Hands over his ears did him no further good. He staggered to the central point between the three statues and fell to his knees. As the rising sun finally struck the spot where he huddled, what had been featureless stone became a magically clear window. Directly below him, he saw the chamber of the Architect, with its throne, on which the armored figure sat as though oblivious to the universe-destroying sonic blast from above.
This disk felt to be the same sort of substance as the statues, which his best effort had not managed to even scratch. Now that he thought of it, though, he recalled a tale of the great brass gong of Rhodes; it was said to ring so powerfully that it shattered glass for a league or farther. Since it seemed as if much more of this noise would do the same to his skull, Kratos decided there could be no harm in trying. He reached down to the transparent disk and rapped it sharply, once, with his knuckle.
The disk instantly shattered with a sharp report, scattering shards so tiny as to become dancing motes of dust. The awful sound fell to instant silence. Kratos plummeted through the hole like a stone down a well.
A convulsive wrench of his body twisted him enough in the air that he could catch himself by straddling the Architect, one foot on either arm of the throne.
The throne began to rotate, with much grinding and clattering of gears. Kratos sprang from the arms to the dais on which the throne rested. The rotation stopped.
“So, Architect,” Kratos said. “You foretold my death, yet here I am.”
The Corinthian helmet turned just enough that Kratos could see cold green fire through the eye slits. “ No man has ever survived the Arena of Remembrance.”
“Until now.”
“But Pandora’s Box will never be yours.”
The Architect raised an armored finger, and the lid of the box on his lap slid open. Kratos seized the Architect’s wrist in a grip no mortal being could break. The armor was shockingly warm.
“No more tricks,” Kratos said. “Tell me how to reach the box, and I will let you live.”
“ You will not, for I am not.”
Kratos tightened his grip on the Architect’s wrist until the armor buckled under his fingers. “You’re alive enough to speak, so you’re alive enough to suffer.”
“ Do as you will.”
Kratos snarled and clenched his fist. The armor crumpled like a dry leaf, but from his crushing grasp, no blood flowed-only steam, hot enough to scald Kratos’s hand. With a curse, Kratos wrenched on the arm, and it tore away at the shoulder. From the severed joint hissed another burst of steam, which faded away as a metal plate within the armor slid into place over the hole.
Kratos scowled down into the armor-empty of flesh or bone, containing only brass tubing and gears of unfamiliar design. “What manner of creature are you?”
“I am,” said the voice, which Kratos now noted seemed to come from beneath the dais rather than from the helmet, “what remains of the Architect. I am his final device.”
Kratos’s eyes widened. “The Antikythera…”
“I control the temple. I am the keeper of its final challenge. Look into the box on my lap.”
Kratos stepped closer and peered into the device filled with a multitude of tiny rods-needles, Kratos realized-set on end and packed together. Here and there some of these needles were depressed to one height or another; the depressions were exactly the diameter of the armored fingers in the empty gauntlet in Kratos’s hand. He guessed their height and conformation somehow controlled the various mechanisms throughout the temple. There were also needles mounted horizontally on all four walls.
“Press them. Anywhere.”
Kratos considered this. There could easily be more going on in this box than just the needles, and those were discolored at their tips. Poison? What poison could still kill after a thousand years?
If anyone would have known the answer to that question, it would have been the Architect.
Instead of his own finger, Kratos used the armored finger of the gauntlet he held. Instantly, the horizontal needles licked out from the walls and stabbed the finger of the gauntlet. Rebounding from the bronze, the needles returned to their places.
“ Had you pressed with your own finger, your hand would be trapped-pinned in place by the needles, and you would be dying, in tremendous pain, from the blood of the Lernaen Hydra that paints every tip.”
“So? I must guess the shape that will reveal Pandora’s Box?”
“No,” the Architect-or, rather, the Antikythera-replied. “ I will tell you: It is the shape of a man’s face, pressed into the needles.”
Kratos thought about the many statues and reliefs throughout the temple-surely the head of a man-sized statue…
“ The face must be of flesh. The needles must drive fully in and remain in place,” the emotionless voice said. “ To reach Pandora’s Box, a man must die.”
Kratos thought of the man in the cage; for one brief moment, he regretted having killed the old fool.
“ And this is your only chance. This conformation of the needles will work only for a tiny span after the window above is shattered. Once the Chariot of Helios rules the sky, the statues-and the box on the disk they bear-will vanish into the noonday light. Only you have reached this far. No one to follow will have a chance at all.”
Kratos nodded. He appreciated the elegant intricacy of this final trap. He said, “But you always-that is, the Architect, your creator-leave one way through.”
“Until now.”
Kratos squinted up at the disk supported by the hands of the Brother Kings, far above in the shining sun. He now saw a speck upon it, and his heart swelled with rage. He had not come so far to be denied. Here, where he could see the box, he would not allow himself to fail.
“Athena herself has told me that there is no way out of this temple without Pandora’s Box,” he said. “So I will die here, in success, or die later for my failure.”
“ You are about to die.”
“Since I am about to die, there is no further need for secrets, is there?” Kratos said. “Tell me why this temple was designed in this way-tell me why each trap, maze, and puzzle has a solution? Why design fantastical defenses around the most powerful weapon in creation-but deliberately design each of them with a hole?”
“Because Zeus commanded it so.”
“Zeus?” Kratos frowned. “But why?”
“I am a loyal servant of the gods. I do not question. I obey.”
The logic was obvious: Zeus commanded that every puzzle have an answer, every trap an escape, and the Architect was fanatically loyal. Which could only mean that this final deadly puzzle was no different from the others.
The Architect had placed his sons in coffins. At Zeus’s bidding? Their heads had proven to be the key to gaining entry to progressively dangerous challenges. Twice this had happened. Twice. Would the Architect so misuse his children unless…
“One last question.”
“Your time is growing short.”
“I know,” Kratos said, thinking, So is yours. “My final question: How can a mere device, a steam-powered mechanism, no matter how cleverly designed, understand and respond to whatever I say?”
Without waiting for a reply, Kratos sprang to the rear of the throne with pantherish agility and seized with both hands the Corinthian helmet that rested upon the armored shoulders. It seemed to be more firmly anchored than the arm had been. Kratos had to twist fiercely and wrench upward with all his strength to rip it free. Then he tucked the helmet under one arm and reached inside with his other hand, scooping out what he found as he would a snail from its shell.
It was a human head. Whatever hair once adorned it had centuries ago crumbled to dust, but this head clearly still held some semblance of life. Tears spurted from its rolling eyes, its mouth worked silently, and the voice from below the dais finally exhibited some emotion.
Terror.
“Stop! What are you doing! You can’t!”