Christopher Golden - Tears of the Furies

"Last one to the top is a deformed fucking freak," she snarled. "Aw, too late." She went up over the rise…

And froze. After all she had seen in her excruciatingly long lifetime, she had never seen anything quite like the sight that greeted them over the top of that hill.

Gull joined her, fury twisting his features all the more horribly. "There were times when I actually felt a sense of guilt over what I was going to do with you. But now I believe…" Then he, too, stopped and gasped.

"Just when you think you’ve seen it all," Eve said, eyes riveted to the valley below her.

The body of a giant lay splayed upon the valley floor, so enormous that it covered much of the valley. The corpse was larger than an aircraft carrier, large enough that a small town could have been built atop it. And corpse was the word. The giant was quite dead, of that she had no doubt, and had been dead for some time by the look of him. Desiccated skin hung loose and leathery from its monstrous skeleton. A wispy fog floated above the enormous cadaver, the smell blowing up from the valley on a breeze ripe with the stench of rot.

Jezebel started to cough and gag, the stink of the decaying giant nearly making her sick.

"It all seems to have a certain logic now," Gull said wistfully, the overwhelming stench seeming to have no effect on him. "The disorder and degeneration — the chaos."

"Someone you know?" Eve asked, bringing a hand to her nose. As the mist above the great corpse shifted in the breeze, she began to notice the details of its attire. The giant wore pitted bronze armor, tarnished green with the passage of time.

"In a sense. Think about it, temptress. One of your experience ought to be able to put the pieces together. Who can this be, a god so large that the Underworld itself is almost too small for him?" Gull asked, a hint of awe in his voice.

Eve couldn’t wrap her brain around the concept. How is it even possible? How is it possible for a god to end up this way?

"Hades," Gull said in a reverent whisper. "What sad fate has befallen you?"

When Eve began to descend the steep hill toward that extraordinary sight it was not only the voice of Orpheus and Gull’s command that drove her. She had to see it, this magnificent panorama of death, so enormous that she could barely contain the fact of it in her mind.

"So, if the Lord of the Underworld is dead," she rasped, "then who’s running the show down here?"

Gull did not look at her as he spoke, his eyes fixed upon the dead god before them. "Turning and turning in the widening gyre," he muttered. "The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world."

"When you start quoting Yeats, I’m guessing that’s code for you don’t have a fucking clue," she said, careful not to lose her footing on the slippery slope.

The closer they got, the more details she took in. The craftsmanship of the god’s armor was some of the most beautiful and intricate ornamentation she had ever seen. But what would one expect for a lord of the abyss? Hades’ face was a shrieking death mask, the withered flesh pulled tight against his skull. Strange birds whose feathers seemed to glint like metal in the faint light of the Underworld flew out of the god’s gaping maw in a shrieking flock as they approached, but her eyes were drawn to something else.

"Look at his throat," Eve said, staring at the dry, curling slash that had been cut across the leathery skin of Hades’ neck.

The ground in that valley was a black, fine soil, but on the acreage around the desiccated head of the dead god the earth was stained a deep burgundy. Though there were trees and other plant life familiar to the Underworld growing about the vastness of the deceased, Eve could see that nothing grew where the dead lord’s blood had flowed.

"All of the detritus of Greek myth had retreated here when their era came to a close. It was their only hope at survival," Gull explained, glancing at an awestruck Hawkins and a giddily grinning Jezebel. "They ought to have built a paradise down here to rival Olympus. Instead, they died, and the place fell to ruin. Entropy. The center could not hold. I wondered what could have happened to cause such chaos here." Gull spoke slowly, mesmerized by the sight before him. "I never imagined that it could have begun with the murder of Hades himself."

Who has the power to murder a god? Again Eve struggled with the inconceivable.

Hawkins trotted several steps ahead of them, trying to get a closer look at the wound, himself now a tiny figure dwarfed by the sprawling, rotting cadaver.

"Not murder," Hawkins said, and they all stared at him. Soldier, spy, and assassin, he was well schooled in murder. "Look in his hand. He’s holding a knife. I don’t think he was murdered at all, I think the poor bugger offed himself."

Eve looked at the dead god Hades, really looked at him; how he lay prostrate upon the floor of the valley, his mouth agape as if attempting to call to his brethren in Olympus above, and she knew that Hawkins’s words were true. Hades had taken his own life.

The closer they progressed, the more foul the stench of decay was becoming, almost palpable in its intensity. Eve found that even she was becoming affected, hacking and coughing with the others. And since she really had no need to, she made a conscious effort to halt her breathing.

That’s better.

Gull was gasping, a twisted hand placed flat against his chest. He had stopped his descent and was trying to catch his breath. Hawkins tied a handkerchief behind his head, covering his face and Jezebel appeared to be fighting the urge to vomit. Despite the revelation that loomed ahead of them, the sublime nature of the thing and the thoughts of divinity and history that it demanded, the two hovered around Gull protectively.

There they were, perfectly helpless. Eve could have killed them all with ease, if not for the voice of Orpheus. Trapped by Gull’s magick, she could do nothing but wait for them to get their shit together.

The sorcerer finally caught his breath and pulled Jezebel to him. "Wind," he said, between gasps of the tainted air. "We need wind to take this foul odor away."

Her eyes were watering badly, trailing black mascara down her flushed cheeks like war paint. "I don’t know if I can."

"You must, sweet Jezebel." And despite his use of that endearment, his tone was clear. It was a command, with consequences if she disobeyed.

She nodded slowly, and took a deep breath punctuated by a cough.

Hawkins sidled up beside her. "Sometime today," he snarled, his voice muffled by the cloth about his face.

The two normally seemed so solicitous of one another — particularly Hawkins of the girl — but it was clear now that their camaraderie was a shallow thing. Scratch it deeply enough, and there was nothing underneath. Jezebel looked at Hawkins with teary, hate-filled eyes as he walked away.

"Proceed," Gull commanded, his breathing becoming more labored.

Eve wondered if the power of Orpheus would still hold should Gull be rendered unconscious. But it was too much to hope for. Jezebel closed her eyes, reaching down deep to call upon whatever mojo she commanded. Her hair whipped around her face in a wind that was not natural, and she winced. The process looked painful and for a minute it seemed she wasn’t going to pull it off, but the girl hung tough. Whatever it was that she was summoning was fighting her, and her body began to twitch and spasm, beads of perspiration breaking out on her brow.

Eve almost felt sorry for the little witch, but then thought better of it.

The girl fell to her knees with a gasp, and raising her arms, she turned her face to ceiling of the Underworld. Lightning snaked from her fingertips and eyes, erupting into the oppressive atmosphere. The wind swirled around them, growing in intensity, and then shifted in a single direction, a gale that swept the noxious fumes of the god’s decay away from them.