Free Cassandra by Kerry Greenwood Page A

old and I was out in the world again.
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    The world was wide and scented with resin and dust. It was autumn, I realised. All the trees in the temple are evergreen; it takes concentration to notice the changing of the seasons.
    Pyla trotted politely at the side of the master's horse. For a few hours we travelled in silence, but it was a pleasant silence and I had a lot to look at. The grapes were ripening well, it seemed, the plump purple patches almost too heavy for the vines. I recalled being a child who tended the goats and lay a whole day in the thyme-scented grass, looking at the shadows of the mountains and making beasts and faces out of clouds. I thought of the small Chryse with pity. He was so ignorant of the world and of men.
    We came into Kokkinades at an easy pace and found no one about in the agora, which was odd. It still lacked several hours until sunset and usually the marketplace of such villages has a cast of inhabitants fully as well known as a satyr-play. The old men on benches by the shady side of the square, market women arguing with customers and proclaiming the merits of their cheese or their weaving, and maidens passing to the well for water with amphorae on head or hop.
    But in the main square of this village there was no none. I shivered.
    `Men of Kokkinades!' called Master Glaucus in a loud voice.
    I did not hear anything but the master went to a house on the far side of the square and wrenched open a door. It was a stone house with two windows. I felt sure that it must belong to the chief family of Kokkinades.
    He looked inside, stepped back, and stood silent for a moment. I wanted to look inside but he pushed me roughly away.
    `Chryse,' he said slowly, `take the horses and walk out along the road, to the west. When you are 500 paces away, stop and call out in a loud voice that a healer has come.' Master Glaucus' own voice was taut with some strong emotion.
    `Yes, Master. What do I do then?'
    `Wait. I will not be long. Take my cloak, boy, I will have to burn this tunic. Go on, Chryse!'
    Puzzled, I walked both horses, who were restive because they had expected to be fed and stabled in the village, 500 paces along the white road. The slopes of the hills were covered in poppies, I remember, and I saw seven varieties of thyme and a sun-coloured butterfly. I felt very foolish when I reached the prescribed place, but I had my orders. Tethering Banthos and Pyla to a convenient olive tree, I cupped my hands and called to the silent hills, `A healer has come!' I waited, then repeated it.
    Since I could not see anyone, I sat down and took a drink of water - our water skin would need replenishing soon - and ate a broken piece of barley bread which I found in the ration-bag. I wondered what had happened to Kokkinades. I could not see any sign of bandit attack; no arrows, no spear marks or blood, and the houses had not been broken into or damaged. Bandits usually set villages on fire after they left. I would have assumed that the people were all away on some festival - the Dionysiad was near - if it had not been for that strained note in my master's speech.
    I heard a rustle and leapt to my feet. A woman came climbing down the bank to the road, carrying a small baby and towing another two children behind her. She stopped when she saw me.
    `Are you a healer?' she asked suspiciously.
    `I'm an acolyte, Lady,' I said politely. `Master Glaucus is in the village and will presently be here.'
    `In the village? Then he is lost. Kokkinades is doomed. Some god has been offended and he has struck us with a plague. Apollo. It must be Apollo.'
    `Are you...' I was about to say `the only survivor' but changed my phrasing hurriedly, `alone, Lady?'
    `No, the others have gone to sacrifice to Apollo to ask him to take off the curse. It must have been that bull. It was prideful of us to sacrifice a bull.'
    `Are you well, Lady?' With my new-found knowledge of the non-existence of gods I could not enter into the argument. She made a