Dionysos pulled her back from the inferno she had created and slammed the outer door of the passage shut. He sighed. "At least we don't have to worry about the fire spreading. It doesn't even matter if it burns through the door. It isn't going anywhere." He looked up the long flight of stairs and sighed again. "I'm tired," he admitted, as they started to climb up. "Do we have to go back to Byblos tonight?"
"No," Hekate said. "I hope you and Kabeiros didn't burn all the beds and the bedding, but if you did we can get some from the servants, I suppose. And the servants will be delighted to provide us with a meal." She frowned. "I told them they were free, but they wept and pleaded not to go. They want to stay here and go on being servants."
"Then let them serve," Dionysos said, shrugging. "Fix a homeplace for a leaping spell here. If you come once or twice a year to collect rents and the yield of the farms, the servants will be happy, you can keep an eye on the young king in Byblos, and you can have me and Ariadne as guests. There's lots of wine-making around here." He hesitated and then said, "Unless you can't bear to be here?"
Hekate thought that over for a few moments and then shook her head. "No. There was enough good in the early years when my mother was teaching me in the shrine in the forest. I liked the house then, and I always liked the garden and the forest. My father didn't bother with me much when I was young—except to teach me to speak mind-to-mind and—" her lips thinned "—to put his compulsion spells on me. But I didn't know about those until long after I left the house." She shrugged. "I wouldn't want to live here all the time, but for a few nights now and again to see to the farms and the servants, it will be fine. Actually it would be best if you could consider the house yours, Dionysos. I'll come as the guest. I can fix a spell for you that will give you a homeplace here. We can pay Hermes later."
He grinned. "I hoped you'd say that. This is close enough for me to visit my aunt—" his grin broadened "—that'll give her a shock. I'd like to see the Nymphae, too, and to visit my temples here and show them to Ariadne. Yes, I'll be here often enough to let you know if anything is going wrong that you have to look to."
They had reached the top of the stair by then. Hekate went through the door, turned to face it, murmured a sealing spell, and lifted her hand to complete it with a gesture. She stopped suddenly and dismissed the spell. "Sweet Hades," she said, "I almost sealed Kabeiros . . ." Her voice checked and she swallowed. "Kabeiros isn't a dog any more." She swallowed again. "Where is Kabeiros, Dionysos?"
"I don't know." Dionysos frowned. "He insisted on carrying down that divan—it's a miracle that we both didn't end up at the bottom of the hole—and laying your mother on it. He said you wouldn't want her on the floor with the other decaying monsters. And he said to tell you that she . . . her body wasn't rotting like the others. But when we came up, he went out. Maybe he went to wash the stink off him. Even as a man his nose is more sensitive than mine, I think."
She managed to say, "Thank you, Dionysos. Would you do another favor for me and tell the servants to clean rooms for us and prepare a meal? I'll set them to restoring the courtyard and garden tomorrow."
He agreed easily and turned in the direction she pointed out as where the kitchen was. She even managed a brief smile before she ran out the door. Inside, her heart was like a lead weight in her chest. He's gone, she thought. He couldn't even bear to wait to bid me farewell. But I must take some leave of him, I must. I must see him once more, at least once more . . .
Outside she stopped, shaking. It was growing dark. I'll never find him in the dark, she thought, but I must. Deep within she wailed *Kabeiros. Kabeiros.*
*I am here,* he replied.
Hekate stopped so suddenly that she almost fell. The mental voice was so close . . . She looked frantically down the path and from side to side, terrified she would not see him in the dim light. But he was there, along one of the side paths in the devastated garden, sitting on a bench that had once been sheltered by a magnificent flowering oleander. She started toward him. He had on a worn tunic that was far too short, barely covering his buttocks and genitals.
She wanted to fling herself down on her knees and plead with him to stay with her. She knew he would stay if she begged him, but that would be terribly unjust, terribly cruel, so she tried for a normal sort of remark.
"Did you burn all of my father's clothing?" she asked. "You were naked. Why didn't you take some things to wear?"
"I thought you wouldn't want to look at anything of his."
She had come up to the bench. He didn't raise his head to look at her but kept his eyes fixed on his long, elegant hands. "May I sit with you?" she asked.
"You may do anything you want with me. I owe you my life, my sanity, all my being . . ."
She had started to sit, but jerked upright. "You owe me nothing!" she said, her voice low but so intense it might have been a scream. "You helped me, supported me, sustained me . . ." Tears filled her eyes and she swallowed. "You even loved me when I needed it, even though you could hardly bear to touch me."
His head came up. In the very last of the light, she saw the golden eyes of a dog widen. "Hardly bear to touch you? Are you mad? I could hardly bear to keep my hands off you. Wasn't it wrong to take that, too? How could I ask you to lie with a creature that was more beast than man? You think I don't know why you never accepted the invitations of any man in Olympus? Even that natural pleasure you sacrificed to me. You knew how it would hurt me, and you denied yourself—"
"I denied myself nothing!" She leaned forward and took Kabeiros' head in her hands. "Kabeiros, don't you want to be free of me? You have been bound to me by necessity for so long. I was your anchor to humanity. Do you mean to say that you didn't resent that? That—" her voice started to rise into a protesting wail "—that I have been torturing myself uselessly with the fear that you would leave me as soon as you were free of the curse that bound you?"
"Leave you? I would never leave you of my own will. I love you so much, Hekate. I thought you would cast me out, shake off the burden I was to you as a dog sheds water, as soon as you were free of your binding."
"Free of my binding?" Hekate echoed, seeking within her. "But I'm not free of my binding. You are still here." She touched her breast. "Wound around my heart . . ." Her eyes fixed on him with urgent anxiety. "Dear Mother, don't tell me that now you can't change into a dog!" And after an infinitesimal pause, her voice grew light and cheerful. "We will have to begin all over again. You must not lose the dog. You love him—and so do I."
"You love the dog? It doesn't trouble you when I kiss you, when we couple, that part of me is a dog?"
"Oh, no. Not at all. When we have found the cure and you can shift man to dog and back again any time you wish, I would be delighted if you were a dog all day . . . and a man all night." She knelt down before him. "I love you, Kabeiros, dog or man. Won't you stay with me? I will let you go if you feel imprisoned, but if you will live with me, I swear I will not try to bind you in any way. I will let you come and go . . ."
He rose from the bench and pulled her up with him. "Hekate," he said, his lips beginning to twitch, "you are begging me to stay with you. I have been dying with fear that you were tired of the burden and would drive me away. Now I must ask you whether it is the burden you love or me?"
"The burden? What do you mean?"
"You love magic, Hekate. Your greatest pleasure is to work with spells, to do things no other can do with spells and to spells. What if I am not frozen into the form of a man? What if I can change from man to dog and do not need to be cured? Will you still let me stay with you?"
There was a long pause while Hekate examined Kabeiros' face as well as she could. Then she sighed gustily.
"You never intended to leave me," she said, and shook her head. "How could I be so stupid? How could I misunderstand you so completely? When you wouldn't lie beside me or you ran away when I changed my clothing . . . that was because the man desired what the dog did not and the pain was too great for you."
She took his face in her hands and kissed him gently. "And you have always put me first, not in things that endangered me—you might have done that because you needed me—but in consideration of my feelings. You endangered your own life and that of Dionysos to give my poor mother some dignity in her death, you were willing to wear a servant's cast-off so I would not need to see my father's clothing." She paused and sighed. "Have we both been tormenting ourselves for nothing?"
"Yes," he said succinctly. "And now that we've stopped . . ." He put both arms around her and pulled her hard against his body. "I'm very hungry."
"Direct as a dog," she said, laughing and wriggling her hips against him. Then her body stilled and she frowned. "You say you can change at will?"
Kabeiros dropped his arms, and the black dog stood before her, his white eyes fixed on her face. *Here I am, a dog. Why do you question me?*
*Because I still feel the binding to you around my heart. Not that I mind it. I would be empty without it, but I fear something is wrong.*
"No, love." He was standing before her, a man, his arms around her again. "Nothing is wrong. It could not be more right. What you feel I feel also. It is not a binding, but a bonding. We are life-bonded, my love."
"Life-bonded." She sighed with satisfaction and dropped her head to his chest. "We will have a wonderful time, Kabeiros. How would you like to go to fabled Chin and India?"
"Why not?" He laughed aloud. "You are free of your bindings and we are two together. We can go anywhere."
MAPS
Thrice Bound
Table of Contents
PART ONE: THE BINDINGS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
PART TWO: THE SEEKING
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
PART THREE: THE UNBINDING
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
MAPS
Thrice Bound Page 46