Shattered Circle

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Hyperventilating was not something I wanted to do, but damn, keeping my breathing even was nearly impossible.

Menessos had not been able to say Creepy’s true name to me, but now that I had heard it, his identity was beyond obvious. With all he could do, I should have seen it or guessed who he was.

How did I miss it?

He was carrying me into the darkness, descending deeper and deeper into the tunnel. As the pathway grew more treacherous, the light he’d thrown ahead of us faded into what would have been a tragically unhelpful dimness. Regardless, he proceeded at the same pace, as if he knew his way so well he could have made this journey in the dark.

If he was taking me where I thought he was, he probably could travel it in total darkness.

I didn’t want to come with him before, but I really, really didn’t want to now.

I weighed my options.

There would be no escaping from him. What I had was the realization of who he was and I could let him know I knew that now, or later. But where we would end up would make it obvious and it might gain me something to not be that dense.

“Would you prefer Aidon, Aidoneus, or Hades?”

His only reaction was a sly smile.

“Well?”

“In truth, I quite like Hades.”

Ahead, the light stopped before a wide-arched wooden door. When we arrived before it, he put me on my feet. As he stepped closer to the door I realized it had no knob. He stood there whispering words I didn’t understand while a 10-watt light glowed like a nimbus around his head. As he spoke the light shifted from white to violet, and the royal-colored illumination edged him with a mystical quality deserving of a god. Then the beguiling imagery faded and the door opened.

“Come.”

I hesitated only a second before leaving the darkened tunnel and stepping into a surprise.

It was a familiar, if massive, hall. Turning to glance around me, my eyes took it all in. He gestured and torches lit throughout the hall, illuminating what I was trying to see.

Towering above was the giant stone stairway, each of the thirteen steps rising five feet high and thirty feet across. Yes, even the knobless door tucked into the bottom step was familiar.

I had been here before . . . I’d been on this side of the door in a meditation and when I had passed through it, I’d arrived at Hecate’s crossroads—but that was not where Hades and I had come from.

My gaze lingered on that magical door, wondering where else it might lead. I wondered, if I ran through it, could I escape him and the shiny new bargain we’d made?

Not likely.

“This way,” Hades said.

Following him across the hall, rounding the various-sized stalagmites, I couldn’t resist looking up for the matching stalactites on the ceiling. The skyscraper-tall pillars held the ceiling aloft. It occurred to me that maybe they held up the world I knew.

We walked for twenty minutes before reaching the middle of the room, and Hades wasn’t one for small or slow strides. Here in the center there was a wider pathway running side to side, like one whole row of pillars was absent, but the ceiling above was arched and painted with tragic faces. “Where does this lead?”

“You don’t want to know,” was all he said.

Since I was panting, nearly running, to keep up with him, and the images on the ceiling were so frightening, I didn’t press the issue.

When we finally arrived at the far side, a fissure in the rock awaited us. Chilled air swirled through it, blowing my hair about as we passed through. There was dim light ahead, and the air smelled fresher.

About halfway through, the fissure widened into a proper hallway with an arched opening. It was entirely encouraging.

Outside was a small terrace with a short series of steps leading down to a white stone road splitting a forest. To the left and right the land was cluttered with the knobby trunks of thick old black poplar trees and the majestic branches of white willows as they arched over puddles. The road was built up to make significantly higher ground.

We began to walk. After several silent minutes, we passed the trees and the land rose up around us. The road ended abruptly and a field of flowers stretched before us. The breeze was light and the soft scent wafted, familiar and yet new.

“Come,” he said.

“They’re so pretty. I hate the thought of tromping on delicate flowers.”

“Then you will not.” He waved his hand as we approached and they moved—literally. They turned their dainty heads down, their lean stems spiraled to make them shorter and their leaves reached into the ground and gathered up their roots like they were little people harvesting tubers.

“What are they?” I whispered, marveling.

“Asphodel.”

Hades clasped my hand and brought me to his side and led on. The flowers did not merely part before us, they scurried out of the way—leaving the softest dirt for me to walk upon—then returned to their places and reset their roots, leaving no trace that we had passed through at all.

They had diaphanous white-gray petals so pale and thin they were like dragonfly wings. I glanced at the sky, longing to see those petals glisten in the rays of the sun . . . but the overcast clouds stretched on forever.

I heard laughter and saw movement to my left, yet the flowers did not stir there.

Curious, and a touch wary, my gaze flitted all around the meadow. I discovered many others moving near us. People who were not solid. “Who are they?”

“Lost children. Those wrongly condemned. Suicides.”

“Why are they here?”

“They linger for the flowers. This field is soothing to them. Eventually their mortal aches may wane. If they do, they will find their way beyond the petals.”

We walked for more long minutes in a dreamy silence as the breeze picked up little by little and surrounded me with an aroma: sweet like hyacinth and a touch of white lily. The fragrance hovered around me without overpowering my senses. With each breath I felt better and more at ease.

The air blew around us with more intensity and carried a chill that made me aware of how warm his hand was around mine. Even the asphodel shivered as they darted here and there. I scanned ahead and saw a mist engulfing the field.

“Hades?” I asked, my voice breathy and subdued to my own ears. This place was affecting me. That scared me, but I found it difficult to be bothered by that fear. I knew this was wrong, but I couldn’t care. “What is that fog?”

“The Vale of Mourning.”

“It’s cold.”

He drew me closer and put his arm around my shoulders. “It is brief; I will keep you warm.”

The ground beneath my feet sloped downward. Inside the mist, indistinct figures raced by, or sat near our feet, or lay on the ground screaming and pounding their fists on the earth. Their sorrowful wails were so loud I covered my ears. When the ground eased into a gentle upward incline and the white air thinned, I asked, “Why do they mourn so?”

“They loved unfortunately in life. Here, they come to know what could have been. Until their souls have made peace with that loss, they are ensnared in the Vale.”

We were in Tartarus. I knew this, but until that moment it had eluded my consciousness that I was in the land of the dead. This is only a meditation. I’m not dead.

We emerged from the Vale where the land leveled off and it was immediately warmer. I pulled away somewhat, but not fully—ahead stood several battalions of ground troops. Considering what alarmingly little knowledge my brain had stored about this place, I was at least able to identify the men ahead. “Those who died in battle?”

“Yes. Fallen warriors of whom the bards sing.”

They marched in formations that turned and broke apart as smoothly as a marching band at halftime, each group redividing until they were small units of perhaps a dozen each. Then mock skirmishes broke out. The good-natured taunting they shouted at each other made it clear these men were merely having fun.

Hades led me around the right side of the melee. Those closest took notice of our passage and ceased their scuffle to talk among themselves quietly. One was brave enough to march nearer. “Greetings, Lord Hades.”

“Greetings, Patroclus.”

“May these men and I escort you and the lady across the Plain of Judgment to the Dividing Road?”

Hades nodded.

Patroclus waved his arm. The men of his group and the one they had sparred with jogged to us and formed ranks around us as we walked. As we passed, circling back to return to the road, the other warriors on the field ceased their tumult and fell into silence.

It was an impressive fanfare, but all in all I felt terribly awkward traipsing alongside a god in my filthy socks.

In the distance were two structures close together. The foremost sat where the road we traveled converged with two others, creating a three-way crossroads, a spot sacred to Hecate. The building was a temple of some kind adjacent to an amphitheater. A crowd had gathered before it.

As we neared, my mouth hung open.

The stage of the amphitheater was sheltered by elaborate awnings. Three thrones sat center stage. It reminded me of the layout on the haven’s court stage—and that thought was joined by the realization that Menessos, his second-in-command Goliath, and I, would never hold court in the haven again.

That was both a relief and a disappointment.

But the thought could not remain. In awe of what I was seeing, my mind flitted back to the present. The three thrones ahead were occupied with figures I had not thought to see until my death.

I’m not dead.

I could guess the male on the left dressed in dark robes was Radamanthys. The center seat had to belong to Minos. His scarlet robes were like a splash of blood amongst the otherwise gray tone of the setting. Lastly, Aeacus sat on the right in white robes, holding a scepter and bearing keys upon his belt.

Before them the souls of those waiting to be judged were gathered. As I watched, they performed their duty and the souls were sent to either the left or the right. The left-hand lane was a rutted and muddy path with steep inclines and declines, and all of it was edged with spiked and jutting rocks. The right-hand route was a smooth, flower-lined trail that gently dipped only as it ran under the rearmost structure.

The left-hand path was getting far more foot traffic, but Hades guided us off the road and toward the right, which brought the other structure into full view. It was an imposing black marble palace, surrounded by thick marble walls with rounded towers at each corner sprouting up from the tops of enormous gunmetal-gray skulls. The skulls appeared to be solid steel, with the eyes and nose set with the same marble that made up the exterior of the palace and the defensive walls. The cheekbones of these skulls were so sharp, and the jaws so square, that I would have wagered they were modeled after Hades’s own features.

The skyscraping towers were each topped with a dozen black-edged silver banners flapping in the wind. The castle itself was a rectangular, multilevel structure with a crenellated roofline. Long banners like those flying from the tower tops draped either side of the main entry to the palace, and likewise, alongside the main gates of the walls.

A cry of pain resounded across the plain behind me and I turned to see a man who had stumbled in the ruts of the left-hand lane and fallen onto the dreadful rock edge. As I watched he slid onto the road and writhed in pain. No one else on that path seemed to notice him as they passed. No one stopped. “Will anyone help him?”

“He must help himself,” Hades said.

“He looks hurt. What if he can’t?”

“Then, he will lie there forever.”

I frowned. “You could help him, couldn’t you?”

“I could,” he said. “But why?”

My expression did not change.

“You are compassionate, my beauty. I admire that, but aiding him will not help him. Do you understand?”

I shook my head.

“In this place, he must travel of his own power. He must spend his time in Tartarus. He will find his way to Elysium, eventually.” After being silent for several paces, he asked, “Do you think me cruel, Persephone?”

When he said my name many of the men escorting us shot quick looks at me. Some started to whisper, and were signaled into silence by others.

“I don’t know what to think.”

He squeezed my hand tighter. “Perhaps you are thirsty from our long walk. Patroclus, fetch the lady some water.”

“From the well, my lord?”

“No,” he said with a nonchalant gesture. “From the eastern river. Its flavor is sweeter.”