The Face of Apollo Page 29

  The figure did not reply.

  When another half-minute had passed and the god figure still maintained its silence, the Scholar tried again: "If you are a god .. .," and let his words die away.

  The other leaned toward him. The tones of the voice that now suddenly erupted from behind the mask were feminine and stag­geringly familiar.

  " 'If'? What else should I be, sitting up here? A monkey like yourself? You've always lacked the wit to recognize divinity, even when it stood right in front of you, trying to get your attention."

  "I―"

  "Shut up!" The command was so forceful that he obeyed. "You are a remarkably stupid man, even for an Academic and a scholar." And she crossed her ankles, calling attention to the re­markable red Sandals.

  Then she raised a small hand and pulled aside her mask and hurled it away, revealing the perfectly recognizable face of the woman who had once been the Scholar's companion, concubine, and slave.

  "Carlotta!" He hadn't really believed in the familiar voice, but here at last was surprise enough to knock him over. He had to grab at a branch to keep from falling out of the tree.

  The familiar greenish eyes stared hatred at him. "So, you re­member my name. Is that all you have to say to me—master?" The last word had the tone of an obscenity.

  Cautiously—his seat was still none too secure—the Scholar lifted both hands in an open gesture. His mind seemed to be whirling free in space, beyond astonishment. "What should I say?"

  She smiled at him, simpering in mockery. "Why, nothing at all. I can do the talking for a change. I can give the instruction, and the orders."

  Arnobius was scarcely listening. Slowly he shook his head in wonderment. "So ... you bring me evidence that I can see with my own eyes. A Trickster does indeed exist. Female, evidently. And she has chosen you as avatar."

  "Oh, has she, indeed? Maybe I have chosen to be the Trick­ster—did that possibility ever cross the mudhole that passes for your mind, that I might be able to make choices of my own?"

  "Carlotta!" He was still clinging with both hands to branches and shaking his head. Still couldn't get over the transformation.

  "Oh, now I am to hear your famous imitation of a parrot! I suppose that is the best way to advance one's career at the Acad­emy—but then you never need worry about your career. Not as long as your father is who he is."

  "You are Carlotta—and now an avatar of the Trickster. For some reason he has chosen you to wear his Face—then the theory of masks is true." He sighed, and his thoughts turned inward. "There was a time when a discovery of such magnitude would have crowned my life's work—or so I thought." He continued to stare at her for the space of several breaths before he added: "I've experienced a profound change, too, over the last few days. I no longer take much satisfaction in philosophy."

  "Oh?" The Trickster pantomimed an overwhelming astonish­ment, ending with her head tilted sideways. Her voice was low and vicious. "Just what in all the hells makes you imagine that your likes and dislikes are of any interest to the world?"

  At last the true intensity of her anger was starting to get through to him. Blinking, he said: "You speak as if you hate me."

  "Do I indeed? Is there, do you suppose, some faint possibility of a reason why I should do so?"

  Arnobius tried to gesture but had to grab again at a branch to keep from falling. He began what seemed to him a sensible ar­gument. "Carlotta, it was not my doing that you were a slave when you came to me. I would have given you your freedom, but as you know, there were reasons—of policy—why that wasn't possible. It seems to me that I always treated you with kindness."

  "Kindness. Arnobius ... you gave me away as if I were a hunt­ing dog! 'Reasons of policy'!"

  "Only because you were, technically, a slave. What else could I have done? I meant you no harm. And now . . . now it seems the question of your status is academic, because you have been chosen." Despite his recent lack of interest in matters theologi­cal, he found himself becoming mightily curious. "I wish you well. How did it happen, this apotheosis of yours? Do you mind telling me?"

  "Considerate, aren't we? My social standing has gone up re­markably."

  "But how? Carlotta!" he added, shaking his head, still mar­veling that she had been chosen.

  "How did that sad little bitch, the poor piece of property named Carlotta, how did she become a god? Right under your nose, you stupid bastard!"

  "Here, there's really no call to—"

  "The truth about my being chosen, as you put it, is that I dis­covered a great treasure. Oh, and by the way, let me tell you that legally the treasure must be yours, for my discovery was made while I myself was legally your property." She leaned forward on her branch. "But let me tell you also that you are never going to see a single ounce of it. It seems to me that gods are safely above the law."

  "Treasure," he said numbly. Revelations were coming too fast for his thoughts to keep up.

  "Yes, a whole stockpile of treasure. Gold, gold, gold. Besides everything else. Ah, that got your attention, didn't it?"

  Actually, it hadn't. Money in itself had never mattered to the Scholar much—he'd always had a plentiful supply. "So, then, you found some treasure in the temple.... Yes, it always seemed to me that there ought to have been at least one or two items of importance in there. I regretted that we couldn't stay to search... but go on."

  Her eyes were fixed on him. "I came into possession of more than one object of fabulous value. The first one I found, these Sandals, was the most important—because it made the others possible. And would you believe that when I held the Sandals in my hands, my only thought at that moment was how I might use the discovery to help you? Can you imagine such insanity?"

  "I don't know what to say. Carlotta! I'm sorry—"

  "Oh, what an idiot I was! Sorry, are you? It's a little late for that, O great Scholar who has never managed to learn anything. You didn't recognize Apollo himself, when he was standing right before you."

  "Nonsense!" His first response was automatic. Then: "When? What do you mean by that?"

  "Never mind. Maybe I should force you to address me as Lady Carlotta. I remember very well what it was like to be your slave, Scholar. Now I want to see how it feels to be your goddess."

  "My goddess?" The Scholar still didn't know where to start in grappling with all this. The depth of Carlotta's hatred came as a great surprise, and as her former master, he felt that her attitude was unjust. He'd always treated her well, shown real generosity, and now she was downright ungrateful. He noted that her golden collar was gone and wondered in passing what had happened to it.

  But he could still refuse to believe her, thinking the statement her own idea of Trickery.

  The Goddess of Trickery, clothed in the body of a vengeful slave, leaned toward him on her branch. Alarmed, he cried out, "What are you going to do?"

  "I have not yet decided what to do with you."

  "Do with me?"

  "Gods, but you sound stupid! Even worse than before. I might, of course, give you away—but who would want you?"

  "Give me away? What are you talking about?"

  "But I have a better idea. It will do for the time being—for rea­sons of policy. You seem to think that a good excuse for any­thing."

  Carlotta leaped suddenly from her branch. Arnobius cried out in alarm, then groaned in a different tone when he saw her not falling, but hovering in midair like a giant hummingbird, her Sandals shimmering like a dancer's shoes. Then with a single dramatic gesture she caused the tree in which Arnobius was still sitting to grow to a fantastic height. The ground dropped away below him with the magical elongation of the trunk, as if he were riding a sling beside some tall ship's mast and twenty hearty sailors were heaving energetically on the rope.

  The tree below him now sprouted branches so thickly that it looked impossible to climb down. If he fell, he was going to bounce many times before he hit the ground—but he could re­member in his gut how far below it was.
/>   The hovering toe-dancing goddess called up to him from far below: "I'm going, now. I think I'd better take a look into the Cave. But I'll be back, my noble Scholar. Perhaps I should con­vey you back to that temple in the swamp. A lot of treasure still waits there, my Scholar, and it could, all of it, belong to you. When you starved to death there, or when the great snakes came in and ate you, you would die a wealthy man."

  Turning back as an afterthought, Trickster conjured from somewhere and gave him a mirror. It was circular, the center of the smoothest, brightest glass that he had ever seen, surrounded by a broad frame of ivory.

  "What's this?"

  "So you can see what a fool looks like."

  When the figure changed into the likeness of a giant, shim­mering butterfly and then darted away in a miraculous dancing flight, he wondered for a moment if he'd been dreaming. But no, the tree was still stretched out like no other tree that he had ever seen, and here he was, at an elevation that looked and felt like a hundred feet above the ground.

  He had a confused memory that at some point his visitor had just told him that he'd failed to recognize Apollo. Now what had that meant?

  If his visitor hadn't really been Carlotta, he didn't have to be­lieve all those confessions and accusations.

  Meanwhile, he clung to his tree. The trunk, and the branches near the trunk, felt far too slippery for him to attempt any climb­ing down. All he could think of was to wait for Sergeant Ferrante to return from his errand, and shout down to him for help.

  Yes, it must really have been the Trickster who had confronted him.

  But that, as he suddenly realized, didn't prove that the woman he had known as Carlotta, his former companion, colleague, mistress, slave girl, was now or had ever been the Trickster. Every serious student of odylic philosophy knew that Coyote was the premier shape changer and it could have been anyone under that outward appearance of Carlotta. Oh, his recent visitor had been a god, all right, the Trickster—but not Carlotta.

  What a bizarre thing for a god to do, to take the shape of a slave girl—but then one had to expect that that particular god, if he existed at all, would have a predilection for the bizarre.

  Poor Carlotta! He wondered what had really happened to her.

  He promised himself that he'd do something nice for the girl if he ever ran into her again.

  Coming back from his nerve-racking encounter in the Cave, Sergeant Ferrante at first had trouble relocating his new com­mander. He'd come back with a disturbing message—it sounded like young Jonathan had gone completely mad—but when Fer­rante had looked into those eyes, and listened to that voice, he'd been ready to believe.

  This was the very spot where he'd left Arnobius. Except that now here was this damned great unnatural tree—when Andy heard the Scholar calling him and looked up and located him at last, he decided that the world had gone mad, too.

  Even the Eye of Apollo had trouble descrying the truth about people—or about any people, for that matter, as complex as hu­mans were. And this Cave did not yet belong to Apollo and prob­ably never had. Though certain things within it might be clearly enough marked as Apollo's property.

  When Jeremy thought back over the chain of events that had brought him here, beginning when Sal's unknown voice had first called to him for help, he could discern only a few links in the chain that he would prefer to have been wrought differently.

  He was gradually gaining more knowledge regarding the na­ture of the fantastic powers vested in him by Sal's gift. A simple arrowhead in his hands took on great and deadly capabilities. And domestic animals, including the bees and the cameloid, could be placed firmly under his control. And the energy of the sun itself was his to command, at least in some limited degree.

  Apollo had never told him what his own fate was to be; Apollo had not told him anything, strictly speaking.

  Jeremy heard the priests of Chaos, trying to nerve their follow­ers for their next battle with Apollo, proclaim in their triumphant ritual chant that this was the place where great Apollo had been slain.

  Still, it was reassuring that they had felt it wise to summon re­inforcements before tackling the pitiful remnant of the god and that it was necessary to whip up the enthusiasm of those re­cruited to do the fighting.

  Jeremy knew that he was going on, down into the deep Cave.

  There was a long moment in which Jeremy as he trudged on felt himself to be utterly alone.

  But I'm not a god, really. I'm only me, Jeremy Redthorn, pre­tending. Not pretending that the god is here—he's real enough. Pretending I'm his partner. What's really happening is that I'm being used, like a glove that will soon wear through.

  His feet in their light boots, made for riding, crunched lightly on the path. His feet—and Apollo's. Behind him—behind them—daylight was growing dim. And ahead of them, neither Jeremy's right eye nor his left could see anything but darkness.

  Twenty-Seven

  Jeremy had now entered a room in which deep silence held sway, broken only by a distant echoing drip of water.

  After pausing to listen for the space of a few heartbeats, he moved on. Apparently Apollo's enemies had been scattered for the moment, the survivors of the clash sent scrambling in retreat. But godlike wisdom was not required to realize that the seeming withdrawal might be a ruse intended to lure the Sun God's avatar deeper underground.

  Even so, the risk must be accepted. The parallel purposes of the god and of Jeremy Redthorn both required their shared body to make a descent farther into the Cave. And for the moment the way was open.

  He could feel his anger against the creatures of the Under­world grow stronger than ever, now that it had been tempered, like a blade, by action.

  At the moment he felt that his will and Apollo's were the same, indistinguishable.

  Steadily he made his way forward and down, into the heavier shadows of the true Cave, while the entrance with its blessed sunshine fell farther and farther behind him. Some time ago the upper world of air and light, of trees and sky, had passed out of sight behind a curve of dark Cave wall.

  After another brief pause to make sure his puny borrowed bow was still in workable condition, he set his foot upon the switchback path and advanced at an unhurried pace.

  There would be no racing recklessly down into the depths. No, not just yet; not until he was good and ready. His advance so far had been in the nature of a probe, testing his Enemy's strength— which had turned out to be formidable indeed.

  The Far-Worker was ready and determined to face his enemies, even if that must be done on ground of their choosing and not his.

  After tribulations and confusion that would grow in the retelling to legendary proportions, Lord John Lugard and his force of four hundred lancers had at last found the proper trail, leading them first to the Honeymakers' village and then away from it again. The lancers were now arriving at the foot of the hundred-foot tree. This would have been an excellent moment for an enemy force to take them unawares—almost all of the four hun­dred were goggling at the spectacle of ten stories above their heads. But the Harbor Lord's enemies were no better organized than his own troops, and the opportunity was wasted.

  A few men, working at Lord John's orders, had begun an ef­fort to help Arnobius down from where he was marooned. A pair of volunteers who claimed some skill in tree climbing had started working their way up from the bottom, cutting hand­holds and steps in the slippery trunk and thinning the dense branches as they climbed. In a few minutes enough brushwood to thatch a large hut lay piled below. Meanwhile hundreds of riders continued to gawk at the monstrous tree and in dubious but respectful silence pondered the Scholar's shouted attempts to explain his strange situation.

  Lord John on discovering the giant tree had at first stared at it in amazement and then reacted even more strongly when he re­alized who was in the topmost branches. After a phase of laugh­ing that lasted several minutes, he went back to marveling again.

  Now he called up: "Certainly something
outside the course of nature has happened to you, Brother!"

  The answer that came down was couched in terms of odylic philosophy and left the questioner no wiser; he felt he had been listening to a foreign language.

  A few minutes later, Arnobius was back on the ground, but still looking at the world from a different viewpoint from the one he'd held before he climbed the tree. Soon he was thrashing over the evidence with his brother, while Sergeant Ferrante was called as a witness.

  "Was it really Carlotta whom I saw?" the Scholar pondered aloud. "I can't be sure. But Jonathan's—or Jeremy's—case is more important. More to the point, is the being called Apollo, whoever or whatever that may be, actually present when these re­markable things happen? Was Apollo actually in possession of Jonathan, or Jeremy, or whatever his true name is? I don't know. Whatever the theory of the business is, the fact is that the lad's now doing things that no mere human could accomplish."

  John, despite the presence of the altered tree, took something of a skeptical attitude. "Yes, it must have been some god. But I doubt that it was really Carlotta."

  There came a whirring and whirling in the air behind him and above him as he sat his saddle. Before he could even turn his head, hands stronger than any he'd felt in many years took him by both shoulders and snatched him from the back of his cameloid, straight up into the air.

  John gave a wordless, helpless cry. A tumult broke out among his troops, but they were as helpless as so many ants in the face of this attack.

  In only a few moments their commander had been whisked away through the air and had vanished, with his kidnapper, from their sight.

  Arnobius, his feet once more on solid ground, found himself in command, more or less by default, of four hundred lancers. The officer who had been second in command after Lord John hesitated only briefly before yielding the point to Lord Victor's son.

  Arnobius, like those around him, gaped after the figures of John and his kidnapper, dwindling rapidly with the speed of their flight into the west. But in only a few moments he turned back with a look of determination. "Major, are your men ready to ride on?"