Chapter 35
An Eye for an Eye
“Quickly.” The old man gestured her into the ruins. “It is not safe to talk out here.”
Danae followed him into the collapsed room. A musty pile of rags was heaped in one corner and on the other side was an eclectic collection of objects. Small pieces of rock, shards of bone and a scatter of broken pottery were lined up in neat rows. It looked like he’d been excavating.
“What are you doing here?”
“I was exiled,” he said quickly. “Tell me, do you have news of the last daughter?”
He didn’t look like an agent of the gods, but then how could she be sure?
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Phineus.” The old man leaned on his staff. “But please, friend. I have lived alone all this time, wondering, waiting. Is there news from the watcher?”
Her eyes prickled. “The watcher is dead.”
The old man jerked as though she’d punched him. He sagged, reaching behind him as he crumpled onto a jutting piece of stone.
“Manto,” he whispered. His stick clattered to the ground as he raised his shaking hands to cover his face.
“Holy Tartarus,” she breathed, realization crashing over her. “You’re Manto’s father.” She edged toward him. “Phineus, I’m so sorry.”
He raised his mangled head. “Get out.”
She faltered.
His frail voice shook. “How dare you come here and say my Manto is...is...”
“I’m not lying.” Danae reached into her bag and pulled out the prophecy stone. She grabbed one of his hands and pressed the rock into his palm.
Phineus tensed, then drew the stone into his chest, caressing its wrappings like an old lover.
“You should not have brought this here,” he said quietly. Then his face spasmed, and the ghosts of tears tumbled from his empty eye sockets. Danae wept too, cracked open by the old man’s grief.
When he regained himself enough to speak, he said, “How did it happen?”
“Saving my life.”
She felt the weight of his guilt like it was her own. He hadn’t asked Manto to wait for the last daughter because he didn’t love them. He did it because of his love for them. So no more parents and children would have to live under the tyranny of the gods.
“Did they suffer?”
Danae saw Manto’s final moments. The bloody gash where the harpy had ripped out their heart.
“No, it was over quickly. We were leaving Delphi and our ship was attacked by harpies. Manto pushed me into the sea and distracted the beasts so I would survive. They died a hero. I gave them a sea burial and made sure they had coin for the ferryman.” Her voice grew thick.
“They asked me to tell you that they kept their promise.”
“I don’t understand.” Phineus shook his head. “They would never have left Delphi without...” He grew very still.
Danae could not breathe.
“Tell me who you are,” Phineus whispered.
She felt as though she were standing on the edge of a precipice. She briefly closed her eyes and imagined stepping off the ledge.
“I’m the reason Apollo razed Delphi...because I destroyed the oracle.” She forced herself to draw a breath. “I am the last daughter.”
The old man reached for his staff and, still holding the prophecy stone, pushed himself to his feet, murmuring, “When the prophet falls, and gold that grows bears no fruit, the last daughter will come. She will end the reign of thunder and become the light that frees mankind.” He pressed the prophecy stone back into Danae’s hand, then raised his gnarled fingers to her cheek, mapping the contours of her face.
“I have waited so long. Since my exile, I’d given up hope of ever meeting you, but here you are. ”
She lowered his hand. “There’s something I need to tell you.
I’m not a warrior, but I can do things—manipulate the threads of my life force and use them to influence the elements.
But I’m working off intuition and I’ve no idea what I’m doing most of the time.
If I’m ever going to be ready to take on Zeus, I need to understand what this power is and what I’m supposed to do with it, and why I keep being shown that bloody tree. ” She stopped to draw breath.
Phineus lowered himself back onto the rock, his wrinkled face deep in thought.
“You’ve seen the tree of knowledge?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me exactly how it appeared to you.”
“This is going to sound strange but the first time...it sprouted from my sister’s dead heart.
” Her mouth was arid, but she forced herself to continue.
“Then it appeared in a vision the oracle at Delphi showed me...there were figures around it, then all these hands dragged them down and reached for its apples, and I burned them. I burned everything.”
“Interesting,” he murmured.
“Do you know what it means?”
Phineus twisted his staff between his palms. “You have seen a manifestation of the tree at the point of its conception and at its end.” He was silent for a moment.
“Those symbols would suggest a cycle is almost complete. Like the phoenix reborn from the cinders of its old body, you are the embodiment of a new beginning. A world free of the gods.”
She swallowed. “In the prophecy, Prometheus called me ‘the last daughter.’ Why the last?”
Phineus did not reply immediately. “Perhaps you are the last of your kind.”
“What kind?”
He shook his head. “That part is not clear.”
Her shoulders sagged with disappointment. Since learning who Phineus was, hope had blossomed. She thought he might be able to give her answers, but instead he left her with more questions.
“It’s fascinating,” said Phineus, more to himself than to her. “You can control your life-threads and use them to affect change outside of yourself in the physical world?”
“Yes.” She was growing impatient. “But I don’t know why or how. I just...can.” She paused. “Wait, you know about life-threads?”
“Of course, they are what power the prophecy stone. I may not be able to see them as you can, but they run through all living things.” As though sensing her confusion he continued, “All that touch the stone, are pulled from their body and taken to the void. Once in that place, all who ask questions are shown the answer woven into the tapestry of life.”
“You could have left instructions. The stone’s visions are impossible to understand.”
Phineus wheezed out a dry chuckle. “If only it were that simple. It took me years of study to accurately divine its revelations.”
She clenched her jaw. “I don’t have years, the gods are hounding me now.” Then she remembered something. “Why did you tell Manto not to use it?”
Phineus bowed his head. “You must forgive me for wanting to protect my child. You will have realized by now that foresight has a price.”
The life-threads that were drawn from her every time she touched the stone.
“I am not as old as I look... The stone is an empty vessel of sorts. For it to weave a vision it first needs to be filled with life-threads. I spent years divining prophecies from it, and in return it took years of my life.”
She stared at him in horror. He looked ancient. “But you told Manto to give it to me...”
“You are the last daughter—I thought giving you access to what is to come was of greater importance than the longevity of your life.”
Silence settled in the cracks of the room.
Phineus spoke without the hesitation of regret, like he was merely stating he preferred black olives to green.
It was then Danae realized that while the prophecy foretold her destruction of Zeus’s reign, it did not promise she would survive.
She let the weight of that thought sink into her bones.
After a long pause, she asked, “Did the stone take your eyes?”
Phineus laughed bitterly. “The priestesses of Delphi did that. Did you know Prometheus’s prophecy came from the very oracle you destroyed?”
“No?”
“Much of the story is lost to time. But fragments remain, passed down the generations of the Children of Prometheus. Long ago, a rock was forged in the heart of the earth. All who touched it were granted visions of the future. It was named the omphalos stone, after the center of the world from which it was born. Everything you’ve heard about Prometheus is a lie.
His only crime was that he saw the downfall of the gods in the depths of the stone and, for daring to speak the truth, he was strung up on the highest peak of the Caucasus Mountains for all eternity.
I do not know how the stone came to be broken, but I do know this—before his capture, Prometheus took one piece of the shattered omphalos stone and gave it to mankind, so the gift of prophecy would be available to all.
The gods were not happy with mortals knowing freely what was to come.
They have spent centuries hunting the missing piece.
The rest of the shards they placed in Delphi and built guarded walls around them, only allowing their priestesses to grant prophecies to those who could pay a mighty price. ”
Danae could see it so clearly: the glittering oracle, shards and shards of obsidian stone trapped below the earth.
Another wave of realization crashed over her. The Pythia. No wonder she had been withered before her time after decades of the omphalos stone gorging itself on her life-threads.
“That stone—” Phineus gestured toward her “—is the last piece. Through the years, it has been passed through the Children of Prometheus, along with the truth. The omphalos stone is the only true source of prophecy. There is no other way to divine the future. That shard is how we’ve managed to stay hidden from the Twelve.
It is how I knew you would come to Delphi in my lifetime. ”