CONTENTS
COVER
ABOUT THE BOOK
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
PART ONE
1 THE SEEDS OF POWER
2 THE WAR OF THE GODS AND TITANS
3 THE FRUITS OF POWER
4 THE SPRINGTIME OF THE GODS
5 THE FIRST THIEF
6 DESIRE
7 THE BIRTHDAY PARTY
PART TWO
8 THE CREATURES OF PROMETHEUS
9 FIRE
10 AN ORDINARY WOMAN
PART THREE
11 WOLVES
12 MOTHERS’ BONES . . . STONES . . .
13 THE LADY OF THE HARVESTS
14 ‘CORE . . . CORE . . .’
15 SPRING IN HELL
16 A CHARMING LAD
17 TWO THIEVES
18 A DEADLY VISION
19 THE BATTLE WITH DEATH
20 THE SECOND FALL
AFTERWORD
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
COPYRIGHT
THE GOD BENEATH THE SEA
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 17384 6
Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK
A Random House Group Company
This ebook edition published 2014
Text copyright © Leon Garfield and Edward Blishen, 1970
Illustrations copyright © Charles Keeping, 1970
First Published in Great Britain
Doubleday Childrens 9780857533111 1970
The right of Leon Garfield and Edward Blishen to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
To
Vivien,
Nancy
and
Renate
PART ONE
THE MAKING OF THE GODS
At first it was a tiny prick of light – as if the sun had gone too close and caught the immense blue fabric of the sky. It glinted and glittered and presently it was seen to be moving, like a golden needle stitching away at the heavens.
This was in the early morning. By noon its brightness had dimmed. Against the sun’s full blaze it was no more than a charred and flaming mote. The sun continued toward the west; the sky deepened and the mote had increased till it was the size of a thumbnail held at full stretch.
Already its light cast a great pool of gold on the darkening sea and a curious sound was in the air. A thin wailing that rose at times to a scream . . .
Now the sun was gone and the twisting, flickering, shining thing lit up a patch of the night as it rushed down to meet itself in the sea.
The sound grew shriller, louder. The waves began to tremble and hasten hither and thither in a panic. It was coming . . . Then, for the briefest instant, the falling shape was seen quite clearly as it turned over and over in the air. It was a fiery, shrieking baby . . .
Suddenly two white arms rose up out of the sea. They caught the infant as it fell and drew it swiftly down under the wave. The light was quenched and the sea rolled on, dark and peaceful under the stars.
The gaping fish and the blundering turtles fled away; the ornamental sea-horses and giant crabs that seemed to carry spired and blushing cities on their backs drifted and clambered into nooks and crevices as the goddess sped down among them in a pearly storm of bubbles.
Deeper and deeper she rushed with the frantic infant in her arms. The formidable monsters on the ocean’s floor curled and rolled away among the coral forests where the flash and glimmer of sea-nymphs lit the goddess on her way. At last she came to the entrance of a cave. Here, strange and intricate configurations of the rock caused the currents to twist and eddy and force the waters through a mighty conch shell so that they foamed and tumbled across the cave’s threshold like the fleece of the sea-god’s sheep.
The goddess paused, then stepped across the waters into the cave and the grotto beyond.
‘Sister,’ she murmured. ‘Sister, here is the babe who fell from the sky.’
The two goddesses, Thetis and Eurynome, gazed down on the infant who had lapsed into a frowning sleep. For a long while they regarded its limbs and crumpled face. Neither spoke and the only sound in the grotto was the wild music the sea made as it rushed through the great conch that guarded the entrance to the cave. Then Eurynome said softly, ‘Sister, though you did well to save him, there’s no doubt he is . . . hideous.’
Thetis sighed. ‘Yet he shone so brightly as he fell—’
‘Then let us call him Hephaestus, the shining one, and – and hope he will improve.’
‘Hephaestus,’ whispered Thetis, bending so low over the sleeping child that her gleaming hair danced across his cheek. ‘What kind of a god will you be?’
He slept in a silver cradle, and the mighty goddesses brought him such toys as became a baby – rattles of coral and pearls, glittering pebbles and curious shells. They fashioned a crystal window in the rock so he might watch the uncanny world that glimmered away into a green eternity. Sometimes the sea-nymphs would come to this window and press their faces against it and make the infant laugh. Then the great sisters would send them flying, for it was time for the growing god to sleep.
They did not speak of his birth or how he’d come to the grotto; his nature was restless and discontented and such knowledge would not have improved it. So when Hephaestus asked how he had come to be, lovely Thetis thought it best to tell him that in the very beginning of things there was nothingness . . . a dreamless sleep. Then it was Eurynome who first awoke, put out her foot and found no place to rest it. So she divided the sea from the sky and danced naked on the wave. (Here Eurynome, who like her sister was but in the first blush of eternity, laughed and half-shook her head.) But it was so, Thetis insisted, and as Eurynome danced, a wind sprang up behind her. It was the north wind that gets all creatures with child.
Hephaestus stared at Eurynome. His eyes were bright, and in them Eurynome saw an image of herself and her wild, lonely dance. Discontent left him and he seemed to forget what had troubled him most.
Then, through the crystal window, he began to see and take note of the wild and passionate embracings of the sea-nymphs. He watched the sinuous coilings of deep creatures as they coupled. He was excited and bewildered. His dreams were all awry. Discontent returned, and the grotto grew dark with his scowls.
So Eurynome herself decided that it was time for the ugly little god to know that he had come from high Olympus, and—
‘Olympus? What is that?’
‘It is a mountain in the sky, Hephaestus, where the gods have their home.’
‘Who are the gods?’
‘Children of the Titans who once ruled the universe.’
‘Tell me how they came to be and what became of them. Tell me who was before them, Eurynome; for Thetis says you were first of all. Is it so, Eurynome?’
The goddess smiled. For a long while she said nothing. Little by little, the smile left her face, and shadows drifted across her brow. Then she began, and the walls of the grotto seemed to roll away as her words unmade them. She told of a thick, dark void, full of roaring and struggling. It was everywhere, and vast commotions banged and thundered as the unseen elements fought, one against another. Such was Chaos.
Then a single spirit, no one knows which, plucked the elements apart and separated them even as the sea-nymphs and the turtles separate the weaving ferns that tangle their paths through the dark sea. Up and up soared the aether, dividing away from the hanging air. All that was heavy sank below. For a while it seemed to dance – as the sand dances in the wake of the sea-horses before it slowly settles. Then earth became firm and solid and lay at last in the arms of ocean, heaviest of the elements.
Now came a marvel even more wonderful. Deep in Chaos, clogged in its thickness and night, there had been certain immortal seeds. They began to grow. Nourished by earth and air they grew into huge glittering beings who seized command over all the universe. They were the seven Titans.
‘Are you listening, Hephaestus?’
The child looked up. He had been playing with his pearls and beads, and arranging them in patterns like the weeds and fishes he had observed through his window.
‘Will you hear more?’
For a moment he searched for more pearls to finish his design; then, finding none, nodded.
‘The tale is dark and fearful, Hephaestus. Will it give you bad dreams?’
‘Will they be worse than the dream of falling, falling, falling?’
Eurynome frowned, and looked up so that her eyes seemed to pierce the grotto’s roof and accuse the sky. Then she stretched out her hand and gently stroked Hephaestus’s harsh black hair.
‘You must ride the nightmare, child, even as it plunges. You must break it till it answers the rein and flies.’
The child shook his head free of the goddess’s hand, and fixed her with his savage eyes.
‘The fearful tale. Give me another nightmare to ride.’
The king of the seven Titans was Uranus, and in that ancient time he had seized the earth for his garden. He planted it and tended it till the mountains and valleys were all green and gold in an endless spring. Then Uranus lay with Mother Earth and she brought forth a second race of Titans, who were as harsh and savage as the rocks from which they had sprung. Among them were the one-eyed Cyclopes and the hundred-handed giants: craggy monsters who, in the stillness of night, resembled great configurations of land. Violent in their pride, they rebelled against their father. But they lacked his power. Uranus flung them into a deep, fearful hole called Tartarus. For nine nights and days they dropped like struggling black mountains, till at last they were extinguished in echoing shrieks and groans.
Uranus listened and smiled. There was nothing in heaven and earth that could oppose him. His throne was the very rock of the universe. He closed his eyes and the sun and stars went out. He slept and dreamed that Mother Earth was in his arms. He saw her smile; he heard her sigh. His huge hands tightened till he dreamed her breath came sharp and passionate.
He could even hear each separate intake, which seemed to catch at its return with an almost secret air; and he heard the beating of her heart. But he slept on, and a single lamp cast his heaving shadow against the soaring wall of his bedchamber. The lamp flickered, making the sleeping shadow writhe to the rhythm of his dream.
The beating heart, the hissing breath – they were coming nearer. The flame leaped and danced at the wick. The shadow bulked and cowered, for another shadow had joined it. A dreadful, creeping shadow, at first like a bird with one wing upraised. But it was not a bird. It was Cronus, his eldest son, and the wing was a huge stone sickle!
Uranus opened his eyes and the universe blazed up all round him. Then Cronus struck. And it all went out for ever. Not even his dying scream was heard, for it was drowned in Cronus’s mighty shout of triumph. The terrible king was dead.
Doors and passages in the great stone castle rang and thundered as the Titans proclaimed his still more terrible son. They tore dead Uranus in pieces and cast them into the sea. They grinned and laughed and joked as they watched the dark sea crack in a hundred places to let the multitude of Uranus in. Then it closed up after, as if he had never been.
But the ocean could not hide what had been done. Three drops of blood from the death wound had fallen unnoticed on the earth, and silently there rose up three terrible creatures. At first they stood still and quiet in the shadow of the castle’s southern wall. They might have been dwarfish trees – or bushes, even, with smooth black foliage that hung down like cloaks. But there was movement among what might have been their topmost twigs, as if some breeze was ruffling them. They were nests of snakes, spitting and twisting as they grew out of shadowy heads. Then, of a sudden, they swayed. The black foliage spread into wide, jointed wings. Once, twice, they beat the air; then the three creatures rose up. Round and round the castle they flew, and their shadows seemed to scratch and scar the stones. They would know that place again. Then they vanished into the upper air. They were the Furies – avengers of fathers murdered by their sons.
Cronus slept in his father’s bed, with Rhea, his sister-wife. His dreams were easy and seemed to hang in thick curtains across his mind. Suddenly he awoke, as if the curtains had shifted. He stared uneasily into the dark, but saw nothing. He closed his eyes and tried to smile away whatever had disturbed him. But it would not go. There was, or seemed to be, a rustling and a creaking in the air and a smell of snakes. He turned on his back and looked up. Nothing. Yet some drops of moisture fell on his face. They burned like venom, and he cried out in fear and disgust. He did not sleep again that night.
Next night the Furies came again. They looked down on the new king, smiling in his sleep. Then with their curious sharp instruments they made another hole in the curtain of his dreams and whispered through it that he, like his father, would be ruined by his son. With the coming of the dawn, they flew away, but left the marks of their shadows behind. They would be back.
Night after night they came to visit Cronus, till his sleep hung in tatters and through every rent came the hateful words, ‘Cronus, you will be ruined by your son! There is no escape!’
A wind blew through the king’s head and all the exposed caverns of his mind began to ache and crack. Nothing comforted him – neither his throne nor his queen. All was swept aside by the nightly terror of the Furies and the threat of the unborn son. Despairingly, he embraced Rhea; then, with a cry of dismay, thrust her from him as he remembered that out of this chief consolation would come his chief danger.
Yet he could not endure without her, and at last she bore him a child. Proudly she brought it to him in swaddling clothes. The Furies’ words roared a gale through his head. His hands shook and madness finally seized him. He took the infant almost tenderly from the queen and thrust it, living, into his gigantic mouth. Then he laughed till his stone palace rocked on the mountain top. He had cheated the Furies.
That night they came again. But Cronus was ready and went for them with his bare hands. He clawed the air and beat the walls, but it was not till dawn that they flew away. He saw them like black moths dwindling in the sky.
The mad king grinned in triumph. Sooner or later, he would destroy his tormentors even as he had eaten his child. Nothing would shake his throne. So he kept spears in his bedchamber, and knives and arrows. They flew from the casements and scarred the walls as Cronus killed the air.
Then Rhea bore another child. Was there a traitor in his bed? No matter. Cronus was armoured at all points. Again he ate the child.
He would reign for ever.
Some more children after that the wild Titan swallowed. Yet each time he took them from her almost lovingly, so that Rhea’s anguish was multiplied by hope.
Then at last she bore such a son as she could not endure to lose. He shone like a star, and her heart ached as he smiled unknowingly.
‘Fetch me the child!’ she heard the mad king shout. ‘The child! The child!’
With trembling hands, she hid the infant among the bedclothes, then stared round desperately. Beside the door was a stone that wedged it open in the heat of the day. Its size was the size of the child. Hastily she wound it in the swaddling bands over and over . . .
A shadow darkened the doorway. Rhea looked up. Cronus stood before her. ‘Give me the child!’ Cronus’s eyes flickered over the tumbled bed linen. Frantically Rhea clasped the swaddled stone. He held out his arms. ‘My son! My son!’ he half whispered, half groaned, and opened wide his mouth. Rhea turned away. Terror seized her. The bedclothes were stirring. Fearfully she looked back at her husband. Had he seen it? His eyes were hooded and remote and his hands hung empty at his sides.
He reached out and stroked her cheek. Then he wiped his mouth and left the room.
When he was gone, Rhea sank to her knees beside the bed. She stared into the careless folds. Then she started. Two golden eyes were gazing out at her, and an infant’s lips were curved in a prophetic smile.
‘Was he a god, Eurynome?’
Hephaestus, in the grotto under the sea, stared into the goddess’s eyes. But she seemed lost in thoughts and memories, and did not answer.
‘Yes, he was a god.’ It was gentle Thetis who spoke. She stretched out her hands, and Hephaestus shambled towards her and crouched at her knee. She smiled with pleasure and told the ugly little god of how this shining child was taken secretly to a cave on the island of Crete. Here there lived children of the Titans and the earth. They were strange, quick, wild creatures, like sinews of the air. They were the nymphs and spirits of the woods and streams. Into the care of these nymphs the child was given. They brought him mountain honey to eat, and hid his cries under their songs, so that Cronus should not hear him.
‘What was their song, Thetis?’
Thetis sighed, and in a lilting voice she sang the song the nymphs had sung to the infant . . . and the wild music of the sea rushing through the conch shell accompanied her. Beyond the window the sea-nymphs listened, and the Sirens learned her song.
Hephaestus’s eyes were closing.
‘What was his name?’ he mumbled dreamily.
‘Zeus.’
But the god’s eyes were shut, and the name hung emptily in the air.
How long he slept, there was no way of measuring; neither night nor day visited the grotto under the sea. Then he awoke, and the name of Zeus was on his lips. So Thetis told him more tales of Crete and Mount Ida where the infant grew to manhood. She told him of how, when tiny, the clever nymphs hung his cradle from a branch so that Cronus should find him neither on the earth nor in the sky. Then she told of how, in the dark nights, the flash and glimmer of his growing limbs might be seen as he moved among the foliage of Ida’s trees. And always she ended her tales with the song the nymphs had sung . . . and Hephaestus drifted away into dreams. But always among them there galloped the nightmare that flung him from its back so that he awoke with the desolate cry of one who had fallen from a high place.
His ugliness increased. He was misshapen, having vast strength in his shoulders and arms and great weakness in his legs. His discontent became fierce and violent. There seemed no outlet for it till Thetis gave him an anvil and hammer to play with, and Eurynome made him a forge. Then he was able to vent the fury of his nature on metals that knew no pain.
The goddesses brought him gold and silver and watched as he hammered and twisted them into shapes as tormented as his own. His brows furrowed and his eyes retreated into the recesses of his head. At last the metals began to obey him and the monster chuckled with delight.
Wonderingly the goddesses saw there was a second nature in Hephaestus far deeper than the first. As there was no mirror in the grotto, his vision was untarnished by sight of himself. It was uninterrupted beauty that came from the forge as he rendered into changeless metals the changing marvels he saw.
Bracelets, necklaces, combs and buckles he made for the two goddesses, jointed and lapped together as marvellously as the gleaming scales of the sea-creatures that jostled the crystal window. He made sandals, silver for Thetis and gold spun as fine as the bending ferns for grave Eurynome, with designs of waves upon them as if to remind her of the time when she’d danced on the first wide sea.
But the loveliest thing he made was a brooch. In silver, drawn and beaten till it seemed like foam, he had imprisoned a sea-nymph and her lover, coiled and twined in a pearl and coral embrace. All the wild and urgent passion of creation was in this little brooch . . . and a strange new tenderness besides.
‘Hephaestus!’ whispered Thetis. ‘If Olympus only knew what a god they have lost to the sea!’
She stretched out her hand for the marvellous brooch. But ugly Hephaestus drew back. He scowled with all his old savageness and ill-temper, and limped to the furthest part of the grotto where he leaned, panting, against the rock. He stared at the goddesses who had nursed him, and had brought him this far in the tale of Creation.
‘What more is there?’ he muttered. ‘Why am I lost to Olympus? Who am I?’ His ragged brow shone with sweat, as if he was trying to drag the answer out of the air. ‘Why do I always dream of falling?’
He raised the brooch threateningly. ‘Tell me or I will destroy it!’
There was silence in the grotto. No sound was heard save for the soft roar of the waters through the conch, and, far, far away, the silvery voices of the Sirens as they sang the song they’d learned from Thetis – the very song that had once lulled the infant Zeus upon Mount Ida, long ago.
Then grave Eurynome raised her eyes and stared across the grotto at the brutish infant, who scowled like the rocks against which he crouched. Then her eyes shifted, and she seemed to be looking beyond him, back to an ancient time. It was as if the tormented child’s question had been no more than a reminder of something that had happened long ago. She began to speak, and though her voice was gentle, the air seemed to turn chill and bleak and the fire of the little forge flickered into dust. Once more the walls dissolved as Eurynome told the monstrous story of Zeus and his mad father, Cronus.
When Cronus slept, dreams of old Uranus would visit him so that he would awake, groaning and struggling, with a violent pain in his left hand – the hand with which he’d seized his father when he’d murdered him with the sickle. He would lie sweating in the darkness and the air would be filled with the sound of beating wings and the stench of snakes. He would stare and stare till his eyes all but burst from his head. Then a wing would scrape across them, and he would turn with a scream and entomb his head in his pillow, on which in the morning would be drops of blood. As always, the Furies parted with the dawn. But now, as they blackened the casement with their going, they left behind their whisperings, to creep and rustle in every quiet corner. ‘Vengeance is near. Soon it will strike . . . soon . . . soon . . .’
The mad king would stumble from his bed and glare out on the quiet dawning world. Fearfully, his eyes would range the shadowy valleys and mysterious mountains, whose shapes resembled formidable monsters . . . What was that? A flash and glimmer among the foliage on Mount Ida. He had seen it before – several times – but never more than a glimpse, and then it had gone. Yet it seemed to menace him. What was it . . . so quick and horribly bright? Nothing, nothing. All was in his shattered mind . . . Stop. There it was again: as always, on Mount Ida.
He shouted for his guards and bade them search the mountain and destroy whoever they should find. Hurry – hurry, before it is too late!
The guards went, and Cronus gnawed his lip until they returned. But they had found nothing on the mountain: only some bears and a strange serpent that flashed as it writhed away. Could it have been the snake that the king had seen?
Next night Ida was in darkness. No uncanny glimmer broke among its foliage nor moved among its trees. And most marvellous of all, the Furies did not come. For the first time since he had murdered his father, Cronus slept long and without dreams. He awoke with a start in fiery sunshine. The pain in his left hand was gone, and his only discomfort was a curious thirst.
He called for a cupbearer to fetch his honeyed drink. But his thirst was not quenched. Indeed, it seemed to have been increased by drinking. So a second cup was fetched. He drained it and laughed uneasily. What was thirst after the nights of the Furies? He flung the engraved cup across the room, where it cracked and splintered against the wall. A third cup! The king was still thirsty. ‘Quickly! Quickly!’ He cursed the cupbearer for a creeping fool. Then Rhea, smiling gently, rustled in to calm her lord. Behind her came another cupbearer, with another cup. ‘Here, Cronus, my lord! Drink! The king must not go thirsty! Drink to your heart’s content!’
So Cronus took the cup and drank.
He drank with barely a glance at the strange cupbearer, and the drink was rushing down his throat before an oddness struck him. Though he stood in Rhea’s shadow, this cupbearer seemed to shine as if by the light of another, secret sun. And in that same instant he saw a look exchanged between Rhea and the stranger whose shining seemed suddenly menacing. The drink tasted sharp, and his throat began to sting and burn. But it was too late, he had drained the cup. Rhea smiled, and the cupbearer smiled; and Cronus knew that they had poisoned him.
‘Who – who are you?’ he whispered. The stranger’s radiance seemed to increase till Cronus could not endure to look at him. ‘Who – are – you?’
‘Ask of the Furies, Cronus.’
Cronus opened his mouth to scream for help – but no words came. His throat was on fire and needles of pain stabbed at his belly. He fell back as cramps seized him and he began to retch. Wider and wider stretched his gigantic mouth till he felt the tendons split and tear at their roots. There was a tumult in his head – a mighty uproar. The bones of his gaping mouth were cracking and splintering as they were forced apart. And all the while, in his dreadful agony, he saw Rhea, his wife, and Zeus, his son, staring down on him with implacable hate.
Then Cronus began to vomit. Six times the poisoned Titan erupted and, like some shaking mountain, spewed out the fiery inhabitation of his belly. At last it was over; and Cronus stared in dread at what he’d brought forth. They rose up before him like columns of fire; the children he had consumed. In their midst, mockingly cradling the fatal stone with which he’d been deceived, was Rhea. ‘Behold your sons and daughters!’ she shouted. ‘Behold the avenging gods!’ Cronus shrieked and fled.
He fled high up among the granite mountains, stumbling and calling to the universe for help. At last he reached his fortress, and it was there that Atlas and all the Titans of the old order joined him in the war to destroy the gods.
Some say that this war raged for ten years; but there was no certain way of measuring it. Night and day were so obscured that time itself was blinded and could no more than mark the tempests, earthquakes and scalding storms of the battles. Huge mountains were plucked from the earth and hurled like pebbles against the sky, where they made black holes in the milky fabric of the stars. Again and again the gods approached the fortress of Cronus, and again and again they were beaten back.