Shadows on the Aegean Read online

  Vena’s rose complexion was mottled with fury. “I could have Nestor back!”

  “He fled to Kemt to get away from you! Okh!” Ileana said, touching her lips in feigned chagrin. “I apologize. What is the tale you are bandying about? He volunteered on a diplomatic mission for dear Phoebus, is that the right myth?”

  “I could have any man on any shore in the empire!”

  Ileana lifted her rhyton to her lips. “Men being what they are, having is no challenge.” She sipped her wine, feeling the peppery bite of oregano and thyme mixed in. “Keeping is.”

  “What a wonder you know the difference after nineteen summers wed to Hreesos. Tell me, Kela-Ileana, has he slept on your couch more than once?” Vena arched her back as she spoke, throwing her perfect body into a pose that halted conversation at two tables.

  Ileana smiled coldly, careful not to let emotion tug at her face. “Hreesos, my Golden Bull husband, may have rutted and rammed a selection—”

  “A wide selection—”

  “—of cows … but he always returns to the fold.”

  Vena, her violet eyes black with anger, clenched her fists. She would be trouble, Ileana thought. She was beautiful, healthy, Olimpi, and her background as a Shell Seeker qualified her. How could Ileana stop her?

  “Mistresses, the air fair crackles with your words.” The speaker dropped down between them, as careless and graceful as a black cat.

  “Already you stink of the grape,” Vena said to him, throwing her chestnut curls over her shoulder.

  He grinned. “But I am of the grape.” He deepened his voice and bellowed, “Dion Bacchi, inheritor of the Clan of the Vine!” Leaning forward, he placed a love bite on Vena’s breast. “Besides, last Season of the Lion, when you were beneath me, also crushing the grapes, your comment was, Aye, Dion!’ “ he trilled in a falsetto. After flashing a wicked smile at the laughter of the courtiers, he sipped from Ileana’s rhyton and turned it so that she drank from the same spot. “However, if we are to discuss the scent that I recall from the experience, I would say it was fi—”Vena cuffed his head and marched back to Arus. The courtiers returned to their conversations as Dion lounged beside Ileana’s feet.

  “Where is Sibylla?” she asked. Best to know where one’s rivals were.

  Dion reached up and plucked shrimp speared with rosemary from the glazed dish before her. “You know full well that she loathes both of you.”

  “As do you?”

  His smile was charming, melting the severe lines of his face. In a lover’s purr he said, “I do, Ileana. With all my heart, I do.”

  In Aztlan, Dion was the ideal—tall, broad shouldered, wasp-waisted, with black hair that fell to his waist. His eyes were large and dark, deep as an oracular pool. Seeing him reportedly drove the clanswomen wild with lust—a screaming pack of hounds in heat who roamed the hills in the white of the moon. Despite his youth, he seemed aged, knowing that no one could refuse him. Ileana hated herself for not being above the physical call of a man she loathed.

  “You have an odd way of showing it, feeding me wine—” Ileana stopped, staring at Hreesos’ whelp. Carefully she wiped her mouth on the edge of her garment, then picked up the empty rhyton. She willed her fingers to cease trembling as she felt the bottom for residue. Holding up her fingers, she saw glittering grains in the dregs. “You poisoned me?” she rasped. Where had her taster been?

  Dion smiled.

  “Tell me!” Ileana hissed.

  He smiled wider, speaking only to prevent her from shrieking for the guards. “Never poison, Ileana.” He clicked with his tongue, a sound of dismay. “Nay, your death should be savored.” He licked his fingers, his tongue caressing the pads. “Anticipated.” His gaze grew darker, more intense, and Ileana felt her body tighten in response. He took her palm and licked it; fire rippled through her body. “Why, it should bring at least as much pleasure as your life has brought grief.”

  “You are dismissed,” Ileana said tightly.

  “Shared,” Dion continued, his fingers stroking his chest in minute movements that made her hands itch to take over the responsibility. “Shared equally by those whom your life has cursed. How many lay their death at your door? Do you need counting strings to keep tally?”

  “You go too far with your accusations and blasphemies,” Ileana hissed.

  He continued as though she had not spoken. “However, your days are numbered. You are too old to bear the next Golden.”

  She rose abruptly and the company fell silent. Dion lounged at her feet. Ileana snapped her fingers and her chair was brought immediately. As she sat, Dion rolled over, his face level with her feet. He kissed the arch of her foot tenderly, his lips finding the sensitive skin between her sandal straps.

  “You test me, whelp.”

  “I will bid a scribe attend you; age has probably affected your mind, as it has your body,” he said sadly. “How your beauty has faded, even more so than your intellect. Perhaps the scribe can assist you with the list. We can start with your own mother, my mother, Phoebus’ mother, Nestor’s mother—”

  Ileana snapped her fingers and they left, but Dion’s count remained in her head. How she had fought for her throne! From her earliest memory she’d known she would be Queen of Heaven. She wanted it, deserved it. In one bold action she had grabbed it. No one could prove anything, though suspicions were raised. Ever after, bodyguards, food tasters, and a rigorous physical regime worked to protect her. She’d spent a lifetime defending her position. If the reigning Queen of Heaven died while in office, Hreesos could choose anyone, any of the many whores he’d impregnated.

  He would have no choices: she would have no assassins.

  So she’d eliminated the many women who had presented her husband with sons.

  They had given him perfect children—Phoebus, Dion, Nestor … The babes from Ileana’s own exquisite, golden body were female. She would not be usurped by her own daughters, ugly though they were. Not by Atenis, her strangely silent, homely firstborn, nor by Irmentis, the child of the night. The goddess Kela had been in her Season of Blood, and Ileana’s youngest daughter bore the marks of her wrath.

  As the embodiment of Kela, Ileana was creator and destroyer. She had made certain neither girl would seek pleasure in Zelos’ arms. She was Kela, with Kela’s authority, power, and position. What she wanted was divinely approved, for she wanted it. Ileana had removed the desire to rule and to wed from her daughters; she would not be a victim of matricide.

  Ileana was assisted from the chair and entered her rooms. Light glowed in alabaster basins, and Leia played softly on the lyre as Ileana’s young serf stood naked, anxious, and prepared to serve.

  He untied her waist cincher, released her skirt, and led her to the lustral bath. Too tired to resist, she shuddered as she stepped into the warm water. The memories never faded; indeed, they grew more potent. The serf offered her kreenos, and Ileana hesitated, then took some. The drug brought her no peace, however. The specters from her past rose up before her.

  Once again she was thirteen, slipping into her mother Rhea’s chambers. Zelos, Ileana’s older brother and Rhea’s son, had just left the apartment, and Rhea was sprawled on her couch, naked and defenseless.

  Ileana, tall and gawky for her age, had hidden an obsidian blade in the folds of her tunic. She was only a Shell Seeker and thus did not wear the layered skirt honoring the Great Goddess. She stepped quietly toward the sleeping woman, the sound of Rhea’s soft snoring beating in the girl’s head. Blond hair, so like Ileana’s, flowed over marble white shoulders. Kela-Rhea wasn’t aging: she would never lose the footrace, she would never step down as Queen of Heaven.

  She raised the blade in both hands, then Ileana plunged it into her mother’s back. Like the animals Ileana had practiced on, Rhea struggled, screamed, and tried to flee the knife. The cone shell poison worked quickly, however—in an eyeblink Rhea could no longer move. “My bath,” she gasped. “Ba—a—aa-ttt …” Her body jerked violently, the poison controllin
g her. Finally, she was still.

  Ileana ran to the balcony and pulled in a fellow Shell Seeker. The nymph’s first taste of wine had made her groggy, and the poppy Ileana had added made her malleable. They traded tunics, Ileana’s blood-splattered one now clothing the dazed girl. “Hold on to this,” Ileana whispered to her onetime friend, wrapping the nymph’s fingers around the knife’s haft.

  Ileana heard footsteps in the corridor. “Don’t let go for anything,” she hissed.

  Ileana watched from the shadows as the narrow double doors opened and two guards ran in. They saw the girl, her position condemnation enough, then realized Rhea had not even been killed in her bath. She would never dance on the Isles of the Blessed.

  Without the purification of the lustral bath, she was eternally dead. Soldiers bathed before they went to war, the ill were bathed if the condition was feared fatal. Newborns were birthed in a shallow pool, in the event they died. Rhea was lost forever.

  Following the guards, Zelos ran in and threw himself weeping on Rhea’s body. With the same blade Ileana had used to take Rhea’s life, Zelos took the girl’s. Ileana’s path to the Queen of Heaven’s throne was now cleared.

  Blinking herself back into the safety of her bath, the distance of those many summers, Ileana forced her mind to calm. No one had guessed, no one had even known she’d been there. Feigned sorrow over the death of her mother seduced Zelos’ heart, and sexual skills beyond her years had won her a place in his bed. She’d stepped easily into the role as Queen of Heaven.

  No one knew. She was safe.

  But safe until when? And whom? Safety was an illusion; danger always lurked. Friends were enemies waiting for opportunity, children were the seedlings of one’s destruction, and even the goddess was fickle in her affections. Kela-Ileana destroyed any realities of danger. Danger lived and breathed in Vena, Sibylla, Selena …

  Not for much longer, however.

  CAPHTOR

  SHE WOKE UP IN THE DARKNESS OF THE CAVE, but instead of feeling familiar it felt foreign. Once again Sibylla was uneasy. She rubbed her eyes and reached for the alabaster lamp to her side.

  A gust of icy wind blew through. “That body is mine!” she seemed to hear around her. “Give it back to me!” It sounded like her own voice, fear filled and furious. Why would her voice be outside her? It’s the part of my psyche that didn’t return, she thought. It hates me for that. The voice carried on the wind, and Sibylla, hands now shaking, lit the oil lamp.

  She lived in a simple room with whitewashed walls; a mattress of dried leaves and herbs lay on a shelf. Her few belongings from Kallistae were grouped atop a small trunk. Two other skirts and jackets hung on pegs.

  That’s a really beautiful contrast, she heard the voice inside her say, but what does it mean, and where am I? Sibylla looked at the saffron-and-crimson skirt against the white-and-black-bordered wall and had to admit it was striking, though so commonplace she didn’t know why she had suddenly noticed it. She ignored her own mind’s question of where she was. She was in Caphtor, in the cave, where the spirit of Kela dwelt. Across the sea were the other islands of the Aztlan empire—her home. She knew where she was. Sibylla rose and began to straighten the already neat room.

  Something unspeakable had happened, was happening, to her.

  She felt … lonely. It was an odd feeling, one Sibylla couldn’t recall having felt before. Images flashed in her mind, a man, not unlike the men she saw all around her, yet different. He glowed through her perception, and she saw things in him that were shielded from most eyes. Integrity, skill, honesty, wit, sensuality … they poured from him in tinted beams of light. She’d never seen him before, yet she knew him. Some part of her mind wept for him. This memory, this vision, was not her own.

  Was this a message from Kela?

  The voice within screamed in frustration, and Sibylla fought the urge to run, run all the way to Knossos if need be. This chamber with the wailing skia, her mind with the weeping unknown psyche, were too strange for her.

  She pulled a cloak around her shoulders and walked outside. The lamp flickered feebly behind her. White chalky dust clung to her skirts and feet. She breathed deeply of the night air, feeling its sting burn in her breast. Above, stars hung like grapes from the arbor of the sky, and Sibylla felt tears in her eyes.

  Why in the name of Kela would she be weeping? Her sense of loneliness and despair was so great, so engulfing, that she could not keep the sobs from rising. Her crying was loud, harsh in the still night. Sibylla had no idea how long she wept, how many times she wiped her face and hugged herself, desperate to feel the concern of one other person. An unknown, unnamed person.

  Finally exhausted, she stumbled back to the cave’s entrance. Malevolence hit her in the face like a stench. Recoiling, Sibylla looked into the shadows. Skia awaited her. Breathing deeply, she forced herself deeper into the cave. The skia surrounded her, pummeling her mind with anger, betrayal, pain, fury, whipping her into a pulpy emotional mass.

  Sibylla ran the last steps to her shelf bed and huddled beneath her cloak. The very night seemed to whisper to her: she had never desired to see the dawn more. The flickering lamp went out, and she screamed, quaking.

  Skeletal fingers poked her, prodded her, and Sibylla retreated in fear to a corner of her mind. Another part of her, a stronger, more adaptable psyche, stepped forward.

  Chloe pulled the cloak off her head and stared into the darkness.

  Holy shit! Once again, she was sharing someone’s body. Was she sure of that? Who am I? she asked herself quickly. Chloe Bennett Kingsley, second lieutenant, serial number 044–65-2089. Born December 23, 1970. Middle child of an American diplomat and an English archaeologist. Older sister Camille, an Egyptologist. Younger brother Caius, a professional black sheep. Grandmother Mimi, deceased. Degree in communications art. She lived at 767 Amber Lane, Dallas, Texas 75007.

  Chloe swallowed. Those were the facts of her life. So far, so good.

  So where was she? She wasn’t in her own skin—she didn’t have black hair. So who was the host body? Her vision of this current world seemed to be viewed through rippling water. Nothing was clear. Nothing was recognizable. The other psyche in this body, Sibylla, treated her as if she weren’t here most of the time. Definitely not welcome, Chloe realized. It was one of the few clear thoughts she’d managed to have over the past—how long had it been? How can I figure anything out when I can’t even see to “drive”! We need to negotiate a body lease agreement. Living in this body is like moving a puppet; I am a breathing Punch & Judy show. Oh God.

  Where was Cheftu? The pain of his loss was so crippling that she whimpered in the darkness. They’d had such a short time. If she hadn’t returned to the modern world, and she was guessing that she hadn’t—caves were rather outmoded accommodations—then where was she? Where was he? Had he stayed in ancient Egypt? Had he moved forward in time? Did he truly understand she’d not wanted to leave? Had he, oh God, was he alive? Chloe shut her eyes tightly, holding back more tears. Did he know she was alive? Did he know where she was? Did she know where she was? Where was here?

  The vision, Sibylla’s vision of destruction, rose behind Chloe’s eyelids. Because it had not been “her” seeing it, the edges were torn and it was faded: a mental daguerreotype. Waves, fire, earthquakes … was she here because of her emergency management training? Not to mention her emergency management experience. When the going got tough, the tough ate locusts.

  Oh Cheftu, oh dear God I miss you….

  Chloe shook her head, the intention taking a few moments to result in action. She didn’t feel quite settled in this body. I sound like the next guest on Jerry Springer, “Modern Women and the Ancient Bodies They Inhabit.”

  “I’m really losing it.” Even her voice was a little different—not to mention the language!

  If I am here, sharing Sibylla’s body, then where is the body of RaEm—my former hostess—where is my body, and where is RaEm? If RaEm and I changed places before, is RaEm still
in modern Egypt in my body? Has Cammy realized I’m not me?

  Where was Cheftu? I need you, she thought. I was stupid not to have admitted it before. God, Cheftu, I need you! He alone would see the humor in this, understand how she could feel like laughing at the farce of it while she cried at the reality of it.

  Chloe wrapped her arms around her waist. Fires, monster waves, and earthquakes. Welcome to Sibylla’s world. She wanted something so badly, almost as much as Cheftu’s touch, as a glance from his golden eyes. She could have bounced quarters off her nerves. If she had quarters….

  She licked her lips. Man, do I want a cigarette.

  DAWN CAME, and with it the women of the village. Startled awake and disoriented for a few moments, Sibylla didn’t understand their language. She blinked, focusing on a woman’s rapidly moving lips, and felt herself slide into the comfort of knowing. The voice inside groaned in frustration and turned away, leaving Sibylla in control of herself once more.

  With smiles and gentle orders they dressed her in a five-tiered red-and-saffron skirt and jacket, lacing her corset and brushing her hair so that it fell in waves to her waist. Cool kohl ringed her eyes and colored her eyelids. No one commented that her irises were still green.

  That other psyche is still inside me, Sibylla thought.

  She took some bread, and together they walked through a gentle rain into the main cave. There was no prophesying today, just the companionship of young and old alike, listening to the tales of the village, the daily trials of smoky fires, cranky men, crying babies, and irascible donkeys. The Season of Rains was for rest. Just as the earth and the sun and the sea rested, so did the villagers.

  The women had brought wool to card. Sitting around the fire, they passed out implements and fleece for carding. Sibylla accepted two of the pronged plates and put a puff of wool—Looks like a bunch of cotton balls, she heard in her mind—between the plates. With a synchronized motion she rubbed the plates together, stretching and straightening the wool. It was loud work, with all twenty women chattering, and the conversation grew louder to be heard over the slap and scrape.