King of All These Ruins

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great and surprising portion! A lot was said at the end but it made sense in a way. Jocasta is learning new things. I am really enjoying this story and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

So, now Manaen has CROSSED A LINE! Well, we'll see what happens.

 

[ChrisGibson]

All that is harm shall be scattered
All that is homeless find ground
All that is broke, be unshattered
All that is lost shall be found.

- ancient rhyme
-



CHAPTER EIGHT

FINDING

Φινδινγ



“NOW,” SHE SAID, still looking upon the Goddess, “why are we here?”
It took a moment for Jocasta to realize the princess was speaking to her.
“Because the Prince will only use you to take Thebes from us and add it to Attika.”
“Yes,” Harmonia turned to Jocasta, suddenly looking old and wise.
“And then there would be civil war.”
“Yes,” the princess agreed, “I have seen this too.”
“Then?”
“Then the only question is what we are to do,” Harmonia said. “I hope you have some idea.”
“Akxa,” Jocasta said. “One of the two kingdoms ruled by women and a kingdom that supported your father.”
“Yes,” Harmonia agreed. “And Aunt will have to come too. I can see the graceless king of our city trying to send his son to court her even though she’s far too old. We will leave for Akxa as soon as possible.”
“Lady,” Jocasta said. “The bags are packed. Grandmother had made preparations. We can leave tonight.”

Even though she had foreseen no problems getting out of the city, it was one of those things that was so necessary, Jocasta was deeply nervous about it not working out. Women could not walk the streets at night, but there was a defile, a passage women used to travel to the town of Kore on their sacred processions, and men never guarded it. It was said to be locked only in a time of war.
“But the men do not even know the gate,” Terpsichore informed them. “It is hidden.”
What was more, though women did not walk the streets in the day, because of the religious festivals they did walk at night. Still, Phocis thought, too many could indeed alert the night guard. She went heavily veiled with Terpsichore leading the way, and then later came the servants and the cart. Lastly came Jocasta, led by Harmonia who had known the city all of her life and knew the defile and the tunnels which led under the great houses and the agora better than anyone else. The others had waited below for them to come through the bushes and down the narrow stone stair so now Phocis took a deep breath and said, “Our journey can finally begin.”
“Mistress, the horses and wagons are outside in a nearby village. We can travel all night and be past Kore by morning.”
“I wonder when they will begin to look for us,” Jocasta wondered.
“I left a message with Aspasia saying we were on a tour of the neighboring villages and staying the night in Kore to make tribute to the Goddess,” Phocis said. “That gives us enough time to get to Aulis, and on a ship before they begin to suspect we’ve left for good.”
“And what is more,” Harmonia noted as they passed through the hill cliffs, the city buildings looking down on them, “they will assume we’ve headed north to Thebes. And search us out along the Hercae Road.”

They reached a village built along a hill where the olive trees leaned crookedly out of the wind and the moon was rising high. There they took the rest of the wagons and rode onto Kore. Jocasta was yawning and tired of being jostled when, by daylight, they approached a large town of white, red tiled houses, and prosperous gardens, and she asked, “What’s that?”
“It’s Kore.”
“Oh,” she said.
“What?” Harmonia looked at her.
“I thought it would be…. Holier.”
Harmonia raised an eyebrow.
“Not that it looks unholy… only… Oh, well…” She shrugged.
“Where will we stay?” Phocis said, unconcerned about the holiness of the town.
“With an old friend of the family,” Terpsichore said. “He is the son of the nursemaid for Harmonia’s mother. He was treated well when she died, and has retired to a farm house.”
Coming closer, the town was not as compact as it seemed, and different from great cities in that it had no walls. Amidst winding paths and stony roads they arrived at an farm house owned by a leathery old couple called Andreas and Evodia. They were unloading the cart and putting up the animals and Jocasta, who had been commanded to not work but be served, thought she had seen a pile of blankets that fell, prop itself back up.
“Very well,” she said.
“You eat,” Evodia said. “You eat.”
It was while they were in the sunlit kitchen, yawning, and Evodia said, “You eat a little, you sleep a little,” that Jocasta decided to enjoy her meal, but enjoy it quickly. Fresh bread in olive oil, figs and olives, and the figs meant that she did not have to pretend it was time to relieve herself.
Outside, near the stables, she saw the wagon with the blankets. She slipped out of her sandals. The sharp pebbles were, to her tough feet, as nothing. Manaen had made sure she was not a pampered girl. She reached under her gown and pulled out her dagger as she tipped across the ground, and then, lifting up the blankets, she put the tip of the knife on the young man’s neck.
She was shocked to see him, for though she had prepared, she had not actually believed someone would be there, and he, of course was surprised to find a dagger at this throat. He wore a sword, but to teach for it would be his death.
“I’m going to take that from you,” Jocasta said. She pulled the sword from its sheath. Her brother was a general and she was not unused to weapons.
“You’re going to get up now and come with me, and when you get up,” Jocasta said, moving the dagger away, “You’re going to be coming with me.”
“Yes, Lady… Jocasta.”
“My name scarcely matters. Obey.”
He was tall, handsome and bemused. He said, as she placed the sword at his back.
“You can hardly kill me, me being who I am. You know who I am.”
“I have eyes,” she said leading him across the yard toward the house. Evodia came out, surprised, but Terpsichore and Harmonia came out more surprised still.
“We have a robber,” Evodia cried.
“We have a guest,” Jocasta said, smoothly.
“I am—” he began.
“Say a word, Prince Theon,” Jocasta murmured, “and it will be your last. When you’re found in a ditch outside of Aulis no one will link it to a bunch of women from Thebes.”
Theon cleared his throat making a foppish bow.
“I am… glad to be your honored guest.”
As Jocasta led him into the house, her arm wrapped about his waist, and her dagger pressed to his side, she saw the look on the faces of the two princesses. When they entered the kitchen, Phocis’s eyes widened and she dropped her fig murmuring, “Oh my God.”


Mykon yawned and stretched in the bed, Through the night his feet had tangled with Manaen’s and his arms had wrapped themselves about Manaen, but now, as he stretched and scratched, smelling the bedsheets where they had made love the night before, he blinked, woke and realized he was sleeping alone. While he lay blinking in the semi I darkness of the room, he heard a gentle rattle, and a droning and pushing, himself out of bed, he pulled on his chiton and pushed the curtain aside that divided the humble room of their house in Chio in two.
The candles were lit on the altar before the Mother, whose serene face contemplated the fruits of the earth she held, round gourds, long squash, flowers and grain, three skulls, the men who were planted in the earth and found new life in her matrix. Beside her, horned, was the goat headed Aegipan, and Father was in a black robe, a rod extended as he traced a circle about himself and shook the rattle in his other hand
Mykon closed his hands together in silence, waiting for his father to stop and sit before the altar again, now and again taking the rattle and shaking it over the images, now and again moving the incense stick with its smoke across the them. Mykon bowed his head. He turned to push back the curtain and climb back into bed. He could not examine his feelings. He longed for Manaen to finish. He longed to hold him and be held again Yet the voice in his head spoke: this is your father. But Mykon thought, of course he is my father. Who else would he be? Did I ever thinking of him as anything else? What they had begun he wanted to continue. In the light of morning would it be different? Would Manaen hold up fatherhood like a mask and say, “Look here, this thing that happened, it cannot happen again.” But no, Manaen held no masks, least of all his authority. It was true, always, and now the curtain opened and, in his black robe, Manaen he came through.
Mykon’s eyes were still half closed, and through them he watched Manaen pull off the robe in a fluid movement so that he was naked, his square shoulders and barrel chest, his firm, thick thighs, revealed again, his sex exposed. Mykon felt himself rising with desire as he turned like a sunflower, following his father as he went to look out of the window. Last night he had lain on top of him begging him for entry. I came out of you my father. I came out of you, let me be in you again! And they had both frozen with the feeling of his entry, the moment Mykon had placed his own father’s legs over his shoulders and penetrated him, the moment Manaen pulled him in hungrily was almost everlasting.
“Father!” Mykon’s voice cracked as if he were a child again, “Come to bed. Please.”
The bald man turned to him and came back to the bed, opening his arms. Mykon clung to him and kissed him hard on the mouth. Yes. It was still there, that passion, they clung together. Mykon realized in the moment of their union that Manaen had given himself, had understood Mykon’s need to be in him, and now he desired to fulfill Manaen’s needs. He turned on his stomach, and pulled Manaen to him, feeling his father’s kiss, feeling him marvel at his body and Mykon rejoiced in his own strength and in his admired beauty.
“All for you,” he murmured, “all for you,” as he clutched the bedsheets and closed his eyes, feeling his father penetrate him for the first time, Manaen’s hands come over his, their bodies seal like a canning jar in the kitchen of old Melpomane. the little sounds of desires escaping them as sweat ran down their bodies, and Mykon felt his father’s teeth gently close on his shoulder.

MORE NEXT WEEK...

 

[CharmedFan28]

Well Jocasta is certainly having an adventure! I don’t know what to think of Manaen and Mykon at the moment. Great writing and I look forward to more next week!

 

[ChrisGibson]

WHILE MYKON AND MANAEN DEEPEN THEIR NEW LOVE, JOCASTA AND HARMONIA CONTINUE THEIR ADVENTURE IN ATTIKA


“It’s like… Nothing I’ve ever known,” Mykon said, his fingers turning over and over again the small pendant he wore that now hung from his hand. “It is like my destiny.”
“It is your destiny,” Manaen said, “and mine as well. It is like being with myself and not with myself. I cannot describe it.”
“Did you ever look at me like this before?”
The two men sat naked on the bed, their backs to the wall, their knees to their chest.
“I imagine I did. I know I did. Only, I did not wish to admit it.”
“Nor did I, but the longer I was away from you, the more I knew I must be with you. Last night and this morning was the greatest love I’ve ever made.”
Suddenly Mykon turned to Manaen and Manaen waited. Mykon, leaned across him, dropping the pendant, and kissed him, pulling him to the bed. Manaen hooked his hands in his hair and, slowly, they began to make love again.
“We need to stay together for a few days,” Manaen said. “For a few days stay in this bed and let all know that we have things to work out.”
“The nature of it I will tell no one I swear,” Mykon said, holding up his hand.
“No one will believe you,” Manaen said. “Or if they will, they will not speak it. I can barely speak it.”
Manaen sighed, his hand running over Mykon’s strong shoulder, his side, lingering gently over his buttocks.
“My boy, my boy,” he murmured, stiffening with pleasure, “and now you are my boy, and I don’t have to satisfy myself in seeing you with others. It was,” Manaen kissed him, “I think,” Mykon kissed him hard, “more torture than you know.
“But you saw me at prayers today, and now I have things to teach you. I will teach them to Jocasta as well, but they must pass to you.”
“Alright, Father,” Mykon said as if he were a boy on his knee, but then, he was a man on his knee.
“You have heard of the tales of the Ellixians and their gods, and those stories are appropriate, their creation tales, They have their own mysteries, though most have lost them, but there are other mysteries. You remember, becore came here and became the father of kings, before those who accompanied him became the Agae, they were Babalonians, from the land of the east. They had their own gods, and their own mysteries, for Babalon was ancient when ancient Thebes was unfounded. ’ sister was Io, sometimes called Europa, and she was a priestess of Babalon. She came to Axum with those mysteries, and though we are long separated from those people, still they are our people, and those are our mysteries.”
Mykon, naked in his father’s arms, felt that this was the most intimate they had ever been, that as the sun rose, coming through the curtain and shining on the hard earth floor, Manaen was opening more to him than he had last night.
“This is the story of the first woman.”
“Pandora? The one Zeon made as a curse to men.”
“No, no, that is foolishness and nonsense, a slander against women and against God,” Manean said, caressing Mykon’s thigh as it wrapped about him.
“But this tale begins in the same way. For there were low gods, like Zeon and his gods. Gods who ruled the earth jealously, and they had made one man in this story, not several, and then named him for the Red Earth and bid him tend their garden and always obey. The Tree of Life was in this Garden and also the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.”
“Why of Evil?”
“Because once you know there is good, you know there is evil. You cannot have knowledge of one without the other. If you do not know evil you do not know your enemy, and then you are your enemy’s pawn. As this man was a pawn of the gods. They wed him to Eve, and she was the first woman. She was of the gods, but her origin is another story. Her teacher was the Great Serpent. In this story the Serpent wound himself about the Tree of Knowledge, and he gave her the fruit and she gave it to her husband, and so he became a man with eyes wide open, and the gods cursed him and sent him and his wife from the garden. He blamed his wife, but he also lay with her. Two sons came, one who was innocent, full of obedience and unquestioning trust, and one called Cayan. Cayan slew his brother and then fled. But the Man and the Woman had another son to replace him. So began two lines, the line of those who trust and bow before low gods, asking no questions, accepting all, and those who create, for Cayan was the father of craftsmen, smiths, masons, builders, musicians, weavers, and those who work magic.
“In time the gods sent a flood to destroy the whole earth,”
“Is this is a different story from Hesiod’s?”
“Slightly. And the story differs all over the east. In Hesiod one man and one woman survived. They populated the earth from stones cast over their back, and perhaps there is something mysterious in that, that they were masons of a sort. But the eastern story says that there was a man, the very first vinter, the maker of wine, and the first farmer as well, and the gods commanded him to build an ark and he and the animals and his family went in and survived it and all others died. But the Sons of Cayan survived with daughters, for they made a tunnel under the earth by the their genius, and when the flood was over they came out. Now, to continue their line, Cayan lay with his own daughters, and to open them up, he lay with his sons, and each of them, having lain with him, he began to teach them the Mysteries, and so I begin to teach you, first with this strange story, and then more and more.”
“Teach me to make the circles, to light the candles.”
“Yes, and to see the untrue from the true.”


“I wish we could have stayed in Kore a little longer,” Jocasta declared as they finished their dinner in the little tavern on the outskirts of where they were staying that night, “but there really was no time. Maybe one day we will get to come back, and then I can spend some time in the temple of the Two. The trip to Attika really has been fascinating, but now it’s time to go.”
“And now,” Phocis added, wiping her mouth, “It’s time to decide where to go.”
“What about me?” Theon said.
“Well, you do present a problem,” Phocis said. “We are splitting up. The best hope for Harmonia is with the women Akxa. We cannot exactly let you go, and it would not serve to have you go to Akxa. My granddaughter and I had thought of something, though.”
The prince looked to Jocasta and she said, “Grandmother will go with Harmonia and Terpsichore to Akxa, and I will take you to Thebes.”
“As a hostage!”
“As a guest,” Jocasta countered.
“As a hostage,” Theon returned.
“Call it what you like,” Jocasta said, “to Thebes you shall go. What will happen to you once there is the city’s affair.”
“By the city you mean your father.”
“Perhaps,” Jocasta shrugged.
Terpsichore lifted a finger.
“There is one change I would like to make in your plans,” she said.
“Speak, Princess,” Phocis nodded with reverence.
“I am… not an old woman,” she said, “though by now I am an old maid. And I feel old. I do not wish to travel to Akxa and plan wars. If there is some way that I could return home, to Phocia…”
“Lady,” Jocasta said, “I think no one would recognize you if you did, though now people surely know we went on a journey that involves you. We could come into the city by night. Or my family keeps farmhouses in a town outside the city called Chio. There you would have complete seclusion.”
“That is well,” Terpsichore said, turning to her niece and touching her hand, “if you do not need me.”
“I will always need you,” Harmonia said, “but I do not need you to always be at my side. No, go home. If all turns out well, I will be there soon too.”

“I will miss you,” Harmonia said when Jocasta came to sit by her in the tavern’s dusty courtyard. Down the dry street, a shepherd was coming, leading his herd of jogging goats, the bells jingling on their necks.
“Grandmother will be with you, and we will see each other soon enough,” Jocasta promised her.
“If all goes well.”
“But Princess, what is the use of thinking all will not go well.”
“You are right,” Harmonia said, “and yet the past tells me that assuming all will go well can be a mistake.
“I will miss Aunt as well, but I cannot blame her. She has been through so much. Her brothers dead at each others hands, my father one of them. Her sister, hanged by her own hand in her own tomb. And that tale! Her father who was her brother at the same time. Who killed the man that was his father and her grandfather.
“No one speaks of my mother. She was not a princess. She was of the noble families of Athene, though, a romantic ending to an awful story. It is said when she heard of my father’s death, she threw herself from the walls of Athene. I used to think someone had thrown her, but this makes little sense and Aunt says she did indeed throw herself from the walls. I understand she was grieving, but I often think, ‘Could you not have stayed in this world for me?’”
“I thought the same thing of my mother,” Jocasta said, “even though she died naturally and could not help it.”
“Was she kind?”
“She was kind and beautiful as I remember,” Jocasta said. “But she has been gone for so long, and I was so little. I think of her still, though sometimes I wake in night, afraid because I can no longer remember her face. Then, gradually, it comes back to me. Do you think of your mother.”
“I try,” Harmonia said, “but when I do, all I see is the city walls.”

MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

Well Manaen and Mykon seem to be going all in on continuing sleeping together. I can understand for sure why they won’t tell anyone. Jocasta is off to plan a war. I hope she survives it all. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

They are certainly the different family on the block, for sure. There will be more King of All These Ruins tomorrow, and some tweaks take place in G. Falls.

 

[ChrisGibson]

TONIGHT WE TRAVEL ALL OVER THE LAND OF ELLIX



“It is the strangest thing,” Marophon said as he was using the strigil on Pyramus’s back. “I know Manaen was glad to see me, but he has spent an inordinate amount of time with Mykon. Says he must teach him many things.”
“Well, it’s true enough,” Pyramus allowed. “And there are things Manaen knows. And does. That I cannot explain. But yes, Mykon seems… not distant But bemused. Bemused by his own father. Why, they spent two whole nights together. But you know that. You’d have to know it.”
“They have always been close,” Marophon lifted the jug of warm water and poured if over Pyramus’s shoulders. “That’s for sure. But now they are like…”
“Like lovers.”
“Yes,” Marophon said. “Exactly.”
“The other night I was making love to Myka,” Pyramus said, “and he had the strangest look on his face. He said, if only he could explain what was happening to him. If only he knew how. And he smiled with this great, radiant pleasure.”
“Yes,” Maro said. “The same with Manaen, and you’ve seen the way he is and how close they are. I chalk it up to some of that Axumi business. For, even though they are of Thebes, they are different from us. We’ve always known it.”
“Tonight too, and our last night in Chio, they are supposed to be going down to some caves, so we’ll be sleeping alone again,” Pyramus said.
“We don’t have to, you know,” Maro told him.
Pyramus turned to him.
“There is that young boy. That Teryn who just came. We could share him. See if he is willing.”
“I wasn’t thinking of sharing anyone,” Marophon said as he scrubbed himself and the lather went down his arms.
“I was thinking of us. Together. No one between us. Like it once was.”
“Oh,” Pyramus said. Then: “It’s only I thought you’d gone off me a bit.”
Marophon, sounding almost wounded, said, “Oh, I’m sorry for that. Truly I am, Pyrs. I think… I imagine I’d gotten used to you.”
“It’s the way of it,” Pyramus said. “The love between two men is not supposed to last. Or don’t the Attikans say it turns into something different.”
“It isn’t our way,” Marophon took the sponge from Pyramus, dipped it in soapy water and began to scrub his back. “I’ll come to you tonight. We’ll rediscover what we’ve been losing.”
“Yes, Maro,” Pyramus said, closing his eyes and allowing himself to savor Marophon’s hands on his back, “I will come to you. Whatever we have lost, let us find it together.”



THE HAIR THAT HUNG down her back and shoulders was as white as snow, though her face was young. When her grey eyes opened they were wide and liquid, but she closed them this night, in comtemplation, praying over and over again:

"To órama proékypse, to orama proékypse….”

Every evening they lit the altars around the castle, and said the night prayers, but tonight they remained, legs criss crossed under them, hands clasped, fingers moving over the seeds that made the prayer beads. Beside Xanthe, her sister, constant as ever, prayed:

"To órama proékypse, proékypse fantasía, diakríseis proékypsan, i gnósi anékypse, mésa mou fánike fotismós anaforiká me ta prágmata pou den akoústikan poté:« Aftí eínai i evgenís alítheia tis dimiourgías tou stress.Aftí i evgenís alítheia tis dimiourgías tou ánchous eínai na enkataleiftheí.Aftí i evgenís alítheia tis dimiourgías tou stres échei enkataleiftheí.

But Ao, the younger sister, was in the blue robe of a mysteriarch, not trimmed in gold and white as was Xanthe, but embroidered with vines and flowers, a fine gown their mother had knitted which in time she had taken to embroidering herself. Ao leaned forward to take incense sticks in light them in a candle before setting them up before the holy gods and bowing, stretching out her arms and kissing the floor untouched by the great rug on which they say. Placing her hands together she chanted the words which were:

“Vision arose, insight arose, discernment arose, knowledge arose,
illumination arose within me with regard to things never heard before:
This is the noble truth of the origination of all fear and sorrow.
This noble truth of the origination of fear is to be abandoned…”

Tonight they needed vision to arise.
“Daughters!”
They turned around, Xanthe finishing the last verse, rising to kneel and lying prostrate before the altar, and then slowly turning to see their mother. As Ao’s hair was lavender and hung down her back and Xanthe’s was white, the hair of Maia was green like a summer day and her deep red brown arms were bare as always. Maia, named for the Titaness, the mother of Divine Hermes. Even in sorrow, her black eyes were bright with life.
“It is time,” she said.
“Are you certain?” Xanthe demanded.
“One such as I,” her mother said, “am always certain. Your aunt is here as well. Everyone is here.”
Here, even the hallways were of polished marble, and the torches glinted off of them as the sisters traveled the hall following their green haired mother. At the door of the chamber there were guards, but the guards were nearly hidden by all the other people near the door. Aeon rose, about to come to them, then sat down. He wanted to comfort, and Xanthe saw that it was another man, their cousin, Eco, who had pulled him back.
“Make room,” Eco said.to those crowding the door.
The sisters entered while Maia hung at the door with her son who was taller and whose green hair was brighter, and with Eco who scowled under the mop of his salmon colored hair. In the large room, beside the dying woman sat Melyssa, Eco’s mother, the auburn haired, caramel skinned Bee Priestess and councilor to queens. She reached across and touched her niece’s hand.
The old woman took a breath and sat up. She turned to Xanthe and clearing her throat she smiled.
“It appears, Granddaughter, that I am going the way of the whole earth.”




Xian had been riding all night, and when she saw the high towers and the great walls, there was more relief than she’d known since this afternoon, when Xian and her party had rode out from the village of Tyran and spent the rest of the day threading the rocky valleys and hills.
The proud city with its high castles and great buildings seemed empty when she entered it, and above everything, on its perch overlooking the sea, rose Castle Acrys, its many imposing towers the house of the royal seat, nevertheless home. The gates of the palace and the servants to receive them, the stables for horses to be put away were like labyrinth, and she made her way, without changing from riding clothes, straight to the throne room which was empty save her brother, the long limbed and woebegone Aeon, and their cousin, the shorter, more compact, Eco. Xian, her hair grass green like her mother’s, was tied in a long shaggy ponytail behind her head, and as her brother rose, she crossed the room to sit with him under the empty throne.
“You knew?” he said. “You got my message.”
“Yes,” Xian said, “And the whole country knows.”
She turned her head. Over the throne, carved into a great stone disk, was the leering head of the Gorgon. Tongue out, fangs out, writhing hair all about her, she was a strange comfort. Life ought to be leered at now and again. She did not know when she stopped thinking this, or when the three of them stopped sitting there, staring into nothing, but at last, coming from their right were the faint stirring of feet and they rose. White haired, Xanthe was walking, followed by Ao and Mother, and then Aunt Melyssa. Behind them were several others of the court. Apparently they were as surprised to see Xian, Eco and Aeon as the three were to be seen, but Xian noted that Xanthe walked at the head of everyone, and then she knew. Eco and Aeon were the only men in the entire court, including the guards in their cuirasses, hair tied back in buns or braids. She went to her knees and so did Aeon, but Eco only bowed, he was not a subject of this land nor was his mother, their aunt. Xanthe hurried across the room, or hurried as much as one could in the stiff fabrics of the court gowns, and lifted up her sister.
“Grandmother is gone. Only a few minutes ago. She is gone. The horns will tell out her death in a moment.”
Xian blinked at her older sister, wiping a tear from Xanthe’s cheek with the back of her finger.
“Camiros Queen of Akxa is dead,” Xian said. Then placing Xanthe’s hands togerher and clasping them in her own, she bowed her head and said, “Long live the Queen.”
The hall filled with women, and two men, cried back, “Long live the Queen!”
There had been a Queen before, and there was a Queen now, and there always would be, for though these people called themselves, Akxakons, and had a long and proud history, to the east, the Heraklids, ever suspicious of women, told stories of their unnatural savagery and, by intention, mispronounced their name, calling them the Amazons.


That night Mykon watched as his father sat over the little altar, taking down images which he silently handed to Mykon to set on another table. Each little god and goddess he took down he kissed, and Mykon realized, as he took the figurines in his hands, that he had never known or asked much about them. Herakles was the son to Zeon and the Queen Alcmene. He had been born with great strength, but his enemy was Teleia the Queen of the Gods, for her wrath was hot against him. She had struck him with madness, and so he had murdered his children, and for penance spent his life doing amazing feats of glory. In his dying, he had become a god and come up to Mount Orthys to join his distant cousin, Iacchus, another son of a Theban princess.
Demeter the Goddess of Grain and her daughter, Kore the Maiden, were known to him as well as Pallas, though she was often called by the name of the city she protected, Athene, but the figure of this man holding the sun who had the head of a scowling and surprisingly fierce rabbit, Mykon did not know, though he had seen him all of his life. This woman, wide bosomed, calm faced, holding the fruits of the earth and three skulls, she could be Demeter, but she could be Kore as well. This red bodied man with the head of a goatlike bull or a bull like goat, this could be Pan. It was Pan, but not the Pan of the stories. Or could it even be that Minotaur, the monster hidden in the great labyrinth in Axum.
As Manaen hummed, he dipped his cloth in water, and washed the altar, and now he began to take up some of the images, but not all of them, and place them back on the altar, before the candlesticks. As he was remaking the altar he said only, “The incense.”
Mykon got up and crossed the room. He mixed the golden pebbles of frankincense with the reddish brown incense powder. He put them on the old brass censer, and as the sweet smoke came up, he brought it to his father who, with a long stick was tracing a circle before the altar. He traced it twice about him, and then another time, and then reached for the swinging censor. Briefly their fingers were entangled in the chains, and then Manaen began swinging the censor to the east, and to the south, and to the west, to the north where was the altar, and to the east again. He began swinging it in patterns declaring, “To the Five Point star which opens all, and to the Six Point Star which is the joining of the Sun and Moon and of the very elements, by the Seven Point Star which is the Face of God and Her Seven Spirits. By the raising of the altar and the tracing of the Star, may all work at this altar be true work, all thanksgiving be true thanksgiving, all devotion be intensified, all protecting be protected in truth, and all those cursed be truly damned. And now the temple is raised,” Manaen set down the incense pot, “the Circle is perfected.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

Wow lots happening all over the land in this portion! A queen has died and things are changing for everyone. I may read this again later to really take it in. Great writing and I look forward to reading more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

It was a lot going on. I didn't mean to post so much, but there was a hell of a lot happening. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

 

[ChrisGibson]

MANAEN BEGINS TO TEACH MYKON THE ANCIENT MAGIC, AND TOGETHER THEY DISCUSS EVERY POSSIBILITY, AND REVEALING WHAT THEY HAVE KEPT SECRET

“Janikot is the great hero. He is the first off the heroes,” Manaen said, as his fingers traced the ears of the rabbit. Fleet of foot, he was not like Herakles who never could think, or even like Perseos of Akxa. He only had one great adventure. Janikot was wise and his mouth was usually his weapon. For this reason some say he was the first magician. He brings up the morning sun and is greeted at the beginning of days. He lends strength for those tasks often deemed impossible. It is said he had hundred of children.”
“All Rabbits?”
“Some rabbits,” Manaen noted, “but others men. For things were different then. So say the tales.”
“And this,” Manaen gestured to the goat, “is Bou Jeloud, called Aegipan, or Pan. Called many other names. The tales of some say he is the son of Mercurio, called Hermes, and therefore the grandson of Zeon, but other tales say he was the fosterbrother of Zeon and still more that he was, like the Titans, before them all.”
“Why is there a candle on his head, between his horns?”
“It is the light between the horns, between what is fierce, between what appears to be good and what appears to be evil. Between appearances in general. Sometimes that light is called the Star, and because of that, in Axum he is known as The Starry One who dwells at the heart of the Labyrinth.”
“Then he is the Minotaur.”
“Yes,” Manaen said, “only that tale is a great Attikan corruption, so much a corruption that it is a lie.”
“Then what is the true story?” Mykon asked.
“It is better to ask what is a truer story,” Manaen answered. “The Attikans were once ruled by Axum. Much of Ellix was. Their oldest families, though they no longer remember, or no longer wish to remember, are of Axum as are their mysteries. Their Goddess Pallas, a Virgin for all time who lives as no woman has ever lived, and is enemy to many women, was once Attanaye, the Serpent Headed, and Zeon and Eidon, that is Poseidonos, were once two sides of the same The Thundering Bull, just as Ceres and Kore are two aspects of the Mother of Grains. The Attikans made up a tale of their king Theseos, who went to Axum and murdered the Minotaur, and they made up a silly story of how his mother was a queen, Pasiphae, who had been filled with lust for a bull and so bore a son half bull and half man and placed him in the Labyrinth.
“Or maybe they did not make up this tale. Maybe they believed it. Or misunderstood. But Asterion is the name for the Horned One. He is Bull and not Goat to them. Minos, in the stories told in Thebes, was the son of Zeon and Io. The Minotaur was the son of King Minos and his queen, Pasiphae. But Pasiphae was a Goddess, is a Goddess, the daughter of the Sun, and so the Minotaur is her child. Here is the thing, the Minotaur and Minos are one. The priest kings of Axum became, on their coronation, the incarnation of Asterion, were called Asterion as well as Minos. And so I believe that Theseos killed the king and not the bull.
“And now,” Manaen continued, “you are wondering something. It is at the back of your head, but still you are wondering.”
Mykon raised an eyebrow.
“When my father died, I respected him, but I did not entirely understand him. I revered him because I loved him, and because he was the head of our family. But these things and more he never taught me, probably because much of it he himself did not know. I was taught them by Kybernets, and so I teach you and yet you wonder, what good is it? It is interesting to know, but in the face of everything happening, what good is it? The things I teach you, the stories of the Old Gods and the disillusion of new lies, is the way back home and home is the center of yourself. in the center of yourself you will find the Zoe, the dýnami zoís, the pnévma tou sýmpantos… The Life, the Force of Life, the Spirit of the Whole Universe. All of these things are one thing, but every time you give it a new name a new face is revealed, thus the gods are made.”
“This force is God? The Gods?”
“And our living with them, or working with Him? With Her. This is what some incorrectly call women’s work, magissa, sorcery, magic, and through it all things can be accomplished.”
“The recreation of the Sacred Band.”
“Yes?”
“And the raising of your private army?”
“Yes.”s
“The fact that all Thebes is in our hand.”
“That too, my son. But this requires wisdom. One who only uses sorcery, but not wisdom and devotion and love, not submission, is only a low witch, and they lack vision. Use your vision and your wisdom to look a little forward and see what we must do next.”
Manaen looked to his son.
Mykon frowned, They sat, legs criss crossed under them before the altar.
“North of us is only Dacan, and to the west Thermedon and Thessaly. None are mighty kingdoms. Phocia is the mightiest but in Thebes we are torn by divisions mainly spurred by the council. There is little between us and Illyria, and Illyria grows stronger every day. We and Attika and Helion, which cannot stop fighting, we are little kingdoms. We need to make peace with them and we need to make Thebes as strong as possible.”
And then Mykon said, “Creon must die, and someone no one can deny must take the throne.” He shook his head. “Who that will be though, I do not know. All of the houses are compromised, and no matter what Jocasta and Grandmother have done, I cannot see Polyneice’s daughter being proclaimed as Queen.”
“If you were to marry her,” Manaen said, “she would be.”
Mykon’s eyes flew open.
“You are the junior general of the Theban army,” Manaen said. “Pyramus is senior to you there, and I senior to you in this family, but you have both family and military power, not to mention favor. You are romanticly linked to powerful men and through Phocis and your mother you have Agae blood.”
“You think I should be King of Thebes.”
“I think you should consider all options,” Manaen said. “This is a time when we must look at every option and choose the wisest one.”
“It seems to me there are two wise options,” Mykon said. “We must keep Creon alive as long as possible until we find a strong successor, and we must… we must tell Pyramus and Marophon that we are… That we have become…”
“Lovers,” Manaen said.
“Yes,” Mykon said to his father, “that we have become lovers.”


MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

Great to get back to this! I learned a lot of lore in this portion and it was very interesting. I am not sure if Manaen and Mykon telling the others what they are is a good idea but we shall see. Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I would not be sure, except its Manaen's idea and Manaen tends to be right. I don't know how they could hide if for long anyway. It's a very strange bit of business indeed.

 

[ChrisGibson]

ON THE WAY BACK TO THEBES, THEONE GIVES JOCASTA SOME SERIOUS ADVICE, AND OUR FRIENDS AND ARCAS DECIDE IF THEY WILL COME TO THE AID OF JOCASTA AND PHOCIS OR NOT....


“This is a sweet little town,” Theon noted as they rode through the village while the sun was sinking red and gold behind the hills. “I love your country.”
“Thank you,” Jocasta said with a smile, “I must admit, one country looks much like another to me. Save this is flatter.”
“Well, that’s something,” Theon noted.
“I would know Phocia if I was gone from it a thousand years,” Terpsichore noted. As she looked about the village, she asked, “Is your Chio like this village?”
“Like it,” Jocasta nodded. “Yes. You will be happy there, and very often we’ll be there too. For all we know, Father is there right now, and he will be there to meet you.”
Jocasta stretched as much as she could, holding to the reins of the mule, “I may stay there a few days myself.”
“And what of me?” Theon asked.
“I really don’t know,” Jocasta said. “After all you were attempting to… I’m not entirely sure what you were attempting to do, but it involved carrying off Harmonia and marrying her so you could be the king of Phocis and Attika.”
“You’re right,” Theon said. “You’re not wrong.”
“It was a terrible plan by the way,” Terpsichore noted as she rode ahead of them.
“It was an undeveloped plan,” Theon said, “because there was no time to think of a plan.”
“And now she is on her way to Akxa?” Jocasta said. “What is Akxa like anyway?”
“Very different from Attika or Phocia,” Theon said. “Once I made a trip their with my father. Though originally from east of Phrygia, their bloodline has often blended with the folk of Arcady and with the Pelasgo, the oldest people of this land. They are long lived and some strong in magic. The current royal family is strange indeed, with strangely colored hair, but this is because the old Queen’s son married an Oread.”
“An Oread?” Jocasta said. “Like a maenad, like a priestess of the old gods.”
“No,” Theon said. “We do not really have much time for the cult off Iacchus in Attika, but we have heard that when women are possessed of Iacchus they become maenads, the men become satyrs, wearing the masks and horns. But... while, to my knowledge, all maenads are human, there are actual satyrs, actual. unhuman wild creatures who follow that God. The old prince of Akxa did not marry a priestess, or rather she was a priestess, but she was also one of the Blessed People, the Ancient Ones. The Princess Maia is an Oread from the wilds of Arcady, a Mountain Woman, and her blood is in her children making their hair different, their eyes different, their lifespans longer. Her sister is only half old blooded, but full of power too, Melyssa, the Bee Priestess, and the beloved of the Gods. You have sent your precious Harmonia and your lovely grandma to a strange crew indeed.
Jocasta shivered remembering the night in Chio, years ago, when the drums had played for Aegipan, and out of the forest she had dimly seen the shapes of the People of the Forest. But she had not seen one up close, or in detail. That they actually came into the world and wed with men, as they had in the old stories, was news to her.
Theon added, “And by the way, had you considered that while you are worried about your precious city and little Phocia, the time is coming when we will have to look to the north and to the south as well as the west, and worry about far bigger kingdoms, think of all Ellix as a whole land, working together?”
“Was that what you were doing?” Jocasta said, plain faced.
“Look,” Theon said, “we have our little city states and kingdoms to the north, Attika and Phocia, now at peace—”
“Until you try to make yourself king of Thebes—”
“But usually we are at war. And then Thermedon, Thessaly and Arcas, all spread out and underarmed, and to the north Illyria grows stronger every day. Unless we come together, the Illyrians will pick us apart.”
It seemed to Jocasta the wind was suddenly cold, and Theon said, “Lady Jocasta it does not matter if I rule Attika and Phocia. It doesn’t matter if your family retains the shaky control of Thebes it has now, if we do not look to the north, and look for help from the south, our two lands will be nothing.”



“Will you leave or will you stay?” Xian asked.
“It isn’t a question of if she will leave or if she will stay, but how long before she leaves,” Aeon noted, stretching his long legs. He always wore green fitted trousers, and a green fitted tunic open over an undershirt just as a tuft of his famous pea green hair always hung over one eye while his grey eye winked wide and merry.
“Mother cannot stay away from the Heartland too long.”
“And it is not good for you to either,” Maia reminded them.
She was a tall, wild haired, big woman, and though noble, no princess.
“I came for the love of Crysos. He was a strong and handsome prince who gave me three beautiful daughters. But now the old queen is dead, and the prince is gone and Xanthe has come into her own. I will stay for the coronation, maybe a little longer. And then I will travel back with Melyssa. I imagine she will stay at the Glade. I must return to Arcady. I never had much business in this place. Not for long. We all know that.”
Aeon nodded, but Xian said, “You just said Melyssa is leaving. Who will council Xanthe?”
“Why couldn’t you council her?” Aeon raised an eyebrow.
“You could,” their mother said. “You are wise and all of you support your sister, but Melyssa longs to leave. The Priestess of the Bees was not meant to be the chief council to the Queen of Akxa. Eco is still here, and I think Eco will remain.”
She turned to Aeon. “That should make you happy.”
“It will make all of us happy,” Aeon said.
“And less alone.” Xian added.
She did not want her mother to leave. If she could she would have traveled back to Arcady too, and yet she knew she could not abandon her sister at a time like this. Akxa was one of the mightiest kingdoms of Ellix, and all around them little powers rose up, wrangled, sought help every day. She would need all the help she could get.





As Xanthe looked down on the harbor, she did not fold her hands together like a Queen, but clutched the hilt of her sword with her white painted finger nails, her white hair blowing in the breeze. Into the royal harbor came the low prowed sloop of the ship with the Red Tree. On the great mast the red pine tree with its candle, its red bird and its star stood, the sign of their cousin’s house and sign that Aramache had returned from her journey south.
Aramache was Eco’s sister, the daughter of Melyssa and like her mother and brother, an impressive enchantress, but like herself, a warrior. Her gown, closed by a geat black sash, was black and covered in bright flowers, red, salmon, green vines and her sword hung at her side. Most magnificent was her mane of hair, dark pink like her brothers, but redder, like a flamingo, bright as her flashing eyes. After the ship had mored herself in the little harbor used by the aristocrats and for royal missions, Aramache descended the plank with dignity, but still seemed hurried. She was not of Akxa and so she touched her forehead, but did not bow.
“Your Grace,” she said to Xanthe, and then women embraced.
Xanthe parted from her cousin asking, “What have you seen in the south?”
“Cona growing more powerful by the day. King Leonidas has put his wife away to marry the daughter of a Cyran aristocrat. He says it is time to solidify the old ties with Cyra. And they are both as close as ever with Illyria.”
“Well,” Xanthe said after a moment, “nations can be close. There can be allies. That is allowed.”
“Everything is allowed,” Aramache said, “but not everything should be.”
Xanthe slipped her arm through her cousin’s.
“Come sister, let’s have a rest, and after supper you can tell me all about it.”


MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

Lots of decision’s made and it was nice to hear from all these characters. I still get confused by all the names at times I think I know what’s going on. I can reread anyway. I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I apologize for that because I saw it was like a whole boat load of those new characters and even I was a little confused since its been a while since the last time I posted.

 

[ChrisGibson]

TONIGHT IS AN ADVENTURE IN SEXUAL EDUCATION...


“For boons bestowed
On mortal men I am straitened in these bonds.
I sought the fount of fire in hollow reed
Hid privily, a measureless resource
For man, and mighty teacher of all arts.
This is the crime that I must expiate
Hung here in chains, nailed 'neath the open sky.”

-Prometheus Bound, Aeschylus



CHAPTER TEN

NARTHEX

νάρθηξ



IN THESE DAYS, the wretched winter was breaking. Manaen woke up beside Marophon with a song in his heart. He was murmuring it and humming to himself as he dressed to go to the altar he had set up last night, as he went to continue the songs he had begun with Mykon. How he loved Maro, and loved sleeping beside him, but had it been Mykon they would have awaken together and dressed quickly and gone to the altar together to sing the hymns and prepare the rites. Here, as he lit the candles and sang the small songs, as he bedecked the gods in green beads and lay coins and liquor on the altar, he remembered that very early, after consecrating the altar and sniffing the sacred herbs, he and Mykon had undressed and consecrated themselves and the altar.
When he arrived at the altar, Mykon was already there. In the last days since they had finally begun sleeping together, Mykon had taken off the chiton of a young soldier or of a boy, and now, wore the full gown of a man, a broad burgundy stripe going up its middle and back.
“The circle is traced,” Mykon said, “the first rites are done.”
He rose from his hams and Manaen caught his hand, the same energy flowing through them as had only a few hours ago when Mykon looked him full in the eyes and then they had undressed and given themselves to each other, given the heat of their union to the gods. Now Mykon sang in his clear voice:

“I arise today
Through a mighty strength,
the invocation of the Seven
Through sight of the Gods
Through knowledge of the One
Towards the creator.”

As would be sung in temples, as Mykon himself would sing beside Pyramus and Marophon in the temple of Apollyon, so Manaen now sang:

“I arise today
Through the strength of the Brilliant One with his Shining,
Through the strength of his dismembering with his burial,
Through the strength of his resurrection with his ascension
Through the strength of his descent to the Seat of Doom.”

Today much money would be spent on dyeing the River Eurotas green, and green would be the color, green they said, for the Python destroyed on this day when Apollyon and therefore the Ellixian race that revered him so much, had come into the land destroying the old goddesses and bringing in the new gods. It was said Apollyon the Lord of the Day had destroyed the Python and all ancient serpents on this very day, and if some said that, then so be it. In truth, the one invoked was Phoebus, the old Sun God, the ancient Titan, sometimes called the Rabbit, and he came not to destroy the Serpent but to bring the Serpents back, the Mother Serpent and the Father, Ayeda and Dambatta, the harbingers of growth and the destroyers of stagnancy. Today was the end of the dead time, the beginning of the days of life when Oludumare, who was Mother and Father, who was God and the Great Serpent took up his reign.

Together, linking hands, Manaen and Mykon sang:

“Emfanízo símera
Mésa apó ti dýnami tou Brillit Oun me to fhinin tou,
Méso tis dýnamis tis aposynarmológisis tou me tin tafí tou,
Méso tis dýnamis tis anástasís tou me tin análipsi tou
Méso tis dýnamis tis kathódou tou stin édra tis moíras.”

“Where is Pyramus?” Manaen wondered.
“With his wife,” Mykon said. “All the house could hear their pleasure.”
“Come with me,” Manaen said.
He brought Mykon out of the holy room where the candles still burned, and through the darkened hall to push back the curtain and see Marophon, white and slender and naked on the bed. He stretched and yawned but did not open his eyes, and as Mykon felt himself stiffening, his penis stretching out to Maro in love, he felt Manaen’s hands on him, lifting his gown. And then Manaen’s gown had fallen to the floor. Naked he came into the bed, and pulled the covers over himself and Maro while Mykon climbed into the other side. As they embraced Marophon, he awoke. As he woke, he perceived. He made a small comment, a little protest, but only a little, before he gave into caresses and kisses, and welcomed them both at once.



Around midnight, the drumming had begun. Kybernets had arrived from the north and in the heart of the village, he and others were drumming while the temple was being set up, for the Axumi set up their temples and took them down, at least at these times of year. All day, through Achaia, riotous drinking would be going on, and parades would go all through the streets of Thebes, Pyramus at the head of them as commanding general of all forces. But the Anaxionade always began the feast at midnight of the new day, not in the morning and as the wine flowed and the torch fires defied the chill of the passing winter, Pyramus danced drunkenly with Charis swinging off of his shoulder as he took up his cup and drank and then offered her drink as well and, eyes half closed, they swayed under the trees and under bright stars. Messages, that Jocasta was on her way back here with a surprise, but not with the Princess, that the Princess Harmonia was headed to Akxa, that troops in Illyria were making alliance with Cyra and Helion, did not matter tonight. The stars, the song, the dancing, mattered tonight.
“Oh, my husband,” Charis breathed, drunkenly, looking up at him and smiling as she massaged his temples, “my beautiful, strong, steady husband.”
Pyramus remembered a night on a beach on Evio, where they had been fighting the Makadakan, when he had been dancing alone, but then there was a woman, the strangest women he had ever seen, and to this day he was convinced she was no human.
“This was the land where Hesiod claims we gave him his vision, where he wrote of the Titanomachy.”
“The time when the new gods fought the old for rule of the earth, when the monsters were subdued,” Pyramus remembers saying, still thinks of how clear and erudite he sounded for a drunken soldier who did not like to read.
“Ah, yes,” the woman had said, swaying as drunkenly as Charis did now, “but he left out something very important.”
Stupidly, trying to look sober, Pyramus had blinked at the woman.
“Some call do not call it the Titanomachy, which happened long ago and began the world we know. Some call it the Apocalypse and say it will happen at the end of days. But they are both wrong or, at least, both lying. The Titanomachy is not in the past nor the Apocolypse in the future. It is now Now and always Now, and men must choose which side to join.”
While Pyramus was still sorting this out, the woman had disappeared from him and now Charis said, “Let us to bed. To bed now! I want to feel you inside of me.”
When she said things like this he went as stiff as a board, and all feeling went to that fragile and vulnerable part of him. She reached under his chiton and stroked him there so that he moaned.
Is this why men are so violent, because we are so vulnerable? Because you can just touch us there and make us feel so much? You can just stroke, there, cup there, and so we call it a sword or a lance, but it isn’t really, just this thickening flesh with so much feeling, so much yearning, such a need, as right now there is such a need.
She took him to their little house, which was beside the larger one where Manaen stayed. For most of their marriage they had lived in someone else’s home, but now, even in town, they kept their own house. Charis took him to her room and undressed him after she undressed herself. When he pressed inside of her, slaked at last, he thought he would cry out, but she cried out. Everytime he fucked her she cried, and he put his finger to his lips.
“No, no, it’s good,” she said, her thighs wrapped about her. “Children should know their father loves their mother, and their mother loves their father’s touch.”
And so he had plowed her until the sweat ran down both of their bodies, until his palms kneaded hers. Until the house heard their screaming, and one by one the children stood on the other side of the curtain, Thalia pushing it aside, her eyes wide, her body changed by the image of them slick with sweat, her father’s face red and demon crazed as, with a shout, his body jerked back, and he exploded inside of her mother.

In the morning when there was scarcely any light, naked, Pyramus went to the courtyard and washed himself. Rinsing his armpits he turned to see Thalia.
“Should you be watching your father bathe?”
“I watched you and mother last night. We all did.”
“We thought you were asleep.”
“We were,” Thalia said, as Pyramus pulled on his chiton and ducked his head under water. “but you woke us. And we saw it.”
“You could have seen nothing unless you pulled back the curtain.”
“We wanted to see,” Thalia said. “We were curious.”
“And what did you see?”
“Is it really nice? Does it really make you and Mother happy?”
“It is and it does,” Pyramus said.
“I cannot understand it.”
He touched his daughter’s shoulder.
“When you are grown up you will,” Pyramus said. I will make sure you find a man who helps you understand it, and not one who makes your life an endless trial.”
Then he added with a smile, “And if you stood there and watched, you little sluts, I believe part of you understands more than you let on.”
Pyramus left his house to go next door, to wander into the room or Mykon, but he was not there. And so so he went to the room Maro shared with Manaen, and pushing aside the curtain he found them there, the three of them, half asleep. A desperation went through him, a sort of pleading, and Maro, between Manaen and Mykon looked up.
“We looked for you,” Maro said. “We wanted to explain. To find you.”
But there was nothing to explain. There was nothing that needed explaining. As Manaen and Mykon woke the same longing that had made his prick push inside of Charis made it point to them.
“Take me. Take me in,” he wanted to say. “Don’t leave me out of this.”
In only a moment he, was naked and in the bed, and in the midst of their love, held between Manaen and Marophon, satisfied.


MORE SEX NEXT WEEK!

 

[CharmedFan28]

Well that certainly was an adventure in sexual education. This story still has the power to surprise and fascinate which I think is a good thing. Great writing and I look forward to more next week!

 

[ChrisGibson]

That really means a great deal. I can't tell you how much. Thank you so much, and have a great weekend.

 

[ChrisGibson]

WHILE PHOCIS AND HARMONIA ARRIVE AT THE COURT OF AKXA, JOCASTA, THEONE AND TERPSICHORE ARRIVE AT THE WALLS OF THEBES



In the great palaee at Akxa, Castle Acrys, the brilliance of their hair was offset by the universal black of their garments. Grant it, it was the sensuous black of wealthy mourners, shot with silver thread and thread of gold, touched by rhinestones and precious jewels but still, it was black, and black hung in great swatches and streamers all about the ancient halls. All through the corridorss, the mournful songs competed with the bright sun of the early spring day, with the rich blue of the sky.
“It is hard to tell,” Eco said, touching his spiky salmon colored hair, “if we are in mourning for your grandmother, or for the divine Iacchus.”
“It is not that hard to tell,” Aeon, turned his head in the direction of the great, black draped coffin before the throne.
“Though tonight they will wrap up the effigy and sing hymns of mourning to him as well.”
But the Queen must be buried and burned first. She had been a great queen, ruling for fifty years, and yet the time of mourning belonged to Iacchus, and after that was the time of resurrection when it would not have been right to hold her funeral, and so it would be now, in an hour with as many of the surrounding lords as possible, the funeral for the woman before the funeral of the god.
“I say,” Aeon leaned out of the window, “is that a ship full of dignitaries from the east?”
“From Attika?” Eco came closer to the long window. “But it seems unlikely that they would have heard about your grandmother’s death and been able to reach us in time for a funeral and yet, here a ship is, coming to dock in the royal harbor.”
“Then let us go out to meet them,” Aeon said.
His sisters were gathered in the temple around his older sister, the new but uncrowned Queen, and there was a funeral in less than a few hours. What Aeon could do was see to the new visitors, and as he set out with Eco, he was always confounded by the many flights of stairs such a great palace possessed, and how many galleries had to be gone through and bridges crossed before they arrived at the causeway that led to the harbor. But then the ship had already given up its royal, or at least noble, cargo. There were common soldiers lingering about to ensure the women they had brought were safely conveyed to… whoever they were to be conveyed to, and the largest among them looked nervous enough and ready to leave, but resolved to stay until he knew the women were safe.
If they were dignitaries for a royal funeral, than these women looked more seasick than sanctimonious. There was a goodlooking, brown, like the women of his family, the older of them who appeared to be in her forties or possibly fifty. Her gaze was steady and she wore a great cloak and had pulled a hood from her head revealing dark hair. Beside her was a girl who appeared a little younger than him, very pretty, but very tired, and on her dignity, and the women who stood behind them, Aeon supposed to be servants.
“Ladies, have you come for the funeral of my royal grandmother?” Aeon inquired, putting one foot behind the other as he bowed.
“Young lord,” the older woman said, “we have been on the sea these two weeks, and heard of no royal death, but we have come to the court of Akxa seeking alliance with whoever may be Queen. If you say the old Queen has passed, and your are the Prince Aeon, then I offer my condolences and convey them as well to Queen Xanthe. I am the Lady Phocis of Thebes, and this is my Princess, Harmonia, heir to the Throne of the Seven Gates.”



We should be home tonight, or at least in Chio,” Jocasta said. “Right in time for the Mourning of Iacchus”
“We know of Iacchus in Pallas,” Theon said, “but do we do not celebrate his greater rites.”
“Even in Pallas the Greater Rites are celebrated,” Terpsichore said, “though not as publicly as here in Thebes.”
“Thebes is his city,” Jocasta said. “In the temple past the Fourth Gate, the women gather and they wrap the image of the God, and then we bear him outside of the city and remember his passing. All through the night we mourn, and for three days he is hidden before the women bring him back into the temple and the city rejoices.”
“In Attika it is Kore we mourn, but she is not dead, only descended to the world of the dead, and her mother, Great Ceres goes under the earth with a torch to find her. She finds her on this night, and they begin their jouney from the Land of the Dead.”
“Yes,” Terpsichore said, “and in the east it is Attus, and further east the Goddess of Love herself descends to the Land of the Dead. It is all part of the great mystery, the return from death and the great sacrifice.”
“I have never understood it,” Theon said. “Perhaps it is a woman’s thing to understand the deeper things.”
“It isn’t a woman’s thing or a man’s,” Terpsichore said. “It is a human thing, a matter of paying attention.”
“In the south and west, the Cyrans have a god who died once for the whole world and never dies again. They celebrate his death and resurrection in a few weeks, not on this day.”
“But of old it was on this day,” Terpsichore said. “I know of that religion. In that one the death is the sacrifice and the sacrifice is for the people of Cyra, but of old the death simply was, and the sacrifice was what brought one back from death, and there were many deaths and the deaths were necessary, the death of the body, the death of winter, but also the death of an age, the death of a moribund way of living, the death of all wintery things and windblown things, of that which was dead and frozen. And the resurrection was not on one day, but a long process, the slow return to life of all that had died.”
“I heard tale,” Theon said, “that in the east, when they celebrate Attis, he is the God ripped and torn apart, much like Orpheus.”
“I will tell you another thing,” Terpsichore said, “and I have had a long time to think of it. As long as the world is as it is, as long as women suffer, and the goddesses are maligned, and the gods made in the image of wicked men, Attis is torn apart and ruined. The Goddess is condemned to the Underworld. This is the night we pray for the God and Goddess to be put together again, for things to be restored. For all things to be restored.”
They were coming to the end of the day when the tangerine sky burned over the dark green country, the tough olive trees, the deep valley, green touched by orange gold. It hardly mattered what anyone else said, Terpsichore would know Phocia from any other country. They rode past a little village of white stone houses and then, as the first stars were rising, Terpsichore stretched out her hand and said, “What is that town down below?”
From the hill, Jocasta made out the very distant walls of Thebes, black in the approaching evening. She looked down and said, “that town right there is Chio. Here you shall live and here, I think, we will rest. I can already see the torch fires for the great feast. Our journey is, momentarily, at an end.”