Marion Bradley - The Firebrand

Once they had travelled for a time with a man who was exhibiting'dancing' serpents. They joined once or twice with other lone travellers, and had lost their way for long distances.

And after so many adventures that Kassandra knew she would never dare to try and recount them, they had arrived safely in Colchis.

She picked up the child again as they walked through the gates. She knew she looked like a beggar woman. Her cloak was the same one with which Agamemnon had covered her on board his ship - it had once been crimson, but was now faded to a greyish colourlessness. Her gown was a shapeless tunic of undyed wool; her hair loosely bound with a scrap of leather thong which had once been used to tie a sandal. Zakynthia looked even worse, if possible; less like a beggar woman than some kind of ruffian. Her sandals were worn almost through and she would have had to find another pair in Colchis even if it had not been her destination.

But they had managed to keep the child well and warmly dressed. His tunic - though he was outgrowing it—was from a good piece of wool which she had bought two towns ago and was fastened with a pin made from one of her last bits of gold, and his sandals were stout and strong. Sometimes she thought he looked less like Agamemnon than like her brother Paris.

"Now we are at journey's end," she said to her companion.

She asked a passer-by the way to the palace, and asked if Queen Imandra still reigned here.

The woman said, "Yes, though she is growing old; there was a rumour from the palace that she was mortally ill, but I do not believe it." She stared at Kassandra's threadbare cloak and asked, "And what can the likes of you want with our Queen?"

Kassandra merely thanked the woman for her help and did not answer. She set off for the palace. After a time Zakynthia picked up the child and carried him. Climbing the palace stairs, she nervously smoothed her hair with her fingers. Perhaps she should have stopped in the market and provided herself with proper clothing to visit the Queen.

She spoke to the guard on duty - one of the old woman guards whom Kassandra actually recognized from her stay in Colchis.

"I would like audience with Queen Imandra."

"I'm sure you would," said the woman, sneering, "but she doesn't see every ragtag and bobtail who comes looking for her."

Kassandra called the woman by name. "Don't you know me? Your sister was one of my novices in the House of Serpent Mother."

"Lady Kassandra!" the woman exclaimed. "But we heard you were dead - that you had perished at Mykenae - that when Agamemnon died, Klytemnestra murdered you too."

Kassandra chuckled. "As you see, I am here alive and well. But I beg you to take me to the Queen."

"Certainly; she will rejoice to know you survived the fall of Troy," the woman said. "She mourned for you as for her own daughter."

The woman wished to take her to a guest chamber and make her ready for her audience; but Kassandra refused. She would have bidden Zakynthia await her, but her companion shook her head.

"I too was bidden here by the hand of the Goddess," her companion said. "And I can reveal only to Imandra why I have come."

Kassandra was eager to know her fellow traveller's story, so she agreed. A few moments later, Kassandra was in her kinswoman's arms.

"I thought you dead in Troy," Imandra said, "with Hecuba and the others—"

"I thought Hecuba went with Odysseus—" Kassandra said.

"No; one of her women made her way here and said Hecuba died - of a broken heart, she said - as the ships were loading. It is just as well; Odysseus was shipwrecked, and no one has heard of him since, and'tis now close on three years. Andromache was taken back to one of the Akhaian kings; I cannot remember his barbarian name, but I heard that she lives. And this is your child?" Imandra picked up the little boy and kissed him. "So some good came of all your sorrows?"

"Well, I have survived and made my way here," Kassandra said, and they fell to talking of other survivors of Troy. Helen and Menelaus were still reigning in Sparta, it seemed, and Helen's daughter Hermione was betrothed to the son of Odysseus. Klytemnestra had died in childbirth a year ago and her son Orestes had killed Aegisthos and taken back Agamemnon's Lion Throne.

"And have you heard anything of Aeneas?" Kassandra asked, remembering, with a sweet sadness, starlit nights in the last doomed summer of Troy.

"Yes; his adventures are widely told; he visited in Carthage and had a love affair with the Queen. They say, when the Gods called him away, she killed herself in despair, but I believe it not. If any Queen was fool enough to kill herself over a man, so much the worse for her. She cannot be much of a woman and still less of a Queen. Then the Gods called him far to the North, where, they say, he took the Palladium from the Trojan Temple of the Maiden, and founded a city."

"I am glad to hear he is safe," Kassandra said. Perhaps she should have gone with Aeneas to his new world, but no God had called her. Aeneas had his own fate; and it was not hers. "And Creusa?"

"I fear I do not know her fate," Imandra said. "Did she even escape Troy?"

Kassandra began to wonder. She remembered parting from Creusa, but it had been so long ago she wondered if she had dreamed it. All things surrounding the fall of the city were like dreams to her now.

"And you remember my daughter Pearl—" Imandra said. "Come here, child, and greet your kinswoman."

The child came forward and greeted Kassandra with such poise that Kassandra did not kiss her as she would have done with any other child her age. "How old is she now?" she asked.

"Nearly seven," Imandra said, "and she will rule Colchis after me; we still keep to the old ways here. With good fortune that will never change."

"There is not that much good fortune left in the world," Kassandra said, "but it will not change tomorrow nor the day after."

"So you are still gifted with the Sight?"

"Not all the time, nor for many things," Kassandra said.

"So what do you want of me, Kassandra? I can give you gold, clothing, shelter—you are my kinswoman, and you are welcome to remain in my house as a daughter - that would be most welcome to me. I know the temple of Serpent Mother would welcome you as the chief of their priestesses."

Klytemnestra had offered her this; but she knew it was too late to spend her life within walls.

"Or if you wish," said Imandra, "I will do as your father should have done long since, and find you a husband."

Kassandra said fiercely, T am as little inclined as ever to be some man's property. In less than a year with Agamemnon I had a lifetime's worth of that."

Zakynthia suddenly interrupted, came forward and fell prostrate before Imandra.

"O Queen," the rough voice entreated, "it was laid on me by the Goddess to come to this city for your help. The Gods have called me to found a city, and I cannot do it alone. At first I thought the Goddess had sent me here to know if any of the Amazons yet survived; for the Goddess sent me a vision that only such a woman could assist me in this task."

"And who are you?" asked Imandra.

"My name is Zakynthos," said the one Kassandra had known as Zakynthia. "Is there none left of the Amazon women who could help me to found a city where the Goddess is served without Gods or kings? I would not have an ordinary wife after the fashion of the Akhaians, but one who can serve as a priestess in the city. Yet I have heard there are no more such women—"

"No," Kassandra said. "No Amazon outlived that last battle, where Penthesilea died."

"I cannot accept that," Zakynthos said, putting back the veil he had worn as a woman. "Now I am free of my vow, I will search the world over if I must—"

"What was your vow?" Imandra asked.