of life, yet still they created their own blood supply -feeding from it, ensuring their own existence for as long as the host body would tolerate them. Not so this cancer: it multiplied with bewildering speed, spreading far beyond its own core. Unable to feed itself its longest tendrils merely rotted, corrupting the fatty tissues of the brain. Then another tendril would spring up, following the same pattern.
Parmenion was moments from death, gangrene and decay entering his bloodstream and carrying corruption to all parts of his body. Fresh cancers were flowering everywhere.
Derae hunted them down, destroying them where she found them.
‘I cannot do it alone!’ she realized, with sudden panic.
‘You are not alone,’ said Aristotle, his voice calm. ‘I will hold the growth in the brain.
Calming herself, Derae moved to the heart. If Parmenion was to live through this ordeal his heart needed to be strong. All his life he had been a runner, and, as Derae expected, the muscles were strong. Even so the arteries and major veins were showing signs of wear, dull yellow fat clinging to the walls and constricting the blood flow. The heartbeat was weak and fluttering, the blood thin. Derae began her work here, strengthening the valves, stripping away the pale yellow wastes clogging the veins and restricting the flow of blood, breaking them down to be carried away to the bowels. His lungs were good and she did not tarry here, but swam on into the gall bladder where wastes had been extracted from the blood only to congeal into stones, sharp and jagged. These she smashed into powder.
On she moved, destroying the cancer cells lodging in his kidneys, stomach and bowel, finally returning to the central core where Aristotle waited.
The growth in the head was unmoving now, but covering still a vast amount of the brain, squatting within it like a huge spider.
‘We have him now at the point of death,’ said Aristotle. ‘You must hold him here while I seek him out in the Void. Can you do it?’
‘I do not know,’ she admitted. ‘I can feel his body trembling on the edge of the abyss. One error, or the onset of fatigue. I don’t know, Aristotle.’
‘Both our lives will be in your hands, woman. For he will be my link to the world of the living. If he dies in the Void, then I will be trapped there. Be strong, Derae. Be Spartan!’
And then she was alone.
Parmenion’s heartbeat remained weak and unsteady and she could feel the cancer pushing back against her power, the tendrils quivering, seeking to grow.
*
There was no sensation of waking, no drowsiness. One moment there was nothing, the next Parmenion was walking across a colourless landscape under a lifeless grey sky. He stopped, his mind hazy and confused.
As far as his eyes could see there was no life, no growth. There were long-dead trees, skeletal and bare, and jagged boulders, rearing hills and dark distant mountains. All was shadow.
Fear touched him, his hand moving to the sword at his side.
Sword?
Slowly he drew it from its scabbard, gazing down once more on the proudest memory of youth, the shining blade and lion-head pommel in gold. The Sword of Leonidas!
But from where had it come? How did he acquire it? And where in Hades was he?
The word echoed in his mind. Hades!
He swallowed hard, remembering the blinding pain, the sudden darkness.
‘No,’ he whispered. ‘No, I can’t be dead!’
‘Happily that is true,’ said a voice and Parmenion spun on his heel, the sword-blade extending. Aristotle leapt back. ‘Please be careful, my friend. A man has only one soul.’
‘What is this place?’ Parmenion asked the magus.
‘The land beyond the River Styx, the first cavern of Hades,’ answered Aristotle.
‘Then I must be dead. But I have no coin for the ferryman. How then shall I cross?’
Aristotle took him by the arm, leading him to a group of boulders where they sat beneath the soul-less sky. ‘Listen to me, Spartan, for there is little time. You are not dead – a friend is holding you to life even now – but there is something you must do here.’ Swiftly Aristotle told Parmenion of the child’s lost soul and the perils of the Void.