‘Shh now, it’s –’ Something dry and scaly clamped over her mouth. Instinctively she jabbed her elbows backwards, hitting whatever was behind her. A burst of hot breath was expelled on the back of her neck, but her assailant didn’t let go. So, she twisted, pummelling with all her strength.
Orpheus cried out as behind her the air shimmered under her blows, punctuated by a pair of crimson eyes with pupils of deepest midnight.
Memories hurtled through her mind. Her nephew Arius’ cries as he was ripped from Alea’s bed, the charcoal-cloaked shade staring at her in the Athenian flesh market, the dull grey body of the dead shade she had killed outside the city of Colchis.
Some of her punches landed, and at last one of her kicks uprooted the shade. They tumbled together, smacking into the rocky ground. Hylas was braying and Orpheus shouting, but the sounds blurred into the drum of blood in her ears as she scrabbled to locate the shade.
Then everything went dark. Orpheus must have dropped the torch.
‘Orpheus!’
The musician did not reply, but she could hear groans. With the loss of her vision, every noise was intensified; the clatter of Hylas’ hooves on the rock, the panting of breath.
To her left, she could hear heavy breathing. She stretched out until her fingers touched leathery skin. Gripping onto what might have been an arm or a leg, she dragged the shade towards her. The creature flailed, trying to smack her away as she clambered on top of it. She worked her way up to its head and smashed it into the ground until she felt the shade’s muscles slacken beneath her. Something warm and wet seeped beneath her fingers. It was near death, its life-threads beginning to flee back into the earth. She had a limited window to consume them; once the life force left its body, the power of the shade’s threads would be lost.
Just as she was about to drain the creature, she was interrupted by braying from somewhere far away.
‘Hylas!’ she screamed, leaping up and stumbling in the darkness towards the sound. She tripped on something lying across her path, and Orpheus yelped as she crashed down on top of him. ‘Hylas!’ she cried again, but she could no longer hear the horse, not even the click of his hooves on the rock.
‘Hylas …’ she whispered, choking on the realization that he was gone. Her faithful companion, her one true friend. How could she have been so selfish? She should have let him go at the entrance to the mine, told him to fly away and be free. He had been scared; he knew something was wrong before they even set foot in the place and yet she’d forced him to come with her.
‘Daeira,’ Orpheus grabbed hold of her. ‘The torch … I’m sorry, something knocked me down … Are they gone?’
She pulled him to his feet. ‘We have to find Hylas. The other shades must have taken him.’ Then she dragged the musician in the direction she’d last heard the winged horse.She stretched out her free hand until her fingers touched cold stone and began treading carefully along the passage, wary at any moment of a hidden drop.
‘They will have come from the Underworld,’ she said with more confidence than she felt. ‘That’s where they’ll have gone.’
Orpheus did not voice his reply, but his fingers tightened around hers.
As they felt their way together in the pitch darkness, she hoped with every life-thread in her body that she was right.
6. Gates of Bronze
It was difficult to gauge their progress with no light to guide them. Danae had given up counting the twists and turns in the passage, struggling to adjust to the sightless world of touch. Every sound was amplified, Orpheus’ ragged breath grating on her ears. She could no longer visualize the rocky tunnel around her, could not tell if the walls were narrowing or widening. The darkness itself seemed to take on a viscous quality, its heaviness weighing on her chest, squeezing her breath. If she had not been so aware of her body, it would have felt like being drawn into the omphalos shard’s vision realm, her consciousness suspended in the void of nothingness.
Suddenly, she stopped moving.
‘What is it?’ Orpheus’ grip tightened on her hand.
She groaned. In the aftermath of the shade attack she had been so distraught by Hylas’ capture, she’d not given thought to the horse’s saddle bag being taken with him. She’d lost the omphalos shard.
‘All my belongings were with Hylas.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Orpheus squeezed her fingers, ‘I have enough coins for the ferryman to take us both across the River Styx to the Asphodel Meadows.’ This was the realm of the Underworld supposedly populated by the virtuous dead, where Alea and Eurydice should be.
You should never have come here, said the voice.You should have turned back, while you still could.
‘Shut up,’ she spat.
Orpheus flinched.
‘Not you, I meant … it doesn’t matter.’
Strangely, now she couldn’t see Orpheus, her suspicion of him waned. She could feel the truth of his terror through his grip, the way he clung to her as though she were saving him from drowning. He was a man willing to walk into the jaws of death because he couldn’t live without his wife. Surely he was no agent of the Twelve.
‘We’ll find them, Orpheus. Eurydice and my sister.’
His grip softened a little as they continued to feel their way along the passage.
