1.97

The Young Griffon

Scythas and Sol’s quiet conversation abruptly ended when I joined them at the front of the ship. The Hero glanced at me uncertainly, having no doubt overheard my conversation with Selene – as he overheard most all things that he cared to. Sol acknowledged me with a nod and twisted to lean an arm against the ship’s rail, looking out over the waves pensively.

I stepped through the gap that separated the two of them and climbed up onto the Eos’ figurehead, a woman carved from wood with both hands cupping her cheeks. In the vision of my father and my uncles that Chilon’s story had shown us, the wooden woman had been reaching wantonly for the horizon. I leaned against her with my back to the sea, crossing my legs at their ankles and my arms over my chest.

At some point, she’d changed.

“I saw my family,” I said without preamble. I had their attention at once. “While Sol was speaking to his faceless friend, I saw the boys and girls that I grew up with – but as men and women instead. It was the final stage of the rites. A delusion.”

“What?” Scythas asked, confused. I frowned, considering the figurehead’s expression as she considered the sea. The naked desire of her first rendition was gone, replaced by a puzzled wonder.

“Every greater mystery cult has its theme,” I said, and Scythas nodded once. Sol was still confused, so I elaborated, “The Rosy Dawn is governed by light and the Burning Dusk by heat, both of them the flame. The Broken Tide by the waves. The Howling Wind, and so on. These traits are foundational. They’re the first tools that an exceptional mystiko uses to build upon their cultivation.”

“Your point being?” Scythas asked.

“Bakkhos was born and raised in Thracia. He loved Orpheus like a brother and buried him with honors. And if he was telling you the truth, he would even return from time to time, to share a drink with his friend beneath the earth. Bakkhos was the kyrios of the Raging Heaven, but he did not study there – not in his formative years. It isn’t lightning that defined him. His domain lay elsewhere.”

“The Mad Tyrant,” Sol realized, eyebrows raising as he followed my train of thought. The fell thread that connected our misadventure to our companions race through chthonic beehive tombs. “Delusion. Madness.”

The ivory gates had confounded Scythas and Selene just as the milk and honey had addled our senses. They’d told us that it was our voices they had heard on the other side of the gates, and that was why they had tried to leave. In reality, the mad acoustics of the singing house had fooled them, twisted the sounds of the Thracian gatekeepers trying to murder our horses. Sol and I had seen things I had few words for, and the commonality in every shifting vision had been the madness – inflicted by the Mother, inflicted by the deaths of friends, inflicted by the turning of the wheel.

“You’re saying he studied the Orphic mysteries?” Scythas murmured, a growing frown on his lips.

They found him in a field of grape vines, half-submerged in the dirt. Like his parents had tried to bury him and given up partway through.

I sighed. “I’m saying that if anyone rose to the heights that Bakkhos rose to by using what Sol and I just experienced as their foundation, Mad Tyrant would be an entirely appropriate title. You knew him better than we did, though you denied it at his funeral-” Scythas grimaced, but didn’t gainsay me. “-so I can only speculate.”

“Did the late kyrios have any interests or abilities that would coincide with what we all went through last night?” Sol asked him quietly. “A passion for singing? A talent for the lyre?”

“The kyrios had a talent for most things,” Scythas said. I hummed, considering the fading red marks on his face and arms. His stings were healing swiftly, based on how ugly they had been before in Selene’s recollection. Sol followed my eyes, his train of thought matching my own.

“Including beekeeping?”

The Hero’s expression didn’t shift in the slightest degree. But his heart did.

“Bakkhos was a beekeeper,” I said, considering that new knowledge. Scythas’ eyes flickered, chagrined. “And he was also known for his madness. Perhaps the connection is there. Perhaps it isn’t. Either way, while under the influence of the Orphic mystery, I saw grim delusions designed to cut me to my core.“

And so did you.

I didn’t say it, though I was nearly certain that it was true. Had we been having this conversation even an hour before, I would have.

Not everyone is made of iron, Griffon. For some people, the fire only burns.

Instead, I offered up a portion of myself.

“The sons and daughters of the Rosy Dawn and Burning Dusk have no reason to fear the light of day, nor the heat of scouring flame,” I said, raising a hand and unfurling its fingers. The rosy light of dawn bloomed in my palm and crept up each digit, glowing brightly and throwing off heat like a campfire. “Our bodies are tempered by the sun.”

“I’m familiar with your city, yes,” Scythas said, rolling his eyes. “And I’m still waiting for you to get to your point.”

I felt his heart flicker and betray his feigned irritation, another whisper of sensation that wasn’t meant to be shared and so I only dimly overheard. Something like fear, maybe, or at least a deep unease. He’d seen the trajectory of the conversation, and he didn’t like where it lead.

“It’s alright.” Sol reached out and clapped the Hero on the shoulder, storm gray eyes not wavering from me as he did it. “This isn’t an attack.”

Only once the words were spoken did Scythas’ expression flicker, showing his unease. The Hero exhaled and nodded. But it wasn’t until a beat later, when the whispers of his heart had fully receded, that Sol squeezed his shoulder once and let go. As if he’d known to wait.

As if he’d felt it for himself. The raven in my shadow reached out for Sol’s. In the dead of night, sitting as close as we were, it didn’t stir our silhouettes.

“You can feel it, too?”

Sol frowned faintly. “Feel what?”

“His heart. You weren’t responding to his heart just now?”

The Roman looked at me strangely. “I suppose, if you want to be Greek about it.”

It was a struggle not to let my irritation show.

“I’m not being florid. I’m asking if you’ve gained a Hero’s heart sense as well.”

“No. I don’t need to ‘feel’ his heart to know that he’s uneasy.”

Like he was simply reading the room. Ridiculous, empathetic Roman.

I raised thirty more pankration hands around me, each of them unfurling like the blooming petals of a rose. Calling up the light of dawn.

Perhaps my approach had been wrong from the start.

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“Tempered by the sun,” I said again, a quiet prayer. “In the Scarlet City, it’s considered good fortune to be born during the day. If a mother is lucky enough to give birth while the sun is still up, the first thing she’ll do is raise her child to it. It’s said that if the first thing a newborn sees is the blinding light above, they’ll be better suited to its study when they’re older. This continues into the child’s formative years.

“Tempered by light. Tempered by heat. Blinded and burned, because the foundational techniques of the Rosy Dawn and Burning Dusk are as dangerous to the user as they are to the target. The Rosy Fingers of Dawn and the Burning Edge of Dusk.”

Cultivators refined the body as well as the soul. We grew stronger, taller, and better defined physically at the same time that we grew wiser, more spirited, and hungrier. A powerful body with a weak soul was a senseless, worthless beast. A powerful soul with a weak body was an ember in a bed of dry leaves. A balance was required.

Scythas knew this as well as I did. He’d been tempered in his own way, as had every cultivator – the ones that had made it to his level of refinement, at least. Any cultivator that could call upon the Rosy-Fingered Dawn had been tempered by the sun. In the same way, any cultivator that could bend the wind to their whims like Scythas had been tempered by the tempest.

All that changed was how the tempering was done.

Not every man was made of iron.

“When I was four years old, my father taught me how to make a fire,” I explained. Of my two flesh and blood hands and thirty manifested hands of intent, only one was still dark and cool. Idly, I rubbed together the thumb, index, and middle fingertips of that hand. Slowly, the motion generated warmth. “He took me out into the forest and showed me the proper wood to gather, taught me which materials would serve best as kindling. Tell me, Sol, if I asked you to light a fire right now, how would you do it?”