The Immortal Game (book 1) (20 page)

…

The beauty of Olympus was forgotten as Apollo’s dark words ran through Ruby’s mind. She soon found herself standing in front of Ares’s abode. He didn’t answer when she knocked on the oak door and she thought of the enormity of the place. How would he ever hear her out here? The door opened easily when she turned the handle. No need for locks on Olympus, it seemed.

She entered the main hall and looked up to the soaring ceiling covered in paintings. She was about to call out for Ares when she heard muffled voices coming from the war room.

She reached for the door handle but then pulled away. Who was he talking to? Should she interrupt? Instead she followed the arc of the curved walls of the entrance hall and looked at each painting, vase, and tapestry in turn.

She was a quarter of the way through the circuit when she heard a feminine, melodic laugh come from behind the closed doors. She looked at the smooth wood door and was about to dismiss it when she heard Ares’s laugh mixed in. His seemed higher than normal, nervous maybe. The laughter came again and Ruby moved closer to the door. She was about to knock when it swung open.

Her body jerked back as the goddess from the tapestry, the same one she had seen at the Table of the Twelve, walked toward her. Up close she was even more stunning. She wore an emerald green peplos that played up her reddish blond hair and her sparkling green eyes. Her complexion was luminous, perfect.

“Well, here she is now.” The goddess’s smile lit up her eyes.

“Ruby!” Ares moved in front of the goddess and put his arm around Ruby. “This is Aphrodite.”

Ruby felt the floor shift beneath her. Aphrodite? The goddess of love and beauty? But what was the goddess of love doing laughing behind closed doors with Ares?

“Don’t make my mistake.” Aphrodite winked at Ares. “He’s a keeper.”

Ruby felt Ares’s grip tighten on her shoulder.

“I’ve gotta run now.” Her voice was smooth and velvety. She spoke with a slow, leisurely rhythm that was almost hypnotic. “Everyone’s going to the river. You two should come.” She looked back at Ares and playfully tugged on his arm.

Ruby didn’t like to see her touch him.

The goddess turned and walked toward the front door. She moved like a silk ribbon. In the doorframe she half turned and glanced back with a sultry smile.

When the door closed Ruby looked at Ares. “What was that about?” She tried to sound casual.

“It’s just Aphrodite.”

“What did she mean? ‘Don’t make my mistake
.
’”

“I don’t know what she meant. I mean … She doesn’t always make sense.”

She looked him in the eye. “I don’t want to have secrets, Ares. That’s no way to start a life.”

“It’s just … She … We …”

Ruby searched his eyes, his face. “
Her
?
She’s
the one?”

“It was a long time ago,” he said, and shook his head.

Ruby felt her eyes getting too big in their sockets. “
She’s
the one you haven’t been able to get over for three thousand years?” Her voice escalated with each word.

“Ruby.” He looked at her with panic on his face. “It was a long time ago. I got over her. I love
you
.”

Her head was still spinning. She didn’t want to blow it out of proportion. They had just been talking. But what bothered Ruby was not that they had met behind closed doors, or Aphrodite’s undeniable beauty. It wasn’t even her walk. It was the laugh. Not Aphrodite’s, teasing and playful, but Ares’s, high and uneasy.

“What’s going on at the river?” she asked, to change the subject.

“A bunch of gods are getting together,” he said, looking relieved. “We should go. Everyone will want to meet you.”

Her throat tightened at the thought of meeting
everyone.

“Have you eaten?” he asked.

“Yes. Athena is taking very good care of me.” Her mood lightened. “She gave us a wedding gift.” She pulled the branch out of the purse at her waist and again marveled at its simple beauty.

Ares took the branch from her. “This is a rare gift. Athena doesn’t cut up The Olive Tree for just anyone. We’ll make a special garden for it.”

“She said to plant it after the wedding.”

He handed it back to her and slipped both his arms around her waist. His touch and energy reassured her. “After we’re married then.”

“I still can’t believe Zeus said yes.” She searched his face, looking for the doubt he had expressed the night before and thinking of what Apollo said on the path.

His eyes darted away for a split second, but then they were back on her. “I’m sure Athena and Aphrodite will want to help us plan for it. And Dionysus, of course.”

“Of course,” she said in a low voice. “Which one is he again?”

FIFTEEN

As they walked to the river Ares pointed out who lived where. The abode near Zeus’s Great Hall, the one Ruby had mistaken for silver, was platinum. It was Hera’s.

The white marble one belonged to Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility. His abode was almost completely covered in vines. “Every variety of grape that grows on Earth and a few that don’t,” Ares said.

“Aphrodite lives there.” He pointed through the trees to a pink alabaster building filigreed with blooming rose vines. Ruby caught the familiar scent of the flowers on the air. Aphrodite’s abode stood in contrast to a black metal one nearby. It was the one with all the sculptures that Ruby had seen from the air. She couldn’t help but feel a little relieved that Ares and Aphrodite didn’t live right next to each other.

She was glad to leave the buildings behind and happy that they hadn’t run into the main residents of either the gold or platinum abodes. Ares assured her that only the younger generation of gods would go to the river. “Technically speaking, we’ll be breaking a few rules.”

She instinctively looked around but Ares didn’t seem concerned as he led her down a narrow trail through the thick woods. At the end of the trail they came to the edge of a river.

“Oceanus,” he said as he stretched out his arms in a grand gesture. “The great river that runs in a circle around the core of Olympus before it flows out to the sea.” He pointed south.

She thought of the seemingly endless ocean she had seen as they flew in. Here it was only a few hundred feet to the far side of the clear water where the forest picked up again.

“This is our boundary.” He looked down to the water. “Zeus has forbidden us to go beyond the water’s edge.”

“What’s on the other side?”

“Maybe I’ll show you sometime.” He smiled at her and she saw a glimmer of the excitement she had grown accustomed to seeing on railroad bridges and at the base of sheer cliffs.

They strolled hand in hand along the river, kicking up rocks and taking their time. Soon they came to a group of gods standing on the bank up ahead. The gods were dressed in peploses or chitons of different colors. They talked in loose groups, and looked to the far side of the water as if they expected the trees to uproot themselves and walk away.

Athena spoke to a cluster of gods but stopped midsentence when she saw Ruby. All eyes turned to them. Athena walked to Ruby and put her arm around her shoulders as Ares continued to hold her other hand. Ruby stood up straight. She was glad that she had these two flanking her. The others approached in a large crowd, except for Apollo, who hung back and continued to look down into the water before him.

“Welcome,” a young god said as he led the pack to meet her. His hair was the color of wheat in August. His eyes were as blue as a summer sky. He was young and cute with boyish features. Ruby recognized him from the dinner party and remembered thinking that he looked like a member of a boy band back home. He wore an off-white chiton and held a gold staff in one hand.

“Hermes,” Ares said with obvious affection in his voice. “This is Ruby.”

Hermes took her hand and shook it.

“You own the winged sandals, right?” she said. “Thanks for the loan.”

His smile was lopsided, charming. “Ares assured me he was up to no good. I was happy to help.” He winked at her. “I had no idea it would be this good.”

A tall goddess with a silver bow and a quiver of silver arrows on her back stood next to Hermes. She wore the shorter chiton that the male gods wore and had long, lithe arms and legs. She had been talking with Apollo at the Table of the Twelve the night before.

“Artemis,” the goddess said, not waiting for Ares to introduce them.

Ruby took her outstretched hand and shook it. The goddess had white-blond hair and familiar blue eyes. Ruby glanced past her to Apollo.

“We’re twins,” the goddess said.

“I see you got the looks out of the deal,” Ruby said as a joke, giddy and self-conscious from all the attention.

Artemis didn’t laugh.

Aphrodite pushed through the crowd. She took Ruby’s hand. “Don’t mind her. She has no sense of humor. Have you begun to plan the wedding? I’d love to help. And Dionysus will create you a new wine,” she said. She waved to a god with short-cropped black hair standing toward the back. He smiled and waved at Ruby.

“We haven’t talked about the wedding much, but I’ll let you know,” Ruby said.

“Yes, you must,” Aphrodite said and with her next breath added, “And this is my son and his wife. They’ll help too.” She pulled in a matching pair of beautiful blonds. If Aphrodite hadn’t said that they were husband and wife Ruby would have thought they were twins, too. They seemed as young as Hermes.

“Eros, Psyche, this is Ruby. She’ll be your …” Aphrodite looked to the forest behind Ruby, apparently searching for the right label. “Stepmother.”

Ruby’s eyes widened—not at meeting Ares’s son or at the confirmation of what she already suspected, that Aphrodite was Ares’s son’s mother—but at meeting Psyche. She had been human once.

Eros stuck his hand out to her. She started when she saw Ares’s turquoise eyes looking out of Eros’s otherwise unfamiliar face. “Nice to have you here,” he said.

Other gods were introduced. The names were familiar, though there was no time for Ruby to place name to myth before the next god was presented. After about twenty gods and goddesses, she stopped trying to keep them straight.

She shook yet another hand.

“
Pan
,” Ares said, and exaggerated the name with a smile.

Ruby’s smile fell when her eyes instinctively traveled down to his legs, which were furry and ended in hooves. She glanced back to his face. His eyes were pale yellow and his pupils were black horizontal slits. In the tangles of his curly brown hair she saw two little horns sticking up. “Nice to meet you,” she finally managed.

“Don’t let my brutish side disturb you, dear,” he said. “I’m only forty-nine percent goat. Mostly god. At least where it counts.” There was a definite twinkle in his golden eyes.

Ruby smiled again. She was surprised at everyone’s warmth and how welcoming they all were.

Apollo, still standing by the water’s edge, called out, “Pan, get your pipes.”

The group walked to the water with Pan in the lead. He produced an instrument of five hollow reeds lined up in descending height order, held together with black and gold lashing. Pan brought the pipes to his mouth and blew across them as one might do with an empty wine bottle to produce a note. He began to play a light melodic tune.

The gods around Ruby looked into the river and at the trees that lined the far bank. The water was as clear as glass, like a rippling window that ran over the smooth grey and brown stones of the riverbed.

The sweet music from Pan’s pipes lulled her. Her thoughts wandered. It reminded her of cycling, of that meditative state she would sometimes get to. There was no real sense of time passing or of the gods around her.

She startled back to the present when she caught a glimpse of movement across the river. Something had shifted among the brown trunks and the green leaves of the trees.

“Here they come,” Apollo said. Loud. Eager.

Other gods pointed into the river. Ruby looked down. Shapes glided through the clear water, so fast she couldn’t make them out. Alarmed, she backed up into Ares who was standing right behind her. He didn’t budge but instead put his arms around her and whispered in her ear. “Don’t be afraid.”

She relaxed into his embrace and watched as figures came into focus on the far side. They were women, young and graceful. All nude. The shapes in the water slowed too. They seemed to be more a part of the clear currents of the river than something foreign in it.

The women across the water drifted above its surface and came toward them. The swimmers climbed out of the water down the bank from where the group of gods and Ruby stood. No one seemed surprised or embarrassed that the women were naked.

“Who are they?” she whispered to Ares.

“Nymphs,” he said. “Nature spirits that live in the woods and the streams. They don’t often leave their groves or springs but they will abandon everything when they hear Pan’s pipes.”

The nymphs walked toward them on the near bank. They were the height of humans or gods. They had creamy white skin and long flowing hair in rich browns and deep reds.

The gods went to greet them.

Ruby saw one god walk faster than the others. His blond head was high above anyone else’s. His light blue eyes were fixed on a single point. Ruby followed Apollo’s line of sight. Before she could find what he was looking at, he stopped. His face brightened.

He took the hand of a plump little nymph. She wore a crown of ivy atop her waist-long brown hair. He bent to kiss her hand, as he had done to Ruby so long ago when they had first met, but instead of a sly smile and a playful gleam in his eye, Ruby saw unrestrained adoration. She felt like she was looking at a completely different god.

The nymph was not especially beautiful but she had an open face that suggested laughter and kindness. There was not a hint of arrogance or smugness between them.

The pair walked away together toward the forest. The nymph’s head was craned back to look up into Apollo’s shining face and they soon disappeared into the trees.

Ruby’s attention was pulled away by loud voices from the other direction. Artemis was with a group of nymphs who were all talking at once. She said something to them. They all turned in the same direction and pointed downstream. In an instant the goddess and the group were off, running down the bank of the river.