The Eighth Arrow

by J. Augustine Wetta

  “That was clever,” I said. “How did you know the door was there?”

  “I didn’t,” he croaked.

  Then with another crash, it slammed shut.

  “Guess we better knock again,” said Diomedes.

  “Your turn,” I answered.

  With enormous caution, Diomedes returned to the place where the giant had knocked and quickly rapped on the wall, then sprinted back. But there was no response. He tried again, and still nothing. He ran his hands along the masonry searching for some trace of the door, but it had disappeared. He moved a few steps down and knocked. He walked back and forth, beating harder and softer, higher and lower on the unyielding stone, but still, no door materialized. Only when we moved around to the second wall were his efforts rewarded.

  Here, his knock was answered with the same ear-splitting crack, and a door materialized directly in front of him. Diomedes made his retreat with the utmost haste and was only a few paces ahead when the door hit the ground. Another few moments of quiet apprehension, and it closed again.

  “We all know whose turn it is now,” said Diomedes, “but this time, let’s try to get inside before the door shuts.”

  “Now that you mention it,” I answered, “why are we so eager to be inside?”

  “You asked to be guided to the lower realms,” answered the giant. “There is no other way.”

  “Is that so?” I said. “Because I’m beginning to wonder if you really do know where you’re going.”

  “I know what I know,” he said, and would say no more.

  So we moved around to the third and final wall. This time when I knocked, the door fell open and remained so; we crossed over without difficulty.

  What lay within, however, was as much a surprise as the walls themselves. The air was cool and dry. The sky shown with a blue of eye-searing clarity, and the earth beneath our feet was thick with green grass. In the distance stood a second castle, larger than the one we had entered. The change of scale was itself a shock to the senses.

  “Now . . . I’m no stonemason,” I muttered to Diomedes, “but isn’t the inside of a building supposed to be smaller than the outside?”

  “Witchcraft,” gasped Diomedes, squinting up at the sky.

  “It is a much deeper magic than that,” whispered the giant. “This was built by the Authority Himself.” Looking at him, I could have sworn I saw a change of expression in his blank face.

  The new structure before us differed markedly from the previous, yet the seamless masonry and dark gray stone suggested a common architect. I was relieved to see that it had four doors, one for each wall, which were not at all hard to spot as they were painted a bright royal purple. Circling the castle itself was a moat, and though we shouted and waved and threw rocks at the doors, there was no reply from within. At last, Diomedes piled his armor on the shore, tucked his tunic into his belt, and dove in.

  Or rather, he dove on, for the water did not give way. Instead, it dipped and folded a little, then launched him back into the air. All in all, it behaved more like a taut sail than any natural phenomenon. As we watched Diomedes tumble across its surface, I noticed that he wasn’t even wet. At last he came to rest on his back, gently rising and dipping with the water’s surface, a startled look frozen on his face. I stood for a moment in awe, then gathered up his armor and worked my way across the surface to my bewildered friend. Even the giant had trouble getting across, and more than once, we were reduced to crawling on all fours.

  At last I knelt beside Diomedes, who remained on his back, an alternating sequence of grins and scowls playing across his face. “Are you all right?” I said, piling his armor next to him on the water.

  “I think so,” he answered, “but it’s hard to tell.”

  I helped him to his feet, and while he somehow managed to fall into his armor, I made my way to the opposite bank, dizzy and faintly nauseous. There I had time to examine the door while my companions caught up. I ran my hands over its surface. It wasn’t painted after all but was stone like the walls themselves, only it appeared to have been carved from some enormous jewel—amethyst, perhaps, or agate. I had half a mind to take a bit as a souvenir. In fact, I had more than half a mind. I drew my sword and gave the door a whack. Not a scratch. But the door did give a sort of shudder and swung open under its own weight, revealing by increments a bright and bustling city.

  Startled though I was by the sudden noise and disorder of it all, nonetheless there was something pleasant about the spectacle. All the filth and bother I had come to associate with village life was conspicuously absent here—no beggars, pickpockets, or ruffians. Children played in the streets. Old folk sat on balconies watching them. On the corners and in the squares, young folk chattered and played. Around us, people of every age and build, speaking various tongues and sporting all manner of dress, moved about in an endless ruck of exuberance. There was no sign of the fear and anguish, the distress and despair that I had come to expect of the Underworld. Moreover, the fact that we were fully armed and accompanied by a faceless giant didn’t seem to alarm anyone, though the children looked up from their games every now and then, and one or two eyed my bow with longing.

  We walked for some time in silence, marveling at the new world before us. I’d heard rumors that people had changed since my death. A lot can happen in three thousand years. Fashions come and go. Empires rise and fall. None of the rumors in Hell carried good news, of course; and in any case, one never knew what to believe. Nonetheless, I had managed to gather bits of news from the screams and curses of other prisoners. There was talk from the upper world that mortals had harnessed the power of thunder, that the gods had died, and that men walked the earth denying that the gods had ever existed. I had even heard that soldiers no longer fought face-to-face, and some had even learned to fly. Although these reports were mixed with lies and contradictions, they had prepared me for much of the scene before my eyes. What took me by surprise was that people themselves had changed so much. To begin with, they were enormous. Even the women were taller than I. And their hair—every imaginable shade of brown, black, bronze, and gold. I could have sworn I saw an old woman with hair that was actually blue. And they spoke languages that would have made a Phaeacian scratch his head in wonder.

  Then I heard someone speak Greek: a single word, kalos. Diomedes and I turned toward it instinctively. Amidst all the babble, that single utterance was like a port in a storm. It didn’t take us long to figure out where it came from. A cluster of serious-looking men on the other side of the street were having an animated discussion. We picked up more and more of the conversation as we approached, straining after each syllable like dogs on a scent.

  “That’s Greek all right,” I whispered to Diomedes. “They’re our people.”

  “Our people,” he echoed. “What luck.”

  One man in particular was doing most of the talking. The others stood in an earnest circle around him. “The only good is knowledge,” he was saying, “and the only evil is ignorance. Riches and nobility are worthless. In fact, I can’t see how they are anything but evil . . .”

  I looked at Diomedes. He shrugged. The speaker was dressed in a manner that looked vaguely familiar, but he spoke Greek with an odd accent. Another, clothed in the white tunic and mantle of an Achaean prince, stood with his back to us. The rest, however, lacked all vestige of civilized society, and it was a wonder to me that these two noblemen would consort with such vulgar types. Most of them wore trousers like barbarians, and they stood in such slovenly disarray that you might have mistaken them for street urchins or worse. Their hair was close-shorn like that of slaves, several had shaved off their beards, and a few wore curious cloth helmets, which could not have offered protection even from the sun. In any case, I was so relieved to hear our native tongue that the peculiarity of their dress was easily overlooked. I decided to direct my greeting to the prince, judging that he at least was from my own age and class.

  As soon as I was within speaking distance,
I stopped and bowed, saluting him and his comrades with a formal greeting: “Good prince, I come here after many trials to beg for mercy—yours and that of all these others here. May you be blessed with fortune, and may each hand down to his sons the riches in his house and the pride of place the realm has granted him. As for myself, how far away I am from my destination—how long I have suffered! I am in dire need of assistance.”

  Their conversation ceased, and the prince answered me in kind, “Speak, stranger. You are welcome in this place.”

  But when I lifted my head, the breath froze in my throat. I was standing face-to-face with Amphinomos, Son of King Nisos. There was no mistaking it. He looked exactly as he had the day I murdered him.

  CHAPTER 9

  A LONG WALK

  HE WAS A LITTLE FELLOW, with a thin neck, a skinny, slightly lopsided face, and the eyes of a rat. Yet in spite of his looks, I had known Amphinomos to be an honest man, and there had been something about him that Penelope liked as well, which may have been why I hated him. The smile slid from his face, and the two of us gaped at one another. At last, he spoke. “Odysseus.”

  I didn’t have the wit to respond, but there was a gasp from the other men in the group that suggested they knew how he had died.

  I looked from one to another. “He had it coming,” I said. “He threw in his lot with evil men and met an evil end.”

  My words were met with more silence.

  “He violated the sacred laws of hospitality,” I continued. “He tried to seduce my wife.”

  Still, there was no reaction.

  “I tried to warn him. I told him he needed to leave the house before its master returned. He wouldn’t listen. I told him there would be blood.”

  More silence. I must have sounded like a caught thief, the way I rattled off one excuse after the other. And the funny thing was that I felt like one too, which came as a surprise under the circumstances. I had no need to justify myself before strangers, and certainly no need to justify myself to Amphinomos. He had known the risk he was taking when he decided to court my wife. No, I’d never regretted killing him. Not much. Or at any rate, I’d never felt the need to justify it. When I had returned from Troy and found my home infested with freeloaders, I’d done what came naturally to me—a heroic deed, at least by the standards of the time. No, my conscience was clear on this matter.

  Or if not exactly clear, then at least—I don’t know—translucent. I may have felt some fleeting reservations about Amphinomos’ death at some point. He was the only one of my wife’s hundred suitors who shrank from killing my son. And when I’d approached him in my beggar’s disguise, he alone among them had shown me kindness. But all that paled in light of the outrage I felt when I saw him sitting uninvited at my table in my house eating my food and—to add insult to injury—courting my wife. Ah, but he had courted death when he chose to court the wife of Odysseus Laertides. And now, in death, we met once more. In another age, I might have had more to say, but a curse was all I could manage.

  During my exculpations, Amphinomos remained silent, fixing me with a gaze that held grief and rage and regret and despair all at once. I looked away and back, but his eyes never left mine. He seemed to be on the verge of an enormously painful decision. Then he shook his head and said, “Follow me.” Without waiting for an answer, he turned away.

  I looked at Diomedes. “I guess if he wanted to kill us, he’d have tried already.”

  Figuring we had little to lose but our lives (and weren’t they lost already?), I decided to follow Amphinomos wherever he was leading, though I kept an eye out for an escape should we need it. He guided us through a labyrinth of narrow passages and footpaths, under and over bridges, through parks and city squares, all crowded with the same bewildering variety of peoples, until at last he halted before a tall stone hall. In my day, we would have called it a stoa. Here, virtually everyone was Greek, which gave me a certain sense of security. Even so, a nervous hush spread over the crowd as we approached, and they parted before us as we ascended the broad marble steps.

  “This doesn’t feel right,” I muttered.

  “Then leave,” said Amphinomos without looking back. He pushed open a set of massive oak doors. “Or follow. I’m not doing this for you.”

  He led us into a wide, echoing hall, lined with chairs. Windows, set high in the walls, cast pillars of dusty light across the marble floor. About us, men and women of various ages stood in groups, speaking earnestly, gesturing, nodding. At the end of the hall stood a throne of cedar, inlaid with silver. Our little party made its way up the center of the room until we stood before the throne, and the hall grew quiet as we passed. There were more gestures, more nods, more whispers.

  Seated on the throne was an old man. To his left and right stood scores of chattering scribes, clad in loose linen robes, all clutching heavy stacks of parchment. But in their midst, the man on the silver throne paid them no heed. He was bent in deep concentration over a silver lyre, which he cradled in his lap. Eyes closed, he plucked a string. The motion was quick, delicate, timid—like that of a child touching a snake. And at his touch, the lyre sang out, clear and bright. He turned a tiny peg at the bridge, and the lyre’s voice wavered. He frowned, pursed his lips, and then smiled as the pitch leveled off. And all the while, to his left and right, his attendants watched in anxious deference.

  Could this be Hades? I wondered.

  Amphinomos stepped forward. “Sir, it is I, Son of Nisos.”

  The old man did not look up, did not open his eyes. “Speak, Amphinomos Nisides. You are welcome here, as always.” He plucked another string and listened.

  “I found this man and his friends wandering the streets. I thought you would want to see him.”

  “I’d want to see him?” said the old man. He handed his lyre to a scribe. “Very well. Bring him forward.”

  “Sir, this is Odysseus, King of Ithaca.”

  At that, every conversation in the hall ceased. Every head turned in my direction.

  “Odysseus,” he said, lifting his head but still not opening his eyes. “Is this the Man of Many Faces, known the world over for every sort of guile?”

  “Even among the dead,” whispered Diomedes, “you have a reputation.”

  “Come closer,” said the old man. He did not open his eyes.

  It seemed somewhat beneath my dignity to be ordered about by a musician, but I’d seen enough of the Underworld by now to know that things were different here. Just the same, a king and a son of kings does not quickly submit to a bard. I stepped forward and planted my fists on my hips. “I am Odysseus, Son of Laertes. Glory of the Achaeans. I am King of Ithaca, Sacker of Cities and Mastermind of War. I—”

  Halfway through my introduction, he lunged forward and grabbed my face. I gave a sort of yelp and stumbled back several paces, leaving him midlurch, grasping at air. I drew my sword. “What? No! Hello? What?”

  I heard the hiss of drawn knives, and the old man raised both hands, palms forward. “Forgive me,” he said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. Gentlemen, stow your weapons. This is our friend.” He spoke without looking up. “It is just that I have been waiting so long to meet you. I do so much desire to know what you look like. I am blind, you see.”

  He opened his eyes. They were clouded over like the eyes of a corpse. I coughed and hemmed and sheathed my sword. “If you’re blind, why do you care what I look like?”

  The old man laughed. “Truly this is Odysseus,” he said. “Ever curious. Ever wary.” He smiled and nodded. “The world may be dark for me, son, but it isn’t shapeless. Do an old man a great favor. Kneel.” He held out his gnarled hands again, and in spite of myself, I obeyed. This time he was gentle. He touched my forehead with his fingertips, then ran them slowly down my face. The sensation was like walking through a curtain of silk. I felt suddenly vulnerable. His fingers, light as ash leaves in a breeze, tripped across my face and into my beard. I felt as though a mask had been lifted. I sank to my knees.

 
Then he settled back on his throne and spoke again. “Welcome, Odysseus, royal Son of Laertes, Man of Sorrows. You would not know me, but I know you well. I spent my life watching you in my dreams. I am Homer.” As though the name itself inspired reverence, the audience bowed their heads. “I thought I would never meet you,” he continued. “So much time has passed, we assumed you must be somewhere in the lower realms. Tell me how you have come to this place, and what took you so very long to get here.”

  I stood up in the middle of the great hall, and for a moment, I thought my eloquence had abandoned me. In the presence of this man, Homer, I felt exposed, as though his clouded eyes looked through me to my soul. This was not a man I could lie to easily, I knew that.

  Still, I had to try.

  “Homer, majesty, shining among your people, what shall I go through first, what save for last? What pains—the gods have given me my due. Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, has appeared to me. She came bearing the storm shield, endowed me with this bow of gold, and sent me here to recruit an army. ‘Your army,’ she told me, ‘will free the souls of Limbo. You, Odysseus, shall be its general. You are to seek out a man named Homer—”

  “He’s lying,” said Amphinomos.

  The smile dropped from Homer’s face. “Of course he is.”

  CHAPTER 10

  REVELATION

  WILY ODYSSEUS,” said Homer. “Teller of Tales. Ever suspicious, ever doubting, always peddling mixed truths. No wonder the Parthenos loved you.” He smiled and closed his eyes. “Come with me,” he said, rising from his throne. The others in the hall stood as well, but he waved them off. “Just Odysseus and me,” he said. “Come now. There is a garden behind the stoa. Let us go there. Give me your arm.”

  I frowned but did as he asked, glancing over my shoulder at Diomedes, who stood fidgeting next to Amphinomos and the giant. Homer led me to a low arch in the wall behind his throne. I could see a garden beyond it. The audience watched us leave.