Steven Saylor - Wrath of the Furies

“You have no religious qualms? You fear no punishment for impiety or hubris?”

“As I told you before, Gordianus, I am a Jew. I don’t worship Artemis. Nor do I fear these Furies you all regard with such awe. At any rate, I have no part to play in the sacrifice. Tomorrow night, you won’t see me in the Grove of the Furies.”

Antipater stamped his foot and gritted his teeth. I thought he was vexed by Samson’s impiousness, until he spoke.

“You must all be quiet! You must let me speak. I know the date for the massacre. I know, because I overheard the king give instructions to Eutropius, telling him the day and the hour. It’s sooner than you seem to think. It will happen two days from now-the day after tomorrow!”

There was a stunned silence.

“But that means…” Zeuxidemus furrowed his brow.

Kysanias shook his head. “Impossible! Without placating the Furies, the king cannot proceed with the massacre. What if the ritual goes badly? If the killings have been arranged to take place the very next day, there’ll be no way to stop them-no way to send the organizers a message. Winged Hermes couldn’t travel that fast!”

Rutilius looked at Antipater. “You’re absolutely certain of this?”

“It’s not something a man would forget,” said Antipater. “I’ve been counting the days, dreading what’s to come.”

“Impossible!” Kysanias repeated.

“No, it’s all too possible,” said Rutilius. “It’s just like Mithridates, isn’t it? The man has never been afraid to take a risk. While the date for the sacrifice was repeatedly postponed, the date for the massacre was firm. Now the one will take place on the very eve of the other. Mithridates is gambling that the sacrifice will go well. He thinks himself so favored by the gods, how could it go otherwise?”

“The hubris of the man!” said Zeuxidemus.

Kysanias raised his hand. “We are not here to speak against the king. Our purpose is to stop the king from making a terrible mistake.”

“But Your Eminence, don’t you see? We can’t stop it now,” said Zeuxidemus. “No matter what happens in the Grove of the Furies, the massacres will take place the next day, everywhere at once.”

“Perhaps … not everywhere,” I said. “Might we avert the massacre here in Ephesus, at least?”

Kysanias considered this. “Yes. If we can contrive to spoil the sacrifice, and the king is made to fear the consequences, then he might at least put a stop to the killing here. The Romans in Ephesus might be saved, and the sanctity of the Temple of Artemis preserved. That would be … no small accomplishment.”

“But much smaller than we hoped,” said Rutilius. “What of the Romans in Pergamon and Adramyttion, in Caunus and Tralles? What of all the temples that will be profaned in those cities?”

Zeuxidemus bowed his head. He was weeping.

Kysanias put his arm around the younger priest. “This is … a disappointment. But we mustn’t be deterred from our purpose. If only one life can be saved, is that not worth our efforts?”

“Only one life?” I whispered. I was thinking of Freny, remembering her smile and her laughter, and also the look of terror on her face as she was taken from the house of Eutropius. “I still don’t understand. Who will disrupt the sacrifice, and how?”

“Who?” said Kysanias. “ We must do it-the five of us in this room who will be there. As to how … that is what we must decide.”

“Can’t you simply refuse to conduct the sacrifice?” I asked.

Kysanias shook his head. “I’ve already postponed it as long as I could-too long, as it turns out, since now we’ve lost any chance to save the Romans beyond Ephesus. I can’t call off the sacrifice altogether.”

Antipater spoke up. “Your Eminence spoke of the ritual going awry. How might that happen?”

“A crack of lightning at the right moment would do the job,” said Kysanias. “But I don’t suppose we can manage that. Likewise, if certain birds were to be seen atop the tall cypress trees that encircle the sacred space around the altar; but that, too, is beyond our control. If the victim were discovered to be a hermaphrodite, or not a virgin-but the girl has already been examined.”

“Her virginity could be taken from her,” said Rutilius, raising an eyebrow.

“The man who did that would be flayed alive,” said Kysanias. “And such a rape would most certainly summon the wrath of the Furies.”

“I don’t suppose we could contrive to leave her alone with the king for an hour?” I asked. “I believe the only reason Freny was chosen was because the queen discovered the king’s desire for her. Now Freny has been put beyond his reach. He’ll never have the girl … and neither will anyone else.”

“That would be rich,” said Rutilius, “if we could trick Mithridates into taking the virginity of his own virgin sacrifice! But I don’t see how that could be accomplished.”

“I think we should return our thoughts to the ritual itself,” said Kysanias, “and the means at our disposal to disrupt it.”

“And somehow keep our heads, into the bargain!” said Antipater. “What about an uncanny voice?”

“A voice?” asked Kysanias.

“The way your voice changed just now, when you spoke to us so firmly, put me in mind of it. In my long lifetime I’ve heard of a number of sacrifices and other religious ceremonies being interrupted by uncanny voices-voices from the sky, or out of the earth, or from an animal’s mouth, that sort of thing.”

Rutilius nodded thoughtfully. “I, too, have heard of this phenomenon. An uncanny voice … but how might we achieve such an effect, and in such a way that the sacrifice would be spoiled? It’s too bad there’s not an actor among us, or a theatrical manager. Those people know all sorts of ways to fool the eye and ear.”

“In my experience,” I said, “the men who manage temples can also be rather skilled at creating illusions.” I looked at Kysanias, who looked back at me shrewdly. “And while we may not have an actor among us, we do have the world’s greatest living poet.”

We all looked at Antipater. He drew back his shoulders, like a man who had been issued a challenge. Once again he seemed to grow larger, and several years fell away from him.

“I have an idea,” I said.

* * *

It was almost dawn when I returned to my room. I crept into bed, thinking Bethesda was asleep. But an instant later she twined her arms and legs around me, pulling me tightly against her.

“I thought something terrible might have happened to you,” she murmured.

I was so weary, I thought I would fall asleep at once. My consciousness faded even as my body responded to her touch. Our lovemaking was ferocious and dreamlike. I fell asleep not knowing where my body ended and hers began.

At some point reality ended and dreams began, for the woman in my arms became, in some gradual, inexplicable way, not Bethesda but Amestris, though I could not have said in what way she changed. Indeed, when I pulled back for a moment and looked in her eyes, it seemed to me she was both women at once. The goddess Artemis spoke to me then, saying, “You have only ever coupled with one woman, and this is her in your arms.”

“Is she a goddess then, that she assumes so many different guises? Is she you, goddess?”

“She could never be me, because I am forever a virgin,” said Artemis. She laughed like a girl. I recognized that laugh-yes, it was Freny! Then Freny stopped laughing, drew her arms to her sides, and became as rigid as a statue. I saw that coils of rope held her arms to her sides. She struggled against them but couldn’t move. Then she was on her back, faceup, being carried by several men toward an altar already covered with blood. I saw that she was gagged and unable to speak, but she looked at me frantically, pleading with her eyes.