Poletes grumbled and mumbled and groped his way back to his bed. I stayed at his side and steered him clear of the stacked boxes of loot.
As the old storyteller plopped down on the feather mattress, I heard a scratching at the door.
“Did you hear…”
Poletes said, “It’s someone asking to come in. That’s the way civilized people do it. They don’t pound on the door as if they intended to break it down, the way you do.”
I picked up my sword from the table between our two beds. Holding it in its scabbard, I went to the door and opened it a crack.
It was one of the innkeeper’s daughters: a husky, dimpled girl with laughing dark eyes.
“The lady asks if you will come to see her in her chamber,” she said, after a clumsy curtsy.
I looked up and down the hallway. It was empty. “Tell her I’ll be there in a few moments.”
Shutting the door, I went to Poletes’s bed and sat on its edge.
“I know,” he said. “You’re going to her. She’ll snare you in her web of allurements.”
“You have a poet’s way of expression,” I said.
“Don’t try to flatter me.”
Ignoring his petulance, I asked, “Can you guard our goods until I return?”
He grunted and turned this way and that on the soft bedding and finally admitted, “I suppose so.”
“You’ll yell loudly if anyone tries to enter this room?”
“I’ll wake the whole inn.”
“Can you bar the door behind me and find your way back to the bed again?”
“What if I stumble and break my neck? You’ll be with your lady love.”
I laughed. “I may only be there a few minutes. I have no intention of…”
“Oh, no, not at all!” He hooted. “Just make sure you don’t bellow like a mating bull. I’m going to try to get some sleep.”
Feeling a little like a schoolboy sneaking out of his dormitory, I went to the door and bid Poletes a pleasant nap.
“I sleep very lightly, you know,” he said.
Whether he meant that to reassure me that no sneak thief would be able to rob us, or to warn me to be quiet in Helen’s room, next door, I could not tell. Perhaps he meant both.
The hallway was still empty, and I could see no dark corners or niches where an enemy could lurk in ambush. Nothing but the worn tiled floor, the plastered walls, and six wooden doors of rooms that my men had taken. Not that any of them would occupy them this night. On the other side of the hall was a railing of split logs, overlooking the central courtyard of the inn and its packed-dirt floor.
I clenched my fist to knock at Helen’s door, then remembered Poletes’s words. Feeling slightly foolish, I scratched at the smooth wooden planks instead. “Who is there?” came Helen’s muffled voice.
“Orion.”
“You may enter.”
I pushed the door open. She stood in the center of the shabby room, resplendent as the sun. Helen had put on the same robes and jewels she had worn that first time I had seen her alone, in her chamber in Troy. There, she had looked incredibly beautiful. Here, in this rough inn with its crudely plastered walls and uncurtained windows, she seemed like a goddess come to Earth. I closed the door behind me and leaned my back against it, almost weak with the beauty of her.
“You have taken none of the treasures of Troy for yourself, my lord Orion,” she said.
“I haven’t wanted any of them. Until now.” She opened her arms and I went to her and swept her up and carried her to the soft, yielding downy bed. In the back of my mind I wept for a woman who was totally different from the golden, splendid Helen: a woman of lustrous dark hair and wondrous gray eyes, a tall and graceful goddess of truth and beauty. But she was dead, and Helen was warm fire in my arms. The sun sank on the edge of the glittering sea and long violet shadows stole across the city of Ephesus as the cloak of night softly drew itself over all. The stars peeked through tattered clouds and Artemis’s sliver of a moon came up while Helen and I made love and drowsed, half-woke and made love once more, then slept and woke and made love still again.
In the gray half light that precedes true dawn we slept in each other’s arms, totally spent, unconscious with the sweet exhaustion of passion.
And I found myself in that other world of golden light so brilliant that it hurt my eyes.
“You think you can escape from me?”
I turned round and round, searching, straining for sight of the Golden One. Nothing. Only his voice.
“You have thwarted my plans for the last time, Orion. You cannot escape my vengeance.”
“Show yourself!” I shouted. “Stand before me so I can throttle the life out of you!”
But I was sitting up in bed, my clawed hands clenching empty air, while Helen stared at me with wide frightened eyes.
That morning I took Helen and Poletes into the heart of the city, while Lukka — who had returned at dawn, true to his word — stood guard over our goods and dourly watched his men stagger back to the inn, one by one.
Ephesus was truly a city of culture and comfort, rich with marble temples and streets thronged with merchants and wares from Crete, Egypt, Babylon, and even far-off India.
Poletes was most interested in the marketplace. He was strong enough to walk now, and he had tied a scarf of white silk across his useless eyes. He carried a walking stick, and was learning to tap out the ground ahead of him so that he could walk by himself.
“Storytellers!” he yelped, as we passed small knots of people gathered around old men who squatted on the ground, weaving spells of words for a few coins.
“Not here,” I whispered to him.
“Let me stay and listen,” he begged. “I promise not to speak a word.”
Reluctantly I allowed it. I knew I could trust Poletes’s word. It with his heart that I worried about. He was a storyteller, it was in his blood. How long could he remain silent when he had the grandest story of all time to tell the crowd?
I decided to give him an hour to himself, while Helen and I browsed through the shops and stalls of the marketplace. She seemed deliriously happy to be fingering fine cloth and examining decorated pottery, bargaining with the shopkeepers and then walking on, buying nothing. I shrugged and accompanied her, brooding in the back of my mind over the Golden One’s threat of the predawn hour.
He would destroy me if he could, I told myself. The fact that he hasn’t shows either that the other Creators are restraining him, or that he needs me for some further tasks.
Or, I dared to think, that I am becoming powerful enough to protect myself.
The ground rumbled. A great gasping cry went up from the crowd in the marketplace. A few pots tottered off their shelves and smashed on the ground. The world seemed to sway giddily, sickeningly. Then the rumbling ceased and all returned to normal. For a moment the people were absolutely silent. Then a bird chirped and everyone began talking at once, with the kind of light fast banter that comes with a surge of relief from terror.
An earth tremor. Natural enough in these parts, I supposed. Unless it was a warning, a deliberate sign from those far-advanced creatures whom the peoples of this time regarded as gods.
The hour was nearly over. I could see Poletes, across the great square of the marketplace, standing at the edge of the crowd gathered around one of the storytellers, his gnarled legs almost as skinny as the stick he leaned on.
“Orion.”
I looked down at Helen. She was smiling at me like an understanding mother smiles at a naughty son. “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said.”
“I’m sorry. My mind was elsewhere.”
She repeated, “I said that we could live here in Ephesus very nicely. This is a civilized city, Orion. With the wealth we have brought, we could buy a comfortable villa and live splendidly.”