She shuddered. “No, thank you. Do the others know this?”
Hades nodded. “Or—well, they know it before they take the first drink. After, it hardly matters, does it? I’ll say this much for Zeus, he will generally explain it all to the newcomers before they are offered the option. I’m just not sure he’ll explain it to you, especially not if your mother—” He broke off what he was going to say.
“That’s a good point.” Persephone scuffed her bare toe into the pebbles. “I can’t always predict what Mother will think, and I honestly don’t know what view she’d take, whether it was better for me not to know, or better for me to know and fight what I don’t want this ‘Tradition’ to do to me.” She heard a splashing—it sounded deliberate—and looked up to see something out there on the water. “Oh, look, there’s Charon.”
A dark shape loomed out of the mist, resolving into the boat and the ferryman. “Well,” Charon said, sounding a tad less lugubrious, “that was interesting.” He toed the plank over the side, and it slid onto the gravel.
“Good interesting, or bad interesting?” Hades asked, handing Persephone into the boat, which was surprisingly stable.
“Good, I think. Minos is going to have his hands full for a little.” Charon chuckled. “I confess I am rather surprised that I carried over quite a few who are neither destined for Tartarus nor the Fields of Asphodel. The friendless and poor on earth may not be such paltry stuff after all. In fact,” he added thoughtfully, “a good many of them are, in their own way, heroes. Leaving them on the bank is doing them a grave—” he chuckled again at his own pun “—disservice, perhaps.”
Hades looked to Persephone. “We might be able to think of something,” she said, in answer to his unspoken query, as he handed her into the boat. “We were just talking about that, in fact.” Hades got into the boat beside her, which rocked not at all under his weight.
Charon poled them through the mist to the opposite shore. It wasn’t as far as Persephone had thought, and yet it was very difficult to tell just how much time actually had passed; Hades remained silent, and Charon wasn’t very chatty.
On the other side…if Persephone had thought that the banks of the river were crowded with souls, here there were shades in uncounted thousands.
As far as she could see in either direction, a thinner mist hung over endless fields of pale blossoms. The shades wandered among them. They seemed particularly joyless as they gathered the white flowers of the asphodel, marked with a blood-red stripe down the center of each petal. They did not seem sad, just…not happy.
Until the fields themselves hazed off into the mist, the asphodel blossoms waved, pallid lilies standing about knee-high to the shades. They seemed to have no other occupation than to pick and eat the blossoms, showing neither enjoyment nor distaste.
This apparently infinite stretch of ground, flowers and mist, she knew already, was the part of Hades’s realm called the Fields of Asphodel, where the souls of those who were neither good nor evil went. In a way, the penalty for being ordinary was to be condemned to continue to be ordinary. Every day was like every other day; the only change was in the comings and goings of new souls, and the Lords of the Underworld.
Charon pushed off once they had gotten out of the boat; there were always new souls to ferry across, it seemed.
The mist still persisted everywhere, making it impossible to judge distance properly, or to make out much that wasn’t near. She and Hades made their way on a road that passed between the two Fields, and the shades gathering and eating flowers paid no particular attention to them. But as they traveled, hand in hand, she saw that there actually was a boundary, a place where the Fields ended. The asphodel gave way to short, mosslike purple turf, and like two mirrors set into the turf, she saw two pools, one on the left of the road, and one on the right. The one on the right was thronged with more shades; only a few were kneeling to scoop water from the one on the left.
“Lethe is on the right,” Hades said, and sighed. “The ordinary choose to forget.”
She nodded, and the two of them stepped a little off the road, which now passed through a long span of the dark purple mosslike growth. It actually felt quite nice on her bare feet. The road itself was crowded with shades, waiting in line. Eventually Persephone made out three platforms ahead of them, each platform holding a kind of throne. The closer they got, the more details she was able to make out.
The three platforms stood in the courtyard of an enormous building, which, at the moment, was little more than a shape in the mist. There were three men there, one enthroned on each platform, and Persephone already knew who they were. They were the judges of the dead, who had been three great kings in life, well-known for their wisdom. Minos was the chief of them, and held the casting vote, if the other two disagreed.
Hades led her past them with a wave. Minos, in the center, shook a fist at him, but with a smile.
Hades chuckled. “Minos would rather have more to do than less,” he explained. “Despite what Charon said.”
The judges held their tribunals in the forecourt of what proved to be a great palace, which, as they approached and details resolved out of the mist, was not what Persephone had expected. She had thought it would be gloomy and black, forbidding, bulky. It was, in fact, all of white marble, and as graceful and airy as anything built on Mount Olympus. Waiting there impatiently in front of the great doors was a young man holding the reins of four black, ebon-eyed horses hitched to a black chariot. There was a bundle in the chariot that moved and made ominous and threatening noises.
“By Zeus’s goolies, it’s about time you got here!” the young man said, indignation written in every word and gesture. “I thought you said the wench was going to come willingly! I finally had to gag and bag her! If I can’t father children, Hades, it’ll be all your fault!” Then he stopped, and stared at Persephone. “Who,” he said slowly, “is that?”
Horror crossed Hades’s face. “This is Persephone. We decided to forgo the abduction and figure out some other way to keep her down here. Maybe arrange for my priests to have some dreams about her or something—”
Thanatos went pale. Which was quite a feat for someone already as white as the marble of the palace behind him. “Then who have I got?”
“That is a very good question,” Hades replied in a flat voice.
All three of them stared at the moving bag. The sounds it was making were very ominous indeed. And very, very angry.
By the time Leo had dug out a pit the size of a shallow grave, he had to give up. He sat back on his heels and restrained his first impulse, which was to scream imprecations at the heavens. His tunic was plastered to his body with sweat and dirt, there was dirt in his hair and dug under his fingernails. And he didn’t care. All he wanted was Brunnhilde back.
Screaming wasn’t going to do any good. This was either the work of a very powerful magician, or—possibly one of the local gods?
Leo clenched his fists and tried to remember what the charioteer had said. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
He ran a grimy hand through his hair, thoroughly confused now.
Think, Leo. Think this through. The man shows up coming up out of the ground, and the ground closes up behind him. He says, “There you are! I’ve been looking all over for you!” And I’ve never seen him in my life.
Could the man have been looking for Brunnhilde?
If it was someone from the northlands…maybe. He was dressed like a local, not like one of the gods or mortals of Vallahalia. He’d never seen a chariot that looked like that in Vallahalia, and anyway, the only chariot there was one pulled by goats. The rocky terrain of the north wasn’t very good for chariots.
And he was dark, not blond; virtually every northlander he’d seen was either blond or red-haired. No, he looked like the people around here.
They didn’t know anyone local.
“There you are! I’ve been looking all over for you!” The man certainly thought he knew Bru; Bru had ce
rtainly stared at him without any sign of recognition at all.
The only way he could have known her was if someone local had been scrying them—but if so, why would he say, “I’ve been looking all over for you”? If he could scry them, he would have known exactly where they were, and he wouldn’t have had to go looking for them.
He couldn’t have been looking for Bru.
If he hadn’t been looking for Bru, he must have been looking for someone like Brunnhilde.
What else had he said…? “You went to the wrong meadow, just like a girl.”
“You went to the wrong meadow”?
It not only sounded as if he was looking for someone, it sounded as if he was looking for someone who was expecting him.
And it must have been someone he had never actually seen.
So he had been looking for someone like Brunnhilde. It was a case of mistaken identity.
It would be hard to mistake Bru for anyone else, if you knew her. Even someone who had only been scrying them from a distance would have a hard time mistaking her for anyone else.
Conclusion: the man had to have been going from a description, and not a very good one, either.
And that meant another question. Man, or god?
Leo didn’t even have to think twice about that. Only a god would be so sure of his own power that he would simply appear and abduct a complete stranger without thought of consequences.
All right. Assume that it was one of the local gods. That put Leo up against a god. With all the power of a god, who could probably squash him flat without thinking twice about it….
To hell with that!
He lurched to his feet, feeling rage surge through him. So what if they were gods? They were pretty damned small gods, and he was married to a god, and he was going to get to the bottom of this and get her back no matter what it cost him!
He caught up his discarded sword and headed for the Vallahalian horses at a grim trot. Damn if he was going to bother going through an intermediary; let the natives putter about with priests. After all, he’d been presented to a goddess of the earth as her son-in-law, and faced down the All-father. In a Kingdom where the gods were real, physical beings, he might as well go straight to the top.
Or wherever he needed to get to in order to confront them directly. And he had a pretty good idea of who could get him there.
The two big bay horses—well, they weren’t just horses, after all, they could stride through the air, you never had to worry about them straying off and they always looked magnificent—were still where he and Bru had left them. They weren’t happy though; they were prancing and pawing the earth, looking every bit as agitated as he was.
And now, if ever, was the time to find out just how different they were from “horses.”
He seized the reins of the horse he had been given on either side of the bit and looked into its eyes. “Do you know where the gods of this land live?” he asked it. On the surface of things, such a question, put to a horse, might have seemed insane, but these were horses that had served the Valkyria, were bred in the pastures of Vallahalia, and he wasn’t inclined to put anything past them. One of Brunnhilde’s sister-Valkyria had given her mount to him, saying with a laugh that it made a fitting “dowry” for him, and that this way he wouldn’t have to ride pillion behind Bru. The other Valkyria had found this hilarious at the time.
Since then, his mount, named Drachen, had done literally anything he asked of it. The only “supernatural” ability it had displayed so far was the ability to fly—or rather, to run through the air. It had a doglike loyalty, was a cherub to him and Bru, and a devil to anyone else. He’d suspected it had a very a high level of intelligence, and perhaps a lot more than that, but hadn’t had a chance to ask Bru.
The horse looked at him measuringly, and then slowly bobbed its head up and down.
“Was that a god who took our lady?” he asked it fiercely.
Drachen snorted, as if it thought the answer to such a question was so obvious the question didn’t even need asking, but again bobbed its head up and down.
He didn’t ask any further questions. He threw himself into the saddle and took up the reins—but left them slack, because clearly, he was not going to be the one in charge on this ride.
“Then let us go to these gods and get her back!” he growled.
Both horses threw up their heads and trumpeted agreement. Leo’s mount reared up; its forefeet found purchase on the air through whatever magic it used to run, and they were off. Both of them plunged up toward the sky as if they were running on a hill. Powerful muscles drove them upward at a pace that far exceeded that of a flesh-and-blood horse.
Once they were well above the level of the treetops, it was pretty clear where they were heading; a cloud-capped mountain loomed in the middle distance, and looked to be exactly where one would want to set up housekeeping if one happened to be a god, at least in Leo’s mind. And as they headed upward, Brunnhilde’s horse cast a glance over its shoulder at him…and snorted.
“What?” he shouted at it. He got no direct answer. But his horse swerved a little and made a beeline for a patch of dark clouds. Before he got a chance to object, both beasts plunged in, and a moment later he found himself in the middle of a rainstorm.
When they emerged again on the other side he was spluttering and soaked. But clean.
His hide and the little one-shouldered excuse for a tunic he wore in imitation of the locals were both dry long before the slopes of the mountain and the buildings there were clearly visible. And if he hadn’t still been so angry he was quite ready to set fire to the entire mountain, he would have been enchanted by the view.
The lowest slopes, mostly forested, were dotted with flowering meadows where flocks of sheep and goats grazed, or little isolated structures of white marble rose. A little higher, as the trees began to thin, there were more substantial buildings, about the size of one of the manor houses that he was familiar with, also of white marble. Halfway up the slope, a line of clouds formed an unmoving ring around the mountain; so far as Leo could tell, this ring would make it impossible for anyone on the ground to see what he saw from his vantage in the air.
With its base rooted in the top of the clouds, a massive wall stretched around the mountain itself, not at all unlike the wall around Vallahalia, and probably erected for the same reason. The gods were not inclined to permit just any old mortal to come walking up the front path. There was a gate in this wall, and it was closed; not that this mattered in the least to Leo.
Behind the wall, and crowding up to the summit, were more of the white-marble manors, surrounded by terraced gardens. As Leo’s mount galloped above the wall and these buildings passed beneath him, he saw the occasional person in the gardens or on a terrace gaping up at him. All the buildings had a kind of inner glow, like light shining through translucent porcelain.
He ignored the people below him. The gods were like anyone else; the most important personage lived at the top, and that was where he was heading, to a single enormous, colonnaded structure ornamented by heroic statues of men and women.
The horses seemed to take on fire and life as they neared this building; and rather than feeling intimidated, Leo experienced a surge of energy and strength, as if he had opened up some sort of heroic spring inside himself that he had never known was there. His anger stopped being all-consuming, and became focused; Brunnhilde had been taken, and there was nothing on this earth, above it, or below it, that was going to keep him from getting to her.
Beneath him, his horse began to shine with an unearthly, golden glow, just as the buildings here glowed, but brighter. He took heart from that; these beasts were the mounts of gods themselves, and if they felt he was worthy of being carried up here, then who were these upstarts in their draped sheets to stand between him and his mate?
The horses trumpeted a challenge as they landed in the forecourt of the chief building; their hooves rang on the pavement as they touched down, now blazing with golden
light. Leo jumped out of the saddle without even thinking about it, pulling his sword from the sheath at the saddlebow. He was barely aware of half a dozen people in robes and tunics staring at him dumbfounded; he had eyes only for one. That one sat on what looked like a throne at the center of the forecourt; a man with the physique of a fighter, long, curling black hair and beard, and some of that same golden glow about him. Like the others, he wore one of those draped garments, but at least this man imparted the ridiculous swath of cloth with a sense of dignity.
Even with his mouth hanging open.
Leo stamped toward him. Evidently these gods were so convinced of their own power and invulnerability that they had nothing whatsoever like guards. But—anger didn’t kill caution; Leo stopped a good twenty feet away. Just in case.
While the man still stared at him, Leo pointed at him with the sword he still held in his hand.
“You!” he roared, his own voice echoing at such a volume that he himself was startled, though he took care not to show it. He swept the sword point around in an arc. “All of you! What have you done with my wife?”
Demeter examined one of the trees in her orchard with a critical eye; like all the trees, it had buds, blossoms, green and ripening fruit on it all at the same time. She wondered if perhaps she should have some of the insects eat a few of the blooms so as not to overburden the tree unduly. While there were the strange cycles known as “seasons” outside Olympia, here there were no such things as set times to blossom and ripen or lie fallow; there was planting and harvest, of course, but no particular time for either. That was because of her; beneath her care, every plot and field in Olympia flourished, and year-beginning to year-end marked not so much a cycle as a progression.
Care had to be taken, though, to make sure the soil stayed fertile, the trees and bushes were not stressed. Demeter spent a great deal of time among the mortals, speaking through her priestesses, schooling them in husbandry, and spent almost as much time in her own fields and orchards, seeing to it that what she tended personally served as an example of perfection rather than neglect.
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