[The Book of the Gods 01] - The Face of Apollo

by Fred Saberhagen

  The cord vines came loose when the logs that they had been holding together were broken. This small cage was more strongly made, much more elaborately carved and decorated, than those up on the surface. Apollo poured extra strength into the human fingers and lingered lovingly over the job. He knew with an inner certainty that it was important to ruin the ritual property of Hades.

  When the latest skirmish was concluded, Katy, crawling, stum­bling, out of the wreckage of the cage, collapsed in Jeremy's arms. Some of the paint that covered her naked body came off on his hands and clothing.

  He could see well enough, even with the last torch almost gone, to know that the two of them were alone. But at any mo­ment Hades's troops or even the Lord of the Underworld himself could reappear.

  She was shivering in the dry coolness of the Cave.

  He had restored some of Katy's own garments to her back­pack when he picked it up from the sale table, and she was soon lightly clothed again but still chilled. Jeremy pulled off his own tunic and put it on her as a coat. In his undershirt he bustled about, ransacking the packs of fallen enemies for extra clothing. One of their bodies also yielded a pair of boots small enough to be a reasonable fit for Kate. Meanwhile the Intruder seemed to watch but gave no clue to his reaction.

  Maybe, thought Jeremy, it was important in terms of magic, of the commerce of the gods among themselves, that the sacrifice intended for the God of Darkness be denied him, reclaimed for light and life.

  What to do now?

  Jeremy realized that it would be foolish for him and Katy to simply turn their backs on their nearest enemies and make their way back to the main entrance. For one thing, the enemies were almost certainly still there and now in greater numbers than be­fore. The Lord Apollo, wounded arm or not, could probably fight his way through them. But neither he nor Jeremy would be able to protect Katherine in the process.

  Besides, the Sun God had some further vital business of his own yet to be accomplished in the Cave. Jeremy was sure; the god had not launched this raid simply to turn back before encoun­tering his chief opponent.

  When he had Katherine clothed as warmly and practically as he could, Jeremy cradled her gently in his arms. "Listen to me, Katy."

  "Jonathan? Jeremy?" Her voice was small and wondering.

  "Yes, it's me—call me by whichever name you like. Listen. We can't get out the way we came in. We're going to have to go on. There's a branch of the Cave that goes up from here, up inside the Mountain..." He paused, consulting his engrafted memory. "All the way to the top, I think." Then he winced as the wound in his arm delivered what seemed a gratuitous jolt of pain.

  "Just get me out of here somehow. Just don't leave me."

  "Leave you? Leave you?" He shook his head in wonderment that she could imagine such a thing.

  If Apollo wanted to leave her, he and Jeremy were going to have the showdown that had been so long postponed. But at the moment, the Lord of Light was nowhere to be found.

  But their advance toward freedom was delayed again, after they had climbed only a little way. Now Apollo's ear could hear the servants of Hades coming after them again. A moment later, Katherine could hear them, too.

  Before the fighting had started, Jeremy had regretted his own youth and inexperience, the fact that he was completely awkward and untaught in any of the normal techniques of combat. But he had come into the Cave armed with a consuming anger and a grim resolve. And by now he had learned, in the most ex­hilarating way, that Jeremy Redthorn's original limitations mat­tered very little.

  He was handling the mediocre bow at a level of skill vastly be­yond what any human archer—let alone an untaught boy—could have accomplished, but yet his eye and his strength and his magic were far below those of a whole Apollo.

  And his left eye and ear continued to show him helpful things. He had to be ready to trust these strange new senses and inter­pret properly what they were telling him.

  It was not surprising that furies turned out to be nesting in the cave, hanging upside-down like bats from the rocky ceiling. Air stirred by their great wings gave warning of their approach. Je­remy/Apollo could strangle them with ease, when the god let power flow into the human's arms and hands.

  It seemed to Jeremy that by lingering here, committing himself to the defense of a mere human girl, Apollo was trying to draw the Lord of the Underworld up out of the deep earth into another confrontation.

  But at the same time the Sun God was too wary to go deep un­derground to try to root him out.

  Jeremy and Katy were now getting ever farther from the Cave's main entrance, although they were actually ascending. Following this branch of the underground trail, they traversed rooms where even Apollo had not trod before. Still, when the Sun God passed the dismembered and thoroughly devitalized carcasses of would-be wizards, explorers, and adventurers who'd fallen in the at­tempt to establish their authority in this place, he knew them for what they were.

  Jeremy refastened his tunic around her when it started to come loose, drawing the belt tight.

  "Who are you?" She asked the question in an exhausted whis­per, her body shivering in the chill.

  "Jeremy. You know me, Kate. For a while I called myself Jonathan. I told you, use either name you like."

  "No." She shook her head. "I don't mean that. And I don't know you."

  The fear in her eyes told him that he would have to come up with a proper answer. But he could feel that Apollo wasn't going to help, and at the moment that seemed too much to ask. "We can talk about that later. We'll have to talk about it."

  "They said ..." He could barely hear her voice.

  "Who said what?"

  "Things down below, in the dark. Told me that I... I belong to Hades now."

  Jeremy took her by the hand. "You don't. No longer. Not that you ever really did." He paused, thinking the matter over, trying to hear his god-partner's wordless inner voice. "I don't care what rituals they performed over you, or what magic they think they did. Apollo—you hear me, Apollo—says otherwise. From now on, nothing in this whole damn Cave is going to belong to hell." And that, Jeremy realized, was why he had been so willing to take time to smash the cages near the entrance. The Sun God would have nothing to do with human sacrifices.

  Katherine's legs and arms moved only stiffly, and she was still somewhat dazed, though fortunately she had suffered little actual physical harm. And soon life and strength began to come back to her arms and legs.

  Dimly Jeremy's left eye could discern a wash of faint, diluted sunlight coming into the Cave from somewhere far above. A lit­tle more came oozing up from below, where he'd already broken open a wall to the outdoors.

  Aided by the powerfully enhanced vision in his left eye, and also by a torch improvised from the fire of the burning cage, the boy-god made his way forward, still guiding the newly rescued Kate who was newly clothed in his own tunic.

  Presently Katherine was able to move along fairly briskly with­out his support.

  But there would be no safety for her, and none for him, until Hades had been defeated.

  The couple passed through almost perfect darkness, past the place of sacrifice, to the spot where the last avatar of great Apollo had fallen.

  In Jeremy's head a kind of dialogue took place, in which the answers to his questions came floating from Apollo's memory.

  Where are we going? Jeremy wanted to know.

  Then he had to concentrate to be certain that he caught the an­swer: Stronger weapons are absolutely necessary.

  All right. How do we get them?

  As yet there was no good answer to that one.

  TWENTY-NINE

  For some time now both Jeremy and Katherine had been aware of the sound of roaring water. Echoes in the Cave made it hard to determine location, but the flow could not be far away.

  The couple had climbed only a few score paces from their lat­est resting place when a new, faint light became visible ahead, coming from a small crevice, high enough to be fa
r out of reach, which let in a trace of sun. Jeremy's left eye could follow, all the way up through the darkness, the growing strength of its distant radiance.

  When they reached a position under the source of light, they stopped and stared at what lay just ahead of them.

  A column of clear water approximately a foot in diameter rose from unknown depths, just forcefully enough to maintain the level of an irregularly shaped pool the size of a swimming bath. This pool emptied itself spectacularly at its other end, where the water for no visible cause again began to rise, moving smoothly into an ascending column, which as it climbed gained speed as if it were falling in the opposite direction under the influence of normal gravity.

  "I don't understand," whispered Katy after a moment.

  "It's called a waterrise," her companion informed her. Even Apollo had rarely seen the like of it before, but he knew the name. "An ancient trick of the Trickster. Harmless. The ones in the Cave should be safe to drink from."

  Cascading up through a network of small cracks and fissures in the irregular ceiling of the cave, the stream went up to fill an­other pool on a higher level, which Jeremy and Katy saw after another minute's climb through the twisting passage.

  * * *

  Before they left the area that was still comparatively well lit with filtered sunlight, the thought came, whether from Apollo or not, that it would be wise to stop and rest. Jeremy got bread and cheese and sausage out of his pack. Katy stared at the food as if she did not know what it was, then grabbed up a small loaf and began to eat. She sat down on a rock ledge shivering, the fingers of her free hand absently rubbing at her upper arms and her legs where they emerged from the borrowed tunic, worrying at the paint that still disfigured most of her body.

  Jeremy, chewing with his mouth full, knelt before her, tight­ening the straps of the sandals he had given her, trying to make them fit her feet. It seemed years ago that she had volunteered to guide him and his companions to the Oracle.

  To Jeremy she said: "I saw what you did back there. To the cage. And to the fury."

  He changed his position to sit beside her on the ledge. "You were right, Katy, about what you told me before we ever reached the Cave—Apollo has possessed me." He paused. "No. That's not really the right word for what's happened. He's made me his partner."

  She said in a tiny voice: "I don't understand."

  "I don't either." He made a helpless gesture. His left arm was stiffening; the gash on the outside of his elbow had stopped bleeding, but it had swollen and hurt more than before. "Why a god would do a thing like that. But I'm not the only one it's hap­pening to. I finally got a chance to talk with ... another person who's in the same boat. It seemed to be working out about the same way for her."

  Frightened and bewildered, the girl looked a question at him.

  He tried to make a gesture with both arms, then settled for using his right while he let the throbbing left arm hang. "Now I can see some things that ordinary people can't see—when I'm not afraid to look for them. One of them is this: the only Apollo that lives anywhere ... is in this body, the one you're looking at right now."

  "Apollo? You?" It was the merest whisper, expressing not doubt but astonishment. He could find no words to answer her, but it seemed he needed none. Looking into his eyes, his face, she had seen what she needed to see.

  The watching girl could only shake her head, wide-eyed. He could feel her shivering beside him and put an arm around her to give warmth. She started a movement, as if she meant to kneel at his feet, but his good arm held her on the shelf beside him.

  Jeremy sighed. "I'm stronger than any human, Katy. But now it turns out that I'm still not strong enough for what Apollo wants to do." He raised the fingertips of his free hand to his tem­ple. "He's in here, but I can't even talk to him. Not really. Now and then ideas pop up in my mind that I know must be his and not my own."

  "Oh," she said. The sound of someone giving up on someone else.

  He tried again, with renewed energy. "I know it sounds crazy, but you've seen what he can do. What I can do, when he helps me."

  In the dim light Katy's eyes were enormous, staring at Jeremy. Then she nodded, her eyes wide, still not saying anything. Je­remy wondered if she was still dazed from drugs or mad with fear. If she were now afraid of him.

  Turning away from her for a moment, he scanned the Cave. Apollo's senses assured him that they still had time before the next Enemy onslaught. Holding Katy's hand, Jeremy persisted in trying to explain. The story of his life, since the day when he'd met Sal, came pouring out. It was a bursting relief to be able to speak plainly about the business, at last, to someone. But in a way it had been easier to talk to Carlotta—not to someone as important to him as Katy was becoming.

  When he had brought the girl up-to-date on his situation, all that she asked was: "What are we going to do now?"

  "I have to get you to a place—" He had to pause there, such was the pang that came from his small wound. How about tak­ing care of our body, you who are supposed to be the God of Med­icine? We're going to need it in good working order. "—to a place where you can rest. And myself, too. We both need it. After that... there'll be a lot I have to do."

  "We must get out of this Cave."

  "Right." He patted her hand. "Doesn't seem likely we'll get any rest in here."

  She stood up suddenly, craning her neck to try to see the source of light ahead of them. "Gods, take me back to where I can see sunlight!"

  Thoughtfully Jeremy examined their current choice of several passages. "I will. We must go up again. Getting nearer the light, even if it's dark for a while." Looking ahead, he wondered if even Apollo would be forced to grope his way.

  After resting a little longer, they used the opportunity to refill Jeremy's canteen and then slowly resumed their climb.

  Presently in the distance Apollo's ear could detect the Enemy, once more mobilized and moving in force. Scores of human-sounding feet were warily but relentlessly following them, with those who walked upon those feet so far taking care to keep out of the Sun God's sight.

  And the pain in his poisoned wound was getting worse instead of better.

  Meanwhile, in the back of Jeremy's mind his inward partner kept up a wordless prodding, holding before him the imperative to seek out weapons, means of increasing strength. In particular the shimmering image of the Silver Bow (a heavy longbow, strung with a silver string) was being thrust imperiously into his consciousness. Vivid images showed him the weapon not as it had been depicted in some of the statues at the Academy, but in a more realistic and powerful form.

  While he walked with Katy, Jeremy tried to explain to her, in whispers, that without the Bow and Arrows, or some compara­bly powerful addition to their armament, Apollo was not san­guine about their chances of even surviving the next round of battle—let alone winning it. And the next round might very well be the last chance against Hades they ever had.

  Despite the bad news, Katy was reassured by his ungodlike be­havior. She asked: "But if you must have this Bow... where will you look for it?"

  "Apollo is perfectly sure that the best place—the only place— to look is in the workshop of Hephaestus. If my old Bow can't be found, that's where I'll have to go to have a new one made."

  On hearing that, Katy only began to look dazed again. Well, Jeremy could see that it might be hard to think of a sensible reply, especially for someone unaccustomed to sharing skull space with a god. Meanwhile Apollo's memory, when called upon, brought forth the image of a sinewy lame giant, wearing a leather apron and wreathed by the smoke of a glowing forge. That was Vulcan, whom some preferred to call Hephaestus.

  Suddenly it occurred to Jeremy that it might prove necessary for him to talk to the Lame God in person. For the Lord of Light to commission from his colleague a new Bow and Arrows, the old silver model having been somehow lost or destroyed. He reeled under the burden of trying to imagine Jeremy Redthorn playing a role in such a confrontation.

  And
where was the forge?

  Yes. Memory was ready to show him not where it was pre­cisely, but what the place looked like—a small, rugged island in a violent sea—and how to get there. Trouble was, the journey would be immensely long, with the greater part of it over the ocean. And there might be no way to gain entrance once he'd reached it.

  Finally Katherine, some of her old practical manner coming back, asked him, "Do you know where this place is, where you must go?"

  "The workshop? Not clearly. But I know which way to start to­ward it, and once I get started, Apollo will show me the route to take." And, he hoped, some means of crossing more than a thou­sand miles of sea.

  "It's far from here, though."

  "I think so. Yes, very far."

  "Then how will you get there?"

  Posing the question inwardly brought forth only a vague men­tal turmoil. "I don't have an answer for that yet. Even if I am... connected with a god, I can't just... fly." He looked down at his feet.

  Meanwhile, Jeremy faced even more immediate problems. There were tremors in his wounded arm. He thought his body was be­ginning to grow weaker, and his poisoned wound was festering, lancing him with pain.

  Still he felt confident, with the wordless inward assurance that had become so commonplace, that the powers of Apollo were fighting against the onslaught. The poison in itself was not going to kill him. But it could easily leave him too weak to survive an­other attack by Hades or some other superhuman power.

  "Jerry, what's wrong?" Katy could see clearly enough that something must be. Meanwhile she herself grew somewhat stronger, as she began to recover from her imprisonment. Food and drink had done her a lot of good, and so had the fact of free­dom. Part of her improvement came through sheer will, because she saw that she was going to have to be the strong and active one.