Carrie Vaughn - Discord's Apple

“I don’t have a choice. I—I have this vision, that a billion years from now the world ends, swallowed up at last by a bloated sun or crumbled to ash. And I’m still here. I live through it, floating in space with nothing to do and no place to go. The lone repository of human history, and a mediocre one at that. Maybe some god out there will have pity on me and take me in—but I think they’ve all gone away. I can’t blame them. But I don’t have their power, so I’m stuck here with whatever fate hands me.”

“Have you thought about going insane?” It would seem like a reasonable thing to do, given his circumstances.

“Did once. Got boring, so I snapped out of it.”

She looked hard at him, wanting to be kind. “I can’t think of anything in the Storeroom that will help you. I’m sorry.”

“Listen,” he said, running his hand through his hair. “Hera’s planning something. She’s a bitter old bitch. But I can get close to her, find out what she’s planning—”

“Can I trust you?”

“Yes.”

“Did you say the same thing to her?”

He closed his mouth on whatever obvious answer he’d been ready to give.

Someone was walking up the driveway. Evie stared at the figure over Alex’s shoulder. He caught her gaze and turned to look.

She wondered who it would be this time: Jack come to fetch some golden eggs, a Persian merchant searching for a rolled-up piece of flying carpet, a Viking unfrozen from the permafrost wanting Thor’s hammer. Her gut sank, and she waited for the instinct that would drag her unerringly to the basement.

Mab pricked her ears forward and growled.

The figure, a woman of average height, in early middle age, slim, and with thick black hair hanging loose down her back, walked up the driveway.

“Shit,” Alex muttered, turning up the collar of his coat and slumping against the wall as if he were an unconcerned vagrant.

The woman was cinnamon-skinned, with Latina features. Mab’s growling doubled in ferocity, lips pulled back from her teeth. The strange woman stared at her, made a motion with her hand—and Mab fell quiet, frozen in her place.

“Evie Walker?” she said.

Evie nodded.

“I’ve come to deliver a message. Hera has your father. She’ll trade him for the apple. Will you trade?”

Evie’s muscles flinched in panic. Yes, yes! The words were on her tongue, but she couldn’t say them. Instead, she said weakly, “Gave up trying to bust in?”

The woman’s expression was cold and superior. “She found a better way. What’s your answer?”

“I—I need—” Yes, anything, don’t hurt him! “I need to think about it.”

“Come to the cemetery this afternoon. Bring the apple. Come alone.” She bestowed a fleeting glance at Alex as she turned to walk down the driveway.

Mab collapsed with a heartbreaking whine; Evie knelt beside her and helped her to her feet. The dog didn’t seem hurt physically. But her eyes showed fear, and her tail was locked between her legs. Evie hugged her close.

Evie’s voice cracked when she said, “Who was that?”

“She’s working for Hera.”

“What will Hera do to my father?”

“I don’t know.”

“I have to give it to her. I don’t care, I have to—”

“Evie, think for a moment.” Alex took hold of her shoulders; Evie gasped, surprised, trembling. “Think what it is—the apple of Discord. Hera will use it to start wars. She could destroy the world with it.”

“The world’s already at war. And I don’t care, it doesn’t matter—”

“Would your father want you to give it to her?”

“I don’t care!” He was in her face, urging her, and she didn’t want to listen. There had to be another way, had to be something she could do. “Arthur—I have to find Arthur, he can help. If we can get him back without giving her the apple, Arthur and Merlin will know how—”

“Arthur’s been here? King Arthur? Did he take the sword?”

Evie nodded, and Alex breathed, “Excalibur.” Then he said, “He’s still here in Hopes Fort? We’ll find him. You’re right. He’ll help.”

Nodding absently, Evie agreed, and wondered which part of Hera’s plan she was falling into.

A group of six army helicopters flew by, passing over the house and heading south. They pounded the air with their rotors.

M arcus screamed and dropped the axe he’d been using to chop firewood. Terrible visions struck his mind all at once, like lightning. The sky was clear, the sun warm. No storms raged; no lightning flashed. All was peaceful, except for the throbbing in his mind. Stories. Hundreds of tales, voices telling them all at once, in languages he didn’t recognize, cadences that were foreign. Gods, beasts, golden fleece, enchanted swords, all stored inside a well-worn leather bag—

All stored in the cellar under the villa. He’d never gone down there, but somehow he knew. He could picture shelves of artifacts, racks of swords, golden apples and winged slippers, icons of the gods—all under his family’s small house?

He ran to the house, then to the stone steps that led down to the roughly carved-out cellar. His father didn’t permit any of the family to enter here. Even at their most mischievous, his children obeyed him. Somehow, the place repelled curiosity. Not anymore. He pushed back the sheepskin that hung from the lintel at the bottom of the stairs, marking the cellar entrance. Even in the dim light, he could see it was just as he had imagined, the wondrous objects of a thousand tales spread before him.

His heart and lungs raced, unwilling to accept the magnitude of what he saw. This was larger than him, and he wasn’t ready for what his being here meant. What is this?

This is the Storeroom, the vision that had struck him from within said. You are its heir.

“But my father—”

You are its heir.

Marcus’s knees gave way. He sat on the dirt floor and tried to catch his breath. He was sixteen. Only sixteen. Nearly a man, yes, but—he wasn’t ready. He’d inherited the knowledge all in a terrible flash, a burst like death. Even at the first, he’d understood what it meant. That was why he’d screamed.

He wanted to give it all back.

Part of him believed it was a mistake. The gods had visited a fit upon him, a false vision. He climbed the stairs slowly. He had to know. He’d see his father striding through the door, and Marcus would demand from him some explanation for what was happening to him, and what the cellar Storeroom really meant.

Pale, shaking, he reached the house’s main room just as someone rushed through the archway. Not his father, but his younger brother Tonius.

The boy was flushed and shouting. “Marcus, please, hurry. Father’s fallen, out in the field. He isn’t breathing, he won’t wake up, you must come help him—”

Marcus closed his eyes and wept. Bitterly, he wished his father had died slowly, of creeping old age, as fathers were supposed to. If Marcus had to carry this burden at all, he’d rather have taken it on in small parcels, so that he might not notice the growing weight of it.

A voice woke Sinon. “Come to me. I need you.”

It wasn’t a sound, but a thought in his mind, put there by Apollo. A holy summons.

Sinon rolled onto his back, folded his hands under his head, and stared at the ceiling, painted gray in the light filtering through the curtains hung around his pallet. It was never night in the Palace of the Sun, and he couldn’t sleep without the curtains. He sighed. We won the war, he thought. What trick of the gods made me a slave, then? I should have fought harder for my freedom.