Perenike, Episode 2
Long, long ago, a goddess descended upon the banks of the Salonika River by night. It was the goddess Kybelar, who roamed the world in a chariot of fire drawn by lions.
The goddess released the pair of lions she loved by the water’s edge to let them rest. All the beasts of the Salonika River basin fled far away, terrified of the goddess’s fierce lions.
But one eagle, and one wolf, remained on the banks of the Salonika River. It was because they had been blinded by the goddess’s great beauty more than by the lions’ savagery. The bored Kybelar found this amusing.
And so the goddess turned the eagle of the plains and the wolf of the forest into beautiful human men, and lay with them.
After spending nine nights on the banks of the Salonika River, the goddess Kybelar departed the earth and gave gifts to the two men who had satisfied her.
Fertile lands bearing their names. Humans who would bow their heads to them.
Names that would be great for ages to come.
To the eagle was given the name “Linus” and the upper reaches of the river; to the wolf, the name “Pelagon” and the lower reaches of the river.
The Salonika River was a great river that cut across the Kalili Peninsula from north to south. And for those who became kings, greed was only natural.
Yet they did everything as the goddess wished. They divided the river and the land, and later each took in and raised one of the twin sons the goddess bore.
The goddess told the eagle and the wolf only that the two sons had different fathers, and never let them know, for the rest of their lives, which child was whose.
She believed that, in doing so, the men who had vied for Kybelar’s favor would be unable to harm one another.
Just as the goddess thought, Linus—the eagle—came to believe that perhaps his own son was in Pelagon’s hands.
Pelagon—the wolf—suspected and suffered over whether the child he was raising might be Linus’s son, yet in the end, because he was the goddess’s son, he could not hate him in the slightest and cherished and loved him dearly.
Afterward, the son Linus raised founded the kingdom of “Argo” in the upper reaches of the river, while the son Pelagon raised founded the kingdom of “Evdokia” in the lower reaches, and under their fathers’ names they swore mutual nonaggression.
Despite that sacred oath, this was not the first time the army of the Kingdom of Argo had reached the very head of Evdokia’s capital.
Just a hundred years ago, water had driven the two kingdoms to war.
In those days, the king of Argo often indulged in the greed of damming the upper reaches of the Salonika River, and Evdokia, stricken by famine, could not contain its rage with mere prayers to the goddess denouncing the tyranny of its brother nation.
And so Evdokia’s starving farmers and frontier soldiers crossed the border. There followed an incident in which they carried out a vast and brutal massacre of the people of Argo, who were dead drunk while holding the festival of the god Dionysus.
Enraged, the king of Argo invaded Evdokia and went so far as to slay Evdokia’s aged king, only to be driven back in turn all the way to Argo’s royal capital by counterattacks from Evdokian princes rising up across the land. That was only a hundred years ago.
And as if that were not enough, had they not even tasted the humiliation of having the succession to Argo’s throne pass to an heir chosen by the Kingdom of Evdokia?
The history of the two kingdoms had flowed in that manner for at least three hundred years. Ever since someone first broke the oath, an oath was no longer a precious word.
At times, the sons of Pelagon were wicked; at other times, the sons of Linus were cruel. And in turn, each was also righteous.
Yet the goddess never answered any ambition in the end, nor did she ever wholly take anyone’s side. Thus the two nations coexisted on parallel lines.
Even knowing they could never completely swallow one another, the ambition to stand behind a new king in the other nation’s Diadochoi (Διάδοχοι)* War, under the pretext of being “brother nations,” was also ancient.
* Diadochoi (Διάδοχοι): successors
For perhaps this time, the goddess might choose them.
Thus, it was only natural that the king of Argo sought to make use of the second prince whom the king of Evdokia had pushed off a cliff.
And that Second Prince Deucalion, as he crawled back up from the cliff’s edge, blinded the king of Argo’s eyes with a new desire as well.
Perenike rode on impassively past the sight of the Kingdom of Argo’s flags, painted with eagles, fallen to the ground and trampled insignificantly beneath the soldiers’ feet.
They said the army of the Kingdom of Argo had long since retreated and vanished northward.
After someone had created a rift within the Phaethusa-Argo allied forces, and then exposed the allied army’s waist to the Nikandros cavalry.
Someone had surely betrayed Deucalion. She briefly recalled certain faces she had suspected all along of being spies, then soon realized there was not even time for retaliation and gritted her teeth as she drove her horse toward the castle gate.
No one stopped the woman who entered the castle with the hem of her black chiton fluttering from horseback.
It was because the soldiers at the gate, having seen from afar the horse’s head ornament that signified a Nikandros cavalry officer’s warhorse, mistook Perenike for one of the few female officers and had already cleared the way.
The ones who recognized exactly who she was were, in fact, the common people in the streets.
“The Kybelaune! It is the Kybelaune!”
“The Kybelaune has returned!”
“Perenike Kybelaune!”
Even when she did not use “Althea,” the strange light that always hovered faintly around her was visible only to the few who could sensitively perceive Althea.
But beginning with the recognition of those few, crowds began to gather in an instant.
“Kybelaune, please look upon my old husband. Kybelaune!”
“Lady Perenike! Daughter of the great General Basilios! Please, have pity on my lowly daughter just once.”
Each desperate voice filled the street. As though none of them knew that she had become Prince Deucalion’s wife.
Their faces were filled only with joy at the fact that their Kybelaune, who had abruptly left Evdokia several years ago, had returned in the midst of civil war.
“Was this the king’s will?”
Perenike passed by the familiar sight of people prostrating themselves in worship along the road she traveled as if she did not see it. She swiftly passed by the voices crying out their suffering to her and begging for mercy as well.
Deucalion’s royal father was a man who, in front of his young son’s face, had uttered the words “When the time comes, die on your own” as if they were a greeting.
A man Deucalion could never call father.
The king, who had wished to make the son borne by the former queen his one and only heir, had led the son borne by his second queen into valleys of death countless times.
Poisoning, assassination, disguised accidents—behind all those threats aimed at the young Deucalion stood the king. Like the shadow of his absolute love for his eldest son, Aktor.
Thus Deucalion was born amid his father’s hatred, and grew up under the teaching that as long as his older brother lived, he could only die.
Deucalion’s mother and her family, too, must have given Aktor the same teaching.
As long as your younger brother lives, you will never survive.
The antagonism between the princes had, since long ago, been a matter not of justice but of survival. Therefore Perenike never believed her Deucalion to be justice. Yet neither did she consider the Lord Regent the rightful heir.
The royal house of Pelagon did not recognize any special right of the eldest son. The throne of Evdokia was simply inherited by the son who survived until the very end. The same had been true of the present king, who was gravely ill.
He was the son of a lowly woman, but he became king because he survived. Because the father of the deceased former queen, and maternal grandfather of the First Prince, had saved the king. That was all.
Did a man whose fate had rested on the choice of a mere noble truly possess greater legitimacy than the son of the queen he hated?
Even so, in order to make his eldest son the complete successor, the king even falsely accused his second son of attempting to murder his royal father.
With a father’s own mouth, he pronounced the execution of his son. The Antehe Council had merely pretended to stop him.
And so Deucalion was exiled abroad. Not as a prince, but as a criminal.
Once, Deucalion had secretly looked up to the half-brother who was a threat to his life, had dreamed of becoming a warrior rather than a king, and had wished for something like a lifetime with Perenike more than a life of wielding power in the royal palace.
If only he could have escaped his father’s grasp.
“If I could be with you, I would be content to live my whole life as a shepherd. Perenike.”
Deucalion. The sound that swelled at that name was no longer his heartbeat. Perenike gritted her teeth.
Only her own heart was pounding as though it would burst. She found herself wanting to vomit her heart out instead.
“If only I had not been the king’s son.”
Deucalion. My Deucalion.
“If only the goddess had not known you, either.”
She leaped down into the royal palace courtyard as though falling from her horse. In the distance, she saw his silver hair.
Deucalion was alive. Still alive. Her blood boiled.
I thought you were dead. I truly thought you had died... Even knowing that the Lord Regent’s soldiers were on every side, the instant she saw Deucalion’s silver hair, a fleeting hope flared up inside Perenike like fire on a winter day. Without a shred of reason, it was an instinct bordering on madness.
“Deucalion!”
But that moment’s foolish rapture died with her the instant Aktor’s blade pierced Deucalion’s throat.
“And so, if only I could always be with you.”
Then, in accordance with the law of Evdokia that cut off the right wrist of a traitor, Aktor had a royal guard hold up his dead brother’s arm and, with an expressionless face, severed Deucalion’s wrist cleanly.
As though he were merely cutting away the hem of his garment caught on something. Just like that.
“If only you could be mine forever. Just as I am forever yours, Perenike.”
I am yours even in death, Perenike.
Do not forget that, wherever you are.