Chapter 4 Seekers
‘Tell me where the entrance is,’ Danae demanded.
Orpheus’ lips parted. He stared at her for a moment, then his face crumpled. He slid down the wall to sit like a child on the ground, head hung between his knees, his shoulders heaving.
Danae clenched her teeth. Her nerves were screaming at her to run.
For all she knew, this was a trap, and Orpheus had created this display to stall for time.
But there was something in the rawness of his pain that felt honest, as though it held a mirror to her own.
And if he did indeed know where to find the entrance to the Underworld, he might be her best chance of discovering the truth of what had happened to Alea’s ghost. Her breath quivered at the thought.
She stepped towards the musician and lay a tentative hand on his shoulder. He flinched at her touch.
‘I’m not going to hurt you.’ She crouched to his level. ‘Orpheus, look at me.’
He lifted his bruised eyes to meet hers. ‘I’m sorry … I’ve been so alone …’
‘Come on,’ she said gruffly. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
Orpheus wiped his face and heaved himself to his feet. They walked in silence to the end of the alley, then Danae turned left, Orpheus right. They paused and looked back at one another, speaking in unison.
‘My horse is outside the town –’
‘– my belongings are this way.’
A beat fell between them.
‘My lodgings aren’t far,’ said Orpheus. ‘And I have food and wine.’
Danae hesitated. ‘Good wine?’
‘Decent enough … nothing fancy.’
Thinking of Hylas she replied, ‘All right, but we must be quick.’
They paced down the quiet street, out into a square dominated by a large water fountain crowned by a statue of Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love.
The Olympian’s likeness was carved from Taenarum’s pale green marble and painted in bold colours.
She was leaning forwards, reaching for someone, her voluptuous curves draped in a thin cloth buffeted by an imaginary breeze.
Bright flowers floated in the water, and the sweet scent of rose and beeswax drifted across the square, from where the locals had anointed the marble goddess’s feet.
As they walked past the statue, Orpheus’ eyes swept over Danae’s makeshift peplos and lingered on her braided hair.
‘Why aren’t you dressed as a seer?’
Danae frowned. Of course, Orpheus had known her when disguised as Daeira, the seer, one who divines the will of the gods. She countered his question with one of her own: ‘Why are you seeking the Underworld?’
Orpheus’ eyes shimmered. ‘My Eurydice.’
Danae recalled the name from the musician’s songs aboard the Argo. ‘The girl from your village?’
Orpheus nodded. ‘She waited for me and when I returned home from Colchis, she agreed to be my wife.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘She …’ he drew a wavering breath. ‘Not long after our wedding – she liked to walk in the forest, and one day a man followed her …’ his voice cracked. ‘She fought him off and ran. My brave girl was swift, but in her haste, she was bitten by a snake.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Furiously Orpheus wiped his face. ‘I’m going to get her back.’
Danae said nothing.
They walked on a little longer in silence, then he asked, ‘What happened to you?’ When she did not reply he continued, ‘Were you kidnapped by the shades that killed Dolos?’
She released the breath that had been locked in her chest. He did not know what she had done.
It had happened nearly a year ago, yet her body still tensed at the memory of that night: the snow crisping the trees, blanketing the world in deafening silence, Dolos’ dark blood staining the white ground as it dripped between the healer’s lifeless eyes.
It had been self-defence; she had discovered Dolos meeting with a shade to procure more of the strength elixir he’d secretly been feeding to Heracles on Zeus’ command.
When she’d threatened to return to the camp and tell the hero the truth, Dolos had stabbed her.
Her powers and her fury had saved her, but they had also taken the healer’s life.
‘Yes,’ she forced herself to lie. ‘Dolos and I spotted a shade skulking around the camp. We chased it into a clearing, where it attacked us. Then more appeared. I managed to take one down, but there were too many … They killed Dolos and kidnapped me.’
‘Poor man,’ whispered Orpheus. ‘It was a terrible shock when we found him dead along with the shade.’ He paused. ‘Heracles was distraught.’
Danae swallowed, her throat thick.
‘Did he find you?’ asked Orpheus.
‘What?’
‘Heracles. He, Telamon and Atalanta left the Argonauts after we discovered Dolos’ body … We thought you’d been kidnapped and they went to search for you. Jason was furious.’
Her pulse quickened as she grasped for more threads to weave into the fabric of her lie. ‘No … I managed to overpower the shades and escape.’
She could feel Orpheus’ eyes on her as they turned down another street. ‘What did they want with you?’
‘I don’t know …’ Her heart fluttered like a fledgling bird. But she was saved from further interrogation as the musician stopped in front of a row of marble workshops and pointed to a narrow street behind them. The air rang with the peal of hammers.
‘My lodgings are just down there.’
He led her down the passageway, halting at a shabby entranceway, before unlatching the cracked oak door.
To call the room lodgings was generous. There was barely enough space for the small table, stool and pallet that filled the entire left-hand wall.
The marble dust from the workshops had even found its way through the cracks around the door, coating everything in a fine green powder.
It simultaneously gave the place a feeling of abandonment and disease.
In the silence punctuated by the dull hammering of metal on stone, Orpheus dusted off his bag and began filling it with the meagre items scattered around the room.
Scanning the place, Danae frowned. ‘Where’s your lyre?’
‘I sold it,’ Orpheus replied as he picked up a small amphora of wine from the table.
She stared at him. When they’d travelled together aboard the Argo the lyre was like another limb to the musician.
When the instrument had almost been destroyed by the storm that wrecked the Argonauts on Lemnos, he’d been devastated.
It was his soul in physical form. She couldn’t believe he would ever willingly part from it.
‘Why?’
‘I needed the coin to travel here.’
‘Couldn’t you have played for payment? You’re the finest musician in Greece!’
Orpheus looked at her with hollow eyes. ‘I cannot play without a heart, and mine was dragged to the Underworld the day Eurydice died.’
She couldn’t argue with that.
The musician lifted a spare tunic from his stool, rubbing the fabric between his fingers. ‘It feels as though the whole world has been poisoned by her death. This terrible war …’
‘What war?’
‘Surely you must have heard? Prince Paris of Troy and Queen Helen of Sparta have eloped. Rumour has it Paris was a guest at the Spartan court and while King Menelaus was called away he seized the chance to take Helen back to Troy. In retaliation Menelaus and his brother, King Agamemnon of Mycenae, have declared war on Troy. Half of Greece has pledged to come to their aid.’
It was testament to how little time Danae had spent in human company over the past year that she had not heard the news. She recalled a fleeting conversation aboard the Argo about Helen, allegedly the most beautiful woman alive. Then she remembered something else.
‘Eurystheus is King of Mycenae, not this Agamemnon.’
Orpheus shook his head. ‘After Heracles chose to join the Argonauts rather than return to Mycenae, the brothers Atreidai attacked the city and deposed Eurystheus. Agamemnon took the crown, and his younger brother Menelaus, by way of marriage, took Sparta.’
Danae blinked. Kingdoms had fallen in the time she had been searching for the Underworld. The ordinary people would suffer the most, but she had no space in her heart to care for other people’s wars.
‘So, where is the entrance to the Underworld?’
‘In an old abandoned mine to the west of the town.’
Danae nodded. ‘Good, we’ll head there as soon as I’ve retrieved my horse.’
Orpheus hurried to stuff the last of his belongings into his pack.
Danae turned to leave the room and, as she did, the chill breath of fear prickled her neck.
She had forgotten, just for a moment, that she did not know if she could trust him.
It had been so easy to fall into conversation like they used to on the Argo, when the wind bloated the sails, and the oarsmen rested their arms and exchanged idle chatter.
But they were Argonauts no longer. He may not know that she had killed Dolos, but Orpheus still might be an agent of the Twelve.
He was desperate to bring his wife back from the land of the dead, and desperate men will do anything for that which they desire.
She rubbed her eyes. It would be the cruellest fate of all to fall into the Olympians’ clutches when she might be so close to seeing her sister again.
As she thought of the Underworld, the voice echoed Prometheus’ final instruction in her mind: Go to Delos. Seek out Metis.
‘Be quiet,’ she muttered.
You cannot run from your destiny.
‘I said be quiet!’
‘I didn’t say anything …’ Orpheus stood behind her, wearing an expression of concern. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine.’ She balled her trembling hands into fists. ‘Let’s go.’
Danae and Orpheus made their way out through Taenarum’s gates and clambered down the rocky slope to where she’d left Hylas.
The familiar hand of dread squeezed her insides when she found no alabaster horse waiting amongst the grey stones and sun-crisped grass. Had he finally left her? Had someone taken him?
She clicked her tongue. Nothing.
‘Hylas, I’ve got wine!’
She was answered by the mournful call of the wind. Then a dash of white appeared from behind the cliffs, and Hylas soared through the sky like the moon escaping a clutch of clouds.