But what use was it? The army was too big. Once launched, it could never be stopped. The shadows were insubstantial, could not be hurt—and vested with Philonecron’s power, who knew what they could do?
It occurred to Zee then that there was another plan, a far simpler plan. Philonecron needed Zee to enchant the shadows. If Zee were dead, he couldn’t utter the words of the spell. All he would have to do was run, run as fast as he could. If he could get to the Styx before the Footmen got to him, he could jump in and save the world. Easy.
It was the best way. The best way for everyone. His other plan was far too complicated, and he could easily mess it up, and what if it didn’t work and what if Philonecron stopped him and what if he then doomed humanity because he was just too weak-minded to resist?
Zee’s heart pounded. He was on fire, every part of him. This would do it. This would humiliate Philonecron, leave him just as helpless as he made Zee feel. This would solve all Zee’s problems. All he had to do was keep away from Philonecron, get free, run, and then jump—and then it would all be over.
He walked behind a row of shadows, trying not to attract attention. If he could just get past the small cave, he’d be home free. Slowly, resolutely, he made his way toward the door of the vast room, trying to quell something that was rising in his chest and throat. No, no, this was the right thing. He was almost there, he was ready to make his break, and then—
And then he felt Philonecron’s hand on his shoulder and his voice whispering in his ear. “Shall we get started?” he murmured. And that’s when everything went black.
The next thing Zee knew, he was standing on a large platform, supported by four of the Footmen, holding a hollowed-out horn of some beast or another, shouting something in a language he’d never heard before:
“Ek skotou es to phaos!”
The enchantment had begun.
Philonecron was standing right behind him, telling him what to say—and the words, whatever they meant, were coming right out of his mouth.
“Ek thanatou es to sden!”
He still felt so foggy, as if he were half there—but he was aware enough to know that he had completely failed. He couldn’t even kill himself. He wanted to sob, to run, to die—but he couldn’t move from where he was. And now it was too late, and it was all his fault.
In front of him were fifty thousand shadows, in perfect rows, still and stiff. From where he stood, they looked even more like headstones towering up into the night.
Zee could hear his words booming through the hall over them—he barely recognized his own voice, sounding so strong and sure through the bullhorn.
“Ek skotou es to phaos! Ek thanatou es to sden!”
And the shadows heard him too. Suddenly he was not addressing paper dolls anymore. The shadows were coming to life.
“Ek skotou es to phaos! Ek thanatou es to sden!”
It was as if the whole room had taken a breath. Zee could feel the air change. Where once there had been six living creatures in the vast room (if the Footmen could be described as living), suddenly there were fifty thousand. The shadows twitched and stirred, stretched and shook.
They were alive.
“Ek skotou es to phaos! Ek thanatou es to sden!”
They were alive, the shadows were alive—because of him. It was as if the room had held thousands of pictures of fire, and then before his eyes the fire had become real. The shadows drank up his words, thrived on them; they stretched, grew, upward and outward. They were five feet tall, then six. They thickened, too, gained depth and substance—the paper dolls were now three-dimensional creatures with life and will. They bent and swayed and stretched and flickered, shaping themselves arms, then hands and fingers, stretching the fingers out to impossible lengths, reaching their heads up to the sky, then molding it all back into their bodies again. They were animate spirits, ones with intelligence and desire—and what they desired was Zee’s words.
“Ek skotou es to phaos! Ek thanatou es to sden!”
The more he repeated the incantation, the stronger they became, the more alive they were. And suddenly all the despair, all the helplessness he had been feeling went away. The hatred for Philonecron was gone too—or at least it had moved aside, made way for something much more intoxicating. Because Zee was feeling something he had never felt before in his entire life: power.
Zee had power. It welled up inside of him, his heart sang with it, his chest filled with it. He had power, and he could use it. He did not have to kill himself. He could still save everyone. He had power, he had a plan—a good plan. And he could do it, he could make it happen, because he was Zachary John Miller, enchanter of shadows.
“Ek skotou es to phaos! Ek thanatou es to sden!”
They were alive! They were rustling, rumbling, waiting. Fifty thousand spirits waiting to destroy a world.
“My boy! Zero! We did it!” Philonecron hooted. “We did it!” He clapped Zee on the back and then corrected himself. “No, no…you did it. My perfect, wonderful Zero.”
Everything happened quickly after that. The Footmen lowered Zee to the ground, then picked up Philonecron, who started shouting commands to the shadows. They were an army now, erect and attentive, waiting for their orders.
“My army!” Philonecron shouted. “We are going to bring down Hades! We are going to march through the Underworld and tear his City to bits! And then we will bring down his Palace! We will conquer the Underworld!”
And then, as one, the shadows lowered themselves to the ground, their bottom halves disappearing into the earth. And, as one again, they stretched back up toward the sky, and when they rose from the ground, it was apparent they had given themselves long, strong legs.
Then they began to march. They marched in place at first, their footfalls eerily silent on the cold stone floor. Then, at a word from Philonecron, they started to move.
Oh, it was an army, all right. They stepped in perfect precision, moving in exact formation, regiment by regiment. They looked as if they’d been training for years. They kept coming and coming. Surely there didn’t need to be so many. Surely a few thousand would have been enough. As the shadows marched by him out into the world, soundless and precise, eerie and intangible, Zee shook off the feeling that he was witnessing an army of Death.
In his head Zee saw images of every battle he had ever seen, every army marching through a city, every war march throughout history. He couldn’t get a good breath; he couldn’t calm his heart; he couldn’t stop the sweat dripping from his brow.
It didn’t matter, Zee was ready. As soon as they got to the Palace, he would act. He would need Hades to take care of Philonecron—and that Zee wanted to see.
But then Philonecron turned to Zee. “Now, you rest up! I’ll be back soon!”
Zee’s eyes widened. “I’m staying here?”
“Yes. Of course you are! I’ll be back for you soon, fret not.”
“No!” Zee said. “I want to come with you!”
“Oh, of course you do!” Philonecron chucked him under the chin. “My brave boy. But I fear some things are not meant to be seen by your eyes. You’re so innocent, so pure. I don’t want you to lose that. You’ve done your part, my boy. You rest now. You must be exhausted! You stay here and dream of the world we’ll make.”
Stay here, yes. Rest and dream.
“Don’t worry, I’ll bring you back something from the Palace!” Philonecron squeezed Zee’s cheeks, gazed into his eyes for a moment, and then turned and left the cave.
Zee closed his eyes and exhaled, getting his mind back. It’s okay, he told himself. He could follow behind them, no one would notice. It would be better this way; he could stay out of range of Philonecron’s brain waves, or whatever they were. He would just wait a few minutes, then sneak over the bridge and follow them all the way to Hades.
“Oh, and Zero?” Philonecron’s head popped back in. “If you need anything, I’ll leave Beta and Theta to watch over you.” He smiled. “They’ll be right outside the c
ave!”
The two Footmen turned and stared at Zee ominously. Philonecron waved and left.
Zee kicked the dirt and put his head in his hands.
CHAPTER 22
Into the Land of the Dead
AS SOON AS THEY LANDED ON THE OTHER BANK OF THE Styx, Charlotte hurried out of Charon’s boat. To Charlotte, Charon seemed like the type who might change his mind, and she was out of Fruit Roll-Ups. She scurried up the bank without looking back—because Charlotte knew of two good rules for navigating the Underworld: 1. Don’t Eat the Food and 2. Don’t Look Back.
As she was crawling up the bank, Charon shouted after her in his grim, grizzly voice, “Give my love to Cerberus!”
Charlotte shuddered. She had forgotten entirely about Cerberus. The Hound of Hades, the three-headed watchdog of the Underworld, who permitted the Dead to enter but never let them leave.
So when she heard a very canine growling and bounding heading toward her, she panicked. Quickly she ran through everything she knew about Cerberus—Heracles kidnapped the dog after a great struggle, Orpheus sang him to sleep, and Aeneas drugged him. And Charlotte? What did Charlotte do?
Charlotte squeezed her eyes shut and pretended she was invisible. It wasn’t the best plan, but it was the best she could do on short notice.
It did not work. The strange, feral noises moved closer, and she cringed, took a deep breath, and opened her eyes.
Before her was a cub-size three-headed dog with three pairs of sad brown eyes that were looking at her plaintively. He was brown, black, and white, with floppy ears and a mass of shiny fur. He cocked his heads. Charlotte cocked hers.
“Why, you’re cute!” Charlotte said. “Even with the three heads!”
The dog tipped his heads the other way.
“You’re a good doggy!”
The dog wagged his serpent-like tail.
“Good doggy!” she cooed, reaching over and rubbing him under one of his right ears.
Cerberus rolled over on his back, and Charlotte sat down and gave him a good, long scratch.
“Well,” she whispered, “I’d like to stay here and scratch you, but I have to save the world.” She stood up, and so did Cerberus. He gave her a fond bark, then headed off down the bank.
She sighed and turned to survey the world ahead of her. Before her was an endless, grim, rocky, reddish gray plain, punctuated with little lakes and small, steaming pits here and there. And of course, the Dead were everywhere, innumerable Dead, like stars in the sky, sand on the beach. They stretched off with the horizon, becoming specks of light, becoming fog. They were right next to her, phantoms of light, hovering, still and aimless, against the dark landscape.
It all seemed to stretch on forever. There were rocky hills on the very distant horizon that seemed to mirror the place she had just come from. In front of the hills she could see a great, black, prison-like wall. A permanent black cloud hung over it, and she could just make out winged beasts flying in and out of the smoke. Suddenly she took a step back—that was Tartarus, the place of punishment, an endless pit in the ground where history’s greatest sinners met their fate. And where Philonecron wanted to send the Dead.
Charlotte looked quickly away.
To the right the view was much less ominous. On the other side of the horizon, rising out of the plain, was a great city. She saw a jumble of spires and buildings and towers, and in the center of it all, soaring up over the Kingdom, were the looming black domes of the Palace.
“Well,” Charlotte muttered, stepping forward, “follow the yellow brick road.”
Sensing the presence of Charlotte, the Dead began to stir. From the crowd around her distinct groupings began to form—little circles of Dead huddling together. It was as if they were whispering to one another, yet no sound came from them. Charlotte looked straight ahead and kept walking. Finally about a dozen broke off from the groups and floated up to Charlotte, resting right in front of her eyes. She stopped.
“Hi,” she said weakly.
They nodded their heads, a bow. Charlotte noticed that when she looked at them directly, all she saw was shape and light, but when she looked away, looked at them out of the corner of her eye, she could almost see the imprint of the long-gone faces of the people they once were.
“I’m, um, going to see Hades,” she told them. “I need to warn him. There’s a man, an evil man….” She paused, chewing on her lips. “Can you help me?”
The Dead did not answer, they simply watched her.
“This man, he’s very nasty. He wants to overthrow Hades….”
Still they did not move. Charlotte, remembering what Mr. Metos had said about the Lord of the Dead, wondered if perhaps they thought overthrowing Hades was not such a bad idea.
“He has my cousin. He wants to throw the Dead in Tartarus!” She gestured to the gigantic, smoking pit to the left, and the Dead shrank back abruptly.
“I-I need to warn Hades. Can you take me to the City?” She pointed to the towers ahead. But again the Dead stepped back. Charlotte didn’t understand. “You should come to the City with me. This is so grim. It looks much nicer there.”
She pointed again, and as one, the group of Dead hurried away.
“Oooo-kay,” Charlotte breathed.
She moved on, cutting a swath through the oceans of Dead. She had to step carefully; the plain was littered with small rocks, and she could just see herself twisting her ankle. That would be great.
The landscape was awful. It smelled like Harpy, it was treacherous, and it was deathly boring, like one of those long car trips through states that never end. At least in Tartarus something happened.
She moved on, slowly, carefully, the Dead falling in line behind her. One by one they joined her—they kept their distance, but she could sense a growing column of them weaving behind her as she walked—not leading her, but following.
They are drawn to Life, Charlotte thought sadly.
There weren’t just Dead, of course. On the ground scurried those fist-size spiders, while cobra-size nine-headed Hydras slithered after them. In the air flew gaggles of black birds of the type that had brought the note to Charlotte and Zee, and in the background she could hear the sound of the Harpies singing, their voices magnified by the great silence of the Dead. The very sound of those voices made Charlotte shudder.
But singing wasn’t all they did. They kept flying right over the Dead, shouting insults at them, and the Dead cowered in their path. Off to the right one of them buzzed directly into a crowd of Dead, cackling as it chased them away. Next to Charlotte, another hovered right over a group of Dead and threw a ball of purple green slime at them, screeching, “Here’s a present for you!”
Charlotte did not want to think what that was. She looked up and shouted, “Now, that’s just mean!”
The Harpy turned to her. “Carrot top! Big mouth!”
“Smelly old hag!” Charlotte yelled.
“Underachiever!” the Harpy yelled back.
An ear-shattering screech sounded from the air, and in swooped another gigantic flying creature—not a Harpy, but a Griffin, with head and wings of an eagle, body of a lion, and scaly tail of a snake. The Griffin soared into the Harpy’s path and lunged at it, and the Harpy lunged back.
“Lion butt!” screamed the Harpy.
Feathers flew everywhere, and screams filled the air, not to mention some insults that Charlotte really could not repeat. Green blood dripped from the sky; a few drops landed on Charlotte’s backpack and burned a hole through it. The pair of hideous, bird-like birds tumbled and pecked and screeched in the sky, and Charlotte was relieved that at least there was someone protecting the Dead—until the Griffin spit Harpy feathers at them.
This was awful, Charlotte thought. Was this what Death held? Barren landscapes and mean monsters and eternal quiet and all this boredom? Why didn’t Hades do something about it? Mr. Metos had said that Prometheus believed Zeus wasn’t worthy of being a god because he didn’t help humans. Hades, then, seemed har
dly worthy of being Lord of the Dead, but it didn’t look like anyone was asking Charlotte. Maybe she could say something to him after he, you know, stopped Philonecron and saved Zee and didn’t eat her or turn her into a ferret.
Charlotte walked for an hour, passing such lovely sights as Harpies dining on the carcass of one of their own, a Cyclops picking his substantial nose, and piles of steaming evidence of Hades’s legendary herd of night black cattle. She didn’t know which smelled worse, the piles or the Harpies. Too close to call.
The City grew closer and closer, and Charlotte was soon able to make out details. It seemed a bizarre place to find in the Underworld—its elegant stone structures and spires looked like something out of a Dickens book. But there were no jet-black palaces in Dickens, at least Charlotte did not think so.
Then, suddenly, there was movement in the silent column of Dead, a rustling, a sense of chaos, where once there had been quiet order. Charlotte turned to look at them.
“What?”
They were all staring at something off in the direction of the City. Charlotte gazed over and she started.
There was someone hurrying toward them. Someone who looked very, very much like a person. Like a boy.
He couldn’t really be a boy, of course—and certainly when he got closer, Charlotte would see that he had red eyes or hands made of birds or a snake’s head for a tongue. Or he spit fire or had five noses or had a hideously long tail. Or something.
But he came closer, and closer still, and Charlotte saw no deformities whatsoever. In fact…well…in fact, the boy was quite handsome. Really quite handsome. He was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt, and he had dark chocolate brown eyes and wavy black hair; he would have looked like he belonged in the halls of Charlotte’s school if he hadn’t been far, far more attractive than anyone who had ever graced the hallways of Hartnett Prep.
Charlotte stared. Who was he? What was he doing down here? And, um, however did he get so cute?
Charlotte stood where she was, while around her the Dead backed away slowly. She didn’t really notice; her eyes were locked on the boy’s chocolaty orbs. Charlotte did so like chocolate.