QBLH
The Seven of Pentacles:
The rewards of patience,
signaling a time
to assess your progress.
​
Chapter LXXI
Dealing with Tyranny
Admiring the garden
“Well,” Antiope said at last, smiling as she rose to greet him, “I’m glad you could finally separate yourself from your machines and give me a little of your time. I am enjoying this adventure immensely.”
“I’m relieved to hear it,” Jim replied, returning her smile. “Because I do not believe Medea will ever submit herself to your authority. She is not destined to join the Amazons beneath your leadership.”
Antiope arched a brow. “Why not? The others have.”
“Because her path lies west,” Jim said calmly. “I must take her to Greece. You, meanwhile, will lead the Amazons into a season of peace. I will return for you after I have slain your bull.”
“And what am I to tell the tribe while you are gone?” Antiope asked. “How am I to explain your absence?”
“No explanation is required,” Jim said lightly. “I have already earned a reputation for vanishing without leaving a trail.”
She studied him for a moment, then smiled more softly. “You will at least spend a few more days with us, won’t you? You could use that infernal Genie of yours to visit me each night, could you not, my love?”
Jim did not deny it. The common man understands the monotony of traveling to labor each day, and the comfort of returning home to what he loves. Antiope simply assumed that Jim’s Box functioned in much the same way.
“I will see what I can do,” he said. “But we must never allow the natives to suspect this ability. My time here is bound to Jason’s journey.”
She leaned closer. “Then let us enchant Medea to fall in love with Jason. You may remain with me. You can turn invisible, assist Jason in his trials, and return to me when you are finished. Slay another bull for me there as well, my love, and you shall own my heart forever.”
“You said we, Antiope,” Jim replied. “I know of no enchantment that could make Medea love Jason.”
Her expression sharpened. “Jim, I sense in you a desire to spend time with Medea. I would not like that at all. And if that is your intention, then take me back to Artemis now.”
It was remarkable how a single flash of Amazon jealousy resolved an otherwise impossible puzzle. Jim’s lingering fantasies concerning Medea collapsed instantly. Medea would follow the fleece wherever it went. And suddenly the answer to how Medea might appear to love the mortal Jason became obvious.
Jim smiled, kissed Antiope, and conceded. “That is an excellent idea. I trust you will handle the enchantment.”
“You remain invisible and assist Jason,” Antiope replied, returning the kiss. “I will do my part.”
Jim sensed that Genie had already charted the course, once again shielding him from explicit foreknowledge so events could unfold naturally. It was better that way. Jim would never encounter Jason again. Word spread quickly of a Hercules who had failed and fallen into the service of an Amazon queen. Antiope herself delighted in weaving the tale—embroidering it just enough to preserve Jim’s reputation.
He scolded her for lying. She threatened to tell the truth instead. The matter was settled.
A home base was chosen.
When the day came for Jason’s arrival at Colchis, Helen accompanied Jim in disguise. He posed as her servant. A small Amazon guard attended her—Persephone, Cassandra, Hecate, and Circe—names that inspired either terror or reverence wherever Isis was known.
Upon arrival, Jim faded into the shadows, frustrating his guards until they accepted the inevitable: he would be found only when he wished it.
Guided by Genie, Jim slipped invisibly into the court of King Aetes, where Medea served as royal advisor. She was as radiant as ever. Though she could not see him, she sensed his presence and smiled faintly before excusing herself to her private chambers.
Jim revealed himself moments later and kissed her neck.
“I knew it was you, Qblh,” she said softly. “Have you come to take me away?”
“Not yet,” he replied.
He considered, briefly, the temptation of becoming Aegeus and ruling Athens beside her. The path was too easy—too defined. Instead, he chose uncertainty. Medea would find her king in time.
“You have several moons remaining,” Jim said. “You will take the fleece to Greece with Jason. Once there, I will see you properly placed.”
“That is Ayesha’s domain,” Medea replied. “Isis forbade interference.”
“Ayesha is gone,” Jim said evenly. “Ariadne stands in her place now.”
“And Delphi?” Medea asked. “Xiang and Xuang ruled there under other names.”
Jim asked no further questions. He could easily infer the names his twin children had adopted. Yet the realization struck him with a sudden, unwelcome weight—a chill of foreboding that tightened his thoughts.
He did not relish the role he was playing. To be the silent architect behind pagan systems of belief—structures that Yaohushua would one day condemn—disturbed him deeply. Guilt pressed in, uninvited. How was he to disentangle himself from his own pagan relations? He reminded himself, again and again, that Isis bore responsibility for these developments, not he. It was her dominion, her will. Why, then, should he feel accountable?
He was a time traveler. In theory, he could intervene. He could alter outcomes.
Jim forcibly broke the spiral of doubt. He would not change the course of history as he understood it. He would not tamper deliberately with time.
Yet even as he resolved this, he recognized the contradiction. He was already tampering—with Antiope, with the Cretan bull, with a challenge he himself had proposed impulsively, almost playfully. He had offered an impossible task, and Antiope had accepted. What began as a dare had blossomed into an undertaking with consequences far beyond its apparent innocence.
There could be no denying it: every moment he existed in this past carried risk. If he were to perish here, what would become of his future—of the future that depended upon him? What would be the fate of those bound to his return? History itself could cast him as a murderer should he fail to restore even a single displaced soul to her proper time. He had sworn never to destroy another being.
Time, he reflected grimly, was rarely kind to certainty.
“Yes, Medea,” Jim said at last. “You are to govern at Delphi. Jason will escort you there. He will seek to claim you—but you must refuse him. Entice him until you are near Greece. At that point, Antiope will dispatch a troop of Amazons to overwhelm the Argonauts and carry you away.”
He paused, then added with a trace of irony, “They will never admit that a handful of women defeated them. Heroes seldom do. Let them keep the fleece. With that treasure in their possession, they will ensure the truth is never spoken.”
Medea’s eyes hardened.
“Enough, Qblh,” she said sharply. “Grant me the same free will you claim for yourself. Let me live my life as I choose—here or elsewhere. Even Isis does not command my affections. Who are you to dictate whom I shall love, or what role I must play? I will not feign devotion to this mortal Jason merely because you decree it. Though you are Qblh to my queen, do not mistake reverence for obedience.”
Jim withheld any reply. This was not the moment for confrontation. Instead, he drew her to him, and she did not resist.
Jason and his company eventually sighted the port of Colchis and moored the Argo. The Amazon priestesses swiftly disarmed local hostility, displaying an intense—and calculated—interest in the unexpected visitors. Under Medea’s authority, Helen and her entourage greeted the Greeks and escorted them toward the palace of King Aetes.
Medea, ageless and composed, was presented to the court as the king’s daughter—a fiction she herself had carefully constructed. She claimed descent from one of the priestesses with whom Aetes had once consorted, a claim sufficient to deter his advances and, incidentally, preserve his life.
In Colchis, as in most cities of the age, the priestesses of Isis were not questioned. Communities understood the cost of offending the dread queen. Lightning from the heavens was easily arranged. More often than not, a precisely vectored energy discharge from orbit was enough to encourage obedience. Isis tolerated many names, allowing each culture its own mythology, and it was often the privilege of a local priestess to invoke her under a regional guise. Medea herself would later be responsible for transmitting the cult of Demeter to Greece—by which time Isis would have already withdrawn from history.
It was Castor and Pollux who first beheld Helen upon the Argonauts’ arrival. Their discipline collapsed instantly. When she greeted them with her serene smile, the guard of the entire crew faltered.
“Greetings, Argonauts,” Helen said smoothly. “We have been expecting you. Your companion is presently in the employ of our queen, performing labors of a rather… exceptional nature. His friend Theseus will accompany you home once your task here is complete.”
Circe’s ambrosial perfume softened the men’s senses as she led them onward, weaving illusions while Cassandra suggested visions and Hecate shaped their impressions. Helen ensured each man drank deeply. In this way, she forestalled any immediate conflict between Jason and Aetes.
The king, normally inhospitable, found himself unusually agreeable under Circe’s influence. Medea was conspicuously absent—her chambers sealed by unfamiliar magic. Guards whispered of a voice speaking with an unseen presence beyond the threshold. When Persephone sweetly threatened the vengeance of her mother should hospitality be denied, Aetes dared not refuse.
Thus, authority was granted.
The Golden Fleece belonged to the Amazons. Legend held that Qblh would reclaim it and return the women to Artemis. Men, however, interpreted legend differently. To them, the fleece symbolized kingship itself. Its loss would shatter Aetes’s reputation far more decisively than war. Some would later argue that Medea’s departure, rather than the fleece’s theft, marked the true beginning of his decline.
Castor bristled. “Hercules abandoned us to chase women.”
“Hercules owes a debt,” Helen replied coolly. “And you owe him your legend.”
She stood lightly clad, her beauty an unassailable distraction. At her side, her moonstone staff pulsed faintly—its power channeled through a hyperspace link to Jim’s dimensional controller. Genie regulated the flow, ensuring balance regardless of distance or temporal displacement. To the locals, it was magic. To Jim, it was insurance.
Castor returned to Jason and urged him to accept the hospitality the Amazons so conspicuously extended. With no viable alternative—and unsettled by the ambiguous reports concerning Hercules and Theseus—Jason took heart and followed the women inland toward Colchis.
The city gates left the Argonauts awestruck. Unfamiliar with steam or stored mechanical power, they stared in wonder as twin furnaces fed the immense bronze doors, supplying both the force required to seal the gates and the heat that warmed the palaces and Medea’s chambers beyond. On either side, exhaust vented through towering bull-headed incinerators built directly into the walls, their mouths forever breathing smoke and flame. Beyond them stood another marvel: a massive contrivance shaped like two fire-snorting bulls yoked to an enormous plow capable of cutting several furrows with unnatural precision.. The grain capital of the eastern sea owed its abundance to these fire-breathing beasts. Yet even as they inspired reverence, they betrayed fragility. The machines required constant tending. They failed often. Few understood their workings, and fewer still dared approach them when they roared to life. The Amazon priestesses in charge of these machines neither possessed the language to explain thermodynamics nor the permission to do so..
Whether this silence arose from obedience to Isis, deference to Qblh’s prohibitions, or instinctive restraint mattered little. To the men of Colchis—and to the Argonauts—these engines were gods made of metal.
At the royal court, Medea had prepared a feast in honor of the visitors. Jim was conspicuously absent. A Babylonian envoy was present as well, his suspicion of the newcomers thinly veiled. He had come seeking alliance against the Hittites. Aetes, guided by Medea’s counsel, maintained an uneasy peace with them—no small feat, given that the Hittites themselves honored the goddess and were quietly governed by Amazon priestesses. The Babylonian elevation of a male supreme deity had ignited open hostility. Marduk, an invented god fashioned by Semiramis and magnified by later kings, posed a direct challenge to Isis’s dominion. Isis could have erased Babylon with ease, yet she chose containment instead, unwilling to inspire new myths in defiance of her own principles. The Amazons remembered well the cost of such ideologies. An earlier demon race had once nearly annihilated them; mercy had not saved the Amazons then, and it would not guide them now. Only a handful of Amazon males had survived that ancient catastrophe. The eastern Hittites, by contrast, remained fiercely loyal to Medea, who ruled Colchis in all but name.
Medea despised Babylon
Medea, for her part, found the Greeks as enchanting as they found her. They were fractured tribes—fortified villages masquerading as kingdoms—yet the prospect of shaping the western world stirred her ambition. What mattered Aetes’s schemes with Babylon, unfolding even now? Qblh’s return marked the end of her Colchian chapter and the beginning of another. Aetes would pursue her relentlessly when she departed; he still coveted her, believing himself promised what she never intended to give. She would abandon both him and his kingdom. The Golden Fleece would depart with her.
Aetes’s temper worsened as Medea’s attention turned increasingly toward Jason. Hecate circulated among the guests, pouring wine infused with subtle herbs and a careful measure of ambrosia—enough to loosen will without breaking it. Helen occupied the king’s gaze while Medea quietly advanced her design. By the time the feast reached its height, the Argonauts were no longer guests merely tolerated.
Helen distracted the king.
Medea began to smile.
The fleece still hung beyond reach.
The bulls waited.
And Jason, though he did not yet know it, had already stepped into the trial.
They were pieces already in play.
And so the board was set: Colchis opened its gates, the heroes stepped forward in awe, and beneath the rituals of welcome and wine, forces older than legend prepared to move.
