Warm light bathed the green leaves and clay-red dirt slopes of the olive grove. Faint summer shadows spread beneath their twisted, gnarled bows, and flashes of Apollo’s bright light flickered through the fluttering leaves.
‘Adrastos!’ The call tore through the grove. ‘Brother!’
Doves scattered from the branches, flapping away into the sun-drenched green beyond the old olives trees and the scatter of pink-flowering cacti.
Zotikos. Adrastos closed his eyes. Why have you come to bother me?
Loud steps thundered through the dirt, dust sprinkled Adrastos’s face, and a shadow fell upon him.
‘There you are, brother.’ Zotikos’s voice rang loud through the quiet groves. ‘Why are you lying out here? Have you forgotten? Father intended for you to speak to the oracle today.’
Adrastos dragged his eyes open and released a long sigh. Father is getting desperate.
Zotikos’s toe nudged at his leg, leaving a faint brown smudge upon the blue tunic. ‘Adrastos. Come.’
He hauled himself up on the tree. ‘Commanding me, little brother?’
Zotikos winced and turned his brown eyes to the floor. ‘Not me, brother. Father commands.’ He turned a rock over with the toe of his sandal and drew lines in the dust. ‘He hopes the oracle will provide a solution for the curse of Zeus.’
‘The curse of Zeus...’ Adrastos touched his fingertips to the twisted pattern of scar tissue covering the left side of his face. With the eye of his mind, he traced the red lines down his body to his toes. ‘All I remember is a flash of light, and that it hurt. Lots.’
‘Your mother’s boast offended him,’ Zotikos murmured. ‘Unfair that you have to pay the price too.’
‘My recovery was called a miracle.’ Adrastos strode down the slope toward the low wooden wall. Beyond it, the walls of Delphi’s oracle rose above the low buildings surrounding the temple. ‘Mother died on that hilltop.’
‘Your mother proclaimed you would be greater than any of Zeus’s mortal sons.’ Zotikos scrambled after him. ‘Adrastos… Brother… Whatever the oracle says, you’ll be a good king.’ A faint smile curved his lips. ‘A better one than I would be.’
‘A cursed king.’ Adrastos clambered over the wall and followed the worn line in the hill. ‘One that no woman would look twice at, even wearing a crown. One that cannot even have children.’
Zotikos’s eyes fell to the floor. ‘My sons can rule after you,’ he murmured. ‘A bastard I may be, but my sons would be trueborn and royal. You don't need to have an heir, you just have to marry and wait for father to die so you can legitimise me.’
‘As our father waited for our uncle to die?’ Adrastos paused upon the road and plucked the bronze blade from his brother’s waist. ‘He used this very blade and took the throne. Would you have me do the same? Our cousin died as a babe. Of sickness.’
Father poisoned him. He hurried through the walls, cradling the hot bronze of the sword against his chest. Then he married mother before little Chryses was even buried. A year later, I was born. Sixteen after that and here I am.
The marble columns rose bright and high into the sun. The bronze scales lining his father’s cuirass gleamed from the steps before them and his men clustered there in the colonnade’s shade.
‘Adrastos!’ His father stepped forward and spread his arms. ‘My son! The oracle awaits. Zeus’s curse will be lifted. Long will you reign when I walk the fields of Elysium.’
Zotikos’s hand rested upon Adrastos’ shoulder. ‘You have to go in alone, brother.’
‘Zotikos.’ Their father’s expression darkened. ‘Ride back to our lands. You need not remain here.’
‘I do not mind if he remains.’ Adrastos passed the blade back to his brother. ‘The oracle’s words will be no secret in the end. They never are.’
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Zotikos smiled and sheathed the blade. ‘I can wait—’
‘No.’ Their father thrust an arm at the horses. ‘Ride home, Zotikos. I have no use for you here. Adrastos, my firstborn, my trueborn, will have his curse lifted in the coming days. He will marry, provide me with grandsons to carry on our line, and all will proceed as I have hoped.’
Zotikos’s jaw tightened. ‘As you wish, my lord.’ He turned on his heel and strode away, his blue tunic fluttering about his thighs and his fist clenched about the hilt of his blade.
All the silver in Boeotia couldn’t buy father my brother’s love. Adrastos strode past his father and into the cool shadows of the temple. Or the love of anyone else in our kingdom. Accursed is a kinslayer.
White-robed priests flitted back and forth between the columns and rooms and a girl sat upon a white marble throne at the end of a dark hall, kicking her feet an arm’s length above the ground.
She stared up at the ceiling with a dazed smile upon her lips. ‘Storm-stricken son of white sand and dark seas, you come hoping for the wisdom of Apollo.’
‘My father hopes for it.’ Adrastos stared into the wide eyes of the girl and shivered. ‘I will listen to the words of the gods.’
Or the words of a little girl.
‘Zeus’s curse cannot be undone by any power of man,’ the girl whispered. ‘But Apollo grants me vision regardless. A chance for love. A chance to win the favour of a maiden both loyal and kind.’
A wife. That might be enough to placate our father for now. Zotikos is right. He wrestled with a swell of pity for the maiden. If I win her heart and she loves me, she won’t hate having to be my queen.
‘And how do I gain this chance? Silver for the temple?’ A wry smile passed across his face. ‘A feast for the priests?’
‘A hunt.’ The girl swayed on her throne. ‘A great white stag comes to your lands, straying from the wild into the shade of olive groves and the warmth of hot springs. It is your chance.’ She slumped back in her seat and her eyes slipped closed.
A great white stag. Adrastos swivelled on his heel and strode out. A sacred beast. Was the curse of one god not enough?
‘Adrastos!’ His father seized his arm. ‘What did the oracle say?’
‘A white stag. To the north of our lands, where the warm springs are.’ He tugged his arm free and strode through the temple. ‘If I hunt it, then there’s a chance I will find a woman who will love me.’
His father’s face lit up. ‘A queen. My dynasty will continue.’
‘The words of Apollo come through a little girl.’ Adrastos paused beneath the shade of the columns. ‘And greater kings than you have been led astray by them.’
The smile faded from his father’s face. ‘Kings are kings. The only free man in a land is the king of it.’ He snapped his fingers at his retainers. ‘You will go after this beast, Adrastos. You will find it. You will slay it. You will not return until you do.’
The king is the least free man in the land. Adrastos bit his tongue. And the bars that cage his sons are only a little less stern.
His retainer stumbled to his side, carrying the great, curved bow of his father. ‘My lord.’
His father waved him away, then leant in close, tickling Adrastos's cheek with his beard. ‘I loved your mother long before she married my elder brother. The things we did for love, no man should be forced to do. But they’re done now. Zeus's wrath was just, perhaps, but it was ours to bear, not yours. He owes you mercy.’ His father thrust the bow and quiver into his hands. ‘A Scythian bow, capable of putting an arrow through the heart of a man three hundred paces away if you’ve the skill, no matter the armour he wears. There is no finer bow in all the world made by the hands of men.’
‘If I don’t return, you’ll be short your favourite spoil of war.’
His father sighed. A tiredness loomed in the lines of his face as he rubbed at his grey-shot, neat-clipped beard. ‘The gods have set you a challenge, my son. If you pass their test, you will return and become a greater king than I.’ He shook his head and led Adrastos to their horses. ‘Think ill of me if you wish, I may have earnt it in my younger days, but I would die a happy man tomorrow if I were certain of your success.’
A thick knot of emotion tightened around Adrastos’s throat. ‘Then I will return successful or not at all.’ He swallowed the lump of feeling down and patted Katharós's flank until the mare snorted and shook her mane. ‘But, if I do not return, father, don’t waste your other son. His mother might not have been your queen, but he would make a better-loved king than this scarred, cursed man.’
‘You are my trueborn son.’ His father’s face hardened. ‘You will be king.’
Adrastos hoisted the bow and the quiver onto his shoulder, then swung himself into the saddle. ‘He is your son, too. More so than me, some say.’
‘You are your mother’s son.’ His father’s brown eyes traced the line of scars down Adrastos’s face and softened, then tugged the knot of Katharós's tether loose. 'I curse Zeus every day for what he has done to you for your parents' sins.’ He drew himself up. ‘Now go, my son. When you return, the other kings and princes of Greece will have naught but envy for you.’
Adrastos gave him a stiff nod and dug his heels into his mare's flanks. ‘North, Katharós,' he murmured. 'A little girl has told us to go kill something so someone falls in love with us.’
And if I come back uncursed, I'll be a king the people won't feel ashamed of. He let himself feel the weight of the bow upon his back, as heavy as Atlas's burden, and felt the throb of his heart against his ribs. And if I don't, they’ve always loved Zotikos more anyway.