Hero for Hire (26 page)

"What do you want me to do?"

The three faces turned ceaselessly, smiling down with contempt, hubris, and vile superiority. I couldn’t see how they moved, what arrangement of bones and muscle permitted this oddity but that’s why she’s a Titan and I’m not. On no face was there any pity or humanity.

“You must understand. It is only justice that I want.” Abruptly she shrank down to my own size. I was glad of it. Discoursing with forty-foot tall women takes a toll on the back of the neck. I did not make the mistake of assuming she’d cooled off. The torches said otherwise.

“Justice?” I asked numbly, so worn by grief that I hardly cared.

“The Thunderer promised me that I would be his queen and sit at his right hand on Olympus. Instead, he married that bosomy sister of his and stuck me down here. I’m sick of the dark and the dead. I want what I was promised.”

“You want Father....”

“Don’t say their names!” she ordered, her faces snapping around to look fearfully at the nothingness. I felt as if the nothingness were crowding in, like bed curtains of blackest velvet smothering a sleeper.

“You want the king and queen of Heaven to part so that you can take her place?” I said, rousing myself from despair into disbelief. "That's what all this is about? A long-ago love affair?"

“I was promised," she said fiercely. "I helped Z...him to overthrow his own father. My reward was to be queen over all the gods, not a gatekeeper for a lot of mumbling, shambling fools! I have waited all this time and now it is my turn to be avenged. I don’t just want that cow-eyed bitch gone, I want them all gone!”

She’d begun to grow again, the torches as bright as burning magnesium. Gods would be easier to talk to if they stayed the same size for more than five minutes consecutively. "I will rule Earth and Heaven without pity, driving gods and men before me like cattle! And you will be my herder, driving them to their doom. Pledger your sword to me, Eno, and I will make you a god over the Earth!"

I could see it, as I had when Eurytos had first proposed it. I rode a blood-red horse, my armor spotted and stained with blood and rust, my army, shambling, stinking, and unstoppable. Every man I killed would be a new recruit until my army swallowed all the lands, all the seas and mounted like a wave to Olympus itself. Even I perished in the first battle, I would ride on. I could hear the screams, smell the burning buildings, and taste the grit of battle.

My heart had already begun to turn. Soon I would be her willing slave, giving up all my human qualities to serve her and her alone. I closed my eyes tightly. I did not pray for I already knew no one from Olympus would hear me. I looked within my own shrouded heart and there, in the last hidden, black corner something stirred. The tiniest hope, the merest shred of all that I had denied, still lived.

And it inspired me -- not to some great deed of honor -- but to a question. I looked at Hekate, trying to meet her shifting eyes. "Why didn't the Waters of Lethe work on me?"

For an instant, her implacable will was taken aback. I saw the merest hint of a doubt. "What?"

"You gave me the Waters of Forgetfulness to drink up there," I said, pointing to the hardly-glimpsed roof of the Underworld. "But I have not forgotten anything. Not my name, not my position in the world, not why I came here. I'm going to give up in a minute. You might as well tell me why the Waters didn't work."

I have tried my level best throughout this account to be as honest as is consistent with a good story. So let this testament state that Hekate backed away from me, her three foreheads equally creased. "I don't know. I should know that, but I don't. The Waters cannot not work; it's impossible. Unless...."

"Unless?"

"They only work once per soul. If you have drunk them before, they will not remove memories a second time. That means...that means...but that's impossible." She straightened up, growing again, her torches brightening. "It doesn't matter now. You are mine."

“What’s going on here?”

In my own defense, I have to admit that, of all the Gods, Hades is my least favorite. I think most people feel that way. There are fewer temples to him, fewer honors, fewer festivals, than to any of the others. We know that, sooner or later, everything belongs to him anyway so why give it to him early?

Seeing him striding forward, staff in one hand, scroll in the other, glints of red volcanic light popping around him like starry sparks on a summer’s night, I changed my mind. The very first temple I found with his name over the door was receiving a very large donation.

“Hekate,” he called out reprovingly, reading the large scroll he carried in his hand. “What is going on? There are no souls coming before us in Averna. We have a quota, you know."

He looked up, his eyes as piercing as a spike. "What is this mortal doing here? Is that blood on his sword? And why is he glowing with a heavenly light?”

He lifted his staff and it had a sharp spear-point on the end. "I want answers and I want them now."

Hekate threw open her arms, her torches flying wide to fall unheeded to the shifting black sands. “Uncle!” she cried aloud, despair cracking her voices. “Uncle, help me!”

The wind died, the dead stopped whispering, and the blackness swirled and moved, as a vault opened in the midst of it. Something white moved there, gleaming like snake-skin, sliding out bonelessly, liquid yet solid. As yet formless, heaped flesh twisted and tumbled, trapped and struggling against a transparent caul, giving birth to itself. I swear I saw a rolling eye, as big as the full moon when it rises.

The Lord of the Underworld and I exchanged glances, mine comprised of terror and awe, his rather world-weary. “What is that?” I asked, though I guessed that the gruesome answer that had come to me was correct.

He studied it with enviable dispassion as it oozed out into his kingdom. With breathtaking speed, the thing took form, two legs, two arms, the rest of him more or less like the rest of us bipeds. He was hairless, naked, huge and hideous, covered with pulsing red and purple veins, clutching at emptiness with attenuated hands. He opened a red maw and bellowed a wordless challenge to the universe.

Hades frowned. “It’s my father.”

“What?”

“You know,” he said. “Kronos, Chaos Himself. Father to us all, devourer of us all, mortals as well as Gods. And he looks hungry. As usual.”

With those words, Hades disappeared, leaving me alone with Hekate and Kronos.

“You can forget about that donation!”

Kronos resembled some loathsome insect, born in lightlessness, so pale that every system under the skin could be traced by its pulsing. Unlike those worms, Kronos was not blind. His bloated face held flat grayish eyes and a toothless gaping mouth, one just as hungry as the other.

Hekate ran toward him, the inner fire that had powered her torches now covering her entirely. “Uncle, help me. The others are coming; I can feel it!”

He picked her up with a swoop of his hand. Holding her before his face, he examined the burning goddess as if he’d never seen her before. Her flames lit his hollow eyes.

Shaking her twice, her flames going out, he popped her into his mouth. She screamed as the fleshless lips closed, cutting off the sound. He swallowed. It reminded me of a man eating a sausage that had fallen into the fire, right down to his expression as he decided it wasn’t too burnt.

I had a feeling, however, that this family squabble was far from over. Nor was my part in it, as I was still there. In Hades. Facing something so old, so corrupted and slimed with ancient crime that even the Gods had locked it away rather than face it down.

Kronos stood up, belched a little smoke ring, and bellowed, “More!”

Without Hekate, the milling dead were at a loss. They fixated on me. But with a starving god bearing down on me, the only edible thing in sight, I fought my way clear of the clinging, confused spirits.

Kronos swept his hand through them, moaning his disappointment when he couldn’t grab anything to eat. Some went down under his huge feet.

I ran, sand spurting and sliding, giving me no purchase to gain speed. In all that featurelessness, the only direction to run was away.

As I ran, I panted out the name of every god I’d ever heard of from Zeus the Mighty all the way to down to Lips, god of the South-West winds. I wasn’t about to stand around waiting for rescue but if anyone cared to lend a hand or send a sleep-inducing mist or an oversized stuffed eggplant to throw behind me...apparently no one did.

I knew it was hopeless but tried to keep that a secret from my legs. If only Zosime had chosen to give me wings instead of that poor little dog.

The ground changed character, becoming white and spongy, no easier to run on. Had I arrived in some new section of the Underworld unknown to the tellers of tales? I glanced behind me. Kronos no longer pursued me.

A pit opened up right before me, red light issuing from it as though from the volcanic bowels of the earth. I stopped on the very brink, arms windmilling for balance.

From the pit, a bulging cratered creature lashed out blindly. I dodged as it flicked toward me. Some offspring of Ouroboros, the snake endlessly swallowing its own tail far beneath even the Underworld? It looked more like the tongue of some leviathan.

I realized I stood on the edge of Kronos’ lipless mouth. I turned, sat down hard, and started to slide down his cheek toward his knurled ear when he plucked me off his face as if I were a flea.

My legs had finally gotten the word. I kicked and thrashed but it was all useless.

Kronos held me as he had Hekate, between thumb and enormous forefinger. Lifting me before his eyes, he seemed puzzled by me, like a man presented with his wife’s newest taste sensation, raved about by all her friends.

His slate-colored eyes seemed to have no pupils and no depth. For all their flatness, a mind moved slowly behind them. Infinite, ageless, marked by horrible crimes and eternal solitude, it brooded on the world. Not even his own immortal children could understand that their lives, to him, were as brief and pointless as my own which must seem like that of a moth that lives but one day.

His voice echoed weirdly under the vault of the Underworld. “You...Smell....”

“Well, I’ve been running....”

“Like...A...God.”

“No, no, just a Thracian, son of a shepherd. Have you ever been to Thrace?”

“I...Eat...Gods.”

I had a feeling he’d eat anything. The mouth opened for me. I twisted violently from side to side, his fingers all but pinching me in half as he raised me up to toss me down that red gullet. I swung my sword blindly, hopelessly.

He howled in pain and missed the drop. I fell on his sticky chest, bounced out far enough to miss everything else, and landed on one of his feet, sword point down. He howled again, and kicked me off.

I fell hard on the black sand. Dimly, in the distance, I saw Kronos hopping on one foot, shaking his hand as if he’d been stung by some small biting fly.

My sword lay near me. I got up, painfully, and went to get it. On the edge of the blade, a golden stain etched the silver. I felt my eyes stretch as I looked at it. I had to convince my hand that it was all right to pick up the sword.

I held it in front of my face, like Kronos inspecting a snack. Faintly, I smelled a perfume compounded of a thousand flowers. If a brutal god’s blood smelled like that, what divine essence must breathe from a more beneficial one?

“Thracian!” Kronos’ voice sounded like a wounded bull’s. “Thracian! Your...Life...Is...Over.”

In all that featurelessness, the only direction to run was away. And still there was only one direction to walk.

If I could scratch him, I told myself, I can dispatch him. He was no longer a god to me, no longer a menace, everlasting and unforgiving. He was just something that I wasn’t going to be running from any more.

“Eno the Thracian...hero for hire,” I muttered as I strode along. “All monsters dispatched from carnivorous geese to Minotaurs. Special rates for Gods.”

The light on my forehead faded, slowly, leaving me to the darkness. I could see Kronos though, glowing like the sickly light that hangs over marshes, luring men to drowning deaths. He had the curve of the stretched skin between thumb and forefinger in his mouth. His eyes over the rim of his hand were boring into me like twin awls.

Then, like the flashes one sees behind closed eyelids, tiny lights began to move, swirling and dancing, blinking and growing stronger. I could not follow one with my eyes, lost in the growing pattern of a hundred, a thousand, an uncountable number. They began to cast enough light to see a shadow and not just mine.

I looked to the right and there, driving a white chariot drawn by half a dozen of the little winged bastards, rode Aphrodite. The lead boy thumbed his nose at me but I laughed because I was so delighted to see her. “You’re doing very well, Eno,” the Lady said. “I’m afraid I’ve been bragging about you.”

Beyond her, fierce as a lioness in mid-spring, drove Artemis. Her chariot was of rougher make, wood unstripped of bark, and was drawn by four deer, their coats shining like silk and their hooves made from gold.

She turned her stern face toward me. “I bear you no malice for the destruction of my temple,” she said. “It will be cleansed and Leros will not suffer for it.”

“Thank you, my lady. And Phandros? Will you answer his prayer?”

She looked forward again, her strong wrist controlled her deer easily. “I have heard no prayers from a Phandros.”

Someone cleared his throat, noisily, on my left. I was almost afraid to look.

Eagles were harnessed to his chariot which was painted in broad swirls of black and white like the clouds of an angry sky. The spokes on the wheels were golden thunderbolts. Zeus drove, beard flowing past his shoulders, looking just like his statues.

He held out a hand to me. All the chariots, pulled by whatever animal, went at the same speed I was walking.

“Come,” he said.

I vaulted over the basket to stand behind him. I heard a deep, male laugh. “A new shield-bearer, my father? Lend him to me; I have need of such warriors.”

It was Ares, driving eight black horses bridled with gold. Painted flames and bright brass decorated his car, and his helmet bore a large silky plume. A pair of dice, large and strangely fuzzy, hung from the front of the black basket weave.

“No, Eno drives with me.”

Ten had come. Demeter would not venture into the domain where her daughter lived with her fearsome husband, even for such a cause as this. Hephaestus, lame and thoughtful, would not be of much use in a battle, even if he hadn’t been so busy making the chariots of others that there’d never been time to build his own.

Kronos had seen his children approaching. He knew why they had come. He threw back his head in titanic laughter. “Come...Then. Lay...Hands...On...Me. Bear...My...Curse.”

They circled him, going round and round, faster and faster. Zeus spoke quietly. “Return to your rest, my father. Give up your vengeance. You are not Master here.”

“I...Am...For...All...Time.”

He exhaled. A blast of eternity blew by. I saw the cracks grow and splinters spring out as time ate away at the chariot’s wooden panels and pitted the silver mountings.

“Jump!” I shouted as the magnificent chariot crumbled to dust.

Zeus didn’t fall. Larger than he’d been, he stepped clear of the wreckage. I began to wish I hadn’t come. The chariots were whipping around Kronos faster and faster, until I could hardly distinguish Ares’ black from Dionysus’ purple from Hermes’ gold. The black sand swirled around in a tornado.

Ares’ was the next to break down. He sailed over my head, past Zeus’ shoulder and landed, spread-eagle, on Kronos’ naked stomach. Like two acrobats on a tilting board, Ares flew in but Hekate, disgorged from Kronos’ belly, flew back.

Above all the tumult I heard Aphrodite laugh. I wondered what they’d do with Hekate, as if being covered in Kronos’ interior juices wasn’t punishment enough.

Then I had no more time to think about her as the battle began in earnest. They all had the very best weapons but seemed oddly reluctant to use them.

Kronos snatched at the chariots of the Gods, smashing one with his fist, stepping on another. When all were afoot, except for Artemis, who kept her distance, he began groping in the sandstorm for them, sifting the black sand with his long, interwoven fingers.

He found Poseidon first. The sea-god tried to keep his father’s hands at bay with jabs of his trident but only used the threat. I don’t believe he pierced Kronos even once. Surely if my little sword had made the giant screech, the fierce trident should have elicited some response.

“Sea...Food....”

Down the gullet went Poseidon. That sobered the Gods. They must have known what would happen.

I ran forward, almost without realizing what I was doing. I hated Kronos more violently than I’d ever hated an opponent since the days when my uncle had defeated me so easily during my earliest training.

Bumping into a form amongst the blowing sand, I would have run on if he hadn’t gripped my arm. Contrary to popular opinion, Hermes doesn’t always wear wings. Nor is Dionysus drunk all the time. He wouldn’t be so popular among the Maenads if he were.

“We can’t hurt him, you know,” dark-haired Hermes said as if continuing a long-carried-on conversation. “He is our father and to raise a hand against a parent is a vile sin.”

“Practically the only one,” Dionysus said. The leopard-skin across his well-muscled shoulders looked the worse for wear...or time. An hour’s practice with me every day would have tightened the bags under his eyes and reduced the slight potbelly the leopard-spots weren’t quite disguising. Nevertheless, he was handsome in a dissipated, life-among-the-fleshpots kind of way. “Of course, it’s blasphemy for a mortal to attack a god. Under ordinary circumstances, I’d never recommend it. The effects are unforeseen.”

“These circumstances couldn’t be more extraordinary,” Hermes said with a lift of an eyebrow.

“How did you capture him last time?” I asked Hermes.

“A sleeping potion in a shipload of wine. He swallowed it off in a few gulps, the greedy pig.”

“You can’t blame him,” Hades said, appearing at my elbow. “He’d just finished vomiting us all up...how I love remembering that! If you are quite finished standing around, I’d like to get him out of my domain.”

At once, Dionysus untied his triple-strand golden belt. Unbraided, it was much longer than needed to go around him. “I’ll try tripping him up with this. Hermes, take the other end. When he goes down, be ready to tie him up!”

“Sounds like a plan,” Hades said approvingly. “I can’t believe my brother thought that just the sight of us would make Father behave. He loathes us and always will.”

Black-browed Hades clapped me on the shoulder. “You’re a good fellow, Eno. I look forward to meeting you again. We always like a few good stories during the long evenings when my wife’s in residence. We’ll have you over some time...but not, I hope, for a long time yet.”

I thanked him, but he didn’t wish that any more fervently than I.

The golden strand of Dionysus failed to hold Kronos. He snatched the cord in the center, hauling up both the God of Festivity and the Olympian Messenger. Down they went, into his terrible maw. He then looked distressed. Everyone held still, held their breath. I saw the bulge as his tongue sought in his cheek for something. He drew out of his mouth the long golden ribbon.

He flicked it away like a used toothpick. I was already angry but something about that carelessly dismissive gesture really put my back up. Kronos was having things too much his own way. If his children and their children were reluctant to injure him, unwilling to commit the blackest crime in the calendar, then I had every reason to.