FALLEN GODS

Jonathan Blum & Kate Orman

First published in England in 2003 by

Telos Publishing Ltd

61 Elgar Avenue, Tolworth, Surrey KT5 9JP, England

www.telos.co.uk

ISBN: 1-903889-20-0 (standard hardback)

Fallen Gods © 2003 Jonathan Blum & Kate Orman

Foreword © 2003 Storm Constantine

Icon © 2003 Nathan Skreslet

ISBN: 1-903889-21-9 (deluxe hardback)

Fallen Gods © 2003 Jonathan Blum & Kate Orman

Foreword © 2003 Storm Constantine

Icon © 2003 Nathan Skreslet

Frontispiece © 2003 Daryl Joyce

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

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appeared in the BBC television series ‘DOCTOR WHO’. Licensed by BBC Worldwide Limited

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Foreword by Storm Constantine

When I was asked to write an introduction for this book, I had no idea

what to expect from it, and was a little surprised by the request. I am not

known for being an aficionado of Doctor Who, and my main experiences

of it are the memories of childhood teatimes and the programme on TV

that both terrified and enthralled me. Seen later in life, those BBC sets

have not travelled through time quite as efficiently as the character they

framed, but the Doctor has his own magic and that has not been

diminished either by time or by memory. The fact that he has endured,

sometimes against great odds, is testament to that.

My qualification for speaking here is my own passion for the mythic,

because in this novel the Doctor manifests in Bronze Age Thera; but I

confess I was a little sceptical. My previous experience of spin-off

novels from TV series has not been edifying. However, I trusted the

publishers’ opinion enough to think they wouldn’t have asked me to

contribute if they weren’t sure I’d like the book. And I’m pleased to say

that Fallen Gods has been a revelation to me; it has opened my eyes to

the modern world of Doctor Who.

In this story, the melding of science fiction with myth is seamless and

feels in no way contrived or unlikely. Throughout human history,

knowledge and enlightenment have dragged superstition, sometimes

kicking and screaming, into the realm of science. What we perceive, in

ignorance, to be supernatural is eventually revealed to be part of the

workings of the universe, and perhaps that process is – and will be –

ongoing, for as long as there are humans eager to probe the secrets of

life.

Although the Doctor and his own mythology are the main components

of the story, it is not just for the diehard Doctor Who fan, and will be

enjoyed by any reader who appreciates good writing and has a

fascination for the Golden Age of ancient times, when sirens haunted the

mists of the wine-dark sea and the tragic Minotaur stamped through the

echoing corridors of the labyrinth. The authors have brought the Minoan

civilisation vividly to life with much authentic detail, sewing into their

story colourful images of Greek and Cretan legend. The fallen gods

include the Doctor himself, here recreated in the image of many trickster

deities. He is the Fool of the Tarot, reckless and unfathomable; the

cosmic jester, who illumines potential yet speaks like a sphinx in riddles.

He is a doomed fallen angel, Prometheus bringing the gift of fire, Icarus

flying on wings of folly towards the sun. He is also Daedalus, whose

vision and inventions are craved by kings. His character is complex; his

wry wit matched by glimpses of a deep inner pain that spans the

universe and beyond. It is inevitable that wherever he manifests in the

streams of time and space, he changes them and diverts the current of

the future. Therefore, he cannot help but be aware that as much as he is

an agent for good, his intrusion can unwittingly spell death or non-birth

for those who might otherwise have survived or existed. In this

awareness lies his tragedy. He is an eternal child, yet ancient beyond

imagination, as evanescent as a phantom. Deftly, his authors do not

allow the reader to identify him fully, which is how it should be. He is

like a shapeshifter: images and ideas of his appearance, personality and

motives are in constant flux. He is, we can suppose, what we expect him

to be, designed by our own desires and beliefs, which mirrors what he

reveals to the priestess Alcestis on the nature of supernatural beings.

The relationship between the Doctor and Alcestis smoulders throughout

the story, erotic without being sexual, a Greek tragedy of

unconsummated love, which culminates in a skilful retelling of the myth

of Prometheus. There are so many allusions to Greek legend in this

novella, weaving in and around each other, that it’s a delight for any

reader interested in the subject to try to spot them all. I’m sure repeated

readings would reveal more little treasures hidden in secret corners.

Fallen Gods has everything I look for in a novel or novella: a rhythmic

and vivid style of writing, in-depth characterisation, realistic and

sparkling dialogue, a well-paced plot and a satisfying denouement. The

authors’ love of language is matched by their obvious affection for their

main character, and a great sympathy for him too.

When any writer adds to the existing canon of a fictional character,

they expand the myth, keeping it alive and dynamic. Doctor Who spans

generations, and its appeal continues to attract new fans. Perhaps one of

the reasons for its success is that within its framework anything is

possible, nothing is pinned down in time and space. It continues to

evolve, because from its beginning no limits were placed upon it. It is

not confined to a particular time in history, such as the early black and

white TV programmes, which were but one aspect of the Doctor’s

evolution. The Doctor is an eternal hero, who can slip into any reality

and change it. The universe is infinite, so the potential for Doctor Who

stories is infinite. It’s tempting to imagine what it would be like if he

manifested in a time and place that is beyond human description. You

can only suppose that must happen to a Time Lord now and again!

The Doctor has come a long way from what I remember of those old

TV episodes. I am happy to discover he is alive and well, because I used

to love so much being scared by the series, no matter what nightmares

they inspired. I am even happier to discover that darker aspects of the

Doctor are being revealed, giving him more depth and fascination. He

has stood the test of time, as a Time Lord should, of course. And his

history is in safe hands with writers such as Jonathan Blum and Kate

Orman. It’s no less than he deserves.

Storm Constantine

Stafford

One: Dance

—Close your eyes, murmurs her teacher.

Alcestis, poised, touch of sun-baked sweat drying onto her. Finding her

balance as she stands in the open fields. The odd foreign man behind

her, pale and cool as ivory in the heat.

Inside her eyes, all is warm orange. Even with them shut, the Aegean

sunlight is bright enough to burn inside. She stands, breathing just a little

too hard, and listens to his voice pass slowly behind her.

—Feel the wind? he asks. —Just a light breeze. You can feel it against

your skin. You’re so light, if you lifted up just a touch, it could blow you

away.

His words form a circle around her as he paces. —There’s a rhythm to

it. A tempo. Swelling and fading. A slow, endless beat, slower even than

your heart. It’s the longest music in the world.

And she can feel it, spreading across her: individual points of

gooseflesh on her arms and chest, the ever-so-slight change in the

pressure of her flounced skirt against her legs. She relaxes into it, just

lets herself feel the wind blowing through her, as if emptying her mind

will make her as light as he says.

He’s right by her ear now, but softer than ever. —You can feel it

quickening now.

Alcestis shivers for a moment. His breath came against the wind, she

could feel it rock her in a different direction. She shifts her balance,

raises herself up, light on her toes, ready to take the first step.

—It’s got a good beat – you can dance to it. Ask the local eagles. You

know there are some people in the world for whom dancing isn’t sacred?

Oh, give them a tune and they can bounce about a bit, but that’s as much

as they know or care ... They don’t know what it means to move with the

world, not just through it.

She knows the dance, remembers from her time in the temple. This

isn’t so different. The tempo is far slower, but she can find it now – in

the rhythm of the breeze playing across her skin, as it shifts direction,

spirals and eddies, but always in the end leads back to the sea. And the

counter-rhythm of his words winding around her.

—Now take the wind to pieces. It’s coming from so many directions at

once, just look at one of them. Just feel the part that’s moving across

you, left to right.

She can feel the difference ... the afternoon sunfire on her right, just

that much warmer than the breeze on the other side. Both sides of her

tingling now, shivering in the heat.

—Now the other direction. Just feel the bit of the wind on your front.

It’s got its own rhythm, you can play the two of them against each other.

You’ll have to remember that, to keep control.

—And now the other direction. Out of the plane, right angles to

everything else, away from the ways you usually move. Straight up and

down. You can feel the wind lifting you, can’t you? You can’t follow it,

not yet, but you can feel this pull ready to launch you.

—And now the other other direction.

—You can feel the wind blowing from your past to your future. A

breath inside you, fanning the little spark of fire at your core. Feel that

now.

And it’s as clear and sharp as all the others – the thrumming of her

body, that she’s never been able to pick out from her heartbeat. The

currents blowing inside her, pulling her to the next moment. She can feel

the rhythm running through each second, she knows how to move with

it.

Alcestis, ready now to dance.

—Now, up –

And she blows away.

A moment later she’s falling, legs flailing in search of the ground.

When she hits it’s a smack across her chest, driving the breath from her

even as she tries to gasp. Suddenly furious with herself, she rolls over in

the dust, fighting to breathe, demanding of her body which piece of it

has failed her.

She sits up, pushing her hair out of her face and plucking grass from

the heavy black tresses. One of her earrings is gone, lost during her

instant of flight.

She recognises the goat-track winding through the distance: she’s up

near the high side of the island, a short distance from the cliffs

overlooking Kaménai. In an instant she’s leaped halfway across the

island. She thinks of those cliffs, six hundred feet down to the water, and

is grateful that this gift she’s discovered wasn’t a half mile more

prodigious.

By the time he finds her, on the goat-track, the sun is sinking low. The

sunset brings colour to his pasty foreign skin, makes him look like he’s

blushing. No, she realises, he is flushed – from excitement, triumph,

awe, or the last run he took to catch her once he came over the hill.

There’s a hint of shadow under his cheekbones, a sketch of crows-feet

around his eyes, a look of amazement too fierce to be simple joy.

—Well I’m thoroughly impressed, he tells her.

—I’m not, the way I landed ...

—Halfway across the island, he says, as they turn and head for home.

And only then does the low wonder in his voice reach her, and she

begins to realise what she’s just done.

—How did I do it? How did I go so far?

He begins to explain, one of his complex tales full of moving hands

and convoluted gestures. —Well I’d expected you to catch just the edge

of one of the temporal currents, but instead you dived right into the

middle of them. For a fragment of a second, you held yourself

completely still.

—It didn’t feel like stillness!

—The Earth moved, rotating and revolving and so forth, and so the

next moment there was something else underneath you.

—So I can just ... vanish. Get away from them.

He frowns, suddenly stern. —Well, that would confuse them, but I

don’t think it would hold their attention. So it does rather miss the point

of the exercise. No, you need to be able to do more than stay still – you

need to be able to move as you choose. Catch the current, ride it at an

angle, blend it into the other three dimensions of the dance. The way the

currents round here are distorted, you can use them to move through

space as well.

—And keep riding them?

—Mm, yes. That’s all flying is – enough moments of not falling.

They walk together towards the sunset. It makes her think not of

endings, but of all the days to come.

It was up near here that she’d first found him, on the morning before the

sixth attack. She’d taken the day off to go walking on the high side of

the island – telling herself she wanted to look for a new design for her

pottery among the leaves and flowers, but really just feeling Akrotiri

itching under her skin. The town always scraped her nerves, but at least

she usually knew what she wanted to escape. All she’d had that day had

been an unfocused twitchy desire to be anywhere else.

Maybe it had been Nisus, the previous night in the tavern. She’d first

met him just after the fourth attack, as she’d helped clear the rubble; she

remembered him working in a diligent daze beside her, even as she’d

heard the awed whispers about how he’d rushed into Cretheus’s house to

support the corner lintel – the demon’s hooves just round the wall from

him – long enough to allow Cretheus and his daughters to get clear.

She’d seen the look of disbelief creep across Nisus’s face while they

worked, as he’d slowly realised what an unimaginable thing he’d done,

and the sight had been almost enough to make her forget herself and

hold him.

Weeks had passed, and that night in the tavern he’d been repeating his

own legend, slopping wine down young Aerope’s blouse in the telling.

The family Cretheus had ceased to be the important ones in the story.

His voice had lurched through the latest bellicose anthems, ready to war

with anyone, just as soon as they knew whom.

Maybe it had been Nisus. Maybe Neleus the innkeeper, watering the

drinks as always, goading old Cocalus for being Athenian by birth –

precisely the same way he’d goaded him before the attacks, but now

with the extra weapon of being able to jeer at his loyalties. They had

danced in Athens at the news of Akrotiri being laid low, a tale Neleus

used like a bludgeon. Using the world’s new cruelty to justify further

little cruelties.

Maybe Nisus, maybe Neleus. Maybe herself, finishing her wine in

silence and leaving without making a fuss. Maybe a whole island that

had known peace since the days of the first Minos, now so ready to

dismiss its better nature as a pampered fantasy, to respond to ugliness in

kind. One of the richest islands in all of Minos’s empire, and they acted

as if all their luxury and privilege had vanished overnight, such that

decency was an indulgence they could no longer afford. Harsher than the

loss of innocence was the loss of compassion – and when she’d realised

she couldn’t even weep for them, she’d had to get out.

So she was wandering near the cliffs facing Kaménai when she first

saw him falling. More remarkable than simply being there to see him

was the fact that she looked up; they had all lost the habit of raising their

eyes. But Alcestis did, looking over the water towards the royal island,

wondering whether she’d be feeling this unsettled itch if her years over

there had not come to such an abrupt end. And so she saw the speck

plummeting towards the ocean from the sky.

Being a gods-fearing individual, she found the sight of a man being

cast out of heaven, if not familiar, at least explicable. Still, it wasn’t

something Alcestis had ever seen for herself. Pelopia was always

swearing she’d seen a nymph flitting round her vegetable patch, or that

twenty years ago a centaur had barged in on her when she was bathing

(though probably only the equine half of the fellow would have taken

any interest in Pelopia), but generally such creatures kept their profiles

even lower than the people of Akrotiri kept their eyes.

It was only when the rainbow wings spread over his head that she

thought perhaps she shouldn’t be looking. Ah well, if this god were the

sort that paraded himself in all his glory and then blinded those who

stared, as the sun was known to do, it was too late now. The wind from

Kaménai was sweeping him towards her.

Closer now, they weren’t wings – instead a multi-coloured canopy

curving above, roped to his back. Not a god, then. No god would need to

break his fall. An inventor, perhaps, or a sailor, expansive in his

cunning, using a rainbow sail to catch the wind and slow his descent. If

whatever god had taken him up had expected him to be shattered by his

landing, they’d be surprised.

The man cleared the edge of the cliff with a few feet to spare, and

swerved between the stubby trees to reach the open land. When he

touched the ground he ran with the wind for a few paces, the rainbow-

panelled canopy settling to earth behind him, then let forth a triumphant,

fierce breath – declaring to all the world that he wasn’t dead. His

chestnut hair stuck out like a mane after tussling with the wind. He stood

like a king surveying his new domain.

—Well now. This’ll do.

He met her eyes, from across the clearing, then blithely let them go

again. As if saying it was nice to meet her, but since she was probably

going to flee in terror she had his permission to get on with it. Instead

she approached him, as he busied himself gathering up the fabric of his

wings.

—And you are? she asked.

He smiled, like a cat with a mouse. —Guess.

—There are a hundred thousand men in the empire, each with his own

name. I don’t know enough of them to guess.

—A man, then? Not a god?

—Probably.

(A grin.) —You’ve no idea what a relief that is. (Then a sudden pout.)

Not even half a god? Human on my mother’s side, perhaps, with my

father a divine bull from the heavens ...

She couldn’t be sure which of them he was mocking. Straight faced,

she looked him up and down, the thick fabric of his elaborate clothes, his

blue eyes and his wild hair. —It’s not impossible.

—Well that’s something. I’d hate to think I suggested a lack of

possibilities.

—You’d have to convince me, though.

—Yes. Well, I’m afraid that might have to wait for a while. You see, I

was rather aiming for over there.

He pointed off the cliff towards Kaménai and went on packing his sail

away. —There’s a powerful updraft, threw me off course. I hadn’t

counted on it.

—There’s always a wind near Kaménai. From the volcano.

—Volcano? Oh, of course. This is Thera, after all. How does one

usually get there?

—There’s a boat every day from Akrotiri. It goes right around to the

temple and palace.

—Palace?

—On the royal island.

—Royal island? The volcano? You mean, a palace right on the slopes?

—Of course.

—Well there’s chutzpah for you.

He finished balling up the fabric, and started down the path away from

the cliff. She found herself moving alongside him. —Could you possibly

lead me to the docks? he asked. —In Akrotiri? You see, I need to get

over there rather urgently.

—Can’t you just fly there?

He looked bewildered, then took in the mass of silk he was holding,

and beamed. —Oh no, I don’t fly. I just fall with a certain amount of

style.

He calls himself the Doctor. He’s a big man – more than five-and-a-half

feet tall – but somehow gives a sense of smallness, as if he squeezes

himself down to her size. Perhaps that containment produces the

pressure inside that drives him. His eyes are full of pride and

insouciance, the hint of crows-feet around them suggesting an age that

his lithe movements belie. The creases developing in his face speak of a

wide-ranging, much-used mockery. They frame a perilous smile.

He had asked why she had been so able to accept his arrival, and she

hadn’t told him. In the temple, in her young days, she had cultivated her

awe. Even when the other priestesses had faded under the familiarity,

seeing the gods as a source of easy blessing and the bulls as a source of

noise, she had stood at night in the alabaster halls cut into the side of the

mountain, her mind open even to a flicker of the Titans’ flame.

After years touching the cool fire of the Titans, then years of silence,

even the Doctor’s colours seemed muted. But if it meant that she could

talk to him where others would be tongue-tied, perhaps it was for the

best.

Some nights after that first lesson, she stands on the edge of the cliff

again – leaning into the wind, one foot out over the abyss. She breathes

hard, feels the current inside lifting her, ready to tear her away from the

moment. His torch, the only light, reveals just enough of them to hint at

more.

—The currents near the island are bent around the land. They don’t just

pull you through time, but through space as well. That’s how they move.

Can you feel the angle it’s at?

—From behind.

—Lean into it. Find the balance.

She flexes, shivering, and pushes herself against the current, letting it

support her. The world judders with her heart. But she’s still there – he’s

still there – flickering, insubstantial, his pale face looking like a hole in

the night. The flames moving slower now, at just the wrong speed.

—Good, good. Now just lean into it –

She lets the wind and the current balance her between themselves.

Turns to look at him, sees the look of awe on his face. Follows his gaze

down, to where her foot is no longer on the ground.

She catches her breath, and doesn’t fall.

Inside she leans again, feels herself buoyed up. Lets the wind carry her

inland, the ground flickering past. Pushes herself forward, tries a swoop

down, then pulls herself up and with a wrench brings herself to a dead

stop in the air. Gritting teeth, gasping, then laughing.

She hovers now in front of him, holding her balance like a tightrope

walker. His gaze takes her in, his eyes shining, staring at what he’s done

– no, at what she’s done. Then moving from her to the stars beyond.

—I wish that I could be the sky, with all those eyes to look at you ...

She sweeps down upon him and gathers him up. Whirling him into the

dance. But she feels him freeze, his arms and legs locked against her,

like trying to move with a tree trunk. She meets his eyes, and slows to a

stop in the air.

—Put me down? Please? Now?

Gently she lowers him, not letting her own feet touch the ground, afraid

they’ll never leave again. She hangs in front of him, struggling.

—Why?

He just shakes his head, his face still tight and twisted. He looks away,

past her again, to the sky. Waves a hand. —It’s all yours. Yours alone.

—But ...

—Go on. Explore it. I’ll still be here. Just don’t go too high.

—Too close to the sun?

He shakes his head, a hollow smile. —No, you won’t burn up there. It’s

cold. There’s a lot of cold between you and the sun. And so much

loneliness you won’t even have air for company.

She wants to stay, to ask more, but the currents are already buoying her

upwards. She shifts her balance, feels her legs sweeping upwards

behind, hovering prone. His face is just below her, just out of reach of

hers. But he’s looking at her again as she raises her head, begins to sail

forward and up. Up into the dark.

She hears him call quietly after her. —And when you come back, I’ll

teach you to fight.

At the docks, of course, the liveried soldiers who guarded the shipment

of supplies to Kaménai refused to let this foreigner on board. His profile

was all wrong, his sunless skin and not-even-shoulder-length hair

marking him out as dangerous. He declared he was a noble of a northern

tribe; they indicated that a noble from outside the empire was in their

esteemed opinion a contradiction in terms. He told them there was a

catastrophe coming; they sniggered and said they had guessed as much.

He told them he had detailed information; they looked him over and said

to aid his memory they’d be glad to provide him with a set of leg-irons

and a hot poker or two. He departed with offended dignity and his exotic

clothes barely intact.

So, instead, at a shop he traded a silver ring for a simple knee-length

skirt and a bronze belt, grimed his face and his hands, and before

Alcestis’s eyes pulled himself down half a dozen social classes into a

pitch-scented sailor. She couldn’t be sure whether he was putting a skin

on, or taking one off.

She said her goodbyes to him again at the docks, then watched him

inveigle himself into the crew of the boat, send one of the hands away on

an errand. He passed under the watchful eyes of those same guards as

they counted the crew, and she saw him disappearing into the mass of

rowers as they pulled away.

She waited for him, despite the city itching at her to leave; she knew

he’d be dragged back on the return boat, but somehow didn’t quite want

to be so sure. When the boat pulled up to the dock a couple of hours

later, and she saw no figure being hauled off in manacles, for a moment

she felt the world spin in a new direction.

Then she saw him still by his seat at the oars, glowering in the sun, and

the ground sank back to normal.

On the shores of Kaménai, the same soldiers who had defended the

loyal Theran sailors against foreign threats now guarded the island

against the loyal Theran sailors. Having taken a sailor’s place, he was

denied the opportunity to slip out of it and into the palace. After

grousing to Alcestis about it, and accepting her offer of dinner and a

floor to stay on, before she had quite realised she was making it, he was

already turning undaunted to tomorrow’s plans – possibly involving

forged papers, or shipping himself inside a barrel, or perhaps the use of a

giant catapult.

Then the sixth demon came, and all their plans changed.

Now he starts each day in the shape of a dockhand, rising while she still

sleeps to start unloading the cargoes from Heraklion and Phaistos and

distant Illium. She takes a few moments from her stall in the

marketplace to meet him, watch him mending a sail with experienced

hands or sealing a fishing-boat’s leaking hull with pitch, eyes narrowed

against the sun. He moves now with an easy artlessness, a labourer’s

grace that speaks of long days working away from shore. For his

nautical lore and a few of his hours, he gains a meal and as much local

knowledge as his head can carry.

By midday he reinvents himself as a wandering poet, with a change of

robes and a borrowed lyre. His hair loose and his body smooth, he takes

up a place in the corner of the market near Alcestis’s stall and entertains

the public. Now every movement is polished, every syllable precise,

with a confidence beyond pretending. His oddly muscled, far from ideal

body still somehow summons up gods perfect in grace and form, stories

with sense and clarity far beyond everyday life. Each ode is finely

crafted, impeccably performed without breaking a sweat, wringing the

listener’s feelings without giving away any of what emotions of his own

may lie beneath.

(—I play the liar very well, he whispers to Alcestis after one such

session, and once again she senses a joke that has failed to translate.)

Rather than tales of familiar princes, he produces his own – stories of

distant inventors whose imagination brings triumph or tragedy, sailors

returning to find their homes changed beyond recognition by time.

(Formulae and borrowings, he confides to Alcestis, except for the bits

that are true.) The children are especially taken with his odd songs from

faraway lands, singing along with his tale of a magical yellow ship

which sails beneath the waves, their eyes wide enough to see him as its

captain.

After noon he retreats with Alcestis to her home: the former priestess is

now a studious potter, her cramped ground-floor rooms doubling as a

workshop. With his help, firing one set of pots in the kiln out the back

while she works at the wheel, the day’s work is completed in half the

time. He colours her spirals and rosettes on ewers and jars, but never

creates a design of his own – saying that his talents lie elsewhere.

And then, in the remaining daylight, he teaches her, and she flies.

From high above, the wind she sees the scars through Akrotiri: the

straight furrow through the houses of the harbour area, the bare rock

where the northern district’s villas had been scoured away, the winding

erasures where the next four demons rampaged. Her city looks

punctured, clawed.

She feels around inside herself for grief, or horror, or rage at the sight.

But all she can feel is the dulled tension in her muscles as she holds

herself in place – neither moving nor at rest. It could be the effort of

flying, but no, on the ground she feels the same. Even in absence

nothing is eased.

The currents buoy her higher, the wounds of the city dwindling away.

The waves below her seem to drag their heels, as the slowed-down

world flickers past. Now she can see all the way across the island of

Thera – Akrotiri spread across its outer slopes, the sharp cliffs along the

inner curve. From here the island forms a vast crescent, its far end lost in

the distance.

Higher still, farther back, and she can see the whole, so many miles

across: Thera a three-quarter-ring, and the pointed mound of Kaménai

within the encircled sea. Even up here there’s a hint of smoky haze over

the crater in the centre of the royal island. It’s a wonder, she tells herself;

not even the King can see his lands the way she can. Why isn’t that

wonder filling the hollows of her bones?

In the shapes of the islands she can see the story the Doctor told her:

that once there had been just one island, a single mountain grown around

the volcano, towering above, the sea. Then hundreds of thousands of

years ago, the mountain had exploded – gouging out those cliffs,

showering a thousand miles with boulders, turning the sky black for

days and vermilion at sunset for years. The mountain had left a basin for

the sea to rush in, drowning the volcano, but its fire was so hot it turned

the water above, to air. Only after several eternities had the volcano

brought forth enough earth from its fire to reach above, the water again,

and set about growing a new island in the centre of the old one.

—The next eruption will be the stuff of legends, the Doctor said.— But

even legends are dwarfed by the stories no one was around to tell.

—You’ll get nothing out of that one, Pelopia tells her, her face crinkling

with the knowledge of the old and long-suffering. —Believe you me.

His type sets off soon as they’ve had their fill.

—You think so?

—The stories I could tell you.

—As indeed you have.

They’re watching him in the marketplace from their stalls, Pelopia’s

carefully-woven linen beside Alcestis’s earthen pottery. His lyre set

aside for the moment, he’s entertaining a small child with a silver piece,

making it appear and disappear and jump from hand to hand.

—He’s a charmer all right. But shiftless. You’ll never get an honest

day’s work out of him.

—I’ve got several.

—O- ho ...

Alcestis laughs. —Real work. Though never a whole day at once, I’ll

admit.

Pelopia turns back to watch him appreciatively. Alcestis can see her

smiling with one side of her face and scowling with the other. —He’s

flighty, that one. What you need is someone with both feet on the

ground.

Alcestis says nothing, her eyes on the captivated child. Watching the

Doctor’s fingers at work, effortlessly deceiving.

Her memories of the first attack were of Pelopia leaning on her in the

rubble, wailing. From the moment they heard the first lamentations,

Pelopia was lost. Doubling over, her free hand uselessly wringing

support from empty air. All Alcestis could do was hold them both

upright, as they tried vainly to sift the remains of the family Coresus

from the powdered mortar that had held their home together.

She didn’t cry, even then. She shook, quivered, moaned even, but felt

no release. She busied herself with the search for anything still solid in

the wreckage, picking out Iphianassa’s scattered beads from the grit and

the dust-clouds while the girl-child howled for her parents.

The demon had cut a diagonal gash through half the streets of the

western town. The mortar of the stones had cracked and crumbled at its

touch, mud-bricks scattering like marbles as it charged. Wood had

rotted, fruit shrivelled past putrefaction. Even the grass under its hooves

had been scorched away to nothing. Oxylus, the swan-necked youth, had

been the last to flee. Not because he had been brave, he said as he wept,

rather because he had been slow to run. The demon had touched him for

just a moment: the left side of the young man’s face was wizened; his

left arm, bones in a bag of skin.

Anaxibia worked right alongside them, clutching her gown together –

the rich wife, who had her glassware stall in the market not to sell, but to

be seen to sell. She had never had any time for them, but today she took

the stones Pelopia handed her, sat with Alcestis at the side when

exhausted, gave Oxylus some water as he quaked. And when news came

through of the second demon, which had just erased the villas above the

harbour, she was the one who gave voice to the unimaginable, as the

same thought crept over all of them: that this disaster had been

arranged.

There was no certainty, no clarity as they huddled together in the

tavern. Some said it was the work of wizards, or inventors. Most just

wondered how Rhea Herself could ever have allowed this to come to

pass. Some stood among the workers proclaiming that this was in fact

the will of the Fallen; that from Tartarus, the deposed Titans now

condemned their irreverent, impious culture. Alcestis had heard these

men preach before – they’d tried to recruit her to their numbers once,

when they’d learned about her time in the temple – and in the past, when

she had weighed the self-absorbed gabblings of the town against the

crystalline clarity of the Titans’ touch, she’d been unable to help feeling

a hint of truth in what they said. But that night, as the lay preachers

thundered in their righteous pleasure at the sufferers, she felt nothing but

disgust at them.

There was no certainty, no clarity as they huddled together in the

tavern. In the end, Alcestis had Iphianassa sleep on her floor that night –

the girl had no other place to go, and on that night, neither of them

wanted to be by themselves.

Her memories of the third attack were just of the runners shouting the

news, the slow paralysis spreading up her body as she sank onto an

upturned storage jar in the back of her stall. They had come again, could

come again and everyone would still be at their mercy. The echoing

hollow in her head filled with the words it does not end.

For the fourth attack, again she hurried to the site, to the path this demon

had clawed through the upper slopes. But this time the clean-up crews

were slaves supervised by palace soldiers, and people from the high-side

carefully stepped around the rubble as they went on their way. Only

children watched, staring at the soldiers as though they were gryphons.

They were rare and gaudy birds, in a town where war was something

that happened in stories from other places.

She saw laughing Iphianassa, silent now, her head down in case she

saw judgement in a pair of watching eyes. She saw soldiers at the tavern

– at the tavern! – with official advice to report strangers, anyone who

might be a wizard, everyone staring at them and each other, clutching

their cups. She saw Anaxibia pass her by, on her way to her undamaged

house, boasting about the compensation her husband had sweet-talked

from the King for loss of trade.

She felt a scream wedged in the bottom of her lungs, with no breath to

force it out. The urge to shake each of them by the shoulders, force them

to notice anything, everything. Finally, the slow, numbing realisation

that only the best parts of the world had changed, that no one saw any

reason to try to change the worst. Her own feelings ground down to a

clod of earth.

Of the sixth attack, all she remembers are fragments:

The ball of fire that struck like a stone from the sky, somewhere behind

the roofs of the market, shaking the ground.

No, the moment before that, when the ground of the marketplace

shook, and the Doctor looked up at the sound of screams.

No, the moment before that, when she tugged on the Doctor’s elbow,

wanting to get out of the marketplace as though the ground was burning

her feet, the itchy, restless feeling of the day reaching a peak.

She remembers seeing the broad, massive animal head within the fire,

and not quite grasping that it was happening again, right in front of her.

She remembers how the fiery bull tossed and kicked the drinkers and

the jars of drink in the beer shop. How the place stank of ashy mould for

a week afterwards.

A heavy man kicking a child out of his way, as the crowd surged in

every direction. Elbows and shoulders striking her, but her feet chained

to the ground, no way to make herself move.

And the heart-stopping moment when the Doctor waved his arms and

ran towards the bull.

The monster turned, the Doctor darted again, away from its head, once

more to the side. Once more the bull, turning. His feints and stumbles,

half bullfighter and half clown, leading the bull, like a bird miming a

broken wing.

It wasn’t until much later, thinking back over and over those fragments,

that she understood the moment before he ran. The look on his face as he

stood beside her. The Doctor had decided what to do. It was not panic

and it was not desperation. He could dodge the bull, keep it turning in

circles. But not for long.

That was the moment when she hefted a poncho from Pelopia’s stall

and hurled it at the demon. The heavy cape unfurled as it sailed through

the air and snagged the bull’s horns, settling for a moment over its face,

long enough for the Doctor to dash away before the monster’s heavy

shoulder could slam across him.

The cloth burned, tangling on the bull’s horns in puffs of grey and red.

Then it was gone. Only moments later, its fire spent at last, the bull was

gone as well.

She remembers the slow realisation: she had known which way the

monster would leap, she had known which way the Doctor would move

in his dance of distraction, the dance that kept the bull busy until its fires

went out.

And the moment when he asked her to do the same.

—Why me?

—Because you can feel it.

They sat halfway up the cliff, on the edge of the track to the high part

of the island, as the coal-red sun died on the horizon. Below them the

port stood huddled against the slope, squeezed there by the ocean, waves

battering it against the cliffs. In the tiny marketplace she could just see

the fires lit by the soldiers, as they continued to search through the

rubble for anything to salvage.

—Why don’t you just go? she murmurs. —Find your way to Kaménai.

Maybe even swim there.

—I’ve thought about that, he answers seriously. —But I don’t want to

go there now. Not yet. This is more important.

—I didn’t even want to be in the city today ... I knew it was coming

again. Somehow.

—You knew which way the wind was blowing.

She sat there shaking in the chill. The Doctor had lent her his strange

lush garment, but the cold was already inside her. Now he took her face

between his hands and aimed her eyes at his: his face gentle and firm

and quite quite mad.

—The currents that these beasts ride on, you can feel them too. Given a

little training, you can anticipate their moves. Even learn to ride the

currents yourself.

The cape, floating impossibly slowly through the air. The cape, settling

on the bull’s horns, melting to dust and ash.

—You took such a chance down there ...

—It’s what I do, I take chances. I also give them.

She looked down at the marketplace again. The soldiers had told them

all to go about their business, leave the clean-up to the new experts.

There was nothing for them to do. Even the Doctor’s offer was probably

nothing, but it would be nice if there was any sort of something to be

had.

—Why me? she asked one last, time.

—Because you weren’t afraid to look at me.

Now she stands in the sun-baked paddock, one eye on the Doctor and

the other on the bull. The latter is farther away, but she’s not sure which

she expects to run amok first.

The gods only know what story the Doctor told this farmer to allow

them to use his distant fields for her practice – probably one involving

plenty of nudging and leering. Getting into the bull’s paddock for today

probably required an even stranger tale. But now she faces it, under the

distant olive tree, its head low in the grass and horns rising like snakes

about to strike. It’s smaller than the demon. It’s bigger and blacker than

a thundering sky.

—The wind hasn’t changed yet, he hasn’t scented us. You don’t have

to try it today.

—I said I would.

He’s quiet and serious, but she can’t shake the sense that he’s still

probing, challenging, even mocking. —You’re sure? Remember, if you

confront it with imperfect courage, it will annihilate your soul. Or

something like that. At the very least it’ll put a whacking great hole

through you.

—The ones who do this in the temple ... It takes months of training.

—You know how the currents change. We’ve got only weeks before

the wind is strong enough for the next attack. Anyway, you’ve got a gift

that those people don’t have. A tremendous gift.

—They have discipline.

—Oh, I think a little discipline goes a long, long way.

—But isn’t that what a master of these sorts of arts is supposed to teach

you?

—Yes, and if you don’t watch it, they’ll discipline every last bit of

spark and imagination right out of you. Ever see that at the temple?

He’s smiling, but she can see old wounds in his eyes. She remembers

Britomartis with the acolytes in the sanctuary, smacking her out of a

tingling spiritual reverie to criticise her posture, and nods slowly. She

wonders what such incident he remembers.

—Now, if you can get by on raw talent and plenty of enthusiasm ...

Well, look at me. That made me the perennial disappointment to my

betters I am today.

—All right, then.

—Ready?

Deep breath. —Ready.

Before she can think again, he whistles, cracking the stillness. —Oi!

Hamburger! Over here!

The bull starts. She can hear the snuffling from here. The Doctor’s

waving his arms, crying —That’s it! Come and have a go!

And it’s thundering towards her, all that bulk and muscle and force

concentrated down to two sharp points.

She runs, runs towards it, praying with every muscle. Feeling for the

currents, letting them lift her with every stride, the world beginning to

shake as she pounds ahead.

And leaps.

Blast of hot breath, hands full of bone, the ground somersaulting over

her and the thunder passing under the top of her head. Her legs kick the

sky. She lets go, and the world whips round free of her.

She lands dizzied on one knee, but the fear keeps her moving — turns

around, to see the bull tossing its head and turning for another charge.

Again she runs, the world around her moving just that crucial bit more

slowly. This time she dodges round it and vaults over its flank, the

currents lifting her from a handspring into open air. Again and again,

catching the rhythm of its bewildered belligerence, matching it time and

again with unexpected grace. Finding the ease.

The Doctor, having legged it, applauds from the far side of the fence.

After the session he presents her with a fine linen towel, worthy of a

villa, and she dries herself as they sit on the edge of the Kaménai cliffs.

—You never told me why you left, he murmurs.

—Left?

—The temple, on Kaménai.

—You never told me where you’re from. Or why you left, and started

travelling.

He shrugs, a movement that looks like he’s ducking. —Well it’s like

asking a fish, isn’t it? If he bothered to answer, he wouldn’t say, oh I

was hatched on that rock, he’d just say he was from the ocean. In which

case, he hasn’t left. But you have left the temple.

—Yes.

He sees, speaks gently now. —You must have been there for years.

—I went there as a girl. Left when I was old.

—You’re not old.

—I was when they finished with me.

—So did you jump, or were you pushed?

—Stories differ.

He nods, slowly. —They always do.

She wants to ask him in turn, but she feels herself resisting on his

behalf – a door she would hold shut if pried open in herself.

He meets her eyes, tells her —I’m so sorry, and then all she needs to do

is sit there and breathe with him. A pause; she can see him weighing his

words before asking anything more.

His words come quietly. —Do you still let yourself remember what

grace was like, before you fell from it?

The air whispers out of her. Somehow he feels what she does. She

wants to hold on to him to keep herself from floating away.

She picks through the memories, finds the precious stones among them,

which she wouldn’t have looked for on her own. It’s easy now to offer

them to him.

—I remember ... certainty. Knowing that there were gods who could

hear your voice at every moment. Knowing that you could do what was

right, and it would matter, even if only to them.

—Certainty, he says, his eyes closing for a moment. —Yes. It would be

nice.

Now, at last, her own question can come. —So where did you fall

from? There’s a wisp of a smile now, just landing on his face. He points,

carefully, between two clouds. —See that, up there?

—No.

—Well pretend you can. That little dot up there, that tiny blue spot

against the blue ... that’s my ship. That’s where it’s moored.

—A ship?

His smile spreads, shyly. —Well, of sorts. Like you said, I’m a

traveller. I can go anywhere in this world. Or other worlds. Or even

other times. Anywhere.

—Anywhere? Including up there?

—Well, evidently.

—So you can fly.

Her smile freezes as she sees the scowl flicker across his features. It’s

there for only a second, but it’s enough to send the moment crashing.

—Well, he says, —Only in the sense that a ship can swim.

He stands, suddenly loose-limbed and defiantly casual, and flings an

arm about the countryside. —Look at all that. So idyllic, so pastoral.

You’d never guess that all of this is in the middle of such rough waters. I

don’t usually land like that, up there, it’s just that that was as close as my

ship would allow me to get.

—To what? she asks, but she’s already realising the answer. —To the

currents?

He nods. —They’re a whirlpool, a typhoon, centred right on the royal

island. In these dimensions, you’re only just catching the edges of it. But

to my ship, it’s a maelstrom – I fought with her for ages, but she

wouldn’t come far enough into it to land. I had to improvise.

—So you knew it was bad here, she says. —Why would you sail into a

hurricane like that?

He shrugs. —To sort it out, he says, and the look on his face makes her

forget to breathe. Even more so because it’s so casual.

Then he’s off again, spiralling and gesturing, not letting himself settle.

—I thought this would be so simple. I’ve got friends, waiting, I can’t get

back to them till this is all over. I thought I’d just drop in, put out a few

fires, then whistle to my ship and have her finish the course she’d started

on, come to pick me up. But no. Instead, I can’t even get to the island at

the centre of it. Instead, I’m barely even getting started. Instead, I’m ...

—Not flying?

Now, it’s his turn to freeze. The distracted, distracting energy runs

down. She goes to him, but he sits down on the cliff edge, hanging his

legs over nothing. She settles beside him.

—My ship can fly, he says, barely more than a whisper. —And she

knows better than I do where I’m going. I just hold on for dear life.

—I’m sorry.

His face has hardened. His eyes are looking out to sea, searching out

unreachable islands. Finally they turn, come to rest on her, pointedly.

—My journeys are not my own. Just what I do when I get there.

That night, she flies alone again, going high enough to lose the light of

the soldiers’ fires. She hovers in the wind, lets it play over her, in sky so

moonless that it makes no difference whether her eyes are open or

closed. Hoping that somehow paring it all away will make it make sense.

That first night, after the attack, she’d walked back into the city with him

under cover of darkness. Back then she’d still thought he might be a

source of answers, rather than new questions.

—If someone just wanted to humble us, why do it like this? Why send

a divine bull?

—Is that what you see?

—What do you mean?

—When you look at the demon, what does it look like to you?

—A bull, a flaming bull —

—Don’t summarise. Describe. What is it?

—A huge animal. Pounding. Uncontrolled. Topples buildings.

—Go on...

—Awe, fear, a force of the gods. Fire, burns everything it touches.

Turns people to dust. Everything crumbles.

—Yes ...

—So what is it?

—Don’t you know?

—I know it’s a bull.

—No. It’s time.

—...?

—A small burst of animated time, given just enough consciousness to

be directed.

—In the form of a bull?

—That’s the face you put on a natural force in pure concentrated

form ... a ripple of age and rot and decay and dust. All the forces of the

world bound up together. An earthquake on legs. Seasons battering you

in a second.

—So they are gods.

—If that’s your definition. You see them as gods, you know your gods

take the form of the bull, so you see a bull.

—But why do I see them afire?

—Is there another element that’s better suited for time? Earth is always

earth. A wind blows you, another can blow you back. The rain drenches

you, you’ll dry out again. A fire burns you ... you stay burned. Time’s

arrow is afire, it burns us all.

—So how do we fight time?

—We don’t.

(And here he had turned to her, with a grin that had made her want to

run for cover.)

—We bluff it.

She moves now in slow motion, miming punches and kicks to precise

spots an inch in front of his face. Her new muscles are held taut, keeping

her exactly two inches from the ground.

—So what is it that brings the demons here? she asks him.

—Someone summons them. They’re spawned from the same energy

source that produces the currents in time ... natural time, but distorted,

bent by something powerful.

—Something on Kaménai.

—That’s the centre of it, yes.

—Is that why I can sense the currents? Because I spent so long living

right there?

—Could be, could be.

—So someone else from over there could do this as well?

He nods, saying —Go on.

She thinks about it. She can’t say anything. She feels the pebbles brush

the underside of her feet and concentrates all her thoughts on lifting

herself, steadying herself, not letting the gnawing thought drag her

downwards into darkness. She holds herself tight and tense.

—How could they? she whispers. —Who could unleash something like

that?

—Either someone who doesn’t know what he’s dealing with ...

—Or?

—Someone who does.

The trick is, he tells her, it’s got to see your attacks, so it’ll react to them.

But if it can tell you’re pulling your punches, it’ll work out that you

can’t really hurt it. Make it think it’s managing to duck your blows —

flattery will get you everywhere. That’ll keep its attention. You need

only to keep it busy for a few minutes ... waves break, winds fade, fires

burn out.

And you? Duck, dodge, misdirect. The best way not to get hurt in a

fight is not to be where the blows land. Tae Kwon Doc: the art of

running away while you fight.

And find your weapons where you can. They won’t last, for long.

She notices that he applies the same driven energy to sleeping as to his

waking work — racing through a night’s rest in half an hour or less. He

seems refreshed enough, though she wonders if he hurries through the

night to keep the dreams from taking root.

One midnight, half awake, she hears the creak of the door. She rises

and follows him, making no sound. From behind and far above, she

watches him, a tiny figure prowling through the narrow streets of the

Akrotiri labyrinth. She wills herself to be as unnoticeable as possible: a

wisp on the wind, a stray bit of moonlight.

When he reaches the beach, he discards his clothes behind a rock, then

disappears into the murmuring waves. He swims straight away from the

island, chopping a hard rhythm through the water, while she wheels

slowly above. The wind is faint, just making her skin tingle. The

moonlight is barely enough to pick out his pale form under the skin of

the water. On and on, till she’s lost all sense of time, and the island

behind has disappeared in the darkness. Even the horizon has been lost,

the black sea blending seamlessly into the black sky.

Finally he stops, in the centre of the ocean. It becomes the centre

because of his presence, with the uniform surface stretching equally in

all directions. She watches him tread water, catch his breath — then roll

onto his back and float. Instinctively she rears away in the sky, but he

gives no sign of having seen her. Slowly she lowers herself, close

enough to study his face: eyes gently closed, mouth slightly open, an

unfamiliar look of peace.

He has stopped. She hangs there, watching him, but he doesn’t move,

his moment of joy stretching onward. Retreats into the sky, sees how

small he is at last. The currents buoy her upwards; he recedes even

further, a glimpse of white surrounded by depths in all directions. Again

she watches, the water lapping against him, until she too begins to lose

the centre, lose herself. All that remains is her grip on the currents

supporting her, like the instinct of her breath.

Finally with a jolt of waking she realises he’s rolled in the water and

started the long swim back. She shadows him home, keeping watch over

him, even as she knows he doesn’t need it. Once he’s safely emerged

onto the beach she sweeps on ahead, hurrying into her house and taking

her place in her bed, so he’ll never have to know he’s been seen.

She laughs now, flitting side to side, dodging each blow the Doctor

throws at her. He grins as their dance zigzags through the scrubland.

Hair flying, he swings again, and she pulls back and upwards. She

knows in her blood exactly how to move.

—Yes, you’ve got it. Keep moving, keep him interested. One step

ahead. Float like a butterfly, duck like a ... duck.

She throws her own punch, leaning into it with the full force of the

wind behind her. It sweeps just past his head, right where she wanted it.

Duck and twist, pike her legs to pull them clear, whip round to face him

again. The rhythm is thrilling.

—Good, good. Not good enough.

—Not good enough?

—You look like you’re playing. You’ve got to convince this thing

you’re a threat to it. That if you ever did touch it you could kill it, as

easily as it could kill you. You’ve got to make it see your determination.

Feel your anger.

—I’m not an actress.

—It won’t be acting.

He jabs again. Her hand leaps up to block it. She flinches; if this were

the demon, she would just have lost the arm.

—Look at me. I’m the thing that tore your city to pieces. You want to

kill me. You’re enraged.

She hesitates, he sees it. She’s breathing a bit too hard, the anger

caught in her throat.

—Don’t fight it. Repression leads to numbness, numbness leads to

apathy, apathy leads to narrowness, narrowness leads to constipation and

all sorts of problems.

—They say anger’s a two-edged sword.

—Well, of course it’s a two-edged sword – how many good swords do

you know with only one edge? That would just be a butter knife with a

long handle, really.

—All these years ... they’ve told me ...

—Oh, yes, be a good little girl, don’t make a mess in the temple. Don’t

shout too loud, you might wake something.

A sudden rain of blows. Duck, twist, retreat – a jolt, a sting across her

chin – she shakes her head in shock. Her legs kick uselessly in the air.

She hadn’t leapt back far enough. He wasn’t pulling his punches, just

relying on her skill to make him miss. Gasping for balance, she stares at

him.

He won’t let up. She twitches, flinches away by reflex, but he keeps

pushing. —Go on. Feel it. Wield it. You’ve got to learn to handle both

edges.

Nisus. Neleus. Oxylus and Anaxibia and all the silent gods. Those who

sent the demons and those who used them to their advantage. Those who

unleashed horrors, those who rode on their backs, those who stood by

and let it happen ...

Her hand crashes down.

Now, he flinches, blindsided. His last, punch flickers towards her, but

she’s already diving, wheeling around so the roll sets up a sharp thrust of

her legs. The jab stops his advance just short of her heels.

—Yes. That’s it ...

Horizontal in the air for a moment. She jack-knifes, getting clear, turns

upright to pound the air. He dodges – she sees just how he’s dodging –

she could lead him right into her next punch if she wanted. The fire

rages in her chest, but she owns it – lets out just enough to power each

controlled blow.

—Though I suppose there are scimitars and suchlike with only one

edge. But if you really wanted a one-edged sword, how about one like a

möbius strip? Now, that would be twisted. Imagine fighting with one of

those –

—You’re playing, she growls.

—Well, yes, any chance I get –

He shuts up as her beaded bracelet catches his nose. Off-balance now,

he backs away, bobbing and weaving. Tries to smile encouragingly, but

her own smile of triumph is louder.

Suddenly he’s down, his back in the scree at the foot of the slope. Lost

footing. With a final leap, she descends upon him, hands to his throat.

Stops there, crouching across him, every muscle thrumming. His eyes

are unguarded. The mockery is silenced, the pride now a gift to her.

She’s ready to choke him, to kiss him, to throw back her head and howl.

—Hold on to that, he murmurs. —It’s as much a part of you as the

currents are. Laugh, cry, scream, whatever it takes to get you through the

day.

Her legs, trembling. She climbs off him, stumbles a step away. Arches

her back, chest to the sky, driving out a cry that pulls from far deeper

than the bottom of her lungs. Feeling each drop of sweat on her bare

ribs, head thrown back, the tears now running sideways across her

cheeks.

—It’s all right, he tells her, but she already knows.

Finally she straightens herself, the exhilaration settling into a hard,

warm coal inside her. As she walks to him, offers him a hand, her heels

don’t quite touch the ground. She can’t tell whether it’s the current

lifting her, or just the way she moves now.

—We can beat these things.

The words sound odd in her mouth, but less odd than she thought they

would. He nods, the playfulness scraped off his face. —Oh, yes. We’ll

destroy them. And we’ll find who sent them, and bring them crashing

down.

—You’ve never even sounded angry about it.

—Well, of course not. (His eyes vanish behind another smile.) —You

just keep the sword sheathed, that’s all.

Finally, one day she feels it. She steps off the cliff and waits, feeling the

wind. Kaménai sits below her, its peak miles away and two hundred feet

down. She watches the breath of smoke from the volcano, lets it pass

through her.

—It’s coming, she says quietly. —Maybe even tomorrow morning.

—Well, then. He offers her his hand with courtly grace, and she steps

gently back onto the ground. —Perhaps we’d better get it finished.

She works late into the night, losing herself in the tactile ease of

moulding soft clay. Finishing the last, of her outstanding orders. If she

burns tomorrow, she won’t have let any of her customers down. Rapt in

her work, moving from potter’s wheel to painting-table to kiln, only at

the end does she realise that her feet have never quite touched the

ground throughout.

—Hold still.

He’s draping delicate fabric over her skin. The remains of his rainbow

parachute, taken neatly into sections, one colour at a time.

He works on her as she works on the clay, wrapping his chosen clothes

around her and pinning the fabric into position. Finally she stands, as his

tailor’s dummy, watching the pots harden and glow in the fire.

—I still don’t see the point of wearing this.

—Camouflage. Confusion. It won’t know where to hit you if you’re

billowing all over the place.

And the loose silk does do a good job of hiding her form, the wide

sleeves spreading like triangular wings. Tapering in at her waist and

flaring out to the tailfeathers of her feet. It also looks appallingly easy to

trip over, until she convinces him to take up the hem a bit.

—I’d feel more comfortable fighting in this, she says.

She indicates her own garment underneath as he peels the top layer

away: soft woven linen, short sleeves, the open bodice presenting her

kohléd highlights with careful dignity, the layered skirts with their

pinched waist. The ceremonial style, a relic of the temple, which she had

unearthed just for this occasion.

—Oh, heavens no, that’s probably the worst thing to fight in you could

imagine. Limiting your breathing, constraining your legs, and at the

same time exposing the bits that you most want to protect.

His hand rests for a moment on top of her left breast, pressing in to

indicate her heart. —It’s almost as ridiculous as fighting in a chainmail

bikini.

Even so, the thought chafes at her: the ceremonial clothing comes from

her life, the priestess’s silhouette is familiar to her. But she won’t

recognise this shape he wants to unleash into the sky. The shape she’s

been letting herself be moulded into.

—So you really think it’s a good idea for me to wear vast swirls of

fabric near a flame creature?

—Oh, that’s the beauty of it. This stuff’s also a little bit fire-retardant.

For this kind of fire, at least. Here.

He wraps scraps of the fabric around her hands, bandaging her palms.

—It won’t be enough to save you from a full attack, but you might get

away with a glancing blow. Now, the final touch ...

He takes a remaining strip of white silk, and wraps it around her

forehead like a scarf, binding her long braids. The end of the fabric trails

away over her shoulder.

Then he slows and stops a moment to consider her. His eyes are years

away.

—I didn’t mean for you to look like an angel.

—A what?

He doesn’t elaborate. Instead he continues undressing her, marking and

unpinning each piece of the fabric. Then he sits against the back wall,

stitching with the ease of a practised sailmaker, his face half-lit with all

the flattery that flickering light bestows on a lover’s body. His hands

look slightly outsized, she notices: like they belong to an even bigger

man trapped in a normal-sized body. It makes the deftness with which he

handles the tiny sewing-needles all the more surprising.

So even he is surprised by the new shape he’s given her. Oddly, this

reassures her: he may be turning her into something she doesn’t

recognise, but the new faces come from somewhere inside her, beyond

his reach. Before he came, she would never have recognised the currents

flowing through her, and now they’re as much a part of her as her

breath. So she surrenders this last, point to him; perhaps these coloured

silks too will become her.

She stares into the kiln and watches the new colours harden into the

pots.

—Let me take you up tonight.

He shakes his head, tries to brush it off again, but she can feel how few

hours remain.

—You’ve given me this gift, this is the least I can give back.

—Oh, that’s just it. It’s the least.

He tries to turn blithely away. But the house is too small and cramped

for him to avoid her, the atmosphere from the kiln too hot and sweaty for

the tension to release.

—You can’t be afraid ...

—Afraid? No. Infuriated.

The word’s not aimed at her, she tells herself. His eyes were turning

inward again. But with nothing else to do, suddenly the argument is the

most important thing in the world, and she can’t stop her own words.

—Because you’d just be a passenger? You don’t like being out of

control?

—No, it’s more than that.

—Then what?

She swoops in on him, corners him near her bed. If nothing else makes

sense tonight, she swears this will.

—Because I can’t go there.

—Why not?

—It’s not my choice, I can’t. It won’t let me in.

—What does that mean?

—Just listen! Listen ...

His fingers pick up the tortoiseshell lyre, discarded by the bed, and

flick across the strings. Without even looking, he sets up a frantic, jittery

rhythm on the two lowest strings – his face impassive, his hands

agitated. She stands, frozen.

—I can play notes, he says. —As many as you like. I’ve got enough

skill, enough enthusiasm, to make it sound convincing. But I don’t feel

the music. I can’t.

A final flurry of notes, and he pulls his hand away. The phrase dies

unresolved.

—I know the beauty’s there. I can feel it from the outside. A virtuoso

human can play and make me cheer, sob, dance, anything. Overwhelm

me with it.

—It’s something big enough to lose yourself in, she says quietly. —

Like the sea. Or the sky.

He nods, a ghost of a smile. —But it won’t let me in.

He sinks onto the bed, all the nervous energy suddenly drained. Her

own frustration suddenly seems horribly rootless, about to blow away.

He fumbles for words. —I want to join in the dance. But when the best

I can manage is my own limping – flightless – theatrics ...

—But you guided me in, she says uncomprehendingly. —You taught

me.

—I knew the currents had to be there. I could give you a digital

description. But I could never feel them myself, not in a million years.

It’s like she’s falling now, without having taken flight. The ground has

just drifted away from under her feet.

—All the times you described how they felt ...

He grins faintly. —Yes. Well. Glad you bought it.

—But they were there, she tells him. More firmly, then. —They were

real.

—Oh they are. But not to me. You’ve got the instincts ... you’ve done

better than my wildest dreams. But if you take me up there, you’re not

giving me a gift, you’re showing me something I can never have.

And all she could do was meet his gaze and gently touch his cheek, not

knowing whether that would help either.

Alcestis meets the bull halfway.

Before she sees the fingers pointing at the sky, before she hears

someone shriek, she’s darting out from her house, trailing silk, one hand

closed around the shaft of a light javelin.

Above, a low bank of cloud has become a miniature dawn, lit from

inside by orange firelight. The crowds are frozen, staring high.

The ground drops away from her. There’s no sensation of effort, of

pushing away. She’s floating up towards the light – too bright to look at

now – the silk billowing softly around her. Already the wind is blanking

out the cries of the crowd below.

Alcestis gathers speed. Her thoughts are trailing behind her body’s

automatic response: can she prevent the demon from reaching the

ground at all? What would the Doctor think of that?

First, she has to show the creature she means business.

The bull breaks through the clouds with a roar like dry thunder. Its face

is huge, the features sketched in burning orange against a smouldering

red and black shape. The body is a wall behind the head, a mass of

charred meat that tapers like the body of a leech. The legs seem to

stretch and fade down to points, to nothing.

It faces her, snorting plumes of volcanic ash and steam. The wind picks

them up and sends them whirling to her. The monster’s breath stinks of

volcano.

They’re both slowing, reaching the same height. Alcestis is in a world

of air, sky, clouds; she doesn’t dare look down at the ground, not yet.

She lets herself drift, making sure the sun is not behind the bull, not

behind her. It needs to have a clear view of her.

The bull’s brute face contorts in surprise as Alcestis comes towards it,

rushing now, the javelin clutched tight. The wind wants to pry it from

her fingers, the same way it’s whipping the breath out of her mouth.

She knows the bull will not move.

With a roll and a flick she launches the shaft, aiming for a burning eye.

Only at the last moment, before the spear strikes it, does it flinch,

turning its head.

The javelin drives into the bull’s shoulder, disintegrating in the black-

red heat as though flung into a run of lava. Even as the javelin crumbles,

the bull is bellowing. It has been struck. It has been hurt. It can be hurt.

It charges, thrusting a face full of rage at her. Alcestis turns and flees.

She plummets, her arms instinctively flying up above, her head to

streamline her shape. The garment clings to her instead of flapping

upwards over her head; he’s thought of everything. As the streets turn

beneath her, vertigo arrives, trailing panic. She lets them pass over and

through her and concentrates on the map spread out beneath her feet.

She glances up, knowing that the bull will still be high above her – it is.

Despite all its strength, its danger, its infusion of divine fire, it’s just like

the bull in the field. Stupid, and slow to change direction. The pounding

of a bass drum, around which a flute melody can wind.

She allows herself a few seconds to slow before she reaches the

ground. The buildings rise up around her, suddenly, and she’s running

across the dusty ground where a house used to stand, her sandals kicking

fine grey powder into the air.

Despite the devastation, she’s surrounded by half-walls. They chose

this spot because the demons’ last, dance created a maze of rubble and

wreckage. It won’t stand up to the bull’s ageing touch, but it’s

confusing, distracting.

Not for Alcestis. She has been over this ground a dozen times.

The bull breaks the earth like a boulder dropped over a cliff. Dust

explodes upwards, like smoke, obscuring its form. Circling slowly,

keeping her back against the standing walls, waiting for it to see her.

Somewhere here, the Doctor is chasing people away from the ruins. His

part is to empty the area, break up any watching crowds. Hers is to fill

that empty arena with movement and fascination until the bull’s fire dies

away.

It charges, darting out of the cloud with unexpected suddenness.

Alcestis lifts six inches off the ground before she catches herself, forces

herself to hold her place.

This time she can’t grasp the bull’s horns as she springs, flies over it,

face up to the sky, her back above, its back and curving down into the

trail of dust behind it. Landing, facing away from it, turning, stumbling,

almost losing her footing in the powder, wiping the grit away from her

eyes.

It’s better than she could have hoped. The bull can’t stop or turn before

it strikes the wall. It smashes into the stones, then through them, and a

moment later the wreckage of the house comes down on it.

At once, the mound of rubble starts to creak and crack, and suddenly

fragments into a rain of pieces, sliding down around the angry,

struggling figure of the monster. A vision: her own bones like the walls

of that house, crumbling down.

The demon hauls itself out with a satisfied grunt and steps daintily

down from the sand on its slender legs. Its vanishingly small hooves

leave no marks in the dust. The heat of it dries out her eyeballs in an

instant – she has to blink, but even a blink feels too long.

It comes for her again. This time Alcestis runs, cutting across the open

space of the ruins, across the line of its charge. The bull is forced to

swerve: an ugly, grunting manoeuvre.

She runs along a wall, just above, the height of the bull’s head. It slams

its burning horns into the bricks beneath her. The moment’s struggle to

free itself, before the wall shatters and falls like an unhooked curtain,

gives her time to leap over its back and away.

Hot grit beneath the toes of her left foot. Her sandal brushed the bull;

it’s gone. A moment later a sharp pain begins in the sole of her foot,

making her draw her leg up, feeling for the burned skin.

There isn’t time. The bull staggers at her sideways, trying to turn its

bulk. She stumbles backwards, the remaining sandal unbalancing her as

she tries to escape that awkward, swinging weight. She catches her heels

on a sharp edge of brick and tumbles onto her back in the dust.

The bull lowers its head and snuffles towards her, snorting contentedly.

Weight in her limbs. A sharp cold in her marrow. The monster has run

her down, and her arms and legs are too tired to drag herself out of its

path. This dance is done.

She closes her eyes and falls into the sky.

Beneath her, the bull snorts and stamps. Mother Rhea, she prays

silently, send the wind to cradle me, to carry me away.

She turns as she rises, until she’s facing the maze below her. She can

see the people milling about the ruins, a safe margin of clear streets

between the crowds and the battlefield. In the centre of the grey, a black

spot.

The bull clambers up into the sky after her. Its colour changes, the

orange spreading to cover its body, then hot yellow, then white. A

moment later there is nothing but a stinking cloud of sulphurous dust,

blowing upwards, and after that, the winds clear it away and there’s

nothing left at all.

She slows, hangs there staring at where it was, blinking the stain from

her eyes.

Alcestis makes no effort now. The winds carry her in a gentle swirl, she

has no idea for how long. Finally she feels the earth reaching up for her,

lets her feet come down to the ground, outside her own house.

The Doctor is there. He takes her arm and takes her inside, helps her

out of the clinging garment, holds a cool jug of water to her lips. She tips

it right back, flooding her mouth and her burning face, until the dust is

clear of her throat and she can speak.

—No-one died.

He puts down the water while she hangs onto the door frame and

screams into the street. —This time no-one died!

She sags into his arms, laughing. —Not even me.

When morning comes, once the story has spread, she stands, again in the

fluttering silk and reaches her arms around the Doctor from behind. He’s

in his foreign finery, cool and composed in the heat, but she can see the

clouds gathering in his eyes.

She leans over his shoulder, close to his ear, and whispers —Just enjoy

what you can.

He twists his head to look at her and smiles. She’s never before seen a

sun move to hide clouds. —Foolish, really. I should be grateful for what

I’ve got.

And she lifts him gently off the ground. He reaches back and hangs

onto her waist as the street drops away. A moment of vertigo as she

finds her balance, straining with the unfamiliar weight; eventually she

hooks her legs around his, to hold him in place, and tips forward.

Carrying him close beneath her as she soars towards the sea.

She feels the tension and resistance in his back, feels it slowly melt

away. Her chin rests on his shoulder. As she banks, she lets her hips

swing against his, pushing him, trying to pass on to him some of the feel

of the dance. At last, she can fly unencumbered by thoughts of what

she’s flying for.

Below them the town looks no different. The scars still cut through the

squared-off blocks of white plaster, the people are no more likely to look

towards the horizon. Down there Neleus is as mean as ever, Anaxibia no

more likely to spare a thought. No different. But given how different the

landscape could have looked, that itself still feels like a victory.

—Small mercies, she hears him murmur, as he tries to match her

rhythm.

She grasps him tighter as they begin their descent.

—Now, this is the bit I’ve been looking forward to all along, he says.

He’s checked that the same soldiers are on duty at the docks that day,

just so he can savour their slack-jawed astonishment when the unknown

saviour of their city descends upon them. They back away against the

boat, cringing with awe at the sight of her as she settles to the earth. And

she unfolds her wings to reveal the insolent foreigner, who grins smugly

at them and says —Now, about that lift to the palace?

Two: Child

Kaménai: yolk within the white of Thera. Alabaster palace-city gleaming

golden under hot, high sun. Harsh, sulphurous rock against the sky-blue

ocean, softened by fields and apple orchards on the gentler slopes. And

in the midst of the yellow, the blood-spot of the volcano at its heart.

Down now, across the encircled sea towards the gap in the natural

battlements of the outer island. Straight up, the cliffs of Thera wall off

the sky. Here at the inlet, a galley full of king’s-men, sweaty and sullen,

stopping the few loyal fishermen and merchant boats still allowed inside.

No-one enters this sea without a royal pass stamped in clay and an escort

on board. While Akrotiri has been raked by the bulls, Kaménai has

remained at peace. Through this the court convince themselves they will

keep it so.

Here, Alcestis, proud as a figurehead in the bow of the supply boat.

Beside her the Doctor – still pale and untouched despite his time in the

sun, eyes narrowed as he studies the palace crouched against the

mountainside.

Sweep back across the salt-water moat: just above, the docks, a fine

trickle of smoke rises from the temple wing, mirroring the volcano

above. Every hour of every day, sacrifices are made to Rhea Therasia,

long-tressed goddess, for her help in ending the terror. The priestesses

queue at the doors of the shrines, clasping honey, flowers, jewellery.

Twice each week, another flesh-and-blood bull is offered up, so that the

temple wing of the palace has a constant, mouth-watering smell. Even

the servants are receiving morsels from the hecatomb. An act of

desperation smoothed into routine, a machine for converting hopes and

fears into meat and ash.

Children play, acolytes train, goats bleat, kitchen hands haul baskets of

barley. Cats and snakes share an uneasy truce. Councillors whisper for

position. Guards check passes, check faces, search rooms and storage

jars. Round and round itself the palace revolves, its fundamental

rhythms resurgent and unchallenged. In the face of horror it is anchored

firm as the mountain itself in the ocean floor: majestic.

—Cor, says Deucalion.

Glaucus sticks his elbow in his older brother’s side. —Shurrup, we’ll

get thrown out.

From their seats beside Father’s throne, Glaucus looks down at the

strange lady in her impossibly sharp multicolours. She has the strong

limbs of a peasant girl, but the poise of a priestess; her face is veiled

with gauzy linen. One braid of her hair falls over her shoulder, its tip

singed white by the bulls. Is she a barbarian queen? Glaucus hopes so.

—Cor, says Deucalion again. Glaucus stifles a giggle. She’s certainly

worth it – and with his thirteenth birthday ceremony fast approaching, he

might be expected by Father to start staring in earnest – but not when

Nauplius the Chief Councillor is making a speech.

The foreign man with her is pale as a fish’s belly. Some hermit who

lives in a sunless cave? Or perhaps a scholar, who never steps outside

his library? His face is a bit like Deucalion’s, but grown up – playful,

but not soft, full of unexpected angles of cheek and chin.

Nauplius has stopped speaking. Now, a page is bringing the man and

woman forward, where Father can see them. The bull-killer and her

mate. The stories of their exploits reached the court at the same time

they did; the court has been full of hopeful chatter. Glaucus leans

forward.

The man is saying: —May it please your majesty for my name to be

Perdix, and my profession inventor and craftsman.

Father strokes his well-trimmed beard. His face is marked with lines

from frowns and laughter; it’s the laugh-lines that are in play now. —A

wandering genius, then? Struck from the mould of Daedalus?

Perdix smiles. —I’m aware of his work. I believe he designed the

sewer system at your brother’s palace at Knossos? And did some

fascinating things with sails ...

He looks as though he could ramble on like this for a while, but Father

smoothly diverts him. —It’s your skills with bulls that fascinate me.

Glaucus still can’t quite figure out how Father does it – interrupting

people without it sounding like a kingly command. It’s the sort of thing

he and Deucalion are expected to learn at these audiences. How Father

keeps his reputation as King Rhadamanthys the judge, the settler of

disputes: letting everyone feel they are listened to, even as he controls

the conversation.

—Well, your majesty, says Perdix, —I’m afraid I’m only a sort of

executive management consultant in that area. The woman at my side is

the one who’s been fighting them – I’m sure you’ve heard all about it –

and I’m here to offer our services. I can help discover why they’re

attacking, and how to stop them.

Rhadamanthys is serious now. —And this woman is?

Beneath her veil, the barbarian queen seems about to address him, but

before she can speak, the High Priestess Britomartis steps forward. —

That, if it please your majesty, is Alcestis, whom I had removed from

the priesthood.

There’s a moment where no-one moves or speaks, and then the

barbarian queen tears away her veil, to reveal the face of a Minoan

noblewoman. Glaucus would be disappointed, but fire is flashing in the

woman’s eyes as she turns to Britomartis: they could be in for a catfight.

Before it happens, Perdix the inventor darts in between the two ladies.

—High Priestess! It’s an honour to meet you. Alcestis has told me so

much. Apparently there’s nothing you like better than a good posture.

Glaucus and Deucalion are both staring now at the former acolyte.

Glaucus thinks he remembers her from ceremonies at the palace temple.

When did he stop seeing her? One day she just wasn’t there any more. It

often happens that way.

—Why did you expel her? the King wants to know. —What was her

crime?

Britomartis admits: —There was no crime. She could not maintain the

necessary standards. I convinced her that it was not her vocation.

—She seems to have found her vocation now, says Rhadamanthys

mildly. —Tell me, Perdix: can you teach others what you’ve taught

Alcestis? Can you make me more fliers?

Perdix says carefully: —It might not be possible; the talent is rare. But

since you wish it, your majesty, I’ll certainly try.

The King nods. —Nauplius will arrange it. Now, Britomartis: I put the

girl into your hands. See that she’s given good quarters. Perdix, you will

come with me. My sons also.

Everyone rises; when the King leaves, the audience is at an end. For a

moment, the woman takes Perdix’s hand, as if afraid to go by herself.

But he nods at her, and she follows Britomartis out of the council

chamber, her back straight and her head held high.

Glaucus realises that Perdix has caught him staring. Before he can look

away in embarrassment, the pale inventor gives him a wink.

In one of the King’s many private chambers, jars of cold water and

plates of fruit are waiting for them. Rhadamanthys waves a hand at them

without looking, inviting his visitor to refresh himself. Glaucus and

Deucalion wait for a few polite seconds before snatching up a couple of

quinces.

The King sits down and looks hard at the man for a few long moments.

There’s little sign of the laugh lines now. —Daedalus was a murderer.

An exile from his native Athens, for his crimes, who sold his services to

my brother’s court. Daedalus was a murderer, and Perdix the man he

murdered.

—You don’t say.

—You have an odd taste for an alias, if you expect me to know this and

still trust you.

—Not at all. I chose the name of an innocent victim.

—But an Athenian. That alone would raise suspicion.

Perdix says: —I never claimed to be from Athens.

—Daedalus never claimed any kinship with his countrymen either. But

given the chance, he sided with them against the empire. Thanks to him,

the Athenians broke from their place, denied us the tribute that was

rightfully ours. And now, Daedalus has lost everything, and my brother

will pursue him to the ends of the earth.

—I’ll let that be a lesson to me.

Father smiles. —As it has been a lesson to me.

Glaucus munches his fruit, wondering when they’ll stop talking in

riddles. His father says: —I am more than willing to make use of your

services. I’ll keep my mind open about where your allegiance ultimately

lies.

—I’m on the side of civilisation, sire. Which here means the side of the

empire.

—Then given that I am the empire, I can take that as a sign of your

personal loyalty?

—With all due respect, your majesty, if anyone bears the name of the

empire, it is your brother.

Father laughs, a rich sound that turns scalding. —You must be foreign

indeed. While Minos is the king amongst kings, he’s far too busy with

his love affairs and his vendetta against Daedalus to rule. It’s my law

that the people respond to. He claps his hands. —One more duty. I want

you to teach my sons.

Glaucus and Deucalion sit bolt upright. Perdix smiles, genuinely this

time. Rhadamanthys says: —They should have a lot to learn from an

inventor and a traveller to boot.

—I’d be delighted, your majesty.

The King adds: —Also, you will sit in on certain council sessions. I’ll

want your advice on the matter of the bulls. We need a quick resolution

to the situation, before any more damage is done. Help me stop the

demons, and I’ll hand you your own weight in electrum.

Glaucus knows his father is testing the fellow. He and his brother are

already well schooled; will they catch this genius, out in ignorance?

What will his advice to the King reveal about his motives and

connections?

Perdix seems to understand this too. —Your majesty, I can see that

serving you will be a challenge. Which I will most gratefully take on.

Britomartis, of course, is untouched by the years that have passed. Not

an inch of her is less than perfect. From her new sandals, her spotless

and unwrinkled tunic, to her make-up, her hair in its precise bun.

Alcestis wonders if her own age makes it time to wear her hair the same

way.

This woman guided her out of her girlhood, source of all wisdom and

comfort, leading her by the hand towards the warmth of the Titans’

glow. Later, when things soured, she found Britomartis and her

perfection crushingly intimidating, as though the High Priestess had hold

of the floor and could whip it out from under Alcestis at any moment.

And yet, here she is, walking back into the priestess’s quarters: escorted

by Britomartis as an honoured guest of the King instead of an acolyte

fallen just short of her standards. The priestesses whisper and stare as

they pass: here is the bull-killer, a woman like themselves.

Britomartis indicates a small but well-appointed room, the lodgings of

a fully fledged priestess. There is even a serpent in residence, coiled

lazily around a water jug in the corner. Alcestis expected subtle insults,

but where the King is concerned, Britomartis doesn’t play games. She

has even sent acolytes ahead to place fresh flowers and fruit on the low

table by the bed. She can’t have arranged the snake, though: they travel

through the temple precincts at their own choosing.

Nor does Britomartis seem embarrassed by Alcestis’s triumphant

return. But just what status does her returned acolyte have now? And

how close will she let Alcestis get to the gods?

—Since I’m here, perhaps I could assist with the blessing ceremony.

Britomartis shows no surprise, no mocking amusement. She smoothes

the front of her tunic and, as though dealing with any over-enthusiastic

noblewoman, she says: —The priestesses have been training for months

for the blessing. You and I both know how different it is from the rest of

the ritual calendar.

—You and I both know how different I am from your acolytes.

Politely, Britomartis replies: —We must find some place for you, killer

of demons.

Alcestis has never experienced the High Priestess’s diplomacy. With

startling formality, Britomartis continues. —May I ask you a question?

—What is it, High Priestess?

—How is it done? Which of the gods has lifted you up?

Alcestis slowly shakes her head. —Everything I’ve learned, I’ve

learned from Perdix ... He teaches me as though there’s nothing holy in

it, as though it’s only a craft, like the potter’s wheel. And yet, when I

dance in the sky, it’s rapture. Not the rapture of communion with the

Goddess, she says hungrily. —But that’s all I can compare it to.

—It can be difficult to distinguish our personal rapture from divine

ecstasy. (Alcestis has heard this speech before.) —One leads us into our

own dance. The other turns us towards unity with Rhea Therasia. That is

the true rapture: when we become a perfect expression of Her spirit.

—What if our own dance is an expression of Her spirit?

—We are all a part of Her. But we do what She asks, not what we

fancy.

Alcestis didn’t intend to get into a theological debate. —High Priestess,

what do you think about the bulls? Where are they coming from? Who’s

sending them?

Britomartis admits: —At first, I thought it was you. Not Alcestis the

scatter-brained pupil. Alcestis the bull-killer who rides the winds like a

seagull, who appeared out of nowhere.

Alcestis understands at once. —Just as the bulls appeared from

nowhere. You expected me to demand a ransom from the King to get rid

of a catastrophe I’d created myself.

—I was wrong. I don’t believe you or Perdix know anything more

about the bulls than I do. Save how to fight them, how to stave them off.

Britomartis rises, about to leave. Alcestis quickly says: —About the

blessing ceremony.

—Let us wait. You have learned a great deal from another teacher.

We’ll see if your conduct and deportment are enough that you’re able to

speak for the Goddess.

Britomartis takes her leave. Alcestis sits on the bed, staring at the

flowers, unsure if the door has just been opened a crack, or whether the

High Priestess just wants to keep her quiet with hazy promises. It was

how she kept them all in line, the hope of promotion, the chance of

getting a little closer to Rhea Therasia.

***

Later, in his palace room, she tells the Doctor —She may let me take

part in some of the ceremonies at least, with the acolytes. I’ve talked to

some of them. They want to feature me in the bull-dancing.

He’s flopped onto his belly on the bed, facing away from her, feet

swinging idly in the air. His fingers are tracing the spiral wave pattern

around the water-jug beside the bed, stroking across the contours of

seashells impressed into the clay. —This is out of period. Middle

Minoan II at a guess. It seems Rhadamanthys is something of a

collector.

Alcestis takes hold of one of his restless feet. —I don’t think any of the

acolytes are likely to know anything. It would take someone senior to

control the bulls. Never a novice.

—Either that or the servants have stuck me in the rattiest old guest

room possible, where they haven’t changed the clayware in a good two

hundred years ...

She gives up and turns away. It wouldn’t be quite so annoying if the

jug wasn’t so gaudy and over designed.

She needs to talk to him, about the ease with which she’s slipping back

into the palace and its dance. Facing Britomartis, standing in the temple

precincts again, felt so natural. He’s brought this out in her. It’s a

shadow of the same ease with which he’s vaulted up several social

classes, from working the docks to addressing the King in his chambers.

Perhaps for him too, this is a return to grace for a fallen star — except,

looking at him now, sprawled along the bed, she can see how he still

doesn’t quite fit. Part of him is a vagabond in the great halls, just as he is

an aristocrat in the gutter. The only time she’d seen him truly in his

element was that night in the ocean.

It’s so easy for him to play a role, walk through a lie. But whether or

not she can trust him, she still needs him to complete the transformation

he’s begun.

—I need you to teach me to fight men.

He doesn’t respond. His gaze keeps flicking between the workmanship

of the inside of the jug, and the labyrinthine patterns embroidered on the

pillow. One distraction, clearly isn’t enough for him.

She insists: —Word travels fast in the palace. The people behind this ...

Even if they don’t know we’re looking for them, they’ll know we’re

trying to stop the demons. They’ll be coming for us.

—Not nearly up to your standards, he says, squinting into the jug. She

still can’t tell if she’s being heard or not.

—I need to know how to follow through on an attack. How to stop

them...

No response. She grabs the jug and wrenches it aside. It clatters onto

the floor with a crack as one of the handles breaks away. —You can’t

duck and dodge forever.

He looks up: the pitcher had hidden the set of his jaw, the same face

she’d seen in the fields when he’d goaded her into strength. —Oh, I’ll

teach you. But you’ll have to learn that not every blow needs your full

strength. And don’t underestimate the acolytes; they hear all the best

gossip. They may not know where all the bodies are buried, but they can

still give you an idea who’s doing the burying.

And his eyes flutter back to the embroidery, without a glimpse of his

previous cares. She shakes her head in disbelief. Before she can say

anything, he rolls over and looks up at her, his cheeks creasing with a

smile as he heads her off. —If I was passionate all the time, I’d burn up.

The next day begins the parade of volunteers: preening bull-leapers and

giddy acolytes, servants grasping for a better lot and bored nobles out for

glory, almost every one of them young, wasp-waisted, and ambitious.

Each morning, before the Doctor’s lessons to the princes, Rhadamanthys

has him put the volunteers through their trials, to find out if any of them

have the gift for flight.

Which of course he does his best not to uncover; Alcestis knows as

long as she remains unique, both she and the Doctor are indispensable,

and the situation remains under their control. But together, they put on a

convincing show of useless lessons – a combination of the Doctor’s

technique of dodging blows, and exercises supposedly designed to coax

them off the ground. It turns out that, without exception, the would-be

saviours would never get off the ground under the weight of their own

heads.

The two of them quickly grasp the potential. Each day, with suitable

solemnity, she introduces the Doctor – guarding her tongue to call him

only ‘Perdix’ in front of the newcomers – and testifies to his teaching of

her. Then he takes the stage. The well-oiled men from the bullring

hesitate for a moment before compliantly tying the bottoms of their

belted loincloths into an infant’s nappy (to avoid unwanted flapping in

flight, the Doctor tells them). Then she leads them through a series of

positions: eyes closed, wobbling on toes, arms and legs outstretched at

odd angles, unaware of the dignity draining from them with each pose.

Finally, she has them shift their weight just a little too far backwards,

and contemplates the sight of a courtyard full of elegant bodies capsizing

one by one. From high enough off the ground, she can see them topple

in waves.

When the Doctor gets in on the act, it’s never the same stunt twice. He

gets them to bounce up and down and throw their arms about, to loosen

their muscles, while singing silly songs to clear their heads. He teaches

them breathing exercises, just to make them go whoosh. He finds a nice

soft patch of ground, then has them practice falling over till they can no

longer walk in a straight line. He sits catlike, with his legs curled under

him, coaxing them into forming a human pyramid, then tells everyone to

wave. Sometimes he’s right in the midst of it all, flailing about rubber-

limbed with the best of them, baffling them further when they can’t quite

decide whether this is meant to be fun or not.

—Oh come on, he finally says one day. —If I told you to throw

yourselves off a cliff, would you really do it? No, wait, better not answer

that.

And through it all, he makes sure to give each prospective student

individual attention: teasing from them any scraps of knowledge about

the councillors to the King who most serve to benefit from unrest in the

empire; gently digging for any hints as to who might have the skills and

the privacy needed to summon the bulls.

Because Deucalion is older, he carries the beaten-up old helmet, while

Glaucus carries the much lighter bronze dagger. Glaucus chafes; he is

growing faster than Deucalion, now a little bit taller and certainly as

strong. Perdix walks behind his royal pupils, carrying an ostrich feather.

They are climbing stairs that lead to one of the palace roofs, steps

usually trodden only by servants who have to set banners or braziers.

Their arrival sent more than a few servants into a flapping panic. Two

palace guards trail behind them, uncertain whether they more greatly

risk the King’s wrath by intervening or by not intervening.

The test began as one of Perdix’s mock arguments. At first, the boys

had thought he would be a holiday, an easy break from their usual

routine of reciting histories and drawing maps from memory. But the

arguments, friendly as they were, became hard work in their own right.

Perdix would never let either of them get away with saying something

foolish, always demanding to know how they could be sure their

statements were true. They discussed the flight of birds and the nature of

the volcano, the meanings of words and the outcomes of battles – all

under the watchful eyes of their usual tutors or some petty courtier, as

though Father worried Perdix would teach them dirty rhymes.

This morning’s argument was about weights and measures. Perdix

demanded their opinions: did heavier objects fall to earth more quickly

than lighter ones? Deucalion ventured that he wasn’t certain, which

surprisingly seemed to delight Perdix. Glaucus said they should test the

question by dropping different weights, which delighted him even more.

The other children wanted to come to the roof as well, but Perdix

forbade it, instead giving the older pair of twin sisters the job of

shepherding the children in the courtyard below. From the roof, Glaucus

can see they’ve done a good job: the gang of royal and noble boys and

girls stand in a hushed curve, well back from where helmet and dagger

will land.

Secretly, Glaucus feels certain that the heavy helmet win strike the

paving first, but he knows that only the test will be good enough to

convince a man like Perdix. Their new tutor makes them stand at the

edge, carefully, obviously ready to grab either of them if they lose their

footing. The boys exchange grins. Their athletic training has given them

strong balance and cured them of height-sickness long ago.

—I’ll count to three, says Perdix, —and when I say three, drop them

both at the same instant. Ready? One, two, three!

The helmet and the dagger strike the ground together with a mighty

clang. The children cheer and chatter; they have no idea what it all

meant. —What do you think, gentlemen? asks Perdix.

—They might have landed at slightly different times, and we couldn’t

tell, says Deucalion.

—Good point. How could we improve our test?

—Go higher up, says Deucalion.

—Try again with a heavier thing and a lighter one, says Glaucus. In the

courtyard below, the children are already looking around for more things

to be thrown off the roof.

Perdix claps his hands. —Excellent.

—You already know the answer, says Glaucus. —You’ve already

carried out this test.

—Not personally ... a friend of mine.

—And they do fall just as fast as each other! Every time!

Perdix looks abashed. —Yes. The earth draws down all objects at the

same speed.

—Then how? How can we fly?

Perdix puts a hand on Glaucus’s shoulder, as if worried his pupil will

put that question to the test, then and there.

—So this is the source of all the excitement.

Glaucus turns around to see that his father has come up the servants’

steps and is standing on the roof, arms folded, watching them. He and

Deucalion and Perdix all bow. He and his brother trade glances: they’re

for it now.

But Rhadamanthys doesn’t seem angry. —How are my sons

proceeding in their instruction?

—Excellently, your majesty. Their minds are empty of preconceptions

and filled with questions.

—Oughtn’t you to be filling their minds with answers? says the King

mildly. —Now, that I’ve satisfied my own curiosity, you will

accompany us to the throne room for a meeting of the council. My sons

will also participate, as observers. (Glaucus suppresses a groan. He

would rather keep chucking things off the roof.) —We will be debating

the problem of Athens.

Perdix beams, disarmingly. —Then we can all look forward to having

our minds filled with answers.

Rhadamanthys moves in to escort his sons away from the edge. —They

take their city’s name from my half-sister, you know.

—Athena? Oh yes, of course, lovely girl. Tried to give her flute lessons

once, but she wouldn’t stand for it.

—Surely you jest ...

—Well,, yes, actually.

Rhadamanthys laughs, rich and throaty. —One of the disadvantages of

being a child of the gods is that you rarely see your family.

—Oh, I wouldn’t say that was the main problem.

—What would you say, then?

—That you’ll always be a child.

Rhadamanthys glowers for a fraction, then decides to take it with good

humour. —In the divine realm, children overthrow their parents with

startling regularity. (An eye to Perdix.) What though of mortals, who

remain children in the sphere of men?

—We try our best, sire. Gentlemen: one last, thing.

Perdix has been holding his ostrich feather the whole time. Now, he

casts it over the edge, and for a moment it spirals upwards on the breeze,

before beginning a slow flutter to earth.

—Something more for you to think about, he tells the boys with a grin.

The council meeting goes on forever. Glaucus starts to clean under one

fingernail with a splinter of wood. Of course Deucalion has to attend

these sessions as the heir, but now that Glaucus is almost thirteen, he’s

being dragged to them more and more often. They want him to learn

how the court works, how people say things without saying them and

don’t admit what they really want.

He can follow enough to tell how good Father is at this. Of course

everyone says he’s wise, he’s the King after all, but Glaucus can see him

balancing one courtier’s interests against another’s, the way he leaves

them all satisfied with his decisions. Spotting everything in their faces,

but giving little away with his own. Maybe that was one of the secret

things they taught you on your thirteenth: how to make your face do

those odd, distant, grown-up expressions. Deucalion has been doing

those a lot lately, even when it’s just the two of them.

Right now, Nauplius the Chief Councillor, Father’s closest advisor, is

insisting that they must prepare for war with Athens. He’s a skinny stick

who once had a great reputation as a runner and a javelin wielder, but

who now spends all his energy trying to convince Rhadamanthys to do

things.

—Now, that we can defend against the bulls they send, we must press

our advantage, before there’s another attack. Sail our men to Athens’s

shores and bring them to heel. Remind them of what they have forgotten

– the speed of our arrows and the barbs of our javelins.

—But surely we don’t need an army to do that? says Peneleos, at the

opposite end of the horseshoe of councillors’ chairs. He’s a big man but

a soft one, a patron to many of the craftsmen of the city. —They have

gods, we have gods. Petition the Fallen. No need to bring men and ships

into it.

Glaucus thinks he’s got it: Nauplius wants to sail an army over because

he owns so many ships. He’s behind most of the trading fleet based on

Thera. And Peneleos, one of the merchants who already has to pay lots

for Nauplius to ship his wares, is resisting anything that might give

Nauplius even more power and influence. Or disrupt his own trade.

Suddenly Perdix speaks up. —Why Athens?

They’d all forgotten Perdix was there. They turn to see him perched on

the edge of a table watching them, and Nauplius starts to explain to the

foreigner as if to a child.

—They’ve resented us ever since the last, war. Since we laid siege to

them after their part in the death of Minos’s son Androgeos. And now

that their old king Aegeus, and Minos’s son Asterius, have both died,

they’ve declared that we are no longer due our tribute-

—Yes, well, I’m sure they need killing just on principle, but how do

you know they’re responsible for the bulls?

Glaucus perks up, watching the councillors fumble. Perdix is using the

same trick on them that he uses on him and Deucalion: the unduckable

question. And since they won’t even admit most of what they do know,

having to admit there’s something they don’t know is making them turn

all sorts of interesting colours.

He glances at his father. He’s still unsure what the King thinks of

Perdix. He treats him almost like another king. Could it be the new

teacher really is of divine descent just like the royal family? Does that

mean he’s wise, or could he be stirring up mischief? If the gods love

anything, they love trouble.

—Anyone could have asked the gods to bring this down on you ...

always assuming someone like Rhea didn’t just get annoyed off her own

bat, of course. But whoever did this could be anywhere. Why decide

they’re in Athens?

—Well, it’s obvious, declares Peneleos. —They hate us. They have to

live somewhere. Athens hates us. They live in Athens.

Perdix smiles indulgently. —Nauplius hates you, and he doesn’t live in

Athens ...

Glaucus can’t help it – he laughs out loud at Nauplius’s flustered

blustering in his own defence, and Peneleos’s cowlike bewilderment.

Deucalion shoots him a shut-up glance, but it’s clear he gets it too –

Perdix is picking up the same sort of things they’re supposed to, but

breaking every rule by saying them.

Thankfully, Father looks amused and tolerant. His voice cuts across the

others: —Peneleos, you were, giving us your counsel?

Peneleos says: —At the very least, we ought to let the gods decide if

they want to, take action themselves.

But Perdix, his face still sunny, won’t let up. —Oh, surely the gods are

always in accord with what the King decides. It’s a mark of his great

wisdom ...

The King stands, up. Glaucus holds his breath. Everyone falls silent:

no-one wants to, share in whatever doom Perdix has just drawn down

upon himself.

Instead, he dismisses the councillors with a wave of his hand, and

descends from his throne to, close on Perdix – still sitting on the table

kicking his legs like a little boy.

—It’s clear there’s something important that you don’t understand

about our empire. Come with me.

***

The King leads him up and out of the rear of the palace. The grand steps

here are inverted, leading upwards into the slope of the mountain rather

than down to, level ground. At the top, the palace spreads out below

them, a sprawling stack of alabaster cubes stretching down to, the sea.

Its squared-off white turned fiery orange in the sunset.

From there they follow a former goat-track, now painstakingly paved,

folding back and forth up the side of the volcano. The King’s guards

trail far behind, anxiously grasping the hilts of their swords. The light

leaves them halfway up, and the Doctor must stay close to,

Rhadamanthys’s lantern.

—You’ve wondered why the palace is here, says Rhadamanthys.

—Well, it had crossed my mind that an active volcano wasn’t the best

of neighbours. If nothing else, it does tend to, dwarf you.

—There hasn’t been an eruption in decades, and nor will there be. Just

as there hasn’t been an earthquake at Knossos in living memory. And

that stretches back quite a way.

The glint in the King’s eye suggests humour, but his tone says that any

joke is his alone through eminent domain.

The Doctor can feel the heat now, closing in on his skin. At times it

seems to, be radiating straight up from the bare rock of the mountain.

The night is sticking to, him now. Above them, the Doctor can see a

plaster-walled shrine, balanced near the peak, lit faintly red from the far

side of the ridge. The King commands him onwards to, the door.

Inside, and the far wall is missing – an open precipice, with a

smouldering glow beneath. The walls on either side are studded with

fragments of crystal, catching shards of the fire and reflecting them; the

large quartz on the central altar hints at only the tiniest flicker inside.

Past the altar, and the chamber broadens out to, a wide stone lip: the

Doctor is looking down, over the inner cliff, to, the sea of searing

magma stretching across the crater.

Rhadamanthys stretches out a hand towards the magma below.

—Tartarus.

The Doctor stands,, taking it in as best he can.

—Down there the gods themselves are imprisoned, Rhadamanthys tells

him. —The Titans, overthrown by their children for their wickedness.

And we have been blessed with the key to, their gaol.

—Oh, murmurs the Doctor. —So that’s how it works.

His face gives no advantage away, his eyes flick about like a cornered

animal. In the magma below, he can just make out glints of hot light set

amidst the dull red glow – uncountable numbers of the crystals,

impossibly floating in the magma, like a thousand eyes in the darkness.

He allows himself a slight grin. Edgar Cayce would have been

delighted: Atlantis’s crystals of power, just as his psychic readings said.

—The Fallen are ours to, command. The forces of sea, sun, wind, time

– they can all be brought forth by our words.

—So no eruptions, then? Four harvests in a year? Sunshine on a cloudy

day?

—All the best for our empire. We can mould the world as we wish.

They stand on the lip of the volcano: the Doctor at the edge, the King

moving slowly towards him. The Doctor is poised on his feet, ready to,

run. The guards are nowhere to, be seen.

Rhadamanthys smiles, old and wolfish. —And Rhea, the mother of all,

stood with her children at the gates of Tartarus, as they cast down her

tyrant husband Cronus, and all his brothers in power.

He clasps the Doctor’s arm, a gesture of friendliness, an assertion of

strength near the edge. His unsmiling eyes lock on the Doctor’s. —Is

that how you see yourself, Perdix? Overthrowing the tyrant?

The Doctor returns the arm-clasp, just as firm: measuring each other’s

strength. —I’ve always been good with children.

Rhadamanthys speaks simply. —If you return from this precipice

without me, you will be executed as a regicide, and my line will go on.

If I return from here without you, no-one will say a word. That, friend

Perdix, is the only reality.

He releases the Doctor and turns, pacing slowly round the altar.

—You wondered why we do not seem to, fear the gods, continues

Rhadamanthys. —Instead, we respect them, with all the comfort of

familiarity. We have been given our task, and our reward. Beyond that,

our affairs are our own ... but neither do we attempt to interfere in theirs.

You too have your task, and your reward.

—Yes, I do get the point, sire. And let me assure you that I know, my

place.

—Oh, I’m sure you feel you do. But I don’t think that you fully

comprehend mine.

He’s closed in on the Doctor again: punctuating his final word with a

turn and a raised hand: a single small gesture that takes in the temple, the

fiery pit, the island, everything.

—Oh, I do, your majesty. You lay down the law, like a mat you can

walk over without sullying your feet.

Rhadamanthys glowers. The Doctor raises his hands submissively.

—I meant no disrespect.

—Yes you did.

—Well, I can hardly contradict you, now can I?

—You meant disrespect, but it’s the disrespect of the powerless. And

thus I can overlook it. You know, that for all your mockery, you cannot

overwhelm me. You can only pray I listen.

—Oh I understand that.

Now, the Doctor turns to, the King, drawing himself up, to, his full

height. —In this reality of yours, there’s no law beyond force. No

tradition, no agreements, no wisdom, just strength. You welcome that,

because you’re the strongest one. Any rule or treaty or covenant can be

broken on a whim. I haven’t the brute strength to force you to look

beyond yourself, any more than I have the words to describe sight to a

blind man. I can’t even whisper in your ear, ‘Remember you are mortal’,

because word has it you aren’t even that. Truly there is no law at all that

binds you ... except the law of cause and effect. And that’s as immutable

as gravity.

—Gravity?

—... Oh for heaven’s sake. That’s the trouble with the Bronze Age, it

cramps my metaphors. Look.

He takes a coiled golden armlet from his arm, throws it upwards. When

it hits the floor it lets out a metallic chime.

—Throw something upward, it falls. Push something, it pushes back.

Use your power as a club, you’ll have to, hold ever tighter to, keep it

from being wrested away. Resentment – from other nations, from your

own courtiers, from the common people – is earned by your actions, just

as much as trust or respect. Call it fate, call it economics, there are still

forces that remain beyond your control.

He picks the armlet up, again. —Cronus is cruel to his wife and

children, eventually they cast down him and all his brothers. Everything

falls.

And he throws the armlet into the volcano. Rhadamanthys starts,

instinctively reaches to, catch it, but it’s lost in the night. He turns back

to, the Doctor in astonishment – and he’s holding the armlet in his other

hand, a catlike grin on his face.

—Everything falls, he says again.

—Even things that fly?

The Doctor holds his tongue for a moment. —Even those.

The King, takes the Doctor’s arm again, gently this time, escorting him

towards the door.

—I provide for my people. They have the best lives of any people in

the known world. I want to see them free of this scourge, and on that we

coincide. Let that be an end to it.

—Oh, I’m glad to, serve you in this. But like I said, it does not end.

Alcestis hears all about it that night, in his room, as they spar in slow

motion. She hovers, holding contorted poses just clear of each prolonged

blow, learning to, keep her balance in any possible position.

He tells her: —The King’s made it quite clear – the only reason he

hasn’t clapped me in irons is because he needs me to defeat the demons.

Which does rather rule out him being the one behind them.

—But of course he isn’t.

The Doctor raises an eyebrow, still in slow motion. —Why not?

—He’s the King.

—You think he wouldn’t make that sort of sacrifice, if he felt it

necessary? Even after all you’ve been through, on this island,?

—The empire stands, for him. He’s capable of many things, but not of

making himself or the empire look weak and defenceless. No gain could

be worth that.

He nods, thoughtfully. She feels a twinge of surprise that he has

something to, learn from her.

She shifts her balance, goes on the attack: twists past to, get behind

him, pulling his hand behind his back, reaching around for the choke-

hold and pressure point. He wriggles free, his hair brushing across her

face, and gives her a nod and a wink as reward for the move. When she

catches his eyes, suddenly with a shiver she knows exactly why she feels

so off-centre.

—Something wrong,?

She doesn’t answer. Then, slowly, she settles to, the ground.

—The demons will be here tomorrow.

So that night, the Doctor starts, throwing stones into the water. Every

scrap of palace gossip he’s been gathering goes into play: he makes the

rounds of all his courtier suspects, in some cases through their servants,

and plants with each one a titbit about something that one of the other

courtiers might be about to do. A fact specially tailored to this courtier’s

agenda, such that, to seize the advantage, one will feel the need to watch

the other incessantly. Spies and counterspies. No matter which among

them takes time from his routine today to summon the bulls, someone

will see it, someone will know. And the Doctor will notice the knowing.

He may not be able to watch all of them at once, but he has his eye on

the ripples of reaction spreading from any unseen encounter.

They’ve agreed not to tell anyone: there’s no defence the Minoans can

offer to the bulls, nowhere to, hide. All Alcestis can do is prepare herself

for tomorrow’s battle. All the Doctor can do is watch and wait. He

shadows Peneleos, who galumphs after Nauplius, who in turn is keeping

an eye on an ambitious, officious record-keeper named Amythaon. They

form a strangely nonchalant line, each meandering purposefully along

the palace portico. The Doctor grins; from above, on her patrol, Alcestis

must be able to follow the intricate pattern of the palace waltz.

He’s cobbled the entirety of court politics into a single ramshackle

machine, and wound it up, to, see where it will go. But after the first

runner comes charging into the palace with news of the latest attack on

Akrotiri, he’s startled to see Peneleos abandon stealth and approach

Nauplius directly. Their conversation is full of implication and

indirection – a mating dance for poisonous snakes – but the aim is clear:

neither would suggest the other had any control over the bulls, or that

they had any themselves, but they both recognise that if either were to

find any such information, it would be quite possible to work out a

mutually beneficial arrangement for the use of such power, for the

benefit of the empire of course.

The Doctor slumps against a pillar and blinks repeatedly, his mind full

of gears grinding and drive shafts popping loose. This could turn out to

be more complicated than he thought.

Glaucus fidgets. Father had warned that his name would come up,

during this council meeting. He’s the only ‘observer’ this time –

Deucalion is off throwing javelins or some such. To Glaucus, it’s a

surprise that it’s possible to be bored and excited at the same time.

His mind wanders during the opening discussions: financial reports

(wealth), agricultural reports (plenty), petitions from courtiers (trivial).

Then two eyewitnesses are brought in to describe the latest battle

between Alcestis and not one but two of the monstrous fire bulls.

Everyone sits up to take notice as the merchants cringe before

Rhadamanthys and tell how the woman danced in the sky. How she

danced over the buildings, how the bulls’ hooves turned rooftops to dust

where they touched, but how they never quite reached the ground,

furious, captivated. Following her at last, out to sea, sending up great

walls and hills of steam, until all three figures were lost to sight.

Perdix listens to, their story with his eyes closed, a faint proud smile, as

though seeing it all behind his eyelids. He opens them only when

Nauplius, introduces the next subject for discussion: retaliation against

Athens. Again. But this time Peneleos has an idea.

—We don’t have to go to all that effort, for the rivers of blood and all

that. It’s very simple. We unleash the Fallen upon Athens.

His words are met with murmurs of surprise, cautious nods, and one

low laugh that drips acid.

—Oh of course. Let God sort ‘em out.

Glaucus gulps. For a subject to, laugh at the King’s plan of war would

be treason – what would it be for a foreigner? But Father hasn’t yet

expressed his own view. In fact, he’s smiling toothily at soft Peneleos’s

wrath.

—Didn’t you want the Titans unleashed just to combat the bulls, before

Alcestis came? I’m not quite proud enough to feel I can treat unchaining

the gods lightly.

—But the sheer cost of a war ...

(—Finally, mutters Perdix, loudly.)

—... the loss of trade, the workers drawn away ...

—Then go and account for it. Do your sums. You may yet make a case;

I just said I wouldn’t treat it lightly. In the meantime, Nauplius, start

pricing out a fleet.

A ripple of cross-conversation spreads through the councillors, with

Perdix’s voice trying to, cut through. His call for attention getting more

insistent. —What’s the matter – the traders in Athens driving too hard a

bargain?

—You’re quick to speak up for Athens, o schoolmaster, says Nauplius,

lightly.

—They haven’t attacked you, they’d have to be mad to, no-one’s even

tried to invade your empire for centuries. You can’t even see that this is

no less mad than it was before?

But when Glaucus glances round to see the councillors’ reactions, they

are not outraged, or stony, but glancing at each other with hints of

smiles. One even pretends to sneeze, hiding a laugh. And Father? He is

smiling politely, tolerantly, as though indulging the twin sisters in one of

their little performances of poetry. They have listened to Perdix’s words

only in order to make their own opinions seem wiser than the blustering

of an ill-spoken foreign eccentric. If they already know what he’s going

to say, they don’t have to think about it.

Perdix can tell what is happening. He ought to have sunk back into his

seat in shame, but instead he’s holding his ground. —I see, he says. —

One good atrocity deserves another.

Rhadamanthys claps his hands – the signal for a new topic of

discussion – and now Perdix takes his seat again.

—Of the matter of my son’s coming of age, says the King, and oddly,

no one glances at Glaucus.

—Tomorrow my son Glaucus turns thirteen, and becomes an adult. As

Glaucus is second in line to the throne, his training shall be as a warrior.

In these difficult times, we will have need of his wisdom and judgement

in the field. As is the custom, he must know no privilege of rank or title

in the years of his apprenticeship at war. Tomorrow, his name will be

taken from him. After his blessing ceremony, he must see no-one. He

will then travel to Heraklion to serve in our army, where I know, he will

distinguish himself without need for royal name or royal title.

Glaucus realises he has sagged lower and lower into his chair. He snaps

himself upright, not deigning to, show emotion. But his glance catches

that of Perdix, who looks stricken with sorrow.

For the rest of the day, it’s like the ground keeps moving under him. All

the other noble children and their parents keep crowding and

congratulating him, but he can’t escape the strangeness when they refer

to his future as warrior or soldier instead of minister or judge. He has no

idea why Father seems to, have changed his mind.

Even Deucalion seems dazed when he hugs him. Grateful and sad and

strangely distant, as if he has to feel like Glaucus has already left before

he can bring himself to say goodbye. His own brother was little more

than a rumour to him until four or five years ago, when Father finally let

them spend time together; before then Deucalion, as the heir, had been

kept firmly out of sight of the other young children, just as the young

ones were kept apart from the older ones. But in the years since then, as

Deucalion has gone from towering over him to just about the same size,

they’ve become inseparable. Now, Deucalion looks like he’s going to be

lonely again, but he looks away and says he’ll be fine.

Finally he escapes the well-wishers and finds Perdix, nestled between

the tapering columns of the palace portico, staring at nothing. He sits,

grateful to have the chance not to talk.

—I knew it wouldn’t be easy, he finally says, trying to, sound sensible

and wise. —They say making a prince is like making a sword.

—They do?

—Yes. A lot of fire and pounding.

They can’t help smiling at his unhappy joke. —It won’t be that bad,

says Glaucus.

—Oh, it’ll be terrible, says Perdix, eyes wide and serious. They’ll try to

bully every last, bit of doubt out of you. To make it so your first reflex is

to think in terms of fighting. And they’ll keep telling you that only you

are responsible for yourself, because that way you won’t think that

maybe they’ve got responsibilities to you too.

Glaucus is quiet at that. —Will I be all right?

Perdix stares into space, pensively, as if trying to, make up, something

wise to, say. Finally he shrugs, and looks Glaucus in the eye. —I don’t

know which way the wind will blow you. But you can be. And you will

be, so long as you keep an eye on how they’re trying to shape you.

Glaucus shrugs. —I’ve known people who’ve come back from

Heraklion. Procris’s father. He came out all right. (His voice gets

quieter.) —Catreus didn’t come back.

—Catreus?

—Half-brother. They told us he was killed fighting pirates. And we

haven’t heard from Sarpedon – my other one – for a year and a half,

since he went ...

—At least that means he’s probably still alive.

—I suppose so ...

Glaucus plucks up, a weed from the neglected stone. —I don’t mind

the fighting. I’m not bad at it. But they still want me to be more than a

fighter, don’t they? All those council sessions. Learning from you ...

(Unless, Glaucus thinks with a twinge, perhaps Father’s change of heart

is because he wants the generals to undo what Perdix has been doing.)

And Perdix seems to have picked up on his thoughts. —Well, of course

they want you to be able to think for them, use logic to get from A to

B ... but if you question their choice of A, who knows what mischief you

might get up to?

Glaucus manages a smile. —I suppose I can try.

And Perdix’s grin is a rich reward. He stands, stretches, leaning against

the pillar.

Then he mimes pushing the pillar over. Stands back: his finger tracing

in the air the path of each pillar as it ticks into the next, down the length

of the portico, all around the palace. He turns to, Glaucus, and with a

rain of fingers and a burst of noise he conjures up, the sight of

everything above, them falling down around their ears. He’s smiling, but

it’s a strange look – playful or frustrated or even wistful, Glaucus can’t

tell.

—Come on, says Perdix. —There’s something you might like to, see.

Perdix leads him from the palace, into the low scrubland outside the

walls. He doesn’t know, how Perdix managed to, keep the guards from

noticing their departure; his usual bodyguards have been left behind. It’s

an exhilarating feeling, and one he should get used to, after tomorrow.

—The peace you knew, before the bulls, that wasn’t an accident or an

illusion – it was because people found ways to defuse aggression. Other

solutions. Not just go for the obvious and the ugly. Not always, not

perfectly, but they chose to be better than their worst.

—Not often enough, says Glaucus.

—So that’s an excuse for you not to,? snaps Perdix. Then more gently:

—If it was easy, it wouldn’t be a choice.

He raises his hand, and a shape from above, descends towards them.

Glaucus’s eyes adjust to the sun: it’s Alcestis, circling down to land on

her toes before them. She’s poised and queenly, as always. She’s also

embarrassed. She hasn’t talked to him much before now, but he’d never

thought that she might be as awkward around him as he was around her.

Perdix beams. —Ah. Alcestis here has a birthday present for you.

—I don’t usually do this, highness, she says, trying not to study the

ground. —But since you’re leaving ... and you’ve never seen the palace

from the air, I thought ...

He says yes at speed. Before he can think again, she’s crouching down,

and Perdix is boosting him up onto her back. His arms clasp across her

collarbone; her own hands are reaching back to hold onto his waist, and

he’s trying not to let her know how much he’s enjoying this already.

She wobbles, and he can hear her smiling. —Don’t tell your friends, or

they’ll all want a ride. My back isn’t that strong.

And she stands, and keeps standing, and suddenly Perdix is shrinking

away below him, watching him go with a tiny wave and a wry smile.

She holds still in the sky, supporting him, as he looks down at his

teacher.

—He’s very proud of you, she murmurs.

—Is this one more lesson? Before I go?

—Maybe. She turns her head, and there’s a sudden smile in front of

him. —But as for me, I just like the view.

And she takes him higher, swaying in the breeze, and his breath catches

as his home stands, revealed beneath him as he’s never seen it before.

Glaucus’s heart beats hard as he walks. He feels that he could float up,

off the path. His father walks beside him. At this moment, they are like

equals; the son is one with the King, the King is one with his son. All his

brothers walk behind them. When Glaucus lifts his eyes to his father,

Rhadamanthys looks back with stern pride, and Glaucus’s heart empties

of its fear of the volcano and swells to fill his chest.

The three-walled shrine is before them. Glaucus strips off his sandals

and his loincloth; he will meet the gods in the same state in which they

created him. It makes little difference, here in the baking heat of the

caldera’s edge. The others turn back at the threshold and descend the

mountain as the four of them step inside: Britomartis and Deucalion, and

Glaucus and the King, side by side.

The shrine is unlit except for the red breath of the volcano, and the

brilliant crystals in the walls, throwing back the hot light, split into

thousands of sparkles and rainbows.

The ritual is brief. Britomartis intones the pedigree of the gods, reciting

verses of praise after each of their names. Glaucus barely hears her

soaring voice. He’s captivated by the brilliance of the crystals, his eyes

strengthening a little at a time, able to take in more of the light. The

crystals’ net of facets and edges seems like hundreds of doors to him,

like a mighty palace folded up into a puzzle. He rubs his fingertips

together in the dry heat. He wants to throw those doors open, explore the

places kept for the priesthood, grasp every last, mystery of Thera and the

whole world.

Behind him, Rhadamanthys intones the name of Cronus, Rhea’s

husband, Gaia’s saviour, father-slayer, child-eater, Lord of the Golden

Age. The chant thickens in the King’s throat, becomes a groan.

The heat in the three-walled shrine blossoms. Sweat bursts out of

Glaucus, running in rivers behind his ears and down his thighs. He flicks

droplets from the tips of his fingers. He holds his ground; it wouldn’t do

for the King’s son to scare at a mere breath from the volcano.

A moment later the heat begins to sting his skin. Glaucus squints,

pushing his sweat-heavy hair out of his face, resisting the urge to cup his

genitals to protect the tender flesh from Tartarus’s wrath. He looks

around for a reassuring glance from his father.

The fire crystals in the walls flicker like rainbows gripped by a seizure.

They throw their dancing light over Britomartis, over his father’s stony

face.

Their eyes meet. Glaucus can no longer make out the individual sounds

of the chant. He feels a deep, hot pressure, somewhere beneath his heart.

His father’s face melts, for an instant, into a look of deep pride, and

something else. Gratitude. —Thank you, he mouths. Glaucus does his

best to smile through blistering lips.

—In Cronus’ name, says his father’s mouth.

Glaucus flinches. His hands are hurting unbearably. He raises them to

his face. They are the hands of an old, old man, spotted and hooked, skin

hanging thin from aching bones.

Glaucus touches his young face with his ancient hands. His hair tugs at

his scalp, growing, flowing down to the small of his back. His feet are

burning on the paved floor of the shrine, making him shuffle. Smoke

rises up, where he lifts his feet away from the stone. One foot matches

his withered hands, the nails grown into helices, the leg becoming slack

and bent.

He tumbles onto the floor. Tumours blossom through his entire body,

swelling in seconds to press cruelly into tender organs. His brittle bones

break like chalk as he rolls this way and that. He sees a pair of feet

stumble back, out of his reach, and realises they belong to Deucalion.

His brother gazes up, at the ceiling, jaw clenched.

Glaucus curls at his father’s feet. Rhadamanthys is untouched by the

catastrophe. He looks down at the white-haired wreckage of his son with

love.

He steps back as Glaucus’s broken frame smokes and shatters into

ashes and is gone, swallowed alive.

Britomartis places a hand on the King’s arm.

—He never made a sound, says Rhadamanthys. —Not one sound. I

was so proud of him.

Three: Burn

The next morning, Deucalion wakes up with his teacher’s hands round his throat.

He starts, to cry out, then realises the hands are on his shoulders,

shaking him awake. His eyes find Perdix leaning over him, but there’s

no comfort there – just a mask-like set to his face, and eyes looking him

over like something cold and dead.

—How many brothers have you had?

Deucalion whimpers.

—No use prevaricating, we know what happened. She’s very sensitive,

you know.

The fingers are tight against his shoulder-blades. Perdix’s voice is flat

as a stone. He leans back, and Deucalion can see Alcestis above, him, a

spider on the ceiling, black-and-white in the moonlight. She’s staring

down from the light-well in the roof, the open sky behind her.

—Call for the guard and we’ll be gone before he can get in here.

Utterly gone. You’ll never see us again, we’ll leave every one of you to

rot in your own juices. So this is your only chance to tell the truth.

He tries to shrink away into the bedding, to twist himself up, into a

little ball. But the hands on his shoulders pin him flat and, no matter how

much he bends his head or screws his eyes shut, the voice goes on. The

murmur getting louder, harsher, having to fight to keep itself low. The

nightmare that Perdix, his teacher, the cleverest man in the world, is

angry enough to kill him.

—What was it like? Did they throw him into the volcano, while you

stood by and watched? Or did they make you do it? Did you hide your

eyes, or could you not take them off him? Was there blood? Was there

bone? Did they put the knife in your hands, pat you on the back for

being brave? Or did you just not think about it? Did he cry? Did you

cry? Did anybody cry?

He hadn’t cried. Not since the first time, when they told him he had to

be a king. But now Perdix is shouting at him, his own voice breaking,

and he can’t say anything without it coming out as a howl. He can’t say

it. He can’t not say it.

—I didn’t do it! They did it to me ...

—What did they do?

—The Fallen, they summoned them ...

—But why did they come? What were, they doing?

No answer. Perdix’s voice is quieter now, almost hopeless. —What

was it for?

—They gave me the rest of his life.

Silence. Slowly the hands gripping his shoulders go slack. Deucalion

pulls his eyes open, blinks his way through the tears, sees Perdix

blinking as well. He looks crumpled. Alcestis above him, her mouth an

appalled O, clutching the sides of the light-well to keep from falling.

Perdix looks down at him, shaking his head slowly – the rage

transformed, redirected.

—Oh, the thing they’ve tried to make you into.

—They want the kingdom to live forever. The King, takes his share

too. He’s going to live for hundreds of years already. We both are.

Alcestis gives up her battle, settles in a heap at the foot of the bed. She

whispers: —So that means that poor little boy wasn’t the first ...

—Kings have all the children they want. He farms them, on the

servant-girls. And they’re all raised to thirteen to make sure they don’t

die young, that they’ll have a long life ahead ... and then they feed that

life to me. All their lives.

—Thus avoiding nasty little succession battles. All that’s left is his

hand-picked heir. Oh, how elegant.

Perdix turns on his heel and stalks to the wall – clawing at it, trying to

pull himself off the ground with his fingernails. Every muscle in his

back is knotted. When he turns back, flakes of the plaster come with

him, revealing the timber and packed rubble behind. He’s calmer now,

tightly coiled.

—Deucalion? How old are you? Really?

—Twenty. I think.

—So it slows the ageing ...

Alcestis speaks now, from the far side of her hardened face. —So this

has been going on for years.

Deucalion nods.

—And you, little prince, have never done anything to stop it.

—Alcestis ... interjects Perdix.

They still don’t know. She wants to burn him, he wants to excuse him,

but neither of them is even thinking why he’s silent.

—I’m not the first, he whispers.

Perdix kneels beside the bed again. —Not the first?

—I was the fourth son. Sthenelus was first. When I was thirteen, we

were taken up on the mountain. But Sthenelus ... My father wasn’t

happy with him. And when the Fallen came, he had them feed Sthenelus

to me instead.

Now, he’s crying. The tears don’t burst out, it’s just that every bit of

him between the tears and the outside has been levelled.

—And so he keeps you on a nice short leash. So you know just what

will happen if you challenge the status quo.

Very neat.

He rolls over and grabs for Perdix, who hugs him back just as fiercely.

It’s startling how hard and lumpy he is. He looks so smooth. But he’s

holding on to him, and he can even feel a soft awkward hand from

Alcestis on his shoulder. As the whole world quakes they’re steady

around him.

—It’s all right, it’s all right ... well no, it’s not all right. But you’ll be

spared. You’ll be spared.

Alcestis sweeps alongside him, wing-sleeves trailing, too busy churning

to realise she’s not walking. He holds the lantern as he paces slowly up,

the winding track, the palace spread out below them.

She offers: —I could carry you. We’d get there in thirty seconds.

—What makes you think I want to get there before I’m ready?

—Sorry.

The hot breeze is blowing through her, leaving her thoughts tumbling

in its wake.

—How could he? he mutters. —Oh, cruelty doesn’t surprise me, but it

still amazes me.

—People must have known.

—It wasn’t in their interest to think about it.

—So, like the court. Short-sighted. Fickle. No-one looking beyond

their next advantage ...

—Don’t blame the blind.

—They don’t want to see. We’ve got to force them to look, we –

He turns to her, his thoughts suddenly exploding out. —If we topple

the King, while the demons are still attacking, what do you think that

will do to the empire, mm? Chaos? Violence? Retaliation? A search for

scapegoats? And if the truth comes out, what do you think will happen

to Deucalion? Do you really think they’d let him take the throne? Or will

it end up, in the hands of someone like Nauplius – now with even more

reason to be harsh?

The questions come so fast she physically feels the need to duck. He

can’t see how tightly she’s wound, he’s got no idea why.

—There’s always a good reason not to act, she mutters.

—We are acting. But carefully.

He rounds a hairpin bend, then they continue upwards. —We can put a

word in when we reach the summit. If the gods refuse to play any

longer, that’ll put an end to it.

—And that’s it? Leave the King, leave everyone unpunished? Is that

your justice?

—One crisis at a time. The King will still be here, no matter what, but

if we don’t stop the demons ...

—If we do stop the demons, will anyone care to challenge him?

He hesitates at that, and she pushes harder. —We have to tell the truth.

I have to know ... We all have to know, how far it’s gone.

—And if it costs Deucalion his life?

—It’s not just Deucalion.

—But he’s the keystone. Who takes the fall for the King’s hubris? Will

you punish the boy for his father’s crime?

—It’s not just his crime...

He doesn’t notice the weight she’s putting on her words. If only he

would notice, if only he would ask. He paces onward, losing himself in

thought.

A word erupts from her. —Please ...

She stumbles in front of him, touches the ground, feels it unsteady

beneath her feet. Her face contorts. He waits for her words to come.

—I’m forty-eight years old.

For a heart-stopping moment, she sees him look over her body, his eyes

judging her.

Finally he speaks, quietly. —Not just Deucalion, then.

—The blessing ceremonies ... We pass the blessings taken from the

Fallen on to all the people. Extra harvests in the year. Extra years in their

youth.

—With a little extra on top for the loyal priestesses as well ...

There’s a slight smile on his lips. She has no idea what he’s thinking,

what he’s feeling. Whether his words were, meant as dispassionate,

mocking, accusing, even playful. Normally that’s part of the fascination,

now it’s rattling her.

—We always thought they were free. But they can’t have been, can

they? All the years ... all the people ... where are they coming from?

He shakes his head, at a loss. She tells herself the hardness in his eyes

isn’t directed at her, when he finally says —Something else to ask your

gods.

He offers her his hand, to escort her further up, the path, and she nearly

pulls away. She can feel every inch of her body right now, feel how tired

and shrivelled it deserves to be, and even a touch of softness feels like a

lie.

Then they round the last, bend before the sanctuary, and in a dizzying

instant the gods gather her up. She brings her hands together and raises

them to her face in a gesture of delight. The gods are a line of power

running down her spine, a robe of peace wrapping around her heart. In

seconds, all the terrible revelations and suspicions run away like water,

and she’s like a child again, carefree, knowing all is well.

She glances at the Doctor, standing beside her outside the holy of

holies, the three-walled shrine. He has the wide-eyed and itchy look of

someone who’s sure they’re being watched.

—You’re aware of them.

—Yes.

Alcestis can’t help but do a little pirouette on the path. She’s washed

clean by their presence, warmed and fed and comforted. Their gaze is

nothing like a human glance, jealous over petty details, wondering what

advantage she might bring them. It’s more the gaze of someone looking

out over the mountains, powerfully aware and yet detached, at peace.

There’s no deliberate mercy, no personal touch; their very distance is

what makes them cool in the centre of the heat.

The Doctor has wrapped his arms around himself, as though he is cold

on the very lip of hell.

—I know who they are, he says. He tips and turns his head, as though

trying to hear something clearly, a distant song, or an actor from the

back of the crowd.

—What do you mean?

The Doctor sits down on the path, abruptly, rubbing at his eyes. —

There are many ways for evolution to run up, a blind alley. Imagine tiny

creatures that live at the very bottom of the sea. No sunlight, endless

gloom.

—Tartarus, she says.

—There’s only one source of warmth: the volcano, where it bleeds lava

into the sea through cracks at its base. It’s their only food, the only

source of the energy in their world. They cannot evolve further in their

hot, dark, heavy world. And so they evolve outwards ... into creatures

untrammelled by the bounds of mortal existence. Beings that exist

outside of time, able to enter or leave it as they please. (He gropes for a

metaphor.) —As a frog can enter or leave the water of a pond, and can

see the creatures in it from above. Your gods evolved to leave time, the

way that fish evolved to leave the water. Colonising a new environment.

Is any of what I’m saying making sense to you?

—Ah. You’re saying that the Titans came from the deep sea at the foot

of the volcano, and that they weren’t always so powerful.

He looks pleased, but thankfully not surprised, that she has understood.

Mostly, however, he has the look of someone distracted by a headache.

—What I can grasp only through mathematics is as natural to them as

swimming.

She slides her hand beneath his hair at the base of his neck and

scratches, as though he’s one of the half-wild cats that inhabit the town.

His shoulders relax, just a little.

—There are only a handful of them left. The others have all sailed out

into the vortex. These few have stayed ... because of the humans.

Because you amused them. And then one of your people, or one of

theirs, found a way to bind them. They’re tied down to the volcano, as

trapped as any fish living in the hot, dark waters.

Alcestis stands, up, and offers him her hand. —Come inside, she says.

The gems shine like stars in the red blackness of the shrine. The Doctor

stands, near the altar, near the edge, looking down into the magma where

the crystals sparkle like moonlight on water.

With a feeling like a great sigh, the Fallen are, there, all around them.

Their bodies, trapped deep in Tartarus, are nowhere to be seen. But

Alcestis feels the pressure of their eyes from the crystals all around.

They have arrived unsummoned, curious, tasting the air.

—Wings, says the Doctor. —Scorching.

Alcestis touches his arm. —Don’t be afraid.

—There are, so many of them. An entire species in thrall. All looking

at me. All looking to me.

—Pray to them, she murmurs. They’ll hear you.

The Doctor straightens, and his brow smoothes. She can hear the gods

listening, waiting.

—Hello, he says aloud. —I’m the Doctor. And I want you to stop.

There’s a rustling in the glowing darkness, as though thousands of

moths are flapping through the shrine, in love with the glistening

crystals. The Doctor turns, and turns again, as though trying to pinpoint

the source of the sound. But the whispering she feels is just a feather’s

touch inside her head.

Stop what?

The rustling turns to laughter for a moment, then dies away again, into

listening.

—I want you to stop co-operating with Rhadamanthys. I want you to

stop devouring the Minoans’ children and grafting that stolen time onto

the ones the King tells you to.

Crackling laughter works through her, like claws over her flesh.

Alcestis is struck dumb with terror. This is not how you speak to the

gods. You don’t treat them as equals.

And yet, the Doctor is still standing, still breathing.

What is he?

Another wash of sensation: sudden sharp awareness of the wall of bone

around her mind. Constraint, power bound, grounded. No choice. No

food. No freedom.

—I’ll find a way to free you, offers the Doctor.

A mix of laughter, of curious murmurs, an angry buzzing undertone

through her teeth. Alcestis starts praying, silently, worshipping, praising,

pleading. But they’re not listening to her.

—Stop obeying Rhadamanthys. Go on strike! Refuse to do his bidding.

You’re gods – why let yourselves be pushed around by some mortal,

even if he is a King,?

Her bones are, laughing again, buzzing in their sockets, grinding faintly

against one another. Tiny lightning-shocks of disdain through her heart:

the King, not commanding, no control. He doesn’t have the wisdom. He

doesn’t have the knowledge. He’s not the one.

—Britomartis, says the Doctor.

—Britomartis, says Alcestis.

A shiver of certainty.

Alcestis sinks her fingers into the Doctor’s shoulder, suddenly urgent,

unmindful of her gods. —I’ll make her tell us.

The Doctor looks into her face. Despite the dimness, his pupils have

shrunk to points, as though too much light is being poured into them.

—Yes, he says. —That might be best.

She turns without a word and leaps from the ridge outside the door, her

arms spread wide.

The Doctor smiles tightly. He begins to put his hands in his pockets,

before realising that he hasn’t got any. —Now, she’s gone, he tells the

gods, with something dancing in his eyes, —we can really talk.

Britomartis descends into the pit, listening to the earth breathe around

her. From here, the few flickering lamps that light the shrine disappear

from view, leaving only the faintest sense of a glow above her. The full

moon, high and tiny, framed in the light-well in the ceiling above the pit,

serves only to outline rather than brighten.

She takes her position cross-legged on the limestone floor. Around her

a scattering of snakes are emerging from their burrows through the

cracks in the pit walls, but aside from the faintest brush they pay her no

heed. Not for her the vast Python of Rhea at Delphi, who keeps her

Pythia entranced; the gods that Britomartis serves are, small things.

She doesn’t close her eyes; she simply wills herself not to notice the

last wisps of light, and her sight becomes irrelevant. Here in the pit, in

the cool earth beloved of Rhea, all else drops away. The life moves

around her, but she is enfolded, so well secured that she can turn inward

without fear. Here she searches the floor of her mind for any stray

specks of doubt. When she finds one, she picks it up, examines it, and

carefully sweeps it away, till her conscience is as smooth and perfect as

the shrine itself. She sees nothing else.

But still she notices the moon going out. She looks up to see the vast

winged shape hurtling through the light-well, straight down towards her

and feels the hands of Alcestis pull her roughly away from the earth.

They speak without words. The gods are, amused by the need to explain

themselves in equations, the mathematics of higher dimensions. They

find it especially entertaining that to the Doctor, these numbers are

profound, efforts to describe the deep processes of the universe. The

highest expression of which he is capable.

—You don’t belong here at all, he says finally. (He is dimly aware that

he is lying on the shrine’s floor.) —You belong free, in the vortex.

A further flood of terms and factors, hints of the unimaginable shapes

they describe. Timeless things, held within time, but able to be released.

—And, murmurs the Doctor, —you can reach out of your prison to

manipulate time. You can carry out the orders you’re given.

Slow needles of ice through his head, fury stretched through tens of

thousands of years. The shapes behind his eyes collapsing and

constricting to one set of solutions – showing how they can reach

beyond their temporal cage without being able to leave it. How their

powers are restrained, proscribed: their fantasies of ageing

Rhadamanthys to a fossil, of reducing Britomartis to an embryo. The

waves and winds that they could minutely disturb, to reduce the island,

to dust – beyond their reach. Their glory constrained by mathematics.

—And yet you can send the bulls. (He can see it in the numbers now,

the loophole someone has found.) —Bursts of directed chronons. Riding

the currents created by your presence. Can’t aim them at the nobles or

the priests. Kaménai, outside the mountain, protected. By the contours of

the equations. Wouldn’t aim it at themselves anyway. But their

subjects ...

His words are, vast and vague, falling from his mouth like lumps of

coal. The dancing needles in his brain move with precision, certainty,

faster and sharper than he could ever catch.

—But who?

Again he feels the wall around him – the paralysing pressure. No

movement, no speech, no choice. Of course, anyone with the knowledge

to force the gods to obey would also be able to force them to remain

silent.

—So, it’s twenty questions, is it? he says fuzzily. The mouth the words

come from seems so far away. Already he’s sure his skull has been

crushed, his whole self scattered under the weight of the Fallen.

Question one, who benefits?

—Question two, says the Doctor, slowly and clearly. —Who says a

god, has to tell the truth?

—A hundred thousand people in the empire, Alcestis tells Britomartis

through her teeth. —A hundred thousand lives to prolong. Who did you

take it all from?

—I should have seen the mistake for which you were, setting your

course. Long before you got to this point. I didn’t intervene enough once

you returned.

—Answer me!

—Yes, for that I blame myself.

Britomartis’s voice is cool over the wind. Alcestis can feel no tension

in the woman’s body, even though Alcestis’s arms and legs enfolded

around her are all that keep her from plummeting to the ocean. Her

calmness only drives Alcestis harder, her anger drawing sharp whiplash

curves through the sky.

—We know about Glaucus. About the other princes.

—I have no need to justify myself.

—We know about the blessing ceremonies. What the Fallen give must

be taken from others.

—You would judge me?

—Everyone would.

Britomartis turns to look at her, over her shoulder. Her eyes speak of

weapons as yet unused. —By the end, you will know better.

Alcestis grips her heart tight in her chest, trying to keep it from

pounding out of control. Trying to ride her fury with the same instinctive

care with which she rides the currents. If she’s going to crack

Britomartis’s composure, she’ll have to strike with care.

—You wouldn’t hide the act so thoroughly if you had no doubt.

—I remember your childlike eyes, the day I first presented you to the

gods. It was like your first taste of honey. You embraced the sweetness,

with no concept of what it truly meant to serve them.

She reaches back, touches Alcestis’s head, a gesture she remembers

from thirty years ago. Running her fingers proprietarily through

Alcestis’s mass of hair. Alcestis swerves sharply, twisting her head

away.

Britomartis goes on. —I keep the truth from the people not out of

shame, but out of pity. I protect them from the damage the knowledge

would do to those who aren’t prepared. It is the duty of each of us to

care for our fellows ...

—Oh, I know, you’ll make sure I get all the care I need. You cared for

me. Never about me. Never about Glaucus.

—I care for the empire. And now, you know how. My pity for you is

rapidly being exhausted.

Now, the equations whirling through his head are, his own: dynamic

forces, balances of power, the push and pull of the nobles who could

command the attacks. Britomartis, already using the gods for the King’s

own sacrifices – but a servant at heart, one who asks the gods rather than

commands. Nauplius, grasping for power and influence, reaching for

war ... but resisting the involvement of the gods. Peneleos, the one who

has most directly called for the gods to be unleashed, but with no

apparent ambition beyond maintaining the status quo. Who benefits?

—Well, none of them, says the Doctor. —Not like the way you benefit.

You’re doing it yourselves.

Their irritation pins him to the floor, like a butterfly pressed down by a

finger. He struggles to find a breath.

—Well, he wheezes. —That was a good guess, wasn’t it?

They whirl now along the cliff-face of Thera, Alcestis spinning the pair

of them wildly as she pushes straight up along the rocks. Fighting the

currents, the sudden strong down-draft from the volcano. Rock and sky

flash past their eyes over and over.

—How many people? she shouts. —How many did you kill for the

empire?

Britomartis turns her head to look at her. —Wars have causalities.

—You fight a war against our own people? Feed our men their own

brothers?

(A querulous look.) —Certainly not. What do you take me for? (A

pause.) —They came from Athens.

—The tribute? You expect me to believe that seven youths and seven

maidens –

—Is your grasp really so narrow? When I say the years came from

Athens, I mean they came from Athens.

Slowly now, a mile above the island, Alcestis trailing to a stop in the

air as the words wash over her.

—The whole city?

—The half of them. The plague that swept Athens, that ended the last

war. You remember, don’t you?

She remembers standing in the palace portico as young Philonis ran

barefoot up, to her, calling out that the boats were, back at long last.

Excited babble about a surrender and a famine and the end of the siege

of Athens, and the wave of relief that had washed over her.

—You?

—The plague was a winged one. We let the Fallen go forth and

descend upon them.

She feels her grip beginning to slacken, and redoubles it. The ease and

certainty with which she held the currents has deserted her. She’s

overbalancing in the air, losing her sense of up, and down. If she loses

her hold on the currents, there will be nothing left to do but fall.

—Even the children?

—And their children’s children, and all the children they would now,

never have. All those years came to us by right of conquest, through the

gods.

For a moment she feels a knot untying in her stomach. Not Minoans,

not her own people; foreigners, outside the law, far away across the

water.

Then it’s as though she hits a wall. Men killed not with swords, not

with rocks or javelins, fighting to defend their women and their homes,

but turned in an instant to diseased and crumbling powder. No songs. No

funerals. No-one to remember them at all.

She stood on the palace docks the day their men returned. The war had

never reached Thera, but she cheered their return, all alive.

She cries out: —We were never in danger from Athens! Not then!

—You think not?

—The war was for justice, not survival.

—They are implacably opposed to our way of life. To our prosperity,

to our law, to everything we value. I would defend our world with any

means at my disposal.

—They aren’t barbarians –

Britomartis cuts her off. —The Athenians worship children. They cast

Rhea Herself aside to kneel at the feet of her upstart son. They would

rise up against her, against us. And while Rhea would stand with her

children to overthrow her tyrant husband, she will not allow herself to be

overthrown in turn.

—And so you do this in her name? You think she would approve?

Britomartis smiles. —Do the crops still flower? Are the bulls still

strong? Do Minos and Rhadamanthys, and their children still prosper?

Then you have your answer.

—Your answer is in the thunder of the hooves.

She feels, rather than sees, Britomartis’s eyes. —Be careful which

answer you listen for. Do you remember when we unleashed the gods?

—How could I?

—Because you did it.

She stares, not in disbelief, in simple incomprehension.

Britomartis turns in her grip, bringing her mouth up, to Alcestis’s ear.

—Three weeks before the return. The victory prayer.

She remembers it: all the priestesses crammed into the peak sanctuary,

whirling through the dance while Britomartis led the chant of a ritual

they had never heard before. On and on for hours, intoxicated by the

nearness of the Titans, following her own footsteps over and over till her

mind lost any sense of time. That day, she had been intimate with the

divine. For just a moment, the earth had no hold on her.

—You’re saying that I ...

—It was your minds that freed the gods to strike. The dance that let

them take flight.

She stumbles, with no ground beneath her feet. There’s nothing to

catch her as she tumbles forward. Her grip loosens, unthinking, but

Britomartis has grabbed onto her just as fiercely, refusing to let go.

—I didn’t know ...

—It doesn’t change what you did.

They’re there before her eyes again, turning into filthy ash. —I

wouldn’t have!

Britomartis shakes her head, blunt, certain. —Remember the dance.

Your clarity in the midst of it. If I’d told you then, you would still have

known it was right. You wouldn’t have stopped.

She’s reeling now, spinning end over end, the blood crushing her inside

her head.

—You’ve felt the life flow through you on the blessing-days. You’ve

seen the joy on the faces of the people. You all but demanded to be let

back into the gods’ presence, but to do that, you must know, your part in

it. You must face what they do, and know, that it is good.

There’s an avalanche thundering under his skin, unstoppable, a gloating

certainty. He’s almost crushed beneath it. The bulls will keep on

coming, and eventually Rhadamanthys will have to send the Fallen to

fight them. The last, time the gods were, let out on a leash, they learned

how to slip it. Never again, will they be imprisoned.

And Alcestis – paper-thin, a leaf in their hurricane.

He forces himself back up, on his hands, tries to plant his feet, ends up

spread-eagled again, a fraction closer to the door. Head throbbing with a

certainty that he can’t stand.

—Don’t underestimate Alcestis, he tells them out loud. —She’s made

of steel.

Something laughs at the anachronism, buzzing its way down his spine.

—Of bronze, then. If you kill me, she’ll come for you. I’ve been

teaching her more than just bull leaping ...

A thousand horrors burn through his head: her deaths by fire, by wind,

by sea, stone or time. But only here, he reminds himself. Only near the

sanctuary can the gods reach them. Where the equations balance to zero.

Keep her away and they can’t touch, her.

He fights his way up, onto one elbow, turns back to the burning rim. —

There’s no need for this, he says. —Let me help you, you can go in

peace ...

Their laughter forces his face down against the floor, as though pushing

it into a page of sums. As the flood of patterns swells again, he screws

his eyes shut, but there’s no way to stop seeing once the horrors are, past

your eyes.

—You still think you can end this? shouts Britomartis. —Make the

world shine through your child’s eyes once again, Every man, woman

and child in the empire has drunk deeply of the blood you’ve ladled out

to them. It has become their life. Will you now, take it from them?

With a howl Alcestis doubles over, hurls herself downwards, riding the

down-draft headfirst towards the island. The wind tears at her eyes, tries

to rip the skin from her back, but she pushes herself even faster.

And Britomartis goes on barking in her ear. —That’s the last bit of

growing up you need to do: to learn that every gift we have for ourselves

is built on pain. And that no matter how much you whimper, you won’t

give those gifts up.

The ground of Thera is spinning up, beneath them. No matter how hard

she turns, Britomartis will not shake loose. There are, only moments of

life left, and she twists herself towards the cliffs overlooking Kaménai,

aiming right for the edge, and as the rocks hurtle towards their heads,

she gives her answer in a final shriek.

— You did this!

With a dull crump Britomartis is ripped from her grasp, and there are

rocks shearing past her belly as she plummets onward, till she finally

pulls away and spirals upward over the ocean, her momentum running

down to nothing, her cries fading to the endless keening wail of a

seabird.

They push the numbers through his mind, or his mind through the

numbers – he’s not sure which. The questions run faster and faster,

figures spiralling upwards, potential temporal energy bursting outwards

– all the death and disaster, forced aside for so many years, breaking

free.

The volcano, erupts, as it should have erupted. The island, is gutted.

Akrotiri is buried under ash and stone. The sky is carpeted with soot,

locking out the sun. Doomsday has arrived.

The gods won’t stop the helter-skelter of mathematics tearing through

the Doctor’s consciousness. They are, too gleeful, painting him pictures

of the island’s inevitable destruction, hauling his struggling mind above,

the numbers into their own incomprehensible raw perceptions, like an

amoeba crammed with quantum mechanics.

He crawls out of the shrine, blind eyes screaming full of universes.

They don’t want him to go; they can’t reach much beyond their

sanctuary. He’s got to get more distance between him and them. He

can’t lift himself up and he can’t see or hear and he’s not even sure

which way is up; there’s no way he can make it back down the path.

Much more of this and he’ll be mad or dead, the centres of his brain

melted like ice in a cup of hot tea.

He pulls himself along with his fingertips, clawing them into the earth

until they find empty space. With a violent lunge he propels himself over

the edge and into sanity and silence –

Finally Alcestis goes back to the body, and sits rocking in a ball for a

while.

She has to nerve herself to touch, Britomartis’s remains. The way she’s

landed, on her side, with arms and legs all skewed, she looks like a

sacrificial offering on the altar of the rocks. The moonlight is just barely

bright enough for her to see how Britomartis’s head had been pulped by

the impact. Alcestis turns away to retch, but her throat is too tight for

anything to escape.

Finally she gathers herself enough to push the body the few feet to the

edge. It disappears into the darkness without a sound. Then she stands,

herself on the same rocks, arms spread out, and falls forward, following

the body. Perhaps a hundred feet down she lets the currents spare her,

and carry her home.

He lies on the path, unwilling to stir. The fall from the ridge to the first

switchback of the path below was not great, perhaps twenty feet or so,

but his return to consciousness was slow. Down here he’s beyond their

reach, but he can still feel the emptiness in his head, where they pushed

him aside to make space. It reverberates with an all-encompassing sense

of something precious lost.

He drags himself to his feet, reeling like a blinded man, and stumbles

his way home.

She tries to tell herself that she didn’t mean to do it. She knows she did.

She tells herself that Britomartis deserved it. Oh Goddess, how

Britomartis deserved it. To be harried to the ends of the earth, repelling

every creature she meets as they see the stain of guilt across her.

When Alcestis reaches the palace on Kaménai, she lurches to the

ground in the courtyard, then pads silently through the portico towards

her room, a moonlit ghost in blood-and-bone silks.

The Doctor is a heap on his bed. Arms tangled across him, one bony

elbow sticking up, cheeks thin over his skull. For a moment he looks like

Britomartis did, and her mind just refuses to form any more thoughts of

any kind.

Then he moves his head, a blind man following a sound. She sits on the

floor against the bed, her knees up, to her chin, her head close to where

his lies. Neither has the strength to touch.

—She deserved it, she says, her

voice weak.

He shakes his head slowly,

—She killed so many ... She killed

blankly.

so many, and who am I to say my

—They’re so big.

hands are, clean? Who am I to

—And there are, so many of them.

judge?

All towering over me from the

She shakes her head, too drained

inside.

even to doubt. —Who am I to

—I can be tiny in the ocean and be

judge? I’m anyone. Anyone can

at home. But Oceanus didn’t just

judge.

show me the ocean, he was ocean.

—But then I have the strength to

—Every ocean I’ve ever seen, and

carry it out.

I’ve seen so many.

—Yes. Which means in their eyes,

—That’s the trouble with

I have the right.

polytheism,

you’re

outnumbered ...

—Yes. If they want a world

With a cringing shudder he pulls

where they can put their own law

his eyes away from whatever he

aside, and have justice lie down

alone can see, then focuses

before strength, then they must

blinking on her. —Sorry, he says,

accept that their strength must lie

his voice a ragged croak. —Did I

down before mine.

just miss something vital?

But it’s too much to repeat, and she lets the thought grow cold and hard

inside her. Now, she tells him about the victory prayer, about what she

did, and the words come out flat and lifeless.

He hunches his body over in the bed, bending to meet her gaze. I’m so

sorry, his eyes say, and say it eloquently, but there’s no reaction on her

own face. When he actually has to mouth the words, I’m so sorry, it’s

like an admission of defeat.

He has no strength for anything more. His head sinks sideways to the

bed, his eyes drift closed.

—What do I do? she asks.

—There are, ways to live with it.

—I’m not living with it, I’m dead with it.

—That too shall pass, he says faintly.

—A hundred thousand people, she cries. —How would you know,? His

eyes open just a hair, and all she can see in them is the dead white. —

Believe me, he says, in the raw tone she now, knows from her own

mouth.

The eyes drift shut again, and the words start flowing out more freely.

A polished answer now, almost a glib one. —Time is fire, when I stop it

burning in one place it spreads to another. A decision I make tonight

could affect whole civilisations thousands of years hence. It happens

everywhere I act. Empires live and cities die in the spaces between my

thoughts, all unseen. I’ve killed far more people than I could ever know

about.

—How can you deal with it?

—I can’t, he says, almost gently. —You can’t either.

Now, she’s feeling. Her body’s betraying her, curling inwards and

shrivelling like a leaf in a fire.

He goes on. —It’s not the sort of thing you deal with. Compensate for,

perhaps, like a man with an arm cut off. Or an old man whose memory

has gone. You find a way to live without the part of you that you had

before – the part that was sure of your innocence. But to deal with is to

resolve, and I’m no good at resolutions. Just at moving on to the next

moment.

—But it’s so big ...

He can only nod. —They are.

And it’s too big to think, waves crashing over her head, and all she can

do is reach up, to his face, her fingers through his hair, and try to pull

him to look at her from inches away. —I’m falling, she whispers. —

Catch me.

—I can’t.

So her voice cracks, spilling out all the anger and ugliness she always

knew was in there. —You brought me here. Put me up, so high. How

can you turn me into this and make me face this and then just drop me?

—You’re looking for absolution, I can’t give it. It’s not my place, this

isn’t my world. I’m not the one who suffered. I can give you an ear, a

word, a shoulder, sympathy, companionship, magic tricks ... but I can’t

be the one to forgive you.

She laughs, a choked sob. —Who’s left to forgive me? The children

who’ll never be born? The survivors who watched their friends burn to

the ground?

He just lies there, shaking his head, a tiny bony creature. She feels

herself falling again, plummeting through the floor. —Even the gods

wouldn’t forgive me. Why would I need forgiveness for their moment of

freedom?

—Oh don’t worry. The gods hate you, but it’s nothing personal.

It’s not possible, not possible at all. But he won’t stop. —They hate

you like you hate mosquitoes, or a stuck door. They hate all their

gaolers. And they’re ready to scour you and all your empire from the

face of the earth.

She hesitates before she speaks. Not because she doesn’t know, what to

say; the thought is already there unbidden. Not because she has any

doubt about it; just a faint feeling that perhaps she should have doubt.

But she searches for it, and can’t find it, and lets the words out.

—We deserve it.

—No you don’t, he says, but too fast for him to have thought about it.

She turns, leaning her chin on the bed inches from his face, and repeats:

—We deserve it.

Now, he opens his eyes, realising she means it, that this isn’t just idle

despair.

—They’ll turn your island, to ash. Rain fire down on the guilty and the

innocent alike –

—There are no innocent. Everyone in the empire is living on stolen

time.

—They didn’t know –

—Neither did I!

—So let yourself off the –

—It doesn’t change anything, it has happened. We’ve all profited from

the crime. Everyone from the King, to the lowliest slave. Every farmer,

every sailor, every whore, every infant. We all have to pay.

—It would be a slaughter.

—It would be just.

—It’s never just anything.

He’s struggling up, on one elbow as he talks, trying to reach her. —

Releasing them would be only the beginning. They’re a completely

unchecked force.

—We already have an unchecked force in the palace. The gods are the

only ones who can bring any kind of justice –

—They’re no more the ones to judge or forgive than I am. That’s

something for you to work out among yourselves –

—It won’t happen! she cries. And she’s filled with rage at him for

fooling her for so long, for making her believe in something better. She

whirls to her feet, pacing and shouting. —I know, just what these people

are. We’ll do anything without thinking about it. That’s what led me into

the dance. That’s why it all needs to end.

—No.

He glares at her, and she realises it’s taking every bit of his strength.

His eyes are, still fiery, but he’s so battered he can’t even sit up.

—There’s another way. I’ve been finding it all my life ...

And she stands, there, a laugh freezing inside her, as she feels the last

scales fall from her eyes. —How old are, you? she whispers.

He just looks at her, lost.

—All these lives you’ve led ... who has died to keep you in them? How

many souls has it taken to keep you acting like a child? How old are

you?

And she can see the years behind his eyes. —I’m afraid I’ve lost count.

She sees nothing more to say. She stalks to the door, ignoring his calls

to her, and throws herself into the sky till the island, is far behind.

Four: Stone

Midnight, the Doctor in his forge, face lit only by the fire as he weighs the

chunk of iron in his hands.

The inventions that Rhadamanthys needs could be fashioned out of

bronze; they’re more or less within the range of contemporary

technology, so his sense of guilt is minimal. He has just finished

pounding out a large flat sheet, ready to be reheated and bent into the

appropriate shape. But the things he requires for his own purposes will

take more than the Bronze Age can provide.

Already he’s driven the smiths from this forge, with Rhadamanthys’s

blessing, to protect his craftsman’s mysteries – and to hide the changes

he has made to raise the temperature in the furnace. So now, he works

alone. He moves slowly now, leaning heavily to support quavering legs:

his face and chest streaked with grime from his labours, his body still

not fully recovered.

The charcoal bed rests among the flames, ready for alloying. Even a

glimpse of this secret could give Minos’s empire an unchallengeable

edge, weapons of a strength that could throw all of history off balance.

But if he’s going to face the gods, or even Alcestis, he’s going to need

steel.

He casts the iron into the forge, and lets it play with the fire.

Midnight, Alcestis at her kiln in Akrotiri. With no clearer idea of what to

do, she has returned home, to lose herself in the motion of her potter’s

wheel. Now she hovers over the vent in the top of the kiln, her eyes

fixed through the heat-haze on the batch of cups inside, watching as the

fire sears away their last traces of softness. Wonders how long it would

take to make a thousand cups, ten thousand, a hundred thousand.

This will pass, she tells herself again. This will pass. This isn’t the first

time in her life she’s felt so sick about the world that she wants it all to

erase itself. It’s just a moment, it will ease.

A thousand cups would cover the floor around the kiln. Ten thousand

wall her in, her own hands endlessly shaping more. A hundred thousand

blot out the sky, bury her alive, no way to move, no way even for a

moment to end.

A thousand cups. Ten thousand. A hundred thousand.

If the soldiers come for her, she has faith in her ability to vanish. It’s all

she has faith in now.

At the marketplace, Pelopia has welcomed her, back into the fold. Like

everyone here, she has no idea of the name of the colourful bird who has

been saving them from the bulls. She bustles round her stall, arranging

her linens artfully. —Oh, you’re well away from that one, let me tell

you. He’s a beauty all right, and they never last.

—I thought I was a beauty. You said so.

—Well, that’s different.

—So was he. At least I thought so.

—Oh, I know, how all the poems go, chuckles Pelopia. —Milky-white

skin, a high ivory forehead, a neck like polished marble ... Well, milk

curdles, dearie, and marble cracks with age. Even here.

Alcestis moves an amphora a handspan to the right, then back to the

left. In the light of day, it was likely he hadn’t known where his youth

came from, any more than she had known. But, either way, she’ll have

to work this out away from his eyes, his words. Even if he was guilty,

she’d still end up believing him. And she still feels the cinder in her

stomach from the moment when he had refused her the comfort or

answers she needed.

—He taught me a lot, she says.

—I’ll just bet he did, cackles the weaver.

—No, no ... Do you know, what I found out? I found out the source of

all our blessings. Our riches and our long, long lives.

—Rhea, of course.

Alcestis looks up, at the weaver. —In a manner of speaking.

Pelopia is troubled by the look on her face, busies herself with dusting

a display. —What are, you getting at, girl?

—We stole it all from Athens. We killed them and took the remaining

years of their lives. The gods did, at our command.

—Well, we were at war with them.

Alcestis stares at her. —This isn’t the same as conquering a land and

carrying off tribute. We took their lives.

—Well, how is it any different? (Alcestis says nothing.) —It’s a shame,

I suppose. But that’s the price you pay in war. Besides, the Athenians

don’t place the same value on human life as we do – after all, they do

have less of it! They’d have done the same thing to us, if the gods had

been on their side.

I can’t believe it, thinks Alcestis. The terrible secret, the awful

revelation, and her fellow Theran barely batted an eyelid.

She tries again, with Nisus, young Nisus the big hero of the fourth

attack. The uncertain days have worn him down; he’s lost weight, and

there are furrows under his eyes. He tells her she’s lost her mind.

She confronts the lay preachers, shouting back at them, telling the truth

about their gods. In moments they pick up her cries, turn them about. It’s

all just confirmation of what they’ve been saying all along: everyone

else is guilty. The truth is soon washed away in the torrent of their

words.

Neleus the innkeeper is already drunker than any of his customers. He

doesn’t dismiss her, but nods sagely, grumbling under his breath.

Something in his glazed eyes tells her, that he believes her, he finds it all

too easy to believe. But it’s so frightening, he can barely move. He just

shakes his head, and goes on shaking it as she walks around the inn,

forcing her, message on them. Don’t any of them understand? How can

life just go on?

She stumbles outside and stares around the marketplace, at all the

women and children. Are they all the same? Not even bothering to feel

defensive, no longer even thinking about how frightened and angry they

are? Would any of them even think of the women and children of

Athens? Of the men who watched their families die and watched their

own limbs shrivel? Would any of them even wonder who fed the

blessing ceremonies in the years before Athens – people now, so

destroyed that they can’t even be named?

Oh, she knows what they feel: she’s felt it herself. Hates the taste of it

in her, mouth. She had always been able to go on because she knew

there was nothing else, she could do. A glib, comforting bitterness, the

protection of knowing you’re powerless in the face of it all. Even now,

she feels it: the rock-hard certainty that, for all her rage, there’s nothing,

nothing she can do to shift the balance and bring it all crashing down.

But now, it’s a horror rather than a balm.

The Doctor’s awakened her, turned that intolerable numbness into an

even more intolerable fire. Sent her out of control. Her insides twist even

tighter. How could he force open her eyes with no regard for what she

would see?

In her mind’s eye, she sees the crowd falling like grain before a scythe,

the space becoming empty as bodies pile on the paving. That’s how it

would have been in Athens: the swift poison of unleashed immortals,

slurping up years. In one moment, the picture of dead Minoans puts

peace in her, heart; the symmetry, the justice: the stolen years stolen

back. In the next, she sees their faces, sees them pale in the dust with

empty eyes, and she cannot tell Athens and Akrotiri apart.

—That’s why the bulls are coming, she whispers.

—Of course it is. (Pelopia puts an arm around her, shoulders.) They

hate everything about us. Serve them right if there was another plague.

Could help with the war.

She’s aware she’s shaking, she feels Pelopia inching her, arm back

towards her, stall. —I know, I know, the hag is crooning, gently. —It’d

be lovely to go back, to when we thought the world was safe and we

could afford to be nice. But we’ve learned better now, dearie, and that’s

what matters.

And she has.

***

Deucalion slips away from his bodyguard while down at the Kaménai

docks. He’s spotted Perdix just around the bend in the island, looking

out to sea from the ridge of black rock, and has to go to him.

He hasn’t had a chance to talk to Perdix, not properly, since the night

he cried. The next morning, he sneaked out to reach their room, but

outside their door was a flock of flapping servants, saying that Perdix

was deathly ill and Alcestis had gone in search of distant help.

Apparently she had taken Britomartis with her as well, perhaps for

guidance. Eventually Perdix recovered enough for the lessons to begin

again,, but always under the watchful eyes of others. And throughout it

all, Deucalion has been kept busy with a whirl of social crises, daily

obligations and warnings of threat – not giving him any time to

remember that anything was ever any different.

So now he’s found Perdix alone, gazing out to sea through the gap in

the circle of Thera – staring at the horizon as if he stood on his toes he

might just be able to peer over it. Deucalion knows the expression; he’s

seen it on Glaucus as he gazed out of the window during a council

session: a flattened longing for any place that wasn’t this one.

—Ah, Deucalion, says Perdix faintly. —It’s good to have you here.

He looks untouched. His skin is still impossibly pale and smooth, his

face no older. But he’s leaning heavily on a carved stick, and Deucalion

can see the tightness in his arm muscles as they support his weight. He’s

fighting to keep the shaking under control.

Deucalion looks at this old body hidden under this young man’s skin,

and wonders if this is how he himself will look in a hundred years’ time.

An egg that’s gone off inside its perfect shell.

They sit together, on the volcanic rock, and for the first time ever,

Deucalion can talk.

—I didn’t ask for this, he says.

—Well of course you didn’t. I can hardly imagine someone who

would. Well, I suppose I can, I mean I’ve met them, like your father, but

somehow that still doesn’t mean I can imagine them, you know, what I

mean?

Deucalion likes the way Perdix looks at him just then. He’s talking like

he’s just another person, not a grown-up.

Perdix has in his hand a pile of stone chips, the black and grey rock of

the Kaménai volcano. He keeps tossing them out into the bay, trying to

skip them across the water, but he doesn’t have the knack; his hands

have too much tremor in them. Stone after stone hits the surface and

disappears, even the ripples vanishing in the chop of the water.

—How could he do it? asks Deucalion.

—For the empire. For himself. I suppose if you stare at the two long

enough it’s possible to lose the difference.

Another stone vanishes with the others. Perdix tells him what his father

did to Athens, and Deucalion feels little more than a sort of numb

acceptance. Glaucus’s crumbling face is still so raw in his memory that

multiplying it by tens of thousands of faces just seems like the next

logical step. Perdix goes on to tell him about the gods, the senders of the

bulls, and even that great betrayal simply seems obvious in retrospect.

—So many ... whispers Deucalion. He can’t even look at Perdix. —I

should have ...

—Died?

—Tried something ...

—Same thing.

Perdix steeples his hands, and rests his chin on them, looking out to

sea. —I’ve had to see things happen, let them happen ... even make them

happen ... because I knew at that moment there was no other way.

—And people died?

—Oh yes.

—But it wasn’t your fault, Deucalion says shakily. —You didn’t ask

for it. And you didn’t have to do it yourself, did you?

Perdix’s eyes look sideways, weighing Deucalion. Deucalion shivers,

as if Perdix can see straight through his question to the fear beneath: the

thin hope that, so long as there’s some bit of distance between him and

the crimes committed around him, he’s not damned.

Perdix, old and weary, answers —Mostly, not.

Suddenly even having a chance at hope seems like such a precious

luxury.

—A question for you, continues Perdix, his voice returning to

something like his old tutorial tone. —Say you know, something

infinitely bad is going to happen, whether or not you do anything. And

you have the choice of refusing to take part, and dying for it, or taking

part and trying to ease the horror down the road. Which is the lesser

evil?

—I suppose it’s better to live and do something, says Deucalion –

hoping that Perdix means his choice was the right one.

—And if you can find a third choice? One that’s less evil?

—Well, then you should take it.

—Even if it’s still about the third most evil thing in the world?

Deucalion blinks. He’d thought this was about making him feel better.

But looking at Perdix, that doesn’t seem to be what’s on his mind at all.

He keeps staring across to the clifftops of Thera, searching the skies.

—I suppose, says Deucalion.

Now, Perdix turns, to look at him, his face childlike and serious. He

nods slowly. —Yes, I suppose, too.

The look on Perdix’s face leaves him even more unsteady. Somehow

he always assumed, when Perdix was asking him and Glaucus all those

questions, that Perdix knew the answers himself. And when he began to

confide in him about his own complicity, he thought that meant Perdix

knew a way to deal with it. When in fact all he had was the gift of still

being there to be able to ask the questions.

And Perdix throws another stone, trying to make it skip, and it too

vanishes into the bay. Now Deucalion sees the tightness and

concentration in the muscles of his hand. He’s training himself,

Deucalion realises – dragging his body back to fitness, struggling to be

ready for whatever is going to happen.

—So it’s better that I’m alive, says Deucalion. He wonders how far he

can take this. —And it’s better that I’ve still got everything I have. It

wasn’t me who stole all the years, I didn’t ask for it.

Perdix says nothing.

—It was all before I was born. So they’re all long dead, so it’s all right

for me to keep my years, isn’t it? It’s not like I could give them all back

and make it all right –

—Wrong question, snaps Perdix.

Deucalion jumps. But Perdix’s voice, while hard, is not angry. Perdix

reaches out and turns Deucalion’s head, towards him, locking eyes with

him.

—You’ve been given these gifts whether you like it or not. You can’t

give them back. Not your wealth, not your food, not your life. All that’s

happened, the things you’ve done to get where you are, they can’t be

erased. The question is — what do you do now you’ve got them?

Alcestis on the hillside, turning over a stone. It’s heavy enough that she

has to put her, back into it, lifting with both hands. After a moment, she

lets out a frustrated breath and simply wrenches herself and the stone up,

off the ground.

A thousand things crawl out from beneath the rock. Alcestis tosses the

stone aside and watches them. A moment later, she is in amongst the

creeping, slithering population, scraping at the loose soil with her,

hands. Grit lodges under her, fingernails as she hollows out a hole in the

dirt.

She pushes the flying costume into it, folding and scrunching until she

has forced all the cloth into the ground. Then she lifts the stone back up,

again, using just her own strength this time, feeling the strain in her

wrists and the centre of her back, and slams it back down into place.

Damn them. They can fall into Tartarus for all she cares. She’s been

wrong to stop the bulls, wrong to get in the way of justice. Let the fire

demons scour the island, clean.

He tells Deucalion:

Every gift costs as much as it gives. Do you know, how the gods give

you four harvests in a year? By borrowing them from the future. Every

year of plenty means several of barrenness in the centuries to come. The

gods have power over wind and water, sun and stars, even time itself –

but they can only rearrange, not really change. The earth tremors that the

grown-ups speak of ... you’ve never felt one? That’s because they’ve all

been pushed into the future. Deferred for as long as they can keep the

gods at bay.

(He turns, raises his eyes to the steep slope behind them, to the point

above, where the trees shrivel from the heat.) But it won’t last, forever.

And when the gods do break free, all the earthquakes and eruptions will

be unleashed at once. All the stronger for their deferral.

The explosion will erase Kaménai from the world. Bury Akrotiri under

the remains of its sister island. For four days there will be no sun, as the

volcano hurls wave after wave across the land: first rock, then

sulphurous windstorms, then lava, then acid thunderclouds. A sky so

thick and gritty that no bird can fly.

Three thousand people will be caught at the harbour, scalded alive as

they try to beg and bribe their way onto any boat. But with all the ships

here, in the trading centre of the world, there will never be enough. The

few who escape will look back to see a plume of smoke, thirty times the

size of the island, and give thanks ... until the tsunamis come, and wipe

their boats from the surface of the sea.

And even that won’t be the end. The empire will limp along, even for

another generation, until a great swarm of men from the north overrun

Knossos. And these men? Another payment deferred. Had the gods not

been unleashed, the last war would have gone quite differently – Athens

would have finally united the neighbouring city-states to push you back

to your own palace gates. The gods’ mangling of time has separated the

two, but the effect will remain, even though the cause has been crushed.

Minos’s empire will be overrun by ghosts, destroyed by the people

whom they made no longer exist.

Tears, now,? Oh, there’s always time for those. But the question to ask

is, what will you do to ease the changes to come? If this is what you

expect, what will you do that they won’t expect?

(And he raises his hand to the waters of the bay, and points, to where

all the chips of pumice he’s thrown are, slowly floating back to the

island, like ducklings following their mother – bobbing on the surface in

a most unstonelike way.)

Payment deferred:

Rhadamanthys finds the Doctor inching alone through the palace

colonnade. The King’s face is a quiet rumble of thunder.

—They’ve found Britomartis’s body, Rhadamanthys tells him. —Some

fishermen caught her, in their nets, near the foot of the Thera cliffs.

—I’m sorry.

—No. (Rhadamanthys’s words whip-crack across the Doctor’s back.)

—You won’t be. Not where anyone can hear.

The Doctor stops short, and Rhadamanthys moves ahead of him, his

eyes pinning the Doctor.

—Britomartis has of course ascended to become a goddess. For the

public, this is a time to rejoice. The matter of her old body can be dealt

with unobtrusively. And the matter of her killer shall remain

unaddressed ... so long as Alcestis continues to defeat the demons.

—I see, sire.

—What do you see? Tell me.

—That justice can be tempered with expediency.

Rhadamanthys shakes his head. —Without Alcestis as a symbol, the

people will feel defenceless. That is reason enough to defer justice, if not

to tip the scales forever. Were she to shirk her duties, though, then we

would have no reason not to hunt her down ... or to keep her name secret

any longer. And no person in the empire would shelter her once they

knew she’d turned her back on them.

—And if, in the end, the demons defeat her?

—Then it will be a tragedy for the empire ... but still justice will have

been done.

—So her ability is her sentence.

—If you wish to see it that way.

—You declare her guilt quite boldly. As a judge, you clearly have the

courage of your convictions–

Rhadamanthys cuts him off, harshly. —No one else, could have taken

Britomartis off the island, to those cliffs unnoticed.

The Doctor falls silent; clearly nonsense will not serve him now.

Rhadamanthys can no more be distracted than a charging bull. He paces

in front of the Doctor, lecturing him like an errant pupil. —Now, you

may have had a part in this murder – but if you were guilty, you would

not have stayed. All that could keep you here is innocence – some of

which I’m sure you have, though not nearly so much as you pretend – or

some more important aim. Whether the former or the latter, though,

you’ve still earned the same offer I have just made to Alcestis.

—I’m afraid I lack her skill at fighting demons.

—Of course you do. And you’ve found no-one else who has it either ...

not that I expect you to find such a replacement now, as I’m sure you

believe that would sign her death warrant. But you are an inventor, a

man of knowledge. Your talent is unquestionable, unlike your loyalties. I

tell you now, that you may keep your place here, so long as your

inventions prove useful against the bulls.

—And you shall have them. I have one nearly ready, which will allow

you to identify their perpetrator.

—And if you can ease conditions within the palace as well, all the

better.

The Doctor lowers his head. —I can but try, sire.

—Then we understand each other.

—As I said, I’m sorry, begins the Doctor, but the King has turned his

back on him and is stalking away.

Still the Doctor speaks quietly. —You must have loved her very much.

Rhadamanthys’s back stops short. When he turns, his face is contorted,

but harder than ever. He answers: —And your heart must be broken

indeed, now she has turned her back on you.

He turns, and disappears into the palace, and the Doctor stands, uneasy

on his stick.

The bull comes with the dawn. Alcestis has been awake for hours,

feeling it coming closer, like a sea storm.

The cries of panic begin, and stranger sounds, noises she’s come to

recognise as buildings crumbling with age. She lies back down on the

bed, but the sounds carry clear through the air.

She pulls on her dress, her ordinary clothes, and lets herself float up,

from the doorway to gain a view of the bull’s work. Immediately she can

see the grey channel it has cut through the buildings, connecting three

streets in a swathe of powder. And there’s the red-black shape of the

monster itself, tossing its head, as it tramples and throws the ones who

aren’t quick enough to get out of the way. From the shattered buildings

rise moans and cries, for help.

Alcestis shoots down towards the bull. The wind whips across her, bare

arms and snatches the breath from her, face. She comes at it faster and

faster until she almost touches its burning skin, and then rebounds away

like a ball thrown against a wall, back into the sky.

The bull raises its boulder of a head, to squint up at her. Then it lowers

it again, smashing into a wall. The masonry comes down like rain,

revealing a dozen people who’ve stupidly tried to shelter behind it.

Alcestis repeats her approach, snapping in close enough almost to

touch the bull. Before she can shoot away again, it turns suddenly, one

of its horns snagging in the hem of her, dress.

She screams and tears loose, the fabric unravelling to her knees.

Another inch and it would have impaled her leg, and that would have

been an end to her.

She climbs upwards, frantically, the bull following in a cloud of

seething air. She can smell its sulphur breath, its magma sweat. A bellow

erupts from its brute face.

Alcestis zigzags suddenly, changing directions, knowing that the bull

will be slow to turn and follow. She has only to out-run it. But it turns –

so fast! – and gallops after her. Its hooves pound ridiculously at the air,

but its bulk moves swiftly, like a dolphin through water. She should be

leaving it behind, but it’s getting closer.

Half panicked, she climbs upwards again. Perhaps it’s too heavy to go

so high? Perhaps it will turn back to its real target, the island?

Beneath her, the ocean fills everything. Thera is a round shape below,

and between her and her home, the swelling, sizzling shape of the bull,

hurling itself upwards after her.

Alcestis realises she is panting. She looks up. Can she lose it in the

clouds? She feels as though she will shake to pieces. The sky is

blackening, turning into a narrow tunnel above, that suddenly squeezes

shut, and she’s–

Falling! She’s falling!

She falls right past the bull, which gives an almost human snort of

astonishment. She’s gasping, her head is pounding, and her hands and

feet are terribly cold.

Somehow she gathers her strength, turns, the fall into a dive, slowing

enough that when she hits the sea she enters it smoothly, her hands out

in front of her. She travels in a deep curve through the cold weight,

lifting herself out and into the air, her hair and dress heavy with water.

The bull strikes the water almost at that instant. Steam explodes

upward in a great jet, showering her with hot water. Beneath her, the

ocean boils like soup in a pot.

The bull does not emerge again. The cold ocean has swallowed up, the

last, of its energy. She watches for long minutes, but all that comes up,

are, dead fish, floating on their sides in the seething water.

Alcestis slaps at her, own face, sobs coming like yelps. She couldn’t do

it. She couldn’t stand by while the bull ran down the crowd. And it

nearly killed her. She can’t trust the Doctor, she can’t trust her own

people, she can’t trust even herself.

But she has to do something to stop it all.

She hauls herself through the air, back towards the land. The taste of

salt lingers in her mouth, like blood.

On the hilltop, she unearths her flying clothes. Now, it’s Alcestis’s dress

that she leaves scattered by the cliff-edge, as if its occupant has shed it

and jumped. She brushes the biggest pieces of dirt from the silk as she

bakes dry in the day’s heat, then abandons the task as the need to move

on builds up, in her, a current she cannot fight.

Dirt-stained, salt-encrusted, hair wild in the wind, she sets off like an

arrow for Kaménai.

—Come to the edge, says the Doctor. —I’ve got things to show you.

Rhadamanthys steps warily out onto the roof. The Doctor points the

way with his walking-stick; the King, notices that he’s using the stick

now for emphasis rather than support. Almost without thinking, he

widens the distance between them.

Near the edge stand two objects. He shields his eyes from the first: a

small chip of crystal, the size of a baby’s fist, resting on the plaster roof

and burning with the orange heat of an afternoon sun.

A crystal from the sanctuary walls, explains the Doctor; he had a

priestess fetch it for him. He tells the King, how he charged it with the

timefire released by the disintegration of this morning’s demon. It is a

fire that will not go out, like the faint glow in the sanctuary multiplied by

a thousand. —You can use it to light the darkness, or keep the kitchen

fires burning forever, or invent the jacuzzi for all I care.

—And you can make more of them? asks Rhadamanthys.

—As many as they send demons, replies the Doctor.

The other gift is set up, on the very edge of the roof, overlooking the

courtyard below and facing the slope of the volcano. It stands, on a

crude wooden tripod, a tapering bronze tube with a curved piece of glass

at each end.

—Come here, says the Doctor, motioning him to the precipice. Look

through the narrow end.

Rhadamanthys braces himself, then peers through the small glass.

Inside he sees the top of the volcano – large and clear enough to see the

doorway on the peak sanctuary.

—Incredible, he says, his free hand reaching out to touch, the distant

building in front of him. —An army gifted with the ability to see their

enemy’s movements from far away— To spy unobserved ... You have

given us foresight in bronze and glass. This gift is truly beyond value.

And just below his feet, Alcestis is pressed against the side of the palace,

held against the wall by the currents and her, fury. With each word she

hears, she feels the scream of rage building in her, throat. Her fingers dig

in as if to tear the wall right out from under them.

—Is that what you’d use it for? asks the Doctor.

And his stick lashes out and knocks a tripod leg away. The spyglass

tips slowly over the edge.

Rhadamanthys lunges for it, but the Doctor catches it first – his body

between the King, and the glass, dangling his prize over the drop. The

King grasps for it, but the Doctor backs away.

—If you want to look through this thing, you’re going to have to open

your eyes first.

—How dare you? rages the King.

—Oh, I dare. I dare.

The Doctor wobbles dangerously as he dances along the edge with the

King. Rhadamanthys can see his arm shaking as he supports the weight

of the tripod, but he holds it nonetheless.

—Listen, Rhadamanthys. I’ve tried patience, I’ve tried eloquence, now

I’m trying something you’ll understand. If you threaten me any further,

you’ll never see another fire crystal, and the glass will do what glass

does best, namely shatter. You’ll never know how to make another of

either. Now, what I want from you is simple: the spyglass stays up here,

with a man constantly watching the volcano. Have you got that?

—Are you giving me an order? breathes the King.

—Open your eyes. Ask me why I want you to do that.

—Why?

—So that when the next demon comes, they’ll be able to tell you

exactly where it came from.

—From the volcano?

—From the Fallen.

The King, slows, the fury on his face melting into disbelief.

The Doctor, speaks quietly now, persuasively. —You’re a judge, you

need evidence. That’s what the glass is for. And the crystal. It glows

from the demons just like it glows from the Fallen, only more so – what

does that suggest to you?

He dances on the edge a moment more. The words settle on

Rhadamanthys, begin to harden. Slowly he turns away, straining for

thought.

—The last, time you let them out, they learned how to slip their chains.

Open the gate again and they’ll devour the empire.

The King stands, taking this in. The Doctor brings the spyglass back to

solid ground and busies himself with it, putting his stick down as he

fusses with the tripod. —Now, poetically just as that may be, I’m still

giving you the chance to save your empire from the fate you inflicted on

Athens.

With that, Rhadamanthys turns on him. —You would blame me for

that? For protecting my people?

—I know, I know, the barbarians at the gate. Never mind the ones in

the palace.

Rhadamanthys grabs his arms, pinning him to the spot. In a flash the

Doctor returns the clasp: holding each other near the edge, such that

neither can throw the other without being dragged down himself.

—The Athenians needed to be stopped, declares Rhadamanthys. —

They killed Androgeos, and now Asterius. Two of my brother’s own

sons lost to their treachery.

The Doctor’s smile is barbed. —Oh, I know, it’s personal. It’s the

oldest question of them all: what will you sacrifice for the children?

And with a hair-raising grin he skips to one side, dragging the King,

with him over the edge.

Just as they tip too far, his trailing foot stamps against the roof, shoves

them back towards safety. They fall tangled together. At once, the King

pulls himself up, stares at the Doctor, paralysed with utter astonishment.

The Doctor doesn’t move from where he lies, suddenly cool in repose.

—But to you, O father of your country, the question is: what do you

expect the children to sacrifice for you?

The King stands, shaken on the roof of his palace. The truth freed from

Tartarus is too much to conceive of. As a man whose prayers have

always taken the form of commands, he now finds himself wishing to

entreat, to beg for aid; but he has no idea to whom he can direct these

prayers.

Eventually he turns, and retreats into the building. The Doctor stays

where he lies: insouciance now, revealed as exhaustion. Finally he

reaches for his stick and begins to drag himself to his feet.

And the clawlike hand of Alcestis grabs his heel and yanks him off the

edge.

Her fury gives her the strength to whip him round by his ankle, a full

half circle in the air. But with that grip he’s heavy and unwieldy – she’s

sinking and tipping over as they spin.

He hits the wall halfway down. His arms break the impact, but she still

feels the jolt straight through his body. There’s a gaping look of shock

on his face. She sees it, and wants to swing him back and hit him again

and again against the wall till the shock turns, to understanding.

—How could you? she breathes.

They’ve sunk to the ground. His head, and arms hit first – he tries to

pull away from her using just his hands. She lets go of his foot and

descends upon him, upon the aching astonishment and confusion on his

face. She’s dirt-streaked and filthy and relentlessly wild.

—How could you? she repeats. —You stay in the house of a murderer,

a killer a hundred thousand times over. You drink his wine, you give

him your gifts, all for your own ends. You leave him untouched after all

his crimes. How could you stand next to him? How could you tell me

you had anything to do with justice?

She’s trying to grab him, but can’t quite reach him – he’s scrabbling

away beneath her, along the polished stones of the courtyard.

—Alcestis. Please. It’s the only way–

—How could you stand next to me? How could you convince me I was

something I wasn’t?

He stumbles to his feet, hands flailing in search of anything to use

against her. Find your weapons where you can, she thinks furiously; we

don’t last long. Behind him a couple of palace onlookers stare

openmouthed. She’s skimming just above the ground, closing in on him

as he protests.

—Please, listen, he says. —Every word I said to you, I still believe.

And just in case you got the wrong impression the other day, let me

assure you that any life-energy I take from my companions is strictly

metaphorical –

A hand flashes towards her, striking at the pressure point in her neck.

But she’s ducked aside already, catching his wrist with one hand and

pressing the other flat against his chest – pinning him with his arm at full

stretch.

—I’ve learned well, she says with a pointed smile. But with a twist of

his shoulder he slithers out of her grip and backs away, giving her a nod

and smile as acknowledgement. She charges at him again. But he can’t

be pinned down: he ducks each attack just as she dodges his. They’re a

flurry of colour and violent motion weaving across the courtyard –

neither able to land a blow.

Her words fly as fast as her arms, somehow not breaking her rhythm in

the slightest. —You turn junk into inventions, people into heroes,

yourself into something new every time I turn around. Monsters into

dust. Cities upside down. You turned me into this. But you won’t expose

the King, and turn him into a criminal?

—Yes, yes, I’m a founding member of the Society For Turning Things

Into Other Things. But I can’t turn notes into music. I can’t turn a

broken thing into a whole one. Only patch it. Only push a bit in a new

direction.

He seems secure on the defensive, as if this is his usual footing. But

she’s adapting to his style – combining blows so that ducking one drives

him into her next strike, not giving him a moment to take the advantage.

—And that’s your excuse for not facing it? she spits. —Leaving the job

half-done?

A hint of a grin. —I don’t do stable.

Fury lifts her. Her legs lash around in mid-air, her body horizontal as

she kicks again and again at his head. —Well, you’re involved now. You

changed me. And I won’t let you escape me!

And she touches down just long enough to spring, and leaps straight

over him. He ducks, but she’s already caught the down-draft from the

volcano, slamming her straight down onto him. She feels him fall, the

rattle through his bones as he hits the ground, her feet stamping on flesh.

By the time he rolls to his feet, she’s already high above him. Held

against the wall three stories up,, head, down, watching him cast about

looking for her. He’s shaking on his feet. Guarding himself now, only

just realising what he’s awakened.

She twists a smile. —Not so quick now?

—The gods took a lot of years from me, I’m still growing them back ...

As he smiles, she’s already launched herself at him again. Headfirst,

hands stretched into claws. She swoops through him – he twists aside,

no longer trying to counter-attack, just blocking and dodging what he

can. Up the far wall of the courtyard, wheeling and banking, moving

faster than his eye can follow.

—No-one cares about justice, she shouts. —Facing the consequences.

No-one ever will.

He turns, on his heel, stumbling, trying to follow her, voice. —Never?

—All that we’ve lost. We used to walk with the gods ...

—Now, the gods, they do stable. If you want your empire levelled,

your cities laid waste, they won’t stop till they’ve finished the job. Is that

what you want?

—I want it over! she shrieks. But she feels the fire about to consume

her, and she directs it out into another rain of blows. Again she

plummets. When she reaches him this time, she spirals ever closer, arms

and legs lashing out non-stop. Reflexive rhythm, faster than she can

think. —None of us deserves to live. We’ve lost our best qualities ...

—Yes, I’m afraid you have. You’ve lost your sense of possibility.

And he stops, his heel back against the wall of the council building. He

keeps blocking her strikes, but his eyes and voice won’t let her go.

—You’d call that being disillusioned, but that’s the final insult to what

you’ve lost. The denial that you lost anything worth having. There’s no

word for having lost a true vision, not an illusion, a real sense of what

could be.

Their dance is so instinctive that she can forget it, the way she forgets

she’s breathing. In the middle of the motion she feels still. And as she

hangs over the Doctor, trading blows and dodges by reflex, she can feel

the disturbance in the currents that she’s never noticed before: a wind

that pulls you, rather than pushes you, into him. There’s a whirlwind

confined inside his body.

—Knowing you’d lost your sight, that would be too painful to face. So

you tell yourself your small hard-fought truth was a big lie, and run from

it. You don’t want to face the fact that some battles you can still win.

One last strike, trying to grab hold of him, to break through and shake

her despair into him. And she catches him – but at the same time, he’s

caught her, pinning her, close to him. His face fills her vision, his

desperate conviction trying to jump the gap to her like a spark.

—Listen to me.

Hold for a moment: being close to him is like the instant you

overbalance in your chair, where you’re not sure which way you’ll fall.

He’s a possibility in the shape of a person.

But a hundred thousand souls are crowding in on her. They thunder

through her veins, crying to be released. She wants to die but she wants

the Doctor to save her but there’s no way to save them, nothing can

atone, the only hope he can hold out is to duck and dodge the

consequences of what they’ve done forever. She wants to save them all,

she wants to see them burn.

She tears away and howls. The cry carries her up, shaking him loose,

letting her, rise up, along the slopes of the volcano, letting all her hopes

fall away behind her.

She lands broken on the scorching rocks of the peak.

Almost instantly, the gods wrap her up in their peace. She sinks to her

knees. Her body feels so strong, so honed and powerful. But the soul

inside has shrivelled. She is a fruit invaded by a worm. And yet, and yet

here, it doesn’t matter.

She walks to the shrine and stands, in the glittering dark. It’s like

coming home, it’s the place she belongs, with the Fallen.

Of course, the thought comes into her head that she could stagger off

the edge and let herself fall into the fire. But her weary feet won’t move

in that direction. What presumption, to fling herself into the gods’ realm

as though she belongs there.

You led me, didn’t you? You led me to Britomartis. You put me

through the fire, to make me ready to do what you want.

They don’t answer in words. A wind rushes through the shrine, the

crystals glow more fiercely. A little flame ignites in her heart. She’s

right. She knows it. She’s been doing their will.

Or is she talking to herself? Telling herself what she needs to hear?

She prays like a child. Make me a stone, she begs them. She closes her,

eyes, and the crystals glow inside her head, flecks of light in the orange-

black of her vision. If I’m a killer, let me be the killer. Let me be the one

to put an end to the horror. Gods, let it end. Let it all end.

They flow into her heart and her hands. They don’t tell her anything,

give her any instructions. But they soothe away her exhaustion, wash

away bewilderment with certainty.

When she opens her eyes again, she knows what she wants to do.

That night, she comes to him.

She hovers in the window, blotting the moonlight from his face. He’s

sleeping tonight, sprawled on top of the bed, his body exhausted.

Slowly, inevitably, she lets the current carry her, over him.

She comes to rest just above him, letting the draperies of her silk brush

gently across his skin. He doesn’t stir; nothing disturbs that unforgivably

innocent face. But in his dreams, his eyes are darting about, like a

trapped animal.

She holds herself there, feeling cold and impersonal as the wind. She’s

clean now: washed in a hidden corner of the palace, her silks

immaculate. Clean.

His eyes wander open.

—Another angel? he murmurs through his sleep.

She gathers him up, without speaking, enfolds his body in the silk. Her

arms cross behind his back, pinning his hands by his sides; her legs hook

round his, holding him flat against her. He’s too close for her to see his

face, cheek against cheek, the braids of her hair falling across his eyes.

Then she takes him up. Out of the window and into the wind, watching

the ground shrink away like a chicken back into the egg. Higher and

smaller; already she can feel the chill whistling through her. She’s

grateful for the animal warmth of this other body pressed against hers;

but even this close, his flesh feels cool and distant.

He isn’t struggling. His body is peaceful and yielding. Perhaps he

thinks this is another dream. Consequences are distant things to him:

understood in abstract, dodged up, close. A man who treats being told to

face the music as an invitation to dance.

But now, she has him pinned. His hands held in place, the magician out

of tricks.

—I didn’t want the last, angel either, says a soft voice in her ear.

Her grip tightens suddenly, but she says nothing as she continues to

rise.

—She came to me as I lay wounded and fallen. All my plans and hopes

laid low by one inescapable act. She looked down on me, a creature of

infinite compassion and unwanted mercy. And she stopped my heart.

For a moment she can’t feel her own. Below the islands have vanished

into the night; there’s nothing with her but the fast shivering rhythm of

his heartbeat.

—But then she started it again. She picked me up, from the ashes I’d

left and gave me a clean slate, another chance. What did I do to deserve

that?

It’s not a teacher’s question. She can feel his breath shaking, his hands

trying to clutch onto her hips.

—Why am I still alive?

—Shh, she tells him. —You won’t need to worry much longer. She

comes to rest in the air. His hair is blowing across her, face in the thin

wind, her own braids enveloping him.

Say something terrible, she wills him. Let me see all your frivolous

disregard laid bare. Let me know that I’m justified in what I’m going to

do. Let this moment be my purifying fire and burn away my doubt. But

the man in her arms says nothing, just holds close for comfort, perverse

to the last.

—The King, and his people have so much, she tells him. —Things they

haven’t earned. Some are the gifts you’ve brought down from the

heavens, some are things they’ve stolen, which you’re letting them keep.

But there are always consequences. I want you to think about the fact

that you gave me the gift that brought you up here. You turned me into

an instrument for something greater.

She takes a final breath.

—Because that means this is your fault, not mine.

And she lets him go.

Slow, flickering motion: pale white face and skin revealed falling past

her eyes. The strange, slow juddering of the world in flight gives her

time to study his face – the impenetrable look as his eyes find hers while

they sink away – but not to understand it.

It takes an age until he’s beyond her, reach.

Another age until he’s lost in the dark below.

Suddenly she feels naked, her front no longer shielded by his body from

the wind, as it sucks the last of his warmth away. There’s nothing else in

the clouds that can touch her now.

Was that last look one of realisation? No, that’s merely what she

wanted to see; his expression was too calm for him to be making the

connections she wanted him to make. But still she can’t imagine his

quicksilver mind not realising, before the rocks turn him into meat, that

he’s earned this for his interference.

He has perhaps a slow count of thirty. Longer through her eyes, with

the distorting effects of the currents. It feels like it’s going to be forever.

Perhaps it was the look of one who thinks he knows that this is a test.

Maybe down below, he’s plummeting serenely as the moments fall

away, expecting her to snatch him away from death at the last moment.

Which means he still might never realise his misplaced faith in her

protecting him from the truth until he can no longer think.

The fury tightens her chest, stiffens every muscle in her body. He has

to die in order to learn. If he doesn’t know he deserves to die, what’s the

point? No, that look was the smug pity of someone who has forgiven

those who sin against his blameless body.

No. Not forgiveness. Not even that he saw it as a test. His fear was for

her. With a surge of fire in the wind, she sees what his eyes said: that as

he fell it wasn’t him being tested, it was her.

In a rage she throws herself over, screams straight down through the sky,

the world flickering past her, faster than she can imagine. Half-formed

words churn in her throat. Telling herself she doesn’t want to pass his

test, that this is still about getting through to him before the end. If he

doesn’t understand, then it’s as meaningless as Britomartis’s sudden

unrepentant stillness.

Falling fast as a stone. The mountain below draws itself out of the dark,

growing ever larger. Finally the Doctor turns from a pale dot to a rigid

figure – arms folded across his chest, falling supine, trying to hold

himself stiff and together. Even closer, matching his speed. Falling with

him from inches above. The tightness in his face as he struggles to

steady his breath and not cry out. Below his shoulders, the treetops mass.

His eyes open and lock with hers, unblinking.

Two more seconds.

She waits.

One.

With a choked-back scream of frustration, she wraps her arms and legs

around him and pulls sharply upwards.

They hang frozen five feet above, the ground. Against her chest she feels

the Doctor letting out a shaky breath. —Don’t say it, she shouts. Don’t

even think it. Don’t you ever understand?

As she turns them upright and prepares to settle them on their feet, he

clutches onto her. His eyes wide and urgent. —No. Don’t, don’t put us

down!

—Why not?

—We’re still falling. Don’t you understand? We’re both falling.

His words don’t make any sense. But something instinctive, something

beneath her senses, is telling her there’s something wrong.

His words come out in a panicked babble, clutching on to her. —You

couldn’t have brought me to a stop that quickly without pulverizing us

both. This isn’t real flight. All you’re doing is, every instant, you’re

jumping yourself up, as far as you’ve fallen in that moment. Cancelling

acceleration but not momentum. And now you’ve matched the speed of

my fall, you’re falling as hard as me. When you land and let go of the

currents we’ll both hit as hard as I would have anyway!

He stares her, in the eye, gasping now, begging as hard as she’d ever

imagined. —You’ve got to go to the water. Please. For both our sakes.

And she follows his words to the sea. Flying, she can clearly feel the

wrongness – sluggishness, a wrenching in the small of her back as if

she’s straining to hold her height.

He’s gasping: —Here, that should be deep enough. Turn us over – got

to hit the water smoothly. Feet first.

His face drives her mad – finally she can see the desperation in it, but

none of it directed at himself. It’s all about saving her.

They’re a short way from the island now, hanging in darkness. She lets

an updraft lift them, slowly – if she sinks her nails into that current as

she falls, it might slow them, just enough.

He’d spoken of angels, creatures of grace, who broke his fall when it

was he who should have been broken. Did he have any idea how

unforgiving they were, when they let him live?

She feels his arms tighten around her.

—Now, let go.

The ocean hits like a hammer. Breath driven from her chest as she falls,

water bursting into her throat. Still driving downwards, far deeper than

she should be, the force carrying her down to no return. Desperately

turning herself and fighting her way back up – each choking cough

sucking more ocean into her. It feels like it’s steaming where it hits the

fire in her lungs. A hand reaches for her from the side; she shoves it

away.

Even when she breaks the surface, the pain doesn’t let up – one more

mouthful of sea water as she flails about. Her whole body convulses

among the swells. Even breathing is torture. Now she knows why

newborns cry.

He breaks the surface near her, great rasping gasps near her ear. The

arm wraps around her again, trying to carry her home. She fights him

off, is still fighting him off as they drag each other onto shore, pounding

and screaming —What does it take to make you learn?

With the last of his strength, he shakes his head. There are salt tears

running down his face. —I had the same question for you.

They dry out in a heap together, shivering, holding on to each other for

warmth. She rests her head, against his; her sodden braids fall across his

bare back like a scourge. His arm reaches round her shoulders, his hand

nestling in her hair. She’s so cold now, that even his cool skin feels

warm against her, through the thin briny silk soaking straight through to

her bones.

—I thought you’d be able to fly so high, he whispers to no-one. —But

not this high. Not so high that you froze on your way to the sun.

She shakes her head, fuzzily. —I didn’t fly. You fell. You were above

me and now you’re standing down there next to Rhadamanthys. Why?

—You really believe every last one of you deserves death?

—Everyone deserves death. That’s why everyone dies.

—Except for the ones who have cheated it.

She can feel the weariness in his voice, the understanding. Finally she

pulls herself to him, enfolding him as best she can, whispering to him.

—And the ones whom angels spared.

They huddle on the rocks, watching the waves crash against the foot of

the volcano just below them, the spray mocking their attempts to escape

the water. Perhaps those tears she glimpsed were an illusion, she thinks.

Just more salt water rolling off of his face as he gasped. But right now,

she’d rather dismiss the thought.

After a while, he asks her: —Why do I deserve to be spared? Another

small mercy?

She has being trying to understand it herself. —You need to learn, she

tells him. —You’re the only one who has any chance of it.

He shakes his head. —Not the only one.

—Every one of us ate of Athens, down to the lowest slave. Whatever

else you’ve done, I can spare you from this.

She feels him turn his head, trying to catch her eye. When she doesn’t

move, instead she feels his chin against her cheek, his voice breathing in

her ear. —So let me spare you.

And for a moment, it’s that same feeling of promise that lifted her

before.

But the truth drowns it out, fills her voice with ice. —You’d spare

Rhadamanthys. So how much does your mercy mean?

He freezes, his body tensed, and for a moment, she thinks he’s going to

pull away. But he turns it into an exhausted shrug, a shake of his head.

—How long has it been since you’ve eaten, or slept? If nothing else, let

me spare you from that.

And she relents, and lets him stand. She sees him looking down at her,

his expression bruised but gentle.

—After all, you shouldn’t destroy the world on an empty stomach.

He leaves her to gather a few branches while he disappears into the

woods, a pale streak in the moonlight among the trees. When he returns,

he’s carrying a pair of flints for a spark, and cradling a pigeon, its neck

twisted.

—I did it because I had to, he says.

He makes the fire dance to life, and they settle close together on the

rocks, just far enough back from the spray, listening. The sea drowns out

the crackle of the fire.

—I know, it feels like your heart’s broken, he begins, but then he tilts

his head sideways, eyes wandering up to the sky. —I really should have

a word with whoever came up with that metaphor, he murmurs. —That’s

just not the way it works. Stones break. Ice breaks. Hearts are elastic.

His eyes have fixed on hers again. But if he’s saying that her heart will

recover, she can’t believe it. The only feeling in her body comes from

well below her heart, a suddenly insatiable stomach. Yes, the gods may

have put the ideas into her head, but the need that drives her is below

both heart and mind. A growling hollow that must be filled.

He removes the charring pigeon from the fire and offers it to her. She

lunges for it, nearly falls over, then forces herself to breathe deep and

chew slowly. But as the first mouthful slithers down her throat, she gags,

her whole body convulsing and rebelling. He ends up holding her as she

retches, an awkward tangle of shoulders and thighs around her side.

He’s still holding her, as she sits back, shivering. The fire is too tiny to

warm her.

—We swallowed their bones, she gasps.

—I know, he murmurs. —I know. Then, gently: —How can you look

upon that and want to kill even more?

What comes out now is a choking laugh. —How can you look on that

and not?

—If you want death, there’s plenty to come. I know what’s going to

happen to the empire. I’ve seen it.

His voice settles down as well, his hand soothing its way through her

hair. He’s her father telling her a bedtime story, one that’s been turned

inside out, a quiet murmur that says that the only happy ending is an

unhappy one.

—The empire will be struck down, destroyed so thoroughly that no-one

even remembers its name. Only legends of the greedy island, which the

gods themselves punished for its arrogance and sent crashing beneath

the waves. The stories of their wickedness will live for thousands of

years, long after their lives are washed away.

—Then why are you trying to stop it?

—Because this isn’t it.

And nothing makes sense any more. She turns to him, looking for

meaning, but his face is as unreadable as the rock they sit on.

—The eruption I know about is several centuries from now. Their

crimes will catch up with them. But not for hundreds of years yet.

—Not until everyone involved in the crime is long dead, says Alcestis

quietly. —And that’s all the justice you can offer?

He doesn’t answer, just rests his head, forlornly on hers. She traces her

other hand along his back, trying to memorise the shape of his shoulder

blade.

She says: —I know, how weak I am. They expect me to be strong.

against the bulls, for them. And if I’m supposed to be their greatest

strength, and I’m still so weak ... then there’s no hope of anyone even

trying for justice. Unless just once ... just long enough to serve the

gods ... I can be strong. And end it.

And once again, she lets him go. She stands, and it’s like she’s seeing

him from far away now, distant and still. He tries to keep reaching her,

but none of his words can drown out the lingering taste of flesh in her

throat.

He tries one last time, on the rocks as the waves crash, shouting to make

his voice heard over the noise of the world. His face spray-soaked again.

They can’t escape the water – or the icy wind, or the stone.

—Please, he tells her, his eloquence exhausted. —I’ve burned so many

for the best of reasons – but that doesn’t end fire. Just don’t go down

that road.

And he stands, there, reaching out his hand. But now, she sees what it

is he wants from her – a cleansing, one more chance to outrun the

uncountable number that he must have burned with his touch. Oh, she

will teach him otherwise. She lunges for the offered hand, yanking it up

in front of his face; with her other hand she grabs his chin, forcing him

to look at what he’d offered her. Her words hit him with all the force of

the cold ocean.

—This won’t save you, she tells him. —No more than it could save me.

For what you’ve done, no god, would forgive you.

And she holds him there, staring deep into his quiet, wounded face, her,

hand gentle now, on his cheek.

And whispers —But I’m not enough of a god.

Slowly she lets him go, turns half away to gather herself. —Find a ship,

she says. —Fly from here. Be gone before the blessing ceremony

tomorrow. I want you to live, and to learn.

A moment’s embrace – gently, formally – and she disappears into the

sky.

Sometime before dawn, the Doctor, in the palace forge. He isn’t going to

make it.

He cradles in his hands a tangled web of thin strands of steel and

bronze, each insulated from the other with tiny twists of fabric. A

labyrinth of charges and wire, a cage for a tiny piece of fire.

The nagging fear mounts as sunrise finds him still bending wires into

place. He’d been working on the assumption that he’d have days at least

before the next demon attack, based on the currents. He hadn’t thought

of the blessing ceremony.

He gingerly puts down the device. It’s so elegant, such a clever little

concoction of anachronistic technology and simple magic ... not magic.

Not gods. Life forms evolved at a bizarre angle, the same thing on a

hundred worlds, with their technology-less science of time.

They would never need the last tool that he’s forged from his last bit of

steel. Time’s run out, and he may have no other choice but to use it.

Stay here. Don’t put yourself in the path of choices.

His hand curls around the last tool. No.

It’s going to be a perfect hot day on Kaménai: the smell of the white-

rippled sea and the volcano’s hearth, the cloudless sky cupping the sun’s

red-orange eye.

Deucalion sits in the window of his palace room, dangling his feet

outside, watching the sky lighten as the sun’s chariot nears the horizon.

Perdix warned him – warned them both – not to look directly at the

sun’s disk. So he just glances at it now, and again, tracing its rising arc.

Behind him, a manservant breathlessly announces that his father is here

to see him. For a moment, Deucalion contemplates staying in the

window, his back to it all. But you don’t do that to the King. He pulls

himself down and straightens his tunic.

Perdix follows his father into the room. Rhadamanthys sits down on a

stool and waves wearily for Perdix to sit as well. The teacher ends up

hunched on the end of Deucalion’s bed.

The King, says: —You will not attend the blessing ceremony this

morning.

Deucalion opens his mouth to protest, but Father silences him. He

looks more shaken and unsure than he’s ever seen him, but his voice is

certain. —You are the heir to everything I hold dear. We need to keep

you safely away.

—Something bad’s going to happen today, says Perdix gently.

—Well, if it’s so bad, why are you going?

Deucalion looks from one to the other, panic scorching his scalp. The

King, says: —The people need their blessings. They need to see me

leading them. If I am seen to falter, we become an empire built on fear

and timidity.

Perdix says: — I’m going to try to stop it.

Deucalion isn’t sure of either of them. Is Perdix going to stop the

blessing ceremony itself, or just the bad thing? Does his father really

want to lead, or does he just not want to bow his head, even to the gods?

What can he do about it?

His shoulders slump. —All right. If you want me to stay here, I’ll stay.

Rhadamanthys gets up and hugs Deucalion. A sudden grasping clutch –

father clinging to him for life. His voice shakes.

—My son, my empire.

Dawn over the volcano. Today the vast red sun sits directly across the

caldera from the open sanctuary wall, its fire blurred through the heat-

haze at their feet. The air is heavy with sulphur and shining dust.

Rhadamanthys stands, arms spread high, his back to the gods and his

face to the people. Through the sanctuary door, on the mountaintop

outside, the cream of the nobility stand arrayed before him, paying

witness to his transmission of the blessings to his people. His shadow

stretches far in front of him.

To his left, in the wide mouth of the temple where it faces the fire, the

musicians hold one sustained note on shell trumpet or forminx – willing

the audience to lose themselves in the sound, a single endless moment of

divine glory, the empire’s glory. Slowly, fragments of rhythm begin to

pick themselves out of the primeval chord: slow, emphasised, growing

in speed and strength. To his right, the circle of priestesses begin the

slow crescendo of their dance, building up to the release. Led by

Polyxena – a last-minute stand-in for the recently ascendant Britomartis

– they find their first shaky footsteps settling into rhythm, guided by the

goddess.

Behind the musicians stands, the Doctor, alone out of all of them

watching the sky.

The rhythm accelerates, the priestess’s chant swells to name the Titans:

child-eating Cronus; Oceanus, the eldest; Hyperion; Iapetus; Astraeus,

father of wind and stars; Phoebe; Crius. The King feels their strength

unfolding within him. He feels their light flooding the sanctum.

He feels their heat searing his back.

And the Doctor, is the first to cry out as the stampede of fiery bulls rises

to block the sun.

Their hooves shake the earth where they land. One has bounded over the

sanctuary to crash upon the path: blocking the way down the mountain,

forcing the fleeing nobles and their families back to where the other

bulls close in. Guards, drilled in distraction, find themselves too

outnumbered to control them. The air’s thick with roars and screaming

voices and the smell of scorched meat.

Nauplius, at the edge of the cliff, flings himself over to try to reach the

switchback of the path below. He reaches it face-first and lies there, his

neck cocked at an impossible angle. Above him, his wife and two sons

stare frozen as a bull thunders through them. A child’s charring skeleton

hangs from a horn for one second, then another, before the ashes scatter

on the wind.

***

In the temple, the light is too bright to bear. Even in front of the sun, the

two bulls are hotter, yellow-white scorches overwhelming the red-

orange surrounding them. Their light floods every corner of the building,

ripping away darkness and mystery to lay the plaster bare. Every flaw,

every weakness is exposed. The crystals flare so bright the plaster

smokes in sympathy. Polyxena cowers in a heap with the priestesses,

like ants under a magnifying glass, while the bulls scatter the musicians.

No matter which way she looks, or how tightly she screws her eyes shut,

the light sears straight through her.

A merciful shadow falls across them. Polyxena looks up, cringing in

awe. It’s Alcestis – immaculate, poised, light shining through her,

billowing silk. Hanging with divine stillness in the chaotic air.

She tells them: —Keep dancing.

The Doctor, bullfighting for his life. Before ascending the mountain, he

tucked as many shiny objects as he could find – though in this light

everything’s a shiny object – inside his ceremonial robe. Now, one after

the other he’s waving them, tossing them aside, distracting the bulls long

enough for the musicians to flee. (Into the gauntlet of the other bulls

outside, but there’s only so much he can do at one time.) He’s moving

faster than he can think, reduced to nothing but a ceaseless impulse to

act. He jabs the nearest bull with a discarded lyre, finds himself holding

a crumbling stick.

No sign of Rhadamanthys. But he hasn’t passed him, so he hasn’t made

it to the door. No sign of the gods either; he imagines them sitting back

in chilly satisfaction as their emissaries do their work.

Across the haze. Alcestis. Whirling circles round the other bull, teasing

it away from the priestesses as they clamber to their feet. A streak of

white, horizontal against the ground.

He dives out of the path of his bull, skitters across the floor to land

almost beneath her. He hesitates only a moment, watching her hover,

weighing her expression.

—I’ve got a plan, he says. —Follow my lead.

A final offer, a final temptation.

***

Rhadamanthys, crying out in the antechamber. He’s crammed into the

narrow end of the wedge-shaped room, just past a window too small for

him. A cluster of guards and nobles outside have tried to pull him

through, to no avail. Behind him, a bull wrestles its horns free from the

plaster. At this end, the room, is too narrow for its head, and shoulders to

reach him, but it seems determined to demolish the wall itself if need be.

This close, the King can feel his face beginning to blister and scar

already from its heat. Wherever he looks, everything he thought was his

to command has turned its strength on him.

—Perdix! he shouts through the fire.

And there’s movement beyond the bull, a pale man and a white ghost.

—Perdix! he shouts again. —Free me!

—Then confess, says the Doctor.

Rhadamanthys freezes, incomprehension in his eyes.

—About Athens. About your children.

A shudder goes through the King’s rigid frame.

—I’ll save your empire, not your throne. You’ll face the consequences,

but you’ll live.

The bull snorts sulphur at him, and Rhadamanthys’s last control

shatters. He shouts to the guards and nobles, to anyone who will listen,

about the massacres in Athens, about the children he laid on the altar. A

warning glance from the Doctor is enough to keep Deucalion’s name out

of it.

Still, one by one, the meaning dawns on the faces at the window, a

further horror drowning out their panic, as they make the link between

their King’s actions and the bulls surrounding them. He’s treated the

gods like slaves. He’s slaughtered his own kin.

—I did it in the name of Cronus, cries, Rhadamanthys, his voice

breaking. —Time eats his children and so have I.

The faces stand frozen at the window. Then a bull outside circles for

another pass, and the watchers scatter. Not one waits for the King.

The Doctor turns to Alcestis, quiet inside the storm. —Justice.

He begins to strip off his red-and-blue ceremonial robe, to wave over the

bull’s head, and distract it. But Alcestis is already leaping above, the

bull, bracing against the ceiling, pulling Rhadamanthys straight up, over

its head. He gasps with relief and folds into a ball across her, arms.

—Alcestis... warns the Doctor.

—I know what you want me to do, she assures him.

But he follows her anyway as she flies through the sanctuary, before

the bull can turn and charge after them.

She watches Rhadamanthys whimper as she flies out through the open

wall, over the volcano. His face is a mass of wrinkles and scars, one eye

milky and staring, half his beard burnt white. He’s got a death-grip on

her collar as he looks for the safety of land. She isn’t circling round the

outside wall of the sanctuary – then he notices the other clear spaces on

the far side of the caldera, outside the horde of bulls encircling the

guests. He realises where she is heading, and gradually he begins to

relax.

She looks down at him.

She whispers: —Cannibal.

Then she flips heels-over-head and lets him go.

He screams all the way down into the magma. But his scream is lost in

the cries of the panicking nobles, and even those are barely a thousandth

part of the screams of Athens echoing endlessly in her head.

At any moment, the Doctor’s mind is a flock of startled birds. A

thousand thoughts, each one circling in its own chaotic direction.

This moment, only one within the flock notices the distant dot of the

King falling. The cry that the Doctor lets out isn’t for Rhadamanthys.

But only a few of the thousand thoughts are able to mourn for Alcestis,

even for a moment, because the rest of them are scouring the sanctuary

for survivors amidst the burning plaster and crystal-fire. There are only

the priestesses, as yet untouched, caught up in their weaving dance as if

the force of their belief will save them.

There’s still a chance for her, one part of him insists. That may have

been the extent of Alcestis’s crime of passion. And she was dancing with

the demons before, playing them for time; if she has finally thrown her

lot in with the gods, why would she fight their bulls?

Bulls. Another of his thoughts touches on the word and spirals off.

Only a matter of minutes before they flare out, and the survivors outside

will be able to flee. The demon behind him is still extracting itself from

the antechamber. The other rounds away from the charred remains of a

musician, paws the ground and readies to charge straight at the

priestesses.

Only seconds. He gets in its path, waving the red-and-blue robe,

leading it to the side – away from the oblivious dancers. He spins and

tumbles away, holding the instantly tattered remains. But the moment,

his eyes can focus, he can see that the bull hasn’t changed course, that its

horns are still levelled at the priestesses’ hearts.

Until it veers at the last moment.

And the priestesses continue untouched, their fear only honing the

dance.

Now, Alcestis glides in, her face cold and noble, and settles inside the

centre of the circle. Polyxena is lost now, swept up in the rhythm. They

are all Alcestis’s to command, their minds laid open to the Titans. And

she’s beginning to speak the words that will redirect the energy that is

being raised here, use it to shatter the prison gates.

The bull doesn’t attack. Of course it doesn’t. Even when she danced

with it, that was only for show, a distraction, to assure the priestesses she

was on their side. The whole rampage of the bulls, a means to drive

away and distract those who could stop her.

Oh, my child, you have learned.

And the gods start rattling inside the Doctor’s head.

Alcestis stands, like a statue in the centre as he reels. As the tremors

build up, to a climax around her, every stone and bone in the sanctuary

dancing. At last, she is unmoved.

The Doctor has dragged himself past the bull, arms stretched blindly at

angles, ploughing into the circle of dancers. Crying out, stop, please

stop, for the love of the world, please. But no matter how he tries to

make the dancers stumble, the current of the dance pulls them onwards

around him, the rhythm unbroken.

She descends upon him. Gently she lifts him, feels him flailing

unseeing against her, as she sweeps him away. Behind her, the dance

continues to build. He stiffens when the wall of heat hits them from

below, as she sails over the vast sea of fire. He clutches onto her, bare

skin slick with sweat against hers, half-formed words tumbling endlessly

from his mouth. Furious and helpless inside his own head. A hand

fumbles at her throat for the pressure point, but the gods’ gaze is robbing

him of any hope of finesse. He must know by now – put her to sleep and

when she wakes she will be undaunted; any cage he puts her in, she can

escape. She will not be stopped.

On the slope of the mountain, she eases him down, stands him on the

path as he recovers his senses. Floats just above him and watches as he

realises she hasn’t dropped him.

She points down the path. —Go. Get far enough away, whistle for your

ship. (He just looks at her, glassily, then immovably. Frustration now.)

—Would you really rather die than live with what you’ve done?

Like a polished shield, his face reflects the question right back at her.

She forces herself to be calm; if she’s going to act for the gods, she

needs their same sense of distance. —You might still make it to safety,

she tells him.

He shakes his head, slowly. —Don’t lie to me now.

For an instant, she’s shamed. —There’s still a chance, she says, her

voice quiet amidst the din. —I gave you every chance.

His eyes are, meeting hers, dead-on. —As did I.

The screams from above are fewer now. He’s breathing hard, looking

around for an alternative, his eyes desperate with a thousand arguments,

but there’s no more time, no more.

She turns, and soars back up toward the sanctuary. As she banks, she

catches just a glimpse of him running up the path, towards the bull

waiting at the peak, one hand to his head to try to hold it in place.

Straining to make his way back as well.

So be it.

She returns to the circle of priestesses to the furious speed of their

dance, their strained honey voices helplessly singing up the end of the

world. Their chant merging with the sound of a thousand pairs of wings,

fluttering, gaining strength, turning into the boom of thunder, the sound

of a great door creaking open.

The bulls, flaring their last.

The temple shaking, the priestesses stumbling but not stopping, and

Alcestis untouched by the building tremors, floating half a foot off the

ground, the words catapulting out of her, arms flung up, fists clenched,

as though the whole of the gods’ power must be driven up and through

her body to its escape.

The Doctor clutching onto her from behind.

His arms crush her just below the ribs. She gasps with the shock, then

recovers her place and starts forcing the last words out.

The breath won’t come.

She wheezes, struggles to speak, feels the built-up moment

evaporating. Even the earthquakes are frozen. Around her the dancers

are stumbling, staring at the two of them in horror.

He loosens his grip, but the pain doesn’t ease. She can’t hold herself

up, she falls back against him, his arms cradling her now as he sinks to

his knees. In his free hand he’s holding a blade, made of a strange grey

metal stained with red, pointing straight towards the continuing pain just

under her heart. The spreading red stain soaking through her white silk.

His agonised whisper in her ear. —Why didn’t you stop?

Tableau:

Alcestis, sprawled on the Doctor, one hand trying to hold in her

lifeblood. The Doctor fallen backward on his knees, carrying her weight,

the knife still in his hand. Both slick with sweat, gasping to breathe,

amid the smoke and rubble and the hellish light. Around them the dance,

collapsed into chaos: priestesses descending on the Doctor in hysteria,

but pulled away by surviving soldiers. Accusations flying this way and

that – he should die for killing her, she should die for killing the King,

the King should die for his crimes against the gods and men, any or all

of them guilty and justified.

Amidst the spreading chaos, the two figures at the centre are perfectly

still.

—How could you? she gasps.

—You wanted me to take responsibility. Accept the consequences. I’m

responsible for you ...

But no matter how calm he keeps his tone, his voice sounds shakier

than hers.

He shifts beneath her, trying to make her comfortable. Her shoulders

have fallen back against his, his mouth reaching forward close to her ear,

cruel in its intimacy. —There’s still a chance, he whispers, and her guts

spasm. He actually wants to give her, comfort right after doing what he

did. Right after proving that he could do to her what she hadn’t been

able to do to him.

The pain is vast and sprawling, it smothers almost all other feeling. But

she’s used to that. Since she learned the truth, she has lived like this, she

has learned to let her rage overwhelm even that which threatens to

overwhelm her.

And if pain is what he wants to give, then pain it is.

With a final effort she reaches for the currents. Instead of skimming

across them, she dives headlong into them, as she did on that first day.

And when she vanishes, the Doctor is left kneeling among the ashes on

the sanctuary floor, surrounded by people in search of answers. A

sagging marionette, trying to hold on to something that’s no longer

there.

She cannot see here, because there is nothing to see. The currents she

drowned herself in have pulled her to a place of stillness: her whole

body somehow immersed, but feeling no need to breathe, for while she

hangs in this moment, she will never reach the moment, where she has

run out of breath. This place is like jumping up and not falling back

down again.

Here the gods whisper around her. She can feel their comforting

fluttering, the rich, cool darkness of their presence. They are reaching

out to her, their long spiny fingers reaching inside her wound, ageing it

to wholeness. A hundred hands running over her, reshaping her body,

soothing her mind, filling her with certainty as they mould her into their

perfect instrument.

Throughout, she nurses the tiny diamond of fire within her, letting her

fury give her purpose. This will not go unpunished, she vows. It will not

end.

Five: Fall

Only a corner of the workshop is left intact – a single wooden box,

carefully sealed with a lock of his own design.

Inside the box is a collection of long, precise metal shapes, and a neat

pile of patches of coloured cloth, carefully snipped from what was left of

the parachute. The scraps cushion the wire cage: painstakingly precise

curls of extruded metal combining into a shape that can be picked out

only after a long time looking. At its centre, a single fire crystal, never

touching the metal of the cage, suspended perfectly by its own matrix of

energies.

Could anyone here make another of the cages? Not without the gods’

help. They might intuitively grasp what’s needed, they might be able to

puzzle out the materials, but they would never have the mathematics.

The rest of the workshop is a shattered wreck. The miniature furnace

has been disassembled, the individual bricks smashed into chunks and

dust, the fuel flung into the sea. Here and there are melted splashes of

metal: tools and ingots alike, diluted with copper until there’s nothing

left of steel in them. In the corner, the spyglass, its lenses shattered and

the pieces ground to powder. Even the wooden workbench has been

attacked, lest it give away some secret of the alchemical goings-on it has

seen. Nothing’s left of it but a dull glow, the last of the embers used to

destroy the hut.

The Doctor scuffs a wave of dirt over the embers with his sandal, then

another, until the last of the glow has turned to ash. He stands over the

wreckage of his workplace, still holding a good bronze axe, a little

nicked now, after this last bout of effort.

He tucks the axe under his arm, lifts the box, steps out of the ashy ruin

into the daylight.

Deucalion steps along the path towards the low smudge of woody

smoke.

His coronation has just been handled by half a dozen dishevelled

priestesses. Fumbling their way through the invocations, glossing over

various gods in light of the morning’s events, dedicating themselves

today to Poseidon in a temple built for Oceanus. (Or approximately half

a temple, overlooking a new crevasse.) They gave him his new kingly

name, and took away his old one, but he still feels like a Deucalion.

Still, at least Deucalion had learned from the council sessions. When he

stepped off the temple dais, he immediately asked the surviving courtiers

and ministers to send a ship across to Akrotiri, to see what damage the

earthquakes had done. He made it sound kingly and decisive, not just the

instinctive reaction of an overgrown boy ( is everyone all right? ). If

nothing else, sending his courtiers bustling bought him the time he

needed to slip away.

After everything that’s happened, the destruction of the workshop

doesn’t seem surprising: what’s more smoke in a sky full of smoke?

Nonetheless, he calls out in alarm:

—Perdix?

—Your majesty.

Deucalion turns, sharply. Perdix is standing behind him, body and hair

smeared with soot, wearing a heavy cloak even in the mountain’s heat.

He looks like a wild man, but his voice is soft. —Congratulations. How

does it feel to be an unrivalled superpower?

Deucalion can’t answer that. —I need to know what to do, he says. But

he catches himself before continuing, starts thinking it out the way

Perdix has taught him. —We know who are responsible, who are

threatening us, we need to know how to act against them.

—And then what?

Deucalion blinks. —What do you mean?

—If someone offers a way to fight the gods, how will you find a way to

fight them?

Deucalion doesn’t know what Perdix is asking. He hopes it looks like

he’s considering it thoughtfully. But Perdix isn’t looking at him, he’s

scanning the sky as though for fresh disaster. —Careful who you’re

strengthening. If you build up one wild force to tear down another ...

Well, you saw how well that worked.

It’s clear now. —So you think I might be setting myself up for a coup.

Perdix presses his hands to his forehead in despair. —No, no, no. It’s

not just about you.

—The people ... My people ...

—It’s all connected. You have to think beyond this moment.

—They’ll have to get used to living without the gods’ blessings.

Perdix says: —The future will remember these days as a golden age,

not a bronze one. But you know ...

—I know it can’t be sustained. So I have to ask the people to expect

less?

Perdix nods. —They won’t love you for that. They’ll fight tooth and

nail to sustain it anyway. You’ll have to teach them that they can’t take

plenty as their birthright.

—So we lose our ‘golden age’, says Deucalion hotly, —and then, at

some future time, we lose everything. And what am I supposed to do?

—Learn from my mistake, your majesty. Have your hindsight first. Do

the best you can, not just the best at the moment. Unless you learn to

think outside the usual reactions, it does not end.

Deucalion swallows, and makes his first real decision as King. —I

know what to do. Will you help me?

Perdix is whistling a foreign tune that Deucalion doesn’t recognise.

The teacher walks behind Deucalion. Everyone walks behind him –

two score of the royal men-at-arms, the very best and bravest. They wear

no armour; they’d cook like crabs in the holy mountain’s hissing heat.

Besides, no bronze protects from the gods, any more than it protects

from old age. But Perdix insisted they bring their shields anyway. Near-

naked men march behind demon faces and swirling patterns.

Perdix is singing to himself. —He marched them up, to the top of the

hill, and he marched them down again.

Deucalion slows down, which means Perdix and everyone else, slows

down. After a moment’s confusion, he commands: —Walk beside me.

Perdix catches up, with a couple of quick strides. Deucalion says: —I

don’t care for your song.

—I apologise, your majesty.

The new King, lowers his voice. —We won’t be marching down again.

Everyone here understands that.

Perdix says: —They’re not following you in despair, your majesty.

They’re following you in hope. If you succeed today, you’ll have the

reputation of a ruler who knows what to do.

For a moment, the long future flickers in Deucalion’s sight. —What

shall I do then, Perdix? With my hundreds of stolen years?

—Learn.

—Of course, teacher.

—No, no, you don’t get it. Learn everything. Learn people, learn the

past, learn possibilities. Learn what you don’t know. Learn what nobody

knows. Learn that even the answers you’ve learned probably don’t fit

the newest questions. Hundreds of years isn’t enough for you to learn

everything about everything, but it’s a start. Crisis points pass, passions

burn away, wealth and power shrivel like flowers in a drought. But

you’ll never find yourself, without a purpose so long as you go back to

your wellspring of questions about what surrounds you. You’ll outlive

any remnant of the days that made you, but you’re not likely to outlive

your world.

He stops, suddenly, his teeth catching his bottom lip, as though he’s

said something he wishes he hasn’t. Then Perdix looks up, looks around,

trying to lose himself in the world that surrounds him, one last time.

At that moment, Deucalion realises that, for all Perdix’s words of the

future, he’s still saying these things because he doesn’t expect to be here

to say them later on.

The first catapult missile falls short of the sanctuary by only a few feet.

As if in response – almost certainly in response – there’s a trembling and

a rumbling, and a gout of lava bursts from the holy mountain like a jet of

hot blood.

The second missile hits. It caves in half the wall of the temple’s front

and flies on into the caldera. Deucalion has a good view of it from the

wide ridge below. He raises his arm and gives a war cry to match his

men’s cheers.

Their real target is not the masonry, but the crystals inside, set into their

niches on the walls. Perdix said the crystals were the eyes with which

the gods looked into the world, the doors and windows through which

they reached into the world. Smash them, bury them, scatter them across

the islands to isolate them, lob missiles into the magma itself to break as

many of the crystals floating there as possible. Refuse the gods’ gifts and

their curses forever.

Another hit, onto the roof this time – not much damage. Immediately

the men are, loading another missile into the catapult, but now there’s a

buzzing in the air, as if they are surrounded by bees. He looks round, and

his soldiers can hear it too, some of them slapping at their ears, one or

two covering them to block out the swelling sound.

A great gout of flame bursts upwards from the caldera, raining handfuls

of hot magma down on them. The men raise their shields, acting

instinctively, and are saved from the worst of it. The mountainside is

shaking like a man in a fit.

That’s not the worst of it. Rising out of the flame are a pair of the

demon bulls, bronze hooves pounding the air. Deucalion has never

actually seen one; his nerve almost fails at the sight, as they come

roaring down over the ruins of the sanctuary.

But Perdix gives a shout of laughter. —What! Only two! They must be

more exhausted than I thought!

He throws off his cloak. Underneath, he is bewinged.

Deucalion stares. Out from Perdix’s shoulders, tethered to his elbows

and his wrists, spring bird’s wings made of a fine, shining silver metal.

In place of feathers, there are coloured shapes of cloth, filling up, the

framework. On his back, between his shoulder blades, there is a single

speck of caged light: a crystal in the centre of a metal cat’s-cradle.

Perdix dips his head, and flexes the wings. A moment later, he rises

from the ground, lighter than the feather he dropped that day from the

roof of the palace.

Without a word, he rises up towards the bulls, which have actually

stopped their headlong rush, astonished by this new apparition. He

passes through clouds of sulphurous steam, free of the convulsing earth.

The men are shouting as they fight to keep their balance, a mixture of

cries of fear, and surprise, and bewilderment, and pain as drops of

magma slip between the shields.

—Steady! cries the King. —We’ve started the task, now let’s see it

through!

Deucalion runs up to his men, helps them get the next missile into the

catapult as chunks of lava rain down around them. A soldier holds a

shield above his King, as the battle goes on.

Alcestis laughs and laughs. It is a laugh she can’t hear. There’s no sound

here in the gods’ realm, and yet there’s nothing but sound, roaring and

swooping harmonies that blot out everything else.

The Doctor dances like an elephant would dance. He lurches, flapping

his new wings, losing height in bursts, turning in sudden jabbing

movements. She can see that they give him no lift – that’s the crystal’s

work. She can also see he’s had no time to practise with them. His

gleeful look has twisted into a grimace, like that of a child who has just

discovered the lyre and now discovers that he can manage barely more

than lurching discords. He knows he’s an intruder, in a world where he’s

not welcome.

But he can move fast, and his clumsiness is a virtue, as the bulls –

grown smart with the adventures of their predecessors – try to second-

guess his moves. He is as likely to drop out of their path accidentally as

to dodge them deliberately. They are already losing form and strength,

turning back into the smoke from which they were born.

She’s ready to finish the lesson now. But not yet, not just yet.

First the King.

Deucalion flinches back, hiding his face behind his shield. It’s a

goddess, tall, grim-eyed, dazzlingly beautiful, too brilliant to look at

directly. Out of squinting, watering eyes he makes out parts of her,

shape, part woman, part sacred dove. Which goddess is this? Or is it a

Titan? Harpy? Siren? Gorgon? Fury?

His men fall back from her, not running, bless them, but stumbling

back from the apparition. The King, holds his ground. He knows he has

to hold his ground, he has to show them they mustn’t give up, even

though he can’t see a thing.

She comes forward and gathers him up, in light.

Her touch is as firm and gentle as that of a woman holding a baby.

Even as she lifts him over the volcano, over the red and hungry steaming

mouth of hell, he feels safe. All he can think of is his own mother.

She tells him, very gently, that he has to die, and asks if he knows why.

—It’s not fair! The words erupt from him like a child’s cry. —It wasn’t

my fault, I was going to do right! That’s what I’m trying to do now!

He tries to clutch at her, but she’s as insubstantial as smoke. How can

smoke hold him up?

A scream tears out from deep in Deucalion’s belly.

Everything is suddenly blackness and tumbling motion. But not

downwards into the volcano’s maw – along, sideways, so fast that the

breath is knocked from him. Or perhaps it’s the priestess tumbling onto

him with a curse. Their bodies connect in the muffled lightlessness in a

way that’s most untoward.

Alcestis lets out another imprecation, and abruptly she’s gone, like a

mote blinked out of the eye. Now, she’s gone, he can see a little light

penetrating the space that he’s inhabiting. With a jolt, Deucalion knows

where he is: inside Perdix’s cloak, being carried along by the flying

inventor like a hare in a sack.

The King, fights down the urge to struggle, clasping his hands together

to prevent his arms from flailing in panic and gritting his teeth as he

feels the ground’s nearness. Perdix barely slows as he puts his burden

down on the ridge.

Deucalion rolls out of the woollen cloak, panting, bruising his elbows

on the hard stone. Perdix stands over him awkwardly, trying to

straighten out the metal wings. They are detached from the inventor’s

wrists now, sticking out at odd angles.

He opens his mouth to ask, but Perdix says: —Your people need you.

With a harsh shrug, he lifts into the air. Deucalion’s head tips back to

follow him, and he looks straight up into Alcestis, diving down towards

him like a hawk on a mouse.

In the next instant, there’s a rainbow tangled with her. Perdix tries to

pull her down, one wing loose from his wrist, metal and cloth battling

the air. Deucalion can’t believe they’re not falling, hard, to the rocks.

But they’re rising, gradually. Perdix is shouting, his voice lost in the

wind and the thump of the catapult and the choking sounds as the

mountainside vomits lava.

—Ah, Alcestis, says the Doctor, with a wide, wild grin. —Shall we

dance?

Alcestis smacks him in the mouth, once, and then again. She doesn’t

want to hear his words, magic words that change the world around him,

change people, the words that changed her. He says her name as they

battle for height, and she rams her elbow into his face before he can say

anything more.

They slap and push at one another. She grabs a handful of his hair and

wrenches his head to one side, while he grabs her, shoulders in a painful

grip. This is no contest: she can control her flight and he can’t. Already

his toy wings are battered and bent. But she can’t seem to shake him

loose.

Alcestis grimaces. It’s the crystal he wears on his back, sending violent

ripples across the current she’s riding, like a wake tossing a tiny boat.

She’s spending all her strength steadying herself against them.

Beneath them, the little King is winning his battle to slam the door on

the gods, but it doesn’t seem to matter, she can’t think about that now.

She tries to snatch at the wire cage from the Doctor’s back, but it seems

to twist away from her grip each time her fingers close on it.

Heat below. In their struggle, they’ve cleared the caldera wall. Alcestis

focuses on climbing, getting up and away from that lethal heat. She

speeds up, hoping the wind rushing downwards will knock him, loose,

but he’s got one hand tangled in her dress and has managed to lock his

other arm beneath one of hers.

She remembers what happened with the bull over the ocean. If she can

gain the same height, will he faint and fall? She drives upwards for the

clouds. He’s got his fingers tangled in her hair. There’s blood coming

from his mouth where she’s split his lip.

—Let go of me!

It’s a breathless scream. She can’t catch her, breath here. The bright

glare of the clouds is darkening. She knows it will happen again, she’ll

fall. Just please, please, let him fall first.

He looks grim, but he’s not bothered at all. He’s speaking, but she can’t

hear the words. He doesn’t even look as though he’s breathing hard,

while her whole body is wracked with every breath.

Alcestis dives until she can fill her lungs again. She draws in the air

and bellows in his face: —Let me go!

The Doctor grabs her hair and draws her face close to his, and shouts

back: —I’ll never let you go!

They’re still falling, down into the centre of the volcano. The walls rise

up around them. It’s like falling into a blazing summer day. And she

realises: they’re not falling. They’re being pulled down.

The Doctor seems to know, at the same moment. The fire crystal on his

back flares as he tries to claw back some height, unsuccessfully. Nor can

Alcestis rise.

They’re in the grip of the Titans, being dragged down into Tartarus.

And still he won’t let her, go!

The flames rise up around them. There’s an impact like being thrown

through a stone wall, knocking the breath and the sense and the life out

of her –

And there’s no time, no place, nothing but the jagged peak she’s

streaking towards, and the Doctor chained there, helpless against the

wind.

Her wing-beats shaking the air. He looks around urgently for some

escape, his head rolling against the rock, as she screams towards him,

raising her talons. Oh, she relishes the way the gods have reshaped her

into the perfect single-minded creature for their task. She wants nothing

more than she wants this.

He twists in his chains, trying to escape. No more escapes. She reaches

him, and rakes across his flesh, claws ripping through skin and meat.

Tearing into him, as he tore into her.

He tastes moist and slippery, no different from any other animal. She

buries her face inside him, beak reaching for morsels deeper in, his

muscles straining around her, till she chews through them. When his

breath heaves, she feels it from the inside, his ribcage scraping along her

neck.

She leaves him, alive, once she’s eaten her fill. Her feathers brush

across his bare chest as she turns, and he gasps, as if this touch, is more

cruel.

When she returns to the mountain peak, he’s as new, not even a scar, and

this spurs her, to even greater fury. How dare he be unmarked by what

he’s been through? How dare he look like a perfect symbol of what she

knows is a lie, a lie?

This time, she takes extra care once she’s finished feeding – covering

the rest of his body with bites and claw-marks, trying to drive her lesson

home with every bit of flesh she breaks. Wounding him for every one of

the uncounted dead, for every one he struck down himself, for all the

ones he’s tried to excuse. By the end of it, he’s a foul, bloody mass, and

now at last he looks like she feels.

Again she soars towards him. Again his skin is untouched. But there’s a

ghost-image of his blood across his chest, and more of a haggard look in

his eyes, and she hopes he may yet learn.

He reacts less and less each time, she comes to him, until it’s like

attacking the mountain top itself. She tries getting more extreme,

drinking more of the salt blood, but gets nothing more than a flinch, or a

cringe, or the occasional moan. She lands on his chest afterwards and

peers into his eyes – beak almost touching the jelly – but there’s nothing

in them to show that he’s engaged with her, in the slightest.

—Come on, she screeches. —Fight me!

It means nothing to break someone so uncaring, who will never learn.

But he just hangs there, giving no sign that he’ll make this easy for her.

She has no memory of where she goes when she’s not attacking him.

She leaves, and she’s soaring right back, hungry again.

One time, she tries explaining – draping her, wingtips across his

shoulders, her beak working its way down his chest, leaving a precise

trail of gouges and bites as she speaks. —As long as you were, just a

collaborator, you could live. You hands were, still just clean enough,

you had a chance to change your ways. But then what did your hands

do?

Now, she tears into his belly, right where the knife had gone. —They

took a life, she says after she swallows. —You killed me. The gods

spared me, but that doesn’t spare you. Once the fire burns you, you stay

burned. There is no hope.

She feels his head shake at that, or just loll. She wonders if he’s even

hearing her, words, or just the endless cries, of a hungry bird.

He doesn’t break down, he doesn’t accept, he must be fighting it, but he

still doesn’t give her a word. She has nothing to go on. She comes to him

again, and again, his flesh ever more tasteless in her mouth, crowing to

him about his damnation, demanding he resist it so she can have

something to break. Sliding from righteous control to unalloyed frenzy.

—Answer me, she shouts. —Fight me. Tell me I’m wrong.

Her wings flail as she holds herself in front of his heavy-lidded face.

—Challenge me. Tear into me. Fight me. Kill me!

Her wings stumble in the air.

Then she tears into his belly even harder, trying to get the taste of her

words out of her mouth.

You stay burned. She can feel the scars where Britomartis was torn from

her grasp, the sudden emptiness between her hands where

Rhadamanthys had been. Surely giving up her hands should have

stopped her feeling them?

When she withdraws from him, he’s trying to speak.

—You wanted me to take responsibility, he whispers. His throat is

dusty from disuse. —Take responsibility for you. Take responsibility

from you. Well, I did.

She peers at him, silently, from where she’s holding on. Her wing

brushes against the ragged edge she’s left in his belly, and his muscles

tighten in a useless spasm.

—Even if that meant giving up, on what I believed in, my bloodless

solution. And even then, I was half aiming to miss, just by enough ...

A couple of bitter mouthfuls, and she turns to fly away, her appetite

shrivelled. She feels his body sag beneath her, exhausted, his final words

calling weakly after her.

—Which I did.

The next time, she’s not hungry. She rests on his chains, of that strange

grey metal, at the point where they fuse with the rock. Looks down at his

head, where it leans on the mountain.

—Just say you did wrong, she whispers.

—Which wrong, did I do?

—Say you were wrong. To make me answer questions I wasn’t ready

to ask. To excuse the inexcusable. Not to give me an excuse.

—I gave you what I could ...

She can barely lift her head. Her scream’s diminished to a whisper. —

Just say it. Lie if you have to. But say you were wrong, and we can both

end this.

Slowly he raises his head – his face inverted beneath her, his eyes

showing her a hollowness she had yet to imagine.

—You still don’t get it, do you? You think it ends?

—It must ...

A shake of his head, a murmur. —You think the gods just sent you here

to break me, and then you’ll take your place by their side? You’re

sentenced here, same as I am. They made this environment from your

mind and mine.

—No ...

—If you can’t free them, you mean nothing to them. Like me, you’re

better off out of the way.

She throws herself down to tear this truth out of him. But halfway

down she stops her own wings and lets herself plummet, down along the

rock face, closing her eyes and willing the ground to erase her. Falling

and falling and never hitting bottom. Never stopping.

And she looks down and sees herself descending towards him, again,

and lets out a scream that would tear through anyone for miles. If there

were, anyone else, in the world at all.

—We’re caught in a fold of time, he says, as she wheels and thrashes

over him. —Stuck in a moment bent back on itself. No change, no end.

No matter how many times you kill me.

—It can’t, she caws, the meaning of her own words almost lost under

the noise. But his words wrap around her, low and raw and

overwhelming.

—That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? The ending. The clean break

you’re looking for, where all the guilty are punished and the innocent

live happily ever after. Well, let me tell you what’s going to happen after

you die.

When the eruption comes, in centuries time, it won’t be the end. Akrotiri

will be erased, but the empire will not lie down so cleanly.

There will be no summer. The explosion will poison the sky for a

decade, tsunamis across the Aegean sowing fertile ground with salt.

Many will live, escaping a clean, righteous execution, only to starve

over years. Gaunt brutes scraping out an existence in half-buried homes,

the debris too thick to bother to clear away. Authority will crumble,

justice forgotten, kings abandoned now that it’s clear that they cannot

protect the people.

They’ll sacrifice children, in an attempt to appease the gods, who have

long since fled them.

It does not end.

Eventually even the gods, will fall. Rhea and her snakes will be driven

underground. Apollo with his lyre and his clear eyes will slay the

Python, and claim the Pythia’s wisdom for his own rational domain.

Then even his kind will be laid low. The children will fall before new

races of gods, and eventually divinity itself will wither in a world that

sees no place for it.

But even then, it does not end.

His face, soft, hard, speaking truth. Mourning and accusing. Bloodied

and weary and relentless.

She can hear no more. She raises her talons to her eyes, trying to drown

out the pain. Her claws slicing in, the jab of her nails against the bone at

the back–

And again, she sees him beneath her as she descends.

She didn’t know it was still possible to sob in this body. She ends up

collapsing on the rocky peak, clinging to his chains for support – body

heaving, wings wrapped around herself for comfort.

—Alcestis.

It’s jarring to hear that name directed at this creature.

He cranes his neck to look at her, his human face looking outsized next

to hers. —We all fall down. You, me, kings, gods. It’s not all we do.

The chains under her are quivering. He’s twisting a wrist back and

forth in its manacle, contorting to scratch an itch. From the quiet, tight

spike of frustration on his face, this now is the most agonising thing in

the world for him.

She shuffles her body down toward him, and with her beak she gently

scratches against his wrist. His whole body sags with release. She says:

—But you’ve told me where it ends ...

—Even that’s not the be-all and end-all. There’s so much more that can

happen, things that haven’t even been thought of. You haven’t

discovered C-sharp minor yet, or Darjeeling with lemon. Or

representative democracy. Or that way you can taper the rim of your

cups so you can pour with them more easily. None of that ends either.

His words are, so gentle, even honeyed. —How can you say this? she

asks, her head resting on his hand.

—Because it’s true.

—But how can you say it to me? How can you speak to me like you

forgive me?

A half-curled smile.

—Oh, Alcestis. You know how good a liar I am.

Her heart doesn’t stop. It just sort of trickles away.

And his hand closes round her throat.

She can gasp, but barely. One eye pushed flat against the rock face, heart

rattling her, body with panic.

His face is cold, flat, a flake of stone. —You just tortured me. In my

mind, I’ve wrung your neck and flung you down a thousand times.

She thrashes, but her claws can’t reach him, her neck can’t turn without

snapping.

—But I’m still here, he continues. —No matter how often I do it. And

there’s always another eagle where you came from.

His clutching hand a million miles away from that raw hollow face.

Almost a completely separate creature.

Slowly, hesitantly now, eyes fixed as his fingers tighten. —There’ll

always be another eagle ...

And she crumples, trying to sob through a blocked throat. —I deserve

it, she manages. —Anything —

He cuts her, off, his voice shaking. —No, not anything. You deserve a

lot, but you don’t deserve to die.

But his hand refuses to let her, go.

He’s talking fast, talking to her, arguing against himself. —Not for

them using you in their crimes, not for executing them. Not even for me.

No justice in killing someone who wants to die.

A final shake of her head. She’s stopped fighting him now, but still

struggling for every whisper of precious air. How can he say she’s worth

sparing? A life sentence is no mercy.

—You already tried ... to kill me ...

There’s a manic tightness round his eyes. —And I’d do it again, if there

was no other way. There isn’t always. But if there is, it’s a crime to miss

it. Don’t you see? Not just hit back. Not just the obvious and the ugly.

His guts are torn open and he’s bleeding words. They come faster and

faster, disconnected, washing over her. Even now he’s healed, his seams

are ripped wide open — eyes pleading, crumpled voice trying to outrun

tears, struggling to reach something beyond the grasp of his hands.

—Lose myself in an ocean of possibilities. Always looking for

something else, even if you don’t know what when you start looking.

That’s what I’m supposed to do, isn’t it? You’ve got to find another way

... If you deserve to die, how can I deserve to live? With all I’ve done?

But he still can’t let up. Her eyes are blurring, wash of red closing in.

And his words rush on, carrying him, helpless in their wake.

Time and again, I have fallen into fire and the fire did not take me. I’ve

seen blazes claim whole worlds. I’ve watched them burn around me.

There’s blame enough to go around and around — trace the path of the

fire back through decades and centuries of cruelty and inattention — but

I can point to one moment when I failed to find another way. When I

took the best way open to me. The great and the good, the cruel and the

cowardly, all turned to silhouettes of ash.

I still stand. I stand where so many have turned to dust. If the fire

spared me, it was not because I was worthy. What can I do but try to be

worthy? If I am less than the best of those who were, lost, that would

shrink the world. Even as the fire burns on, even if it does not end, I

must not let it rob me of my own ability to stop!

And the air rushes back into her.

He sags against the mountain, breathing as hard as she is. Over each

sweet breath she hears his murmurs, stray fragments, noises of sorrow

and remorse. From her own mouth she hears the same sounds. Then

there is silence, together, apart.

When the mountain top begins to melt, he closes his eyes and lets out a

sigh, draining the last of his breath from his lungs. Beneath her hands –

hands? – she can feel the rock losing its rock-ness, the chains in flux.

—At last, he murmurs.

—What’s happening? she cries.

—Either the gods, are, weakening, or we’re both going mad.

Whichever you prefer.

Everything is wavering, losing its edges, like a landscape through the

shimmer of noonday heat. Even her own body, now translucent as finest

linen. In this world, the Doctor is the only solid thing left.

—It’s the crystals that bind the Fallen to our world, says the Doctor, —

allow them to manipulate it. Like all this. With Deucalion and his men

scattering them, burying them, their power fades. The bulls, all this,

gone. When we came down here I gambled they wouldn’t be able to

sustain eternity forever, I was hoping it would give us enough time,

together ...

—You came in here for me?

A ghost of a smile. —Like I said, I was responsible.

Humbled, beyond thought, her, head, bows before him.

He brings his hands down, the chains stretching like toffee. She expects

him, to fall, but there’s nothing to fall to. —When the time, comes, we’ll

need to ride the currents out of here. You’ll need to fly blind, just dive

in. One jump. If you don’t ... (His eyes find hers.) —Well, it’s only a

little way down into the magma, you won’t have time to feel a thing.

The form the gods had convinced her was hers is falling away. In a few

moments, she knows there will be nothing left. It can be over.

His eyes are those of a man in need of mercy. But now, even the form

around them is coming apart – now old, now young, both vast and tiny, a

thousand embroideries on a basic truth. Something bigger inside than the

shape that contains it.

She grabs onto him with all that remains of her. There’s a fire in her

hands and she lets it burn through her, refusing to let go, holding on to a

single truth out of the body of contradictions. The man who, caught up

in this violent world, claws and drags his way toward peace.

—Now, up –

And they’re falling, clinging to each other, the wind tearing through

them and the only warmth their skin pressed together. Sunlight, so cold,

the sky rolling wild around them and the tiny islands so far beneath.

She’s gasping for air, sobbing and laughing and filling her lungs with as

much as she can hold.

—Here, she tells him, and holds him even tighter. —Let me do this.

And she reaches for the currents to carry them, but they aren’t there.

She pulls back from his shoulder, catches his eye, sees his grave

expression before she can speak.

—The gods were the source of the currents, he murmurs. —And now

they’re cut off.

And all she can do is shake with laughter, the tears blasted from her

face by the wind.

—There are still some left, he tells her. —No waves, just ripples.

Aftershocks. Going on for years. Possibly enough to support you.

—I can’t feel anything ...

He taps the tangle of wires, the fire-crystal still strapped to his back,

just above her arms. She cranes her neck over his shoulder; it’s still

glowing, faintly.

—This thing’s interfering with you, so close. You can still fly – but

alone.

For a long moment, she just realises.

—No, she says, and begins to rip the crystal from him.

He stops her with a gasp, his whole body tensing. —The currents are

too weak now. You couldn’t carry me.

—I’ve got to!

So he lets go of her. Instantly, she grabs on with arms and legs, holding

him to her – pinning them both, the crystal beyond her reach.

—Alone. It’s our only chance. (His eyes close wearily.) —Your only

chance.

She hangs on fiercely. —I can’t ...

—Well, it was easy enough for you a little while ago, he mutters

peevishly. —Sorry, sorry.

—Not after all this ...

—Exactly. You throw your life away after all this, then it was

pointless. You still don’t get off that easily. You helped make this world,

you’ve got to live in it.

She looks him in those hot-sky eyes. There’s no answer in them; he

doesn’t know which way the wind will blow her. But there is certainty.

He’s said everything he needs to.

She says: —I can’t do the things you’ve done.

He shakes his head. —You never know. You might do better.

And he waits, for her to be ready.

She holds on, trying to feel every piece of him at once, trying to stay

caught in the moment.

It takes every bit of herself to open her arms.

Slow, flickering, as the last faint currents take hold of her. He hangs

below her, drifting into the distance, almost all his skin bare to the wind.

Half-healed scars across his belly, crows-feet deep around his eyes. His

face at peace, lost at last in the ocean of sky.

Then she dives into the currents and rides them straight down to the

water.

Splashdown, feet first, arrowlike into churning dark. Driving upwards,

breaking the surface into sunlight before the water makes her new fire

falter. Already back in the air, eyes sweeping the sky, reaching for any

sign of him.

The sky is empty.

On a scrap of beach west of Akrotiri, the waves wash over his wings.

She finds them just ashore in the sand, twisted, half-melted. The crystal,

peeks out of the shallows, its wires scattered along the shoreline. Of his

body there is no sign.

She plucks a blue silken feather and holds it close – chilled now,

soaked through. She stands, watching where the land, sea and air all

meet.

Around her, she hears a strange fading grinding: mechanical wave-

crash, a mis-blown wind. Perhaps this was all one final sleight-of-hand

on his part, a last dramatic exit. Maybe he’s still running from those he

burned, maybe he faces them with every action in the world he’s made.

But whether he lives or not makes no difference; he is gone. And she is

here.

Slowly she lets the currents lift her; they falter and fade like a summer

breeze, and she has to circle to gain altitude. No longer master of the

currents, she must follow their flow, set her own course as she can

within them. The summer sun warms and dries her.

Ahead there is smoke over Akrotiri, but no fire. Down there they will

be trying to make sense of a world where the gods’ favour can no longer

be taken for granted, where neither kings nor heroes can be trusted, but

both still are needed. With luck there will be mercy there; if not, she will

do what she can to make it. She has fallen so far, but she’s the only one

who can pick the pieces back up.

She settles to land, walking alone towards the sunset. It makes her

think not of endings, but of all the days to come.

Acknowledgements

There’s no reason why most of the people whose words and actions shaped

this book will notice its existence in the slightest – and anyway,

someone like Jimmy Carter would probably be rather more interested in

his Nobel Peace Prize than an endnote. Still, a tip of the hat to U2 for

‘Kite’ which became the end credits music.

Thousands of thanks to our readers: David Carroll, Sean Corcoran,

Royce Day, Rob Hood, Rachel Jacobs, Annie Marshall, Andrew

Shellshear, Cat Sparks, Marsha Twitty, Jim Vowles, Kyla Ward, Jeff

Weiss, and Matt Wolff.

And infinite thanks to Lloyd Rose for reminding us.

About the Authors

Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman have been married for five years,

writers for ten, and collaborators since some point in between. Together

and apart, they’ve produced eleven novels, a couple of audio plays, one

direct-to-video feature film script, and an assortment of short films and

short stories. Between the two of them, they have been nominated three

times for the Aurealis Award for best Australian SF novel, and once for

the Ditmar Award.

They live in Sydney, Australia, with occasional returns to Washington

DC. Far more can be found out about them at their website, at:

www.zip.com.au/~korman

Next up Kate is working on an original SF novel, while Jon is co-

writing a novel based on the Patrick McGoohan TV series The Prisoner,

for release in 2004 by Powys Media (www.powysmedia.com).