of those had dared to come near for more than a decade.
These commonplace inhabitants of Thera spoke what was evidently their own dialect, with which I had some difficulty. They were vague in their replies to my questions, and reluctant to give me any information. When at last I tried to reassure them that, despite my wings, I was only a human being like themselves, this rather than easing their minds seemed only to upset them all the more.
When I tried to convey to these people my intention of exploring some of the higher portions of their island, they reacted with alarm, and some tried to warn me against any such effort. They themselves were all determined to stay clear of those upper regions, where, they swore, the caves and meadows had for years been occupied by the gods, or beings claiming that distinction.
Looking up at the looming volcanic peaks, I could see, as I had on the previous day, a trace of rising smoke. I asked about eruptions, but that was not what bothered the natives. They assured me that the volcanos had not been really active within living memory, and indeed I could observe no evidence of fresh lava upon the higher slopes.
I leaped into the air and flew, then circled uncertainly for a time. But presently I made up my mind, deciding to return to the ship and report to Theseus before exploring any further.
I reached the ship without further incident. When my royal companion had heard my report, he remained, as I had feared, utterly unshaken in his determination to search the island thoroughly for Dionysus, and if possible to try conclusions with the god. The young king fretted and fumed that he could not fly as I could, and come to grips with his rival that way. But at the moment there was no way to remedy that.
Only now, at last, did a general murmur of protest arise among the crew. Theseus quieted this incipient grumbling by telling them that all who wished to do so could remain aboard the ship, while he led a small party of volunteers inland. He told the men, and we all believed him, that he was perfectly willing, if need be, to attempt the expedition without the help of any of his Athenian volunteers.
This shamed a couple of the Athenians into agreeing to come with him. And Kena'ani insisted on going ashore too. "Why else have I come to Thera, if not to land on it?"
And as before, I volunteered without fuss to go along, knowing there would have to be a flying scout, and not wishing to trust my precious wings to anyone else.
We never did put into the harbor, but rowed into the shallows near a beach on the other side of the island. From there I fluttered ashore, while Theseus, Kena'ani, and the two members of the crew who were to accompany us leaped into shallow surf and waded. Once inland past the beach, we climbed a trail, or rather Theseus and the others climbed it, while I flew on in advance to reconnoiter. Generally I kept a few score paces ahead of my comrades, scouting out the best route upward and looking out as best I could for any surprises.
Before we had made half the distance to the top there was no longer any real trail to find. No one, or very few people, had climbed this way on foot for a long time. I sweated and labored, seeking out the most practical route; flying, in fits and starts is hard work, especially when done only a short distance above the ground.
I still remember that day, and the discoveries we made then, as if it were only yesterday.
To begin with, I recall very plainly how we came without warning upon the first of the strange dwellings. This happened only a little way below the rim of the broad plateau that roughly encircled the twin peaks just below the feet of their barren upper cones.
Not that we immediately recognized that first strange find of ours as a dwelling, or as something constructed by the gods. It was more like a great inverted wine-bowl, the size of a respectable house, and broken as any common wine-bowl might be broken, so that most of its substance lay in shards. It had been constructed almost entirely of some material resembling dark glass, or Baltic amber, and when we first gazed on it, its purpose was as much a mystery to us as its construction. Yes, I too was mystified, even though I at least had seen glass many times before, glass of Egyptian and other origins, and had even worked with it in my Athenian workshop.
The five of us stood in a circle around this shattered structure for some time, trying to decide what it had been before it was destroyed. That destruction was unmistakably deliberate, as if it had been accomplished by the repeated blows of some giant armed with a hammer. I think none of us suggested that this glass bowl might ever have been a house. But the truth was, as we later came to understand, that if one of us had mentioned a prison cell, he would not have been far wrong.
Before our party moved to ascend the trail again—from here on up a thin path was indeed visible once more—I went scouting ahead again on my wings.
When I had flown high enough to be able to peer above the level of the uppermost meadow, or plateau, that more or less surrounded the high peaks, I beheld a grassy expanse studded with boulders, and marked here and there with small streams, some of them issuing from springs that must have been near the extreme heights.
Here and there this broad, extensive meadow bore clusters of broken dwellings similar to the one we had already discovered. All of these buildings, or ruins, appeared to be completely deserted. I hastened back to my companions and reported this discovery.
When I rejoined the young king and his companions they were climbing steadily, toiling back and forth among the rocks, and they of course paused to hear what I might have to say. Theseus listened without surprise or excitement to my report of what awaited us above—his only reaction was one of disappointment, that the god Dionysus did not appear to be there now.
Now I used my legs instead of my wings, though I kept the pinions strapped on and was ready at every instant to leap into the air. After climbing on foot the remaining distance to the high meadow, we peered into one after another of these great mysterious inverted wine-bowls. Everything we saw confirmed that no one dwelt in any of the structures now, though there were suggestions—animal bones gnawed and discarded, footprints and trails too vague and old to read—that once, not too long ago, someone had.
Some of the structures were larger and more complicated than others, and one, I recall, was at least as big as the Temple of Athena in Athens itself, rising three or four stories above the meadow. Some of these buildings had been constructed in part of other and even stranger materials than glass or amber. But all of them now looked deserted.
And it seemed to me that everything in them, or almost everything, was broken. It was as if some ritually thorough policy of destruction had been enforced.
Then, while we were in the midst of exploring these ruins, there came for me another of those moments that will never be possible to forget.
I was standing in front of a shattered wall, made of one of the mysterious
opaque substances used in so much of the construction here; and this wall was
very much like all the other shattered walls around me, except that I realized abruptly that a human face was peering at me through one of its many holes.
It was no ordinary face. On my second glance at this apparition, with my previous experience with the Bull and Dionysus never far from my awareness, I was not entirely sure that the countenance now confronting me was wholly human.
Not that there was any gross disparity in shape or feature. My first logical impression of the man behind the wall was only that he must be of no more than ordinary height, and young, so that his brown beard, bleached somewhat by the sun, still grew patchily. His brown eyes were large and round with astonishment as he stared at me through the hole, and the expression on his face suggested that he had never seen anything quite like me before. But somehow, before I had seen anything of this man but the central features of his face, I knew that he was extraordinary. This person was somehow of a kind with Dionysus—which meant that to me he was, perhaps, more than a mere human being after all.
I called out in a low voice to my four companions, who were moving about at no great distance behind me. And at the same time the stranger and I, as if by common though unspoken consent, both began to move toward the place where the wall separating us ended in a broken opening. When we reached that point we would be able to confront each other fully, at scarcely more than arms-length distance.
The man I had discovered was clothed only in a lion-skin, I saw when we had both moved beyond the corner of the wall. But even this bizarre garment was not the first nor most remarkable thing that any of us noticed about him.
As greatly as Theseus had excelled the clerk Stomargos in strength and bulk of muscular development, even so, it seemed to me, this stranger excelled the King of Athens, or any other mortal man that I had ever seen. And yet the massive body poised in front of me looked neither fat nor slow; and the muscles under the tanned skin were not only extraordinarily large, but appeared to have a different
quality
about them as well, as if, despite their natural flow and movement, they might be formed of some material harder than human flesh. This peculiarity is something hard to put into words. I was reminded of the Bronze Man patrolling the shore of Crete; not that I thought the figure in front of me was rigid metal, or had the least doubt that it was fully alive.