“Lion against lion!”
Telemakos’s voice cracked, sounding as babyish as Athena’s in his own ears.
“Against his own kind! A lion against his own kind! You would not set a dog against another dog, oh never, not one of your precious salukis, but you would so despise a lion?”
The huntsmen had fallen silent now.
“And not one of your guard had wit enough to stop it happening! Ah, God, I am ashamed to be gifted with your damned dogs. Give me next time a pair of songbirds, so I won’t have to be party to another such murder!”
“Quiet, child, calm yourself,” Abreha said. “Calm yourself.”
Telemakos screamed at him, “What am I going to tell Athena?” He burst into tears.
They tried to make him drink water that was bitter with the taste of some added sedative. Telemakos spat this out in fury and struck the man who had offered him the drinking horn. They pinned Telemakos by the shoulders while Tharan pinched his nose shut until he gasped for breath. When Telemakos opened his mouth, Tharan jerked his head back in one swift movement and poured the drink straight down his throat.
“You are a damned pack of hyenas!” Telemakos wept, spitting and coughing. Abreha caught him gently when he fell.
He was lying on his back beneath the willows. Stars appeared and disappeared above him through the shifting leaves. Athena slept with her arms around his neck and her head against his shoulder, a warm, affectionate bundle of banked energy pressing him against the ground. The salukis were curled beside him as well, one tight against each leg. One of them had its head propped on his stomach.
He was still immobilized by the sedative and battled for consciousness. Someone else was there, someone awake, touching his head: combing his hair, so gently and lightly it did not hurt, even when the quick hands pulled through the snarls.
“He doesn’t like being put to sleep,” Muna said. “His father spends more on opium for him than the Scions are allowed for their clothes, and he disdains it. Rasha has found unopened vials of the stuff tied in his shirttails. You should not force it on him, even to calm him. You deal harshly with him, my lord.”
She was picking the sand from Telemakos’s scalp and plaiting his hair in tight rows against his skull, in the neat style of the Himyar warriors. He knew that she was using clarified butter to oil his hair, because he recognized the smell, but he could not remember where he was or why he had been drugged. It was all right; Athena was there.
“I dare not spoil him with any softness,” murmured the najashi’s voice. “For a prince of his stature, he is flawed severely enough as it is. Old enough to train as a warrior, and afraid to sleep alone! I hoped the dogs would come to substitute for the child as his comforter. Why should he need anything at all, this half-grown youth who killed two lions today all unaided? In Aksum, in my homeland, killing a lion is the ritual test of a king. If you can kill a lion, you are deemed fit to rule a kingdom.”
“He can’t light a lamp,” said Muna. “He can’t comb his hair. He can’t drink from a waterskin. He can’t sharpen his pens. He is healing, only healing still, and you deal harshly with him.”
“He has slain a lion,” the najashi said. “He could kill a man. He shouldn’t need help with lamps and combs! He doesn’t need it, any more than his sister needs to be carried about like a lap dog. She’s three years old. When will she learn to walk?” He sighed. “Neither one of them is whole. Neither one of them sleeps peacefully without the other near.”
They talk about us as though we were their own children, Telemakos thought, and fell back into his drugged sleep.
He woke again shortly after dawn, still unable to govern his body, and found himself trapped in the illusion of imprisonment that had scarred his mind in Afar. If he tried to move his legs, they were chained. If he tried to move his arms, they were bound. If he tried to open his eyes, they were held shut by the dreaded, hated blindfold. He struggled until he began to weep aloud. And then out of nowhere the najashi was holding him, clasping him firmly hand in hand and stroking his hair.
After a little while Telemakos murmured unhappily, “You must hate it that I am alive and your son Asad is not. I think that is why you are so strict with me.”
“I was not strict enough with Asad,” the najashi answered gently. “He had neither your will nor your endurance. God forbid you should grow to be so soft and submissive. Your aunt Goewin took him for a servant the one time she met him.”
“I am soft. I am a coward. I am always so afraid, sleeping and waking, it never gets any easier, any less cruel, any lighter. I am always so afraid!”
“So are we all,” Abreha said. “You learn to master it. Or you pay it no heed, as a lion pays no heed to the dangers of the life he leads. He lives from kill to kill, from drought to drought, from pride to pride. What safety is there in his life? He is always afraid, and never knows it. It does not ruin him.”
“Where is Athena?”
“Breaking her fast with my queen, like a good girl.”
“I want my dogs, then,” Telemakos said.
“They’re here.”
Telemakos had not noticed them, lying against him.
“Master it,” Abreha repeated. “Do not be afraid.”
Telemakos spent the morning watching the men working over the hide of his golden lion. The lions he had known in the highlands of Aksum were black maned, but this one that he killed in Himyar was all over a molten, burnished gold, from mane to tail. He could not believe how big it was. Its skin was bigger than the one that hung in Kidane’s reception hall at home, which Medraut had caught for Turunesh before Telemakos was born.
“What will your father say to this trophy when he receives it?” Abreha asked him, and laughed at his own question. “He’ll forbid you to go hunting again, most likely, in case you damage yourself.” Then the najashi added, more soberly, “The other hide is yours as well.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Send it to your aunt.”
I could do that, Telemakos thought; no one has ever given Goewin such a trophy of her own. She’ll be pleased. And she will understand why I’ve done it.
They did not tell Athena what had happened. They sent Menelik’s skin to Aksum and hoped she would not notice that her lion was gone.
X
THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE