The fog receded as they pressed on through the tunnel, the copper light brightening with each step. Danae became aware of noises, the clash of metal on stone and the rumble of what sounded like wheels. The clangs and crashes intensified as they proceeded through the smooth passage. She stumbled on a patch of uneven ground and looked down to see that parallel grooves had been carved into the rock walkway, similar to the cart tracks in the old mine far above.
They were almost halfway through the tunnel when a blast of heat rippled down the passage, stinging her cheeks and drawing tears from her eyes.
‘What’s down there?’
‘Patience, little Titan,’ Hades glanced back, his pale skin glowing in the burnished light. ‘Soon all shall be revealed.’
At the end of the passage they stepped through another entranceway, supported by a thick wooden frame, and emerged onto a large platform on the edge of a huge pit, lit by hundreds of flaming braziers fixed to the curving rock wall. It was the size of a town, its jagged, circular interior a warren of caves. Twisting around them, stone staircases were threaded like veins across the rock, joining several walkways that stretched across the void. Carts attached to pulley systems that seemed to move of their own accord ran beside thestairs, their bellies glistening with hunks of precious metals, gems and slabs of rock. From this angle Danae could not see the bottom of the pit, only the steam that billowed up from below.
‘It’s a mine,’ she breathed.
‘Minerals, metals, marble, jewels,’ said Hades. ‘The earth’s riches are bountiful.’
‘What do you do with it all?’
‘Most goes to Olympus. Some to the favoured kings of men.’ His voice tightened. ‘On the command of my brother.’
A deep bellow echoed up the pit. She moved forward to see what had uttered the sound and gasped.
Something huge emerged from one of the larger passageways. A creature over thirty feet tall, shaped like a man but bound in solid muscle, its leathery skin as grey as stone.
It was a giant, like the one Heracles was famed to have slain during his labours.
As she watched, a second emerged behind it, then a third. There was a whip crack and another bellow. The giants were all manacled at the wrists and ankles by thick metal chains, their muscular arms full of rocks they heaved into waiting carts.
Following her gaze, Hades said, ‘Mortals may be the Mother’s favourite children, but they were not her first. Once, we shared the earth with these creatures. Zeus wished to destroy them all, but I convinced him to let me imprison some in my kingdom. The giants have been invaluable to my work. Not only are they powerful, they age so slowly they are capable of living for thousands of years.’
Danae could not draw her eyes from them. These must be the beings the Olympians had fashioned the tales of the Titans after.
‘Who is the Mother?’ she asked.
‘She is unimportant. As mortal children outgrow their parents, so we have outgrown her. Come.’ With a flare of his dark robe, Hades strode across the platform down one of the flights of stairs cut into the rock. Danae and Charon hurried after him.
Danae was about to press Hades further, when several oddly shaped creatures, seemingly without heads, emerged from the same cave as the giants. It took her a moment to realize that they were shades, dressed in fortified leather armour, armed with whips and spears. One lashed out at the nearest giant, drawing a roar from the creature. Then another gust of steam boiled from the depths of Tartarus, and Danae was forced to cover her eyes.
They pressed on, deeper into the bowels of the cavern.
Danae slowed again as the clink of axes drew her attention to another of the caves. Here, the workers were not giants, they were mortals.
The rest of the Missing.
Like their larger fellow miners, these people were shackled together, their clothes so torn and filthy it was impossible to discern who they once might have been. They did not look up from their work as Hades, Charon and Danae passed them by, their eyes hollow as the cavern around them.
Danae thought of their families left behind, with no graves to mourn at, and no answers to sate their desperate longing.
She dragged her eyes from the mortals and forced herself to keep moving, pacing after Hades and the ferryman.
Eventually, their winding staircase reached the bottom of the cavern, and Hades paced towards a vast iron grate set into the rock bed beneath their feet. Metal tubes burrowed into the stone around it, feeding up to the cavern walls and into the pulley systems that operated the carts. Another burst of steam issued from the grate, the tubesvibrated, and the carts heaved into motion. Danae’s lips parted in amazement.
‘Check the locks,’ Hades barked at Charon.
The ferryman obeyed, running between the eight metal locks holding the grate in place. Condensation glistened on the bars. As Danae drew closer, the heat burned her lungs and lanced sweat from her skin, but curiosity drove her forward. When she reached the edge, she looked down.
Dark water shimmered at the bottom of a vast well. Ripples scurried across the surface, then the liquid seemed to shatter as something huge emerged from the water.
A great reptilian head coated with emerald scales and black spines reared up. Eyes, like two burning suns slit through with obsidian, blazed up at Danae. Then jaws that could have swallowed her whole opened.
She threw herself back just in time to avoid being caught in the plume of steam soaring up through the cavern. It seemed Charon had known what to expect and had already moved back. Once the cloud of hot air had dissipated, he carried on testing the locks of the creature’s cage.
