by Diana Tyler
Hermes pressed the wand harder, twisting it into his spine.
“Easy. I just wanted to inform you that I can’t travel in time, and my sister can only go backwards. Neither one of us can show you anything that hasn’t happened yet.”
“I don’t need your rotten domas. I need your brain.” Hermes drew back the wand and stashed it at his side. “It will only hurt a little.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
MNEMOSYNE
We’ll have to make this quick,” said Leto, combing her hair with her fingers as Hermes lowered her gently onto the sand; Damian he’d dropped carelessly from three feet above. “Hermogenes won’t sleep much longer.”
“He’ll sleep just fine,” Hermes replied. “I made him drink water before we left.”
“Water will only send him to his chamber pot.”
Hermes grinned. “Not when it’s filled with valerian.”
He directed his wand at Damian and the blindfold covering his eyes. “Hold still.” Damian froze as Hermes pulled off the blindfold and summoned it into his satchel. “The shackles stay.”
Despite his close eye on the Asher, Hermes wasn’t too worried about him escaping. They’d traveled halfway around the world, and Damian had seen nothing of their journey. He’d wander for weeks before finding civilization again, if he didn’t die first.
“Where are we?” Damian asked, shivering as snow flurries danced around him. They were standing at the base of a peak that had long been forgotten, accursed by Zeus after the Titanomachy of eons past.
“Mount Othrys,” answered Hermes, “the oldest mountain in Petros.”
Leto drew her cloak across her nose and mouth. “It smells of death here.”
“This place is death.” Hermes crouched down and collected a handful of snow. Though the earth was covered with snow, it failed to conceal the stench of ichor, smoke and charred skin saturating the soil beneath. Somewhere, bones of Hermes’ own limbs lay buried.
“Want to tell me what we’re doing here?” Damian’s voice quivered in the cold.
“You mortals are so fragile.” Hermes removed his cloak and with a flick of his wand covered it with fur. He draped it over Damian’s shoulders. “We’re here because this is where the mechanism is.”
Damian threw his bound hands toward the sky. “Thanks. That tells me a lot.”
Hermes turned to face the mountain. He’d sworn to Hades and Apollo that he would never speak of this place, much less return to it. They had assured him that doing so would be futile since they had eradicated all the Titans, save one, and every remnant of their existence.
But Hermes had to try. He had to put his doubts to rest by proving that what the Asher said was false. Never had he so much as fantasized about forsaking Apollo. However, the fact that Hermes was suddenly so hellbent on making sure he never did only made him suspect it was true. Just yesterday, Hermes had violated Apollo’s command by sparing Hermogenes and using the Asher as bait instead. Two thousand years was a long time for resentment to germinate and bud into betrayal. This mountain was proof that even the strongest alliances could be shattered.
“Mnemosyne, guardian of all mankind’s memories!” Hermes exclaimed, the bitter air searing his eternal lungs. “It is I, Hermes, protector of travelers, and with two such Petrodians have I come to request one hour with the pýli, the machine wrought by the Cyclopes before snow erased the glory from Othrys.”
Beneath his feet, Hermes could feel the mountain rumbling. He seized Damian and Leto by the hands lest he need to snatch them away from a crashing avalanche. He didn’t expect the goddess to act hospitably. After all, it had been he, along with his Olympian brethren, who had banished her family to Tartarus.
But an avalanche didn’t come. The quaking shook away snow from the craggy face, revealing a cave’s mouth that was the shape of a screaming skull. There were even two concave recesses above it resembling the sockets of eyes that could see far better than any god or mortal. The goddess was inside, waiting.
Hermes dropped their hands. “Come.” But the others didn’t budge. “Don’t stand there like a daft pair of mules. If she wanted to harm us, she would have done so by now.”
“I’m thinking I should have taken my chances in hell,” said Damian.
Leto blew into her hands and scowled at the snowflakes gathering on her boots. “You still haven’t said plainly why you’ve dragged us all the way to a desolate wasteland just to see some useless old relic. It probably hasn’t worked in centuries. I can’t imagine it worked to begin with if it was crafted by one-eyed barbarians.”
Hermes took a breath and turned to her. With as much equanimity as he could muster, he said, “You expose your ignorance when you speak so disdainfully about a race you’ve never seen. I have seen the Cyclopes and they were far more intelligent than the cream of Petros’s elite.”
“I suppose with heads the size of a gourd, they would have sizable brains.” Leto laughed.
It was all Hermes could do not to slap her. Who was Leto to mock the sons of Titans, men who had aided Hephaestus in his forge, built entire palisades in a single night, and crunched the bones of impudent maidens just like her for supper? He had felt unparalleled relief when Cronus banished them to Tartarus, but never would he stop respecting them.
It was arrogance like Leto’s that made Apollo’s job so simple. All he had to do was let men believe they were supreme in strength and intellect, and that nothing, neither on Petros nor beneath it, could best them. Even the Pythonians believed, deep in their hearts, that they could defeat Apollo should he emerge from hell as a foe. This much Hermes had heard them say with his own ears.
If Duna ever did permit Apollo to roam freely as the gods once had, Apollo would take up his bow and wage the briefest, bloodiest war in history, and doubtless break the oath between himself and both his brothers. Indeed, he would see to it personally that Hermes and Hades were chained nearest the sweltering heart of Petros’s core. After all, the proclivity for uprising coursed through their ichor veins.
Hermes turned and gazed upon the snow-covered plain before him. Steel clashing against steel, Apollo’s arrows whistling through the air alongside Zeus’ bolts…the sounds of the Titan War were still etched in his memory. And why wouldn’t they be? After all, the memory holder herself stood behind him.
Mnemosyne could force him to relive every excruciating blow and witness the bloodshed a second time if she so desired. In the blink of an eye, the pýli could show him the moment Cronus and his ten siblings were herded like cattle to the volcano north of the mountain. Hermes could hear again their pleas and ululation as they were thrown into the fire, leaving Hades, Zeus and Poseidon to divide the world among them. He could again witness Apollo’s smug, satisfied expression, content to bide his time until his armies were ready.
Hermes felt a heavy somberness descend on him like a rain-soaked mantle. Duna’s eyes were on him now. He could feel them boring a hole through the restless machinery of his mind and surveying the emptiness of his soul.
He heard the All-Powerful asking him: Was it worth it? Do you not regret rising against me?
“Leave me!” Hermes shouted. He pressed his hands to his ears, but Duna’s voice could not be silenced. It continued: Are you prepared to learn the truth? Are you prepared to act upon it?
Hermes reached out and grabbed Leto and Damian once more, this time by the tender bend in their elbows, and dragged them into the cave.
“Despite your reputation, you are unwise, Hermes.” The goddess’s voice echoed throughout the main chamber as a spectral glow materialized before them.
“Do not fear her, the Titaness has been subdued,” he whispered, assuring himself more than he was assuring the mortals standing beside him.
The light intensified as a woman’s body slowly took shape within it. “You cannot serve two masters,” she said. “You’ve brought yourself to the place where your road diverges. You must choose which path to take.”
Hermes widened his stanc
e and searched for the eyes still hidden in the lambent haze around her. “I have not come to alter my path, only to use the mechanism, if it’s possible.”
“Your path, cousin, shall alter you.”
Leto stepped forward; Hermes could sense the aggression boiling in her hands. “As long as his path does not lead him to sequestration inside some damnable mountain,” she said, “I think he will be just fine.”
Hermes took her wrist and pulled her back. “Your insolence will get you in trouble one day if you don’t learn to hold your tongue.”
Hermes doffed his cap and bowed his head. “Mnemosyne, forgive our intrusion, as well as our impertinence. You were—you are—the last of the illustrious Titans, heaven’s unequaled protectors. I must say I’m astonished that even now you try to protect me, messenger of the one who vanquished you.”
As if throwing aside a cloak, Mnemosyne cast the light off her shoulders, revealing her full, unobscured splendor. Her beauty had not diminished one iota since Hermes had last laid eyes on her all those centuries ago. She was a temple statue come to life: tall, regal, and immaculate. Her entire being—hair, skin, eyes and robes—was the color of white clay, brighter than snow in the sunshine. Despite her station here in this cold corner of the world, her bearing was dignified, fearless, and ineffably peaceful. Why did she not wish to hurt him as Apollo had hurt her, Hermes wondered.
“The burden Apollo gave me was not light.” Mnemosyne’s voice was resonant and full, as if flowing through water. “He left me here not as a display of mercy, which he does not possess, but as a monument to his pride. For through my memories, the blessed gift by which I’m now cursed, he can forever remember the victory he won at the price of his own soul.”
“Each of our souls was sold far before the Titanomachy, goddess,” said Hermes, as his frigid blood caught fire.
Mnemosyne lowered her head, the circlet upon it lightly reflecting the scarlet of Leto’s robe. “Duna’s forgiveness reaches farther than I once thought. Have you never heard him call to you, Hermes?”
Her soothing voice coaxed his gaze upward into the porcelain pools of her eyes, but he dared not speak. He could not acknowledge that he had indeed heard Duna’s voice, and it wounded him more deeply than any strike of Apollo. He wished his own memories of heaven, of his life before the War, could be erased. He’d drunk from the Lethe on countless occasions, but the river had the reverse effect on him: it sharpened his recollections, magnified his regret, and made the suffocating shell of hell all the more insufferable.
“I wouldn’t know his voice if it shouted to me from Olympus,” Hermes said.
Mnemosyne turned her face toward the shadows. “I pity you, then. Perhaps in time your ears will regain their sensitivity.”
Leto’s fingers twitched at her side. She pressed her lips together to keep from insulting the goddess a second time.
“This will be over soon,” Hermes whispered to her.
He unsheathed his wand and turned it into a torch. “If you will direct me to the mechanism, fair cousin, we will depart before dusk.”
Without turning her head, Mnemosyne pointed at Damian. “Answer this first. What business do you have with this boy? And tell me truthfully, how is that I have no memory of his existence?”
“I’m an Asher,” Damian said. “And so is my sister.”
Hermes jabbed him in the side. “Who gave you permission to speak?”
With a sweep of her arm, Mnemosyne ripped the torch from Hermes’ grasp and held it to her face. Its luster, compounded by the radiance of her skin, shone like the evening star. “He needs no one’s permission!” Her voice shook the stalactites over their heads, each one an arrow poised to drive straight through their skulls. “Do you understand?”
Hermes flew to the torch and clasped it with both hands, trying with all his strength to wrench it from her fingers.
With a single breath, Mnemosyne created a wind that rivaled Leto’s and sent Hermes cartwheeling into the wall. “Don’t make me remind you of the Titans’ strength.”
The threat did not fall on deaf ears. Hermes knew full well the power the Titans possessed. It was not for want of force that they had lost the war to Zeus, rather, the want of loyalty. What Hermes and the other Olympians lacked in brawn they more than made up for with cunning. They’d won the giants and Cyclopes to their side, procuring enough brawn to defeat a hundred Titans, let alone a dozen.
“Forgive me,” Hermes said, every joint and tendon throbbing.
If Mnemosyne had heard him, she didn’t show it. Her attention was turned to Damian; he stood before her as stolid and stiff as a soldier awaiting a reprimand.
“I’ve always wanted to meet an Asher,” she said, holding the torch’s light on him now, examining him from head to foot.
“It’s nice to meet you.” Damian held out his hand.
Rather than taking it, the goddess cut off his shackles with one flick of her finger. “You come from the future?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Damian answered. He glanced at Hermes, who was still slumped against the wall, licking his wounds. “Hermes brought me here because he wants to see whether what I said was true.”
Mnemosyne leaned in and caressed the side of his face, peering at him tenderly as though he were an exotic pet or her own newborn babe. “You’re the one the oracle spoke of. The Vessel. I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Actually, my sister and I together are the Vessel.”
Before the goddess could speak another word, three flaming arrows pierced her chest, sending a spray of icy golden fluid onto Damian’s face and clothes.
“Apollo!” Hermes gasped. He watched in terror as the Titaness’s body was dragged into darkness.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHIONE
Damian rushed after the fallen goddess, stopping only when he saw the colossal crater in the limestone floor. One more step and he would have followed her into it.
“You told me Apollo and Hades couldn’t cross into our world,” Leto shouted at Hermes.
Damian pointed at the hole. It looked bottomless. “I haven’t seen too many portals to hell in my life, but I’d say this is one of them.”
Hermes flew past Leto and landed at Damian’s side. “Aye, and a secret one, it would seem. Perhaps that’s why Apollo housed Mnemosyne here.” He jumped up and hovered over the abyss. “I know you can hear me, Apollo. Is my theory correct?” He began flying in circles above the crater. “You claim I’m the clever one, but I see you’ve been concealing your craftiness all along.”
Damian stepped back. He didn’t want to be around when three more arrows came whizzing out of there. The walls of the crater began to thunder, the vibrations rattling his ribs. He took off for the exit, taking Leto’s hand as he ran by.
“No need to scamper off like a scared rabbit, Asher,” Hermes yelled. “Neither Apollo nor I can harm you, nor any other deathless god for that matter.”
“But you can push me into hell,” Damian called back as he picked up his pace, lungs already burning from the altitude.
“And what makes you think I can’t do the same?” Mania halted and reached her arms out in front of her, summoning the snow from the ground. “I could push you into Hades before you take your next breath.”
Damian had no idea which way home was—home for the time being, anyway. But given his options, he’d rather wander aimlessly on his own than take his chances with these two. He closed his eyes, and felt his hands and arms begin to tingle.
“Hermes!” Leto shouted. “Damian’s disappearing.”
Hurryhurryhurry, Damian thought.
But his doma wasn’t fast enough. In a flash, Hermes was in front of him, binding his wrists in a new set of shackles.
“Take him back to Ourania,” Hermes told Leto. “I’ll follow once I find the mechanism.”
“Be careful,” she said. “Try to stay in one piece.”
Hermes laughed halfheartedly. “I make no promises but this,” he said, pulling her c
lose and kissing her forehead, “I will come home to you.” He paused, tasting his next words before he spoke them. “And to Hermogenes.”
The miniature blizzard Mania had conjured died away, the snowflakes settling onto their heads and shoulders. Sheets of snow cascaded down the mountain as it erupted again with another rumbling warning. From the mountain north of them, thick plumes of smoke were rising.
“I think that might be a volcano getting ready to blow,” said Damian.
Leto and Hermes turned to look, then held one another tighter. Were they not evil megalomaniacs trying to take over the world, Damian might have felt sorry for them.
“Come with us now, Hermes,” whispered Leto. “No matter what that stupid machine shows you, you’ve already betrayed Apollo by coming here.”
Hermes sighed as he took in the dreary scene of smoke and infinite snow.
Damian could only imagine what history these plains and peaks contained, much less what Hermes, this notorious menace of the ages, had endured under Apollo’s reign. One thing was for sure—he didn’t envy him.
“I was telling the truth,” he said. “You helped us—my sister, and Ethan and his parents. I have no reason to lie to you. I can tell you exactly what the pýli would’ve shown you.”
Hermes cast a defeated look back at the crater as a wall of fire sealed its mouth. “I should have predicted this moment. All of us who fell from heaven are nothing if not fickle. Our loyalty is never fixed.”
“And where is your loyalty now?” Leto asked him.
“With you,” Hermes said, taking her hand. “And with whatever twist of fate awaits us.”
He turned to Damian and stared down at the shackles. “It would seem these are no longer necessary.” He touched his wand to each ring and snapped them open, then sent them spinning into the fire.
“Thanks,” Damian said, rubbing his wrists. The snow actually felt pleasant against his chafed skin. “Now take my hands.” Leto and Hermes looked at him as if he’d just sprouted another head. “It’s safer to be invisible right now, don’t you think?”