Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume One (27 page)

Three pairs of jaws closed upon three Harpies, dragging them to earth. Cerberus whirled, swinging the Harpies around and around him, using them as three clubs to beat off the others who were diving toward him. The heads of the Harpies he held shattered themselves against their sisters. Hard skulls broke bones, arms, legs, rib cages, as they smashed against each other. The dog kept whirling until six broken Harpies lay moaning on the ground.

Cerberus didn't stop to study them. He knew they were dead or dying. Nor was his battle done. He was in the grip of his greatest talent. He was in a fighting fever, in an ecstacy of combat. He knew there was something else coming at him, something big. He knew it before it happened and was ready when it did.

Two giant serpents loomed in the mist. Hades had whistled them up when he saw the Harpies fall. Hades and Hecate watched in disbelief. The dog seemed to be frisking like a puppy, almost dancing on his paws as the serpents came toward him. Indeed the sight of their huge, scaly bodies had reminded him of his mother, and how as a pup he had frisked with her as she cast her coils about him.

These were giant serpents, each thirty feet long, with jaws hinged in the middle of their bodies. Each, in fact, was a living gullet lined with teeth.

They slithered toward him. They were in no hurry. Nothing ever escaped them. Again, the dog did not wait. He charged toward one of them, which opened its jaws. Cerberus leaped. He hurtled over the serpent's head, landing at its tail. Seized the tail in his bull-dog jaws, braced his feet, and began to whirl the snake like a gigantic whip. Then he cracked that whip, breaking the serpent's spine. The creature went limp. Cerberus leaped again and landed on the other serpent's back. Three heads struck. They bit through polished, leathery scales, through flesh and sinew. The creature was too long and too thick to die all at once. But its head was dead and its jaws slack before the tail stopped lashing.

Cerberus leaped off, unfatigued. His rage was quenched. He did not linger among his fallen enemies; his most important task still lay before him. He trotted off.

The smell of sulfur faded; the fog still lingered, but it had turned gray and felt cooler. Cerberus didn't know it, but he was approaching the vast, changeless place called Limbo. He walked among tall, pale, scentless flowers. He had come upon the Field of Asphodel where floated the misty forms of those who had been sent to Limbo. They were ghosts but not restless. Their fires banked, they had neither memory nor hope; their pale vitality was just enough to make them visible.

He didn't know where he was, but he knew Delia was there. He didn't see her through the fog. He couldn't smell her; he smelled only the mist. But somehow he knew she was there.

Delia was in that field, drifting in a kind of coma that was not pain, certainly not joy, but a nullity, tinged with longing. Cerberus walked slowly toward her. His six eyes fixed on her, trying to determine what she was now. Her own eyes were still green, he saw, but dulled, like pebbles taken out of the water. Her face was blurred. Her hair floated though there was no wind.

Cerberus licked her face. His tongue passed through it. He tasted only a faint salty dampness, like that of tears. A triple sob broke from him. He crouched, whimpering.

“She's dead,” said a voice.

Cerberus whirled, snarling. He saw a tall, black-robed figure holding an ebony staff topped with an enormous ruby. He knew it was Hades.

“I've been waiting for a long time to welcome you to my realm,” said Hades. “But I must say you're hardly an ideal guest. You have drastically reduced my staff: six prime Harpies and two splendid serpents, almost impossible to replace.”

“Let her go,” growled Cerberus.

“Not even a please?”

“Please let her go.”

“The dead are not returned to life,” said Hades. “That simply does not happen.”

“She wasn't ready to die. You stole her from life. You sent Argus to kill her. Now I have killed six of your Harpies and two of your splendid, irreplaceable serpents. If you do not let this child return with me, I shall harrow Hell. I shall run rampant, killing, destroying every one of your creatures. Oh, I know that your legions of demons, your tamed monsters, your echelons of Harpies will finally prevail. But is it really worth it to you to keep a little girl who will cost you so much?”

“As you say, my creatures will prevail,” said Hades.

“If you won't release her, I shall do you as much harm as I can,” said Cerberus.

“Perhaps we can strike a bargain,” said Hades. “If you serve me for a certain time, serve me well, guarding my portals, allowing no shade to escape, or living creature to enter—then, when your stint is done, I'll let the child go.”

“How long must I serve?”

“A thousand years … which in our time is not too long, not at all.”

“But she's human,” growled Cerberus. “It will seem long for her.”

“She
was
human; she's a shade now,” answered Hades. “She exists beyond time. She will be the same in a thousand years as she is now. But this discussion has gone on long enough. Do you accept, or refuse?”

“I accept,” growled Cerberus. “And you, will you keep your promise?”

“By my honor as a god, by my dignity as a king, and by the waters of the Styx—which is an unbreakable oath—I swear to you that if you serve me for a thousand years, your Delia will be restored to you alive.”

“I'll start right now,” said Cerberus. “I don't want this to take a minute more than a thousand years.”

He turned to Delia, but she had vanished among the asphodel.

16

The Three-Headed Sentinel

Cerberus kept his pledge. For the next thousand
years he served Hades, guarding the tall iron Gates of Hell, keeping the dead in and the living out. On only three occasions did he fail his duty: the first time to let a loving wife through.

She was Alcestis, a beautiful young queen, who had come to offer her own life to redeem that of her dead husband. At first Cerberus, for all her impassioned pleading, barred the way. But then at the sight of her lovely grief-wracked face and the sound of her voice throbbing with tears, he remembered his own grief at Delia's death and let her pass.

Upon the second occasion, it was a widower who trespassed. The young husband was Orpheus, the great minstrel who had invented the seven-stringed lyre and drew such ravishing melodies from it that trees would pull themselves out of the earth and hobble on their roots to follow him as he played. Wild beasts and gentle beasts would come out of the forest to stand in a circle listening, at peace with each other.

Orpheus had come to reclaim his young bride, Eurydice. “She was taken from me before we were married three days,” he told Cerberus. “Abducted and foully murdered. I shall go in there and ask Hades to return her to me. If he does, I shall sing his praises from now until the day I die, sing them so eloquently that he, the most hated god, shall become the most beloved. Let me through, good dog.”

Cerberus wanted to, but was afraid that if he did so, Hades would consider the pact broken and refuse to release Delia when the time came. All three heads snarled in warning, but gently.

Orpheus said nothing. He unslung his lyre and began to play, singing as he touched the strings. He sang not of his own grief but a happy song. A hound song, a hunting song. As he sang, Cerberus saw the iron gates vanish; they melted into a misty meadow—and happy young hounds yapping with eagerness as the hunt began. He dreamed of being such a dog, a normal dog with one head, running through the dappled shade of the forest, chasing a stag as dogs are meant to do. And as the song wove the enchanted forest about him, he pictured Delia, a young huntress, running at his side shouting with joy.

Cerberus whimpered, twitched, and fell into a deep sleep.

“Thank you,” said Orpheus, and carefully skirting the great form, passed through the Gates of Hell.

Hercules was the third one to pass the three-headed dog. His whole life was spent doing things that others could not. But how he entered Tartarus belongs to another story—to be soon told—of the monster Geryon.

S
ome say that Hades kept his promise and released Delia's spirit, which immediately started to grow a new body just like the one Argus had killed. Cerberus, of course, followed her out of Tartarus, lived with her, and guarded her until she grew up. Then he guarded her husband and her children, who were the safest children anywhere.

But others say that Hades, who lied as naturally as he breathed, never had any intention of keeping his promise, that Delia's shade remained in Limbo. Cerberus waited and waited and waited, keeping his promise, watching over the Gates of Hell—waited so diligently, so hopelessly, that his heads became specialized, were no longer three complete heads but three crania that divided the senses. The middle head had eyes but no ears or nose. The right-hand head had ears but no eyes or nose. And the head on the left had neither eyes nor ears; it was a blind snout tipped with quivering nostrils. But each had kept its huge jaws and dagger teeth.

Which tale is true? Who can know the truth about what happened so long ago? Unless, perhaps, as some say, time runs in a circle, and what has happened keeps happening.

What is certain is that the heart still dances at the sight of dogs and children, and when they play at dusk, it's hard to count heads.

THE CHIMAERA

For our bonus grandson

JESSE CLINTON

and a handsome bonus he is.

Characters

Monster

Gods

Mortals

Animals

Contents

CHAPTER I

Monster and Monarch

CHAPTER II

The Smallest Archer

CHAPTER III

The Horse-Breaker

CHAPTER IV

The Warning

CHAPTER V

The Tormented Land

CHAPTER VI

The Blind Seer

CHAPTER VII

The Mad King

CHAPTER VIII

A Gathering Doom

CHAPTER IX

Hooves of Death

CHAPTER X

Anteia

CHAPTER XI

The Hunt Begins

CHAPTER XII

Dangerous Passage

CHAPTER XIII

The Ghost Returns

CHAPTER XIV

The Winged Horse

CHAPTER XV

The Chimaera

1

Monster and Monarch

It was a clear, hot morning, but the Lycians were frozen with horror. The Chimaera had appeared in their skies and was hovering overhead. One chieftain tried to hearten his people.

“It won't land here,” he said. “It's on its way to Corinth. For monsters are sent to punish wicked kings. And who is more wicked than Melicertes?”

While he was still insisting that the monster was going elsewhere, it swooped down on the village and devoured the entire population—men, women, and children; then it proceeded to the next village and ate everyone there, but more slowly. Whereupon, it flew heavily toward the mountains, and didn't go to Corinth at all.

As for the hopeful chieftain, he had attacked the Chimaera as soon as it touched ground, struck one blow with his sword and disappeared down the smoky gullet before he had time to realize how little he knew about monsters.

Now, as the Chimaera flies eastward, we go west—to that bridge of land known as Corinth that connects the land masses of Arcadia and Boeotia. This rich kingdom was ruled by Melicertes the Malevolent, whose reputation for evil had spread to all the lands of the Middle Sea basin.