CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

Oh River, You Heartbreaker, Part 2

“The Olympians, you say?” He eyed each member of Sam’s team with renewed interest—idling longer than necessary on Thunder’s pretty face—before finally settling on Sam. “There’s something about you...just looking at you annoys me so very much.”

“Um, I wouldn’t know why, lord-sir,” Sam replied with a half-hearted smile.

He guessed it was his passing connection to the hero who’d robbed Achelous of his horn and his love, but Sam didn’t say that out loud. I’ve got enough problems...I don’t need a god’s misplaced anger hounding me too.

“Ahem,” Farsight cleared her throat, “as I was saying, we’re on a mission for the Olympians and we require your guidance, most peerless of river gods.”

Take notes, kid, Farsight’s playing to a god’s ego, which is the one surefire way to get them to help... Smart, Chiron said.

“Um, have you been listening in this whole time?” Sam asked in an undertone.

If you’re asking if I noticed the sappy thoughts you’ve been having for Thunder, then yeah, Chiron chuckled. I was quiet because I had to mop up all the barf I puked out from sensing you pine for her. Ha-ha-ha.

“You’re such an ass,” Sam whispered.

“Excuse me?” Achelous eyed Sam warily. “What are you whispering about?”

“Um,” Sam lowered his gaze to avoid the judgy look Farsight was giving him, “I’m just excited to get started on this quest for the Olympians, lord-sir.”

Achelous continued to eye Sam with mistrust, but he eventually relented. “Very well…if none of you came to my river to become my bride then I suppose you’re here for that.”

He pointed a bronze thumb behind him to the structure at the very center of the tiny island they were all on.

It was a raised altar surrounded by a floor of perfectly partitioned squares that resembled a chessboard. Etched on the surface of each square was a letter from the Greek alphabet. The altar itself was a simple slab of stone, and on it sat a bronze horn.

“Is that THE cornucopia?” Sam asked.

“Of course, not…is your brain addled?” Achelous asked in concern. Then he sighed. “The real cornucopia, my precious horn, was stolen from me by my hated foe...that dumb muscle-bound oaf Hercules...”

Once again, he turned an icy glare in Sam’s direction.

“Come to think of it”—the red glow of his eyes was beginning to show again—“there’s something about you that reminds me of that bastard somehow…”

“Um,” Sam cleared his throat, “that’s just your imagination, lord-sir...I just have one of those annoying faces... that’s all.”

“Are you certain?” Achelous seemed unconvinced. “You’re not one of his descendants, are you?”

The memory of Hercules’ last descendant made Sam frown. “No, I’m not...that’s some other guy.”

Achelous gave Sam one final wary stare before the automaton stepped aside to allow Sam and his friends to move closer to the edge of the board-like formation.

“A path laid bare for all to see yet one only sword can tread,” Achelous chanted, “for honor of a chalice whose heart remains unstained by dread.”

“For Horus’ sake…” Jackboot sighed. “Not another bloody riddle...”

Sam thought differently though. He imagined this was a nice distraction from the creepy old god looming at their backs. A path laid bare... only sword can tread... This last phrase caused Sam’s brow to furrow because no one in his team wielded swords, and… “How does a chalice have a heart?”

“Maybe it’s not a chalice?” Thunder suggested. “Maybe the chalice is a metaphor for something else?”

“Like a symbol, you mean?” Jackboot confirmed.

Thunder nodded.

If that’s the case, then couldn’t ‘sword’ be a symbol or something as well?” Jackboot suggested.

“The sword and chalice…” Just like that, a lightbulb lit up inside his mind. It was an idea born from Sam’s gaze drifting over to his friends, Jackboot and Thunder, a man and woman, which Sam realized used to be represented in ancient texts as, “…a sword and chalice!”

Sam searched the edge of the board and quickly discovered what he was looking for only a step ahead of him. With only the barest of hesitations, he stepped forward, and the square he landed on lit up like there was a flashlight right underneath it.

“Sam?” Thunder called. “What are you—”

“You were right,” he said excitedly. “They’re all symbols.”

Sam raised his arms wide across the board of squares.

“This whole thing is a map…and I think stepping on the right path will allow us to get to the center without problems,” Sam explained.

“And how do you know you’re stepping on the right path?” Farsight asked.

Sam pointed at the letter on the square beneath him for the answer. It was the Greek eta which also stood for the letter H.

“The sword and chalice represent a man and a woman,” Sam explained. “And if this is a path only a man can tread in honor of a woman whose heart remains unstained with dread, then that would be a—”

“Heroine!” Farsight gazed smugly back at Jackboot. “I got it first! Hah!”

“He teed it up for you though,” Jackboot replied.

Sam let the two of them call each other names while he went searching for the next letter on the board. The ‘Epsilon’ of the ancient Greek alphabet was the square directly to Sam’s upper left. The next one, the letter ‘Rho’, was directly vertical from the ‘Epsilon’ square. All three squares lit up as Sam stepped on them.

“Should we follow you?” Thunder asked.

Sam shook his head. “It’s a path only man can tread...”

“Hmm…interesting”—Sam heard the condescending tone of god watching him from the sidelines—“it seems you’re not the dumb brute I imagined you’d be.”

Sam ignored this verbal jab and slid over to the ‘Omicron’ tile to his immediate right. This lit up as well despite Sam’s reservations because he’d wondered if the ‘Omega’ to the left of ‘Rho’ might have been the correct answer instead.

No, you chose right, kid… Omega isn’t an O. It represents something else, the ending, Chiron explained.

Three more tiles separated Sam and the altar. Luckily, these three words, the ‘Iota’, the ‘Nu’, and ‘Epsilon’, were lined up horizontally after ‘Omicron’. Sam stepped over each of them and finally landed on the steps leading up to the altar. It was only here that he’d noticed that there had been an invisible barrier protecting the altar all along. Although this protective shield quickly dissipated after all the right tiles had lit up in the correct order.

Sam was just about to pick up the horn on the altar when Jackboot yelled for him to stop.

“It might be booby-trapped,” he warned.

Sam frowned. “You think?”

“Honestly, you don’t take something called the ‘Trial of Wit and Nerve’ and not expect a booby trap at the end, right?” Jackboot reasoned.

“Please~~e…why would there be sabotage at the end? Achelous scoffed. “You think I would need something silly like a trap to hurt mortals who’ve stumbled upon my domain and shown such apparent disrespect to me?”

The automaton let out a shrill laugh that reminded Sam of a sputtering engine.

“No, I would not hurt you in this way, hero,” he sighed. “Not when your business is the business of the Olympians.”

As condescending as that sounded, Achelous’ words made sense, and so Sam gingerly picked up the horn—while his mind tried to brush off the thought of a trap exploding underneath him—and that’s when he noticed the words engraved on its bronze surface.

A Newsletter Of Thus was written on one side of the horn. Endowed Higher Wits was engraved on its other side. Finally, the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 29, 18, 76, 11, 47, and 7 were scrawled along the horn’s spine.

Sam frowned. “What in Hades does this mean?”