Guardian's Road: Vision

[aithne]

I woke surrounded by the smell of damp olive leaves.

The sky was lightening outside, and I nudged Melitta beside me. "Time for us to be up, love." She stretched and yawned, and muttered something about not wanting to get up. But get up we did, dressing in the clothes we'd come here in. Yet again, we'd left most of our worldly possessions behind us. We did have our coin, but I hadn't worn my armor to see the king, which meant that it was probably gone forever. Not a huge loss; the style of it marked me quite clearly as a Guardian of Porta, even more than the axes I wore on my back, and that sort of visibility wasn't anything we needed at the moment.

"Hold this?" Melitta asked. She handed me her comb as she tried to make some sort of sense out of the disorder of her thick hair. She managed to secure it in place with pins, and I tucked in a couple of stray locks for her. "Ready?" I asked her.

"Not really," she said, glancing around. "But we have to go, so we'll go."

I knew how she felt. "It's almost sunrise, let's see if we can go help with breakfast. No sense in leaving on empty stomachs."

We'd been to dinner the night before, and met the trio who did most of the cooking, two woman and one older man. When we wandered into the kitchens, they immediately put us to work helping slice cold meats for breakfast rolls and for the packets that would be sent out with those who were going to be too far out to come back for the noon meal. The Fallen wandered into the large room that was attached to the kitchen, a room that was used for meals and all sorts of gatherings and had one wall that opened to a covered outdoor space.

When we sat down to eat, Melitta waved at someone who I had my back to. It turned out to be Orrin, who came over to sit with us. "How are you two settling in?" he asked.

Melitta gave him a half-shrug. "We have to leave this morning."

"So soon?" he asked.

"As much as we'd like to stay, we have some things we need to find," I told him.

He gave me a thoughtful look. "Do you need help?"

I blinked. "Help would be welcome. As it is, we don't even know if what we're looking for will still be there, but we need to go see anyway."

"How many do you think you will need?"

Melitta and I glanced at each other, and then I nodded. "Just two or three people, I think. It would give us some more protection and not make us too conspicuous." The last thing we needed was to travel in a large group.

"Your choice, what type of people are you thinking? We have mostly priests and paladins."

"If three would like to come along, I was thinking two paladins and a cleric."

"I have just the three, then," Orrin said with a smile. "Myself, my wife, and our daughter." He waved at a short woman who was involved in a deep conversation with a man carrying a Porta axe. She seemed quite stout, but as she smiled and shifted her stance, I could see that it was far more muscle than fat. She was definitely a warrior of some sort. "My wife Evangeline," Orrin said, and there was fondness in his voice. He caught the eye of one of a group of children, waving one of the girls over. She was maybe ten years old, thin in a way that suggested that she was going to become gawky in a few years. "My daughter, Kaia. It'll take us about an hour to get ready to go."

I nodded to Kaia, who had come up to stand beside her father. "Good to meet you. Once we're all ready to go, I'll tell you what it is we're going after."

Kaia grinned. "No need. You are after the paper at Delphi."

Both Melitta and I gave the girl a startled look. "We are--let me guess, you're a seer?" I asked.

Orrin clapped his hands over his daughter's ears. "Probably the seer. But she is getting a big head."

"I heard that," Kaia said, with an exasperated look.

He smiled down at her and took his hands away from her ears, resting them on her shoulders. I laughed. "Well, I can see why she would be useful to have along."

"That's what I thought," Orrin said. "My wife is a paladin of Porta and I am a cleric of Wazet. I think it's fate that we travel together."

"Certainly seems that way. Then again, fate's been meddling in our lives for a little while now."

"Fate is called Porta and Wazet."

"True enough. I think I, at least, am the better for it." I smiled at Melitta, and she slipped her arm around my waist.

Orrin chuckled. "You are, trust me. And if you have troubles, Evangeline knows all about the vow guilt."

I winced. "That still comes back every now and again. Shall we, then?"

An hour later, we were on the road north. They'd put together packs for both Melitta and I along with their own, with a couple of changes of clothing for each of us, and the food we would need on the way. We walked north through the olive groves, angled towards the pain road that led towards Delphi, and starting climbing into the hot, dry hills beyond.

I got to know both Orrin and Evangeline on the road. I found it easy to talk to both of them; Evangeline and I had instructors and even a couple of friends in common, and Orrin was an easygoing man with an open smile and an obvious love for both his wife and daughter. Kaia was harder for me to read. She tended to walk out in front of us a bit, and seemed to find not having anyone of her own age around a bit trying. I was impressed with her stamina; she easily kept up with us, though I did see her rubbing her feet with a pained look on her face the first night.

And Kaia watched me.

At first, I thought I was imagining things; of course she'd be watching Melitta and I, we were strangers. But during the second day it became obvious that she was keeping a close, silent eye on me. When a seer is fascinated with you, it's never good news, and I really didn't want to know why she was watching me. As I watched her watching me, I saw that it wasn't just me that she was paying attention to, but the Kyriths as well.

It was the third day of our trip and we were all dusty and footsore. We'd spent the night before in a shrine to one of the local gods. Orrin assured us that the shrines were meant to be stayed in by travelers, as long as a token offering was left. I fell in beside Orrin as we walked, watching Kaia run ahead and then spend some time poking a stick at something she'd found at the side of the road. "You mentioned that there had been more Fallen arriving in the last year," I said to him. "Do you know if there's any reason for it?"

"Most say that the temples have lost the way and they feel that the goddesses don't want them on that path," he said. He was keeping an eye on Kaia as we walked, and Melitta and Evangeline were behind us.

"Have there been incidents that have made them decide this, do you know? A common thread to the stories?"

"For the Wazets, it's been assassinations with no seemingly political or spiritual motivation. Many have been asked to kill the innocent. For those of Porta, many of them are losing their powers working at the temples, only regaining them and in greater strength after leaving."

I nodded. "Yes, I noticed that Kyrith was stronger after some things happened that made sure the Guardians are likely to kill me if they ever see me again."

Kaia, still holding her stick, suddenly bounded off of the road and into the tall weeds to the side of it. A moment later, I saw what had prompted her to do so--a cart coming around the corner the other way, drawn by a cranky-looking donkey. Three complaining goats were tied to the back. The driver waved to us as he came close, and we waved back. Orrin said, "So it seems for all of us. Many of the Fallen are wanting to act, even now, for the things that they have seen."

"Well, if there was ever any time to act to bring the Temples more in line with what the Goddesses want, this would be it." The cart creaked past, and I nodded to the driver.

After the cart and the goats had gone by, Orrin nodded. "Yes, they have discussed it numerous times, and I think some have acted upon it."

"What do you think they've done?"

He scratched the back of his neck and watched Kaia bound back onto the road. "Oh, I think that they have been cleaning the poor sections of town, the Porta people acting as sort of guards and ensuring the peace and the Wazets removing some of the dead weight that can strangle a city."

"Seems like a good idea, in all."

A line had appeared between Orrin's eyebrows, and he glanced at me. "I suppose it is. But soon they may kill or do something that will attract attention to us more than we want, and the good king will find us out." I winced, remembering why we'd fled Athens. "But mine is not to control them, they have to follow their goddesses," Orrin added with sketch of the Wazet sign over his heart.

"True enough. We all have to do as the Goddess asks. Even if it leads into places you never dreamed you'd find yourself in."

"Yes, and even could get you killed."

I made a gesture towards the sky above. "Well, at least I'm used to the possibility of not living to see old age. A lot of Porta paladins don't. Comes with the job."

"I thought the same when I was your age," Orrin said with a smile. "I have made it relatively far. Best to have plans for the future. If you don't and it shows up, you have nothing to do."

"True enough. Especially since it appears that I'm likely to have a family one of these days, which comes as something of a surprise." The future--there was something else I didn't really want to think about. Being a bodyguard, while it paid well, wasn't the sort of job I could imagine doing into old age--and definitely not if Melitta and I had children. Being a merchant was right out. I could farm, though, if I had someone to show me the ropes, I figured. I tried to imagine myself hip-deep in goats and almost laughed.

Orrin smiled. "It always does. I think that Melitta will wait until this is over, but soon enough you may have children. Depends on her, really."

"Yes, that's pretty much up to her. She's sensible, and I think she'll wait until we're not involving ourselves in conspiracies." Melitta was a priestess, and all priestesses knew at least the basics of controlling fertility, either encouraging or discouraging it, through spells or preparations.

"Well, she may be like my wife. She didn't want children, and she was pretty sure she couldn't have any. Took a sword through her stomach that punctured where the baby normally is held. Didn't heal all that well, with a raging fever, which is how I came to meet her."

"How did you manage to come by Kaia, then?" I asked.

Orrin made an expansive gesture. "A year later, Evangeline thought she was having stomach troubles and I found her pregnant with our child. We hadn't been using any spells to chase children away, thinking it wasn't a possibility, but there you are. She has never conceived since."

"That sounds like divine work, there."

"We think so." He raised his chin, looking up the road at his daughter, who was singing something and accompanying herself with rhythmic taps of her stick against the ground. "She can be a handful."

I chuckled. "I'm sure. She keeps staring at me and the axes. I don't think I really want to know why."

"Best to ask her. She usually has a reason. Sometimes you don't want to know, but you probably should."

"I was afraid you were going to say that." I heaved a sigh, watching Kaia play ahead.

"You can wait it out if you want, she probably won't tell you unless you ask. It can be a bit eerie after awhile," he added.

"Oh, I probably should. It's just that it's rarely good news when a seer looks at you like that."

"Maybe, maybe not." His tone held a world of experience with his child's talent. "Might help you avoid death."

"Might be. I'll talk to her, then." I nodded to Orrin and then stretched my legs out, catching up with Kaia in a few minutes. She'd stopped on a little stone bridge, crouching at the edge and looking down at the nearly-dry stream below.

"Hey, Kaia." I stopped next to her, looking down into the muck of the streambed.

She didn't look up. "Hello, Theron." She extended her stick and scratched a faint line in the mud, then raised the end of the stick to her nose and sniffed, making a face.

"I was noticing that you were looking really hard at me and the axes. Is there something I need to know?" I asked.

"Depends. Nothing important yet." She was poking the stick into the water now, and she still hadn't looked at me.

I was going to have to drag this one out of her, was I? "Was there a reason you were looking at me like that?"

"Just watching to see when Phoena is born, and when the Kyriths merge."

"The Kyriths are going to merge?"

"Yes, it's happening now."

I glanced back over my shoulder; both the axes were still there, just as separate as ever. "Hm. And Phoena is going to be reborn?"

Kaia rose and started walking again, tapping her stick against the ground to rid it of the last of the clinging mud. "In a manner of speaking, yes."

"what manner might that be?"

She glanced at me, looking at me for the first time. I could see a little mischief in her black eyes. "Your Phoena and the book's Phoena are the same Phoena."

What, precisely, was she trying to tell me here? "Someone who isn't born yet wrote a book a thousand years ago?"

"It's complex, but yes." She grinned at me. "And that axe is your axe. See?"

I tried to wrap my mind around it, tried to imagine time somehow running in more than one direction at once, and was rewarded by the beginnings of a headache and no real understanding of the concept. "Not really, but I think I'm going to take your word for it."

"How else would the pictures on the wall be so accurate? Or this Kyrith know where the papers are?"

"Well, I just figured Phoena was a seer, was all. That's a...very strange thought."

She shrugged. "I thought you might think so, so I didn't say anything."

"Well, I'm starting to get used to having my mind twisted around a bit by new ideas, so it's all right," I told her.

She considered this, and smiled, pleased. "And yes, to answer your question."

"Phoena is Melitta and I's child? Or was that the answer to one of the other questions?"

"That Melitta will be pregnant, yes, that she will want you to name her Phoena, yes, your other axe talks, yes, I can make your blood come out of your ears, nose and eyes."

Kaia had gone back to tapping her stick along the ground in a rhythm with her steps. I considered this girl, the enormous gift and curse that she possessed, and felt a great sympathy for Orrin and Evangeline. "All right, that last wasn't actually a question I'd thought of, but good to know."

"Just thought I would let you know."

I started dropping back, uneasy. "I see. Well, then. I should probably go talk to Melitta a bit."

"All right, Theron." In that moment, I almost felt myself falling away from her attention, almost ceasing to exist to her in that moment. She hummed under her breath and paused to look under a bush.

I walked back to the rest, profoundly disturbed. I didn't tell Melitta about what Kaia had said. Not yet, not until I had a chance to digest it a bit. Silently, I shaped a question in my mind, to the Kyrith I thought of as my Kyrith. Was she right? Can you talk?

Yes. The other Kyrith taught me how. Her voice wasn't quite the same as the other Kyrith's, but it was very similar. Porta is paying attention.

That would explain it, then, I said silently.

She has an interest in you, Kyrith said, and it was just not my Kyrith but the new one as well, or the old one, depending on how I looked at it. They spoke in near-unison. It is not, really, an unmixed blessing.

"I'll say," I muttered aloud. I dropped back to the others, listening as they talked amongst themselves. Later in the afternoon, it was me talking with Evangeline, Orrin and Melitta ahead of us, Kaia getting a pickaback ride from her father. We'd been talking about what it meant to break a vow such as the one we'd taken, and about the life-altering consequences of coming back into the world after renouncing it.

Eventually, the topic wandered as we watched Kaia request to be put down and then run ahead, the small rest of being carried for a bit refreshing her seemingly boundless energy. "Orrin mentioned she was something of a surprise to the two of you," I said.

"Surprise," she said, and snorted. "If I hadn't been lying down when Orrin told me why I'd been throwing up, I would have fallen over. Do you remember that altercation we had with the Wazet people over the temple in the east of Crete? Eleven years ago, or so."

"I wasn't in the Guardians at that point," I told her. "But I think I remember a couple of the trainers mentioning it."

"Pretty bloody. We lost a lot of people that year. Anyway, the battle was pretty much over, and I was running to find one of my shieldmates. One of the Wazet knights wasn't nearly as dead as she looked. She came about halfway up and I took her sword right about here," she said, making a fist and thumping a spot on the very lowest part of her belly. "I came down, and my movement along with how she was holding her sword carved a good hole right through me. According to the cleric who was right behind me, there were bits of me that came out with the sword. Part of my womb, most of one ovary. She decided that patching me back together was more important than putting everything back in the right place. I would have bled to death in seconds if she hadn't been right there."

"Ouch," I said. "That's a nasty wound, there."

"They were surprised I lived, and they figured I'd never carry a child to term. My monthlies stopped and haven't ever started again. Not complaining about that one," she said, and grinned.

"That has to be the Goddess's doing," I said.

"No other way. Kaia was needing to be born for some reason."

"And to you two in particular."

Evangeline shrugged. "Maybe for Orrin, but I wasn't interested in children. Mind you, now that Kaia is here, I don't resent being a mother, but having the choice, I think we would have been childless."

"Odd, that," I said. "Maybe Kaia just needs to be somewhere you're going to take her."

"Might well be. She knows she needs to go with you on this trip," Evangeline said, shifting her pack a bit, rolling her shoulders.

"And tell me things that bend my mind into interesting new shapes," I said with a rueful smile.

"And here's another one to bend your mind," she said. "Just a moment." She swung her bag off her shoulder and dug in it for a moment, then handed me a folded piece of parchment. I took it and unfolded it, looking at it.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention. It was a charcoal drawing, and it was of me and Melitta holding hands. It was identical to the drawing we'd seen in the bunker, only this one had me in it as well.

"She's been doing drawings since she was four," Evangeline said, shouldering her pack.

"This is strange. I've seen half of this before, painted on the side of a bunker. I don't suppose she draws really detailed pictures of volcanoes and things, does she?"

"She does, sometimes. She says sometimes she dreams of an older time." Evangeline was shaking her head.

"Is it difficult, being a mother to such a strong seer?" I asked, curious. If what Kaia had told me was right, I'd have a seer on my hands in a few years.

"Her dreams and visions rarely involve me, so no, not really. Orrin is really the parent, always has been. If she scraped a knee, she went to Dad. He could heal it, best I could do was bandage it."

I nodded. Though Guardians all had some healing power, there were restrictions on when and where it could be used. Healing a child's scraped knee wasn't something we could do. Priests had no such restrictions.

"True enough. I'm still getting used to the idea of the possibility of being a father one of these days," I said. "It's...an odd thought for me. Being a Guardian, you just never think about ever having children, because we generally don't."

"It is a hard thing to deal with to start. But I figure if it was wrong, then the goddess would take our powers." She reached up to touch the axe that was strapped to her own back. The axe's name was Hebe, Evangeline had told me. "Now some say that the goddess never takes your powers away, but I have seen the fall of one who did. So I know that not to be true."

"What did the one who lost his powers do?"

"He decided that the goddess wasn't looking, and that it didn't matter what he did. He went on a prostitute run. His best friend had died in battle a few days before. He didn't lose his powers after that, so he decided to push it. He started killing, first murderers and thieves, and then just people that pissed him off in bars when he was too drunk to care." She grimaced. "We were sent to round him up and bring him back, and we found him fighting three people outside of a bar. He was fighting three people, and one got in a good shot that hit him in the neck. You know those kinds of wounds. Blood everywhere. He went to heal himself, and it failed. We broke up the fight and went to heal him ourselves and it failed. He bled out on the floor. So I know she watches."

"That's quite the fall, there, when Porta refuses to let anyone heal you," I said. "Honestly, I don't think the celibacy vow is anything the goddess really cares about."

"I don't either," Evangeline said. The conversation wandered then, and we made good time for the rest of the day, reaching another roadside shrine about a half hour after sunset. There was a firepit and a wooden sleeping platform in back of the shrine, and tonight we were the only ones in residence. There was firewood stacked near the platform, so tonight we'd have at least a little bit of warmth. Even in the summer, there was a chill in the air at night.

After eating supper, we sat around the fire. Evangeline and I took care of our respective axes, cleaning and sharpening them, muttering prayers as we did so. It was the Guardian devotional, and always one of the bright spots of my day. It was a little while to spend communing with the divine, feeling just the edge of Her presence.

When I'd finished, I looked up to see that Kaia had fallen asleep with her head in Orrin's lap. She was wrapped in a blanket, and the firelight played over her features. "She sleeps soundly, has ever since she was a baby," Orrin said as he saw me looking at her. "She's slept through any number of earthquakes. It's a blessing, honestly, though she's sometimes hard to wake up in the morning."

"I can imagine," I said with a smile. I wrapped up the Kyriths for the night, figuring that there wouldn't be any call for them on such a quiet night. Melitta came to sit next to me, setting her back against the stone I was next to, and tucked herself in next to me. I put an arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of my head. "Hey, love," I said in a soft voice.

She was in a contemplative mood that night, and just nodded rather than offering conversation. It was a quiet evening; all of us were tired, and we had at least two more days of walking to get to Delphi. After a bit, Orrin carried Kaia to the sleeping platform, and we all turned in.

Time passed much like that, long hot days giving way to cool, clear nights, walking together and talking to each other. I grew a little more comfortable with Kaia, though she would occasionally do things that sharply reminded me of what she was, and I got to be friends with both Orrin and Evangeline. Melitta and Orrin got along famously, though she and Evangeline didn't have quite enough in common for an easy friendship.

Melitta kept jabbing me once a day or so with darts, building up my poison tolerance. She kept a close eye on me after each injection, monitoring me for any signs of trouble. A couple of them made me feel feverish, and one dose made me quite sick to my stomach, but other than that I had little trouble.

The road we were on wound up into a hilly region, and the trees got smaller as the landscape around us got drier. We were now relying on wells for our water, rather than streams. Delphi itself was a large village, and when we asked around we were pointed to the Delphi Temple. It was dedicated to the local earth goddess, but was famous for its vapors that, it was said, would allow one to come into contact with their own god or goddess.

It was mid-day, and the road that led up to the Temple was hot and dusty. When we reached it, we could see people wandering around, all of them looking somewhat godstruck. Some were in such a state of communion that they could barely move; others spoke either gibberish or in languages I couldn't understand.

"Where do we start?" I murmured to the Kyriths.

The opening in the ground is noted by the vent of gases coming from it. The gases are what people inhale to communicate better with the goddesses.

Ahead, I could see what must be the place. Behind us, there was a commotion, and I turned to look. A young woman in heavy robes was walking among those communing with their gods, stooping occasionally to put her hand on the heads of those who were reclining. This had to be the famous Sibyl of Delphi, and as long as she was here, nobody would even glance at us.

Good enough. We went to the vent, a deep crack in the ground that vented a yellow gas in short busts. The gas smelled of rotten eggs. We waited and watched, and found that the gas bursts were regular, about three minutes apart, and the small hole that the gases vented from was visible from the surface. Just above the hole was a protruding rock with a small symbol carved into it. "Is that--"

"I think so. Which meaning, though?" Melitta was beside me, crouching down to see.

"I think, given the location, it may just mean opening," I said. "Let's see." After a quick look around, I knelt and touched the stone. The rock didn't move, and nothing seemed to happen except a noise out of place. It was a soft click coming from somewhere in the stone below us.

I eyed the vent, then rose. "Back a bit," I said. "Let's see if anything happens." A robed man wandered by, babbling incoherently, pointing at the sun. We waited for a few minutes, and then when the vent was due to blow again, something did indeed happen.

There was a flat stone nearby, almost looking like part of a ruined foundation. It came as something as a surprise when in the middle of that stone a hatch popped open, releasing a gust of foul-smelling vapor. I went over to it and hauled it up; it moved on hidden hinges, still working after all these years. "I'll go down and see what's down there," I said to the rest.

Melitta was behind me and gave me a saucy smile as I peered down into the darkness. "You'll need some light."

"I will, at that." I lowered myself down into the hole, and Melitta followed me. The ceiling was a bit taller than I was, so no ladder was needed. Melitta followed me down and snapped her fingers, bringing a soft light into being.

It was positively foul down here, the rotten-egg scent of the gas permeating everything. The room was a square, and I could almost touch opposite walls with my outstretched arms. There were two holes on the west side, one on the south side, and all of them looked like vent holes. "I think we may want to get out of here before it blows again," I said to Melitta.

"Think so? Could be a interesting place to make love and have visions."

"Might, but we might also suffocate," I said, chuckling. I stooped to inspect the holes. The two on the west were stained yellow, the other stained blue. As I looked through the holes, I saw nothing through the yellow holes but darkness. The blue hole, though, had some sort of light flickering in it. I caught a glimpse of some sort of box through the flicker, but it looked somewhat strange, like heat rising off of hot rock. "Hm. Look, this one seems to lead somewhere."

Melitta looked through the hole. It was almost exactly at her eye level. "The next venting's not long from now."

I glanced upwards. "Well, as long as the top's open, we probably won't suffocate right away. Let's stay and see what happens."

Another minute passed, and then the room was overwhelmed by the scent of the yellow gas as it flooded into the room. The other hole puffed out a blue vapor, and the air around us took on a decidedly greenish tinge. The gases mixed and then flowed upwards, out of the hatch, leaving both Melitta and I woozy but not really the worse for wear.

I checked the blue hole once again. Without the flicker, I could see a block of some sort of blue substance. That was probably responsible for the blue vapor, I figured. Melitta and I checked walls, floors and ceiling, looking for a catch or latch of some sort, but found nothing.

"Pressure blew the last hatch. Might do it again," Melitta suggested.

I eyed the blue hole. "So if we plug this hole somehow, you think?"

"Maybe."

I unstrapped one of the Kyriths from my back, and set the butt end into the hole. It was a decent fit, but I was going to have to hold it in. As the next vent began to happen, I put my weight against the axe's haft. The vapor wanted to come out, desperately, and it took all of my strength to keep it in.

Just when I thought I was going to lose that battle, there was a crack next to me, and a section of wall blew out with a gust of blue vapor behind it. Surveying the damage, we saw that a section of wall wide enough to climb through was now open. "You're brilliant, Melitta," I told her as I pulled Kyrith out of the wall and peered into the chamber revealed by the large opening in the stone.

"Thanks, but you knew that already," she said, patting me on the rear.

We looked into the adjoining room. It had a blue block on a plinth in the center, and the walls were coated with the same blue. There were vents leading away from the room, very much like in the smaller outer room we'd seen. The substance smelled vaguely like wine--much better than the sulfur smell of the yellow fumes.

Deciding that it probably wasn't poison, I climbed into the room. It turned out that the entire room was coated in blue-stained beeswax, and the block in the center seemed to be a box covered in the same wax. As far as I could tell, the seal on the box was unbroken, but I could only vaguely see it through the thick coating; the wax was probably layered as deep as my hand was long.

The walls were coated in a much thinner layer of wax, and beneath the wax were representations of people carrying boxes and such away from a brooding mountain in the background, smoke coming from the top indicating that it was getting ready to erupt. "Volcanoes seem to be a common theme in these places. I wonder if that's Thera again," I muttered as I tried to work out if I could pick up the box. A little bit of the blue stuff had made me woozy. I didn't know what a full dose would do.

The box was liftable, it turned out, and we headed out. I lifted Melitta up so she could scramble out of the hatch, handed up the box to her, then pulled myself out just before the gas vented once again. She helped me close the hatch, and then--

"Macaria? What are you doing here?"

My commander was standing, staring at me, looking baffled. "I don't understand," she muttered, seemingly to herself. "Why did you run, Theron? What was more important than your duty? I never thought..."

"I can explain--"

But she was gone. In her place, women and men all around me were fighting. This was familiar, I could see old friends, fallen friends back from the dead, fighting an eternal battle. "I'm seeing things," I said. I couldn't hear myself speak.

There was a pair of hands on my shoulders, and I couldn't tell if they were real or not. They felt real, and that was Orrin's voice, saying, "Come over here, Theron, sit down." I found myself next to Melitta. At least she was real. I could feel her warmth beside me as the world wavered.

For a few minutes, what I was seeing was superimposed and entwined with the real landscape around me, at least as real as I could remember. Soon enough, that landscape faded and I was walking through battles both large and small. I held Zosima in my arms as she died once again, my best friend during training, dead during our first battle together. I tasted the copper of flying blood, picked my way through battlefields strewn with corpses, heard the curses flung as axes and swords clashed. Men and women dead at my feet, mostly by my hand. Large battles, single combat, I saw the face of the first person I ever killed, and Attis once more, the most recent.

I was walking through this, untouched. I was following something. Someone. "Wait," I said. "Wait."

Whoever it was kept walking, slipping between battles faster than I could follow. I was drenched in blood, my hands were dripping gore, and I clutched Kyrith in both hands. I ran, trying to catch up with the one I could not name.

The scene turned from battlefield to forest, and then to open ground, the top of a ridge. My breath was coming hard to me, but I could see that it was a woman I was following. "I see you," I called. "Wait."

She stopped then and turned, and abruptly I was close to her. I could do nothing now but stare mutely, hands going white on Kyrith's haft.

Porta smiled at me, and something in that smile was so beautiful that tore something open inside of me, some unnamable wound, some pleasure that burned in me like a small sun. Then she faded, that smile of hers remaining for just a moment after she left like the afterimage of a glance at the sun.

Then I was back in Delphi, and it was over.

Melitta was leaning on me, and I wiped my brow. Both of us were sweating heavily. I felt like I'd just run for a few miles or just fought a battle, a bit shaky and out of breath. Evangeline crouched down beside us, sitting back on her heels. "Feeling better, you two?"

"I think you're real, so the answer must be yes," I told her. "Melitta, are you all right?"

"You would not believe the stuff I was seeing," she said. "I'm fine. I'm going to have a headache, though, I can tell."

I looked around; we were in a place shielded from the main temple of Delphi by a low stone wall, some scrubby trees surrounding us. "This looks like a good place to rest for a bit," Evangeline said. "Are you going to try to open that box?"

"As long as we're not going anywhere, I might as well work on it," I said. She dropped it in my lap and I got out my knife and started scraping.

Orrin and Kaia came back with some food; there were vendors down the hill a bit who made a living off of pilgrims too deep in communion with their gods to cook for themselves. I worked for a while on scraping the wax off, and found when I got down to it that it was a box made of what looked like olive wood, sealed with a bronze band wrapped around the center. There didn't appear to be any way to get the band off; there was no latch or keyhole. There was only the symbol of a snake etched into the band at the bottom of the box.

I touched the snake, but nothing happened. I turned to Melitta. "Want to take a look at this?"

She nodded, and I handed the box over to her. She rubbed the box, meeting the same lack of results, and then frowned. "Give me your hand?"

I did, and she put my hand down on the symbol and placed her hand over mind. Beneath my fingers, the bronze band writhed like a snake undulating. I muttered a startled oath and pulled my hand away as the band wriggled off the box and then curled up on the ground like a snake, and then stopped moving.

I glanced at Melitta, and she grinned at me. "See? Nothing to it."

I leaned over to kiss her, and she plopped the box back into my lap. Cautiously, I opened it.

Inside was...not quite what I'd expected. There was a belt with ten or so jewels tied to it, the kind of belt that would be put on a statuette of some sort, not the type that a human would wear. The belt was next to a smaller box, also of olivewood.

The smaller box contained the page we were looking for. And that page contained some very disturbing details indeed.

It seemed the Greeks had a secret shipyard on the island of Andikithira. Officially, Andikithira belonged to the Greeks, but it was a small island uncomfortably close to Crete. There was a treaty that neither the Minoan nor the Greek government would use the island for any purpose. It was meant to be for the use of those who lived there. Building a shipyard was definitely outside the treaty.

The ships that this yard was building were a new class of ship, a warship that was far more powerful than anything else currently afloat. It would shut down the Minoan shipping lanes in a single year, and with the merchant fleet crippled, life on Crete would become abruptly quite difficult.

The first ship out of the yards would launch about six weeks from today.

I handed the paper to Melitta. Orrin and Evangeline read over her shoulder. Kaia waited until they were done, then snatched the page away to read for herself. "A word in the right ear about this one would probably be a good thing," I said.

Melitta tipped her head, and intent look on her face. "Think so, or do you think we should go and wreak a little havoc?"

"I have to admit, creative destruction sounds like fun," I said.

"By the time you convince the good kings or the temples, they will have to think about it for a bit and then the ship will be launched." She shrugged. "Then it's too late."

"True enough. And we might not start a war while we're at it--because that's exactly what will happen if Crete gets wind of this."

"Sure will. I am sure that Aeneas will deny its existence and call it pirates, but still."

"Well, by the time we get there. there might be a war on anyway. We'll see," I said. Melitta came to lean against me once more, and I put my arm around her. Orrin and Evangeline sat down too, put their backs to the wall. Kaia was lying on the leaves on her stomach, studying the page intently.

"But we can at least see if we can make this a little less one sided. Didn't you just get some stuff that would blow up a boat?"

I'd been thinking along the same lines. "Yes, I did. And if that boat's docked in with a lot of other boats, well."

"A large shipyard fire will do the trick."

I nodded and closed my eyes, calling to mind the maps and charts I'd seen recently. "We can leave Meteora for another time. We should start the journey to Andikithira within the next few days if we want to make sure all the boats will still be there."

"Back to Athens?" Melitta asked. "Wasn't there something on Hydra, as well?"

"There was, as I recall. We could stop there first. I'm not sure what the harbor at Hydra is like, but we might be able to find a boat going south."

She nodded. "Probably, if you think we have the time."

"Depends on what boats we find in Athens harbor. If there's one heading straight for Andikithira, we probably ought to take it. I'm guessing we're going to have to boat-hop a bit, though, and we might as well go through Hydra." I grimaced, remembering what we'd left behind. "We need to keep our heads down when we're in Athens again. If Vesna gets wind of us being there, we'll have some trouble on our hands."

"She may be following us already," she said.

"Also a possibility. We'll need to keep our eyes open."

"You know," Orrin said, thoughtfully, "there is another port not far from here, most of a day's walk. It's called Itea. I'll bet we could get a boat at least to Hydra from there."

"And that doesn't take us back through Athens," I said. "Sounds good to me."

So it was decided. We would spend the night here in Delphi, and then head for Itea and hopefully a boat to Hydra in the morning.

That night, Melitta and I wandered off for some time together. The summer stars were low and brilliant, and lit the path we chose with soft light. "What did you see, today?" Melitta asked as we picked our way around boulders.

"Old friends, old battles, mostly. A little bit of Porta, at the end. You?"

"This and that. The dead, the dying. It was a little unnerving." We were climbing up a rise now, to a flat spot that when we got there seemed to be surrounded by stars.

I sat, caught Melitta's hand, pulled her down next to me. "You all right, love?"

"I think so." She leaned into me, and I wrapped my arms around her. "Better, now."

I kissed her, and she answered that kiss, and eventually kissing turned into other slow and liquid things, skin against skin, surrounded by stars. For some reason, I was struck by wonder that night, that I might have walked past this and never taken this risk, opened myself to this. It felt like I had been here half of forever.

This journey was only getting stranger as we went along, but I found myself well in love, and well content. I whispered words to that effect to Melitta as we lay entangled together, our hearts beating fast. Her reply was wordless, but I knew exactly what she meant.

Tomorrow, we would be off to Hydra, to see if we could find another page. And so on down this road, a road that I had no idea where it was going to end...