“But where are the darker powers to go? People know in their hearts that they are still there, so they embody them by their own dark imaginings. This is what you saw beginning to happen last night, here on my island. I have no power to stop it. I am a puff of smoke in the wind compared to the solidity of this dark god. But you could, and only you, and I can tell you how and give you a few small glamours to help you. It will be very dangerous, and you may not succeed, but you are already in terrible danger. It is your choice, Yanni.”
There was only one possible answer.
“I . . . I . . . I’ll try.”
Twenty-seven days later, though he had gone to bed twanging with nerves, Yanni slept late—a little gift from the goddess, he guessed—and didn’t wake until the sun was well up. Euphanie was waiting for him in the kitchen, serious and pale.
“She came to me in my dream,” she said. “She told me what you are going to do tonight. Oh, Yanni!”
(Nobody on the island except themselves seemed to have met, or even seen, the census-taker’s sister, though the men in the tavern and the women in the market had talked animatedly about the census-taking, and their possible losses or gains from the re-evaluations that were going to result. Euphanie, indeed, had been one of the lucky ones. Following her visitor’s advice she had checked every detail in the rolls, and had discovered an error that meant she had been paying excess taxes since the previous census. Rather than face the hassle and litigation of suing for full repayment she had accepted a reasonable sum in settlement on the spot, which was how Yanni had been able to stand his round on his visits to the tavern this last month.
And then to drink his share. Or rather to make it seem as if he had, by practising the glamour the goddess had shown him. It was something like what she had said about the way the gods are embodied, the light streaming in to the central point of the lamp, as it were a willed belief, intense enough to rouse echoes of itself in the minds of others, and then beamed in with them to a central point—a mug, for instance—so that the mug appears to be brim full when it has only a dribble of wine in the bottom. A dozen such dribbles in an evening aren’t enough to get a grown man drunk, though Yanni had been apparently reeling by the time he left the tavern each night. He was confident now that he could make it happen again, new-moon night or not.)
It was the new-moon night nearest midwinter, and had been dark for three hours by the time Yanni walked down the hill. Pitch dark now, all stars hidden behind heavy, slow-moving cloud. He carried a lantern, because it would have seemed strange not to do so on such a night. Scops went with him, not riding on his shoulder but slipping invisibly from tree to tree through the olives, or moving further from the track to swoop low across a patch of scrubland or a vineyard, then calling softly when she returned to the track to reassure him that she was still there.
In the pocket of his pouch he carried the odd-shaped piece of wood that the goddess had told him he would need. He had spent some time searching the hillside for exactly the right branch, and had eventually cut it from a wild olive, shaped and smoothed it, and, lying on the kitchen table, with Euphanie’s help practised what he planned to do with it.
His palms were sweaty with tension. He felt scared but not terrified. He believed he could face what was coming, and cope with it, provided he kept his wits. And he wouldn’t be alone. Scops was already with him, and the goddess would be there, she had told him, and she would bring helpers, each in themselves as near-powerless as she was, but together, perhaps, worth something.
A noise on the path ahead of him, coming from round the next bend. It paused and came again, more prolonged. Footsteps crossing a patch of loose gravel. Several people climbing the path. He drew aside, tucked his lantern under his cloak and waited. He had been half expecting this.
“See you Tuesday, Yanni?” someone had called when he’d been leaving the tavern last week.
“They’ll be shut here, won’t they? It’s a new-moon night again,” he’d answered. (He’d been wondering how they were going to manage this.)
“Oh, we’ll meet at my place,” Kosta had said. “Usual time.”
“Long way to walk down on a new-moon night, lad,” Stavros had suggested.
“No, I’ll be all right,” he’d said confidently. “See you at Kosta’s, then.”
Despite that, they couldn’t have been sure he’d not have changed his mind, or been persuaded to by his sister, so now they were coming to unpersuade him, and if necessary to take him by force, and perhaps Euphanie as well.
They rounded the bend, dim shapes in the light of their lanterns, climbing in silence. He couldn’t tell them apart until they were almost level with him.
“Stavros?” he called softly.
They stopped dead. Stavros clutched at Dmitri’s arm as they turned to face him.
“It’s me, Yanni,” he said easily. “I didn’t mean to make you jump—I was just being careful. New-moon night, you know.”
They relaxed, but there was still a gruffness in Stavros’s voice as he answered.
“Good lad. That’s why we thought we’d come and see you down. Now you’ve saved us the climb. Back we go, lads.”
They were all as tense as he was, Yanni realised as they descended the hill, and no wonder. They must understand that they were already trapped in a hideous labyrinth, and tonight they were going to descend a whole level further into its darkness. In their hearts they must be yet more afraid than he was. They didn’t have even the ghost of a goddess to help them, only a real and terrible master they must obey.
By island standards Kosta was a wealthy man. He was a boat builder, with three paid hands to help him—Dmitri was one of them—and himself owned two fishing boats. He lived in a house larger than most, a little above the town up a different track from the one that led to Crow Castle. The rest of the men were already there in the kitchen, with Kosta’s two bustling sisters bringing them little plates of the usual island snacks to add relish to the wine. Apart from that, the meeting was outwardly no different from any other at the tavern, teasing talk, and small bets on the backgammon, and memories of times past. Inwardly, though, it was utterly different. The air stank with tension and dread, and excited expectation, until Thanassi said “Time you were getting home, Yanni, lad.”
The tension wound up another notch, twanging taut. Yanni rose swaying, as if in response to the wine they supposed him to have drunk. Any moment now, he thought.
“Nightcap to see you on your way?” said Kosta, also rising. “Settle the wine and give you sweet dreams? Brandy, everyone?”
It would have been a slap in the face to refuse.
“You won’t taste brandy like Kosta’s again,” said Dmitri, himself too drunk not to chuckle at the hideous joke.
Kosta fetched a dozen small glass goblets and a stone bottle from a shelf. Yanni watched him fill one goblet and push it a little to the side, then fill the rest and not move them. He handed Yanni the first glass and the men passed the rest around among themselves. Yanni concentrated his will, the way the goddess had shown him.
“Well, good luck,” he said.
They echoed the toast, and watched him over their goblets as they drank. They saw a flesh-and-blood arm raise a solid glass goblet to his lips, and relaxed as they watched him drain it in three gulps.