Timothy Boggs - Hercules Legendary Joureneys 02 (15 page)

He wondered about the Klothon.

Poseidon had conveniently not described it, and from what he understood from Holix and Venitia, no one on land had ever seen it.

And lived, that is.

What sort of beast could rear itself this high out of the sea, grab a victim, and vanish again, all without leaving a trace?

He passed a hand over his chest, deciding that he really didn't want to know.

A large bird coasted overhead, its shadow brief and chilly.

He checked the sky again, this time letting his senses do the work for him, senses that weren't nec-essarily restricted to his eyes and ears.

He let the presence of the sea touch him; he felt the wind and all the wind carried on it; the weight of the sky; the smell of the air.

He sensed Iolaus standing beside him, but the man said nothing; he knew what Hercules was after.

Finally Hercules shook himself and glanced at his friend. "Hera" was all he said.

Iolaus frowned. "Where?"

"I don't know. Near." He gestured toward the horizon. "There's going to be a storm."

"I know that already. Just look at the sky."

"No. Something..." Hercules' eyes narrowed as he searched for the right word; then he shook his head in frustration. "Something more, I think. I'm not sure."

Iolaus rubbed the side of his neck thoughtfully before shrugging. "Can't help you, Herc."

"That's okay. Just know that it's Hera. How, I don't know, but it is."

He beckoned Venitia to him. She obeyed apprehensively, as if she believed he still didn't quite trust her.

If that was the case, she was right. It had nothing to do with her infatuation with Iolaus; it had everything to do with her convenient appearance in the alley that morning. Although Hercules doubted that she was part of Rotus' still-unknown plans, he couldn't for the life of him figure out why she was with the rebels in the first place.

Rebels weren't always a type, but if there was one, she wasn't it.

"Themon," he said, turning to face the city. The half mile between the gentle drop to the sand and the first of the buildings was unbroken by trees or large rocks. "Why does it sit back there, and the fishermen stay over there?"

"The sea," Venitia answered, and explained how the sea had battered the original village, and how the original villagers decided that swimming wasn't as much fun as they used to think. "Sometimes," she said,

"we get a really bad winter storm, and the waves slide right up the boulevard, because it's lower than the ground by a couple of feet. You can see that even from here. Sometimes the water almost gets into the city itself." She smiled. "My mother says that wouldn't be a bad thing. It would clean up the streets without anyone doing any work."

He looked at Themon's modest sprawl without responding, turned toward the sea, followed the swath of the boulevard-turned-road through the low grass to the sand. Maybe, he thought, the old city fathers had hoped Themon would eventually make its way back to the sea. It was a lot of work for a street that had no buildings along it.

He also figured the people had long memories, and the stories of new Themon's beginning hadn't faded.

"It's a nice place," he said absently, meaning it.

"Oh, I love it," Venitia answered eagerly. "I really do."

He glanced at her sideways, but she didn't notice. She had decided to point out to Iolaus the boats swarming on the water; even the festival couldn't stop the work.

The pride in her voice was unmistakable.

Suddenly he grinned.

Hercules laughed.

Bewildered, Iolaus looked at him. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," he said. "Something just clicked, that's all." He put an easy hand on Venitia's shoulder, gripping it gently when she flinched. It didn't take long before he knew he was right. "You're Titus'

daughter, aren't you?"

"What?" Iolaus yelped. "Are you nuts, Herc? She can't be, she's a rebel!"

"Oh, yeah," he said quietly, without taking his gaze from the young woman's astonished, and abruptly flushed, face. "I'll bet she is."

"But you saw her!" Iolaus flapped his arms. "He saw you, right? In the cave, I mean.
I
saw you in the cave." He frowned. "You
were
in the cave, right? Eye patch and everything, right?"

She nodded, but she didn't look at him. The ground, at that moment, had become inexplicably fascinating.

Iolaus continued talking as if to avoid realizing the truth of Hercules' words. "Well, there you go, then, Herc. She was in the cave."

Hercules nodded.

"She was .. ." Iolaus blinked. "She was . ,." He put a hand to his mouth, stared at Venitia as if he was seeing her for the first time, and rolled his eyes while he clapped a palm to his forehead. "I'm an idiot."

No one disagreed.

"You
could
say I'm not an idiot, you know," Iolaus grumbled.

"You're not an idiot," Hercules said obligingly, dropping his hand, shaking his head. "I just figured it out now."

"You guessed," his friend accused.

"I guessed," he admitted.

Iolaus nodded sharply. "It's the eyes, right?"

"The eyes. The mouth." Hercules laughed silently. "You are definitely your father's daughter."

Venitia shrugged. "I'm also a rotten rebel," she said, although her mouth trembled as if trying to fight off a smile. "He works so hard, he hardly pays any attention to Mother or me, so when I heard about Rotus, I volunteered, even though I really didn't know what the problem supposedly was." She giggled. "It didn't occur to me at the time that becoming a rebel wasn't going to get me noticed by my father, since I was wearing a disguise."

Iolaus stared at her in admiration. "Does your father suspect?"

"I still have my head," Venitia replied, "so I guess not."

Hercules touched her arm to get her attention. "You helped us in the alley."

She nodded; instant shyness.

"What happened? Between you and your friends, and Rotus."

She gazed at Themon for several long seconds, hugging herself against the chill of the breeze. "At first it was fun. At least for a while. Then ..." She pushed windblown hair from her eyes. "Something happened, I don't know what, and it all changed. There's this man you haven't seen yet, I don't think. Jax.

He's Holix's best friend. We all thought he was in charge, because he always brought us our instructions."

' 'From your father?' Iolaus asked.

"I guess so. Who else? Anyway, Rotus decided Jax didn't know what he was doing. Whenever Jax wasn't around, Rotus made up his own plans. I didn't like them. He wanted people hurt."

Iolaus didn't get it. "So why didn't you say anything?"

"Rotus said he'd cut my throat."

Iolaus' eyes widened. "He .. . what? Your throat? He did?" His eyes narrowed, his face hardened, but he only grunted, nothing more.

Hercules shook his head in disbelief. Themon was the damnedest place he had ever visited. It had a peacetime tyrant who wasn't all that bad, a band of rebels that kept changing its mind about how serious it was about its revolution, a festival that once in a while sacrificed its queen, and a street nearly a half mile long with no buildings on it.

It was ...

His mouth opened.

It was . ..

"Herc?"

Again he stared at the city, and the sea.

"What's the matter with him?" Venitia whispered.

"He's thinking."

"Oh."

"No, not just 'oh.'
Uh
-oh."

"Uh-oh?" she asked.

Iolaus nodded. "Uh-oh as in trouble," Iolaus explained.

"But there already
is
trouble."

Iolaus shook his head. "When he gets like this, you have no idea what trouble really means."

Ignoring their commentary, Hercules lowered himself to his hands and knees and leaned over the edge of the cliff. With the tide out, the sand below was nearly dry; clumps of drying kelp clung to the shadows of the jagged boulders; the sea-sharpened edges of brown-black rock poked out of the cliff's face. He couldn't see the base of the cliff because there was a slight overhang, and he chided himself for not in-specting the area last night.

Iolaus knelt beside him, questioning him with a look.

Hercules rocked back on his heels. "A shrine," he explained. "There has to be a shrine around here somewhere. To help draw Hera here." He gestured. "Everything is too open, Iolaus, or we would have seen it by now."

"Shrine?" Venitia said, puzzled.

"To Hera," Iolaus told her.

The woman shook her head. "Not here. Demeter, Poseidon, a couple of others, but not Hera. Not here."

For no reason other than instinct, Hercules knew she was wrong. However, a check of the sun told him the festival would start soon, and he and Iolaus would be expected in the plaza.

Too much to do and not much time left to do it.

His expression brooking no arguments, he told Iolaus to search the area from here to the fishing center for something that might be used as a shrine; Venitia he sent off to the rebels, with instructions to find out what, exactly, Rotus planned to do during the festivities.

He himself hurried back to the Red Boar, surprised that he didn't get lost more than once. Maybe twice, but he couldn't really tell, because he was lost.

When he reached the inn, he hurried straight to his room, pushed open the door, and froze.

Holix still lay on the bed.

A woman sat beside him, a gleaming knife in her hand.

"Hercules, no!" Holix cried hoarsely when Hercules slammed the door behind him and took a long stride toward the bed. "It's all right, really, it's all right!"

Fortunately, Hercules had already figured that out by the way the woman had scrambled onto the bed and done her best to push herself into the wall.

The knife fell harmlessly to the floor.

"Hercules?"
the woman breathed.

Holix nodded. "Yes. He saved my life."

She was, Hercules thought, extraordinarily beautiful, with rich red hair that must be the envy of many a goddess. Keeping his palms up to show he wasn't going to harm her, he pulled the chair closer to the bed and sank into it. Smiled. Tilted his head to tell the young man he was ready to listen.

With much theatrical moaning and groaning and wincing and hissing, Holix pushed himself to a sitting position, his back against the wall behind the low headboard. A clean cloth had been wrapped around his head, his face washed of grime and blood, and a fresh, deep-green tunic replaced his tattered old one.

"This is Cire," he said, trying to sound casual without revealing how smitten he was. Which, of course, is exactly what he revealed.

"I ran away," she said in a fearful whisper, explaining that the streets had been filled with the talk of the battle that had occurred that day at the stable. When she'd raced there to find Holix, a number of people told her he'd been carried away by a giant. "You, I guess."

Hercules didn't know how to respond. Once again he was uncomfortable at the awe his name inspired.

He gestured weakly, smiled, then listened with increasing anger as Cire recounted what she had overheard in the house where she and her twin worked. Her eyes reddened, her lips trembled, and by the time she finished, a tear had begun to trickle down her cheek.

Hercules sat back and crossed his legs, staring thoughtfully at the window. "For one thing," he said,

"you aren't going to die."

"See?" Holix said. "I told you."

"And I'm pretty sure I know what's really going on."

Holix grinned. "See? I told you."

Hercules hushed him with a glance. "For another, though, Cire, you'll have to go back."

"See?" Holix said. "I. .. what?"

"What?" Cire echoed. "Holix, where's the knife?"

Hercules hushed them again, this time with a scowl that sent them into each other's arms. Gingerly, however, since Holix's ribs had not miraculously healed.

Hercules' gaze returned to the window. "What happened to Bea?"

"She left when I arrived," Cire answered flatly, her head resting possessively against Holix's shoulder.

"He didn't need her anymore."

Hercules grunted.

She raised her head. "And what do you mean, I have to go back? Do you know what's supposed to happen if I do?"

"Yes."

"I'm supposed to die!"

"I know."

Cire struggled to sit upright, bracing a palm against Holix's chest. The stable hand promptly opened his mouth in a silent scream. "So I'm not going."

"Yes, you are," Hercules told her.

"Holix, where's the damn knife?"

Holix gasped; he couldn't do anything else.

"You have to go back," Hercules told her calmly. "It's the only way I can save you. And us."

"Never mind," she grumbled as she started to crawl across Holix's legs. "I'll get it myself.'