The Pillars of Hercules (46 page)

“The Greeks may know this place as Hades,” said Barsine. “But for me it is
Chakat-i-Daitih,
the underworld of which the great Zoroaster spoke, the pit into which Marduk hurled Tiamat. And Lugorix will have heard of
Cernunnos
—”

“That name is not right to speak,” said Lugorix quickly.

“—the domain of the Horned One. It may be that all of us are correct.”

“You’re all wrong,” said Eurydice.

Barsine looked at her like she wanted to throw her overboard. “So you have been telling me for weeks now.”

“Your gods don’t exist. Your religions are a sham. The sooner you get that through your heads, the better off we’ll be.”

“You persist in regarding this place as some kind of Atlantis,” said Barsine.

“I thought
that
was yet another line of bullshit,” said Matthias.

“It’s actually the only sensible way to view our whereabouts,” said Eurydice obstinately. “What we’re looking at isn’t the fucking
afterlife
. Do you think we’ll find Damitra here?” Barsine’s face went red. “We won’t. And we won’t find Lugorix’s parents either. Or his sister. None of them. I don’t know what happens to souls when bodies die. But they certainly don’t end up in this dump. My father was a rationalist who—”

“Your father was a bigot,” snarled Barsine.

“Think I don’t know that? But he and Plato spent their lives trying to understand the elder civilizations that once ruled the Earth.”

Barsine shook her head. “You mean that once
tried
.”

“Fragments,” said Eumenes as the ironclad navigated through the maze of channels in near-complete silence. All that could be heard was the splash of the oars. “Fragments are all we have. Plato wrote of a mighty power that lay west of the Pillars and whose legions subjugated Europa and Africa.”

“Doesn’t look like they’re doing much subjugating now,” said Kalyana.

“According to him, they were defeated by Athens.”

“By
Athens?”
Kalyana clearly didn’t buy it. “How do you explain such a thing?”

“Plato was Athenian,” said Eumenes. “It looked good for him to say that.”

Kalyana nodded. “More books he could sell, no?”

“More books, sure. More royalties, more hash, more pussy. But it still left the question of just what
did
happen.”

“And you believe you have the answer?”

“I like to think of it as a theory,” said Eumenes.

“Plato can only take you so far,” said Eurydice. “My father’s real breakthrough came when he discovered the lost tales of the bard Thamyris.”

Matthias frowned. “Wasn’t he mentioned in the
Iliad?”

“Yes, and not to his credit. He challenged the Muses to a singing contest: if he won he got to fuck them.”

“I take it he didn’t?”

“Of course not. He lost big-time, after which they smashed his lyre and blinded him. Typical penalty for
hubris
. But he was most famous for the epic poem
Titanomachy
. Which was eventually written down by one of Homer’s students and then later destroyed during the Persian sack of Athens. Or so they thought. But my father got hold of a copy.”

“As did I,” said Barsine.

Eurydice stared. This was obviously news to her. “How?”

“You said it yourself—my people sacked Athens and made off with the spoils.”

“Assholes,” muttered Matthias.

Barsine ignored him. “The
Titanomachy
made its way into the hands of the Magi. And then Damitra absconded with it during the war with Alexander.”

“And you were going to tell me
when?”
said Eurydice.

Barsine smiled mirthlessly. “Now seems like as good a time as any.”

Maybe it was just Lugorix’s imagination, but he fancied he could hear the noise of Eurydice grinding her teeth. He figured this to be a productive development. If Eurydice and Barsine were at last leveling with each other, then maybe he and Matthias would finally get some answers.

Assuming the two women didn’t kill each other first.

“We ought to have discussed this
weeks ago,
” said Eurydice.

Barsine shrugged. “I didn’t know whether you were working for the Macedonians.”

“At least I wasn’t fucking them.”

Lugorix had to hand it to Barsine—she had class enough to keep her cool. Sometimes being an aristocrat had its advantages. Then again, they were probably used to having their guards beat the crap out of the peasants when they got uppity. No sense in getting their own hands dirty. Barsine took a deep breath.

“All we needed to cooperate on earlier was getting here,” she said softly. “There was no sense in talking about the
alleged layout
of this place until we made it.”

“Well now we have,” said Matthias. “So how about you two get it together and start talking. What does this
Titanomachy
discuss?”

“The war of the Titans,” said Eurydice using that patented
dumb-ass
tone that seemed to be so effective at getting Matthias’ goat.

“The war between the Titans and the gods?” said Matthias.

She shrugged. “I don’t know for sure.”

“Then why the fuck are we even listening to you?”
said Matthias. Lugorix could only marvel at how totally their relations had disintegrated to utter shit. That was why you should never start sleeping with someone who you were trying to infiltrate the underworld with. There was no way such a romp could end well. Especially now that Eurydice showed herself to have none of Barsine’s restraint. She slapped Matthias hard.

But he just grinned.

“Any more of that and I might stop rowing and start getting excited.”

“You’re disgusting,” said Eurydice.

“Eurydice is correct,” said Barsine. For a moment Lugorix thought she was talking about Matthias. But then she clarified: “At least from the standpoint of Greek mythology. According to the legends, the gods overthrew the Titans. But the
Titanomachy
doesn’t really distinguish between the two—doesn’t rule out whether it was simply a war between two groups of Titans, or perhaps two groups of gods. It just says one group was of Olympus; the other, of the Underworld. So to call them
gods
just means we don’t really understand anything about their true nature.”

Lugorix frowned. “So we’re talking about a war between two large and powerful gangs of assholes,” he said.

“And if they were gods, they weren’t the kind you
worship,
” said Eurydice. “They were the kind you
run from
. It was the Olympians who stopped those who ruled the Underworld from conquering the sunlit lands above.”

“So the Olympians won?” asked Lugorix.

“Not exactly,” said the daughter of Aristotle.

“The Sibylline Books,” said Eumenes. “They’re the key to all this.”

“The books that Alexander consulted with at Rome?”

“He didn’t just consult them,” said Eumenes. “He ripped them off.”

Kalyana’s mouth dropped in a wide open O. “He
stole them?”

“Alexander’s never that crude. He bribed the priests with untold riches to look the other way and allow him to substitute a bunch of nonsense texts that Hephaestion and I cooked up. But the real trick is that Alexander got ahold of the
other
Sibylline books—the ones that were supposed to have been destroyed.”

Kalyana frowned. “Destroyed… by who?”

“By the chick who sold them to Rome in the first place.” Kalyana raised both eyebrows at that. Eumenes just laughed. It was that crazy: “Dig this: couple of centuries back, the Sibyl of Cumae showed up and offered
nine
sacred books of prophecy to Rome’s last king. He asked how much, she named a price, and he said forget it, no way I’m paying that much. Whereupon the old crone
burnt
three of the books, and repeated the same offer for the last six books. And he
still
said fuck off. So then she torched three more and offered him the remaining three at
the same damn price
.”

“And this time he paid,” said Kalyana.

Eumenes nodded. “And those three books were kept in Rome ever since.”

“But she didn’t really burn the others,”
said Kalyana.

“Apparently not. Prophetesses are like magicians—you have to watch their hands. Or maybe she had extra copies. Lot of that going around these days, I hear. Hephaestion and I found the burnt remnants of the six beneath Avernus, near Cumae. Which was supposed to be one of the gates to the underworld. And may well be, but the damn thing’s blocked.”

“By what?”

“Probably during the War,” said Eumenes.

“Which war would that be?”

“The
war. Between the guys down
here
and the guys up
there
.”

Kalyana nodded. “Make sense.”

“Really? I’m still trying to wrap my head around it.”

Kalyana shrugged. “In Vedic scripture, there is a book called the
Bhagavad-Gita
that speaks of a war that shook the universe—a war in which the gods themselves took part. So the Sibylline books, they say this too?”

“The first three were the best three it turned out,” said Eumenes. “The king of Rome really should have taken that offer. Anyway, the war pretty much brought the house down. The skies rained blood and the oceans boiled and the continents buckled and someone blew up the land-bridge between Africa and Europe—”

Kalyana’s western geography wasn’t his strong point, but even so:
“What
land-bridge?”

“Exactly. All that’s left now are the Pillars of Gibraltar. Both sides hammered away at the other with terrible magick and weapons until they had nothing left to hammer with. In the end what was left of the Olympians got frozen in the arctic ice on an island called Thule and the Chthonic gods got sealed down here.”

Kalyana pondered this—looked out at the fire-streaked gloom through which they were moving. “Do you know where exactly?”

Eumenes grinned mirthlessly. “We’re heading there now,” he said.

Retreats were never pretty.

Most of the Athenian army had perished on the beach, but those soldiers who survived were busy staggering back to Syracuse, joined by hordes of refugees fleeing the invaders. Just when it seemed like matters couldn’t get any worse, Mount Etna—that great volcano on the eastern coast of Sicily—had started rumbling and belching smoke and ashes. It was though the gods themselves were signalling the downfall of Athens. Clouds of grey hung low overhead and all the birds had stopped singing. It was like the world itself was dying.

Maybe it was. The rampaging Macks had massacred the first few villages they’d reached; after that, everybody was on the move, frantically heading for the safety of the island’s walled enclaves. The most popular of which was Syracuse. That was where the biggest walls were, after all—that the city was almost certainly Alexander’s main target didn’t really seem to have occured to most of the refugees.

“It’s a deliberate strategy,” said Xanthippus. His helmet was lifted half-back, nose-guard against his forehead, the better to march with. He was fortunate to be marching at all. But the three Syracusans had done a good job with the arrow that had struck him—cutting the shaft in two, and carving out the arrowhead with a blade they’d first heated in boiling water. They were clearly soldiers of some kind themselves, however much they denied it. Xanthippus had confided to Diocles that they were probably Syracusan resistance; Diocles had replied that he really didn’t give a shit. They’d saved Xanthippus’ life, and that was all he cared about. Though if they really
were
Syracusan resistance, he’d have expected them to find some way back to Syracuse that didn’t involve marching alongside two Athenian soldiers. Then again, maybe that was the smartest way to do it.

“Of course it’s a deliberate strategy,” said the long-nosed man—the one who seemed to be the boss of the three Syracusans. “Make sure as many people get herded into Syracuse as possible. There’ll be that many more mouths to feed.”

Diocles hadn’t thought of it that way. But the Syracusan seemed to know what he was talking about. He seemed to have contacts everywhere, too—peasants and woodsmen kept coming up to him and whispering in his ear. It was after one of these encounters that the Syracusan—who called himself Antiphon, though neither Xanthippus nor Diocles believed for a second that was his real name—swore loudly and turned to his companions.

“He’s landed,” he said.

There was no need to specify who
he
was. But Antiphon then proceeded to tell everyone in earshot all about it, and everyone perked up his ears to listen. He warmed to his audience, waxing poetic about how—with his advance guard already wreaking havoc across the coast of northern Sicily—Alexander himself had ridden across the bridge at the head of his entire army. The king had been flanked by his Companions, with his recently named consort, Hephaestion, at his side. Both wore golden armor, and the king himself sported his customary ram’s-head helmet. Behind them were the divisions of the Macedonian phalanx, interspersed by elephants and chariots and metal-men who knew neither fear nor mercy. No sooner had the army reached Sicily then it turned south for Syracuse.

“They’re heading this way now,” finished Antiphon. A low moan swept through the crowds of refugees, who proceeded to pick up the pace insofar as they could.

“If that volcano erupts while he marches past it, then maybe that would put paid to Alexander,” said Diocles.

“It won’t erupt,” said Xanthippus.

“How do you know?”

“Because nature itself is on the king’s side.”

Diocles shrugged. It wasn’t like he could offer any argument to the contrary. They reached Syracuse shortly thereafter as part of a throng heading through the gates. Diocles found it strange to be back here again—it felt like things had come full circle, since this was where he and Xanthippus had set off from on the journey to Carthage. But that time he hadn’t even been allowed off the ship at Syracuse. Now he saw the city from the point of view of the landward defenses. The city sprawled up onto the Epipolae plateau and down to the waterfront, the island-fortress of Ortygia towering up against the sea. The city-walls were bristling with peculiar looking pieces of artillery, and in many places the height of those walls had been extended still further with additional wooden levels. They looked all too precarious to Diocles, and he hoped he wouldn’t have to go up on top of them.