Hellequin Chronicles 4: Prison of Hope

by Steve McHugh

  “Yes, my lord,” Cerberus said, although he clearly disagreed with the assessment.

  “And don’t call me that; it sounds stupid.”

  Cerberus smiled, only slightly, but enough to show that Hades had won and gotten his way.

  “Are we ready?” Hades asked the guardians around the realm gate.

  A lanky woman, with long green and yellow hair glanced back. “Yes, Lord Hades, all is prepared.”

  “What about the explosives?” I asked.

  “They weren’t detonated on the other end,” the woman said. “No danger to the gate. Looks like we caught the attackers before they could do any serious damage.”

  “Okay, let’s get this done then,” Cerberus said and motioned for the guardians to begin.

  The tall woman placed a hand against the runes carved onto the wood and rock that made up the gate’s structure, and the dark green runes burst to life, bathing the room in color. The mass of emptiness in the center of the gate changed to a shimmering mass of different colors, which shifted and merged before revealing Tartarus.

  “I know I worked at the compound, but I’ve never been to Tartarus,” Lucie said. “Not in all my years here.”

  “Well this is going to be quite the educational trip then,” Sky said, and we stepped through the realm gate.

  CHAPTER 18

  Tartarus does not look like the fiery pits of hell where the eternal souls of the damned are sent to burn for their sins. However, on first entering the realm, it does look ominous and dark. A giant lake sits a little ways from the realm gate, and an almost constant, thick mist rolls over the still waters, coming up as far as the realm gate and blocking out a lot of the brightness from the sun. Once past the mists, though, the realm opens into one of rolling hills, mountains in the far reaches of the land, and immaculate coastal areas where the inhabitants swim and fish. It’s pretty close to a lot of people’s idea of paradise. So long as you’re okay with the griffins.

  In mythology, griffins have the head and front half of an eagle and tail and back half of a lion. They walk around on all fours and guard treasure. They’re also about as intelligent as your average eagle or lion and tend to eat people who get too close.

  The reality is about the same except for two key areas. First, they’re smarter than most people I know and can speak without problem, usually in many languages; and second, they walk around on two feet. The top half is all eagle, with beak, feather-covered arms and hands that look like bird feet with talons the size of kitchen knives, while their bottom half is lion, with tail, fur, and paws.

  They’re an odd sight when you first see them, especially considering they have wings, the span of which would comfortably put two full-grown men in its shadow. It’s odder still when you consider that they’re the apex predator in Tartarus and often go hunting some of the larger creatures that live in the forests and mountain ranges that are scattered over the landscape. And Hades put them in charge of guarding the realm.

  That’s not to say the griffins are cruel or particularly unpleasant, but they have a very rigid code of honor and see things in a very black-and-white way. On the one hand, it means that everyone under their charge is treated the same, but on the other, it means that those who cross them are dealt with harshly, no matter the crime. In the thousands of years that Tartarus has been a place to put political prisoners and those who are allowed to live out their lives away from Avalon, there have been three executions. None of those killed received anything close to a good death.

  The realm gate on the Tartarus side sat on a small platform beside a large hut made from massive stone blocks and wood cut from the forest behind the gate. Stairs led a hundred feet down into the mists below, where people waited to be taken to the inhabited part of the realm.

  One of the griffins stood outside the hut beside us, its golden and silver armor gleaming in the mist. Over six feet tall, and hugely muscular, with dark brown feathers on his top half and an almost caramel-colored fur on his lower, the griffin, like all of his kind, was an imposing sight. The fact that he carried a spear that was in excess of his own height by a few feet, with a razor-sharp blade on one end, enhanced the impressive sight, as did the shiny black talons and bright red beak, both of which could easily have torn flesh from bone.

  “Welcome to Tartarus,” the griffin said. The first time I’d arrived in Tartarus, I’d expected them to have screechy, high-pitched bird voices, and when they spoke in their own language to one another, it did sound like birds chirping, with the occasional low growl. But when speaking in a human tongue, they copied the accent of the language and spoke in a much lower humanlike tone, which gave the slightly weird side effect of them all having British accents when they spoke English.

  Lucie introduced the three of us, and the griffin bowed his head slightly. “My name is hard to say in anything but our own language. But you can call me Lorin.”

  “What is your language called?” Lucie asked, the interest in her voice clear to hear.

  “Ah, we don’t have a name for it. Someone once suggested that we name it after the eagles in your land, but we are not eagles, we are something more.” Lorin turned to me. “We have not met before, although you did meet my father, Arandi, on your last visit here. Apparently there was some . . . difficulty with one of the residents.”

  “Atlas,” I said. “He’s probably not going to be happy to see me.”

  “He is rarely happy to see anyone, but I’ve been told he’s working at the mine. You should manage to avoid him, unless he discovers you’re here and decides to make his presence known.”

  “And what happens then?” Sky asked.

  “We will intervene if necessary, but you will not kill him.” Lorin stared at me. “I know of your reputation.”

  “How’s your father?” I asked, quickly changing the subject.

  “Good, thank you. I’ll let you make your way. The boatman will take you across the lake to the village.”

  Sky nodded. “Thanks very much.”

  “I have one question,” I said, as Sky and Lucie began to set off. “How’d Cronus escape?”

  Lorin appeared less than happy to have to answer the question. “We don’t know.” His eyes narrowed in anger. “It’s being investigated. As soon as we know, a report will be given to Hades.”

  “Thank you,” I said and walked off to join Lucie and Sky. We descended the stairs, the mist becoming thick and obscuring the farther down we went, until you could barely see more than a foot or two in front of your face.

  Lit lanterns had been placed every few feet on the journey down, which helped enough to ensure you didn’t slip on the uneven steps as you made your way down to the shore of the lake. The farther down we went, the less the sun penetrated the mist, and it wasn’t long before the lanterns were the only source of light available to us.

  A pier had been built on the shoreline, and a small hut placed on top with a rowing boat beside it. Dozens of lanterns on wooden poles lit the area, but it was still dark and foreboding. I’d been to more inviting crypts. As we got closer to the pier, the sound of the water lapping against the bank of the lake became all you could hear; then a voice, shrouded in the thick mist, called out from the pier.

  “Who goes there?” The voice was deep and rumbling.

  “It’s Sky,” she called back. “We need to get across the lake.”

  “You’d best come here then,” the voice responded.

  The three of us made our way onto the pier, where we were greeted by a tall, thin man wearing dark leather amour that reminded me of the Faceless I’d seen back at the compound; an identical cloak billowed out behind him as the winds on the pier whipped around us. A long, gray beard obscured most of his face, but his eyes burned the color of molten metal.

  “Charon,” I said as he looked each of us over.

  “Is that Nathan Garrett? I figured you’d be dead by now.”

  “Sorry to disappoint,” I said with a smile.

  “Not disappointed,
son, just surprised. You had a tendency to piss off the wrong people.”

  “It’s more of a hobby these days,” I stated. “You still ferrying souls to and from this place?”

  “We all have our penance to pay. This is mine.”

  “Why does he look so old?” Lucie whispered. “Isn’t he the son of Erebus?”

  The mention of the name Erebus made me remember something, a conversation I’d had recently, although I couldn’t remember the details and wasn’t even sure if it had actually happened or I’d dreamed it. I pushed the thought aside. “The water ages you,” I told her. “It’s why no one swims in it. Even the tiniest bit ingested will cause you to lose part of your life and age you. Charon has done this job for over four thousand years, since the Titans were first placed here. He took their side in the war, so his punishment was to ferry people. Forever.”

  “And he drinks the water?”

  “I started to,” Charon said, making Lucie jump slightly. “I’m not deaf, girl.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend,” she told him.

  Charon waved her off. “I’d been doing this job for a millennia when I decided to start drinking the water and take my own life by the natural death of old age. Unfortunately, I learned too late that it takes a percentage of your life, until it can’t take anymore. It doesn’t kill you—just ages you physically. So now I’m stuck looking like this.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lucie said.

  Charon shrugged. “I still have the energy of someone much younger than I appear. Hades tried to suggest I get someone else to do the ferrying, but I’ll be damned if I give someone else my boat.”

  “What’s with the armor?” I asked.

  Charon smiled. Maybe. There was a lot of beard in the way, so it was hard to tell for sure. “Hades gave it to me. I needed something better than those old rags I used to wear. I’ve got a dozen sets. Apparently Avalon keeps giving them to Hades for a Faceless he doesn’t have.”

  Hades had never liked the idea of the Faceless and refused to have one join his organization, despite repeated requests by Avalon members for him to have one. I always got the impression that he found the idea of a masked man at his beck and call distasteful and counterproductive to having people place trust in him.

  We all climbed down into the sizeable wooden boat, which could have easily fit twenty people. Charon removed the thick rope used as the mooring line, before sitting in the middle of the boat and taking hold of the grips on the two wooden oars. He used one to push the boat away from the dock, and within a few seconds he’d settled into a slow, deliberate pattern of rowing.

  “What’s that?” Lucie asked as we moved farther away from the shoreline into the deep waters of the lake.

  She was sitting beside me and had spotted something on the shore beside us, just before the narrow neck of the lake opened up into the massive expanse of water between the main town and the realm gate.

  I turned my head and immediately spotted the thirty-foot hill nearby. Two huge wooden crosses sat atop it.

  “That’s Traitors Mound,” Charon said, following my gaze. “When Pandora escaped she had two griffins help carry her across the lake and get her through the gate.”

  “Are the griffins guardians too?” Lucie asked. “Did one of them open the gate for Pandora?”

  “A few are,” Charon told her. “These two griffins overpowered the guardian there, and one of them opened the gate. Pandora bewitched some people in the control room, which allowed her to escape into your realm. The griffins returned back to town to accept their fate. They were crucified on that mound, their wings nailed to those crosses, their screams easy to hear over the lake as their questioning took place.”

  “Why?” Lucie asked. “Pandora bewitched them too, so why go so far? I didn’t hear about any of this after what happened in Germany.”

  “They weren’t bewitched,” I said. “Griffins can’t be affected by magical or mental abilities. It’s why Tartarus was chosen as a place to put the Titans. They helped her of their own free will.”

  “It’s been kept quiet, something that will continue,” Sky said, glaring at Lucie. “The fact that two griffins knowingly helped Pandora escape is not something Avalon needed to be aware of.”

  “They could have helped,” Lucie said.

  “But they wouldn’t,” I informed her. “They’d let it slip, and certain people would start to involve themselves, and the whole thing would fall apart. The rest of the griffins hate those two. Not just for betraying them, but for betraying Hades. They’d never work for anyone else—especially if Hera tried to start telling them what to do. Four griffins died because of Pandora’s escape; getting Avalon involved would have made things worse.”

  “Four?” Lucie asked.

  “Griffins mate for life. If one mate dies, then normally the other refuses to eat or drink while it mourns. They never take another mate, although sometimes they do recover from that grief.”

  “And sometimes they don’t,” Sky finished for me. “The mates of the betrayers died—never recovered from what happened.”

  “You know I won’t tell anyone,” Lucie said, “but I still think you were wrong to keep it from Avalon.”

  “Maybe,” Sky said. “But it would never happen again.”

  “Except maybe it has,” Lucie said. “Maybe the griffins helped Cronus escape.”

  Charon stopped rowing. “Don’t even suggest anything of the kind. If any griffins heard you say that, they’d cleave you in two. Unless you know for certain that they were involved, don’t even mention the idea.”

  “Do you have any idea how he got across the lake?” I asked.

  Charon shook his head. “The only things I know are that he didn’t swim and he didn’t fly. There’s no way the Griffins knew he was missing. So he had to have avoided them. No idea how, though.” Charon resumed rowing, and the only sound for the remainder of the hour-long journey was the oars as they gracefully touched the water.

  CHAPTER 19

  The mists stopped a few hundred feet before we reached the shore, revealing a green field next to a sizeable pier. Griffins flew over the buildings that dotted the bank of the lake, occasionally landing and entering one of them. The guard barracks were placed there for a very good reason: everyone entering had to walk through them to get to the town, which was about a mile away, next to the coast.

  Charon stopped the boat and moored it to a post on the pier, motioning for us all to leave.

  “Are you staying?” Lucie asked.

  Charon nodded. “I have a hut just over there.” He pointed off toward a two-story building a short distance away from the rest. “It’s why it takes awhile for someone to arrange to come here. Those on Hades’s side have to send word to the griffins to go get me, and then I start rowing.”

  “Why don’t you live with the rest of them?” I asked. “I’ve always wondered that.”

  “I just prefer the company of the griffins. They aren’t good at political bullshit. Just like me. There’s too much vying for power in the town. Everyone wants to control their little piece of whatever power they can get. Atlas with his damn mines; Rhea, the farmland; and Cronus, whatever he’s allowed to take. I don’t have the energy for it.”

  “We’ll see you in a few hours then,” Sky told him, and he turned and walked off toward his home, leaving the three of us on the pier.

  The walk to the town took about ten minutes, with the landscape becoming greener every minute. A lush forest bordered one side of us, and open grassland the other, until we were a few hundred feet from our destination. The large houses of those who lived there were easy to spot. Some of them were three or four stories high and made from carved stone and wood. They reminded me a little of ancient Roman villas, with immaculate columns standing at the front of each house.

  The grassland faded away, replaced with a golden beach that led to some of the clearest ocean water I’d ever seen. I wasn’t sure if anyone had ever tried to sail the ocean and see what
else was in the realm. I imagined a few had, but no one ever gave any indication of wanting to be anywhere else.

  “Wow,” Lucie said. “You could sell real estate here and make millions.”

  We walked under a huge archway that was held up by two 20-foot tall marble columns. The word “Atlantis” had been etched onto the arch—the name of the town. The Titans had destroyed the original Atlantis during the war with the Olympians. Hundreds of thousands had died during the few days of attack, which had led to the end of the war; Zeus and his forces had been outraged by what had happened and had retaliated in the most horrific way possible with the creation of Pandora. After the fighting was over, Zeus had forced the Titans to take the name as recompense for their crime, a reminder of how the Titans had brought about their own downfall.

  A gigantic golden statue of Zeus had originally stood at the entrance, always looking down on the Titans in their new homes, but Hades had it moved and melted down well before I was born. Ensuring your prisoners were behaving was one thing, but antagonizing them every single day with a gleaming thirty-foot statue of the person who had defeated them was only going to end in rebellion and more death.

  There were plenty of people living in this Atlantis who had been born and raised here, and even more who had decided that living under the gaze of the griffins was infinitely better than living under the gaze of Avalon. So the town of Atlantis had swelled from a few hundred at the end of the war, to over twenty thousand by the end of the twenty-first century. This feat was even more impressive considering that none of the inhabitants were human and anything that uses magic has a reproduction rate that makes even giant pandas look positively prolific.

  The red, brick-paved streets weren’t teeming with people, but we walked past several on our way to Rhea’s house, which was on the far side of the town, another half-hour walk from the entrance. I’d considered getting horses for each of us but had decided I’d rather not have everyone know of our arrival, and three strangers riding horses through the town would have set tongues wagging.