Chapter 10: Wives

"I don't know who you two are, but take your indecent acts somewhere else," the man said, his voice not sounding anything like my father's. When he came closer to pick up a wooden crate beside Eros and I, I knew for certain that it wasn't him. "There's an inn across the street with rooms available."

I closed my eyes, willing my racing heart to calm itself. For a split second, I truly thought this man was my father. But I was mistaken. My fear of being caught by him must have played tricks with my mind.

With one last disapproving look in our direction, the man left with his crate.

I tried to stand, but the shooting pain in my ankle quickly reminded me that I couldn't. I grimaced and leaned against the wall, standing on one leg, with the injured foot up. "How's your back? Still hurts?" I asked Eros.

He shook his head, standing up as well. "The pain passed, as it always does. Though I must say the last moments of it weren't as bad as usual, thanks to your method of distraction." He grinned.

I had to look away from his inviting lips. They were the first I'd ever felt against my own, and I was afraid that I already grew to like them. Very much so.

"Hop on." Eros lowered himself in front of me and offered me his back. "We still need to find you a healer."

With my arms around his broad shoulders and my legs securely held against his waist, he carried me out of the alley. As soon as we rounded the corner, he stopped walking and looked up at a sign above a building made of mud and straw.

"Looks like the healer was closer than we expected," I said.

We went inside the hut and looked around. It was spacious and very clean, with shelves full of medicine and different herbs in glass jars, two cots, and two chairs. A man was sitting behind a wide table, grinding some dried herbs into a thick paste.

"Are you the healer?" Eros asked.

The man nodded. "That would be me. What can I help you with?" He looked up and his eyes widened when he saw us, and so did mine.

It was the same man who caught us kissing in the alley. The one I'd mistaken for my father.

"She has a sprained ankle," Eros responded, completely unaffected by the situation. I, on the other hand, wanted to leave and find a different healer. "Could you help her?"

The healer put away the paste he was making and stood up. He motioned to one of the cots. "Put her down there. I'll need to inspect it."

Eros carefully placed me on a cot by the window and stepped away to let the healer look at my ankle.

"Hmm. It's definitely swelling," he mused. Taking two pillows from the other cot, he placed them under my injured foot. "Keep it elevated. And you," he told Eros, bringing him a small pouch filled with ice, "hold it against the injury while I make the medication."

Once the healer made a green paste, he came back.

"How did you hurt it?" He started applying the medicine on my ankle.

"I tripped on a tent," I said.

He didn't seem to believe me. "Are you certain it didn't happen when you were in that alley with him?" He motioned to Eros.

My cheeks reddened. "I'm certain. I hurt it before the...alley."

"All right," he said, unconvinced. Finished with applying the green paste, he tightly wrapped my ankle into an elastic bandage. "This should do it. Try not to move you foot around too much. The medicine I applied works fast, but you need to help it do its magic. If all goes well, you should be completely healed in a few hours."

"What's in this paste?" I asked, looking at my ankle. I'd never heard of such fast acting medicine.

"A special herb I'd received as a gift from a water nymph. It has healing properties far beyond what we know today."

True to his word, his medicine worked like magic. My ankle felt much better in a few hours and I could finally move it around without feeling any pain at all. During that time, Eros brought us something to eat from the nearby market and we shared a meal with the healer who told us stories of his encounter with the water nymph that he rescued.

By this time, it was already dark outside as the moon replaced the sun in the sky.

"We should find a place to sleep," I said to Eros, who was sitting on a chair beside my cot.

"There's an inn across the street," he suggested. "I remember the healer telling us that they had rooms there."

The healer overheard our conversation from his table. "Make sure you don't put too much weight on your ankle yet. And I wouldn't recommend any strenuous activity for the night. It'd be a shame if you injure yourself again."

"Don't worry," Eros said, picking me up from the cot and carrying me to the door, "we'll be careful."

The healer sighed as we left.

"Eros!" I said in disbelief. "Why would you say that? He'll get the wrong idea."

"He already got the wrong idea the moment we stepped into his hut. No amount of arguing would have changed his mind, so I decided to just play along." He looked down at my embarrassed face in amusement. "Don't worry. We know the truth, and that's all that matters."

"I suppose you're right." When we got to the doors of the inn, I tapped his arm. "You can put me down now. My ankle doesn't hurt anymore. I can walk just fine."

After a moment of hesitation, he did as I asked and let me stand on my own two feet. "Lean on me as you walk. The healer said not to put too much weight on it yet."

The inside of the inn was dimly lit, a lone counter in the middle of the entryway greeting us as we came in. Several keys hung on a wall behind it.

"A room for two?" asked an old man who looked to be the owner of this inn. He took one key off its hook and turned to us. He scratched his bald head. "Well? Are you taking it or what? My arm's getting tired holding it out for you."

I grabbed the key. "Thank you. How much for a room?"

"How much you got on you?" He grinned, showing off a few golden teeth.

"We have nothing," Eros lied.

The old man snatched the key from my hand. "I'm afraid that won't do."

Eros sighed and put a silver coin on the counter.

The old man pursed his lips. "Not enough."

Eros added one more silver coin.

"Not enough."

I placed a small, but heavy pouch of golden coins on the counter. "I believe this will do?"

"Ahh, this...this will do just fine." The crook smiled and shook the pouch near his ear, peaking inside it and looking very pleased. He handed me back the key. "Stay as long as you like."

When he tried to also take the two silver coins on the counter, Eros snatched them away.

We found a room that matched the number on our key. It was spacious, but old, with worn out carpets and curtains. Other than a canopy bed that occupied the centre of the room and a dresser with a chair in the corner, there wasn't much furniture.

The floorboards creaked as I went to the window to open the curtains to let more light in from the outside. "I may have overpaid for this room," I admitted.

"Definitely," Eros agreed, looking around.

Loud laughter came from a room across from ours. It sounded like a group of people.

"Great," Eros said. "The walls are paper thin too." He sniffed the air. "Do you smell that?"

"What?"

"It smells like..." He sniffed again. "It smells like grilled pork!" His eyes widened. "Our loud neighbours seem to be cooking it in their room. Do you think they'll be willing to share with us?"

I laughed, shaking my head. "It's late. We should get some sleep."

"I won't be able to sleep with that smell taunting me." Eros took my hand and pulled me out of our room. "It wouldn't hurt to ask. They seem to be in a good mood if they're laughing so."

He raised his first to knock on their door, but I stopped him. When he frowned questioningly, I pointed to my ears and whispered, "Listen."

"--poof! She was gone. Just like that. One minute she was in the kitchen, grumbling about something I did, and the next moment I didn't see her."

"Poor lad," said a familiar voice. "Let us raise a glass for his wife!"

A clinking of glasses followed, then loud chugging sounds, as they drank what I assumed was alcohol.

"Doesn't that voice sound familiar to you?" I whispered to Eros.

He nodded. "It does. Do you think it's him?"

I put my ear against the door to get a better listen, but someone yanked it open.

"I'll get us more beer-- oh!" a red faced Rib looked at me. "Look who we have here?" He slurred, then bowed. "Your Highness, to what do I owe this visit?" Then he glanced at Eros. "You're here together?" He pointed to us both, then opened the door wide. "Come in, come in. We were just wallowing in self-pity here. You see, it's the anniversary of Hector's wife's disappearance, and we also have a new member who wants to join our search." He stumbled back inside the room, pointing at a young man who was wiping tears off his face.

Eros and I exchanged a look, then followed him in.

"Listen," Rib said, climbing to stand on his chair while holding an empty glass in one hand. "I'd like to apologize for-- whoa!" His chair wobbled beneath him and he almost fell off, but surprisingly managed to stay on. "As I was saying, I'd like to apologize for my rude behaviour and for abducting you and putting you in cages. Though you managed to escape just fine, but!" He held up a hand. "It was wrong of me to do all that in the first place, I know."

I didn't know what to say. I expected my next run-in with Rib to be anything but this. Eros seemed to be at a loss for words too.

"I promise I'm not a bad person. I was simply desperate to find my wife. Still am." He started to sob. "She...was taken...from me...years ago." He got down to sit on his chair, covered his face and cried into them. "My Dimitra!"

Hector started to console him quietly. "We'll find them soon. We'll find them."

The young man, the new member of their group, began to cry again for his own wife. The fourth bandit in the room squeezed his hands into fists and clenched his teeth, as if holding himself back from breaking into tears as well.

"That ghost we saw in the dessert." I turned to Eros. "She cried out for Hector before she disappeared."

He frowned. "Hector," he said, getting the bandit's attention. "Where did your wife disappear?"

"In the dessert of this kingdom."

"Were you with her?" I asked.

He shook his head and slumped his shoulders. "I should have been the one to go," he croaked, bottom lip trembling. "Shouldn't have left her to do my dirty work. It's my fault. It's my fault she's gone."

"Seems like he truly loved his wife," Eros observed. "The love spell from my arrow faded."

As he said that, I realized it was true. Hector no longer looked at me with adoration in his eyes as he did when we escaped from the cages Rib had us locked in. He was indifferent to my presence now.

All four of these bandits had their wives taken from them. I wondered if the same was true for the rest of them who weren't currently in this room. I asked Rib that question.

"Yes," he responded, his eyes swollen from crying. "I was the first one it happened to. Then I found a few others, and over the years we'd formed a group, with members all over Asterin. This symbol," he pointed to the embroidery of two intertwined rings on his headband, "represents our mission to find them."

"But how do you know if they're alive?" I asked, debating whether I should tell them about the ghosts I've seen.

"They disappeared without a trace!" the fourth bandit interjected. "If they were dead, we would have found their bodies. Not a single one of us did. Not a single one. They must be somewhere. They have to be."

"Many of us witnessed our wives' disappearances right in front of our eyes, and they all have one thing in common," Rib said. "They were pulled into there." He pointed to the ground. "Right before the last trace of them was gone, we saw them being pulled there. And we all know what's down there."

"The Underworld," I said, looking at Eros who had a deep frown on his face.

"The Underworld." Rib nodded. "The place we cannot visit until the day we die. But we knew that death wasn't the answer. There was no guarantee that we'd get to see our wives if we crossed over, and then we learned of the Helm of Darkness..."

"You plan on using the Helm of Darkness to go to the Underworld?" Eros asked.

"That's exactly what we plan to do," Rib said. "As the leader, I will go first and find where our wives are being held. I feel it in my heart." He put a hand over his heart. "My Dimitra is still alive. We all feel this way."

The other bandits nodded in agreement.

"Can you go to the Underworld and check if they're there?" I whispered to Eros.

"I'm banned from visiting Hades's kingdom," he said.

"Banned?"

He scratched the back of his head and looked away. "Persephone was quite...fond of me, and Hades didn't like that. He made sure I couldn't visit her after their marriage. The gates of the Underworld will not let me in. Believe me, I've tried."

"You tried to visit her?" I tried not to let the slight bit of jealousy show in my voice.

He nodded. "She'd helped me heal after I was poisoned, and I wanted to repay her; thought I could talk Hades into letting her go. I knew she was miserable. But I couldn't do much to help her situation."

"I've been meaning to ask," Rib said, looking at me. "How did you know where the first piece of the Helm was hidden?"

I hesitated. Though their drunken honesty revealed their true intentions with the Helm, they hadn't quite earned my trust yet. Which is why I concentrated my gaze to reveal the state of their souls.

"What is she doing?" the youngest bandit asked Hector quietly. "She's just staring at us."

"She must be assessing our strengths. Straighten your spine and puff up your chest."

All four of them were pure, their souls filled with golden light.

Now that my last shred of doubt was erased, I felt like I could tell them all I knew about the Helm and the visions I've seen. We had to put the pieces together and figure out why their wives were taken, and why the lives of everyone else were in danger.

"We'll work together," I said, sitting down on an empty chair, facing everyone else in the room. "I'll tell you everything I know, and you'll tell me everything you've learned so far of the disappearances and of the Helm."

Rib gave a firm nod. "Sounds good to me. Objections?" he asked the rest of his gang. They all shook their heads.

"I think it's a good idea as well," Hector voiced his agreement.

"Me too," said the youngest bandit.

"I'll do anything to bring my wife back," the fourth bandit joined. "Ask me anything."

"Great! We're teaming up now," Eros said. He glanced at a small table in the corner. "But before we begin... Mind if I have some of that grilled pork?"

~~~

"It's somewhere here," I said, squinting my eyes and looking around the desert. "In my vision, I saw that exact cactus in the distance. And that whale shaped rock to our left." I climbed off my camel. "We can start digging here. If someone finds a silver box, call out to the rest of us."

We all spread out over the area and started digging under the blazing sun. I glanced at Rib to my right, and saw that his clothes were already drenched in sweat. He wiped some off his forehead and flicked the moisture away with one hand. The rest of the bandits seemed to be in the same state.

"When we do find the third piece," Rib grunted, throwing a pile of sand to the side with a shovel. "How do we put them together? Do they magically attach themselves to each other?"

"I don't quite know about that," Eros responded, digging in front of us. "They will either come together or we might need to bind them ourselves."

I froze, suddenly remembering something. "The first piece! It's all the way in Kingdom Typhon! We'll have to travel there to get it before we can even begin putting the pieces together."

"Uh, about that first piece..." Rib scratched his head. "We have it."

"What?" I turned to him with raised brows. "How?"

"As I said, we have members all over Asterin. Some of them work as servants in castles and palaces. A servant in Kingdom Typhon's castle found the first piece when cleaning a room and sent it to me."

Overhearing our conversation, Hector came over and pulled out that very piece from his belt bag. "Now all we need is to find the final one."

"I've underestimated you, bandits," I said.

"Quit calling us that!" The fourth bandit, whose name I learned was Ajax, exclaimed from his digging spot. "We're not bandits."

"She's fond of giving nicknames to people," Eros explained.

The bandits had the first piece. I had the second one. Now all we needed was to find the silver box with the third piece that King Ira had buried. But after hours of digging, we still found nothing.

"Hey princess!" Ajax said. "You were wrong about this location, don't you think?"

I shook my head. "This is definitely the spot. I know it. I feel it."

"Then why can't we find it?" he raised a challenging brow.

"Looking for this?" A woman with a shawl covered face and goggle covered eyes dangled a silver box in her hand. She was accompanied by a man, who was also dressed in full Pesok desert attire. A black stallion with a silver mane stood behind them.

"Lena! Bion!" I abandoned my shovel and ran over to them, embracing them both. "Where were you? I've spent all morning looking for you two, and asked the bandits to keep an eye out if they saw you. Are you all right?"

"We're not bandits!"

"Our crazed horse nearly abandoned us in the sandstorm, but we managed to stay on and ride to the city," Lena said.

"He tried especially hard to throw me off." Bion glared at the stallion.

"After getting some rest, we came out here to look for the spot you've described," Lena continued. "With the cactus and whale shaped rock."

"It took a long time to find it," Bion complained.

"But we finally did," Lena finished.

"Took a long time to find this silver thing too," Bion added.

"But we found it," Lena said, smiling up at the satyr. He smiled back.

We gathered in a circle and took out all three pieces of the Helm of Darkness. Rib held the first one. I held the second. And Lena held the third piece. The three of us looked at each other, then nodded.

"Wait!" Rib said. "Everyone else, step back. Gods know what will happen when we put the pieces together. I don't want you to get hit."

The bandits, Eros, and Bion stepped back to give us more space.

"Now," Rib said. Lena and I came closer and lined our pieces together with his, holding our breaths in anticipation. We waited for them to attach to each other.

Nothing happened.

The three of us pulled our metal pieces away from each other. "It's not working," I said.

"Any ideas of what else we could do, Hector?" Rib asked. "You know more about this Helm. Hector?" He turned around and dropped his piece, disbelief in his eyes.

Lena and I followed his gaze. The bandits and Bion were nowhere in sight.

They all disappeared.