Medea. Kerry Greenwood

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СКАЧАТЬ as he spoke. And he wiped his brow. Battle fury came on that hero with a wave of heat.

      'Remember that,' Cheiron warned. 'If you meet Herakles. Beware of him when he speaks gently and you see sweat break on his skin. Once his anger is loosed, no man or god can call it back - not even Herakles himself.' The centaur returned to his story.

      The Minyans quailed - for they had heard of Herakles, of his strength and his battle-madness - but they had orders from their own king. They gathered, spears raised. Helle threw herself at her brother and untied his bonds, hoping for escape.

      Then the gods, who are just and weigh all actions in the scale of Themis, sent a winged golden ram from heaven. Hera sent it, she who is the protector of Herakles and guardian of families. Hermes made it, who is the messenger of the gods. Phrixos and Helle climbed onto its back and flew away into the air, above the astonished faces of the wicked Minyans. Phrixos was saved.

      I couldn't stop myself from asking, 'Master, Master, what about Herakles? Didn't the Minyans attack him?'

      'He had great presence, even newly woken and dusty,' said the centaur.

      There were only twenty Minyans there, and they knew that he might overcome them. For Herakles could leap like a goat and run like the wind; his eye was keen as a lance and his hands were stronger than tree roots that can rip through stone. He stared at them, and they at him, after they had watched the golden ram bear the king's son away. Then, they say, he gave a sigh, nodded to the heavens, hefted his club and walked away, quite slowly, down the mountain. They did not dare to follow or assail him. He was Herakles the hero.

      'Remember that, son Aison. Authority is a great shield.'

      Jason nodded impatiently. 'And Phrixos?' he prompted.

      The old man's voice was flat with displeasure - though he allowed Jason to interrupt him more than he did me - but he continued.

      As to Phrixos, he flew on the golden ram across Thrace, even in the sky as no one but birds, gods and Daedalus, the architect, and his sons have flown before. When passing over the strait, his sister Helle lost her grip on his waist and fell. They call that water the Hellespont now.

      Women are weak, and she was a tender maid, too young to leave her mother's house. Phrixos cried after her as she fell, but the blue closed over her and she was gone.

      The ram flew on to Colchis, the white city on the River Phasis, which flows into the Euxine Sea, and there landed, safely, the royal son of Minyas. He immediately showed his piety by sacrificing the ram to Zeus, his deliverer.

      'Hera sent it, not Zeus All-Father,' I interrupted, 'and why kill the ram? It would be wonderful to be able to fly.'

      'The actions of heroes are not to be questioned by boys,' snarled Cheiron, and I closed my mouth.

      'That is the Golden Fleece, Jason, which rests in the sacred grove at Colchis, guarded by a serpent. It is a holy treasure beyond price, the rightful property of the rightful king of Iolkos.

      'Phrixos met a princess there: Chalkiope, daughter of the king Aetes. She saw him and loved him, the fair hero, and she lay with him and bore him four sons. But the king disliked these boys, having no son of his own, and when Phrixos died, he did not adopt them - or so they say.

      'That king holds the Golden Fleece without right. Zeus punished him by taking his queen, though they say he took another woman. She only bore him another daughter, Medea, before she died too. The hand of the gods is heavy on blasphemers. That is the tale of Phrixos, cousin of Aison - your father, and Pelias - your uncle. Remember it when you come into your own.'

      Jason was alight with the tale; he told it to me over and over again as we lay down in the goatskins, and as I drifted into sleep I heard him whispering in the darkness over the snores of the centaurs.

      'Rightful property - the Golden Fleece is the rightful property of the descendants of Phrixos, who rode on the golden ram from Mount Laphystios to Colchis.'

      With my last conscious thought, I still considered that sacrificing it at all, and especially to the wrong god, was very unfair on the ram.

      --- II ---

      MEDEA

      I could read and write - and how inkstained I got, and how Chalkiope scolded me for the black blotches on the clean white tunic worn by all princesses of the royal house! - so I must have been nine years old when Trioda summoned me one hot morning.

      It was sizzling as I crossed the white marble pavement. The sun had heated the stone, so that even my hard bare feet were uncomfortably warm. I wondered where I had left my sandals when I went fishing with my half-brother Aefialeus and my sister Chalkiope's sons: Cytisoros, the eldest and leader; Argeos, the bully; Phrontis, the trickster; and Melanion, my friend.

      My sister was fifteen when I was born. She had lain with the foreigner, borne his children and wept over his grave while I was growing up. I remembered him, a tall man with a loud voice. He had died eight years ago and the stems of the ivy around his grave were as thick as hawsers. I thought my sister old, of course, old and stern. And she disapproved of me, though we could have been close. Both of our mothers had died at our births - and she certainly interfered in my life as much as any mother could have done. Trioda said that there was a curse on all women associated with my father, Aetes.

      Chalkiope had been pretty, I vaguely remembered, though now her brow was furrowed and her lips pinched. She did not like my friendship with her children, though the youngest was the same age as me. Melanion had smooth skin and eyes like the most expensive Kriti honey, and I was another boy to him, a playmate, not a princess.

      I could not marry. I knew that the priestesses of Hekate are always maidens. I did not see, however, that I could not be friends with Melanion because of that. He was my nephew. No one could object to amity amongst close kin, surely. Possibly, however, it might have been a good idea not to get quite so dirty while demonstrating this.

      Trioda eyed me. She stood in her black garments like a crow in the brightness of the strong sunlight, her arm raised against the light. I surveyed myself.

      I had skinned one knee on the edge of the landing stage, and I had fallen in - once my mistake and the second time because I was already wet and going to be scolded, and I liked the feel of the water. The shallow river-pond where we harvest shellfish had been as warm as blood, and I had already dried on my run from the banks. My tunic was crumpled and stained with tar and altogether I was a spectacle - an object lesson in what a princess of the royal house of Colchis should not look like.

      I raised my chin and waited for a slap, but she did not hit me, or even seem to notice my disheveled condition. Instead, she gave me a potion and watched as I choked it down. It was bitter. Then she took my hand and led me into the grove.

      I had been feeling defiant; now all my courage drained away. There was something in that grove - something new. The wind in the cypresses sang loud and shrill, though the day outside was as still as death. My mud-stiff hair stirred at the back of my neck. I could smell, suddenly, a reek of strong perfume, rank and fascinating, like a mixture of incense and rotting flesh, and I coughed, pulling against Trioda's hand, not to retreat but to run into the scent, into whatever was forming in the darkness under the trees. Something was pulling me. Trioda grabbed me by the shoulders.

      'Speak,' she ordered. 'Pray. Listen!'

      'Lady of Darkness,' I began. My words were blown away in the rising wind. 'Lady СКАЧАТЬ