The Wine-Dark Sea by Robert Aickman

women had said nothing. The first lightning leapt at him in his room, taking him completely by surprise as he lay there musing in the warm darkness , some time after midnight. It was curious pink lightning, condensing, as it seemed, the entire firmament into a single second; and the thunder which followed might well have torn apart the total citadel … except that, to Grigg’s astonishment, there was no thunder, nothing of the kind beyond a faint rumble, more as if the Olympians had been overheard conversing than as if there had been an electrical discharge. On the instant, there followed another flash and brief rumble of distant talk; and then another. Grigg now listened for rain, of which there had been none that he was aware of since his arrival; but though, according to the laws of nature, it must have been raining somewhere, all there seemed to be here was a rising wind. Lightning was flickering from cherry-blossom almost to scarlet; but Grigg hardly noticed it as the wind rose and rose, like a cataract of water charging through the widening burst in a dam and sweeping down a valley, presenting to Grigg a similar picture of instant danger and catastrophe . He caught up the garment the women had woven for him and hastened round the big dark room shutting windows, like a suburban housewife. Those in one of the walls were too high for him to reach, but at least there was as yet no question of water pouring in.
    ‘There have always been storms like this.’
    It was Lek’s voice. Grigg could just perceive her shape standing by the door. ‘There is nothing to be afraid of. The citadel is built to remain standing.’ A flash of rosy lightning filled the room, so that, for a second, Grigg saw her with unnatural clarity, as if she had been an angel. ‘Come and look.’
    Lek clasped his hand and led him out. They ascended the pitch-black, stone stair. ‘Do not falter,’ said Lek. ‘Trust me.’ Grigg, feeling no doubt at all, went up the hard, dark steps without even stubbing a toe. They came out on the roof.
    The sky was washed all over with the curious pink of the lightning. Grigg had never seen anything like it before, and had never known so strange a wind, roaring, but warm, and even scented. Faintly massed against the rosy dimness at the other end of the flat roof was the recumbent shape of the male god. Lek stood looking at the god, herself a lovely, living statue. Grigg was filled with awe and revelation.
    ‘Tal is earth,’ he said, somehow speaking above the roar of the wind.
    As far as he could see, Lek moved not an eyelid.
    ‘Vin is fire.’
    He thought she faintly smiled.
    ‘And you are air.’
    A smile it was. There could be no doubt about it. And her eyes were far-distant vastnesses. The wind hummed and sang. Grigg kissed Lek, lightly as a leaf.
    ‘Come nearer to the god,’ said Lek, drawing him onward through the hurricane. ‘It is for him. Everything is for him.’
    And for the prostrate Grigg, as the warm wind blew and blew, the heavens opened.
    This time, just as much as he had finally forgotten to ask questions, so, at the end, he made no foolish demands.
    *
    On another night, conceivably a week later, Grigg was awakened by what must have been an unusual sound. He sat up and listened. There was nothing at all loud to be heard, but there was an unmistakable clinking and clanking in the island night, systematic, purposive, human. It occurred to Grigg immediately that there was an intruder – one intruder at least.
    He put on his garment and descended, without disturbing the women, presumably on the floor below.
    He stood in the courtyard avoiding the gaze of the stars in order the better to judge where the noise was coming from.
    He padded across the courtyard stones to the gateway leading to the tower he had climbed when first he came.
    On the top of the tower, visible above the roofs of the intervening ruins, he could just make out a figure; blacker than the night, and palpably at some manner of