Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume One (24 page)

“I regret to inform your majesty that five more ghosts escaped last month,” announced Hecate. “And I had to send out a whole squadron of Harpies to catch them. Also, two of the Undead managed to smuggle themselves in, trying to join two who had died. This also took much time and effort before they could be found and deported. The fact is, oh king, our security is not what it should be.”

“What you tell me,” said Hades, “makes me even more determined to get that three-headed dog down here. Some time ago I asked you to give thought to this problem. Have you?”

“I have, my lord. I sent two of my best Harpies to spy upon him. And I, myself, have braved the loathsomely cheerful sunshine of the upper regions so that I might observe him personally. I believe I have arrived at a strategy for his recruitment.”

“Do you think you can stop praising yourself long enough to describe it to me?”

“My strategy is based on a reading of his character. You must understand that he is afflicted by an ailment to which gods and monsters are usually immune; he has a loving heart. This means that his wits are muffled by a kind of innocence and that, for all his strength and ferocity, he can be manipulated.”

“Speak on.”

“He has found someone to love besides his mother. A little girl whom he rescued from a shark and who has become the dearest thing in life to him. We'll use her to bend him to our design. We'll have her killed. Her shade will be brought to us; Cerberus will follow. Once he is here, we shall know how to keep him.”

“Your idea seems promising,” said Hades, “but I detect a few loopholes in the plan. Let's think it through.”

“Any strategy must profit from your wisdom, my lord.”

“If Cerberus dotes on this child, he must guard her night and day, for that is a dog's nature. Who then can possibly get close enough to her to separate her soul from her body?”

“Difficult, I grant,” said Hecate. “But not impossible.”

“You have a candidate for the job?”

Hecate whistled. Something shambled in. Hades, employer of monsters, was experienced in various forms of ugliness. But he gasped as he saw what had entered his throne room. It was huge, hunched, sidling, and covered with a flaming red pelt. Through its fur Hades saw blue things crawling, seething, glinting, as if its entire body were covered by bluebottle flies.

“I have been using him as a sentinel,” said Hecate. “But he is ready for higher tasks. His name is Argus.”

“What's crawling on him?”

“Eyes,” said Hecate. “He has a hundred of them. He sees anywhere, everywhere. He has eyes on the ends of his fingers so that he can poke them into places where others cannot see. Nothing escapes his vigil, nothing! And he's a killer, too. If you give me leave, my lord, I shall send him after the little girl.”

“Send him, send him,” muttered Hades. “Just get him out of my sight.”

Hecate waved her hand. Argus bowed and sidled out of the throne room, eyes rolling and glinting.

8

Decoy and Death

It was a sunny morning. Cerberus was sullenly prowling the beach. Delia had gone to the tidal pool, bidding him not to come, for she knew he was jealous of the attention she paid her father's animal patients.

The shadow of great wings glided over the beach; Cerberus crouched, hackles rising. He goggled in surprise at the creature hovering above him—a female figure with brass wings and a whip curled at her belt. She was tall and stern-looking, white-haired, but with a young face. She landed nearby and came striding toward him. “Greetings, Cerberus,” she said.

He had no way of knowing she was a Harpy; he didn't know there was such a thing. But he remembered something his mother had told him. “Are you one of my Gorgon aunts?” he asked.

“Why, yes,” said the Harpy, who, like all those who work for the King of Hell, had been taught to lie very smoothly. “That's who I am, an aunt. But I come on a sad errand, dear nephew. Your mother is quite ill.”

“Ill?
Her
?”

“Well, “wounded. She chose to take on a shark and octopus simultaneously, both the biggest of their kind. She was almost strangled, and lost much blood before she could dispose of them.”

“Is she dying?” asked Cerberus.

“We hope not, we hope not. But she's asking for you. You're her favorite.”

He thought of racing off to inform Delia, but he didn't want to waste a moment. “She'll know,” he thought. “She'll understand it's something important that takes me away and that I'll be back as soon as I can.”

Without further hesitation he charged into the sea and began to swim as fast as he could toward the underwater cave where he had been born.

The Harpy mounted on the air, cackling, and flew off to report to Hecate that the ruse had worked—that Cerberus had been lured away, leaving the girl unguarded.

D
elia was at the saltwater pool, feeding herbs to a seal that had been stabbed by a swordfish and was bleeding to death in the water when her father had rescued it. Glaucus had taken it home, bound its wounds, and put it on a diet of healing herbs. Now it was recovered enough to pass to Delia's care. The seal was a clever, playful animal, and Delia had grown quite fond of it. She was careful, though, not to spend too much time at the tidal pool, for she knew how jealous Cerberus could be of other animals in her care.

Delia fed the seal some more herbs and patted its sleek head. A shadow fell upon her. She thought it was one of her brothers and did not turn around. Her reckless courage had become a kind of family joke, and her big brothers were always jumping out at her, trying to scare her.

Delia reached behind her to give a pinch and touched coarse fur. She turned swiftly and found herself in the grasp of something huge, hairy, and flaming red. Most horrible of all, under its fur it was crawling with eyes. Even the paws grasping her had eyes. And they were all looking at her.

She tried to call for Cerberus. But the creature took her slender throat almost gently between two great, furred fingers, and tweaked the life out of her like someone snuffing a candle flame.

The seal flung itself at the monster, who, as calmly as a horse whisking away a fly, lifted the seal by its tail and shattered its head against a rock. Draping Delia's body over one arm, he scuttled away like a giant red crab.

Argus climbed a cliff, as Hecate had instructed, and dropped the body onto the rocks below, so that it would appear that the girl, who was always rock climbing, had been killed in an accidental fall. Then he sped toward the cave called Avernus, that would lead him back through underground chambers to Tartarus and his mistress, Hecate.

9

The Body on the Rocks

After swimming a short distance, Cerberus was astonished to meet his mother. “Mother, mother!” he cried. “Are you all again?”

“Well? Of course I am,” replied Echidne. “Why shouldn't I be?”

“I mean, are your wounds all healed?”

“What wounds?”

“Weren't you almost killed in a terrible fight with a shark and an octopus?”

“My dear child, who's been telling you these tales?”

“One of your sisters. A Gorgon.”

“What did she look like?”

“Brass wings …”

“Yes, Gorgons have those.”

“White-haired, with a rather handsome face, though cruel.”

“Handsome face? The Gorgons are all frightfully ugly. Squashed noses, bulging eyes, yellow fangs, seaweed hair. Besides, they're not in this part of the world. They're far north. They dwell upon a frozen marsh with their sister, Medusa. Whatever you saw was not a Gorgon.”

“Who is she then?” asked Cerberus. “And why was she telling me lies about you?”

“Brass wings … white hair … anything else you remember?”

“She had a whip at her belt.”

“Of course. My dear pup, it was a Harpy that came to you. One of Hecate's dreadful hellish echelon. They all serve that odious god, Hades. You can be sure of this though: she meant you no good.”

“Why would she tell me you were dying?”

“She knew, perhaps, that you would come to me as fast as you could. But why would she want you to do that? What have you been doing?”

“Guarding a little girl named Delia—whom I love,” replied Cerberus.

“Perhaps they mean her some harm?”

As soon as he heard his mother's words, Cerberus knew with dreadful certainty that they were true. Without a moment's hesitation, he turned and shot away so fast he spun a hole in the water as he went. His wake was a whirling tunnel.

When Cerberus reached the village where Glaucus dwelt, he found everyone out searching for Delia. The dog raced to the tidal pool, because that, he knew, was where Delia had been when the Harpy came to trick him. A dead seal lay there, its head smashed. How strange! Had the Harpy killed it?

Cerberus lifted his three heads and snuffed the wind. Then he whirled and rushed off. The faint spoor grew stronger as he ran. He was following the exact course that Argus had taken. He scrambled up the cliff, braced himself at the edge, and looked down. The strange scent was quite strong now. And there was something else, something he did not want to accept.

The three heads howled softly in unison. The dog scrambled down the cliff to reach the body of the child upon the rocks. His six eyes were blinded by tears. His three throats were choked with sobbing howls. He couldn't bear to look at her. In two days the gulls had done their work, and crabs had fed there too.

His grief was no soft, sad thing but a savage beast tearing at his entrails. He shivered with agony, but half-welcomed the pain because it blurs memory. But vivid images burned through—how she had looked—her scratched, ivory-brown legs, her black bell of hair, her glinting green eyes. He remembered the raucous challenge of her laugh—how it had been when she flung her slender arms about his neck.

He thought he would perish then. He wanted to. But grief turned to rage. The idea of vengeance filled his great body, making him tremble with a new rush of venomous energy. Not for nothing had he been given his strength; not for nothing such teeth, such claws, such fighting skills. He would find whoever had killed her, and rip and rend, tear flesh, crush bone. Yes … he would live till then.

Cerberus scrambled back up the cliff to where the scent was strongest, and sniffed the grass. Faint waves of odor filtered through his great desire—became lines, took on shape, flushed with color. All his senses fused. Smell became sight. Upon the visionary pan of his brain was printed the image of a red-furred, shambling thing—a creature more horrible than any he had ever seen. It would have to be that way to have done so horrible a deed.

But what was it? Who was it? Where could he find it? Cerberus ran back to Delia's hut and led her brothers to the rocks below the cliffs so that they might take her body and burn it decently upon a funeral pyre. Glaucus, he was told, had sailed off across the bay to a mountain range where he hoped to find the cave Avernus. He knew it led to the Kingdom of Death, and he wished only to follow his daughter and stay with her. He didn't want her to be lonely.

Cerberus leaped into the sea and drove another whirling tunnel back to the place where he had left his mother, hoping that she would know something about the enemy he had envisioned. He couldn't help surfacing once, and looking back. A fire burned on the headland. He knew that it was Delia's funeral pyre.

10

Conference in Hell

Hades sent for Hecate. She came to his throne room. “Well,” he said. “Has the little girl been taken?”

“Yes, your majesty,” replied Hecate.

“Is her shade where it should be?”

“Yes, your majesty.”

“When can we expect Cerberus to come for her?”

“A complication has arisen.”

“Complication?” exclaimed Hades. “You are here to solve problems, not to create new ones.”

“And I shall solve this one, my lord. But it may take a bit longer than I anticipated.”

“You'd better tell me what's happening.”

“This first part of our plan succeeded,” said Hecate. “The second part miscarried slightly. Argus managed to kill Delia, but Cerberus has not followed her, at least not yet. What he craves is vengeance. He is in the upper regions hunting for the girl's murderer.”

Hades frowned. “When he catches Argus, Cerberus will force him to tell who ordered the assassination. So, instead of gaining a loyal employee, I shall have made an implacable enemy.”

“I assure your majesty that no one I dispatch upon sensitive business will ever bear witness against us. Anyone returning from such a mission must drink of Lethe's fountain, whose waters wash away memory. And I made Argus drink a bellyful.”

“So he remembers nothing of his mission?”

“What passes for his mind, my lord, has been swept clean of the past.”

“But when Cerberus finally comes down here and learns that Argus is our employee, he will inevitably blame us for the girl's death, no matter what Argus remembers or forgets.”

“Argus is no longer here,” said Hecate. “He no longer works for us. I traded him to Hera, who has need of a hundred-eyed creature to spy upon the antics of footloose Zeus.”

“What is she giving us in return?” asked Hades.

“She has persuaded her son, Hephaestus, to make us two new instruments of torment—the Fire Flick and the Marrow Log.”

“I see …” said Hades. “And when can we expect Cerberus? I can't wait to start training that stubborn brute and, when he is well broken, to see him guarding the gates of my kingdom. One head will be cocked to keep the dead in, the other alert to keep the living out. And the middle head will always be poised for biting. How long must I wait, how long?”

“It will be soon, master, I promise you. Cerberus must be growing very weary of searching the world for someone he can't find. Yearning so for the child he loves, he will inevitably be drawn to our depths for a glimpse of her.”