Thrice Bound Page 20

  "But then the merchants could not find it either," the petitioner protested.

  "Oh well, each merchant with Colchis as his destination would take aboard a mage who would have a key to the illusion." King Aietes smiled.

  "And who would pay the mages?"

  "The merchants, of course."

  "Then I think an increase in the navy—"

  "Which would necessitate a substantial increase in tariffs, docking fees, and perhaps other taxes. Warships do not build themselves, and the mages who ride them and assure that they will be where they are needed when they are needed also must be paid."

  "Sire, Sire," the merchant cried. "I cannot make such a decision for all my peers without a word to them. And yet it has taken me near a year to obtain this audience. Must I go back and tell them I have no news, that we must wait another year?"

  "Master Merchant." The mellow voice was that of the blond man to the king's left. "Nothing worth having is free. You have yourself praised the good governance of King Aietes. You are not the only one who has petitions for him, which is why each must wait his turn. Now think of his generosity in not simply applying to the problem of raiders the remedy that would cause him the least inconvenience and assessing you for the cost. Any solution will take time and have a price. Warships are not built in a day, nor is an illusion that disguises the whole coast generated without long preparation. Even if you take your protection into your own hands, you will find that you cannot assemble a good and reliable fighting force overnight. I advise you to take King Aietes' generosity to heart."

  "Of course." The Master Merchant bowed. "I understand. I am grateful."

  "Good. Then go back to your living quarter and discuss these expedients with your fellow merchants. When you have come to a conclusion as to what would best suit you all, come to me. I will bring your answer to the king so that you do not need to wait for a formal appointment, and I will bring his answer to you."

  "Meddling again, Phrixos?" The girl smiled as she spoke, which almost made the words into praise.

  Almost, but not quite. Hekate knew without any doubt that Medea did not like Phrixos, not at all! Her eyes flicked to Aietes' face and to Phrixos'; only Phrixos seemed unaware of the bitterness under the honey—thick, smooth, and sweet—of Medea's voice. Hekate's eyes came back to that beautiful face and widened. One blemish existed in the perfect beauty. Medea's lips were perfectly bowed, very red, full and soft, but the smile exposed her teeth, which were just a little too small for her mouth and, in addition, as sharply pointed as if each had been filed.

  King Aietes laughed but looked hard at Medea. "He meddles to my great benefit," he said firmly. "Phrixos, I will leave the whole in your hands, for the merchant has spoken of a real and growing danger. As the fame of Colchis spreads, greedy eyes turn to us. There was that raid on the lower docks by Porters Way and Lord Nodeleya and Lady Tshuva lost a whole shipload of goods, not to mention the buildings that were burnt and the people killed. That was only one ship. What if ten had come?" He turned to the merchant. "Master Merchant, I will give Phrixos the power to carry out whatever decision he makes for the protection of the city."

  The man called Phrixos bowed his head to the king and said, "Yes, lord," then turned to look at the Master Merchant. "Come to my house after the Court is over, and we will make arrangements for your easy access to me," he said, smiling.

  The merchant seemed well pleased with that arrangement and stepped back into the crowd. Another man pressed forward, but the king's guard forestalled him.

  "Here is the Lady Hekate," it said.

  The eyes of everyone on the dais turned to her. Hekate clutched her staff tighter. Phrixos smiled. Aietes looked faintly puzzled. And Medea cried out, high and angry, "By the names of all the gods, she isn't there!"

  CHAPTER 14

  "A simulacrum? An empty shell?" Aietes exclaimed, half rising from his throne chair.

  "No, I am not!" Hekate cried. "I am me. I am real. I am no simulacrum!" With the words, she created a mage light and left it suspended just above the hand holding her staff. "No simulacrum could cast a spell!"

  Aietes sank back into his seat. "I have never heard of a simulacrum that could cast a spell. Usually they can barely speak and walk." His eyes sought his daughter's.

  "Usually?" Medea hissed. "What is usual about this circumstance? About what we have heard of her? Why could a simulacrum not be created carrying one or even several spells? I say we must destroy—"

  "Gently. Gently," Aietes remonstrated, waving back the guards who were closing in on Hekate. "I don't wish to damage either the person or if it is a construct, the construct. Such a creation is worth study. And it is not inimical to us, Medea. If it is a simulacrum and if, as you claim, it carries one spell, why not a spell of destruction? The mage light can do no harm even if it is floating free. And I would like to know how she did that!"

  "It could snap forward and touch you before you could avoid it. How do you know what it can do if it touches you?" Medea snapped.

  "Shall I dissolve it?" Hekate asked. "Would that come under what a simulacrum could do? What can I do to prove I am real? I don't wish to be cut to show I bleed red blood."

  While she was speaking, Phrixos had released the hand of the little boy, stepped off the dais, and cupped his hand around the mage light. "It is harmless to me," he remarked, and raised his hand so that it fell on Hekate's shoulder. "She is warm and of flesh."

  "I don't care!" Medea shrieked. "She isn't there! I see her with my eyes, but I can't feel her. I can't sense her. She has no soul! No matter how perfect, she's a simulacrum!"

  "No," Aietes said quietly. "Calm yourself, Medea. I think Phrixos is right—"

  "Phrixos is always right!" Medea spat.

  "About the woman," Aietes continued. "I agree that I don't feel her as I feel others, but I can't sense the spell that holds the mage light either."

  "What?"

  Medea's huge eyes turned to the mage light that held steady over Hekate's hand on the knob of her staff. She stared at it. It shone placidly. She muttered under her breath. It didn't move or flicker. She gestured, spoke aloud in a language unfamiliar to Hekate. From the corner of her eyes, which she kept fixed on Medea, Hekate could see the swirls of lightning power around the mage light, but they didn't affect the earth-blood power Hekate had used to create it. The mage light remained unaffected. Medea looked at Hekate.

  "Who are you? What are you?" she asked, eyes narrowed.

  "I am called Hekate." The answer acknowledged that she had a true name kept unknown. "I am an herb-wife—or, I was an herb-wife until I came to Colchis and found those who would teach me healing spells. I am now a healer."

  "What other spells do you know? I don't wish to have someone carried here from a sickbed so you can show your healing skills."

  Hekate shrugged. "I know a few illusions, such as may entertain at a celebration."

  She saw a thread of light dart from Medea toward her and pulled a touch more power into her shields but without shifting her eyes or allowing any change in her expression. The thread of light touched her wards and dissipated into a blurred mist. Hekate frowned thoughtfully at Medea.

  "I am very good at personal illusions," she said, pointed a finger at her head, drew it down her body to her feet, muttered a few meaningless words, and shifted to the crone.

  It was perhaps a dangerous chance to take, but she was tired of arguing about whether she was real or not and even Medea would acknowledge that a simulacrum could not change its appearance. She had proof enough that neither Aietes nor Medea, who was, Hekate suspected, the more powerful of the two although less experienced, could feel her. That would make it impossible for them to sense that the crone was not an illusion but a true form of Hekate so her shift should not betray her.

  The guards had sprung forward as she began to mutter and gesture, one throwing himself in front of her so that she could not cast a spell at those on the dais, the second reaching for her. When she changed
form, however, both hesitated, and in that time Aietes bade them let her alone.

  "So," he said, "you are no simulacrum. An illusion atop an illusion—that is too much. Now you need to tell us how you can do magic no one can sense and why we cannot touch you as we can touch everyone else."

  "I wish I could," Hekate said most mendaciously but with seeming sincerity, "but I don't know myself because I can't sense your magic. I'm sure you and the Lady Medea have been trying to scry my soul, but I feel nothing."

  Aietes raised his hand to rub his lips. As he did, a bolt of light flew from his fingertips. Hekate ignored it, keeping her eyes on the king's and not flinching or blinking when the bolt shattered on her shields.

  "Yet when you learn a spell, it will work for you?"

  Hekate's lips parted to speak, but she was interrupted by Medea, who said, "Dismiss that disgusting illusion! If we must talk with you and be nauseated by what you say, at least spare our other sensibilities."

  "Yes, my lady."

  Hekate repeated her meaningless "spell" and shifted back to the woman, straightening away from the staff on which she had been leaning her bent body. She was aware of Medea's keen scrutiny and of the flash of anger that betrayed Medea had not sensed the dismissal of the "illusion." As she looked toward the king to answer the question he had asked, Phrixos bent close to speak in Aietes' ear. Hekate waited. The king sighed, then nodded and beckoned to the guard who had accompanied Hekate from the inn—at least she thought it was the same one; they were to her eyes identical.

  "Take Lady Hekate to the first waiting chamber," Aietes said. The guard came forward. The king held up a hand and said to Hekate, "I can see that I must speak to you at length, but this is a time of petition for my people and I must not scant them. You will have to wait."

  "Yes, my lord," Hekate said.

  She bowed to Aietes and again to Medea, watching each carefully as she transmitted to Kabeiros the information that she was going to have to wait, for how long she knew not. To her relief, neither showed the smallest sign that they were aware of what she was doing. She had not previously aimed a clear communication at the hound, for fear they would sense it although she had "echoed" their remarks and her replies, hoping Kabeiros would be able to catch something. Now she shifted her attention to the guard and "sent" that she would be in the first waiting room . . . wherever that was.

  The guard showed no response, but as Hekate moved toward him, Medea said, "Wait!" and the guard, who had been turning, stopped. So did Hekate. "Where is the black dog?" Medea asked. "We were told that she was always accompanied by a large black dog with white eyes. Does he hold her soul?"

  "No, of course not," Hekate said immediately, allowing a touch of anger to show in her voice. "Even if you can't sense it, my soul is just where it should be, within my own body." She bowed to the king. "King Aietes, I didn't intend to hide Kabeiros. I just didn't think it fitting to bring a dog into your palace. Kabeiros is waiting for me by the outer door."

  Aietes shook his head at Medea. "That the soul can be lodged elsewhere is a tale, Medea. Even the gods can't move their souls around." Then he looked at Hekate again. "Nonetheless, I would like to see this dog myself."

  "I will fetch him," Hekate said.

  "You can't summon your familiar?"

  "Kabeiros isn't my familiar. He doesn't store or focus my power . . . such as it is."

  Although Kabeiros was resistant to her magic, Hekate wasn't sure he would be equally resistant to that of Aietes and Medea. Her spells didn't "take" on him, so she had no way to shield him and didn't want Aietes and Medea trying to take him apart to find what wasn't there.

  "I have heard he is a very strange-looking dog." Aietes' doubts were clear in his voice.

  "That's true, my lord. His eyes are all white. He was left on a midden near my house—because he was believed blind, I suppose. Perhaps I am too tender-hearted, but I couldn't leave that puppy to die of hunger and thirst. I told myself a dog doesn't use his sight as much as his smell and hearing. I brought him home, and it worked to my advantage. It was as if he knew; he has always been devoted to me and when my husband's family put me out . . ."

  "For what?" Medea's question was sharp, suspicious.

  Hekate shrugged. "For being childless—as if it were my fault when my husband was past fourscore years."

  "And you were not powerful enough to hold your own against them?" Medea's suspicions had not been allayed.

  "Powerful?" Hekate shook her head. "I knew nothing then but herbs, and in that city—"

  "Enough!" Aietes cut her off and gestured sharply at Medea, whose lips tightened; however, she stepped back. Then Aietes spoke to the guard. "Take Lady Hekate first to the door to fetch her dog. Then bring her and the dog to the first waiting room. Stay with her until I come."

  Hekate went at once, but as she and the guard made their way out of the bright center of the chamber and through the dimmer, almost forest-like aisle, she remembered that the guard had obeyed Medea when she said, "Wait." If there were a contest of wills between Aietes and Medea, who would win? Aietes right now, Hekate thought, but not forever; perhaps not even for long.

  Father against daughter. Hekate felt chilled and reminded herself firmly that Aietes was no Perses and Medea was the last person in the world to need her help. Then she wondered whether she should warn Aietes. Warn the father against the daughter? Hekate restrained a shudder and decided if he didn't understand the danger a warning would do no good because he wouldn't be perceptive enough or strong enough to resist Medea anyway.

  When they went through the audience-chamber doors into the corridor, Hekate called aloud, "Kabeiros, come," so the guard should hear her give the hound a verbal order. But it wasn't the dog she saw at first. The shadowy man almost leapt to his feet as the solid hound rose more slowly from his haunches.

  *What happened?* Kabeiros' face was twisted with anxiety. *I almost tried to follow you twice. I smelled the magic of your wards—a burning smell—as if they had been damaged. Are you all right?*

  Hekate felt startled and frightened. The touches on her shields had seemed insignificant; then the damage Kabeiros sensed had been undetectable to her. She passed her tongue nervously over her suddenly dry lips.

  *Both Aietes and Medea tried my shields, but I felt no weakening. We may be in worse danger than I thought if—*

  *No. I must have smelled the testing. The wards are as usual now, just smelling of your kind of magic.*

  Was that true, or had Kabeiros only offered reassurance so that fear shouldn't weaken her? She was distracted from that concern as the shadow of the man reached her, ahead of the dog. He put out a hand, as if to draw her to him, and Hekate leaned toward him, wanting desperately to be enfolded in a supporting embrace . . . but she only felt the dog lick her hand. Tears stung her eyes, and she had to force her eyes away from the man and make herself pat the dog's head. It seemed to her that before she had looked away, the shadow eyes were bright with shadow tears.

  The guard, who had waited until the dog reached Hekate's side, pivoted to the left and walked along the wide corridor which, as Hekate had thought, went all the way around the building. They didn't go so far, however. At what Hekate estimated must be an area that was behind the dais in the great audience chamber, the guard stopped, turned left again to face the inner wall, and opened a door.

  The room was not large, but it was plainly not a prison cell either. Although Hekate held the dog close, curiosity dulled the pain of wanting the man. Facing the door at which they entered was a beautiful mosaic of a garden. About midway a gate wrought of some dark metal was pictured. Through the gate the mosaic showed a paved walk that disappeared into the distance.

  Against the wall on the right was a narrow table that held a pitcher and several glasses on an oval platter. Above it were three mosaic portraits, very well done, particularly the eyes, which had a lustre that was nearly living. Hekate could see no sign of active power around those eyes, but the lustre might have bee
n lent by old usage. By the other wall there was a divan flanked by two comfortable chairs. A low table stood before the divan.

  "Sit," the guard said, and went to stand with its back to the door.

  Although Hekate and Kabeiros had plenty of time to review everything that had been said, done, and felt while she was in the audience chamber, their wait was not as long as Hekate feared it might be. Before the slight nagging sensation in her belly resolved into real hunger, Kabeiros, who had been sitting by her knee facing the back wall, stiffened and rose to his feet. Hekate turned to look and also rose to her feet.

  Along the path pictured in the mosaic came two figures that quickly approached the wrought metal gate. As the man put his hand out to touch the gate latch, Hekate saw he was Aietes, the woman Medea. Neither Phrixos nor the child was with them. And then they were in the room, standing with their backs to the gate as if they had actually passed through it.

  Both looked at Kabeiros, who looked back, perking his ears and wagging his tail very slightly in an ingratiating manner. He and Hekate had decided that meek compliance was their best hope until all hope was gone. Then, if necessary, they would both attack and try to escape. But that didn't seem an immediate threat.

  "You never answered my question," Aietes said, coming forward. He seated himself in one of the chairs and Medea went to the other—neatly flanking Hekate and Kabeiros. "When you learn a spell, that spell will work for you?"

  "Yes, my lord. And I have taught the spell of the free-floating mage light to other sorcerers. When they cast the spell, it works just as it should . . . but I can't sense it any more."

  The king waved at Hekate to be seated, and she resumed her place on the divan with Kabeiros at her knee again. But now he had his back to her so he could watch Aietes and Medea.