She drew herself up to her full height and turned to her father. “Kratos was always meant to be the weapon that killed a god. This truth names the coldest dread my heart has ever known: The god that was to be Kratos’s victim was you, Father. Ares was grooming Kratos for the same task I am, and for the same reason: to slay a god but to avoid Gaia’s immortal curse on any who shed their family’s blood. Father, you must help Kratos! He is not the true hope of Athens-he is the hope of Olympus itself! My lord father, I have seen this future in my darkest nightmares. If Kratos falls, so falls Olympus.”
Breathless and nearly in tears, the goddess of foresight and clever stratagems had left to her only truth and love. “Father, please.”
“My edict stands. One god may not kill another.”
Athena had nothing to say.
“Kratos may reach the Arena of Remembrance and face his final challenge. But that will not be the end.”
Zeus looked grim, his beard crashing with lightning amid the thunderheads. “That, my beloved daughter, will be the beginning. Until then he has much to conquer, not the least challenge being his own nature. If he does-if he does-then I might find him worthy.”
“Worthy of what, my father?”
Zeus did not answer.
NINETEEN
THE TUNNEL THROUGH the living rock wound about with sudden right-angle turns and eventually opened onto the face of a cliff. Kratos looked up and saw the overhang was such that he had to find ledges and handholds to cross an expanse of rock before going upward.
A quick glance convinced him that nothing but death awaited him below. He wiped his hands against his thighs once more to remove the last vestige of blood. The wounds he sustained had now clotted over-and more. The deaths of his opponents had renewed his own energy and accelerated healing once again. Since that day when Ares had answered his prayer before the barbarian king, it had been thus. Wounds healed quickly, but the aftermath always wore on him, because, while his body was whole, his spirit never was.
“SHOW NO MERCY!” he ordered his warriors as they entered the vile village. A shrine devoted to Athena stood at the far end-a shrine that mocked Lord Ares and angered Kratos. Whatever angered the God of War angered his servant.
Kratos was the first to light a torch and throw it onto a thatched roof. The flames burned brightly in the night but were a guttering candle flame to the anger and bloodlust that boiled within him. The entire village was an affront.
“Kill them all!” he shouted, then set to using the Blades of Chaos to show his men the proper way of slaying. From one end of the village to the other, he killed without hesitation. The blades swung in a pattern, a deadly arc, that ended the lives of those trying to fight him with scythes and forge hammers-and those who did nothing but beg for his mercy.
Kratos knew no mercy. And he would show no mercy to the old woman hobbling from the shrine. He shoved her aside. Those within would die by his sword.
“Beware, Kratos,” she called in her cracked, ancient voice. “The dangers in the temple are greater than you know!”
He laughed harshly. He was Kratos and feared no one, no thing, especially not the feeble thrusts and blows from the acolytes within. His mighty Blades of Chaos began swinging, slicing, slashing, and killing, until he saw nothing but a red veil of their spilled blood.
And then there were two more bodies on the floor at his feet, fresh victims of his bloodlust. Kratos stared at them and screamed.
Ares’s callous voice filled the temple. “You’re becoming all I hoped you’d be, Spartan…”
ANGER FILLED HIM ANEW at how Ares had used him so vilely. Kratos took a deep breath and forced back the dark tide threatening to drown him. The visions would be his legacy forever, unless he did as Athena had commanded. The gods would erase his nightmares-his memory-and again he could live in peace with himself. All he needed to do was cross the sheer face of the rocky cliff.
He stepped out, shoved a sandaled foot into a small crevice, and reached widely for a handhold he spotted barely within reach. His fingertips clamped on the narrow outjut of stone, allowing him to move his other foot and continue across the cliff face. Many times he had scaled mountains to outflank an enemy, so this was not a new challenge for him.
“By the gods, no!” The words escaped his lips when he saw a bulge of stone ahead begin to swell and take shape. The stone exploded outward as a man-sized, scorpion-tailed creature flowed from the very rock to block his way.
Drawing the Blades of Chaos required stability he did not have. He jumped, caught at new hand-and footholds, and grabbed for the scorpion thing. Its tail whipped about, but Kratos had a firm grip on its throat and turned its body so that the deadly tail flicked past him harmlessly. He grunted, focusing all his strength on crushing the monster’s armored windpipe. Chitin cracked; the scorpion thing thrashed about wildly, its tail even more menacing now. Kratos jerked away as the tail sang through the air, aimed for his eyes. A droplet of poison that had beaded on the tip of the stinger splashed his forehead and burned like fire. His grip on the creature weakened as the poison trickled down into his eyebrow, searing the hair and threatening to run into his eye.
Kratos swiped his arm against the poison drop to prevent it from blinding him-but his arm was coated with gore. Blood got into his eye and turned him blind. As he had experienced in battle, the blood dropped a Stygian dark veil across his vision. He blinked furiously to clear it. Blood in his eye was better than permanently blinding poison-but the distinction quickly vanished when he heard talons scraping on rock below him.
The scorpion monster had fallen a few feet when he released it but was now returning to kill him. And he could not see it.
He squeezed his eyes shut so hard they turned painful. Then he remembered the two bodies in Athena’s shrine. Anger and tears exploded within, and his vision was crystalline again. The rock scorpion was only a few feet away and approaching, its tail with the poison-laden stinger readied for a killing blow. Kratos made a wild grab, caught the creature by the neck again, and wrenched hard. The tail drove around in an arc over the creature’s head-into the rock, missing Kratos by inches.
With another loud shout to focus his strength and rage, Kratos brought his fingers together, completely smashing the rock-dwelling monster’s throat. He held it suspended now, away from the rock, and did not have to see clearly to finish it off. It twitched feebly, then all life fled. He dropped it, watching the body rebound repeatedly from the rock face before disappearing far below.
Kratos wiped the gore from his hand and continued traversing the cliff, blinking hard and recovering his vision. He had gone only a few yards, not even reaching the spot where he might scale the cliff and go straight to the top, when new scraping sounds alerted him to other scorpion things popping from the very rock.
“Athena, you ask much of me,” he said, trying to speed along the path he had scouted across the stone face. Kratos had barely reached the point where he might climb directly upward when two more of the monsters overtook him, scuttling across the vertical rock as if it were level ground.
Kratos found a ledge and positioned both feet on it. Still hanging on to a secure handhold, he wrenched a rock free with his right hand and flung it with all his might. The missile sailed true. The nearest scorpion reacted instinctively and lashed out with its curved, deadly tail. This was all the opening Kratos needed to hurl a second rock, which accurately struck the creature in the middle of its head. The tail flew to fend off this new attack-and the scorpion monster stung itself.