It was neither city nor country, but eventually they passed through a small town, the patios of the little hotels on its main square pocked with fat palms. Clouds of orange trees hung over whitewashed walls, and the air was sweet with the smell of their fruit.
Then they were moving on, speeding through flat groves of olive trees bordered by metal fences, past a church capped in terracotta tiles and built of stone that glowed gold like the terraces of Themyscira, until the road was dappled by the shade of plane trees and quivering fronds of fern. The countryside became suburbs, and those gave way to a modern town, wide boulevards bracketed by apartment buildings, offices, open-air cafés set with plastic umbrellas, metal streetlamps marching steadily toward the town center.
“God, it feels so ordinary here,” said Nim.
It was all still too new to Diana to feel ordinary, but they were surrounded by traffic, people. It felt safe somehow, as if the modern world might beat back the terror of the old gods. Too soon they were jogging north and crossing the Eurotas.
As they passed over the river, Alia murmured, “We’re close, aren’t we?”
“Only a few miles left,” said Jason. He tapped a nervous rhythm on his thigh, every muscle in his body taut with worry. It was hard for Diana to believe he was the same boy who had run with her, laughing beneath the stars, who had kissed her on a mountain peak. She shook the thought from her head.
“Does it feel different to you here?” she asked Alia. The landscape had changed subtly once again, grown more lush. They passed gated quarries, and here the olive trees’ twisting gray trunks emerged from soft green grass. Even the color of the rock had changed from gray to a rich red.
Alia let her hand float outside of the window, riding the currents. “It feels familiar.”
Clouds scudded across the sky, and the air blew cool against Diana’s skin as the road began to climb through the low hills.
“No cars,” said Theo. “No tour buses. I guess we’ll have the tomb to ourselves.”
“They forgot her,” said Alia. “Everyone remembers Helen of Troy. But she was from Sparta; this was her home. The queen who lived and died here, they forgot.”
Nim’s pace had slowed to a crawl as she wended around the road’s wide, lazy curves. “Does it seem…I don’t know, too quiet to anyone?”
Alia shivered and rubbed her arms. “You mean like something’s going to go horribly wrong?”
“You know what they say,” said Theo. “Don’t shoot a gift horse in the mouth.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not what they say,” said Nim.
Alia took a deep breath. “Everybody just…stay relaxed.”
Jason shifted uneasily in the passenger seat, a muscle ticking in his jaw. Diana knew they were all thinking the same thing. After the horrors of the pass, there should have been something worse waiting for them as they neared the spring, and yet there was no sign of trouble.
The road climbed steadily, surrounded on all sides by rocky pasture, more olive trees, the stark trunks of telephone poles. They passed through a small town that seemed to appear up against the hills for no reason and a large cemetery blooming around a church like a crop of white crosses.
As it turned out, the sign for the tomb was so small they had to double back twice before they found it—a dented metal rectangle tilting woozily on its metal pole, nearly hidden by yellow wildflowers. The words were written in Greek and English: Menelaion, Sanctuary of Menelaus and Helen.
“At least she made it onto the sign,” muttered Alia.
There was nowhere to hide the Fiat, so they had to park it up against the dirt shoulder of the road.
“It feels weird to just leave her out here in the open,” said Alia.
“It’s a girl?” said Theo.
“Sure. Isn’t it obvious?”
“This feels too easy,” Diana murmured to Jason, as they fell in step behind the others.
“It’s possible we lost whoever attacked us on the jet,” he replied, eyes scanning the surroundings. “They had no way of knowing we were headed to some obscure tomb.”
“Even so, where’s Eris? Where are the twins? They don’t need satellites to track us.”
“They could still make a showing,” he said.
They might. But another voice spoke inside Diana—what if it had all been a ruse? The Oracle had said the spring at Therapne, but what if Diana had somehow misunderstood. Maybe there was some other place sacred to Helen. Maybe Eris and her horrible nephews had just been a distraction, driving them on, making sure they were focused on the wrong target as the hours until Hekatombaion winnowed away.
“Diana,” said Jason, startling her from her thoughts. His hand brushed the back of hers, and she remembered how it had felt to kiss him beneath the night sky. “When this is over, will you go home?”
“Yes,” she said without thinking.
“Ah.” He trained his eyes on the ground. “For good?”
How could she explain the rules of the island? She supposed that, after all of this, even if they succeeded, she might be exiled. But time passed differently on Themyscira. While Diana was tried and sentenced, years would pass in the mortal world. And even if she could somehow find her way back to her friends, could that ever temper the pain of losing her home? Of never seeing her mother or her sisters again?
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t belong here, Jason.”
“But you could,” he said, still not looking at her. “In time.”
“Is this it?” said Theo from up ahead, standing near the top of the hill, hands on hips.
The ruins were less dramatic than Diana had expected. She knew there had once been a vast settlement here, shrines and temples dedicated to Helen and her husband. But now all that remained were a few overgrown foundations surrounding an unimpressive pile of earth that looked like a cross between a burial mound and what might have once been a temple, its stone walls slowly being swallowed by wildflowers. Beyond it, the green bowl of the valley glowed golden, as if the sun had pooled between the mountain ranges, glinting off the banks of the Eurotas far below.
“It doesn’t look like much,” said Nim. “And where’s the spring?”
“Maybe it’s a metaphorical spring,” said Theo. “Like the spring is inside all of us?”
“Why didn’t I run you over when I had the chance?”
“Diana?” said Alia.
The sick sensation in Diana’s gut worsened. “The Oracle just said the spring at Therapne.”
“Could she have meant somewhere else?”
“Where?” said Diana. “There are no other monuments to Helen in Therapne. ‘Where Helen rests, the Warbringer may be purified.’ ” She could feel her frustration rising. “This is where Helen was laid to rest. It was her shrine first, before it belonged to Menelaus.”
“There’s nothing here,” said Jason.
Theo turned in a slow circle. “We came all this way for nothing?”
Jason shook his head. “Alia, we have to get you out of here. You could still be in danger.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Her eyes met Diana’s. “I held up my end of the bargain. The sun will set soon.”
No. They’d barely looked for the spring. They hadn’t thought this through.
“We still have time,” said Diana. “We’ll find some other solution.”
“How much time do we have left? An hour? An hour and a half? There is no other solution. I won’t live knowing I could have stopped this.”
“Alia,” Jason said sharply. “I am not letting you kill yourself.”
“It isn’t up to you,” she said. Her voice was clear and strong and rang with conviction, the sound of steel against steel. “This is between me and Diana.”
Sister in battle. It wasn’t supposed to come to this. Diana had known in her heart they were meant to reach the spring together. What other lies had she told herself?
“You can’t be serious,” said Nim desperately. “What if this is all some k
ind of big mistake? For all we know this Warbringer thing is just—”
“Nim, after everything you’ve seen, everything we’ve been through, you know this is real.”
“We’re not going to kill you off as a precautionary measure,” said Theo. He gripped her shoulder, more serious and more frightened than Diana had ever seen him. “There has to be a way to fix this.”
But Alia shrugged him off. She took a step closer to Diana, and Diana had to will herself not to move away from her.
Your cause is mine.
She’d sworn to become a murderer, stain her hands with innocent blood. She’d given her oath, but Diana had never truly believed she’d be forced to fulfill it. She could not; she would not, and yet how was she to turn away from the conviction in Alia’s eyes? Alia had fought with everything she had to reach the spring, to reach the future Diana had promised might be hers.
“Sister in battle,” Diana said, ashamed of the tears that roughened her voice. “I have failed you.”
“You haven’t,” said Alia, taking another step toward her. “Not yet.”
Jason moved to block her path. “Enough. We never should have come here. You would be safe right now if—”
“No,” Alia said, and Diana heard the anger in her voice. “Your solution was to hide. Ours was to fight. Don’t you dare blame us for trying. Diana, you gave me your word.”
Diana could feel the oath that bound her, as powerful as the lasso, as indestructible. She could not live with herself if she violated the vow she’d given. But how could she live knowing she’d taken Alia’s life? She was immortal, and that would give her an eternity to endure this terrible shame.
“Make your choice, Daughter of Earth.”
Eris. So she had come after all. To gloat. Diana looked to Nim, expecting a monster’s face, but saw Nim’s wide brown eyes, her mouth agape as she stared at a figure perched at the apex of the rocky ruins, black wings spread wide, the tips of her filthy feathers nearly touching the ground. Her hair flowed around her face in curling tendrils of darkness, and the gold smeared across her lips glinted in the sun. “Foolish girl, with your noble quest and your heart that yearns for glory. Can you do it? Cut her throat to keep us at bay?”
“Is that what I looked like?” Nim asked in disgust.
A wind rose, billowing up from the earth around them, and the sound of hoofbeats filled the air. The dust collected in the shape of two chariots, cutting a path around them, the hooves of their horses seeming to fly over the ground.
“I don’t know,” said Theo, backing up so they stood clumped together at the base of the tomb. “I look pretty cool.” Phobos smiled from his chariot, his hideous pointed teeth emerging. “Or not.”
Had the battle gods grown stronger this close to sunset? Was that why they didn’t need to possess Nim and Theo any longer? Or had that just been a game to them?
“You have laid a feast before us!” shouted Phobos, his voice rising shrill above the clatter of wheels and hooves.
“And, O young warrior,” cried Deimos in exultation, the crack of his whip like a bomb blast, “we will eat our fill!”
Eris rose in the sky, beating her shield with her sword, the clamor unbearable. Diana covered her ears with her hands, but she couldn’t block out the sound of her regret. She’d gotten it wrong, all of it.
“The reaping moon has come. In an hour the sun sets and darkness rises, yet here you languish,” Eris cackled. She rose higher, her vast wings blotting out the sun, casting them in shadow. “What will you tell your sisters? Your mother?”
“And you, Warbringer,” Deimos mocked as his chariot raced faster. “What will you tell your mother in the afterlife?”
Phobos bellowed laughter. “She will wear a veil in the underworld and hide her face for the shame you’ve brought her, haptandra, the cursed.”
Diana and the others clustered in a frightened circle, back to back, shoulder to shoulder, as the chariots circled, their steeds sending up clumps of earth, the horses’ lips pulled back as they snapped at their golden bits, their muzzles trailing blood-flecked foam.
The shields, the hooves, the whip, the rumble of the wheels, the sound was overwhelming, filling Diana’s skull, shaking her teeth.
“I can’t think!” Theo shouted. “They’re too loud.”
“But why?” yelled Alia. “This is different from last time! Why are they making so much noise?”
Jason shook his head, hands clamped to his ears. “They’ve won, and they know it!”
He was right. Alia and the others were grasping at false hope. It was the way of mortals. And yet, if Diana had been wrong all along, why interfere at all? For the fun of it? On Themyscira, she’d grown used to the extraordinary, to the knowledge that the gods made demands, that their will dictated the rules of the island. But nothing in the mortal world was as it had been on Themyscira, and the gods of the battlefield were not the goddesses of her home. They hungered for blood and sorrow. They required it and needed mortals to provide it. So why exactly were they here? Had they simply come to enjoy her suffering in this last hour?
Her suffering—but not her terror. She was scared, frustrated, furious with herself—yet that gibbering, mindless horror wasn’t flooding through her. Why wouldn’t the battle gods want them terrified? Unless they didn’t want the group to run. What if they simply wanted them to stay here, stay still—paralyzed and deafened. What if Alia was right? What if they’d come with a purpose? What if all this din was to drown something out?
She remembered the way Phobos had hissed at the touch of her lasso. Could its touch kill a god? It didn’t have to. She just needed to drive them back. She just needed to buy some respite from that clamor.
Diana gritted her teeth and removed her hands from her ears, the noise rising to a jaw-shaking roar.
She unhooked the lasso and swung it over her head, a steady rhythm, matching it to the beat of her heart. It felt comforting in her hands, and yet so slight. Was this a weapon with which to face the gods? She let it swing farther and farther in a widening loop, then unleashed it with a snap. It glowed golden in her hands, lashing out like a tongue of yellow flame at the wheels of Phobos’s chariot and sending him veering off course. Snap. It snatched at Deimos’s helmet like a hungry serpent, forcing him to shake his reins and break his horses’ stride. The sounds of their shields and chariots faded. Maybe it was just the weapon she needed.
Diana swung the rope wider and wider, the lasso seeming to lengthen impossibly in her hands, the gust of its momentum forcing Eris back, her wings flapping grotesquely as she let fly a hideous shriek, and sunlight burst over them once more.
“Diana!” shouted Alia. Her face was alight; her braids made a halo around her head as if borne aloft by invisible current. She was bracketed by two figures of light. They were Nim and Theo, but Diana knew then they were also the Dioskouroi, Helen’s twin brothers and guardians, legendary warriors.
“Diana,” said Alia, “I hear it!”
“Hear what?” shouted Jason, his face grim and disbelieving. “I don’t hear anything.”
“Listen,” urged Alia.
He tugged on her arm. “Enough, Alia! We have to get out of here now.”
Alia shook her head. She smiled, and the air around her seemed to shimmer. “They’re singing.”
The song was faint, so quiet that at first Alia felt sure she was imagining it. She dismissed it, her mind still reeling from the sight of Eris wheeling in the sky above them, of Diana keeping Phobos and Deimos at bay, the lasso a bolt of lightning in her hands. Then there it was—a ringing in her ears, the wind in the trees—no, something more, a melody. One voice became two, ten, twenty. She didn’t understand the words, but she knew they were guiding her.
“What did the Oracle say, Diana?”
Diana glanced at her, confused, the lasso still whirling in her hands. “I told you—”
“No, what were her exact words?”
“ ‘Where Helen rests, the Warbringer may be pur
ified.’ ”
Where Helen rests. “The spring isn’t here,” she said. “It’s one of the springs that feeds the river.” The Eurotas, the wide, slow river that had paralleled the road as they approached the Menelaion, that lay only a hundred yards below.
“This is her tomb,” said Jason. Every bit of his patience had vanished, replaced by an angry urgency. “Stop grasping at straws, Alia.”
Why couldn’t he hear them?
“No,” she said. She needed to make him understand. The girls were singing, and their song was one of mourning, a farewell to a friend. “Don’t you see? By the time Helen died, it was too late. She wasn’t Helen anymore, not really. She was Helen of Troy. She was Menelaus’s wife. Her tomb didn’t even keep her name.”
“The race,” said Diana, new hope kindling in her blue eyes. Alia had hated to see that light go out, even for a minute. “That was the last moment, when she was still allowed to compete side by side with her companions.”
The battle gods shrieked and howled, and Alia knew she was right.
“It was her last moment of peace,” she said. “Before she became a bride, before she stopped running. We have to get down to the river.”
“Well, we’d better move quick,” said Theo, pointing to the road.
Far in the distance, a parade of armored vehicles crawled along the winding road like gleaming beetles, dust rising in a cloud behind them.
“If we could just explain,” said Nim.
“They may not give us the chance,” said Diana. “To the river. Now.”
Down the hill they plunged, Eris circling above them, beyond the reach of Diana’s lasso, trying to disrupt the chorus with her screams and the banging of her shield, Deimos and Phobos alongside, their chariots making a furious clatter.
But the girls ran with them, too, Helen’s companions, hair streaming behind them, laughing and unafraid. And now that she’d heard the song, Alia could hold it, keep the thread of its melody in her mind. It was the song they sang when one of their own was chosen to be married. A chorus of celebration, but also one of mourning for the girl who had been lost, for the freedom that had vanished with a vow, for the future races she would never run.
Wonder Woman: Warbringer Page 30