No one stepped forward to help Camaralzaman as he lay writhing in agony. Pandy was noting that the grand vizier was not only not aiding his prince, but was actually smiling, as if someone had just done him a great favor. After several seconds, the prince gave a tremendous heave, sat straight up, then fell back onto the floor at the foot of his throne, dead.
Slowly but steadily, blood began seeping from the ears, nose, eyes, and mouth of the dead ruler.
Now people began to rush frantically toward the door of the hall, taking care to stay as far away from the head of the Physician as possible. Codadad was yelling at the guards to stay away from the prince’s body and physically blocking anyone who tried to get close. Yet, over the great noise of the crowd, Pandy heard the Physician’s voice.
“Pandora! NOW!”
“Just focus on the person you wish to speak to,” Hades was saying as Alcie stared into the milky bile. Alcie concentrated on Pandy’s face, with her golden teardrop just under one eye, her long brown hair, and her smile with the overbite that wasn’t so prominent anymore. Suddenly, two clear pools in the shape of eyes appeared in the yellowish liquid. Then the pools became confused with color and motion and Alcie realized she was looking into a room or a space where there was much commotion; people were racing past in the background, but in the foreground, there was the unmistakable figure of a man lying on the ground, motionless but bleeding profusely. Alcie realized with a start that she was looking through someone else’s eyes.
“Let’s go,” Pandy whispered to Iole.
Making their way against the throng, she and Iole were pushed and pulled as they inched past Douban’s son, talking in low tones to his father’s head, on their path to the lifeless prince. Seeing his body only a meter away, Pandy pulled the box out of her carrying pouch. Then she and Iole stopped short.
The blood oozing from every opening on Camaralzaman’s face was coagulating in puddles and those puddles were slowly but surely taking the form of shiny red scorpions.
Instinctively, Pandy reached into her pouch and grabbed the adamant net. Watching the scorpions, she flashed back to Jealousy, in the form of a black goop that then formed itself into a spider.
“This is like the first time, with Jealousy,” she said to Iole, raising her voice to be heard over the din.
“That was just one Evil,” Iole answered. “There are three of these that I can see!”
“Thank Zeus that we’ve gotten good at this,” Pandy said, handing the box to Iole. “On a count of three. Ready?”
One by one, Pandy threw the net over the scorpions and, as Iole lifted the lid of the box with perfect timing, threw them inside without so much as a wisp of smoke from any other captured Evil ever curling out.
“That was easy,” Iole said, but she wasn’t smiling.
“Too easy for my drachmas,” agreed Pandy. “Wait! Douban said he’d counted or he’d guessed that there were four lesser evils in the Prince. We only got three!”
At that moment, Homer let out a bloodcurdling scream.
Iole took off, still clutching the box, but as Pandy rose to her feet and turned to run, a giant weight fell on her left shoulder. Turning back, she saw the grand vizier, Codadad, towering over her, his right arm flopping against her neck, his eyes a yellowish white and his mouth beginning to move.
“Hey!” the vizier said.
But it wasn’t his voice, Pandy thought; that couldn’t be his voice.
“Hey, figs, how do I know if I’m getting through? Pandy! Where are you?”
The vizier’s head jerked around until he was almost face-to-face with Pandy.
“There you are!” came the strange voice out of his mouth. “Pandy, it’s me! It’s Alcie!”
Pandy dropped the net.
“Look, it’s crazy, I know, but I’m okay! I’m alive and I’m coming to join you.”
“Whaaaa?” Pandy gaped.
“Don’t go all wonky on me. I’ll explain everything when I see you. I may be sticking out of a wall, but I’m gonna get there! I’ll be in Baghdad, oranges, when?”
Although it was taking all of Pandy’s concentration just to stay standing, she thought she heard a deep voice behind Alcie saying “soon.”
“Soon,” said Alcie through Codadad’s mouth. “I’ll figure out a way to let you know where as soon as I get there. Hades says—”
Pandy, quite involuntarily, did a double take.
“—that right now my voice will be coming out of the lowest form of life close to you, so, pomegranates, I just hope it’s no one we know.”
“Let Pandora talk, Alcestis,” came the deep voice again, from somewhere behind Alcie.
“Okay, you talk now!”
Pandy stood stock-still in front of the vizier, his body rigid, as if it had been stuffed.
“Alcie?”
“Right here!”
“Is it really you?” Pandy whispered.
“Yep, and right now I think there’s more of me,” Alcie replied. “I’ve been eating really well.
“And Hades is there?”
“Well, he, like, lives here. And Persephone is here too!”
“Hi, Pandy!” came a distant female voice out of Codadad’s mouth.
“This is a trick,” Pandy said, shaking her head, not knowing whether to cry or to be incredibly angry. “It’s one of Hera’s tricks!”
“So not so, my friend,” came Alcie’s voice.
Pandy thought fast.
“Tell me something that only Alcie would know!”
The figure of Codadad was silent, then suddenly the mouth broke into a wide grin.
“Okay,” said Alcie. “About a year ago, we found out that some of the youths from the Apollo Academy were gonna go swimming after wrestling practice and we stole all their clothes just so we could see …”
“Oh Gods!” said Pandy, feeling the tears welling up in her eyes. “Alcie!”
“Hey, no cryin’. This is all great stuff. And I have so much to tell you about the underworld! I’ll start with the food. Okay, apples, I don’t know where you are or what you’re doing, but you look like you’re busy, so I’m gonna go. I’ll see you and Iole soon. Tell Homie I miss him. Love you!”
The vizier’s eyes cleared as a huge tremor shook his body. Pandy staggered back as the man gagged once, then pitched forward to lie stone dead next to the hardening, bloodless body of Prince Camaralzaman.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A Lesser Evil
“Pandy!” Iole was yelling. “Pandy, bring the net!”
Pandy looked at the body of Codadad until Iole’s voice penetrated. She jerked her head up and caught glimpses, through the crowd, of Douban’s son carefully placing his father’s head in a silk sack, Homer sitting on the floor clutching his ankle, and Mahfouza and Iole standing over him screaming for her attention. Pandy quickly picked up the net and fought her way through dozens of people still frantic at witnessing a talking head and the painful death of Camaralzaman.
“What’s up?” Pandy said, reaching them.
“Look!” said Iole, pointing to Homer’s lower leg.
Homer was squeezing his calf muscle as hard as he could, trying to form a barrier. Below his hands, at his ankle, Pandy saw a bloody gash, as if something had jaggedly sliced his flesh. Then she saw something lumpy moving under his skin.
“The fourth scorpion?” Pandy said.
Iole nodded.
“It didn’t just sting him, it punched a hole large enough to crawl inside. Pandy, what were you doing over there?”
“Talking to Alcie,” she said thoughtfully, staring at the hidden scorpion scrambling over Homer’s anklebone, not noticing Iole’s mouth fall open.
“I beg your par—”
“We have to get it out of him,” Pandy interrupted. “But we can’t do it now. We’ve got to get out of here before the guards start taking over.”
“Don’t let it reach his heart!” came the Physician’s voice from inside the bag. “The effects will be permanent, I’m
certain. As they were with the prince.”
“If he takes his hands away, it will crawl up his body,” said Mahfouza.
Pandy hastily scanned the room, then, seeing the perfect solution, raced over to the body of Codadad and hurriedly removed one of his many ceremonial sashes. She brought it to Homer and began tying it around his upper calf.
“Iole, Mahfouza,” she called. “Help me pull it tight!”
The crowd in the room was beginning to thin and the guards, with fewer people to guide safely from the hall, began to take notice of the scene in the middle of the floor.
“This should keep it from moving, Homer,” said Pandy, actually having no idea if the sash would work.
“Oh, I believe you. I believe you,” Homer said softly, taking his hands away from his leg.
“Nice job,” said Douban’s son, looking at the neatly tied sash and the scorpion, unable to get under it. “It’s perfect. Let’s get him to his feet.”
Slowly, the group ambled toward the entryway of the hall. When any guard looked at them oddly or tried to approach, Douban’s son would hold up the silk sack and the voice of the Physician would bellow forth, scaring the wits out of anyone close by.
“Where are we going?” asked Iole.
Pandy looked at Mahfouza.
“Suggestions?”
“My house is on the other side of the city. It is too far,” Mahfouza said, shaking her head. Then she brightened with an idea. “Come. Come! I know a silver merchant with a shop close by. He has dealt with my family for many years. He is an old friend and I am certain he will help us.”
Mahfouza guided them through the streets of Baghdad and into the bazaar. Pandy and Iole gawked at the wonders of the marketplace as they tried to keep Homer from falling over in pain. Bolts of silks in colors and patterns she’d never seen in the Athens agora, bowls of spices so bright they made the colors of the silks look dull by comparison, and so many gold and silver merchants with their wares glimmering in the sunlight, she thought she would be blinded. As Mahfouza led them into one particular shop, Pandy glanced into the stall of a rug merchant and could have sworn she saw a man standing on a rug that was floating half a meter off the ground, yelling, “I’ll take it! I’ll take it!”
They found the silver merchant standing on a tall ladder against one wall of his shop hurriedly displaying, on a high shelf, silver bowls and platters with Prince Camaralzaman’s face etched deep into their bottoms. Word of the prince’s death had traveled fast and the merchant knew that these pieces had now become expensive collector’s items and tempting for thieves. After Mahfouza greeted him and hastily exchanged introductions and a few pleasantries, she asked for his permission to take Homer into a back room. The merchant agreed without question but was then somewhat shocked when he got a good look at the two maidens supporting a big blond youth with something squiggling under the skin around his ankle, followed by another youth talking to a large, heavy sack.
On their way into the small room, Pandy noticed a thin, mottled, tired-looking cat snoozing on top of a short stack of silver platters. The cat barely opened its eyes as the group passed, calling out with a faint whimper at being disturbed.
The merchant led them to several couches, then politely excused himself, telling Mahfouza that he would be at the front of the shop if she needed anything.
“If the authorities pass by, it will look strange if he is not visible,” she said to Pandy. “Then they will search the entire shop. He is doing us a favor.”
“It’s a favor,” said Homer, nodding his head as he sprawled on a low couch. “I agree.”
Pandy and Iole looked at him.
“My son, remove me,” came the Physician’s voice from within the sack.
Douban’s son removed his father’s head and gently placed it beside Homer. The eyes were bright as the Physician looked down at Homer’s ankle. Then he gazed up at his son.
“Your first patient, Douban,” said the head.
“You are the great Douban, Father,” said the dark-haired youth.
“Enough! We both know I do not have much time. Do you have your bag?”
“Always; as you taught me.”
“Then let us see how you will treat this case.”
For the next half hour, young Douban, the new Physician, mixed herbs and blended them with strange liquids, uttered odd words, made clean incisions, and burned foul-smelling sticks of wood. It was only every so often that his father’s head would chime in with a word or two. “Remember to … ah, good … that’s it!” or “You are dealing with a lesser evil, this is not an average pox; you can’t simply … yes, yes, there you go!”
Finally, Douban looked at Pandy.
“Ready your net, if you please.”
“Oh, right! Right,” she said, jolted out of her fascination with his treatments; then she realized she’d been holding the net tightly in her hand ever since she’d left the bodies of the prince and his grand vizier lying at the foot of the ruby throne.
“Iole, where’s the box?” she asked.
“Here,” Iole answered, drawing it out of her own pouch.
Gingerly, using the tips of his fingers, the young Physician began to force the blood scorpion down Homer’s calf, where it had been crawling around desperately trying to get under the sash. Slowly and delicately, he inched it toward a large, clean incision he’d made just above the jagged wound torn by the scorpion. When Pandy saw it was about to appear, she threw the net over Homer’s ankle and grabbed the first tiny, bloodred claw as it poked into sight, drawing the animal slowly out of his body.
“Now,” she said.
Iole flipped the clasp and opened the lid. Pandy tossed the scorpion inside and Iole snapped the lid shut as everyone listened to the faint fizzling sound as the evil dissipated. Pandy quickly put the net and the box into her carrying pouch as Douban smeared Homer’s wounds with an orange paste and began wrapping his leg with clean linen. At last Pandy looked at Iole.
“Which one do you think it was?” Iole asked.
“Could have been any one of them,” Pandy replied. “Could have been ‘deep ingratitude.’ ”
“That’s it,” said Homer softly.
“Or it could have been the lesser evil of a ‘lack of mercy,’ ” Pandy continued.
“That’s it,” Homer said. “That’s what it was.”
“How do you know?” asked Pandy, now looking at Homer, curiosity all over her face.
“Because … because,” Homer fumphered. “Because, like, you said that’s what it was.”
Pandy stared at the floor for a moment.
“No,” she said flatly, testing a theory. “No, it was ‘deep ingratitude.’ ”
“Right!” Homer agreed, nodding furiously. “You’re right.”
Pandy looked at Iole, then at Mahfouza and the young Douban.
“My hair is the color of straw,” said Mahfouza, picking up on Pandy’s intent and twirling her pitch-black curls.
Homer stared at her, his eyebrows furrowing and unfurrowing.
“Okay,” he said at last. “I probably would have said black, but if you say straw, then I believe you.”
“Your name is not Homer,” said Pandy.
“Yes it is,” he replied.
“No, it’s not.”
Homer paused.
“Okay.”
Everyone else began to smile.
“Gullibility,” they all said at once.
“Right!” said Homer.
“If it had to be one of them,” Mahfouza said, “I am glad it was that one.”
“How long do you think its effects will last?” Pandy asked Douban.
Douban turned to his father’s head, but the eyes and mouth were closed.
“Not long,” said the youth, turning back, a delicate authority creeping into his voice. “Prince Camaralzaman had these embedded in his heart for months. Homer only had it in a lower extremity for a much shorter period of time. I would say the effects will wear off sometime befor
e sunrise tomorrow.”
He was even beginning to sound like his father, Pandy thought.
“Very good, my son,” mumbled the head, but the eyes remained shut.
“Pandora,” Iole said, standing up. “I must speak with you privately. Will you all excuse us briefly?”
Mahfouza nodded as Douban checked his dressing of Homer’s ankle.
“ ‘Pandora’?” Pandy asked as she and Iole stepped into the shop and stopped by the old cat. “What’s with the proper name?”
Iole whirled on her, her face was so intense and there were so many emotions flashing on it that Pandy didn’t know if she was mad or frightened or bewildered.
“What do you mean you were talking with Alcie?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Good-bye
Alcie stared at Persephone and Hades.
“So … ,” she began, and then stopped.
“So … ,” answered Persephone. “Okay! Time to say bye-bye. But, oh, wow … I wish you didn’t have to go.”
“Yeah. I mean, this place is fantastic and I’ve had a great time … I guess. I mean … I don’t know what I mean.”
“I know. I know!” Persephone turned to her husband. “Buster, would you be a hero and get Alcie some dove hearts to go. Just have Cookie—no, wait …”
Persephone tossed a look to Alcie.
“Cyrene,” said Alcie.
“Right! Cyrene! Sirens, will I ever remember? Just have Cyrene wrap a few in a cloth, so she can share them with her friends.”
Then she turned to Alcie.
“If those tasty morsels actually make it that far, am I right?” She giggled.
“You are asking me,” Hades said, gaping at Persephone, “the Lord of the Underworld, in the presence of a mortal, no less, to play delivery boy and—”
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