Kratos ran forth from the temple, skirting the ramparts of the sacred mountain for a few minutes. Then before him loomed a crumbling gate, attended only by a vast statue of a hoplite. He pressed on through the gate without pausing. A strong wind whipped up a storm that cut at his face like tiny razors—and when he turned back for a last look at Athens, the city was gone. There was nothing to be seen in any direction save an eternity of sand.
He was alone, more alone than he had ever been in his life.
FOURTEEN
“SO LITTLE LEFT. Would you care to wager on how long before your city will be rebuilt in honor of Ares?” Hermes fluttered above the reflecting pool, breeze from his winged sandals rippling the water and blurring the view of Athens’s destruction. He bent down and poked a finger into the liquid and disturbed the image just under the surface. A heretofore undamaged building fell into rubble at his touch.
“Stop that,” Athena said sharply.
“Why? I would say Ares is the clear victor here,” the Messenger of the Gods said, smiling broadly. “Do you think that building would have survived his assault? He has left you nothing, and now he reduces that nothing to … even less.”
Zeus appeared, thunder rolling from his sudden entrance. Hands tucked into his toga, he frowned at Hermes, appearing wroth. “He’s done better than I expected. Ares usually blunders about like a Minotaur in a potter’s shop.”
“Better than you expected?” Athena said pointedly. “Have you chosen to support my brother?”
“No,” Zeus said, looking angrier yet. “He destroys too many of my shrines. It is almost as if he picks them out, but I must be wrong. It is your worshippers he kills, Athena.”
Athena could only glower.
“Ah, Lord and Father,” said Hermes cheerfully. “You have won handsomely in this business so far, haven’t you?”
Athena looked sharply at Hermes.
“What do you mean by that?” Zeus’s voice thundered and lightning sizzled his beard.
“Is Kratos not your creature?” Hermes asked, fluttering up and away, seeming a little frightened. He looked to Athena for support, but she had none to give. She worried that Hermes understood Kratos’s true quest into the Desert of Lost Souls and would tell Ares, simply to relieve himself of boredom by stirring more trouble.
“He is Athena’s pet, not mine,” Zeus said.
“Yes, of course. I was wrong to assume you were aiding him, though someone in Athens uses a thunderbolt similar to your own against Ares’s creatures.”
“Do you know that or is it only another of your whispered calumnies to set one god against another?” Athena asked.
“You accuse me—me!—of inciting civil war in Olympus. Never!” Hermes turned his attention back to Zeus. “I am your loyal subject and son, Skyfather! I seek to harm no one but only to keep all informed.”
“And amused,” Zeus said. “You would go to any length to avoid boredom.”
Hermes nodded, smiled, then caught himself. He fluttered higher so he could bow deeply while hovering above the scrying pool. More somber, he bowed his head and swept his arm through the air as he said, “My loyalty is without bounds, my king. You need only command me.”
“Very well,” Zeus said, grating his teeth. “Go to Ares and tell him I order him to cease his destruction of my temples and supplicants.”
“Ares?” Hermes looked so distraught that Athena fought to keep from laughing. Then she realized the gravity of the situation. Ares would never accede to Zeus’s wishes and, if anything, would redouble his effort to snuff out not only her followers but the Skyfather’s as well.
“My father, there is no need for Hermes to interrupt Ares. The God of War is only pursuing his true nature.” Athena’s gray eyes met the storm-filled ones of Zeus. She did not flinch. If Zeus sent this message, Hermes would become curious and would undoubtedly discover that Kratos sought Pandora’s Box. She knew the Messenger of the Gods well. He would never be able to restrain himself from slyly hinting to Ares that he knew something the God of War did not—and Ares would take only moments to learn all that she wanted kept secret from him.
Pandora’s Box, Athena thought in wonder. Kratos must find it before Ares realizes there is danger in the quest.
Zeus’s words startled Athena and relieved Hermes.
“You need not deliver the message to Ares,” Zeus said.
“How may I be of aid in other ways, my father?” Hermes almost babbled in his respite from delivering such a challenge. The Messenger of the Gods usually enjoyed such discord, being above the content of the news. With Ares willing to slay anyone, though, even the messenger would be at risk, in violation of Zeus’s decree against one god killing another.
“Father,” Athena said, choosing her words carefully, “the mortals bear the brunt of my brother’s rage. If Hermes were to warn our priests and priestesses, telling them the best avenues of escape, they could save themselves.”
“Well, get to work on it, then,” Zeus said. “I would see this conflict at an end.” Zeus grumbled some more, stroking his beard, then looked hard at Athena. “You are not goading your brother into destroying my shrines as a way to humiliate me, are you, Daughter?”
“Father, no! I would never add to the destruction in my city!”
“Even to save your pet mortal?”
“Kratos is nothing to me,” Athena said, forcing herself to remain as calm as possible. If she dared not provoke Ares into hunting Kratos, neither did she want Zeus spying on him. She had no idea how the King of the Gods would respond to a mortal killing not only a god but Ares, his son.
“Be gone,” Zeus said in a booming voice to Hermes.
Hermes took a single pass around the chamber for airspeed, then his winged sandals carried him high into the clouds around Olympus.
“Thought he’d never leave,” Zeus said, lowering himself gratefully onto his throne. When he regarded the Goddess of Wisdom, the noble gravity of authority shadowed his eyes. “I wouldn’t say this in front of Hermes—you know how he gossips—but I am growing concerned for you, Athena. Ares has delivered a surprisingly thorough destruction. Within a week or two, you may not have any worshippers left.”
“It’s been difficult,” she admitted. “He’s won the battle—but I always knew he would. I can still win the war.” She watched her father for any hint that he would aid her.
“Can you?” Zeus asked, a bit sadly. “I have great faith in your powers, my daughter—but so far you haven’t even hit back.”
If she admitted to doing nothing, Zeus would become suspicious, since this would be unlike her. His concern for her rang true and brought her to an audacious confession. She had worried that her father would hinder Kratos when he found that there was a way for a mortal to destroy a god. But perhaps he would remain neutral, if not aid her valiant hero. It was a risk, but one she had to take to prevent unwanted interference.
“That’s about to change.” Athena squinted at the Chariot of Helios where it hung in Olympus’s everlasting summer noon. “If everything has gone as planned, my oracle in Athens has just now opened the portal to the Desert of Lost Souls and sent Kratos through.”
“What does Kratos seek?”
Athena again paused, wary of her father’s power and his possible opposition. Then certainty settled upon her like a cloak. She told him of the object of Kratos’s search, revealed through the divination of the Oracle.
Zeus sat up straighter. His voice caught. “The box …”
“Yes, Father,” she said with grim satisfaction. “Pandora’s Box.”
FIFTEEN
LOST IN THE BLINDING SAND, Kratos had no idea where to go.
His eyes watered so hard that he might have been swimming in the sea, were it not for the grit in his mouth and the way the dust filled his nose. Kratos put his head down and slogged forward. He was keenly aware that there were an infinite number of wrong directions, and only one right one. He hoped.
He could not know if there even was a
right direction to walk.
The Oracle had summoned the visions that haunted his nightmares. The revulsion at what she had seen in his head had been writ plain upon her lovely face. He found it all too easy to imagine that she might have decided a man as corrupt and evil as he knew himself to be was best taken forever from the company of humankind. She might have sent him to this terrible desert to die.
Worse, she might have sent him to this terrible desert to not die.
He had heard tales of the punishments of the Titans in Tartarus. This endless desert, endless slash of sand, endless heat, and endless thirst seemed all too similar to such tales.
He cursed the gods as he trudged along, then added their oracles. If there had chanced to be a rift in the sandstorm through which he could glimpse the sun, he might have gauged the passage of time. Or, at least, he might have discovered whether time did indeed pass in this awful waste or if this had become his eternal fate. As it was, all he knew was growing heat and the ever-present wind laden with blinding sand.
Above the howl of the wind came a shrill keening. He reached for the blades but did not draw. Slowly turning, he aimed himself toward the sound and advanced warily. Ares could lay a hundred traps in such a storm. Worse, Kratos knew he might be lured away from his true destination. The only hope he had was to get a fix on the sound and find what it might be. The sound was the first hint he’d had of anything other than his own sorry soul trudging through the storm.
A bright light flashed once, twice, then shone to rival the sun. His stride lengthened. Whatever lay ahead had to be better than stumbling blindly through the desert. As he neared, he saw that the twin beacons were eyes in a statue of Athena.
“Athena,” he said angrily, staring into the goddess’s gray eyes. He felt abandoned, and she was only the most recent of the Olympian pantheon to use and then discard him. “Why have you brought me here?”
The statue spoke. “Kratos, the journey forward is perilous but one you must complete if you are to have any hope of saving Athens.”
“The Oracle spoke of Pandora’s Box. Can it be real?” “The box exists. It is the most powerful weapon a mortal can wield.”
“Can I defeat Ares with it?”
“With the box, many things become possible. And so it is hidden well, far across the Desert of Lost Souls.”
For a brief instant the clouds of roiling sand cleared, and Kratos saw to the horizon. As quickly as the window opened, it closed.
“There is safe passage through deadly sand, but only those who hear the Sirens’ song will discover it, for only the Sirens can guide you to Cronos, the Titan. Zeus has commanded him to wander the desert endlessly with the Temple of Pandora chained to his back, until the swirling sands rip the very flesh from his bones.”
“How do I find him?”
“Stay true to the song of the Siren, Kratos. Your journey begins here. Pray it leads you back to Athens—with Pandora’s Box. Remember this: Seek the summit for only death awaits you below. There is no escape without the box.”
“How do I resist the Sirens’ song?” he asked. Athena’s statue did not answer. He moved closer and saw the eyes were featureless orbs of marble. The spirit of the goddess had left—and had left him. He held down his rising wrath. Hints, nothing but hints!
HE GRITTED HIS TEETH and trudged on. It was not given to mortals to understand the whys and wherefores of the gods. That was what his mother used to tell him, back before he turned seven and was taken from her to begin his training. He had always assumed that it meant nothing more or less than “Hush and do as you’re told.”
As he set forth, he saw that the statue had changed. Now the right arm was raised, pointing into the desert. As he turned to follow that direction, he heard the faint keening once more. He stood a little straighter against the wind. Now he knew that sound to be the song of the desert Sirens.
Athena had set him on his path but, as usual, had not even hinted at how he might overcome the Sirens. He assumed she trusted him to figure it out for himself—or, if his cleverness was unequal to the challenge, he could always rely on his native savagery and the Blades of Chaos.
Odysseus had stopped up the ears of his crew with beeswax, while he remained chained to the mast of his ship. Kratos had nothing that would block the insistent, seductive sound. Even at this distance, he felt his heart quickening and his body responding to their call. If he succumbed, he would be their dinner.
As he walked along, Kratos clapped his hands over his ears, hoping to muffle their insidious song. That failed. He found himself walking faster, hunting through the sandstorm for the creatures, wanting them as he had never wanted another before.
The heavy flapping of wings caused him to look upward. Through the dust clouds he saw a harpy struggling to carry a dangling body in its claws. The monster veered and disappeared in the storm, but Kratos knew it took the body to the Sirens.
Once, on a battlefield outside Sparta, he had come across two Sirens and had ordered his men to fill them full of arrows. The Sirens had been dining on the dead of both sides, greedily gobbling up human flesh and smearing the blood all over themselves. Their death cries had cost him three expert archers. As the Sirens had died, they screeched at such a pitch that the men’s heads exploded. Kratos had ordered the Sirens’ carcasses to be carved into pieces so small that even crows would ignore them and then be flung to the four winds, so that the monsters’ shades would wander forever restless upon the earth.
He pressed his palms harder against his ears. The Sirens’ song grew ever more enticing. The wind slackened, and their evil song lifted and filled him with irresistible lust. Soon he stared across a sandy dune marked with wavy ripples from the wind. Beyond lay the ruins of an ancient temple—perhaps where the Sirens made their home.
And then he saw them: four tall, spectral creatures floating about the plaza before the ruined temple.
The Sirens’ seductive sound turned Kratos weak. Sheer sexual allure pulled him forward like a shade in Hades shuffling toward Charon’s boat. Every move he made was slow, unsteady, and increasingly uncoordinated. One of the Sirens had seen him now. Drawn by his mortal blood, she turned toward him, and her part in their song rose.
Kratos tried to draw his swords but found he could not. The Blades of Chaos were never meant for creatures so lovely. The Siren who’d seen him slithered down the slope, her face unbearably beautiful as she smiled. The sharp yellow teeth that rimmed her gaping maw didn’t bother him in the slightest. Lovely, she was so lovely, and she became more so as she neared.
“Come to me, lover. I want you as much as you want me.” Her voice carried the Siren’s song. Kratos knew the song for what it was—knew it sang the melody of his doom—but still he could not resist. With a mighty exertion of will, he forced one hand back to his shoulder, fingers brushing the hilt of one blade.
The Siren didn’t flinch. She knew well the power of her vile song. “There is no need, lover. Come to me and love me. I love you. I want to feel you in my embrace.”
His resistance faded as he went to the most beautiful woman in the world. His arms wrapped around her as he pulled her close. Kratos jerked as he felt a bite.
“A love bite, my dearest,” came her cooing words. “You like it. You want me to give you more, many more!”
He felt blood running down his chest from the neck wound, but he knew she loved him—and he desired her above all others.
Even above Aphrodite’s twin daughters. Even more than Lora and—
He pulled back, struggling in the warm embrace of a woman he treasured.
“No,” he said. “I can’t…” His ears filled with song, shrill at first and then so melodious that he wept. His lover sang for him. She sang a haunting song of love and desire. For him and him alone.
“Another love peck,” she said.
Again he recoiled as blood spewed from the other side of his neck.
Blood, blood spilled in battle, not in a lover’s tryst— He straightened his arm
s and shoved hard. The Siren let out a screech of pure rage, momentarily breaking the spell. Kratos saw the Siren for what she was, and then she sang to him. Sang a melody so lovely and beguiling he knew she wanted him above all others in the world.
But she is not my wife … my wife and daughter … Those memories hammered at Kratos’s mind even as he felt more love bites. The pain offset the pleasure. He had known pain, so much pain, and he concentrated on it. And his wife. And his daughter lying dead at his feet—
Again he pushed away, but this time he heard other voices.
“Share! You are greedy!”
“Hungry! We’re all hungry. You must give him to us!”
The voices turned strident, and the lovely, loving melody faded in his ears.
My wife! My daughter!
Kratos lifted his hand and felt energy flow. The Thunderbolt of Zeus built … but against his lover, his lovely, caring lover. He couldn’t. Not this way …
The cacophony of demands to dine on his flesh grew as the Siren’s song diminished. Kratos reached down deep within, the visions—the nightmares—powering his determination. The thunderbolt erupted from his palm. A force greater than anything he had ever felt lifted him from his feet and threw him high into the air, spinning, turning, and tumbling. He crashed into the sand, dazed. When he looked up, he saw Sirens scattered about, lifeless.
He shook himself and stood, aware that he had destroyed only a few of the creatures with the power of Zeus. Three other Sirens rushed toward him. Kratos had never seen creatures so lovely or loving—but he did not fall under their spell. Within a moment he understood why.
The Sirens had begun to fight over him. His hand went to his neck and found fresh bite marks, all bleeding freely. His nightmarish vision had allowed him to break their spell to fight, and when he had blown them apart with Zeus’s lightning, the thunder had partially deafened him. He might not have the beeswax that Odysseus carried, but he had a makeshift method of temporarily blocking the Sirens’ call. His hearing was already returning, though—had he waited too long?
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