The Face of Apollo

by Fred Saberhagen

  And then at last, Jeremy/Apollo and the Scholar, after tramp­ing across a broad meadow covered with masses of wildflowers, peered over a ridge of rock and saw clearly ahead of them, no more than a hundred yards above, what they had been expecting, with a mixture of hope and fear, to find. Here the Mountain and their climb were coming to an end at last.

  The House of the Trickster. That was one name, supplied by Apollo's memory, for the sprawling structure that clung along the crest, its walls surrounding the actual summit. The grander title of Olympus seemed to apply at a different time in history—but again, as often before, memory was confused.

  From somewhere far down in memory there floated up an­other name: The House of Mirth.

  Echoes of maniacal laughter, perhaps launched by an earlier Trickster's avatar, seemed to haunt the high rocks, coming and going with the wind.

  The structure's low crenellated walls and squat towers were visible from certain places a long way below.

  The closer Apollo came to the building, the stranger it looked. Very strange indeed, as if different deities had at different times been in charge of its construction—which, Jeremy supposed, was actually the case. The House of the Magician.

  Whatever other attributes the strange, half-ruined structure might possess, it provided a kind of fortification, on the highest ground available, and a comparatively small force ought to be able to hold it against a larger army.

  At first glance it seemed unlikely that this sunlit scene, the broad, high meadow and the flowers, could ever form any part of Hades's territory—though the idea became less startling when you knew about the steaming vent that led down secretly to the Underworld again. Steam came rising visibly into the chill air.

  Jets of boiling water and scalding mud imperiled the under­ground explorer.

  The Trickster had left her/his mark everywhere around the summit, in the form of balanced rocks and twisted paths and natural-looking stairs of rock leading to blank walls or, without warning, over precipices.

  Apollo's hearing could detect the murmured clash of wide­spread fighting, drifting in and up from miles away. There were signs that a major battle between human armies was shaping up.

  And right now some zombies, their bodies the hue of mush­rooms, were coming out to fight, coming right up out of a hole in the ground.

  Thirty-Four

  The naked bodies of the zombies gave no sign of being af­fected by the cold of the high summit—but they recoiled swiftly from direct sunlight. They had emerged from hiding, welling up from various of the Cave's upper entrances, only a lit­tle below the very summit, when the sun was temporarily hidden by thick cloud. But they swiftly retreated under the rocks again when the rays of Apollo's heavenly personification once more pierced the clouds.

  Arnobius had not seen such creatures before, and their pres­ence disturbed and frightened him. "What does it mean?"

  Apollo, on the other hand, was quietly elated. "It means that the one I'm looking for can't be very far away. It means that there still exists a dark tunnel allowing such creatures to come all the way up here to the crest."

  Now the very summit was only about fifty yards above where the two men were standing. Even now, in broad daylight, the air hurled by the howling winds along the crest was grayish, filled with a strange unnatural mist, when it was not opaque with snow. All this before the last greens of summer had faded from the sea-level lowlands visible below. Here and there Jeremy could barely distinguish some building, maybe a barn, that happened to be bigger than the ordinary.

  Looking down from up here at the world from which he had ascended, the young man sometimes thought it was the normal land down there that looked enchanted—and this strange place the stronghold of grim reality.

  Rising winds sometimes blasted gusts of snow straight toward the driving clouds above, ascending in twisting columns that threatened to coalesce in the shape of howling faces, reaching arms.

  The Scholar, his gaze turned upward, let out a little moan, and the expression on his face suggested that he had now entered into an exotic, exalted mental state.

  Jeremy looked at the man sharply and saw that he was going into one of his recurrent fits. A moment later Arnobius had top­pled softly into a bank of flowers, where he lay with eyes closed and arms outstretched, hands making feeble groping movements.

  His companion pondered whether to let him lie where he had fallen or carry him on to the very summit. But at the moment the Sandals were giving Apollo no impulse to move on, and so he decided to wait where he was till his companion snapped out of it.

  Jeremy had never forgotten his sworn promise to Sal. His Sandals had brought him here and were not yet ready to carry him all the way to the summit. But she was not here. Once more he ex­pressed a thought that he had already repeated so often that it had become automatic: "Find me Margaret Chalandon."

  This time, it seemed, he was granted an almost immediate re­sponse.

  He had thought himself alone except for the unconscious, en­tranced Arnobius. In the background, the song of larks was au­dible between fierce gusts of wind. On every side, but where the summit of the Mountain lay, there stretched a view that seemed to encompass all the countries of the earth.

  But Apollo/Jeremy was no longer alone. A woman of regal bearing, her dark hair lightly streaked with gray, came walking toward him through a flowery meadow—and Apollo remem­bered now this was the Meadow of the Sun—dressed in the practical garments, including boots and trousers, that an intelli­gent scholar would have worn on a field expedition. She carried no tools, no weapons, no canteen or pack of any kind.

  It was the woman's clothing, as well as the timing of her ap­pearance, that instantly suggested a name for her. "Scholar Cha­landon?"

  She stopped, ten paces away. "Yes?" Her attitude was calm, her voice mild. If she found the youth standing before her particu­larly impressive in any way, her face did not reveal it.

  Jeremy came right to the point. "I swore an oath that may now be impossible to keep."

  "Regarding what?"

  "I carry with me a great treasure that was entrusted to me by a young woman, a little while before she died ..."

  Apollo's voice trailed away. He had never seen Circe wearing clothing anything like that of the woman before him, and also this woman was apparently years older than the sorceress. There­fore, it had taken the god a space of two or three breaths to rec­ognize her. Now he continued: "... but I recall having told you something of the matter before. Tell me, were you also one of the seven?"

  "No, my lord. But you may count me as a worshiper of Apollo—your humble servant." The voice of the enchantress was soft, but her eyes and bearing were anything but humble.

  "I want no worship, but I need help. I am still Jeremy Redthorn—and I am afraid."

  "So is Apollo, sometimes, I am sure. So are we all. I include Hades, too, of course—and even the great enchantress Circe." The last words carried a tone of something like self-mockery. She paused, as if to collect her thoughts, and as she did so the ap­pearance of age fell away and her clothing changed, all in an in­stant, to the kind of filmy stuff that Circe was wont to wear. Now she strolled the meadow on bare feet that seemed to re­quire no boots, or Sandals either, to carry her around in perfect comfort on the flank of a mountain. The intermittent fierce blasts of wind had little effect on her, barely stirring her hair and garments.

  Jeremy waited.

  Presently Circe ceased her pacing and said to him: "In the old stories the gods are forever disguising themselves as humans, or­dinary mortals, and prowling around the earth in search of ad­venture. The Lord Apollo must realize, as soon as he allows himself to think about the matter, that such disguise is, in fact, no disguise at all."

  The larks had fallen silent, but in the pines beyond the sunlit meadow wild birds were screaming frantically at one another, caught up in some conflict that had naught to do with either gods or humans.

  Revelation, when it came, was something
Apollo had doubt­less known all along but Jeremy Redthorn had been afraid to look at. "You mean that only when the gods put on human bodies—like mine—can they ever have any real life."

  Circe smiled at him.

  "I spoke with the Gatekeeper," Jeremy told her. "Before he died."

  Her dark eyes expressed a gentle curiosity.

  "Certain things he said to me," Jeremy went on, "fit very well with other things I see in some of my ... in some of Apollo's deepest memories.

  "The Faces that turn people into gods were never made by Vulcan. What really happened was that the Face of Vulcan and all the others were created, long, long ago, by clever humans. They were made to embody certain . . . certain powers . . . that even then had been with humanity from time immemorial. And the Gatekeeper, in that time before he became . . . what he be­came, was one of the clever ones who fashioned Faces."

  Circe was nodding gently.

  Jeremy/Apollo went on. "Now and again, down through the centuries, people have tried to destroy the Faces, but that can't be done. Sometimes people have hidden them away. They may lie in concealment for many years, but someone always finds them out again.

  "The Scholar, if he could ever grow wise enough to under­stand, would call the Faces triumphs of engineering with the odylic force. The Gatekeeper in his early life would have called them biocomputers." It was a word from a language too old for even Circe to recognize it; Apollo could see in her face that it was strange to her.

  "My lord gains wisdom," said she who had been known as Margaret Chalandon, and now bowed to him lightly. Then she added: "So far I have been conversing with my Lord Apollo; let me speak now to Jeremy Redthorn."

  "Go ahead."

  "It is not out of kindness that the mighty god who shares your body refrains from seizing total control of the flesh and bone. Kindness has nothing to do with it. The real reason you retain your freedom is that Apollo, who is granted life and being by your body, cannot exist without a human partner. As long as he lives in you, he can do nothing that Jeremy Redthorn does not want to do."

  Nerving himself at last to probe the depths of borrowed mem­ory, Jeremy saw, and his new understanding deepened. "Then neither is Hades a true, pure god, as he believes himself to be?"

  A nod of confirmation. "The power called Hades can commit no greater wickedness than the human who wears that Face. Who but an evil man or woman would seek to wield the power of death?"

  Jeremy/Apollo took a step toward the woman. "Then answer me this. Where did the powers that are captured in the Faces come from, in the first place? Who created them?"

  "As well ask where we humans came from." Then Circe added: "Fare you well in the battle you must soon fight; I cannot help you there." And the image that had been Circe became only a pattern of wildflowers, seen against the meadow, and then the pattern was gone from Jeremy's perception and there were only the flowers in themselves.

  From ground level at his side there came a faint mumbling and a crackle of broken flower stems. Arnobius was sitting up and rubbing his eyes. Looking at Jeremy, he said: "I dreamed ..."

  "Yes, I think I know what you dreamed. Never mind. Get up, if you are coming with me. I want to stand in Olympus, on the very top."

  "You wish me to come with you, Lord?"

  "Yes. Why not?" It was on the tip of Apollo's tongue to say that if he were to discover yet another Face, he would want to have some halfway decent human being on hand to give it to. Arnobius for all his faults would be less objectionable as a god than any of Hades's henchmen.

  Turning his back on the Meadow of the Sun, Jeremy found the trail again and went on up. Behind him he heard the Scholar's booted feet crunching on gravel, trying to catch up.

  Meanwhile Lord John, having borrowed a few garments from various of his officers, was once more dressed in something like a fitting uniform and chewing on field rations as he rode—he'd lost some weight in his brief tour of duty as a quarry slave.

  After reducing the guard at the Cave entrance to about fifty men, he was making his way uphill with all the others he could muster, trying to regroup his people into something like a co­herent fighting force, after his brother's absentminded amateur commands had scattered them almost hopelessly about.

  The ascent of John and his small force, unlike his brother's or Apollo's, was not unopposed, and the results of combat so far were unhappy.

  Jeremy and the Scholar climbed on over the last few yards, against a sudden howling wind that stirred the piles of old bones, human bones, that lay about. It seemed that today's was not the first battle to be fought upon these heights. Now and then the wind picked up a skull and hurled it, dead teeth grinning in a great silent shout that might have been of fear or exaltation.

  They now observed, at the foot of the stone walls that were al­most within reach, another waterrise, an enchanted stream flow­ing in a closed loop, part of its course uphill. White ice from splashes covered all the nearby rocks. Its water might have frozen in this bitter cold, had it not gained warmth continually from some underground source. Only a few yards away, another pool lay bubbling and steaming and stinking of sulphur, from time to time emitting dangerous jets of steam. And yet a little farther on, two such streams were linked together, so that their waters, while never mingling, crossed and recrossed each other in an endless system of circles. Fish, mutated aquatic animals, were shooting up the waterrises, leaping with broad silvery bodies bending left and right, tails thrashing the air, like salmon headed upstream to spawn. In each dark, small pool the stream itself seemed to rest for a moment, gathering its strength for the abruptness of the next leap up.

  There had been fighting here only hours ago, and dead men lay scattered about, along with a couple of dead cameloids. Some of the lancers, following the age-old tactical doctrine of seeking the high ground, had preceded their commanders to this spot; ev­idently some of Lord Kalakh's troops had had the same idea. Je­remy was able, as in his earlier combat, to replenish his supply of ordinary arrows by scavenging from the fallen.

  Time and again in recent days Jeremy had heard rumors of the real Oracle's being up here. And now Arnobius was certain of the fact, with a true believer's faith.

  The mad world of the upper heights was littered with strange objects. One who had not seen the vicinity of the workshop might have thought that the world could hold no other display like this.

  During the years of the interregnum of divine activity, an in­credible number of magicians, would-be magicians, adventurers, would-be saints, and fortune seekers seemed to have come this way, each striving desperately for his or her own goal. Here the seekers of knowledge, of wealth and power and glory, had left their bones, both broken and whole, and their weapons in the same variety of conditions. Here were rags of clothing, much of it once fine, purses and boots and headgear, now and then an armband of gold, a broken dagger beside a jeweled necklace, lying here forgotten and abandoned. Furs and blankets were more valuable booty, for folk who had to spend the nights out­doors at this altitude.

  Possibly, Jeremy/Apollo thought, some of this junk had sim­ply been abandoned by mundane human workers, who had been brought up here by one divinity or another, to contribute human effort to the construction of Valhalla. Building with only one set of hands, no matter how strong and how much assisted by things of magic, had probably turned out to be practically im­possible.

  No doubt there had been some tearing down to be accom­plished also. Obviously the plans for the structure had been changed, repeatedly, while it was under construction.

  There were broken flutes of wood and bone and an aban­doned drum.

  The shape of other fragments suggested that they had once been parts of a lyre.

  Passing through one of the many gaps in the outer wall, they found grass growing through the holes in what had been a fine tile floor. So far there was no sign of the tremendous Oracle of whose existence on these heights Jeremy had received hints.

  Fighting flared and sputtered at no great d
istance below, but so far all was quiet right on the summit—except for the wind. If the old stories had any serious amount of truth in them at all, this barren place had been, perhaps still was, Olympus. To Je­remy and Apollo both it seemed within the realm of possibility that Father Zeus might come stalking out from behind the next half-ruined wall, coming up or down one of the ruined stairs.

  Apollo was ready to challenge this possibility and boldly raised his voice: "Where is it, this deadly machine that can de­stroy Faces? Where is great Father Zeus? Apollo has a question or two he'd like to put to him—and so does Jeremy Redthorn."

  His only answer was a gust of wind more violent than before, hurling a whole shower of grinning skulls and swirling a pow­dering of snow in the rough shape of a pointing arm. The indi­cation was to the place where the piled stones reached their peak.

  Brother John had reassembled a hundred or more lancers into a coherent fighting force and was commanding them with some skill. Every time he had a moment free for thought, he thought about the gods—and every time he did that he looked up at the sky, afraid that woman in her chariot might be coming back. And then, Apollo! He and his brother, the Scholar, had both failed for a long time to detect any trace of divinity in the skinny red-haired peasant fisherboy one of them had picked up in a swamp.

  Up on the very summit, magic was thickly present in the strange­ness of the way the world behaved. Under a gray sky, amid gray stones, you tried to catch your breath while flecks and streaks of improbably colored birds were driven past like missiles in a breathless hurricane of wind. Some of their eggs came flying, too. Yes, winged eggs, sprouting wings in midair at the last sec­ond, veering away from a smashing collision. Arnobius was struck by the mad thought that these might be the winged eggs of flightless birds—and then he saw a pair of great gray eagles riding the whirlwind, broad pinions almost motionless, appar­ently in full control.