Timothy Boggs - Hercules Legendary Joureneys 02 (11 page)

When at last the sea tower reached fifty feet into the air and the sea churned and boiled at its base, the water began to slide away from the shadow. Slowly. Bubbles of foam floating away like tiny stars, the waves reversing themselves to shatter against the base.

All of it without a sound.

The water continued to fall, as if sculpting the shadow—head and broad shoulders first, then sculpted chest and muscled arms, finally the waist and legs. On the featureless head was a crown, in the left hand a trident, in the right something else Hercules couldn't make out.

The sea calmed.

The figure looked down.

"Oh," it said in mild, pleasant surprise. "It's you."

Hercules nodded, and waved an apprehensive greeting.

Instantly the figure began to shrink so rapidly that Hercules had to turn away to keep from getting nau-seated. When he looked back, the figure was only a head or two taller than he, using the trident's base to push itself toward the beach.

"Hello, Uncle," Hercules said, still unsure if he was welcome or not.

"It's been a while," Poseidon replied. In the moonlight it was difficult to tell his age. His voice was an old man's, but his physique denoted tremendous power. "Sorry about the display there. I thought you were some high priest trying to score points with a divinity. Scares the hell out of them, usually." He held out his right hand. "Tuna sandwich. You want some?"

Hercules chuckled. "No, thanks, Uncle. You eat tuna?"

Poseidon shrugged. "I rule them, doesn't mean I don't get to eat them now and then. They're dull, anyway. Like clams. It's a rule of the sea, Hercules— you absolutely cannot have a good conversation with a clam."

Hercules waited.

"Oysters, now, they're different. Every once in a while they come up with a real pearl of wisdom."

Hercules groaned.

Poseidon laughed, and began to walk east, gesturing his nephew to get moving or be left behind.

Hercules got moving. Poseidon was well aware of his nephew's anger at Zeus, and had judiciously re-frained from taking sides. Sympathy was there, however; Hercules sensed it each time they met. In the manner, in the careful choice of words ... in the way Poseidon hadn't flattened him into the sand or punctured him with the trident for interrupting his dinner.

"Lovely evening," the sea god said, admiring the sky flowing with bright stars. "I really should get up here more often. Starfish don't quite have the same panache, if you know what 1 mean."

Hercules said nothing. His uncle moved with the languid motion of the sea. Nothing would hurry him.

Sooner or later he'd want to know why he was called. Patience was required.

"Alcmena is well?"

"Very well, thanks, Uncle."

"And your friend? Iolaus?"

"As always."

Poseidon finished his tuna in a gulp, spat onto the beach some bones that immediately formed an uni-dentifiable creature, and said, "Let 'em figure that one out, harebrained mortals."

He meant the scholars who insisted on trying to learn what made the sea do what it did, without taking Poseidon's sometimes whimsical nature into consideration. It was the god's delight to throw them a curve once in a while, just to confuse them.

The night was cool, the sea breeze gentle. In the distance the sky glowed faintly with Themon's light.

"I give up," Poseidon finally said.

"Hera," Hercules told him.

Poseidon stopped, looked down at him, and shook his head. "Considering my position, Nephew, I really shouldn't get involved." A ghost of a smile flitted across his lips. "What'd you do to piss her off this time?"

"Nothing."

"Of course not. Except for a couple of Nereids of my acquaintance, that woman holds a grudge longer than anyone I've ever known. Including humans, I might add." With a nod they began walking again. "So what does this have to do with me?"

"Themon's summer festival."

Poseidon stopped again. "You're involved with that?"

Hercules cocked his head in a shrug. ' 'The council invited Iolaus to be a judge, and wanted me to come with him. As a judge, too."

Poseidon sighed knowingly. "And you came to keep him out of trouble."

"Well. .. mostly, yes."

The sea god laughed, a deep-throated rumbling less heard than felt. "They teamed up against you, didn't they, your mother and your friend? Meet women. Get a home life. Right?"

Grudgingly Hercules nodded. "Something like that."

"Women." Said with both mild condemnation and much affection. "Amazing what they'll do."

Amazing isn't the word for it, Hercules thought; scary is more like it.

Poseidon stabbed the air with the trident. "So? What?"

Hercules hesitated. This was the tricky part: explain without insulting.

"I can't read minds," his uncle said goodnaturedly. "It's all this free-floating air up here. It makes me dizzy. It's a rush, actually, but I don't much care for it."

Quickly, then, Hercules told him what he had learned from the stable hand about the disappearances among those chosen to be summer queen, explaining that although the official explanation—they had gone off to seek their fortunes in the larger cities—was reasonable enough, it didn't explain the recent discovery of the remains of one woman.

Since he didn't think Demeter, being of the land and the seasons, had anything to do with it, he—

"You thought I did," Poseidon finished. His face darkened. The tips of the trident began to glow.

"I thought you might," Hercules corrected hastily. "M
i
g
ht
know what's going on is what I meant."

They were a few hundred yards from the rocks Holix called dragon's teeth. From the distance the rocks appeared as vague shapes, despite the bright moon, and Hercules didn't much care for the shadows that lay between them. Or for the way his uncle stood, glaring at the water.

He waited for several minutes, knowing not to speak, knowing not to move.

"I am one of three," Poseidon said quietly, the glare fading to contemplation. "My brother Hades, my brother Zeus. We do not, and cannot, control each other, which is as it should be. We do not... we cannot control all that we oversee, which is, perhaps, not as it should be. Most, you understand, but not all."

Hercules moved to stand beside him.

The tide had turned.

"Klothon," his uncle said.

"What?"

"There is a creature out there, Hercules, called the Klothon." His free hand pointed along the horizon east to west. "It travels in the deepest parts of my kingdom, and beyond, where even I do not travel. It moves in a great circle, and so I'm fortunate not to have to see it more than once in a few years. A vicious beast. Evil." His chest rose slowly. "We have fought, too."

"You didn't win," Hercules ventured.

"Didn't lose either," Poseidon said. "If I had, my dear son Triton would be in charge, and I'd be sitting on a rock somewhere, writing stupid songs for the Sirens." A grin, a quiet laugh. "Not a bad life, actually, but my wife would kill me before I finished the first verse."

Hercules knew that to be true enough. But if he let his uncle start talking about his family, it would be dawn before he'd hear the end of it. "The Klothon?" he prodded.

"It's here."

That, Hercules thought glumly, is what I was afraid of.

Poseidon pointed at the promontory above the rocks. "They'll put some poor child up there, thinking she's a real queen. By morning she'll be breakfast."

"And you can't stop it?"

"I wish I could. I really do, Nephew. A lot of ships are lost out there, and not a few of them litter my place because of that
thing.
' He faced Hercules then, and put a heavy hand on his shoulder. "This is Hera's doing; you already know that. She wants you to be the hero you are and try to save the woman.

She also knows that if I can't save her, it's not likely you'll be able to either. It's a death sentence, Hercules."

That, Hercules thought, is also what I was afraid of.

"Does this Klothon have a weakness?"

Poseidon's hand dropped away. "Are you kidding? It's a monster. Of course it has a weakness."

Hercules blinked slowly. "Then why haven't you used it against it?"

The sea god made a long low noise, expressing the kind of
for heaven's sake do I have to explain everything?
patience an elder has to dredge up in order to deal with a young one who insists on acting dense.

Hercules stared at him.

Poseidon stared back.

Hercules wondered if his uncle had gone to the same teaching school as his mother; they both used the same method of silent staring to make him think, and make his life miserable.

Until, that is, Poseidon grinned. "This isn't the Klothon's element." He stamped a foot on the sand. "It's more at home in the water, right?"

Poseidon smiled: patience rewarded, though in this case the younger not the elder had dredged it up.

"Quicker in the water, slower on land," Hercules suggested.

Poseidon nodded. ' 'Maybe slow enough for you to notice that there is quite a long but narrow area under its chin and running down toward its belly, an area that could definitely be pierced."

Hercules brightened. ' 'And if I should pierce it?'

"Enough meat to feed that city for a hundred years." Poseidon winked. "And really tick Hera off.

Unfortunately," he added, "you'd have be to quick as Hermes to pull it off. Assuming you could get at it in the first place. Assuming it really is that much slower on land. Assuming—"

"Enough, please," Hercules said. This was more than he had dared hope for, though less than he'd have liked—which was that Poseidon himself would do the honors and leave him, Hercules, out of it. Preferably a couple of miles inland.

Still, this was more information than he had when he'd arrived.

Now he just had to figure out what to do with it.

That's when he realized that Poseidon was already wading into the ocean.

"Thanks, Uncle," he called.

The trident waved, and a wave suddenly rose over Hercules' head, broke, and slammed him to his knees, sputtering.

Poseidon turned. "Oh. Sorry. Wasn't thinking."

Hercules could only nod; there still seemed to be a lake of saltwater in his mouth. He spat it out, wiped his face, and rose shakily, warily.

The sea was blank.

Nothing left but the moon and the tide.

And a large serpentine shadow that watched him from the moon's shimmering trail on the water.

Iolaus had
n
o complaints about the rooms at the Red Boar. To be sure, they were small, but they were also fastidiously clean. Each had a single wide bed with
a
low table beside it, a chair, a woven hanging on the wall for color
—
utilitarian and comfortable, made for sleeping and not much else. A
small window overlooked the boulevard, perfect for watching the parades and the pedestrians.

What he wasn't so sure about was Orena, the innkeeper's wife, who insisted on accompanying him personally upstairs. Just to be sure, she explained, that he and his legendary companion would be satisfied with the accommodations. She was a pleasant-looking woman, although a shade too rotund for his taste, and loud, and he would have attributed her obsequious manner to a desire to prove to the council that the Red Boar knew how to handle visiting dignitaries had it not been for the way she kept bumping into him with her not inconsiderable hips.

Constantly.

And batting her blue-painted eyes.

Not to mention the giggling and the waggling of her thick eyebrows and the way her hands almost but not quite touched him whenever she spoke, or giggled, or batted her eyes.

It drove him crazy.

Yet he couldn't bring himself to be rude, and so he endured the clumsy flirtations until, at last, he managed to convince her that everything was absolutely wonderful, that the council would be fully informed of the wonders of the Red Boar Inn, and that he really did need a few minutes alone.

"To rest," he added with a courteous smile. "It's been a long day."

Orena giggled, almost touched him, and batted her eyelids so rapidly the wind nearly put the bedside candle out. "Well, when you've done," she said breath-ily, "come downstairs. There'll be a meal and drink for you. And your friend, when he gets back." The eyelids batted again. "On the house, naturally. Your money's no good as long as you stay here."

He thanked her profusely as he eased her into the hallway, then closed the door and sagged gratefully against it. Somehow the room now felt remarkably like a prison. It didn't take long to figure out that the chair wouldn't hold the door against a determined pusher, but the window was at least large enough for him to wriggle through if he had to.

"Brother," he whispered, and dumped his travel sack onto the bed. He sat for a minute, scratching his head vigorously, wondering what Herc was up to. If he knew his friend at all, it had something to do with Holix's story, and the kid's red-faced admission that he was head over heels for a rich man's servant.