King of Ithaca Read Online Free PDF

They had found the oracle.
    ‘They won’t let you in now. They never lets you in after dark.’
    They turned to see a young man dressed in a coarse black tunic with a fleece draped over his shoulders against the cold. He sat by his own small fire next to a pen full of goats. The animals were subdued by the night and lay pressed against each other for warmth. Occasionally a kid would bleat or the tangled mass of bodies would kick and shift as one of its members repositioned itself. The herdsman pointed up at the temple.
    ‘Just got a new Pythoness from the village. The ol’ one died, see, and this un’s only been at it a few weeks. Makes the priests a bit protective, it does, an’ they want ’er to get plenty of rest at night.’
    ‘She’ll speak for me,’ Castor responded. ‘I’ve got business that won’t wait.’
    The herdsman smiled sympathetically. ‘You’ll be lucky to get by those priests, m’lord. I’ve seen rich folk, nobles like you lot, offer ’em a gold piece to see her after dark, but the priests just laugh at ’em. Say she’s special, is this’n, and they don’t want to tire her any more’n what they have to. Breathing them fumes all day takes years out of a Pythoness, so it does. The one what died looked old enough to be my grandmother’s mother, though in truth she were only a few years older than what I am. Those fumes rot the flesh as well as the brain, y’know.’
    Castor turned and carried on up the slope. It was all the persuasion the others needed to leave the herdsman to his advice.
    ‘’Ang on,’ the herdsman shouted, springing up from his fire and running after them. ‘If you’re goin’ anyway, you ought to buy one of my goats. You can torture the priests and hold the Pythoness upside down by her ankles, but the goddess won’t speak unless you take her a sacrifice. Ain’t your lordships respecters of the gods?’
    Castor grabbed the man by his tunic and pulled him close. ‘Don’t ever question my loyalty to the gods. Now, go and fetch me a one-year-old goat, pure black with no markings.’
    ‘Get me one, too,’ Eperitus ordered. If Castor could not wait until morning, neither would he.
    The herdsman returned with an animal under each arm. The beast he gave to Castor was as black as night and wriggled like a hydra. Eperitus’s was brown and white and had hardly managed to rouse itself from sleep. They threw them over their shoulders and held them by their cloven hoofs.
    ‘Tha’s one silver piece for blackie, and six coppers for the other, sirs.’
    ‘We’ll give you five copper pieces for them both,’ Eperitus corrected, disgusted at the man’s audacity.
    The herdsman turned to him with a broad smile on his dirty face. ‘That black un’s my best animal. If your lord wants . . .’
    ‘Here,’ said Castor, impatient to get on. He handed the goat herder two silver pieces and started towards the temple.
    ‘You should learn the good grace of yer master,’ the trader told Eperitus, before turning to walk back down the slope. Eperitus gave him a swift kick to the buttocks to speed him on his way, which provoked a stream of insults hurled towards his departing back.
    As they rejoined Castor and the others a great belch of smoke swirled out of the temple door and coiled into the night air. For the first time Eperitus consciously recognized the faint stench that had been growing since they left the pool. He turned to Antiphus, who wrinkled his large nose in response. It smelled of rotten eggs, the nauseating, throat-drying stink that poets associate with Hades itself. Suddenly Eperitus wished he had waited until morning.
    ‘Perhaps she’s asleep like the herdsman said,’ Antiphus suggested, uncertainly. ‘Wouldn’t those other pilgrims be here otherwise? Let’s come back tomorrow.’
    ‘Go back if you want,’ Castor replied, holding the struggling goat tighter about his shoulders and looking up at the steps to the temple. ‘You can all wait until morning if