Ariande's Web
Page 40
A funnel-shaped volume of soil and rock, some five or six yards in diameter at the top, had gone sliding and collapsing down into the bowels of the earth. The whole apparatus of nested rings had completely disappeared, along with whatever might have been immediately beneath it.
The great, gaping hole, as seen by some observer who found himself hanging precariously over it when the pavement broke, indeed looked as if it might open a passage into the very Underworld.
"In fact—" Apollo began to say. But he stopped abruptly, and after standing frozen for a moment, peering down into the pit, quickly jumped back.
Dionysus stood close enough to see a little of what was going on. Darkness was moving down there, as if a negation of sunlight, of all light, had taken on a solid, objective form. And it was hurtling toward the surface, at the speed of a slung stone.
Hades came erupting out of the earth, a boiling cloud of shadow. The Cap of Invisibility concealed his precise form, even from the other gods nearby, but everyone could feel his presence.
One Silver Arrow, and then another, went flying into the heart of the darkness; and in return, there came back a shaking and rending of the earth beneath the Sun-God's feet, a hurling of chunks of solid rock.
And then another Silver Arrow, this time drawing blood. Darkness flecked with red burst open, like pus from a boil, and seemed about to engulf the entire Labyrinth. Alex felt the need to brace his feet, straining against what seemed a combination of wind and gravity, that threatened to suck him down into the earth.
Gradually, irresistibly, the sunlight seemed to be eating away the billowing darkness.
The awesome weapons of Hades and Apollo shook the rock beneath the feet of all the humans unlucky enough to be caught nearby. Those who were able went scrambling to find some kind of shelter.
The earth was trembling again.
Now Alex/Dionysus saw, with a chill of horror, another figure emerging from the newly enlarged pit.
Dionysus recognized the new shape, superficially quite human. It was that of the God of Death. The lower half of his ugly face was covered by a ragged growth of dark beard, and the eye of Dionysus could make out the red and ghostly wings sprouting from his shoulders.
Thanatos struck at him, a staggering blow whose force was borne by no visible weapon or movement of the arm; and in another moment, a four-way fight was in progress.
The weapon of Thanatos was a subtle extraction of life; but it was hard to extract life entirely from anyone when Dionysus was defending.
Neither Alex nor Dionysus had thought ahead of time how the God of Joy might be able to fight the embodiment of Death. Laughter to shake him to pieces? That would not work. But if Dionysus could not strike back at Death directly, he could maintain his own life against the onslaught, and spread it as far as possible into the world around him.
How long their silent struggle lasted, neither Alex nor Dionysus could have said. But a time came at last when he realized, with a kind of desperate relief, that Thanatos was in full retreat.
Death fled close on the heels of Hades, who had been wounded, perhaps mortally, by a barrage of Silver Arrows, and had gone tumbling down through the opening from which he had emerged.
For hours, Theseus had been prowling the Labyrinth, sometimes with sword in hand. When he heard human voices somewhere ahead, he followed the sound as best he could, until the voices faded away, to be followed by the crashing noises of divine combat. In a few minutes, that too had faded.
Still he kept going, trusting to the luck that almost never failed him; and after several hours he emerged in the central open space, the very spot from which he had escaped, some days ago, by bounding over a wall. He looked around him warily, but the plaza with its central tiers of seats, and torture-cages, was now deserted. But for the seats and cages, he might not have recognized the place, so drastically had it been transformed, with some of the surrounding walls torn down and a great ragged cavity hollowed in the earth.
But still there was no sign of the Minotaur.
In frustrated anger he turned round, glaring at the walls, and shouted, "Come out and fight, damn you, Cow-head. Where have you got to now?"
Only silence answered.
And suddenly, for the first time since returning to the Maze, Theseus knew fear—fear that he was dreaming again, and that he would not be allowed to recognize the fact that he was dreaming—not until something truly horrible had happened to him.
But Theseus would rather die than allow his life to be ruled by fear. Moving on, a moment later he almost stumbled over the blasted, headless, shriveled-looking body of Shiva's most recent avatar. The necklace of skulls made it impossible to mistake—though for just a moment he had almost taken it for some fallen priest of Shiva's service.
Theseus raised his head, and looked around him, and listened carefully. For a moment, a moment only, he thought of Ariadne. "Time to go home," he said aloud at last. He was speaking to no one but himself.
No, it was not a dream this time. He was not going to allow it to be a dream.
That evening, an irregular string of mercenaries' ships were putting out to sea from the harbor of Kandak, oars working the water in a steady rhythm. Captain Yilmaz, like many of his colleagues, had not waited to hoist sail; Theseus, leaning on the rail beside his friend, remarked that it was easy enough to tell when a fight had been lost, when there was no longer any prospect of getting paid.
Dionysus understood that the killing of Hades would have more far-reaching implications than the deaths of Shiva or the God of Death. But was the Lord of the Underworld truly dead as a coffin-nail, his Face lost somewhere down a fissure in the earth? Neither gods nor humans could be sure.
No one really depended on the Destroyer for anything, but the Underworld had widespread and far-reaching business—some said that the soul or shade of everyone wound up sooner or later in that dark domain.
Apollo, though once more victorious over the Lord of the Underworld, had been weakened by the conflict, and had withdrawn to rest and try to restore himself; and not even Dionysus knew where his great ally had gone. He had promised to return in time for the wedding.
Gazing down into the pit, as well as he could while keeping at a safe distance, Daedalus said, "Not easy to see how any object that falls down there will ever be brought back within reach of a human hand. Yet I must believe that it will."
But the satyr Silenus, who had launched, or at least helped to spread, the rumor concerning the Face of Zeus, had already confessed the fact to his master Dionysus.
Princess Phaedra asked, "Then whether or not there was any truth in the story of the face of Zeus being there . . ."
"Is something that we simply do not know," said the Twice-Born.
The current avatar of Dionysus, he who had once been Alex the Half-Nameless, could only hesitate as to whether to punish his servant, who was now prostrate before him and putting on a show of great repentance. The god said sternly, "Whatever effect you intended, the result was to sow great confusion among our enemies—and among ourselves as well."
It was easy to bewilder the foolish Creon. He had already befuddled himself, with much seeking after exotic wisdom. Next time we will be more careful, lord. Oh great lord, is it time yet for another celebration?
It would be time, and very soon, for a great wedding feast. But the Twice-Born was not ready to allow his erratic servant the joy of making such a plan—not just yet. Instead, Dionysus told him, "We will be lucky, you ancient fool, if any of us live long enough to see another celebration. Hades will always be waiting somewhere."
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