Nothing would ever harm her again.

My sweet cousin, she replied with tender resignation, I have a husband. She indicated the letter. As you have a wife.

Her seemingly passive acceptance of fate infuriated me. What husband is he who abandons his wife? What wife is she taken without love? The gods demand of us action and the use of our free will! That is piety, not to buckle beneath necessity's yoke like dumb beasts!

This is Lord Apollo talking. My cousin smiled and touched me again with patient gentleness.

She asked if she could tell me a story. Would I listen? It was a tale she had confided to no one, save her sisters of the sanctuary and our dearest friend Bruxieus. Only a few minutes remained to us. I must be patient and attend.

Do you remember that day when the Argive soldiers shamed me? You knew I turned the hands of murder upon the issue of that violation. I aborted myself. But what you didn't know was that I hemorrhaged one night and nearly died. Bruxieus saved me as you slept. I bound him by oath never to tell you.

She regarded me with the same self-consecrated gaze I had observed upon the features of the lady Arete, that expression born of feminine wisdom which apprehends truth directly, through the blood, unobscured by the cruder faculty of reason. Like you, cousin, I hated life then. I wanted to die, and nearly did. That night in fevered sleep, feeling the blood draining from me like oil from an overturned lamp, I had a dream.

A goddess stood above me, veiled and cowled. I could see nothing but her eyes, yet so vivid was her presence that I felt certain she was real. More real than real, as if life itself were the dream and this, the dream, life in its profoundest essence. The goddess spoke no words but merely looked upon me with eyes of supreme wisdom and compassion.

My soul ached with the desire to behold her face. I was consumed with this need and implored her, in words that were not words but only the fervent appeal of my heart, to loose her veil and let me see the whole of her. I knew without thought that what would be revealed would be of supreme consequence. I was terrified and at the same time trembling with anticipation.

The goddess unbound her veil and let it fall. Will you understand, Xeo, if I say that what was revealed, the face beyond the veil, was nothing less than that reality which exists beneath the world of flesh? That higher, nobler creation which the gods know and we mortals are permitted to glimpse only in visions and transports.

Her face was beauty beyond beauty. The embodiment of truth as beauty. And it was human. So human it made the heart break with love and reverence and awe. I perceived without words that this alone was real which I beheld now, not the world we see beneath the sun. And more: that this beauty existed here, about us at every hour. Our eyes were just too blind to see it.

I understood that our role as humans was to embody here, upon this shadowed and sorrowbound side of the Veil, those qualities which arise from beyond and are the same on both sides, ever-sustaining, eternal and divine. Do you understand, Xeo? Courage, selflessness, compassion and love.

She drew up and smiled.

You think I'm loony, don't you? I've gone cracked with religion. Like a woman.

I didn't. I told her briefly of my own glimpse beyond the veil, that night within the grove of snow.

Diomache acknowledged gravely.

Did you forget your vision, Xeo? I forgot mine. I lived a life of hell here in this city. Until one day the goddess's hand guided me within these walls.

She indicated a modestly scaled but superb statue in an alcove of the court. I looked. It was a bronze of Veiled Persephone.

This, my cousin declared, is the goddess whose mystery I serve. She who passes from life to death and back again. The Kore has preserved me, as the Lord of the Bow has protected you.

She placed her hands atop mine and drew my eyes to hers.

So you see, Xeo, nothing has transpired amiss. You think you have failed to defend me. But everything you've done has defended me. As you defend me now.

She reached within the folds of her garment and produced the letter written in the lady Arete's hand.

Do you know what this is? A promise to me that your death will be honored, as you and I honored Bruxieus and we three sought to honor our parents.

The housewoman appeared again from the kitchen. Di-omache's children awaited within; my boy guide had finished his feed and stood impatient to depart. Diomache rose and held out both hands to me. The lamplight fell kindly upon her; in its gentle glow her face appeared as beautiful as it had to my eyes of love, those short years that seemed so long past. I stood too and embraced her.

She tugged the cowl atop her cropped hair and slid the veil in place across her face.

Let neither of us pity the other, my cousin spoke in parting. We are where we must be, and we will do what we must.

Chapter Twenty Eight

Suicide shook me awake two hours before dawn. Look what crawled in through the bunghole.

He was pointing to the knoll behind the Arkadian camp, where deserters from the Persian lines were being interrogated beside the watch fires. I squinted but my eyes refused to focus. Look again, he said. It's your seditious mate, Rooster. He's asking for you.

Alexandras and I went over together. It was Rooster, all right. He had crossed from the Persian lines with a party of other deserters; the Skiritai had him bound, naked, to a post. They were going to execute him; he had asked for a moment alone with me before they opened his throat.

On all sides the camp was rousing; half the army stood already on station, the other half arming.

Down the track toward Trachis you could hear the enemy trumpets, forming up for Day Two. We found Rooster next to a pair of Median informers who had talked a good-enough game that they were actually being given breakfast. Not Rooster. The Skiritai had worked him over so hard that he had to be propped up, slumped against the post where his throat would be slit.

Is that you, Xeo? He squinted through eyeholes battered purple as a boxer's.

I've brought Alexandras.

We managed to dribble some wine down Rooster's throat.

I'm sorry about your father were his first words to Alexandras. He, Rooster, had served six years as squire to Olympieus and saved his life at Oenophyta, when the The-ban cavalry had ranged down upon him. He was the noblest man of the city, not excepting Leonidas.

How can we help you? Alexandros asked.

Rooster wished to know first who else was still alive. I told him Dienekes, Polynikes and some others and recited the names of the dead whom he knew. And you're alive too, Xeo? His features twisted into a grin. Your crony Apollo must be saving you for something extraordinary.

Rooster had a simple request: that I arrange to have delivered to his wife an ancient coin of his nation, Messenia. This thumb-worn obol, he told us, he had carried in secret his whole life. He placed it into my care; I vowed to send it with the next dispatch runner. He clasped my hand in gratitude, then, lowering his voice in exigency, tugged me and Alexandros near.

Listen closely. This is what I came to tell you.

Rooster spit it out quickly. The Hellenes defending the pass had another day, no more. His Majesty even now was offering the wealth of a province to any guide who could inform him of a track through the mountains by which the Hot Gates could be encircled. God made no rock so steep that men couldn't climb it, particularly driven by gold and glory. The Persians will find a way around to your rear, and even if they don't, their fleet will break the Athenian sea line within another day. No reinforcements are coming from Sparta; the ephors know they'd only be enveloped too. And Leonidas will never pull himself or any of you out, dead or alive.