Persephone had just turned to Hades to urge him to confirm her promise and add his assurances to hers that Demeter would not be forced to remain in Plutos, when the ship creaked and jolted as if it had hit something. Demeter cried out and Persephone gasped. Both began to rise, but the ship lurched violently sideways, quite out of pattern with the movement to which they had become accustomed, and they were thrown together. Simultaneously, there was a huge thrashing of water, an ear-splitting keening of animal pain or fear, a bellow of warning, and a chorus of shrieks of human terror.
Hades leapt to his feet and rushed out of the door, his drawn sword in his hand. With a cry of caution, Persephone thrust Demeter away and ran after him, snatching one of the bread knives from a basket of food. More shouts and shrieks brought Demeter to her feet just as the ship lurched violently again, throwing her against the doorframe with stunning force.
* * * *
Around the ship, the sea was boiling with life. As she emerged onto the deck, Persephone saw Hades strike out with his sword at a thing, huge and white with gaping jaws, that was leaping from the water. Had he been wielding his own long sword, he might have touched it, but the shorter, thinner blade he carried whipped by, short of its goal. The beast fell back into the sea, causing an enormous wave and a spume of water that drenched the deck.
The ship heeled over and Hades staggered back, colliding with a cowering sailor. As he steadied himself, another creature rose, seemingly all mouth filled with rows of teeth attached to a long, sinuous neck that stretched over the deck. Hades struck with all his strength and the sword bit. A long arc of red appeared behind the head, followed, as Hades wrenched his sword free, by a cascade of blood, spouting like a pulsing fountain. The creature howled, and the head, dangling to the side, jerked away and disappeared.
By the bow of the ship an animal like a squid, only ten times as large, rose from the sea as if propelled by a catapult. It shot up high enough to clear the rail of the ship and came down with spread tentacles right above a sailor who was helping a mate repel something Persephone could not see. An extra-long tentacle snapped out and caught his neck; the remainder embraced him. A shout of surprise and fear was immediately followed by a shriek of agony. The captain ran forward with a long fish spear and stabbed the squid as the mate attacked it from the other side. It heaved and released its prey. Persephone screamed. The man’s head was gone.
The white thing with the gaping maw appeared again. Hades snatched another fish spear from a sailor and cast it right between the jaws so that it lodged in the throat. Contracting with agony but silent, it fell short of the deck and into the sea, its huge tale beating the water to froth.
No one noticed. On one side of the ship another squid thing had risen. This one had come down on the rail and was clinging there with some tentacles while it snatched blindly with others. One sailor slashed back with a club, another stabbed with a long knife. One of them shrieked, but by that time shouts from the other side of the ship had drawn Persephone’s attention.
Something else, long and thin, had thrust its head over the ship’s rail. Hades hacked at it and another man tried to help with a knife. The snakelike head whipped around and the teeth fastened on the man’s arm. As soon as it had him, the creature began to slide backward, dragging the screaming sailor with it. Hades raised his sword.
“Be strong, Hades. Be strong,” Persephone muttered.
She felt the burning power pour out, heard Hades shout as it seared him. But then Hades’s sword bit again, bit deep, and was torn from his hand as the spine severed and the flesh tore. The body slid down into the sea with the sword. The man fell backward, the head still attached to his arm.
Backed against the wall of the shelter where she was out of the way of the struggling men and frantic creatures, Persephone looked down at the knife in her hand, wondering if she should run forward and give it to Hades. But the paltry weapon was useless. Her power beat at her, burning, but she knew no way to use it as a weapon herself and she dared not thrust more at Hades. He had caught up a cargo hook from the deck and was fighting another of the long-necked beasts, the iron hook glowing red and the wooden haft in his hand beginning to smoke where it met the metal. The thing shrieked and shrieked again as the hot metal seared it, but it pressed forward, snapping and slashing at Hades, rocking the boat, driven by a force greater than its own will.
Behind her, from the roof of the shelter, a thin, high voice—the ship’s boy—screeched, “Leviathan!”
The power of that word was great enough to tear Persephone’s eyes from Hades’s desperate fight. At a distance ahead, but clearly approaching, were the flukes of a tail so huge that they nearly covered the horizon from edge to edge. The smallest tip of one could crush the ship into splinters.
Chapter 24
The certainty that there was no escape, that they were all dead, cleared Persephone’s mind of the immediate horrors surrounding her. As soon as thought returned, she understood that a sea boiling with monsters of the deep was no natural event. One might be disturbed and rise or be hungry and go hunting, but the creatures Hades and the crew were fighting did not eat, or seek to eat, men, and they lived far too deep in the sea for any boat to disturb them. They had been summoned!
On the instant, Persephone knew what to do with the knife. She rushed back into the shelter, tore open the panel of the litter, and pulled off the covering of the lower compartment. She grabbed Poseidon’s arms and yanked them up. The cord bit into his genitals. His eyes snapped open and he bellowed with pain behind the gag. She dropped his arms and he choked as the cord sawed at him once more.
Persephone yanked the gag from his mouth. “Bid your creatures go!” she screamed. “Send away leviathan!”
“You will die before you can unman me,” Poseidon snarled.
Persephone set the blade of the knife at the base of his throat and leaned on it, just enough to draw a bead of blood. The ship lurched. The knife cut deeper. Poseidon stared up into eyes that changed from gold to burning copper and then glowed red, at hair that stood away from her head and snapped and crackled with blue sparks.
“You dare not!” Poseidon yelled. He sought authority of tone, but the words were half a scream of fear. Hades would never have driven home that knife. Even as the ship sank, he would have been too much a coward to spill his brother’s blood. But not this mad bitch. She smiled.
“I have just thought,” she cried, laughing above the noise of the battle, “when you are dead they will all go anyway. They are creatures of the deep and come at your summoning, but they are in pain. Your death will release them to their natural place.”
“No!” Poseidon shouted, but he knew it was too late.
“If they do not go”—her lips pulled back; she leaned closer, red eyes glaring, as if she intended to tear his throat out with her teeth—“you will be dead before Hades. That will be my joy.”
Panic lent strength and immunity from pain. Poseidon screamed two liquid words as he shoved his heels against the litter and straightened his knees in an instinctive effort to shrink from her, but he could not shift himself. “Wait!” he bellowed. “I have loosed their bonds.”
“You are too treacherous to trust,” she snarled.
She would have pushed the knife home on the words, but the ship heaved, tipping her backwards. She caught at Poseidon’s bound hands to steady herself, bringing another shriek of pain from him, but she did not let go of the knife.
“They are gone! They are gone!” Poseidon yelled as she raised her arm.
“Kore! Stop!” Demeter screamed, staggering toward her, and then shrank back as the glaring red eyes fixed on her. “Persephone, I acknowledge thee,” she cried. “But do not kill!”
“Why?” Persephone asked, the knife still poised.
“A priestess of the Corn Goddess does not kill,” Demeter pleaded.
Her mother’s voice was softer now, broken by sobs, but Persephone could hear her. She realized that the noise outside the shelter had
almost died away. Where was Hades? Had he lost his battle before she forced Poseidon to call off his beasts? That question filled her, mind and soul, but her voice responded not to her fears but to what Demeter had said and asked harshly, “How is this different—except that this is quicker and more merciful—from what you planned for the people of Olympus?”
Eyes and mouth round with shock, Demeter stared into the merciless face that was her daughter’s—and was not her daughter’s. Persephone was almost as surprised as her mother by the words that had come out of her mouth. But if the Goddess had spoken through her, She was immediately gone and, oddly, left no reluctance in Persephone to take revenge for the loss she feared and to remove permanently any threat Poseidon could create. Persephone’s arm tensed to strike.
“Persephone!” Hades said sharply from the doorway. “Please do not slit my brother’s throat.”
“I did not intend to slit it,” she snapped, but her eyes were pure gold again as relief at his safety drew the heat of hatred out of her power. She lowered her arm. “I intended to push the point right through it…slowly,” she added, smiling at her husband. “Does he not deserve it?”
Hades was all spattered with blood and his clothes were burned where the hot metal he had been handling had touched them, but he laughed rather breathlessly, closed the door, and leaned against it.
“Not if you look at it from his point of view,” he said. “He might not have known, until you threatened him, who had taken him prisoner. And even if he did, he might feel being swallowed by sea monsters was a deserved punishment for someone who hit him on the head and trussed him up in a particularly undignified manner when he had only wished to offer you—and me—the compliment of rape.”
“It was a mistake,” Poseidon said. “I thought she had betrayed you. The server told me she was lying with a man, and I thought you still in Plutos.”
Hades came away from the door, walked to the litter, and stood looking down at his brother. He did not speak, and Poseidon swallowed audibly. After a long moment had passed, Hades said, “You must be hungry and thirsty and need to piss too. I will help you, but will not loose you. I am sure you understand why. I will tell you, too, that I wish you no harm, despite your ‘mistake’. I doubt you will make another mistake with Persephone, even if she should come into your power again.”
Poseidon glanced toward her and saw only a smiting woman of breathtaking beauty. And then he noticed she still held the knife and he remembered vividly those glaring red eyes. He shuddered. “You may be sure I will return her to you with all the haste I may make.”
“That is not very flattering,” Persephone said, laughing. “Would you not even offer me three days of guesting?”
“Tchk,” Hades remarked reprovingly. “Did you not realize that no one wants a guest who first hits him on the head and then threatens to shove a knife into his throat…slowly? Some day I will have to discuss with you the proper behavior for guesting.”
Persephone laughed again. “Well, I will listen, my lord, but I think it a great waste of time. I have no desire to leave my home in Plutos to go guesting, and I do not think the rules of proper behavior apply to those made guests against their will.”
Hades looked from Poseidon to Demeter. “I doubt you will be troubled again in that way, my love.”
“No,” both assured him in chorus, with deep sincerity.
Despite those assurances, neither Hades nor Persephone trusted their captives. Without a word spoken, they agreed a strict watch must be kept on Demeter and Poseidon. With a single kiss and a hand on Hades’s cheek, Persephone indicated that he should sleep first. Even with the power she had given to him, he had fought nearly to the end of his strength and he needed rest.
Persephone sat near Poseidon with the naked knife in her lap. She did not threaten, but the sea king knew that he would be dead before the first cry of alarm faded away—even if he were not guilty of summoning the trouble. He could do nothing while the slow hours passed and the sun sank slowly in the west except pray the waters would be quiet, for he could not control those without being in their midst, warn the denizens of the sea away from the ship, and hope that no mariner would, out of nervousness, cry a warning for a nonexistent danger.
Persephone lit the lamp as soon as the shelter darkened so that she could watch his expression, which offered him no comfort. How could he tell what such a madwoman would consider dangerous? Poseidon hoped he was not sweating. The lamplight would catch the sheen of moisture and she might take that as an excuse to kill him, saying she feared he was sweating with concentration in an effort to destroy them.
Oddly, he was not as relieved as he expected to be when Hades woke and took Persephone’s place. They had all eaten before Persephone went to sleep, she and Hades alternately holding morsels to his mouth and carefully raising his head so that he could drink while the cord around his neck and between his legs neither strangled nor threatened to bisect him. There was something about the way Hades kissed his wife when she lay down, and the absolute absence of expression on his face, that warned Poseidon his brother would no longer hesitate to kill him. If she were threatened in any way, Poseidon knew he would be dead before he could open his mouth to plead innocence.
* * * *
For a long time the thought of being a victim of circumstances beyond his control occupied Poseidon’s mind to the exclusion of all else. However, as the night passed, the near paralysis of fear that had held him ebbed. Not that he was fool enough to try any more tricks while they were aboard ship, but he was able to remember that he was not powerless on land either.
They were going to Eleusis and Celeus, who ruled there, feared him for his power over wind and wave; Celeus would do his bidding, but Celeus could not “hear” him. A messenger must be sent to Celeus—but only the creatures of the sea “heard” him. Yes, but there was one sea creature who could come onto land and manage as well as in the sea, the triton. Moreover, once they were ashore, Hades and that destroying brilliance of his would relax their guard.
* * * *
This time, however, Poseidon did not send out his silent summons at once. Tritons were strong, but simple and mischievous. Left to their own devices they would forget his purpose and ravage the land for amusement. Thus, he did not send out his search call until afternoon, and it was early evening before a few dark shapes slipped through the water of the bay of Eleusis and came to rest on the rocky shore to the west of the town. One and then another crawled ashore and, whimpering with pain, slowly changed to a sleek-haired male creature with flat sea-green eyes and slightly scaled skin.
When the first to arrive was recovered, he walked along the beach until he came to the road and then followed that boldly through the town. He met no opposition. Twice he looked toward a stall left vacant by the merchant, who had hastily fled inside and barred the door at the first warnings of his approach, but his head turned back to the road to Celeus’s palace as if pushed by some outside force, and he snarled at nothing each time.
At Celeus’s palace he stopped by the barred gate. A hand stretched out to seize the gate and shake it loose, then paused. His great green eyes looked at the hand with dumb amazement, and then widened still more with surprise as his voice cried out, “My master, the sea king, sends a message to King Celeus,” sounds he had never before made in his life and which he did not understand. Then he stood, snarling with impatience but leashed by another’s will, until a wicket in the gate opened.
“I am King Celeus,” a man said.
To the triton the sounds were meaningless; nonetheless, his mouth opened and noise came out: “A ship comes to Eleusis. You are bid to give the litter on the ship to the tritons and kill those accompanying the litter.”
On the other side of the gate more noises were made, but the triton knew he would not be allowed to break the gate so he turned and ran down the road toward where the others of his kind waited. In the town again he swerved and stretched an arm to snatch at a woman cowering by a wall,
but again his hand stopped before it reached its goal and he was driven along toward the shore. Angry at the frustration of all his attempts to play, he tried to slide under the weight that restrained him and slip back into the sea. In that, too, he failed, and he joined his grumbling fellows, who nonetheless all stood looking out toward a darker speck against the darkening sky, which was a ship approaching.
* * * *
Unknowing, Hades and Persephone had by mutual consent arranged the conditions that permitted Poseidon to use all his strength to manage the tritons. At the first hail sighting land, they had hastily fed him and let him drink and relieve himself. Then they had bound his eyes and gagged him. Neither cared that the cloths obscured his expression. The litter was still open, and both Hades and Persephone were close enough that a knife stroke could finish Poseidon should there be any alarm. But neither noticed the beading of sweat that formed on the slivers of cheek, chin, and forehead which showed around the gag and blindfold. In a moment the beads were gone, absorbed by the cloth, leaving only a faint sheen where more sweat formed and was swallowed up.
Both were more concerned about Demeter. The closer they drew to land, the more frantic her pleas became not to be dragged down into the underworld. All their assurances went for nothing.
“I am afraid of the dark, the terrible, unending dark,” she cried.
“But we do not live in the dark, groping about like moles in the earth,” Persephone said, smiling. “Our palace is alive with the light of crystal. Indeed, mother, I am not trying to punish you, I wish you to be at peace, knowing how beautiful is the world in which I live.”
Dazzling Brightness Page 35