Thrice Bound Page 27

  "Go? But she's not finished with the ship!" the steersman exclaimed. "The roots by the prow that are in the water are still swelling. She must dry them."

  "The curse will wear off. She admitted that herself."

  "But will the roots go back to being dry after the curse wears off?"

  "The serpent is there on your feet! Man, it will bite you. Jump away. Run."

  The captain's eyes followed something that crawled back and forth over the steersman's feet, but no one else could see it and the steersman clearly couldn't feel it. Those crew members who could see the captain's face whispered among themselves and to the crewmen who were watching Hekate.

  All of them were sure she had caused the captain's condition, but none—not even the steersman—was willing to confront her. Worse might befall them than the harmless vision bedevilling the captain. What if they began to see other crew members as monsters and attacked each other? And what of the ship? What if the curse did not wear off?

  Hekate had quietly repacked her bundles and lifted one to each shoulder, the third to Kabeiros' back. She never looked at the captain or any other member of the crew, but started to walk slowly toward the forest bordering the beach. The steersman ran after her.

  "Mother," he said, his voice pleading, "it seems that the captain's greed has addled his brain. You can't go off into the wild all alone. Stay with us."

  "I think the danger of being alone in the wild is less than the danger that your mad captain will order me thrown overboard when a new fit seizes him."

  "But the ship is not healed. Will the lashings return to normal when the curse wears off?"

  "I have no idea," Hekate admitted. "I didn't set the curse on the ship. I don't even know how such a thing is done. I'm an herb-wife and I know some small healing spells and that's all."

  "Mother, if the lashings do not heal by themselves, we will be castaways on this beach. Please stay, at least until the next port, which is not far. I will make sure no harm comes to you, that you go ashore with everything you brought aboard, and that you are fed—and the dog too."

  Hekate put down her bundles. Kabeiros sat down beside her, panting. The steersman offered further inducements, further guarantees of her safety. Eventually she shrugged and looked at the semicircle of men watching and listening.

  "The rest of the crew must agree also," she said. "With the captain's approval, you could be overwhelmed by the others and your promises made worthless."

  There was no problem about the crew agreeing. They were all nodding as she spoke. Each man then came separately, and allowed her to touch him in binding, swearing on his gods, and, more important, on the mercy of the sea that Hekate and Kabeiros would be kept safe, fed, cherished, no matter what the captain ordered. But then they gathered and begged her to remove the curse that was driving their captain mad.

  Hekate shook her head. "Whatever you all believe, I didn't curse the man and I can't remove the curse, just as I can heal the lashings but I cannot remove the curse from them. I have nothing to do with curses."

  "Then what ails the captain?" the steersman asked.

  "I don't know. Perhaps he knew he was wrong to try to rob me after I had worked so hard to keep us all alive. Then when he saw the herb stalks in my bundle, he thought it was a snake. But madness is beyond my skill to cure. The best I can do is offer a potion to make the captain sleep. Perhaps when he wakes, the serpent will be gone."

  At first the captain would not agree and screamed that the serpent would bite him while he slept and, when the crew insisted there was no serpent, that Hekate had bewitched him so she could poison him. Hekate offered to drink some of the potion herself and after she did, the steersman forced it down the captain's throat and had him carried aboard. Of course, the serpent was not gone, when the captain woke—Hekate saw to that.

  With the captain out of the way, her relations with the crew improved over the five days it took her to unravel Medea's spell. She healed small sores, removed deep driven splinters, soothed uneasy guts. Making the crew less fearful of her was important because she didn't want hysteria to sweep over them at sea and end with her overboard. And, despite her apparent reluctance, Hekate was as eager to stay with the ship as the crew were to keep her.

  She didn't fear the wilderness, but her packs were heavy, each having a substantial sum in gold and silver hidden by illusion in it. No matter that the chunks and twists of metal looked like nut hulls, seeds, stinking black dried dung, or pots of salve, the weight of the metal was there, and Hekate didn't want to carry it. The spell Medea had put on the ship intrigued her, too. Surely the princess of Colchis had not discovered how to revive the dead?

  The answer was not so earth-shaking. In fact, it was so simple she almost overlooked it—a basic piece of sympathetic magic. Medea had someone bring her some of the root fiber used for lashing together the planks of a ship and cast a spell for drinking in water on it. Then most likely she had sent one of her tame sorcerers aboard the Sea Foam, perhaps disguised as one of the crew, with the enchanted root in hand. He would only need to go around touching all the roots in the hull, transferring the magic from the seed root to those on the ship.

  More intriguing to Hekate was the renewal spell Medea had woven into the simple water-drinking spell. The vindictive princess had, in fact, made sure the "curse" would never have worn off. The renewal spell drew power from high or low magic and fed itself and fed any spell to which it was connected.

  It took Hekate most of the five days she insisted the Sea Foam remain on the beach—ostensibly to let the curse wear off—to tease the two spells apart, but the renewal spell was well worth having. Hekate had known a way to make an illusion spell that drew from the earth-blood to feed itself, but that spell needed to be on the earth and could not be moved. Now she had a way to make any spell she devised "immortal."

  PART THREE: THE UNBINDING

  CHAPTER 18

  It took Hekate years to reach Olympus, but she had been in no hurry. Traveling again, she discovered she had developed a strong taste for new places, new people, and new ideas. Having learned from Yehoraz the spell for drawing a language from a person's mind, she never needed to be marked as a stranger, although usually it suited her best to use trade tongue. There were advantages as well as disadvantages to being an outlander. And most often, despite the discomfort, she used the form of the crone.

  She had learned caution, and traveling by ship required no physical effort. The form of the old woman with her cloth-wrapped bundles was no threat to anyone and no temptation to men or to thieves. And, oddly, Kabeiros seemed happiest and most affectionate when she was the crone.

  Occasionally, if she didn't like the selection of ships in a small port, she would join a caravan. She selected those that included other travelers, especially women. Then the crone would arrange a place for her newly widowed granddaughter or greatniece-by-marriage or some other relative by marriage, begging the caravan master to care for the lone creature, and the woman Hekate would do the more strenuous traveling.

  She always left the impression that she had a large and loving family. When she sailed, the woman bought space for her grandmother aboard a ship that regularly took passengers and had a good reputation for arrival of the travelers. This most beloved old lady wished to go home to some more-western land (Hekate picked a new one each time) to see a younger, favorite son, but her older son expected her to return and awaited that event eagerly.

  Neither in caravan nor ship did she have another experience like that on the ship that had taken her from Colchis. She thought of that ship from time to time and regretted that she had resisted the temptation to add Medea's self-sustaining loop to the illusion that kept the serpent as the captain's constant companion. He knew by the time they made the port where Hekate left them that the snake was not real and that it wouldn't bite him, and he could function . . . but not well.

  He deserved the punishment, but Kabeiros said it was enough, for he shied away from her like a frightened ho
rse and spoke to her, when it was absolutely necessary, most respectfully. The crew, too, Kabeiros said, didn't deserve to be ruined by the loss of the ship and the cargo, and any emergency at sea or trading venture could turn to disaster if the captain were distracted. So she hadn't made the spell permanent.

  Despite his own griefs, Kabeiros was sweet-natured. He did not carry the scars on his soul that Perses had left on hers. Hekate always yielded to his kinder judgement when the matter was not of their safety, and she never expected to see the Sea Foam again. She had laughed to herself as she packed her bundles. By now none of the crew blamed her for the captain's "lunacy," but they would watch him closely in the future and might curb his greed to prevent a second attack of guilty madness. So Hekate just said her farewells and walked away, knowing that the spell would fade as time passed.

  The old crone had disappeared in the narrow, dirty streets of Trapesus. A day after Sea Foam had left port, a tall, strong young woman, carefully veiled, had enquired about passage westward for her grandmother, who wanted to go home to Greece. Only a few on the docks had ever heard of Greece, and no ship was headed there. The moving rocks, the Symplegades, cut off the narrow passage of the Bosphorus from the Propontis, but perhaps at Sinope, a larger port, someone would have more information.

  She was satisfied. She hadn't expected to find a ship that went to Greece, but she had the name of a port to the west. The next day, the crone inquired about ships and fares to Sinope. Her master was dead and she wanted to join her daughter in that city. She looked poor and was offered deck space at a reasonable price, so she bought a place for herself and her master's dog, whom no one else would keep.

  It took the rest of the summer and into the autumn to travel from Trapesus to Sinope, but the ship made port and laid over at Hermanssus, Cerasus, Cytorus, Themiscrya, and Carusa on the way. The crone and the hound enjoyed themselves. At each town where the ship stopped to load and unload cargo, the crone visited the market and set up a stall if it were permitted.

  If itinerant merchants were forbidden the market, she was allowed a small mat on the dock near the ship. She offered for sale foreign lotions and potions, amulets for protection, for good luck, for faithful love (but never to induce love), and gathered in handfuls of copper and now and then a piece of silver. Some of the metal she bartered for herbs, spices, and exotic roots and for new amulets to replace her supply; the remainder she shared with the captain and won his goodwill.

  She spent the winter in Sinope, fortunately a city that was indifferent to foreigners. If you paid the fees, you could buy, sell, even practice magic . . . but Hekate admitted to no magic. The amulets, she claimed, had been purchased in "the east" as they were, charged with good fortune or other blessings. She was an herb woman, no more.

  She almost spent more than the winter in Sinope. The ships going westward were few and far between. The land to the west was more barren. Only Cytorus and Heraclea were towns large enough to make trade worthwhile. Caravans were even less frequent. Only the wild tribes traveled that barren interior. The moons of early spring passed; high summer was close before a ship traveling west docked.

  Wave Leaper, however, was worth waiting for. The woman Hekate was told that the ship was going all the way to the Bosphorus, the passage guarded by the Symplegades. Ser Ottah, the captain, whom Hekate immediately recognized as an Egyptian although she did not say so, informed her that he could not be certain of the actual date. They might not make port in Cyaneae until the next spring, and from there her grandmother would have to travel overland to Byzantium.

  He hoped, he told Hekate, to arrive at Cyaneae, a town just north of the Symplegades where they made a blue dye of surpassing beauty and tenacity, before winter, but he could not give a bond for that. It was later in the season than he usually arrived at Sinope. If the weather turned foul too soon, he would stay in whatever port he could find, as he would not risk his ship in the winter storms.

  The woman Hekate pursed her lips. She understood the problem. If Wave Leaper wintered over where the crone had no friends or relatives, she would have to pay to live—find goods or metal to provide her with rent and food. Hekate said that her grandmother was a famous healer and could support herself wherever trade was allowed to foreigners. Then she shrugged.

  "I will give you metal or trade goods enough to support her over the winter, and you may give her the metal or goods wherever you overwinter or take care of her needs. If more is owed you, she can trade in herbs or in service. As I said, she is an unequalled healer."

  If Captain Ottah looked a little surprised at such trustfulness, Hekate was indifferent. Attached to the gold and silver pieces the crone delivered to him before Wave Leaper sailed was a compulsion to treat with honesty, generosity, and kindness the person who gave him the metal—and Medea's renewal spell was wound into the compulsion. Hekate could have renewed the spell herself by touching Ottah now and again during the voyage, but she preferred not to need to think about it. Until the end of his life, Captain Ottah would be kind, generous, and honest to Hekate.

  As the voyage progressed, Hekate came to believe that the compulsion spell was unnecessary. Captain Ottah was a delight: an excellent seaman, a fair master, a good host with a lively sense of humor and a wonderful knowledge about places and people. When Hekate confessed that the tale of a younger son in Byzantium was false, that she was traveling just because she was old and wanted to see what she could of the world before she died, he laughed immoderately. When he could speak, he remarked that he who had spent all his life traveling looked forward to settling in one place. It was only reasonable, he said, that she, who had lived always in one place, should want to travel.

  To her delight, he suggested that she visit Greece, although he warned her strictly against using any magic at all there, even simple healing spells. He smiled at her when he said it, showing that he knew she had used more than pounded leaves and draughts of willow bark steepings to cure the foot of a seaman who had driven a splinter deep where it had festered.

  "If they don't kill you outright," he said, "they bind you and leave you as a sacrifice to the king of the dead."

  Hekate sighed. "They only treated the Gifted that way in Sinope," she said. "Magic was not loved, but usually it was tolerated—if no one had a grudge against the magic maker."

  That set him off and he told tales of his youthful years in Greece, when he had accompanied his father on trading missions, tales of how they dressed and what they ate, small things but those that made a deep impression on him because it was his first voyage out of Egyptian territory.

  "And I never went home again," he said with a sigh.

  "But if you passed the Symplegades coming from the Mare Aegaeum to the Pontus Euxinus, why not the other way?"

  He laughed heartily. "I wasn't captain then, just a seaman. I was a third son with no hopes of my father's business, so I struck out on my own. And the ship I sailed on didn't pass through the Bosphorus. At Byzantium I left the ship and went overland to Cyaneae—which is how I started to trade on my own. There are caravans that travel that route several times a ten-day."

  However, Hekate was not to need that knowledge very soon. There were contrary winds and sickness struck the whole crew at Cytorus where they were forced to remain for a full moon. It took all Hekate's skill to save Ser Ottah. Kabeiros grew very silent again while she cared for the captain, but although she did not neglect the dog, her mind and attention were plainly elsewhere.

  Wave Leaper barely made Heraclea. A nasty storm tore away their sail and the crew had to row to reach that port. Hekate had taken the place of the cook and had bailed to free more men for the oars. And when they came to port, the captain said he would go no farther, that the crew was free to seek another ship or he would do what he could to reduce the cost of lodging for those who wished to overwinter at Heraclea and finish the voyage with him.

  Hekate was satisfied to do that; she was in no hurry. But she was surprised when Ottah did not give her the metal
she had entrusted to him at the start of the voyage and let her fend for herself like the crew. Instead he found her a more comfortable lodging than she would have chosen for herself and even hired a little maid to care for her. When she protested that her funds would not cover such expenses, he laughed and said she had earned her comfort and that he did not wish to forgo the pleasure he had in her company.

  Truthfully she was glad to have someone with whom to talk and jest. Kabeiros had been not only unusually silent but sullen since she settled into her new quarters. She grew very sorry that she had gone aboard the Wave Leaper in the form of the crone instead of wearing the woman's body.

  "If I had thought about it," she said one night after Ottah had left to walk back to his own lodging in a pouring rain, "I could have gone as the woman since I intended to bespell him anyway."

  *And he could have stayed the night in your bed rather than going home to his own?* Kabeiros said. *And what would I have done? Gone to sleep in the alley?*

  "What would you care?" Hekate snapped. "You are forever telling me that the dog isn't interested in humans. And you needn't be so self-pitying. There are two chambers to this apartment. There would be nothing to stop you from sleeping on the divan or the rug in here."

  Whereupon the dog got up and went to the door. *Let me out,* he said.

  Hekate ran to him. "No, don't go out, Kabeiros. You'll get all wet. It's raining very hard."

  *Open the door,* he repeated. *I need to remind myself that I am a dog.*

  He was not back by the time Hekate was ready for bed. She wasn't sure whether she was more frightened or resentful. She had not neglected him. Indeed, she had included him in most of her conversations with the captain, specially when Ottah told tales of the sea or of cities he had visited. In the periods when it was normal for her to be a silent listener, it was easy to make mental asides to Kabeiros and to enjoy his sometimes caustic remarks.