The Gifts of Pandora, page 24
The Titans battled for the life and soul of the Thalassa world, and Men died in droves in their names, but Hades forbid Titan parties should be impacted. Numerous walls bore vibrant frescoes depicting undersea cities and mer courts as well as coral reefs teeming with kaleidoscopic varieties of fish. Grand works of art honoring the sea Tethys and her consort so loved.
How, exactly, had she arranged for mer to serve her? Who were these Telkhines that followed her bidding? Her words indicated they hailed from Pontus, a fabled kingdom beneath the Aegean. And that Nereus, apparently, ruled there now, though Poseidon would do so in Pandora’s time. Pieces of the puzzle remained elusive, and, much as she wanted to solve the picture, she feared to ask too much. She could not know how much Tethys expected her to be aware of in this time period, and a mischosen phrase might turn the Titan from a half-gracious host to a suspicious gaoler.
Almost biting her tongue, Pandora held her peace. Tethys showed her to her new chambers, these too painted in cool blues reminiscent of the sea outside. Her room had a shutterless window from which she could look out and catch sight of the waves, far, far below.
After some few pleasantries, Tethys left her with her thoughts, and Pandora sank upon a surprisingly comfortable wool-stuffed bed. After her ordeal upon the bireme, exhaustion tightened its grip upon her, and she slept.
Her days without Prometheus and Pyrrha stretched on and on. Despite attempting to learn as much as she could of this time and place and the Telkhines, ennui inevitably set in each afternoon. There was a sense she could not shake that she languished here, passing time while failing to live. Had she begun to define her very existence in reference to that of her new family? Such thoughts, pathetic and weak, drove her to once more dive into her studies in Tethys’s palace.
She perused papyrus scrolls and read of the Titans who lorded over this Golden Age, and how they squabbled over land and Ambrosia. She read tales of Nymphs pursued by supposedly valiant Titan lords, as if the satiation of their lusts held some inherent heroism. Most of all, she took occasion to make her subtle inquiries about the Telkhines.
Nereus, King of Pontus, had given Tethys a pact long ago. Some mer he granted to her service, in exchange for a steady stream of mortals offered up to his kingdom. What did the mer use Men for? This, Pandora did not know, though some of the palace servants believed the mer dragged their hapless sacrifices into the deep and feasted upon them, body and soul.
Pandora remained dubious.
Ten days after her arrival here, Okeanus returned and with him, word claimed, came Prometheus.
Unable to contain herself, Pandora awaited them in the vestibule, shifting from foot to foot, when she wasn’t pacing about between the columns. When her lover arrived, Pyrrha cradled in his arms, his sapphire eyes locked with her own, all the rest of the palace fell away. Perhaps others stared as they embraced, as she shuddered in gasping, wordless relief at holding the two of them once more. If so, if they gaped at her wantonness, Pandora cared not a whit.
Nestled against his chest, she clutched Pyrrha’s little hand.
Moments like these, one remembered truths that so far transcended petty notions of propriety. After nigh losing those who mattered most, one was forced to admit to oneself. Everything besides the people one loves comes a distant second, so far behind as to seem irrelevant and self-indulgent. Any who could not understand that failed themselves.
After she had cradled Pyrrha, after she had nursed her—and found her milk somewhat diminished, much to her dismay—and the child slept, she laced her fingers with Prometheus and lay with him. Only then, spent and reeling, could she form the words to speak of what had happened, her face pressed his bare chest.
“The woman who attacked me bore auric armor, helm to greaves. She had great, golden-feathered wings.” Pandora swallowed. “I thought she intended to kill me for trying to subvert Ananke’s will. All I could think was about how you warned me but I hadn’t listened. But … Zeus had been right there and I thought, if I could stop him from winning the Titanomachy, the whole World might have been better.”
“Fate is not always what we think,” Prometheus offered. “The woman who attacked you sounds like Nemesis. The Moirai have many servants, but she is the fiercest of them. An assassin and enforcer of Fate.”
Pandora had suspected as much, though that thought had induced more questions. “If the timeline always included me coming back to the past, falling in love with you, and having Pyrrha …” She felt an almost imperceptible tightening of his chest beneath her, perhaps anticipating her line of thought. “If time could bend upon itself thus, did it also always include my confrontation with Nemesis?”
“You begin to apprehend the paradoxes of Fate.”
So Pandora had always tried to kill Zeus as a child, and Nemesis had always stopped her? Which meant she was, essentially, impotent to alter the course of Fate … Or could only do so with such a rank deviation that not even the Moirai could anticipate it. But no such course seemed to present itself, and besides, once more looking upon her family, how could she make any choice that would deny her them?
Which left her again trying to survive the turbulent present. “Kronos knew about the Box. I cannot understand how he can know about it, long before its invention. But since he does, and appears to know of me, I cannot imagine he will give over his pursuit of me.” What would the Titan do with the Box, should he claim it?
Prometheus’s silence spoke more than the Titan probably wished, and Pandora pushed herself up on her forearms so as to look into his eyes. “You know something of Kronos, don’t you? Yet you hold it back from me.” She couldn’t quite keep the acid from her tone. She’d dared to think this a problem only with his future self, interacting with her past self. Dared to believe his lingering secrets a mere puzzle for her to unlock, perhaps even one he set for that very purpose. “Who is Kronos? Is he an Oracle as well?”
Another hesitation, and those sapphire eyes flitted over her face. She leaned closer, enclosing his vision, preventing any egress, and thus, she hoped, forcing him to confide in her. “He has seen a great many things, even unto the Time of Nyx, Pandora. Some few of the Titans are older than the rest and are privy to things others might not understand. Perhaps things others cannot understand.”
With a frustrated grunt, she pushed off him and rose, wrapping her peplos about herself. “You have a talent for circumventing the question at hand.”
He leaned on his elbow. “It may behoove those who seek straight answers to remember the World bends in endless curves and folds, and so-called forthright truths only serve to further obfuscate understanding with oversimplification.”
Gah! Such answers made her want to scream. All the more so when she could see the truth in them. “Do not think, dear Prometheus, if I upend a brazier upon your head, it means I don’t love you more than my own life.”
“I am a Firewalker,” he pointed out. “The flames will not harm me.”
“I was shooting for the sheer impact of bronze and coal upon your skull.” She sniffed. No, she would never harm him, exasperating as he might sometimes prove.
Looking at him now, at leisure in their bed, warm and safe, only served to drive home the reminder of what lay ahead for him. Which, in turn, sent her back to her prior conclusion. She could not save him here, in the past. All she could do was use the Box, return to the future, and save him from his torment then.
“I need it back,” she said, the words scouring her insides. She needed to leave this Prometheus, leave their daughter, leave this precious time.
After frowning, Prometheus waved a hand at a satchel he’d dropped by the bedside. Hand shaking—she almost wished he would have said he had lost it—she fished inside until she felt the Box. The damning, impossible, wondrous Box he would build for her and create the sum of their lives from within its depths. She withdrew it and set it upon the foot of their bed, settling down in front of it.
In her crib, little Pyrrha stirred, moaning, feet kicking off her blankets for the thousandth time. As Pandora watched their daughter, an unexpected dry sob wracked her.
Damn the Fates for this!
“You do not have to do this,” Prometheus said.
“Kronos will keep looking for it so long as it remains within his reach.” While true, it was a flimsy excuse, as he would well know. “I cannot leave you in the situation which allowed this to come to me.”
“I am not easy to kill, Pandora.”
Oh, but then, it was not just death he faced in Tartarus, and the look on his face, however much he tried to conceal it, told her even he dreaded the suffering that awaited him.
He rose now, standing naked beside her, hand upon her shoulder. “If it is set correctly, perhaps you can return not so long after you left. That being the case, some few more days here will not make any difference to the future me, save in offering me more memories of this time.”
Ah, an even more beautiful excuse than hers. A while longer.
Another day before she must rip out her own heart.
26
Artemis
207 Golden Age
* * *
For seven years, Artemis had fought for Helion, and at last, the war had ended. The peace council had returned from Atlantis and, despite all he had done, they had granted Atlas control of the island in perpetuity, provided distribution of the Ambrosia was overseen by a new hegemony calling themselves the Ouranid League.
Great swathes of Sardeis lay in utter ruin and, rather than attempt to rebuild, Phoebe had moved a few miles further down the coast to found a new city, Phoeba. Though the Ambrosial War had only just ended, already a new acropolis had sprung up upon this hill, and below it, some few marble structures that would become an agora.
From within this agora, Artemis watched the construction up on the hill. Donkeys hauled carts of marble along a dirt road leading to the summit, the animals straining beneath the weight, indifferent to the irate shouts of their masters. Artisans from around Lydia were up there, carving blocks into caryatids and columns. Phoebe had marked out a space for a Temple of Thoth, and most of the work focused upon that and on the queen’s palace.
Around her, hastily constructed stalls had sprung up, merchants peddling figs and dates and apples. Across the way, another dealer hawked textiles imported from Phoenikia, bearing dyes of rich purple and crimson. And beyond, in the harbor, ships had begun to gather.
Life, it seemed, would spring up the very moment the slaughter ended, and the merchants would come chasing drachmae as if naught had changed. As if streams of golden ichor and the red blood of Men had not stained the land and sea, no small sum of it spilled by Artemis’s hands. Even death was but a small impediment to the implacable, relentless march of commerce.
Sandals fell upon the packed dirt behind her, and Artemis turned, starting at seeing her mother here. The woman so rarely managed to get out of Helion anymore. Artemis had to assume she had come to see her own mother, as she couldn’t have known Artemis would be here.
Artemis moved to embrace her, but her mother held her back. “Was it worth buying your father’s affection at the cost of your grandfather’s?”
Artemis winced. “I don’t know.” Who could say such things?
“He has gone north, I hear, along the Axeinos Sea, even beyond Phrygia.” Into Kimmeria? That was a wild expanse, overrun with Gigantes and closer to the Nyxlands than the sane cared to venture.
All Artemis could do was frown. Her mother was right to blame her for that. Koios felt betrayed by his wife and grandchildren, and maybe he had been. Small wonder he fled these lands. Maybe … Maybe now that the war was over, Artemis could travel there and convince him to return. She supposed it was the least she could do to clean up the mess she had made of this land.
A marriage broken. A city razed to the ground.
But then, Atlas had been forced to capitulate, and the nascent Ouranid League ought to ensure Ambrosia flowed throughout the Thalassa world. All Titans, not only the greatest among them, would maintain their immortality. Surely she could claim some credit for that. Such things she wanted to say to her mother, but Leto’s world was smaller. Males like Helios had forced it to become smaller when they named her Nymph. As small as a golden cell in a dungeon shaped like a palace.
And how could the woman not grieve for the father who had adored her and been driven into virtual exile?
“I might have expected this sort of thing from your brother,” her mother chided. “From you …”
Not knowing what else to say or do, Artemis seized her mother in an embrace, whether it was welcome or not. “I will go to find him, if I can.” Maybe she would spend forever solving one woe after another. “I will bring him back. In time.”
A full moon was up, and though the Temple of Thoth remained incomplete—columns with no roof—four priestesses knelt upon the foundation, offering supplications. Some of their words were in a discordant foreign tongue Artemis had never heard. The very speaking of it made the hair on her neck stand on end, as if some wrongness seeped into the air. Something beyond this world.
The night was thick, pregnant with arcana she could not understand, though she longed for answers.
Outside the temple, she watched the priests. They poured libations over the altar in offerings to the moon. So intent was she upon the proceedings she didn’t even notice her grandmother’s approach until the woman was at her side.
“Is there magic in this?” Artemis whispered.
Phoebe blew out a long breath. “What is magic? There are forces we do not comprehend in the World. We offer them respect because to do less would be hubris. You can feel the touch of something Otherworldly close by on nights like this, I can see it in your posture. Perhaps that is the power of the Primordials.”
Had the Primordials truly given rise to the cosmos in the Time of Nyx?
“And did you actually see the Time of Nyx?” Legends claimed the elder Titans had lived then, had joined Ouranos in ending the reign of Nyx and ushering in this Age. Phoebe and the other five who had won the Ambrosial War claimed to be heirs of Ouranos and named themselves the Ouranid League in his honor. But was that all posturing?
“I was too young to remember much, save we traveled here from somewhere far to the north. That and …” Her grandmother fidgeted a little. “I recall a nightmare, as if the night sky had tried to devour the land itself. Perhaps the cycle of sun and moon had not yet fixed itself as it is now.” She shook her head. “Or perhaps, those are the nightmares of a frightened child. But I believe Kronos when he claims to have seen Ouranos himself, to have fought for his cause. There are, my dear, powers in this World older than Titans. Older, deeper, and more unfathomable.”
And Kronos had, after all, proved himself the most formidable of the Titans in this war. If not for him, perhaps Atlas would have become emperor of the whole of the Thalassa Sea, rather than one of the six members of the Ouranid League. Clearly, Kronos had won the respect of all others, Phoebe included.
But what did Artemis’s grandmother mean by deeper truths? The question niggled at her, a needle worming its way through her mind, demanding answers. Just what lurked beyond this world?
“There is an order in Phoenikia,” Phoebe said, then paused, finally fixing Artemis with a hard gaze. “Your father is among their number, as was I, at one time.”
“An order?”
“Dedicated to uncovering these deeper truths you question at. The Circle of Goetic Mysteries they call themselves, and mayhap they have the answers you seek.”
Artemis’s skin tingled at the thought of it. She had sworn to go first to the Axeinos Sea and seek out her grandfather, though she dare not reveal the task to Phoebe who would surely forbid it. Still, she could not deny a temptation to seek whatever arcana lay out there. Because her grandmother was right: Artemis could feel a puissance saturating the World on nights like this.
“I’m curious to seek them out,” she admitted.
Phoebe nodded. “Do so with care, then. Knowledge is valuable, but sometimes we learn things we might rather not know. The price of it can be steep.”
Her words left Artemis shivering.
If Koios had passed into Kimmeria, he might have either crossed the western strait into Phlegra or skirted the southern shore of the Axeinos Sea through Phrygia. Artemis could not say which way for certain, but Menoetius held some sway in Phrygia, and her grandfather had once considered the Titan a friend. As such, she broke east.
Passing alone through the woodlands was easy enough for one trained in such arts, and only a hint of Perspicacity meant no beasts could sneak up on her. Oh, besides animals, she had heard chimerae haunted the lands around the Arad Mountains. She trusted her ears and nose to catch the spoor of such creatures and avoid them.
Once she scented something acrid and foul, and this she gave a berth of miles, having no desire to witness aught that might have spawned the tales mortals used to frighten their young.
She hunted for her food, swam in the rivers, ran along the banks for the sheer thrill of it, and gave over any attempt to track time. Such was the better life, that those huddled behind city walls so oft forgot. Simple moments that made immortality worth having, and during the seven years of war, such moments had proved far too elusive.
Eventually, though, she had to break away from the sylvan paradise and follow the edge of the sea. Along its shore she walked for miles. Much as she wanted to savor the wonder here, too, winter was closing in. Daylight began to grow scarcer, the nights colder, and her progress slower.
It was thus, in the waning of autumn, that she came upon the camp. A lake of tents, it seemed, dotting around the banks of a river running down from the mountains and joining the sea. From the foundations already laid upon a hill, it seemed these people—whoever they were—had begun construction of a fortress, or perhaps even a whole new polis.
