Gorgon Born, page 6
“Goddess Nyx must’ve distracted the guards,” Aunt Euryale whispers when the silence grows taut.
There’s a shuffle in the dark ahead. I freeze, breath held tight in my throat. Aunt Stheno curses under her breath.
But the shuffling stops. We wait one breath, two, then Aunt Stheno pushes me forward again. Fear grips my body too tight to fight back.
On and on the darkness goes, with only the sound of our breathing for company. The sun vanishes, snuffed out by the power of this place, leaving the cavern an endless struggle of stairs and fear.
We all sigh in relief when torchlight suffuses a distant landing ahead. A single glow of light and my heart beats normally again.
Soon, the light illuminates the tips of my shoes, giving them a golden glow. Still, I hesitate just outside that circle of beckoning light on the landing.
This is too easy.
“Go,” Aunt Euryale says.
But I don’t move. I can’t move. Fear holds my feet to the ground. Traps air in my lungs. Only my heart moves, an erratic beat in my chest.
Her snakes hiss, eyes narrowed, and lunge for me when she passes. Aunt Stheno grunts, following. They warm their hands in front of the single torch.
Stop, I want to say. This is too easy.
My mouth won’t open. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth, useless like the rest of me.
Clank. Clank. Clank.
Footsteps running toward us. Yet my aunts don’t so much as flinch. So close to the crackling torch, surrounded by their own chatter, they don’t notice the noise at all.
I back away one lurching step at a time. Torchlight stretches to follow, the fire burning brighter by some unseen force. Another step. The light follows.
There’s no escape. I’m trapped in the circle of light, welcoming only minutes ago. I should warn my aunts, I should whisper for them to run. But my mouth seals shut.
Their muffled words fuse with the rushing in my ears. My knees knock together. The air becomes stagnant, choking. The scent of damp rock overwhelms my senses.
I’m panicking. I can’t panic, not now. But telling myself not to only speeds it along.
“Chloe,” Aunt Euryale says, eyes wide. Her words are distant. “Do you hear that?”
Yes.
But my mouth won’t move.
My vision wobbles. I’m trapped in my panic, in my body, and I can do nothing. Not when a woman drags herself out of the darkness to stand behind my aunts. Not when she grips them by an arm each. Not when she finally spots me and her grin turns vicious.
Calm as still water, quick as a snake.
The ghost of my mother’s hand petting my hair. I gasp for breath, chest loosening. Dash a hand across my tear-filled eyes.
Do I run? I can’t leave them behind.
The woman clomps forward on heavy boots, steps swift despite dragging each of my aunts with her. Aunt Stheno’s snakes strike, biting into the woman’s face. She doesn’t pause. The wounds heal as fast as they appear.
She’s immortal.
Her hair gleams like spilled blood in the low light. Her tunic and pants, made of hardened leather, creak with each step.
“Come on,” she says in a sultry rasp. “To the dungeons with you. If you come peacefully, I’ll consider sneaking you some extra rations.”
I stumble back. The light doesn’t follow, but it doesn’t matter. She’s seen me. She knows I’m here, just beyond the circle of light.
Her hands tighten. Bone grinds beneath her palms. Aunt Euryale whimpers.
I won’t leave them behind.
One foot at a time, I stagger forward. She doesn’t lunge forward, doesn’t grab me. She merely grins, victorious, and struts out of the light, down the tunnel venturing deeper into the earth.
I follow her clanking footsteps and force myself to breathe. My aunts are pale, strained, but they don’t glance back. Their snakes lie silent and coiled tight.
Soon, when the silence presses like an iron weight against my chest, more light shines in the distance. Closer, then closer still.
Then we’re out of the tunnel and in a wide cavern of pristine gray stone. Rushing water echoes from a turn ahead. She leads us toward it, pulling us through a throng of people shuffling toward the noise.
Their bodies are solid one blink, swirling fog the next.
Not people. Souls.
A boat waits on the river shore. Not any river; the river Styx, the path souls must traverse to reach their afterlife. And not any boat, either. The ends curl into themselves in sharp points. Rows of benches, empty, wait. The ferryman’s boat.
She leads us until I could reach out a hand and stroke the smooth wooden hull. A bridge folds from the boat, reaching to shore. She doesn’t linger, striding across the bridge with my aunts pulled after her.
My aunts press close together to avoid dragging any part of themselves in the river depths. The river Styx isn’t kind to interlopers.
I hesitate on the shore.
She settles herself on a bench, one aunt to each side, and throws me a menacing look. “Come now, prisoner, or you’ll starve in the dungeon.”
I walk across the bridge, ignoring the temptation to peek into the river. The moment I’m seated in front of the woman, she leans closer, breathing down my neck but saying nothing. I hunch my shoulders tight.
A man peels himself from the shadows at the curved ends of the boat. Dark-haired with flinty gray eyes, he nods at the souls waiting on the other side of the bridge.
They lurch across one by one, placing something in his hands, then settle on the surrounding benches. A child’s soul presses in close to my side, his body cold to the touch. I don’t dare move, not with the woman watching, but I slant the child a smile. He returns it with a gap-toothed grin.
The man leans against the side of the boat. The shadows don’t swallow him whole this time, though his pitch stained arms all but vanish in the darkness.
With each breath, I’m careful to inhale, then exhale in a steady rhythm. I imagine layering paint on a canvas; the strokes of color, one for each breath, and the finished painting one of serene calm.
And though the woman continues to breathe down my neck, my heart slows. My hands still. I think clearly again.
Soon, we stop at an island jutting from the river. A building of cream marble waits onshore, a beckoning light calling from the space where doors should sit. The second the boat stops and the bridge settles, the souls shuffle off the boat, toward the light.
The boy beside me waves once before the building swallows him. I miss his calming, cool chill immediately.
One of my aunts shuffles in her seat. I glance back. Euryale, trying to shake off the guard’s grip. But it only tightens until a crack of bone fills the silence. Grimacing, I stare ahead.
The ferryman watches, face blank. He says nothing.
With a final snick of the bridge folding back into the hull, the boat glides into movement again. Another twist, another spot of land, this time containing an onyx palace stretching far into the cavern above. But no, not the cavern.
A night sky full of stars. Nyx’s powers stretch even here.
The ferryman clears his throat, throwing a pointed look at the guard.
She sniggers. “Not here, Charrie.”
“Then where?” His voice is a monotone rumble, softer than I expected.
Thuds begin somewhere near the palace. I stare from the corner of my eyes, not daring to turn with the guard at my back. A dog lumbers toward shore.
But no, not a simple dog. No mortal dog has three heads or a body four times my height and six times as wide. Slobber dribbles from its gaping mouths. Wickedly sharp canines glint white in the torchlight.
Cerberus, another guard of Nekros.
The woman sighs, breath hot against my neck. “Tartarus.”
Cerberus stops at the edge of shore. The bridge hasn’t slotted into place on the gravel. Still, his thick, muscled legs could make the jump easily.
My heart jolts, then kicks into a swift beat. There are worse things than dungeons. How long could they could trap me in Cerberus’ gaping mouths or stomach?
The woman waves a hand toward the dog, a dismissal. “I’ve got this one. Hades has a hunk of meat set aside for you inside.”
A tongue flops out of one mouth, swiping along a tapered snout. The drool begins anew.
“A whole stag, I heard.”
One head barks.
Curling low in my seat, I tremble. But Cerberus ignores me, bounding back toward the palace, a trail of spittle left behind him.
When he’s gone inside the massive doors, the ferryman sighs. “Why Tartarus?”
His voice is pure boredom, but I sense something like concern in the tilt of his brow and the depths of his eyes.
“That’s none of your concern,” the woman says. “It’s godly business, nothing for the likes of you.”
And then, as if to soften the sting of her words, she flips a golden coin toward him. He catches it without looking away.
“You’d do well to remember who guides this boat,” he says. Still, he tucks the coin out of sight, deep in the folds of his tunic.
She laughs. “And you’d do well to remember your place, deity.”
He tilts his head. At first, I think the black twisted horns growing from his head are a trick of the shadow. But no, they’re real.
He’s a protogenoi, one of the original gods born of Chaos, like Nyx. One of only three able to shift their appearance based on Chaos.
I bring the godly lineage to the forefront of my mind. The protogenoi gods: Erebus, Nyx, and deity Charon. The very Charon who acts as ferryman for Nekros.
Why didn’t I realize sooner? I squint at him. Probably because he’s nothing like the storybooks say. No hunched back or scraggly beard. He has the fiery eyes, though I’d equate them to cooling steel.
Head still tilted, he hums. The boat moves again, away from the pitch palace and Hades waiting inside.
My aunts brought back rumors from the mainland about how Persephone no longer ventures to Athansi, and its gilded palace where her mother Demeter lives, with each turn to spring. About how she’s embraced her title as Queen of the Dead, ruling over Nekros.
And if what Nyx says is true, the sirens are her allies and spies.
I glance around, then up at the night sky looming over the realm. Tucked into where a crevice meets the sky, a bright head of red-orange hair watches. Her eyes, a glimpse of pale blue from this distance, are wide. Watching.
And at her back sit wings the same shade as her hair and speckled with brown dots, a splash of color against the indigo sky.
A siren. Nyx was right.
Chapter 7
I open my mouth. Snap it closed. What’s the point in saying anything? The woman works for Persephone and Hades. She won’t care if yet another of their allies spies on us.
Torturous minutes of absolute silence pass. The guard moves back a row, seating herself behind my aunts with a glare. And always, a glimmer of red hair or feathers from the corner of my eyes.
Before long, Aunt Stheno jostles into Aunt Euryale, unable to handle the quiet any longer. Her whisper is more of a hiss. “You got us caught.”
At least she’s not blaming me. I slump low in my seat with my head ducked. I won’t give her any reason to.
“I got us caught? It was your idea to warm our hands near that blasted torch!” Aunt Euryale whispers back.
Aunt Stheno’s snakes reawaken with an ominous slide of scales. “My idea? My idea! You walked there first.”
Charon shifts, falling back into the shadows at the curved ends of the boat. I stifle a groan, wishing I could do the same. A million times I’ve heard these ridiculous arguments. With each new one, I want to plug up my ears with wax more.
Instead of breaking them apart, and risking their ire redirected, I slouch lower in my seat. Soon I’ll be on the bottom of the boat if I keep this up. The thought brings a smirk to my lips.
Aunt Euryale squawks, overloud in the silence surrounding us. Even the river is a muted hush. “And you put your hands out first!”
“I did no such thing,” Aunt Stheno growls, forgetting to whisper. “You—”
The guard leans forward, splitting them apart by placing herself between them. “Both of you need to shut up.”
Aunt Stheno opens her mouth, brows furrowed low.
The woman bares her teeth. They gleam in the wane light. “Shut up or I’ll make you shut up. Understand?”
Knives slung low on her hips rattle in their sheaths. Her hand twitches toward one of them.
Aunt Stheno’s mouth clicks shut. Aunt Euryale ducks her head.
I straighten in my seat, keeping my head turned to the side to watch the guard.
She grins, gaze bouncing between my cowering aunts, then sits back in her seat, humming a tuneless song while leaning against the boat side.
How many times have I wanted to say the same words she said? How many times has my stare lingered on a kitchen knife, picturing the threats I could make to shut them up, just once?
A smile lingers on the corners of my mouth. Neither of my aunts notice.
But the guard shoots me a look. She tilts her head as if faced with a puzzle, stare raking over my face.
I turn forward, gulping. She’s not your friend, I remind myself. No matter how she says the things you cannot.
Her stare burns into the back of my head. I shift in place, hoping her attention flits to the ferryman in the shadows or my aunts, but no. Her eyes layer a weight over my shoulders. Soon, I’m hunched over in my seat, staring at the boat’s bottom instead of twisting in my seat to look back.
Thunk.
I jump, slipping off the bench to land on the hard planks with a thud. My head cracks back against the bench’s edge. Wetness trickles down my neck. Blood.
I blink the dizzying black from my sight. The world spins as the wound on my head threads itself back together. The woman snorts, stepping over me to stride across the bridge, and my aunts follow in her wake.
Only the ferryman and I remain on the boat. He doesn’t emerge from the shadows. The red hair always at the corner of my eye has vanished. Sighing, I stagger upright and cross the bridge.
I glance back once, when the boat is drifting away. The ferryman watches back, his eyes twin pools of molten gray. All too soon, a twist in the river Styx carries him out of sight.
Somehow, I know the gold coin the guard bribed him with will do no good. Intuition, maybe. Or how he hadn’t reveled in the gold. Hadn’t tucked it somewhere precious.
A snippet from one of our books returns: souls bring him coins for safe passage across the river Styx. He receives enough coins on his own. The guard is an idiot for thinking he needs, or wants, more.
“Welcome to Tartarus,” the guard says. She swings her arms wide, steps heavy on the barren red dirt. “It’s not much to look at, but it’s home.”
Tartarus is flat, is the first thing I think. Then, the red tinted dirt catches my eye. I walk forward and my foot sinks into not dirt, but damp clay. Another step, the earth sucking at my sandals.
Tartarus is nothing like the storybooks. No tormented souls or impenetrable gloom. The clay brightens the dim place, and the night sky above glimmers brighter here besides.
A distant scream, so faint I’m sure it’s a trick of my imagination, niggles against my eardrums. I shake my head, trying to loosen the noise, but the more I try to put it out of my mind, the more the screams gain in volume. A whole cacophony of them, shrill and shrieking, tortured.
The guard notices my grimace and snorts. “Hades keeps the wicked souls out of sight. That’s about as much interference as he runs, here.”
“Why?” I ask, squinting into the distance. There’s a dark speck on the horizon. A roiling mass of something.
She grins. Her teeth glint oddly in the starlight. “This is my mother’s domain. No king dares control the night sky itself.”
My eyes go wide. I stare, heart beating all the way into my throat. Her mother is the night sky.
No, her mother is Nyx.
Something of my revelation must show on my face.
She laughs, head thrown back. “Did you think someone truly subservient to Hades would have bribed the ferryman? Did you think a loyal guard would bring you to Tartarus?”
My aunts trade a look. Aunt Stheno straightens, head lifted, and grins. Aunt Euryale chortles under her breath.
All this time, in the tunnel then the boat, she let us believe we were going to a horrible dungeon. Let us believe we were going to Tartarus to rot with the wicked souls. And all this time, she’s working not for Hades, but for Nyx.
The day of frustration—of propelling the boat across the sea while my aunts watched on, then their constant arguing, then being caught—burns like bile in my throat. I want to swear, scream, rage. But I bite my tongue, swallowing sharp words.
I’m my mother’s daughter. I know better than to show my anger.
Stam unfurls beneath my hair, lingering just beyond the fringe where no one will see her. Waiting. Watching.
I run a hand through my hair. Stam, forced deeper into its depths, flicks her tongue against my knuckles.
Not now, I will in her direction. These are allies.
She doesn’t retreat.
The guard’s shadow contorts into a writhing mass against the red clay. She doesn’t notice, too busy smirking at my aunts. A tendril of shadow tears free from the earth. It lunges, coiling around the guard’s shoulders.
She staggers back, falling to her bottom in the clay.
The tendril twists, becoming a dark arm growing into a whole person. A whole goddess. And when the shadows stop growing, Nyx stands behind the guard, gripping her around the neck in a hold somehow both friendly and threatening.
“Eris,” Nyx rasps. “What’s this about bribing the ferryman?”
Eris, the goddess of discord and Nyx’s daughter.
“Mother,” the guard, Eris, chokes out, face drained of color.
I don’t dare move, don’t dare back away or lower my hand from my hair. Instead, I stand frozen, watching while Nyx’s hold tightens.
