"How dare you say "pretending" to be a warrior? I am a warrior, and no less a woman for that!"
Andromache's smile was wicked, even though she put her hand to her reddening cheek.
"Men say that women who take up weapons are only pretending to be warriors because they are unable to spin and weave and make tapestries and bear children—"
"I did not find you under an olive tree," interrupted Imandra.
"And where is my father to say so?" asked the girl impudently.
Imandra smiled. "What does our guest say? Kassandra, you have lived both ways—"
"By the girdle of the Maiden," Kassandra said, "I would rather be a warrior than a wife."
"That seems to me folly," said Andromache, "for it has not brought happiness to my mother."
"Yet I would not change with any woman, wedded or unwedded, on the shores of the sea," said Imandra. "And I do not know what you mean by happiness. Who has put these sentimental notions into your head?"
Penthesilea spoke for the first time and said, "Let her alone, Imandra; since you have decided she is to be married, it is just as well she should be contented in that state. A girl that age does not know what she wants, nor why; that is so among our girls as well as yours."
Kassandra looked down at the soft-skinned, rosy-cheeked young girl at her side. "I think you are quite perfect as you are; I find it hard even to imagine you otherwise."
Andromache lifted her hand toward Kassandra's bandaged cheek. "What have you done to yourself, cousin?"
"Nothing worth mentioning," Kassandra said. "No more than a scratch." And indeed before Andromache's soft eyes she felt it truly nothing, a trivial incident she should be ashamed to mention.
Imandra leaned forward, and as she did so, Kassandra saw the small squarish head sliding out of her bodice. She put out her hand. "May I?" she asked, pleading, and the snake glided forward to slide round her wrist. Imandra guided the snake into her hand.
"Will she speak to you?"
Andromache looked on with a frown. "Ugh, how can you touch those things? I have such a horror of them."
Kassandra brought the snake caressingly to her cheek. "But that is foolish," she said. "She will not bite me, and if she did it would do me very little harm."
"It has nothing to do with fear of being bitten," Andromache -said. "It is not right, not normal to be unafraid of snakes. Even a monkey who has been kept in a cage for all its life, and never seen a living snake, will cry and shiver if you so much as throw a piece of rope into his cage, thinking it is a snake. And I think men too are intended by nature to be afraid of snakes."
"Well, perhaps then I am not normal," Kassandra snapped. She bent her head close to the snake, crooning to it.
Imandra said gently, "It is not for everyone, Kassandra. Only for such as you, who are born with the link to the Gods."
"I do not understand this," Kassandra said, feeling sullen and inclined to contradict everything that was said to her. Petting the snake, she said, "I dreamed the other night - or perhaps it was a vision of some sort - of the Goddesses. But the Serpent Mother was not one of them—"
"You dreamed? Tell me about it," said Imandra, but Kassandra hesitated. Partly she felt that to tell her dream might dilute the magic; it had been sent to her as a sacred secret and was not intended for anyone else. She cast a pleading look at Penthesilea, for she did not want to offend the Queen who had been so good to them, either.
"I advise you to tell her, Kassandra," said the Amazon Queen. "She is herself a priestess of the Earth Mother, and perhaps she can tell you what this means to your destiny."
Thus encouraged, Kassandra began, detailing every moment of her vision, ending with her confusion that neither the Maiden, nor Earth Mother, nor Serpent Mother had appeared among the Goddesses. Imandra listened intently, even when Kassandra, momentarily overcome by the memory, let her voice sink to a whisper.
When she finished, Imandra asked quietly, "Was this your first encounter with any of the Immortals?"
"No, Lady; I have seen the Mother Goddess of Troy speak through my mother's mouth, though I must have been very small indeed at the time. And once…' she swallowed, lowered her head and tried to steady her voice, knowing that if she did not she would break into wild weeping without knowing why, "Once… in his own temple… Apollo Sunlord spoke clearly to me…'
She felt Imandra's gentle fingers rest on her hair.
"It is as I thought when first I spoke with you; you have been called as a priestess. Do you know what that means?"
Kassandra shook her head and tried to guess.
"That I must live in the Temple and care for the oracles and the rites?"
"No, it is not as simple as that, child," Imandra told her. "It means that from this very day you must stand between men and Immortals, to explain the ways of the one to the other… it is not a life I would choose for my own daughter."
"But why have I been chosen?"
"Only those who called you know the answer to that, little one," Imandra said, and her voice was very gentle. "On some of us they lay their hand in a way we cannot mistake. They do not explain their ways to us. But if we try to escape their will they have ways of forcing us to their service, forget it not… no one seeks to be chosen; it is the Gods who choose us, not we who seek to give our service to them."
Yet, thought Kassandra, I think I would have sought this service… at least I do not come to it unwilling. The snake seemed to have fallen asleep in a heavy puddle on her arm; Imandra leaned forward and scooped it up still sleeping, letting it slide as if melting down the front of her dress.
"When next the moon shines full, you shall seek her," she said. And Kassandra felt an omen in the way she spoke.
CHAPTER 12
"I know so little of being a priestess," Kassandra said. "What must I do?"
"If the Goddess has called you, she will make it clear to you," said Penthesilea, "and if she has not, it does not matter what you-do or do not do; it will be all the same."
She patted Kassandra on the head and said, "You must get yourself a snake, and a pot to keep it in."
"I would rather keep it inside my dress as the Queen does."
"That is all very well," said Penthesilea, "but any animal must have a place that is all her own, for a refuge."
Kassandra could very well understand that. And so she went to the market with her kinswoman, seeking a pot for her snake; tomorrow, she told herself, she would go into the countryside, seeking a snake for herself. It did not seem suitable to buy one at the market for money, though she supposed she could speak with the people who raised snakes for the temple. Perhaps Imandra could be persuaded to tell her what she should know.
She searched among the pot-sellers in the marketplace, and finally found a vessel tinted blue-green and decorated ,with sea-creatures; on one side stood a priestess offering a serpent to some unfamiliar Goddess. It seemed to Kassandra that this was the perfect pot in which to keep her snake and she at once bought it with the money that Penthesilea had given to her. There were many pots decorated exactly like it, and she wondered if they were all put to the same use.
That evening as the sun set, she stood with Andromache on the palace roof, looking down into the darkness of the town as one by one, lights were kindled in the city below.
"You cannot go before the Goddess in leather Amazon breeches," said Andromache. "I will lend you a robe."
Kassandra frowned. "Is the Goddess a fool? I am what I am; do you think I can deceive her by changing my garment?"