The Face of Apollo Page 33

  Jeremy passed on this bit of information to his companion. Then he added: "Circe's house was built of cut stones, and it stands in the middle of that patch of woods." He pointed weakly toward the center of the island, luxuriant with greenery, a quar­ter of a mile from where they were about to land.

  "You've been there? I mean ..."

  "I know what you mean.... The clearest image I can get from Apollo is of a young woman, sitting in that house. She's dark... and beautiful. . . and she is singing as she works at her loom."

  "Weaving? Weaving what?"

  "Nothing ordinary. I can't describe it very well. A thin . . . web of some kind." In memory the material looked incredibly soft and delicate. And it was shot through with spectacular colors. "People said that no one but a goddess could have made it."

  Kate made no comment on that. The invisible stair created by her Sandals had run out softly beneath them, and they were on the ground. Jeremy's weight hadn't posed her a crushing burden as long as they were Sandal-borne, but now she was glad to be re­lieved of it.

  Stiffly Jeremy extended his legs and found them capable of supporting him, though with not much capacity to spare.

  "The place looks deserted," Kate said quietly, gazing around them.

  "Almost." No sooner had Jeremy said that than the visitors were treated to a peal of tinkling laughter, nearby but proceed­ing from some invisible source that not even Apollo could at once identify. Kate was startled, but Jeremy, still reassured by borrowed memory, made a sign to her that she ought not to be concerned.

  "Which way is east?"

  He didn't even need to look up at the sun. "There."

  Another body of land, whether island or continent, was visi­ble at a modest distance across the water, in the direction of his pointing hand.

  Fortunately, much of this island was blessed with a southern exposure that bathed it in life-sustaining sunlight. Here the sur­face rocks and beaches of white sand were pleasantly warmed.

  With Jeremy now and then leaning on his companion for sup­port, the couple followed an irregular path of shell fragments and white sand to the small house in the center of the island. An­other, fainter burst of fairy laughter accompanied the opening of the front door, which unlatched itself with a loud click and swung itself in just as they reached it. A brief tour of the sunny rooms inside discovered no visible occupants; the place was snugly furnished and obviously well cared for, and the couple settled in for a rest. Both fell asleep in comfortable chairs in the front room and awoke an hour later to find that invisible servi­tors had placed food and drink on tables beside them.

  Katy, having seen her patient settled in the most comfortable bed, spoke of her desire to visit her home village and see her family again but feared the enemy might seek them there.

  "It seems safe here."

  "It is. I'm going to sleep again."

  The poison dart of Hades had been fearfully potent. Even Apollo could not keep his body and Jeremy's from sliding into re­current bouts of fever and delirium. Sometimes he thought he saw Death, in the form of a great fury, smiling at him, closing in with talons like those of a raptor.

  No matter how warm it was, Jeremy was chilled with fever. He opened his eyes to see that Kate was standing by his bed and that she had taken off her clothes. She said, "If you are still shivering, then I must warm you properly." And she slid in under the blan­kets with him.

  In time the fever went away, and Kate still comforted him with her love. When he slept again, the chills and shivering came back and with them a dream of the three-headed dog, catching up with Jeremy at some temple halfway around the world, where he had gone by means of the Sandals, looking for the Bow—and he also felt an urgent need to find the unnamed treasure that Car­lotta had hinted was hidden there.

  Katy's embraces soothed him, and he woke feeling better and spoke reassuringly to his companion: "On this island one tends to have prophetic dreams."

  He shouldn't have said that, for within the hour he slept again and his next dream was a nightmare, from which Jeremy woke screaming, in which it had seemed that a hangman's noose awaited him.

  "Don't..." He gasped. "I don't want to have any more dreams like that. Not ever again."

  Katy held him and petted him and soothed him.

  After a long silence, she said: "If she—Circe—is only a mere human, like me, how can she defend her island, herself, against Hades?"

  "She is ... what she is. She doesn't intrude into his domain, and he doesn't see her as a threat. I don't doubt he'd like to have her as an ally."

  By the next morning Jeremy was feeling much better and was up and moving weakly about. The swelling on his arm was much re­duced.

  Covered dishes appeared, as if from nowhere, holding deli­cious food. Here and there, inside the house and out, were traces, carved initials, showing that other humans before Jeremy and Katy had visited and lived upon this island, over a period of many years. "Some of them were shipwrecked sailors."

  "Was Circe as kind to them as she was to you? To Apollo, I mean?"

  "Circe is not always kind...." Memory suddenly produced an unwanted offering of ghastly pictures, of men turned into ani­mals. "But she is Apollo's friend....Also, other gods have been here, coming and going over a long, long time."

  In the evening, just as sunset light was fading, a fire came into being on the small hearth, radiating all the gentle warmth that even a sick man might need.

  The two backpacks Jeremy had made a point of bringing contained a number of useful things, including a couple of blan­kets, and some spare clothes for warmth. It seemed that the ef­fort to carry them had been wasted—except that the couple could expect to need the packs again when it came time to de­part. In fact, the sanctuary turned out to be furnished with almost anything that a couple of exhausted humans might need. Sometimes music of a heavenly sweetness played, coming from an invisible source, but never for more than a short interval.

  After two days in sanctuary, both visitors were beginning to feel rested, and a start had been made toward healing Jeremy's wound.

  Now he was able to stroll about the island, talking with Katy about exactly what they ought to do when it came time to leave.

  That would be when the poisoned wound upon his arm was healed enough to serve him well in combat again. Already the arm felt much better and the swelling was almost gone, but it would be wise to wait a few more days and make sure.

  Briefly blissful in their new status as lovers, the couple lay on the white beaches and swam in the warm, clean sea. Jeremy warned his companion to stay inside the barrier reef, for beyond it was the realm of Poseidon, one of the very mightiest of gods, of whose friendship Apollo could not be sure.

  Katy worried about sunburn, but Apollo only laughed. "I will mark you with my left eye—and the sun will never burn your pretty skin again."

  "Oh?" She splashed a little water at him, not knowing whether to take him seriously or not.

  "The more I think about it, Kate ..."

  "Yes?" She paused, prettily shaking the water from her hair and treading water.

  "The more that I could wish that I was not a god." The lure of immortality meant little—not after he'd seen one god die at his feet.

  "For a moment there, you almost looked like Apollo!"

  Almost he laughed aloud. "And what does Apollo look like?"

  * * *

  When he was better, but still weak, Katy left him alone for hours at a time. She put on the Sandals fairly often, having learned to enjoy the heady feel of using them. She also felt a need to return briefly to her home, at least long enough to reassure her family. Tentatively she brought up the idea of going there and back on a solo flight.

  "Jerry, I want to see my family. I have a father and a mother, a brother and a sister."

  "I don't know that you could find your way."

  "Never fear; I've a good sense of direction. Now that I've been here I'll not forget the way. And she—Carlotta—said the San­dals
help whoever is wearing them to find things."

  He shook his head solemnly. "Don't count on being able to find your way back here, Sandals or not. Not to this island."

  Subject to vague feelings of unease, and with the sense that Circe was never far away, Kate postponed her visit home, re­stricting her flights to the vicinity of the island.

  Once, as soon as she had gone on one of these, Jeremy stretched out on the warm sand for a nap but soon awoke to find a beautiful dark-haired woman sitting beside him, clad in a cloud of fine fabric woven of all colors and of none.

  The enchantress, when she saw that he was awake, managed a graceful kind of seated bow. "The Lord of Light is welcome to my home, as always."

  "My gratitude for your hospitality," said a voice from Jeremy Redthorn's throat, in tones that had grown familiar though they were not his own. A nod of his head returned his visitor's bow.

  "Any favor I may do my Lord Apollo will be reciprocated, I am sure." Her eyes appraised his unclad form. "The lord has this time put on a younger body even than I am accustomed to see him wear. All to the good—it will facilitate healing."

  "I shall do what I can for you, in turn," Apollo said, and paused. After a moment he added: "I have wondered sometimes why you never seek divinity for yourself."

  "I am content with what I have." Circe's smile was serene and private. "As I am sure the Lord of Light must know, the fire of divinity is a consuming one when it catches in a merely human mind and body."

  Apollo was not much interested, it seemed, in pursuing the subject further—and Jeremy Redthorn was afraid to do so.

  "Two words of warning, my lord," the dark-haired woman said, after the silence between them had stretched on for a little while.

  "Yes?"

  "First, not many days ago, my lord held in his hands the Face of Death and cast it in a certain stream."

  "True enough. What of it?"

  "It has been picked from the water and will be worn again."

  "I feared as much. And what is your second warning?"

  "It is for Jeremy Redthorn and not the Lord Apollo, and it is only this: that the human body when serving as the avatar of any god will, as a rule, fairly quickly wear through and collapse; there is a limit to how long the power even of Apollo can sustain it. He should expect that the Sun God will seek a fresh human to use when the one called Jeremy Redthorn has been used up. The immortality of the gods is only a cruel hoax where human beings are concerned."

  Whether the voice that answered was Apollo's or truly his own Jeremy could not be sure. "And that I suppose is one reason why Circe herself has turned down more than one chance at divinity."

  The enchantress ignored his response. She went on: "And there is a third item—take it as a warning if you will—that I pass on for what it may be worth: I am told there is a place atop the Mountain of the Oracle where the Faces of the gods can actually be destroyed."

  Apollo was immediately skeptical. "How is that possible?"

  "Some instrument of Vulcan's devising—how else? It was told to me that the destruction must be accomplished while the target Face is being worn inside a living human head."

  "Ah."

  "You know that it is your Face, Lord of Light, that Hades in particular wishes to destroy."

  "Rather than have one of his henchmen put on the powers of Apollo and try to use them?"

  "He would much prefer, Lord, to see your Face and your pow­ers wiped out of existence."

  Jeremy nodded slowly. "A question for you, friend Circe. Since it seems you are in the mood today to provide information."

  The enchantress slightly inclined her lovely head.

  "There was a woman, known to ... to Jeremy Redthorn only by the name of Sal. She carried the Face of Apollo with her, through great dangers and suffering, and made no attempt to put it on. Though she must have known as well as anyone that wear­ing the Face of Apollo would intimately connect her to the god. Why was she ready to die rather than to achieve that connection?"

  "Fortunately, my lord has chosen to question me on a subject whereof I have some knowledge. The woman you knew as Sal chose as she did only because she was deeply convinced of her own unworthiness to share Apollo's life. The fact that she was fe­male and the god embodied in the Face was male was another reason. But that in itself would not have decided her. When hu­mans are confronted by death, a great many preferences, such as those involving sex, are easily forgotten."

  And the sex difference, Jeremy mused, hadn't mattered in the case of Carlotta and the Trickster.

  "Is it possible?" Apollo mused aloud. "Yes, I suppose it is." By the standards of the Cult of the Sun God, to which Sal had be­longed, she had been unworthy. "As I recall, only two members of the cult were considered qualified to become my avatar—and one of them is now dead. What the other is like I really have no idea. Foolish mortals!"

  "Have you never met the other?" The idea seemed to amuse Circe.

  "No."

  If only Sal were still alive, to tell him, Jeremy Redthorn, what to do now!

  But Sal was dead. And anyway, Jeremy now had a far better grasp of the relationship between gods and humans than that young woman ever had. She had been a member of a cult, a wor­shiper, and the god, the image of Apollo, she'd prayed to had been mainly a creature of her own hopes and fears.

  The real god was something else. Just what Jeremy was only beginning to find out.

  "Mortals have no monopoly on foolishness, my lord."

  "I suppose not."

  "Consider Thanatos, in his most recent avatar, whose life was so swiftly and violently terminated at my lord's hands—consider the misplaced courage that led Death to challenge Apollo face-to-face."

  That statement was at first so shocking that Jerry was more or less compelled to consider it. Doing so, he realized that he had almost entirely lost or outgrown his fear of his own—Apollo's—memory. And when he looked boldly into those vaults, he real­ized that what Circe had just implied was true. He saw how deeply the Monster of Darkness, the antithesis of sunlight, must fear the mighty Apollo—even though Hades boasted and tried energetically enough to kill him when it had the chance. And Thanatos, being so much less powerful, must have been even more afraid. .. . Professor Tamarack had nerved himself somehow to take a reckless gamble and had paid the price. When Je­remy had discovered Alexander's body, Tamarack had retreated—because terror lay in Apollo's power to inflict.

  "Then it is true that Hades fears me."

  "He is absolutely terrified. Which does not mean, of course, that he will not attack you; quite the contrary."

  Circe had one more caution to pass on: "Hades has a helmet, made long ago by Vulcan of course, that grants him invisibility. Other people ought to be able to use the same helmet if they could get their hands on it."

  Now they were coming into view, truths that Jeremy might have found for himself, weeks ago, in Apollo's memory, had he dared to dig for them. The truth was that almost every god and goddess feared and tried to steer clear of the mighty Apollo, even at times when there was no particular enmity between them. Thanatos, and Cerberus, and even powerful Hades, despite all his bluster, had to nerve themselves just to hold their ground when they came within sight of him.

  Circe had gracefully risen, in what seemed to be an indication that she meant to take her leave. She assured the Lord Apollo that he was welcome to remain on the island as long as he wanted.

  "And your companion, too, of course. The girl who is so enthusiastic about her Sandals."

  "Thank you."

  One of the thin, dark eyebrows rose. "A most human expres­sion of gratitude. One final bit of advice."

  "Yes?"

  "I strongly recommend that on leaving the Isle of Dawn the Lord Apollo should pay a return visit to the temple of Hermes, in the great swamp, before going anywhere else."

  "And why is that?"

  With her eyes closed, Circe added: "What my lord finds there will make a profound difference in what happe
ns to him over the next few days."

  "A difference for good or ill?"

  Circe avoided answering that directly. She bowed deeply—and disappeared.

  A few minutes later, when Katy returned, flushed and cheered, from her practice flight, Jerry was sitting alone on the portico of the small house, waiting for her. Feeling not at all godlike at the moment, he had spent the time in struggling with the decision of whether to tell her of the other woman's visit.

  The struggle had been brief and not very hard. "I had a visi­tor while you were gone—Circe herself."

  Katy had a hundred questions, including: "Was she as beau­tiful as you remembered?"

  "Good-looking enough, I suppose; I hardly noticed. Not my type." Apollonian wisdom had guided that reply, but whether it was truly wise enough ...

  Long before the two lovers emerged from their sanctuary, Katherine had heard Jeremy's whole story regarding the process by which there had come to be something very much out of the ordinary about him. She'd heard it the first time when her own mind was still unbalanced with terror and maltreatment and wanted to be told again. And so she was.

  If he'd saved Katherine's life down in the Cave, she'd certainly saved his by carrying him here. He felt now that he really owed her the best explanation he could manage regarding what he thought was going to happen next. Besides, he now wanted to tell her everything that was of importance to him.

  "You deserve to know all that I can tell you. The trouble is, there's so much I don't understand myself. Despite all the lan­guages I can now understand, all the powers that seem to keep coming and going in me."

  "You don't have to tell me."

  He considered that. "No, I think that's just what I have to do. I just don't know how to go about it."

  Being Katy, she didn't insist on knowing everything. But he wanted to tell her anyway. As much as possible.