The Eighth Arrow Page 15

  I glanced back up the side of the cliff. Beyond, I could make out a waxing red glow like a sunrise. There was no telling what might happen if the whole river Styx caught fire. We shouldered our gear and made for the final leg of our descent.

  “This doesn’t feel right,” said Helen.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, “we’ll make it.”

  We didn’t.

  We were just reaching the shore of the Styx when the sky lit red and a wave of liquid fire tumbled over the edge of the fall. In its own terrible way, it was a beautiful thing to have seen, this shower of light churning and sparking down the face of the cliff. With each splash and bump, a spray of embers shot into the mist, and as though called to a life of their own, each expanded in a cloud of flame before vanishing into ash. I was breathless with awe. Lucky for me, Diomedes was not.

  “Run!” he shouted, and the moment the command registered in my consciousness, I understood its wisdom. Helen was already halfway up the bank, and Diomedes followed, lurching over the wreckage of rock and sand.

  By the Olympian gods and the river Styx itself, I swear that no mortal Achaean ever ran with such absolute focus as I did that hour. Achilles—no, Hermes himself—would have marveled at such reckless speed. I leapt from rock to rock like a wild mountain goat, every nerve in my body focused on reaching the cliff face, where a number of small caves offered the only protection at hand.

  There was a thunderous crack, and glancing over my shoulder, I saw the spray at the base of the fall burst into a cloud of fire. Then a sheet of flame sprang up around it and rushed outward like the surge before a storm. Diomedes and Helen had arrived at one of the caves, and Diomedes was setting his shoulder to a boulder twice his size when I reached him.

  “Help me!” he screamed. I dropped my weapons in the cave and threw my back to the rock, heaving with all my strength as I watched the approaching storm of fire.

  In Ithaca, they tell stories of mothers who, seeing their children in danger, are filled with a Dionysian frenzy that gives them the strength of six men. I believe I was myself infused with such strength at that moment as my friend and I heaved the enormous boulder in front of our shelter. It settled with a gravelly thud, and the two of us squeezed inside, then cast ourselves against the far wall, waiting for the worst.

  Diomedes’ quick thinking saved us twice over, for the rock not only shielded us from the initial cloud of fire but also provided some protection from the heat it cast. Even so, the air around us grew thin, and I whispered my death prayer to the gods as I lost consciousness.

  CHAPTER 21

  A RUDE AWAKENING

  I AWOKE TO the assumption that in fact I had not survived the cloud of fire and that I was now in some new Hades. This, the gods be praised, turned out not to be the case, but having squeezed out of our tiny cave and into the blackened aftermath of the cataclysmic fire, I can be excused for imagining that a new Hell had replaced the old. Everything was black with soot. Glowing embers littered the earth like winter leaves. It seemed I had been transported to a place set aside for those who were unworthy of their original punishment.

  What grieved me, however, was not the prospect of more suffering but the realization that I would be unable to keep my promise to Penelope. Deep down, I had never really expected to escape the Underworld, but my wife and son deserved something better. I understood that now, and I wanted it for them more than I wanted it for myself.

  This realization came as a surprise to me, for I could not recall ever wanting something for someone else. As I stood reflecting on this, Helen materialized beside me. “We’re not dead,” she said, as if reading my thoughts.

  I reexamined the landscape. This wasn’t a new Hell after all. The river Styx—every greasy ounce of it—was gone, burned into oblivion, leaving behind only scorched silt and the charred carcasses of its unlucky inhabitants.

  “What have we done now?” whispered Diomedes. He took Helen’s hand as we surveyed our handiwork.

  “On the upside,” Helen mused, “this eliminates the need for a ferry.”

  One thing can be said for Hell: it may not be pretty, but it is built to last. Even as we made our way through that scorched wasteland, leaving bright tracks in the soot, the waterfall behind us began to refill the river. Diomedes, unnerved by the sheer ugliness of it all, broke into a jog, and I followed his lead, with Helen close behind, trying her hardest to tiptoe around the smoldering corpses that everywhere littered the ground.

  We were about halfway across the gully when the smoke started to lift and we caught our first glimpse of the burning fortress of Middle Hell. “Do you think we did that too?” asked Diomedes. He stopped to contemplate its glowing walls.

  I loosened my helmet and wiped the sweat from my brow. “No, my friend, I think it was that way before we got here.”

  “It certainly was,” said Helen. “Gentlemen, that is the burning city of Dis. Great citadel of Medusa. A lovely thing to behold. We have arrived at the edge of this world, boys, and we stand on the brink of one greater. Congratulations.” She smiled fetchingly as she said this, but her enthusiasm did not catch. In fact, I found it somewhat unsettling to see her so pleased. A new ring of torment didn’t seem like something to celebrate, and it didn’t seem like Helen to want to celebrate it.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I asked. It came out like an accusation, but I was genuinely curious.

  “Lay off,” said Diomedes.

  “Just trying to see the bright side of the mess we are in,” she said.

  Here they were at it again, the two of them, teaming up against me. I grit my teeth and found a distraction. At my feet, a black carcass still crackled and hissed. I crouched to have a closer look.

  “Poor devil,” said Helen, poking him with the toe of her sandal—her attempt, I suppose, at mending bridges. “Look how he is twisted about.” The corpse’s spindly legs were drawn up to its chest, and one arm curled over its head in a crumpled claw. The other stretched out straight in front of him, fingers sunk into the black earth.

  “Remind me never to die in a fire,” I said to Diomedes, who shuddered and bent forward for a closer look. Together we groaned, reliving for a moment our own torment in the flames of the eighth level. We were still staring at the corpse when both eyes snapped open and fixed me with a furious gaze. Diomedes let out a distinctly feminine squeal, and I nearly stabbed myself with my own sword.

  “By the gods,” said Helen, “he’s alive!”

  “Of course he is,” Diomedes answered, regaining his composure. “Where would he go if he died?”

  “I should not dare to say,” she answered, and poked him again.

  “I think we should try to help him,” I said.

  “I really would not,” answered Helen.

  “Of course you wouldn’t,” I said with a scowl. “It’s the right thing to do.”

  I leaned a little closer. “Can . . . uh . . . we be of some help to you . . . friend?” I reached out with one hand, though I wasn’t too keen to touch him if I could help it.

  His eyes followed my gesture, and I took this to be a good sign. But suddenly his mouth sprang open, revealing a brilliant set of teeth, and in one violent paroxysm, he threw himself forward, snapped at my hand and, falling short of that, fixed his teeth into the meat of my thigh, growling and thrashing. I let out a shriek and pounded his head with my fists. I had to resort to my sword before he would let go.

  I stood clutching my leg and cursed with a vigor I hadn’t known since my early days as a sailor. “You motherless, thumb-sucking son of a pig herder! Stay here, then, and may dogs and crows pick your carcass bare!” I said other things even less worthy of repetition as I limped away.

  “Told you so,” said Helen under her breath.

  The wound felt deep, but it was the shock and the indignity of the attack—not to mention the humiliation of proving Helen right—that really lowered my spirits. And the closer we drew to the glowing walls of Dis, the more the wound felt like an omen. Thu
s, after several detours and some procrastination, we arrived none too cheerful at the beach, where the sand sloped up and away from the soot and the acrid stench.

  I looked back and could see that the water was already beginning to rediscover its former abode, spreading in a smooth black sheet across the gully.

  Now there was no turning back.

  “So,” sighed Diomedes, “what now?”

  The great iron wall of Dis was built directly on the sand and climbed so high it dizzied me to look for its top. All the metals known to man would not have sufficed to build such a marvel. It shimmered with a dull light of its own, as though newly drawn from some terrible forge. Directly before us, an enormously domed tower stretched its turrets skyward, the closest of many that punctuated a long expanse as far as we could see along the shore in either direction. Here at eye level, a pair of stout iron gates barred the way, and the closer we drew, the more my spirits sank.

  “What next?” asked Diomedes, chewing his helmet strap. “Should we knock?”

  I shook my head. “Can’t see that there would be much point in it.”

  “You’d roast your knuckles trying,” added Helen.

  I was demoralized and exhausted, and the bite on my leg was starting to itch. I sat down to examine the wound. Already, there was some ugly swelling around the bite, and the blood was starting to run a little gray.

  “Let me have a look,” said Helen. She pushed me onto my back and eyed the wound with a frown. I knew she had a certain skill with drugs, but I hadn’t known her to be much of a physician. She gave the wound a gentle prod, then noticed the scar over my knee. “O i mi! Did he do this too?”

  I looked at her incredulously. “My scar?” I said.

  “It looks like it could be an old injury,” she said, “but wounds heal quickly in Hades.”

  “My scar,” I said. “You don’t remember it?”

  “Oh! Of course,” she laughed. “This old battle wound. You took it on the field at Ilium, if I remember correctly.”

  “No,” I gasped. “No, I didn’t. And you know that. I’ve had this scar since I was a boy. You know that as well as anyone. It’s how you saw through my disguise when I sneaked into Troy!”

  Helen coughed and brushed her hair back. “Yes. Of course.” She giggled and bit her lip. “It has been so long, Odysseus, and I have been through so much. It just slipped my mind.” She ran her fingers across the scar. “Now you relax. I know a spell or two that might slow the bleeding. Lie back now while I work on this.”

  I watched as she bent to the task, muttering incantations under her breath and passing her hand back and forth over the wound. Something was wrong. For the first time since she’d joined our company, Helen actually looked nervous, and it suddenly became clear what had been troubling me ever since we’d taken her on. From the start, Helen had shown entirely too much confidence. In life, she had never been a bold or courageous woman—at least not outwardly. She had always played the part of the victim, allowing one man after another to dictate the path of her life. I’m not saying she wasn’t clever. It just wasn’t like her to take charge the way she had ever since she’d linked up with us in the storm.

  And now this—the scar. She had failed to recognize my scar. The ghost of some terrible realization began to take shape in my mind. But just as it emerged, a deep drowsiness came over me, pulling me into dream like the current in some fathomless, black lake. I gasped and flailed, but the current was too strong, the waters too cool and comfortable. I succumbed. I dreamt.

  CHAPTER 22

  SCARS

  IT WAS A MEMORY, really, though it took the form of dream.

  It was my sixteenth year. I had left the straight path and wandered far into the depths of a dark wood on the slope of Mount Parnassos. I held a wooden pike in my hands—a spear I’d made from a beech sapling when I was a child. Argos was with me. We had drifted away from the rest of the hunting party—a loose band of uncles and cousins who seemed more interested in making noise than actually hunting. For my part, I was determined to come home with a kill, so when Argos found a trail that led away from the others, I left them and followed him instead. He had a good nose, that dog, a deep longing for the kill, and all the best qualities of a Molossian tracker. He never barked when he caught a scent, so I guess that’s why my uncles didn’t notice when I loped off in the other direction.

  I followed Argos pretty far into the woods that day. Followed him through streams and through scrub and down gullies and winding game paths, over fallen trees and running water and into a thick tangle of brushwood where a wild boar had made its lair. And I knew I was in trouble the moment I saw it. This was a grand and ancient beast. It had dark, fiery eyes and a neck so thick with bristle and brawn, it might have lifted a cart with its tusks. Grand and ancient, but not noble. I’ve killed animals for food and sport, and for some of them, I mourned a little when I watched them fall. But not this thing. It came charging out of the brush with nothing in its face but rage and brute hatred. Its two yellow tusks, sharp as iron daggers, swung left and right as it ran. Argos leapt out of the way, but I wasn’t so lucky. I had just enough time to lift my spear before the tusk tore into me, ripping a hole in my thigh just above the knee. I cried out, and Argos answered with a howl. The boar spun around to face him, and when it did, I thrust down with the spear. Caught the beast just behind the right shoulder. The point passed straight through and out the other side so that the boar fell mutely in the dust. The life just spilled out of it.

  And when my cousins found me, drawn by the frantic howls of my dear Argos, they found the three of us—man, beast, and dog—huddled together in the clearing, a pool of bright blood spreading out in a circle around us. My blood and the blood of the boar mixed together in the dirt.

  I nearly died that day. The wound was deep. The hike home took what little strength I had left. But somehow I pulled through, and my grandfather had the tusks of that mighty beast set into a helmet of silver and gold. He commissioned a bard to put the story into song, and soon, there was no one in Achaea who had not heard the tale of Odysseus and the Parnassian boar.

  I woke with a start, ripped from my dreams by another childhood memory—a certain nursery tale my mother had told me about a shape-shifting magician named Proteus.

  “No!” I shouted, but the word came out in a garbled groan. I was awake, but only in spirit. My whole body felt like it was pinned under a great weight. I struggled to open my eyes.

  “Calm down, Odysseus.” Diomedes’ voice seemed to float to me from across a great void. “Helen said the magic might make you sleepy, but we’ve got everything under control.”

  I lifted one arm, heavy as a sack of sand, and cast it in the direction of my sword. Nothing.

  “Relax, old horse. We’ve got a plan.”

  I rolled onto my side, and the weight seemed to lift a little. I pried one eye open and looked up the beach. Helen stood before the iron gates—wearing Diomedes’ armor and carrying my sword and bow.

  “Wha—” was all I could manage.

  “I said, don’t worry,” Diomedes said, rolling me onto my back. “Helen’s got a plan. We’ll be through those gates before you know it.”

  Just then, a voice erupted from behind the iron wall, a piercing scream that rattled the thoughts in my head. The voice dropped off, and a second took up the cry, then a third, high and sour—a shrill, screeching singsong. Then all three took up the chant, grating one against the other in bitter dissonance. I heard Diomedes rise to his feet.

  Then there was a cracking thud as of a bolt in an ancient lock, and I rolled back onto my side in time to see the gates grind open.

  With aching slowness, they swung apart, releasing a great miasma of fire and steam. And there, in the glowing aperture amid swirls of smoke and ash, stood the Erinyes. Such horrors are better left undescribed, for even the memory of those hideous creatures unsettles my stomach. They hissed and screeched and flailed their withered arms. Through the blur of my half-closed e
yes I watched them stagger forward, oozing blood from their eyes, snakes writhing in their hair.

  It was shock enough to pull me out of my lethargy. I knew these women from the stories of my youth. These were the triplet goddesses of vengeance, Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera, whose special privilege it was to punish oath breakers and murderers.

  They were no farther than fifty paces off when they stopped, lifted their hands, and chanted in unison.

  Come, Medusa. Hear our cry.

  Change these men to stone!

  No one leaves the depths of Hell

  But Theseus alone!

  Facing them, and looking somewhat like Athena herself in Diomedes’ shining helm, Helen stood, armed for battle. For a moment, I thought perhaps my fears were misplaced, but then she bowed and placed our swords on the ground before her.

  “What is she doing?” whispered Diomedes nervously. “Why would she do that?”

  “She wouldn’t,” I groaned, working my tongue loose in my mouth. “She wouldn’t do any of this. She wouldn’t have fought the Siren. She wouldn’t have stabbed Cerberos. And she certainly wouldn’t have forgotten my scar. Diomedes,” I said, “we’ve been duped.”

  I looked on as “Helen” unbuckled her armor, stepped back from the weapons, and stretched out her arms. The air filled with an odd, pungent smell—the same fishy odor that Diomedes and I had noticed back at the hurricane and again near Cerberos. She turned her head left and right as though working a kink in her neck. There was a sound like the snapping of bones. Then she stomped her feet and shook out her hair. And with every move, the contours of her body seemed to dissolve a little—lose their shape and flutter, as though I were viewing her through a curtain of silk—as though the frame beneath her flesh had lost its substance. Her body seemed to melt into itself over and over until all that was left was a lump of flesh. Then it shook and bubbled up and twisted and pushed and molded itself into the form of a serpent, then a seal, then a lion, an ox, an ape, and finally, an old, old man with long sea-blue hair. A tattered green cloak hung from his shoulders.