SWORD AND SORCERESS XVI, page 10
The girl led Cynthia straight past the village and along the Sacred Way toward the temple of Apollo. So the mother had not been living in Didyma when she fell ill, then; perhaps she had come to seek the help of Apollo the Healer and had not received it, and was now too weak to walk. They passed by the temple entrance and turned to the west.
Here a smaller ring of boundary stones enclosed the shrine of Artemis Pythie. Between the stones, through the trees of the grove, they could see the outcrop of rock that brought forth the goddess' sacred springs; and at the entrance stood the Hydrophor herself, her chief priestess, carrying a golden cup, with several of the attendants. The girl led Cynthia between them into the shrine, weaving back and forth as between close-growing trees. None of the women took the slightest notice. It was as if the ring of Gyges shielded both of them from sight: and Cynthia, who had seen already many strange
things in the homeplaces of goddesses, felt the hair rise on the back of her neck.
She took a step into the temenos, and another, and suddenly a great flash of light flowered in the cool western morning sky and blinded her. She tripped and fell flat, and heard a deep voice rumbling like a stormwind, like thunder over her head,
"Is that the best you could find?"
Foolish people (knowing no better) frequently are tricked into taking a man's voice, heard through an actor's speaking mask, for the voice of a god. No one who has heard the voice of a god will ever mistake it for the voice of a mortal. Cynthia pulled her stole over her head and wondered if this was death at last. But she heard the little maiden saying,
"Uncle, don't be foolish. If you burn her to ashes, she can't do anything. Cover yourself; you can't talk to her like that."
The light that blazed through the woolen stuff of her stole and through her eyelids dimmed, and the deep voice rumbled, "Woman, look at me."
She uncovered her head and obeyed. The figure before her might have been man-sized and within arm's reach, or mountain-tall and far away. He stood naked, a bow in his left hand, a little animal sitting in his right palm. It turned its head to look at him. She had seen his likeness on coins and medals all morning. His hair was long and curled; there was a little smile on his lips, such as one saw on the old kouroi, the figures of young gods. A cruel little smile, with nothing human in it.
"Listen, mortal," he said. "If you cure my sister of her illness, you shall have my favor. If not, not. If you fail to cure her—" He raised the bow in his left hand—
"Yes, Uncle," the little maiden said, "you've made your point. Now let the woman do her work. Don't you have somewhere you're supposed to be?"
The god favored his niece with a look of annoyance that would have turned a mortal to cinders, and vanished.
"He's always wanted somewhere," the girl explained. "Now he has to be in Delphi, and soon after, he runs to Kolophon and from there to Xanthos, and then back on a run to Klaros, then to Delos or back here, or wherever the oracle drinks from the sacred spring, or chews the bay, or shakes the tripod, and calls him." In the darkness he left behind, the little maiden shone like the moon behind a cloud.
"That was Apollo," Cynthia said.
"Yes."
"And his sister is—"
"Artemis. You know: Leto's twins."
"And she's your mother?" Artemis was, going by the tales, the most virginal of the gods, saving only Athene who had sprung motherless from the brow of Zeus. "What is your name?"
Now she smiled, like the moon breaking out of cloud. "Arete," she said.
Virtue. And it explained why her gown was so clean and white, her flowers unwithered, why none had seen her unbidden. "But I know you," Cynthia said. "I knew you in the form of a man. Komi was his name."
"Oh, yes." The maiden's eyes glistened with tears. "Yes, he was one of mine. I'll not threaten you. Only, please: for the love we both bore him: cure my mother."
"If I can."
Cynthia got to her feet and looked around. This was not the same temenos she had seen before she had stepped into it: tiny, close-walled naiskos here, altar over there. Only the outcrop of rock was the same, with its springs that bubbled out of the clefts and fell into golden basins below. The white pillar-stones marking the temenos boundaries had receded to a great distance, and beyond them the pale shapes of mortal worshipers moved about, dim as clouds. Within the vast plain of the temenos there were a few trees here and there, and over against the west a dark grove. One great oak stood nearby, and in its shade a woman lay on a bed inlaid with ivory. The cloth that covered her was rich with
Tyrian purple, interwoven with threads of gold. From a branch hung a bow and a quiver.
Cynthia came close and knelt down to look at her. She seemed a woman of some forty years, thin and pale, with a few lines in her face and throat. A little of her daughter's light seemed to shine out of her, and indeed Cynthia felt she could almost see the sheet and pillow through the goddess' skin.
There was no point in asking why Apollo Paian, the Healer, could not heal his sister himself. If he could, he would; therefore he couldn't. If she lived long enough, she might discover the reason why.
"First, study the patient's appearance." She could almost have recited the description in Hippokrates word-for-word: the nose sharp, the eyes sunken, the ears cold and drawn in and their lobes distorted, the skin of the face hard, stretched, and dry, and the color pale. "How long has she been like this?"
"Like this?" Arete had come close; she bent down and brushed the fair hair away from her mother's face. "She's been feeling poorly ever since I can remember: two hundred years, maybe, as mortals reckon time. But this—the vomiting, seeing things that aren't there, speaking out of madness or not at all—that began this spring."
"What was the weather like this spring? I mean, what was it like here (if she was here)? I was at the other end of Greater Greece then, halfway to the Pillars of Herakles."
"The weather," Arete said, frowning in concentration. "It was a very cold, rainy, late spring. You'd think such things would not bother us immortals; but if they did— why didn't she recover once the weather got warm?"
"Well, I don't know that yet. A mortal, at least, might take such a chill in such a spring as he'd never recover from, no matter how warm it got." She looked around. A bowl lay on the ground beside the bed, made of gold with an ivory spoon in it, and a golden cup. She picked up the bowl; it was half full of something clear as water and firm as soft jelly. Ambrosia, she supposed, the food
of the immortals, prepared in a soft form like to the barley gruel fed to sick mortals. She raised the bowl to her nose and sniffed: there was no smell so far as she could tell.
"You shouldn't taste that," Arete said.
"I hadn't planned to. What's in the cup? Water?"
"The water from her own spring. It's all she will take now."
Cynthia took a cautious sip. The water tasted pungent, almost, and slightly bittersweet. The candle in her mind burned a little brighter. It was like, it was like— Curse! she couldn't put her mind to it. She got up from the bedside and looked around again. The great plain within the temenos seemed perfectly flat, or even bowl-shaped—or maybe that was just a trick of the light. There were stretches of green grass, and she could see deer wandering out of the woods to graze. (A white stag raised its head to look at her, and lowered it again.) But much of the plain was a powdery cracked limestone with bushes of laurel and heather and rhododendron growing out of it, the sunlight bright on their rustling leaves. And as she stood looking blank-faced across the plain, a bee flew by her ear with a loud buzz and hurried away into the distance. But the light in her mind blazed up and illuminated that bee, lit up the golden fur on his body, his glassy wings, his tiny dark-eyed head. Stories welled up in her mind like the springs of Artemis: poisoned armies, raving warriors, foragers who should have stayed on beans and horsemeat. She turned back to Arete.
"What place is this?" she asked. "This vast plain that fits so neatly within a little ring of stones?"
"It's the plain of asphodels, the plain of immortal things," said Arete. "The little patch of ground inside those boundary stones stands for, or in a sacred sense it really is, this wide plain where the herds of Artemis graze without fear, where all healing plants grow."
"Oh, it is, is it? May your words be as true as the truth." Cynthia almost gripped the young goddess by the shoulders, but thought better of it. Yes, almost at her
feet grew a clump of spiky asphodels. The only flower that grew in both worlds, some poet had said. Well, he was wrong: the heather was wearing ten shades of soft rose and purple, and the rhododendrons must have been a glorious sight when they were in bloom. "Now tell me: is this plain on earth?"
"I'm not exactly prepared to answer that question," said Arete after a moment's thought. "I'm only a young goddess, lady; give me a little time to learn."
"Does the same sun shine on it, that shines on earth?"
"Oh, yes."
"Does the rain fall on it, water its plants, and sink deep into its soil?"
"Yes."
"And does that water, presently, bubble up out of the ground into these springs? And this is what your mother has been drinking all year?"
"Yes, yes. What is it? Is she poisoned? Can you cure it? How could any poison harm an immortal goddess?"
"Yes, it's poison; yes, I know a treatment. As to your last question, I'm not prepared to answer that, not yet.
"Listen. Xenophon tells of a band of soldiers traveling overland near the region of Colchis. They found wild beehives, ate the honey, and fell ill. They acted mad— or drunk. They fell to the ground in their thousands, unable to stand, miserable and despondent. It took them days to recover. Later they found out the honey they had eaten came from the flower of the rhododendron. The people of that region know better than to eat it themselves. 'Mad honey,' they call it. Medea lived there, princess of Colchis, witch and poisoner. Dionysos danced there with his Maenads."
"Mad lads," said Artemis suddenly. "My skip, the moondering wan, high with Castor's brother and his brother Castor."
"The rhododendron blooms here every year," Arete said, "but this never happened before."
"That's where the weather comes in. The spring was cold and wet and late: there was nothing for the bees to
feed on, except the rhododendron. They made it into thin, greenish, watery honey that dropped from the combs: and if, as I guess, their hives were not well-shielded from the weather, then every time it rained, the honey washed right out of the uncapped combs. And into the water your mother has been drinking all year."
"Water," Artemis said. "Wetter. Wether, wither, whether. Why not."
"No, don't give her any," Cynthia said. "I dare say in her good days it still wouldn't have harmed her. But with this weakness upon her, bringing her down almost, no offense meant, to the feeble strength of a mortal—"
"About half of that seems to make sense," Arete said. "Let's assume it does. You said there is a treatment?"
"Sound honey, and pure water," Cynthia said. "Or rue as an emetic, but I don't want to make her vomit now, she's too weak. There'll be nothing but traces inside her anyway. I'll go find the honey; can you get water that doesn't come from these springs? Rain water would be fine."
"Yes, I can have it brought. But the honey—" she gestured toward the plain. "Won't it be poisoned, too?"
"Not the new stuff, that they've made since the other flowers bloomed. Sometimes you can get good and bad within parts of the same comb." She knelt beside the bed again, where she had laid down her sack, and found flint and steel. "I'll be back as soon as I can."
"Wait." Arete ran her hands over Cynthia's face and hair. "That will protect you from stings—as long as you don't become afraid."
Out on the plain, time was still passing as it did on earth; the sun had risen almost to the noon. Cynthia looked back to mark the place where the great oak grew by the outcrop, and set off to look for flowers.
The grassy lawns where the deer grazed were more clover than grass, thick with white blossoms, and the bees were foraging over them as greedily as newborn babes at the breast. The white stag lifted its head again
to look at Cynthia, sighed as a weary man might have done, and stooped down to graze.
The bees were no ordinary bees. If there were bees of the gods, they were these: bees the size of sparrows, bees that hummed under their breath like a whole chorus of deep-voiced Scythians, bees that flew off with pollen clumps on their legs the size of horse beans. They could fly faster than she could walk, but when one flew out of sight, another came into view over her shoulder, steadily leading her toward the hive.
It was plain enough that none of the spells from the scrolls in the turtle shell would be of any use to her here. There were charms to keep bees from swarming or, once they had swarmed, to coax them to settle in a new hive. But Cynthia had had as friend a farmer who kept bees, and she knew the value of smoke.
The bees led her to a huge oak, still green and hale but split up the side to a point higher than she could reach. Cautiously she knelt and peered inside. It was dark, and it murmured, and smelt of wax and honey.
Piles of green heather branches at the entrance, on a bed of dry leaves and grass to catch the spark and fire the whole stack. The grass flared, the heather smoldered; the little leaves and flowers blazed up, crackling like hail, and then settled down to pouring out clouds of thick, pungent smoke. The hollow tree drew it in like a chimney. Inside the murmuring rose sharply and fell again, more slowly. " 'Tisn't that the smoke fuddles them, nor makes them more peaceable," her friend had said. " 'Tis that they think the woods are afire and they must fly for their lives. So they go to fill their bellies with honey. And once their bellies are full, look you, they're happy and they don't sting." She gave them a little longer, till their song had dwindled to a thick gluttonous hum. Then she picked up a branch of heather by its unburnt end and stepped inside.
The comb hung like curtains of thick-woven homespun from unseen ceilings far overhead. Here and there, where the cells were not yet capped, bees hung in clusters
drinking their fill. Long-fallen combs crunched underfoot like shells on the seashore.
She looked overhead, peering through the thick smoke, with only the fitful light of the torch to see by. She thought she caught a glimpse of the king bee, his long body as large as a wood pigeon's, but she could not be sure of it.
What she needed was a piece of filled comb that she could break away with her hands, and most of these combs were entirely too big. Each separate cell must hold several spoonfuls of honey. Wait—there was a small piece, growing out of a great hanging comb like a wart on someone's earlobe. If she could break it loose—
She laid the torch on the ground and tugged at it with both hands. It bent, and swayed, and came loose with a chorus of pops. Honey oozed over her hands. She picked up her torch again and turned to go.
But the larger comb was still swaying and popping, and the anxious bees rose from it in a great cloud as it collapsed to the floor, folding up on itself with a sound like a long sigh.
The cloud of bees swirled and thickened into a pillar the size of a man, that bent its shapeless top this way and that as if to search for the person responsible. The song rose into a bellow of rage, a war chant for an army of myriads.
It had been a mistake to lay the torch down on the floor. Everywhere a twig or leaf or strand of dry grass had blown in across the wax, a little candle flame had sprung up on a slender wick. It made for a lot of bewilderment and not much real light, and where in Hades was the doorway?
The pillar of bees was circling now, like a beast closing in on its prey—but no beast went upright, none but man, the most dangerous of all. She fancied that it would soon put forth a head to see her with, arms with poisoned talons to grasp and kill. She took in a last deep breath, dropped the torch and trod it underfoot till it was out.
Then she trod out the little candle flames, one by one, till they were all quenched and the place was dark again.
The bees roared like swarms of lions around her head, but none of them touched her. Perhaps they didn't sting because of the smoke; perhaps they didn't sting because of the blessing of Arete, and because Cynthia was just too busy to fear. After some time her eyes grew used to the darkness; she saw a faint light glimmering through the smoke, and groped her way outside. Eyes watering, her clothes reeking of smoke and sticky with honey, she made her way back across the plain of asphodels to the oak tree beside the welling rock.
Two of the Hydrophor's women were there, their faces empty as in a dream, carrying between them a cask full of water. "Rain water," Arete said, "some housewife's laundering water from the village." The women put down the cask and turned to go. As they passed between the pillars of the gate they vanished and reappeared cloudlike on the distant horizon.
