Harvest Moon

by Mercedes Lackey, Michelle Sagara

  A leaden silence fell. It was the woman in the helmet who broke it. “Mortal, what was it you said that Thanatos called out?”

  Leo licked lips gone dry. Whoever this “Thanatos” was—the gods thought the situation was very serious indeed. “Uh—he said, ‘Well, there you are! You went to the wrong meadow, just like a girl. I’ve been looking all over for you!’ Then he grabbed her and vanished into the earth.”

  “Oh, dear.” The silence grew even heavier. “Mortal, I am sorry. Given that Hades was seen to leave with Persephone—who is a golden-haired maiden—and given that Thanatos, Hades’s servant, was driving Hades’s chariot—I believe your wife is the victim of a case of mistaken identity.”

  Zeus looked unhappily down at the helmeted woman. “Do you think?”

  She nodded. “Aye. I think he sent Thanatos to fetch Persephone, so that her mother would have no way to take her back. But Thanatos had never seen the girl, and took the first woman that matched her description. This mortal’s wife.” She turned to Leo. “Mortal, I am sorry. There is nothing we can do for you.”

  Leo’s anger erupted again. “What do you mean, there is nothing you can do for me? He’s one of you, isn’t he? Order him to bring her back!”

  “Mortal—” The oldest woman stepped forward, a sympathetic and sorrowful expression on her face that filled him with dread. “Mortal, even the gods are subject to rules. Thanatos took your lady. Thanatos is the god of death. Not even we can take her back from him. That is why Hades must have sent Thanatos to take Persephone.” She shook her head. “I am sorry. But we are as helpless as you.”

  “Is there a precedent for getting someone out of here?” Brunnhilde demanded.

  “Well…” Hades paused.

  “I didn’t actually die, you know!” she snapped. “I was kidnapped by your dim-witted flunky!”

  “Hey—” Thanatos objected weakly.

  “She has a point,” Persephone said patiently. “Just because Thanatos took her doesn’t mean she actually died. He took her body and spirit.”

  “It’s a technicality, but it’s the technicality we were going to use to keep you here,” Hades pointed out.

  Brunnhilde’s eyes darkened dangerously. “Do you really want to get into a battle between my people and yours?” she asked, her voice low and menacing. “You wouldn’t like that. We’re not civilized.” She moved very close to Hades and narrowed her eyes. “We live for fighting. We thrive on doom. My father actually tried to bring on Ragnorak. He’d be overjoyed to find a way to destroy not just one, but two entire sets of gods. If only to get away from his wife.”

  “What’s Ragnorak?” Thanatos wanted to know.

  “Never mind. I don’t want to know.” Hades waved his hands frantically. “No, we have to work together to figure out a solution. There has to be an answer.”

  A puff of black smoke erupted next to Hades’s throne. “By Gaia’s left breast, Hades, you really are a moron,” said a sardonic female voice from inside it. The smoke cleared away, revealing a handsome dark-haired woman with a torch in one hand, accompanied by two dogs. “I cannot believe what a hash you made of this business. And you’re no better,” she added in Thanatos’s direction. She looked down at her dogs. “You two, go run and play with Cereberus.” She stuck her torch in a nearby holder, and the dogs, suddenly looking like perfectly ordinary canines, yipped and ran off.

  She turned to Brunnhilde. “I’m Hecate. You must be the abducted barbarian.”

  Brunnhilde nodded, and drew herself up straight. “Brunnhilde, of the Valkyria, daughter of one-eyed Odin, king of the gods of Vallahalia, and Erda, goddess of the Earth.”

  “Or, in other words, half-Fae like all the rest of us.” Hecate did not quite smile. “When we choose to remember it, that is. Bah! A fine mess this is.”

  She sat down on Hades’s throne. Hades didn’t even bother to protest. “All right, first things first. Persephone, I assume you’re here of your own free will?”

  Persephone looked ready to burst. “Aunt Hecate, I am sick to death of being treated like a toddler! I love my mother, really, I do, but she—”

  “Was smothering you, as I told her a dozen times in the last year alone. You, Hades. Is this some enchantment or some other trick?” The gaze she threw at Hades would have impaled a lesser man.

  Persephone answered before he could, proudly detailing how Hades had met her as a simple shepherd-god, much her inferior, and wooed her gently and with humor and consideration. Brunnhilde caught Hecate’s lips twitching a little during this ebullient tale, as if the goddess was having trouble keeping her expression serious.

  “All right, all right,” Hecate said when Persephone paused for breath, before she could start in on another paean to her love. “I’ll take that as a no. And I suppose Athena was right—you intended to have Thanatos take her so you’d have the rules on your side to keep her here. Right?”

  Hades confined himself to a simple “Yes, Hecate.”

  “By Uranus’s severed goolies, this is a mess. Let me think.” Hecate drummed her fingers on the marble arm of the throne. Her nails made a sound like hailstones. “Persephone, keeping you here should be easy enough. Eat. Eat something that was grown down here.”

  Hades grimaced. “Ah…not…that…easy. The only thing that grows here is the asphodel—and that only nourishes spirits. We bring all the food we eat from Olympia. There just aren’t that many of us that need real food.”

  “Try the Elysian Fields, at least there’s light there,” Hecate suggested. “Persephone, there has to be some of your mother’s powers in you, go coax something to grow, then eat it. That will make you part of this realm. That’s what works for the Fae realms, and The Tradition should make it work here.” She pointed a thumb at Brunnhilde. “Now, you, and your mate. What is it, usually, Hades? Nearly impossible tasks?”

  Hades nodded. “As few as one, as many as seven.”

  Brunnhilde quickly saw where this was going, and nodded, though not with any enthusiasm. “And a year and a day, usually,” she said with resignation. “Damn.”

  “Hades, you figure out some tasks for the barbarian woman. I think the best thing to do with the man is to set him to guard Demeter so she doesn’t manage to get herself abducted by something nasty, or fall down a well, or something.” Hecate pondered. “I’ll manufacture more tasks for him if I need to. Or who knows? He might just fall into some, thanks to The Tradition. Let’s see if we can’t get this happening sooner than a year and a day, or everyone and everything in Olympia is going to starve to death.”

  She got up and reached for her torch. “Wait!” Brunnhilde said.

  Hecate paused.

  “This was all your fault,” Brunnhilde said, pointing at Thanatos. “I want something in exchange for going along with this and not just summoning my father and giving him an excuse for a war of the gods.”

  Hecate raised one eyebrow. “She has a point. And I’m a goddess of justice, among other things.”

  Hades nodded. “All right.” He sighed. “What is it you want?”

  Brunnhilde smiled in triumph. “I want you to make my husband an immortal.”

  So this was Elysium.

  It was certainly pretty. Flowers, flowers everywhere, underfoot, overhead in the trees, clouding the bushes. But not a hint of fruit. Nothing like a vegetable garden. No fields of grain.

  Which, all things considered…was not at all surprising. Everyone here seemed to be blithely uninterested in the humbler tasks, or indeed, in work of any sort. Well, it wasn’t as if they had to work; they were spirits after all, they didn’t eat, or drink, they had everything provided for them. But it made her feel just a little impatient, looking at them lolling about, doing nothing but exercising, having games, discussing ridiculous things like “How do I know the color blue is the same to you as it is to me?”

  Hecate was at least right about one thing. Elysium did have light. It had its own sun, and its own stars, which were in the heavens at the same time. She
had gone to it by means of an imposing gate in an otherwise blank wall; here the gate stood, quite isolated, in the middle of a field of—yet more asphodels. She had the feeling that she was going to be very, very tired of asphodels after a while.

  Perhaps if this experiment worked she could get other flowers to bloom in the gardens of Hades’s palace.

  There was none of that all-enshrouding mist here. Aside from the extraordinary sky—in which the sun, as near as she could tell, did not move, but simply winked out from time to time, making “night”—it was rather like the slopes of Mount Olympus, minus the animals and birds. No flocks of sheep, no songbirds, no insects. Hmm. And no bees.

  Which means I am going to have to pollinate whatever I am trying to grow by hand.

  But it wasn’t wilderness. It was all very tame. Mannered groves, manicured meadows big enough to conduct games in, hills with just enough slope to make a good place to watch, rocks where they were most convenient to sit on, small, “rustic” buildings or miniature temples dotted about.

  And everywhere, people. Which she ignored, because she was trying to figure out what, if anything, she might be able to get to bear fruit, and why there was nothing bearing fruit here now.

  Finally she gave up trying to reason it out herself, and went searching for someone who could tell her. Most of those she asked looked at her askance, and said they hadn’t really thought about it. A couple groups actually turned the topic of their debate to whether or not there should be such a thing as planting and harvesting here.

  Well, it was no worse than the “color blue” question.

  Finally she was sent to the ruler of Elysium; the former king Rhadamanthus, who was the son of a Titan. Or, as she was well aware now, at least half-Fae.

  She found him arbitrating a dispute between two philosophers, but once he caught sight of her, he seemed more than pleased to tell them they were both wrong, dismiss them, and go to greet her.

  “So, this is ‘little’ Persephone.” The king chuckled. “I must say, I envy Hades. Perhaps Thanatos can find me another like you?”

  “Oh, he already did, and you wouldn’t want her,” Persephone replied, thinking about the rather formidable war-goddess she had left stewing in Hades’s care. “Cross Athena with Ares’s temper, and throw in a bit of Bacchus’s madness, just to keep things uncertain—” She explained to Rhadamanthus what had happened as briefly as she could. “So the problem is,” she concluded, “since Thanatos didn’t abduct me, I have to find another way to keep Mother from getting me back. Hecate says the only way she can think of is for me to eat something grown down here. But it has to be real food, apparently, flowers won’t qualify, or I would already have had a salad of asphodel.”

  “Well…that is a problem. The definition of Elysium is that it lies in eternal spring—not a good time to produce anything edible.” Rhadamanthus pondered this for a moment. “Well, if you have any of your mother’s power…”

  She sighed. “Hecate said the same thing.”

  “There might be one place where you can succeed. Come with me.”

  She followed Rhadamanthus, for quite some time. He proved to be an excellent conversationalist and told her many valuable things about Hades’s moods and personality. It was only when he took her through a very precipitous cleft that she noticed that this part of Elysium was a bit different than the rest. Drier, not so lush, and at the moment—warmer.

  On the other side of the cleft was a tiny valley. It was not a particularly fertile valley, either. But there were three stunted pomegranate trees here, with a few blossoms on them.

  “I really don’t know why this part of Elysium is resistant to the eternal spring we have everywhere else,” Rhadamanthus mused. “But it is. No one but myself ever comes here. I only found the place by accident. I’ve seen fruit start—I’ve never seen one ripen, but I have seen them start. If there is anyplace in Elysium where you can succeed, it will be here.”

  Persephone stared at the unprosperous-looking trees, and for a moment was ready to give up completely. This was ridiculous. The trees were warped by drought and deprivation, the soil was poor, and in any event, pomegranates took five months from blossom to fruit! By that time, Demeter would surely track her down and demand her back!

  “The Tradition does demand the almost impossible in order for the Hero to succeed,” Rhadamanthus said, as if he was reading her thoughts.

  She almost groaned, but he was right. This was exactly the sort of thing that The Tradition required.

  It seemed she was going to be growing pomegranates. Hopefully, at an accelerated pace.

  Hopefully, her mother’s power actually was in her.

  Leo had more than a few choice words for the Olympians, and he was delivering them when Hecate returned. This time the billow of dark smoke sprang up between him and the others, so that Hecate was in an excellent position to interrupt them all when she stepped out of it. “Your woman seems to be fine, mortal,” Hecate said, cutting his tirade short. “And she’s no better pleased with this than you are. I pledge you that Hades has no intention of holding her if there is any way we can work out a solution for this predicament he and Thanatos managed to muddle into.”

  Leo frowned, and was about to demand what she meant by if, when she held up her hand, forestalling him. “However, if you’ll give me the favor of holding your tongue for a moment, Olympia has a much bigger problem to deal with here than just one separated couple, and unfortunately, this is one that won’t wait.”

  “Just what would that be?” Leo asked angrily.

  Hecate’s somber face made him pause. “Demeter is the goddess of fertility,” she said slowly and deliberately. “And the goddess of fertility has just abandoned her home and run off into the wilderness and beyond. I would not in the least be surprised to discover that she has abandoned her duty and fled past our borders as well. The Tradition has put her firmly in charge of the magic that keeps Olympia fertile and growing, and there is no way to replace her. And we have a country populated by mortals who have no concept of ‘seasons,’ and no reason to store food, since Demeter has insured that things ripen all year long.”

  Athena was the one who grasped the gravity of the situation about the same time that Leo did. She gasped and paled, understanding that Hecate meant the country was about to plunge into starvation as the last of the food was eaten and there was nothing growing to replace it. Leo’s first reaction was another flare of anger. These people had made their bed, so to speak, let them lie in it! What did he have to do with them, or the troubles they brought on themselves? He only wanted Bru back!

  But then…

  Then something else cooled the anger as quickly as if he’d had a bucket of water thrown over his head.

  He couldn’t let that happen. The mortals of Olympia were innocents in this, and what was worse, the gods could probably hold out and it would be the innocent mortals that would suffer.

  He could not let that happen. Not and still be himself.

  He was Leopold, the People’s Prince, who had fought a city fire in his shirt and breeches like everyone else, passing buckets and setting the firebreaks among the homes of the great that saved the greater part of the capital. He was the Prince who had joined in with his own two hands while the citizens rebuilt.

  And now, he was…well, if he wasn’t quite a Hero like Siegfried, he was still the Prince who fought dragons and tyrants in lands not his own. And while he claimed that he did so because it was exciting and dangerous and therefore a fantastically amusing thing to do, down deep inside he knew that he did it for the same reasons Siegfried did. Because it was the right thing, because The Tradition, and magicians and powerful creatures and people, all conspired to make misery of the lives of ordinary people, and someone had to help them. He was a Prince. Noblesse oblige, that was the concept that his own father had taught him, and it wasn’t just a nice phrase to him.

  It was an obligation and one that, despite his outwardly cavalier attitude, he took seriou
sly. He and Bru had talked about this at some length just before they crossed the border into Olympia, and it had been an interesting conversation.

  At first, when he and Bru had embarked on this life of adventurers, Bru had been rather like a child let loose in a circus. While her fighting ability was both inherent—because she and her sisters were, after all, minor battle-goddesses—and instinctive, she had never actually used her weapons much. Like her sister Valkyria, her main tasks had been to fetch the heroic dead from the battlefield and take them to Vallahalia, and it was a rare occasion when she even brandished her spear or sword, much less used them. She and her sisters sparred, and that was about the extent of her opportunities to fight. She had the spirit of a born warrior, and to be finally able to go up against creatures and people that were clearly evil and best them in combat had been, for lack of a better term, exhilaratingly fun for her. She’d really not taken any thought for anything but the sheer excitement of pitting herself—and him—against them.

  But it had been a brief visit to Siegfried and Rosa that had opened her eyes to the other side of the situation. They had just had a very odd encounter with another dragon, one who agreed to come guard Eltaria, but only if they could beat him in combat. After their victory, it seemed rude not to drop in on Queen Rosamund and King Siegfried.

  After the initial greetings were over, Siegfried had asked casually if they wanted to come along and lend him a hand with a “wild bull problem.” The Tradition was making things lively within Eltaria since the King was a genuine Hero. While the presence of guardian dragons on the border was keeping armies at bay, this did nothing to stop the country itself from presenting the new monarchs with all manner of Traditional challenges whenever things started to look a little too peaceful.

  And Siegfried was very much a Hero King in the style of his native land. Which meant that he turned up wherever there was a problem, without fanfare or escort (other than the Firebird, his constant companion), talked to the locals, then dealt with the situation, or sent the Bird for some reinforcements. Usually (he said) he didn’t need the reinforcements, and having seen him in action, Leo could well believe it. Besides, he was a Hero—and a Hero, Traditionally, was supposed to get rid of such things single-handedly. Siegfried had it down to a kind of routine now. Once he had the measure of the situation, he’d dispatch the menace in question, then allow the locals to make a great victory fuss over him, and depart.