IF: Gods and Monsters Page 8

  But he did show, just a few minutes later, slipping quietly into the hall and slinking over to an empty seat at the table. Poseidon had lost much of himself since the move to the desert. His strength had left him, and his dry, flaking skin now hung in bunches from his frail, hunching bones. His cheeks were deep hollows, his eyes yellowed and sickly. His hair had been drained of its color, and now only white wisps clung to the scalp under his dusty cowhide hat.

  “So you’re still alive after all,” Hera said, genuinely surprised. “I thought you’d be sucking in your last gasps on some dry bed of death by now.”

  Poseidon opened his mouth to speak, but all that came out was a rattling gasp. He signaled to Dionysus, who approached with a tall pitcher of cold water, its sides dripping with condensation. Poseidon lifted the pitcher to his lips and poured it into the dry cavern of his throat, gulping down as much as he could, spilling the rest down his chin. When the pitcher was empty, he handed it back to Dionysus and cleared his throat. “The river does me well enough,” he said quietly. He caught the drips of water trickling down his neck and rubbed them into his chest. He closed his eyes and sighed.

  “He never should have brought us here,” Hestia said, shaking her head sadly. “Look what he’s done to us all.”

  “He’s given us freedom,” the voice of Ares boomed from the entrance. The other gods turned to behold him, the blunt, mountainous god of war. His frame filled the double door completely, his broad, muscular shoulders scraping the sills on either side. He ducked his head to enter the room and stepped into the light, his legion of scars gleaming like a shower of meteors against his sun-darkened skin.

  “Freedom!” snorted Hestia. “What freedom is that, nephew?”

  “The freedom from our fate,” the warrior boomed. “It was man who confined us to Olympus; it was Zeus who led us away.”

  “So it’s freedom that Poseidon’s enjoying? Look at the poor dope…he’s drier than toasted paper!”

  “The god of the sea has lashed himself to his title like a captain to the mast of his sinking ship,” Ares said, taking his seat at the table. “Poseidon on land is a fish out of water because he refuses to evolve.” Here, the god of war turned a scarred eye on his parched uncle. “You’ve been given the freedom of the world, and you don’t know how to live outside of your prison cell.”

  “Easy for you to say, warmonger,” Apollo said cheerily, leaning back in his chair and propping his feet up on the table. “There’s no shortage of fighting in this new realm. The natives fight the newcomers, the newcomers fight themselves, both sides try to fight us, and we all fought against the reapers themselves when we decided to pitch camp in the Gulch. Your thirst for blood is being constantly quenched.”

  “I won’t—” Poseidon began, but his words were choked out by his throat, which was as dry as the desert sand beyond the meeting hall walls. Dionysus appeared with a newly filled pitcher of water, and Poseidon upended it into his mouth. When he was adequately moistened, he tried again. “I won’t leave my brother, or the rest of my family.” He stubbed one gnarled, bony finger against the tabletop. “I stay here.”

  “You won’t have to.” The gathered gods turned toward the door in unison as the twelfth and final Olympian pushed his way into the room. “Not for much longer.”

  “Nice of you to join us,” Hera frowned.

  “Relax,” Zeus said with a smile. “And here. Have some ambrosia. On the house.” He produced two of the top-shelf bottles from behind his back and passed them around the table. Everyone seemed temporarily sated by the surprising gift of liqueur from home. Everyone, that is, except Dionysus.

  “I hope you left me the right payment for those,” he said miserably. Then he added, “In the proper currency this time.”

  Zeus flashed him a wink. “Not to worry. We’ll have Hermes fly up to the mountain and snag us a few more reserves.” The poor, frazzled god of travelers swooned and fell out of his chair. “Someone pick him up,” said Zeus. “He’ll want to hear this, too.” Ares reached down with one hand, grabbed Hermes by the scruff of his neck, and hauled him back into his chair. Zeus nodded, satisfied. “All right, then. Let’s begin.

  “I know the last several eons have been difficult on some of you. Some of you have taken pretty well to our transition to life in the Old West. But others of you haven’t found it so easy. Poseidon, I know you in particular have been troubled by the climate. It’s been a time of great change for all of us, and I want you all to know that your patience is acknowledged.”

  “Acknowledged,” Demeter laughed. “How gracious.”

  But Zeus stayed his course. His mood was so fine, not even sarcasm from the goddess of the harvest could flare his temper. “You all know why we came down here. When the Romans came to power, our influence began to wane. We withered on our proverbial vine. And then, of course, came the Christian god. No sense rehashing it. What’s done is done. Mortals stopped believing in us, the people lost their faith, and our power evaporated like that.” He emphasized this with a snap of his fingers. The other gods begrudgingly nodded their agreement. They remembered all of this only too well. “So, with our potency reduced to ash, we were abandoned in the halls of Olympus, little more than husks of the mighty gods and goddesses we once were. And so I brokered us a deal with the then-lord of the Boundarylands and moved us to a place that would never threaten to remind us of our old mountain home and what we’d lost there.”

  “We’ve heard this speech already, many times,” Artemis said uneasily. Historically speaking, long speeches from Zeus almost always resulted in extreme upheaval. And she was just beginning to like her new life. “What did you really bring us here to say?”

  Zeus smiled a mischievous grin and pressed his palms together in front of his chest. “Just this; all of our long suffering is about to be redressed.”

  Another murmur arose from the table. Poseidon sat up straight in his chair, desperate to hear news of a return to more humid climes, and even Hermes perked up a little at Zeus’s proclamation.

  “And how, exactly, is that going to happen?” Hestia asked.

  “With the help of our new weapon,” Zeus grinned. “One powerful enough to wipe that sniveling Royal off the plane of imagination for once and for all.”

  The gods eyed each other uneasily. Zeus’s words were treason.

  “What is this weapon?” Ares asked. “I would hear more of it.”

  “It’s not an ‘it,’ it’s a ‘her.’ She’s a child—a real child, from the real world.”

  More gasps went up from the gods around the table. Some of them even laughed out loud.

  “A real child? That’s not possible,” Hestia said.

  “Humans can’t cross over,” Demeter agreed. “At least not this far into the Boundarylands. It’s never been done.”

  Zeus grinned, pleased to be back in control of the conversation. His eyes crackled blue lightning with excitement. “It has now. There is a child in the Boundarylands, and the Royal wants her. He wants her something fierce.”

  Apollo raised a finger from the other end of the table. “Even if there is a child in the Boundarylands, what does that have to do with us?”

  Zeus beamed and raised his own cup to the ceiling in salute. “I have her in Reaper’s Cave.”

  Now the entire table began to buzz.

  “A real girl! In our cave?”

  “That’s one serious bargaining chip.”

  “What would the Royal give to have her?”

  “What wouldn’t he give to have her?”

  “Zeus did something right for once in his useless life.”

  “Don’t give him the credit yet. There’s still plenty of time for him to blow it.”

  Among all the gods of Olympus, only Athena was hesitant to cheer. “How old is the girl?” she asked.

  Zeus shrugged. “By real world years? Maybe seven or eight
.”

  “We’re holding an eight-year-old girl prisoner? In a cave? Just so we can hand her over to the cruelest royal the realm has ever seen?”

  “We’ve done worse things,” Apollo pointed out.

  “I don’t like it,” Athena insisted. “It reflects poorly on our town.”

  Zeus shook his head, struggling mightily to retain his patience. “In the first place,” he began, “it’s not like she’s chained to the wall. Not anymore, at least. She’s free to move about the cavern.”

  “Unless she gets too close to the entrance, I imagine,” Hestia said, her motherly instincts subduing her initial excitement. “What do you have guarding her? A gorgon?”

  “The Hydra. Which won’t harm her,” he added quickly, “because she’ll keep to the recesses of the cave since her alternative is to face the Hydra. And secondly, we’re not handing her over to the Royal.”

  “We’re not?” Hermes said drowsily from the corner of the table. “Sorry, did I miss something?”

  Zeus heaved a mighty sigh and rubbed at his temples. His children could be so shortsighted. “The girl is our leverage. If we give her up, we lose our hold on the Royal.”

  “Besides that,” Aphrodite chimed in with a wicked grin, “Zeus, Hercules, and I paid a visit to the Pinch a few days ago. We weren’t extended the warmest of welcomes. I wouldn’t give the Royal anything he couldn’t take by force. And I’m guessing he couldn’t take much.”

  “You visited the Pinch? Without an official envoy?” Athena asked, alarmed.

  “Relax. It was unofficial business. We went to plead a case for trade.”

  “Jewels from our mine for fresh stores of water,” Aphrodite explained, examining her long, red fingernails.

  “Enough to keep us in drinking supply for another age or so, and to keep Poseidon from cracking into pieces.”

  “What did he say?” Poseidon croaked, his voice taking on just the slightest tinge of hope. Zeus turned to his brother and hesitated uneasily.

  “He said no.”

  “But he took the jewels,” Aphrodite added.

  “And he’ll send for more. When he does, we’ll reveal the girl.”

  “And when his cronies take her?” asked Demeter.

  “They won’t. The Hydra will see to that.”

  “So, I’m sorry,” muttered Hephaestus, straightening up in his chair, “but what’s the point in all this? We have the girl; we tease him with the girl; he asks for the girl, and we say no. What’s the point?”

  “The point is, we agree to hand her over only to the Royal himself. We’ll find a passable excuse, she’s too valuable to be left with lackeys, we want his personal assurances we’ll be well compensated, something. And when he comes—”

  Hestia interrupted with a snort. “He’ll never come out here,” she said, crossing her arms. “Not so far from his throne.”

  “He’ll come,” Zeus insisted. “The girl is that important.”

  “What then?” asked Ares.

  Zeus could practically see the lust for war welling up in his son’s eyes. “Then we dispatch of him. Once we have word that the Royal himself is on his way, Hermes and Apollo will take a small platoon of creatures, gorgons, harpies, minotaurs, maybe, enough to take the Pinch but not so many that we’ll raise a red flag by crossing the border. Ares, you’ll work out the details. The rest of us will wait here for the royal envoy. The Hydra will do its work; what it doesn’t finish, the rest of us will clean up.” Zeus’ fingertips sparked with lightning. “Though I think I’ll save the Royal for myself.”

  “Not bad, Father…not bad,” Apollo mused, nodding his head slowly. “Snuff the Royal, take the Pinch, and just like that, we’re back to our ruling ways.”

  “This is going to set inter-imaginary relations back eons,” Athena warned.

  “So be it,” Zeus growled.

  “He’ll send armies, you know,” said Ares. “Before he comes himself. He’ll send armies. Maybe legions. He’ll exhaust his power of range before he takes the journey himself.”

  “I expect he will. That’s why we have you.” Indeed, the god of war’s mind was already hard at work striking out strategies and formations, plotting plans and secondary assaults and categorizing each member of the Greek royal family by expendability for positioning on the lines.

  “We will win,” Ares calculated with a sly smile.

  “I expect we will,” agreed Zeus.

  “What do we do now?” asked Apollo.

  Zeus shrugged. “We wait. We wait for the Pinch to come to us.”

  They drank off the rest of the ambrosia, and the meeting of the gods was adjourned.

  An Interlude

  The Royal hasn’t visited the dungeon in some time. A smile creeps into his lips as his hands pass along the familiar stones set into the wall. Even in the dark, he knows every nook and cranny of this dank, cold vault. In an earlier time, this was his solace, the chamber where he came to think, to rediscover his calm. The moans of the prisoners, the screams from the torture chambers, they had soothed him more completely than Brahms or Mozart ever could.

  But, like all things, the dungeon became stale with time. What was once comforting and playful grew dull and colorless. He used to feel such pleasure, watching political prisoners of the realm succumb to the breaking wheel. It used to be a delight to keep the pins of the iron maiden sharp. But before long, there was not a single torture device in the collective universes of imagination that could excite him, and the details of managing an ever-expanding kingdom became great and consuming of his time, so gradually, his visits to the prison subsided. It has been perhaps two whole ages since he last made these rounds.

  But there is a new prisoner who interests him. So he has made a glad return.

  This new prisoner is in a cell near the door, the quarters nearest the torture chambers. The Royal wishes him to be constantly reminded of the pain and terror that await him if the monarch so much as tips the painsman a look. He has not harmed the prisoner, not yet. He will savor this one. He will draw it out.

  “How are you enjoying your visit to the Pinch?” the Royal asks, approaching the bars. The creature raises his eyes, expecting the jailer, and seeing the king instead. He scrabbles back to the far corner of the cell.

  The prisoner is a singular being. He is wrong in shape, somehow, though in a way that escapes exact definition. Perhaps it is something in his height; perhaps not.

  The Royal grips the bars with both hands and leans his head against the cool metal. “I understand you had a short and disappointing stint with humans,” he says.

  “I don’t know what you heard,” the prisoner cries, his voice strained with fear. “I’m not in league with the real worlders.”

  “I didn’t say that,” the Royal says. He savors a short pause before adding, “Guilty conscience?” The prisoner bursts into tears. He is a grown man, as self-possessed as any other man, and yet he sobs like a child. This is not unusual, in the Royal’s experience. He has worked diligently to make sure the subjects of the land fear him. “It is not merely your involvement with the humans that has resulted in your incarceration, but your inability to keep them from penetrating the realm. How much of the blame lies with you…well, that’s what we intend to learn.” The monarch lifts a short, metal hook from its nail on the wall, a small but effective torture device. He is about to explain the mechanics of the tool when he senses an urgency in the castle above. “I’m needed upstairs,” he says curtly, put off by the interruption. “Think on how you might present yourself when next we meet.” He turns and exits the dungeon as the wailing prisoner cries and cries and cries.

  The Royal is ill-surprised to find Roark rushing toward him when he returns to the throne room, a piece of paper flapping in his hand. “A message from the dentist,” the servant says.

  The Royal snatches the paper from Roark’s ha
nds and reads the careful script: I need carte blanche.

  His mouth presses into a firm line. He beckons to Roark for the writing plume, which the servant provides without hesitation. The Royal writes his reply on the same paper, and the dentist’s words disappear before the tip of his pen, replaced with the Royal’s hasty scrawl: No one gets a blank check.

  He waits impatiently for a reply, but he doesn’t need to wait long. In just moments, his words are replaced with the dentist’s script: I do.

  The royal smolders at this impudence, but he will let the hand play out. The dentist is his greatest weapon against the threat of the real world children. For now.

  Explain, he writes.

  Your tactics are useless here, the dentist replies. Fine in other situations, I imagine. Effective for stopping any number of typical threats. But these children are unlike anything you’ve faced before. They don’t hold to our rules. And they’ve got one cunning son of a gun showing them the way.

  The Royal considers this carefully. He gives away nothing by letting the dentist think he has a measure of control. Nothing but pride. Pride is important, but it can be regained. And so he responds:

  You believe you can stop them?

  The Royal can practically hear the sharp scratch of the dentist’s pen:

  I know I can.

  A few seconds pass, and the script disappears and is replaced with a new message from the doctor. These children are the key to my life’s work. And I am not a young man.

  The Royal closes his eyes to think. The dentist has great intelligence and drive, it is true. Perhaps too much of both. But these real world children should be put down as soon as possible, and it would not do for the Royal to venture to the outer Boundary, where he is weak. Absolute sovereignty hangs by a thread, and he cannot chance defeat at the hands of children. The realm would be lost to him.

  You have my permission to do what needs to be done, within reason, he writes. Then he adds, My reason. Not yours.