Clanking of pots and the sounds of a fire being stoked lured Kratos into a quick look. He flicked a glance swifter than a blink, but he took in the entire kitchen. The blind man decanted some kind of jugged meat into a bathtub-size cauldron, while Jurr built the cooking fire beneath it. It looked as if the Queen of the Gorgons favored spring lamb…
No, those weren’t lambs, Kratos realized, as a cold knot formed in his belly.
They were human infants.
Kratos balled his fists, wanting to strike out at such horrific fare. Children. Human children like his own daughter, his dear daughter, who He stepped out but forced himself back into hiding until the proper moment. His rage mounted at the cannibalistic meal, feeding his need to destroy the Gorgons. Taking Medusa’s head had been decreed by Aphrodite-he would take grim pleasure in it, command from a goddess or not!
Shortly, the blind man loaded a huge trencher full of steaming baby stew and shuffled off toward a darkened archway across the small kitchen. Jurr watched him go, then cat-footed over to the vast kettle, snatched a ladle, and dipped a scoop, holding it up to his nose to capture the aroma. “That old blind bastard is finally learning to cook,” Jurr muttered, bringing the ladle to his lips. But before he could taste the baby stew, an enormous hand seized the back of his neck and yanked him into the air.
He dropped the ladle into the tureen and tried to yell, but the hand around his neck crushed his voice down to a squeak. He struggled, kicking his legs and clawing at the hand, but the ash-white skin seemed harder than bronze. He found himself, a moment later, turned so that he was face-to-face with the Ghost of Sparta.
His eyes went wider and rounder, and a strangled croak worked its way up between Kratos’s fingers.
“Medusa,” Kratos whispered. “Where? Just point. Point and I’ll let you go.”
Through frantic waving of his hands, Jurr managed to indicate that the bedchamber of the Queen of the Gorgons was the first door to the right along the darkened hall. Kratos nodded.
One quick squeeze crushed Jurr’s voice box, so that he couldn’t scream and so that Kratos wouldn’t have to listen to any pathetic begging. Kratos lifted this baby chef above the bath-size cauldron of boiling stew and then, true to his word, let him go.
Kratos knew that he was most in danger in the first instant of entering the Gorgon queen’s chamber. If he mistook the real Medusa for one of the reflections and found himself looking upon her face, he wouldn’t get a second chance.
Fortune favors the bold, he thought, and charged.
With a pantherish leap, Kratos sprang through the opposite archway, reaching the door to Medusa’s chamber only an instant behind the blind man. The blind man balanced the trencher unsteadily on one hand while he opened the door with the other. Hearing Kratos behind him, the blind man half turned. “Jurr-” was all he had time to say before Kratos snatched the trencher and, with a mighty kick, sent the blind man flying into the middle of the chamber beyond.
Kratos took care to look only at the ceiling. Jurr had not lied-he had not even come close to telling the full story. Mirrors paneled the walls. Even more mirrors stretched from side to side along the ceiling. The mirrors there showed the blind man plowing straight into the hideous monster. Before either of them had a chance to react, the snakes that were Medusa’s hair instantly unbraided themselves and struck at the blind man as one, latching on to his entire body and chewing on him as the water snake had chewed on Kratos’s greave. The snakes writhed as the blind man went into convulsions and they clamped him to Medusa’s face. Gut churning at the reflected sight, Kratos decided he didn’t need the rest of his plan.
Three quick steps sent him past the dying man and the Gorgon, who shrieked in rage as she tried to claw the hapless slave from her face. Just as she finally succeeded in pushing him away, her head lifted and, in the mirrored wall, she saw her death standing at her back. Kratos sprang into the air, striking downward with both feet and driving the monster face-first to the chamber floor. At the same instant, the Blades of Chaos flashed in a converging slash that sheared through both collarbones and the back of her upper ribs.
Kratos released the blades and reached down into the wound with both hands. Driving his fingers into the slimy mess of Gorgon tissue, he caught hold of her spine and with one mighty wrench ripped her head from her body. Her head snakes struck at his arm, but weakly; their venom had been expended on the blind man.
He paused for a moment, regarding the reflection of her deadly gaze in the mirror: those fearsome eyes, the tusklike fangs, hair of living snakes.
KRATOS ARCHED HIS BACK as the feeling of sudden upward movement seized him once more. From the dim, moss-lit subterranean chambers he was transported to a place of dazzling, brilliant white.
“You have done well, my Spartan.”
I’m not your Spartan, he thought, but he said only, “Lady Aphrodite?”
He used his free hand to shade his eyes against the glare and then could barely make out the diaphanous house silks that clung invitingly to the goddess’s body. She took the severed head from his hands, holding it by its now-dead hair snakes.
“Lady Aphrodite, are you finished with me?”
“Oh, yes-one last thing now that I have made certain you have completed your mission for me. Here,” she said, holding out Medusa’s severed head, its face carefully turned away. “Take it by the snakes. That’s right. Careful you don’t look into its eyes yourself. Now, sling it back over your shoulder as if you were putting away one of those impressively large swords you wear on your back.”
Kratos did so and felt the snakes evaporate from his grasp. “What happened? Where did it go?”
“It will be there when you want it. Just reach back for it, and it will be in your hand, turned the right way and ready to petrify.”
“How does that work?”
“It’s magic. One more thing you should know: Being dead diminishes Medusa’s power.”
“People won’t turn to stone?”
“Oh, they will. They just won’t stay that way for very long.”
Kratos stared directly at Aphrodite, waiting for the full explanation.
“Ten seconds from a full blast from the eyes. And whatever you do, don’t lose it.” Aphrodite spread her hands and regarded him closely. “Athena wants it when you’re done. She has some use for it. Something about a shield… maybe a cloak? Well, no matter. You have destroyed the Queen of the Gorgons, and now her power is yours!”
In an instant she towered above him like a mountain, as though her hair might brush the moon, and her voice rang like a great bronze bell. “Freeze and destroy them all with Medusa’s Gaze!” the goddess thundered. “Go with the gods, Kratos. Go forth in the name of Olympus!”
Before he could draw breath to reply, he was in Athens once more. Ares still towered above the Acropolis, casting house-size gobbets of Greek fire on every side.
When Kratos recovered his bearings, he found himself once more in the quieter neighborhood from which the goddess had taken him. He was still on the far side of the Acropolis from Athena’s temple-and from her oracle.
He put his head down and ran. Ran like the lion in pursuit of a lamb, swift as a falcon, tireless as the wind. He had to run. So much time had been wasted, and for what? A power he didn’t need. A power that had nothing to do with finding the Oracle, nor with defeating the God of War. If Aphrodite had really wanted to help him, she would have set him down at the door of Athena’s temple and put the Oracle in his lap.
Gods and their games. He was sick of all of them. Once he killed Ares, he would be done with them and their insane demands.
And the nightmares would be banished from his sleep, from his every waking instant. Forever.
NINE
SMOKE ROLLED DOWN from the heights of the Acropolis, a black greasy pall that smothered the Parthenon on the mountainside and came near to strangling Kratos. The tough armor he’d taken from the undead legionnaires shielded him from the killing heat of the flames and protected his Ares-burned back, but it couldn’t help him breathe. Choking, gasping for air, he had to turn back and seek a clearer way toward the summit.