The Magus - John Fowles [83]
facing me, the horn in his right hand. Suddenly there was a new sound, even stranger, of a woman or a boy, I couldn't tell, calling from where the track out of Bourani disappeared into the trees. It was a chanted sound, a triphthong hauntingly prolonged, an echo of the horn's echo. _Eia_. _Eia_. The man dropped his arm and turned and went a pace or two to the north. I saw him raise his yard-long horn, a narrow crescent with a flared end. He called back; and the other call came back at once, so that the echoes of the two calls intermingled. _Eia_. _Eia_. Like the man I was watching the trees to the north, the dark tunnel where the track disappeared. A running girl appeared; and I thought at first by the apparent whiteness of her skin--the torch did not shift to her--that she was also naked. I thought too, with increasing shock, that it was Lily. If she had gone very quickly round the back of the house... but then I could distinguish a white chiton, and dark hair. A wig? The girl had a slim body, the right height. She ran towards the sea, between Apollo and myself on the terrace. Then a third figure appeared behind her. Another man, running from out of the dark tunnel through the trees. The girl was being chased. I flashed a look round. Conchis sat exactly as before, as if he disapproved sternly of this interruption. The nymph-girl ran through the beam of light that shone on Apollo and had almost reached the seaward side of the clearing when several things happened. Apollo blew his horn again, but this time it was a single wild note, sustained then abruptly ended. He struck a new pose, his hand pointing at the satyr-man, who stopped at the sound. Simultaneously a much stronger beam shone out from directly underneath me. Someone else was standing under the colonnade. The beam moved, caught up the still running figure of the girl, her white back and her black dishevelled hair and her seemingly near-exhausted legs, as she plunged into the trees. She disappeared. The light went out for two moments. And then, in a brilliant _coup de th�re_, it went on again, and standing there, exactly in the place where the first girl had disappeared, a place where the ground rose a little, was yet another, the most striking figure of all. It was Lily, but metamorphosed. She had changed into a long saffron chiton. It had a thin blood-red hem where it ended at the knees. On her feet were black buskins with silver greaves, which gave her a grim gladiatorial look, in strange contrast to her bare shoulders and arms. The skin was unnaturally white, the eyes elongated by black makeup, and her hair was also elongated backwards in a way that was classical yet sinister. Over her shoulders she had a quiver. In her left hand she held a long silver painted bow. Something in her stance, as well as her distorting makeup, was genuinely frightening. She stood, cold and outraged and ominous for a long second, and then she reached back with her free hand and with a venomous quickness pulled an arrow out of the quiver. But just as she began to fit it to the bow string, the beam tracked like lightning back to the arrested man. He was standing, darker-skinned, in a black chiton, spectacularly terrified, his arms flung back, and his head averted. It was a pose without realism, yet effectively theatrical. The beam swept back to the goddess. She had the bow at full stretch, the horn blew again, the arrow went. I saw it fly, but lost its flight in the abrupt darkness as the torch flicked off again. A moment later it shone on the man. He was clutching the arrow--or an arrow--in his heart. He fell slowly to his knees, swayed a second, then slumped sideways among the stones and thyme. The torch lingered a moment on him, then went out. Apollo stood impassively, surveying, a pale marmoreal shadow, like some divine umpire, president of the arena. The goddess began to walk, a striding huntress walk, towards him, her silver bow slung like a rifle over one shoulder. As she came near, into the diffuse beam of weak light, he held out his hand. They stood like that, facing me, hand