“And I hope as much use,” Atalanta muttered behind his back. And when he turned and winked at her, the flush—which had only been on her cheeks and brow—spread throughout her body and she feared she might be sick on the spot. So she left the room without so much as nodding at the king.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
SECRET TEMPLE
THAT NIGHT, ASLEEP IN a soft royal bed, Atalanta was visited by a dream. Like a voice in the wind, it called her from her room, beckoned her through the door and out into the hall. Strangely, there were no guards or servants to be seen, as if everyone in the palace had suddenly disappeared.
Atalanta felt herself being drawn mysteriously to a dark staircase that went down and down to another passage. This in turn brought her to a spiral stair that descended into a damp and gloomy underground chamber that was lit only by a few oil lamps set in alcoves in the walls.
Silently, she followed the lamps to a door that was standing ajar. She could hear voices on the far side of the door but couldn’t tell who they were.
Slipping through the doorway, she found herself in an enormous domed room, the ceiling rising high overhead, with huge supporting pillars of stone.
From the safety of one of the pillars, she peeked out and saw King Iasus pacing. His face was flushed and sweating, and he clenched and unclenched his fists with great agitation.
Looming over him in the center of the room was a statue of a woman at least fifteen feet high. Her eyes and mouth were brightly painted and cow horns stuck out from the golden ringlets of her hair. Her belly was hugely swollen, and below it her stone skirts stretched to the floor in folds of purple and crimson. It was the goddess Astarte.
“What else was I to do?” he protested. “I prayed to you and to Demeter and even to Hera, queen of the gods. But you gave me no help!” He seemed to be talking to the empty air, not to the statue in front of him.
And the empty air answered him.
“You were a fool.” A woman’s voice filled the chamber like the soughing of the wind. “By your own choice you dishonored the gods of Arcadia, making sacrifices to this painted statue of a foreign deity.”
“All I wanted was a son,” Iasus insisted, raising his arms above his head as if entreating the air. “To carry on my name and my line.”
“Did you really think you could call on barbarian gods and not pay a price?” the voice demanded, rising like a winter gale. “It is you, Iasus, who called down this curse upon your kingdom.”
“I sent the Phoenician priest back to his own land,” Iasus pleaded. “Can’t you, in turn, Great Artemis, send the beast back from whence it came?”
There was a silence as deep as doom and then a sigh. Atalanta leaned forward to hear.
“But you kept the statue. The beast,” Artemis informed the king, “comes from the same desert lands as does this barbarian goddess. A fitting punishment for your sins, Iasus, and your pride.”
“Can’t you stop it, O Artemis?”
The air seemed to draw itself up. “Stop it? Why should I?” The voice laughed cruelly. “No man is ever cursed unless he brings it down upon his own head. This is the price you pay for invoking foreign gods and practicing their vile rituals, Iasus. This beast will destroy you and yours, and your kingdom will be brought to ruin.”
Iasus shook his fist at the air. “Never. The great Orion is here now. He’ll kill the beast.”
“Only your own blood can save the kingdom now,” the voice said coldly. “Orion has his own sins to pay for. He, too, has dishonored me.”
Atalanta thought suddenly of Orion pushing the statue of the goddess to the ground in his fury at being beaten in the race. Oh no, she thought, he was sorry right after. Don’t punish him, Great Artemis, for that. But she didn’t dare say it aloud.
All at once the statue of Astarte began to sway, leaning from one side to another, almost drunken in its movements.
“Let this be the last time Astarte shows her painted face in Arcadia,” proclaimed the voice.
The statue began to fall forward and Iasus leaped aside, then ran for shelter behind a pillar.
When stone hit stone, the statue broke into hundreds of pieces that rolled across the floor. The noise of the impact echoed over and over in the great chamber.
Atalanta sat upright in bed, the echoes still crashing in her ears. Her heart was pounding. The dream had been so real, yet here she was safe in the silence of her own bedchamber.
Was it the rich food that had caused her night visions? Or the suggestion of the rumor that Melanion had told her?
Or was it something else?
She slid out of bed and put on her hunting clothes. Grabbing up her bow and quiver of arrows, she padded out of the room. She followed the corridor as she’d done in her dream. Sure enough, it brought her to a stairway. And the stairway to the passage and the spiral stair.
She knew then that below would be the lamp-lit tunnel and the great domed room. How could I have dreamed all this? she wondered.
Facing a wounded boar was nothing compared to the fear she felt now. She took a deep breath, brushed aside an impulse to turn and run, and started down the spiral steps.
Just as in the dream, the door to the domed room was ajar. She stepped inside without making a sound. The sight that greeted her made her catch her breath. There was a man crouching among the shattered fragments of a statue, examining the pieces.
But it wasn’t King Iasus.
It was Orion.
She thought she’d been silent, but he suddenly said without looking up, “Little huntress, what brings you here?”
She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. “A dream,” she said at last, painfully aware of how foolish she sounded. “I saw the king here and the statue fall.” She said nothing of the goddess. Nothing of Orion’s fate. It had been a dream after all, and she knew she was no oracle.
Orion stood and looked strangely at her. “I came because my instincts told me the king was hiding something. Something important. One should never go on a hunt unprepared.” He stopped as if expecting some response from her.
She nodded.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he continued, “thinking about what it might be. I walked the corridors and heard the sound of breaking stone, which led me to this place.” He picked up a painted fragment from the floor. It was an eye, heavily outlined in black, the eyelid painted green. “I’ve seen such images before, in the temples of the distant East.”
“Is it…is it a goddess?” Atalanta asked, already knowing the answer.
He nodded. “Astarte at a guess. The goddess of childbirth.”
“And the beast is terrorizing Arcadia because of her?” Atalanta asked.
Orion tossed the stone aside. “Whoever or whatever brought the mantiger here, it’s still only an animal. And I have never met an animal I couldn’t kill.” He smiled grimly at Atalanta and walked out of the room.
Remembering the cold voice of the goddess in her dream, Atalanta shuddered. She was amazed that she found herself afraid for Orion.
And for herself.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE GREAT HUNT BEGINS
ORION INSISTED ON LEAVING at dawn. Only a few servants were bustling about at that time, more interested in their work than the hunting party gathered in the courtyard. The majority of the Tegeans were still sleeping off the banquet.
Prince Ancaeus looked as if he wished he were still abed. He wore a rough tunic, dyed green, like his nephew and Hierax. But while they were both clear-eyed, his eyes were rimmed with red and his face pale. Atalanta worried about him. A hunt was no place for a sick man.
“Perhaps we should carry you in a litter, Uncle,” Melanion suggested with a smile.
Ancaeus merely glowered. “Where are the chariots?” he complained. “Why aren’t they ready yet?”