It took Hekate years to reach Olympus, but she had been in no hurry. Traveling again, she discovered she had developed a strong taste for new places, new people, and new ideas. Having learned from Yehoraz the spell for drawing a language from a person's mind, she never needed to be marked as a stranger, although usually it suited her best to use trade tongue. There were advantages as well as disadvantages to being an outlander. And most often, despite the discomfort, she used the form of the crone.
She had learned caution, and traveling by ship required no physical effort. The form of the old woman with her cloth-wrapped bundles was no threat to anyone and no temptation to men or to thieves. And, oddly, Kabeiros seemed happiest and most affectionate when she was the crone.
Occasionally, if she didn't like the selection of ships in a small port, she would join a caravan. She selected those that included other travelers, especially women. Then the crone would arrange a place for her newly widowed granddaughter or greatniece-by-marriage or some other relative by marriage, begging the caravan master to care for the lone creature, and the woman Hekate would do the more strenuous traveling.
She always left the impression that she had a large and loving family. When she sailed, the woman bought space for her grandmother aboard a ship that regularly took passengers and had a good reputation for arrival of the travelers. This most beloved old lady wished to go home to some more-western land (Hekate picked a new one each time) to see a younger, favorite son, but her older son expected her to return and awaited that event eagerly.
Neither in caravan nor ship did she have another experience like that on the ship that had taken her from Colchis. She thought of that ship from time to time and regretted that she had resisted the temptation to add Medea's self-sustaining loop to the illusion that kept the serpent as the captain's constant companion. He knew by the time they made the port where Hekate left them that the snake was not real and that it wouldn't bite him, and he could function . . . but not well.
He deserved the punishment, but Kabeiros said it was enough, for he shied away from her like a frightened horse and spoke to her, when it was absolutely necessary, most respectfully. The crew, too, Kabeiros said, didn't deserve to be ruined by the loss of the ship and the cargo, and any emergency at sea or trading venture could turn to disaster if the captain were distracted. So she hadn't made the spell permanent.
Despite his own griefs, Kabeiros was sweet-natured. He did not carry the scars on his soul that Perses had left on hers. Hekate always yielded to his kinder judgement when the matter was not of their safety, and she never expected to see the Sea Foam again. She had laughed to herself as she packed her bundles. By now none of the crew blamed her for the captain's "lunacy," but they would watch him closely in the future and might curb his greed to prevent a second attack of guilty madness. So Hekate just said her farewells and walked away, knowing that the spell would fade as time passed.
The old crone had disappeared in the narrow, dirty streets of Trapesus. A day after Sea Foam had left port, a tall, strong young woman, carefully veiled, had enquired about passage westward for her grandmother, who wanted to go home to Greece. Only a few on the docks had ever heard of Greece, and no ship was headed there. The moving rocks, the Symplegades, cut off the narrow passage of the Bosphorus from the Propontis, but perhaps at Sinope, a larger port, someone would have more information.
She was satisfied. She hadn't expected to find a ship that went to Greece, but she had the name of a port to the west. The next day, the crone inquired about ships and fares to Sinope. Her master was dead and she wanted to join her daughter in that city. She looked poor and was offered deck space at a reasonable price, so she bought a place for herself and her master's dog, whom no one else would keep.
It took the rest of the summer and into the autumn to travel from Trapesus to Sinope, but the ship made port and laid over at Hermanssus, Cerasus, Cytorus, Themiscrya, and Carusa on the way. The crone and the hound enjoyed themselves. At each town where the ship stopped to load and unload cargo, the crone visited the market and set up a stall if it were permitted.
If itinerant merchants were forbidden the market, she was allowed a small mat on the dock near the ship. She offered for sale foreign lotions and potions, amulets for protection, for good luck, for faithful love (but never to induce love), and gathered in handfuls of copper and now and then a piece of silver. Some of the metal she bartered for herbs, spices, and exotic roots and for new amulets to replace her supply; the remainder she shared with the captain and won his goodwill.
She spent the winter in Sinope, fortunately a city that was indifferent to foreigners. If you paid the fees, you could buy, sell, even practice magic . . . but Hekate admitted to no magic. The amulets, she claimed, had been purchased in "the east" as they were, charged with good fortune or other blessings. She was an herb woman, no more.
She almost spent more than the winter in Sinope. The ships going westward were few and far between. The land to the west was more barren. Only Cytorus and Heraclea were towns large enough to make trade worthwhile. Caravans were even less frequent. Only the wild tribes traveled that barren interior. The moons of early spring passed; high summer was close before a ship traveling west docked.
Wave Leaper, however, was worth waiting for. The woman Hekate was told that the ship was going all the way to the Bosphorus, the passage guarded by the Symplegades. Ser Ottah, the captain, whom Hekate immediately recognized as an Egyptian although she did not say so, informed her that he could not be certain of the actual date. They might not make port in Cyaneae until the next spring, and from there her grandmother would have to travel overland to Byzantium.
He hoped, he told Hekate, to arrive at Cyaneae, a town just north of the Symplegades where they made a blue dye of surpassing beauty and tenacity, before winter, but he could not give a bond for that. It was later in the season than he usually arrived at Sinope. If the weather turned foul too soon, he would stay in whatever port he could find, as he would not risk his ship in the winter storms.
The woman Hekate pursed her lips. She understood the problem. If Wave Leaper wintered over where the crone had no friends or relatives, she would have to pay to live—find goods or metal to provide her with rent and food. Hekate said that her grandmother was a famous healer and could support herself wherever trade was allowed to foreigners. Then she shrugged.
"I will give you metal or trade goods enough to support her over the winter, and you may give her the metal or goods wherever you overwinter or take care of her needs. If more is owed you, she can trade in herbs or in service. As I said, she is an unequalled healer."
If Captain Ottah looked a little surprised at such trustfulness, Hekate was indifferent. Attached to the gold and silver pieces the crone delivered to him before Wave Leaper sailed was a compulsion to treat with honesty, generosity, and kindness the person who gave him the metal—and Medea's renewal spell was wound into the compulsion. Hekate could have renewed the spell herself by touching Ottah now and again during the voyage, but she preferred not to need to think about it. Until the end of his life, Captain Ottah would be kind, generous, and honest to Hekate.
As the voyage progressed, Hekate came to believe that the compulsion spell was unnecessary. Captain Ottah was a delight: an excellent seaman, a fair master, a good host with a lively sense of humor and a wonderful knowledge about places and people. When Hekate confessed that the tale of a younger son in Byzantium was false, that she was traveling just because she was old and wanted to see what she could of the world before she died, he laughed immoderately. When he could speak, he remarked that he who had spent all his life traveling looked forward to settling in one place. It was only reasonable, he said, that she, who had lived always in one place, should want to travel.
To her delight, he suggested that she visit Greece, although he warned her strictly against using any magic at all there, even simple healing spells. He smiled at her when he said it, showing that he knew she had used more than pounded leaves and draughts of willow bark steepings to cure the foot of a seaman who had driven a splinter deep where it had festered.
"If they don't kill you outright," he said, "they bind you and leave you as a sacrifice to the king of the dead."
Hekate sighed. "They only treated the Gifted that way in Sinope," she said. "Magic was not loved, but usually it was tolerated—if no one had a grudge against the magic maker."
That set him off and he told tales of his youthful years in Greece, when he had accompanied his father on trading missions, tales of how they dressed and what they ate, small things but those that made a deep impression on him because it was his first voyage out of Egyptian territory.
"And I never went home again," he said with a sigh.
"But if you passed the Symplegades coming from the Mare Aegaeum to the Pontus Euxinus, why not the other way?"
He laughed heartily. "I wasn't captain then, just a seaman. I was a third son with no hopes of my father's business, so I struck out on my own. And the ship I sailed on didn't pass through the Bosphorus. At Byzantium I left the ship and went overland to Cyaneae—which is how I started to trade on my own. There are caravans that travel that route several times a ten-day."
However, Hekate was not to need that knowledge very soon. There were contrary winds and sickness struck the whole crew at Cytorus where they were forced to remain for a full moon. It took all Hekate's skill to save Ser Ottah. Kabeiros grew very silent again while she cared for the captain, but although she did not neglect the dog, her mind and attention were plainly elsewhere.
Wave Leaper barely made Heraclea. A nasty storm tore away their sail and the crew had to row to reach that port. Hekate had taken the place of the cook and had bailed to free more men for the oars. And when they came to port, the captain said he would go no farther, that the crew was free to seek another ship or he would do what he could to reduce the cost of lodging for those who wished to overwinter at Heraclea and finish the voyage with him.
Hekate was satisfied to do that; she was in no hurry. But she was surprised when Ottah did not give her the metal she had entrusted to him at the start of the voyage and let her fend for herself like the crew. Instead he found her a more comfortable lodging than she would have chosen for herself and even hired a little maid to care for her. When she protested that her funds would not cover such expenses, he laughed and said she had earned her comfort and that he did not wish to forgo the pleasure he had in her company.
Truthfully she was glad to have someone with whom to talk and jest. Kabeiros had been not only unusually silent but sullen since she settled into her new quarters. She grew very sorry that she had gone aboard the Wave Leaper in the form of the crone instead of wearing the woman's body.
"If I had thought about it," she said one night after Ottah had left to walk back to his own lodging in a pouring rain, "I could have gone as the woman since I intended to bespell him anyway."
*And he could have stayed the night in your bed rather than going home to his own?* Kabeiros said. *And what would I have done? Gone to sleep in the alley?*
"What would you care?" Hekate snapped. "You are forever telling me that the dog isn't interested in humans. And you needn't be so self-pitying. There are two chambers to this apartment. There would be nothing to stop you from sleeping on the divan or the rug in here."
Whereupon the dog got up and went to the door. *Let me out,* he said.
Hekate ran to him. "No, don't go out, Kabeiros. You'll get all wet. It's raining very hard."
*Open the door,* he repeated. *I need to remind myself that I am a dog.*
He was not back by the time Hekate was ready for bed. She wasn't sure whether she was more frightened or resentful. She had not neglected him. Indeed, she had included him in most of her conversations with the captain, specially when Ottah told tales of the sea or of cities he had visited. In the periods when it was normal for her to be a silent listener, it was easy to make mental asides to Kabeiros and to enjoy his sometimes caustic remarks.
Other times she had been a bit irritated by Kabeiros' comments, which tended to point out what he felt must be exaggerations on Ottah's part—and she had said so. But she had never left him out of her thoughts or ignored his remarks. Lying in bed, listening for Kabeiros' scratch or short bark at the door, Hekate had asked herself what this attitude meant. When (she wouldn't let herself think 'if') Kabeiros had control of his shifting again and could live in the world as a man, if they were to live together, would he want all her attention? Would he object to her having friends of her own? Would he grow sullen and angry every time she enjoyed another man's company?
She fell asleep at last without ever hearing a sign from Kabeiros. He didn't return until she was up and dressed and eating the breakfast the little maid set on the table. The girl had looked about for the big black dog and asked where he was, and Hekate had snapped at her that he was about his dog's business, which was none of her affair. She had felt guilty but too ill-humored to apologize.
The child was very fond of Kabeiros. She had been terrified of the huge dog when Ottah first brought her to serve Hekate, and Kabeiros had put himself out to win her trust, wagging his tail and pressing his head against her hand very gently so that she could pat him. Her first lesson about the household in which she was to serve was that she didn't need to fear the black dog and she had come to love the creature. Now she always made sure his bowl was full of water and asked if she should prepare food for him.
It was the maid who opened the door when he scratched and he stopped halfway in to lick her cheek, which made her giggle. If he glanced at Hekate, it was too quickly for her to see and she said, "Where the devil have you been?"
The little maid laughed as she always did when Hekate spoke aloud to Kabeiros, but this time Kabeiros did not reply under cover of the maid's amusement. He leapt up on the divan, turned once around, and went to sleep. The maid made no comment on that. Her second lesson had been that the black dog was never reprimanded. He went where he liked, lay where he liked, and if he chose to rise up on his hind legs, put his forepaws on the table, and snatch a tidbit from Hekate's plate, even that was not criticized.
Hekate was so annoyed that she pushed aside the remains of her breakfast, took her cloak, and left the apartment, slamming the door behind her. Outside she went down a few steps and then hesitated, listening for Kabeiros to tell her to wait or, if he still was not speaking to her, for a scratch at the door or a bark to indicate that he intended to accompany her, but no peace token was extended.
Fuming, she went down the rest of the stairs and headed for the market. She had intended to rent a stall as soon as she knew the Wave Leaper would remain in port in Heraclea but somehow she hadn't done it. Instead she had accepted with pleasure Captain Ottah's invitation to go about with him as he negotiated for new cargo, sharing meals with him and talking of the advantages of trading for oneself or carrying goods for others.
She found the talk and expeditions of such interest that they reconciled her to wearing the body of the crone. No one looked askance at her keeping company with the captain as they would have done had she been a handsome young woman. The bailiffs and shipping factors all called her Mother and addressed their most persuasive arguments to her, assuming she must be old and wise in trade for the captain to bring her with him. She and Ottah laughed heartily together over the mistake, but sometimes it was useful when different aspects of a cargo were presented to her and to him.
Her mind was so busy with past pleasures that she passed unseeing along the stalls, starting when a hand caught her arm and a market warden called out to her. He remembered her from an earlier examination of rental possibilities because he had had a terrible cough when she spoke to him, for which she had given him a remedy. That act of kindness was now repaid; there was a stall open—the holder had fallen sick and abandoned it—that would suit her perfectly.
She was indeed satisfied with what was shown to her—a small but weathertight shed in which she could store her goods and even see to a client if the weather were inclement, and an outside apron of dirt packed so hard that even the rain of the previous night had done no more than slick the surface. Hekate contracted for the space at once, fishing in her thin purse for a few coppers to hold her right until she could return later in the day with the rental and fee.
She felt surprisingly pleased with the transaction, and hardly regretted that it would curtail her time with Ottah. It was only when she was on her way back to her rooms, thinking how pleased Kabeiros would be, that she realized she had rushed out to rent market space to pacify the hound. Her desire to pacify him when it was he that had made the quarrel by being totally unreasonable, annoyed her so much that she didn't tell him what she had done. And he annoyed her still more when she came in; he didn't speak but lay on the divan, only the dog showing, nothing of the shadow man.
Even angrier than before, Hekate changed to her best gown—not that any gown could do much for the crone, bent and hollow-chested as she was—and went out to dinner with Ottah and the crew. She was sorry the moment she stepped out of the house. Heraclea was not a particularly dangerous city, but dockside was not perfectly safe either, and she was accustomed to having the protection of the black dog.
No harm befell her, however, and Ottah saw her home. She told him about renting a stall and when he offered any support she needed, thinking she sought clients because she needed living expenses, she assured him it was more to keep up her practice in healing than any need. He was regretful that she would not be available as a companion, but admitted he had little more to do. His cargo was sold and, by his reckoning, his hold would be full for the spring voyage.
When they reached the house, Ottah looked down and then up at her in surprise and asked about Kabeiros. He had not noticed until then that the dog was not with her, simply assuming he was. Hekate made some excuse, she didn't remember what, because she was busy fighting a terrible temptation to shift to the woman and to go home with Ottah, leaving Kabeiros to wait and worry.
Almost, almost she yielded. Only the thought of the long explanations, of the admission that she was a real sorcerer and knew a lot more than healing spells, of the real chance that Ottah, Egyptian or not, would withdraw from her in horror when he learned she was Gifted, a shape-shifter, held her back. So she said her usual good-night and went up the stair. The heavy key that hung at her belt opened the door, but she didn't even glance toward the divan. She went through to her bedchamber and went to bed.
The next morning, to her infinite surprise, not only was Kabeiros sitting in his usual place, but the shadow man was present . . . and he was hardly a shadow.
*Kabeiros!* she exclaimed, silently because the little maid was scurrying about with dishes and platters. *You are almost real. You look as if I could touch you.*
*Not real enough, unfortunately,* he said, with a smile that twisted the lips of the shadow but lacked mirth. *I was thinking last night that my trouble might be within myself, a result of lack of trying to be a man.*
*I can't believe that! You must have tried to shift.*
She was eating as she spoke, holding out a tidbit to the dog as she often did. The little maid noticed nothing strange.
*Did I?* Kabeiros asked doubtfully. *Shifting had always been so easy. Like breathing. I thought 'dog' or 'man' and I was dog or man. I didn't think how. I just was. And when I tried to shift and I couldn't . . . I do remember the terror that seized me. I remember trying again and again and being more afraid each time I failed. But I don't remember asking why I couldn't shift or looking within myself to see what was wrong. My friends tried to help, but they didn't really know any more than I did and I soon fled and became more and more the dog, until I came by accident to the caves of the dead . . . and became a man.*
*I don't know.* Hekate's eyes lit with enthusiasm. *There's no sense blaming yourself after all this time. Who knows what really took place? But we can work on it. Perhaps if I lend you power—not that you need power but more might do the trick—you will be able to change. We can do that between clients. Few will come these first days, until my reputation has a chance to spread. We will have time.*
*Clients? And are you sure the market will be a good place to work? What if I do change to a man right there where everyone can see?*
*I have a shed and it has a door. I can pretend to be working with my herbs, preparing potions.*
*You have a shed?* His mind echoed the words as it had previously echoed "clients."
Hekate blushed a trifle. "Oh, I forgot to tell you. When I went out yesterday I went to the market and I rented a stall. There are two or three moons more before the weather clears enough for sailing and I have done no healing for a long time. I need to practice my skills because, as you have told me and Ottah, too, no spells are allowed in Greece. I bet they will have witch-smellers about, too. I need to cure without witchcraft.*
She had practice in plenty in the moons until the Wave Leaper sailed, except for the first few days. These she devoted to Kabeiros while she pretended to mix herbs and compound salves. First she tried to pour power into the hound, but he was as resistant to outside transference of power as he was to spells. Foiled of the most direct route, she tried to teach Kabeiros to draw power from the blood of the earth. He could smell it and she was marginally more successful in this attempt. If he walked the blood-lines, he could draw some power through his naked paws. It was enough to allow him to sustain the less shadowy appearance of the man, but did not come near feeding enough to the draining spell to make the man real. Last of all, Hekate tried to enter the dog, find the organ that ruled his ability to shift and pick the draining spell from it, thread by thread if need be. That, too, failed. She could no more penetrate the hound than could a spell.
After that failure, the dog was silent and only a dog. Hekate pleaded with him not to give up hope, blaming her own lack of skill and knowledge for the failure, but her voice trembled with fear. She knew she was lacking neither in skill nor in knowledge. When she had arrived in Colchis, perhaps, but she had grown enormously in the years she had spent there. She had freed herself from Perses' compulsion not to use magic; she had learned to use high magic as well as low; she could create spells, weave them together, take them apart, bind them, make them immortal. Yet she could not penetrate the dog's shields.
For a ten-day she might as well have been pleading and reasoning with a true hound. Then she remembered that she didn't know everything. The dog was not impervious to all magic. With hope in her own voice and face, Hekate reminded Kabeiros that Medea in serpent form, had reached past the dog's defenses, whatever they were. The princess had used her Gift for that. True, her spells as a human sorcerer were as ineffective as Hekate's own, but the serpent's Gift had reached inside the hound, found his power and the draining spell that spoiled it . . . and had nearly killed him.
*Hold on. Hold on,* Hekate begged. *As soon as spring comes we will be on our way to Olympus. The gods are greatly Gifted. Think. If Hephaestos could build the palace at Colchis when he was little more than a child, his Gift as an artificer is near incredible—and he was only one of the minor gods. Surely among the great ones, one will have a Gift that will free you.*
*Perhaps,* Kabeiros replied, but his voice was dull.
Hekate would have been in utter despair, except that she was soon too busy healing, and Kabeiros was roused from fading into a dog's uncaring by the need to watch her clients, to listen to what they said to each other and report that to Hekate. She was not a teller of fortunes and didn't care about the clients' private lives but, strangely enough, they would often tell a fellow sufferer of symptoms they would not describe to their healer.
Hekate's success was not totally owing to skill and good fortune. Some of it began with a new favor from Ottah, who sent members of his crew and others to her. Seeing her stall crowded, local people began to come out of curiosity and soon out of need. It was not surprising, then, as the year turned toward spring, and she told her clients she must depart, that there were pleas and protests. She calmed those by leaving recipes for certain potions and salves with several healers she had learned were skilled and honest.
To one woman, whose eyes told Hekate more than the woman knew herself, Hekate came on the evening before Wave Leaper sailed and brought a half-dozen healing spells for deep troubles that salves and potions would not touch. She told the woman how to practice the spells and how to test them.
Hekate would have been horrified to learn that when she was gone, the woman set up a shrine at the crossroads in the market and worshiped Hekate. When others laughed, she insisted that a goddess had visited Heraclea. They laughed less when her healing spells, taught her—she never failed to say—by Hekate, worked wonders. The woman spread the spells among her sisters and daughters so that more worshipers were drawn to the shrine. They came as dusk faded to darkness because that was when Hekate had come to her first disciple. As in legend, the goddess had moved on, but the worship persisted and spread.
Hekate knew nothing of that. Her heart and mind reached only toward Olympus. Perhaps her desire was strong enough to magic the weather. The long voyage to the Bosphorus was swift and sure. A following wind, not so strong as to whip up huge waves but strong enough to drive the ship forward at a good pace, never failed. It died just enough every evening to allow them to beach Wave Leaper without difficulty, and blew again the next day. It even shifted to southerly when they needed to stand out to sea to avoid the Symplegades and turned westerly again when they needed to come back to shore.
At Cyaneae Ottah tried to convince Hekate to continue on with him. If she merely wanted to see new people and new things, he said, she would certainly do so if she came along on his voyage, for which he would demand no fare. Wave Leaper would be taking the northern route along the coast of Thrace and the land of the Getae to Olbia and then south. She had never seen those lands, had she?
She refused him gently, laughing and saying he might not have seen the last of her, she might yet return to the shores of the Pontus Euxinus. First, however, she had to go to Greece. And when he protested that would be dangerous for such as she, she shrugged and told him her goal was one place where magic must be welcome—Olympus.
"No, no," he begged. "You are old, but you are very strong and won't die soon. I know what you desire. Because you are a witch, you think you can win immortality in Olympus, but it's a vain hope. You'll never find the place, and even if you do, the gods don't so easily give up their secrets. And they are known to punish the audacious."
She shook her head. "I've no such foolish dreams," she said. "It's for Kabeiros that I go." She shrugged and put her arm around the unresponsive hound. "He wasn't always a dog. He is bespelled . . ." Even to Ottah and in the last hours before separation, she wouldn't admit Kabeiros was a shape-shifter.
"I knew he was more than a dog. I knew." Ottah sighed. "No one is bound to a dog as you're bound to Kabeiros."
"Nor have I been completely honest with you about more than my lack of a younger son in Byzantium. I have no sons at all, and didn't come from Sinope but from Colchis."
"Colchis! I have heard tales . . ."
"Too many are true. If you don't have to make port there, don't. But even in Colchis, and it was a city of sorcerers, there was no one who could set Kabeiros free. There are only the gods of Olympus left."
She said it softly, looking anxiously over her shoulder at Kabeiros, who had walked away to lie down on some folded blankets. His eyes were closed and there was no sign of the shadow man. He was not totally withdrawn into the dog. He came alert quickly when there was doubt or danger, but he hardly spoke—no more little caustic comments or seemingly sober remarks really designed to make her laugh when she shouldn't. More than her heart ached. She kept seeing the man, almost real, and her body ached for him, too.
Ottah saw the inflexible determination in her. He wondered if the dog had been a brother or a husband or, even though she had denied children, a son. He told her first what his route would be and where, if she decided to return, she could leave messages for him or meet him. Then, sighing, he went with her to the caravanserai and helped her make arrangements to start her journey west.