[The Book of the Gods 01] - The Face of Apollo

by Fred Saberhagen

  Now Jeremy and Arnobius, climbing the very highest rocks, which seemed the remnant of a demolished tower, were able to look down at the portion of Olympus that had until now been hidden from them behind the very peak. They saw a sprawling, clinging structure, clinging low to the Mountain's rock, but still one of the biggest buildings that Jeremy Redthorn's eyes had ever seen. Apollo had seen bigger but could not recall any that looked more odd. From this angle, Olympus appeared to have been built as an ancient crude rock fortress. It would only be fit­ting that great horrors, great marvels, or both should lie behind such walls.

  Fierce fighting raged not far below the crest, between the Lu­gard lancers and the forward units of Kalakh's army; the sound of men's voices, bellowing, came up on the wind, but for the mo­ment Arnobius and his companion had the summit to them­selves.

  "The Oracle of the Gods," Arnobius breathed, and went scrambling up, scaling the very pinnacle of tumbled rocks.

  Apollo's keenest interest lay elsewhere, and he went down a lit­tle on the eastern slope, where the bulk of the vast enigmatic structure lay. Scouting inside, Jeremy came to a place where the howling of the wind faded a little, shielded now behind thick stone walls. He had entered a huge central room. Enough seats and benches to hold hundreds of people were arranged in con­centric rows, all empty now, but the heavy wooden frame on the small stone dais at the center looked more like a gibbet than a throne. Directly above it, the domed ceiling was open, at its cen­ter, to the sky.

  A slight sound caused Jeremy/Apollo to turn round. Back in the dimmest shadows at the rear of the auditorium, a pool of deeper blackness was suggestive. Apollo walked in that direction and stood at the edge of the pool, peering downward into the depths. He had discovered the uppermost entrance of the Cave.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Jeremy came out of the sprawling half-ruined building again. His thoughts, as he looked about him at what was supposed to be Olympus, kept coming back to the revelation of his last talk with Circe, in the Meadow of the Sun: His union with Apollo had brought him marvelous tools, powers, including memory, worthy of a god. And with Apollo's memories, includ­ing those of his death struggle against Hades, had come a kind of inherited purpose. But whatever wisdom or foolishness Je­remy demonstrated, whatever courage or fear, did not come from the Sun God. Whatever Jeremy Redthorn now possessed of such qualities could only have come from within himself.

  He stood for a moment looking about him at the ruin, part of which was older than Apollo's memory. If this was Olympus, then there ought not to be any gods.

  The wind brought noisy news; the fighting between Kalakh's troops and Victor's was now sweeping up the mountain again, to rage once more upon the highest rocks.

  Jeremy/Apollo took his Bow in hand and once more gathered ordinary arrows from the fallen, as he needed them. Wreaking havoc among the troops in Kalakh's blue and white, he meant to provoke a showdown with Hades, at all costs.

  The Sun God yearned for help from Hephaestus. But Andy did not appear, and Jeremy supposed the truth was that the enemy was likely to get more help from Hephaestus than Apollo did, in the form of jealously guarded tools and weapons, crafted in olden times, by previous avatars. Andy had not mentioned anything of the kind—but then he could not have had time to fully explore his memory before Jeremy departed.

  Jeremy kept in mind Circe's warning that human bodies pressed into service as the avatars of gods tended to wear out and collapse rather quickly; there was a limit to how long even the generally beneficent power of Apollo could sustain a framework of flesh and blood through extraordinary stresses. He should ex­pect that the Sun God would seek a fresh human to use when the one called Jeremy Redthorn had been used up.

  But there was nothing that Jeremy could do about that now.

  Meanwhile, Lord John was bravely rallying the remnant of his original four hundred lancers, as many of them as he could gather under his control. He had dispatched messengers to his fa­ther's army and now could only wait for some reply—and, above all, for reinforcements, before it was too late.

  Once more the most ordinary of arrows, springing from Apollo's Bow, wrought fearful havoc among the enemy. He wished he dared to use his stock of special shafts, that they would magically replenish themselves in his quiver as fast as he shot them away—or that Andy would come whirling in an airborne chariot to bring him more. But that was not the way things were working out today.

  How long his human flesh could stand the strain and stress of combat he did not know. But for the moment he endured, and no human could stand against him in single combat—unless it were another like himself, strengthened from within by the help of some god.

  This battle could not be won until he had challenged and con­quered Hades. He went back into the auditorium, nocked one of his three special Arrows to his Bow, and prepared to go under­ground.

  Pausing at the very entrance to the Cave, Jeremy found himself looking into the eyes of an old man, standing no more than an arm's length away. A moment passed before he realized that the image was his own, reflected from the visual depths of a glassy wall. The left eye was dark and keen, the right as greenish and nearsighted as Jeremy Redthorn's had ever been.

  He started down, into the darkness.

  Somewhat to his surprise, not Hades but Thanatos, in a new avatar, stood there confronting him.

  Apollo was not impressed. "Nothing to say to me, Death God? The last time we met, you were full of words."

  "This time I am a soldier, not a scholar," replied a sharp new voice. "You may find it a little harder to kill me, this time."

  Jeremy raised his Bow just as his opponent dodged back out of sight.

  Arnobius, wind-battered but still clinging to the stones that seemed to him the top of the world, could feel his mind waver­ing, on the brink of being plunged into another fit. Grimly he fought to retain his consciousness; he was only dimly aware of the fighting going on a short distance below.

  But here came a startling sight indeed; he saw a chariot swoop­ing down out of the sky and the Trickster in it, about to enter the fighting. But that was not to be, for grim Thanatos rose from be­hind one of the high rocks and put the curse of death upon the magic horses, so that the running animals collapsed in midstride and the chariot crashed to earth.

  The Scholar blacked out for a moment, and when he could get his eyes to focus again, he saw the goddess, who was no longer Carlotta, on the ground now and in the grip of Death himself. She was being dragged under the earth through one of the little openings by which the zombies had earlier come out in their abortive sortie.

  In the midst of his near-swoon, trying to get his body to work again, Arnobius thought he understood why the gods had ceased for many days to fascinate him: that had happened as soon as they became uncomfortably real. Just as he had turned away from Carlotta when she became a real person in his life. But here and now, on the Mountain, reality had become so overwhelming that he had no choice but to yield to it.

  This was Olympus, the abode of Zeus, the place where an­swers ought to be available, if the truth could be found anywhere in the universe. Here, if anywhere, it could be possible to read or hear the inner secrets of the gods.

  The Scholar gritted out: "Once the gods cease fighting among themselves, they may slay me for intruding. But first I will de­mand, of whatever Power rules here, some answers!"

  At the very peak, three massive stones, one supported by two, formed a kind of niche or grotto, and half-sheltered in this recess there grew, or crouched, what looked like a squat and ancient tree, almost entirely denuded of leaves, trunk and branches fiendishly twisted by centuries of wind.

  On the side of the tree toward Arnobius, an image was form­ing, even as he watched. A knob of the thick trunk fashioned it­self into a head, twice as large as human life. On it was a countenance, gnarled and grim and powerful, that might have belonged to Zeus.

  Two great eyes stared at the human visitor. "Ask," said a voice, seemingly wrung out of
the wood, branches, and whole sections of the gnarled trunk, squeaking and grating against each other in the wind. Then it repeated the same word, four or five times, in as many different languages.

  The Scholar could understand all of the languages but one. "Apollo, Apollo!" he screamed at it, surprising himself with his own choice of a first question. "I want you to tell me about Apollo!"

  He had been expecting the voice to convey whatever response the Oracle might deign to make, but instead his answer came in an even more amazing form. The right eye of Zeus quickly ex­panded into a rough circle, a hand length in diameter, and its sur­face became glassy, translucent. There was an appearance of a ceaseless motion, flow, of something very active inside the eye, and presently small dark lines spelled out letters and words. The Scholar, clinging close to the trunk, had no difficulty in deci­phering the ancient language:

  I KNOW MORE THAN APOLLO,

  FOR OFT WHEN HE LIES SLEEPING,

  I SEE THE STARS AT BLOODY WARS

  IN THE WOUNDED WELKIN WEEPING

  If Zeus was really a talking tree stump, then the world was in­deed completely and utterly mad, and the Scholar burned with the daring of despair. "Who are you?" he shouted. "What is this gibberish? Is there or isn't there a god somewhere, hiding in these ruins, who can explain it all to me?"

  The wind howled, tearing at the rage of his clothing. New words formed inside the eye:

  THERE IS NO GOD—(WISDOM 12:13)

  More nasty tricks. He might have known. He stood up straight and howled at the universe. "Who are you? Father Zeus?"

  Doing so, he almost missed the next line:

  —OTHER THAN YOU, WHO CARES FOR EVERY THING

  Arnobius gripped the rough bark with all the fingers of both his hands, clutching at the cheeks of Zeus. "Tell me; I demand to know . . . whether the gods made human beings or humans somehow created gods?"

  YET GOD DID MAKE MAN IMPERISHABLE

  HE MADE HIM IN THE IMAGE OF HIS OWN NATURE (2:23)

  "Who are you?"

  I AM HE WHO FOILS THE OMENS OF WIZARDS, AND MAKES FOOLS OF DIVINERS (ISAIAH 44:24)

  "All trickery, all sham! What kind of knowledge is this? This is no god. I could give better prophecies than these myself."

  KNOW THYSELF

  Arnobius jumped to his feet again. And in the next moment, as if responding to a signal, flying furies came buffeting him with whip-fringed wings, tearing at him with their claws.

  Moments later the furies were driven off by a pair of eagles—birds known to Arnobius as the symbol, sometimes the incarna­tion, of Father Zeus.

  The Scholar fell down gasping. The pangs of a new seizure clawed at him, and this time he had no choice but to give way.

  Jeremy, having advanced a few more yards into deepening gloom, made out in front of him, to his utter horror, the form of Katy. She was struggling in the grasp of Death, and he lunged forward to save her. A moment later, his Arrow had plunged un­erringly into Thanatos's head, even though the Death God was trying to shield himself behind his hostage.

  A moment later, Jeremy/Apollo had scooped up Katy in his arms and had turned with her, striding back toward the daylit dome of the big amphitheater.

  The way to sunlight and the upper air stood wide open for them. No opposition here. Only the faintest imaginable blot of shadow, moving along the wall of the Cave passage—

  "Look out!"

  Katy's warning came just too late. Hades, wearing his Helm of Invisibility, came seemingly from nowhere to strike down Je­remy/Apollo with a rock. Apollo's powers shielded him from the deadliest effects, yet he fell down senseless before he even realized that his great Enemy was near.

  On regaining consciousness, Jeremy/Apollo discovered that he was lying on the stone floor of the great auditorium, bound hand and foot, his Sandals gone; he remembered slaying Death—for the second time—but knew that his own death was near.

  Straining against his bonds, the Sun God discovered that this body's muscles had again been worn and exhausted into weak­ness. He had no chance of breaking even a single cord.

  The fight, the whole battle, had been lost. Among the common soldiers in green and blue, those who were unable to get away downhill, the Enemy took no prisoners.

  But worse than that, worse than anything, was the fact that Katy lay bound beside him, as helpless as he was.

  The first thing he heard on regaining consciousness was: "Don't kill either of them yet. We must not spill Faces where they might flow away and be lost."

  Kate still lay beside him, and her eyes were closed, but the rise and fall of her breast showed that she still lived. He thought of calling, trying to wake her—but then thought that perhaps he had better not.

  Instead he turned his head and looked around. His mind, now confronted by inescapable doom, was refusing to settle down on anything. Somehow the atmosphere here under the great stone dome was utterly businesslike. If this was still the Trickster's house, in this room even the Trickster seemed to have abandoned whimsy; even she, it seemed, must be compelled to take seriously this ultimate assertion of power.

  Jeremy realized now that it was not an audience chamber so much as a place where executions would be carried out, and wit­nessed by an orderly crowd.

  The fine workmanship of this room, at least, if no other part of the fortress in its present form, showed that it must have been built by Hephaestus—who else?

  Apollo thought that in some of the stonework he detected faint clues to some fairly recent remodeling, but he could not tell by whom it had been done or for what purpose....

  But that mattered little. Of course, this was the place, the room, the device, in which Faces could be destroyed.

  Occasional crevices in the thick walls and the central opening of the dome let in the howling of the wind. Looking up, he could see blue, and moving clouds, but the sun and its power had now gone low in the western sky. There would be no direct beam of its light to lend Apollo new strength.

  Yes, the chamber must have been designed to accommodate rituals with hundreds in attendance and possibly to double as a throne room for the intended ruler. Certainly that had not been Hades, who would never dare to risk the brightness of daylight or even the piercing pin lights of the stars, under the centerless dome of stone. As many as twenty concentric rows of seats as­cended toward the dome's circular base at the rear. And now, an hour after the end of the battle, it appeared that almost all of the seats would be occupied, by the officers of Kalakh and the min­isters and hangers-on of Hades. Lord Kalakh, stern and ageless-looking, with his bulging eyes, an enemy of Lord Victor and therefore an ally of Hades, had a place of honor in the front row.

  * * *

  Jeremy's mind was clearing now. He could wish that it was not so, but so it was.

  And even in the midst of fear and overwhelming loss, Jeremy could not help being struck by how serious this chamber was, in its surfaces and its proportions! After all, it could hardly have been built to the Trickster's specifications. Darker forces must have commanded here.

  Now executioners came, to lift him up while others lifted Kate. They were being hoisted now onto the central dais of the great room, where other men were busy, bending over, testing some­thing. At the last moment the two prisoners were held aside, but not so far that Jeremy could not see what was being tested. In the center of the stark wooden scaffolding, a circular stone trap, big enough to accommodate two bodies side by side, fell open smoothly.

  When the round slab hung open, it revealed what looked like a bottomless well beneath. The details of whatever was down there remained invisible. It reminded Jeremy of Vulcan's forge be­fore the flames came shooting up.

  "That is where the two of you are going," said a male voice at Jeremy's side. He looked around, to discover an unfamiliar male countenance, yet another avatar of Death—there seemed no shortage of humans willing and ready to put on that Face.

  The man said: "Our master Hades bids me explain the matter to you: You will discover
no quick end to life below. Instead, slow horrors await you in the pit. There will be prolonged agony for you both. The Faces now inside your heads will rot there. Your gods will decay, eroded by your pain, until there is nothing left of them. Days from now—to you it will seem like many, many years—when your two bodies at last cease to breathe, both Apollo and the Trickster will have been long dead."

  Whatever reaction the newest Thanatos had hoped for was perhaps there to be seen in Jeremy's face—perhaps not. Jeremy was past caring what his enemies saw or thought.

  When Death had turned back to report to his master, Jeremy wondered a little that Hades should prefer to destroy the Trick­ster's powers rather than take them over for his own ends, but then on second thought he did not wonder. Any trick, even the nastiest, contained an element of joy, of unpredictability, that would be unacceptable to the gloomy ruler of the Underworld.

  Kate, oh, Kate! Her eyes were open now and wandering. As for himself, he'd done what he could and there was nothing more to try, and they would kill him now. Let his fate, and Apollo's, be in the hands of Father Zeus ... if there was any Father Zeus, apart from the odd presence upon the summit, which he had never had the time to see for himself.

  But Kate! Oh, Kate.

  On second thought he diverted his prayer, directing it to the Unknown God, whose empty pedestal waited in the hall of deities back at the Academy.

  Hades had removed his helmet of invisibility—perhaps it was a strain to wear or interfered with the wearer's own vision—and could be seen by those brave enough to look directly at him. The Lord of the Underworld was standing heavily shadowed in the rear. About as far as he dared to get away from the opening of the tunnel. Now and then someone in one of the forward seats turned his head, glancing back toward that brooding presence—but soon turned back again. He didn't like people in front turn­ing around to try to see him clearly. He had a bodyguard of shadow-loving zombies around him.