"It"s not your fault, Jason. It"s mine. I know what a nightmare she is, and I still let her be near him," Helen said ruefully. "Any idea how long before he wakes up again?"
Jason held a glowing hand over Jerry"s head, his eyes closed in concentration.
"He"s completely out," he said, opening his eyes. "He could be like this another twelve to sixteen hours, I"d say. That"s just a rough guess, though."
"Thanks," Helen replied.
"So. How"s Lucas?" Jason asked tentatively.
"He"s totally fine," Helen said, smiling. "In fact, I gotta go get him."
"Get him?" Jason asked, his relieved look fading. "Can"t he fly? Or is he still too injured to walk? We"ll all come help . . . Hector!" Jason turned and started calling loudly for his brother.
"Jason-wait. It"s not that at all," Helen said, reaching out to stop him. But Hector had already come to his bedroom door. Behind him, Helen could see Orion getting out of the guest bed in Hector"s room.
"What?" Hector growled peevishly at his brother, and then noticed Helen. "Where have you been?" he asked her, coming out into the hallway.
"Helen?" Orion asked, following Hector.
"Oh, good. You"re here," she said. "Don"t go anywhere."
"Okay," Orion said tentatively, not understanding her. "Where"s Lucas?"
Both he and Hector were looking up and down the hall for Lucas.
"Oh, for the love of Pete," Helen mumbled to herself, running a hand over her face. "He"s fine! Would I be wandering around, not sobbing my brains out, if he were dead?"
By this point, Castor and Noel, Pallas, Ca.s.sandra, Kate, and Andy were all awake and looking out their bedroom doors at Helen. She held up her hands before everyone could start talking at once.
"Lucas is absolutely one hundred percent alive and healthy and waiting for me in a safe place," she announced.
"Where?" Castor asked, his face both hopeful and confused.
"Ah . . . safe," Helen said, unsure of how much she should share.
"Where did you take my son?" Noel demanded, striding angrily down the hallway toward Helen. Her face was swollen and her eyes were bright red from crying all night. Helen realized that Noel blamed her. She looked around at everyone"s faces. She saw doubt, distrust, and in the best cases, confusion. She was used to Pallas looking at her like he didn"t trust her any farther than he could throw her, but not Castor and Noel. Or Claire.
"Lucas and I call it Everyland." Helen threw up her hands and just said it. "But you all know it as Atlantis."
TWELVE.
Helen finished explaining and a long silence followed. Looks got traded around the Delos kitchen table, where they all sat.
"How many Worldbuilders have there been?" Castor asked finally calm.
"Not many. Hades, Morpheus, Zeus, and the Furies all have their own lands. Other Scions in history have had the talent, but I can only remember two."
"Remember? How can you remember the other Worldbuilders if they lived long ago?" Orion asked.
"Well, you know how I touched a few drops of water from that river?" Helen smiled at him and Orion nodded, smiling with her at the mention of their adventure on Halloween. At least Orion was still on her side. "When I got my memory back, I got more than just my memories. I got other women"s memories, too. One of them was Helen of Troy"s."
Hector muttered a colorful swear word.
"Her life sucked, by the way." Helen looked at Castor. "You were Priam, king of Troy. Your brother, Tantalus? Totally Menelaus. And you were Agamemnon," she told Pallas.
Hector and Orion looked at each other and started laughing.
"You were the great Hector, and you were Aeneas, his best friend and general," Helen said, shrugging as she looked at them. "But you guys already knew that."
"Yeah, we kinda did," Orion admitted with a grin.
"Wait," Claire said, holding up a hand. "Wasn"t Helen of Troy the one who betrayed the city that was protecting her and let the Greeks slaughter her friends and family?"
The weak laugh Claire added on the end did not make her question funny. Helen couldn"t believe the accusation in Claire"s voice and glanced down at her heart. It was full of fear.
"This is terrible. You built a world," Ca.s.sandra gasped, surfacing from her own thoughts to rejoin the conversation a few minutes late. "Zeus will fight you. He must fight you or risk being overthrown. That"s what the Fates have wanted all along. They want the children to overthrow the parents."
"Yes," Helen admitted. "And until the Scions overthrow the G.o.ds we"ll be stuck in this same cycle, repeating our ancestors" mistakes with every new generation until the Fates get what they want."
"Apollo said something similar," Hector said, nodding in agreement. "And after spending a few thousand years cooped up on Olympus, he looks ready for a fight."
Several people asked Helen questions at once, but as they began debating the virtues of fighting and avoiding a fight, Helen felt Lucas wake up in Everyland, and she happily turned her attention to him. He was worried about her. She made a note appear on the pillow next to him, explaining where she was and what she was telling the family.
"Wait-one thing?" he asked out loud before reading the note.
Strangely, Helen didn"t hear him say it. She felt the words appear in her head attached to some sort of essence that she understood as Lucas. It was like a freaky second sense, much more subtle than actual hearing, and she knew she could tune it out if she had to. But she didn"t want to. She wanted to spend as much time as she could, feeling Lucas inside her world, inside her mind, like this.
"Anything," Helen replied, placing the word gently in his thoughts so he wouldn"t be frightened by some booming voice in the sky or anything too Old Testament.
"Can you make it, like, a lot warmer? What is it with you New England girls and snow, anyway? I grew up in Cadiz. I like sun."
Helen laughed out loud and imagined a warm place for Lucas.
"Helen?" Orion asked, touching her arm to bring her thoughts back down to Earth. She looked at him and saw that her strange behavior had startled him. He was scared of her. They all were-especially Claire. Right now, Claire was looking at Helen like she"d just run over someone"s dog. Helen knew that she needed to sit down and have a chat with Claire, but she didn"t want to take the time to explain herself just yet. She was too eager to get back to Lucas and their own personal paradise.
"I have to leave," she said, shrugging apologetically. She turned to Orion and pointed at him. "Don"t go anywhere, okay?"
"I"ll be right here," Orion said.
She stood up from the table and moved away so that she didn"t freeze everyone when she opened a portal. She looked at Noel. "I"ll be back with Lucas soon. Promise."
Then she vanished.
Somewhere between Earth and Everyland Helen opened her eyes. She had been through the process of viewing the memories she"d inherited from the River Lethe enough times to know when she was doing it again. And she was doing it again.
Except, this time, when she woke with Paris" naked body tangled up with hers, she didn"t watch the scene like a ghostly third person in the room. She felt as if it was happening to her. And of all the memories she"d relived, this one hurt the most.
It was the night that Troy fell.
Helen joined the memory as Paris was slipping into a deep sleep shortly after they had made love for the last time. She felt his body grow heavy, his joints slacken, and watched his calloused hand curl up into a fist. She desperately wanted to stay, hold him, and watch him as he watched his dreams pa.s.s behind his eyelids. But she couldn"t. She had made arrangements with Odysseus and needed to sneak out as soon as possible to do his wretched bidding.
She"d already done all her crying for Paris. The only thing left now was to protect their daughter and make sure that something of Paris was left when it was over.
Odysseus had convinced her slowly. He"d explained that immortals could not fight mortals to the death. Hecate, the only t.i.tan more powerful than Zeus, forbade it. But this technicality didn"t stand in the G.o.ds" way. They were remarkably good at making it so the demiG.o.ds wanted to kill each other off, anyway. Over the years she"d watched as hero after hero fell in single combat, each of them goaded on by his father-G.o.d, and she saw that Odysseus must be right.
Helen understood now that the G.o.ds were purposely perpetuating the war, and she agreed that unless one side won soon all of the demiG.o.ds would be exterminated. Which, as Odysseus had pointed out, was exactly what the G.o.ds wanted, and not only for the show. Aphrodite had told Helen that the G.o.ds loved to watch and place bets on whose offspring would defeat whose. But what the G.o.ds really wanted was for the greatest threat to their power to be eliminated.
The Fates had openly decreed that the G.o.ds would fall at the hands of their children. Ca.s.sandra had made the nearly unintelligible prophecy about Houses, or bloodlines that didn"t even exist yet, and of the "children overthrowing their parents" ten years ago, at the very start of the war. They had all heard it, G.o.ds and demiG.o.ds alike. But in this case, the G.o.ds had the edge. Only the G.o.ds knew that Ca.s.sandra was telling the truth. The demiG.o.ds thought Ca.s.sandra was crazy.
Helen knew she wasn"t. Her sister, Aphrodite, had told her about Apollo"s curse. As the war was starting, Ca.s.sandra had refused Apollo"s amorous advances and he had cursed her to always prophesy correctly but never to be believed. Helen couldn"t think of a more torturous curse-to always know what horrors the future held, but never to be able to steer the ones you love away from destruction.
Helen had watched over the years as Ca.s.sandra screamed at her family. She"d tried to tell them that Helen would betray them all and let the city fall, but no one believed her. The more she screamed, the crazier she"d seemed. And as the G.o.ds laughed, more and more demiG.o.ds died.
But Ca.s.sandra was right. Helen was going to betray her family. She was going to let the Greeks into Troy, and they were going to burn it to the ground.
She felt her husband"s head slip off her shoulder as he tumbled from her arms into Morpheus", and she knew this was her only chance. She edged her hips out from under his, and slid unnoticed out of bed when he rolled over onto his side.
She knew he was going to die.
She nearly woke him, desperate to tell him everything.
She thought of their daughter and knew that Paris couldn"t be saved. That was the deal she"d made with Odysseus-all of Troy for her daughter"s life.
It was a steep price to pay, but not an entirely selfish one. The Greeks didn"t believe her when she"d tried to reason with them. They refused to end their pursuit of the little girl who might or might not be the Tyrant. Helen had tried to tell them that if Atlanta died, all love in the world would die with her. They saw her pleas as a mother"s desperate attempt to save her only child, but that wasn"t entirely it. If Atlanta died, the Face would die with her, and Aphrodite would punish them all.
Helen"s love for Paris and the rest of his family, no matter how deep, could not compare with that. She just hoped that Odysseus managed his side of it. If he didn"t imprison the G.o.ds as he promised he could, then all of this would be for nothing. They would simply wait a generation or two and start another war to kill off all the demiG.o.ds. Strangely, Helen trusted Odysseus with this. She"d heard his plan and, as crazy as it sounded, she knew him well enough to know that if there were ever anyone who could find a way to trick the G.o.ds, it would be him.
Helen leaned down over her husband and ran her lips lightly across his bare shoulder in good-bye. Maybe, someday, she would find him by the River Styx. There, they could wash all their hateful memories away, and walk into a new life together, a life that didn"t have the dirty paw prints of a dozen G.o.ds and a dozen kings marring it.
Such a beautiful thought. Helen vowed that she would live a hundred lives of hardship for one life-one real life-with Paris. They could be shepherds, just as they had dreamed once when they had met at the great lighthouse long ago. She"d be anything, really, a shopkeeper, or a farmer, whatever, as long as they were allowed to live their lives and love each other freely. She dressed quickly, imagining herself tending a shop somewhere by the sea, hoping that someday this dream would come true.
It was still early, an hour or two past sunset, as Helen stole out of the palace, taking her usual route down to the kitchens. As she crept through the herb garden on her way to the wall she saw Aeneas climbing the hill to the temple of the Oracle. Helen paused. No one visited the Oracle anymore, unless they were summoned. What did Ca.s.sandra want with Aeneas on this night . . . the night, Helen wondered?
She couldn"t follow him just now, but she realized it was a stroke of luck that he was distracted. Out of all of them, Aeneas did not feel the influence of the cestus. He was Aphrodite"s son, and could not be swayed. This was more than luck, she realized. Again, Helen had the sinking feeling that she was just a p.a.w.n of the Fates. Aeneas was the one, the only one, who could give her trouble accomplishing her goal, and the Oracle herself had stepped in to remove him from his post on the wall. It was fated, then. Troy was doomed.
In another moment, Helen was climbing the steps up to the turret. The soldiers manning that station parted and bowed to her. Helen looked over the side of the wall, down at the large wooden horse that the Greeks had left on the beach.
"Bring it in," she ordered.
"Princess, may I speak?" asked the commander. Helen hated being called that, but as this was technically her t.i.tle here in Troy she had no choice but to submit to it. She nodded her a.s.sent for the soldier to continue. "General Aeneas has ordered us to leave the horse. He thinks it"s a trick."
"How can it be a trick?" she asked innocently. "The Greeks have gone. Sailed away. Troy has won the war."
The men looked at each other, not knowing what to do. A young soldier, who probably didn"t remember much before the war, spoke in a wavering voice, "Excuse me, Princess. But my cousin"s nurse said her husband, the fisherman, saw all the Greek ships ma.s.sed just up the beach."
"Well, I"m sure your cousin"s nurse"s husband the fisherman knows much more about politics and warfare than I," Helen said jauntily, and the rest of the soldiers laughed while the young man blushed and looked at his feet. "But I think it"s safe to a.s.sume that the giant wooden horse is an offering to Poseidon. The Greeks are trying to buy safe pa.s.sage across the sea. If we take the horse, then we take away their offering, and maybe Poseidon will smash a few Greek ships before they make it home. What say you to that?"
Most of the men cheered at Helen"s rousing tone, but a few still looked apprehensive. Time was running short, and she knew she had no choice. As Helen used the cestus to influence the last of the soldiers, she felt true hatred for the first time. And it was for herself.
"Bring it in," she repeated, and all the men on the wall rushed with dazed faces and blank eyes to fulfill her orders.
As the great gate was being hauled open for the first time in over a decade, Helen hurried off the wall and made her way through the city to the temple of the Oracle. If Aeneas were to return to his post now, he would ruin the whole endeavor. Helen had to make sure he stayed occupied and away from the gate, or she would have to do something drastic.
She couldn"t kill him before dawn. The deal Odysseus had made with Zeus was that Odysseus could get the great gate of Troy open and the entire Greek army into the city in one night without killing a single person before the sun rose. Then, at dawn while the city still slept, the Greeks would slaughter the citizens of Troy in their beds. In exchange for such a speedy end to a war that was turning all of the G.o.ds against each other, Zeus had sworn that the G.o.ds would not return to Earth unless the Scions united and threatened his rule.
Helen had to make sure that she didn"t kill anyone while she accomplished her end of the deal. That didn"t mean she couldn"t hamstring Aeneas and tie him up, though.
Her body trembled as she clutched her dagger. She didn"t want to hurt Aeneas, who had always been a good and true man, but she would do whatever was needed. There was already so much innocent blood on her hands that adding his wouldn"t make a difference, anyway. For a moment, Helen thought of Astyanax, Hector and Andromache"s infant son, and her eyes filled with tears.
All the women, including Helen, were to be spared-after a fashion. They were to be divided among the Greek kings as the spoils of war. Helen was to go to Menelaus. She shuddered, repressing the memory of him trying to beat her to death, and knew that she would face that over and over in the years to come. He was impotent now, made so by Aphrodite"s curse on his town, and he would be determined to take it out on Helen for as long as she managed to live through his brutality.
Helen felt like this was fair. The women were to be married off to the Greek kings, but apart from Atlanta, all the children of Troy were going to die that night. In comparison, Helen estimated that her suffering was small.
Odysseus had refused to budge on the children, no matter how much Helen had begged for their lives. The Greeks wouldn"t take the chance that the babies would grow into men who might hunt them down to avenge their fathers" deaths.
The Oracle had warned them that the Greeks could slay all the children of Troy, but blood for blood was still to be the demiG.o.d"s fate. Ca.s.sandra foresaw that the Furies would not tolerate the killing of children and kin, and that they would punish all the demiG.o.ds for the slaughter of innocents. But of course, no one believed her.
Helen kept her dagger in its sheath until she needed it, and climbed the steep, rocky hill to the temple where Ca.s.sandra lived in solitude. Many times over the years, Helen had stared up at the gleaming pillars of Ca.s.sandra"s plush prison and thought that her husband"s little sister was like the moon. She was higher than any of them, remote, and so very alone.
A few steps farther, and Helen heard some unmistakable sounds. Impossible, Helen thought as she heard the two voices cry out in unison.
Helen darted from column to column and made her way through the forest of marble in the interior of the temple, until she was close enough to the inner sanctum to confirm with her own eyes what her ears had already told her.
Aeneas and Ca.s.sandra were lovers. And from the surprised look on Aeneas" face as he lay next to Ca.s.sandra, still panting, Helen could see that their intimacy was a new development.
Aeneas sat up in the pile of discarded clothes and torn-down draperies that had served as their bed and ran a hand across his sweaty face like he had no idea what to do next. He looked around at the knocked-over amphorae, the ripped curtains, and the general havoc that their union had wreaked on the now-defiled temple, and then down at Ca.s.sandra, completely stunned.
"Did I hurt you?" he asked her urgently.
It amazed Helen that a brutal warrior like Aeneas, who had spent the last ten years of his life shedding rivers of Greek blood, could have such tender emotions. He was more concerned for Ca.s.sandra"s well-being than he was for the fact that he had just committed a crime that was punishable by death.
The Oracle was sacrosanct. Helen couldn"t believe that the Fates had allowed this union at all. From what she understood, fate itself stepped in and kept Oracles from finding intimacy with men. Oracles could try, but the man they wanted would inevitably meet a fatal accident, get shipped off to a faraway land and never return, or there"d be some other devastating misfortune before that love could be consummated. For whatever reason, that obviously was not the case here. The Fates either wouldn"t-or couldn"t-interfere with Aeneas.
Ca.s.sandra smiled and reached up to touch her lover"s pretty mouth with her fingertips. "I hear that"s to be expected the first time. It was worth it a thousand times over," she said quietly.
He took her hand in his and turned it so he could kiss the center of her palm. "I"m sorry, anyway," he whispered, placing her tiny hand over the thick muscles that hid his sensitive heart.
Ca.s.sandra gazed at him hazily, her eyes swimming. Aeneas scooped her up, pulled her onto his lap, and kissed her. Ca.s.sandra swooned for a moment in his arms, but then seemed to steel herself. She pulled away from his kiss and shook her head.
"You must go," she slurred, drunk on him. "Now, before anyone discovers us."