Being the cautious sort, however, Stolas insisted that they take a second precaution, too: the tattoo. “Because the master wasn’t a mortal, by all rights he shouldn’t ever die. But we were in virgin territory here, you understand, and I was afraid that something might happen that we hadn’t foreseen. I had to be certain that if he died and his soul was sent to the underworld, that we wouldn’t lose him. I had to be able to find him, even though he was in hiding. And so we decided to use a tattoo as a secret signal. It was a gamble; no one had ever done this before—we didn’t know if it would work.” Stolas had never even known if the master had made it through the abyss; all he knew was that Adair had never returned.

“When Adair first disappeared, the queen was furious. She turned the underworld upside down looking for him,” Stolas said. “It didn’t take her long to figure out that her husband’s most trusted adviser had something to do with it. She had me seized and tortured to try to get me to give up the secret, but I refused, and eventually, she had me thrown into the pit. The queen had my quarters searched, and that’s how she found out about the tattoo. She found the drawing hidden away in one of my books. She’s had guards at the entrance to the underworld looking for this tattoo ever since. Checking every soul that passes through. Millions upon millions of souls. She never gave up.”

Jonathan. It had been Jonathan, carrying the tattoo on the inside of his right arm, who had given Adair’s secret away. And it was my fault all this had happened. If I hadn’t given Jonathan his release when he’d asked me four years ago in Maine, he’d never have been caught at the gates of the underworld. He’d never have been brought before the queen; she would never have known. And Adair would still be hidden from the gods, the cosmos, from himself.

“But why?” I asked finally, impatiently. “Why did he want to leave the underworld? Why fight his way through the abyss, why put this story in his head? Why did he give up being a god and make himself a man? It doesn’t make sense.”

“There is a reason,” Stolas said with infuriating calm. “A good reason. But it is his secret to tell, not mine. I cannot share it with you, not without his permission. You must ask him, the next time you see him.”

However, sitting where I was, at the bottom of the pit, I had no reason to believe I would ever see Adair again.

TWENTY