CHAPTER 6
The world was bigger than she had ever thought; though they rode from first daylight till it was too dark to see, it seemed to Kassandra that they were simply crawling over the plains. The hills of Troy could still be seen behind them, no further away than before; in the clear air it sometimes seemed she could reach out and touch the shining summit of the city.
Within a very few weeks it seemed to Kassandra that her life had always been lived with the horsewomen of the tribe. From day's beginning to day's end she did not set her feet to the ground, but even before breaking her fast was already in the saddle of the chestnut mare they had allotted to her use, whom she called South Wind. With the other girls her age she stood watch against invaders, and at night kept the horses together, watching the stars.
She loved Elaria, who cared for her as she did her own daughters, girls of eleven and seventeen; Penthesilea she worshipped, although the Amazon Queen rarely spoke to her except for a daily inquiry as to her health and welfare. She grew bronzed with the sun, strong and healthy. In the endless burning sun on the plains she saw the face of Apollo Sunlord, and it seemed to her that she lived her life under his eyes.
She had lived with the horsewomen for more than a moon when one day she found herself telling Penthesilea all about the curious vision. The tribe had dismounted for their frugal noon-meal of hunks of strong mare's-milk cheese in view of the now distant Mount Ida.
"His face was as like mine as is mine to my own face reflected in the water," she said, "yet when I spoke of him my father knocked me down; and he was angry with my mother too."
Penthesilea paused for a long time before answering, and Kassandra wondered if the silence of her parents was to be repeated; then the woman said slowly, "I can well see that your mother, and especially your father, would not wish to speak of this; but I see no reason you should not be told what half of Troy knows. He is your twin brother, Kassandra. When you were born the Earth Mother, who is also Serpent Mother, sent my sister an evil omen: twins. You should both have been killed," she said harshly. When Kassandra shrank away, her lips trembling, she reached out and stroked the girl's hair. "I am glad you were not," she said. "No doubt some God has laid his hand on you.
"Your father felt, perhaps, that he could escape his fate by exposing the child; but as a worshipper of the Father-principle—which is, in truth, a worship of power and the ability to father sons - he dared not wholly renounce a son, and the child was fostered somewhere far from the palace. Your father did not wish to know anything of him because of the evil omen of his -birth; so he was angry when you spoke of him."
Kassandra felt enormous relief; it seemed to her that all her life she had walked alone when there should have been another at her side, very like her but somehow different.
"And it is not wicked to wish to see him in the scrying-bowl?"
"You do not need the scrying-bowl," Penthesilea said. "If the Goddess has given you Sight, you need only look within your heart and you will find it there. I am not surprised you are so blessed; your mother had it as a girl and lost it when she married a city-dwelling man."
"I believed that the - Sight—was the gift of the Sunlord," Kassandra said. "It first came to me within his Temple—"
"Perhaps," said Penthesilea. "But remember, child, before ever Apollo Sunlord came to rule these lands, our Horse Mother -the Great Mare, the Earth Mother from whom we all are born -was there."
She turned and laid her two hands reverently on the dark earth, and Kassandra imitated the gesture, only half understanding. It seemed that she could feel a dark strength moving upward from the earth and flowing through her; it was the same kind of blissful strength she had felt when she held Apollo's serpents in her two hands. She wondered if she were being disloyal to the God who had called her.
"They told me in the Temple that Apollo Sunlord had slain the Python, the great Goddess of the Underworld. Is this the Serpent Mother of whom you speak?"
"She who is the Great Goddess cannot be slain, for she is immortal; she may choose to withdraw herself for a time, but she is and will remain forever," said the Amazon Queen, and
Kassandra, feeling the strength of the earth beneath her hands, took this in as absolute truth.
"Is the Serpent Mother then the mother of the Sunlord?" she asked, and Penthesilea, drawing a breath of reverence, said, "She is Mother to Gods and men alike, mother of all things; so Apollo is her child too, even as you and I are."
Then … if Apollo Sunlord sought to slay her, then was he seeking to kill his mother? Kassandra's breath caught with the wickedness of the thought. But could a God do wickedness? And if a certain deed was wicked for men, was it wicked also for a God? If a Goddess was immortal, how then could she be slain at all? These things were Mysteries, and she set her whole being into fierce resolve that one day she would understand them. Apollo Sunlord had called her; he had given her his serpents; one day he would lead her to knowledge of the Serpent Mother's mysteries as well.
The women finished their noon-meal and stretched out to rest on the green turf. Kassandra was not sleepy; she had not been accustomed to sleep this way at midday. She watched the clouds drifting across the sky and looked up to the slopes of Mount Ida rising high above the plain.
Her twin brother. It made Kassandra angry to think that everyone knew this when she, whom it concerned most closely, had been kept in ignorance.
She tried to remember deliberately and consciously the state she had been in when she had first seen her brother in the waters of the scrying-bowl. She knelt motionless on the grass, staring upward at the sky, her mind blank, searching for the face she had seen but once and then only in a vision. For a moment her questing thoughts settled on her own face, seen reflected as if in water; and the golden shimmer which she still called, in her mind, the face and breath of Apollo Sunlord.
Then the features shifted and the face was her own and yet somehow subtly not her own, filled with a mischief wholly alien to her, and she knew she had found her brother. She wondered if he had a name and what he was called, and if he could see her.
From somewhere in the mysterious linkage between them, the answer came: he could if he wished, but he had no reason to seek, and no particular interest. Why not? Kassandra wondered, not yet knowing that she had stumbled on the major flaw in her twin's character; a total lack of interest in anything which did not relate to himself or contribute in some way to his own comfort and satisfaction.
For an instant this puzzled her enough that she lost the fragment of vision; then she collected herself to call it back. Her senses were filled with the intoxicating scent of thyme from the slopes of the mountain, where the bright light and heat of the Sunlord's presence gathered together the fragrant oils of the herb and concentrated their scent in the air. Looking out of the boy's eyes, she saw the crude brush in his hand as he combed the sleek sides of a great bull, smoothing the gleaming white hair of the flanks into patterns like waves; the beast was larger than he was himself - like Kassandra he was slight and lightly made, wiry rather than muscular. His arms were sunburnt brown as any shepherd's, his fingers calloused and hard with endless hard work. She stood there with him, her arm moving like his, making-patterns on the bull's sides, and when the hair was suitably smooth and wavy, she put aside the brush. With another brush she dipped into a pot of paint that stood at his side, laying the coat of smooth gilt paint across the horns. The bull's great dark eyes met her own with love and trust and a touch of puzzlement, . so that the beast shifted its weight restively. Kassandra wondered if somehow the animal's instincts knew what her brother did not: that it was not only his master who stood before him.