The Amazon Captain stood back from that smile, hands automatically rising into a defensive posture. The question was stuck like a bone in her throat, could she leave the Greek hero alone in this state?
A shock of pain hit Xena’s face, she doubled over with it. “Now, or you’ll be greeting your ancestors in hell!” The Greek roared.
Musu took off like a cheetah. Her long stride ate the distance from the fighting ground, to the Way House where Geb and the other Amazons were spending the evening. She could only pray that she had made the right choice; that she could get the Greek Queen to her hero’s side in time.
The Way House was a low mud brick building, built around a court in the Hellenistic style. Local houses were built closed and often of two stories, painted in a lime wash and designed to keep out the brutal heat of the day. At night an Egyptian family might gather on the roof and recline, with the reed shades for the narrow windows drawn back. The mainstay of the village was tourism, being located on the river, and the main tourists were Greeks and Romans. These Westerners had to have their courts, even as the heat of the day drove them right back inside as soon as they tried to sit in the colonnade. The Egyptians of the village would, politely, watch this and laugh. Nothing is as endlessly amusing as tourists to the native folk.
Now, seated in the cool of the evening on a cushion stuffed with flax, a wine bowl in his left hand, Geb allowed that the Greeks had a few good ideas, if misplaced. Such a building would be heaven itself in Alexandria, but Alexandria was a Greek city to the bone, merely set along the Egyptian coast. Alexandria et Egyptum- Alexandria by Egypt, as the rest of the Mediterranean world liked to say. The wine was good; Egyptian, a young pressing from the fifth Nome Geb thought, sipping at it. Mixed liberally with water, as the Greeks took it. He glanced over at the Amazons, sitting cross-legged on spread mats in the center of the court. They managed to look regal, even with this posture. How many of them had been beyond the borders of Dahomey before?
The thought intrigued him, so he followed it, watching the soldiers carefully. They sipped at the wine, frowning, not liking the sweetness. Used to the rough brewed beer from their own lands. Egyptians were mad for beer, and would gladly have brought it out, but they took the party as a Greek one, and set out wine. Most of them, Geb decided, had not been outside the borders of Dahomey, except to kill their first man on their two-month, their coming of age. None of them looked at ease, keeping their spears to hand and their eyes on the door. They waited for their commander, the Captain Musu.
Now there, Geb thought, was an Amazon who had been beyond the borders. It was in small ways that she revealed this; her familiarity with Egyptian slang; the ease she adapted to the ship when there were no great bodies of water in Dahomey. Not a civilized woman, he thought, but one with a sense of culture. It would be interesting to see the Captain’s reaction as they fared farther and farther up the Nile, toward the city of Alexandria. She seemed to get on well enough with Greeks.
Geb glanced to his left, where the Greek Amazon sat, seething. Musu got along well enough with the Greek hero, Xena. She showed perfect deference to Gabrielle, never stepping beyond boundaries of propriety. Good manners on that Musu, Geb thought; never a word or gesture out of place. Controlled. He admired that, even as he longed to shatter that control and see what lay behind the mask. Musu rarely admitted to sense of humor, so the dwarf was cautious in his approach. What was happening now, out beneath the moon? Was the Greek hero beating the control out of Musu, or was Musu finally showing the Greek a lesson in strength?
Either way, he had been left to deal with the uneasy Amazons of the escort, and the furious storyteller. Geb sighed. It was easier to be a leader of Bedouins than it was a courtier.
“The wine is good, is it not?” He said, in the fine Attic Greek he’d mastered. When the Greek storyteller did not respond, he continued speaking, liking the sound of his own voice. He never lacked for civilized company. “Like the young wines of the Peloponnesse, set apart by the Nile water admixed. You would think, from the baboon wax mark on the wine jars, that this was a local vintage. But no! The baboon is a symbol of the Fifth Nome as well. Not that you wouldn’t get a jackal or a serpent vintage here, but they are less common. Egyptians haven’t mastered the ‘art of the mixing bowl’. It takes a Greek to get a Greek properly drunk.” He lifted his bowl and drank, watching Gabrielle from the corner of his eye. Her bowl hadn’t moved.
“Perhaps drunkenness isn’t the state to induce in Greeks. All manner of baser passions might erupt. Soon demagoguery would break out; we’d end up in a democracy, and who wants a form of government like that? Unwashed rabble shouting down lawmakers and mob rule. Distasteful.”
This got a rise out Gabrielle. She stirred, heeding what Geb was saying. “Democracy isn’t mob rule.”
“No? Then why are matters of law or policy devised from a crowd shouting one another down?”
“They aren’t. The assembly meets and discusses matters. Anyone may speak, not just people of a certain birth or wealth. Democracy is the rule of all citizens of the polis. Demos- the people. It is a form of government that produces free men, encourages arts and philosophy, hates tyranny, and made Athens the envy of the world,” Gabrielle said, her eyes moving from the doorway to her companion.
“Men, yes, exactly. If I am not wrong, it is only men who are citizens in Athens, no? And only men who are the sons and grandsons of citizens. A foreigner, such as myself, no matter how noble or useful, could never be a citizen. At best we might be metics- non-citizens allowed to live and work in the city.” Geb said, enjoying the engagement of the storyteller. He’d never had a chance to test her mind, away from the hero, who might well smite him if she felt Gabrielle was being insulted.
“Yes, that’s true. Metics have rights, but not the status of citizens. And citizens, as it now stands, are only men from certain families.”
Geb smiled brilliantly. “Strange, then, to find a woman of Potidaea, not even of the bloodlines of Athens, arguing for her government. Strange to find a Queen argue for democracy.”
Gabrielle shook her head. “A Queen among the Amazons isn’t the same as a Queen in the city-states. Amazons are free people. Queens lead by love. If the warriors did not love them, and trust them, they would simply not follow. No one can compel an Amazon to do anything, laws or not. Try it; you will find it easier to teach a horse to fly.”
She narrowed her eyes at the dwarf. “I know what you are trying to do. You’re trying to distract me.”
Geb, all innocence, strolled to the mixing bowl and refilled his wine. He was standing there, dipper in hand, when Captain Musu came into the courtyard on the heels of thunder. The moment was so perfectly timed that Geb dropped the dipper back into the mixing bowl, the ceramic crash echoing the crash from heaven. Lightning, from a clear night sky? What god was offended now? He had no time to follow this thought, as Musu’s ferocious entrance ate his attention.
“Well met, noble Captain. And how did the wrestling- ”
Geb was cut off by Musu’s lunge toward Gabrielle, who was on her feet, tense as a racehorse at the mark. It was then that Geb realized that Musu was breathing like a bellows, scored all over with minor wounds still dripping blood, and alone. Xena was not with her. Musu grabbed Gabrielle by the arms, a thing Geb would not have credited if he hadn’t beheld it.
“Xena,” Musu said, with such force as a dying man might invoke the name of his god. It was all the storyteller had to hear. She sprinted out the door, leaving the Captain to follow in her wake. Musu threw a glance at Geb.
“Carry me, sister. We don’t have the time to spare.”
The Amazons raced at Musu’s heels in tight formation, spears at the ready. Geb was impressed with their discipline, even under such circumstances. Musu hadn’t given them a word or a signal- they fell in behind her seamlessly. What I could do with such soldiers...he thought. Ah, well, I am no longer a chieftain of raiders. It is Fortune’s humor.
They found the hero kneeling in the sand, head clutched between her splayed hands. Black hair slipped like blood trails between her clawed fingers. Gabrielle was walking toward Xena, cautiously, as she might approach a wolf at bay. The very softness of it surprised Geb- he expected her to rush heedlessly into danger when the danger was her lover. That was it, the difference of this moment. Gabrielle was reacting to her lover as if the black haired giant were dangerous. Geb had never seen it in any interaction between them, and had a good sense that it was new. It sent a chill up his spine, in a way that the great killer’s violence never had. Gabrielle was her anchor. What would happen to the hero if Gabrielle herself were afraid?
Among the Bedouins raiders he had led, horsemanship was a skill accorded better than any for a man to posses. The raiders were born and bred for the saddle, suckled on mare’s milk and riding before they could walk. Sired by the North Wind. As a Nubian, horses weren’t in his experience until he’d been sold to the Pharaoh’s court as an acrobat. Geb had come to horsemanship as an extension of his acrobatic training, and so took it as simply another discipline. It was among the raiders that he saw that horsemanship wasn’t a discipline; it was a way of life. It was what could only be called love. A man’s prized horses stabled in his tent at night. He slept with their tether tied to his wrist. On campaign he slept in the saddle, or on the hard ground with the saddle for his pillow. Horses were wealth, protection, status, gifts, dowry and bribes. The sum of a man’s virtue.
Geb had watched one of his seconds, his lieutenant Aram, see to a horse who’d fallen in battle. A blow had made the stallion blind- he lay on his side, trumpeting his fear, pinned under a pile or corpses. Aram approached him like a lover, whispering softly, crooning the affectionate terms a man uses only with his steed or his children. He called the stallion his beautiful son, praised his courage, promised him succor. It was a glimpse at a man in love.
With such gentleness he cradled the thrashing horse’s head, heedless of the death the beast might deal him. With such gentleness he spoke in the horse’s ear, until the stallion calmed and lay heaving, flanks quivering. With such gentleness Aram drew his curved blade from his sash, and opened the large vein in the horse’s neck. The stallion died before he knew he’d been cut. Aram wept and lay the stallions head back down. It was a gift he had given the horse, a quick painless death. On the desert, in the Red Land, it was mercy of the highest order, reserved for one’s brothers and comrades. For those one held close to his heart.
The way Gabrielle approached the fallen Xena reminded Geb of Aram and the stallion, too closely for his comfort. He felt an urge to cry out and warn Gabrielle away; he mastered it only by his years of iron discipline. This must be allowed to play out. If Xena struck out at Gabrielle, none of them were safe.
The Greek hero raised her head, eyes finding Gabrielle, steel to a lodestone. There was intelligence behind the eyes, a graphic sense that the spirit looked out of the cage of the skull, but could not reach the world. Language continued to hemorrhage from the warrior’s mouth, words in Hittite and Lydian. None of them resembled Xena’s voice or manner in the slightest. Strangers were crowding into the body of the kneeling warrior.
Gabrielle crooned Xena’s name, making a chain of it, a slender chain that called the spirit back. She was afraid. The pit of her stomach was acid; she knew better than any what violence Xena could enact. Gabrielle felt her hands tremble and prayed it didn’t show. Xena needed her, needed her faith. This was not the time to doubt.
“Come on, stop playing around. We’ve been through worse. This is nothing.” Gabrielle said, lightly. The sound of her voice drew full attention from the warrior. The grief he saw in the Greek warrior’s eyes made Geb weep openly, careless of who saw. This was more terrible than watching her try to die. This was a spirit that longed to live and was held away from it. Held away from the house of the body, the living flesh of her lover.
One of the Amazon soldiers spoke, involuntarily. “Oya!” Invoking the name of the warrior goddess Nzinga’s people revered. She was also a guardian between life and death, the keeper of the gates to the cemetery. Chthonian goddess, in this aspect. Geb’s mind took the name and followed it, even as he watched Gabrielle take Xena’s head in her hands. There was no outburst, no explosion of violence. Breath hissed out between teeth for many of the watchers.
Gabrielle stroked Xena’s hair, exactly as Aram had comforted the stallion. Like the horse, she trembled under that touch. The blue eyes focused on Gabrielle, pain alive in them. The flood of language receded, leaving brack and wreckage.
“Kill me.” Xena said, softly. “Too many in here.” One hand tapped on her skull.
“Shut up.” Gabrielle said.
“I can’t...its not always me.” Xena said, and affected a smile.
“So you didn’t just tell me to kill you?” Gabrielle asked, her hands trapping Xena, not allowing her to look away.
“I didn’t. Somebody did. This place...a lot of people have died here.” Xena said, her voice returning to normal. She stood, shaking the sand from her. Gabrielle’s hands she did not remove.
Horem, who had followed the Amazons as they ran from the Way House, spoke up. “Here? This is just a village.”
Xena turned toward him, eyes unerringly selecting him even in the darkness.
“Now, yes. But a thousand years ago it was a trade road, and armies marched along it. Battles were fought here. Men died.”
“How do you feel?” Gabrielle asked.
“A bit like a Titan sat on me.”
“You need an exorcist, Ghoul. This is not a state of affairs that can continue, as much as I enjoy the entertainment you provide our group by going mad every so often.” Geb said. “Horem! Go chat up the locals. Somebody must know where to find an exorcist, this is Egypt after all.”
The Way House became the unofficial headquarters of the new Dahomean Ambassador. Geb held court beginning at dawn, setting himself up in the main room with Horem, a handful of sailors from the Feather of Ma’at, the mayor of the village, the innkeeper, and a line of locals ready to offer advice. It helped that the new Ambassador was offering a talent of silver to the person who found him a reputable exorcist at the shortest possible notice. The usual village charlatans and mesmerics showed up with amulets and gewgaws; families claimed witch blood. Geb expected the local priests to parade in from the temple of Ptah, who held sway over the Nome. He was informed that they had been called away on a pilgrimage.
Xena and Gabrielle he exiled to the inner court. “Go sit in the colonnade. The Amazons will cause less trouble than you, Ghoul. I want you out of sight, lest you scare our one hope to death.”
Snatches of conversation drifted out to the inner court, already baking in the heat of the morning. Gabrielle sat on a flax-cushion with a beaker of water to her left. She watched carefully as Xena paced.
“What do you suppose they are arguing about?” Gabrielle asked. It was a perfectly normal question; under other circumstances she wouldn’t hesitate to ask Xena, who it seemed could hear through walls. Yet now she hesitated. Xena could feel her holding back. During the night, when the warrior had collapsed onto the sleeping pallet, Gabrielle had sat at the edge, watching her.
“You coming to bed?” Xena had asked, opening one eye.
“Soon.” Gabrielle turned to the narrow window, and watched the moon set.
She had been up before Xena in the morning, a rare occurrence even before they’d become lovers. It might be perfectly innocent, but it stung the warrior to the quick. Gabrielle had never doubted her. Xena had begun to depend on that certainty, even feed her own esteem from it. To have the bard turn away and keep her thoughts hidden, even for a night, was like a death.
Voices rose from the inner room, spilling out into the court. Geb was trying to quiet them, shouting in Egyptian, speaking Greek, all describing rituals.
“Needs the lead tablets known in Greek as katadesmoi, without a doubt!”
“Demon traps. Take the bowl, inscribe the demon’ names face down (in some cases two bowls are glued together with pitch) then put the skull fragments underneath.”
“I have a papyrus with a good spell, a professional one- I have heard and the voice of the weak ...of the men who are fighting ... of raging women who curse and afflict and cause pain they have descended against them Azdai, Yazdun and Yaqrun, Prael the great and Ruphael and Sahtiel and seized them and by the tufts of hair and the tresses of their heads and broke the horns which were high and tied them by the tufts of hair of their heads and said to them "remove that which you have cursed"...”
The shouting abruptly stopped. A single voice, a voice like oiled wood, a voice with a sheen of lacquer to it, slid out into the court.
“You need to address Hekate Ereschkigal. The subject needs to be bound and placed in a coffin, in the tomb of one just dead. I will teach her the spells to keep her alive. But only in this way, only by following one who just died into the afterlife, may a mortal commune with the dead. Ereschkigal, virgin, dog, serpent, wreath, key, herald's wand, golden is the sandal of the Lady of Tartaros. I can keep her safe; I can help her prevail."
Xena and Gabrielle abandoned the pretense of lounging and listened at the door.
“Of course you can,” Geb said, easily. “And whom might you be?”
“I am a necromancer.”
“Yes of course you are. What name may we be privileged to use for thee, Lord of the converse with the dead?” Geb said, slipping into the courtly Egyptian of his youth.
“Setnakhte.”
“Truly. A fine historic Egyptian name for a Lybian. Or are you Hittite?”
“I am Egyptian.”
“The beauty of the Two Lands, in the wisdom of her divine kings, is her diversity. Any may become an Egyptian citizen. I, myself, though you may never credit this upon meting me, was born in a small village in Nubia.” It was easy to read the contempt in Geb’s voice. It made Xena wary. She had to see this man, get her own sense of him. The fact that Geb was even questioning him gave him status.
“I know your background, Geb of Nubia.”
“Indeed.” The very politeness of Geb’s tone made it mockery.
“Hekate Propolos has spoken to me of you. Hekate Phosphoros told me you would come here. And Hekate Soteira will guide me in my work with your Greek.”
“I haven’t spoken of the Greek. Yet, it would not be hard to gather information that I sailed in with a squadron of Amazons of Dahomey and two Greeks. Nor would it be hard to learn that one of the Greeks is unwell. I think there is more bribery than beatitude of your methods.” Geb’s voice changed, subtly, edging toward anger.
“You doubt me?”
“It is my nature, and a man can no more escape his nature than a crocodile may become an ibis. Consider, I offer a talent of silver. I require proof.” Geb said.
“Tahraqo. From the lands near Jebel Barkal, the holy mountain. This is who you were, before you became Geb of Egypt. “
“No man living knows that name.” Geb said.
“Living, no.”
“Very well. You can come in now, Ghoul.”
The room drew in its breath. The tension pressed against the watcher’s skin like a pleading dog. It wasn’t lost on Gabrielle that Geb had reverted to Xena’s war-name among the Bedouin raiders. The name carried unhealthy connotations, evoked images she didn’t want to think about. What had happened, to Xena, in the time she’d gone mad and wanted to die? When they’d been reunited, the joy was enough. Nothing else need be spoken. Now, as Gabrielle watched her lover becoming a stranger to her, her mind returned again to the weeks Xena had been a savage desert raider. From the tales she’d heard from Geb, and from the Egyptians, Xena was a monster. How else earn the name Ghoul?
Gabrielle watched Xena stalk into the room, her normal charisma seeming dark and brooding. She was reverting as well, perhaps to some state that suited the name. An animal state or rage and pain and longing for death. It might be painful, but Gabrielle resolved to make her lover speak about those weeks. It was time.
This, Geb thought, is high theater. No wonder the Greeks consider drama a service to the gods. Heightened emotion brings energy that can be used, if it is harnessed quickly. The black haired giant had the room on edge from the moment of her appearance in the doorway. Panther eyed, savage, seamed with scars of a thousand fights, muscled like a racing stallion, a manner that promised murder even unarmed. Clad only in leather, with her bronze and steel set aside, Xena was still the most dangerous person in the room and all knew it. Suddenly, the Egyptians found pressing matters elsewhere and vanished.
“Ah, our wayward Greeks. Come in. Xena, this is Setnakhte. He’ll be your exorcist.”
He wasn’t what Xena had expected from his voice. He was young, not yet twenty, with the skin of a boy. The cinnabar and ochre hue of his skin was smoothed and polished from the sun, his head was shaven, as were his eyebrows, in the manner of a priest. Yet he dressed like a beggar in a ragged kilt of coarse linen, without the makeup or jewelry of an Egyptian gentleman. There was something about his accent that smacked of the court, as if this beggar’s appearance were affectation. A play at superior morality, perhaps.
She stood, eyes burning down at the boy. His courage needed to be tested, before she would trust him. Let him experience the full force of her attention, directed at him in silence. This alone made most men quail; the weight of her eyes, the opaque fire, the unmoving force of contemplation. The warrior knew that her silence was unnerving, and the longer she kept it, the more likely people before her were to babble anything to fill that void.
The muscles of his face betrayed fear, in their involuntary tightening, but he didn’t break his stance or back down. Good, Xena thought. He is afraid, but he stands. That will serve as a start.
“Perhaps you could describe the malady to our necromantic friend, Ghoul?” Geb suggested, weary of this staring contest. Yes, yes, you are intimidating, great killer. Now finish it, he thought.
“In Dahomey I opened myself to be Ridden by their warrior Goddess Oya, while she was in full rage. After, I was Ridden by one of the dead.” Xena said, matter of fact.
Setnakhte considered this, without betraying complete surprise. Ridden, by a Goddess? Could any mortal hope to survive such a thing? His glance stole, sideways, to the gathered Amazons. They listened with attention and calm, not disputing this claim. Well enough, he would proceed from this knowledge.
“What have the symptoms been since?”
Xena cocked an eyebrow.
Gabrielle spoke.
“Bursts of anger. Visions. Disturbed sleep. Speaking in other voices, other languages. Impulsive fighting. Los of control. Possession.” The bard said, with a quaver in her voice on the end of the list of symptoms.
Setnakhte looked at Gabrielle. “What is her profession?”
“You need to ask?” Xena rumbled.
The exorcist turned back to her. “Yes. You stink of death; it runs at your heels grinning and snapping its fleshless jaws. This is not a profession. I could read you as a killer, and treat you as such. React only to the manslaughter. Are you a soldier? Do you fight for a reason? These things matter.”
“Xena is a hero.” Gabrielle said, immediately.
“This is so?” Setnahkte asked Xena.
The warrior nodded.
“The journey into the Underworld will be different for you. It always is, for heroes.”