Colemine, the Prince

by Clayton Smith

  Dr. Mandrill could actually feel the capillaries bursting somewhere deep behind his eyes.

  He was beginning to understand the true meaning of rage.

  An Interlude

  The Royal lets his awareness stretch out into the recesses of the castle, down into the dungeon where the misshapen traitor of a creature sits in his cell, weeping. The Royal can feel the creature’s fear as if it were a warm blanket draped over his shoulders. And it brings him at least as much comfort.

  He has not yet decided what the creature’s punishment will be. The severity will likely depend on how quickly the dentist or the Norseman captures the children and brings them to his door. His impatience grows with each passing turn of the dial.

  This does not bode well for the prisoner.

  The Royal redirects his concentration and sends his consciousness beyond the walls of the castle, across the Pinch, and out to the far reaches of the Boundarylands. His focus spreads here, and becomes thin, so it is difficult to concentrate. There have been rumors of uprising in the Field of the Fates, where the three crones sow the seeds of many imaginary creatures, IFs among them. He reaches for this place, this Field of the Fates, and he catches a glimpse of the youngest woman, Clotho, at work on her loom, spinning forth a thread of life. Undoubtedly, she plans to one day spin the thread that will be the Royal’s noose. Perhaps this is that thread. Perhaps not.

  The Royal pulls back his thoughts from the Field of the Fates and lets his consciousness collect itself as it draws around to the far bank of the Twilight River, out to the desert of New Olympus.

  He feels Odin, tracks his movements across the Pinch Rim. He is heading toward the gateway to Reaper’s Gulch. His mission is progressing.

  The Royal smiles to himself. The old gods still have their uses.

  He shifts direction one final time, spreading his awareness until it is as thin as paper. He cannot reach so far as the Way Station, and he is dismayed and annoyed to learn that even the Nouveau Hall, which was once on his periphery, has now faded into darkness, pushed farther out by new dreams that have sprung up between the Pinch and the Hall. But he can see far enough. He finds what he is looking for:

  The dentist has returned to his office. He is alone. And he is full of anger, and fear.

  The Royal draws his concentration back to himself. His power is enough that this action causes a faint ripple in the air of the Boundarylands, and innumerous imaginary creatures raise their heads and shiver at the cold breeze that whips past them.

  The dentist appears determined to fail.

  The Royal launches himself from his crooked throne and stalks to the dungeon steps. He feels a great need to release his anger. And he knows just the prisoner upon which to do it.

  Chapter 6:

  On the Surprising Nature of Bargaining Chips

  Athena frowned up at the mouth of the cave, hidden in the shadow of the great seven-headed beast. She’d never cared for the Hydra. It was a vulgar thing, more monster than animal. But then, she supposed that was the point. It bristled its scaly spine, as if to confirm this opinion.

  Athena sighed.

  “Lost in wistful wanderings, sister?”

  She turned as Apollo crested the hill. “I am many things, brother. Wistful is not one of them.”

  “Don’t I know it.” He shook out his golden curls, closed his eyes, and drank in the blazing midday sun. Its heat caused shimmers to rise from the desert floor, and even the heartiest sand creatures cowed in what little shade they could find.

  “Can’t you do something about the sun?” Athena said, opening the top button of her shirt and fanning the collar. “Shrink it? Cool it? Extinguish it altogether?”

  “Hm. I suppose I could,” Apollo mused, rubbing his jaw thoughtfully. “But that would upset the natural order of things.”

  “There’s nothing natural about this heat.”

  “It does seem especially intense today, doesn’t it?” he asked with a smile. “Well, we’ll have to live with it. You know Zeus likes it hot. As a reminder. And if I go against his will, it’s not you who’ll spend the next millennium chained to a rock.”

  “I’m sick to death of Zeus’s reminders. How long will it take for him to accept that Olympus is lost and allow us to make a real home here?” She removed her hat and fanned herself with the brim. “Or somewhere with an average yearly rainfall of more than a quarter of an inch?”

  “What’s got you so sour, sister?” Apollo teased. He nodded up at the cave. “Is it our little guest?”

  “Our little prisoner, you mean. And emphasis on ‘little.’ She’s just a child, Apollo. And we have her locked away like a criminal.”

  “We used to do worse to younger,” the sun god reminded her. Athena rolled her eyes.

  “Yes, the ‘glory days.’ How civilized we all were.”

  “We didn’t have to be civilized. That’s one of the perks of being a god. You get to be an absolute monster, and they’ll still adore you.”

  “They’ll fear you.”

  “I find there’s little difference,” Apollo grinned.

  Athena huffed and crammed her hat back onto her head. “This is exactly why our kind was replaced. People need compassion from their gods.”

  “People have no idea what they need,” Apollo replied.

  The Hydra adjusted itself on its perch above the cavern entrance and shook its massive body. It unfurled its gigantic wings and flapped them twice, sending two monstrous gusts of warm air blasting across the sand. The two gods simultaneously spread their arms and let the moving air rush over them. “Oh, we should train it to do that on command,” Apollo said happily.

  “Checking in on our little bargaining chip?” asked a gruff voice behind them. Zeus stalked through the hardpan behind them, crackles of excitement sparking from his rough-shaven jaw. “How’s she faring this morning?”

  “You’ve left her alone with no food or water in a cave full of reapers. She’s probably dead,” Athena said icily. Zeus waved her off.

  “When she needs food, we’ll feed her, and you know full well the reapers are contained to their canyon. She’ll be fine.”

  “She’s just a child,” Athena insisted.

  “There was a time that you wouldn’t bat an eye at a little kiddie sacrificed on the bier,” said Zeus with a smirk.

  “Precisely what I was saying!” said Apollo.

  “The world was a less civilized place then,” said the goddess of wisdom, her voice tinged with annoyance. “We paid dearly for our barbaric ways. As you well know, Father.”

  “Whet your conscience against some other stone,” Zeus grumbled.

  “I’ll have no part in this,” Athena replied hotly, turning on her heel. “Whatever you do with the girl, you do without the support of New Olympus.”

  “I am New Olympus,” Zeus snarled. Blue lightning crackled from his finger as he leveled it at his daughter’s back. “Whatever title you may hold, I am the one who rules.”

  Athena bristled. A thousand words of venom seeped into her mind, but she was, after all, a diplomat. Rather than hurl her poisons at her father, she simply said, “She’s real, you know. Your little bargaining chip in there. You may do well to remember that. The real ones can surprise you.”

  Chapter 7:

  In Which a Monster is Viewed From a Distance

  The Stranger shouldered his way through the batwings and stepped into the sandy desert floor of Reaper’s Gulch. The air on this side of the gateway was hot, and dry, and it felt a little like home.

  He’d come across just behind an old, rickety barn on the edge of some poor prospector’s land. A clapboard house of sun-bleached boards stood off to the side, near the main roadway. The land was expansive, but sandy and barren. There were a few dozen oil drills set up out on the desert hardpan, and not a single one of them was churning.


  The Stranger heard the creak of an opening door from the other direction, and he turned toward the sound, seamlessly pulling his six-shooter from its holster. He leveled the barrel at the source of the creak, then realized it was just a small boy exiting the outhouse back behind the clapboard home. The boy stopped when he saw the cowboy with the gun and threw his hands into the air. His trousers, which he hadn’t quite managed to re-fasten, fell to his knees, exposing two scrawny legs clad in a pair of dirty long Johns.

  The boy hadn’t expected to see a new swinging batwing door set into the side of his pa’s barn, or a dangerous man with a drawn pistol stepping through it.

  The Stranger frowned and motioned the boy away with the barrel of the gun. The boy gratefully hiked up his britches and stumbled quickly toward the house.

  “Come on out,” the Stranger mumbled over his shoulder. “Coast is clear.”

  The children stepped through the doors and shuffled into the bright, hot desert afternoon. “Did we make it?” Cole asked warily. “Is it Reaper’s Gulch?”

  The Stranger gave a curt nod. “I believe it is.” He motioned off to his left, away from the nearby town, over toward the horizon, where a gargantuan, seven-headed creature perched atop an outcropping of stone jutting up from the sandy floor, its massive black talons clutching the pale, white rock. The stone opened up into a cave just beneath the great beast’s leathery wings, and before it stood three people, engaged in a heated discussion. “Something tells me that’s where we’ll find Polly.”

  “In there?” Cole asked, his voice swallowed up by the tightness in his throat. He could hear the beast breathing, even from this great distance, and could see the sunlight reflecting off its long, curved teeth, each one the size of a grown man’s forearm.

  He hoped Prince Colemine had a little more magic up his sleeve.

  “I should have stayed behind,” the prince whispered, instantly snuffing out Cole’s hope.

  The Stranger gritted his teeth and pulled the brim of his hat low against the blowing sand. “Best I handle this one alone,” he decided.

  “Aw, come on!” Willy whined. “I want to slay a dragon!” He picked up a plank of wood from the side of the barn and slashed it through the air, just barely missing Etherie’s nose. “Whoops…”

  “You’re not valiant enough,” Etherie decided casually, taking a safety step away from the Willy and his weapon. “A knight must have a drishti. But your soul is frantic.”

  Cole frowned toward the many-headed creature. “Are you sure this is a good idea? It just looks...” He trailed off hopelessly, unable to put the sheer magnitude of the situation into words.

  “Obscenely dangerous,” Prince Colemine finished.

  “No choice,” the Stranger said. He walked over to the wall of the barn and gripped a thick cedar plank that had started to come loose. He pulled it free with a grunt, then dragged it over to the batwing doors. “Grab me that tool box,” he said, nodding at an old, wooden box lying on the ground just outside the barn. Cole trotted over and retrieved the tools, and the Stranger set to work boarding up the doorway. “You five wait there in the barn while I’m gone. I’ll come back for you when it’s over.”

  “But what happens if you...? I mean, if you...?” Cole stammered. He noticed that his hands were wringing themselves, and they wouldn’t stop.

  “What happens if you die?” Emma asked softly, her eyes glossy behind tears that threatened to spill out.

  The cowboy snorted and spat onto the hardpan. “Best not to think about that,” he said. Then he nodded over toward the barn. “Stay outta sight.”

  Chapter 8:

  In Which a Plan is Formed

  Polly was bored stiff. And she felt stiff, too, from sleeping against a pile of rocks the night before. It was an all-around stiff situation she’d gotten herself into, and she didn’t like it one bit. Stiffness was unbecoming of a princess.

  Which is how she came to make up her mind once and for all.

  Monster-dragon or no monster-dragon, she was going to make an escape.

  If there was one thing she knew, it was that she was no match for the giant, multi-headed beast guarding the exit. She obviously couldn’t just go sauntering out through the mouth of the cave. And her wand was no help. It was definitely on the fritz. Despite all her chanting and wrist flicking, she couldn’t get it to change stones into Jell-o, or vines into swords, or mud into sleeping potion, or any of that. So she’d have to think of something else.

  “What would a princess do?” Polly asked aloud. Her voice echoed off the wet stone walls and rebounded back to her, as if some other person were asking her opinion. And when she heard it that way, it was actually an easy question to answer.

  “A princess would send her army,” she decided.

  And Polly knew exactly where she could find an army.

  She felt around the dark space, searching for the rope-like vine that bisected her cavernous prison.

  She was going to need it.

  Chapter 9:

  “Ye Gads, You Gods!”

  Zeus spat angrily into the dust as his daughter huffed away, heading back toward the town proper. “Your sister is a fool,” he grumbled.

  “We’ve all had our turn at that table,” Apollo said jovially, recalling more than one of his own personal transgressions with no small amount of delight. “And we’ll all have a seat at it again soon enough.”

  Zeus glowered at his son. He never ceased to be amazed at how little they had in common. “The Royal’s emissary, whoever he chooses to send, will arrive soon. He knows by now that we have the girl, he won’t waste any time. Be on alert. If the Royal himself comes–and he won’t, mark my word–but if he does turn out to be foolish enough to do it, take Hermes and head straightaway to the Pinch.”

  “Shall we bring the god of war as well?”

  “No. He stays here, to ensure our victory. Once the Royal is dead, the Pinch will be ripe for picking.”

  “Who do you think the Royal will send?” Apollo asked, his eyes on the horizon.

  “Some general or other, with a legion of warriors at his back, no doubt,” Zeus muttered.

  “Is there any chance he’d send just one man?” Apollo asked.

  Zeus scoffed. “Not hardly.” He glanced up at the towering Hydra. Two of its heads were drooping with sleep. He flicked his wrist, and a small sizzle of electricity shot out from his fingertips and burned into the sleeping heads with a soft crackle. The Hydra jerked awake and hissed at the king of the gods, but sat up straighter. Zeus turned back to his son. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because there’s a man approaching now,” Apollo said, nodding over Zeus’ shoulder. “And he appears to be quite alone.”

  Zeus turned and shielded his eyes against the sun. Sure enough, he saw a dust-covered cowboy ambling across the desert. The gunslinger walked alone, approaching the New Olympian cave with what Zeus regarded as a wanting amount of respect. “Who is that?” he asked, annoyed. “Surely not an emissary of the crown.” He flexed his fingers on both hands, and lightning crackled to life in his palms. His eyes filled with the same blue sparks, and his teeth flashed blue when he gritted them against the sandy desert wind. “Signal for the others. Now.”

  Apollo nodded, his usual smile replaced by a rare and lopsided grimace of determination. He worked back his shoulders and lifted his chest to the burning sun. With his eyes closed, he reached toward the yellow orb in the hazy sky and stretched out his fingers, as if he could pry the sun right down and out of the heavens. Beads of sweat popped out across Apollo’s forehead and spilled down his reddening face. He struggled mightily into the air, groaning and heaving under great labor. Then, slowly, the sun itself began to bend, just on one side, stretching a piece of itself out to the east while the rest of the globe continued its slow, plodding course to the west. He pulled at the sun until it looked like a brig
ht yellow pear tipped over on its side. This new configuration caused a portion of the sun’s light, and heat, to siphon off toward a large, circular pane of glass that stood bolted to the top of the New Olympus bell tower. The lens gathered the sun’s newly placed heat, magnified it, and beamed it directly onto a short fuse that lay nearby. The cord began to smoke, then it sprang to life with a fizzing, sparking fire that sizzled up the fuse and directly into the small, homemade cannon that sat atop the bell tower roof. The powder ignited, and the cannon shot a green flare into the sky. The glowing orb arced through the air, then exploded into a million tiny shards of green light.

  By the time the dusty stranger was within shouting distance, most of the gods of Olympus had seen the signal and were hustling up the slope toward the cave. But if the sight of a gathering horde worried the cowboy, he didn’t let it show. He continued on his path, approaching the cave like a cattleman might approach his herd.

  “Be ready,” Zeus muttered to the assembling gods, his very words tanging the air with lightning. “I don’t like this.”

  Hephaestus planted himself near Zeus, cracking his knuckles and preparing for a fight. Ares towered above even the blacksmith god, his arms folded, a sly grin slashing his face. Hermes stood next to the god of war, looking puny by comparison, and ready to drop. Poseidon crawled his way to the mouth of the cave, where he collapsed into the cool shade of the Hydra. Hera followed him, more than happy to sit in the relative coolness of the cave. Athena was noticeably absent, but Hestia and Artemis completed the ranks, the former armed with a fire poker, the latter wielding her bow.