As we sail close to one of the smoky pillars, Charon reaches out a bony claw and scoops a fistful of ash from it. A few stray cinders fly away. The undead ferryman brings the ash to his mouth and eats it, staining his yellow teeth and leathery fingers soot-black.
I notice he doesn’t eat the cinders; they break free and drift toward the ceiling as Hannah continues, “It’s up to each soul, each ghost, to decide what’s right for them. And it’s not like they can’t change their minds, so some choose to experience all kinds of things…”
I point up. “What about those cinders? The ones that just broke free?” I watch as they reach the volcanic ceiling, stick, then fade away.
Hannah cranes her neck to follow my finger. “Oh, those? They’re souls who found hope and fanned it into a flame, ambition strong enough to break free and move on. When they reach the ceiling, they’re sent to Tartarus for processing, just like any other newly arrived soul.”
“So the Pillars aren’t eternal punishment?” Mark asks.
“Nothing is, unless you want it to be.” Her familiar caws and bobs its beak in agreement.
“And the souls Charon just ate?” I ask.
Hannah shrugs. “They were never going to break free. Charon simply ended their pain.”
My jaw drops. “Seriously? By eating them?”
“By transferring their energy to something useful—to him. How else do you think a living mummy could get by? Especially one who poles a boat all day?”
“We all gotta eat,” I agree, but it’s more to be polite than anything. I flash Charon a smile—a smile that freezes on my face when I notice the soot marks on his teeth slowly absorb into him. His teeth are no longer yellow but gleaming white, the color of a carcass freshly picked clean.
“I’ll be glad to get out of this place,” Mark says.
“Yeah,” I say. “Me too.”
Hannah shakes her head. “Bit gloomy for you, huh? I thought you were a scholar, Mark? Don’t you find all this interesting?”
“Oh, it’s interesting,” Mark says. “Maybe I’ll feel more like studying it later. You know, when I’m dead.”
“Plenty of time then,” Hannah agrees. Unlike Mark and me, she isn’t unsettled by this creepy stuff at all. And why should she be? She grew up here. Soul-eating mummies, hundred-handed giants, these are all normal to her, and maybe what’s normal to us is weird to her.
And that makes me wonder… If I’d been raised here by Cronus, how different would I be? What makes a man a man, or a Titan a Titan? Is it nature or nurture? Or is it both? I don’t have those answers, but I know I will by the time our quest is done. And that’s what scares me. I’ve spent a lot of time lately wondering what I am, and now that I know, I wonder what kind of Titan I’ll be…
I know there are good and bad examples, like Cronus, who would eat his own children, and Prometheus, who would help mankind by teaching them how to make fire. Not all the Titans sided with Cronus before, but those who defied him didn’t end well. Zeus and the other Olympians seemed to have a short memory, and even shorter gratitude. Many of the Titans who sided with them had been betrayed. And yet here I am, a Titan, thinking of helping an Olympian… What other choice do I have?
I would never betray them, but after we succeed in defeating Cronus and the rest, what will stop Hades from betraying me? I look at Hannah and wonder. But it isn’t Hannah or her father I have to worry about now. It’s the menacing shape I see breaking the surface…
Before I can even get a warning out, the river monster raises its massive head, a head that looks like a melted crab crossed with a squid. A head attached to a long, eel-like body covered in spines and armor-like scales. It has dead black eyes on stalks, and four long whisker-like tentacles. They branch out from its upper lip, two to each side, each ending in a barbed stinger. The tentacles are translucent and gruesome green liquid pumps through the veins: poison to fuel the stingers. And the mouth… the mouth has teeth like daggers. It looks like a nightmare and sounds like a scream.
“Look out!” I cry as the monster rushes toward us. If it hits the boat, we’ll be capsized, thrown into the inky water with it and no shore to swim to. But right before it hits us, the creature veers violently to the left and away. Our boat rocks a little in its wake, but that’s it. I stare after the beast, wondering why it changed its mind, and if it will change it again and circle back.
“What the hell was that?” Mark demands. He’s gone pale with fright and looks how I feel.
“Relax,” Hannah says. “We’re safe. It can’t hurt us. Charon’s boat is safe against attack from monsters or anything else. My dad laid the magic wards himself. Their protection is good for another thousand years, if not forever.”
“You, uh, didn’t mention there were river monsters,” Mark says. “Is there anything else you haven’t told us?”
Hannah smiles in reply. “If I’d stopped to warn you about everything we’re going to meet, we’d still be back on the shore. You might not have even gotten in the boat.”
“But we did,” I say, “and I can see where the river monsters might have slipped your mind, seeing as how they can’t hurt us.”
“Exactly! As long as we stay in the boat, nothing can hurt us. Too bad we have to get out of it sometime.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Too bad.” As we sail out of the cavern, I give a lingering look at the Pillars of Ash. There’s no sign of the monster, and even the light of the cinders fades away.
One monster down, a million more to go.
5
WE’RE HEROES, RIGHT?
Our boat’s back in the tunnels. Charon poles us along, faster now that he’s fed. Above us, in the dark recesses of the ceiling, a curtain of cobwebs hangs down, sighing in the chill breeze like the tapestry to some forgotten dream.
I turn to watch the web after we pass, wondering.
Hannah raises an eyebrow. “Afraid of spiders?”
“Only giant ones.”
She laughs. “Those are the ones to be afraid of.”
“So, um… We won’t have to pass through the gates of Tartarus to get to the Garden of Bone, will we? I don’t want to deal with both of Gyges’ brothers if we don’t have to.”
“We won’t,” Hannah says. “There’s the front gate all the souls pass through—and most everyone else—and then there’s the back gates only a few people know about. We’re using one of those.”
“How many secret gates are there?”
Hannah shoots me a look. “One, so far as you know.”
“Who else knows about the gate? Does Cronus?”
“No, Andrus, Cronus doesn’t know. He’s not omniscient. He only knows what he sees for himself or what others tell him, as much as he’d like everyone to believe otherwise. That’s not to say he isn’t incredibly clever or well-informed, but if Cronus had known about this gate, he wouldn’t have let me use it to slip back and forth between Earth and Tartarus all these years, now would he?”
“No, I guess not. I suppose the river monsters discourage anyone from looking for it.”
She grins. “Oh, yeah! And that was one of the smaller ones.”
I don’t even want to think about that. It’s not so much that I’m scared as I don’t know exactly how much power I have and how quickly I can use it up. I don’t want to waste it fighting random monsters. At least that’s what I tell myself. The truth is, I’m scared. But not just for myself: for my friends, for my parents, for everyone back on Earth. What my friends and I are doing is important, the most important thing anyone’s ever done, and if we screw it up… Well, it won’t come to that. It can’t.
We’re heroes, right?
Up ahead, I see an outcropping of rock rising up from the river. That’s not unusual, but what’s embedded in it is: long white spiky crystals. “Slow down,” I tell Charon. “Angle us over to that rock.”
“What’s up?” Hannah asks.
“Crystals.”
“Oh yeah,” Mark says. “Good idea! You need to rearm
yourself. That was pretty badass the way you shot those crystals from your hand to take out those harpies.”
I grin at the memory. “It was, wasn’t it? That makeshift armor I made worked out pretty good too. Nessus would have messed me up otherwise.”
“It sucks we had to flee,” Mark says. “You would have won, I know it.”
“The quest is more important,” Hannah interrupts. “What use is it to win one battle and lose the war?”
The witch has a point.
Charon brings us to the outcropping and I reach out to grab the crystals. Before I can touch them, they slide out of the rock and fly into my outstretched hands. OK, that’s new, but I like it. Some of the crystals I grind by squeezing them in my fists. I fuse these to my skin in an effort to repair the cracks in the gemstone and crystal armor covering my chest and shoulders. It was damaged when Nessus stabbed me in our duel, but only because he’d been using one of Ares’ magic swords.
“Your wound better?” Mark asks.
I rotate my arm and rub my shoulder. There’s a slight twinge, but not much. “I think so… Fast healing is one of the perks of being a Titan.”
“You should put that armor all over,” he suggests.
“I wish! But nah, man. There aren’t enough left to form a complete set of armor, and maybe that’s for the best. I’m not sure how wearing a full suit would affect my mobility. Gotta stay fast in a fight.”
“Yeah, I get it. Just don’t get hit in the back or the side.”
“Or anywhere else,” Hannah teases.
“Ha, ha. Duly noted.” I take the last three spikes and work them one at a time between the knuckles of my right hand. Through my connection to the earth, they slide right in. No blood, no pain. The perfect secret weapon.
“Those ought to come in handy,” Mark says.
I groan. It’s a weak joke, but there’s nothing else to laugh at down here, so I give it a few chuckles.
Hannah rolls her eyes. “You about ready, Rock Boy?”
“Almost.” I make a fist and will the spikes to reemerge. I hold them up and study them, still not used to my power. With a thought, the spikes retract. “OK,” I say. “We can go now.”
6
LET’S GO SAVE THE WORLD
Our detour stops at a rock wall. A dead end. Mark shouts a warning—a warning I echo—but Charon ignores our increasingly panicked cries.
Hannah doesn’t, but reacts with amusement. “Calm down, guys! It’s not what you think.”
“What do you mean? Tell Charon to stop! We’re going to hit the wall—” I brace for impact. Only we don’t hit it; we sail right through as if the wall doesn’t exist.
“It’s an illusion!” Mark says in surprise. “A trick meant to make trespassers turn back.”
“Close,” Hannah says. “Only it’s not an illusion. The wall’s real, but not for us—well, not for me, or for Charon.” Her raven familiar squawks and she scratches the back of his head. “And not for my precious Shadow. Basically, anyone Hades has granted permission to. And that extends to anyone inside Charon’s boat.”
I frown. “That’s why you’re taking us this way, isn’t it? Because you don’t want us to know about the other back doors? The ones anybody can use?”
“Look, Andrus, I like you, but we only met a few days ago.”
I blurt out, “It’s because I’m a Titan, isn’t it?”
Hannah doesn’t answer that. “Maybe this way isn’t faster, but it’s more secure. If I took you to another gate, one you say ‘anybody’ can use, what do you think would happen?”
I scowl. “We’d get to the Garden a lot faster!”
“Would we?”
“Well, sure! Except…”
She gives me a pointed look as sharp as any dagger. “Except what?”
“We’d get spotted.”
“Not just spotted, genius! We’d be up to our necks in monsters.”
“OK,” I persist, “but I need you to trust me.”
“I do… I trust you to fulfill the quest, but that doesn’t mean I trust you with all my secrets, especially the ones that aren’t mine to give. I’m loyal to my father, and this is his kingdom, not mine.”
I nod, not really liking her answer, but understanding it. “So how much further? Another few hours? Because it feels like we’ve been down here forever.”
“Not far,” Hannah replies. “Time flows differently in the underworld, slower. Days here equal hours there.”
“So we’ll come back to Earth soon after we left?” Mark asks.
“Well… It depends on how long this quest takes, but yeah, we shouldn’t be gone long.”
“So there’s still a chance?” Mark asks. “To save my sister? To save Lucy?”
“And my parents?” I add.
Hannah says, “Maybe… The faster we free my father, the better the chance of saving your loved ones.”
That seems to satisfy Mark, but I notice Hannah looks away when she says it, and I can’t tell if it’s because she’s hiding something or because she notices the pale gate that glows in the distance.
“Is that it?” Mark asks.
“It sure is,” Hannah says. “We made it!”
The gate is ghostly gray, mist-like: a magic portal. Charon steers us through. When we come out, we’re in Tartarus. The Kingdom of the Dead at last. It doesn’t look like much, just a small damp cove. The skeletal ferryman pulls us alongside an ancient stone dock.
“Thank you,” Hannah tells Charon. “My father and I appreciate the risk you’re taking on our behalf. Your loyalty will be rewarded.”
Charon fixes her with his sightless gaze then bows in a click and clatter of bones.
“Don’t worry, old friend. Once my father is free, you’ll be back in business ferrying souls in no time.”
“Yeah, thanks,” I say to Charon. “So are you going to wait here?”
The mummy shakes his head and points back the way we came.
“Why can’t he wait?” Mark asks Hannah. “I’d feel safer knowing he’s here.”
“Someone might get suspicious if he’s gone too long from the Styx. This little cove is warded and as “off the grid” as you can get. Besides, I can summon him if we need him again.”
“What do you mean ‘if’?” I ask.
“We might not be coming back this way. It depends.”
“On what?”
“On how successful we are.” Hannah climbs out of the boat onto the dock. She walks away as Mark and I look at each other, not sure what to do. When the witch doesn’t hear us following, Hannah looks back over her shoulder. “You two coming?”
“Yeah,” I say. “In a minute.” I turn to Mark and give him a quick pep talk to psych him up, but it’s really for both of us. “We got this, man. We’re going to march in there and kick some ass!”
“Monster ass?”
“Nah, not just monster ass. All the ass! Now come on, let’s go save the world.”
When we join Hannah at the far end of the dock, she holds out her hands to stop us from moving forward. “Getting here was the easy part,” she warns. “Everything we fought on Earth is nothing compared to what we’ll fight here. I want you both to know that, so let it sink in… This is an adventure, but it’s dangerous: another world, a world of monsters and magic you can’t even begin to imagine! And the stakes—”
“Mark and I know what the stakes are.”
She studies my face a moment, then nods. “I guess you do.” In a burst of feathers, her familiar launches from her shoulder and goes flapping down the rock passage. “I’m sending Shadow to scout ahead; our telepathic link will warn us of any danger he finds.” With that, she swirls her purple cloak around her and resumes walking.
Behind us, Charon guides the boat toward the gate. The living dead man doesn’t look back, and neither should I, but I do.
“When we get outside,” Hannah says, “we’ll be surrounded by ghosts. Act casual. They won’t know Mark is alive because of his ghost-mask, and they
won’t see me at all because my cloak makes me invisible to the dead. I’m too famous and easy to spot otherwise.”
“What about me?” I ask. “Won’t the ghosts notice I’m alive?”
She snorts. “You’re a Titan, remember? You aren’t really alive, not in a human sense.” When I scowl at her, she quickly adds, “I mean you don’t give off ‘living’ vibes like Mark would. They’ll just think you’re another ghost unless you do something stupid.” She gives me a stern look. “You’re not going to, right?”
“No.”
“OK, then. Nothing to worry about.”
We come to a dead end, but it doesn’t stay dead long. There’s a secret passage, one Hannah explains only she can open, and when the rock wall slides away, we step out into the Kingdom of the Dead.
7
EVERYTHING’S HUNGRY
The landscape of Tartarus varies, from jagged, barren rock to lush green valleys of fragrant moss. Gems blanket the cavernous ceiling like stars. Mushrooms carpet the floor. There are bats and rats, owls and ravens, lizards, spiders, and worms—every manner of creeping night-thing. Some are larger than any version on Earth, and we waste precious minutes hiding as a giant centipede crawls by, cruel jaws clicking, antennae waving like whips. Its three hundred legs march the blood-red body along like a hard-shelled army.
“We have to be careful,” Hannah warns. “Everything’s hungry down here, hungry for one thing or another… Life, death, knowledge, it doesn’t matter. Everything wants something, and most are good at getting what they want.”
“Are the insects and animals alive?” Mark asks. “Or are they ghosts too?”
“Oh, they’re alive. They feed on each other, or the vegetation. And some of them will feed on us if we’re not careful.”
“Like that centipede?”
“Yep. The bigger they are, the hungrier they get, and they can’t eat ghosts.”
Titan_Kingdom of the Dead_An Epic Novel of Urban Fantasy and Greek Mythology Page 3