Caged Lightning

by Marina Finlayson

  I shuddered. “Let’s not talk about Zeus’s love life, if you don’t mind.” Turning back to Manannan, I asked, “So why did you visit Poseidon?”

  “When Hades told me how bad things were getting over here, I was worried about him. I suppose I wanted to see for myself that he was safe, and that he had appropriate security in place.”

  “Of course I did,” Poseidon said. “This place is a fortress. Nobody gets in or out without my say-so. But, since he was here, I asked him to check out some rumours I’d been hearing from the Merrow. I would have gone myself, but protecting my brother’s lightning bolt is my first priority. I won’t leave the fortress even for a moment while it’s here.”

  “What rumours?” Apollo asked.

  “There was a lot of power swirling around the canals. Merrow are particularly sensitive creatures. They could taste it in the air. Some of them were worried another god had moved into my territory.”

  Sensitive creatures, huh? Not the ones I’d met. A chill ran through me as I recalled the feeling of a cold hand closing around my ankle, yanking me down to my death. Not a pleasant sensation at all. “But hang on—it was the Merrow who attacked us. They were working for the shadow shapers the whole time, so why would they go blabbing to you about it?”

  “That was only a couple of renegades,” Poseidon said. “It was the loyal ones who came to me.”

  “And the loyalists didn’t know who their fellows were working for,” Manannan added. “Or where. The shadow shapers had a cosy little nest in Brenvale, as you discovered, but it took me several days to locate it. Then I kept watch for a couple more, trying to understand what I was sensing. It seemed to me that there was more power there than could be explained by a few jumped-up power-stealers. Turned out that was Hades I could feel, since, by that time, they’d dumped him there. I had loyal Merrow watching the place. When they reported spies, I was intrigued. I was already on my way to see what you were up to when you were attacked.”

  “Fortunately for us.”

  “Yes.” He grinned. “Fortunately for you.”

  “It couldn’t have been Hades you sensed, though,” I pointed out. “He had a collar on by then, which blocked his power.”

  Manannan and Poseidon turned identical frowns to me. Maybe it was a sea god thing. “Then who was it?” Manannan asked.

  “Possibly our traitor,” Apollo said, looking grim.

  I nodded. “Maybe. Or maybe there were just so many shadow shapers there that it felt bigger to you. There were at least twenty of them the night we freed Hades, and some of them had taken power from more than one god.”

  “So what now?” Apollo asked.

  The lightning bolt still lay across Poseidon’s knees, quiet as a lamb. Quieter, actually. Lambs had a tendency to spring about at random, but the lightning bolt showed no desire to gambol. If anything, the intensity of its glow had lessened since Poseidon had first pulled it out of the wall. It was possible, now, to look at it without squinting.

  Poseidon lay a big hand on it in a protective gesture. “If you’ve come to ask me to give this to Hestia, you can jump overboard and swim back to shore. Unless you can find the other one, and there’s actually some possibility that we could get my stupid brother back, it’s not leaving here. That woman couldn’t protect a hen house from a fox. I’m not trusting her with this.”

  “She’s kept the one she has safe enough,” Apollo pointed out in such a deliberately patient tone that I could tell he was annoyed at the slur on Hestia. He was very fond of her.

  “Only because no one can get near the damn thing. You said so yourself.” He glared back at his nephew, and I sighed. What was the point of arguing about it? He’d obviously made up his mind.

  “I’m all for finding the other one.” I was also keen to keep them focused. “Do you have any idea where it is?”

  “Are you sure Hades doesn’t have it?” Poseidon still looked grumpy. “He seems the obvious choice.”

  “He says he doesn’t, and he has no reason to lie about it. Who else would Zeus have trusted?”

  “One of the other sky gods, perhaps, like Thor?” Manannan suggested.

  Poseidon rolled his eyes, and I was tempted to do the same. Just because Manannan had brokered a peace between the sea gods didn’t mean that any of the others could get along so well.

  “Please,” Poseidon said. “Zeus has a hard time even admitting that other sky gods exist. There’s no way he’d send part of his power to one of them. He’d be afraid he’d never get it back.”

  “What about Hera, then?” I asked. “She’s his wife.”

  Poseidon laughed. “Only because she hasn’t got around to killing him yet.”

  “Okay, not Hera. Aries?”

  Poseidon shook his head. “Haven’t seen him in forever. He’s made himself very scarce while this whole thing’s been going on. Perhaps Demeter? She was always Zeus’s favourite sister.”

  “Hades has already checked with Persephone and Demeter. They don’t have it.”

  “Then who else is left?” Manannan asked. “Aphrodite?”

  Poseidon guffawed, and even Apollo smiled as he shook his head.

  “Athena, then?”

  A long pause followed while they considered the idea.

  “I suppose it’s possible.” Apollo sounded as though he didn’t like the idea.

  Poseidon nodded thoughtfully. “She came from his head. She knows his mind.”

  “And she’s his favourite child,” Apollo finished.

  “Does that bother you?” I asked. Should it bother me? It all felt rather academic, since I had no memory of ever meeting Zeus. What did I care who his favourite child was?

  “Of course not,” he said, a little too quickly. “I don’t need Daddy Dearest’s approval for self-validation.”

  “Self-validation?” Poseidon echoed. “You’ve been spending too much time among the humans, boy.”

  It was odd to hear one thousands-of-years-old man call another “boy”, but I supposed these things were relative. Poseidon had been around before there were even humans, when the Titans still walked the earth.

  “Regardless, it probably is Athena—which is a pain in the arse.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked.

  “Because she hasn’t spoken to the two of us in over a thousand years.”

  ***

  Many hours later, the iceberg was floating at rest in the tiny cove of a remote tropical island, and the four of us were standing on the small, flat part of the iceberg, looking up at the mountain that towered above the centre of the island.

  “Are you sure this is the place?” I asked.

  Jungle stretched as far as the eye could see, from the thin stretch of white sand at the water’s edge up onto the knees of the black mountain. Bright birds flashed through the sky above the treetops, and monkeys—or something—called to each other from deep in the jungle. There was no sign that people had ever been here. It looked like virgin jungle, completely untouched by human habitation.

  “Where does she live?”

  “Up there,” Poseidon said, waving a vague hand at the mountain. He was being deliberately uncooperative, still sulking about being dragged into the action. But he was the only one of us who knew where Athena lived.

  “You’ll have to talk to her,” Apollo had told him last night. “She won’t listen to me or Arti. I doubt she’d even let us in.”

  Ah, sibling rivalry—such a wonderful thing. Apparently, we’d had a falling out with our sister way back when, though Apollo hadn’t told me why. It was probably something stupid, as such things often were.

  “I told you,” Poseidon had returned, the scowl returning to his face. “I’m not leaving this iceberg while the lightning bolt is under my care.”

  “The three of us can look after it,” Apollo said.

  “Artemis doesn’t even know which way’s up, and you’ve already been caught once by the shadow shapers, boy.” Poseidon wielded his usual tact and diplomacy. I was almost
used to it by now. “I wouldn’t leave you in charge of an ice cream stand. And I’m not sure I want to get involved in this mess. I have the lightning bolt to think of.”

  “You’re already involved.” Apollo was rapidly losing patience. We’d been going round and round in circles for what seemed like hours. “Don’t imagine you’re safe just because you hide in this iceberg. You’re a target, too, just like the rest of us. But if you’re too scared, tell Manannan where this damn island is, and he can take us there.”

  “How dare you!” Poseidon had roared. “I’m not scared, but I have a duty to safeguard this bloody lightning bolt. And if you’re right about there being a traitor among us, how do we know that they won’t be lying in wait for us there?”

  “No one’s going to be lying in wait for anyone,” I said. “How would they know we’re coming when we’ve only just decided it ourselves?”

  Before Poseidon could burst a blood vessel, Manannan stepped in. “Let me go ashore. I don’t have an avatar, so I have nothing to fear from any shadow shapers. You can wait at a safe distance.”

  “Athena won’t listen to you,” Poseidon growled.

  “If she doesn’t, I can invite her to come out and hear it from you, Poseidon.”

  That had seemed to satisfy him, and so we found ourselves here, in the morning sunshine, contemplating the looming peak of Athena’s island.

  “I’ll come with you,” I said now to Manannan. “For company. I can wait outside while you talk to her.”

  Manannan glanced at Poseidon. “Do you think that will upset her?”

  “Breathing upsets her. I’ve never known such a one for getting miffed over the smallest thing.”

  Pot, meet Kettle. I sighed. I was itching to get off this iceberg and look around the island. “Maybe I’d better not, then.”

  The shore was still a good way off, the water changing from deep blue where the iceberg floated to a beautiful, clear green next to the beach. Manannan stepped off the edge of the iceberg but didn’t sink—the sea held him up as if it were as solid as the ice.

  “Nice trick,” I said.

  He winked at me. “I know how to impress the ladies.”

  Walking on water would have been impressive enough, but he didn’t have to exert himself so far. A wave rose up under his feet and bore him into shore, gently depositing him on the beach. It looked like he was riding an invisible surfboard.

  “Can you do that?” I asked Poseidon.

  “I wish.” He stared after the Celtic god enviously. “I’ve been asking him for a thousand years to teach me that trick, but the bastard won’t give it up. I’ve even tried getting him drunk, but those Celts can hold their liquor.”

  As Manannan trudged up the beach, small black cones like witches’ hats popped up out of the sand just before the tree line. He paused and glanced back at us.

  “Any idea what those are?” he shouted across the water.

  “Keep going,” Poseidon called. “It’s the only way to find out.”

  “Easy to say when you’re standing out here,” Apollo said, earning himself a glare from our uncle.

  The cones gleamed in the sun as if they were made of metal. I probed them, searching for a spark of animal life, but they were as dead as the metal they appeared to be. Manannan still hadn’t moved, and neither had the cones. There must have been fifty of them, spaced at regular intervals all the way along the small beach.

  “Is this the only access to the island?” I asked.

  “No,” Poseidon said, “but it’s the easiest. This is the lowest point. The other side’s all cliffs. If you had wings, you could fly right in. Where’s Hermes when you need him?”

  It was a rhetorical question, but Apollo answered anyway: “I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since Zeus disappeared. He’s lying low somewhere.”

  “Some messenger,” Poseidon grumbled.

  Back on the beach, Manannan was on the move again. His first couple of steps were tentative as he watched the black cones for a reaction. When they didn’t move, he strode more confidently towards the trees.

  “See?” Poseidon said. “Nothing to worry about.”

  No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the whole beach erupted. Sand fountained into the air as the cones surged skyward. My mouth fell open as giant armoured warriors appeared. Like the iceberg, their bulk had been hidden beneath the surface. The cones turned out to be only the tips of their helmets.

  “Shit,” Apollo said as Manannan beat a hasty retreat back down the beach.

  In unison, the warriors thumped the butts of their spears down into the sand. They carried shields as well, and the hilt of a sword protruded over each armoured shoulder. Each warrior was twice the height of a man, but they weren’t men. They were statues, the faces beneath their helmets only featureless, metallic surfaces.

  Water lapped around Manannan’s ankles as he stopped in the shallows. The warriors stood motionless, barring the way into the jungle.

  “What do you think?” he called. “I may be immortal but I’m not keen to spend the next few months regrowing my limbs.”

  “See what happens if you approach them,” Poseidon suggested.

  Obediently, Manannan moved back up the beach toward them. The statues responded by marching down to meet him, so the sea god turned tail and fled back to the safety of the sea. Once he was on his way back to the iceberg, the statues returned to their former position at the tree line. The message was clear: the way to the mountain was barred.

  “This is your field,” Poseidon said to Apollo. “Can’t you do something with them?”

  Apollo snorted. “I could melt them to slag, but that might not endear us to Athena. Hephaistos is the metalshaping expert. Was the metalshaping expert. My power over fire gives me only basic metalshaping abilities.”

  I contemplated the giant warriors. Hephaistos had been the god of metalshaping, and now that he was dead, metalshaping was becoming more and more difficult. What we needed was another metalshaping expert—someone, perhaps, who already had experience with moving giant metal statues and bending them to his will.

  “What are you smirking about?” Poseidon asked.

  “Just remembering the time that Jake woke the giant statue of Apollo in the Plaza of the Sun and set it on Erik Anders,” I said. Good times. “You should have seen him run, with those huge horses and the chariot chasing him across the plaza. And when the statue threw its spear, I thought he was going to wet himself.”

  Apollo was quick on the uptake. “Are you suggesting that Jake might be able to help us here?”

  “Who’s Jake?” Poseidon gave us both a suspicious look.

  “My new Ruby Adept,” Apollo said.

  “A fireshaper? Nonsense. How could a fireshaper succeed where a god cannot?”

  “His secondary is metalshaping,” I said, offended on Jake’s behalf at the sea god’s scorn. “And he’s bloody good at it.”

  “Much as it pains me to admit it,” Apollo said, “metalshaping is not really my thing. I had no need to bother learning the fine art of it with Hephaistos around. Jake is probably much more suited to the task.”

  Poseidon shrugged. “Fine. Let’s get this Jake person, then.”

  Later, when the island was only a tiny speck on the horizon and Poseidon and Manannan were swapping raucous sea god stories over a flagon of wine, Apollo leaned closer and murmured: “Are you sure you only suggested Jake for his skills in metalshaping?”

  “Of course.” I batted my eyelids at him in mock innocence. “Why? What other reason could I possibly have?”

  “As long as you’re not trying to tempt away my Ruby Adept. I need him, Arti.”

  “Mm-hmm.” I took another sip of my wine. He needed him? “I think Jake has already made it clear which twin has his loyalty.”

  He said no more, apparently satisfied. Naturally, my first thought had been of Jake when we needed an expert metalshaper. But that didn’t mean it had been my only thought. I had every intention of using
any means at my disposal to steal Apollo’s Ruby Adept away from him. But there was no point arguing about it now. He’d figure it out soon enough.

  9

  We left Poseidon’s iceberg out at sea, and Manannan dropped us back at Berkley’s Bay in the same luxury yacht that he’d picked us up in the night the Merrow decided to capsize our little rowing boat. The shadows were long, and the heat had gone from the day by the time we left him and headed straight for Winston’s little temple.

  “I’ll come with you,” I said to Apollo as we stood on the footpath outside the small brick house in the late afternoon sun. We’d been gone nearly twenty-four hours. Syl would be worried. I hadn’t expected our visit to Poseidon to turn into an overnight jaunt to a distant island.

  “No need.” He frowned impatiently at me. “I’m perfectly capable of retrieving Jake without your assistance.”

  “I know, but …” But I couldn’t wait to see him again. And maybe I was just a little worried that Apollo might run into trouble. Syl’s nerves had infected me. After all, as Poseidon had pointed out just hours before, the shadow shapers had already captured him once. Every time he went out in public, especially in a big place like Crosston, he was basically walking around with a target on his back.

  “But you’re eager to get your hands on my Ruby Adept?”

  “Jake is too proper for that.” But I’d wear him down, somehow. What we had was too good to let go without a fight. “I guess I’m just a little worried. Syl’s got me imagining shadow shapers around every corner.”

  “Then stay here and guard your back. Or, better yet, figure out a way to persuade Athena to give us her part of the lightning bolt.”

  “That’s assuming she’s even got it.”

  “Who else would have it? Poseidon’s right; it makes sense that Zeus would send it to her. He makes no secret of the fact that she’s his favourite child.”

  “Maybe that’s exactly why he wouldn’t. Too obvious. Perhaps the reason Hermes has disappeared is that he’s guarding it.”

  He sighed. “If you’re determined to be gloomy, go home and mope with your friends. If she doesn’t have it, we’ll keep looking. Let’s just take one problem at a time, eh?”