[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
with rubble
file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/...The%20Face%20of%20Apollo%20(v1.
1%20htm).html (218 of 221) [2/4/2004 11:11:05 PM]
Fred Saberhagen - The Book of the Gods 1 - The Face of Apollo now and with the
bodies of the audience.
Fresh wind was whirling a great cloud of dust away. Jeremy could now get a
fresh view of what, only a minute ago, had been the inside of the auditorium
and was now an expanse of rubble covering an open slope. With the pulling of
the executioner's trigger, the whole of the packed chamber had collapsed,
dome, sides, and sloping floor alike gone sliding thunderously away, careening
and crashing in all directions down the steep slope of natural bedrock that
moments earlier had been its support.
Gone in the crash, and doubtless now buried in its debris, were Lord Kalakh
and all of his key aides and officers who had been present with him.
It was hardly possible to hope that Hades had been killed. He would be
sun-scorched and beaten now but no worse than half-dead, and he would have
found underground passage home through the Mountain-
piercing tunnel.
No sooner had the eagles set Jeremy and Kate down upon a fresh mound of rubble
than Vulcan was suddenly present and a golden maiden to hand Jeremy his
recovered Bow and the one Arrow he had never used. Armed again, though still
almost staggering with pain and weakness, he looked around for his foes but
those few who were still alive were already out of sight as they went
scrambling in retreat.
Minutes had passed, and still it seemed that the last echoes of the prolonged
crash refused to die. The fact was that it had provoked landslides, whose
sound rose in a great but now diminishing roar, down the
Mountain's distant flanks. More clouds of bitter dust came welling up, mixed
with a little smoke.
And the Trickster, gripping Jeremy by the arms, then hugging him, once more
laughed her glorious laugh:
"Couldn't you remember whose house this is?"
"It wouldn't have destroyed either of your Faces anyway," Andy was assuring
him, a little later, leaning out of the new chariot in which he'd just landed
on the Mountain's top. Now it was possible to observe how much the new
Hephaestus looked like Andy and sounded like him, too. "At least I don't see
how it could have. That was nothin' but a latrine rumor from the start. Oh,
the dungeon was real enough. Don't know who built it, but I had to fix it up a
little."
Page 215
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"Small comfort." Apollo/Jeremy was sitting on a rock in the full light of
sunset, trying to regain some strength and sanity. His right arm was around
Kate, who was sitting close beside him.
Jeremy Redthorn's brush with death had freed him of the fear of being used up,
worn out, a human body too frail a vessel to bear all the forces that a god
pours into it. It seemed to him now that that view was based on an essential
fallacy. Humans were stronger than they looked or felt, and the gods with
their
Faces, however powerful, were only human creations. Eventually the human body
that he still shared with Apollo would die but Apollo would not be anxious to
discard him when he tired and aged. Apollo, as long as he remained Jeremy
Redthorn's partner, could want nothing that Jeremy Redthorn did not want.
Hephaestus produced what actually looked like a guilty blush. "Damn it, Jer,
we didn't want it to work out like this we hoped you could get a couple Arrows
into Hades, kill him dead. But you never know what'll happen in a fight, so
Katy and I thought we better work on the house here, and we got this little
business ready, with the trapdoor and the walls and so on. Just in case."
"Might've told me."
file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/...The%20Face%20of%20Apollo%20(v1.
1%20htm).html (219 of 221) [2/4/2004 11:11:05 PM]
Fred Saberhagen - The Book of the Gods 1 - The Face of Apollo
"Meant to tell you, damn it! But by the time I got in touch with Kate and we
settled what kind of plan would have the best chance, you'd already gone
rushin' off to fight. Damn, boy! For someone who didn't want to join the army
. . ."
"I
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]