flesh of his enemies, he discarded it in favor of the second, which served him through another dozen or hundred opponents until it, too, dulled. Then he gathered weapons dropped by the dead or fleeing enemy so that the carnage would never slow, let alone stop. His valiant soldiers looked to him for guidance-the kind of guidance a legendary commander could offer. He gave them the lessons he himself had learned.
He showed them how to kill. “No quarter! No prisoners! No mercy!”
The warring became nothing more than a stage on which Kratos played. He killed for the God of War, he killed for the glory of Sparta, he killed for the sheer joy of watching men die under his sword. All feared him, ally and enemy alike…
… except one.
His calm and patient wife, who seemed the only mortal with the courage to stand against his fury. “How much is enough, Kratos? When will it end?”
“When the glory of Sparta is known throughout the world!”
She made a gesture, as if shooing away an annoying insect. “The glory of Sparta,” she said with scalding mockery. “What does that even mean? Do you know, or are you just mouthing the excuses you tell yourself to justify your bloodlust?” She gathered their daughter against her skirts, and the flash of anger vanished, replaced by a resigned melancholy. “You do not fight for Sparta. These things, you do only for yourself.”
Before Kratos could respond, he saw his wife change, grow older, and… her eyes began to shed bloody tears, tears that caught fire as they ran down her cheeks. Where they fell, a wall of fire sprang up between Kratos and his wife-exactly like the flames kindled by his own men to drive the enemy before them and to hear the lamentations of their women. The flames blinded him and seared his flesh.
But his wife! She was on the other side… the other side of ATHENA’S ORACLE pulled her hands off his temples and looked at him, her face bloodless. “By the gods! Why would Athena send one such as you?”
Kratos took her by the throat with one mighty hand. “Stay out of my head!”
For an instant, a need to snap that pretty neck shook him like an unfurled banner. His head rang with memories of war trumpets and the screams of terror and despair. He cast her aside, and she fell to the temple floor.
She sat and rocked back on her hands, staring up at him. Then she stood and faced the Ghost of Sparta, unafraid. “Choose your enemies wisely, Kratos.”
She turned from him and walked toward a section of temple wall where he made out the faint outline of a door. The wall beside it was marked with an insignia, where the Oracle stopped. “Your brute strength alone will not be enough to destroy Ares.”
She leaned against the insignia, causing the wall to fade away and the door to open. “Only one item in the world will allow you to defeat a god.”
Kratos squinted at the bright light pouring through the portal; it intensified until he had to use one enormous arm to shield his eyes. Heat boiled toward him as if he stood near an open furnace. What lay beyond confused him. This door should lead out onto the rocky night-shrouded cliffs surrounding the temple…
But through the portal, as his eyes began to adjust, he saw noontide and swirling sands.
If the Oracle found this in any way unusual or disturbing, she gave no sign. “Pandora’s Box lies far beyond the walls of Athens, hidden by the gods across the desert to the east,” she said with calm assurance. “Only with its power can you defeat Ares.”
She stepped aside and turned her unreadable eyes on him once more. Kratos feared no man, no god, but he shied away from Athena’s oracle. She had entered the hidden realm in his mind and witnessed his shame.
“Be warned, Kratos. Many have gone in search of Pandora’s Box. None has returned.” She pointed to the portal. “Go through the Gates to the Desert, Kratos. There begins the path to Pandora’s Box. It is the only way you will defeat Ares and save Athens. The only way, Kratos. The only way.” Her voice faded to a whisper, hardly audible over the whistling desert wind.
Kratos ran forth from the temple, skirting the ramparts of the sacred mountain for a few minutes. Then before him loomed a crumbling gate, attended only by a vast statue of a hoplite. He pressed on through the gate without pausing. A strong wind whipped up a storm that cut at his face like tiny razors-and when he turned back for a last look at Athens, the city was gone. There was nothing to be seen in any direction save an eternity of sand.
He was alone, more alone than he had ever been in his life.
FOURTEEN
“SO LITTLE LEFT. Would you care to wager on how long before your city will be rebuilt in honor of Ares?” Hermes fluttered above the reflecting pool, breeze from his winged sandals rippling the water and blurring the view of Athens’s destruction. He bent down and poked a finger into the liquid and disturbed the image just under the surface. A heretofore undamaged building fell into rubble at his touch.
“Stop that,” Athena said sharply.
“Why? I would say Ares is the clear victor here,” the Messenger of the Gods said, smiling broadly. “Do you think that building would have survived his assault? He has left you nothing, and now he reduces that nothing to… even less.”
Zeus appeared, thunder rolling from his sudden entrance. Hands tucked into his toga, he frowned at Hermes, appearing wroth. “He’s done better than I expected. Ares usually blunders about like a Minotaur in a potter’s shop.”
“Better than you expected?” Athena said pointedly. “Have you chosen to support my brother?”
“No,” Zeus said, looking angrier yet. “He destroys too many of my shrines. It is almost as if he picks them out, but I must be wrong. It is your worshippers he kills, Athena.”
Athena could only glower.
“Ah, Lord and Father,” said Hermes cheerfully. “You have won handsomely in this business so far, haven’t you?”
Athena looked sharply at Hermes.
“What do you mean by that?” Zeus’s voice thundered and lightning sizzled his beard.
“Is Kratos not your creature?” Hermes asked, fluttering up and away, seeming a little frightened. He looked to Athena for support, but she had none to give. She worried that Hermes understood Kratos’s true quest into the Desert of Lost Souls and would tell Ares, simply to relieve himself of boredom by stirring more trouble.
“He is Athena’s pet, not mine,” Zeus said.
“Yes, of course. I was wrong to assume you were aiding him, though someone in Athens uses a thunderbolt similar to your own against Ares’s creatures.”
“Do you know that or is it only another of your whispered calumnies to set one god against another?” Athena asked.
“You accuse me- me!-of inciting civil war in Olympus. Never!” Hermes turned his attention back to Zeus. “I am your loyal subject and son, Skyfather! I seek to harm no one but only to keep all informed.”
“And amused,” Zeus said. “You would go to any length to avoid boredom.”
Hermes nodded, smiled, then caught himself. He fluttered higher so he could bow deeply while hovering above the scrying pool. More somber, he bowed his head and swept his arm through the air as he said, “My loyalty is without bounds, my king. You need only command me.”
“Very well,” Zeus said, grating his teeth. “Go to Ares and tell him I order him to cease his destruction of my temples and supplicants.”
“Ares?” Hermes looked so distraught that Athena fought to keep from laughing. Then she realized the gravity of the situation. Ares would never accede to Zeus’s wishes and, if anything, would redouble his effort to snuff out not only her followers but the Skyfather’s as well.
“My father, there is no need for Hermes to interrupt Ares. The God of War is only pursuing his true nature.” Athena’s gray eyes met the storm-filled ones of Zeus. She did not flinch. If Zeus sent this message, Hermes would become curious and would undoubtedly discover that Kratos sought Pandora’s Box. She knew the Messenger of the Gods well. He would never be able to restrain himself from slyly hinting to Ares that he knew something the God of
