“There is no strength in loving,” the demon was now saying to her with conviction. “Caring for anyone is always a mistake. That fool boy just proved it by walking into my trap. Love makes humankind vulnerable.”
“Did you never love?”
“Only myself. I was the only person I ever found worthy.”
The faintest tremor passed through the arm Justine held, as if some violent internal struggle were taking place far below Vesi’s placid surface. Justine cast a swift glance at Lars Porsena but apparently he had not noticed, being preoccupied with his own discourse.
He went on describing the ways in which love invariably failed humans, but Justine was no longer paying attention, though from time to time she murmured a syllable of approval. Her mind wandered back over people she had loved—or thought she’d loved—times when the world seemed joyful. There had been many dark days in her existence and only a few bright moments. Those were the ones she wanted to remember. What a shame, she thought, there were not more of them.
“Love is the ultimate trap,” Lars Porsena announced conclusively. “For the sake of love men march willingly to horrible fates, as that boy behind us will discover.”
Justine awoke from her reverie. “Are you going to attack him soon?”
“Not yet. First I have some business to conduct in order to facilitate my actions here. Then I want to lead him far away from any possible help before I confront him. The Netherworld is a vast realm, most of it violent and unstable. You are already aware of some of its natives. There are others far worse.
“Satres, god of the Netherworld, makes no effort to control its inhabitants. He enjoys and even encourages their worst behavior to amuse himself. But Veno, Protectress of the Dead, provides a sanctuary of delight for those who manage to reach her. I have no intention of allowing that boy’s spirit to find safe haven.
“If he gets close enough to Veno’s realm, he will be able to call upon whatever kin he has there for aid. But if I catch him out in the open, I can call on allies of my own. All the advantage will be mine. I will tear his immortal essence to shreds.”
“You never told me why you want to destroy his spirit,” said Justine. “I can understand killing a living human for revenge, but to destroy the spirit …”
“Not easily done,” the demon interrupted. “But possible. And in this case, necessary. Suffice it to say that while his spirit survives it poses a threat to me. I had long been looking for him. When I discovered his mother in the palace, I realized the weapon for his destruction had fallen into my hands.”
“How did you know she was his mother?”
“I did not … at first. But I have an infallible memory, Justine, and soon recalled her face. I forget nothing. You would be wise to remember that yourself.”
There was a chilling undertone in his voice. Justine was suddenly anxious to change the subject. “Have we far to go?”
“A distance yet. The Netherworld is much larger than the Earthworld.”
Justine glanced over her shoulder. “What if he catches up with us before you conduct this business of yours?”
Lars Porsena turned to look at her over Vesi’s head. In the lurid crimson light, his handsome features were strangely distorted, his wild, uncombed hair suggesting horns. “You are a clever girl. A woman with a mind— what a peculiar idea. We need something to slow him down of course. An impediment … ah, I know!” Releasing Vesi’s arm, he raised his face to the blood-lit sky and clapped his hands together twice.
“Children of Rak-Sar-Shu! Attend me!” he called in a ringing voice.
Singly, then in small clusters, then in a blazing cloud, they formed out of the scarlet sky, the crimson light. Brilliant yellow-white sparks swirled and darted toward Lars Porsena like so many fireflies. But these insects made a sinister hissing sound as they approached. The cloud of malign spirits that had accompanied Lars Porsena fled in terror.
“What are those things?” whispered Justine.
“Fire fiends,” Lars Porsena replied casually. “Infernal servitors of a Babylonian fire god now long forgotten. Only his minions remain.”
When the burning sparks reached him and the others, they began circling the trio with ever-increasing speed. As they flew they grew larger until each was the size of a man’s fist. The sound they made became a muted roar, the roar of a fire on the verge of exploding. The air smelled of molten metal.
Justine shrank back against Lars Porsena. “Will they hurt us?”
“Not as long as they are under my command,” he assured her.
“Are they like you?”
He chuckled. “No one is like me, dear child. These fiends are very minor imps that have never been human. They possess almost no mind. Like fire they are obedient to anyone who can control them. Such beings have their uses however. Because they have little intelligence and are incapable of emotion, they are perfect tools for my purpose.”
Addressing the moving balls of fire, he commanded, “Return along the way I just came until you find a young man trailing me. Surround him, harry him, do whatever is necessary to slow his progress without causing him to stop altogether.”
He paused as if listening to the fiends, then chuckled his cruel chuckle. “I doubt if you have enough power to kill him,” he said, “and I forbid you to try. Hurt him all you like but do him no fatal injury. He is mine. I will not rest until I have torn his spirit apart personally.”
FORTY-FOUR
Waiting in the cavern with Horatius’s body, Khebet listened anxiously to the sounds of the four regrouping outside. He was keeping Anubis’s fire alight, but just enough to be a warning. In time his energies would fail and the fire would go out. What might happen then he could not imagine.
From time to time he looked at Horatius. The young man lay supine on the floor of the cave with his hands folded on his breast and his calm face upward. In the light from the magical fire he looked asleep. Beneath his closed lids the eyeballs moved constantly however, as if scanning the landscape of dreams.
Then, as Khebet watched in the flickering firelight, a change took place.
The landscape of the Netherworld was not a constant. As Horatius and Pepan advanced, the scenery changed dramatically. No sooner did they leave the lake than they entered into a parched, arid country. Stunted trees clawed the reddish atmosphere as if desperate for air, and the ground was baked to a hard crust. As Pepan had said, Earthworld tracking techniques were not possible here. Yet with the Lord of the Rasne at his side Horatius always knew which direction to take. From time to time Pepan would cock his head as if listening, then point. “We go this way,” he would say with certainty.
“What do you hear?” Horatius asked.
“The music of her soul,” was Pepan’s cryptic explanation.
Horatius wanted to question him as to what he meant, but there were so many other new things to see, experience, learn … .There would be time later, he thought. Once Vesi was safe. Then he would sit down with Pepan and have a wonderful conversation. He would learn all about his mother and his grandmother and the land from which they came.
As he strode forward Horatius made a striking figure: a lean, muscular young man wearing a warrior’s breastplate and the pelt of a leopard over his damp toga. The shield was strapped to his arm, the greaves covered his legs to the knee, and he had used the cloth sling to fashion a pouch holding the bag of stones from the Styx and his flint knife. The pouch hung round his neck within easy reach. Most impressive of all was the glittering two-headed ax he carried nonchalantly on his shoulder.
Horatius’s clean-shaven face was calm, his eyes were clear and confident. Purpose was implicit in every line of his body. The bursts of childishness that had, understandably, still been part of his character seemed to have been left behind in the warm waters of the lake. Horatius Cocles was indeed a man.
I wish he were my son, Pepan told himself.
No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than he saw Horatius tense and flex his knees, dro
pping into a defensive crouch.
“What is it?”
“Look there, coming toward us over that hill.” Shifting his grip on the haft of the ax, Horatius pointed with his free hand. A cluster of bright specks like blazing embers had appeared in the distance. They rapidly drew nearer. As they approached, the two men could hear a low, sinister hum coming from the fiery swarm.
That sound told Pepan all he needed to know. “Beware, they are dangerous. By their very nature most natives of the Netherworld are inimical to life.”
“I am armed.”
“You are,” agreed Pepan, “but your arsenal is not proof against fire.”
The specks had become spinning, blazing balls that hurtled through the air at tremendous speed, trailing streamers of black smoke in their wake. Horatius stood his ground. “They may pass us by, Pepan. There is no point in worrying until …”
Suddenly one of the balls swerved toward Horatius. A second and third followed, then halted in midair to hover in front of him, blocking his path. When he took a step sideways the globes of fire moved with him. The others gathered until there were twenty or thirty forming a burning barrier. They would not let Horatius pass, yet neither did they force him backward.
“See if you can get around them, Pepan.”
But when the Rasne lord attempted to move to one side the fiery spheres took up an orbit around himself and Horatius, effectively penning them in. As they circled the pair they continued to spin at great speed individually, throwing off more sparks. A few caught and flared briefly in the dry grass. There was an immediate smell of carbon, acrid on the tongue.
Horatius narrowed his eyes in thought. “He did this before, Pepan.”
“What are you talking about? Who did this before?”
“The man who stole my mother. He sent rats and scorpions that threatened me but apparently did not intend to kill me. Well, I’m not waiting to see what these things will do!” Clenching his jaw, Horatius took a step forward.
Pepan started to say, “Be very caref” then stopped. The burning globes in front of Horatius had given a tiny amount of ground. They allowed him to move forward one small step at a time, no faster.
Horatius looked over his shoulder. “It’s all right, Pepan. Apparently we are allowed to advance as long as we go slowly. But why should we go slowly?”
As if in reply something sang through his blood, the wisdom of a wise old warrior recognizing an enemy strategy. “We are being delayed because those we pursue need more time!” exclaimed Horatius. “Time to give themselves an advantage … right! Let’s go, Pepan. Run!” He raced forward.
Instantly the low hum became a furious roar. The globes of fire launched a concerted attack on Horatius, coming at him from every direction. He plunged ahead, through the fire, through the smoke, grimly holding on to the haft of the useless ax, possessing no adequate weapon against the flames but his own courage.
The spinning balls narrowed their orbit until they were close enough to singe hair, but Horatius never hesitated. He ran as fast as he could, with Pepan hurrying after him. In an effort to slow him, the balls of fire began mindlessly hurling themselves at Horatius’s body. The first struck his breastplate a glancing blow and went spinning away. The next one hit harder, only to explode in a gout of flame and a shower of sparks. A tiny, insanely raging entity fled unnoticed from the holocaust. Undeterred, the other fiends pressed the attack. Another ball hit the breastplate and burst, the flames spinning off at an angle to graze the exposed underside of Horatius’s arm. The flesh turned an angry red as a long blister erupted from wrist to elbow.
Ignoring the pain, Horatius ran on.
As Khebet watched over his body in the cave, one of Horatius’s arms turned crimson. The Aegyptian lowered his own arms long enough to lift the limb and examine it, finding a huge, watery blister rising on its underside. Almost at once a second blister appeared on the upper arm. The hair on the arm crisped and smelled scorched.
There was only one conclusion: Horatius was being injured in the Netherworld.
And if he was injured, he could be slain. Khebet lifted his arms and cried to Anubis, “Great Jackal Lord, protect this man who now roams the dark realms! Let him survive this ordeal, allow him to return safely and I will offer you sacrifices of a splendor to rival that of the pharaohs!”
He made the promise wildly, rashly, with no idea how he would keep it but knowing he must find a way somehow. The gods always demanded that promised sacrifices be delivered.
But he had a more immediate worry. During his brief lapse of concentration the fire across the entrance had died down enough to allow the four to get into the cave.
FORTY-FIVE
The moon pool in the long, oval hall began to bubble. There were no mortal eyes present to see the figure that partially emerged. The multibreasted Pythia rose briefly through the white water, looked around, found herself unattended, and submerged again. But she did not leave the pool, need not leave it in order to travel from her Earthworld temple to her Netherworld palace. Water was a conduit.
Among the many palaces belonging to gods in the Netherworld, Pythia’s was neither the largest nor the most spectacular. Each palace was a reflection of the nature of its builder. Some employed Cyclopean architecture on a scale beyond Earthworld comprehension, with massive walls and immense towers that bespoke granitic power. Others were as tiny and exquisite as jewels, refracting rainbow prisms from crystalline pinnacles where silken banners fluttered gaily.
Pythia’s stronghold in a shadowy valley between two brooding mountains possessed a sinister quality all its own. Even among the gods, who could scarcely afford to condemn any of their own for misbehavior, Pythia’s name was enough to provoke a shudder of distaste. At the dawn of Humankind she had interfered with Man and Woman in the Birth Garden, tempting them to an intellectual independence that altered the entire relationship between Ais and human. For this she was ostracized.
In response she had made defiance her coda. Her palace reflected her truculent attitude. A vast circular structure surfaced with overlapping scales of metallic black, the mansion rose level upon level, coil upon coil, to dominate the valley. Any who wished to traverse the region between the two peaks found their way blocked. Should they be so foolhardy as to venture into Pythia’s realm, they could expect to find agony.
As a result the coiled black palace had very few visitors. Sumptuously furnished in onyx and obsidian, the building echoed hollowly whenever the goddess was not in residence. At its heart was another pool whose waters were as thick as curdled cream and as black as tar.
Here Pythia resurfaced.
A flat forehead, a long narrow jaw, a slash of a mouth. In the Netherworld, however, Pythia was not blind. Her keen eyes were like buttons of polished jet. Turning her head slowly on its long, slender neck, she surveyed the hall surrounding the pool. Her tongue briefly flickered through half-parted lips. “Attend me!” she cried.
Servants hurried forward. Like her Earthworld acolytes, these had serpentine forms. In their case, however, the shape was natural rather than an imposition of the goddess. Pythia was fond of capturing humans and warping them to suit her fancy, but those who served her in the Netherworld were snakes at heart and had never been anything else.
“You command, we obey, Great Goddess,” they replied with superficial deference as they approached the tarry pool. They did not share the fear of the Earthworld acolytes that prevented them from looking at their deity. They looked at her openly, almost insolently, as if measuring her usefulness and wondering if they might find a god more worthy.
“Have you any news of the traitor Bur-Sin?” the goddess demanded.
They writhed in indecision, urging one another to go forward. Finally one was shoved to the front. “Even now,” the reluctant messenger related, “he is approaching your palace, Great Pythia.”
“What! He is coming here? Deliberately?”
“So it seems. With him he brings two females from the Earthworld. Two l
iving females. He maintains their fleshly bodies by using the power he stole from you, an act of appalling audacity. Possibly he thinks to use them to do you harm.”
“Harm me? What wretched demon could possibly harm me?” With a great upward surge, Pythia began to emerge from the pool. Beads of moisture clung to her polished skin. She rarely left the water completely because her form was repellent even to herself. Once she had been as beautiful as the loveliest human woman. But in punishment for her misdeed the other gods had put a mark upon her forehead and cursed her to crawl forever in the dust.
She found it easier to hide her shame within the shelter of opaque water. For some acts, however, she must commit to dry land.
Up she came, and up. The slender column of her neck gave way to sloping shoulders, then a grotesque cluster of swollen breasts with their ruby nipples—and one withered breast, empty and useless. The elongated torso that followed was muscular and sinewy, without waist or hips. As more of Pythia emerged from the water her resemblance to anything human disappeared. Her undulating body was broad and thin, like that of a monstrous eel, and of astonishing length.
With a final convulsive heave she cleared the water and lay stretched upon the floor of the hall, half-filling the room, her many bosoms heaving. Gathering herself, she swiftly coiled into a huge and deadly spiral.
Her servants recognized their danger then and tried to slither backward. Before they could escape she reared up until the forepart of her body towered high above them. A broad hood of mottled black flesh unfolded from either side of her neck just below the jaws. Then she dipped her head and played her flickering tongue over the one who had spoken.
Pythia’s jaws opened; fangs shot out, dripping a paralytic poison onto the hapless servant. Her victim could only watch with eyes bulging in horror as her jaws unhinged enough to clamp around his entire head … and rip it from his body.
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