Hero for Hire (4 page)

I confess I crawled back to the shelter of the woods. Instantly, the pain passed. I stood bent over under one great tree, hands on my thighs as I fought for breath and for control of my galloping heart. A passing breeze rattled the leaves over my head. A whisper seemed to speak my name and to say, "You should not stay here...."

I was alone but stood in a landscape where any tree might hide a spirit. "I must go on," I said aloud.

"Fool...."

Delicately, two branches dipped as though to shelter me. I looked up into the shifting play of light through the golden-green leaves. "What lies beyond those temple doors? What have you seen?"

"Death..."

As the dryad whispered to me, I could feel the whole tree shiver with something that was not the breeze. What could frighten a tree-spirit so much?

Looking about me, I saw that the grass stopped growing right at the point where I'd felt the scourging hatred rip at my body and mind. It was as if a line had been drawn with acid. What could hate even the grass?

This time, teeth gritted, I ran straight toward the temple doors, feeling as though I dodged a flight of arrows. I was doing well, head up and lungs working, until I tripped and landed sprawling in the dirt.

The hatred flattened me at once as if a boulder had tumbled off a cliff, crushing me to the earth. My tongue clove to the roof of my mouth and began to swell. The swelling spread to my throat, cutting off my air. I felt a rope tightening, though there was nothing there. I forced my hand down lest I strangle myself.

I could not go back; my pride would not let me flee a second time. I had either to go on or to die here in the dirt like an exhausted animal. I fought with the part of me that wanted to turn back, ordering it to keep faith as though it were a cowardly soldier deserting in the heat of conflict. I had faced men and monsters; a mere feeling had no power over me. I would not be so constrained.

I got painfully onto one knee, straightened my legs, and rose up, feeling the implacable hatred burning on my skin as though I passed through an acid-cloud from the heart of a volcano. In a crouch, my breath coming short, tears and sweat mingling, I pressed on slowly, step by dragging step. The malice seemed to increase with each strike of my boot until I felt as though I were pushing a huge rock before me. A moment's inattention and it would roll back to crush me into paste.

I looked up to find my foot on the first white marble step of the temple entrance. I drew my first full breath since leaving the woods. The horrible malignity that had tortured me had ebbed. I could not tell if it was gone or merely withdrawn for the moment.

I laid one hand against the temple door and the other on my sword.

Inside, all was dark and cool. My bursting lungs eased, though a faint scent of rot seemed carried on a chilling breeze over the floors. Tall columns lost their capitals in the darkness of the timbered roof. A lamp burned in the peristyle, its many-paneled red glass sides doing nothing to illuminate the space. A basin of water stood to one side. I staggered to it, wishing to test whether my throat really had grown closed. Perhaps it was just the red light, but it looked as if the basin were filled with blood.

I decided I wasn’t that thirsty, though a moment before I would have sold my mother for a drink.

Directly in my ear, a woman laughed softly. I turned, sword out. No one was there, though I had distinctly felt breath tickling my skin.

Anger strengthened me. No matter how sick I felt, I wasn’t about to let invisible women laugh at me.

I could see the altar now, the massive statue of the goddess gleaming twenty feet tall, her face far above the reach of mortal hands. Only prayers could reach her. Floating veils of smoke obscured her face, thickening into blankets exactly wherever I wanted to look. There seemed to be something not quite right about the goddess, especially the shape of her head.

I slashed with my sword in frustration. The veils dropped, falling to the floor in pieces like solidified grease on a pot of cold soup. It reliquefied as it hit the stone floor. A nauseating smell arose, like a garbage pile on a steamy summer's day, worsening to gag-level when I inadvertently stepped in a puddle.

I strode up to the altar, imagining that here, if anywhere, there’d be sanctuary. Forever fleet and young, Artemis had little to do with men except in her role as goddess of the hunt. I’d meant to implore her aid in my primary quest but my new mandate had taken me far beyond that purely selfish pursuit. She might have helped me hunt a harpy but now I had men to hunt as well.

“Oh, virgin inviolable...guide of arrows, huntress, Artemis....”

The laughter came again, muffled as though by a hand. It came from the goddess herself, far above my head.

“Come nearer, insignificant creature.” The voice was harsh with a hiss in it as of snakes.

Torches flared into life and light. I leaned back to look upwards and yet more upwards.

The head of the statue had been hacked off. In its place, joined to the marble neck, was block of roughly carved black wood. Three hideous faces, with mouths obscenely open and starting eyes, had been carved into the sides, blending one into another. By some sorcery, the head slowly revolved upon the neck, showing each grimacing horror in turn.

I am not particularly religious but I know Blasphemy when I see it.

Then all three pairs of eyes snapped open their lids and living eyes focused down on me. The malice I’d met outside was like a tossed bouquet of spring flowers in comparison. The intensity of their malevolence could have flayed the skin right off me. The chuckle came again, harsh but sweeter, like poison cloaked in honey.

"Who are you?" I demanded, only my voice came out in treble squeak.

"I am She Who Opens the Gate."

"What gate?"

"The Gate between your world and the dark on the other side. Look upon me. I judge all...and will judge you."

For a long, long time I stared up into those red eyes, eyes both frigid and burning, that looked into me without pity or even justice. I felt she hated me and all human things with a hatred all the more implacable for its eternal coldness that no feeling or thought could ever touch. I thought I bore it for an hour, but it was hardly thirty beats of a thundering heart before I couldn't bear it another instant.

I held up the flat of my sword like a shield between my gaze and that hideousness. But my curiosity came back, stronger in me than fear. I peered over the edge. The cruelty that had pinned me down was withdrawn for a moment. “I had high hopes of you, for you are reputed to be brave. I see now that you are a child afraid of a nightmare,” the harsh voice said with infinite contempt. “Die in one now.”

I took a fighting position, crouching to minimize vulnerable areas, knees bent, feet planted firmly but lightly for balance and mobility.

Nothing happened, except the foul smell grew stronger.

After a moment more when nothing happened, I stood up and went to look for the entrance to the interior rooms. Her mocking laughter followed me.

As I thought, the door was behind the statue for ease of access by the priestesses. I wondered where they were and was afraid I knew. No true daughter of the Moon would have permitted such a travesty to stand in her lady’s place while breath still moved her body.

Just as I put my hand on the door, I heard a knocking. At first, I thought it came from the door before me but quickly realized someone was knocking on the entrance door to the temple. Thinking perhaps Phandros or Temas had followed me, I called out to them, warning them not to enter.

The door opened and in walked The Dead.

The King was first as the most recent to die. He held one hand, nails already blackening, to the makeshift bandage around his throat and moaned as he came on.

Following him, two men in dusty armor, dried blood crusting on their necks and faces. Their eyes were rolled up so only the whites showed but they shuffled toward me as if they could still see.

The next, of many, was a child, a naked baby boy, hardly able to toddle. His stomach was grossly distended. He trailed one hand along the temple wall for balance. Where his tiny fingers dragged the stone crumbled away.

The door behind the statue was false sanctuary. For all I knew, it was locked and I didn’t want to be pounding on it when those questing hands touched me.

Sheathing my longer sword and clenching my short one in my teeth, I turned to the statue and began to climb. My knee on the stone thigh, a quick slightly blasphemous grasp of firm marble breasts, and I was up, standing on smooth white shoulders. I hoped Artemis wouldn’t mind; as I said, she’s been known to be touchy about such things.

The horrible rotating head was between my thighs. I gripped it about the ears with my knees, stopping the movement though I felt the unseen force resisting my strength, trying still to turn. “They’re coming for you, Thracian,” it said, laughing again. The voice echoed weirdly, coming from three mouths at once.

I glanced down at the dead ones, milling about, moaning as they touched each other, ripping away putrid flesh. Several women, still pregnant with the infants that had killed them, were clawing at the base of the statue itself. I felt it rock as one took a stronger swipe at the pedestal. One way or another, it was coming down.

With my sword now in one hand and my dagger in the other, I began to scissor away at the joining of wood and stone. The power that had called out the dead was centered here. Destroy it and, with luck, they’d fall quiet again.

A good theory but my progress was slow. I tried not to look down a second time. I was already working as hard as I could. But a gurgle of happy laughter in that setting so surprised me that I couldn’t help but glance down.

One of the women had snatched up the gray-skinned little boy and was cradling him to her bosom. She was rocking back and forth, crooning something that might have once been a lullaby. He was pressing a gentle hand to her sunken cheek, leaving no wounds. They had forgotten about everything else. Something infinitely sweet had survived not only the grave but even the dark power that animated their bodies.

The head between my knees shuddered and ceased its struggle to turn. Shaking off my amazement, I struck a blow and chips began to fly from the statue instead of flakes. Though the eyes fluttered and the mouths gaped, the monstrosity was at least silent now.

None of the other walking dead had paid any attention to the touching reunion. They continued to claw at the statue, though their strength seemed to have grown less.

Hearing a hiss, I glanced down below me. One of the dead guards had dug his fingers deep into the statue’s backside and was attempting to pull himself up to me. I kicked him in the head and he tumbled down, knocking over both former king and comrade.

My arms were aching and the sweat kept dripping into my eyes. The dead were causing the statue to totter but they had no idea of teamwork. The women scrabbled at the front, trying to reach me but unable to do more than dig at the plinth, the king and his men were doing better but unable to come at me more than one at a time. I couldn’t be sure that I was doing any more damage than they were. I could, however, feel confident that if I were to fall, my life would be done one way or another. They must not have had any such comfort.

A new fear reinforced all the others. Would I die? Or would I lurch to my feet and wander, blind, grasping fingers destroying everything they touched? I started to hack with greater violence at the neck, grunting with every blow, trying to achieve some kind of proper sword position so that I could cut even more deeply. There wasn't really enough room to get a good swing going.

More of the dead had come in, old men, a maiden or two, more children, some things hardly recognizable as once human dragging themselves over the threshold. The smell was growing worse by the moment, nastier than a battlefield on the third day of a heat-wave.

The ceiling was just above the statue. I braced myself, arms above my head, and began kicking at the nearest face. Again and again I hit the same spot, hoping I’d hacked out enough of the neck to make the head topple over like a half-cut tree in the woods.

Finally, though I jarred loose several of my teeth, I put all my strength in such a violent kick that the thing flew off, ricocheting from one pillar to the next, bowling over some corpses and splattering two or three others into fragments. The instant it rolled to a stop, however, out of sight behind a curtain, all the walking Dead fell down, empty of all will, all life, once again.

My troubles weren’t over. The headless statue began to lean forward inexorably. I had nothing to hold onto; besides, being left hanging twenty-five feet up in the air wasn’t an attractive prospect.

I dropped, sliding down the goddess’ marble back to wrap my arms desperately around the remains of her slender throat. I shut my eyes tight in anticipation of a bone-shattering fall.

The echoes of the crash banged around from one side of the temple to the other. Dust, more dust than one would have thought possible, flew up and sifted down. Coughing, I sat up and slid off the statue. It had broken in several pieces, arms off, legs snapped at the ankles. Luckily, I’d been on the most solid bit.

I looked around at the Dead, pitiable, huddled things now that the will that had driven them to attempt my destruction was withdrawn. I couldn’t see the mother and child whose coming together had altered the spell.

I’d always heard that death severed all bonds, that one died and drank from the River Lethe, causing one to forget all mortal ties. Could some loves survive even that? I put aside philosophy for the moment. She Who Opened the Gates had perverted these honorable dead, twisting them to an evil cause.

I strode over to where the ghastly head had rolled. I wanted to examine it closely, to understand who had made it and what it was supposed to be. It did not belong in any sacred place, let alone one dedicated to the purest of all the Olympians.

Acid ate black holes into the edge of the curtain. I pushed the fabric back gingerly, rattling on its rod, and saw a bubbling pool of gleaming black slime, emitting small popping noises as it seethed. The last eye was just melting into the viscous mess as I watched. Then, as though it had some rudimentary life of its own, the black mass slid away into a crack in the floor and was gone, leaving behind no trace beyond a foul smell like a latrine used by a large army suffering a mass outbreak of bad hummus poisoning.