but take what you will.”
“Why?”
“Why give you supplies?” One bony shoulder lifted in a shrug. “Why not? It’s not like I have any use for them myself.” With the nub of arm bone, it pointed toward its guts-or, rather, to the ragged gap where his stomach, liver and bowels ought to be. “Bloody vultures got my innards decades ago.”
“Where’s the food?”
“Over there,” the decrepit creature said. “I rob the bodies.”
“Of what? For what?”
“Whatever they’ve got. For fun, mostly. It’s the only interesting part of my job. Never quite know what you’ll find.”
Kratos hefted a half-empty water skin. The water inside smelled like goat. “Drink up,” the creature said. “And here’s some decent meat. Hardly any maggots at all. I got it off a body only a day back. Or was it two? Five? You lose track of the days out here. One’s pretty much like the next, and both today and tomorrow are like all the ones before.”
Kratos drank of the water and ate what he could. The worms tasted better than the meat they infested. He licked what little grease there was off his fingers and wished for more. He drank the last of the water in the skin. The undead seemed not to mind. Why should he? Then he donned bronze armor from the pile.
When Kratos had finished, he frowned at his host.
“I can see your curiosity, eh? You want to know my story. Questions, questions. It’s always the same,” the firekeeper said. “Madmen seeking power, and fools seeking glory. I know. Too well I know. As you can see by what’s left of me”-it indicated it’s maimed form-“I was no luckier than the rest of them. Unluckier, really. At least they got their burning and their souls released to the Lord of the Underworld. I got… this.” It swung its staff about, showing the area filled with the pilfered possessions and the huge fire bowl.
“You attempted to conquer the temple?”
“That I did, and I’m sorry for it now. I was the first mortal to enter the temple. And so I was the first to die. As punishment for my presumption, Zeus doomed me to tend this corpse fire for all eternity-or until Pandora’s Box is taken. Which is close enough to eternity, for no man will ever gain the box.”
The creature nodded toward the towering gates and gave out a whistling sigh. “The Architect-he who built this temple-was a zealot. He lived only to serve the gods, and for that he got the same reward we all do: an eternity of madness. The tale is that he’s still alive, still inside, still trying to appease the gods who abandoned him centuries ago.”
Kratos stepped closer and stared into the fire, where bodies sizzled and popped.
“I see your question. How many bodies a day do I burn? Go on. You can ask. I tried counting, for the first few years, that is. I gave up after the tenth year. Five a day? A dozen? I know your questions, I do, since I’ve heard ’em all before. Did every one slay desert Sirens and sound the horn to get here? Did I?”
Kratos grunted, looked past the remnant of a man, and studied the gates for a way to open them. If he could not, he might scale the walls beside the bronze-and-wood gates. But he recognized the danger in that, with the harpies fluttering around above, eyeing him hungrily.
“You shouldn’t think so much,” the firekeeper said. “It’ll only make you crazy-but then, you’re here, so you must already be crazy.” The way it laughed warned Kratos of something more. “You’re right to question me. I know what happened to you because you didn’t question the gods.”
A fist of dread clenched in Kratos’s guts. He fixed his gaze on the firekeeper.
“I know you are the Ghost of Sparta.” The empty eye socket glimmered as though the undead stared at him intently. “I know why your skin is white as ash.”
Kratos lurched forward and seized the firekeeper by the throat. “Your job is difficult for a creature missing a hand and a foot. Imagine how difficult it will be when you’re missing your head.”
“You’ll have no luck entering the temple if that gate stays closed.” Kratos’s grip didn’t impede the creature’s mocking speech. “Think it over, Ghost of Sparta. Can you risk mindlessly serving your lust for blood? After what happened last time?”
With a wordless snarl of frustration, Kratos cast the firekeeper to the ground. Chuckling, the creature rose and hopped over to grab a skull from the ground. With speed and accuracy astonishing for such a broken creature, the firekeeper hurled the skull at an outcropping above. It shattered against the stone, its impact disturbing a pair of harpies. They fluttered down toward some sort of mechanism at the top of the massive gate. Kratos could not see what they did, but soon the gate began to lift slowly, as one harpy on each side flapped frantically to lift with all her might. The gates ratcheted upward and locked in place. “See you soon, Ghost of Sparta!” the firekeeper cried. “I’ll see you again when the harpies drop you in my bowl!”
Kratos strode through the gate without a backward glance.
SEVENTEEN
THE BOOK LAY OPEN before a massive door like the eye of a god, its upper arch decorated with arcane symbols. The book itself seemed to be only a statue, a replica, carved from stone to look like a book on a pedestal- no real book could have survived exposure to the Desert of Lost Souls, open for a thousand years.
Its nature was irrelevant. All the import was conveyed by the words graven into its stone pages.
– PATHOS VERDES III
Kratos scowled as he read the graven words. The Architect had actually designed the Temple of Pandora, deliberately, to be solved by “the bravest hero”? Kratos snorted in disgust. He was no hero, having committed the bloody murders he had, but he would not meet his doom here. His hatred for Ares-and the promise of the gods to erase his nightmares-would carry him to victory. Kratos spun about when the great temple doors slammed behind him. There was no going back, even if he had wanted to.
He looked around and saw that the only way forward was through a portal carved with more of the curious symbols. At cardinal points around the circular doorway were large gemstones, dull and lifeless in spite of the sunlight slanting down from behind him. Kratos placed a hand on one huge stone that might have been a diamond. He felt it quiver and drew back his hand.
Spinning, drawing the Blades of Chaos, he faced a ten-foot-tall heavily armored undead. Kratos crossed his blades above his head to fend off a powerful downward strike by the undead’s massive sword. The blow was so hard that it drove Kratos to his knees.
Rather than force his way back to his feet, Kratos suddenly released the pressure on his blades and rolled forward between the undead’s legs. As he whirled under, he knocked it down by grabbing its skeletal ankles. The undead soldier toppled forward, giving Kratos the opening he needed. He came to his feet and slashed with all his strength. Two things happened, one expected and the other surprising. The undead’s head exploded from its neck,
