by Glyn Iliffe
Reluctantly, he forced himself down onto one knee and bowed his head. The shocked silence continued and, as he focused his attention on the stone floor, all he could hear was the hissing and popping of the fire.
‘My slave,’ Eurystheus said, at last. ‘The great Heracles wishes to be my slave?’
‘I don’t trust him,’ said a hard, gravelly voice. Heracles looked up to see the grizzled man in the black cloak step forward and point his maimed hand at him. ‘He claims the oracle said you’d set him ten labours; I say, what labours? Have the gods revealed to you what they are, my lord? Have they spoken to you in your dreams? No, because he’s lying. What he wants is to be made your steward so that he can poison your wine; or to carve your meat for you so he can slip the knife into your heart. And when he’s murdered you, he intends to claim the throne for himself.’
Eurystheus pushed himself forward from the chair, landing on his feet with a small jump. He paced the dais several times, keeping his eyes fixed on Heracles.
‘Copreus is right,’ he announced. ‘You want to be king in my place, Heracles. And you’ll kill me to take Tiryns and Mycenae for yourself.’
‘If I say I do not want your throne,’ Heracles said, returning to his feet, ‘then I mean it. And if I have offered myself as your slave, then the offer is genuine.’
The priestess stepped forward.
‘My lord Eurystheus, if this man has been sent here by the oracle, then he’s here at the command of the gods. They will reveal these labours he speaks of when the time is right.’
‘What do you say, Iphicles?’ Eurystheus asked. ‘Copreus believes he’s come for my throne, and Charis says he comes from the gods. But you’re his brother. You know him better than any of us.’
Iphicles looked at Heracles and the dislike on his face was clear. Years of living in the shadow of his older twin had left him bitter and resentful, but now his brother’s fate had been placed in his hands. What would give him more pleasure, Heracles wondered? To see him humiliated as a slave, most likely to die performing one of the labours that the Pythoness had deemed impossible? Or to have him ejected from the city and know that he would spend the remainder of his life haunted by the deaths of his sons, never to be free of his guilt?
‘The man is a brute,’ Iphicles replied. ‘He is proud and violent and will stop at nothing to get his way. But he is a man of his word. My lord, if you make him swear by Zeus – the god he calls his own father – then he will not break a sacred oath. If you can make him promise not to harm you and never to take the thrones of Tiryns or Mycenae for himself, then you and your kingdoms will be safe from him.’
Eurystheus looked from Iphicles to Copreus, then to Charis and back to Iphicles. Last of all, he turned his eyes on Heracles.
‘Will you take this oath? Will you promise before Zeus not to harm me? Will you swear never to claim the kingdoms of Tiryns and Mycenae for yourself?’
Heracles nodded. What choice did he have? Though his pride still chafed that Hera had tricked him out of his inheritance, he knew that – had Tiryns and Mycenae been given to him – he would have been a poor king. His mind would always have been on the next challenge, his heart looking to the next adventure, ever restless and never content with the daily boredom of administering a kingdom. Though marriage and fatherhood had tamed him for a while in Thebes, they had been torn from him. Now he almost relished the thought of the ten labours the Pythoness had spoken of. They would at least distract him from the horror of what he had done.
As for Eurystheus, what did Heracles care about a weakling king who was afraid of his own shadow? Even if he was tempted to kill him, he could not do it until the last labour had been completed. Not if the command of the oracle was to be fulfilled.
‘I swear it,’ he said. ‘By Zeus and all the gods of Olympus, I swear I will do you no harm, Eurystheus. And I swear before the gods that I will never covet your kingdoms. Whether you live or die, I will not take up the thrones of Tiryns or Mycenae. Are you satisfied?’
Eurystheus took hold of his daughter’s hand, and together they stepped down from the dais and walked around the hearth towards Heracles. Every eye in the room followed them. They stood before the towering figure of Heracles and stared up at him.
‘Admete, kick him.’
The little girl smiled, and without hesitation kicked him as hard as she could in the shin. Though he did not move – he hardly felt the blow – Eurystheus gave a laugh and looked around at the watching nobles. One or two took up his laughter, to be followed rapidly by all but a handful of the rest. The slaves standing behind the rows of chairs and the guards in the shadows laughed also, until the walls echoed to the sound of their amusement.
‘The mighty Heracles, liberator of Thebes,’ Eurystheus announced. ‘Afraid of a girl!’
The volume of laughter increased, and then – with a flash of his palm – the king slapped Heracles hard across the cheek. The sound of it rang across the hall, silencing the laughter and filling the warm, smoky air with sudden tension. Heracles’s eyes burned with fury and his hands balled into fists, the flesh straining white over his knuckles. But he did not move.
‘Good,’ Eurystheus said. ‘I almost believe you can restrain your temper. Almost.’
He pursed his lips and spat in Heracles’s face. Heracles gave a furious roar and raised his fist, only to sense a dozen bowstrings drawn taut in the shadows, aiming a dozen arrows at his heart, with four times as many spears waiting to be hurled at him and rip his flesh to shreds. Eurystheus fell back in fright, stumbling into Admete, then tripping over his own cloak and landing in a heap on the floor. He crawled away, with his daughter trying to help him back to his feet. Heracles released his fist and stepped forward, offering his hand, but Tydeus had leaped from the dais with drawn sword and sprang between him and the king.
‘Say the word, my lord, and he’s dead.’
In a moment, Heracles had seized Tydeus’s wrist, crushing it so that the weapon fell from his hand, in the same movement twisting him around and hooking his other arm about his neck in an unshakable grip.
‘Tell your men to lower their weapons,’ he commanded.
‘My life is meaningless,’ Tydeus croaked. ‘Kill me, or take another step towards the king, and you’ll be dead.’
Eurystheus pulled himself to his feet and gestured for the ring of guards to lower their weapons. Heracles released his hold on Tydeus and the captain of the guard quickly snatched up his sword and stepped back to protect the king.
‘I accept you as my slave, Heracles,’ Eurystheus said. ‘Nothing will give me more pleasure than making your life a misery of servitude and humiliation. But you are not to live in the palace, or even the city. You cannot be trusted enough for such luxuries. No, Copreus will have one of the hovels outside the walls emptied. You will live there until I have decided what I want to do with you.’
Chapter Five
The Spawn of Echidna
Charis stood inside a high-ceilinged cave deep beneath the earth. She was atop a flight of roughly cut stone steps, with a wall of black rock to her right and a deep cavern to her left. A river of hissing fire moved slowly along the floor of the cavern far below, fed by a smoking cataract of lava that oozed from a hole in the cliff face opposite her. The heat was intense, the reek of sulphur overwhelming, and the dull roar of the falling magma enough to drown out every thought and sensation. Despite the intensity of the light emanating from the molten rock, it seemed to have no penetrating value, illuminating only the rocky teeth that edged the banks of the river, and failing altogether to push back the deep shadows that filled the great cavern.
She reached out with her right hand, finding the wall and using it as a guide as she went down. Though the steps glistened red beneath her feet with the reflected light, they were as dry as the bones that littered the cavern floor. The air, too, was devoid of moisture, leaving her throat parched and longing for a mouthful of water. The descent was long, taking her past the fury and clamour of
the falling lava and down into a far corner of the cavern. The steps ended at the entrance to another cave, a black hole devoid of light, from which emanated a stench far worse than the burning sulphur of the river behind her. The rock floor before it had been worn smooth and was littered with bones that pulsed red in the light from the lava.
Undeterred, she entered the darkness of the cave, feeling the crunch of more bones beneath her sandalled feet as she advanced. For a while everything was black, but the woman whose body she was in seemed familiar with the cave and walked on confidently. Soon, a faint green light appeared, highlighting the rugged contours of the tunnel until eventually the walls opened out into another cavern. Torches burned in iron brackets, the emerald flames casting a jaded glow over the large chamber. In the furthest reaches, where the shadows were deep and impenetrable, something moved.
Charis felt herself stiffen. A pale shape was emerging from the gloom. Bloated and hideous, it pulled itself forward on its fat limbs until it was fully exposed to the torchlight. Its arms flailed blindly for a moment, searching for something. The claw-like hands seized onto a boulder, and the monster pulled itself up to rest against it, as if supporting itself on the arm of a couch.
Charis stared at it with appalled fascination. Its lower body was a mass of black, scaly tentacles, ceaselessly twisting and curling, like the fronds of a river plant caught in a gentle current. From the waist upwards, its skin was almost white, but not in any way that suggested purity. Rather, it seemed to have the quality of a drowned body washed up on a seashore, distended and drained of blood. That it was female was evidenced by the eight breasts that hung down from its torso, the long teats like blackened fingers reaching for the ground. Despite their number, there was a human quality to them that revolted Charis, if only because the notion there could be anything human about such a creature was repugnant.
Atop its broad, sloping shoulders was its neckless head. It was too small for its huge body and was triangular in form, a cone of flesh with a wide, lipless opening for a mouth. This was filled with long, needle-like teeth that moved in a restless gnashing motion, as if driven by a terrible inner anguish. There was no eye that Charis could see in that hideous head, and what little hair it had hung down in greasy twists to its shoulders and chest.
Charis had been faintly aware of the emotions of the woman through whose eyes she was looking: her lack of fear in the fiery cavern, despite her discomfort at its dulling effect on her senses; her desire to right some great wrong that had been done to her; and her anger at the thought of that wrong. Now she could feel her revulsion at the monster before her.
‘The time you appointed is here, Echidna,’ she said. ‘Is what I asked for ready?’
The rasping of teeth stopped momentarily and a green tongue slithered out from the lipless mouth, waving slowly from left to right. It was as if it was sniffing the air, Charis thought.
‘My children are ready to come into the world,’ Echidna replied, ‘if you are ready to receive them, Hera, Queen of Olympus.’
Charis felt a small shock. The vision – for this was no dream that she was experiencing – had been given to her by the goddess she served. What was more, Hera had honoured her by allowing her to see through her own eyes. But why, she thought? Why ?
‘I am ready.’
‘Are you? They are not for the eyes of those used only to beauty and elegance, those who feast on ambrosia and nectar.’
‘I am not Aphrodite!’ Hera snapped. ‘And how much worse can they be to look on than you, oh Mother of Monsters? Bring them forth. The more fearsome they are, the happier I will be.’
Despite her bravado, Charis sensed Hera’s uncertainty. It seemed strange to her that a goddess – supreme above all created beings – should feel anxiety at the thought of what she was about to witness. Such emotions belonged to mankind, whose transient existences were ever subject to fear of injury and death, but surely not to those who need not concern themselves with mortal worries.
‘And you will keep your promise? To unleash them on the world of men?’
‘That is our agreement. They have to spread chaos and havoc if they are to draw my husband’s son into their clutches. Then they must kill him, before he can fulfil his true potential.’
Echidna laughed – a chilling, stuttering sound that vexed the nerves and had Charis willing her host to cover her ears.
‘You fear him, I see. But you need not. My children will do what you ask. And when they have succeeded? What will happen to them then?’
‘I care not,’ Hera said. ‘Let them feed on the humanity around them. Let them devour the whole of Greece, until Zeus himself is forced to deal with them. All I want is Heracles dead.’
‘Why not simply kill him yourself?’ Echidna challenged. ‘Why does the queen of the gods need me?’
‘Because I am not king of the gods. The power in Olympus lies with my husband, and he has forbidden direct involvement in Heracles’s fate. I can only set him labours by which he will earn himself glory, or die in their fulfilment. That must be the arena in which the battle is fought. And I intend to win!’
‘You will,’ Echidna promised. ‘My children will destroy your enemy for you.’
She let out a sudden wail that rose up to the cavern ceiling. Her lower torso began to writhe, the tentacles beating against the rocks and the air. Hera took an involuntary step backwards, her eyes fixed on the repulsive sight. A few short moments after the birth pangs had begun, several of the monster’s tentacles folded in on themselves, taking hold of something and pulling it forcefully from its body. A large sack slid out onto the floor, pale and green in the light from the torches.
Already, whatever was bound up inside the glutinous mess was squirming to be free. Charis stared at it with dread, fixed on it by the equally appalled eyes of Hera. Then, as a great black claw tore a vent in the sack, Echidna cried out again. Hera averted her gaze to the Mother of Monsters, watching as the process repeated itself. As the first creature emerged full grown in all its evil foulness from the sack that had nurtured it, a second, much larger bag was plucked free from Echidna’s womb, falling on the rocky floor beside it. Its older sibling tore at the pale film with its claws, releasing the monstrosity within. It slid out, a mass of thrashing coils that roared with hate-filled fury at the world into which it had been born.
Charis closed her eyes, refusing to watch any more.
She awoke on the bank of a river, swollen by autumn rains, and looked up at the mountain above. The foothills were densely wooded, the shadows beneath the trees lengthening as the sun sank towards a shoulder of the mountain. Glancing down, she saw that her body was now her own. And yet, this was not the waking world. She had never been in this place before, though she knew the mountain was Mount Tretus, and that she had to enter the trees that covered its skirts. Pulling her cloak tightly around her white priestess’s robes, she muttered a prayer to Hera – beseeching the goddess’s protection – then followed the riverbank as it led into the woods.
For a while, the higher reaches of the canopy were bathed in sunlight, turning the leaves a yellowish green and lighting her way. Then she came to a waterfall and the path veered off to the left, away from the rolling course of the river and steeply up into the trees. She knew she had to follow the faltering trail as far as it would take her, though she did not know where that would be, or what she would find there. Conscious now of the cool, damp earth and the carpet of dried twigs and leaves beneath her bare feet, she walked on.
The path was no longer gentle and easy, as it had been by the river. Now it climbed up difficult slopes, between boulders and fallen tree trunks, sometimes disappearing and then – by chance or divine guidance – reappearing again. And all the time, the light in the tops of the trees was growing dimmer and dimmer, until the leaves were a dark shade of green. The shadows deepened around her, and the birdsong that had filled the woods in daylight died away.
As she walked, she began to hear new noises. Twigs fell from
high branches, and unseen creatures moved in the darkness. The sound of the water to her right, tumbling down from the mountain above, had faded away to be replaced by the sinister rustling of leaves in the breeze. Then a sound like the roaring of a distant animal echoed through the trees, stopping her in her tracks and chilling her flesh. Was that where the goddess was leading her? Against her will, she walked on, deeper and deeper into the forest, until the path disappeared and the last of the light failed.
After what seemed a long time stumbling over tree roots and rocks in the darkness, she sensed the trees thinning and stepped out into a clearing. Stars were visible above, though there was no moon to lend its light to that dark place. And despite the sight of the night sky – a glimpse of the world beyond the forest that had consumed her – she had a sudden feeling of danger. She wanted to go back into the trees, or drop to the ground and curl herself up into a ball, but her feet carried her relentlessly forward.
By the faint starlight, she saw the gleam of stone ahead and saw a gully with rocky flanks overhung with vegetation. As she reached the mouth of the channel, her sense of imminent peril increased. At the end, barely visible, was a deeper blackness – a hole in the shadow of night. It seemed to draw her, though she knew it led to death, and it took all her remaining willpower to stop herself from walking directly into it.
And then she saw a movement. A faint outline emerged from the darkness. Its heavy paws padded across the bed of leaves, revealing the terrifying shape of the beast: as tall as a man, surrounded by a mane of long hair, its great jaws filled with glinting teeth. It gave a terrifying roar and bounded towards her.
She turned and ran. The black trunks of trees rose up before her, offering the illusion of escape. Then she heard the pounding of heavy feet close behind her, and a second roar splitting the air as the beast leaped upon her.
Charis sat up and screamed. The echoes were still ringing from the walls of the temple when she realized there was no mountain, no forest, no cave, no monster. The fog of her dream cleared, leaving just the memory of her terror. She placed her hands down at her sides and touched the straw mattress. The furs that kept her warm through the night had been tossed aside and lay in a heap on the flagstones. She felt the night air cooling the dampness of her naked skin, then, shaking off the last of her sleepiness, she grabbed her priest’s robes and slipped them over her head.
