Khryse walked away and Kassandra went to her room. Honey slept there, still curled in blankets, but Kassandra noted that the snake was gone. Wiser than humans she had sought refuge in some secret place known only to the serpentkind. Kassandra bent and gently shook the child, waking her. Honey put her arms up to be lifted and Kassandra dressed her quickly. Somehow she had to get the child safely out of Troy before the invaders broke through the walls.
She said, "Come, darling," and took her hand. "We must go quickly."
Honey looked confused, but obediently trotted along beside Kassandra as they crossed the compound. Hurrying up toward the Maiden's Temple with Honey's hand in hers she stumbled, and strong hands picked her up.
"Kassandra," said Aeneas, "it has come. This was your warning?"
"I thought you had left the city," she said, trying to steady her voice.
"Surely you cannot stay now," he said. "Come with me; I shall find a ship bound for Crete—"
"No," she said. "Come - quickly. The Gods have forsaken Troy—"
She led him swiftly into the innermost shrine of the Maiden's Temple; there were a few priestesses there, and she cried out to them:
"Quickly, extinguish all the torches—yes, even the Sacred Flame! The Gods have deserted us!"
She herself took the last torch and crushed out the fire that burned before the Maiden; and as the priestesses were rushing out of doors, she tore down the curtain.
"Aeneas, this is the most sacred object in all of Troy; take it." She drew forth the ancient statue, the Palladium, and wrapped it in her veil. "Carry it across the seas, wherever you may go. Build an altar to the Goddess and establish the Sacred Fire. Tell the truth of Troy." He moved as if to remove the veil and look at it, but she stayed his hand.
"No, no man must look upon it," she said. "Swear you will carry it to a new temple and there consign it to a priestess of the Mother—Swear!" she repeated, and Aeneas looked into her eyes.
"I swear," he said. "Kassandra, there can be no further reason to remain. Come with me - a priestess should be the one to take this beyond the seas."
He bent to embrace her; she kissed him wildly, then drew back.
"It cannot be," she said; "my fate lies here. It is yours to leave Troy unwounded and alive. But go at once, and all our hopes and all our Gods go with you."
"You must not stay here—" he began.
"I swear to you, I shall leave Troy before the sun rises again," she said. "It is not death that awaits me; but I am not free to go with you; the Gods have decreed otherwise."
He kissed her again and took the wrapped bundle.
"I swear it by my own divine lineage," he said. "I will do your will - and hers."
Her eyes blurred with tears as he hurried out of the temple.
She had hardly crossed the court when inside her head she heard a great roar. The ground swayed beneath her feet; she stumbled and fell with Honey in her arms, and lay still, her body pressed against the suddenly unstable earth which rippled and bounced beneath them. Her only emotion was not fear but rage: Earth Mother, why do you let your sons play this way with what you have made?
The movement seemed to go on forever, through the frightened sobs of the child in her arms. Then it subsided, and she realized that the sun was still only a fraction above the horizon; the quake could hardly have lasted more than a few moments. Honey's crying had subsided to a soft hiccoughing.
Kassandra looked behind her; the sound she had heard had been the walls of the Sunlord's house collapsing inward. Hardly a building in the enclosure was still standing. Of the main building where they dwelt no more than a heap of rubble was left. Certainly nothing could be salvaged from there. There was a muffled screaming; someone had been trapped inside under the fallen stones. Kassandra looked helplessly at the pile - she could not with all her strength have budged a single stone—and very soon the sound ceased.
Somewhere in the gardens, an unconcerned bird began to sing.
Did this mean it was over?
As if in answer, the ground seemed to shudder and rock again, and then was still. Stunned, Kassandra walked toward the vantage point where last night she had looked down on the plain.
The great gate and front wall of Troy had fallen, and in the midst of the battered rubble of wall and gate, Kassandra saw the wooden Horse lying, one leg raised grotesquely as if it had indeed kicked the wall down with its great hooves. The torches had set the scaffolding on fire and it was burning fiercely; but against the horse itself, the flames licked in vain. Flames were rising, as expected, from the poorer quarter with its wooden houses. It was the vision she had seen first as a child, the vision no one had believed - Troy was burning.
Through the gap in the fallen wall, Akhaian soldiers were already pouring in in floods, rushing into still unfallen houses and leaving laden with everything they could carry. Where could she hide? More important, where could she take Honey? One building within the compound of the Sunlord's house was still standing; the shrine. There might be food there, remnants of the offerings of the day before. She was conscious, to her own shock, of a sudden fierce hunger. She went inside, and paused. If there should be another quake, the building might fall. The statue of the Sunlord had fallen, and beneath it, crushed, lay a human figure. Approaching with a numb curiosity - there was nothing to be done - she saw that it was Khryse who lay there.
At last, she thought, now the God has truly struck him down.
She knelt beside the fallen man, closing the wide-open eyes, then rose and passed on.
In the room behind the statue, where the offerings were kept, she found loaves of bread, quite stale, but she ate one, dividing it with the little girl, who seemed stunned and did not cry. She thrust another into the fold of her robe - she might need it—and stopped to consider. The Akhaians were already plundering the lower town. Had the palace fallen? Had they all been killed: her parents, Andromache, Helen? Were there any Trojan soldiers left alive to halt the sack? Or were she and her child the only ones left alive to watch the devastation?
She listened for any sound that would prompt her to think that someone else remained living in the Sunlord's house but there was only silence. Perhaps someone still lived in the palace below. Had the warning reached them in time to get out into the courts or gardens?
Although the sun was now quite warm, she shivered. Her warm shawl, and every stitch of her clothing except the shift she stood in, was buried in the ruins of the Sunlord's Temple.
She should go down to the palace; although she was aware of the Akhaian soldiers in the city, she was desperately anxious to know if her mother still lived. She picked up Honey and began to run down the street.
The way was blocked with rubble and the debris of partially fallen houses; the people were mostly stunned-looking women, like herself half-clad and barefoot, and a few half-armed soldiers who had risen early to join Deiphobos. When they saw she was heading for the palace, they followed her.
The palace had not collapsed. The front doors had, and some of the carvings had fallen away, but the walls were still standing, and there was no sign of fire. As she approached she heard a loud wailing, and, recognizing her mother's voice, began to run. On the flagstones of the forecourt, heaved up and uneven now, she saw Priam lying, dead or senseless; she could not tell. Hecuba bent beside him, wailing; Helen wrapped in a cloak, Nikos at her side, and Andromache, clutching Astyanax in her arms were with her.
Andromache raised her eyes to Kassandra and said fiercely, "Are you content, Kassandra, that the doom you prophesied has come on us?"