Chapter 40
A Mountain at the End of the World
Danae shielded her eyes against the rioting snow and peered up at the peak of the mountain.
The path had ended long ago, but she’d pressed on, clambering over boulders of frozen rock until she could go no further.
Above her was a sheer sheet of ice. Torrents of flakes whipped by so fast, the mountain appeared to be moving.
The longer she stared at it, the smaller she became.
There was no other way up.
She swallowed. She’d scaled cliffs this steep back home. But on Naxos they were sun-drenched, and she’d been unencumbered by thick furs wound around her limbs. In this place of ice and snow, even when the sun was at its brightest it had no warmth.
She made sure Heracles’s lion hide was tied securely around her chest, tightened the strap of her bag and pulled the knives from her belt. She drove the first into the ice and gave it a wiggle. It held. She plunged in the second, then began to climb.
The higher she went, the harder it became to keep her balance in the buffeting gale. Each time the blades pierced the ice she held her breath, waiting for it to crumble. Soon she became so used to the ache in her limbs she no longer registered the pain.
After a while, time lost all meaning. She tried to track her progress by counting each heave of her body toward the peak.
But when she got to somewhere in the hundreds, her thoughts wandered.
She saw home in her mind’s eye, imagined running up the dirt track from the beach, the smell of her mother’s honey cakes wafting through the yard.
Then her foot slipped.
She flailed, panic exploding through her as she fell. The world fragmented in a blur of white, protruding rocks bashing her as she tumbled down the ice.
Then her fingers caught a jutting ledge. She clung on, sucking in stabbing lungfuls of frozen air, fighting to claw her mind back together. She still had her bag and one of the knives, the other was lost to the storm.
Squinting through watery eyes, she looked up. A slash of black cracked the snow coverage above the ledge. Beyond it, the mountain seemed to stretch endlessly into the raging sky.
Defeat wound its fingers around her chest. Hours of climbing wasted.
She ground the hopelessness between her teeth.
She couldn’t give up now. Not when she’d come this far.
With a grunt of pain, she swung her left arm up.
Her one remaining blade clattered onto the rock as her fingers scraped over the lip.
She could feel herself slipping, her legs sliding uselessly down the ice as she pushed against it.
Willing the last of her strength into her arms, she heaved, sinews screaming with the effort, and slumped onto the ledge.
It was the entrance to a cave.
She dragged her body forward, pulling her legs up onto the rock.
Pain twitched through her limbs, snatching her breath.
There was no room to stand, and even if there had been it was beyond her now.
As she lay there, calm settled over her.
She knew she had to get up, had to keep climbing, but she couldn’t move.
She stared into the dark belly of the cave, her breath dancing like little ghosts in the gloom.
Tawny feathers drifted through the air, still restless after her struggle with the griffin the night before.
The blood around the creature’s carcass had dried overnight, staining the cave floor the color of rust. Danae looked at the gruesome remains dispassionately.
It was just a dead thing. It couldn’t hurt her now.
After killing it, she’d pillaged the griffin’s hoard and built a fire with every scrap of wood she could find.
She’d melted the frozen waterskin, then stripped the beast’s feathers, sliced chunks from its breast and roasted them over the flames.
The meat was rich and surprisingly tender.
It was the first hot meal she’d eaten since the Stymphalian birds.
Even after several hours of sleep, her body still tingled with the griffin’s life-threads.
Manto’s pipe was in her lap. She must have fallen asleep smoking it.
She was grateful she’d had something to take the edge off spending the night in an icy cave with only a dead griffin for company.
She picked it up and traced the outline of the tree painted on the barrel.
“I’m almost there,” she whispered. She wished her friend could see how far she’d come.
She packed the pipe away in her bag, then carved up what meat she could carry and wrapped the portions in the remnants of her dress.
Once harvested, she heaved the remains of the griffin to the mouth of the cave and pushed its body over the ledge.
It gave her a glimmer of satisfaction to watch it bash unceremoniously against the ice.
Fitting, for a creature half-formed from the sacred bird of Zeus.
She breathed in a lungful of freezing air. There was a calmness to the mountain now. The storm had dissipated, and rods of sunlight pierced the clouds that yesterday seemed impenetrable.
After one last sweep of the cave, she secured the lion hide around her neck and slung her bag across her chest. Knife in her fist, she edged out onto the lip of rock and continued to climb.
It was hard going with only one blade. She was at the mercy of finding natural rivets and the shards of protruding rock that yesterday had bruised her as she fell.
But the lashing snow was gone and, thanks to the griffin’s life-threads, so was her weariness.
As she hauled herself up the ice, she wondered if the legend was true, that every day an eagle ripped open Prometheus’s abdomen and feasted on his liver, then every night the organ grew back to be devoured anew.
She would find out soon enough.
She paused for a moment to catch her breath, pressing her body against the ice as she twisted to look at her surroundings.
She was at the top of the world. It was eerily quiet without the screaming wind.
The city of Colchis looked like a child’s toy beneath her, the pine forests like swathes of emerald moss. When the sun broke free of the clouds it illuminated the mountain in gleaming light, so bright it was almost blinding, like she was climbing the surface of a diamond.
The Argonauts would have reached the city by now. She hoped Jason found the fleece he so desperately craved, and they all made it back to the ship unharmed.
Dolos’s face loomed into her thoughts, his lifeless eyes staring into nothing as blood trickled down his forehead.
She wobbled and pressed herself against the ice to stop herself falling.
She’d killed him. She’d murdered the only man who knew the truth about Heracles.
What would happen to the hero without him?
She bit down on her lip and tasted metal. It jolted her back to the mountain. She could no longer feel her hands and feet, but she had to keep going. It would all be worth it once she reached Prometheus. It had to be.
She set her eyes on the next rivet and continued to climb.
Near the crest, she reached a narrow ridge that slanted upward.
She hauled herself onto it, clinging to the knife as she pulled herself up to standing and shuffled her feet sideways.
It was perilously narrow. She tugged the knife free and flattened herself against the icy rock, edging slowly along its length.
She couldn’t tell if it was the hours of climbing, or being so high up, but she felt increasingly dizzy.
Wisps of cloud trailed past, crisping her hair and swallowing her in hazes of gray, only to be chased away again by the blinding sun.
She was reminded of the mist Athena had conjured on the Doliones’ shore.
She must stay vigilant. It had been three days since she’d abandoned the Argonauts.
Surely it would not be long before the gods worked out where she was going.
As she neared the top of the peak, the sun was eclipsed behind the mountain. The summit was close now.
A screech pierced the air.
She froze, heart hammering as she scoured the sky. A pair of golden wings soared above her. An eagle. She flattened herself to the mountain, expecting the bird to dive at her, but it sailed on overhead. It must be going to Prometheus.
Shuffling as fast as the ice would allow, she continued up the ridge.
The dark side of the pinnacle came into view.
A sheer section of rock stretched down, as though a giant blade had sliced a chunk out of the mountain.
The vertical drop was swathed in shadow and ended in a bed of snow, heaped on the crag below.
She slowed as she caught sight of a figure chained to the rock.
Whatever she’d expected, it wasn’t this.
Prometheus hung from the rock by rusted chains cuffed to his wrists.
The Titan was the height of a mortal and skeletally thin.
He looked more rotten than some of the corpses on Lemnos.
A circle of iron that would have once fitted his neck balanced loosely on his collar bones, and his spindly arms looked like they’d long ago been dislocated from holding the weight of his body.
He was wrapped in furs like she was, but his extremities were bare and blackened with frostbite.
He was missing several fingers, and the tip of his nose and his ears were gone.
The eagle swooped down and landed on the iron ring around Prometheus’s neck. The Titan didn’t flinch as the bird clawed its way up his face and prized his scarred lips apart with its talons.
Danae stared in horror as the bird proceeded to regurgitate into Prometheus’s mouth. It wasn’t torturing him. It was feeding him.
Its task complete, the eagle launched itself into the air, leaving Prometheus with fresh scratches on his face and neck. His head lolled to one side, eyes closed.
She waited until the bird was out of sight, then edged along the last stretch of ridge and climbed up onto the snowy crag beneath the Titan.
“Prometheus?”
He didn’t move.
She raised her voice against the whistling wind. “I’m the one from your prophecy.”
It was somehow even colder than it had been on the ridge. They were completely exposed to the elements.
Prometheus’s left eye cracked open.
Her heart clattered against her ribs. “I am the last daughter.”
Both eyes opened. There was a heavy pause as they stared at each other. She waited. Maybe he hadn’t heard her.
“I’m the last daughter!”
Prometheus blinked.
“When the prophet falls, and gold that grows bears no fruit, the last daughter will come. She will end the reign of thunder and become the light that frees mankind.”
He continued to stare at her.
“I destroyed the oracle at Delphi.” Her throat ached as she strained against the wind. “And I’ve had visions of a golden apple tree. How am I meant to end the reign of thunder and become the light that frees mankind?”
The Titan tilted his head, his bones crunching. Waiting for him to speak was agonizing.
“I’ve come such a long way to find you. I’ve worked some things out on my own, but there’s so much I don’t understand...even with my powers, how can I ever hope of defeating the King of the Gods?”
“There are no gods.” Brittle with disuse, his voice scraped like nails over stone.
She must have misheard. He couldn’t have said what she thought he had.
She shuffled closer. “Sorry, what did you say?”
“There are no gods.”
She gaped. “I don’t...”
Prometheus’s gaze shifted to focus on something behind her. Danae turned around.
Flying toward them through the clouds was a chariot pulled by two winged horses, one russet, one white as the mountain snow. Its rider was clad in golden armor overlaid with a filigree of peacock feathers that matched the trim on her billowing purple cloak.
As the figure drew closer, Danae could make out the face beneath the indigo-plumed helm.
To call it beautiful would have been reductive.
None of the likenesses carved on statues or painted on murals did her justice.
Even Alea’s radiant features would have looked clumsy next to these.
Her skin was flawless ebony, her eyes dazzling umber.
Her face was that of a lioness and the most delicate flower all at once.
A face so perfectly formed it didn’t look real.
It was the most devastating face Danae had ever seen.
Hera, Queen of the Gods, had come.