THIRTY-ONE

 

By dawn on his fourth morning in sanctuary, Jeremy had the feeling that the benign environment of the Isle of Dawn had done its work; his arm was as ready as it was going to be, and Apollo was once more ready to take over the controls of the shared body. It was time to go hunting. He knew this when he awoke from a dream in which he had seen his familiar dream companion standing tall, pointing toward the horizon.

Inwardly the most important thing to Jeremy was that from now on he had Katy at his side.

 

It was now unavoidable that Kate and Jeremy separate for a time while he went to seek the required Bow and Arrows.

"I have to go back to the Mountain. Hades will be behind, but not too far behind, the humans who are fighting for him."

Jeremy had no doubt that with the Sandals on and strength regained he could have carried his lover on his back or in his arms for almost any distance—but when he entered combat, her presence would probably be disastrous for them both. Then his overriding concern would be for her safety. He knew, without any divine guidance, that that was not the way to win a fight against an opponent of Hades's stature.

Now he could race safely down the Mountainside or up a nearly vertical cliff. It was almost as if the Sandals had their own voice: Where do you want to go? I will take you there.

It proved possible also to race like a gliding spider across the surface of a body of water, tripping over the waves or dodging them. The water had a different feeling to it than the earth when it passed beneath his flying feet.

Jeremy's plan on leaving the sanctuary had been to transport his love back to her village. He could think of no safer place for Kate to pass the time until Apollo had settled his business with the Underworld.

He was still nagged by an inward fear, not supported by any evidence, that Apollo disapproved of Katy and Jeremy's powerful attachment to her—that the god at some point would ruthlessly move to get her out of the way.

Jeremy worried, but so far nothing of the kind had taken place.

Now it was her turn to ride on his back while he carried bow and arrows in his hands. "Hold on tight—as tightly as I held to you."

 

A human could do marvels wearing the Sandals. But with a god's feet in them, the effect was transcendental. The air rushed past his face at a speed that made it difficult to breathe. Katy's arms held tight, and her face was buried in his shoulder.

"We are making a small detour."

"Why?"

"There's something I have remembered." He didn't want to tell Katy that he was following Circe's advice, in going first to visit the temple of Hermes in the swamp.

Katy wanted to arm herself, before they risked re-entering the great world, and asked his advice on how to do so, even though she had no training or experience in using weapons of any kind. He looked at her fondly. "Then carry whatever makes you feel comfortable. Anyway, there don't seem to be any arms here, except for what we brought with us."

Jeremy hoped this would be only a brief stop before he took Katy home and then went Bow hunting.

 

Carlotta had hinted at a vast treasure remaining in the temple in the swamp, and Jeremy assumed that her urging him to visit the place might have something to do with the treasure.

But as matters worked out, all thoughts of gold were promptly driven from his mind.

When Jeremy and Katy arrived at the swamp temple, he landed on the crumbling quay just outside the shadowed main entrance to the temple. Apollo's ear soon detected a faint sound from inside—they were not alone.

Cautious investigation promptly discovered Carlotta/Trickster inside one of the rooms not far from the entrance.

She was dying, and even the healing power of Apollo, or as much of it as Jeremy was able to apply, was not enough to pull her back. As the Trickster she knew this and was not afraid. But the girl Carlotta was afraid of death. She said that she had taken refuge in the temple in an effort to hide from the bad gods.

Katy went to get the dying girl a drink. Apollo continued to exert his curative powers, but at this stage they were not going to be enough. Perhaps if he had found her earlier. Jeremy said, trying not to make it a reproach, "You told me you would be safe."

"I misjudged Hades' nastiness."

Jeremy was no longer much concerned about Arnobius—but Carlotta, evidently unable to stop thinking of him, brought up the man's name and mentioned his brother, too.

What with one thing and another, she'd never got around to punishing either of them further.

Her last words were: "What bothers me now is ... I have to die, and the Trickster doesn't."

Jeremy Redthorn could appreciate the point.

 

Carlotta in death looked worn and small, her body insignificant.

Moments after her last breath, the god Face she had been wearing ejected itself from inside her head. There came a visible bubbling out of eye and ear. A flow of something clear and active that within a couple of seconds had solidified to make a small familiar shape, one-eyed and one-eared. It was sharper-featured than the Face of Apollo or Thanatos but showed the same transparency alive with mysterious movement.

Gently Jeremy lifted the strange-looking object free of the dead face and handed it to the living girl who was standing petrified beside him. The thought had crossed his mind that he ought to warn Katy to put on gloves or, if that was impractical, to wrap her hands in something before she touched the Face—but then Apollo decided that such a warning would be pointless, given what was certain to come next.

The girl stood looking down at the Face in her hands as if it was a cup of poison—as if she understood already what must be. Jeremy knew that there was no blood on it, no material trace of any of the human bodies it had inhabited down through the centuries.

When Jeremy spoke he thought that his voice was purely his own. "Katy? We have to decide what to do with this."

Her startling gray eyes looked up. " 'We'? How can I have any idea of what's best to do?"

"Because you're involved. It's not possible to destroy the thing; at least, Apollo doesn't know any way of doing it. I'm wearing one god Face now, as we all know, and this seems to mean that I can't put on another." Though even as he spoke he was trying recklessly to do that very thing, pressing the Trickster mask against his eyes, to no avail.

Kate watched, still not understanding—or not ready to admit that she understood.

Jeremy said to her: "You must wear it. In the long run that will be safest for you, and everybody else."

Long seconds passed before Kate could speak. "I? Become a goddess?"

When Jeremy was silent, she shook her head and put her hands behind her back and took a small step backward, away from him.

He said: "Apollo is telling me that that's what you should do."

"Well. How can either of us argue with the Lord Apollo?"

Suddenly Jeremy was as weary as if he had been wounded again. "I don't know if I want to argue with him, Kate. Anyway, I can't. Not in this. We can't destroy a Face; we can't hide it where it can't be found. The point is that if you don't wear the Trickster now ... someone else will eventually get his hands on it and use it. Quite likely it will be one of those men who held you prisoner in the Cave. Because they'll be looking for this Face now, looking like crazy, and no one else will be."

"Jeremy. What are you telling me I should do?"

"I—all I know is that the god in my head ought to know what he's talking about." He raised both hands to his head as if he weren't sure whether to crush his skull between them or tear it open and let the intruder out. "Damn it, Kate, what I want most is to protect you, but I don't know how!"

Kate's voice was quieter now. "What will it mean to us, Jerry, if I do wear it? What'll it mean to you and me?"

Slowly Jeremy Redthorn shook his head. "It's not going to change how I feel about you. You're never going to have to worry about that."

With a gesture like one downing a fatal cup, she raised the thing of magic in both hands and pressed it hard against her face.

In the next instant she moved staggering back a couple of steps, as if her balance had become uncertain. Jeremy was at her side in an instant, offering support. "Kate? Are you all right?"

The face she raised to him showed no sign of change—except that her expression was suddenly transformed, full of life and almost gay. "Of course I'm all right, darling! My, you didn't tell me it was going to feel as good as this." She stretched her arms and turned, this way and that. He was glad, of course, that the transformation seemed to have been easy for her—all the same, he found the very easiness of it somehow unsettling.

"You don't have to carry me any longer, Jeremy."

"How will you travel? Get anywhere?"

"Carlotta managed to get here, from the Mountain, remember? The chariot she used is still available. It's waiting out behind the temple, and I can use it now."

"Do you still want to go home?"

"Eventually I will."

"I still want you to be safe."

"The safest place for a country girl may not be the safest for a goddess. Besides, I don't know that I can sit still for very long."

Jeremy, not knowing what else to do, soon agreed that it would be a good idea for Katy/Trickster to try to get word to Lord John Lugard, or to Arnobius, that the Cave was open for occupation—and maybe even a better idea to seize control of the Castle on the heights.

Solemnly Apollo warned Katy, as she tentatively tested her new powers, to steer clear of the deep Cave and the monstrous things that now ruled there. They were not to be provoked until Apollo at last descended in his full power to root them out, kill them, or drive them deeper still.

Naturally both Jeremy and Katy wondered what had happened to Ferrante and to Arnobius.

*    *    *

Katy, getting used to wearing the Trickster's Face, giggled, finally, a surprising and uncharacteristic sound. Her eyes flashed at Jeremy with unwonted brightness. She had changed—of course she had, he told himself irritably. No one could put on a god's Face and remain the same. But nothing really important had been altered. She was still Kate—

Just as he was still Jeremy Redthorn.

 

Bidding a cheerful Katy an uncertain good-bye, Jeremy, retaining the Sandals for himself, now went looking for Ferrante.

"Will you go home soon?" he asked once more.

"Of course. After I've . . . looked around a little, got used to ... to being what I am."

 

Locating Ferrante took some searching, among the skirmishing that simmered around the Mountain's flanks. Hundreds or thousands of men belonging to the army of Lord Kalakh, their colors blue and white, had now come on the scene.

Apollo, putting to work the special powers of the Sandals, concentrated on finding the man he wanted. Within a quarter of an hour he had located him.

 

The Sandals brought the Sun God swooping down on Ferrante in the bottom of a wooded canyon on the Mountain's flank, where the sergeant had to be pulled out of a hot fight. The task was easy enough in this case for Apollo, the sight of whom was sufficient to dissolve a fierce skirmish and send half a dozen of Lord Kalakh's men scrambling in terrified flight.

Andy was aghast, relieved, and shocked all over again when he realized who had saved his life and was confronting him. The young soldier's left hand, already lacking two fingers, was dripping blood again. "Jerry? My gods, it's true! What you told me before you went into the Cave."

"True enough. I need help, a fighting man I can rely on. Are you ready for a ride?"

Andy wiped his blooded sword on the leaves of a nearby bush and slapped it firmly back into its scabbard. "Ready as I'll ever be—if that's what we need to do."

Jeremy said: "That hand looks bad. Give it here a moment."

Gingerly the other held out the mangled part. At first it was as if they were simply shaking hands, left-handed. Then Ferrante, shooting him an uncertain look, said: "We stand here holding hands like two schoolgirls."

"Don't worry; the next person I take to bed will be a schoolgirl and not you."

Ferrante looked at him sharply, then suddenly asked: "Kate?"

Jeremy only nodded. Later, he thought, would be time enough to explain what had become of Kate.

 

Apollo's powers could compress ten days or more of healing into as many seconds; at the end of that brief time the bleeding had stopped and some function had come back.

Jeremy bent over and gestured toward his own back, and Andy hopped aboard.

There followed another long airborne jaunt, over water, some of it during the hours of darkness. Dawn at altitude was spectacular. For Jeremy this was becoming almost routine, but for his passenger it was a different matter. Ferrante clung to him as tightly as a one-armed tackier in a game of runball, and his bearer, glancing back once, saw that the young soldier's eyes were closed.

Keeping his voice as calm and matter-of-fact as possible, Jeremy explained to his passenger en route that they were looking for the workshop of Hephaestus and that Apollo knew where it was—or where it used to be. The age of the memory inspired awe even as it undermined confidence; and even then, the Sun God had only glimpsed the place from outside.

Even as Jeremy talked, a new suggestion, born in Apollo's memory, came drifting up into his awareness: that if they could enter Vulcan's workshop, they might well find there yet another god Face—or even more than one. Now it became clear why he had felt he must bring Ferrante with him—if indeed another Face became available, it should be given to a trusted friend to wear, as soon as possible.

 

When Jeremy looked down and saw their destination take form out of the mist, below his jogging feet, what he beheld was nothing like the Isle of Dawn.

"We'll be down in a minute."

Ferrante growled something unintelligible.

"Are you ready to move?" Jeremy asked his passenger when they had landed and were both standing on a shelf of dark, slippery rock, only a few feet above the level of the sea. Atop the rock a large building fit the image of their goal as carried in the god's memory. "I know, we both need food and rest; but I think this cannot wait."

Ferrante at first shook his head, too much overcome to speak. At last he got out: "Give me ten minutes." He stretched and limbered his arms and legs, drew his short sword, and practiced a few cuts and thrusts.

Then Andy paused, staring at what two hours ago had been the freshly wounded remnant of a hand. The new cuts were quite solidly healed, and even the long-healed stumps of missing digits on the same hand were itching and stretching. Each remnant of a finger was longer, by half an inch, than it had been.

"In a few days you should have them back," Jeremy assured him.

 

The two men advanced on foot, Apollo in his Sandals leading the way, and circled partway round the tall building as they climbed toward it. Seabirds rose up screaming, but so far their approach had provoked no other response.

Ferrante asked, "You expect fighting?"

"I don't know what to expect, except that I'm probably going to need some kind of help." It was a shading of the truth.

"Well, I'm here; I'm ready." And spit and once more loosened his blade in its scabbard. "Seen what you can do. Less'n the sons of bitches come at us in a whole army, we oughta be able to whip their ass." He shook his head, held up his left fist, and flexed it, still marveling at the healing and restoration of his hand. "Itches like hell."

"Sorry about that."

"Have to get used to having five fingers again—but I ain't about to complain."

This glacier-bound island, in the middle of a fog-bound northern ocean, gave no sign of ever having been inhabited by humans at all. That, thought Jeremy, was probably one reason why Vulcan had chosen the site, at some distant time in the past.

The place seemed to have been sited and designed with the idea of making it approachable only by a god. Someone who could fly. When Jeremy thought about it, he knew that few of Apollo's colleagues possessed any innate powers of flight—a pair of Vulcan's Sandals, or the functional equivalent, were required. If conditions were stable for a long time, most deities would manage to get themselves so equipped.

As they were clambering around the outside, looking for some way to obtain entrance, their efforts apparently disturbed only gulls and other seabirds.

"Tell me—damn it all! Do I still call you Jerry?"

"I hope so. I'm trying to hang on to being human."

Ferrante needed a moment to think about that. "All right then, Jerry. Tell me—look into that extra memory you say you got and tell me this—did Vulcan or Hephaestus or whatever name you give him build his own workshop? If not, who built this place?"

"I've been trying to come up with that, and I don't know. Apollo doesn't know."

Now they had almost completed a full circuit of the huge building and had come back on a higher level to a position directly in front of what appeared to be its main entrance. Flock after flock of wild birds flew up screaming. Waves pounded savagely against sheer cliffs of ice, which offered the seafarer little choice of landing places. Cliffs half rock and half ice, the latter portion thunderously fragmenting into glaciers. A thin plume of natural smoke promised that the Artisan (Apollo recalled an ugly face, bad temper, heavily muscled arms and shoulders, and gnarled legs that did not quite match in size) would be well provided with handy volcanic heat to draw on as a source of power.

At places the climb was so steep and smooth that Jeremy had to give his human helper a boost up. Now they were approaching the place whose appearance from a distance had suggested it might be the front door.

And when he came to consider the walls of the workshop itself, even the Far-Worker wondered what power could have wrought metal and stone into such configurations.

Down far below, under the sea and earth alike, the senses of Apollo perceived fire—life of such intensity, and energy, as to keep dark Hades from any underground approach against this spot.

Still there was no apparent means of getting in.

There were visible doors, or what from a little distance had appeared to be doors, but with surfaces absolutely smooth and no way to get a grip to try to open them. Beating on them, even with all the strength the Lord of Light could muster, blows that would have demolished ordinary masonry, made no visible impression. At the most they only bent slightly inward and then sprang back elastically.

One wall seemed to be composed entirely of doors, so that there was no way to tell which of them might be real and which were only decorations on a solid surface.

When Apollo let out a god-voiced bellowing for Hephaestus to come out or to let them in, Ferrante grimaced and plugged his ears with his fingers. But the noise drew no response from inside.

Anxiously Jeremy/Apollo looked around for some tool or weapon to employ, but there was nothing but chunks of rock and ice.

An alternate possible entrance was suggested by a visible door, or transparent sealed window, of ice, fitted neatly into a thick wall of the same material. When the door was forcibly attacked (Apollo battering it with the hardest rock pieces he could find, then focusing upon it the full heat of the magnified sun) the body of it went melting and crumbling and sliding away, revealing what had been behind it—another door of ice, this one just a little smaller than the first. Each of the series was a few inches smaller than the one before it and, long before the progression had reached its end, too small to squeeze through. Each door frame seemed to be of adamant, impossible to enlarge.

"Dammit, there's got to be a way! Nobody builds a place like this without there's some way in!"

 

Hours passed, and darkness fell. It was fortunate that they had brought some food with them, carried in a pack on Ferrante's back as he himself had been borne on Apollo's. Apollo could wring fire out of driftwood and drifted seaweed and pile rocks for a makeshift shelter so that his merely human companion was able to pass a night of no more than ordinary discomfort, by a soldier's standards.

 

When dawn arrived with no improvement in their position, Jeremy decided to leave it up to the Sandals to find a way in for them—they, too, were a product of Vulcan's art.

Finally they gave up on the doors and sought some other means of entrance. Their attention was then caught by a raw hole, in a part of the rock that served as the building's foundation, which Apollo's strength was finally able to sufficiently enlarge, to allow them to squeeze in.

But when at last they burst inside, momentary triumph turned quickly to dismay. The sweating intruders stood reeling in a shock of bitter disappointment. All the rooms of the workshop inside lay in ruins. Several overturned workbenches and a floor littered with fragments of tools and materials—but nothing, nothing at all of any value left.

It was obvious that the place had been thoroughly plundered, long ago, so long that the seabirds were coming in to build their nests. The only practical way to gain entrance was to enlarge one of the cracks that had admitted birds. The place smelled of the sea and of ice and rust and of desertion.

The doors of cabinets and lockers stood open, and raw spots on the walls and ceilings showed where some kind of connections had been ripped free.

"Cleaned out. Everything's gone."

For Jeremy it was a sickening blow—and he could see the same reaction in Ferrante's face and feel how deeply his invisible companion shared it, too. "This means that someone else may have come here and made off with a hundred Faces. Or two hundred. But who?"

For the moment, neither Jeremy nor his companion could come up with a useful idea. They were about to leave, in near-despair, when...

"Wait a minute."

Some idea, some clue, led Jeremy/Apollo back. "Those doors, where we were first trying to get in, weren't really doors."

"True enough. So?"

"Then maybe . . ." He couldn't express his hunch clearly in words. But it led him back into the ravaged interior.

"What the hell we looking for?"

"We won't know till we find it. A hidden door. An opening. A... something."

A thorough search ensued, probing examination of all seemingly blank, unhelpful surfaces.

At last it was Apollo, aided by some subtle secret sense or the trace of an ancient memory, who found it out. At the back of the smallest, dirtiest cabinet in one of the ruined rooms, a panel remained unopened. But at the Sun God's touch it silently swung aside.

Andy, crouching beside him, swore. Apollo muttered something in an ancient language.

Before them, when they had passed through the small aperture, stretched a whole suite of undamaged rooms, larger than the decoy rooms. Here was the true workshop of Hephaestus, packed with strangeness and loaded with wonders. Inside, the air was warm and clean. Soft globes of bioluminescence filled the sealed rooms with pleasant light.

The central chamber of the suite was circular, and in its center stood a massive forge, now all unfueled and empty. When they laid hands upon its edge, it felt as cold as a rock on the bottom of the arctic sea. Going down from its center, deep into the earth, was a round black hole in which a single spider of surpassing boldness had spun a web and taken residence.