The Face of Apollo Page 37

  "... but the gods ... the gods make many promises, to many humans, which they never intend to keep."

  The listener waited to hear more, but the ancient man was dead. No Face came trickling and bubbling out of the Gate­keeper's head when breath was gone. There might have been the passage of a soul, but not even Apollo could see that.

  Thirty-Three

  When the fight was over and Jeremy slung the Bow on his shoulder, he could feel how its size diminished just enough to fit him comfortably. The workshop was silent, though now a thin column of smoke ascending from a hidden chimney near its center gave evidence that it was no longer unoccupied.

  Wanting to bring its new occupant news of his victory, Jeremy started back inside. He also wanted to let Andy know that Apollo was now returning to the Mountain.

  That was where the decisive fighting was going to be, and he had to go there—if necessary, without waiting to get more Arrows.

  A golden maiden met Jeremy in the ruined, deserted-looking an­teroom, holding out in her right hand three more Arrows. Hand­ing them over with a light curtsy, she informed the Lord Apollo in her golden voice that many hours must pass before more shafts could be made. The reason given had to do with a shortage of vital materials.

  "I must talk to Andy," said Jeremy. "I need more Arrows." And Apollo pushed past the machine that made no attempt to stop him.

  "I have demolished Cerberus and killed the Gatekeeper."

  "That's fine." The Toolmaker, eyes on his task, reached for a heavy hammer. Andy's altered face of the Toolmaker was ruddy in his forge fire's light, his newly muscular torso bare and sweat­ing.

  "What are you working on?"

  "Necessary things." Andy/Vulcan appeared irritated at being distracted from his work. "Look, Jer, I'm going to be busy here for some time. I can't just make Arrows. I've got to strengthen the defenses of this place and fix myself up with some fast trans­portation—I don't have any Sandals."

  "I need more Arrows."

  "Hell yes, I'll do your Arrows, too."

  "Hades is..."

  "Then go fight him," Hephaestus growled. "I tell you I can't leave the shop just now." And he turned back to his forge. On the anvil lay a small object whose vital glow was so dazzling that even the Sun God's vision could not quite make out its true shape, but it did not appear to be another Arrow.

  Apollo took himself away, vaguely unsatisfied but afraid to pro­voke an argument with his strongest ally. The uncertainty wor­ried him, but he dared not wait around to discuss the subject. He was disturbed by the fact that he'd been given no congratula­tions on winning the skirmish, no expression of enthusiasm; it wasn't like Andy. The situation brought home the unpleasant fact that the Andy he'd come to know no longer existed.

  But Jeremy's greater worry was for Katy—partly on account of sheer physical danger and partly because he feared the changes that must inevitably have taken place in her when she put on the Face of a goddess. If only he could have followed his orig­inal plan and carried her back to her home village, instead of—but there was no use fretting about the unchangeable past.

  The bleak thought came that, in a sense, he'd killed the woman he loved. The Katy Mirandola who had grown up in the Hon­eymakers' village no longer existed, any more than did the boy named Jeremy Redthorn, who'd once had only dreams to tell him what the stars were like.

  He adjusted the straps of his Sandals and sprang into the air, headed for the Mountain again.

  His plan was not to immediately search for Kate. He calculated he'd have a much greater chance of defeating the Lord of the Un­derworld if he could somehow rejoin Lord Victor's four hun­dred lancers and persuade the troops in green and blue to accept his leadership. He supposed that would not be hard for Apollo to accomplish.

  He thought it impossible that any human being could stand against him in single combat, but leadership was a different mat­ter—not his strong suit. Nor, when he came to think about it, was it Apollo's either.

  Arnobius, having been left by default in command of the 400 lancers when his brother was snatched away, ordered an advance on the entrance to the Cave. There the remnants of the Gate­keeper's force, outnumbered about thirty to one, either fled into the surrounding woods or surrendered immediately.

  The Scholar decided to leave about a hundred men to hold the entrance. Meanwhile he meant to advance, with the remaining three hundred, toward the summit.

  "Up there ... up there at the top. That's where things will be decided."

  His harried second in command stared at him. "Sir?"

  "Up there, Major!"

  As Trickster, Katherine's first important decision was that Lord John ought to be rescued from the punishment to which her pre­decessor had consigned him and restored to his proper position of command. For one thing, his presence as a skilled and famil­iar leader ought to be good for his army. For another, she didn't want a son of the Harbor Lord to fall into Hades's or Kalakh's hands and be used as a hostage to hinder the war effort.

  Not that she approached the task of rescue with any enthusi­asm. Through the Trickster's memory Katy could recall perfectly that Lord John had been ready to take Carlotta and use her as a slave.

  Fortunately, the place where she had taken him, a stone quarry that used up a lot of slaves, was relatively nearby, not ten miles from the Mountain.

  Her borrowed chariot, behind its galloping horses whose hooves magically found purchase in the air, swooped low to scoop John up, out of a cloud of rock dust and hammering noise, under the eyes of a gaping overseer who was so aston­ished that he dropped his whip.

  Looking at the totally bewildered man she'd just dumped be­side her in the zooming chariot, Katy/Trickster told him: "Don't suppose that I have suddenly become your friend. Maybe before the day is over you'll wish that you were back there, breaking rocks."

  He appeared to be in bad shape, half-naked now and his re­maining clothes in shreds. His costly earrings of course were gone, one having been ripped right out by some impatient robber, turning the lobe into a raw and ugly fringe.

  Slowly he righted himself and got to his feet, fixing his gaze on her with an expression of haggard hope, mixed with despera­tion. "Who're you? You're not..."

  "Not Carlotta, no. Lucky for you," Katy told him, increasing their airborne speed with a flick of the reins on the white horses' backs. "But I am the Trickster, and I remember her and what happened to her. I suppose you are not a good man—but maybe not that bad. In practical terms, you should be very useful."

  Clinging to the low rail in front of him, the man beside her started to stammer through some kind of explanation, but Katherine wasn't really listening. She felt troubled by new inner doubts about her relationship with Jeremy. "The Bride of Apollo," she muttered to herself, wondering if anyone would ever call her that, and tried to laugh at the idea. There were moments when it seemed to her ridiculous that the two of them could have any kind of a future together.

  She still felt human—and then again she didn't. This new state of existence was something more. If neither of them was going to be human any longer, would marriage between them even be possible? The Trickster's memory gave reassurance on that point, as did the old stories, in which divinities frequently wedded one another and brought forth offspring.

  Driving over the spot where she had left Arnobius and the lancers, Katy observed that they had moved on to the Cave en­trance, less than a hundred yards away. Bringing her chariot to earth there, she reined its magnificent horses to a standstill. "Where is Arnobius?" she demanded of the junior officer who appeared to be now in command.

  "Gone up the hill, my-my lady," the man stammered, his eyes as wide as those of the lowliest common soldier.

  Katy/Trickster reached out a hand to assist John out of the chariot. "The military situation here will be your job," she in­formed him. "I have other business to attend to. Don't make me sorry that I brought you back." She flicked the reins, and a mo­ment later the chariot had leaped into the a
ir again.

  John ached in every bone and in a good many other places. But he was not too hurt, or too exhausted, to know what had to be done and settle down to do it.

  He was also burning to be avenged upon those who had whipped and starved him for the last four days or so. But that would have to wait.

  Meanwhile his older brother's thought and energy were being entirely consumed by the increasing nearness of the Oracle—the true Oracle, if any in the whole universe was true. With Olympus itself now practically within his reach, he would at last be granted a clear look at the nature of the gods.

  The Scholar looked around and found himself alone in the woods. The last of his troopers had somehow wandered away—but no, they were probably good soldiers, and vaguely he remembered sending them off.

  But doing what was really important here would not require soldiers.

  When Jeremy/Apollo arrived at the main entrance to the Cave, there were no ordinary pilgrims to be seen, which was hardly surprising, given the fighting in the area. Instead of pilgrims he found lancers, with Lord John newly restored to command. But he had no more than about fifty men in the immediate vicinity. The elder brother's inept orders had scattered the bulk of the force up and down the mountainside, generally out of sight and out of touch with each other, where they were engaged in inef­fective skirmishing with Lord Kalakh's troops in white and blue.

  When Apollo appeared, John turned pale, evidently with fear lest this new god had come to snatch him away again.

  Once reassured on that point, he tried to explain what had happened to him. "It was the Trickster, my Lord Apollo, who brought me back here, about an hour ago. The same goddess who snatched me away—but not the same woman, if you take my meaning."

  Jeremy's heart leaped up. At least Katy was still alive. "I do. Where is this woman now?"

  John had not the faintest idea. She'd hurried away in her char­iot again, airborne as before. But he passed on the information that Arnobius was pressing on toward the summit, determined to find Olympus.

  Jeremy moved in the same direction. Now, with the Silver Bow in hand, an advantage that Apollo's previous avatar had lacked, it was time for him to lure Hades out into a decisive combat.

  Might it really be true that at the summit of the Mountain there existed a means of destroying god Faces? Apollo had no di­rect memory of any such device or even of the possibility of one, but that, Jeremy decided, didn't rule it out. The Sun God's mem­ory was shot through with lacunae, some of them in places where vital matters ought to have been available.

  And Jeremy Redthorn was willing to risk much to destroy the Face of Hades. At least the power of destroying Faces must not be allowed to remain in Hades's grasp.

  Jeremy considered praying for help—but to whom should a god pray? Father Zeus? That name called up from memory only a shadowy, forbidding image, oddly similar to a gnarled tree. He could only hope that after dropping off Lord John Katy had managed to get herself back to the Honeymakers' village or to some other place of safety. Carlotta's fate had proved that the Trickster's powers were no match for those of Hades in a direct contest.

  Katy. The idea that he, Jeremy Redthorn, might have destroyed her was now continually preying upon his mind. It was too ter­rible to be thought about, and yet it refused to go away.

  With the power of the Sandals to aid him, Jeremy could readily enough dash off to visit Lord Victor in Pangur Ban or some­where in the field, if he had good reason to do so. He pondered whether he should do so and decided against it. Surely His Lord­ship had learned by now of the great perils his sons were in and had taken the field with his full army.

  His mind once more focused on finding Katy, Jeremy let the Sandals carry him where they would. After whirling him above the treetops for two minutes in a curving ascent, they brought him to the Scholar, who through carelessness had become sepa­rated from the last of his troops, and was climbing alone, on foot, toward the summit.

  Arnobius looked almost exhausted but content. At the sight of Apollo his face lit up, and his whole body seemed to slump in the relaxation of one who had finally achieved an almost impossible goal. He had now at last established the contact with Apollo that he had once so desperately craved.

  He gave no sign of recognizing, in the figure before him, any­thing of the peasant lad he had once enlisted as his servant. In­clining his head in an awkward kind of bow, he said, "I am the Scholar Arnobius. What is your wish, my Lord Apollo?"

  Apollo on Sandals, armed with the Silver Bow and with a fold of his white cape over his arm, was an impressive sight and a for­midable antagonist. Jeremy now conjured up the white cape whenever he wanted it.

  "I recognize you, Scholar. My wish is to defeat Hades. But first, to find out what has happened to the Trickster." When he saw how the Scholar's expression changed, he added: "She is no longer Carlotta—Carlotta is dead."

  "Ah." Obviously the man did not know what to make of that.

  Jeremy was not going to try to explain—not now. "Where is your cameloid?"

  "I had to leave the animal behind, my lord, when I decided to climb some rocks. I was hoping for a short cut to the summit." Arnobius squinted up into the clouds. "But it seems to keep ... receding from me."

  Because the Sandals had brought Jeremy to Arnobius, he thought it would be wise to retain the man in his company for a time. With Apollo's three precious new Arrows in the quiver on his back and his new Bow slung over his other shoulder—and with Arnobius now thrilled to be tagging along as his compan­ion—Jeremy allowed the Sandals to carry him on toward the top of the Mountain, as he tried to concentrate upon his wish to rejoin Katy/Trickster.

  Together god and scholar advanced along the aboveground trail, at a pace no faster than a well-conditioned human might sustain. Jeremy wondered why the Sandals were guiding him this way, rather than at the speed of the wind and through the air. Perhaps there was no hurry or approaching on foot would allow him to see something he would have missed in hurried flight.

  The winds gusted more savagely and hour after hour became more fierce; soon after sunset, a fist of icy cold clamped down. People who had come up here in summer clothing suffered from the cold.

  Other difficulties were less easily explained by events in the realm of nature. From time to time Jeremy and others observed monstrous suffering animals and birds—most of them dead creatures that had not lived long, some of the more tasteless jokes perpetrated by one or another of the Trickster's avatars.

  At this altitude the climbers encountered no one, and the trail Jeremy followed seemed never to have been much traveled, for it was narrower and less deeply worn than on the lower slopes.

  Looking out over the ocean and land from up here was quite a dizzying prospect. At night you could see the occasional little fire sparks of villages and isolated houses.

  Again Jeremy wished that Andy Ferrante could be at his side, ready to fight his enemies or give him counsel. One simple human friend would be of more comfort than a dozen divine promises ... but he saw now with cold clarity that he had killed Andy Ferrante, just as he had destroyed Kate.

  The closer Arnobius got to the crest, the more he hungered for the certain knowledge that would be available there. No more mysticism—the Mountaintop was real and solid, and whatever was there would be as real and solid as itself.

  Jeremy was unable to shake his dread that he had gone through all his various sufferings and struggles only to lose his love again, and for good.

  The trail on this side of the Mountain wandered back and forth across the middle slopes, not always for obvious reasons, some­times traveling miles to get up the hill a few hundred yards. In places it was quite difficult, but a couple of trials soon demon­strated that trying to shorten the hike by climbing off the path was going to be considerably worse.

  Now and then the Scholar had to stop for breath on this leg of his climb, and each time he expressed his wish that they were at last near the top. But, in fact, they could always see that the
re was something, in fact a good many things, still above them. And as often as not, they had stopped in a place from which it seemed impossible to climb any farther. Yet every time there was some means discoverable of going on.

  Signaling his companion with a wave indicating that he wanted to stop, Jeremy let himself sink down upon a handy rock. It was time to do some planning. He felt confident that rest had restored him, that when the need arose again he would once more have mighty powers to call upon.

  Deciduous trees, the leaves of birch and aspen already burning orange and yellow with the steady autumnal shortening of the days, had gradually given way to evergreens as the ascent con­tinued. And once a certain height was reached, trees of any kind were fewer and stunted and growing bent and twisted by the winds that almost never ceased. Jeremy's imagination trans­formed their images into those of elderly enchanted wizards, their deformed arms frozen in gestures of power that would never be completed.

  The rocks seemed to grow ever sharper and the paths and trails steeper.

  Distant mountains, some of them weirdly shaped or colored, were visible from up here, some more than a hundred miles away.

  "Lord Apollo, we approach Olympus." The man's voice was hushed, exalted.

  "I suppose we do. I have never been there before." Then Je­remy asked his companion, "How high are we above the level of the sea?"

  "Something like two miles." Here it grew very cold at night, and fires and/or tent shelters at least were necessary for human survival.

  Here, too, Apollo was at least a little closer to the sun and had brighter and less filtered light to work with, when he set out to burn or to illuminate. And so were his enemies closer, to their dis­advantage.

  And now again, as on the island of Vulcan's workshop, there was snow on the ground, only gradually being eaten away by di­rect sunlight and persisting in the shade.