Timothy Boggs - Hercules Legendary Joureneys 02

by Serpent's Shadow

  He's Holix's best friend. We all thought he was in charge, because he always brought us our instructions."

  ' 'From your father?' Iolaus asked.

  "I guess so. Who else? Anyway, Rotus decided Jax didn't know what he was doing. Whenever Jax wasn't around, Rotus made up his own plans. I didn't like them. He wanted people hurt."

  Iolaus didn't get it. "So why didn't you say anything?"

  "Rotus said he'd cut my throat."

  Iolaus' eyes widened. "He .. . what? Your throat? He did?" His eyes narrowed, his face hardened, but he only grunted, nothing more.

  Hercules shook his head in disbelief. Themon was the damnedest place he had ever visited. It had a peacetime tyrant who wasn't all that bad, a band of rebels that kept changing its mind about how serious it was about its revolution, a festival that once in a while sacrificed its queen, and a street nearly a half mile long with no buildings on it.

  It was ...

  His mouth opened.

  It was . ..

  "Herc?"

  Again he stared at the city, and the sea.

  "What's the matter with him?" Venitia whispered.

  "He's thinking."

  "Oh."

  "No, not just 'oh.' Uh-oh."

  "Uh-oh?" she asked.

  Iolaus nodded. "Uh-oh as in trouble," Iolaus explained.

  "But there already is trouble."

  Iolaus shook his head. "When he gets like this, you have no idea what trouble really means."

  Ignoring their commentary, Hercules lowered himself to his hands and knees and leaned over the edge of the cliff. With the tide out, the sand below was nearly dry; clumps of drying kelp clung to the shadows of the jagged boulders; the sea-sharpened edges of brown-black rock poked out of the cliff's face. He couldn't see the base of the cliff because there was a slight overhang, and he chided himself for not in-specting the area last night.

  Iolaus knelt beside him, questioning him with a look.

  Hercules rocked back on his heels. "A shrine," he explained. "There has to be a shrine around here somewhere. To help draw Hera here." He gestured. "Everything is too open, Iolaus, or we would have seen it by now."

  "Shrine?" Venitia said, puzzled.

  "To Hera," Iolaus told her.

  The woman shook her head. "Not here. Demeter, Poseidon, a couple of others, but not Hera. Not here."

  For no reason other than instinct, Hercules knew she was wrong. However, a check of the sun told him the festival would start soon, and he and Iolaus would be expected in the plaza.

  Too much to do and not much time left to do it.

  His expression brooking no arguments, he told Iolaus to search the area from here to the fishing center for something that might be used as a shrine; Venitia he sent off to the rebels, with instructions to find out what, exactly, Rotus planned to do during the festivities.

  He himself hurried back to the Red Boar, surprised that he didn't get lost more than once. Maybe twice, but he couldn't really tell, because he was lost.

  When he reached the inn, he hurried straight to his room, pushed open the door, and froze.

  Holix still lay on the bed.

  A woman sat beside him, a gleaming knife in her hand.

  "Hercules, no!" Holix cried hoarsely when Hercules slammed the door behind him and took a long stride toward the bed. "It's all right, really, it's all right!"

  Fortunately, Hercules had already figured that out by the way the woman had scrambled onto the bed and done her best to push herself into the wall.

  The knife fell harmlessly to the floor.

  "Hercules?" the woman breathed.

  Holix nodded. "Yes. He saved my life."

  She was, Hercules thought, extraordinarily beautiful, with rich red hair that must be the envy of many a goddess. Keeping his palms up to show he wasn't going to harm her, he pulled the chair closer to the bed and sank into it. Smiled. Tilted his head to tell the young man he was ready to listen.

  With much theatrical moaning and groaning and wincing and hissing, Holix pushed himself to a sitting position, his back against the wall behind the low headboard. A clean cloth had been wrapped around his head, his face washed of grime and blood, and a fresh, deep-green tunic replaced his tattered old one.

  "This is Cire," he said, trying to sound casual without revealing how smitten he was. Which, of course, is exactly what he revealed.

  "I ran away," she said in a fearful whisper, explaining that the streets had been filled with the talk of the battle that had occurred that day at the stable. When she'd raced there to find Holix, a number of people told her he'd been carried away by a giant. "You, I guess."

  Hercules didn't know how to respond. Once again he was uncomfortable at the awe his name inspired.

  He gestured weakly, smiled, then listened with increasing anger as Cire recounted what she had overheard in the house where she and her twin worked. Her eyes reddened, her lips trembled, and by the time she finished, a tear had begun to trickle down her cheek.

  Hercules sat back and crossed his legs, staring thoughtfully at the window. "For one thing," he said,

  "you aren't going to die."

  "See?" Holix said. "I told you."

  "And I'm pretty sure I know what's really going on."

  Holix grinned. "See? I told you."

  Hercules hushed him with a glance. "For another, though, Cire, you'll have to go back."

  "See?" Holix said. "I. .. what?"

  "What?" Cire echoed. "Holix, where's the knife?"

  Hercules hushed them again, this time with a scowl that sent them into each other's arms. Gingerly, however, since Holix's ribs had not miraculously healed.

  Hercules' gaze returned to the window. "What happened to Bea?"

  "She left when I arrived," Cire answered flatly, her head resting possessively against Holix's shoulder.

  "He didn't need her anymore."

  Hercules grunted.

  She raised her head. "And what do you mean, I have to go back? Do you know what's supposed to happen if I do?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm supposed to die!"

  "I know."

  Cire struggled to sit upright, bracing a palm against Holix's chest. The stable hand promptly opened his mouth in a silent scream. "So I'm not going."

  "Yes, you are," Hercules told her.

  "Holix, where's the damn knife?"

  Holix gasped; he couldn't do anything else.

  "You have to go back," Hercules told her calmly. "It's the only way I can save you. And us."

  "Never mind," she grumbled as she started to crawl across Holix's legs. "I'll get it myself.'

  Hercules didn't bother to look this time—he snared her arm and eased her back onto the bed, squeezed once in a silent order to stay put, and propped his feet on the lumpy mattress, crossing them at the ankles.

  With any kind of luck, he would appear more confident than he felt.

  Which was, right now, hardly confident at all.

  "Look," he said, "I know it won't help much, but this whole thing isn't really about you."

  Cire snorted. "Yeah, right."

  Hercules explained. "I'm the one who's supposed to die. Not you."

  Holix gasped, and blinked away a few tears of lingering agony.

  "Okay with me," Cire said, then started when Holix gasped again and she realized she had been leaning her elbow against his bruised sternum. What followed was a few minutes of tearful apologies, some well-placed kisses, and Holix's valiant attempts to bear it all without screaming.

  I am blessed by the gods, Hercules thought wearily ... and when I find which ones did it, I'm going to thump them.

  "Tonight," he said when Holix had been soothed and Cire was at last listening, "I'm going to find out exactly how involved Titus is in this. Not the rebels. That's a different matter, and I'm not sure how it fits.

  Or even if it does. I need to know what Titus knows, and that I can't do until later. And until I do find out, we have to carry on as if we don't know
anything. In other words, look and act normal."

  Cire opened her mouth to remind him that acting normal, for her, in this situation, would get her fairly dead, but changed her mind and shook her head instead.

  He smiled at her confusion. "You don't know me, Cire, but you'll have to trust me. I don't intend to let you die, and I certainly don't intend to die myself." He tapped a finger against his temple. "I only have a vague idea of what's really happening around here. But if I'm right—"

  He cut himself off.

  They didn't need to hear it.

  They didn't need to know that if he was indeed right, saving Cire from the Klothon wouldn't do her any good.

  She would die anyway.

  Iolaus danced nimbly away from the hiss and foam of an approaching wave, and cursed the day he had accepted the stupid invitation to judge this stupid queen thing at this stupid festival thing.

  It was supposed to be fun.

  What it was, was misery.

  He was soaked from the ocean's spray. His left shin was banged up from an encounter with an outcropping he hadn't seen because he had been too intent on not getting slammed by a wave. He absolutely did not like the rocks looming darkly over him, or the way those gulls stared at him with their flat black eyes. And as long as he was at it, he didn't understand why Hercules had sent Venitia off on an errand he knew full well was going to net her nothing.

  He had made his way along the beach from the fishing wharf and had found zilch. As he had expected.

  His first pass along the cliff's base had been a failure as well, but he was sure a shrine was here somewhere. It had to be. Unless it was invisible.

  And why not? he thought. An invisible shrine would make about as much sense as anything else these days.

  On the other hand, this search at least gave him some respite from Venitia. Not that she was a terrible person or anything, and not that he wouldn't mind celebrating with her sometime during his stay, and not that he wasn't flattered by her attention.

  But the sheer intensity of that attention was, to say the least, unnerving. It was as if he had walked into Themon with a target on his forehead, and she was determined to hit the bull's-eye. One way or another.

  "Boy," he muttered, and stared at the rock wall, sidestepping as he did.

  It all looked alike to him—brown rock glistening with spray, barnacles, streaks of droppings from the gulls, piles of kelp where the tide had left them ... if this was somehow Hera's local shrine, no wonder she was in a lousy mood all the time.

  A wave tickled his boot soles.

  A gull screamed at him.

  A larger wave slapped his ankles, and he whirled angrily, ready to draw his sword, until he realized the absurdity of threatening the sea with his weapon.

  Getting to me, he decided; this whole place is getting to me.

  By the time he reached the first, and tallest, of the dragon's-teeth rocks, he was ready to give up. His shadow had already shifted from his right to his left, and if he was going to make it back to the inn before the evening ceremonies, he'd better leave soon.

  Another gull screamed just as a wave shattered against an outer rock.

  The sound of wings.

  He looked up just in time to see a large black-faced gull sweep down at his head. He ducked, instinctively swinging one arm up for protection, and grimaced when he felt the bird slam against the blade.

  "Great," he muttered as he stood. "Great."

  The bird was at the cliff's base, a single feather on an upraised wing fluttering in the breeze.

  "Great."

  He walked over and glared down at it. "Stupid bird. Haven't you ever seen a sword before?"

  At that moment he heard yet another scream, and ducked again, yelling at the gulls to leave him alone.

  They refused to comply.

  At least a half dozen swooped from shallow ledges on the rocks and dove at his skull and eyes. Screaming. Batting at his face and shoulders with their wings. One dropping under a halfhearted swing of the sword to nip his neck and draw blood.

  For a few moments he was confused. There were too many feathers, too many wings, too many sharp beaks for him to know which way to turn. He had been using the sword without much enthusiasm, not wanting to have to kill another bird. The gulls, however, weren't as timid, and when a talon raked across his brow, Iolaus lost his temper.

  With a shout, he stood to his full height and aimed his sword at the cloud of gulls swarming around him.

  It did no good.

  For every bird he drove away or brought to the ground, three more joined the fray, and there was nothing for it but to run.

  So he ran.

  And he hadn't gone four strides before he realized he was running straight at the cliff, the gulls battering him, deafening him, nearly blinding him.

  It was too late to veer away, and he braced himself for the collision.

  Except there wasn't one.

  One minute he was about to dash himself against solid rock, and the next he found himself in a tunnel whose entrance had been hidden by the convoluted configuration of the cliff face.

  The gulls didn't follow.

  It took him a few seconds to understand what had happened, a few seconds more before he was able to walk without his legs wobbling.

  He didn't go very far.

  Light from outside reached only a few yards into the tunnel, and he wasn't about to poke around in the dark, risking a broken limb, or worse, just to find proof of what he already knew: that somewhere at the tunnel's end was Hera's shrine. He was no coward, had been in many battles and had faced many creatures that weren't remotely human, but Hera . . . she was not to be tempted.

  This, he thought, was a job for Hercules.

  All he had to do was survive the onslaught of birds so he could tell him.

  Cire still wanted to know where the knife was.

  It was under Hercules' rump, but he wasn't about to tell her that. What he did tell her, and Holix, was the nugget of a plan he believed might work. But only if they did exactly what they were told.

  When he explained what they were to do, fleshing out the idea as he spoke, Cire told him flatly that it couldn't work, wouldn't work, and they were all going to die.

  Holix told him he didn't think he'd be able to walk, much less do what he was supposed to do.

  Hercules told them both that walking would be the least of their problems if they didn't stop complaining and pay attention.

  At this point Cire decided that she didn't need the knife, her nails were long enough.

  Hercules ignored her. "You'll never have to work in a stable again," he said to Holix. And when he saw the look on the young man's face, he wished he'd thought of that sooner.

  "Really?"

  "Of course," Cire said sourly. "Because you'll be dead. I'll be dead. We'll be—"

  "The question is," Hercules interrupted, "can you do it?"

  Holix looked at Cire, and hushed her abruptly, his hand reaching out and brushing her cheek. "For her, I can do anything."

  Without warning Cire began to weep.

  Slowly Hercules lowered his feet to the floor and stood. There was nothing more to say. What he needed was to leave these two alone for a few minutes while he waited for Iolaus; what he needed was a sign that a fair amount of luck was heading his way; and finally, what he needed most was a new head, because this was one of the dumbest, riskiest, most dangerous things he had ever done.

  Even Iolaus, with his unbounded enthusiasm and general lack of foresight, couldn't possibly have come up with something as stupid as this.

  The door slammed open, interrupting Hercules' self-deprecating reverie.

  Cire uttered a short scream, Holix a longer gasping one.

  "Herc," Iolaus exclaimed, "you're not going to believe it."

  Hercules stared at him. "You're soaked."

  Iolaus blinked several drops of water out of his eyes. "Of course I'm soaked. I've been fighting killer seagulls and huge tides just to
get back here."

  "Killer what?"

  Glowering, Iolaus clamped his hands onto his hips. "Do you want to know what I found or what?'

  It was a toss-up, fifty-fifty, but the expression on Iolaus' face made the choice for him. "A shrine?"

  Iolaus pointed at the window. "You'd better have a look. Then I hope you have a plan, because, boy, we're going to need one."

  The boulevard was jammed with participants and spectators for the festival's first parade.

  Litters borne on the shoulders of rippling-muscled slaves carried the jewel-bedecked elite, who tossed dinars and trinkets into the crowd lining the broad street; chariots with plumed, high-stepping horses rattled slowly over the paving stones; on a long narrow platform held aloft by a score of capped acolytes in gold-and-emerald tunics rode a shrine to Demeter, surrounded with representations of the harvest yet to come; a band of trumpeters and drummers marched behind a squad of Themonian guards; another shrine glided past, this one dedicated to the daily harvest of fish provided by Poseidon.

  The music, the cheering, the applause, the cries of hopeful prayers as each shrine passed—all of it blithely continued despite the darkening sky above.

  Hercules and Iolaus hurried toward the plaza as best they could, forcing themselves to smile as men grabbed their hands to shake them, and ladies flung their arms around their necks to plant kisses.

  At another time, Iolaus would have been in his element. Now he could only frown his skepticism.

  "You're kidding. That's the plan?" he asked Hercules.

  "It's better than 'run.'"

  "In case you've forgotten, 'run' worked."

  "So will this."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Pretty sure."

  "What if you're wrong?"

  "I'm not wrong, Iolaus."

  "Because of a dream."

  "Yes. Because of a dream."

  The frown deepened, then vanished abruptly as Iolaus grinned. "Well, why not? I can remember times when we had a lot less to go on."

  The side streets had become rivers of people, all taking favorite shortcuts, all trying to get to the plaza in time, all hoping they would find a good place to watch the festival begin. A few fights broke out, a few purses were snatched, but no one seemed to care. Part of it was the atmosphere, but most of it was because there were so many people that the thieves seldom got very far before they were caught, thumped, and left behind to try again.