‘Look, I know how it sounds, Alex. Really, I do. And it totally wasn’t an easy decision for me to make. But you have to understand that this is my father we’re talking about.’
‘And Medea,’ said Alex. ‘After everything we went through in the summer, Rose, how could you be so blind? So selfish?’
‘I’m not blind or selfish!’ Rose felt her throat tighten with anger. ‘I just want my father back! And helping Medea is my only chance to do that. She proved to me that it works. She said, she said ––’
Rose scrunched up her face, searching for the right words. But all the right words had suddenly vanished under the rising swell of doubt that Alex had released. She tried to stem its flow, telling herself that if she stopped helping the sorceress now, then everything would be hopeless, certain of how the story would end for her father.
Shaking her head, she stepped backwards, wishing that she could simply jam her fingers in her ears and make him stop.
She didn’t want to hear what he was going to say next.
She didn’t want to hear any of it.
‘Rose,’ he said, reaching out to touch her shoulder. ‘Nothing in the world, nothing at all, is worth helping Medea.’
Unstoppably, the truth of what he was saying now surged through her mind in a freezing torrent, sweeping away all her earlier certainties. She gasped, appalled as every reason she’d soothed her conscience with now bobbed, splintered and broken, in the deluge. She pressed her fists to her eyes, trying to stem the big, hot tears welling there, as an image of the London theatre returned to her. Seeing Alex beside her, huddled with Hazel on the stage with the pop star’s screams dying away in her ears, she remembered the sheer relief of knowing that they had stopped the sorceress’s cruelty.
‘I’ve been so stupid,’ she gasped.
She felt her chest tighten with panic and shame and remorse, knowing that every moment of learning from Medea, every yearning step on the way to helping her father, despite her best intentions, had been utterly and totally wrong. Deep inside she’d always known it – of course she had, she was sensible, kind Rose – but she’d been so desperate, so headstrong, so determined to make things right that she’d joined forces with Medea as cheerfully as boarding a roller coaster. Strapping herself in and setting her hands on the bar as the ride had started moving, she’d let it crank up the rails, taking her higher and higher with it whilst she’d made herself ignore the bumps and creaks of her own conscience, stuffing every clanking fear about what she was doing into a dark corner of her mind, simply so that she could get what she wanted.
Worse, she’d actually enjoyed it.
Now, as the tears began streaming down her face, she thought about the magic she’d performed over the last few days and felt the dizzying certainty that somehow curing her father made everything else all right vanish away to nothing, leaving her feeling absolutely disgusted with herself.
Gently, Alex put his arm around her shoulder and, feeling horribly unworthy of his friendship, she cried harder still. Minutes later, she finally looked up and wiped her face roughly with the back of her hand.
She’d never felt more wretched in her life.
For a long moment, no one said anything.
At least until Aries gave Rose a big, rough, rammy lick on the shoulder.
‘We all fool ourselves sometimes,’ he said, ignoring the shocked gasp from Wat.58
Flicking a knowing look at Alex, Aries settled his muzzle on her shoulder and continued.
‘Even if we know deep down that something is wrong, we can still let ourselves be taken in by other people, by how they appear and what we think they offer us.’
‘Fie!’ said Wat. ‘Thou art indeed a strange creature, but you speak the truth. We can all be made clowns. Like Lady Francesca of Windermere and me. She was so charming, I didn’t know my beard from my elbow.’
‘And,’ said Adder, jabbing Alex rudely on the knee, ‘jus-s-st like you and Jas-s-son.’
Alex glared at him and Adder instantly coiled back on to the shield.
‘Jason?’ said Rose, her surprise for a moment dousing her misery. ‘Is he here too?’
‘He was,’ muttered Alex.
So that was why Medea had been so jumpy all morning, she thought. Jason? The man who’d betrayed her so brutally was back on Earth? He was the reason the sorceress appeared to have swapped her brain for a bath sponge?
Rose looked at Alex, willing him to go on.
‘Athena insisted he lead us in the quest back to Earth,’ he explained. ‘She decided it was time that Medea paid for all the crimes she’s committed over the centuries.’ He walked over to Aries, unbuckled a saddlebag and lifted out the statuette she’d glimpsed in the scry bowl. ‘That’s why she wanted Jason to hand her this.’
Rose raised her eyebrows at Alex. ‘A statue?’
‘Not any old statue,’ replied Alex. He turned it over gently in his hands.
Sunlight glinted from its sharp, spiky wings and unforgiving face. Now, looking more closely, Rose noticed flashes of red, orange and blue light skittering about inside it.
‘It’s filled with the Greek spirits of vengeance,’ said Alex.
‘Three goddesses,’ continued Aries, under his breath, ‘who’ll drag Medea, kicking and screaming, down to the Underworld prison.’
Rose shuddered and looked around the clearing.
‘So, where is he then?’
‘Gone,’ said Alex coldly. ‘Ran away.’
Rose’s mind flipped back to the journal she’d read the night before, and the way Jason had freaked out amongst the bone men and had flatly refused to climb the serpent’s coils.
Grass Snake loomed up in front of her. ‘Firs-s-st he refus-s-sed to help Alex when Ariesss wasss attacked by a terrible three-headed jaguar.’
‘See,’ said Aries, turning his left side to her to show her the tattered dressings beneath the harness before tilting his head down and rolling his eyes towards his broken horn. Feeling her heart clench at the sheared-off twist, Rose leaned over and kissed his head.
‘And now he’sss run off and left usss behind altogether,’ added Grass Snake, looking up at her with furious ball bearings of eyes. ‘With the key!’
‘What key?’ said Rose.
‘The key to the Underworld, of cours-s-se,’ shrilled Grass Snake, flopping back on to the shield. ‘I don’t know how we’ll ever get home again!’
As Grass Snake continued to wail, Rose recalled the enormous key on Medea’s shelf and how puzzled she’d been to see it in a village without a single lock.
‘Was it long and black?’ she said. ‘Attached to a little carved parrot on a chain?’
‘Yes,’ said Alex, exchanging surprised looks with Aries and the snakes. ‘But how could you know that?’
‘Because it’s been hanging in the sorceress’s hut for days.’
‘Days?’ said Alex.
Aries stamped his hoof in the mud. ‘Then Jason must have lost it when were locked up!’
‘Which is why he was so keen to get on with the quest when he came back to the hotel,’ said Alex sourly.
‘And,’ sighed Aries, ‘it explains why he came back to find us at all.’
‘More lies,’ muttered Alex. He shrugged sadly at Rose. ‘I was so convinced I knew what he was like. Just like a stubborn goat.’
‘More like a goat with a bucket on his head,’ said Aries. ‘Like this.’ He started walking backwards, swinging his head left and right, warming to his theme, the harness jangling as he flung his enormous behind from side to side, and despite her dismay Rose had to stifle a small giggle. ‘“Oh, no Aries,”’ he said, waggling the fans hanging from the back of the tackle. ‘“You are completely mistaken about him! Please don’t say such rude things about Jason-Sparkly-Sandals.”’
‘Do you mind?’ grumbled Alex, but Rose was relieved to see that he was smiling for the first time since they’d met again.
‘Aries is right,’ he said. ‘I suppose we can all be taken in
by what we want to believe. And I meant what I said about your dad. I’m glad you’ve found him. Truly.’
Rose blinked back a fresh threat of tears.
‘Child,’ said Wat. He laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. ‘Perhaps you should tell us what the witch asked you to do.’
Taking a deep breath, Rose looked up at Wat.
‘She needs me to help her raise the gold from the lagoon you led us to. She said that it was special, special enough to make her magic work.’
Aries groaned.
Glancing uneasily at him, Rose went on.
‘Because it has an amazing history.’
Whereupon Wat groaned, too.
Feeling a tingle of dread, Rose looked at each of their faces in turn, at their matching expressions of dismay.
‘What is it?’ she said. ‘Medea said the gold in the lake would help me cure my father because it was just as cherished as the Fleece.’
‘Oh, Rose,’ sighed Alex, shaking his head slowly. ‘She was lying. The Fleece wasn’t cherished. Every strand, every single curl of it was cursed.’
‘Cursed?’ Rose heard her voice trail away to nothing.
‘By Medea,’ said Alex. ‘The Fleece ruined her life from the start. From the moment her father hung it in the forest at Kolkis, things started to go badly wrong for her because he became so dazzled by it that he simply forgot all about his little girl.’
‘And then,’ said Aries, ‘when Jason arrived she thought she’d finally be happy. She was so sure he loved her –’ Aries sighed. ‘As far as she was concerned, my Fleece ruined her life and so, in return, she poured her bitterness into it. Then, when it was brimful of her hatred, she used it in her magic. Every time she stitched its curls into her special clothes, the Fleece released her misery. That’s what brought about the deaths of the people wearing them. I know it’s true, because she told me herself, back in London, down in that terrible cellar, when she tried to extinguish me.’
Rose stared at him. ‘Misery was the real secret of its power?’
‘That’s right,’ said Aries, looking at her with his treacly eyes dimmed by sadness. ‘My beautiful gold coat used for something so terrible. Her misery poisoned the gold in the Fleece. And poisoned gold can only ever do poisonous magic.’
‘But what can be so bad about the gold in the lake?’ said Rose.
Wat turned away and looked into the trees.
‘After what you’ve just told me,’ he said grimly, ‘I think I can guess.’
The others waited for him to go on.
‘El Dorado,’ sighed Wat, turning back. ‘In my time, people believed it was the name of a city built from shimmering gold, hidden deep in the heart of the jungle. Even my own father, in his boyhood, would race down to Plymouth harbour each morning, eager to hear the returning sailors’ stories of their quest to find it. Truly intoxicated, he yearned to discover it and years later his tales dazzled me too.’
‘So, Medea was telling the truth,’ said Rose. ‘The gold did inspire men?’
‘Inspire, child?’ Wat shrugged. ‘Perhaps some might call it that. Men were certainly provoked into trekking deep into the jungle to find it.’ He looked around the clearing at the graves. ‘Thousands of men, men such as these conquistadors, men who never returned.’
‘Thousands?’ Rose flinched. ‘What happened to them?’
‘Some drowned in the Amazon, some were attacked by deadly snakes, crawling pests or mauled by big cats. Some were sent mad by the strange berries and mushrooms they ate in their desperation and turned on each other like wolves. Yet more were bitten by the fever flies.’
Alex looked up at Wat.
‘But if so many people were looking so hard for the place, then why could no one ever find it?’
‘Because it never existed,’ said Wat simply. ‘There was no city of gold. Yet, in their greed, the Europeans tortured tribe upon tribe of native Indians to death, demanding that they tell them where this marvellous city was to be found.’
Dizzy with horror, Rose pictured the soldiers storming into a village like Tatu and rounding up the villagers, snatching the giggling women, the children playing happily on rugs, demanding answers that nobody could ever give, and felt her anguish turning into anger.
‘During our months in the jungle,’ Wat continued, ‘we heard strange rumours. That El Dorado was not a city but the leader of a fantastically wealthy tribe – the Muisca, whose gold was so plentiful they even fashioned pans and cups from it. Gladdened, we made haste further north than anyone had searched before, towards the great lagoon by which they lived. Fain,’ Wat laughed coldly, ‘in happening on this true El Dorado, I wished verily to be dressed for my triumph.’ He pulled back his doublet to show a ragged black-edged hole in the linen, and Rose caught a glimmer of gold thread. ‘Some triumph,’ he muttered. ‘Thanks to the sorceress’s needlework, I stumbled blindly into an ambush and was felled by a Spaniard’s gun. Worse,’ said Wat, almost whispering, ‘when my heartbroken father returned to England with tidings of my death, the King was so furious that I’d fought with the Spanish that he marched my father to the Tower of London and beheaded him.’
Rose groaned, utterly sickened at just how many terrible deaths stained the El Dorado gold, and felt freshly foolish in her own misguided willingness to help Medea reach it. She saw how easily Medea had twisted the truth around her little finger, and Rose with it, duping her from the start.
Poisoned gold can only do poisonous magic.
Like a spiteful chant, a cold little voice piped up in her mind, mocking her, taunting her with the phrase. Her skin prickled. The gold in the lake was so saturated in misery and suffering that it could never, ever have helped her father. It could only make him even worse. Imagining it, glinting beneath the dark water, she realised something else and felt a judder of shock: that whilst the gold of Aries’ fleece had only been powered by the unhappiness of a single woman, the gold of El Dorado buzzed with the misery of thousands. Meaning that if Medea succeeded in getting her hands on it, she’d be absolutely unstoppable.
Rose turned to Alex, a blistering fury scorching away the last of her earlier, drizzling despair.
‘Show me that statue again,’ she said.
57 A regular visitor to Sherborne, who was known to shamelessly flaunt her ankles every time she used the stunt.
58 Talking rams were not common at the Court of King James I.
LOVE ISN’T IN THE AIR
There have been many passionate moments in the Greek myths: Paris whisking Helen away to Troy, Ariadne unravelling her knitting to give Theseus the wool to lead him from the Minotaur’s maze, and Narcissus going all googly gaga over his handsome reflection in a woodland pool. However, thought Jason, now practising a seductive raised eyebrow at a rather elderly yellow-footed tortoise he’d found waddling in the long grass, his meeting Medea again wasn’t likely to be remembered as one of them.
‘Sweet rose of Kolkis,’ he said, practising his newest chat-up line and offering the ancient reptile his best smile. ‘How I’ve longed to see you.’
The creature regarded him blankly with big, black eyes and continued to gum at a clump of grass, churning it round and round in her lipless mouth.
‘My dear and long-lost love,’ Jason continued, as the creature lurched away towards the undergrowth, ‘your smile is like the sun rising over the sea. It makes the water sparkle and the seagulls swoop, it, it ––’
He paused, sniffed and, noticing a rather sour smell wafting up from the ground, glanced down at the rear end of the tortoise, dismayed to spot a trickle of yellow liquid, seeping into the soil behind her crinkly back feet. Clearly he was losing his debonair touch. And small wonder. He’d been so stressed about meeting his ex-wife again that he’d given himself a crick in his neck from rehearsing his best hair flick, whilst his voice, usually low and syrupy, sounded as squealing and high-pitched as a piglet at teatime.
He’d have to do better than this if he wanted to smooch Medea into handing the key to
the Underworld back to him. After all, as he reminded himself now, he really didn’t need to be so worried.
You see, ever since he’d stopped running away from that ghastly big cat the day before and recovered from the raging stitch that running for nearly an hour will bring on, he’d started thinking. And, it hadn’t been long before he’d realised something rather important: that just as the swarm of army ants hadn’t killed him, the weird three-headed cat hadn’t even seemed interested in him. After all, he must surely have passed the creature only moments before it attacked Aries and yet it hadn’t so much as batted one of its six eyelids in his direction. Instead, it had been utterly single-minded, launching itself at Aries like a bleat-seeking missile. All of which had confirmed his earlier suspicion: that Medea clearly still reckoned he was the best thing since stuffed olives.
The thought brought a welcome surge of his old confidence and, setting his hand on his hip, he tilted his head boyishly and turned on his full-beam smile, staring at the tortoise’s receding bottom.
‘Light of the Greek isles,’ he cooed, his voice low and smoochy again. ‘How I’ve dreamed of this moment.’
‘Why thank you, darling,’ replied a woman’s voice behind him.
Jason froze, open-mouthed.
For a second his blood seemed to drop in temperature until it clinked through his veins like an ice-slushy. The voice was instantly familiar, and even though he hadn’t heard it – save in nightmares – since he’d been in the Underworld, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle.
Forcing his mouth into an unwilling smile, he turned round.
‘Medea!’ he gushed.
The sorceress looked radiant, her hair gleaming in ringlets, her face tinged pink from walking, as pretty as a Venus flytrap in the sunshine. In fact, considering his own stained and torn T-shirt and jeans and the way he smelled like a Spartan’s sandal after a hundred-mile march, she looked amazing. Rather, he thought, now complimenting himself on his own hunky charms, as if she’d been powdering and primping all morning especially for him.
Rampage! Page 24