The Face of Apollo Read online

  They spoke, when questioned, in golden voices, assuring the Lord Hephaestus and the Lord Apollo that there was no Silver Bow here in the workshop now, nor were there any Arrows. New weapons would have to be manufactured.

  Ferrante's eyes were open now, and he regarded the maidens with a thoughtful, proprietary air. Jeremy's left eye could already read the subtle beginnings of a tremendous transformation in the young soldier's face and body. Of course it would take him weeks, months, perhaps even years to grow into the part as Je­remy had grown into his.

  Then Ferrante suddenly clutched his right leg. "Ouch! What the hell—?"

  "What is it?" asked Jeremy—although Apollo already knew.

  "Like a goddam stabbing pain—" Within a minute the pain had abated, but Ferrante was left limping.

  Jeremy spent the next few minutes reassuring his friend about the various strangeness of the transformation. Each individual who underwent the transformation was affected differently; Katy hadn't needed nearly so much help, and he himself had mud­dled through unaided.

  "Everything looks different," Ferrante murmured.

  "Sure it does. I just hope you can see how to make the things we need."

  "Let me think a minute. Let me look around." The new avatar of Hephaestus hardly had time to catch his breath before he was required to get busy making weapons—in particular the Silver Bow and its complement of arrows.

  When Ferrante hesitated and fretted, Jeremy told him, "Don't ask me how to do things; look into your memory. You'll find more things in your mind, more plans, more schemes, than you know what to do with."

  The young man turned away, staring numbly at the pair of golden women, who looked back solemnly with yellow eyes. Slowly Andy nodded. The expression on his face was now that of an old man.

  Even as the new Hephaestus began preparing to produce a Bow, Apollo wanted some questions answered about the business of making Faces. Whether or not some previous avatar of the Ar­tisan had manufactured the current supply, Ferrante said he could find no clue in memory as to how the feat had been ac­complished. Making more god Faces wasn't going to be imme­diately possible.

  He paused in his labor, looking at Jeremy out of an altered face, speaking in an altered rumble of a voice. "Anyway, I don't see how I—how Vulcan—could have made the original batch. That would mean he somehow manufactured his own memory. In effect, that he created himself. No, I don't think so.

  "Some great mystery's involved here. I can't remember the be­ginning of Vulcan's life—if it ever had a beginning—no more than Andy Ferrante can remember Andy Ferrante being born."

  Jeremy/Apollo couldn't argue with that. "That's about how things stand with me."

  Ferrante raised his hands (did they already look bigger, with gnarled fingers? in Apollo's eye they had acquired that kind of ghostly image) to his head. "Jer, I'm not gonna dig into memory anymore. Not now. It could show me some terrible things ... if I let it. But just like you say it is with you, there are holes in my new memory. Huge gaps."

  "All right. We can't take the time now to go looking for ulti­mate answers. We'll have to do the best we can. What I need are my Bow and Arrows."

  Now the new Artisan had begun to putter about, in a way that seemed purposeful though not comprehensible to his compan­ion. As Ferrante worked, limping from bench to cabinet and back again, evidently taking an inventory of tools and materials, he tried to keep up a conversation. "Maybe I'll grow taller? Like you?"

  "I think you will."

  Andy nodded. "That's one part of the business I'll enjoy."

  Jeremy hadn't mentioned other probable changes that had popped into his mind. He was thinking that the other would doubtless grow uglier as well, which he would not find so enjoy­able. Strength and magical skill would flow into his hands—and into his eyes and brain, for measuring and planning. As well as a knowledge of all the marvelous tools with which his workshop was equipped.

  Already he had begun to issue orders to the two handmaidens who were the color of gold. They murmured obediently and started doing something in the rear of the workshop.

  Then, for a moment, Andy was only a young man again, ter­ribly out of his depth.

  Jeremy/Apollo said to him: "It's your workshop now."

  Ferrante looked round nervously, then whispered as if he didn't want the two golden women to hear him. "Until the god­dam god comes back."

  "He has."

  Ferrante started and turned quickly, first to one door and then another, as if he expected another Presence to come striding in. Only when he turned back to meet Jeremy's level gaze did the truth finally sink in. "... oh."

  Apollo was nodding at him. "Yes. Take it from me; you are now Hephaestus. There is no other."

  Hesitantly Ferrante called orders back to the two golden maidens, who had been watching him impassively: "What we've got to do now is make a Silver Bow—and the Arrows to go with it. Bring out whatever the job's going to need."

  As Ferrante's body began its slow, inevitable alteration, Vulcan's image flickered in Apollo's eye, like a tongue of flame—which reminded Apollo that on the rare occasions when the Artisan was driven to use weapons, fire was generally his choice. Apollo could remember how the Smith had once driven off Ares himself, with a mass of red-hot metal.

  And now Vulcan's new voice, not much like that of a soldier named Ferrante, was raised, chanting words, ancient names, be­yond the understanding even of Apollo: "Agni... Mulciber..."

  . . . and with a pop and a whoosh the forge fire had been lighted, a column of flame springing up from concealed depths below, radiating a glow in which red and blue were intermingled.

  The workshop was certainly equipped with marvelous tools, and to Jeremy and Apollo both it appeared they might enable the construction of anything that could be imagined. Here and there some project looked half-finished—Apollo had no idea what these were, and Vulcan's new avatar already had more to do than he could readily handle.

  The new avatar of Vulcan, looking around him, already be­coming thoroughly enmeshed in his new memories, became less communicative as he gained in understanding. The looks he shot at Jeremy/Apollo were still friendly, but more reserved.

  Also, thought Jeremy, you would have to know how to use the tools. Some of the implements scattered around on benches or visible in open cabinets looked almost ordinary, while others were very strange indeed. If you didn't know what you were doing, messing around with them could be dangerous—and even Apollo did not know. They worked by magic—or by technology so advanced as to be indistinguishable from magic.

  And then Apollo—even Apollo—was brusquely commanded to step out of the room during some phases of construction.

  "Go out now. Soon I will bring you, or send you, what you need."

  "Sure." Jeremy hesitated. He wanted to ask again about the possibility of destroying Faces but did not want to distract the new Smith from his task of Bow and Arrow making. Abruptly Jeremy turned and left, crawling out again through the little cab­inet. Over his shoulder he called back: "If I don't see you for a while, good-bye. And good luck!"

  Before exiting the building through the broken place in the foundation, he peered out cautiously through the riven rock where he and Ferrante had come in. Jeremy was not much sur­prised to note that snow had started to fall, nor did it really as­tonish him that the Enemy had arrived.

  Before deciding what to do next, Jeremy took a careful inventory of the opposition. There was Cerberus, and there a human he was able to recognize as the Gatekeeper, accompanied by about a dozen human and zombie auxiliaries, who had taken up positions behind various outcroppings of rock, from which they could observe that side of the workshop that looked the most like a front door. That seemed to be all.

  In another moment Jeremy had spied out his enemies' means of transportation, now almost concealed behind rocks—a kind of airborne chariot, pulled by winged horses that were no more like natural animals than the golden maidens were like women. As soon as he posed th
e question seriously to himself, Apollo's memory informed him that few gods were for long without some means of swift, long-range travel.

  From behind him in the inner chambers Apollo's keen ear picked out what sounded like a whoosh of bellows—of course, plenty of heat would be needed for working silver. Though how either Bow or Arrows could be fashioned of that metal was more than the Sun God could say.

  Turning his back on the enemy, he crawled deep enough into the interior again to encounter one of the maidens and informed her: "Visitors have arrived."

  By the time Apollo got back to his observation post, Cerberus had moved to a position allowing the god inside the building to get a better look at him. So had the Gatekeeper, who was now sit­ting, wrapped in furs, a little apart from his companions. Cer­berus was obviously not human, not even a human wearing some god's Face, but an artifact of the mysterious odylic process. The mechanical beast looked like nothing in the world so much as a three-headed dog, shaggy and elephant-size, though built closer to the ground than any elephant. Apollo had no important in­formation to offer on the subject of Cerberus; Jeremy concluded that the Dog, too, had been built by some earlier avatar of Vul­can.

  Thinking it over, the Sun God decided that Hades's minions must have been here to the workshop before, scouting. Perhaps they had come here many times over a period of decades or cen­turies. They'd evidently had some agency watching the place and so were informed when Apollo arrived.

  It was quite possible that on some earlier reconnaissance the villains had penetrated far enough to observe the interior ruin. That would account for their attitude of nonchalant waiting, which indicated that they didn't expect either Jeremy/Apollo, or his merely human companion, to have acquired any new arma­ment when they came out.

  In confirmation of these suspicions, the Gatekeeper now raised his voice, with surprising confidence for a mere mortal, and called out: "Are you finding a new Bow in there, apprentice god? I don't think so! We can discuss the matter further when you come out. My good pet here wants to meet you."

  Jeremy/Apollo turned, in response to a small sound behind him. Approaching from the direction of the inner workshop, crawling out through the inconspicuous cabinet, came one of the maidens, carrying his required weapons, the great Bow still unstrung. While the cabinet door was open, Jeremy could hear from inside the workshop Hephaestus/Andy hammering on his forge.

  "One Bow, three Arrows, sire," the golden woman, really no more human than Cerberus, murmured in her resonant and mel­low voice.

  Apollo accepted the gift with a few words of appreciation. His favorite weapon, when Jeremy Redthorn's eye at last got a good look at it, was as tall as he was when he set one tip on the stone floor. It appeared to be laminated with horn from some magical beast and some special metal still hot from the processes of man­ufacture. The string appeared to be metallic silver—just like those of the perfect lyre that lay also in his memory.

  The enemies were behaving restlessly outside. Someone, or something, out there hurled a rock with terrific force, so that the missile striking the workshop's outer wall shattered and splin­tered into tiny fragments. Following the booming impact, Je­remy/Apollo could hear the little fragments raining, dusting down.

  Jeremy tried to calculate whether a mere three Arrows might be sufficient to dispose of the array of foes that now confronted him. Certainly one should be enough, and more than enough, for the merely human Gatekeeper—but then Jeremy remembered the powers of the merely human Circe and no longer felt quite certain.

  The Arrows he held in his hands were just as Apollo remem­bered that they ought to be: very long, perfectly straight, and dis­tinctively feathered. The feathers, if that was truly what they were, must have come from no bird that Jeremy Redthorn's eyes had ever seen—he thought no draftsman could have drawn such linear regularity in all the fine details. These all bore the broad-bladed, barbed heads of hunting arrows—Apollo could re­member some Arrows in the past that carried quite different points from these, but he felt satisfied that these were what he needed now.

  He turned to see that the maiden had retreated. Andy/Hep­haestus had stuck his head out of the inner workshop and was regarding him.

  Jeremy held up one Arrow. "Will one of these kill him? Hades himself?"

  The answer seemed to come more from Vulcan than from Andy Ferrante: "Wouldn't bet on it. But he won't like the way it feels."

  Jeremy nodded and turned back to business. It was time to string the Bow.

  The more he looked at it, the more he was impressed. Jeremy Redthorn's eyes had never before even seen a bow anything like this one, and he would not ordinarily have imagined that he had the strength to draw it. He could feel something in his arms and shoulders change when he picked it up; his restored strength drew it smoothly.

  The Bow felt heavier than any normal wooden weapon, even heavier than a bar of silver ought to be. Jeremy estimated that normal human strength would not suffice to bend it—scarcely to lift it. But Apollo's arms, of course, were more than adequate.

  . . . as the Bow bent, it seemed to him that tremors afflicted the deep earth beneath the workshop, and from somewhere came a rip­ping sound reminding him of the noise a great tree made, moments before it went down in the wind. . . .

  And (his memory assured him) distance would offer his ene­mies no protection. Even if Apollo could not see a target, let him imagine it clearly, Far-Worker's weapon could put an arrow through it. He could even attempt to slay Hades from halfway around the world—but no, he had better deal with the immedi­ate peril first.

  The Gatekeeper and the great Dog must have been at least half-expecting him to sortie from the workshop, but the Bow and Arrows were evidently a considerable surprise. The immense dog-like three-headed machine was scarcely higher than a large normal dog but at least thrice bulkier than a cameloid. Each head was supported by an extra set of legs, and each set of jaws was filled with long, sharp teeth. Cerberus was ready to attack, whatever the odds might be, and came roaring and scrambling forward, over rocks and snow.

  Apollo's first Arrow killed one head of the Dog, striking it squarely between the wide-set yellow eyes.

  As the beast recoiled, an idea occurred to Jeremy/Apollo. Ig­noring a thin rain of missiles from the auxiliaries, he turned his aim in another direction. The second Arrow well placed into the middle of the chariot split it in half, bright wood splintering, as clean as freshly broken bone. Now Hades's creatures would be stranded here unless they could find some other means of trans­port.

  If any of them survived this fight.

  One of the Dog's still-functional heads now seemed to be try­ing to speak, but Jeremy could understand nothing that it said, because its fellow growled and roared, drowning out the words. Meanwhile the slain head hung down limply, while the extra legs beneath it were starting to lose function, threatening to bring the whole beast down.

  Now, thought Apollo, it was time to dispose of the auxiliaries, lest they cause some mischief after he had departed. Now Je­remy wished he had the support of Ferrante, the simple soldier, in this fight, but he could manage without it.

  Thanatos had not been with the war party when it arrived, but death had come among them, all the same. Even ordinary ar­rows leaped from this Bow straight to the target, striking with terrible, unnatural force, within an inch of the place the archer willed them to go. There was no need now to aim for chinks, for the missiles were driven right through armor, even a succession of armored bodies, even if the targets were not arrayed in a straight line. The flight path of the missile curved to take in a goodly number.

  The blood of the human/zombie auxiliaries was a startling red against the fresh snow. The few survivors among them scattered with, Jeremy thought, little hope of survival amid rocks and surf. Drowning or starvation ought to be the fate of any who escaped immediate slaughter.

  Jeremy's ordinary shafts had been used up now, and his single remaining Arrow was now required to finish off the monster three-headed D
og.

  The Gatekeeper had vaulted onto the creature's back, in an ef­fort either to make his escape or to control the creature and di­rect its fury against Apollo. When the third Arrow leaped from the Bow to strike the Dog, it also mortally wounded the man who was trying to ride it.

  Cerberus was finished now, and beside the huge and grotesque body the man in furs lay sprawled on his back, motionless in a pool of his own blood.

  The Gatekeeper's face looked cynical and infinitely weary. He blinked and squinted, as if trying to bring into focus the Face of Apollo bending over him.

  What had been a commanding voice came out in a thin whis­per. "Once I wanted to be you."

  Apollo did not understand that, but often the dying babbled nonsense. The god was paying attention to this death, listening carefully, withholding the healing force that might have saved. His Bow was still in his hand, though no more Arrows—or even arrows—were left in the quiver.

  The god's voice came out through Jeremy Redthorn's lips. "You are an evil man."

  The Gatekeeper breathed twice, shallowly, before he answered: "And you are still a child....Never mind. It doesn't matter." He was showing his age now, as he lay Arrow-pierced and dying, and in truth, as the watching god remembered, this man was ex­tremely old.

  There was one last thing the Gatekeeper had to say to Je­remy/Apollo: "Still a child ... I made you."

  Whatever Jeremy, or Apollo either, had expected to hear, it had not been that. "What are you talking about?"

  Three more slow and shallow breaths. "A little while ago I thought. . . that if I could only deliver . . . your Face, the Face of Apollo ... to Hades, then no one else would be able to oppose him any longer. And he, he would give to me at last..."

  "Give to you what?"