A History of Magic

Cassandra and Penthesilea

City-state of Troy (Modern Anatolia): 1184 BC

The Princess woke in her chair. The palace still burnt before her eyes. She no longer slept in her bedroom, with its balcony overlooking the forums and towers of Troy, but the screaming reached her everywhere. Agony, brief. Fear, down to the last hours of killing. Regret.

Cassandra closed her darkened eyes and tried to remember silence.

"Princess? I'm coming in." Coroebus, her fiancé, entered the marble sitting room with food, "The king asked me to bring you something. He's just formally accepted the Greek peace envoys. Their army is drawing back from the walls. The city might be holding its breath."

"As if all Troy know their own future," Cassandra whispered. "But none dare to say the king has ass's ears. Leave me. You'd be mad to stay and hear a woman's madness."

"Cassandra, you can't be mad. You always had the wisest, brightest mind I knew–you would enthrall philosophers who I could barely talk with. But there was the war, your brother Hector's death...I know you only speak from your suffering, Cassandra. I just wish I could take you out of this city."

Fingers twitching, Cassandra turned from Coroebus's honest, moonstruck face.

"Stupid. I could never leave Troy. You must believe me."

"I...I know you wouldn't lie. But your father will meet the Greeks, whatever I say. If he doesn't make peace, now...without Hector, Troy will fall before spring..."

"I know! I see it–I can't change it! I only asked that you believe–If Greeks envoys enter our city, she will burn by nightfall. Heroes have died in heaps around Troy, but you're the one who can save me now. Say you believe me. Three words."

"Cassandra...no man abuses flags of truce, not even Greeks–their honor would die for all time. Your visions...they seem a curse that shows only death..."

"I see the future. Or did I sell my soul for nothing?" Cassandra glared like a devil, but wept into her hands. Coroebus touched her shoulder.

"Whatever happens, I'll fight for you. I know I can die–"

"So that's your nature, then. Fight, die and call yourself a hero! Any man with sword could do the same."

Coroebus stumbled out, past the guard posted to stop king Priam's eldest daughter making another public scene. Cassandra wished she could do anything to make him hate her. Then the vision of Coroebus hacked down in Athena's temple might disappear. A renowned hero of Greece beginning to rape his fiancé might not be his final sight.

Cassandra felt her arms shaking, harder than in any Witch-hunt. She wondered if telling Coroebus her last vision would've shocked him into belief. It hardly mattered; she could never have told the poor boy such a loathsome thing.

~*~*~*~

By evening, Cassandra heard singing from the streets. Ten years of war was ending. All Troy celebrated with wine and hung up wreaths, excepting her.

Even her guard had left. She passed from the room, and threw herself into the railing of a balcony. Flashes of bright clothes and discarded armour rose up from the white streets, with laughter and the dying moans of the future. Hair streaming like a flag of death, she called out;

"The Greek envoys will open the city gates! Listen! Your houses will burn; your wives will be slaves! I warned you? Do you say I'm mad? Your daughter is twelve and you'll see her die on a spear tonight!

"In a thousand years, they'll talk of a wooden horse, and call you immortal fools! In a thousand billion years, light will die to entropy...everyone will die, without hope..."