Chapter 5 The Mines of Taenarum #2
The musician’s brow furrowed. ‘A farmer in the neighbouring village to mine said he’d heard there was an entrance at the furthest point of mainland Greece. He could tell me little else, but I had to try …’
Danae stared at him, wishing her gaze could pierce those red-rimmed eyes and lay bare what thoughts swam beneath.
She looked back at the tunnels and forced herself to make a choice.
‘We go this way.’
Their path split again and again. Each time they were forced to choose, Danae tried not to think of the odds mounting against them.
Orpheus followed at her heels like a child, always looking to her to decide the way.
She cursed herself again for not extracting more information from Theseus. A map for a start.
Her mouth had grown parched. They could have been below ground for hours or days, without the sun she could not tell.
‘Take this,’ she proffered Orpheus the torch and drew out a waterskin from Hylas’ saddle bag, along with his bowl. She poured the horse a drink, took a draught herself, then offered the skin to the musician. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got any more food in that bag?’
Orpheus shook his head, took a glug, then handed back the skin.
They only had enough water between them to last another day or two. After that it would be a slow, painful death by dehydration.
‘Before, you said you wanted to bring Eurydice home,’ Danae said as she packed away Hylas’ bowl. ‘How will you do that?’
‘I will convince Hades to fashion her a new body, just like the old one.’
Danae’s chest tightened. ‘You believe he has that power?’
‘Yes,’ Orpheus said simply. ‘The gods can do anything.’
She thought of Hera, the Queen of the Gods, blazing in golden majesty, as she had hurled spears of ice at Danae atop the Caucasus Mountains. Fear, all-encompassing as the darkness around them, threatened to consume her as she imagined what would happen if she fell into Hades’ hands.
The musician will not find what he seeks. Nor will you, said the voice. There is no afterlife in the Underworld.
A wave of weariness crashed over her. It was much harder to battle the voice when she was sleep-deprived and ravenous.
She tucked the waterskin back in the far saddle bag, but as she reached for the strap the horse jerked away from her, tossing his head.
‘Shh now, it’s –’ Something dry and scaly clamped over her mouth. Instinctively she jabbed her elbows backwards, hitting whatever was behind her. A burst of hot breath was expelled on the back of her neck, but her assailant didn’t let go. So, she twisted, pummelling with all her strength.
Orpheus cried out as behind her the air shimmered under her blows, punctuated by a pair of crimson eyes with pupils of deepest midnight.
Memories hurtled through her mind. Her nephew Arius’ cries as he was ripped from Alea’s bed, the charcoal-cloaked shade staring at her in the Athenian flesh market, the dull grey body of the dead shade she had killed outside the city of Colchis.
Some of her punches landed, and at last one of her kicks uprooted the shade. They tumbled together, smacking into the rocky ground. Hylas was braying and Orpheus shouting, but the sounds blurred into the drum of blood in her ears as she scrabbled to locate the shade.
Then everything went dark. Orpheus must have dropped the torch.
‘Orpheus!’
The musician did not reply, but she could hear groans. With the loss of her vision, every noise was intensified; the clatter of Hylas’ hooves on the rock, the panting of breath.
To her left, she could hear heavy breathing.
She stretched out until her fingers touched leathery skin.
Gripping onto what might have been an arm or a leg, she dragged the shade towards her.
The creature flailed, trying to smack her away as she clambered on top of it.
She worked her way up to its head and smashed it into the ground until she felt the shade’s muscles slacken beneath her.
Something warm and wet seeped beneath her fingers.
It was near death, its life-threads beginning to flee back into the earth.
She had a limited window to consume them; once the life force left its body, the power of the shade’s threads would be lost.
Just as she was about to drain the creature, she was interrupted by braying from somewhere far away.
‘Hylas!’ she screamed, leaping up and stumbling in the darkness towards the sound. She tripped on something lying across her path, and Orpheus yelped as she crashed down on top of him. ‘Hylas!’ she cried again, but she could no longer hear the horse, not even the click of his hooves on the rock.
‘Hylas …’ she whispered, choking on the realization that he was gone.
Her faithful companion, her one true friend.
How could she have been so selfish? She should have let him go at the entrance to the mine, told him to fly away and be free.
He had been scared; he knew something was wrong before they even set foot in the place and yet she’d forced him to come with her.
‘Daeira,’ Orpheus grabbed hold of her. ‘The torch … I’m sorry, something knocked me down … Are they gone?’
She pulled him to his feet. ‘We have to find Hylas. The other shades must have taken him.’ Then she dragged the musician in the direction she’d last heard the winged horse.
She stretched out her free hand until her fingers touched cold stone and began treading carefully along the passage, wary at any moment of a hidden drop.
‘They will have come from the Underworld,’ she said with more confidence than she felt. ‘That’s where they’ll have gone.’
Orpheus did not voice his reply, but his fingers tightened around hers.
As they felt their way together in the pitch darkness, she hoped with every life-thread in her body that she was right.