But that was not the man who cringed before us now, writhing in flame. He was still wearing his armor and crown but was blackened from head to toe; his hair hung in knotted mats, and his body shook with pain. Even so, he did his best to stand upright, and when another head poked up out of the tomb, he knocked it back down with his fist.
“Odysseus! Lord of Ithaca! Rescue me, I command you.”
If his imperiousness hadn’t been so pathetic, I might have laughed. The old goat was in no position to give orders, but he just couldn’t help himself. “Diomedes! Is that you? Good man. Get me out of here. Now.”
Diomedes looked over at me with half his face screwed into a frown. “I didn’t even like him when he was alive.”
“Diomedes!” he shouted again. “Odysseus! Help me out of here . . . please.”
It was a word we had never heard from King Agamemnon in all our years fighting under him, and it astonished me.
“We should at least try.”
“How do we even know it’s him?” said Diomedes. Poor man. If the episode with Proteus had taught him anything, it was skepticism.
“Just look at him.”
He looked. “Yeah. We should try.”
And we did try over and over, but the heat would not allow us any closer, and there were several rows of tombs between us. At last, sweating and gasping in the path, Diomedes and I gave up.
“Lord Agamemnon, we have failed you,” I shouted. “We can’t even get close enough to throw the rope, and I fear it would burn if we did.”
“That’s all right, boys,” he called back, and with every breath, his voice grew weaker. “You’ve done your best. Besides, Priam is in here with me, and it would have been hard to make him stay behind.”
“Priam?” we both cried at once, and the same bald head popped up in front of him, only to be knocked down again.
“Yes. The old dog-face himself. I’d have to kick him hard to keep him in here, and I’m not sure I have the strength. But tell me one thing before you leave: How is my son?”
Diomedes and I looked at one another again. After three thousand years, who could say? “Lord of men, your son avenged your murder, but he had a tough go of it afterward. Beyond that, we do not know.”
The old man sighed, gave someone in the tomb a kick, and collapsed.
We stared after him in disbelief. “So Priam’s in there with him,” Diomedes mused.
With a new weariness, we returned to the path.
From there, the landscape gradually deteriorated into a crumbling downward climb, unremarkable but for an odd, goaty smell and some scattered evidence of livestock.
“Could be cattle nearby,” I said.
“Or just Proteus.”
I looked nervously about. “A bite of roasted beef might not be such a bad thing, though, eh? Maybe we can kill him while he’s still a cow. You think that counts as cannibalism?”
“Seems to me you’ve seen enough of cannibalism and cattle rustling,” said Diomedes. It was a mean thing to say. On my way back from Troy, I’d lost half my men to a tribe of cannibals, the other half to a botched cattle raid. He knew it was a sore point. Outwardly, I’d blamed the men for their misfortune, but Diomedes knew there was a part of me that still blamed myself. And he knew that mentioning it would shut me up. It worked. There were no further signs of the cattle or any other living thing, and even if there had been, the meager glow of the retreating tombs left us with hardly enough light to walk, much less hunt.
Over time, however, the darkness began to loosen its grip, and the broken earth beneath our feet leveled out. In the distance, the gloom gave way to a pulsing red glow, somber and dull like light through skin.
“I don’t like the look of that,” said Diomedes when we stopped to rest. But there was no avoiding it, so onward we trudged until we found ourselves at the edge of another cliff. What lay below, however, was obscured by a thick red mist. And not just red by reflection of some distant light, but red itself—a deep crimson that made me want to hold my breath and never let it out. In fact, to call it mist is not to do it justice. It was more like pudding—a foul pudding made of old cheese and sweat. We had to climb through this noxious cloud to get to the next level, and by the time we came out on the other side, both Diomedes and I looked as though we had been dipped in blood—which in fact we had.
With the crimson clouds rolling above us, I looked down the steep descent into a landscape that was terrifyingly beautiful. For as far as I could see, everything—every stone, every barren tree, every cloud and puddle—was red. The rocks that tumbled down the face of the cliff glistened like ripe fruit against trickling streams of blood; the base of the cliff dissolved into scarlet sand; and in the distance, dark clouds pelted the earth with drops of ruby ichor distilled from the ether like crystal beads in a witch’s den. Distant bolts of lightning flashed and throbbed. And through it all flowed the steaming river Phlegethon, thrashed to a foam by the violent souls that struggled in its current. One oasis of color did relieve the sickening homogeny of the landscape: just this side of the river, scattered across the sand like bright shells, stood a crowd of tents—hundreds of gleaming cones scattered in yellows, blues, and greens.
“Who do you think lives in those?” I mused. I was about to answer myself when an arrow lodged in the ground in front of me and a gruff voice called from below, “Who is that who descends the slope? Tell it from there; if not, I draw again.”
“I don’t see him,” whispered Diomedes, reaching for his sword.
A second arrow grazed his hand. “Move again, and you will lose the arm altogether,” said a voice from behind us. There was a clattering of hooves and the creaking of drawn bows.
“I am Odysseus, royal Son of Laertes,” I said. “I come from the island of Ithaca. I travel with Diomedes Tydides, Lord of Argos. We mean only to pass through on our way to the lower realms.”
“Ill met then, Odysseus, Son of Laertes, and Diomedes, Son of Tydeus. No one passes here.” A sharp blow to the back sent me sprawling face-first, and Diomedes beside me. Then we were blindfolded, bound, and thrown over the back of a horse—all before I even had a chance to look at our captors.
“I can’t say I saw that coming,” Diomedes said with a grunt.
“Whoever they are, they move fast,” I answered.
And in this ignoble manner, slung side by side like two sacks of barley, Diomedes and I completed the final leg of our descent. I was bumped and jostled till I thought my teeth would fall out. What’s more, my blindfold was bound exceptionally tight, which gave me a ripping headache. It did, however, provide a little gap though which to see the ground pass beneath us.
“Diomedes,” I whispered, “these are real horses.”
“Well, they aren’t sheep.”
“No, what I mean is, these horses are alive,” I said. “Like us. They leave prints in the sand. They aren’t shades.”
“Is that good news?”
“I hope so. If the horses leave tracks, maybe their riders do too, in which case they may be men like us.”
But there were no footprints in the camp at all, only the shallow, round tracks of more and more horses.
Once we had been brought into camp, we were unloaded without ceremony, pulled to our feet, and ordered to walk. Our captors never dismounted but trotted alongside us, shoving us left, now right, now left again . . . I tried to commit the sequence to memory in case we needed to escape, but we might have been back at the entrance to Hades, for all I knew. At last we were ordered to stop, and while we stood silently waiting, our escort cantered off. “I’ll bring this to the attention of Lord Chiron,” he called to the others.
Chiron. I knew the name, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Had I met him? It was a Greek name at least, and that was a good sign. Well, all would be made clear in time. And it was.
Before long, there was a tremendous clatter of galloping hooves, and a deep voice boomed, “Who captured these men? Untie them at once! Nessos! Pholos! Sha
me on you both. Can’t you see they’re alive? Come now, remove those blindfolds and return their weapons without delay.” And just like that, my liberty and my sight were restored. Which is how I found myself, bewildered and bruised, blinking into the face of Chiron, Lord of Mount Pelion, the Centaur.
CHAPTER 4
THE SONS OF CENTAUROS
AH! HE WAS A magnificent creature, all muscle and strength from the shoulders down but with the wide forehead and clear gray eyes of a philosopher. A white beard hung from his chin. And around us, blowing and stamping in a circle, stood the great archers themselves, the sons of Centauros—half man, half horse, tall as temple doors and just as broad.
“Gentlemen, Lords of Achaea, do please forgive our coarse manners,” said Chiron, bowing to us and striking the ground with one hoof. “We have been at war for many ages with the Harpies who dwell across the river. My friends here have their hands quite full as it is, and precious little time for civilities. Please, though, follow me. I will do what I can to make you welcome.”
He led us back through the camp until we arrived at his tent. It was taller than the others, and its once bright fabric had been scrubbed to a dull gray. The inside was warm, though sparsely furnished, its only decoration a depressingly brown rug. A wide, low table stood in the center; wooden shelves lined the walls floor to ceiling; but the most noticeable feature of Chiron’s residence was the extraordinary clutter. Piled on the shelves and scattered everywhere about the tent were scraps of parchment, quills, bones, feathers, bowls and cups, bits of broken crockery, oddly colored rocks, tools, pelts, strips of leather, and various types of cloth, but above all, a great abundance of empty glass vials. The room fairly sparkled with glass.
There was, however, one oasis of order amid all that chaos, and it immediately caught my eye: the far left corner of the table—an area no wider or longer than a child’s tunic—had been cleared of all debris, and in its center lay a leather case, just about the length and width of a quiver and with a leather strap running end to end. It was cylindrical and meticulously worked with bright ribbons and beads. I was intrigued. Surely it held something valuable.
“Please,” said the Centaur, “do make yourselves at home.”
Diomedes and I looked about for somewhere to sit, but aside from the table and a small pile of mangy-looking pelts, there was nothing resembling furniture and no available space on the floor. Thus we remained awkwardly standing.
Chiron noticed and smiled self-consciously. “In another age, I would have kept a stool or two for visitors such as you but I haven’t had a human guest in several thousand years. For that matter, I haven’t any food or wine to offer either. A poor host I make these days, and all the more regrettable as Nessos tells me you are of noble blood—the houses of Tydeus and Laertes, though I can see for myself that he speaks the truth. Your parents’ blood is not lost in you.”
He took a few steps toward me, glass crunching underfoot. “You must be Odysseus,” he said, and nodded approvingly, scratching his beard with an arrow. “I knew your father. I can see his likeness in your hands and feet. You have the same glancing eyes and a fair shock of hair just like the old man himself . . . Which would make you Diomedes, though I could tell as much from the set of your shoulders. You stand just like your father, head thrown back like you’d just sacked seven cities. Tell me, though, what brings you here, forsaking the light of the upper realms to see this joyless kingdom of death? And where exactly are you going? And how did you get this far? And where, above all, did you acquire that magnificent bow?” He looked down at us with his arms folded and smiled.
“Thank you, Lord Chiron,” I said, somewhat flustered by this avalanche of questions and compliments. Was he trying to put me off, or was he really this friendly? My first instinct was to invent some lying tale and save the truth for later, but it was clear enough that Chiron was a shrewd observer, and if he knew my family, he’d be expecting lies. Still, I didn’t want to tell him too much. “I thank you for your gracious welcome and pray that you will send us on our way with equal grace. As you have so astutely inferred, I am indeed Odysseus, the Son of Laertes. And yes, this is Diomedes, Raider of Thebes. We have come, after many trials, to cross the river Phlegethon and enter the lower rings of the Underworld. By the will of the gods have we come thus far, and by their gracious intercession do we hope to travel farther still. As for where we are going and how we came to this place, I am afraid I must keep that to myself. Our journey has been fraught with peril, and if we have learned nothing else in this joyless kingdom of death, it is that we must give our confidences carefully.”
Diomedes huffed.
Chiron looked genuinely disappointed. He stood for a moment in silence, then smiled a little and spoke. “I understand, good Lord Odysseus. Hades is not a place for making friends. Nor is it a place for long chats.” He sighed. “And to tell the truth, for me that is the worst of it. Forget the river of boiling blood and the Harpies . . . it is the boredom I find most difficult. Pholos and the others are nice chaps, but they haven’t much in the way of brains.”
I did feel sorry for him. I knew from experience that there was nothing so wretched as loneliness. I looked at Diomedes. He shrugged and shook his head. The old Centaur had welcomed us as guests, after all. And our families knew him. Moreover, I had a deep and urgent sense that whatever was in that leather case, it was sure to be of some real use to me. If I could earn Chiron’s trust, he might let down his guard long enough for me to sneak a look inside.
“Oh, why not?” said Diomedes, reading my thoughts. “What do we have to lose? We’re in Hades.”
So I told Chiron pretty much everything. While Diomedes stood by quietly studying his feet, I laid out the entire account of our journey through Hell, starting with my death and bringing him all the way up to the present. Who knows how long I talked? Chiron took such obvious pleasure in every detail, it was hard to deny him anything. What’s more, I made a point of wandering about the tent as I spoke, circling ever closer to the mysterious leather case. Once I’d taken stock of everything in the room, I brought my story to an end.
“Theos meos!” said the old Centaur. He switched his tail and stamped the ground with one hoof. I almost felt I had done the right thing. “Truth. All of it. I can see it in your face. But one thing troubles me.” He looked from me to Diomedes and back. “This is not the Odysseus I learned about from the songs. I was told you were a liar and a thief. Were the bards so mistaken?”
“No,” I answered, “the bards spoke truth. I think, however, that I have changed.”
Diomedes snorted. I glared at him. Chiron coughed.
“However the case,” I concluded, “that ends our story. Or middles it, rather, seeing as we’re only halfway to where we want to be.”
“Oh, more than halfway,” said Chiron. Then he stopped suddenly and closed his eyes. I thought perhaps he had hurt himself. The whole time I’d been talking, he had been working that arrow deeper and deeper into his beard. By now, it was in so far, I felt sure it would take him the rest of the day to pull it out again. “I have an idea,” he said at last, tugging on the arrow. “Wait here. I shall return shortly.”
Chiron trotted over to the entrance of the tent, lifted the flap, and was gone—just the opportunity I’d been waiting for. I made straight for the table and picked up the leather case.
“Odysseus! What are you doing?” hissed Diomedes.
“Keep an eye on the door,” I said. One end of the cylinder was stitched shut, the other fastened in place by four ribbons. A swift tug on each, and it was open.
“Hurry, will you?” Diomedes was holding the tent flap open with a finger and had his eye to the opening. “He said he’d be right back.”
“Shut up,” I said. “There’s something valuable in here, and I want it.” I lifted the lid and looked inside. Empty. My heart sank. I ran my hand along the interior. It was lined with parchment—no, not lined. I turned the container upside down and shook. A scroll fell out ont
o the table.
“What is it?” whispered Diomedes.
“What does it look like?” I unrolled it a little, and my heart jumped into my throat. A map—a map of the Underworld! This was something we needed.
“Put it back! Here he comes!”
I rolled it up tightly and shoved it into my quiver.
“Quickly!” whispered Diomedes.
I fumbled with the ribbons.
“He’s here!”
I threw the case back on the table and leapt across the room, turned toward one of the shelves, and picked up some bit of broken glass to examine. Diomedes remained by the door looking stupid. Chiron nearly knocked him down as he entered the tent.
“Good news!” he said, trotting over to the table. “I have spoken with the brethren. The council is considering your case. If you are lucky, they may allow you to pass. In the meantime, there is something I should like you to see.” He reached for the leather case.
I cringed. “No need, Lord Chiron. Diomedes and I would just as soon be on our way.”
“Oh, but you will want to see this,” he answered, pulling on the ribbons.
“No thank you,” I said. “We really must be going. Our situation is urgent.” I walked quickly toward the door.
“Stop!”
I froze.
“You must wait here for the council’s decision,” he said, holding the case half-open in his hand. “You will not want to rush them. This is a serious business, allowing someone to cross into the lower realms, and it is only my word that has kept you alive thus far. Step outside the tent without me by your side, and they’ll shoot you dead without thinking twice.”
The Eighth Arrow Page 18
