Hermes tossed his head haughtily. “Oh, certainly he’s pretty enough-but he’s such a bore!”

“The next words from your lips had best concern your message.” She leaned toward him and poked him lightly on the chest with the point of her sword. “You have lately seen, I believe, the consequences of making me angry.”

The Messenger of the Gods looked down at the blade against his ribs, then back up at the war goddess’s unwavering gray eyes. He drew himself up, adjusted his chlamys with exaggerated dignity, and said in a clarion voice, “It’s your pet mortal.”

“Kratos?” She frowned. Zeus had said he himself would be looking after Kratos until after the memorial. “What of him?”

“Well, I thought you might like to know, in view of all the aid he has given you and the concern you occasionally feel for him-”

“Hermes.”

He flinched, just a bit. “Yes, yes. Here: Witness.”

He lifted the caduceus and pointed. In the air between them, an image built of a mountain, tall beyond imagining, and a cliff, impossibly sheer, impossibly far above the Aegean’s watery surge. On the edge of that cliff, Kratos paused and seemed to speak, though no one was there to hear.

“Your pet has chosen a perilous path to tread. This one will take him to Hades.”

Athena felt herself go pale. “He takes his own life?”

“So it appears.”

“He can’t!” The disobedient mortal! And where was Zeus? Not looking after Kratos, obviously-or had he, she now wondered, said he would be looking upon the Spartan? Which would be an entirely different thing.

As her mind raced, sorting through all the possibilities and improbabilities, the Kratos in the image leaned forward and lifted a foot as though to step from the cliff into empty air… then he fell. Simply fell.

No struggle. No scream. No cry for help. He plunged headfirst toward his death on the rocks below, and on his face was only calm.