”Okay, the next line?” Gabrielle asked, scrutinizing the papyrus unrolled before her on the bed. Xena paced the room, managing to project boredom even with the controlled anger of her movement.
“Hekate Enoidia, Triodite, lovely dame, of earthly, watery, and celestial frame, sepulchral, in a saffron veil arrayed, pleased with dark ghosts that wander through the shade; Perseia, solitary goddess, hail! The world’s key-bearer...” Xena stopped, the clenching of her fist indicating her frustration.
“There’s more.” Gabrielle said, looking up.
“I know! Damn it. I hate this.” Xena snapped.
“You have to know it. Setnahkte said that the Orphic hymn is the door –opener.”
Rage rose in Xena’s eyes. “Let the dead be wary of me. I’m not in the mood.”
“You’re in the mood all right, just a miserable one.” Gabrielle said.
“What?” The word was spoken softly, a hiss between the teeth, an escape of air that might be a puncture wound. An arrow into the lung.
“Xena, this is important. If you don’t get the spells right, you may not make it back from the underworld. You are treating this like a minor irritant.
“I am a fighter, not a scholar! When a problem needs to be solved, I solve it with steel.” Xena snapped.
The silence that followed was eloquent.
Gabrielle set aside the scroll.
“The woman I love is not just a thug, not a murderer. She understands the greater good, and is constantly willing to place her own life on the line to seek it.”
“The woman you love? Don’t you mean the hero? Its an idea you are infatuated with, Gabrielle, an image. Deified.” Xena snarled.
“The woman. I know the difference, Xena. I’m not sure you do, anymore.”
It was a response of pure instinct- not animal, which would react to a threat, but baser human, that reacted to an emotion that could not be balanced or contained. Xena’s fist smashed through the wall.
The bard backed away from this explosion of violence immediately, her hands up in a defensive posture. This was not lost on Xena, who saw it, even as she pulled her hand free from the plaster.
“Do you feel better?” Gabrielle asked. Her voice was steady, though her hands shook from the adrenaline. She didn’t bother to hide it.
The look Xena turned to her was confused, blinking into the sunlight, flash blind. She looked at the impressive hole in the wall, then down at her fist, dusted with plaster and spotted at the knuckles with blood.
She shook her head violently.
“Xena-“
“Stay away.”
“Are you all right?” Gabrielle asked, hating the futility of the question. Of course the warrior wasn’t all right, or they wouldn’t be training her to be buried alive.
“I can’t be near you,” Xena said, her voice soft and deadly.
“Why not?”
“I have no wall between my emotions and my actions. My will means nothing; I react before I know I’ve moved. I thought it was only when other people insulted you, that I lost control. That’s not it. I have no defenses against you.”
Xena crouched down against the wall; the bard sat on the floor a spear’s length away.
“Did you used to have defenses against me?” Gabrielle asked.
“Yes.”
“When did it change?” Gabrielle asked.
Xena smiled, the first time in days. It melted Gabrielle.
“When we went to Har. When you lead me, by the hand, to Malache’s house.”
“Our first night together.” Gabrielle said, and winced. The memory she thought would be too suffused with sweetness to ever cause her pain, now cut away at her. The walls had gone down between them that night, she’d known it. She hadn’t known what the consequences would be.
Xena nodded.
“It left you open to attack. You let me in, and now that choice will destroy you.” Gabrielle said, voice choking. There was no room for love in Xena’s life. The direct threat and consequences of their decision to become lovers had been brushed aside without understanding. Here the consequences were.
“I won’t let it destroy you.” Xena said, a hint of steel back in her voice. She stood up in a series of controlled movements, deliberate as choreography.
“I’m sorry, Gabrielle.”
“Don’t be sorry that you loved me.” Gabrielle knew what was coming next.
“Love you. That will not end, even with my death. But this, what we have between us, must.”
“I understand.” Gabrielle said, imitating Xena’s tone.
“I’ll tell Geb to get me other quarters.” Xena leaned toward Gabrielle automatically, her body arguing against her words. She controlled the motion with visible effort. In the doorway, caught between rooms she paused. “You are the best part of me.”
Gabrielle said nothing, and let her go.
Geb was sitting in the common room of the Way House, with a full escort of Amazons. He waved to Xena when he saw her walk in. “Ah, Ghoul! Come frighten these stalwart soldiers off, a man cannot get a moment of peace with such an able escort.”
The look on the Greek warrior’s face would have swallowed the sun.
“I need new sleeping quarters.”
Geb’s eyebrows rose, but he kept the jest in his voice. “Your woman kicked you out for snoring again?”
“She’s not my woman.”
Geb smiled, now certain that he was being played with. “As Re is not a god, and the earth does not swim in the void.”
The look Xena lowered on him changed his tone immediately.
“Of course. You will sleep in the east wing of the house with Horem, Setnahkte and I.”
Xena nodded, turned on her heel, and left.
The Ghoul was quit with her woman. Geb shook his head, not following, nor believing, the moment. What madness was this? He would never get an explanation out of the glowering Greek fighter; sooner get stones to sing. So Geb of Nubia set aside the habits of thought that he’d employed as a chieftain of raiders, and thought like a diplomat. The Greek storyteller would be the one to ask. If he approached her in full indignation, he would get nothing useful from her, this wound was too fresh. Perhaps if he offered concern, and support, without specificity.
Geb gave a moment’s thanks that he, of his own free will and inclination, followed the goddess Fortune. He had been taken from his village in Nubia while still a child, and so never learned to follow Apedemak the warrior god, or Amun, the ram. The Egyptian gods he learned to show reverence for without taking them seriously.
It was the function of his own observation of human nature and the nature of the world that led him to worship Fortune. It was not a man’s virtue, his wealth, his family, his comrades, name or reputation that marked him as a success in life. A man may be gifted with all these advantages and yet know only sorrow. Ptolemy Philadelphos had been such a man; a Pharaoh of a long line of pharaohs, yet sorrowful all his life. It was an unpredictable element that took a gifted man and made him a success. Some called it luck, or divine favor. It was the hand of Fortune, the goddess that granted and took away favor according only to her own plan, unknowable and unreadable by men. If you felt the hand of Fortune, if you felt the luck, you had to ride it holding nothing back. It may, at any moment, vanish. Fortune had a certain grim sense of humor, and he appreciated this. The Romans called her Fortuna, the Greeks called her Tyche. She had no temples in Egypt, almost no myths, no priesthood. Yet her hand was in all things: good luck and bad. It suited him, to follow such a personal goddess, in his own way.
He offered a small prayer to her as he walked into the courtyard, seeking the Greek storyteller. The warrior had stalked out into the murderous heat of the Egyptian afternoon. To avoid her, the bard would still be in the colonnade, or so he reasoned. She was not. The flax stuffed cushions were bare, the wine table was overturned. Ah, signs to be read, like the aftermath of a battle. Here the warrior had smashed through the wall with her fist. There, the storyteller had crouched, for the final words. So. The warrior left, the storyteller sat on the cushion in shock, to think. The wine table was knocked over, a moment of carelessness he had never seen in the bard. She must be half out of her head. The wine jar was missing. Geb set the table back on its legs. He would have to seek the bard out in the village.
Gabrielle was drunk. Three jars of uncut wine, downed like water in the heat of the day, and she could barely walk. Speech was an abstraction. But wine, blessed wine, Dionysos two-edged gift, kept her from her pain. For now. Interesting how the heat of the day seemed to increase the burn of the wine. Interesting how the ground rolled gently beneath her feet, as if she walked the deck of the Feather of Ma’at. Her thoughts narrowed down into observations, mild sensation, nothing larger. There were rooms in her mind that she could not enter, and so she shut the doors and looked away. This was one of the benefits of Dionysos gifts. For a moment, Gabrielle thought of the Maenads, running mad on the hills, tearing at their hair, scoring their flesh, howling like beasts- disordered in their passion, following the Vine God. She shivered, and put the thought aside. This was not the time to go invoking Dionysos’ ecstatic side. She needed peace, not more warring emotion.
Suddenly the heat of the day was oppressive, the sweetness of the wine cloying. Gabrielle turned away from the path and wandered into the reeds by the river, vomiting up a red river of her own.
Great. Can’t even stay drunk- she thought, pressing her face against the matted reeds beneath her head. If she didn’t have to move, ever again, this would be a good place. The breath of the river touched her, just a hint of green water in the air. Didn’t have to think about anything. Didn’t have to be anyone, for just this moment.
Aphrodite...why didn’t you warn me that your gift would be like death? Eros, sharp edged Eros, to succumb to his blandishments, to know, finally, the taste of love. To feast on it. Then be disfigured by its loss. All in the span of months. Weren’t mortals supposed to have a lifetime to learn these lessons?
One solemn green-gold eye regarded her from the level of the reeds. A cat was sitting, watching her with some interest, as she sprawled. Gabrielle wasn’t sure if she’d been speaking aloud, but the cat looked, for all the world, as if it had been listening.
The cat’s fur was tawny with soot dark markings scattered from muzzle down the back. Though thin, it was the thinness of aristocratic bones showing, well bred, under a sleek coat. No river cat, this, no scrounging for fish heads in rubbish heaps. No granary cat, kept to curb the rodent incursions. The cat wore two gold hoops in the right ear and a collar of green jasper plates set in gold. A temple cat, used bowls of milk and honey. A companion of the gods.
Gabrielle sat up and brushed the reeds from her hair as best she could.
“Sorry. I’m not feeling well.” She said, compelled to explain herself. I must still be drunk, she thought. The cat kept looking at her without changing expression.
“I’m in your spot?” She asked, wanting to get a reaction from the animal.
“I didn’t mean to intrude. Nice place you got here, by the river. Trust a cat to find the most comfortable spot. Somehow I don’t take you for a fisher. You probably get hand fed.”
The cat started to wash its ears. This blossomed into a full body stretch and elaborate bath. The cat ignored Gabrielle, tending to itself. It was oddly comforting, as if the cat had sized her up and decided she could be allowed to share the territory by the river.
Gabrielle discovered that, if she were leaning to the left, she could see the water moving along the reed-screened bank. It was soothing to watch the movement under the surface. After a few minutes, she couldn’t tell if the river were moving, or the earth. The feeling of sickness passed, along with the feeling of drunkenness.
“I can see why you like it here,” Gabrielle said, to the cat that now curled up to her leg and started to purr.
“We all need a place to escape.”
The cat was looking at her, squinting in pleasure. That voice, speaking Greek, could not possibly have come from the-
“No, for all her wisdom, Ubasti tends not to use human speech.”
There was a woman, standing behind her in the reeds. Gabrielle’s sudden movement upset the cat, who moved away in dignified outrage at being disturbed.
She was Egyptian, dressed in a linen of transparent weave, pleated so it ran like the river over her body. Gold pins held it loosely gathered over smooth brown shoulders. She wore jewelry of a gentlewoman; malachite and jasper, faience and lapis lazuli set in soft rose gold. On her head she wore a black wig dressed with gold and alabaster beads. She looked as if she had just stepped out of a dinner party, perfumed and kohled, for a breath of air. Enormous jet eyes were made supernatural with shadow of crushed beetle’s carapace.
Gabrielle felt very rough and dirty, suddenly aware of the sour stench of wine and sweat that hung about her. She must be trespassing on this woman’s land, this must be her cat, would she imagine her a criminal or just a vagrant?
“I’m sorry, I was just sitting here. I didn’t know, I mean-“
The woman smiled at her, graciously, and Gabrielle felt calm suffuse her.
“No, don’t bother with that. The river is here for everyone, gods and mortals alike.” She said, her voice like silver bells.
It dawned on Gabrielle that she was speaking flawless Attic Greek with slight accent. The woman knelt, folding her legs under her with boneless grace.
“I love this spot. When the afternoon gets too oppressive in the temple, I can always trust Ubasti to have sense and come here, expecting me to follow. “
“You speak excellent Greek,” Gabrielle observed.
The woman smiled, facing out at the river. “That depends on who is listening.”
“I’m Gabrielle,” The bard said, extending her hand. The woman clasped it, softly, and held it.
“Pasht. You’ve already met Ubasti.”
At her name, the cat gave the woman a slit eyed stare.
“She was good company, if not very talkative. You’re a priestess?” Gabrielle asked.
“Not as such, no.”
“You mentioned a temple.” Gabrielle said.
“All Egyptians are never more than a hundred paces from a temple. We have so many gods in the Black Land you can’t take a walk without encountering five or six. After three centuries of Ptolemies, even the native gods have become Hellenized. You can hear a man invoke Ptah, Osiris, Serapis and Zeus in a single prayer.” Pasht said, lightly.
Gabrielle looked toward the river. “I wish I could find a place without gods.”
“Why?” Pasht asked.
“They interfere in everything. We spend half our time cleaning up after them. Even when they give gifts, they don’t stop to think like the mortals who have to live up to these gifts.”
“Elaborate.” Pasht said, petting the suddenly interested cat.
Gabrielle found herself pouring out the tale of the war goddess of Dahomey; of Xena’s selfless act in channeling her rage, of the aftermath. This strange woman was, much like the cat, ridiculously easy to talk to.
Pasht smiled and nodded. “You love a hero.”
“Yeah, well, the hero doesn’t seem to love me.”
“That isn’t true.” Pasht said.
“The sad thing is, none of that matters. Letting me love her will only cause her pain,” Gabrielle said, tears starting down her cheek. “Love isn’t enough.”
Pasht looked shocked. “How can you say such a thing? Love is the strongest force in creation.”
“I believed that, once.”
The pain bore Gabrielle’s head down, she set it on her folded arms and cried her heart out. She felt the woman’s hand stroke her hair, as if she were a cat. Pasht’s voice was soft, crooning.
“You’ve spent too long among war goddesses. Pain and death carry their price; standing against them carries its price. What warriors keep forgetting is that price cannot be paid in kind. Pain will only produce endurance, not respite. Pain is nothing. It does not create. You know this already, daughter. Love is stronger than death. Let your warrior relearn this. It will not be easy, but would she let anything be easy? “
Gabrielle had to laugh at this. “No.”
“Love is stronger than death, Gabrielle. Trust me.” Pasht kissed the bard on the forehead. There was a rustle in the reeds; Pasht and the cat were gone.
”Storyteller?” It was Geb’s voice, advancing as the Nubian pushed through the screen of stalks.
“I’m here,” Gabrielle said, sitting very still, caught between one world and the next.
“You are alone? It sounded like you were speaking,” The dwarf looked around at the matted bed of reeds.
“There was a cat here. And a woman.” Gabrielle said.
“Ah,” Geb said. The Greek had been unwell, and was more than likely still drunk as an infantryman on his first holiday.
“Do you believe in the gods, Geb?”
Yes, still drunk, he thought, and sat down on the bank with her.
“Some more than others.” He said. So the Greek woman was in that stage of drunkenness when the fever moves to softer emotions, when maudlin reverie is the form. Sentimental. Best to let her speak, then, as she was primed for it.
“I’ve met so many gods. They have all the passions and madness of mortals, and sometimes it seems like none of the restraint. They get fascinated with us, play with us for a time, then wander off. I had to learn that we make our own destiny, we don’t rely on heaven for it.”
“A sensible notion,” Geb said, though it contradicted his own belief.
“Xena’s notion, “ Gabrielle said, with a soft smile.
“Yes. As to your hero, er, the fighter, she said something odd to me.” Geb said, pulling on his collar, adjusting his belt knives. Why was he left to do the sensitive chats? Damn the Greek killer anyway.
“She asked for separate sleeping quarters.” Gabrielle said.
“Yes. If you excuse me, what camel dung is this? You fought, perhaps?” Geb said directly.
“No, its not about that.”
“We, every living thing between Har and the yellow valley necropolis, know that the fighter cannot live without you.” Geb said.
Gabrielle, much to his surprise, smiled at him, fully.
“I think its time she learned how to live with me.”
For once in his life, the Nubian was left without a word to say.
Captain Musu shifted her spear to her right hand and shaded her eyes with her left. The dwarf Ambassador had requested that she leave him alone for the afternoon, so that he might seek the griot-queen. Musu had given her soldiers their ease, but left strict orders to be on guard, all watches of the night. She elected to keep an eye on the Egyptian exorcist. Everyone was going mad. First the Greek hero getting ghost sick, then the new necromancer Setnakhte popping up, the split with the bard, and now the storyteller wandering off dead drunk into the village. What next, a rain of frogs from the sky?
As a rule, Musu had no use for necromancers. Egyptians were half mad about the afterlife anyway, with their rules and gods and trials and tombs and collections of souls. There was one guardian of the dead, in Dahomey. One soul. And one way to contact the ancestors- through being Ridden. Anyone might invoke them and hope they listened. Direct, bold, and respectful. Amazon.
This mucking about in tombs, muttering spells and pleading with the gods not to eat your heart was gruesome.
She stood now, spear resting on her broad shoulder, watching the half naked Egyptian kneel in front of a house at the outskirts of the village. He was chanting something, tossing dust on his shaven head. Mad as Harrians, all of them. Someone in the house was ill, and about to die. This much she knew. The necromancer watched like a vulture. His spell needed a recently dead person to make it work. He hadn’t elaborated to Musu his intentions, but she had her thoughts. This skinny little Egyptian snake wanted to bind the Greek hero up like a mummy and bury her alive with the corpse.
A hideous, pitiful wailing burst from the mud brick walls of the house. Death had come.
Setnakhte bowed his head, once, then sprang up, showering dust into the air. “We must get the Greek.”
Geb walked the bard gingerly back through the village streets. Though the storyteller seemed far more composed, she was yet feeling the effects of the wine and had to move slowly in the heat of the day. Geb pitied her the hangover headed her way. They had talked, along the riverbank, well into the afternoon. The Way House was under Captain Musu’s command, the sailors under Horem’s, and the Greek killer was out walking off her mood when he left. What could possibly go wrong?
The Way House door was open, the reed mat thrown back, the sailors were packing their kit under Horem’s direction, and the Amazons were arming for war.
”Now what?” Geb roared, as he beheld the chaos.
An Amazon answered his bellow, crossing the room in a single stride. It was Beru, one of the youngest of the escort guard, a woman nearly as tall as Musu herself, though not as massively built.
“Ambassador. Captain Musu asks that you meet her at the necropolis. The Greek hero is being buried.”
“Of course, we’ve spoken of the ritual burial. But why now? Does the necromancer want to scout out a tomb, maybe rehearse the spell? Why the urgency? Even if someone died today, it would take at least forty days to prepare the body for the afterlife.”
“No, lord. The Greek is already being wrapped. A man died today. She will be sealed with him in his tomb at sunset.”
“You are mistaken. No Egyptian would be buried with such unseemly haste. His family would never allow it. No mummification? No embalming?” Geb said.
“The dead is no Egyptian. He was a Phoenician workman, doing a three month round at the mortuary temple. He will be buried in haste, as his people do.”
This exchange went by in rapid Dahomean, with a smattering of Egyptian. Gabrielle watched the speakers closely. It helped, being a storyteller. Observation was natural to her, as well as a profound curiosity. It took her moments to gage Geb’s mood, to gather the epithets for Xena and the word necropolis.
“You mean to tell me that Xena is being wrapped for burial? She’s not ready! She doesn’t know the full Orphic hymn, or all the spells. She’ll be devoured in the underworld.” Gabrielle said, to Geb.
“Are you now possessed, like the Ghoul, to speak all languages?” He asked, frustrated.
“No. I just pay attention.” Gabrielle said.
“We have to get to the necropolis before this gets any worse. The sun is going down. ” Geb said.