Hero for Hire (24 page)

“They’ll all be dead in the morning,” the sergeant said with a coarse laugh.

“Not a moment too soon. I hate all this nonsense even if it does serve my purposes."

Phandros returned alone. “Take the basket,” the queen commanded, “and help the sergeant with that.”

She tossed her head in my direction, not deigning to point, and swept away, still graceful, hands held high, her feet taking tiny but rapid steps. The maid, Damalis, had trouble staying a respectful distance behind her.

Phandros and the sergeant picked up the handles of my cart. “What did he do?” I heard Phandros whispered.

“Some kind of criminal, I guess,” scoffed the sergeant. “Man, what are you, new? What the queen says matters in this land. Don’t you forget it, don't ask any questions, and you’ll be all right.”

The moon had started playing peek-a-boo games among the clouds again. The short parade stopped in the center of the enclosure. No cages were set here, leaving a large empty space. I’d thought, looking around earlier, that it was some kind of training area as the dirt had been swept free of the stones and straw that littered the ground elsewhere. A line of rocks marked the area off.

That thick greasy feeling I associated with dark magic had begun to gather again, wrapping around me like the enervating embrace of a succubus.

"Turn him around," Zosime commanded. "He should see this."

The two men turned me, setting the cart upright. My bonds were tighter this time, but I was tied to the wooden cart's bed which wouldn't be hard to break with a combination of a dead-lift and a cross-pull. I just wanted the right moment.

She came over to me. "How are you feeling?" she asked in a parody of concern.

"I'm still Eno," I said, meeting her eyes.

"Strange..." Then she shrugged. "The power of that potion must have waned. A pity it did not occur to you to pretend that it worked. Now you are my prisoner once more and I will send you in person to serve Hekate."

She walked a few paces off, stopped and suddenly thrust her arms in the air, leaning backward. I could only see her from the back as she swayed and dipped like a young tree in a storm. She did not speak but I saw uneasy glances pass among her witnesses. Phandros' eyebrows tried to hide in the cover of his hairline.

When she did begin to chant, it seemed to have no meaning. Words there were but in a language unknown, strange even in sound, as though not made for human lips and tongues. Humans don’t usually bay or trumpet when they speak. Maybe it was a trick of the uncertain light, but sometimes, when she turned her head, it was as if she hadn't turned it so much as sprouted another face. I hoped it was just the light. Had I miscalculated my true enemy?

Far off, lightning illuminated the undersides of clouds with a sickly bluish glow as the storm the captain of the
Doris
had predicted began to make itself known. The thunder was so distant that I felt it through the wheels of the cart rather than heard it through my ears.

Then I realized that the ground was shaking, with a grinding, creaking crash like two long ships smashing into each other. Phandros ran back a few steps as if in fear. No one was paying any attention to him, or to me. They were focused completely on their queen. But even Phandros paused in the act of cutting me free when the ground before her opened up.

Two large doors rose out of the dirt to stand upright and wide open. A black pit had appeared in the ground. As though this were an everyday occurrence, which for all I knew it well could be, the queen of Troezen walked daintily forward and down into the depths.

Her sergeant was so focused on what Zosime was doing that he didn't even notice what Phandros had done. I saw orange dust on his hands and clothes. After a moment, without a glance at either of us, the sergeant followed her.

Once my hand was free, I took the knife, slashing through the other bonds. "You'd better get out of here," I said.

"I'm staying. This is philosophy and a half!"

He was already a dozen or so steps ahead of me. Before I started down the steps, I chose a large rock, as big as my two clenched fists from among those that demarcated the 'training ground' from the rest. I balanced it on the edge, where one mysterious door would fall. I wasn’t about to take the risk of having them closed for good with me on the wrong side.

Though the steps took me down only a few feet below the ground, it felt as if I were in a cave miles beneath the earth. The air, hot and thick like smoke, stifled me. The queen’s servants had lit the torches as they passed, each torch burning with a clear but greenish flame. The smoke added to the bad air quality, adding to the streaks of soot on the low ceiling.

There were fissures in the floor, where steam and more varied smells emerged, varied only in their degrees of horribleness. Rotting cheese, the sulphuric effluvia of a nest of dragons, a reek like the stables of Diomedes’ man-eating horses were some of the more agreeable ones. From some of the cracks, I heard moans and weeping. The terrifying noises of the upper-town in mid-debauch now seemed like the lilting songs of spring praise in comparison.

I paused, seeing Phandros’ back close before me. He was trembling from head to foot, with determination I thought. “Come on, fool,” I heard the queen call imperiously. “What, afraid? It is perfectly safe so long as I am here. Stiffen your spine, fool. Come to me now.”

As if his body were under some other control, Phandros began walking, lifting each leg high before swinging his weight onto it. I heard him whisper, “Oh, no, no, no....” but he kept moving forward.

Far below us, a pounding arose, forcing everything to move to its rhythm. I felt my heart beat change to fall in with that intense throbbing. Phandros moved to that thundering as well, even his murmured protest matching it beat for beat.

I took a risk and looked out from the tunnel’s mouth into a much, much larger cave. The roof looked infinitely far away, a curve on the edge of sight. Only a narrow path lead out from where I stood, the rest empty air.

In the center of the cave, attached to no other wall, attached only by the path, floated a massive piece of rock, smooth on the top but jagged beneath as though torn from the earth and flung away to float eternally between earth and sky. Distance and sizes were hard to judge but I knew it had to be fifty feet or more across.

Upon it stood a circular altar, paved with many tiny tiles, curving and twisting up from the base to the flat surface. On the altar-stone itself was laid a mosaic of surpassing skill, depicting nightmarish figures that wrestled and fought, biting and tearing at each other. This was the source of the bizarre embroidery on the robes of the Leronian king and the queen of Troezen. Changed, simplified for the embroiderers to follow, but still containing the essence of the subtle terror that spread out from the mosaic to touch everyone and everything.

Zosime stood on the very edge of the decoration, her feet not quite touching it. “Give me the basket, then go stand with the others.”

She turned to her female servant. "Come, Damalis. Perform the ceremony with due care, though for the last time."

The maid servant bowed. She opened the basket quickly and lifted up a black puppy. Still nearly boneless but with opened eyes, it gave a small yap of protest at being taken from its warm basket.

Damalis cradled the puppy to her bosom. It didn’t like it, whimpering and squirming to escape. Maybe it didn’t like her perfume, maybe just the hardness of the heart pressed against it. She placed it firmly in the center of that evil mosaic, the queen smiling with more warmth than I'd yet seen.

The maid raised her arms, transformed into a priestess of evil. “For you, Soul of the Darkness! Tomorrow we will sacrifice this creature for you! Ten thousand voices will shout in your praise! Blood will be given to you, much blood. To glorify you, to honor you, grant me this boon that I might make of this insignificant creature a proper sacrifice!”

Damalis began to sway and moan, calling upon the Dark Powers in that weird keening which made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The puppy, finally realizing that not all was well, tried to move but was flattened against the tiles. It whimpered piteously, then cried out in piercing protest as small black wings erupted from its back.

“Not enough. You are too weak!” Zosime cried out in nearly the same register as the agonized dog. “Come here, Damalis!”

The maid approached, chained to the horrible rhythm. Even from a distance, I could see the sweat shining on her face. She tried to shake her head. The queen’s delicate hand reached for the girl’s shoulder, nails digging in. Again the swaying, the chanting. Zosime raised her other hand, fingers pointing at the hapless dog.

Then she stopped, choking, her free hand seizing her own throat. The maid sank to her knees, as blood spurted from the fingernails clenched in her shoulder.

“Eno!” Phandros shouted. Five feet behind her, he had both hands up, clenched fists together. He and the queen were linked as if by some force running between his hands and her throat. She was up on her toes, bent back like a bow. She clutched at her throat and I knew that Phandros had thrown his lasso around her neck.

The sergeant was slower than I to break from the hypnotic force of the throbbing power, but he drew his short sword and ran toward his queen. I reached Phandros first, slid under the all-but-invisible cord by sheer instinct, and punched with all my pent-up fury at the sergeant’s chin. I heard his neck snap as he went over like an empty bottle.

The queen gasped, sinking to her knees in her turn, pulling Phandros closer. “You’d better ease up,” I shouted. “But not too much, eh?”

“Get the puppy...please get the puppy,” Phandros begged.

Taking care not to touch that mosaic, seeming to writhe beneath the transformed dog, I scooped it up by the scruff of the neck. It growled, flapping new wings, and snapped at my finger with milk-teeth. I grasped it gently to keep it from flying out of my hand.

The maid, freed from her mistress’s painful hold, tried to go for my eyes with her nails. I tripped her in self-defense. She flung her hands out to stop herself and landed with both of them square in the middle of the mosaic. She screamed as her arms sprouted fur, her hands turning into lion’s paws. She could still bend them at the elbows like a human but she screamed again in torment as her ears dragged through her cheeks to the top of her head.

Poor Damalis staggered up, her shrieking becoming a deep roaring. Her eye, still human for the moment, stared at me, seeing and understanding the appalled pity on my face. Instantly, with a lion’s spring, she bounded to the edge of the huge rock and dashed herself over the edge. A spume of fire exploded upwards as she was consumed. The heat abruptly increased.

Queen Zosime had both hands at her throat, her face swelling. Phandros had tightened up again, involuntarily. I actually admired his self-control. I would have strangled her twice over by now.

“I’ll trade you,” I said to Phandros, holding out the dog.

He gave me the throwing cord without even looking at it, taking the winged puppy in his hands. “There, now, little lamb. Nothing more to fear.”

It cocked its head to the side, one silky ear askew. Then it licked his fingers. I got bit; he got licked. That’s life for you.

But I had other concerns now. I loosened the cord, slid it down below her breasts to keep her elbows locked tight against her body, and pushed her onto her side with my foot.

“You will die for this blasphemy,” she hissed.

“Yeah, yeah, tell me where have I heard that before.”

“What now, Eno?” Phandros asked.

“Maybe her majesty has a suggestion?"

“You will die. Die horribly. I will watch. No, I will drive the dagger myself!”

“Not helpful, if heartfelt.”

Phandros stroked the puppy’s smooth head. “What are you going to do with her?”

“It’s not what I’m going to do with her; it’s what she’s going to do with me. She’s going to take me to see this awe-inspiring Goddess of hers.”

Zosime’s eyes narrowed. “You are insane. No man may go to Hades and live! Wait a little. She will come to you, oh, yes."

“I think it's more polite for me to call first. You never can tell with goddesses. The last time we met she seemed to take a liking to my charms.”

I turned to Phandros. “Go back to the ship. If I’m not there by the time she sails, I’ll see you at your friend’s house.” I didn’t want to give Zosime any hints on where to find him later if things went sour.

“Will you?” He smiled sadly. It unsettled me even more than the events of the last few minutes.

“I hope to. I’ve gotten out of worse messes, though I can’t think of one off-hand.”

“I wasn’t thinking of you.” His eyes were shining strangely, as if lit from within. Lines had smoothed away from his face and his chest lifted wide with deep breaths. A kind of peace seemed to have settled on him.

“Phandros. What are you planning?”

He looked up toward the distant roof. “I’m going to let those animals out.”

“They’ll kill you.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. You never can tell.” Laughter came into his voice. “I’m not afraid anymore, Eno. For a long time, always really, I’ve been afraid. It was like carrying a great stone in my gut, filling me with that heaviness. That’s why I eat so little and drink so much, I suppose. But it disappeared the day I chose to follow you. Seeing my old friend again helped take it away as well. Maybe it will come back but I don’t think so.”

“That’s all terrific news but what does it have to do with the animals?”

“They don’t deserve what’s going to happen to them tomorrow.”

“They’ll just be hunted down anyway.”

“Not if the Goddess Artemis comes to protect them. I will pray to her for them. She is the Goddess of the Hunt, yes, but she protects such creatures from man. Only if we hunt for necessity can we implore her aid and this vileness isn’t necessary.”

I’d heard that distinction of Artemis’ role on earth before, of course, as part of the Mysteries taught to every child. “She may protect them, but what about you?”

“Hermes will protect me. I’ll pray to him as well. We are, after all, trying to restore this festival to its former purpose, among other things.” He turned away before he’d finished, eager to be about his work. I mistrusted his faith. It seemed too much like folly to hold on to any hope in this black place.

“Wait a minute, now. Listen to me! I have it on very good authority that the Gods aren’t paying any attention to men right now. They’re obsessed with Troy....” I looked down at Zosime. “Did you laugh?”

“I laugh at all vain hopes. That fool will die, torn to pieces as he deserves. But his torment will not end there, oh, no! He will be sent to Tartarus to labor in endless night for daring to blaspheme against mighty powers. You will join him there, chained to a great stone, greater even than you can carry for all your strength.”

“Cheerful little minx, aren’t you?”

“Do you deny that it was the White One told you that the Gods have ceased to attend to the affairs of mortals while the War in Troy rages on?”

“If you mean Aphrodite....”

She bared her teeth at the name, hissing like a sack of snakes. “Say not her name! She will fall with all the rest, whether the child of that unnatural son or not!”

I felt as if she were giving me all the keys but without labels to tell me which went with what lock.

Phandros waited politely enough during this exchange yet his face told me how much he wanted to be on his way. “They’ll kill you,” I repeated.

His smile held something uncanny, a confidence not of this world, plagued as it is with fear and uncertainty. “You showed me that I don’t need to be afraid any more. Don’t try to make me feel that way again. I will see you on the ship. I have no doubt, no doubt for either of us.”

His shining eyes fell upon the queen. She shrank away as far as her bonds would let her. “Justice works both ways. It is not too late to turn your heart.”

She had just enough saliva to spit at him. He was too far away to be touched, but her message was clear.

He turned back to the tunnel but paused. "Oh, I forgot." Shifting the small dog cradle under his arm, he fumbled beneath his long robe. "You're going to need this."

The sword glimmered in the red light of the altar-place. I caught it and swung it around in the Spartan salute to honor him.

Phandros headed out. I had no idea if I would ever see him again. The number one drawback to my profession is that so often friends don’t make it to the end of the job. Look at the Argonauts, for instance, and how many of Hercules’ companions ever survived?

I noticed that the deep throbbing had faded into a thrumming like the quivering heartbeat of a gigantic hummingbird. Unsettling but not compelling.

Zosime had risen onto her knees. “None of that,” I commanded. If she made any attempt to get to her feet or to put her arms above her head, let alone swaying and chanting, I was ready to tighten the cord until her eyes bubbled.

With downcast eyes, she clasped her hands before her. “Mercy, oh great and terrible warrior. I am much moved by this farewell to your friend. Who will regret Zosime? No one.” A tear trickled from her left eye.

“Just one question.”

“Anything, lord....”

“Just how dumb do you think I am?”

She sprang for my throat, arms tied against her body or no. I stepped swiftly aside. Her rush would have carried her directly onto the evil mosaic, just like her handmaiden, if I hadn’t caught her back with a short sharp jerk on the cord.

Her toes on the edge, she hovered over it, her face just above the heart of the medallion itself. She pressed her hands in hard against her chest or they would had touched.

“Shall I let go?”

“No. No!”

“Is there a way down into the Underworld from here?”

“What? Why...how would I know.?”

I let a little of the cord slip through my fingers. Her weight, greater than I would have guessed from her delicate hands and feet and knife-thin face, strained against my backwards leaning.

The cuff of her robe brushed, only brushed, the surface. The sewn images there that had always seemed to be on the point of moving under their own power now did so – in earnest. It was like watching dormant snakes wake up after a long winter’s cold.

There was stern stuff in Zosime. She did not scream. “There is a way down. Save me; I will show you."

I hauled her in, hand over hand, until she could drop safely to her knees again. “Get this cord off me quick,” she demanded. When I hesitated, she lifted her forearm as well as she could. The embroidered signs had grown fleshier, twisting and rippling under the fabric, seeking with blind intensity for a way out.

I opened the loop with a shake and it dropped to the ground for her to step out. The instant she was freed, Zosime ripped her robe off and flung it away. It fell half-on, half-off the mosaic. Almost faster than I could see, it vanished, sucked away into nothingness.

I half-expected Zosime to be naked under her robe but she wore the sort of simple garment any modest matron would put on for a visit to a friend. A heavy gold necklet lay at the base of her moderately wrinkled throat, a few dark amethysts flashing with rich purple sparks. The thin line where the cord had dug into her flesh looked like just another necklace. She was female enough to pat her disordered hair into place.

“So....” I prompted.

“It’s easy. Jump over the side of the stone.”

“As your servant did? I’m not up for a quick suicide today, thanks.”

“I have no need to lie to you. Your death is approaching quickly now, every breath is numbered. But you will not die, I grant you, by your own hand. Another wishes to see to that detail. I speak that promise with a voice of power.” And for a moment, I heard the echo of the triple-tongued monster I'd met in the temple.

When I still stared at her, trying to tell if she lied, she laughed scornfully. “Coward! I will go with you. I have been before this and returned. Put your cord around my throat again. If I lead you astray, kill me.”

“Nice offer, considering we’ll both die when we hit bottom.” I said it, but I already believed her. Zosime was far too fond of herself to die simply to ensure that I died also.

“Have I not told you I have done this already? I am the very hand of the Goddess. Before I left Lesbos to become queen here, I taught Nausicaa as I trained her mistress, but not everything, only enough to serve Her will. Nausicaa took it upon herself to initiate the king of Leros after the queen died, because she wanted him under her control. I warned her that men are not suited to the tasks we must undertake. And you prove that I am right again, here, now. Coward.”

“Well, you know more about that than I would. I do have a couple of other questions.” I thought I should try to get some answers while Zosime was in a comparatively good mood. It was common sense, like scheduling grooming time for falcons after they are well-fed so they don’t mistake a thumb or an eyeball for their mid-day mouse.

“You want to know if you will be safe,” she hazarded. “I’ve already told you there is nothing to fear. It’s the intention that matters. Damalis wanted to die, though I think she was a fool. Her usefulness to me wasn’t over just because of one little mistake.”

“Little mistake? She turned into a lioness!”

“Does that mean she should rob me of her service? Besides, I was trying to turn that miserable dog into a griffin for my dear husband to kill tomorrow.”

“And the spell just spilled over onto her.”

“She knew what would happen if she touched the mosaic. It’s not my fault; these girls today just don’t listen to their elders.”

“Right. Speaking of which...you know your niece?”

“Niece? What niece?”

“Your husband’s, so I’ve heard.”

“Oh, her. She died of grief. Poor little bud, what a blossom she would have been.” Her imitation of sorrow was almost believable, but a little smile of gleeful triumph gave her away.

“Instead, you turned her into a harpy."

She laughed, delighted clear through to the bottom of her black heart. “Dear little Kissos, our little twining Ivy. It’s really the king's fault, you know. If he had half the courage he thinks he does, he would have killed her years ago. His brother wanted to leave Troezen to her, can you imagine? I wanted to do it immediately but he swore he’d divorce me and send me to a brothel on the docks if anything happened to her. I should have killed them both instead of transforming her and drugging him. He wouldn’t have dared to touch me.”

“What stopped you? Couldn’t have been conscience.”

She laughed shortly. “I won’t make that mistake a second time. As soon as I’m done with you....”

“Why Leros?”

“I knew Nausicaa would keep an eye on my little birdie and washed my hands of the business. But you had to come along and meddle. That ridiculous pirate with the cage. At least he had wit enough to cover it when he came to port so everyone couldn’t see it and jabber about it.”

“You had them killed, I suppose.”

“Naturally, I had to,” she said as if speaking of cracked eggs purchased by mistake in the marketplace. “I couldn’t very well have a bunch of ragtag pirates rattling their tongues about selling the harpy to me even if they did believe it was just for the Hunt. But if they should see that it didn’t appear, they would talk.”

“Well, I think that’s about all my questions.”

“Good. It does seem a tiny bit as though you are delaying on purpose. I’m sure I’m misjudging you. Come, hero, wrap your strong arms around me, and we shall jump together.”

I walked up to her. I hadn’t been close to her before and I didn’t want to be now. Though scented and rubbed with aromatic oils like any wealthy woman, there was a deeper odor that came through the attar of roses and cassia flower, a stink like cold wet ashes. I didn’t like the glitter in her sea-coal eyes or the shine on her white teeth. Teeth that could come awfully close to my neck with a little effort on her part, effort she’d already shown willing to expend.

I reached out for her shoulders. She showed those teeth in more of a snarl than a smile but stretched backwards to bring her bosom into high relief against me. She put up a hand as if to stroke my face, not noticing or caring that it was still marked with the blood of her late servant. Even if I found her attractive, that would have wiped it out.

I evaded her hand, took her shoulders and spun her around sharply. Then I wrapped my arms around her tight. Lifting her up, I carried her to the edge. “You’re sure about this?”

“Perfectly sure, my dearest enemy. Death is only for those who want to die; I have every intention of living forever, in eternal youth and beauty. That is where the real power lies. In a face. Look at Helen. All those ships sinking, all those men dying just for her.”