Pantheon (The Tamar Black Saga)

by Nicola Rhodes

  ‘Clive nodded. ‘You are a quick study,’ he said, sounding genuinely impressed. ‘I always said you couldn’t be as daft as you look.’

  ‘Charming!’ put in Tamar. She always got irritated when people commented derogatively on Denny’s looks.

  ‘All the files – places, times, everything, are accessible from wherever we are,’ said Denny glossing over this with the ease of long practice – it happened all the time – well, he wasn’t handsome and never would be, so why get bent out of shape about it? But Tamar could never accept this.

  ‘Of course, you have to be able to access the astral plane,’ said Clive. ‘It’s not as if just anyone can do it. But you two, at least, should have no problems.’

  ‘Well, I wish you had thought of it,’ said Tamar to Denny. ‘Years ago. It might have saved us all that pissing about in mainframe looking for Askphrit.’

  ‘What would have been the fun in that?’ said Denny.

  * * *

  ‘So where are we going then?’ asked Denny. ‘I mean what year?’

  ‘Are you certain that you know how to do this?’ said Tamar.

  ‘Easy as winking,’ he said confidently. ‘You know it too, just think about it.’

  Tamar thought. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘I mean I can understand it in principle, but …’

  ‘Okay, trial run,’ said Denny. ‘Let’s go back to say, last week.’

  ‘We’ll run into ourselves,’ objected Tamar.

  ‘No we won’t,’ said Denny. ‘The reason being, we weren’t here last week. We were at home.’

  ‘Oh, okay then.’

  ‘So, ready?’ he said.

  They drifted onto the astral plane. That was the easy bit; they had done this so many times before without even thinking about it. Now for the hard part. But Denny had been right; when you knew what you were looking for it was easy. To teleport to another time rather than another location was just a matter of going in a different direction. Now that she could see it, she wondered that she had never seen it before.

  ‘Oh, it’s easy,’ she said in delighted surprise.’

  The previous/current occupants of their room weren’t quite so delighted.

  ‘Well, they shouldn’t have still been in bed at that time of the day,’ said Tamar afterwards.

  ‘At least they were too busy to register exactly how we arrived,’ said Denny.

  ‘So, now that we know we can do it,’ she said. ‘We have a few decisions to make. Like, do we go alone, just the two of us, or do we contact the others? And most important, like you said, what year do we go to?’

  ‘We can’t ask Hecaté anyway,’ said Denny. ‘She’s from that time …’

  ‘Yeah, well, so am I,’ pointed out Tamar. ‘I’d already been a Djinn for two and a half thousand years by the time the gods faded out.’

  Denny stared at her. He had forgotten this.

  ‘Will it make a difference?’ he asked.

  Tamar shrugged. ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ she said. ‘So, do we call in the troops on this one or not?’

  Denny narrowed his eyes. She was being entirely too dismissive on the subject in his opinion. On the other hand, they had done this before. They had even met Tamar in her other incarnation once, and nothing much had happened. So maybe she really thought it would be okay.

  ‘It’s a long way back,’ he said. ‘Hecaté was a god at the time – well, she still is of course, but back then …’

  ‘I know,’ said Tamar. ‘She was one of those gods, and we all know what can happen when two of the same person end up in the same time and place.’

  ‘They merge into each other.’ Denny knew this because it had happened to him. ‘She’d become the Hecaté from that time. We wouldn’t know her anymore.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ he said as he suddenly realised. ‘She’s still the Hecaté from that time. She’s still one of those gods. I mean, history changed, didn’t it? Our Hecaté, she doesn’t exist anymore. She’s one of them now – again – whatever! Which means …’

  ‘She’s probably not married to Jack either,’ said Tamar. ‘I mean why would she be? They probably never met at all.’

  ‘And Jack himself?’

  Tamar shook her head. ‘We have no way of knowing how much has changed,’ she said. ‘I can’t remember the way things are now. You try it.’

  Denny tried. He also shook his head. ‘It’s not there,’ he said. ‘I don’t know…’

  ‘Damn!’ said Tamar. ‘Why didn’t Clive say anything about this? He could have filled us in, the little weasel.’

  ‘Well, he didn’t have to, did he?’ pointed out Denny. ‘We worked it out by ourselves. Besides, he always does it this way, little dribs and drabs of information and then we have to figure the rest out on our own. At least we didn’t find out too late this time.’

  ‘Yeah, okay, but what else hasn’t he told us?’

  ‘I guess we’ll find out.’

  ‘We’re on our own this time, aren’t we?’ she said. ‘We’re the only ones who know the truth. I mean even if we could find Jack, even supposing he’s still our friend – and he might not be you know – and even supposing he understood the situation, and he agreed to help us, he’s not a part of this. Neither is Cindy or … anyone else. They all belong in this world. Only we don’t.’

  ‘But Jack and Cindy … we met them before we met Hecaté …’

  ‘Ha!’ snorted Tamar. ‘We met Cindy because of Hecate. She is now the goddess of witches, or should be, but she probably isn’t now, because she wasn’t then – if you understand me. I bet we never met Cindy at all. And as for Jack and that whole vampire plot, I doubt it ever happened. Askphrit wouldn’t have got away with, it regardless of us, not with all these other gods running around large as life.’

  ‘And … and… our Iffie?’

  ‘She won’t be a witch even, let alone have the power of the dragons. Without Hecaté to train her as a witch or Ashtoreth, who never would have existed at all if it wasn’t for Cindy meeting Eugene and then falling for you … sorry I know you don’t like to talk about that … But anyway, no Cindy and Eugene – no Ashtoreth, no dragon power.’ Tamar shrugged. ‘We definitely can’t drag her into this.’

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting that we did,’ said Denny. ‘You know, you’re talking as if you know all this is true,’ he added.

  ‘It just makes sense,’ she said.

  ‘No, it’s more than that,’ insisted Denny. ‘Intuition?’

  ‘I just think we’re on our own this time,’ said Tamar stubbornly. ‘I know how this stuff works. Call it intuition if you like. All I know is that the whole world changed two and half thousand years ago, that’s a hell of a knock on effect. We need to put it back how it should be. Clive was right. We have to fix it. We have no choice.’

  ‘I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky that we even met each other,’ said Denny gloomily.

  ‘How do you know we did?’ said Tamar. ‘Only kidding, we obviously did. But poor Iffie never met young Jack, that’s a certainty. Even if he was Cindy’s adopted son, in the same way as before, I mean, if Cindy did have a kid, (just not with Eugene) and Finvarra did swap them over like before and all the rest of it, he wouldn’t have been a part of our lives. Oh, we just have to fix this, for everyone’s sake.’

  ‘And if Cindy didn’t have a kid?’ said Denny.

  ‘Then young Jack will have died along with the rest of the Faeries – or … but it was Jack who destroyed the Faeries with Leir’s gauntlet … Oh god, this is too confusing. Are there still Faeries out there too?’

  ‘Like you said,’ said Denny. ‘A hell of a knock on effect. Let’s just get on with sorting it out, shall we? We could speculate on this forever. It won’t do any good. Let’s just make sure that whatever has happened, we’ll never have to worry about it.

  ‘We are on our own,’ he continued. ‘And it’s because, since the world changed, we’ve always been on our own.’

  ‘I can think of worse things,’ sa
id Tamar with a gentle smile.

  ‘Yeah, and they’re probably all happening right now,’ said Denny pragmatically.

  ‘Right!’ said Tamar. ‘So … we have to decide. 527BC, the real beginning of the end, or 600BC, when the story says it was the end?’

  Denny shrugged helplessly. ‘Clive said we have to change the story back to how it’s supposed to be,’ he said. ‘But supposing we kill them all seventy years before they really started to die off, what will that do to the timeline? Can we even kill them before the belief is all gone anyway? Will people continue to believe in them even after we kill them, and if they do, will that mean they won’t be dead after all?’

  ‘When we killed Ran-Kur,’ said Tamar thoughtfully; dextrously untangling this metaphysical maze that Denny had woven around himself. ‘The actual belief remained behind. It was used by Askphrit, but that’s not the point here. It is possible to believe in something that’s not real – or not real anymore. Clive said as much. He even said that religions can carry on even after all the belief is gone.’ She scratched her head in puzzlement. ‘I don’t really understand that very well,’ she admitted. ‘However, Ran-Kur was dead, but the vampires didn’t know that, so they still believed in him, but it didn’t bring him back to life.’

  ‘So, we go back to 600BC?’ said Denny.

  ‘Yes!’ said Tamar sounding a lot more positive than she felt.

  ‘And when we get there?’ said Denny. ‘Just how exactly are we going to kill a lot of immortals anyway?’

  ‘Beats the hell out of me,’ said Tamar. ‘I’m making this up as I go along.’

  ‘Oh good,’ said Denny. ‘That always works.’ He said this without a trace of irony. The most meticulous plans, as they had discovered again and again, usually just ended up getting in the way.

  * * *

  600BC was not that different, at first glance, to the present day; at least, not in Greece. Of course, the Temple of Athena– where they had decided to set off from as a constant landmark that they knew existed in both time periods – was a lot less ruined looking, but the basic landscape looked much the same – and oddly enough, not at all like rural New Zealand. Up close, it would no doubt be possible to see many differences in the local buildings, market places and people and so on, but just from here, they might as well not have gone anywhere.

  Except for one thing.

  ‘I feel different,’ said Tamar. ‘Sort of strange … weaker.’

  Denny was frowning. ‘Me too,’ he said. ‘Sort of … powerless.’

  They looked at each other in horror.

  ‘We don’t have our powers!’ they said in unison.

  ‘Which also means we’re stuck here,’ said Denny.

  ~ Chapter Two ~

  Tamar covered her face in a panic. ‘What do I look like?’ she demanded unreasonably, since he could not see her face anyway.

  ‘What?’ he asked nonplussed. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘My face,’ she whimpered. ‘Is it … am I … ugly?’

  ‘What? No, you look like you always do. Is this really important right now?’ Denny was annoyed. He knew she was vain, but at a time like this …

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘If I’ve lost my powers, then my beauty is really the only weapon I have left. Besides …’ She left the thought unspoken. But he knew what she meant. She was worried that he would not like it.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I always seemed to manage with my ordinary old face.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tamar, too distracted to issue her usual denial that he was not unattractive. ‘But that’s not what people like about you.’

  Denny took her hands. ‘It’s not the only thing people like about you either,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, yes it is,’ she said positively. ‘Except you maybe.’

  Denny shook his head wearily. He would never convince her. She was brave to the point of recklessness, loyal to the point (sometimes) of stupidity, generous to a fault, selfless, kind, forgiving and wise, and she never, ever gave up on anything or anybody. But she could not be made to see … She even thought that he – of all people – would not love her any more if she lost her beautiful face. It was ludicrous. It was also her armour against the world; and that he did understand. All of her phenomenal self-confidence came from the way she knew she affected people simply by the way she looked. And she was right, in a way. Without her powers, she was going to need all that self-confidence, amounting to arrogance, to get through this.

  She uncovered her face apprehensively. ‘Are you sure,’ she said. ‘I look the same?’

  ‘Exactly the same,’ he said. ‘I told you ages ago that is your face now, so stop worrying about it.’

  ‘Oh, God, I’m an awful person, aren’t I?’ she said, sitting down suddenly. ‘Here we are in this terrible mess and all I can think about is …’ She made a helpless gesture toward her face.

  Denny hunkered down beside her. ‘You know you aren’t an awful person,’ he said reassuringly. ‘You just had a little panic. People often panic about irrelevant stuff when they feel overwhelmed and, let’s face it, this is quite a problem.’

  ‘I don’t understand it,’ she said. ‘We didn’t lose our powers the last time we went into the past, why now?’

  Denny shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I thought it might happen to me,’ he admitted. ‘I mean we don’t know when the Athame was forged, maybe my powers don’t even exist yet. But we know that yours definitely do. So why…?’

  ‘But you still have the Athame,’ said Tamar.

  Denny was startled by this revelation. He looked down at his belt and sure enough, there it was, the sheath tucked into his belt as always. ‘What the …?’ he said.

  ‘Hang on to it,’ advised Tamar, ‘At best, it’s still a power-stealing Athame, and at worst, it’s a very, very sharp dagger.’

  ‘Yes, okay, but …’

  ‘I know, I know, none of this makes any sense,’ she interrupted. ‘You should still have your powers if you still have the Athame. And I shouldn’t be able to maintain this face without my powers, and yet … and yet…’

  ‘Well, one thing’s for certain,’ said Denny. ‘We won’t be killing any gods without our powers. And we can’t get home without them either, so what are we going to do?’

  Tamar examined her fingernails.

  ‘I have no idea either,’ said Denny.

  ‘Maybe if we could just figure out what happened …’

  ‘Do you think Clive knew this would happen?’ said Denny suddenly.

  ‘I wouldn’t put it past the little rat, why?’

  ‘Well, you said you wondered what he hadn’t told us. Guess this was it. But … it doesn’t make sense. How could he expect us to kill the gods in this condition?’

  ‘Maybe that wasn’t the point at all,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time the clerks had tried to get rid of us.’

  ‘Not Clive,’ said Denny. ‘He knows us too well to believe for a moment that it would work. It never works. There is a way out of this. We just need to find it.’

  ‘We need powers,’ said Tamar. ‘Any powers, just …’ She frowned.

  ‘Eureka?’ asked Denny.

  ‘I might know where there are some powers going,’ she said.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘We need to find me,’ she said. ‘Who else is going to help us, after all?’

  Denny thought this was a good idea until he asked. ‘Where are you now?’

  ‘600BC.’ She thought for a moment and then her face darkened. ‘Rome,’ she said. ‘I’m in Rome.’

  ‘Rome?’ exploded Denny. ‘Without our powers, it might as well be darkest Africa.’

  ‘I’ve been there too,’ she said. ‘It was hot.’

  ‘Well, we can’t stay here forever,’ said Denny. ‘Suppose we go and …’ He had been slapping the Athame against his palm all the time they had been talking and now a sudden thought struck him. ‘Er,’ he said. ‘Not that it matters – just out of curiosity – what do I lo
ok like?’

  Denny was technically nearly fifty years old; only the power of the Athame had allowed him to remain at the same physical age (twenty five) that he had been when he found it. So it was yet another mystery that he also looked exactly the same as he always had, but no more of a mystery, as Tamar pointed out, than the fact that not only had she retained her good looks but, the more she thought about it, if the loss of their powers was going to result in instant ageing, then she ought to have crumbled into a pile of bone dust the instant they arrived, like Dracula or something.

  ‘Not necessarily, said Denny. ‘You’ve only been human for twenty odd years, before that you were a Djinn and immortal anyway.’

  ‘They didn’t wear stuff like this on Xena,’ complained Denny of his toga, which he was wearing over his jeans, completing the overall picture of a complete and utter twerp. ‘I never saw a single toga on that show.’

  ‘That was set later on,’ said Tamar, ‘and it was completely inaccurate anyway. You know this is right. We nicked them off those people who came into in the temple. And it isn’t a toga, it’s a chiton. And you look f-f-fine – ahem.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, so why are you having such a hard time keeping your face straight?’ he demanded.

  Tamar herself was looking stunning as usual. Her own chiton resembled a long and flowing dress, with delicate long sleeves and a dainty rope belt around the waist – she looked like a princess. Denny looked like the frog (albeit a frog wrapped up in a pillowcase). But since he was well used to this being the case, he did not really mind all that much. But, unusually for him, he did mind a bit.

  ‘I look like a character from Carry On Cleo,’ he said. ‘Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me,’ he quoted. ‘I really need bigger shoulders to carry off this style,’ he added. ‘I look like a matchstick man.’

  ‘Is there anything you don’t think you look like?’ said Tamar acerbically. She was not used to this Denny. What had happened to his usual take-me-or-leave-me attitude?