The Face of Apollo Page 27

  He'd actually forgotten Ferrante for the moment. Now a small sound made him turn, to see the young soldier petrified with as­tonishment. Jeremy's finger pointed. Out of his throat came Apollo's voice, not loud but commanding: "Go back to the Scholar, and tell him that the Lord Apollo has gone into the Cave."

  "The Lord ..." Ferrante's face had suddenly gone gray, his eyes as they regarded Jeremy turned into those of a frightened stranger.

  "Yes. Tell him." Turning, Jeremy strode on.

  Obviously the Intruder had been in this part of the Python's Cave before and was familiar with many of its details. Now it was possible to get a better idea of the location of the room, buried in the earth somewhere ahead, where about two months ago the last previous avatar of Apollo had been slain by some over­whelming enemy.

  Many additional nuggets of information were suddenly avail­able, a bewildering variety of clues leading up to that event, and much emotion attached to it, but Jeremy firmly refused to dig into any of that now.

  A minute ago, he'd been fearful that his Apollo component might come bursting out of hiding and take complete control of his behavior—that Jeremy would become a prisoner in his own head and eventually perhaps be ground up and compressed to nothing there. But now he had no sense that anything of the kind was happening. It was Jeremy Redthorn who was putting one foot ahead of the other, determined to head down into the Cave, whatever anyone else, human or god, might want from him. Certainly he was no puppet.... People stared at him, sales­men and priests and would-be guardians, as he strode past them and went on down. They must have wondered who he was, but none of them had noticed what had happened to the sentry.

  Looking down from very near the sharply defined brink of the entrance, Jeremy beheld a winding path, almost too narrow for two people to edge past each other, but smooth and well-worn into rock, clinging to the side of the Cave, which was al­most vertical here at the start. An easy place to defend, if your enemies were trying to fight their way up out of the ground. The path in its first descent went halfway round the great hole. Then it started to switchback lower, fading and losing itself in the de­vouring darkness after a distance of perhaps a hundred paces. His left eye could follow it only a little farther than his right. How far beyond that the Cave might descend into the earth he had no means of guessing. Nor did the stories offer much real in­formation, except that it was very large and some of them claimed that it connected with the Underworld.

  Jeremy tried a gingerly search of Apollo's memory for details of the Cave's configuration at this point but came up blank. To reach the Cave beyond this point, the Intruder, in the course of his previous visit, must have traveled by some different route.

  Lord John and the almost four hundred troops under his com­mand had found their way down the western side of the gorge, forded the tumultuous stream at the bottom, and located a trail to bring them up the eastern side, all the while trying with belated caution to guard against another ambush. The kidnappers' trail had been more than a day old by the time they reached it. More long and painful hours had passed before the searchers were able to pick up the right path and follow it to the Honeymakers' vil­lage.

  Now the boy Jeremy was standing in the cavern's first great room, a roof of rock some thirty feet above his head. But he was still so close to the surface that the sky was barely out of sight. There was still plenty of daylight with which to examine the details of his surroundings.

  Stalking from one to another of the prisoner cages that stood near the entrance to the Cave, inspecting the contents, the visitor made sure that Katy wasn't in any of them. Once that was ac­complished, Jeremy now felt certain of where she had gone—down and in. The only remaining uncertainty, and it seemed a slight one, was whether she was already dead, somewhere under the earth.

  Here the Gatekeeper's people, who were also the merchants of sacrifice, were definitely open for business. Half a dozen intended victims, their number divided equally between girls and boys, were even now awaiting their turns, in the same number of wooden enclosures. All were young; all had probably looked healthy when they were caught, not many days ago—unblem­ished specimens were generally preferred. Now they had the ap­pearance of being drugged, their naked bodies slumped in awkward positions or crouched, like animals, over their own droppings. They turned to Jeremy eyes that were very human but utterly lost.

  He held his breath until he had made sure that Katy was not among them.

  In similar cages nearby there also waited an assortment of an­imals. Posted prices indicated that one or two of the beasts, rare and almost perfect specimens, cost more than some of the hu­mans. Doubtless they were more difficult to obtain.

  The cages were rough cubes about five feet on a side, and some of them at least were set on wooden platforms, to raise the con­tents somewhat above the ground. This no doubt made easier such cleaning and feeding as was undertaken.

  Several of the cages were new, which Jeremy took as evidence that business was good. Generally the heavy cages were left here and only the helpless occupants, their bodies painted with mag­ical designs, were dragged or carried down into the earth, to Hades's kingdom.

  Jeremy, who despite his recent adventures still looked reason­ably prosperous, was given additional information by one of the attendants, who wanted to sell him an animal or a human.

  Lord Apollo was eager to proceed, his spirits were high, and his attitude imbued their joint progress with a certain style. Je­remy Redthorn might have advanced at an anxious run, but that would not do for the senior partner. Regally he stifled the im­pulse to trot and infused the boy's walk and carriage with a kingly grace as he approached the next set of attendants, who now gave him their full attention as he drew near.

  One man in particular came out bowing and fawning, smirk­ing as if he thought he was approaching an incognito prince. His object was, of course, to sell the prince one or more humans. The other attendants smiled and bowed. There was nothing like youthful specimens of humanity, perfect in every limb, if you wanted to please the Dark God with a really classy sacrifice.

  Did the Cave Monster, Jeremy Redthorn wondered, have any real interest in devouring helpless humans? Yes, the Intruder's memory assured him. One point was surprising—the hunger of the thing below seemed to be more for beauty and rationality than for meat. The monster, then, was some perverted god, sur­viving from the last cycle of deity creation. It may have played that role, as well as many others. In past cycles, if not placated by sacrifice, it had come out to ravage the countryside.

  Exactly which member of the partnership, Jeremy Redthorn or Apollo, made the final decision to smash the cages in this Cave anteroom before going farther down Jeremy was never afterward quite sure. It seemed to be one of those things that they agreed on, though their motives were quite different.

  One of the attributes of Apollo, as cataloged at the Academy, was that he was not readily impressed by sacrifices. Rather, what he looked for in his worshipers was a seeking for purification, a willingness to atone for guilt.

  Nor, one would think, would Apollo have any particular in­terest in the welfare of a humble village girl named Katherine, any more than he would in any of the other intended sacrifices. After Jeremy had looked internally for an answer, he decided that the Far-Worker's reason for smashing the cages was that he, Apollo, meant to claim the Cave as territory from Hades, his mortal enemy. Eventually, perhaps, he would relocate the true Oracle where it belonged, up on the peak of the Mountain, in open sunlight.

  Jeremy's right arm, which he had bruised against the sentry's bony mass and armor, still pained him—not a disabling injury, but certainly a warning of this body's vulnerability. The boy thought that, for once, he could almost follow the Intruder's thoughts: First, before I enter serious combat, I must attend to this body, this tool, which is my best and only essential weapon; limbs so feeble and tender must first be strengthened.

  And Jeremy's hands and wrists came up before his face, in such a way that
he could not be sure if he himself had willed their rising up or not. A moment later something, as if pumped by his heart and in his blood, came flowing through his back and shoul­ders, spreading, trickling, down into both arms. He could follow the interior flow by the feeling that it generated of a buzzing, liq­uid warmth. He was intensely reminded of the never-to-be-forgotten sensation of the mask fragment melting and flowing into his head through the apertures of eye and ear.

  The feeling of warmth and flow abated, leaving him slightly dizzy and with a pounding heart. His arms looked no more for­midable than before as he raised them and gripped the cage—and yet he knew that the power of the Dark Youth had entered into them. He pulled with the right hand, pushed with the left, in almost the same motion he would have used to draw a bow. Moderate effort yielded spectacular results. Under the pressure of those arms, green logs four inches thick went splintering in white fragments, and the tough withes that had bound the cage together exploded from it. Briefly there was the sound of timber breaking, a forest falling in a gale. The noise put an end to any hope that his further progress would remain unnoticed by those in the room with him.

  There was shouting and confused activity among the humans milling around.

  Noncombatants, women and a scattering of children, as well as a few aged men, were screaming and shouting in panic, getting themselves out of the way as rapidly as possible.

  There came a well-remembered flapping, whistling, sighing in the air around him. Apollo was suddenly happy, an emotion so vital that Jeremy caught it almost at once from his senior part­ner. How marvelous that there should be furies here! They must be kept like watchdogs by some greater power, for a whole swarm of them now came soaring and snarling out of the depths of the Cave.

  It crossed Jeremy's mind to wonder if these might even be counted as domestic animals and thus be readily subject to his control. He wasn't going to find out, and, in fact, he immediately forgot the question, for the sight and sound and smell of them had triggered a killing rage in both of the entities inhabiting Je­remy Redthorn's frame. His—or the Dark Youth's—left arm lashed out like a striking snake and clutched a handful of mousy skin, stopping the creature in midflight. It screamed while its whips flailed at him, with no more effect than on a marble statue.

  A moment later, the Lord of Light had seized a wing root in each hand and was ripping the beast apart, with no greater effort than Jeremy Redthorn would have used tearing paper. A maimed body fell to the Cave floor, and black blood splashed and flew. Only later did Jeremy realize how his face and clothing had been splattered.

  Then he seized one of the dealers in human souls and bodies by his neck, took one long-clawed fury foot in his other hand, and used the talons to obliterate the slaver's face.

  Again Jeremy stalked forward. Now he was approaching the first internal barrier he'd encountered since entering the Cave, a gate of wood or metal that was already standing open. The smoke of pungent incense rose from a wide, shallow bowl supported atop a tall three-legged stool of black wood.

  The debauched priestess who mouthed the prophecies swayed on her three-legged stool, staring with drugged eyes at the new­comers. An aging woman, her sagging breasts exposed, a tawdry crown poised crooked on her head.

  She reacted violently to the presence of Apollo/Jeremy. "Lord of Light, I know you! You come to die again!"

  Jeremy/Apollo ignored the nonsense she gibbered at him and stalked on, leaving behind him a growing pandemonium. The captives that he'd freed would have to see to themselves now—his own real task lay ahead.

  On he stalked, and down.

  Once more a single figure, this time a man, confronted him. And out of memory new material suddenly emerged: At the inner entrance to the Cave there ruled, partly by cunning, partly by tradition, the Gatekeeper—a human remembered only vaguely by Apollo and of whose actual age even Apollo could not be sure. But it was hard for even Apollo to remember a time when there had been no Gatekeeper at the Cave.

  Could it possibly have been the same individual, all that time?

  ...quite old in his appearance, and of a lean and vicious as­pect, who a few months ago, at the time of the great duel, had commanded the debased remnant of the traditional attendants of the shrine.

  In Jeremy's left eye he looked even worse.

  And now he himself hardly ever emerged from the Cave but rather shunned the sunlight.

  He had wisps of graying hair, once red, curling around a massive skull. Once he had been impressively muscled, and still his body possessed wiry strength, fueled by meanness. Large portions of his tawny skin, wherever it was visible, were covered with tattoos. Once there had been rings in his ears and nose, but now only the hard-lipped scars remained.

  He was cynical and evil—but in his heart he was still waiting for the true god to reappear.

  For almost as long as Apollo could remember, the world had ac­cepted the Gatekeeper (really a succession of Gatekeepers, the god supposed) as chief overseer of all sacrifices at the shrine. The only ones in which he took keen interest were those in which a human was set before the God of the Underworld—the immolation of youth or maiden, their nude bodies painted, then carried, drugged and helpless, down into the darkness, where they were bound to their log frames and left to whatever might come for them.

  Later, so the whispers said, he sometimes went down again, alone, to revisit the victims. If Hades or one of his creatures had not yet accepted the sacrifice, the Gatekeeper sometimes tortured or raped them. Once or twice, acting on an impulse he could not explain, he had killed a victim mercifully with a swift knife thrust.

  "I see," called Apollo to the waiting figure, as Apollo/Jeremy strode near, "that your master, Hades, has not yet decided to de­vour you."

  "It may be that he will, someday, Sun God." The voice that came from the ravaged face was surprisingly deep and firm and unafraid. "But the knowledge has little terror for me."

  "Have you forgotten what terror feels like, torturer? It is very dangerous for any human to entirely forget that."

  "Only one thing, my Lord Apollo," said the deep voice from the ruined face, "any longer is capable of filling me with true dread—and so long as I am not confronted by that one thing, I seem to have forgotten what it is."

  The Gatekeeper had been the first of Hades's human allies to reach the scene after the most recent killing of Apollo. Prophecies were handed out under his auspices. He controlled, most of the time, the demented woman who generally uttered them. More often than not she was just putting on an act and saying what the Gatekeeper told her to say. Sometimes she was passing along what came down, in some jumbled way, from the summit.

  The Gatekeeper was not trying to block the path, and Apollo/Je­remy strode on past him. Once more the man spoke briefly to Apollo, then dodged and fled when Apollo merely raised a hand to his bow, as if to grasp and draw it.

  The Gatekeeper fled down into the depths, to bring his dark master word of the new incursion.

  Jeremy now was in the third great chamber of the Cave, out of sight of the entrance by some hundreds of feet. But there was still plenty of indirect daylight to let him find the path.

  His attention was focused on the way ahead. There he could see with his left eye the reflections of a distant reddish glow and hear with his left ear the echoes created by the shuffling approach of the monster Hades.

  He knew that these were signs of the approach of Hades, who must now be coming up, with strength renewed for renewed bat­tle, from however far down in the earth his last retreat had car­ried him.

  Jeremy strained his senses listening, wondering if Cerberus might be coming up also. Apollo's memory was not reassuring on the subject of Cerberus, picturing a multiheaded, dog-like shape of monstrous size—and neither human nor divine. Apollo seemed reluctant to push the image of that shape forward, where Jeremy might have a good look at it.

  And what of Thanatos? What Hades had said might well be true: If that mask fragment had been retrieved from
the stream carrying it under the earth, then the God of Death might al­ready have been reborn in the body of another human avatar. There would be no shortage of people ready to enter the great game in that role. Still, Apollo seemed to believe that the odds were against Thanatos having been already revived.

  So an active Thanatos was a real possibility, and so was a re­constructed Cerberus. If all three of those dark allies should come against him at the same time ... but he could not think yet of turning back.

  The Enemy's chief avatar, when he finally appeared, was, like Je­remy himself, no more than man-size, physically. But his true di­mensions were hard to see at first, such was the dominant impression of overwhelming strength.

  Even Apollo had difficulty in determining practical details from a distance. Minor changes in form had occurred since the two gods' last encounter. The only clear impressions coming through to Jeremy were of malevolence and enormous destruc­tive power.

  The one who approached seemed to move in the form of rippling shadows, which the light of the torches spaced around the walls could do nothing to disperse.

  This was a presence monumentally powerful. Beside the Lord of the Underworld, even Death, which Apollo, if not Jeremy, had already experienced, faded toward insignificance.

  Hades, on coming at last into conversational range, put on a show of mockery and feigned obeisance. "I go to prepare a place of entertainment for you." His voice was not loud, but it boomed and echoed, as if it were coming from some great distance.

  Jeremy had not long to wait to hear, from his own lips, Apollo's reply. "Indeed I am ready to be entertained. Prepare whatever objects and ceremonies you choose. But remember that whatever is in this Cave, inside this Mountain, will soon be mine. I intend to take the Oracle from you and make it speak the truth."