The Dancer from Atlantis

II

Where the Dnieper snaked in its eastward bend, grass-land gave way to high bluffs through which the river hastened, ringing aloud as it dashed itself over rocks and down rapids. Here ships must be unloaded and towed, in several places hauled ashore on rollers, and cargoes must be portaged. Formerly this had been the most dangerous part of the yearly voyage. Pecheneg tribesmen were wont to lurk nearby, ready to ride down upon the crews when these were afoot and vulnerable, plunder their goods and make slaves of whoever were not lucky enough to be killed. Oleg Vladimirovitch had been in one such fight as an apprentice. In it, by God’s grace, the Russians sent the raiders off bewailing their own dead and took many husky prisoners to sell in Constantinople.

Things were far better since Grand Prince Yaroslav—what a man, cripple though he was!—trounced the heathen. He did it at the gates of Kiev, so thoroughly that ravens afterward gorged themselves till they could not fly and no Pecheneg was ever again seen in his realm. Oleg was in the host on that wondrous day: his first taste of real war, thirteen years ago, he a fuzzy-cheeked lout of seventeen winters. Later he rode against the Lithuanians, and later still sailed on the ill-fated expedition against the Imperial city. But mainly he was a trader, who wanted no troubles that cut into profit. (Tavern brawls didn’t count, they nourished the soul, if you made sure to clear out before the Emperor’s police arrived.) He was happy that the Greeks were likewise sensible and, soon after throwing back the Russians, resumed business with them.

“Yes,” he said to the bumper of kvass in his hand, “peace and brotherly love, those are good for trade, as Our Lord preached when he walked this earth.”

He stood on a clifftop overlooking the stream and the fleet. It was beneath the dignity of a shipowner to haul on cables or lug bales; and he had three vessels by now, not bad for a boy who in birchbark leggings had run traplines through northern woods. His skippers could oversee the work. But sentries were needed. Not that anyone expected bandits; however, the furs, hides, amber, tallow, beeswax being transported would fetch a price down south that just might draw many masterless landloupers together for a single swoop.

“To you, Ekaterina Borisovna,” Oleg said, raising his cup. It was for traveling, wooden, albeit silver-trimmed to show the world that he was a man of consequence at home in Novgorod.

While the thin sour beer went down, he was thinking less of his wife or, for that matter, various slave and servant girls, than of a tricksy little minx at journey’s end last year. Would Zoe again be, available? If so, that gave him an added reason, besides extending his connections among the foreign merchants resident in Constantinople, for wintering there. Though Zoe,—hm, over several months Zoe might prove painfully expensive.

Bees hummed in clover, cornflowers blazed blue as the overarching, sun-spilling sky. Below Oleg, men swarmed about the bright-hued swan—and dragon-headed ships. They must be longing for the Black Sea: in oars and up mast, loaf and let the wind carry you on, never thinking about the currents, never caring that that was when the poor devil of an owner must worry most about a wreck. Their shouts and oaths were lost across a mile or two, blent into the clangor of great Father Dnieper. These heights knew quietness, heat, sweat trickling down ribs and soaking into the quilted padding beneath the chainmail coat, which began to drag on the shoulders, but high, high overhead a lark chanted, and the joy floated earthward while a mild buzzing from the beer rose to meet it....

Oleg smiled at everything which lay in his tomorrows.

And the vortex took him.

Winters were less strong here than on the plains over which Uldin’s forebears went drifting and storming. Here snowfall was scant, most years, and a man had no need to grease his face against the cold. But he could nevertheless lose livestock to hunger and weather if he did not ride the range and take care of his beasts—especially when lambing time drew near.

Uldin’s followers numbered only half a dozen, including two unarmed slaves. The East Goths had fled into a Roman realm which would not likely prove hospitable. Some stayed, of course, the slain and those who were captured and beaten into meekness. For the past three years the Huns had lived in peace, settling into their newly conquered land.

It lay white beneath low gray clouds. Here and there stood leafless trees. The snags of a garth sacked and burnt were the last sign of farming. Fences had been torn down for firewood and grain had yielded to grass. Breath smoked on a raw wind. The hoofs of the ponies plopped in snow, clattered on ground frozen hard. Saddle leather squeaked and bits jingled.

Uldin’s son Oktar edged alongside. He was barely old enough to ride along, his father being young, but already he showed in height and pale skin the Manic blood of his mother. She had been Uldin’s first woman, a slave given him by his own father when he reached an age to enjoy her. He finally lost her, gambling with a man of another tribe at a Sun Festival meeting, and didn’t know what her life became afterward, though for a while he had idly wondered,

“We can reach camp tonight if we push hard,” the boy said importantly. Uldin half raised his quirt and Oktar added in haste, “Honored sire.”

“We won’t,” Uldin answered. “I’ll not weary horses for you to sleep earlier in a warm yurt. We’ll stretch our bags at—” he made a nomad’s quick estimate—“one Place.” Oktar’s eyes widened and he gulped. Uldin barked a laugh. “What, afraid of wolf-scattered Gothic skeletons? If they alive couldn’t stop us slaughtering them, who fears their thin ghosts? Say boo to them.” He jerked his head in dismissal and Oktar fell behind with the rest.

Uldin would, in truth, also have liked to make the main encampment. Riding the range at this season was no sport. In summer the entire tribe traveled with their herds, and a man could nearly always be home at eventide after a day’s work or hunt. That was good: creaking ox-drawn wagons; smells of smoke, roasting meat, live horseflesh, fellow-men’s sweat, dung and piss, closeness within the huge grass-rippling horizon, beneath huge hawk-hunted heaven; noise, laughter, gluttonous eating; after nightfall, gatherings about the fires, flames whirling and crackling aloft, picking the faces of trusty friends out of unrestful shadows; talk, perhaps thoughtful or perhaps bragging, maybe a lay of heroic times to inspire the young, ancient times when the Middle Kingdom itself feared the thannish Empire, or maybe a jolly bawdy song, howled forth to the thutter of drums and tweedle of flutes while men stamped a ring-dance; and kumiss, bowl after bowl of rich fermented mare’s milk until a man became a stallion and sought his yurt and his women.... Yes, barring lightning storms (Uldin made a hasty sign against demons, taught him by the shaman at his initiation), summer was good, and to arrive home now would be to have a foretaste of it.

However, no softness could be allowed. It was bad for discipline if nothing else, and what was a tribe without discipline? Uldin drew from beneath his saddlegirth the tally stick on which he had recorded the size of his flocks, and made a show of studying it.

Not small. Nor big. He was no clan chief, just the head of a household, so-and-so many younger sons and the like who had given him their pledge, together with their dependents and his own children, wives, concubines, hirelings, slaves, horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, wagons, gear, and plunder.

Plunder. He had won little of that when the Huns were overrunning the Alans east of the Don River, for in those years he was but a youth learning the trade of war. The sack of the Gothic holdings had enriched him somewhat. Now, when grazing had been made ample, he would do best to trade silver and silks for livestock and let natural increase bring him the only wealth that was really real.

But his gaze drifted westward. Beyond this rolling plain, he had heard, were mountains, and beyond the mountains were the Romans, and it was said they paved their streets with gold. A man might carve himself an empire there, great as the ancestors’, so that folk a thousand years hence would tremble at his name.

No, that chance would hardly come in Uldin’s lifetime. The Huns had no reason to conquer further nor would until their numbers waxed too large. To be sure, without some battle the skills of war would rust and the tribes become easy prey; hence the West Goths and others would at least be raided pretty often, which could bring, opportunities.

Abide, he told himself. Honor the Powers and the ancestors, stand by your Shanyti and do his will as you expect your household to do yours, steer your affairs wisely. Then who knows what may come your way?

And the vortex took him.

Again Erissa must, seek the heights alone.

She did not know what sent her forth. It might be the whisper of the Goddess or, if this was too bold a thought, a lesser Being; but no vision had ever come to her on those pilgrimages. It might be nothing deeper than a wish to be, for a while, one with the moon, with sun, stars, winds, distances, and memories. At such times the house, Dagonas, yes, even the wide fields and woods that were hers, even the dear tyranny of her children, became another slave kennel to escape from. So relentlessly was she driven that she seldom believed there was nothing of the divine about it. Surely this was a sacrament she must receive, over and over, until she was purified for the reunion promised her these four and twenty years ago.

“Tomorrow dawn I leave,” she told Dagonas.

Though he had learned the uselessness of protest, he did answer in his mild way, “Deukalion could well return meanwhile.”

For a moment her spirit overflowed and stung, her eyes, at thought of the tall sea captain who was her oldest son. He was gone from Malath more than he was on the island; and when home he spent most time with his comely wife and children, or his young male friends, and this was right and natural. But he had come to have so many of his father’s looks

The stinging made her aware, too, of how Dagonas had always been kind to the boy who was not his. Of course, he was honored in having for stepson the child of a god.

Nonetheless, his goodness went beyond duty. Erissa smiled and kissed her husband. “If he does, pour him a rhyton of Cyprian wine for me,” she said.

Dragonas was eager that night, knowing she would be absent for days. He had never cared for other women. (Well, he must have had them in foreign ports, seeing how long a merchant voyage could become, just as she had taken occasional, men in his absence; but after he retired from that life and went into brokerage, it had been entirely they two.) She tried to respond, but her dreams were on Mount Atabyris and a quarter century in the past.

—She woke before the slaves themselves were up. Fumbling her way in the dark, she got a brand from the hearthfire and lit a lamp. When she made her ablutions, the water lashed her blood with cold until it raced. She dressed in proper style before kneeling, signing herself, and saying her prayers at the household shrine. Dragonas had made that image of the Goddess and the Labrys above, with his own clever hands. Cradling Her Son in Her arms, Our Lady of the Ax seemed by the uncertain light to stand alive, stirring, as if Her niche were a window that opened upon enormous reaches.

Religious duties performed, Erissa made ready to travel. She shed long skirt and open-bosomed jacket for a tunic and stout sandals; her hair she wound in a knot; at her belt she hung a knife and a wallet to carry food. She swallowed a piece of bread, a lump of cheese, a cup of mingled wine and water. Softly—no need to rouse them—she stole into the pair of rooms they had and kissed her four living children by Dagonas farewell. Two boys, two girls, ages from seventeen and soon to be a bride (0 Virgin Britomartis, her age when the god found her!) to chubby sweet-smelling, three. She forgot until she was on her way that she had not saluted her man.

Westward a few stars still glimmered in sea-blue depths, but the east was turning white, dew gleamed and birds twittered. Her house was actually not far outside the harbor city; but steeply rising land and dense groves of fig, pomegranate, and olive trees cut off view of anything save her own holdings.

Dagonas had demurred when she chose the site: “Best we live in town, behind its walls. Each year sees more pirates. Here we would have none to help defend us.”

She had laughed, not merrily but with that bleak noise which ended argument, and replied, “After what we have lived through, my dear, are we afraid of a few curs?”

Later, because he was no weakling, no mainlander who could not cope with a woman unless he had a law making her inferior, she explained, “We’ll build the house stoutly and hire only men who can fight. Thus we can stand off any attack long enough for a smoke signal to fetch help. I do need broad acres around me, if I’m to breed the sacred bulls.”

Having left the buildings behind and taken an inland trail, she passed one of the meadows where her cattle dwelt. The cows drowsed in mist-steaming grass or stood with calves clumsily butting their udders. The Father of Minotaurs was also on his feet, beneath a plane tree whose upper leaves snared the first beams of the unseen sun. She stopped a moment, caught on the grandeur of his horns. His coat was softly dappled, like shadows on a forest floor, and beneath it his muscles moved like a calm sea. Oh, holy! The wish to dance with him was an ache within her.

No. The god who fathered Deukalion had thereby taken away her right’to do it in Her honor; and time, slowing her down, had taken away her right as wife and mother to do it for the instruction of the young.

Otherwise she had lost little from her body. Pebbles scrunched beneath her mile-eating stride.

A swineherd, further on where the unpeopled lands began, recognized her and bent the knee. She blessed him but did not pause. Strictly speaking, she was not entitled to do that. She was no priestess, simply a wise-woman, skilled in the healing arts, in soothsaying, and in beneficent magic. This let her behave as she chose—faring off by herself, clad like a mainlander man—without unduly shocking respectable folk; but it did not consecrate her.

Yet a wise-woman must needs be close to the divine; and Erissa had taken the lead in restoring certain forms of worship among the Malathians; and she had herself, when a maiden,; danced with the bulls of Our Lady; and, while she made no point of having once been chosen by a god, neither did she make any bones about it, and most people believed her. Thus she was no common witch.

The awe of her, waxing over the years, helped Dagonas in his business. Erissa grinned.

Her muscles flexed and eased, flexed and eased, driving her always further inland and upward. Before long she was in ancient pine forest. At that height, under those scented boughs, the coolness of autumn began to grow chilly. She took her noontide meal beside a rushing brook. It widened into a pool where she could have handcaught a fish to eat raw, were she not bound for a shrine of the Goddess and therefore prohibited from killing.

She reached her goal at dusk: a cave high in the highest mountain on Malath. In a but nearby dwelt the sibyl. Erissa made her offering, a pendant of Northland amber which enclosed for eternity a beetle. The Egyptian sign being very potent, that was a valuable donation. Hence the sibyl not only gave Erissa routine leave to pray before the three images at the front of the cave—Britomartis the Maiden, Rhea the Mother, Dictynna the Rememberer and Foreseer—but led her past the curtain to the spring and its Mystery.

The hut was well stocked with food brought up by countryfolk. After they had eaten, the sibyl wanted to gossip, but Erissa was in no mood for it and, because she too had powers, could scarcely be compelled. They went early to bed.

—Erissa was likewise up betimes, and on the mountain-top shortly after daybreak.

Here,, alone in stillness and splendor, she could let, go her tears.

Beneath her the slopes fell away in crags, cliffs, boulders, stone strong and dark against the green of pines, which finally’ gave place to the many-hued fields and orchards of men. Overhead the sky soared altogether clear, holding an eagle whose wings sheened gold in the young light of Asterion, the sun, the Son. The air was cool, pungent with sage and thyme, and cast a breeze to lift the hair off a wet brow. Around the island reached the sea, blue and green shading afar to purple, streaked with a dazzlement of foam. Northwestward, fellow islands stood like white-hulled ships; northward reared Asia, still hazy with night dreams. But southward hung the peak of Mount Ida, where Asterion was born; upon Keft the lovely and forever lost.

There was no sign of Kharia-ti-yeh. There would never be again in the world.

“God Duncan,” Erissa wept, raising to heaven a hand that gripped a piece of earth, “when will you call me back to you?”

And the vortex took her.

They stood in a land that the sun had burnt barren. On brown rock-strewn ground, scored by gullies, grew scattered thombushes. Heat shimmers danced on the southern horizon. To north the desert met waters that shone like whetted metal beneath an unmerciful glare and three wheeling vultures.

They looked upon the land and upon each other. They screamed.