Brothers of Remembrance by D.G. Ironside

Down the Styx we tilted, three of us, a boat of bones sheathed in flesh beneath. To accentuate our speed, we had a sail of human skin, stretched, dried, and stitched. For the journey, ours was naught but gruesome. The living corpse Drohas, sentient and dead, stood at the fore. In his rumbling voice he called to us, pointing out hazards in the current. With oars of desiccated limbs, the unattached bones of some long-wasted giant, I rowed like a madman. My brother Levan had the rudder. All about was stink, a fume of cooked brains, seared souls, and memory. All was alive and flowing in the river of damnation.

From Acheron we’d come, at some point crossing a veil subtle and invisible, gossamer sheen under a sickened moon. The river had transformed from white to black in the shallows of the night before, then red. A crimson flow it was, thick as blood, all currents woven as forsaken threads. A liquid past, present and future pulled like clutching hands at our skeleton craft. Even for our eyes wide and ready to meet the end, our terror subsided into deep foreboding, then unshakeable dread. Ardour moved us toward Nehane, our sister, wherever she was prisoner. We would have her back or endure torture in the rescue, so wrongly was she taken.

Drohas moaned.

“Ambrose! Shift us to your left!” bellowed my brother, fixed on the zombie’s indications. I placed my oars and leaned with my bulk. I was a big man, the weight of four full talents, Levan smaller but possessing the savvy to get us there and back. I trusted him no matter how sickening the sojourn. Moreover, I would have abandoned the grace of every god for Nehane.

We careened leftward as I placed force against red water, the splash of stuff up to my legs where it burned and steamed. I cried out in suffering. Then we passed a great black rock, shining and oozing sound as no rock should. My view looking back from where we’d come, I saw another ragged boulder parallel and knew we’d passed between a gate.

Levan knew the same. “We are beyond,” he said. The fierce chill hit me, and I abandoned what grit I possessed. My face must have shown it, for my brother reached forward to chastise me with a slap to the cheek, small pains that I deserved.

---

Nehane was before the oracle, the Pythoness of Apollo. There was a grand stone temple on a high hill overlooking a broad valley. It was always the destiny of those who desired insight to climb mountains. Near the door we hovered, Levan disinterested and leaning, but I listened hard for clues.

“Voices,” I whispered.

“You are a fool, Ambrose, but your sister loves you. Go through if you must.” Levan ushered me forward. I looked about, spying for trouble, yet below in the valley was the festival and frivolity of the harvest. The hillside was deserted. Though it was forbidden, I crept in with hushed steps. I smelled the odor of smoke and fire, the burning cauldron just beyond. Behind broad columns I hid, close enough to detect my sister’s simmering rage.

“Vengeance,” Nehane spoke low.

“You come to Parnassus feigning want for wisdom,” replied the Pythoness, the most important woman in the world. “Instead, you want murder.”

“It is such,” owned my sister.

We had come for a portent, an augury for our act of terror, even if the Pythia might betray us. Such it was that Nehane trusted mysticism above her own judgement.

“Visions do not come without cost,” the old woman warned. My sister’s voice was steady to offer our single price.

“A soul for Apollo,” Nehane promised.

“The sun does not want for the dead,” the Pythia countered.

“Who then might the Pythoness herself desire gone?” Nehane asked. “For us, we want Keraunos. Who then, for you?” There was an odd pause then, where the oracle weighed such traitorous thoughts, and decided.

“If Keraunos the Thunderbolt shall find a grave, then that will be enough for the sun and earth,” the dame spoke. Heavy words. The King of Macedon was an enemy to many, but to us he was bane to life. The lord’s impetuous violence had destroyed my parents, my village, and all my family save two siblings. We three were the last of the entire Aradala valley, and for all our clans dead there would be justice.

The words and tone of the oracle changed then, from the gravel of her aged throat to a haunting lilt. She spoke in a language I did not understand. I believed it was the engagement of her inner self against the cauldron, the smoke to find fortune or doom. I heard Nehane start to sing. For my worry and curiosity, I took a step.

“Wait!” hissed Levan, his sudden hand on my shoulder. I flinched but made no sound.

The two of us heard feet move, a dance, the women working together to summon the muster of fate. Levan scoffed, he a disbeliever in the occult. Even so, I thought of my sister and imagined her consumed by wicked spirits, all about her in a cloud. I made again to move.

Levan whispered at me furiously. “Your sister did not drag us to Delphi for you to ruin it with oafishness!”

I hesitated, even for the ferocious instinct to protect. The oracle murmured a terrible sound, a demon hovering in her throat. Nehane groaned and there was the sound of shuffling, as if she writhed on the floor.

“A king leaves Aigyptos and returns to Macedon!” the Pythoness called.

“A lord crosses the sea,” called Nehane. In the eye of my mind, I saw her casting incantations in the smoke.

The Pythoness illuminated Karaunos’s crimes. “He murders the descendant of Alexander to claim power. Thereafter he is reckless and wicked, and for his conquests there is panic, suffering and death.”

There was an episode where both women groaned dark and deep, and I feared they would suffocate for the ashes; flowing all about were billowing gray fumes. For their closeness to the cauldron, I could not believe they had air to breathe. Yet the women hummed a song together, a weave, a ritual. They spoke in tongues. I flinched as I heard them fall, two thumps to the floor.

“Do not!” Levan hissed, again right in my ear.

After an empty stretch, only my pounding heart to mark time, they stirred. The vision had come. The Pythoness chanted. “A king makes war, a battle of his devising. The Thunderbolt of Ptolemy finds weapons gathered,” she claimed.

“Yes,” my sister said.

“Kinslayer and warmonger. He shall discover even now, an enemy host marches from the north and west. This trial may undo him.”

Nehane sung agreement.

“Revenge within air, as winds flow from the edge of waves. It is spoken from the cauldron of Delphi,” the women canted together, as if they possessed the same mouth.

It was done, a die cast in fire, but real as the ocean. I saw Levan cursing my tears.

---

Along the edges of Thalassa we’d travelled, a sojourn of many weeks. I’d never seen the sea on the western shore, a shade of azure more haunting than the deepest dreams. There we saw the edges of an army, all of Keraunos’ forces mustering to meet invaders. Their numbers were mounting, so much haste and chaos. In the night, the hills around us were dotted with hundreds of fires, flecks of orange atop charcoal hills. The blowing air was saturated with woodsmoke.

Levan and I prepared a meal, a small goat we’d poached, but Nehane would have none. Instead, she fasted and prayed to infernal gods. I saw her silhouette against the moon and believed this was again her time as sorceress, her long black hair a mane of devilry. In those times I was afeared to see her face. From days less desperate I recalled her angelic touch, gentler than my caged songbirds finding millet on my palm. Those times were long past.

Later, as the moon came high and bright, I made to sleep beside Levan where he snored. But some part of me was restless and needed to peek upon my sister. For all my caring impulses, she was gone. At the spot where she had given canticle to the night, she had abandoned her necklace of bones. Chilled, I returned to my brother and grimly clutched my blanket. In the smallest hours, Nehane reappeared, her eyes glowing fierce. I sat up, shuddering for the shroud of atrocity she wore, the frigid air gone still. Nehane’s hands danced with the vice of appeal.

“In this battle anon, let the king of Macedon have iron pierce his breast!” she beckoned to the plunging moon. In the sharp light of that orb, she was a living shadow. “Let Keraunos fail this day and feast on his own blood!” she howled.

Then, as Levan cracked his eyes in lassitude, a murk of villainy appeared all about Nehane, vapor pinching at her skin. I gasped. I smelled the odor of death and was much afraid. She had summoned some weirding. I witnessed it, the swirl of ghosts, ancient souls to serve. Then, just before Nehane might command them, another face came. I heard the inception of a scream in my sister’s throat, then stifled as a new image dominated the mist.

“Witch of the night, I know you!” bellowed the voice. I saw the features. It was Keraunos himself. The Macedonian King was somehow with us in spectral visage.

“Anax, you only wish to summon the same sinister forces as I,” Nehane spat. Her back was to me, and I saw not her face, yet her words were plain. She swore to him defiance. “It is too late Ptolemy king, for you are damned! I have woven my curse against you. Too late, for the power of the dead is mine! Your one life for thousands you stole. So sayeth the Pythoness and I as one.”

The conjured face of Keraunos contorted with rage to see this new reality, where the swirling souls in the mists were aligned to oppose him. Those spirits whispered curses to see him die. He could not call upon them for aid, one moment too slow to my sister’s spell.

“Then I bind thee,” called out Keraunos. “These profane powers, if they will not aid me in battle, will suffer your soul, just as they yearn to snatch mine. I bind your fate to mine, both of us to Hades, heinous woman of Aradala. Your psyche will perish with my body. I will find you in darkness!”

With that, the cloud of spirits and the king’s face dissipated to nothingness. Nehane collapsed. I went to her, seeing that she barely breathed, her eyes swamped with gray. She could not be roused and barely drew air for what remained of the night.

In the day that followed, we saw two great hosts bring down violence and much havoc, but the Thunderbolt waited not for his full complement of troops. His heart knew well he was doomed. Later, we heard from fleeing soldiers that Keraunos had been captured by the Galatians. It was then only a matter of time. We hovered near our sister to abide the end. Her skin eerie and pale, she was deeply still, bound to the fate of the seized king. After a painful waiting where I fought melancholy, Levan despondent, Nehane choked her last sound and her body transformed to ashes. In the breeze, the powder of her remains swirled off until there was naught but pain.

“This will not stand,” Levan said.

“What?” I gnashed my teeth.

“We have our vengeance, but we do not have Nehane.”

I coughed on breath; all my muscles aggrieved.

Levan’s face turned grim. “Ambrose, gather yourself. There is daunting work ahead.”

I said nothing to him then, knowing he would not stop, even for the unthinkable.

---

Beyond the river were insufferable caves, where we endured inhalations of mold and rot. Drohas the dead man, our guide, lead us deeper in Hades without pause. He moaned hard and low, his long, ghastly arm pointing to the leftmost opening, a gap in rock so foreboding no sane man would enter. Levan lifted a torch, a sputtering nub of greasy black. We went on.

We crossed over scree and rubble under a jagged roof, the surround foreboding in every way. My mind would be wrecked from our mission, I was sure, if we did not find egress in the immediate. Then I saw Levan, his countenance a mess of solemn resolve bathed in macabre light. He looked akin to the form of Hades himself, a doomed lord with an iron will.

“We cannot go further,” I called to him, wheezing.

“We are close,” he called back, beckoning me.

I pleaded. “Levan, we cannot go another step.” I would beg to turn back, I knew, given another moment to be heard. I was worn with countless aches, my neck and back barely holding in the foulness of the underworld. Every step was agony. I made to my brother to shake some sense into him.

“Draw weapons!” Levan cried.

There were suddenly beasts, the depraved forms of dogs, a slavering pack striding for us in the dim. I brought forth my blade, as decayed canines jumped at my arms. I kicked one away and crushed its unliving skull under my boot. Levan jumped back and cursed to have them all around, more snapping jaws at his every move. He waved the torch, but it was not enough to keep their fangs at bay. Soon they would have his legs.

“Ambrose, now!” Levan cued, as he drew them close. They wanted to consume his flesh, his energy. The dead always want for life. I hacked at those dogs, not much more than bones and empty flesh. They could not howl or bark, their throats rotten and gone, even as their bodies succumbed to my attacks.

When at last they were broken or fled, I turned to Levan. I wiped away sweat, my valor torn. “No more. There will be more servants of Cerberus to come. We cannot succeed.”

“I say again, we are close.”

“No more do I care,” I huffed, seeing Drohas silent, bizarre, and waiting.

“Damn you, Ambrose. Without Nehane there is no leaving this place. Do you not see?”

“I… I...what of that?” I asked. “Can we not turn back?”

Levan’s eyes refused to meet mine. “Drohas’ bargain was plain. The katabasis is our passage to Nehane. The dead man will trade himself for our sister and have his rest at last. If we do not find her, there is no anabasis, no ascent, no return. We have no choice but to go on, to the feet of Persephone herself, if need be.”

“But we will die at this,” I protested.

“Without Nehane we are dead already,” he told me.

My perplexity and despair made him at last confess.

“Without Nehane, the spirit-keeper, our souls are worthless. She honoured the light of our ancestors, from mother and father to the far-off peoples of homeland and history. There is no life worth having in her absence, all memory broken.” At last, he gave me his marred eyes. “Without memory, you and I would wield no more hope than Drohas. Wasted and gone yet cursed to be alive. Bereft of belief.”

I paused to suck upon the truth. It tore me in two and steeled me whole in equal measure. I shook my head as if to shrug off the very last doubt.

“The dead drink from the Lethe, and they forget,” Levan reminded me, the tale we’d learned as children. “We shall not be as them. We will remember.”

He placed his hand upon my shoulder and then pulled me close for an embrace. I was surprised for an act of brotherhood we had never shared. He was small yet fierce in my arms.

“We will remember,” I echoed, keeping him at last.

---

So weary as to be ready to fall, we spied a derelict and ancient temple at the crux of a triple crossroad. The construct was remarkable, where three pieces of the form met as one in the centre, arches high above. Below the confluence of those three arms was an illuminant goddess, twelve feet tall, with three heads and a distinct face for each. With a triple set of eyes, she could guard all roads at once. Each head was not disfigured but instead lovely, each of their own accord yet somehow the same. She shimmered, directing souls to float past with one of six impassive hands. We watched her, waiting for signs of vileness that never came. From her position betwixt the temple, there were places beyond of grim shadow, warm light, and a dim haze that split the two. Each place we could see in the distance was vague, shifting, but the goddess herself was cool and constant. When Levan had seen his fill, we approached.

“Hecate,” Levan called to her. One face turned to us and gave, mystically, a frown, a smile and indifference all at once.

“That is my name,” the goddess spoke. “This is the place between Tartarus, Elysium, and the Asphodel Fields. You are safe here for a time, but you are mortal and cannot linger.”

I dared to speak. “We seek our sister,” I called.

“Yes. I see all things,” Hecate spoke. “She is within the temple, where discordant fates are decided.”

Again, I gathered some small bit of courage. “May we go within?”

“You may, but your guide has been judged unworthy of afterlife. He will wait here.”

“This creature fooled Charon to get us here,” Levan protested. “What’s more he is our trade, a soul for a soul.”

Hecate was detached. “While such bargains are known, this one cannot substitute. His hex is anathema. He will wait. You will go.”

Drohas made no sound, nor gesture, and simply stood still, his way. For the briefest moment I pondered what atrocity he’d done to be barred from the hells, let alone the heavens. But then we were inside. There, my sister and Keraunos made war.

The dead king of Macedon was a wispy ghost, my sister the same, their structures only fibrous mist. Still, they fought in every way. Within only a moment they clashed three times. Physically they could do each other no harm, yet spiritually they raged on, coming together with screams. There were sparks and offshoots of ether, a spun torrent of mystical energy. Then they would pause, reform, and clash again. Before we could even speak a word, they had done this again and again in quick succession, no quarter or gain.

“Stop!” I called to them. “Stop, please!” Levan only watched.

The two spirits fought on, unwary or uncaring. I swallowed a lump in my throat and made to turn away, sickened by my sister’s torturous fate, forever to brawl with the atrocious man who had slaughtered our people.

“Nehane,” Levan said.

Our sister paused, or rather her spirit. She looked at us while Keraunos froze in place.

“We bring deliverance,” my brother told her.

Nehane breathed, if a spirit could do such, and for a moment she became flesh instead of translucent stuff. To see her whole and at rest, I wept lines of misery.

“I am bound to this evil one,” Nehane spoke, “and he to myself. Such is the price of retribution.”

“We shall change the rules,” Levan said, so calm as to be serene.

“We cannot,” Nehane protested. She was overcome, her jet hair a mess, eyes tortured.

Keraunos snarled from where he too was reformed in body, seeming ready to die yet again. At his challenge Nehane hissed like a cat, game to battle, pointless bravery.

“Wait there, yet one beat longer,” Levan told Keraunos. “You shall have your endless rival.” Levan turned to catch my view. I shuddered to observe his emotionless mask.

“Ambrose, we must get your sister home,” he told me.

I shook my head, disbelieving in possibility.

“You know what I must do.”

I stared at him, knowing he was resolute. I gulped a mouth of spit, enduring so much that was terrible. Then Levan stole my dagger from its sheath while I was beset and made a swift arc to stab my heart. In a beat of dexterity unlike me, I caught his wrist. Staring at him for his misdeed, I welled with hot emotion, even as I held him fast. His look transformed from adamant to neutral, then finally flush with all measure of regret.

“I know what must be done,” I whispered.

“Do it,” he told me. My muscle and weight pressed against him, and the blade met his neck. He fell and his blood stained the strange stones of Hades.

Nehane screamed. Yet as she wailed, she became entirely whole, flesh, and real, and I grabbed her. We turned to run, even as Levan rose up intangible, to embrace Keraunos in spiritual combat. The substitution, a soul for a soul, was done.

I had Nehane by the wrist. “Come now!” I bellowed, loud as I’d ever uttered a sound. I could not bear another moment, and I knew the legends to never look back. As we emerged from the temple, Hecate saw us. The dead man was immobile and silent, exactly where we’d left him.

“This creature, known to you as Drohas, will return you,” the goddess said. “He shall endure his punishment above, not below. Go now, and return not, or suffer just as he.”

Nehane spoke a prayer for Hecate as was her grace, beseeching new hope for the goddess instead of imploring aid for herself. For such sweetness, I realized she was reborn as the truth-bearer of Aradala, noble and beautiful. Again, I swore I would protect her or succumb to the worst, she the one righteous thing for all my life. What’s more, I would build a memorial of stone to Levan in the heart of our valley. All was as right as the fates would allow, if we could but safely return.

Drohas turned to point the way.

Ω