Shadows on the Aegean Read online

  What are you talking about? Where am I? Where did you get those names? the voice pleaded, its fear tangible.

  Sibylla ignored it. Kela-Ileana had ruled as Zelos’ wife and personification of the Great Goddess for the same nineteen summers. This summer the nymphs of Aztlan would challenge her position as Queen of Heaven. Through a series of footraces and mazes, the queen and the chosen racers would match strength and resilience. If Kela-Ileana won the competitions, she would marry Phoebus. Becoming pregnant in thirty days would confirm her position as the Great Goddess and Phoebus’ wife, ensuring another nineteen summers’ reign. If she proved to be infertile with Phoebus, then her position would be yielded to the runner-up.

  Yielded to the runner-up? Does that mean she gets a lovely parting gift? The voice alternated between fear and scoffing. What is a runner-up wife? God! Where am I?

  Silence yourself! Sibylla hissed. As a member of Clan Olimpi, she would compete for the role of Great Goddess and Phoebus’ wife. While tradition decreed Hreesos must be golden haired, his wife need only be Clan Olimpi, religiously trained, and fertile. The prosperity of the land related directly to the Great Goddess’s fecundity. The queen must conceive within thirty nights of the sacred marriage. Sibylla sighed; it was too early in the seasons to concern herself. The race was moons away.

  Race? Moons? I have a bad feeling about this.

  Arching her back, feeling unused muscles stretch and pull, Sibylla tried to enjoy the restfulness of Caphtor, to ignore the strange voice that spoke to her in a language she didn’t fully comprehend. On Kallistae, the wind would be whipping around the palace, the sun not even touching Ileana’s chamber, the Megaron, until well after its zenith. Cold, rainy, and noisy, the island shrieked with the winter wind.

  Sibylla pitied the Mariners, Aztlan’s navy. Winter, the Season of the Snake, was forbidding on land. How much more terrifying on a ship? The Mariners sailed from port to port, checking on the various outposts of the empire, trading food for stones—seeking for certain stones. Sibylla shrugged. Her pity was wasted: each clan had its responsibilities.

  Instinctively she touched the clan seal around her neck.

  Nice necklace, the voice said.

  The gold seal showed a snake swallowing its tail, signifying her name day, and was inscribed with horns for her clan. It had hung around her neck since she’d come into adulthood. Each chieftain wore a similar golden seal. The only time they were removed was during the Council meeting, when the chieftains were stripped and unadorned, representing every man and woman. The meeting convened every nine years and in the nineteenth year, during the Season of the Bull.

  The Season of the Bull? Is that summer? Please, someone tell me where I am…. The voice trailed off despairingly.

  “Help me, Kela,” Sibylla prayed under her breath. Surely she was hearing skia talking to each other.

  As Kela was the goddess of women, the Apis bull Earthshaker was worshiped only by men. The priests had pyramids on Aztlan Island and the other four “Nostrils of the Bull” throughout the empire. The peaked Nostrils cast Apis’ hot, sometimes putrid breath into the air. The priesthood worshiped diligently, for if the Bull’s ire was raised, he was a destroyer. He breathed fire, melted gold, boiled the springs and rivers, and made the mountains bleed molten rock.

  The freshness of the rain-soaked fields recalled Sibylla, and she smiled in anticipation of the year: the nineteenth, the Megolashana’a. Her earlier visions of horror had faded. Sibylla could not believe Kela and Apis would seek to destroy their own people! Surely the Great Goddess was not truly bidding them to leave their homes? Was there another meaning, perhaps? Symbolized by these dreams?

  Her mind felt clearer now, her skin once again familiar. When she was an oracle, the spirit of Kela inhabited her body, speaking truths, answering questions. Only a small part of her intellect would stay behind, as an anchor for her wandering psyche. Extensive training had taught her never to let the silver noose, which linked her traveling spirit and her Kela-inhabited body together, to stray too far. She could be lost forever then, doomed to wandering as a skia.

  Sibylla acknowledged, however, that some part of her was missing. The silver noose had come undone, and she feared that part of her psyche was wandering. Something else had come back in place of herself. Someone else.

  Me! the voice said.

  “My mistress?” someone called, and Sibylla looked up gratefully. The young bride-to-be approached. Sibylla accepted the offering of corn from the nymph’s outstretched hands.

  “You spoke of destruction yesterday,” the girl said.

  Sibylla looked away.

  “Will my husband be safe?”

  The humility of the young woman’s question brought tears to Sibylla’s eyes. The nymph asked not for herself, but for the boy she loved. Your vision looks like footage from a National Geographic special, a voice inside her said. Sibylla stiffened, chilled by the voice. The interloper was speaking. Nay, it must be Kela.

  “I did not see him in the vision,” Sibylla answered. The girl’s night-dark gaze searched hers, then dropped away. Sibylla knew her words were false, but what hope to tell a bride she would not live to see her firstborn?

  So tell her to go to the other side of the island, the voice said. Surely she has relatives there. It won’t hurt them to get away for a while. It might even save their lives.

  Please let this be the Kela speaking to her in a way never before experienced, Sibylla prayed.

  Not hardly, the voice scoffed. C’mon, this kid deserves a break.

  If I instruct her, demand she move, Sibylla countered, would that not be changing what is decreed to happen? If she loses her home and fields, what matter is it for her to live?

  Within her Sibylla felt a heavy, lost sigh. We can only try. Those things that cannot be changed are not…. Sibylla felt the voice retreat, wounded and hurting.

  “You have family in Phaistos, nymph?”

  “Aye, my mistress.”

  “After you are wed, go there.”

  The nymph’s eyes grew round. “Phaistos?”

  “It is the wish of the Kela.”

  Sibylla rested her head on the rock, listening to the sounds of the nymph scampering down the stony path, returning to the village. The creature inside her smiled.

  Way to go, Sibylla.

  NO ONE SAW.

  They began in the dark depths of the ocean, peaks built by the fury of the earth. An arc of islands swept through the wine-dark sea, heights of death intermixed with cradles of savage and gentle beauty: Milos, Hydroussa, Tinos, Siros, Myknossos, Delos, Naxos, Paros, Nios, Folegandros, and the connected islands of Kallistae and Aztlan. Some had spewed their fury before humanity inhabited their slopes; others would remain silent for centuries more.

  As the African and Eurasian tectonic plates slowly nudged each other, ripples and ridges shuddered through the earth, compressing rock, fueling fire, building tension, creating this volcanic sweep of islands on the plot of earth to someday be called the Aegean microplate. Massive earthquakes on the ocean floor were felt only as bare tremors in the clear air, thousands of meters above.

  Stealthily the molten core had risen. What had once lain a day’s sail beneath the crust of the earth had crept into four channels that ran like veins inside the beautiful mountains of the Aztlan empire: Mount Apollo, Mount Krion, Mount Gaia, and Mount Calliope.

  The weakest channel was on Delos, an island of artists. Mount Calliope loomed above them, an inspiration for paintings, for poetry, for the soul. The artists did not feel the increasing heat beneath their sandals. No animals had yet become victims of gas poisoning. Thousands lived in Calliope’s shadow, celebrating feasts in its groves, making love in its crevices, giving strangers directions by its location. They did not know liquid death lurked inside the mountain. Hot, boiling with rage and rock, creeping through the narrow passageway that led to the throat of the cone.

  Thousands of years had passed since the last eruption. A mass of land now
resided on the bottom of the purple ocean, testimony to the earlier wrath of the earth. The mountain had spewed rocks the size of ships for days, raining scalding ash on the round island. Fire had reached the heavens, and the tales of destruction became part of myth and legend.

  Then the mountain had slept. Minutely the cone had risen from the depths of the ocean. Green grass had covered it and birds had flocked to it, and each year it was bigger and higher, its soil more fertile. A tribe had reclaimed it, growing purple grapes and flavorful herbs and fig trees, raising their crops and rearing their children, unaware.

  No one settled on the peak, for the high places were forbidden by the deity the tribe worshiped. Iavan, the ancient patriarch of the tribe, told of how the deity had saved his family because of the goodness of his grandfather, Noach. This family, and the animals they had gathered up, had been spared from the waters that had drowned the earth. Because of this nameless deity’s rescue, the tribe that sprang from Noach’s loins was ever faithful.

  As the cone grew and time passed, the god passed from practice, then memory. Rising from the same stock were others who worshiped the earth, the sky, and the sea. They identified the island cones as Nostrils of the Bull, whose roars sometimes shook the earth. In great piety and vanity they tipped the cones with pyramids, their sides emblazoned with precious stones, their interiors vast caverns where their priesthood lived.

  Beneath the floors tiled in gold circles, black stripes, red swirls and squares, the volcano grew. Like the bull god who controlled it, the mountain’s rage was consuming and unfocused. It waited, the heat that could vaporize a man, building, growing more intense than any metal worker’s forge, its capacity pulled from below the ocean, where cataclysms were born, in the molten womb of the earth.

  It waited.

  THE AZTLAN EMPIRE

  ILEANA LINED HER LIPS CAREFULLY with the sharp edge of the ocher, then moved the color stick to her nipples, adding a drop of water and painting them, too. A few good pinches brought them erect. She smiled, pleased.

  Her many summers had been good to her. She still had the figure of a nymph, and the legends of her beauty brought sailors and gifts from around the empire and beyond. Zelos was hers, for a little while longer. Ileana swallowed, a tremor of fear playing with her brow. At midsummer festival her husband’s son would become the ruler and she would become a widow. Phoebus had hated her as a boy. Now, at age nineteen, he hated her even more. Ileana had not lived so long and so well that she didn’t recognize danger. Phoebus would as soon kill her as see her, but Ileana had no intention of stepping down as Queen of Heaven.

  There was no doubt she would win the footrace. However, Phoebus would have his satisfaction if she were unable to become pregnant in the time allotted. She refused to think of the penalty for losing: the Labyrinth.

  A piercing shriek came from the corridor, and Ileana patiently finished her makeup. A peacock strode in, screaming, his tail closed. Ileana turned on her stool, snapping her fingers for a serf to hand her seeds. “Come along, my beauty,” she said, throwing its food on the painted floor. “Show me how lovely you are.” The peacock ate the seeds and screamed for more. “Not until you show your colors,” Ileana admonished her pet.

  Obligingly the male strutted forward and preened, opening the multicolored wonder of his tail. “Those two and that one,” Ileana said to the serf. The peacock screamed again, closing the fan of his tail, but the serf was fast and already held three long, eyed feathers in his hand. Three, a number to honor the Great Goddess. Laughing triumphantly, Ileana turned back to her water mirror. Deftly the boy tucked the feathers into her crown of corn gold hair.

  “The feathers make your eyes as fathomless as Theros Sea,” the boy said.

  Admiring her reflection, Ileana leaned back against him, her head against his chest. She feasted on his expression of admiration reflected in the mirror, then waved him away.

  Immediately he bowed, stepping back. She snapped her fingers and two handsome men, long limbed and narrow waisted, opened her chamber’s doors. With a final tug of her seven-tiered skirt, befitting her role as mother-goddess, Ileana stepped to her carrying chair. Before she asked, a rhyton was handed to her. It was a slender pointed cup fashioned from mother-of-pearl and gold, pointed at the end to stay fixed upright in a graceful metal stand or the ground. She snapped her fingers and the men proceeded slowly so they would not step on the wandering peacocks.

  The walls of the palace, with their life-size paintings of priestesses and princes in worship and parade, sailed by in a haze of gold, scarlet, black, and white. Sounds of the festivities—music, the clatter of earthenware and alabaster, and the low trill of laughter—caressed Ileana’s ears as she was carried down the wide staircase to the queen’s Megaron.

  The guards set her chair down gently and assisted her out. Shooing the peacocks into the spacious chamber, Ileana smiled as silence fell. One solitary flute played as she sauntered in. The guests, her subjects, stood with bowed heads and arms raised in supplication.

  “Kela-Ileana, Queen of Heaven, Mother-Goddess of the Harvest, Mistress of Aztlan,” a high voice sang.

  She took her seat at the elevated edge of the company: with a snap of her fingers the feast returned to life. Her rhyton was refilled, and before she could sink it in the ground a male voice spoke. “Fairest Heaven, may I?”

  Slowly she raised her gaze. By the strength of Apis, this man was a beauty! His smile indicated he knew this well. Irritated by his arrogance, Ileana plunged the rhyton’s end into the ground. His shock was visible. Was she the first to refuse him?

  Looking beyond him, she called out to her stepson, “Arus! Tell me, who is this man to think he can approach Heaven on the strength of his smile?” From the corner of her eye she saw the youth’s cheeks redden.

  Arus, his hair unfashionably short, but bearing a most impressive nose, leaned forward. “He’s the youngest Troizen prince. Not enough man for an Aztlantu woman.” He smiled and turned his attention back to his companion.

  Ileana snapped for food and waited in silence, watching the courtiers of Aztlan. It was a gay group since Hreesos’ grayheads had gone to an annual symbolic sea skirmish.

  Her gaze flickered quickly over the women present. Summer approached, when she would have to defend herself and her goddess-given throne against the nymphs who chose to challenge her. The Coil Dancers were priestesses, but not Olimpi. She dismissed them. Long ago she’d learned their sexual tricks and had gone on to perfect them.

  She saw the occasional fresh-faced nymph; however, they were not priestesses and therefore no threat to the Queen of Heaven. A clanswoman or two roamed the room, their years proclaimed by the backs of their hands. Age alone would prevent them from catching her in the footrace.

  Three women were her true rivals: Vena, Selena, and Sibylla. Ileana smiled at a courtier attempting to woo her through gifts. Even if one of her clanswomen managed to win the race, she would still have to wait a moon to see if Ileana had become pregnant. Then Ileana had several moons when she could pretend pregnancy before she was discovered. Those moons would be fatal for any potential successor, giving Ileana time to get with child.

  Ileana knew she was fertile, she was the goddess on earth. However, she might have to work to find the right partner. It was the timing of the thing. Racing always disrupted her moon-cycles, and to become pregnant immediately afterward … she needed Kela’s help. The courtier blushed as Ileana directed her most charming smile of gratitude at him. The gift was worthless, but he was blond—he could be useful.

  The young Troizen prince had not spoken, not even glanced her way. Intriguing, Ileana mused. He refuses to cower before my beauty or to flee my legendary wrath.

  Deliberately she turned to him. He stared straight ahead. Ileana narrowed her eyes. He was not as tall as an Aztlantu man, but he was broader shouldered and more sinewy. His body was sleek skinned and oiled, firm young flesh that rippled as he moved.

  He was a blond.

  Per
Aztlantu custom he wore a belled, patterned skirt, but strangely he had no waist cincher. A flat link necklace was his only adornment. No makeup tinted his lips or ringed his eyes. He turned to her, challenge and carefully banked lust in his deep green eyes. “Are you pleased with what you see … my mistress?”

  His arrogance was tinged with charm. He wasn’t afraid of her, and Ileana found the difference thrilling. Playing with him could be entertaining. “Thus far,” she said, husky voiced. She rolled a date on her lips before eating it, licking the sticky residue away slowly. “However, I cannot make a decision based only on what I behold.”

  His eyebrows were not plucked or painted but grew densely, leaving only a narrow gap over the bridge of his nose. Ileana felt a catch in her throat. His nose was exquisite, large and bold; his mouth was wide.

  “Even your beauty cannot win you that honor,” he said, rising to his feet. Ileana smiled coolly at his retreating form; he was a prince of Troi, eee? The man was a peacock; she admired his spirit. She had insulted him, so he had responded in kind. A worthy lover, to give as good as he got.

  Ileana was not finished with him yet.

  She saw him embrace a Coil Dancer; holding the girl’s bare breasts in his hands, he kissed her mouth with the fervor of youth. Ileana felt desire’s flood rise. Two blond men; who would know if Phoebus were not the true father?

  “He’s quite a stag, is he not?” hissed Vena.

  Too entranced to recall that she hated Vena, Ileana agreed.

  “He’s fostering here. His name is Priamos, the youngest son of Troi.”

  “Why we foster an enemy’s whelp, I do not know,” Ileana mused.

  “Well, if a mistress of your stature and summers knows not, then few of us have any chance at that wisdom,” Vena said with a smirk.

  Ileana remembered instantly that this above-herself Shell Seeker from Milos was among her rivals. She smiled sweetly. “My poor dear, don’t lust after a younger son, it demeans the clan. I know you must doubt yourself now—your charms, your ability—it must be difficult to have a lover flee.” Ileana spoke over Vena’s sputtering protests. “But I overstep your feelings. I do not know. I’ve never been put aside.”