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Back The Arrow of Apollo
Chapters (52)
  1. Cover
  2. Title
  3. About the Author
  4. Dedication
  5. By the Same Author
  6. Author’s Note
  7. Map
  8. Domus Libris
  9. House of the Wolf
  10. The House of the Wolf
  11. One
  12. Two
  13. Three
  14. Four
  15. Five
  16. Six
  17. Seven
  18. Eight
  19. Nine
  20. Ten
  21. Eleven
  22. Twelve
  23. Thirteen
  24. Fourteen
  25. Fifteen
  26. Sixteen
  27. Seventeen
  28. Eighteen
  29. Nineteen
  30. Twenty
  31. Twenty-One
  32. Twenty-Two
  33. Twenty-Three
  34. Twenty-Four
  35. Twenty-Five
  36. Twenty-Six
  37. Twenty-Seven
  38. Twenty-Eight
  39. Twenty-Nine
  40. Thirty
  41. Thirty-One
  42. Thirty-Two
  43. Thirty-Three
  44. Thirty-Four
  45. Thirty-Five
  46. Thirty-Six
  47. Thirty-Seven
  48. Thirty-Eight
  49. Timeline of the Trojan Cycle
  50. Further Reading
  51. Acknowledgements
  52. Supporters

The lion was now at Silvius’s heels, and he scrambled up to a further branch.

‘Who are you?’ Elissa called.

‘Come down, and you will know.’

Elissa stared into the eyes of the lion. There was something in them, a fierceness that she recognised, a wildness that reminded her of Stargazer. The sightless eyes of the woman seemed also to emanate something that she could feel, tugging deep in her heart. Perhaps this was what they were meant to find.

She glanced at Silvius, who stared back, wide-eyed.

‘I’m going down.’

‘No, don’t! Elissa!’

Taking a deep breath, she jumped down, and landed in a crouch.

The next thing she knew, the world had become lion, and all she could see was its sharp white teeth, and all she could smell was the stench of meat from its huge maw.

Elissa uttered a shriek of terror, and the laughter of the lion rider resounded in her ears.

Twenty

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Plots and Poisons

MYKENAI, ACHAEA: KINGHOUSE OF THE LION

All the next day, Tisamenos looked at his father with a new respect. He saw, now, behind the sloppy facade, the reddening cheeks, the cheery jokes and the limp, the cold watchfulness of a hawk.

He could not shake away the memory of the Fury. Knowing it was down there, in the depths of the kinghouse, a visible reminder of his father’s torments, was itself a torture. Could he invoke those beings by taking his own revenge?

As he was leaving his chambers in the morning, he had felt suddenly dizzy, the stone part of his head weighing him down terribly, and he had stopped to rest his forehead against the stone lintel. It was crumbling in places, and there was even a bit of moss growing at the place where it touched the floor. He’d rested there for a moment, alone in the dark corridor. It gave him a strange sense of comfort.

Whispering made him look up.

‘The blood … the shadows …’

Nobody was in sight. He’d called Hero’s name, and there had been no reply.

Now he was hidden on a ledge, watching Erigone as she sat in the large courtyard of the kinghouse. She was talking to one of her attendants. The others were throwing a ball between themselves, whilst one was teasing a tabby cat under the shade of a tree. A wet nurse was holding Penthilos, a tiny, wrinkly bit of life, wailing in his swaddling clothes. If he killed Erigone, then would Penthilos want to take revenge on him? It wasn’t his fault, this little thing, his mouth wetly open.

Tisamenos had vowed to watch Erigone, but he could not be caught doing so. He listened intently.

At some point he must have dozed off, as he woke with a start. ‘Gone … she’s gone …’ came a whisper in his mind, and sure enough, when he looked down into the courtyard, Erigone and her companions were no longer there.