Hero of Olympus

by Hero of Olympus (retail) (epub)

  ‘It is many years since we have seen a mortal,’ she said. ‘Who are you? Why have you entered the sacred garden?’

  He stepped closer and immediately felt a wall of pressure before him, resisting any further approach.

  ‘Stay where you are! It is forbidden to touch the tree or its fruit. That is why you have come, is it not?’

  ‘I’ve been ordered to fetch three golden apples,’ Heracles replied. ‘And I will not leave without them. I cannot.’

  ‘Ordered? Then you have a master. But what master sends his servant on a quest to the furthest reaches of the world, knowing he must fail?’

  ‘One who wants me to fail, because he fears me and hopes I will not return to him. I’ve already completed ten labours on his orders, all of them deemed impossible. Now only this and one more remain.’

  ‘Interesting,’ the serpent said, thoughtfully. ‘He does not want you as his slave, any more than you want him as your master; yet something binds you together. And you are only his bondsman until the twelfth labour is complete, or so your words suggest. Yet you are strong, resourceful and brave, and he is afraid of your power. Why, then, don’t you reclaim your freedom? Why do you carry out these impossible tasks, for the sake of a man who is weaker than you?’ Her heads swayed from side to side, pondering the answer. ‘Obviously, you will receive something in return. What is the reward that you seek?’

  ‘Peace from my sins.’

  ‘Then your sins must be very great indeed,’ she hissed, a hint of pleasure in her tone as she probed his secrets. ‘Murder? But not just any murder, of course. You are a warrior – murder comes easily to your kind. No, you murdered someone important. Not a king. No, you scorn kings and all their gold and finery: when I say the word king, I see murder in your eyes. It must have been someone important to you. A loved one—’

  ‘Enough!’

  The heads laughed with a hideous whispering sound.

  ‘It is as we thought. You are Heracles, Zeus’s son. The gods made you a slave to King Eurystheus as a punishment for murder. You also killed our siblings—’

  ‘And I can kill you too!’

  He pulled the bow from his shoulder and fitted a black-feathered arrow, pulling the string back to his ear.

  ‘By poisoning us with our own brother’s blood?’ Ladon asked. ‘Put your bow away, Heracles, if you hope to complete your labour. We bear you no ill will for their deaths; we did not know them.’

  ‘All I ask is three apples,’ Heracles said, refusing to lower his weapon. ‘Give them to me and I will spare your life. Refuse and there will be one less monster in this world, and I will help myself to your fruit anyway.’

  ‘We are sure you mean it, though we can’t simply give them to you. We have guarded the tree for many generations of men, and we only give its fruit to those who are worthy.’ She raised her scaly necks from the ground, each one connected to the base of the tree like a root. ‘But if you want to steal its apples, then we will not prevent you. You have our word.’

  Heracles lowered his bow a little and stared at the serpent. Was it a trick to draw him within striking range of her many heads? But he sensed no threat of violence, and stepped cautiously up to the nearest branch. Keeping a wary eye on the creature, he reached up and plucked one of the apples.

  He took a couple of paces back, beyond the reach of Ladon’s fangs, and stared down at the fruit in his hand. It was a reddish-gold colour, with a metallic sheen that made him expect it to feel cold and hard to the touch. Yet it was soft, with a thick, pungent-smelling skin. But as he looked at it, he noticed the colour begin to darken and the smooth skin become tighter. Within a few moments, it had turned brown and shrivelled to half its size. Spores of mould appeared on the skin, quickly covering it in grey fur. With a look of disgust, he flung it away and wiped his hand on his lion-skin cloak.

  ‘What is this? What happened?’

  The serpent heads chortled their strange, whispering laugh again.

  ‘The apples have to be freely given, or they will rot to nothing,’ she explained. ‘If you kill us, Heracles, whatever apples you steal will wither away in moments. Your quest will have failed and your sins will never be forgiven. You will carry the murder of your three sons with you for the rest of your life. Even your massive shoulders could not bear that load for long.’

  He looked at the place where he had thrown the apple, but nothing remained of it. Now he understood why Phorcys had warned him against killing the tree’s guardian. But he also remembered what else the old man had told him about the serpent.

  ‘So, I cannot kill you, and I cannot return to Tiryns empty handed. But the one who told me how to find you said you will give me what I want if I answer your questions.’

  Ladon looked at him and gave a long hiss, her tongues flickering out from her lipless mouths.

  ‘Sometimes words are more painful than weapons, Heracles,’ she said. ‘They strike deeper and the wounds take longer to heel. If we question you, it will not be easy.’

  ‘It can’t be any harder than the labours I’ve already completed. I’m ready.’

  ‘We will see. For three apples, you must answer three questions – and unless you answer them all, you will receive nothing. Do you agree?’

  ‘I do.’

  As they had been speaking, the sun had set and the light had drained from the world, taking the colour with it and leaving the landscape a monotonous grey. The mountain was like a black, featureless cone, towering over him and blotting out the western horizon, while in the clear sable skies beyond its canopy of cloud the first stars were beginning to show themselves.

  ‘Tell me, Heracles,’ Ladon began, ‘by whose hands were your children murdered?’

  The question was not what he had expected. It was too easy. Too personal. His nostrils flared slightly and he fixed his eyes on a branch a little above the head that had asked the question.

  ‘Mine. I murdered them,’ he said. ‘Though I have no recollection of doing it, except perhaps in my nightmares.’

  ‘You have answered truthfully. Now answer me this – who is your wife’s lover?’

  ‘What? She has no—’

  He stopped and thought. He remembered his hopes when he had sailed to Themiscyra, intending to liberate Megara from the Amazons, but anticipating so much more. She had forgiven him for killing their sons – accepting his madness had been induced by his enemies – and for a while on the return voyage, reconciliation had seemed possible. Then Eurystheus had sent him to the ends of the earth, on a labour that had taken many months to complete, and now he realized he had been gone too long. Megara had fallen in love with another man.

  But who? He had sent her to her father’s palace for safekeeping, but there were many men who frequented Creon’s home, from high-born nobles to wealthy merchants. Any one of them might think himself worthy of the king’s daughter. Yet who would dare to court her without Creon’s permission? Indeed, who would be reckless enough to pursue Megara, wife of the great Heracles, knowing they would pay for it with their lives if her husband returned? Who was even close enough to win her heart?

  Then, as if a veil had been lifted from his eyes, he understood. His heart trembled inside him as the identity of the other man became clear.

  ‘Iolaus,’ he answered, his voice barely a whisper.

  ‘That is correct,’ Ladon replied. ‘Your wife and your nephew have become lovers.’

  His heart sank further at the confirmation. The serpent had warned him that the questions would be painful, but he had never imagined this. It was too much. He thought of his nephew’s awkwardness when they had been reunited in Tiryns, and finally recognized it for what it was. Guilt. He thought of the stiff silences on their long journey from Tiryns, and the lost intimacy during their conversations over their campfires – how Iolaus had seemed unusually reluctant to talk about himself, and hesitant in answering Heracles’s questions about Megara. But it was not because of the many months they had been apart, or that he was los
ing his boyish character. It was because he had already lost it – in Megara’s arms.

  He clenched his teeth and balled his fists, desperate to find something on which to vent his growing wrath. He looked at the tree, wanting to tear it from the ground and hurl it from the edge of the rock shelf, deliberately destroying any possibility of completing the labour and freeing himself from the murder of his sons. He wanted the curse of his crime to fall on him and crush him, and in his black mood he looked at the edge of the precipice and thought of throwing himself off. There would be no Iolaus to save him this time.

  ‘You have one more question, Heracles.’

  He glared at the serpent, his eyes burning with the fire of his wrath.

  ‘Ask it then, damn you!’

  The monster’s forked tongue slithered out from its mouth and flickered at the air, though whether it was an expression of fear at Heracles’s anger or joy at his agony was impossible to tell.

  ‘Very well. Answer this question and I will give you the golden apples you seek. Who plotted the murder of your sons?’

  The question surprised him, it was so easy. His rage subsided and he frowned at Ladon.

  ‘Copreus gave my housekeeper the mushrooms that sent me mad. He wanted revenge because I killed his father. It was he who planned I should take my boys’ lives.’

  The serpent gave a long hiss. One by one, the other heads withdrew towards the base of the tree, sinking into the grass and taking the forms of gnarled and twisted roots, exactly as they had been before Heracles’s arrival woke them from their slumber. Only one head remained.

  ‘Your answer is incorrect,’ she said, before joining her sisters.

  * * *

  Iolaus unyoked the horses from the chariot and led them to the river. After they had drunk their fill, he tethered them to a tree where they could feed on the grass. It was pleasantly cool in the shade of the forest, and sitting on the roots of an ancient oak, he lowered his head into his hands and thought of Megara.

  There was no escape from their first kiss. For all his desperate loyalty to his uncle, and for all her desire to restore her marriage and return a resemblance of normality to her wrecked life, their ideals had never stood a hope against the intimacy of that moment. For his part, he had always loved her; for hers, she needed new love to wipe away the tears of the old. That moment of intimacy had torn down the curtain of denial they had been hiding behind, and there was no putting it back again. They had seen each other’s desire, and their love of Heracles could not pull them back from it.

  That same night, they had made love in Megara’s marriage bed. They repeated the act many times during the months that followed, a physical expression of their emotional need for each other. At first, both felt a sense of betrayal to Heracles that meant they had to fight through their guilt before and after their lovemaking. For Megara, the shame was shorter-lived – made easier by the fact her husband had murdered her children, and her guilt would always be eclipsed by his. But for Iolaus, it was harder to accept. He thanked the gods for giving her to him, and railed at them that she was the wife of the man he honoured and loved with all his heart.

  He also knew that one day his uncle would return to Tiryns with the cattle of Geryon, and when that day came, he would have to face him and tell him that he and Megara had fallen in love. There would be little point in trying to hide what had happened. Indeed, he did not want to. He wanted to be free to claim Megara for his own, not be forced to conceal their love from the world. So it was up to him to convince Heracles that they had not acted perfidiously, or sought to hurt him, but that they had simply fallen in love. If his uncle was the man he hoped he was, he would accept that these were the threads the Fates had spun for them. If not, Iolaus would have to face his infamous anger and live or die under the consequences.

  And then, many months later, the news arrived that Heracles had, at last, returned to Greece. Iolaus had his chariot made ready at once, intent on setting out for Tiryns before the first light of dawn. He had said nothing of his intentions to Megara, knowing she would try to stop him. As he looked at her, asleep beneath the bedclothes, he was possessed by the terrible realization he would probably never see her again. Then he kissed her gently on her hair and crossed to the door.

  ‘Don’t do it, Iolaus,’ he heard her say. Turning, he saw her propped up on one elbow, staring at him. ‘He will kill you.’

  ‘I must,’ he said. ‘He’ll find out anyway.’

  ‘He doesn’t have to.’

  ‘But he will. And do you want to hide what we have? Should we love each other in secret and live in fear of being found out?’

  ‘No. Never. But he doesn’t have to find out yet. Now isn’t the time.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ he said, returning and sitting on the bed beside her. ‘I love him as much as I love you. I can’t… I can’t dishonour him by living a lie.’

  He could see the fear in her eyes as she reached out and touched his cheek. They should have discussed this long ago, he realized, but both had avoided it. It was the one shadow over their love, and neither wanted to shatter their illusion of joy. He had forced himself to mention the possibility of Heracles’s return once, but she had placed her finger over her lips and shook her head; and he had been happy to pretend with her that their happiness would never be threatened. But the thought had always been there, haunting him. And, it seemed, Megara too.

  ‘Honour and dishonour have nothing to do with this,’ she said. ‘They’re such cold notions. So distant from real emotion. Iolaus, I love you. If you rush off to tell him what we’ve done, how do you expect him to react? He’s been gone for over half a year, faced who knows how many trials and horrors, and then his most loyal and beloved friend tells him that he has slept with his wife. He’ll kill you, and who could blame him? And then what would happen to me? Do you not care for the woman who loves you? Don’t you care that I’ve already seen my children murdered and lost their father with them? I couldn’t face losing you, too – not now we’ve found such happiness together.’

  ‘I… I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t thought—’

  ‘No, you hadn’t. But I have – long and hard, even if we’ve avoided talking about his return. And I love him, too. No, not as I used to – that passion died with my children. But I don’t blame him for what happened any more. He was a victim, too, and he has suffered more than any of us, even me. I want to see him released from that. That’s why I considered reconciling our marriage, in the hope it might bring some sort of healing for us both. Then I kissed you, and I realized I could never find healing with Heracles, or him with me. Iolaus, he has to finish the labours. Realizing he isn’t personally responsible for our sons’ deaths isn’t enough on its own: he has to know the gods have released him from his guilt. If he learns about us before all the tasks are complete, he could lose heart. I’ve seen him when his mood is at its lowest ebb, when he stops believing in himself. Such a blow could take away his will to succeed. Do you see?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, taking her hand in his. ‘Yes, of course. But if he completes the labours, we still—’

  ‘Still have to tell him about us, I know. And when the time is right, we will. First we have to earn his blessing – show him that we still love him, so that in time he will come to accept that you and I are in love and want to be together.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘You must let him see your loyalty and earn his gratitude. Iolaus, you must go to him and help him with the remaining labours.’

  Iolaus was roused from his thoughts by a faint clanging. Sitting up, he leaned around the trunk of the oak and looked up the slope. The only movement was among the shadows on the forest floor, as the breeze swept through the branches above. But the hollow chiming of the bells was coming closer, and with it the bleating of goats. Standing, he took his sword from the chariot, strapped the scabbard over his back and hid.

  The first animal appeared among the trees higher up the hillside, its black and white coat making
it difficult to distinguish among the dappled patches of sunshine. Ignorant of his presence, it picked a path down to the space between the trees where his chariot lay and his horses were chewing the cud. Another animal emerged behind it, bleating loudly, and was soon joined by several others. They followed the first down the slope, gathering at the riverbank as they bent down to drink.

  A series of whistles broke the monotony of the flock’s cries, and was followed by a female voice, the words too distant to make out. A second voice answered – also female – and was joined by the laughter of others. Glancing up, Iolaus saw a flash of colour flitting between the patches of shade. A tall young woman with coppery red hair and a blue, knee-length dress was striding down the slope, her pale limbs swinging about as she zigzagged between the trees.

  ‘Wait, Arethusa!’

  A second woman appeared, running lightly down the slope after her. She wore a dark-green dress, similar in length and simplicity to the other’s, and her hair was a pale yellow that turned to gold whenever the sunlight touched it. Iolaus had never seen such lightly coloured hair, and watched her approach with amazement. Arethusa waited for her, hands on hips as more goats swept around her on their way down to the river.

  ‘Where is Hesperie?’ she asked.

  ‘Waiting for the rest of the flock. Will you bathe with me, sister?’

  They followed the goats down the incline. The similarity in their features was more obvious as they came closer, though Arethusa’s expression was thoughtful and serious, whereas her sister’s seemed carefree. Then Arethusa grabbed her hand and pointed.

  ‘Horses! Do you see them, Aegle?’

  Aegle’s smile disappeared and she peered into the gloom.

  ‘But who can they belong to?’

  ‘They belong to me,’ Iolaus said, stepping out from behind the tree.

  Aegle gave a shocked scream. Arethusa stepped in front of her. A small knife was in her belt, but she had no bow or shepherd’s staff with which to defend herself.