Enchanted Fire Read online

  ENCHANTED FIRE

  Roberta Gellis

  Chapter One

  Voices! Eurydice froze beside the trunk of a large tree, biting back the Word that would invoke—not invisibility, she did not know a spell for that—a kind of reluctance to notice her. As long as she did nothing to draw attention, anyone would pass by her without seeing her. But it would be far more dangerous for her to use Power before anyone actually discovered her than to chance that discovery by accident. The Power would stand out like a beacon to any witchsniffer and mark her for capture.

  She was both furious and frightened. She had thought she had drained old Baltaseros enough that he would be able to do little more than breathe for at least several weeks. Not, she reminded herself bitterly, that that would have mattered much. Like a fool she had fled south instead of north—only she had not had much choice, really; there were those who knew her in the north from whom she had also needed to escape. But now she was trapped on this spit of land surrounded by the sea and already enmeshed by pursuers. If only she had had a few weeks more, perhaps she could have found a way to slip through Baltaseros’ net. But if he was hunting her already, if he had strength enough to set trackers on her, he might be much stronger than she thought and a much more dangerous enemy.

  Eurydice bit her lip, fighting a desire to burst into tears, keeping her breathing soft and light. That would teach her not to be so merciful in the future. She could have drained him completely, sucked out his life force and left him dead, but she could not bear to kill that way. Even now, when she feared being captured and could not help regretting that she had not finished Baltaseros, her regret was for failing to take the time to seek a knife or a strangling cord. Not with her Gift! She shuddered at the thought of death tainting her Gift.

  Another halooing call made her cling to the tree, shaking, unable even to think on which side to hide. The fear rose and choked her until she felt she could not breathe—then she fought back, struggling against the terror and the regret. Those she knew were also a trap, devices that would distract and confuse her, making a path to safety even more obscure. She directed her senses at the men, the voices, submerging the fear as she had been taught at the temple.

  At last the sounds she heard became less a simple focus of terror and began to fall into words. Almost at once she realized the men—and there were far too many of them to have been sent by Baltaseros, surely—were speaking the hard-accented Greek of the kingdoms west of Thrace. Her fear receded further as she also realized that the men were still quite far away; the voices had been so loud that she had thought they had somehow crept up close while she was unaware. Actually, they were shouting to each other about—she listened more carefully—water. They were seeking water.

  Well, the water was not far to seek. She herself had been going to the small river when she heard them. Eurydice leaned more easily against the tree to which she had been clinging in her first terror, waiting until they found what they sought and all congregated in one place. If she moved now, while they were spreading out through the forest, she was as likely to walk into one of them as to avoid them. She was no longer much afraid because she was certain she could avoid anyone who was not specifically searching for her. She was curious, too, about how so many men had appeared so suddenly and about their purpose.

  Very soon, as Eurydice had expected, there was a bellow of triumph and answering shouts from various places in the wood—one almost directly behind her. Eurydice slipped quietly into the shelter of a brushy patch; it would not have hidden her from anyone searching deliberately but her earth-colored and mud-stained tunic would blend in with the forest floor and the brush would be sufficient to shield her from a casual glance. And, indeed, the man passed within feet of her without hesitation.

  He was a big man, tall and strong, with golden hair and, she thought from the quick glimpse she caught as they turned in her direction, pale eyes. She did not nod—movement catches attention—but she thought with satisfaction that her guess about the language had been correct; the stranger was likely from Salonica or even Thessalia, although that color hair was very rare. When he had passed, she wriggled silently out of the brush and followed, slipping from tree to tree without a sound. As she moved behind him, almost as noiselessly as his own shadow, a short, silent laugh parted her lips. She did not need the look-past-me spell. After three years of running and hiding, she was getting very good at concealing herself.

  The voices grew no louder as she approached because the men were no longer shouting, but Eurydice was in no danger of coming too close. She knew the area, and the increasing brightness as she neared the bank of the river also warned her. She edged carefully from the trunk of one tree to another until she could peer safely through the branches of a bush. Then she heard a loud splash of water, and a boy’s thin voice protesting that he did not want to get wet.

  Eurydice’s eyes followed the sound and her mouth dropped open in astonishment. She had never seen quite so pretty a boy in her life. His skin, beardless as yet, although he looked from his size to be about fifteen, was creamy as milk fresh from the udder; his hair was black and just curly enough not to lie lankly; his eyes were black too, large and lustrous; his nose short and straight; and his mouth, soft and rosy, pouted as adorably as any girl’s. Even as Eurydice’s eyes were ravished, however, her ears were offended. Out of that perfect mouth came a truly nasty whine.

  The blond man she had followed strode forward, raising his hand, but before he could strike a very, very deep male voice said, “Do not hit him, Jason. It is my fault he is spoiled.”

  Eurydice blinked and blinked again at the man? giant? who had just stepped out of the forest farther down along the river bank, carrying a large cask. He stood a head taller than the blond she had followed. He was also blond, though less golden fair than the man whom he had called Jason, and his body made Jason’s, which she had thought tall and strong, look like an underdeveloped child’s.

  “Maybe so,” the man called Jason replied, “but spoiled or not, he must do his part, Heracles.”

  The giant called Heracles nodded, set down the cask near the water, and turned to the pouting beauty, who was now sniffling. “You are one of us, Hylas.” Despite sounding as if it were coming out of a deep crevice in the earth, the voice was surprisingly gentle. “You wanted to come. You begged to come with us until I agreed. Since you are too light to help carry the casks, you must fill them. Take off your tunic if you do not want to wet it. It is warm enough.”

  Casks, Eurydice thought, suddenly making sense of what she had seen. They are filling water casks. That means a ship. And a ship means a way off the Chersonesus! The boy, Hylas, was whining again, but Eurydice did not listen. How? she wondered. Dare she walk out of the woods and simply say she wanted to go? No, that was impossible. She had nothing with which to pay for her passage, and they were Greek. They would laugh at her—if they did not try to seize her and rape her. The Greeks looked down on women, confined them to their homes and kept them ignorant and uneducated. A woman who appeared in public without an escort and a definite purpose was considered no better than a whore and could be insulted with impunity.

  The sound of another mighty splash broke into her thoughts, and her eyes, which had been fixed on nothing, focused on the group of men. From their relative positions, Jason had dumped Hylas into the stream where the boy was floundering and shrieking curses. Most of the men were laughing, but Heracles waded into the water and carried the weeping boy out.

  “Jason,” Heracles protested when he reached the bank again, “there was no need to throw him in and spoil his garments. I would have convinced him—”

  “Not in time to fill the casks and get them back to the ship while it is still light.” Jason’s voice wa
s flat with controlled anger. “We will camp here tonight, since so much time has been wasted already, but I would like to leave early tomorrow. We may have to sail for days before we sight a village or even another boat. We must find people to ask the way. All we know of Colchis is that it is ‘east of the sun setting over water and west of the sun rising over mountains,’ which is not the most exact directions I have ever had.”

  Eurydice had to bite her lips to suppress a cry of shock and hope. Colchis was a familiar name—a place she had considered as a haven. Little was known of the country, but rumors of magic and enchantment clung to it. She had even heard that the king of Colchis had a daughter, Medea, who was a great witch. If Aietes protected his daughter, Eurydice reasoned, would he not at least allow her to live in peace? Because that hope sprang up each time she was plagued or threatened on account of her Gift, she had gathered what information she could about Colchis, and she knew—not where it was, exactly—but of a person who could direct a party going there.

  A babble of male voices arguing amiably about something could not distract her from wondering whether she could trade her knowledge for passage on their ship. But would they believe she knew someone who could direct them? She could not tell them the name of the man or from where he came too soon or they might not honor their word to take her, or might too soon abandon her. Equally important, would they even let her speak? That brought her back to her initial problem: how to introduce herself to these men so that they would not attack her.

  Then, as one man pushed another and both fell to the ground laughing and wrestling while the others shouted and cheered, another danger leapt to her mind. In Thrace the Gifted had their problems: unless they were extraordinarily powerful (which presented a whole special variety of pitfalls), they existed at the whim of any little despot. They could be driven away or imprisoned or forced to use their Power in ways they did not like. But those difficulties were nothing compared to those of the Gifted in Greece, who were considered dangerous and unclean and fit only for destruction. Would these rough and thoughtless creatures maim or burn her, or sacrifice her to Hades, king of the Dead, if she showed her Power? Hiding it was only another problem. Was she capable of concealing it completely?

  A third tremendous splash—the two wrestlers had rolled off the bank—and roars of laughter drew Eurydice’s attention. Jason began to curse the men angrily for roiling the water, and a sudden silence fell among his previously playful companions. He then turned on Heracles, who had stripped off Hylas’ tunic and was drying the boy, and told him to stop wasting time since Hylas had to get into the water again immediately.

  “Gently, Jason,” an older man said. “We spent nearly a year with the women of Lemnos. A few hours more or less now cannot matter. You will find Colchis. I have Seen that. And there is something here, something ...”

  His head lifted and swung toward Eurydice, moved past her, swung back. She held her breath, damping down any wisp of Power she had let slip. His eyes stared, unfocused. A seer? Before she could decide whether to step out of hiding or try to slip away, he shook his head sharply and shrugged.

  “It is gone, whatever it was. The farther I get from my temple the less I can perceive. I wonder if that is why I will not finish the voyage—that I will become useless.”

  “No pair of hands is useless, Idmon,” Jason said, the stridency gone from his voice. He went closer, placed a hand on the older man’s arm, and squeezed it gently. “And what you do not perceive of the future, you make up for in seeing the present.”

  He turned to the men then, laughing, and said that he would apportion the tasks according to the dampness of the man. Those two who had fallen in might as well stay in and fill buckets; those who had been closest to the bank and were well splashed would take the buckets and fill the casks; and those who were still dry could move the casks. The men began to laugh too, to compliment Jason on his wisdom, and to complain and shout at each other comparing the advantages and disadvantages of their tasks even while they began working.

  Eurydice slipped carefully backward, out of the embrace of the bush in which she had been hiding, and retreated again from tree trunk to tree trunk, until she was almost beyond the sound of the men’s voices. She sat down then on a fallen tree overhung by new growth and tried to devise a safe approach to the men, but each explanation she thought of for being alone in the forest, except shipwreck—and that had its own drawbacks—seemed totally unbelievable. Eventually, an increasingly dry mouth and protesting stomach reminded her of her original reason for going to the river. She had been hungry and thirsty and wished to see if she could find some bulbs or mushrooms to go with the rabbit she had killed and cooked the day before.

  She rose slowly, thinking about the path of the river and the coastline to east and west of where the river dropped into the sea from a headland. There was only one place a ship could be pulled ashore. The men bringing empty casks and carrying back full ones would take the shortest route. She could go upstream with little danger of meeting anyone, but then she would have to take great care if she wished to gather plants. Possibly the men would be too busy to notice if something escaped her and went downstream, but they might be alert to any sign of disturbance since they were looking for a resident to question.

  She bit her lip as that thought crossed her mind. Was that an opportunity? If she allowed the men to catch her “accidentally,” would that help? No, it would be worse. If she lived here, she would have no excuse to want to go with them. Also, they would want to question others and ask where was the town from which she came. She would be branded a liar at once, and then who would believe her when she said she could tell them how to reach their goal? No ‘accidental’ meetings, and no pretense of being other than she was, a fugitive.

  Her stomach growled again, and she brought her thoughts back to gathering food. There would be some danger going closer to where the river fell into the sea, too, in that someone from the ship might have wandered off the main path they had trod down for use, but she thought she could avoid any strays. And if she wanted an encounter, she could just wade upstream and say boldly she had heard voices and had come seeking succor.

  Eurydice reconsidered the decision and was content with it. Jason had said the crew would stay overnight, so she had time to fill her stomach. She would do that now, while she continued to think about a story to tell the men. She would need all her wits about her whether she approached the men working on the river or waited until they had lit campfires and came to one of those saying the light had attracted her. Neither device was really safe, but Eurydice realized that somehow, while she seemed to be thinking of other things, she had decided that she dared not let this chance slip away.

  She found no difficulty in stealing across the route from the ship to the river the men had partially cleared. Then she went back to the riverbank and quenched her thirst. That most urgent necessity assuaged, Eurydice began to work her way along the river, keeping back in the shelter of the trees, listening as she went. When she could barely hear the voices, it would be safe to begin gleaning. But then, closer than she intended to stop, she chanced on a particularly dense and luscious patch of mushrooms and she could not resist picking and eating them.

  Crouched low to the ground, her eyes fixed on the succulent round heads her fingers were gathering and peeling, Eurydice was mostly intent on satisfying her hunger. She had not abandoned caution, but she was listening partly to the voices behind her and partly for any sound of movement through the brush. Thus, she was totally unprepared for a cascade of notes from a cithara. She jerked upright, gasping with shock.

  Fortunately she was not as close to the source of those clear notes as she had feared. She was actually well screened from the player by a thicker growth of brush that lined a small clearing. Indeed, she could hardly see the musician, just now and again a patch of white chiton showing as he moved. Eurydice knew her dull and dirty gown would be much less noticeable, even if the player’s attention had not been fixe
d on his music.

  The waterfall of notes changed to chords and then to a haunting melody, which stopped suddenly and then began again to continue with a slight variation. Eurydice’s attention had been as fixed as the musician’s while he played. During the pause, she regained enough sense to look wildly around, sighing with relief when she saw no one else had been attracted by the sound. She kept a grip on her sense of wonder and managed to move forward cautiously when the music began again, hating to do so because she had to attend to where she was putting her feet and could not concentrate on the exquisite sounds.

  When she was close enough, she saw a man seated on a fallen trunk in the open glade. Eurydice breathed a prayer of thanksgiving to the Goddess. He was all alone. She studied him anxiously. Judging from length of arm and leg, he would be as tall as Jason, but he was much slenderer and his hair was a darker brown than that of Heracles. He moved his head a little in time with some silent music in his mind and she caught a glimpse of light-colored eyes and high, sharp cheekbones. The mouth, however, looked soft.

  Eurydice drew in a long breath and bit her lip. Here was one man, likely less brutal than the others, since he was a musician, to whom she could tell her story…as soon as she decided on a story. And then he began to sing. Eurydice froze where she stood. All thought, all emotion, was caught up and bound into the song and the music.

  Whether she would have stood there until night if he had continued to play, Eurydice would not have hazarded a guess. The song, fortunately, was not a finished piece, and the musician stopped frequently to polish a phrase or try a new chord. At first, Eurydice was so stunned by the effect that she continued to stand without thought or movement even during the silences, only longing for him to begin again. Soon, however, a somewhat longer pause gave her enough freedom of mind to question what was happening. Eurydice knew she admired music no less than any other, but to draw her this way, to bind her—that was not skill. That was Power.