Olympos t-2

by Dan Simmons

  The old man almost collapsed into the gold-and-lapis throne.

  “Hail, Priam, son of Laomedon, noble ruler in the line of Dardanus, father of brave Hector, pitiable Paris, and welcoming Deiphobus,” said Penthesilea, going to one greaved knee. Her young-woman’s voice, although melodious, was more than strong enough to echo in the huge chamber. “I, Queen Penthesilea, perhaps the last of the Amazon queens, and my twelve breasted and bronze-armored warriors bring you praise, condolences, gifts, and our spears.”

  “Your condolences and loyalties are your most precious gifts to us, dear Penthesilea.”

  “I also bring you a message from Pallas Athena and the key to ending your war with the gods,” said Penthesilea.

  The king cocked his head. Some of his retinue audibly gasped.

  “Pallas Athena has never loved Ilium, beloved daughter. She always conspired with our Argive enemies to destroy this city and all within its walls. But the goddess is our sworn enemy now. She and Aphrodite murdered my son Hector’s baby, Astyanax, young lord of the city—saying that we and our children were like mere offerings to them. Sacrifices. There will be no peace with the gods until their race or ours is extinguished.”

  Penthesilea, still on one knee but her head held high and her blue eyes flashing challenge, said, “The charge against Athena and Aphrodite is false. The war is false. The gods who love Ilium wish to love us and support us once again—including Father Zeus himself. Even gray-eyed Pallas Athena has come over to the side of Ilium because of the base treachery of the Achaeans—that liar Achilles most specifically, since he invented the calumny that Athena murdered his friend Patroclus.”

  “Do the gods offer peace terms?” asked Priam. The old man’s voice was whispery, his tone almost wistful.

  “Athena offers more than peace terms,” said Penthesilea, rising to her feet. “She—and the gods who love Troy—offer you victory.”

  “Victory over whom?” called Deiphobus, moving to his father’s side. “The Achaeans are our allies now. They and the artificed beings, the moravecs, who shield our cities and camps from Zeus’s thunderbolts.”

  Penthesilea laughed. At that moment, every man in the room marveled at how beautiful the Amazon queen was—young and fair, her cheeks flushed and her features as animated as a girl’s, her body under the beautifully molded bronze armor both lithe and lush at the same time. But Penthesilea’s eyes and eager expression were not those of a mere girl’s—they brimmed over with vitality, animal spirits, and sharp intelligence, as well as showing a warrior’s fire for action.

  “Victory over Achilles who has misled your son, noble Hector, who even now leads Ilium to ruin,” cried Penthesilea. “Victory over the Argives, the Achaeans, who even now plot your downfall, the city’s ruin, your other sons’ and grandsons’ death, and the enslavement of your wives and daughters.”

  Priam shook his head almost sadly. “No one can best fleet-footed Achilles in combat, Amazon. Not even Ares, who three times has been killed by Achilles’ own hands. Not even Athena, who has fled at his attack. Not even Apollo, who was carried back to Olympus in golden-bloodied pieces after challenging Achilles. Not even Zeus, who fears to come down to do single combat with the man-god.”

  Penthesilea shook her head and her golden curls flashed. “Zeus fears no one, Noble Priam, pride of the Dardanus line. And he could destroy Troy—lo, destroy the entire earth on which Troy resides—with one flick of his aegis.”

  Spearmen went pale and even Priam flinched at the mention of the aegis, Zeus’s most powerful and divine and mysterious weapon. It was understood by all that even the other Olympian gods could be destroyed in a minute if Zeus chose to use the aegis. This was no mere thermonuclear weapon such as the Thunder God dropped uselessly on moravec forcefields early in the war. The aegis was to be feared.

  “I make this vow to you, Noble Priam,” said the Amazon queen. “Achilles will be dead before the sun sets on either world today. I vow on the blood of my sisters and mother that…”

  Priam held up his hand to stop her.

  “Make no vow before me now, young Penthesilea. You are like another daughter to me and have been since you were a baby. Challenging Achilles to mortal combat is death. What made you come to Troy to find your death this way?”

  “It is not death, My Lord,” said the Amazon with strain audible in her voice. “It is glory.”

  “Often the two are the same,” said Priam. “Come, sit down next to me. Talk to me softly.” He waved his bodyguard and son, Deiphobus, back out of the range of hearing. The dozen Amazon women also took several steps away from the two thrones.

  Penthesilea sat on the high-backed throne, once Hecuba’s, recovered from the wreckage of the old palace and now kept empty here in Hecuba’s memory. The Amazon set her shining helmet on the broad arm of the throne and leaned closer to the old man.

  “I am pursued by Furies, Father Priam. For three months to this day I have been pursued by the Furies.”

  “Why?” asked Priam. He leaned closer, like some future-era priest to some yet unborn confessor. “Those avenging spirits seek to exact blood for blood only when no human avenger is left alive to do so, my daughter—especially when one family member has been injured by another. Surely you have hurt no member of your royal Amazon family.”

  “I killed my sister, Hippolyte,” said Penthesilea, her voice quavering.

  Priam pulled back. “You murdered Hippolyte? The former queen of the Amazons? Theseus’ royal wife? We heard that she had died in a hunting accident when someone had seen movement and mistaken the Queen of Athens for a stag.”

  “I did not mean to murder her, Priam. But after Theseus abducted my sister—seduced her aboard his ship during a state visit, set sail, and carried her off—we Amazons set our mind to revenge. This year, while all eyes and attention in the home isles and Peloponnese were turned to your struggle here at Troy, with heroes away and Athens lying undefended, we made up a small fleet, set our own siege—though nothing so grand and immortal in the telling as the Argives’ siege of Ilium—and invaded Theseus’ stronghold.”

  “We heard this, of course,” mumbled old Priam. “But the battle ended quickly in a treaty of peace and the Amazons departed. We heard that Queen Hippolyte died shortly after, during a grand hunt to celebrate the peace.”

  “She died by my spear,” said Penthesilea, forcing every word out into the air. “Originally, the Athenians were on the run, Theseus was wounded, and we thought we had the city in our grasp. Our only goal was to rescue Hippolyte from this man—whether she wanted to be rescued or not—and we were close to doing so when Theseus led a counterattack that drove us a day’s bloody retreat back to our ships. Many of my sisters were slain. We were fighting for our lives now, and once again Amazon valor won out—we drove Theseus and his fighters back a day’s walk toward his walls. But my final spearcast, aimed for Theseus himself, found its deadly way into the heart of my sister, who—in her bold Athenian armor—looked like a man as she fought alongside her lord and husband.”

  “Against the Amazons,” whispered Priam. “Against her sisters.”

  “Yes. As soon as we discovered whom I had killed, the battle stopped. The peace was made. We erected a white column near the acropolis in my noble sister’s memory, and we departed in sorrow and shame.”

  “And the Furies hound you now, for your sister’s shed blood.”

  “Every day,” said Penthesilea. Her bright eyes were moist. Her fresh cheeks had gone flushed with the telling and now were pale. She looked extraordinarily beautiful.

  “But what does Achilles and our war have to do with this tragedy, my daughter?” whispered Priam.

  “This month, son of Laomedon and scion of the line of Dardanus, Athena appeared to me. She explained that no offering I could make to the Furies would ever appease the hell-beasts, but that I could make amends for Hippolyte’s death by traveling to Ilium with twelve of my chosen companions and defeating Achilles in single combat, thus ending this errant w
ar and restoring peace between gods and men.”

  Priam rubbed his chin where the gray stubble he’d let grow since Hecuba’s death passed for a beard. “No one can defeat Achilles, Amazon. My son Hector—the finest warrior Troy has ever bred—tried for eight years and failed. Now he is ally and friend to the fleet-footed mankiller. The gods themselves have tried for more than eight months, and all have failed or fallen before the wrath of Achilles—Ares, Apollo, Poseidon, Hermes, Hades, Athena herself—all have taken on Achilles and failed.”

  “It’s because none of them knew of his weakness,” whispered the Amazon Penthesilea. “His mother, the goddess Thetis, found a secret way to confer invulnerability in battle to her mortal son when he was an infant. He cannot fall in battle except by injury to this one weak place.”

  “What is it?” gasped Priam. “Where is it?”

  “I swore to Athena—upon pain of death—that I would reveal it to no one, Father Priam. But that I would use the knowledge to kill Achilles by my own Amazon hand and thus end this war.”

  “If Athena knows Achilles’ weakness, then why did she not use it to end his life in their own combat, woman? A duel which ended with Athena fleeing, wounded, QTing back to Olympos in pain and fear.”

  “The Fates decreed when Achilles was an infant that his secret weakness would be found only by another mortal, during this battle for Ilium. But the work of the Fates has come undone.”

  Priam sat back in his throne. “So Hector was fated to kill fleet-footed Achilles after all,” he murmured. “If we had not opened this war with the gods, that destiny would have come about.”

  Penthesilea shook her head. “No, not Hector. Another mortal—a Trojan—would have taken Achilles’ life after he had killed Hector. One of the Muses had learned this from a slave they called a scholic, who knew the future.”

  “A seer,” said Priam. “Like our esteemed Helenus or the Achaeans’ prophet Calchas.”

  The Amazon shook her golden curls again. “No, the scholics did not see the future—somehow, they came from the future. But they are all dead now, according to Athena. But Achilles’ Fate awaits. And I will fulfill it.”

  “When?” said old Priam, obviously turning over all the ramifications of this in his mind. He had not been king of the grandest city on earth for more than five decades for no reason, to no purpose. His son, Hector, was blood ally to Achilles now, but Hector was not king. Hector was Ilium’s noblest warrior, but while he might have once carried the fate of the city and its inhabitants in his sword arm, he had never imagined it in his mind. This was Priam’s work.

  “When?” asked Priam again. “How soon can you and your twelve Amazon warriors kill Achilles?”

  “Today,” promised Penthesilea. “As I promised. Before the sun sets on either Ilium or Olympos visible through that hole in the air we passed on the way in.”

  “What do you require, daughter? Weapons? Gold? Riches?”

  “Only your blessing, Noble Priam. And food. And a couch for my women and me, for a short nap before we bathe, adorn ourselves again in armor, and go out to end this war with the gods.”

  Priam clapped his hands. Deiphobus, the many guards, his courtiers, and the twelve Amazon women stepped back into earshot.

  He ordered fine food be brought to these women, then soft couches made available for their short sleep, then warm baths to be drawn and slave women to be ready to apply oils and unguents after their baths, and massages, and finally that the thirteen women’s horses be fed and combed and resaddled when Penthesilea was ready to go forth to do battle that afternoon.

  Penthesilea was smiling and confident when she led her twelve companions out of the royal hall.

  10

  Quantum teleportation through Planck space—a term the goddess Hera did not know—was supposed to be instantaneous, but in Planck space, such terms had little meaning. Transit through such interstices in the weave of space-time left trails, and the gods and goddesses, thanks to the nanomemes and cellular re-engineering that was part of their creation, knew how to follow such trails as effortlessly as a hunter, as easily as the goddess Artemis would track a stag through the forest.

  Hera followed Zeus’s winding trail through Planck nothing, knowing only that it was not one of the regular string channels between Olympos and Ilium or Mount Ida. It was somewhere else on the ancient earth of Ilium.

  She QT’d into existence in a large hall that Athena knew well. A giant quiver of arrows and the outline of a giant bow was painted on one wall and there was a long, low table set with dozens of fine goblets, serving bowls, and golden plates.

  Zeus looked up in surprise from where he was sitting at the table—he had reduced his size to a mere seven feet here in this human hall—and idly scratching behind the ears of a gray-muzzled dog.

  “My Lord,” said Hera. “Are you going to cut that dog’s head off as well?”

  Zeus did not smile. “I should,” he rumbled. “As a mercy to it.” His brow was still furrowed. “Do you recognize this place and this dog, wife?”

  “Yes. It is Odysseus’ home, on rugged Ithaca. The dog is named Argus, and was bred by the younger Odysseus shortly before he left for Troy. He trained the pup.”

  “And it waits for him still,” said Zeus. “But now Penelope is gone, and Telemachus, and even the suitors who had just now begun to gather like carrion crows in Odysseus’ home, seeking Penelope’s hand and lands and wealth, have mysteriously disappeared along with Penelope, Telemachus, and all other mortals save for those few thousand at Troy. There is no one to feed this mutt.”

  Hera shrugged. “You could send it to Ilium and let it dine on Dionysos, your wastrel son.”

  Zeus shook his head. “Why are you so harsh with me, wife? And why have you followed me here when I want to be alone to ponder this strange theft of all the world’s people?”

  Hera stepped closer to the white-bearded God of Gods. She feared his wrath—of all the gods and mortals, only Zeus could destroy her. She feared for what she was about to do, but she was resolved to do it.

  “Dread majesty, Son of Kronos, I stopped by only to say goodbye for a few sols. I did not want to leave our last discussion on its note of discord.” She stepped even closer and covertly touched Aphrodite’s breast-band tucked under her right breast. Hera could feel the flow of sexual energy filling the room; sense the pheromones flowing from her.

  “Where are you going for several sols when both Olympos and the war for Troy are in such turmoil, wife?” grumbled Zeus. But his nostrils flared and he looked up at her with a new interest, ignoring Argus the dog.

  “With Nyx’s help, I am off to the ends of this empty earth to visit Okeanos and Mother Tethys, who prefer this world to our cold Mars, as well you know, husband.” She took three steps closer so that she was almost within touching distance of Zeus.

  “Why visit them now, Hera? They’ve done well enough without you in the centuries since we tamed the Red World and inhabited Olympos.”

  “I’m hoping to end their endless feud,” said Hera in her guileful way. “For too long have they held back from each other, hesitated to make love because of the anger in their hearts. I wanted to tell you where I would be so that you would not flare in godly anger at me, should you think I’d gone in secret to Okeanos’ deep, flowing halls.”

  Zeus stood. Hera could sense the excitement stirring in him. Only the folds of his god-robe concealed his lust.

  “Why hurry, Hera?” Zeus’s eyes were devouring her now. His look made Hera remember the feel of her brother-husband-lover’s tongue and hands upon her softest places.

  “Why tarry, husband?”

  “Going to see Okeanos and Tethys is a journey you can take tomorrow or the day after tomorrow or never,” said Zeus, stepping toward Hera. “Today, here, we can lose ourselves in love! Come, wife…”

  Zeus swept all the goblets, cutlery, and spoiled food from the long table with a blast of invisible force from his raised hand. He ripped a giant tapestry from the wall
and tossed it onto the rough-plank table.

  Hera took a step back and touched her breast as if she were going to QT away. “What are you saying, Lord Zeus? You want to make love here? In Odysseus’ and Penelope’s abandoned home, with that dog watching? Who is to say that all the gods will not be watching us through their pools and viewers and holowalls? If love is your pleasure, wait until I return from Okeanos’ watery halls and we will make love in my own bedroom, made private by Hephaestus’s craft…”

  “No!” roared Zeus. He was growing in more ways than one now, his gray-curled head brushing the ceiling. “Don’t worry about prying eyes. I will make a golden cloud so dense around the isle of Ithaca and Odysseus’ home that the sharpest eyes in the universe, neither god nor mortal, not even Prospero or Setebos, could pierce the mist and see us while we’re making love. Take your clothes off!”

  Zeus waved his blunt-fingered hand again and the entire house vibrated with the energy of the surrounding forcefield and concealing golden cloud. The dog, Argus, ran from the room, his hair standing on end from the energies being unleashed.

  Zeus grabbed Hera by the wrist and pulled her closer with his right hand, even while pulling her gown down away from her breasts with his free hand. Aphrodite’s breastband fell away with the gown Athena had made for Hera, but it did not matter—the air was so thick with lust and pheromones that the queen thought she could swim in it.

  Zeus lifted her with one arm and tossed her back on the tapestry-covered table. It was a good thing, thought Hera, that Odysseus had made his long dining table of thick, solid planks pulled from the deck of a ship run aground on Ithaca’s treacherous rocks. He pulled the gown away from her legs, leaving her naked. Then he stepped out of his own robes.

  As many times as Hera had seen her husband’s divine phallus standing erect, it never ceased to stop her breath in her throat. All of the male gods were … well, gods … but in their almost-forgotten Transformation to Olympians, Zeus had saved the most impressive attributes for himself. This purple-knobbed staff now pressing between her pale knees was the only scepter this King of the Gods would ever need to create awe among mortals or envy among his fellow gods, and although Hera thought that he showed it too frequently—his lust was the equal of his size and virility—she still thought of this part of her Dread Majesty as hers alone.