Shimmering Splendor Read online

  “Since you have chosen to obey a mortal master instead of an immortal goddess, you have invited a dreadful fate. Yet such is the mercy of Aphrodite, that those of you who survive a week of living under her curse will be given a second chance to amend your ways and love and worship her. And one of you will be spared to tell your master that worse will befall him if he does not come to humble himself to the goddess and make full reparation for his transgression.”

  As he spoke Eros raised his hand, whirling the sling, which no one but he could see, around and around. On the last word he released it, spraying outward the dead black balls and those of putrid orange-green.

  Instantly one of the soldiers screamed at the man whose shoulder his arm had been embracing before Eros cast his spell, “Monster, evil, disgusting worm!”

  Eros could see the black pall of the spell of hatred dropping like a veil of shadow over the man, who drew his sword and would have struck the other man. He, on whom Eros watched the spell of revulsion spread like a green slime of vomit, stood transfixed, crying, “Beloved! What is wrong?”

  He would have died in that moment, only such violent revulsion struck the lover who now hated him that he retched and his blow missed. The entire group was now embroiled—two lay dead and three fled away pursued by four others, who struck at each other as often as at those who fled them. One man, who had been nervously watching the gate when Eros first appeared and had thrown himself face down on the ground soon after Eros began to speak, crawled backward, weeping. The spells had flown over him and he was untouched by hatred and revulsion. Nonetheless, because he knew himself to be the messenger appointed, he expected to die by Anerios’s hand just as surely as his companions were dying by each other’s.

  As he watched the chaos of screaming, fighting men blunder off toward the town, Eros fed power to the cobweb that had once bestowed a kind of invisibility. To his surprise, instead of shattering or crumpling into nothing, the fragile threads strengthened until the ball gleamed like silver. That must have been a very powerful spell—well, it would be, since it was intended to deceive Zeus.

  There was something about the web… Hecate! That was who had cast it. Eros hesitated. Should he use the spell again? Hecate was very strange. Even Zeus did not meddle with her, and she was as old as he—or older. What could Aphrodite have given her in exchange for such a spell? Eros rather balked at the notion of Hecate using a spell of love. Hate? Revulsion? Despite her strangeness, he doubted Hecate needed or desired such spells.

  With a mental finger Eros plucked at a strand; like a true spiderweb, the threads were very strong, ensuring that the spell was sound. And the color they made in his mind, full-powered now, was wholesome. He disgorged the ball of web into his hand, let it swell, whispered, “Tuphlox tha ommata,” and cast it over himself. He felt it unfold, touching his hair, his cheeks, his bare shoulders gently as a floating spiderweb. The feeling was pleasant, protective—not a sensation he associated with Hecate.

  He looked upward and whispered, “Thank you, Mother.”

  The Goddess, it seemed, was willing to indulge him. Not only had She honored his words to the soldiers by preserving a messenger who could recount his words and their effect but surely, no matter how strong in magic Hecate was, it was She, the Mother, who had kept that old spell viable. It was only a teasing indulgence, possibly to show that She had taken note of and approved his reawakening, because it would not have mattered if all the men had been affected. Possibly they would all kill each other, but even if they did not succeed, Eros was certain none would know who died when and each would believe some other had been spared to be messenger—and had suffered the fate of bringers of ill tidings.

  He prepared the second batch of spells as he walked along the wall to the other gate, climbed to the roof of the gatekeeper’s chamber, and whispered, “Heimi oraton,” while imagining the webbing passing through his skin and reforming into the ball, which shrank to almost nothing as it took its place in the box. When he saw himself, he breathed out softly in relief. Sometimes an old spell malfunctioned by being hard to reverse. And then he thought, Forgive me, Mother, for my doubts… I am only human.

  His speech and spell-casting against Anerios’s men were equally successful this time, except that he spared none. He did feel a little guilty because all the men were kneeling and begging forgiveness for being where they were. However, that they were there, begging pardon or not, instead of running off against Anerios’s orders, was an offense—a confession that they still feared the king more than they feared Aphrodite.

  He watched them turn on each other, leaving three groaning with wounds, but still trying to kill each other as the other seven ran along the road toward the palace striking and screaming. Eros hoped that some would stay alive long enough to reach Anerios, then he shrugged and came down to put away the ladders, and, eventually, to give the priestesses a thrill by “appearing” on the altar beside Aphrodite’s statue.

  “They are stricken with hate and loathing,” he told the supplicating priestesses, “fitting curses on those who will not accept love and beauty. Let them spread the news of what befalls any who fail to honor Aphrodite as she deserves. If Anerios does not come to confess his transgression and make restitution before dark, I will lay the goddess’s curse on him tomorrow.”

  Chapter 5

  Eros woke before dawn, full of resentment. He had given warning after warning in the hope that Anerios would yield and bow to the power of the “goddess”. Had Anerios done so, he would have found Aphrodite very merciful; the restitution required would have been well within his means, and the problem of his daughter would be solved. The king had remained adamant, however, even sending another force against the temple. Eros had sprayed the front ranks with hate, and those bespelled had turned on their fellow soldiers. The few who continued to try to advance despite the chaos, Eros had made so loathsome that they could not even endure each other.

  After that, Hyppodamia’s scryer reported, heated conferences had taken place in the palace. The queen, her family, and her youngest son argued strongly for placating Aphrodite, while Anerios blustered and threatened that if Eros showed his face in the palace, he would strike him dead despite his beauty. Aphrodite had once been wounded by a spear, he said, and if Eros was only her servant, he must be more vulnerable. Psyche had taken no part in the discussion, the scryer reported. She remained in her chamber, speaking to no one.

  Despite that good news, for if she were consumed by guilt she would be more ready to be “sacrificed” to remove the curse from her family, Eros was furious. Anerios’s stubbornness complicated everything. Now he would have to wait until the people killed or drove out their king. If they drove him out instead of killing him, he would have to arrange Anerios’s death without open involvement, lest Psyche fall under the taboo against taking as lover the person who killed her father. Atop all that, he would have to have Psyche watched to be sure that she was not harmed as the cause of all the trouble.

  As he rose from his bed and dressed in his Olympian kilt, he caressed the ugly pulsing spell of obsession with his inner eye. He was so eager to start the process of Anerios’s destruction that he did not call for breakfast. He could eat when he returned to the temple.

  In the inner courtyard where the living tributes to Aphrodite were kept until they were translocated stood the ugliest sow Eros had ever seen. Her skin was mottled and she was old and gaunt. She looked up when Eros opened the pen but made no move to rush at him, and when he picked up the pail of slops set ready and called, “Pig, pig,” she came toward him with interest, but no great hurry. That reassured but did not surprise Eros, who had given instructions that she be well fed the night before. She followed him out through the gate nearest the direct road to the palace and along the road, showing no impatience to get at what he carried but interested enough in it to keep close—as long as Eros did not hurry.

  Since he could not increase the sow’s pace, Eros watched the lightening sky with some concern;
however, the walls of the palace came in sight before the sun rose. He went off the road then so the gate guard would not see him, and when he and the sow reached the wall, he dumped about half the food in the pail on the ground. The sow moved to the food and began to eat contentedly. Eros smiled at her. Despite her appearance she was a nice old beast. He would do his best to see that her service to Aphrodite was well rewarded.

  Eros fed power to his cobweb of invisibility, feeling a greater drain of his strength than he had the first time he renewed the spell. As he cast the net over him, Eros examined the threads. They seemed sound. Well, if they would not cover him again, he would find another way. Slipping his bow over his shoulder, he began to climb. At least, even encumbered by the pail, he had no trouble getting up the rough stones of the cyclopean wall and down the other side. Then he walked to the gate, lifted out the bar under the starting eyes of the guard, and pulled the gate open.

  “This house is accursed,” he intoned. “No gate can lock out its doom.” The guards sank to their knees, sweating with fear. Grinning, Eros set down the pail. “Go!” His voice, coming through his cupped hands, acquired an even odder tone. “Pray at the temple for mercy and you will be saved.”

  It was fortunate that he was standing to the side or the guards would have run him down in their rush to avoid the fate of the men Anerios had sent to attack the temple the day before. When they were gone, weaponless, running along the road, Eros picked up the pail and went to fetch the sow, who had finished what he’d left her and was wandering along the wall—fortunately, in his direction—snuffling hopefully. She seemed not at all disconcerted by what she must consider a delicious smell emanating from nothing—or perhaps, Eros thought, she was not affected by the spell and could see him. Whatever the reason, she promptly lifted her head and trailed behind him at her own stately pace, not balking at the gate or at the noise and movement coming from the inner courtyard.

  Eros was feeling more and more kindly toward the accommodating beast, and he paused under the gate, dropping a handful from the pail to keep the sow busy while he drew from his store of spells a tiny, tiny flicker of golden light which he set upon the sow’s brow. She was just as ugly, just as dirty, just as old and gaunt, but he doubted anyone could harm her now. Then a truly nasty smile twisted Eros’s mouth as he realized that the liking everyone would feel for the old beast would make more repellent Anerios’s unnatural sexual desire for her. Grinning, he walked out of the passage, the sow following quietly.

  In the courtyard, servants were going about their morning duties and nervous soldiers were gathered in groups. One by one, as they saw the sow crossing the open space, they stopped, fell silent if they had been talking, and stared. To their eyes, the dirty old animal, coming from what they believed was a locked and guarded entrance, was walking all alone, quite purposefully, head up, not snuffling along the ground, toward the portico that led to the king’s quarters.

  On the lowest step, Eros dumped the remainder of the food, invisible to him and to everyone else except the sow, who selected something from the mass and began placidly to chew. Everyone watched her with a kind of nervous intensity that wavered between amusement and terror. Meanwhile, Eros ran quickly back across the courtyard to the side porch and up the stair to the right. He passed the first landing, which opened on the corridor of the women’s quarters, and climbed a ladder, coming out on a flat roof no doubt used for drying and bleaching clothes and yarn. He drew the ladder up and closed the wooden flap that kept out the rain.

  From the place near his heart, he drew out the pulsing red thing, his lips curling away from his teeth at the unclean feel of it. This time the sphere lengthened rather than swelled, conforming to the image held firmly in Eros’s mind. Between one breath and the next, a red arrow, throbbing and glittering, at the same time beautiful and repellent, lay in Eros’s hand. He went to the far end, took his bow in his hand, and breathed, “Heimi oraton.”

  Visible, he took a deep breath, and called aloud, “Hola, people of Iolkas! I am Eros, servant and messenger of the goddess Aphrodite. Call forth your lord and his daughter to hear the will of the goddess.”

  There was a frozen, horrified silence. Two menservants and several women collapsed on the ground. Eros blinked. He had done nothing to them. Other women, and a few men, began to scream.

  “Anerios has transgressed against the divine Aphrodite.” Eros’s voice rose, clear and pure, like a fine hunting horn, above the sobs and wails. “So far, coward-like, he has sent others to suffer the lash of her displeasure. Now it is time for him to face his own doom.”

  “My brother was sent against the temple, and now he is dead,” one soldier called out to the crowd.

  “My cousin and I were closer than brothers, and he was turned into something so loathsome that my gorge rises at the thought of him,” another echoed.

  And half the soldiers in the courtyard set up a shout of “Anerios, come forth and be champion to your cause.”

  Eros thought he heard footsteps going down the stairs, but his eyes were fixed on the entrance to the vestibule where Anerios would appear. The soldiers shouted again, and Eros began to wonder if his voice would carry over the din, but a silence fell as Anerios appeared at the top of the steps, hair tangled from a restless night, a spear in one hand, the other clutching a himation loosely around him.

  Eros set the image of the sow into the head of the red arrow, notched the arrow to his bow, raised it, and fired. As Anerios’s eyes lifted, following the gaze of those who still stared at him rather than the king, Eros saw the arrow sink deep. The spear, half raised, fell from Anerios’s hand. Although the king could not yet have discovered at what his people were staring and thus from where the threat to him and them came, he lost all interest in everything but the glorious, delicious, ultimately desirable female creature he knew was waiting for him. His eyes sought and found the sow, still rooting around the bottom step of the portico for tidbits only she could see. Anerios uttered a strangled cry, his grip on his himation relaxing so that it slipped to the ground.

  Eros’s voice rang out into near silence, overriding the gasps of horror at what the falling himation disclosed. “This is the curse of Aphrodite: those who do not honor love will be dishonored by it.”

  “Father!” Psyche shrieked, bursting from the side porch and running across the courtyard.

  She caught up the himation and cast it over her father’s shoulder, although it was too late to hide both his violent erection and the object of his lust. He shoved her away but she clung to his arm, mouthing into his ear words that Eros could not hear. However, Eros could see the dulling of the ugly, glittering strings of red that had spread from the arrow over Anerios like a net, and their throbbing slowed. Psyche had countered his spell!

  Admiration for her courage and loyalty almost quenched Eros’s fury at her interference, but he could not allow Aphrodite’s power to be challenged. Psyche must be punished instantly. Eros drew out the second spell of obsession, but as he lengthened it into an arrow, he realized he had no object for Psyche to love. All that was left to him was to inflict on her an undirected, unquenchable lust that would make her couple with anyone, anything, constantly, until exhaustion felled her only to make her rise to renewed lust. Tears rose to Eros’s eyes. How could he do that to a woman so clever, so witty, so charming? How could he ignore his debt to Aphrodite for any other woman?

  Eros fitted the arrow to his bow and let his eyes find their target. Then he saw Psyche’s face. She was white, even her lips, and she trembled, clinging to her father as much for support as to restrain him, her eyes drooping half shut with exhaustion. He remembered now that she had told him her spells did not work because she had so little power. Plainly it had taken all she had within her to subdue the utter madness of Anerios’s obsession. The compulsion to love the sow remained. Aphrodite’s spell was the stronger, and as Psyche’s counterspell faded, Aphrodite’s would regain its full power. Eros let the bow point down toward the earth, took th
e dreadful red pulsing thing back within him, and shut it away among the other spells.

  He tore his attention from Psyche and fixed it on the crowd. “Hear me!” Eros bellowed.

  Every eye—except Anerios’s, which remained fixed on the sow—turned to him. A silence fell so deep that Eros could hear the snuffling of the sow and Anerios’s panting breath. He drew himself to his full height, imagined himself even taller, broader, more beautiful. A huge sigh of terror and longing lifted to him from the watchers.

  “For his hubris in claiming his power greater than that of divine Aphrodite, Anerios is smitten with a foul perversion of love. Look at your king, panting with lust for a sow! Yet she is the instrument of Aphrodite, and no harm may be done to her.”

  A moan of terror rose and fell. A curse on Anerios that was not lifted would carry over onto his whole family. That could mean death or slavery for nearly all in his household. The king’s three sons, who had come from their quarters with weapons in hand to support their father and had frozen with horror as the scene played out, dropped their weapons and turned to kneel with hands upraised toward Eros.

  “Mercy!” they cried, showing him empty palms, and the whole crowd knelt and cried, “Have mercy!”

  Eros looked sad—with some difficulty, since the scene was evolving much as he desired. Beside that, he did not know whether anyone could make out his expression.

  “Since you cry for mercy,” he called, “I am permitted to tell you that the divine Aphrodite is tender of heart. When Anerios bows down to the goddess before all the people and makes sacrifice and restitution, the curse will be lifted. For his violation of her holy person, the restitution will be set and must be made to the priestess Hyppodamia. To Aphrodite, the greater sacrifice; Psyche must be brought to the altar atop Mount Pelion and left there for the goddess to do with as she pleases.”