Authors: Morgan Llywelyn
The Elementals (18 page)
Abashed, Hokar hurried tardily forward and clasped Meriones by both hands. “What about your wife? Did you reach Kn
sos?”
sos?”“Kn
sos is gone. Tulipa is gone.”
sos is gone. Tulipa is gone.”“Gone? What do you mean, gone?”
“Gone. The sea took them.” Meriones' tone was flat and dead.
Hokar and Ebisha exchanged shocked glances.
Something whined at the door. A very lean, very dirty white hound crouched there, wagging its tail to placate its god for the sin of having followed him.
The faintest spark of life crept back into Meriones' voice as he said, “It's all right, this is my friend's house.” He did not think Hokar was the sort of person who would object to a dog in the house. He snapped his fingers and the hound ran to him.
“What's happening out there?” Hokar wanted to know.
“It's very bad. The air is thicker than water and cinders and other things are falling out of it. Fires are springing up everywhere. And looters,” he added, relieved that Hokar had asked no more about Kn
sos and Tulipa. “You should bar your door, Hokar.”
sos and Tulipa. “You should bar your door, Hokar.”“I can't, it won't close. The frame is twisted. But we'll be all right here.”
Meriones was not so sure. The atmosphere in the house was only slightly less foul than outside. The wind blowing across Crete from
destroyed Thera was bringing not only volcanic ash and debris but poisonous gases.
destroyed Thera was bringing not only volcanic ash and debris but poisonous gases.
Ebisha coughed again, and again, more harshly each time.
The three sat on Hokar's couch, the woman in the middle and the dog crouching at their feet. They sat and waited. There was nothing else to do.
Sounds drifted in from outside. Crashes, shouts. Then long sullen silences broken only by the howl of the wind. Then different crashes, other voices shouting.
It might have been day or night.
“My throat is so dry,” Ebisha gasped, reaching for the water pitcher on the table beside the couch. But the pitcher was empty. She clawed at her throat beneath the gold necklace she had slipped over her head.
“Where's your well?” Meriones asked Hokar. “I can go for more water.”
“It's a good trot down the road, in a little square half hidden by shrubbery. Not easy to find unless you know just where it is.”
Ebisha coughed again, violently. Her eyes pleaded.
“You go then, Hokar,” said Meriones.
Suddenly Ebisha said, “Both of you go!”
“But I want to be with you,” Hokar protested.
“I shall be all right for the time it takes you to fetch water,” she insisted. “Just go now. The dog will watch over me.”
She had grown accustomed to palace habits. At Labrys, men and women insisted on privacy when they relieved themselves. Bodily functions were circumscribed wich rituals. It had been a long time since she last emptied her bladder and it was aching dreadfully, but she was reluctant to say this aloud. If the two men would just leave her alone for a little time she could take care of herself in private.
The more Hokar argued to stay with her, the more she urged him to go. And each time she spoke made her cough.
At last he gave in. “But we'll be back very soon,” he assured her as he walked, somewhat stiffly, toward the door.
It would be good to do something other than sitting passively, he suddenly realized.
Meriones had a last word for the dog. “Guard her well!” he ordered the hound.
The white dog, which had started to follow him, sank back on its haunches with a disappointed whine, but stayed with Ebisha.
Outside the house the unnatural twilight closed in upon them at once.
There were other people at the well. A nervous scuffle had broken out. Everyone was in a hurry to fill the various water vessels they had brought. Once people waited politely at the well, each taking their turn. Not now. The eerie light, the quivering earth, the stinking air combined to strip away the patina of civilization and reveal frightened animals snarling at one another over water rights.
One man shoved another hard. The second man staggered back against an elderly woman. She dropped the vessel she carried. It crashed on the paving stones. Glancing down, Meriones saw that it had been a finely made piece of pottery formed to resembled a leather bag with a lip, with pottery handles simulating twisted rope. Rose in color, it was decorated with a repetitive double ax motif common to Cretan ware.
Smashed.
As Cretan pottery was ceremoniously smashed every year in an ostentatious display of wealth intended to give employment to more potters and enhance the economy still more.
Holding his own water pitcher against his chest, Hokar managed to edge closer to the well. Then a fight broke out in earnest. One burly man hit another in the face with his fist. In seconds, the area boiled with fury. People relieved their pent-up emotions by hitting out at whoever was nearest, for no reason at all.
Meriones had never liked fighting. He tried to stay out of the melee, but when he saw Hokar being pummeled by a pair of men he swallowed hard and plunged forward to try to help his friend. “You leave him alone!” he yelled.
The crowd swallowed him.
Meriones was, however, tougher than he looked. His was a wiry and agile strength and his reflexes were quick. He gave as good as he got and found, to his surprise, that it felt good to be hitting something.
Yelling wildly, he began to hit harder.
The crowd at the well was so intent on their impromptu war that they did not hear other voices crying out in the town, warning of the arrival of the looters.
Someone hit Hokar a thundering blow to the side of the head and the red world turned black. He slid down and away, into a ringing silence.
But consciousness did not totally desert him. He could still feel the pain in his hip, and he somehow knew he was in a sitting position with his back against the cold stone of the well-curb. Confusion swirled around him like spirits swirling through the netherworld.
His mind wandered off in a dream of its own. He envisioned the long, satisfying afternoons in the goldsmiths' chamber at Labrys. He fancied he heard the sound of the lyre, and he smiled to himself. Sitting dazed on the shaken earth of Crete, his ears temporarily deaf to the funeral laments of a shattered civilization, he lived again at his workbench. His fists uncurled and reshaped themselves as if holding his tools. He reveled in the rich satiety of designs running through his mind, waiting for his art to give them substance.
He thought he was watching his hands shape the gold necklace for Ebisha. He saw the shells â¦
“Ebisha,” he groaned, clawing his way back to the here and now.
Meriones was bending over him. “Hokar? Are you all right?”
“No. Not. No.”
“Can you get up?”
“I don't want to,” Hokar said with conviction even as he reached for the hand Meriones was extending.
The pain in his hip woke afresh, but somehow he got to his feet. “What happened?”
“The fight's over. I think we all won. Everyone got their water and went home. I've been trying to get you to open your eyes for ever so long.”
“Ebisha!”
“We'd better get back to her,” Meriones said. “I don't want to worry you, but I heard someone say there's been looting not far from here.”
“Why didn't you leave me and go to her right away, then?”
Meriones looked shocked. “You're my friend. How could I leave you here with men fighting all around you? And I couldn't carry you, you're too big.”
“Ebisha,” Hokar said again. This time it came out as a groan.
He leaned on Meriones' shoulder and reverted to the hobbling hop that was the nearest he could come to a run. The two men hurried up the road toward Hokar's house, neither speaking. They sped through a smoky, permanent dusk. Beneath the cloud of volcanic debris no daylight could survive.
Other survivors were still picking their way through the streets, not only of Arkhanes, but of the other cities and towns of Crete that had suffered the volcanic fury and its aftermath. They were digging at the collapsed walls, seeking friends and family, trying to identify landmarks, talking to one anotherâor at one anotherâin fragmented, disjointed snatches. Words drifted to Hokar and Meriones: “⦠the entire fleet ⦠six generations to rebuild ⦠collapsed on top of them, and no one ⦠have you seen her? A little girl, only this high ⦠burning, still burning â¦
As they neared the house with the gaping door, Hokar and Meriones slowed by mutual unspoken accord. Nothing looked any different than when they had left it.
And yet.
“Don't go in there,” Meriones said suddenly. “Let me look first.” He pushed Hokar's arm from his shoulder and advanced toward the house alone. Hokar made no move to follow him.
Meriones was not afraid. As far as he was concerned, the worst possible thing had already happened. Nothing he might find in Hokar's house could be as bad as seeing the tidal wave that took Tulipa.
But Hokar was afraid. He stood frozen with anticipatory anguish.
Meriones edged his body around the door and peered into the gloom. At first he could not see anything. Then his eyes began to make out details.
An overturned table.
A couch hurled halfway across the room.
Meriones flinched in spite of himself. “Ebisha?” he whispered hesitantly.
A voice answered him. Not a human voice. The faint whimper came from beneath an overturned table.
Meriones flung himself down beside it. The hound lay there, thin ribs heaving, a bloody slash along them showing where the dog had been attacked with a knife. The hound tried to lick Meriones' hand.
“Did you fight for her?” he asked it. “Did you try to save her?” The dog whimpered again. Meriones' heart sank.
He knew what had happened as surely as if he had been there. Looters had stumbled across Hokar's house and seen the gleaming necklace Ebisha wore. He glanced to one side. The flagstone with the hollow beneath it was still in place. Meriones and Hokar had hidden the gold nuggets there before they went for water, and it appeared undisturbed.
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