The God Beneath the Sea by Leon Garfield

Author:Leon Garfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448173846
Publisher: RHCP

PART THREE

GODS AND MEN

ELEVEN

WOLVES

Unchanging Zeus looked down. The glimmering nymphs were harder now to find. The creatures of Prometheus seemed everywhere. Like mice, they filled the shady crannies of the earth. Neither the Fates nor the plagues, nor the loss of their great protector, had extinguished them. They built temples and the soft air was whiskered with the smoke of sacrifices.

They pleased Demeter, who enriched their harvests; and Hestia, who blessed their hearths. All seemed set fair for a second Olympus to be raised on earth. Prometheus had not laboured in vain. He had made man in the image of the immortals – and the gods were flattered to see themselves so dearly imitated.

So the lord of the sky laid aside his blinding fire and thunderbolts and left his palace in the clouds for Arcadia, where once the nymphs had lain thick on the ground. He came at nightfall, in the shape of a humble traveller . . .

The pinewoods of Lycaeus were dark and full of fumbling shadows. High overhead, the black branches interlocked like giants’ fingers over the eye of the moon. But here and there her arrows silvered through and stuck quivering in the ground, their slanting shafts engraved with moss, ferns and misty bark. Unseen animals rustled and padded about their nightly business, briefly pausing as if alarmed by each other’s footfalls . . .

Suddenly, a wind began to blow. Trembling, the animals fled and hid in their lairs as this strange wind came sweeping through the woods from the north. Even the arrows of the moon bent aside for it . . . Then it passed out of the trees where they gave way to what seemed to be a second forest made of marble.

The palace of Lycaon, king of Arcadia, lay under the moon as proud and silver-white as a city of the gods. Courtyards and colonnaded walls surrounded it, and their shadows stretched like black dreams across a silver world. From time to time, these shadows jumped and divided as light from the palace leaped up . . . most likely when some log was thrown on the hearth or roasting fat had caught and flared. For there was a savoury smell of meat in the air, together with a noise of shouting and laughter.

A servant, leaning against the pillared porch, muttered and hoped he’d be remembered before all the food was gone. He stared across the courtyards towards the pinewoods, idly counting the shadows.

Suddenly, he stood upright. There was someone coming.

The light from the palace flared again. The servant’s eyes narrowed. It was a stranger – a traveller by the look of him. He was walking impudently across the courtyard.

‘Be off with you!’

But the stranger did not seem to hear. He came on at a steady pace.

Within the porch, chained to the pillars, were a pair of lean, grey dogs. Their savage, bloodshot eyes were turned towards the angry servant. It was for just such an occasion as this that they were kept – their natural ferocity increased by hunger and confinement.

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