The city had been rocked by earthquakes two years ago, but was far enough inland to have been designated a temporary refugee center. The tents and trailers had mostly been cleaned away by this point, and, like everywhere else in Hellas, the residents had their share of mutated, deformed citizens. Many of the ‘new-humans’ were being kept indoors by relatives, who were ashamed to see the pure beauty of the human form distorted so. A handful had returned to work, or tried to do so; the harpies and dryads were doing a brisk trade at the local theater, playing parts in ancient dramas . . . .and were much in demand at the local brothels as well. There were even darker rumors of specialty acts for the connoisseur. Satyrs and centaurs taking the role once reserved for donkeys, in shows reserved for the discerning client.
Proof positive that for every supply, a demand could be found. The tourists had to be accommodated, after all.
The ground shook, and the outdoor merchants, hawking jewelry and scarves and finely-woven cloaks, looked up uneasily and edged away from the buildings around them. There had been aftershocks for weeks in 1987. Many of the buildings still had cracks in their facades.
From out of the clear blue sky, a woman fell like a stone, landing near a fountain in the central market square. A couple of tourists raised cameras and took pictures with nerveless hands, knowing that the film could not possibly capture what they saw. For surrounding and overlapping the woman were two other figures. The outer two were slightly more diaphanous, almost translucent at any given time, but which one was the most solid varied, from moment to moment, and as she moved, she blurred. All three dressed identically, in black peploses that left their sides bare, and were fastened at the shoulders with golden brooches in the shape of dogs’ heads. All three wore black cloaks that covered their faces, and all three hoods blew back from their faces at the same time, revealing identical faces, though each had been changed and shaped by time. Maiden, with lustrous dark hair, worn freely; mother, her hair tied up and out of the way, out of pure practicality, and crone, her white hair thin wispy around her face. Hecate.
Hecate, revered in Athens and its environs, was unique among Hellene goddesses, in that she had remained far more powerful than her Roman counterpart, the demigoddess Trivia. The goddess of the crossroads, doorways, magic, and the restless dead had been associated in many places with many other things, over the centuries. The moon, herbs, poisons, the earth, the sea, and the sky, among other things. Poseidon might be lord of the sea, and Zeus might be lord of the heavens, but most people gave Hecate a nod when embarking on a journey, or hoping to make a good bargain, or to turn away magic. Most Hellenes invoked her and propitiated her once a month at moondark, with a ritual meal. Now, she lifted her tripartite faces, and her voice resounded throughout the entire city. Flee! Take only what you may carry, and go to Athens! Take refuge there. A mad god comes!
The result was a stampede, as people tore down the streets, piling into motorcars and flinging themselves for the highways. The less-human creatures, such as the harpies, actually broke windows in their rooms, and tore their skins against the jagged glass that remained in the frames, in their efforts to escape. Only a few of them could really do more than glide, awkwardly, to the ground, before running, their bleeding wings held behind them, creating drag. The local minotaurs and cyclopeans, who’d been put to work in a regional quarry, heard the goddess’ words, and turned to run with the rest of the humans, but were stuck on foot, as most of the humans fled by motorcar. A few—a very few—were helped into a flat-bed truck by a friendly co-worker, and then they merged out onto the crowded highway. “Cut across the fields!” one of the minotaurs rumbled, slapping the cab of the truck. “Get out of here!”
The sky overhead turned a dull maroon, visible even to the human eye, and the Inachos river, which curved in an arc to the east of the city, mirrored it, its waters turning red and turgid, the water’s viscosity thickening to almost that of blood. Sheep grazing near the river spooked and fled, their noses daubed ochre. In the city itself, there was a high-pitched humming sound that thrummed through everyone’s ears, resonating in the bones inside their ears, inside their skulls, making them all feel as if they were about to explode, like overfilled balloons. Drivers fell limp at the wheel, blood pouring out of eyes, ears, and noses, and the monstrous creatures cried out in agony, as waves of madness rolled across them.
Hecate threw herself into the heavens, and she and the mad god—a nimbus of black light visible only to the eyes that were attuned to the Veil—fought. Arcs of black lightning poured out of the entity, tearing at the ground. Burying itself in the ley-lines, causing them to resonate arhythmically. Tearing at the cosmic strings that they were, warping reality around them. Power cascaded along the violated lines, erupting at power stations and ley-taps, setting off fires all through the city, and causing concatenations through the grid that echoed for a hundred miles in every direction. The fleeing crowds—assuming their drivers were alive—found that their ley-powered motors had just failed, some of the engine blocks fusing as energy leaped out of the ground and into the charging antennas, which touched the ground in every ley-powered vehicle capable of absorbing charge from the lines directly.
Hecate tore at the entity with raw sorcery, trying to buy her people time. She could feel it, massively powerful, bloated with the essences of a thousand smaller spirits and tens of thousands of human souls, stab at her with arcs of blight, and the tendrils reached into her, feeding on her. Devouring her, where she hovered in mid-air. She screamed as it tore part of herself away, and felt part of herself die. The crone was no more, one mask ripped away, and with it, much of her magic. Power radiated out from her, exploding across the city, and she couldn’t stop it, though she strained to keep it in, staunching it like blood from a wound. Go! she shouted to the citizens, many of whom had now abandoned their vehicles and were running on foot. She lashed out dizzily with everything she had left. Air and wind couldn’t affect it. Earth? It was eating the earth, tapping into the violently surging ley-lines, as a god or a spirit could not do. She grappled with it in the sky, feeling more and more of herself being devoured. More and more tendrils wrapping around her, penetrating her essence.
Sky, torn away. Moon, stripped away. She was too powerful to be consumed at once, and looking down, she could see traces of her power raining down from her like blood to the ground, arcing and crawling away, trying to find a home. No more, creature. No more!
She had been, before and beyond anything else, a goddess of gateways. The gates of every city held her shrines. Every house’s front door had a statue of her. She was affiliated, too, with the crossroads, the places between. Borders. Verges. With the line between life and death, where ghosts were said to dwell. And because of that, she had abilities that many other gods did not. Hecate cried out as the creature began to tear at her again, and opened a gateway to the Veil. It yawned in the sky, a physical, tangible, visible thing, that let some of the humans who’d turned back to look, see into a realm where space existed, but time did not. Where physicality was entirely optional, and causality did not exist. Where color and light bent the wrong ways. Some of the humans’ sanity shattered simply looking on it, and Hecate knew that here, she didn’t have time. She caught at the part of herself that the creature clung to, attempting to leech it from her—the mother, all earth and fertility—and tore herself in half. She felt herself sundered, and the pain went beyond anything she could have comprehended . . . and then she threw her divided self, and the mad godling, into the gateway. Watched her other self begin to explode, still in the white hole that connected the realms. Bade herself farewell, and closed the portal, the creature and her otherself still in the transdimensional conduit.
The portal caught most of the power. Hecate’s golden eyes dimmed. This was not as it was meant to be. This was not in the plan. And she fell from the sky. Tree limbs caught at her body, but she was unaware of that, or of the impact as she hit the ground.
Across the city, as people fled the re
gion, a set of eyes opened in darkness.
Warmth coursed through his body, but there was nothing else but blackness, and a smell of dust. He frowned, and held up a hand, fire limning his fingers. What? I was never able to do that before. At least the flames gave him enough light to realize that he was . . . inside a stone box. A sarcophagus? A stone box, meant to eat my flesh and house my bones? He realized in some confusion, that his left hand, propped on his chest, held a tablet of stone. Black marble with symbols incised into it. He couldn’t read it, even though he’d taught the Mycenaeans how to scratch marks that meant words into wet clay. The symbols were all familiar, but meant nothing to him. This isn’t mine. Why would someone bury me with this? Wait, why am I even buried? I . . . died? Memory was uncertain for a moment. He reached out with his free hand, and shoved the lid of the stone box away, sitting up, carefully, and looking down at his body. Naked, apparently, but . . . there was skin, hair, flesh . . . . Everything about his avatar was as it should be.
He looked around, unable to account for his surroundings. A temple, surely. Magnificent friezes in stone on the walls, but the walls showed cracks, and a haze of recent dust hung in the room. The air felt charged and invigorating; he leaped out of the mouth of the box with ease, and stared at the carvings. Oh. This is me. Yes. The eagle. How could I forget the eagle? He stared at the figure of the man, bound by chains to the rock, an eagle perched nearby, and an elegantly-placed gash across the right side of the man’s abdomen. Artists always seem to clean up reality. I look peaceful there. Placid. I screamed when it carved into my belly and ripped out vital organs. I was never at peace as the wind kicked up dirt and grit into the bleeding wound. I was never steadfast and silent. I cursed Zeus with every breath.
And on the heels of that recollection, another. Zeus, standing in judgment, in the soon-to-be ruined city of Troy. Condemning him, for not having told him to begin with, that the god-born could turn against him and devour him, just as the younger gods had devoured the titans. You told us that the mortal-born would be conduits. Would allow us to stay in this mortal realm. You never said that they would betray us. Kill us. Devour us.
I thought it was obvious. They are part mortal, part spirit. If they can use our powers, they can absorb our powers. They are part of us, and we are part of them.
You betrayed us. You aligned yourself with the mortals and the god-born. You worked against my will. For that, you will die.
None of the other gods present raised a hand to help. Not fair Aphrodite, not warlike Ares, not Apollo of Delphi or Artemis the huntress. None would deny the will of Zeus. None of them wanted to be enchained, trapped in the mortal realm, cut off from the Veil. None would take the risk. Not even if it were the right thing to do. Cowards, he’d told them all. You do not dare face the consequences of your actions. I have. I will. And so, very shortly, will you. You will not be able to escape it.
And then . . . he’d opened his eyes. There hadn’t even been darkness in between. There had simply been nothing. No awareness. The only reason he knew centuries had passed, was that he was highly attuned to time. I still feel like myself. I still know my Name. Is that what death is for us, then? Non-existence, but still . . . so long as a Name exists, we can be brought back? How curious. He walked outside the temple, and just stared for a moment. He was in Hellas. He knew that. He could feel the earth under his feet, the shape of it, the contours. He knew where on the bright and spinning globe he was. But he didn’t recognize this place in the slightest. Humans, racing away on foot, but not clothed in any way he recognized. Some of them wore tubes of cloth around their legs, and tunics woven of some material he did not know, the threads so fine that surely some poor woman had burned out her eyes and rheumed her fingers, spinning it so. There were metal boxes with wheels on them in the street—chariots with four wheels? No, wagons, surely, but no oxen to draw them, and enclosed. Perhaps weapons of war. Yes, the feeling in the air; surely, this is a place of battle.
He looked up in time to see the next surge of power, and saw the woman’s figure high in the air. He blinked. Hecate? But . . . I hardly know her. Hardly recognize her, except that her Name rings out from her. And . . . what is that thing? His eyes widened in horror at the creature of blackness that took up a quarter of the sky . . . and then Hecate tore the heavens asunder, and he looked into the abyss and saw his home. He could feel her agony as she cut herself in half, and cast the creature out . . . and then she fell, plummeting to the earth. He marked where she fell with his eyes, and began to trudge that way, still naked, and holding the tablet of stone in his hand. And as he walked, he stared around himself in awe.
I knew they would become something amazing. I knew that they would grow and change. I knew that with the light of reason in their minds, they could build wonders. And they have. Look at this place. Look at the roads. These are not goat-tracks, rutted and muddy. These are made of stone so smooth, it has no seams. Look at the houses; there is stone here, but I feel metal in them, and iron, twisted into shapes to hold the load. I feel iron in their chariots . . . and they’ve touched the ley-lines. Twisted and distorted now, but I can feel how they’ve used that energy and shaped it and made their world run on it . . . and other things. Yes. Electricity. They’ve tamed Zeus’ thunderbolts and made them their own. How much have I missed? How long have I slept? How many wonders have I been cheated of seeing born?
But even as he wondered at the past, Prometheus the Fire-Bringer, whose name meant Fore-sight, could feel patterns in the world around him, all pointing forwards. He could feel the madness in the world, the way the ley-lines were vibrating in protest. He could feel lines of battle off to the east, where Marduk—old, old Marduk, who was still alive?—fighting off another . . . creature . . . such as the one Hecate had fought. And Marduk was losing. And when he finally lost that battle, some of him would be consumed, and some of him would rush out, a tide of power that would work its way into the earth and the flesh of those around him, and more destruction would unravel itself. Did I return in time only to see the world destroyed?
But there was one direction where the lines of future and past moved smoothly. South and east, a sensation like moving downhill in summer. That is where there is hope. That is where I must go, and take this . . . thing . . . with me. He glanced at the tablet in his hand again, curiously, and then lifted his head, tracing the lines of probability that coursed through the air, clear as the sun above to his eyes. Caught disturbances in them, and followed them, to where Hecate had fallen.
She was surrounded by creatures. Prometheus’ eyes widened once more, seeing harpies and satyrs gathered around the fallen body of the goddess. Such existed once, long ago, as spirits took avatars that commingled animal and human form, but those spirits were weak even in the time of the titans, before Zeus destroyed Cronus for devouring his own children, and for touching the face of time as he did . . . .
He could sense madness in these creatures, fresh and open like a wound. A resonance from the creature that had hovered in the sky, the black crackle of its energies in their bodies. He didn’t have the power to remove that energy, but as the harpies dove in and began to claw at Hecate’s body, he strode into the clearing and tossed them out of his way with his long arms. Fire wrapped itself around his hands, and again, he stared at it quizzically. I really did steal it, didn’t I? But I never consumed any of Hephaestus’ essence . . . .
He hefted her limp body up onto one shoulder, and strode off, leaving a cluster of confused monsters in his wake. A few tried to follow, but he clouded their minds. Simple enough, as mad as they were, it only required a moderate use of his energies . . . but it still left him feeling exhausted. I am not what I once was. I was a spark, kept in existence, I think, by the love of Athens for me. I can feel . . . more recent mentions of my Name, still hanging like echoes in the air. Millions of them. Someone has caused people to remember me. I can . . . remember when there were only two or three million people in all the world. What a strange place, this future
.
As he walked, he found a river, which made a fine road to the sea he would need to cross, and with a sigh, pulled himself up to stride atop of it. He’d never been able to fly, when manifested, and not entirely understanding how he had come to be awake, he didn’t dare de-manifest. Without knowing if Zeus had relented in his rage, he did not dare go to the Veil to replenish his energies, either. And of course, there was Hecate, who felt thistle-down light on his shoulder. When she began to stir, he set her down on the ground, and lightly slapped at her face, causing her to recoil. Her golden eyes went wide, and she reached for her hood, covering her face.
Why do you hide yourself from me? You know I can still see who you truly are.
Her sense trembled. He could feel . . . shame. Shame at being so weakened. Horror at what she had faced. And guilt. Guilt . . . regarding him. How interesting. These are mortal emotions I sense in you, Hecate. Have we become so much more than once we were, then?
The others say that we have become less, not more.
The others were always fools.
Most of them are weak, for all that Zeus tied us to some paltry Etruscan gods . . . who then became more powerful than any of the others could have dreamed of, in days gone by. Her voice trembled slightly. You are alive, foresighted one. It was not wonder in her voice but . . . muted satisfaction. Now Olympus may well quake. She paused. What do you remember?
The Goddess Denied (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 2) Page 104