Shimmering Splendor Page 6

  Then he saw the bruises on Hyppodamia’s face and arm and he was recalled to his purpose. “If you would like to sit, please do,” he said, laying his bow down on a table as he passed behind her to throw open the doors. The scent of sweet oil from the lamps was cloying.

  He grinned when he turned back; although she had murmured a thanks and sat down on a stool near the pivoting wall, her eyes were firmly fixed on the toes of her shoes.

  “Your will, my lord?” she asked.

  “A sow,” Eros said, “recently farrowed so her dugs are prominent, large and ugly if possible, but of a docile enough disposition that she would not savage a man who tried to caress her. Do you know of such a beast? When the guards are gone, could you send some servants out to enquire?” He laughed at her expression. “Divinity does not include the knowledge of every pig in the area.”

  “No, lord, of course not,” Hyppodamia concurred doubtfully, “but such a beast would not be very toothsome…”

  “So I think also, which will make it all the more strange for Anerios to suddenly develop a mad passion for it.”

  The priestess was so startled that she almost raised her eyes to Eros’s face to see whether he was serious. He saved her from any further doubt by adding, “How long do you think he will keep his throne when he pursues such an animal with tender words and kisses, even tries to mount it?”

  Hyppodamia shuddered, then sighed, and again bowed her head. “It must be as you command, my lord, and I see that an unnatural love for an utterly loathsome creature is a fitting punishment for scorning my lady’s power.”

  “But you are troubled, Hyppodamia. Speak your trouble aloud, priestess. I will not touch your mind, for you are faithful and honest, and there is no need to violate the privacy of your thoughts.”

  “Thank you, Lord Eros. I am troubled by the loss of Anerios as king and his sons with him. It is true enough that he is very jealous of his power, but usually that jealousy is controlled by reason, and I honestly believe his purpose is for the better quiet of the state.”

  “He closed the temple of Aphrodite for the better quiet of the state?”

  “In a way, yes. He has become desperate for a solution to the problem of Psyche. He is not such a monster as to slay his own daughter. While she lives, however, his house is infested with suitors who will not leave even after she refuses them, who quarrel among themselves and with any new suitor who comes, causing disruption of his household and a constant threat that one will be maimed or killed to begin a blood feud. He dare not give her to any man who lives close enough to bring an army against Iolkas, for that, he is sure, would be the result of the jealousy soon wakened in any husband by the constant temptations offered to Psyche.”

  Eros, who had been standing near the doors he had opened, blinked and started toward a large gilded chair set beside a small table. So that had been the charm of Atomos to Anerios, not only the fact that he would not need to hear that Psyche had been hurt or killed, but that the husband would not find it practical to seek satisfaction. Hyppodamia had continued speaking and he forced himself to attend.

  “He thought he had found the answer when he brought Psyche here,” she was saying. “I wish I could have taken her into the temple, but she was unfit, totally unfit. To have her serve the goddess would have been a defilement in itself. She hates beauty and does not believe in love. I had to refuse her, and his rage drove him to desecration and blasphemy. Once he had gone that far he began to think how much more secure he would be if he controlled the temple as well as the throne. Thus, desperation led to rage and rage to evil thoughts, but usually Anerios does not oppress his people and has been a good king.”

  “Your bruises, priestess, cast shadows of doubt upon your words. Is there not something else besides your pity for Anerios? Do you fear for the safety of your temple and your underpriestesses if punishment is visited on Anerios?”

  She sighed again. “You see deeply, Lord Eros, even when you do not ‘look’—and I know you have not because you have spoken of the nearer, most obvious fear. I am not much concerned over revenge. I think so much terror will be aroused by Anerios’s fate that the temple will be protected against any attack even by his sons, who would be the first to wish us harm. But I fear there will be war in Iolkas if Anerios and his family are judged accursed and driven out. Because he is so strong a king, there is no preeminent noble who could succeed him peacefully.”

  “Then we must hope that there are guards on the road and that Anerios takes warning from their fate. If he comes to beg mercy and make restitution to the temple, I myself will tell Aphrodite that you are willing to forgive him and plead with her to be merciful. If he resists, he must go down. Aphrodite prefers love, but she must not be thought of as less than divine for that reason. When the offerings of love are withheld, worship must be extorted by the whip of fear.”

  “You are merciful, lord.” Hyppodamia bowed her head and then asked, “Is there any service you desire of me or my priestesses?”

  “Nothing tonight. Breakfast and the hunt for the sow tomorrow.”

  She rose, bowed again, and withdrew. Eros made a moue of distaste. He always hated the pretense he had to make of godhead when he came among the native peoples in his own form. He thought it wrong, but Zeus and Poseidon had started the practice, hurling thunderbolts and raising terrible storms to coerce worshippers to make generous sacrifices—which increased their wealth and their herds. Athena and Apollo had adopted the notion with deep enthusiasm, and within no long time all the great mages had temples and were enjoying the sacrifices.

  Not Hermes, Eros thought suddenly, and began to laugh. Hermes had grown so rich selling translocation spells to the “gods” and “goddesses” so they could appear and disappear that he was totally indifferent to native worshippers. He had some; messengers—and thieves—prayed for his ability to disappear and reappear in some far distant place. Thought of the young, merry-eyed mage, always ready for mischief, made Eros feel light. His perfect brows drew together: to feel light assumes an earlier feeling of heaviness. To feel at all was a pleasant change, but what went so deep that he would be burdened by it without conscious thought?

  He followed his thinking back from Hermes to sacrifice to the need for fear to Anerios’s punishment—to Psyche. The weight he had cast off when Hermes came into his mind slid back onto his heart. How could he bear to force Psyche into the demented adoration of a halfwit who would even more dementedly adore her, preventing her from the exercise of body and mind in the name of keeping her safe and perfect, and thereby inflicting on her the cruelest suffering through frustration and boredom?

  Poor Psyche; she had done nothing wrong. That she had been born beautiful was through no fault of hers. For the sake of her family and her homeland she had agreed to serve a goddess whose attributes she loathed. That was not so heinous a sin. Eros chuckled sadly. If it were, he would be afflicted with all the tortures of Tartaros, since he hated love and beauty as much or more than Psyche and yet he served Aphrodite and lived with her and loved her. He could not bear the injustice, and yet Psyche had to be punished or Aphrodite’s reputation would suffer.

  Eros bit a fingernail, thinking that if he pleaded for her, Aphrodite would exempt Psyche from punishment. She would even give Psyche to him. Eros’s mind checked on that, aware of the leaping of his heart, thrusting aside the desire with the knowledge that his satisfaction would do harm to his friend, his only friend, who would indeed put aside her own interests to please him, would gladly come and fetch Psyche herself to bring her to him. Whatever he felt, whatever her true guilt or innocence, for Aphrodite’s sake, Psyche must be punished, must be given to a monster…

  Suddenly Eros burst out laughing, having found the perfect solution to his problem in a combination of his desire to spirit Psyche away to save her and the idea of giving her to a monster. That would be Psyche’s punishment! For her scorn of Aphrodite, she would be set as a sacrifice on the altar on Mount Pelion, condemned to be a monster’
s bride.

  Eros gnawed his lower lip. But if Anerios took the warning and made contrition… Well, Eros thought, that would not matter. Even after begging pardon and promising amendment, Anerios must make a sacrifice in expiation of his rebellion. The expiation would be to sacrifice Psyche. Again Eros began to laugh. Even if Anerios did grieve over the “terrible fate” of his daughter, it would be a sacrifice he would be eager to make.

  The solution to his problem left Eros pleasantly relaxed. He blew out the lamps in the room and went into the bedchamber where he opened the doors to the garden. For a time he stood there, enjoying the cool air, thinking of Psyche’s quick-witted responses and the faint stirring of interest she had shown in Atomos. And Atomos was thick-browed and heavy-featured. Would she not be even more interested in him when she saw—

  “No!”

  The fact that the word burst out of his mouth aloud expressed the depth of his rejection of the idea. He had responded to Psyche’s interest in Atomos because that interest was in the being of the man, not in the mask that anyone could see.

  Eros removed his clothing and went to lie on the bed, contemplating a new problem. He could take Psyche, but once he had her, what would he do with her? If he showed her Eros, she would either reject him or, despite her knowledge of the worthlessness of his beauty, become enamored of it. If she did, she would soon turn jealous, particularly if he took her to Olympus, where all the female mages were beautiful. Nor could he wear the disguise of Atomos. He was strong, but he could not be Atomos day and night without respite for very long—and Aphrodite would not like it. Nor did he want Psyche to love a false image.

  He wanted her to love what Eros was under the skin—and he had hopes she could because the thoughts and words to which she had responded were from his own heart and mind. But how could he hide himself and still not show her a face to which the characteristics she had learned to love would become attached? By not showing her any face at all! If she could learn to trust and then to love—what? Not empty air. It was too unsettling never to know from where a voice would come. Constant shock, Eros thought, did not lead to trust and must preclude the growth of love.

  He stared out into the darkness, where a breeze had found its way over the wall and was rustling leaves and slowly smiled. A blot of darkness—that would be monstrous enough to fulfill her punishment so that he would not be made a liar. But from that darkness his voice would come, speaking reassurance, and when she gathered courage enough, she would be able to put her hand into that darkness and feel a man.

  Then he lost the smile. Not in Aphrodite’s house. Aphrodite would like a blot of darkness walking about even less than she would like Atomos, and a spell of darkness would take as much or more power as the disguise of Atomos; he could not wear it constantly for long. But there was no place but Aphrodite’s house…oh, yes there was! The hunting lodge Aphrodite had given him in the mountains above the valley of Olympus. He could be Eros in Aphrodite’s house, sleeping away half the day, as he usually did. Only now he would not be trying to escape the weary hours of nothingness but resting to gather power so that at night he could be Psyche’s “monster”. An enormous relief washed over him and his eyes closed on a delicious sense of anticipation.

  He woke early, full of energy, washed, and then pulled the silken rope above the bed, which he knew would bring a priestess. Hyppodamia herself came and he asked for food and whether the guards were still at the gates. The tray and the news that not only were the guards there but the force had been increased came back with her so quickly that Eros knew both had been prepared and waiting. Eros smiled.

  “So Anerios sent more men, did he? Ah, well. The more men the merrier the rout will be. Thank you, Hyppodamia.” He chuckled at the look on her face. “Trust me. No matter what their orders, when I have done with them, far from attacking the temple, they will not even recall its existence.”

  “Thank you for your care of us, my lord.”

  “Aphrodite never fails those who love her faithfully, and I am Aphrodite’s servant and messenger. I will come when I have eaten.”

  When she had withdrawn, he sat down at the table and began to eat and plan his strategy. There were two gates, the one he had entered last night and another on the other side of the temple in the wall surrounding the gardens and orchards of the priestesses. Unfortunately, they were not in sight of each other, but possibly the shouts of men fighting would be heard. Eros’s jaw set. He could not take that chance. He would have to run along the wall to the other side. His perfect lips twisted into an unhappy grimace. That would be most ungod-like. The priestesses would expect him to fly.

  Eros closed his eyes and sought within himself. Faint as a dying breath came a memory of words, tuphlox tha ommata, and moving with that breath, thin and light as a ball of cobwebs, there was a spell. Aphrodite had given it to him at some time long ago to hide him while he cast on the Mage-King Zeus the enchantment that infatuated him with Europa. Eros frowned momentarily; sometimes Aphrodite’s mischief had very unexpected results.

  Then his mind came back to the old spell. He had no idea whether it could still be used and was afraid to bring forth the fragile thing to examine it. Safer by far to tell the priestesses to gather in the inner shrine—where they would hear little and see nothing—to pray for Aphrodite’s help.

  Yes, that was right. He could try to infuse the spell with power and use it at the time he needed it. If it worked, his movement from one part of the temple wall to the other would seem like a miracle to any priestess that peeped or to any soldier not stricken with a spell; if it disintegrated, he would be no worse off than if he did not have it at all or had forgotten it—but he never forgot a spell.

  More essential were the spells he must use as weapons. Eros brought his mind and will to bear on what he imagined as a little box just beneath his breastbone. In it lay tiny balls, some warm, bright gold, some a putrid orange-green, and some dead black. At one side were two of an unpleasant pulsing red—one of those was for Anerios. The other had been meant for Psyche, but he would not use it. Another jolt of anticipation made Eros chew faster, laugh aloud in wonder at his eagerness, and finally tell himself that if he did not stick to business, he would never get her.

  Hyppodamia said there were ten men at each gate; he would have neither sufficient individual spells nor the time to deliver them in his usual way—which was just as well because full strength the spells would last a year and there was no reason to utterly destroy men who were only obeying orders, even if they should have known better. If the diluted spells lasted a day or two, the lesson would be sufficient. But how to deliver them if he could not use his bow? His mind ranged over the weapons that wounded at a distance and came soon to the sling. He was not so expert with the sling as with the bow, but he was not seeking to hit a single target only to spread a scattering of magic over the whole group.

  Taking a last bite of his bread and cheese, which he washed down with warm goat’s milk, Eros summoned Hyppodamia again and told her that he was finished with his meal and it was time to begin. For her own safety, she and her acolytes, lesser priestesses, and servants should gather and pray in the inner shrine. He saw her stiffen and the tray, which she had lifted, began to shake in her hands, but she bowed without speaking and slid through the pivot door, which he opened for her.

  When she was gone, he returned to the table and spread his hands, staring at the space between them until it was filled with the image of a broad-bellied sling. Then he lifted one hand and cupped it beneath his breastbone. In a moment the vision of a little black ball formed in the palm. Freed from its confinement in his body, the ball expanded. With his mind, Eros plucked it in half, then each half into half, halving the four pieces once more into eight pieces. Rolling those into smaller balls, he willed them to remain separate and watched to be sure they did not join, after which he spilled them into the belly of the sling. Then he repeated the process with a sickly orange-green ball.

  He reached for the slin
g and picked it up as if it were a real thing, hefting it to judge its totally imaginary weight as he opened the pivot door and went out through the empty visitors’ chamber and anteroom. Beside the gate through which he had entered was the now empty chamber in which the gatekeeper usually sat. Within it was a ladder that the gatekeeper, or more likely a manservant, could use to climb up on the flat top of the chamber to look over the wall Eros set the ladder and climbed up, hoping none of the priestesses was watching and had her faith shaken by seeing one of the gods do something as prosaic as climb a ladder instead of covering the space in a single bound. He did crouch as he climbed so the soldiers would not see his body rising slowly above the edge of the wall and guess at his mundane method of arrival. He wanted to surprise them. The less chance one of them had to throw a spear or shoot an arrow, the greater the chance he could maintain the illusion of godliness.

  When he was ready, he popped upright, calling, “Soldiers of Anerios, you were warned!”

  A few were sitting and watching the gate already. Others were lounging about, half convinced that the guards who had fled to the palace the previous night babbling of seeing the god Eros had been the victims of a trick of the priestesses or possibly of townsfolk who valued the temple for varying reasons. At the sound of his voice, they all leapt to their feet, looking first at the gate and then upward. Most simply stared open-mouthed. Two had reached for their spears as they jumped up but stood frozen by his appearance, one clutching his weapon, the other with his hand extended toward it.

  Eros’s voice continued without a hesitation, although he felt rather weak with relief. It would have been shockingly out of character for a god to need to dodge a mortal’s weapon. That would have implied too strongly that the “gods” were as vulnerable as men.