The Arrow of Apollo, page 12
She could see along a clearing towards a path where, in the gloom, she could make out a shape. Hunched over, it appeared to be on four legs. It raised its head, and from the angle she was at, it resembled the silhouette of a centaur.
‘Maybe a friend of Stargazer!’ said Elissa, relieved, stepping forwards. Silvius grabbed her elbow.
‘Careful …’
Ruffler was right up against Elissa’s legs, his back arched, his hackles raised. The silhouette stepped into a patch of grey light.
It wasn’t a centaur at all. It was a beast, tawny and huge, with black, wet eyes and a rough, shaggy mane.
‘A lion …’ breathed Elissa. The sense of power coming from it was immense.
And on the back of the lion was a woman, dressed in a simple brown tunic, with long golden-brown hair. There was something odd about her, and it took Elissa a fleeting moment to work out what it was.
Her eyes were milky white.
‘She’s blind,’ she said under her breath.
‘Let’s back away,’ Silvius replied. ‘Quietly.’
They began to inch backwards.
The lion shifted its head lazily, and yawned, a huge pink tongue lolling out. The woman’s head turned sharply and she uttered a word of command. The lion started padding, at first slowly, then loping; soon it was charging towards them.
‘Run!’ Silvius sprinted away, Elissa close after him. There was no sign of Ruffler. Hoping that the wolf cub would find them later, she ran onwards through the undergrowth.
She caught up with Silvius. ‘What shall we do?’ Elissa panted.
‘Find a tree?’
‘And wait on a branch till we starve?’
‘Let’s shoot at her!’ Silvius turned to go back.
‘No, wait!’
The lion rider appeared over the brow of a ridge, fierce and fast, the blind woman’s hair billowing behind her.
There was a tall tree a dozen or so paces ahead. Silvius was right. It was the only thing to do, and Elissa flung herself at it, scrambling up from a thick low branch to a thinner one above. Silvius followed her, sat astride the lower branch and had just enough time to fit an arrow to his bow.
Elissa breathlessly watched the flight of the arrow.
And gasped in horror. It never reached its target. Instead, the woman made a small movement with her hand, and the arrow simply shrivelled into dust in mid-air.
The lion rider laughed.
‘You are in my woods now, mortals, and you would do well to follow my commands.’
The lion was now at Silvius’s heels, and he scrambled up to a further branch.
‘Who are you?’ Elissa called.
‘Come down, and you will know.’
Elissa stared into the eyes of the lion. There was something in them, a fierceness that she recognised, a wildness that reminded her of Stargazer. The sightless eyes of the woman seemed also to emanate something that she could feel, tugging deep in her heart. Perhaps this was what they were meant to find.
She glanced at Silvius, who stared back, wide-eyed.
‘I’m going down.’
‘No, don’t! Elissa!’
Taking a deep breath, she jumped down, and landed in a crouch.
The next thing she knew, the world had become lion, and all she could see was its sharp white teeth, and all she could smell was the stench of meat from its huge maw.
Elissa uttered a shriek of terror, and the laughter of the lion rider resounded in her ears.
Twenty
Plots and Poisons
MYKENAI, ACHAEA: KINGHOUSE OF THE LION
All the next day, Tisamenos looked at his father with a new respect. He saw, now, behind the sloppy facade, the reddening cheeks, the cheery jokes and the limp, the cold watchfulness of a hawk.
He could not shake away the memory of the Fury. Knowing it was down there, in the depths of the kinghouse, a visible reminder of his father’s torments, was itself a torture. Could he invoke those beings by taking his own revenge?
As he was leaving his chambers in the morning, he had felt suddenly dizzy, the stone part of his head weighing him down terribly, and he had stopped to rest his forehead against the stone lintel. It was crumbling in places, and there was even a bit of moss growing at the place where it touched the floor. He’d rested there for a moment, alone in the dark corridor. It gave him a strange sense of comfort.
Whispering made him look up.
‘The blood … the shadows …’
Nobody was in sight. He’d called Hero’s name, and there had been no reply.
Now he was hidden on a ledge, watching Erigone as she sat in the large courtyard of the kinghouse. She was talking to one of her attendants. The others were throwing a ball between themselves, whilst one was teasing a tabby cat under the shade of a tree. A wet nurse was holding Penthilos, a tiny, wrinkly bit of life, wailing in his swaddling clothes. If he killed Erigone, then would Penthilos want to take revenge on him? It wasn’t his fault, this little thing, his mouth wetly open.
Tisamenos had vowed to watch Erigone, but he could not be caught doing so. He listened intently.
At some point he must have dozed off, as he woke with a start. ‘Gone … she’s gone …’ came a whisper in his mind, and sure enough, when he looked down into the courtyard, Erigone and her companions were no longer there.
They must have repaired to the women’s quarters, and Tisamenos slid down off the ledge and made his way there.
Most of the guests were at the games, taking place in the large open space in front of the kinghouse, and he could hear their laughter and shouts echoing. The passageways were colder and danker than ever, the hallways silent; even the kitchens and storerooms, with all the servants out watching a wrestling match.
As he neared that part of the kinghouse, he paused, remembering the guard that had sent him away so abruptly last time.
Was there a way past him? The women’s quarters were on the ground floor of the kinghouse, accessed by that one great door. But there must be other ways in – windows, archways. Instead of going down the corridor which led to the main entrance, he turned left, and passed through a stone arch that opened to the outside of the kinghouse.
It was warm, and he breathed in the air deeply, feeling the sun on his face. He couldn’t see round to the front, but he heard a roar as the wrestling match came to its no doubt ferocious conclusion.
He leaned against the stone of the walls, and closed his eyes.
At once his mind filled with whispers. ‘The blood … the shadows … the knife … the poison … Find her, see her …’ He shook his head angrily to clear it, standing abruptly away from the wall. He was going mad. The thought made him horribly afraid.
And yet, he had to find out what was happening to him. Orestes was always telling him to face up to what frightened him. Resolute, Tisamenos placed his head once more on the cool wall. Like the hum of tiny insect wings, the words buzzed around his mind once more. ‘Traitor … traitor to the house …’
The stone. It was the stone. Trembling, he closed his eyes, and instead of resisting, he allowed the whispers to course through him.
‘On the steps … the blood flowing down … under the net … she does not forgive … she waits, she watches … the spiral turns … you are us, you are us …’
Had everything he’d seen and learned finally sent him insane, or near enough, like his aunt Electra? But no, the sounds in his mind were real. It was the stone, and it was talking to him.
Listening to the whispers, he began to sense that they had different qualities. Some were cool and dank; others were warm, as if they had been baking in the sun. As he listened, he began to see the whole kinghouse in his mind. It was as if he was seeing it from all angles at once, and yet it was not confusing. He saw patterns and beauty in the way it was put together that he’d never seen before. It was timeless, ancient, as if it had been hewn out of the very ground itself.
Within his mind he followed the lines of the building until he came to the women’s quarters, and he knew that if he went along the outside of the wall, he would soon come to a place where he could climb up onto a ledge and look down into them through a light well.
He opened his eyes, and the image lingered for a second, and for a moment he had a strange feeling that he was in some way the house itself; then it passed.
He felt elated as he went. The kinghouse was talking to him. The outside wall was grey and moss-covered, yet to him, now, it was beautiful and alive. He wondered if this was what Electra had meant when she touched the walls. Did she have some other way of seeing into the stones?
Tisamenos found the ledge easily, in a recess just at the north-western corner of the kinghouse. The whole of the building was between him and the games. Opposite, beyond the citadel wall, was a cluster of houses and temples, but he caught no flash of movement. Nobody was watching. He climbed onto the ledge, and soon was on the roof of the women’s quarters, looking down through the large light well, exactly as the stones had shown him.
It was Erigone’s chamber. He could not see very much, only the small square courtyard of lighter stone, through which women would saunter, bangles glittering or headpieces shining. There was a definite sense of movement below. A sudden flurry sent some women scattering, and Erigone’s voice floated up to where Tisamenos lay crouched.
She was sending her attendants away. By the sound of it, as footsteps shuffled out, there were none left – although he couldn’t be sure. He inched further forwards, leaning on his elbows, and peered as far in as he dared.
Now he could just make out Erigone. She was seated at a marble dressing table, and a maid was removing the golden headdress from her piled-up hair. A square of mirror hung above the table, and Erigone’s locks, falling around her head, curled into coils.
On the table was a scatter of little pots. Erigone fingered a few. Then she said something to the maid, who scuttled away feverishly.
Once she was alone, Erigone removed a key from around her neck and unlocked a drawer in her table, pulling out a garment, silvery and beautiful, which she held up to the light before laying it down flat on the table. She took up a small casket from the same drawer, and with a fine brush, gently pasted the ointment from it onto the garment’s inside lining.
When she’d finished, she held it up carefully. As if she needed a better look, she came into the area where the light fell. Tisamenos instantly drew back. He must have made a noise, as when he dared to peer back again Erigone had gone, and the room was empty. There was no sign of the ointment or the silvery garment.
He remembered how Medea was said to have killed the Corinthian princess, before his grandfather’s time. She had sent a poisoned dress, and the girl had died a terrible death, clawing the garment from her skin. Could this be a similar device?
He leant forwards once more, and satisfied that there was nobody in the room, he jumped down, landing in a crouch, and headed straight to the dressing table. This could be his chance to expose her. He had to be quick, before she returned.
Twenty-One
The Sibyl’s Prophecy
SICILIA
Laughter, drifting into Silvius’s ears. Laughter that he recognised, light, rippling, coming in short bursts. A moment ago, he’d been in the tree, watching Elissa jump down to the lion. And then … had he fainted? He opened his eyes. He was lying on his back in a grassy glade. Elissa was tickling the belly of a huge lion, the afternoon sunlight pouring all around them.
Silvius sprang up. ‘Elissa – I don’t think that’s safe …’
The lion was lying on his side, yawning with pleasure. Elissa, looking around, found a stick and began to scratch his back.
‘There you are!’ she said. Silvius blushed. ‘Don’t worry – he’s a pussycat. Aren’t you,’ she said, nuzzling into its mane. The lion beat his tail upon the ground, for all the world like a dog.
He took in his surroundings. They were still in the forest, the trees growing thickly together, but near a pleasant-looking wooden dwelling. A woman appeared from his right, bearing a pail of milk full to the brim.
It was the blind lion rider.
‘Elissa, what are we doing here?’
The blind woman set the pail down, and Elissa came bounding over and dipped a wooden beaker in, then brought it to Silvius. He tried to look for concern in Elissa’s eyes, but she was smiling.
‘She’s our friend. She’s who we came to see.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Just drink this.’
He gulped it down gratefully.
‘From my best cow, son of Aeneas. She was grumpy, but her milk’s good.’
Silvius looked sideways at Elissa, who shrugged, and said, ‘I didn’t tell her who you are.’
The lion rider went to a natural hollow between two trees, and sat down, as if on a throne. Her blindness was no impediment to her movement, and she walked gracefully, sure-footedly. She didn’t look very old, but her skin was weather -beaten, and her golden-brown hair, he saw now, had streaks of grey. Her entirely white eyes moved around, as if seeing things that could not be seen by normal sight.
‘I give thanks to you,’ said Silvius. ‘But …’
‘You are wondering who I am?’ said the lion rider. ‘I often wonder that too. They call me the Sibyl. A blind woman, cursed with prophecy, given power over animals. Sometimes I remember what happened, but most of the time I do not look at the past; it is too full of horror. I look at what will come. I see the shapes of things, I see the way towards them, reaching out into places and things I do not understand …’ Sleepily, the lion swatted at a fly with its tail. ‘Would you believe me if I told you I have seen ships flying through the air? I have seen a world without gods …’
Silvius glanced at Elissa, whose brow was furrowed. She was listening, scratching circles in the dirt.
‘And you too, daughter of Anna,’ said the seer. ‘I know what you are both seeking. I saw it, around the neck of the centaur. I saw those people, lit from within with unholy fire. You have it now. I feel it burning through the air. I feel how it longs for the rest of the arrow. I have rarely felt such power.’ She clasped her hands together, her long fingers trembling. ‘I have seen you both,’ she continued, steadying her voice. ‘Both of you, and one other. Everything converges.’
One other. That must be Python, Silvius reasoned. Two children against an immortal. It felt pointless. ‘You know about him?’ he asked. ‘You know about Python?’
The Sibyl said, ‘Before the Olympians, when the world was young, he ruled in Delphi, over a race of monsters, and Apollo laid him low. But you cannot slay an immortal entirely. His essence remained, and now he has gathered himself once more.’
‘What does he want?’
‘He wants his rule back. He wants the Oracle. He wants to take the place of the gods. He will bring destruction.’
She stood up suddenly and disappeared inside the hut. The lion got to his feet and loped off into the forest.
‘The Sibyl!’ Silvius turned to Elissa. ‘I remember my father talking about the Sibyl – the priestess who took him through the Underworld. I didn’t think it was true! This must be her daughter.’
‘She’ll know where we need to go.’ Elissa hugged her knees.
A few moments later, bearing some herbs and a small jug, the seer reappeared. There was a fire prepared in a ring of stones in front of the hut, which she lit with dexterity, sprinkling the herbs over the flames. Silvius did not recognise their scent, pungent and sharp. He watched the Sibyl suspiciously, whilst Elissa closed her eyes, seeming to breathe in the fumes with relish.
As the Sibyl weaved slowly around the stones, she chanted, words which had no meaning for Silvius. She jerked her body from side to side, inhaling deeply. With a sudden movement, she upturned the jug’s contents, and a thick, dark liquid caused a flash of bright white.
It did not catch fire in an ordinary way. Silvius watched with mounting horror as it spread across the ground to the hem of the seer’s robes. He grabbed the jug of water. Elissa stopped him, frowning.
Now the Sibyl was sheathed in white light.
She spoke in phrases they could barely understand.
Starwolf
lionstone
dolphinlight
three will slay
one will die …
She choked, as if preventing herself from saying more. The flames became the light of Apollo and for a fleeting instant Silvius saw the young god’s face in hers, and his heart filled with joy.
Then it flickered, and shifted; the eyes grew red, and for one brief, horrifying moment, he saw Python.
It passed, leaving Silvius relieved, and the seer’s expression was once more grave, gazing at him with her impenetrable eyes.
‘What do the words mean?’ asked Silvius, as she gathered up her materials.
‘I cannot tell you. It is for you to discover. I will feed you, and then you must go. The tide will be high soon.’
As they were preparing to leave, there was a rustling in a nearby bush, and a small, excited wolf cub came bursting out and threw himself into Elissa’s arms.
‘Ruffler! Where have you been?’ Elissa tickled him joyfully and the wolf cub wriggled away, skipping in circles around her. The lion padded after him.
‘I sent Leo to look for him,’ said the seer. ‘He had not gone far.’ Ruffler was indeed now being given a hearty lick by the enormous lion. Running towards him, Elissa threw her arms around his neck, and buried her face into the mane. Silvius looked on, smiling.
‘You have a long way to go,’ the Sibyl said, quietly. ‘I know that we will see each other again.’
‘Where are we to go?’ asked Silvius.
‘Into the heart of your enemies. To Mykenai, home of Agamemnon, where now rules Orestes. Into the heart of the spiral.’
‘To Orestes?’ Silvius’s heart sank. Somehow, he had known that this would be the case. ‘His father destroyed our city!’
‘All your cities will be destroyed if you do not stop Python. And then what will you do. Argue over the ruins?’
