by Bill Hiatt
“What if the lines blur at some point?” asked Alex, who knew more about Graeco-Roman mythology than any of us. “The Land of the Shades is sometimes said to be in the Underworld, sometimes adjacent to it. What if it’s a loophole, the one spot where beings could develop who were simultaneously Olympian and not. Such a being could leave the Olympian plane yet still be Olympian enough to have the right to invite others into Olympus.”
“But the Olympians can’t invite anyone who isn’t related to them,” objected Carlos.
“Oh, I get it,” said Stan. “The Populus Umbrae are the shadows of ancient Greeks and Romans. That’s why they’re eligible for an invite.”
Tal was looking very pleased with himself. “Lucas, I think I’m getting closer to understanding a vision I had right after I saw…you. I believe I know something about the nature of the imperator.”
“No one knows the true essence of the imperator,” objected Umbra. “It is unknowable.”
“By normal means, perhaps,” Tal conceded, “but visions can potentially provide the key to any knowledge, no matter how obscure.
“Alex, who is the Greek god of darkness?” As non sequiturs went, that was a pretty big one.
“Erebus,” one of the earliest beings to evolve out of chaos,” said Alex without having to think twice.
“I have…heard that name,” said Umbra, trembling, though whether with excitement or with fear, I couldn’t tell.
“Primal Olympian,” said Tal. “Vast, like the figure I saw in the vision. Now, Alex, imperator is a title in Latin that became the basis for what English word?”
“I need the SparkNotes,” stage-whispered Gordy in the background. I had to agree.
“Emperor,” said Alex.
“Within the great mass in my vision was a much smaller human figure, separate from, yet somehow part of, the mass.”
“One of the Roman emperors?” asked Carlos. “His shadow, I mean.”
“I think Erebus worked out a loophole to get around the seals of Olympus yet still retain his power. At some point he became a composite being, an exceptional case that broke all the normal rules. Then he extended his power through shadow magic all over the place, something no other Olympian could come close to doing.”
“If the theory that God sealed off the Olympians is correct, why would He allow a loophole?” asked Stan.
“I don’t know. Free will, maybe. Umbra, shadow assassins don’t just roam around, right?”
“No,” she said firmly. “They leave the Land of the Shades only in response to a contract.”
“Or a training mission,” I reminded her. Maybe I needed to stop picking at that old wound.
“Yes,” she agreed, “but to make the simulation complete, a contract is always drawn up.”
“Erebus adheres to rules based on someone else screwing up,” said Tal, even more pleased with himself. “Perhaps that’s why God allowed it. All we have to do is figure out Erebus’s rule set, and we might stand a chance of diverting him from assassination to a different purpose.”
“That doesn’t sound so easy,” said Eva.
“And we’re on the clock,” pointed out Shar. “We don’t have months to research.”
“Umbra, how are the Populus Umbrae paid for their contracts?” asked Tal, so wrapped up now I wasn’t even sure he heard Shar or Eva.
“The one he negotiated with Stan was supposed to be free, but normally the cost is paid in gold or other precious metals.”
“What does the imperator need gold for?” asked Tal.
“He does not really need it, I suppose. He just wants it.”
“I have an idea,” said Tal. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Several of the guys wanted to object, but Tal had a gateway to the Valley of Lost Things open and had passed through it so fast there wasn’t really time for further discussion.
“What just happened?” asked Gordy.
“Do I have to grow up to be that confusing?” asked Michael.
“I know where he’s going with this,” said Alex, looking pretty smug.
“Well, are you going to let the rest of us in on the secret?” asked Carlos.
“Erebus is the father of Charon—you know, the ferryman of the dead a lot of us met in the Underworld.”
“Uh, yeah,” said Gordy. “So?”
“Tal used the power of Zom to break down Charon’s magic resistance and got him to bend rules all over the place. The only one Tal couldn’t overcome was the fee. We still had to pay to get taken across the river.”
“So Tal wants to do the same thing with the imperator?”
“Now that we know it’s Erebus, I hope not,” said Alex. “On the Olympian plane, Erebus is one of the primeval forces, probably hundreds of times more powerful than Charon. It would be like using a fishing pole to try to hook a whale. I think Tal’s hoping Erebus’s desire for gold is strong enough to get him to disregard his other rules.”
“I would be a great deal happier with such a plan if it were not based so much on speculation,” said Arianrhod, probably impatient to get her nephew rescued. “We know not if the imperator even truly is this Erebus.”
“No, but Tal is seldom wrong,” said Alex. “And who better to rule over a land of shadow than the living embodiment of darkness? Assuming we’re right to think the imperator has to be an Olympian, Erebus is the logical choice.”
Tal came back in about twenty minutes, soaking wet and carrying what turned out to be a lost pirate treasure chest. By the look of things, he had needed to dig it out of the ocean floor. He stuck around only long enough to get dry, then hurried off again. He came back fifteen times more, each with some lost treasure he’d found by traveling to it through the Valley of Lost Things.
After number fifteen, he plopped down in a chair, exhausted.
“Stan, about how much is the price for gold these days?”
“As if I know the current gold price off the top of my head,” said Stan.
“You totally do,” said Tal, smiling.
“Around one thousand three hundred ninety-two dollars and sixty cents an ounce, I guess.”
“You guess!” Gordy said, snorting a little afterward.
Tal closed his eyes, then opened them in a few minutes.
“Based on weight, then, we have enough gold now to exceed the fortune of Crassus, the wealthiest of all Romans.”
I knew he hadn’t just been resting, but I didn’t realize he had been somehow weighing the gold by magic.
“That should make a nice offer,” Tal continued. “Umbra, can you set up a meeting with the imperator?”
“No one meets with the imperator!” said Umbra, shocked.
“Not even such an important client as me?” asked Tal, smirking.
“You don’t mean in the Land of the Shades, surely,” said Eva.
“No, I’m inspired right now, not crazy. If the meeting doesn’t go well, I don’t want to be surrounded by thousands of shadow assassins. If Lady Arianrhod will be kind enough to dim the lights, I will stand near the darkest shadow in the room, and the imperator and I will converse from there, he on his side, and I on mine.”
“It does not sound wise to invite such a being into my dwelling,” said Arianrhod.
“My lady, all you have to do if he makes some unexpected threat is raise the light in the chamber pretty high, and if he has crossed over, he’ll be forced back. Umbra, why don’t you pay the imperator a visit and ask if he can see me now? Oh, and either way, please bring back a copy of our contract.”
Umbra pretty clearly thought Tal was crazy, and Arianrhod wasn’t too far from drawing the same conclusion herself. Nonetheless, Arianrhod agreed to dim the lights, and Umbra reluctantly passed through one of the shadows. She was gone nearly an hour, probably weaving her way through whatever bureaucracy the Land of the Shades had, but finally she returned, carrying an ancient piece of parchment and looking as surprised as she had probably ever looked in her whole life.
“The imperator has agreed to
meet with you,” said Umbra. “He will appear in one half hour in that shadow over there.” She pointed at one of the corners.
“Thanks, Umbra,” said Tal, taking the parchment and sitting down at the table. “Shar and Alex, why don’t you look this over with me? You can both tap into ancient Greek knowledge, so you might pick up on something I miss. Umbra, I’ll need you, too, in case I have a question about the way the imperator does business.”
The three of them quickly joined him. He read each paragraph in its original Latin, which he and Umbra could both understand, then translated into Greek for Shar and Alex. I wished he was translating into English so we could all understand, but I wasn’t really a lawyer or an expert on the Greeks and Romans, so I probably couldn’t have contributed much anyway.
Unfortunately, the interval when Tal and his ancient history advisors were discussing the contract gave Arianrhod a chance to approach me.
Being the new guy, I hadn’t met the Olympians or any of the faerie rulers. I found Phul intimidating, to say the least. Arianrhod wasn’t quite as bad, but under her beautiful appearance, I sensed resolve like steel. She was not used to taking no for an answer.
“I fear you may have sidetracked your group,” she said, looking at me in a very judgmental way.
“What do you mean?” I asked, though I had a pretty good idea where she going with that statement.
“You refused to release your past self, even though you know you could help your fellow warriors triumph. Then you convince Taliesin not to take the aid of the shadow assassins, though they are mighty and could also have contributed to a victory. Now he is attempting to bargain with an ancient force that may not well receive his efforts.”
Before I could say anything, Gabriela, wearing her middle-aged look, came over and jumped to my defense.
“It is not for you to criticize my bisneto. He did what he thought was right, just as you would.”
“That is so,” conceded Arianrhod, “but the times may not allow for the luxury of an overly tender conscience. Destruction threatens us from many sides. Perhaps when the Encante itself is under attack, you will feel differently.”
Gabriela stiffened at that last line but did not at first respond. However, by now Gordy was also lumbering over to take my side.
“My lady, we are not like soldiers sworn to obey our commander,” he said. “It is our custom not to force people to go against their conscience.”
“I thought I was dealing with men who understood war, not with boys,” said Arianrhod, eyes cold as outer space. Without waiting for a response, she walked quickly away to hover near Tal.
“A lot of supernaturals are used to a society more like what the Middle Ages had,” said Gordy. “Ones that know us really well, like Gwynn, kind of understand us, or at least humor us, but a lot of them just don’t get us at all.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Was she right, though?”
Gordy looked as serious as I had ever seen him outside of combat. “I can’t say for sure, but you wouldn’t be the first of us to have qualms about something. Tal told me about his conversation with Saint Brendan, a little chat they had some time before we fought Nicneven the first time. Brendan told him if something didn’t feel right, Tal should look for a different way to get the job done. You know what? Tal found one.”
Of all the guys, Gordy was the easiest one for me to relate to, and he did make me feel better. It was a good thing someone did. Every so often I could feel Arianrhod’s condemning gaze on me. I didn’t give her the satisfaction of looking back, though.
Tal and the others who had reviewed the contract were talking excitedly. Evidently, Tal found language he though would suit his purpose. However, I could tell toward the end of the conversation that more was going on than just that. Tal called over Jimmie, Stan, Khalid, Eva, and Arianrhod; he spoke to them a little above a whisper, just in case someone was listening from a nearby shadow.
There wasn’t a doubt in my mind. Tal had a backup plan in case Erebus rejected the renegotiation.
When the half hour was nearly up, I helped the other guys carry the gold over to near the shadow where the imperator was set to appear. Tal opened the various chests and containers, which, since most of them didn’t come with keys, involved burning some of them open with White Hilt. Then he made a conscious display of them behind him, so that the imperator could not miss seeing them. After that, the guys arranged themselves in what was obviously a carefully planned way. Tal stood immediately opposite the shadow, with Shar on one side and Jimmie on the other. Stan and Alex stayed close, and Khalid hovered farther back but in such a way he could take a shot at the shadow if need be.
I came to the nerve-racking realization that Tal was arranging them for possible combat. The people closest to him were the ones with the weapons most likely to be effective against the imperator and his minions. Jimmie’s sword had sunlight in it; Shar’s had antimagic properties; both of them could become like ray weapons in Tal’s hands, as could his own White Hilt. The sword of chaos Alex held could disrupt anything, probably even a shadow assassin. If Stan let David take over, his sword became endowed with some special blessing from God. Khalid’s arrows were also blessed, by God and by Helios, among others.
Was Tal actually thinking of trying to fight one of the primal forces of the Olympian plane? Could we win a battle like that?
And if we didn’t, would it be my fault?
Arianrhod made the room midnight dark, with only the constellation murals and moon image providing a small sliver of light. For better or worse, we were ready.
Well, almost. It was hard to move around in the nearly complete darkness, but I managed to maneuver myself pretty close to Tal. If there had to be a fight, I owed it to him—to everyone—to help out.
“Who summons me?” asked a voice that somehow sounded like a whisper and a shout at the same time.
The imperator had arrived. If I concentrated, I could see something in the shadow.
“‘Summon’ makes it sound as if I ordered you here, oh great Imperator,” said Tal. “I requested your presence, and I am honored you were able to gratify my request.”
“Why did you ‘request’ my presence, then?” asked the imperator. The voice itself didn’t convey much emotion, but I sensed impatience. Negotiations apparently were handled by underlings, not by the big shadow himself.
“My friends spoke hastily when they agreed to this contract,” said Tal, holding up the parchment.
“You intend to break it?” asked the imperator. I felt menace far stronger than the impatience of a moment ago.
“I do not speak of breaking anything, Imperator. I ask that it be amended.”
“We do not amend once a deal has been struck,” replied the imperator with a finality like death’s.
“Yet this deal has been built on flexibility,” argued Tal. “The name of the target is not yet specified. Is it not so that until that specification, the deal is not final?”
There was a long pause, so long I thought my nerve endings were going to tingle themselves silly. Finally the imperator said, “We have agreed in principle that there is a contract, but yes, the contract language is not final.” The acknowledgment was grudging, but I did feel the sense of immediate menace recede.
“Here is what I propose,” said Tal. “The original contract was to have been performed gratis. To compensate you for the amendment, great Imperator, I offer you a sum of gold greater than the wealth of the richest citizen in all of Roman history.” He stood aside to allow Erebus to take in the carefully made display of open chests, each bulging with gold.
“What would you have in exchange for all this gold?” asked Erebus. This time I felt genuine eagerness behind the words. Tal’s strategy might just work.
“In lieu of an assassination, I ask instead for safe passage through your realm to Tartarus. I also ask that you permit this girl to leave the Populus Umbrae and rejoin the human race.”
“If I amend the contract as you ask, how t
hen are we to rebuild our reputation as assassins, so badly damaged by you and your warriors?” asked the imperator.
“The Populus Umbrae can find much more…lucrative employment in other ways,” suggested Tal. “There are many requests for assassination, I am sure, but there would be far more for information or safe passage. Your shadows can go anywhere unobserved. They are perfect spies. Their ability to pull others with them, even from realm to realm, would be invaluable to someone wishing to escape. The assassination business will pale in comparison.”
“Why may I not contract for rescues, spying, and assassinations?” asked Erebus. “Would not all three be better than just two?”
Tal sighed. “I see I must revise my proposed deal, then. All this gold for the girl, safe passage to Tartarus…and your oath on the Styx to prohibit your shadows from killing anyone ever again.”
Erebus laughed. I hoped I never had to hear a laugh so cruel again.
“You would need far more gold to make such a deal.”
“How much?” asked Tal. He was nothing if not gutsy. Who else would do this kind of give-and-take with a being who could crush him like an insect?
“A thousand times what you have offered.” Those words had a very nonnegotiable feel to them.
“Done,” said Tal. “It will take me time to assemble so much, but have we an agreement in principle?”
There was a long-enough pause that someone holding his breath would have died from lack of oxygen. I suspected Erebus had set the price at a level he believed no one would pay.
“Can Tal actually come up with that much?” I whispered to Gordy.
“I guess he can keep finding treasure through the Valley of Lost Things, but at the rate he was working before, it would take him like a year to do it.” I could tell Gordy wasn’t thrilled with that idea.
Finally Erebus spoke again. “Even a thousand times what you offered could still not compensate for the loss of assassination contracts for all eternity. I make this counter offer: the gold for the girl and for safe passage through my realm to Tartarus—but you must still select a target for assassination as well.”
Since the whole point of the exercise was to get the shadows out of the assassination business, or at least avoid helping to promote it, I knew there was no way Tal would take that deal—but what else could he do now?