Shiva made a gesture of impatience. "Something he has heard from one of his familiars." Actually Shiva had been unable to follow Creon's involved explanation, but he had no intention of confessing any such failure to a mortal. "Of course he may be wrong, but we cannot afford to let the opportunity pass by."
Perses meanwhile was thinking that some of Creon's other predictions, notably those about the Face of Zeus, had not been fulfilled. But the king, dreading his god's reaction, did not want to voice that comment aloud. Investigations, both physical and magical, were continuing. But legend and experience alike assured him that in the Labyrinth, answers of any kind, to any question, tended to be difficult.
The god had fallen silent. Perhaps, thought Perses, Shiva's thoughts were running along the same lines.
Presently they were joined by Creon himself, who brought word that Hades was ready for a meeting.
Shiva drew himself up to his full height. "That is satisfactory," he allowed.
"Will the Lord Shiva be going to Dia personally?" the high priest asked. Then he looked up apprehensively, as another fragment of something fell from the ongoing work above.
"Not now." Shiva's original plan had been to allow Theseus time to get to Dia with his ship, and then to appear to take a personal hand in the proceedings. But the meeting with Hades must come first. By his very nature, the Ruler of the Underworld was vastly more powerful and important than Dionysus was ever likely to become.
He did not wish to try again to explain to this mere mortal how he, Shiva, could be so certain that his many enemies were trying to entrap him. Besides, there were other matters, like trying to arrange his alliance with Hades, that were really of overriding importance. Seeing to it that the right human got to wear the Face of Dionysus was certainly a task worth doing, but Shiva did not think that his own fate depended utterly on the result.
To Perses he said, "The Lord Hades has expressed a wish of forming an alliance with me."
"Great are the ways of the gods," the king murmured placatingly. Now the man was being so ostentatiously awe-stricken that Shiva found his attitude irritating. "How soon does my lord plan to conclude this alliance?" No doubt the humble tone of the question was intended to make it sound less impertinent, but the effort did not succeed.
"Very soon," Shiva responded shortly. Later there would be time to deal properly with impertinence.
The current human avatars of Hades and Shiva had never met, and, as far as Shiva could remember, none of the contacts between their respective earlier embodiments had been more than brief and incidental; so Shiva knew he must approach their impending conference warily.
In a little while the humans who were working as liaison between himself and Hades came to Shiva and told him where Hades wanted to meet him, and when. The rendezvous was scheduled to take place on a new volcanic island, many miles from Corycus, and still almost glowing with heat. Shiva had already scouted the place, airborne, from a distance; he supposed that Hades and his creatures of the Underworld could stand on it unscathed, but Shiva and everyone else would find it excruciatingly hot. Shiva expected that he could stand there and shield himself from damage, by an exertion of will, but he could not be comfortable.
The attitude of these human servants of Hades toward him was not at all like Creon's. Shiva burned with inward rage at being treated with arrogance by these mere mortals; yet he dared not strike them down, or even rebuke them strongly. And they were so confident in their impudence that they did not even flinch when he allowed the lid of his Third Eye to open slightly. Perhaps they did become just a shade more respectful.
These humans were relatively new to their job; their predecessors had been discharged—if that was the right word to describe their fate—in a general shakeup of Hades's staff following last year's encounter with Apollo.
The meeting got under way at last.
Lightning flared, rain fell toward rocks still not cooled very far below their melting point. The falling water, caught up in the rising heat, was turned to steam before it even touched the rocks, and so sprang up again at once, hissing and boiling away in white clouds that spread across the cooler ground, knee deep on mortals and deities alike.
There were no formal introductions made, and most of those present seemed to be taking steps to cloak their identities. For a moment Shiva wondered whether all these who were gathered here were part of the great conspiracy against him. Well, even if they were, it was too late now to simply turn around and leave.
Hades had to remove his Cap of Invisibility before he could be seen, even by his fellow gods. But even before the cap came off, Shiva was certain that he could feel that mighty presence near.
And then he saw it, standing where the shadows of the thunderclouds above seemed to be deepest. Not so much a shape, as a gathering of darkness, only vaguely human. It was difficult to be sure of Hades's size, though he received a definite impression of a shaggy head and massive, rounded shoulders, with a dark chain of some kind hung around the neck.
The voice when he heard it was dark and deep, and sounded full of echoes, as if it were issuing from some deep cave.
As was true of all the gods, Shiva's human body had once walked the earth with no name or identity beyond those of mere humanity. But the Destroyer, unlike many other deities, had long labored to force himself to forget that epoch of his existence. He would have given a great deal to possess that Cap. He was impressed despite himself by the power and majesty of Hades, but also vaguely sickened in a way. An utter blackness, an infernal gloom, that defied the Sun itself to brighten it. It would have swallowed up the lancing beam from the Third Eye, as the ocean swallowed sparks.
Exchanging whispers with those around him, Shiva began to comprehend the situation. Some of the gods that the Lord of the Underworld had hoped to recruit had declined to join him, while his aides had been unable to locate certain others. Some might be absent because no one was wearing their Faces at the moment. Others simply disliked Hades, or feared him too much to consider entering a partnership.
An alternate explanation could well be that they were mightily afraid of Apollo. Even those who had never been the Far-Worker's enemies, who considered themselves ready to be his friends, tended to be uneasy in his presence. Of course, very much depended on the nature and behavior of the particular avatars involved. In general, it seemed that the worldwide community of gods—if such a loose assortment of beings could be called a community—was not taking sides in this conflict. Most of the members, as far as could be determined, were simply waiting to see what happened next.
One god commented, "Too bad that Thanatos is missing. I have not seen his Face on anyone for some time."
"Have never seen him, that I can remember—and won't be too sad if I never do." That got a chuckle.
And another observed, "Yet I have noticed no difficulty in terminating mortal lives, even in the absence of Death himself."
Hades had his own ideas concerning any god-Faces that might be available, and who should put them on. He wanted to make sure that this new upstart avatar of Dionysus was slain without delay, though he was not at all sure which human should receive the prize. Ideally, the Lord of the Underworld would have preferred to carry that Face down to such a subterranean depth that none of his potential enemies would ever be able to get at it.
Shiva protested that he had in mind a certain human who, he thought, was very well qualified to wear the Face of Dionysus.
Well, said Hades, who as yet had no particular human in mind, maybe the candidate of Shiva would be acceptable—this Theseus. "But I must meet him first."
While the gods conversed, they observed a new version of Cerberus in operation. Cerberus was not a god, of course, and certainly had never been a human. But a formidable weapon and tool in the arsenal of Hades, the creature had just broken open the new gateway to the Underworld.
First a quivering of the ground, then a savage eruption, flying rocks and mud. Powerful limbs moving in a blur of speed, cla
ws harder and sharper than any bone, any tooth or claw, rending the earth, pulverizing even rock.
And now Cerberus, unbothered by the infernal heat, was working to pave the smooth, round wall of a tunnel, circular in cross-section.
"I seem to remember a different creature of that name. Much more doglike."
"That was the old version—Apollo killed it, more than a year ago."
The introduction of Apollo's name cast something of a chill on the proceedings.
Looking at the thing, Shiva decided that it was not, and had never been, alive, even though it certainly had hair—even red hair, calling to mind something he had heard of Apollo's new avatar—and its surface showed some of the complex irregularity of life. Even its eyes looked dead, and there was no sign that it was breathing.
Some kind of artifact, no doubt, of the mysterious odylic process of the ancients.
"Where does Hades get them?" an anonymous voice wondered.
"No one knows."
The thunderheads of the ongoing storm were massing ever more tightly above the island. The suggestion was inescapable that Zeus might be taking an interest in their meeting.
Hades professed indifference, but many of the others who gathered here would have preferred to meet at night, out of sight of the great Eye of Apollo.
The subject of the Sun-God having arisen, Hades assured his prospective colleague that he was quite ready to go another round with Apollo.
"That Bloodless One will not escape me, next time."
Shiva had been impressed by the presence of Hades when the meeting began. As it went on, the Destroyer moved from being wary to being frightened. The dark presence before him was one, with Poseidon and Zeus himself, of the triumvirate who ruled the universe. It had become a habit with Shiva to toy with the lid of his Third Eye, no matter whose company he was in, deriving pleasure from the nervous reactions of whoever he was with. But now the Third Eye stayed tightly closed.
And he remained frightened of Hades even after the conference was over. Even if Hades had promised that his, Shiva's, rule on Corycus would be confirmed and strengthened.
The high priest Creon, making his own calculations, had decided that the unknown power that had advised him about treasure was probably very reliable.
The thought that it might be untrustworthy was very frightening indeed, and he quickly put it from him.
Chapter Twenty
In the moment before Alex slipped the Face of Dionysus on over his own, he had only a vague and general idea of what shape his impending transformation was going to take—but that his metamorphosis would be awesome in some way he had not the slightest doubt. The young man clapped the strange thing over his left eye and ear, and cheek and forehead, in the full expectation of being seized and shaken by all the powers of Dionysus, mentally as well as physically, like a rat in the jaws of a dog.
What actually happened seemed less violent than he had expected, but every bit as thorough.
Through his left eye he now saw the world quite differently than he ever had before. Potentialities of life, perceptible as shimmering, transparent reds and greens, were visible in almost everything he looked at. Not quite everything; the empty sky was least affected, along with certain dark rocks, whose shapes and colors told him they had been unchanged for almost as long as there had been an earth. The vision of his other, un-Faced eye, like the hearing in his right ear, remained unaffected. The dual perception thus created in his senses was disorienting at first, but he soon began to get used to it.
In his left ear there now came sounds that were not quite sounds, only hints of whispers that might have been or were yet to be. And, if he listened for them, the throb of pulse and sigh of breath of every human who was near him.
Outside of the sudden alteration in his senses, the young man was at first aware of very little physical change in his own body. Unthinkingly he had somehow expected to be ten feet tall, but of course that was not to be. It seemed to him that there had been a broadening of his chest, a slight rounding of his limbs. When he wished silently for a mirror, one of the newly revitalized sprites brought it to him, materializing what felt like solid silver and glass out of the air.
Presently Alex realized that he was now able to see the sprites, and the other creatures of his entourage, clearly, whenever he wanted to see them, in somewhat the same way as a human could always monitor his own breathing when he cared to think about it. He could have named them now, or most of them, individually, had he wanted to take the trouble. At the moment about a dozen sprites, also called maenads or bacchantes, were visible, about half their number naked, the remainder wreathed in wispy veils. All were beautiful in both of the young soldier's eyes. Most of them appeared to be no more than half-grown girls, in a great variety of sizes and shapes. Their smooth, bare skins bore all the ordinary colors of humanity, along with several hues that neither Alex nor Dionysus had ever seen on mortal flesh.
Then there were the hairy-legged satyrs, all emphatically male, ranging in apparent age from elderly to hardly more than children. Their leader, as Alex could now remember, was a paunchy and debauched elder specimen named Silenus. As soon as Alex willed their forms into clarity, there they were, satyrs and maenads alike, making obeisance to him as soon as they observed that he was taking notice. The moment he wished them away, they promptly disappeared.
Let them stay vanished for the moment. He needed at least the illusion of privacy, to try to come to grips with a new world, his new self.
Now memory, vastly augmented over what that of mere mortal Alex had ever been, assured him that only the chariot and the two panthers were still missing from his usual entourage. The stored experience of a god's lifetime, a depository of marvels bewilderingly enormous, warned him that the restoration of those items might still take many days.
But it was not only the potentialities of life outside his own which were now open to his observation. New memory also assured him of the possibilities of frenzy, that he would experience and that he would bring to others, embodied so clearly in his inhuman escort. And there were depths now visible within himself, from which he recoiled after his first look.
The moment Alex wondered about the thyrsus staff, it suddenly appeared. It had come from nowhere, and now it was in his hand. He knew that his marvelous new memory, if he consulted it, would tell him what miraculous feats might be accomplished with the staff, and how to go about doing them. He would be able to work marvels, he was sure. But first . . .
The first really disturbing change to manifest itself was a raging thirst for wine, easily enough satisfied. He had only to extend a hand, and a filled goblet appeared in it. Then came a vivid daydream of naked women, sinuous bodies twisting in a lustful dance. But in the very first moments of the experience Alex realized that it was not a dream at all. The sprites were back, as he must have wanted them to be, at least a dozen of them now, as convincingly real and alive as any people he had ever seen.
Satyrs in their several varieties came trooping and cavorting with the females, bearing torches whose flames spurted up wildly in different colors. Romping lustfully, stamping and prancing to the beat of the music, the goat-men, led as usual by Silenus, grappled the girls and women to them in a wild dance that had hardly got under way before it was transformed into an orgy.
His human mind and body had a limited capacity to sustain such passion. Soon there came an ebbing of the tide that had drawn and whirled his blood into such frenzy, The storm ebbed, and was soon followed by an exhausted calm.
How many minutes had passed, Alex could not have said. He came to himself, gasping and with the blood pounding in his head, keenly aware that he had just finished satisfying his own lust on the body of Clara. Now she moved again beneath him, but this time the movement was only a simple, awkward, sexless shifting of her weight, as if trying to ease some painful pressure. With a kind of groan the new god—still Alex, but no longer only Alex—raised his body, enough to let her get up and withdraw to a little dista
nce. Then he collapsed on his side and lay there panting.
His mind was filled, overwhelmed, with the memory of naked bodies surrounding him, the rhythms of joining and rejoining. When he closed his eyes they were still there. But gradually the excitement and its visions faded.
Evidently Clara had been caught up in the madness of Dionysus almost as fully as he had himself. Nor had Daedalus been immune—but there was another matter that Alex now found puzzling. When the tide of mania ebbed, he retained a confused memory of having been observed, even while the frenzy was at its peak, by the figure of a woman. A beautiful, dark-haired woman, clad in a cloud of fine fabric that shimmered with the ghosts of many colors, she had watched with evident amusement while declining to take part.
Who was this woman, who could resist so successfully not only the grappling efforts of the satyrs, but all the charisma of Dionysus? His vast new vaults of memory held the answer, readily available—Circe, no goddess but a mortal woman, though still in appearance as young and beautiful as she had been two hundred years ago. Beyond that distance in the past, even the memory of the Twice-Born started to grow cloudy, on this subject at least. Dionysus thought it would have been good to speak with Circe, but now she was gone again.
Alex found a kind of ease in the exhaustion of his own, still very human, body. Not sleep, not yet. Sleep would come, as it came to gods and men alike, but it would have to wait.
The thyrsus was lying on the ground, and he bent and picked it up. He looked around, but there was still no sign of chariot and leopards.
Thinking about all that had happened to him during the last few hours, pulling up memories of a vast number of similar events in the god's past, Alex gradually came to understand that a great part of what he had experienced during the orgy—but not all of it, by any means—had taken place only in his own mind.
Well, he had never anticipated that the Face of Dionysus, the arrogant intruder he had so eagerly invited into his brain, was going to bring him peace. Tranquillity of any kind, physical or mental, was exactly the wrong thing to expect from the god whose nature Alex had come to share. But the change had been more overwhelming than he had expected it to be. The presence of the deity was racking him with madness.
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