The Haunting of Guaritori Diolco, Part 29
Walking in Another’s Memories
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“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
Hecate was practically screaming, but my migraine was intense enough that it drew more of my attention than she did.
“It’s unusual enough to maintain two souls in the same body. Now you have three in yours. You’ve put yourself in danger. Not to mention Zeus, who may well die if you do. Or Hermes, who cannot be restored without you.”
“We need Iskios,” I said so quietly that I imagined Hecate could barely hear me. “If you want to help avoid the problems you’ve described, save Iskios’s body.”
Hecate looked as if she would rather have gone on screaming at me, but she was too much of a realist to ignore the fact that what I had said was true. Forgetting about the chains for the moment, she hurried over and started doing what she could for Iskios. Healing wasn’t one of her areas of expertise, but she was a versatile caster, and anyway, she knew enough about shadow to be as much help to someone like Iskios as anyone could.
“Just let me die.”
Those words chilled me far more than Iskios’s usual threats of violence. He appeared to have lost all hope, increasing the odds that he’d perish. We needed him, but even if that wasn’t true, my past life self had contributed to his woeful condition, even though the contribution was indirect. So far, Iskios hadn’t had the chance at a decent life—and he deserved one.
“I will make things better for you. I don’t know how, but I will.”
For once, Iskios seemed to be at a loss for words.
I felt the Philosopher’s Stone shifting more power into sustaining my body, a move that suggested the additional soul was putting some strain on me. I shouldn’t have been surprised by that. I’d seen Iskios’s power, and it was impressive. He wasn’t as strong as Zeus, by any means, but he could probably overpower some of the lesser Olympians, and he kept struggling to break loose from my body in much the same way he had struggled to free himself from his own.
Hecate continued to labor over Iskios’s body, but she wasn’t making as much progress as I would have liked. She had stopped the bleeding, and his heart continued to beat, though it sounded as if it could fail at any moment.
No doubt sensing that something was wrong, Hestia, Hera, Poseidon, and Hades entered the makeshift cell. Demeter and Persephone must have been too busy sustaining Zeus’s nearly dead body to join them.
“What is the meaning of this?” asked Poseidon, waving his trident to encompass the entire room.
“Iskios tried to kill himself,” replied Hecate, her anger simmering in every syllable. “Garth stupidly took his soul into an already overloaded body in an attempt to save him. I’ve been trying to keep Iskios’s own body from dying.”
Hades waved his left arm, and I could no longer detect Iskios’s heartbeat.
“What have you done?” I asked, trying not to sound as outraged as I was.
“I have put him in what you mortals might call stasis,” replied the king of the Underworld. “That will give us more time to repair his body—or give someone time, anyway. I sense the presence of elder powers.”
“Eros and Nyx have come to our assistance. They have agreed to attempt the recreation of Iskios in a stronger body.”
“Why would they do such a thing?” asked Poseidon. “He is our enemy, after all.”
“According to Nyx’s prophecy, an enemy of whom we need to make a friend,” replied Hades. He looked at me with cold but curious eyes. “This was your idea, I suppose. Hecate is too full of wrath for it to have been hers. But can it work?”
“I don’t know,” I said, knowing there was little point in lying to someone like Hades. “But I couldn’t think of anything else that would leave us a chance of fulfilling the prophecy.”
“Iskios’s suicide attempt has made our job even more difficult,” said Nyx. The surprised expressions of the others gave me no doubt that she was talking to all of us. “We must now repair damage before we can even begin to change the body’s capabilities. That means drawing on the forces of creation even harder, causing a greater risk that the entire plane will collapse.”
“Perhaps creating a body from scratch would be easier,” suggested Hestia.
“The risk is just as great,” replied Eros.
“We cannot allow Iskios to die, yet we cannot easily do anything that will incline him to join us—which is the only reason for keeping him alive,” sand Hades.
I wanted to argue that point, but I saved my breath. Of those present, only Hestia was likely to agree with me, and I couldn’t be sure of even that much support.
“I have a solution to offer.”
I looked over in disbelief to see Medea standing in the doorway. She’d changed from her ostentatious court outfit into a plain black robe, though she made even that look elegant. I shouldn’t have been so surprised, though. I knew she was going to be invited to provide a little extra magic. I just didn’t realize someone had already invited and admitted her.
“By all means, tell us what it is,” said Hecate, who looked as if she was the only one besides me who was even remotely glad to see Medea. Poseidon frowned at her, and Hades looked even colder than normal. Hera looked as if she would rather rip Medea’s heart out of her chest than listen to her.
“How do you even know what we’re talking about?” asked Poseidon, pointing his trident in her direction.
“I can hear Nyx and Eros talking, just as you can,” she replied, meeting his skeptical glance. “And Demeter filled me in on the past developments right after she invited me to come.”
“What do you propose?” asked Hestia, her face neutral.
“We need Iskios, but he can’t stay in Garth’s body indefinitely. We want to give him an incentive to join us, but if Eros and Nyx engage in too much creative activity, this already fragile plane might disintegrate. If we let Iskios die or if he remains hostile to us, however, we cannot fulfill all the prophecies whose conditions we must meet to succeed.”
“All of this, we already knew,” said Poseidon, his voice sounding stormy.
Pretending not to notice the hostility, Medea kept her eyes on Poseidon as she answered. “What we need is a solution that requires less from Eros and Nyx, a way of exploiting natural processes. We create a body for Iskios in the same way any human body is created.”
“That could be done much more easily than creating one from nothing or repairing an existing one,” said Eros.
“Exactly!” said Medea, obviously pleased with herself.
“Who will the parents be?” asked Hestia with a touch of fear in her voice, as if the virgin goddess thought she would be forced to be the mother.
“To reduce the amount that Eros and Nyx must do, the parents should be powerful to begin with. I volunteer myself as the mother, for my ancestry is entirely divine. Even better, I have light as a direct descendant of Helios and darkness as a priestess of Hecate. To create the desired body for Iskios, do we not need both light and shadow?
“We do,” said Hecate. “Shadow to enhance Iskios’s natural abilities, and light to balance them.”
“There is merit in this suggestion,” said Hades, sounding a little surprised. “Who will the father be?”
“Why, Garth, of course.”
My heart skipped a beat. Medea was beautiful, and I had learned that she was much more than the evildoer portrayed in myths. I even trusted her. But my past-life relationship with her as Jason had been a total disaster—a result for which Jason had to take much of the responsibility. I couldn’t help wondering what a relationship with her in this life would bring.
My face must have revealed more than I intended. “You needn’t marry me, nor would I expect you to,” said Medea. “Surely, you do not think that our coupling would be…entirely unpleasant.”
I blushed a little. In truth, I thought sex with her might be too good, that it might leave me, like the hapless men whose eyes fell you the faerie queens of folklore, incapable of doing anything but long for her afterward. Or would it produce the opposite result? If Medea fell in love with me and I wasn’t in love with her, wasn’t that likely to set the stage for yet another epic disaster?
“You still mourn for Francesa,” said Medea, who seemed uncomfortably good at reading me. “And I am in love with Aethalides, who we might be trying to find right now if not for this new crisis. Sex between us isn’t likely to lead either of us to love the other, if that is your concern.”
“His descent is not as exalted as yours,” said Hades.
“In a previous life, he was a descendant of Hermes,” she replied. “In this one, his body has been transformed by the Philosopher’s Stone, making him far hardier than a normal mortal. He has also been the vessel of Hermes and is now the vessel of Zeus himself. It seems difficult to imagine who would make a better father among the available choices, unless you or Poseidon wish to volunteer. Best of all, Iskios’s soul is already within him. It would be easy enough to have it flow into my womb with his semen.”
“Uh, do we have nine months to wait, though?” I asked. “And then at least a few years for the new Iskios to grow up enough to be able to join us?”
Medea smiled as if enjoying my uneasiness. “It isn’t hard to accelerate a pregnancy when Olympians are involved. And as for Iskios’s maturation, I can think of at least one instance in which children grew into adults overnight in answer to a prayer.
“And before you object to Iskios losing his childhood, keep in mind that he already had one—not much of one, I’ll grant you, but this would not be his first incarnation.”
“I won’t have the two people I hate most in the world as parents,” said Iskios, though his thoughts expressed more despair than hatred. “I don’t care how great a body I’ll get out of it.”
“Give us a chance,” I said, even though I still feared the consequences of this plan. “We can be good parents to you. I know we made mistakes with your mother, but we’re capable of doing better.”
I heard nothing but cold silence from Iskios, so I turned my attention back to the others.
“For the record, Iskios isn’t happy.”
“The fate of this entire plane hangs in the balance,” said Poseidon. “We can’t afford to care what he thinks.”
“You all know that I’ve never liked couplings engineered to produce particular children,” said Hera. “Zeus used to make that excuse all the time. But here, I see little choice.”
“But if Iskios is unwilling, is it not likely our acting without his consent will ensure that he remains hostile to us?” asked Hestia.
“It is possible,” replied Eros. “But the problem can be solved if Iskios can be convinced to cooperate.”
This whole situation would have been my idea of hell—except for the fact that the collapse of the entire plane would doubtless be even worse. I might fear the complications a sexual relationship with Medea could produce, but we did trust each other, something I thought would never happen when she first realized I was Jason and wanted to kill me.
If she thought her scheme was a good idea, I would follow her lead. Truly, we had no other choice.
“Because we share a body, Iskios and I sometimes pick up on each other’s thoughts and emotions,” I said. “Perhaps I can persuade him if I open up more, let him see everything I’m thinking.”
“How will that help?” said Poseidon, though he sounded a little less stormy than before.
“He has a distorted idea of who Medea and I are, based partly on things my past life self did thousands of years ago. If I can show him who I am now, he may be more likely to accept our help.”
“We have nothing to lose by trying,” said Hecate. “I will help you open yourself to Iskios if necessary.”
“I’m sure I’ll need a little guidance,” I replied. Poseidon still looked unhappy, and Hera continued to glare at Medea as if wishing she had enough magic for another major curse. But no one objected to my idea.
Hecate had me lie down and close my eyes. I felt some of her magic wrap its arms around me as I tried to move into a trancelike state.
I found myself in a misty environment, but I could clearly see a dark figure who looked like the Greek version of an Arthurian black knight. That must be the way Iskios saw himself.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” he said, drawing a dark sword and pointing it at my heart. But he sounded more like a child right before a tantrum than he did like a villain. Still, the armor in which he had clad himself suggested that he would resist experiencing my memories if he could.
“I don’t want to force you to talk to me,” I replied. “But we face a dire threat right now. If you let yourself, you can read my mind. You will know that I’m being honest with you.”
“That’s just another trick,” said Iskios, still pointing his sword at my chest. He wasn’t going to make this easy—but I could have guessed as much.
“See me,” I said. “See me, and feel my emotions.”
Up until that moment, I’d looked pretty much the way I did in the real world. But now, I lost my human form and became more like a projector screen. Images flashed across it—my current life, from the beginning until now.
“No!” said Iskios. “Stop it!”
But I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. The mists between us gained shape and color as they too projected my life all around him. The armor he had tried so hard to maintain dissolved, and for a moment, he became one with me.
I’d been no saint, and I let him see everything. Even on my worst day, though, I was far better than Jason had been. Jason used Medea and then dumped her when he saw a surer path to the power he craved. That callous act had led to Eriopisis’s abandonment and ultimately to Iskios’s own birth.
In contrast, I had loved Francesca. Her death tore me apart, made me do stupid things—but Iskios, feeling both my love and my grief, would see that both were genuine.
“This…this cannot be!” he shouted. But it was. And he knew it.
“Eriopis told me none of this,” he said as the memories continued to pour over him, wave after wave.
“She knew none of it,” I said. “She knew only the sins of Jason, and she assumed that I was the same person. As you can see, I am not.”
He saw me with my new friends, Medea’s inner circle. He felt the bonds I had with each of them. He saw me blunder—but he also saw me risk myself for them, time after time.
Perhaps most important, he saw me save his life when the Olympians would have killed him.
I felt his disbelief slowly melting, like frost in spring. But he tried to cling to his earlier perceptions, his hands still clenched around them even when they were gone.
I don’t know whether he felt the presence of others, but I did. I sensed Hecate’s sharp eyes as she supervised my progress. I felt the warmth of Eros wrapping around Iskios and me. I felt Nyx’s arms encircling us, too, a substitute of sorts for his shadowy father.
“What about my parents?” asked Iskios. I felt cold fear as it gnawed at him.
“Medea and I will be the parents of your rebirth, but it is not our intention to replace Tartarus and Eriopis. They will remain your parents. You can still hold them in your heart. You can save them, too, for if you join the Olympians, you will help prevent a disaster that could wipe them both out.”
Before, he would have just called me a liar. But now, he could tell I wasn’t lying.
“I…I will let myself be reborn,” he whispered. I embraced him, and he sobbed against me as if we were both physical. His tears ran down my chest.
I should have been ecstatically happy, for now we had hope again. But in the back of my mind, the earlier prophecies that I could bring ruin to this plane suddenly resurfaced. Coyote had feared that. So had Arianrhod. So had Thoth.
Making Iskios an ally could save us—but I could also imagine that it might backfire terribly. This wouldn’t be the first time I’d tried to make a situation better, only to make it worse, instead.
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