Loss (16 page)

With Eddie, Billy hadn’t understood what he’d been doing; he’d just reacted. But with Kurt and Joe, Billy had known what could happen, and never mind how he’d thrown the Bow away before going into the cafeteria. He’d known that he could summon the Bow, and he’d known what the Bow could do, if only he’d use it.

And he’d used it, all right.

But maybe, if he was really careful, he could manage. He was good at not acting on his feelings—hell, he was an expert on getting the snot beaten out of him with barely an arm up to protect his face—so maybe he could have the Bow and not use it.

Maybe—

Before he could think any further on that, the White leaped up at him, wrapped itself around him and dragged him down.

Chapter 15

Billy Struggled . . .

. . . against the tendrils of White pinning him and pulling him into itself, but it was no good; the White had him, and memories not his own sucked him in.

***

/the pox has ravaged his kingdom, indiscriminate of poor or rich or old or young. The healthy had suddenly been taken by a violent heat that started in the head and slowly worked its way down, transforming their eyes to embers, inflaming their throats and causing them to spew blood and reek of sickness.

And yet Mita, king of Phrygia, remains untouched.

He presses a clean linen cloth to his daughter’s lips to help quell her coughing. Lying on her sickbed, she’s in the throes of the great pestilence that has captured his land; he watches, helpless, as she struggles to breathe. The group of royal physicians trained in the works of Hippocrates and Galen had warned him that the time would come when her throat would close, and then nothing would allow the passage of air. Mita had dismissed them all, first individually and then as a group, when they, too, began coughing. Even so, many stayed, determined to perform their duties to the end. The last doctor to walk the halls of his palace had collapsed in a heap not two days gone; the last priest had died yesterday, his appeals to Apollo unanswered, save by the cold embrace of Thanatos.

Mita touches his daughter’s cheek, and he flinches from the heat he feels there. She’s burning up. His child is dying before his eyes, and there’s nothing he can do.

His kingdom is dying, and he’s powerless.

(Billy struggles but he’s powerless.)

On Mita’s brow, his crown threatens to crush him beneath its weight.

He squeezes his eyes closed and prays to the gods—all of them, any of them, whichever one will show mercy and be moved by his words. “Please,” he says, “tell me what to do.”

The answer comes like a whisper of wind: one word, one action, one request.
Die.

Perhaps his daughter listens to the wind, because she takes one last strangled breath, and then she breathes no more.

Mita throws himself over her small body, screaming his rage and grief and impotence to Olympus and Tartarus and all places in between. His wails eventually give way to harsh, shuddering sobs that wrack his body and rip his soul. Only when his voice is hoarse and his tears are spent does he bow his head and pray for the safe passage of his daughter’s
psyche
to the Underworld, where she will drink from the river Lethe and forget her mortal life.

Forget the pain
, he wishes for her, pressing her hand to his lips.
Forget everything that has ever hurt you.

Forget me, the father who could not save you.

Mita places her hand gently across her chest, and he slowly rises. His heart is too heavy and his head is too thick, and barefoot he walks, stooped and broken, out of his daughter’s bed chamber. He cannot think; his body moves and his mind follows, nothing more than a quiet passenger. His steps are unsteady and his mind is blank, but still he walks, compelled by some unknown presence to leave the palace grounds and enter the sprawling city below. The wind kicks up, strong enough to blow Mita’s long black hair away from his face. He walks on, breathing in the perfume of sickness, all spoiled meat and feces and blood. Around him is the cacophony of panic: terrified citizens shuttering their windows and doors and hearts, turning away those already suffering with the plague, even as they beg the gods to forgive them, to show mercy, to spare their lives. Mita hears their words, but they are nothing more than noise, the buzzing of flies lighting on a carcass. If any of his subjects tries to stop him, he does not notice. He is blind; he is deaf. He is an impotent king of a diseased land.

He is lost.

When Mita comes to his senses, he is at the entrance of Apollo’s temple, deep in the center of Phrygia. Inside the doorway is a stone table—the god’s altar. On the slab is a metal dish, used for the sacred fire but now gone cold, and a curved dagger. Next to the table rests a jug. The priestess’s body is sprawled on the ground, her face swollen and discolored from the sickness that killed her. Other corpses litter the temple: the bodies of the devoted, whose prayers did nothing to stop the great pestilence from annihilating the kingdom. The temple smells of stale incense and despair.

And death, of course. And death.

Mita stares at the dagger on the altar, and with the clarity of an epiphany, he knows what he must do.

He has no proper sacrifice to offer; the shepherds are dead and dying, so none are tending their flocks. He himself is not proper, for instead of being freshly bathed and wearing the appropriate purple tunic, he is filthy and his
chiton
is stained. There are other missteps to the ritual of sacrifice as well: There had been no procession, led by a maiden carrying a basket filled with barley covering the sacrificial blade at the bottom. And the priestess is dead.

But he has a crown for the sacrifice, which is important, and there in the jug is holy water, which is necessary.

And he has flesh, as unworthy as it may be.

He strips off his dirty
chiton
and takes the jug in his hands. Naked save for his crown, he spills the contents of the jug over his head. The water hits him, and with it he is purified. So what that he has no barley to sprinkle? The gods will have to understand. He sets the jug back on the ground and takes up the dagger, and then he climbs atop the stone table.

Kneeling, Mita presses the tip of the blade to his bare chest. “Take me,” he begs, “and spare what remains of my kingdom. Let my blood be enough to appease, and to make right whatever it is that we have done wrong.” Closing his eyes, he hopes that his plea does not fall on empty ears. His fingers tighten around the handle, and he takes a deep breath, preparing himself for the end.

A cold grip catches his wrist.

“Hold, King Mita,” says a man’s voice. “I would have a word with you.”

Mita’s eyes snap open, and he sees a tall figure clothed in a coarse brown robe, his face hidden by a cowl. Mita is so stunned by the interruption that it doesn’t occur to him to reprimand the man for daring to touch a king.

“Before you spill your blood,” says the hooded man, “I have an offer for you.” His voice is oddly hollow, as if coming from some great distance.

“What could you possibly offer me?” Mita asks bitterly. “My daughter is dead. My kingdom is dying. I wear a crown, but it is sickness that reigns in Phrygia.”

“There is a different crown you could wear,” says the stranger, “one that would allow you to banish the sickness from your land. For a price.”

Something flutters in Mita’s chest, a mixture of hope and caution. He stares at the figure in the dark brown robe, and he frowns at the shadows beneath the stranger’s hood. “Let me see your face,” he says.

The stranger stiffens. “I come with an offer, and yet you make demands?”

“I don’t bargain with those who hide their face.” Mita wonders why he gives any reason at all. He is king; that he commands it should be enough. Beneath the stranger’s strong fingers, his wrist has gone numb.

Finally, the figure releases Mita’s arm. “Then look,” he says, and draws back his hood.

Mita looks, and his eyes widen and his mouth drops open and his breath catches in his throat. Before the horror truly sinks in, the stranger
ripples
, and now Mita is staring at a young man’s face. A shock of yellow hair crowns him; his skin is pale yet not sickly, even though his cheeks are sunken and the angles of his face are sharp. Only his eyes touch upon the truth: They are blue and yet bottomless, and they swirl with the secrets of the stars.

With that one look, Mita knows him, recognizes him for what he is: Thanatos. Not a god, but something older, something
other
. Something far more terrifying. It is the embodiment of death, masquerading as a human.

Mita quickly drops his gaze. His heartbeat thunders in his chest and ears and eyes, and a tremor settles in his hands, causing the sacrificial dagger to tremble. He’d been ready to die minutes ago, and yet now, with Death right in front of him, he suddenly very much wants to live.

“You know who I am.”

“Yes, Lord Thanatos,” Mita replies, his voice cracking.

A sound like the wind rustling dead leaves, and then: “I am no one’s lord, but you may call me by that title if it sets you at ease. Tell me, King Mita: Do you want to save your kingdom?”

Mita swallows thickly. Bargaining with one such as Thanatos is folly at best, but what choice does he have? “Yes, Lord.”

“Well then, we each have something the other wants. You want to save your land from pestilence, and I want a new Horseman.”

“You . . . wish me to be a soldier?”

“I wish nothing,” says Death, “and the role of War has long been cast. But I offer you a place as the White Rider of
Apokalyptein
.”

A pause, as Mita struggles to make sense of Death’s words, but he is at a loss. “The White Rider of Revelation? I don’t understand, Lord. What would be revealed?”

“Pestilence.”

With the word, Thanatos presents Mita with a long white box. Where it came from, Mita cannot say; it’s as if the box has always been in Death’s hands, and Mita has only now just noticed. Still keeping his head bowed, Mita asks, “What is inside, Lord?”

“Open it and find out. But know that once you open the box, you agree to be the White Rider.”

The pronouncement rings in the air like doom.

Mita’s head pounds in time with his heartbeat. He thinks of Pandora and how her curiosity doomed mankind to all manners of evil. Is that what waits for him inside the plain white box?

“Pandora’s Box is nothing more than a story that lets people pretend they have nothing to do with the existence of evil.” Again, the sound of dead leaves rustling, and Mita realizes that Thanatos is laughing. “Humanity’s imagination is both its greatest achievement and its greatest disappointment.”

Mita is still weak with fear, but he raises his head to meet Death’s bottomless gaze. “Humanity did not create the plague that is killing my kingdom.”

Thanatos nods his head slightly, acknowledging the point.

“What does it mean,” Mita asks slowly, “to be this White Rider? How would pestilence be revealed?”

“I could spend years telling you the meaning of the White Rider,” Thanatos says, “and it still would not be enough, for with every answer you would ask another question. Do you accept the box, and therefore accept the role of White Rider?”

The king lifts his chin. “You offer me the chance to save my kingdom, and I am grateful. But I am also blind as to your intention.”

Death’s eyes narrow.

Mita forces himself to remain still. The urge to beg forgiveness is nearly overwhelming. He wants to hide his face in his hands and cower before the terrible creature before him that makes even the gods tremble. But he is king, and so he must pretend to be brave.

“You presume much,” Thanatos finally says. “I’m not certain I like that. But I do admire it. My intentions remain my own, and are no business of yours.”

Mita holds out his hands, imploring. “Tell me one thing, at least, before you would have me make a decision that would leave me forever changed. What does a Horseman of
Apokalyptein
do?”

“Mediate the ills of the world.”

Mita’s heartbeat is galloping again, but this time it’s not from fear. “If I become a Horseman, I can eradicate illness?”

The shadows on Thanatos’s face darken until his eyes are blue stones in a sea of midnight. “There must be balance. There can be no health without sickness, no peace without war, no satiation without starvation.” A lightning flash of a smile. “No life without death. These things must exist so that all living things exist. But the natural order is one of push and pull. There are times when the ills of the living become too great to bear. And that’s when the Horsemen set it right.”

“Set it right?” Mita repeats.

“To put things back in balance,” says Death. “There can be no health without sickness, but as the White Rider, you would be the Conqueror of Disease. You would help ensure that no pestilence becomes so great as to wipe out humanity. Starting, perhaps, with your own land.”

A sound escapes Mita’s lips, a soft cry of relief. Tears sting his eyes, and muscles in his neck and shoulders and back that have been pulled taut with stress for too many days to count finally begin to loosen.

“What say you, ruler of Phrygia? Will you exchange one crown for another, and take up the mantle of the White? Will you be one of the Riders of
Apokalyptein
and help save the world from itself?”

How can he not?

And so Mita, king of Phrygia, naked and on his knees, puts down the dagger that was to spill his blood and instead takes the long white box offered by Death. Inside is an unstrung bow, cut from polished black wood, and a silver circlet. Both are intricate in their simplicity.

“For thee,” says Thanatos.

With numb fingers, Mita removes the crown of Phrygia from his head and replaces it with Death’s gift. The metal is cold upon his brow.

“Thou art the White Rider,” says Thanatos. “Go thee out unto the world.”

With those words, a door opens in Mita’s mind, and he throws back his head as he feels the agony of his people suffering from the plague that has infected his land. The coughing, the sneezing, the endless vomiting and spasms, the compulsion to rip clothing away from his overheated body, the urge to throw himself into a rain tank or the river in the desperate need to slake a maddening, ceaseless thirst—he feels it all, and so much more. Because deeper than the sickness is the embodiment of health, part of the world itself, and that health reaches up and touches all living things. He senses it all, and he knows he can separate the pestilence that is causing such a destructive imbalance of the humors and, once separated, he can decimate it forever.