The Face of Apollo

by Fred Saberhagen

  "He keeps telling me that we can't win—at least he doesn't think we can—unless we have the Silver Bow."

  "Then you'd better listen to him. Find out how to get it."

  "I am. I will. The trouble is, he doesn't know how to get it either."

  Not Hades, this time.

  This was the Python, the monster come to fulfill the threaten­ing promise made by Hades at their last meeting. A looming snake-shape whose body thickness equaled the height of a man—how long it was Apollo could not see, for fifty feet behind the smooth-scaled head the rearmost portion of the body van­ished in a curve of the descending passageway.

  And it had an escort of human auxiliaries. Katy had to take shelter against their arrows.

  The first and second of Apollo/Jeremy's ordinary arrows only bounced off the thickness of its armored scales. The third sank in too shallowly to accomplish any vital harm. At last he scored an effective hit, when he thought to aim for the corner of one small eye in the moving head. The enormous body convulsed, the vast coils scraping the sides of the cave, dislodging loose rocks. Apollo's next shot hit the other eye.

  Meanwhile, Jeremy could hear and feel that Katy was close be­hind him, screaming even as she hurled rocks at the enemy. It was the sight and sound of her more than the rocks that helped to drive the human foes away.

  The monstrous serpent, now probably blind and perhaps mor­tally wounded, broke off the fight and turned and scuffed and scraped its scales away. Even wounded, it still moved with im­pressive speed. They could hear it shuffling, dragging, stumbling.

  In the aftermath of their latest skirmish, Katherine and Jeremy found it possible to gather more supplies, including arrows, from their fallen human enemies. This they did in the failing light of sunset, which oozed into the Cave through yet a few more high crevices. Soon even these portions of the upper Cave, more than a mile above sea level, would be immersed in utter night. Mean­while they conversed in whispers. The air was damp around them, and their voices echoed whenever they were raised.

  Jeremy, stimulated by the urgency of the fight, felt temporarily a little stronger. Now he prowled cautiously into a vast, poorly lighted chamber that the Intruder instantly recognized.

  Through part of the night, the couple took turns sleeping and standing watch.

  Splits and cracks, only some of them natural, in the moun­tain's walls were letting in the light of early morning, at least in­directly. In one place a glorious sliver of blue sky was visible. Even the faintest wisp of daylight was better than the brightest torchlight for Apollo's eye. Each time darkness fell outside the Cave, he was going to be at a disadvantage.

  There had been a hell of a fight in this room, at some time in the not-too-distant past. Jeremy's nose, one organ that was still functioning without divine help, informed him that the smell of burning, of rock and cloth and flesh, had lingered for many days in this confined space and would linger on a whole lot longer.

  A couple of hours' sleep had helped a little, but he could no longer deny the fact that he and Apollo seemed to be losing ground in their battle with the poisoned wound. The body they shared was getting weaker. He picked up a small log, really no more than a stick. When he tested his strength, trying to break it, his left arm was almost useless, his right quivered in futility, and a wave of faintness passed over him.

  He could no more break the log than he could lift the Moun­tain. Soon he once more had to sit down and rest.

  "What are we going to do, Jerry? How do we get out of here?"

  "I'm not sure. Let me think."

  He—at least the Apollo component of his memory—had been one of the combatants in that historic fight. And Apollo's opponent then had been Hades, the same entity that he had fought against today. The same, yet not the same. Today's version was somehow diminished from the image in memory.

  Jeremy stood leaning against the Cave wall, his head slowly spinning. Katy was speaking to him, in a worried voice, but he couldn't quite decipher what she was saying.

  Here and there on the rocky floor of the Cave were scattered the metal components of weapons and of armor that had sur­vived. Soldiers from at least two competing forces had died here. He wondered if Sal had been here—Sal. She was why he had come here in the first place.

  He was fueled by a feverish curiosity to see what the remnants of the fallen god—of his earlier self—looked like. Whatever was left of him now was inconspicuous, unimpressive.

  Yet there remained a certainty that Apollo in all his majesty could be somehow revived and reconstituted, as a bulwark against the darker gods who had survived.

  This, then, must truly be the place where the seven had held their famous meeting.

  "This is it. There is where it happened—where I died."

  "Jerry!"

  Advancing slowly, a step at a time, the boy discovered the frag­mented remnants of a human skeleton, of normal adult size, somewhere near the fallen Bow, and assumed these bones were those of some other intermediate owner of the Bow or some mere human ally of Apollo, like Sal—but really they had be­longed to the last human being to serve the god as avatar.

  Jeremy could only wonder what the person had been like; he couldn't even tell now whether it had been man or woman. The god's memory seemed useless in this, holding no record of any­one who'd ever filled the role.

  No doubt mere humans weren't considered sufficiently im­portant.

  Jeremy couldn't tell which fragmentary skeleton was that of Apollo's previous avatar. It gave him an odd feeling, as if he were trying to identify the remains of the brother he'd never had.

  The bodies themselves (perhaps no human from outside had dared to remove them or even to visit this room) had been re­duced to skeletons by Cave scavengers, during the months since the fight had taken place.

  The Apollo fragment in Jeremy's head provided an agonizing memory here. Remembered defeat blended with the current pain and sickness caused by his wound.

  Then for a moment or two he stood motionless, with his eyes closed. Sal played a role in this particular memory, though under a different name—not that he cared any longer what other name she might have used. It was as Sal that she'd belonged to him. And he could see her face.

  The images dissolved in an onset of delirium. His arm throbbed and had swollen frightfully. He was poisoned and tot­tering. Katherine now had to lead him forward for a time.

  Katy was calling him, shaking him, dragging him up out of a nightmarish sleep. Jeremy came awake to the echoes of a distant uproar, what sounded like some kind of skirmish in a far part of the Cave.

  "We'd better move on."

  Jeremy had been dreaming of Vulcan's workshop. Apollo's memory supplied some accurate details.

  That site was of course a place that every combatant wanted to control—but it was guarded by some kind of odylic fire. Traps, dangerous even to other gods, lay in wait there for the un­wary.

  "Someone's coming. But—" Sounds as of speeding footsteps, light and rapid, came echoing up from below. The approach was being made at an impossible speed.

  A last broken arrow shaft clutched in his right hand, Jeremy braced himself to make a desperate resistance—then he relaxed. As the couple tried to take shelter in a niche, a slender form he quickly recognized as that of Carlotta came staggering, dancing on the red Sandals, up from the lower Cave, to stop right in front of them.

  Jeremy slumped in relief, but Katy recoiled in fright when the figure came near. Her companion did his best to reassure her.

  Carlotta, looking weary but apparently unhurt, reported that she had just concluded some kind of skirmish with the bad gods, down in the depths. Then, as her breathing slowed down to nor­mal, she told them: "It was too easy for me to find you just now. If I could do it so quickly, so can Hades."

  "Where is he now?"

  She gestured back in the direction from which she'd come. "Way down there. Still resting, as you should be, gaining strength. He's also trying to recruit more help. I'd say you
have a few more hours before he's ready to try again. He believes that time is on his side now, and he wants to be sure to be strong enough to finish you the next time he finds you—I see that you are wounded."

  "It's not much."

  "It's too much!" the Trickster corrected him sharply. "Any weakness on your part would be too much—and who is this?"

  Katy had started to get over her fright when she saw Jeremy calmly talking to the apparition. Now, with Jeremy's hand on her arm, she summoned up the courage to open her eyes and watch.

  Carlotta looked thoughtfully at them both, the way they were clinging to each other. Then the Trickster sat down on the Cave floor and began to untie her Sandals.

  "What are you doing?"

  "I'm giving you these." She slid them off and held them out.

  "Why?" But Jeremy automatically put out a hand to take the gift when it was thrust at him.

  "Because I want Apollo to survive. You don't look well enough to get through a round of heavy breathing, let alone one of fighting Hades. I'd hate like hell to see him and his take over the worlds." Carlotta sighed. "I only regret that the evil twins, I mean the Lugard brothers, aren't on the other side. I think they'd fit right in."

  "Where is Arnobius? Where are Lord Victor's troops?"

  "A little while ago the Dunce was up a tree. I don't speak metaphorically." Carlotta smiled faintly. "His brother got him down, but now his brother is engaged in some heavy exercise, I think. I tell you, I can't really decide what ought to be done with either one of them."

  "Up a tree?" Neither Jeremy nor Apollo understood.

  "Yes. And their father's army was milling around, looking for both of them, and making a great effort to get itself organized—but none of that is your immediate concern, my dear colleague.

  "Apollo needs to get away, to rest and heal. And you are going to have to acquire some superior armament before you face Hades again. It would be suicidal otherwise."

  "I know that. But you're going to need the Sandals yourself."

  "Pah, have you forgotten I am a god? It's not easy to kill a god. I'm not going out of my way to pick a fight with Hades, and he has enough on his mind without going out of his way to make another enemy. I'll be safe enough." Carlotta looked at Katy, then back to Jeremy: "Do either of you have any place in mind where you might be able to rest and heal for a few days in safety?"

  "I do," said Jeremy. "Apollo does." Another ocean-flavored memory was trying to bob up, now that a need for it had arisen, and now it came popping into place. Another island—this one very different from the first, surrounded by warm seas, with warm mists and sandy beaches.

  "Then put on what I have given you and go there immediately. Don't tell me where it is; one never knows. . . . Take whatever time you need to recover and rearm yourself. Then hurry back here, to the Mountain, as soon as you are ready."

  "What will you do in the meantime?"

  "I have some plans . . . but never mind. On your way now, both of you."

  "Thank you," said Katy. "Thank you very much."

  "You're welcome, child. How old are you? Fifteen? A couple of years ago I was fifteen, and now I am about a thousand. .. . Never mind. Listen, dear. Katy, is it? A fine strong god you have there for your lover. Let me reassure you that no human body in­habited by Apollo is likely to die of poison, even a dose admin­istered by Hades—but you must see that he gets some rest."

  Kate nodded, overwhelmed, and Jeremy added his own thanks. Then, despite his weakness, he insisted on trying the San­dals before he would let Katy have them.

  "After all, I am Apollo."

  Kate didn't know what to say. Carlotta grumbled but let him have his way. It was as if she did not dare to try to be forceful.

  Now at last he took a close look at Carlotta's gift. It was easy to see that this footgear was of no ordinary material or con­struction. The thongs and trim were of silver, around the red. They didn't feel at all metallic—unless their straps were almost like thin strips of chain mail. A smaller, finer version of the chain mail worn by some of Hades's fallen warriors. And by some of the lancers, too.

  Apollo had no hesitation about putting them on. Doubtless he'd had these before, or another pair just like them—or even better.

  In another moment Jeremy was strapping the red Sandals on. At first he feared they would be too small, since they had exactly fit Carlotta, but they conformed magically, perfectly, to the size of his feet.

  When he stood up, it was almost with the feeling of floating in water. Looking down, Jeremy saw with alarm that his feet did not quite touch the Cave floor—but in a moment they had settled into a solid contact.

  A quick experiment proved that he could still walk normally— but now that was only one, and the least useful, from a menu of choices.

  The instant he decided to move more quickly, a single stride carried him floating, gliding, clear across the great room. Stop­ping, or changing direction, in a single footstep was as effortless as starting had been.

  But weakness and dizziness quickly overcame him.

  Jeremy had to admit that he was now too weak with the poi­sons of his wound to use the Sandals effectively himself. He saw that they were given to Katy, who gave him his own sandals back in return.

  They bade Carlotta a hasty farewell.

  Apollo's memory was reliable. Eventually it turned out to be pos­sible to leave the Cave by the same exit used by one of the wa­terrise streams.

  Building up speed, the couple raced through the Cave and out through some aperture known to Apollo, so fast that anyone who might be on guard to keep them in, a picket line formed by the army of Hades's human allies, had not even time to raise their weapons before Katy was past them, Sandals barely touch­ing the earth, and gone from their view.

  They had emerged from the Cave along with the stream of a waterrise, in a rainbow shower of frosty spray.

  They were coming out into daylight substantially farther up the mountainside than the main entrance and out of sight of the people gathered there, where, according to drifting sounds, a skirmish had now broken out.

  Thirty

  Whatever remnants of his childhood Jeremy might have taken into the Cave had been purged away there long before he emerged. There had been moments underground when the business of killing men seemed of no more consequence than swatting flies.

  That was a godlike attitude that he didn't want to have. But until the war was over, he would wear it like a piece of armor.

  His empty quiver and his mediocre bow (a useless weapon for a man with only one effective arm, but it never crossed his mind to give it up) were still slung across his back when Katherine car­ried him out of the Cave. The first three fingers of his right hand were sore from the repeated pressure of the hard bowstring.

  Katy was still weak from her captivity, but even fragile feet could fly like eagles once the Sandals were strapped on. But Vulcan's footwear healed no injuries, counteracted no poisons.

  Once they were clear of the Mountain, Katy, who fortunately had no terror of heights, soon mastered the simple procedures for controlling course and speed—and her own fear of the pow­ers that had come to her from Carlotta. Jeremy told her in a faint voice which way, and how far, she had to go to reach the sanctuary. Only vaguely did Apollo remember the way—only vaguely, for the god could not recall, in all of his own indeter­minately long life, any time when he had needed sanctuary.

  Looking down from his position on Katy's back, her honey-colored hair blowing in his face as he clung weakly to her shoul­ders, Jeremy could see her feet in the red Sandals, striding as though she ran on earth, treading air at a vast distance above a surface of gray cloud, gliding like a skater's on a frozen river—almost as if time itself could be frozen in place. In his present condition, the rhythmic running movement of her hips between his clasping legs was no more erotic than the measured drifting of the clouds below. Through holes in the distant floor of gray cloud he could catch glimpses of the ocean, its waves almos
t too tiny for even Apollo's eye to pick them out. Then Jeremy drifted into unconsciousness, even as he was borne off through the howling air.

  When he regained his senses his muscles felt weak as a child's, his god-tenanted body trembling and sore. And he shivered, with the persistent wetness of the fountaining stream.

  Both he and Katy had been wet coming out of the Cave, and the outer air, screaming past them with the speed of their run­ning flight, was so cold that Jeremy thought he would not long survive. Katherine might have found something in which to bun­dle him.

  With Katy dancing on magic Sandals and with Jeremy rousing himself at intervals long enough to sight landmarks, providing guidance as the information came flowing from Apollo's mem­ory, they swiftly accomplished the long journey.

  The air was warm about them, the breezes gentle, as they de­scended, as if on invisible stairs, toward what seemed a spot of garden rimmed by surf and coral.

  Jeremy said: "This island was Circe's, once."

  Her head turned slightly back. "A goddess. The one who turned men into beasts, in the stories. This was hers?"

  "Some of the stories have her a goddess, but she's not. I'd call her a witch, or enchantress."

  "You know her, then?"

  "Apollo does."

  Kate was silent briefly, almost drifting down. "If this island was hers once, whose is it now?"

  They were now going down so slowly that the air was almost still around them. He tried to sort vague, hazy memories. "A long story, I think, a complicated business. I don't want to dig for it." He made a gesture at the side of his own head. "But it seems to me we can depend on friendly spirits."

  Now Katy was only walking in the air, instead of running. As her steps slowed, so did their darting passage. They were coming down to the inner edge of a broad beach of white sand, rim­ming a peaceful half-wooded island in a warm sea. Birds flew up squawking, but as far as Jeremy or Apollo could see at the mo­ment, the place was deserted of intelligent life. The god's mem­ory presented the fact that certain immaterial powers that served as guardians and keepers here were no doubt hovering close by.