Dazzling Brightness

by Roberta Gellis

He pulled her to him and kissed her again. His lips were firm and very hot and she clung to him hard, realizing how carefully he had not answered her plea. He would not allow her to change his opinion of Zeus, but if he learned that Zeus was not fond of him, had been using him… She pressed harder into Hades’s body, chilled by her fears and needing his warmth.

  “Now,” he whispered into her ear, “I have just remembered the dreadful fate with which you threatened me, and I think I had better quench its desire so completely that it will hang its poor head all the while you are away and place itself in no danger of being cut off.”

  Persephone laughed shakily. “That is the silliest and most complicated way I have ever heard to say ‘Let us go to bed’. I am very willing, but to speak the truth I do not believe ‘it’ can be so easily reduced to inaction.”

  “Not when you are the temptation,” Hades murmured, leading her across to their bedchamber. “But with the taste of you in its mouth, it will be limp as a wet rag for any other.”

  Persephone was glad enough to be reduced to a mindless body aware only of physical sensation, and exhausted enough to sleep as if she had been struck dead when he had elicited from her a third, violent, culmination. Whether he slept she was not sure because when she woke, crying aloud that she was lost, lost, he was instantly ready to soothe her and seduce her into passion yet again. She would have been ready to spend the whole day before Hermes arrived in bed, smothering her fears under passion, but Hades reminded her that he had promised the miner to try to follow the seam of chrusos thanatos to decide whether he could burn it out or if he would need to seal off that section of the mine.

  “I will go with you,” she said. “We will burn it! Burn it all no matter how deep it goes.”

  “If we can,” he replied, smiling at her fierce desire to destroy something.

  In fact, they were able to burn out the seam, tracing it up and out, always confined to an open fissure which was carefully enlarged as it was made safe, toward the surface where the ugly green-yellow growth emerged from a tangle of roots in the topsoil. Regretfully, for he did not like to damage living things, Hades slagged the entire area so that nothing would ever grow there again.

  The work, delicate and dangerous, held their complete attention. Neither had a moment for fear or regret, and both were tired because Hades had to draw more than once on the power Persephone freely offered. They were surprised when they returned to the palace to find that the great candle that marked time was over a quarter burnt away and Hermes would soon come again. That was an excellent excuse to bathe together to rid themselves of the chips and smears of black rock that soiled them, and such propinquity, when recollection of their imminent parting was so sharp a spur, could only result in making love. By then, when they found Hermes already waiting, their emotions were muted by exhaustion.

  Hermes looked from one heavy-eyed face to the other. Neither seemed to notice him as they came forward hand in hand, although they must have been told he had arrived. Hades bent his head and Persephone raised hers. They exchanged a single, lingering kiss.

  Then Hades looked at him. Hermes swallowed. Something was wrong. The black eyes in which he had feared to meet black rage had a glint that he could have sworn was amusement.

  Hades said, “Queen Persephone has decided to allow you to take her to her mother. She wishes to assuage Demeter’s grief and try, by convincing Demeter that she is very happy as my wife and has benefited greatly by Zeus’s choice of a husband for her, to make peace between her mother and the Mage-King so that she can return to Plutos and need not be called to the outer world again.”

  “You agree to her going?” Hermes asked.

  “I have agreed to her going but to no exchange. No other priestess will be accepted in Plutos. Persephone alone rules the temple.”

  This was too easy, Hermes thought. Hades had rejected any exchange, but he asked for no guarantees and Persephone was gesturing to Aktaion and two other men who were each carrying a substantial chest, apparently her possessions. Momentarily Hermes forgot Hades’s unnatural agreeableness. That load would cost him! He might have to stay on Aegina for a day or two to gather back the power he would need to expend carrying everything.

  He saw Hades glance at the chests, pull Persephone close once more, and close his eyes. Hermes swallowed again, this time a lump in his throat. Hades’s love for his wife was almost a thing one could touch. Then the sympathy was swallowed up in anxiety. If Zeus would not free Persephone, doubtless it would be from him that Hades would seek to recover his lost love. If he brought her back as Hades demanded, Zeus would blast him; if he did not, Hades would entomb his palace, no doubt with him inside. Oh no, he would not! Hermes licked his lips.

  “You understand that I am only a messenger. I do not wish to be blamed if Demeter will not be reasonable and will not release her daughter.”

  Hades lifted his head and regarded Hermes steadily. “I do not believe Demeter will wish to keep Persephone very long.” His lips twitched. “My queen has eaten and drunk the fruits of Plutos. I think Demeter may find her…changed.”

  “That is between you and Demeter,” Hermes said.

  “No,” Hades replied, and now the black eyes were cold and hard. “Zeus sent you here. You implied a threat to Plutos from all the mages. I would simply have pulled down Olympus around your selfish ears, but Persephone—a true priestess of the Mother desires peace and plenty for all and dissuaded me. Whether she will go or stay and for how long is Persephone’s decision to make, and I will hold every Olympian responsible for supporting her decision.”

  “Hades,” Persephone said, touching his hand. “You are frightening Hermes and there is no need for that. My mother will let me go. I will return to you. Only…do not be impatient.”

  He smiled at her. “The dead are very patient.”

  She laughed. “But you are not dead, which is why I am warning you.”

  Then Hades laughed too. “ ‘It’ is as good as dead, I promise.”

  Persephone put an arm around his neck and kissed him one more time, then pulled away abruptly and almost ran the few steps to Hermes. “Let us go,” she said. “Before I change my mind and bid Hades to pull down Olympus.”

  Chapter 15

  “Kore! Kore! My poor little girl! You are safe now. Mother has you safe.”

  Persephone was bewildered by the difference in passing through space with Hermes from the passages she often made with Hades. One passage was warm and slow and blind, the other full of flashing color and freezing cold with a terrifying loss of all sense of position. She had come to rest facing a throne as magnificent as Hades’s, all iridescent with pearls of every color inlaid into designs of Nereids and fantastic sea creatures.

  The man in the throne must be Poseidon. He looked a little like Hades—just enough to make her heart leap—but his hair, though dark, was softly curled, like Zeus’s, rather than in tight springy knots like Hades’s, and the look in his eyes startled her so much that she did not immediately associate the shrill cry of “girl” with herself. Realizing in the next instant that it was her mother’s voice, high with excitement, she turned quickly—and felt a pull on her power.

  Without conscious thought, her inner seal expanded into place. She saw the true joy in Demeter’s face, the tears of relief streaming from her eyes—which suddenly widened with shock when no warm glow suffused her and gave her strength as in the past. Persephone saw it all, understood what Demeter felt, but locked inside herself, no echo of that emotion touched her.

  “Kore?” Demeter whispered, trembling.

  “My name is Persephone, mother.”

  “Mother? Mother?” Demeter withdrew a step, eyes still wide with shock, hands clasped tightly below her breast. “I am not your mother. You are not my Kore. You are some dreadful simulacrum—

  “I am not a simulacrum and you are indeed my mother, but I am no one’s Kore. I was a girl when I went into the underworld, but I am a woman now—Persephone, Queen of Plutos.” Perse
phone hesitated as she thought of the proofs of her womanhood Hades had given her over the last night and day. Because her love for Hades was inside her, a warmth blossomed out, filling her and saving her from the utter isolation imposed by the shield that sealed in her power. She smiled and held out her hand.

  “I am truly your daughter, but I am also Hades’s wife and queen. I am very happy in that state. Hades is so good to me. I love him. Oh, mother, I am sorry if you grieved and worried. I should have sent you a message that I was safe and happy, but I feared that this would happen, that you would demand my return—and I did not wish to come.”

  “I do not believe you,” Demeter cried. “I do not believe my Kore could have changed so much—to love stone-hearted Hades and change to stone herself. My daughter could not be happy to live in the dark surrounded by the dead. You are ensorcelled.”

  As her initial nervous excitement faded, Persephone’s weariness returned manyfold. She felt as if more power had been leached from her; perhaps the cold of the passage with Hermes had drained her. She ached for the warmth of Hades’s arms, the comfort of the darkness of their bedchamber lit only by the gleam of the gem image of falling water. But something her mother had said pierced that weariness and resonated with a hope. Ensorcelled? Why not? She had believed that story of the six pomegranate seeds; very likely her mother also believed it. She shook her head and smiled again.

  “Not in the sense you mean, mother. Hades cast no spell—except the spell of his own love and need of me. But I have long eaten and drunk the food of Plutos. I no longer desire to live in the outer world.”

  “But you are not dead!” Demeter exclaimed.

  “No, neither is Hades. I assure you he is very much alive,” Persephone said, starting another smile, which changed into a huge yawn. “I beg your pardon,” she sighed on the outward breath. “We were hard at work, Hades and I, until a little while before I left, and— She uttered a gasp of laughter at the unintended double meaning of her statement—she had been thinking of the vein of chrusos thanatos they had destroyed—but even the memory of their restricted grappling in the tub could not keep her stimulated and she yawned again. “And I am very tired. Can we not talk later, after I have slept?”

  The gasping yawns drew the attention of Poseidon, who had been talking very quietly with Hermes, and he heard her plea. He turned aside from Hermes, who had thanked him for an offer of hospitality but refused, saying that all the leaping he had done over the past few days must have strengthened him because he was not too tired.

  “It is growing late, Demeter,” Poseidon said. “You and…ah…your daughter will both be calmer and more able to hear reason in the morning.” He raised his shell and blew. Nerus appeared. “Take the lady—

  “She can stay in my chamber, Poseidon,” Demeter said. “There is room enough. She can sleep on the long bench—”

  Poseidon’s eyes flicked to Persephone just for an instant before he shook his head. The glow of her beauty had nearly taken his breath away at the moment of her arrival, and he had beckoned Hermes to him and asked some stupid question so that he would have to keep his eyes off her. But his second glance did not fulfill his expectations. She was lovely, but something was missing. Well, of course there was. She was exhausted.

  “Do you think I am short of chambers and beds, Demeter? You cannot think that bench would be a comfortable place to sleep. Besides, I do not believe one accustomed to the quiet of the underworld would be happy on the sea-side of my palace. The sound of the breakers on the shore might be disturbing. Nerus, show the lady to one of the inner rooms.”

  “You can move me to an inner chamber,” Demeter said. “I want to be with my daughter, so long lost to me.”

  “No, mother,” Persephone said. “If I cannot lie with Hades, then I wish to lie alone.”

  She was not certain whether the words were really meant for her mother or for Poseidon, although he did not look quite so much like a shark contemplating a tasty tidbit as he had when she first caught his eye. Nonetheless, she suspected his concern for her comfort was largely owing to his hope of putting her privacy to his own use.

  “That is ridiculous!” Demeter exclaimed. “Poseidon, she is only a child. She has had a terrible experience. She may not yet realize it, but she needs her mother’s comforting.”

  “I need no comfort but that of Hades.”

  “Demeter, listen to me—” Poseidon said, loudly enough to override Demeter’s voice.

  As he spoke Poseidon’s eyes sought his steward’s, caught them, flicked to Persephone, and then away. Nerus smiled and nodded, signaled silently to Neso—who had, as usual, followed him from behind the curtain—to arrange the transport of Persephone’s chests, and gently touched Persephone’s hand.

  Dazed and angry as she was, Persephone instantly liked the old man and followed trustfully. It seemed like a long way. The throne room itself was huge, and by the time they passed through the large double doors, she was glad to lean on the arm Nerus offered. It was surprisingly strong for an old man, and the hand her fingers rested on was slick, but with regular, small raised ridges. She was too tired to be much surprised when she looked at it and saw that it was thinly scaled, the fingers webbed.

  In the left-hand wall of the antechamber to the throne room was a door that opened into a corridor. The left-hand wall of the corridor ran along the throne room and was unbroken; on the right were several doors. Nerus opened the last onto a large room with a wide window, now blocked by a closed shutter. Persephone did not wonder what was behind the window. All she saw that interested her was the low bed backed with a fan of pearl-pink nacre. She released Nerus’s hand, staggered to the bed, and dropped down on it. Vaguely, she felt hands undoing her sandals. She was almost asleep when a soft, light warmth covered her.

  * * * *

  When Persephone opened her eyes, sun was streaming in the window. The sight startled her and she sat up, wondering whether she could have fallen asleep in the temple. The view beyond the window was of low hills rising to a distant mountain—as the view from the temple would have been—but it was somehow wrong and unfamiliar. Her eyes swept backward along the wall and over her shoulder to the glistening creamy gold and pink headboard of the bed; she remembered where she was and burst into tears.

  “Do not weep, my poor Kore. Mother is here. You are safe.”

  Arms were around Persephone—a woman’s arms. They offered comfort, but at the same time it was as if those arms were full of soft, open mouths that sucked at her. Before the ugly thought was truly formed, Persephone’s shield was up. And even as the thought formed, she knew it was false; her mother was not deliberately draining her power. That very small taking, which could do her no harm because it absorbed only what flowed naturally from her, was part of Demeter’s whole relationship with her. But it was too late now. She knew a love that freely gave to her and took only after asking.

  Before Hades, before she had learned to resist all drawing on her power, she had received as much pleasure from giving as her mother got from taking. Giving had been the only way she knew of getting love. And Demeter had given love unstintingly, had given shelter from every harshness, protection…too much protection. She could not drop her shield; before she gave again, her mother had to be convinced she would get nothing from her daughter until she acknowledged her as Persephone, Hades’s wife. In a strange, distant way—sealed off, Persephone could not respond to external emotion, not even to the pain she saw on her mother’s face—Persephone knew she should feel sorry for Demeter. Now that she saw her again, she knew she should wish her mother could share her joy in her husband. But the only thing she felt, because it was inside herself, was her longing for Hades. She pulled away.

  “Why should I not weep?” she cried. “You have taken me away from all I love. I agreed to come to you in Olympus so that you would return to live there and quicken the seed for them. I am not so cruel as you, and did not want the folk I knew all my life to starve. But we are not in Olympus are
we? Was that not Poseidon I saw yesterday? Where are we?”

  “We are on Aegina, dear child. We are far over the water, where Hades cannot follow. You are safe. He cannot rise up from the earth and seize you here. You need not pretend you love him and that dismal realm.”

  “Aegina?” Persephone shrieked, leaping from the bed and running to look out of the window. It was, indeed, no place she had ever seen, the crowning proof a glimpse from the extreme right of the window of a low, ugly mud-brick town at the head of a long inlet. She closed her eyes and turned her back on the scene. The panic, confined inside the shield, battered at her until she could think of nothing else.

  “No!” she screamed. “No! Take me to Olympus.” From Olympus she could have contrived an escape somehow. In Poseidon’s stronghold of Aegina she was truly a prisoner.

  “Child, be calm,” Demeter said, coming toward her with outstretched arms. “You are safe here from Hades and from Zeus also.”

  “I love Hades,” Persephone cried, thrusting Demeter away. “I am not pretending anything. He is the best, the kindest man in the world.”

  Demeter shook her head sadly, dropping her arms. “Poor Kore, you are bespelled.”

  “No, madam, she is not,” Nerus said from the door, which he had opened so Neso could carry in a tray of food.

  His large gray-green eyes held Persephone so firmly that her need to scream and run wildly, anywhere, even into the ocean to free herself from this prison, diminished. They were quite inhuman eyes, Persephone realized, unable to be frightened or surprised, quite…fishlike—except that there was intelligence and kindness in them.

  “Yes she is!” Demeter insisted. “If not a spell cast by Hades, then she has been changed by that poison which is the food of Plutos. We will stay here until it is all leached from her body and she is ready to give me the love she owes me.”

  “She is indeed changed,” Nerus said. “And I know my master will make you welcome as long…as long as is necessary. But let her eat in peace now, Lady Demeter. She is too angry with you to listen to you now.”