Dazzling Brightness Read online

  DAZZLING BRIGHTNESS

  Roberta Gellis

  Chapter 1

  A man waited in the tumble of boulders on the toe of a mountain intruding into the lush valley of Olympus. He was wrapped in a hooded gray wool cloak, so close to the color of the granite on which he leaned that to a quick glance he seemed only part of the irregular outline of the rock. In the pale light of dawn his face was shadowed by the hood, but the skin was so very white that a close examination might have made him noticeable—all but the eyes. The eyes were shadow within shadow, a blackness between brow and cheek.

  A footpath curved around the toe of the mountain, leading from the temple of the Corn Goddess, which was on the very outskirts of the gleaming city that was home to the mages of Olympus, to a pool sacred to the Mother of Life. Four times a year, at the turning of the seasons, the lesser priestesses and novices of the Corn Goddess brought her ceremonial robes to that pool for a ritual washing.

  The sun topped the shoulder of the mountain, setting the snow-capped peak aflame with rosy light. A bird raised a lilting paean to the morning. The man’s head jerked up, but then he huddled closer to the rock, becoming briefly visible as he moved and then even less visible. He waited. Once a deep sigh stirred him. Then he was still again.

  A sound, high and sweet but nothing like the intermittent birdsong that greeted the morning, drifted down the path. The man stirred briefly again as he took a deep breath and turned his head slightly so that he could see along the path. This time he did not have long to wait. The group whose singing had preceded them came into sight. First an older priestess, older but no crone, as evidenced by the lush curves filling out a gown the brown of a rich autumn; she was surrounded by a gaggle of little girls in white and older girls in green; then a more orderly group of young women dressed in the golden amber of ripened grain, all carrying baskets. As they approached, the sound of singing increased.

  A very slight movement showed that the man had tensed as if he were peering forward, trying to see the second group more clearly. And then, a little way behind, a last young woman came into view, this one garbed in the tender green of early spring. She was obviously idling, in no hurry to catch up with her companions. The breath the man had drawn as he tried to see the faces of the amber-clad girls was checked. Had Zeus told her she was to be taken? Was she willing? If she were willing…but he did not dare take any chance. If he failed to take her, she would be immured in the temple in the future and guarded too closely for him to try again. He murmured softly and his hand moved under his cloak.

  The older woman and the little girls had rounded the rocky toe and were progressing along the path, their backs now to the boulder against which the man stood. In another moment, the young women with their baskets also passed around the curve. The man gestured sharply and among the small rocks at the very edge of the path an exquisite flower of tiny, brilliant gems suddenly caught the light. His finger moved just a little—right, left. The jeweled flower rocked, throwing off glitters and gleams.

  The young woman in the green gown paused as one and then another bright flash caught her eye. She searched the edge of the path, then hurried forward to kneel down and pick up the pretty thing. She stared at it, amazed. Around a golden yellow-diamond heart were ruby petals, and peeping from behind them emerald leaves—but the whole flower was hardly larger than her thumbnail and it was all one piece, as if diamond, ruby, and emerald had somehow been melted together and yet kept distinct.

  While her attention was held, the man withdrew around the boulder and gestured again. There was a sharp, but not loud, snap. The young woman’s head came up just in time to see a round piece of the boulder nearest her crack and fall. In the exposed hollow was just such a gem as that which she held in her hand. She looked at the flower in her hand and then toward the sparkling thing cradled in the rock hollow ten or fifteen steps up a sharp rise above the path. She looked right, left, and at the boulder again.

  The man froze tighter against the surface of his shelter and clenched his jaws over the impulse to call to the young woman and a simultaneous but opposite urge to hide himself more completely. He resisted both silly notions but not without twitching at the hem of his cloak, which he was certain was visible. At the same moment that he yielded to that betraying movement, a voice floated back from around the curve in the path.

  “Kore. Come along now, Kore!”

  Although he knew what the young woman was called, the man’s teeth set with outrage. Every person, even a slave, had a right to a personal name, but this poor young woman had to make do with Kore—girl, in the language of the mages. How dare her mother deprive her of that most personal possession, as if she were not a person at all. Furious, he moved again and then realizing he might have exposed himself, froze, holding his breath.

  Just before the irritable voice demanding that she hurry came to her ears, Kore raised her eyes from a second suspicious examination of the gem in her palm to the twinkle in the boulder. One fine golden brow lifted. Despite what her mother often said, Kore was not a fool. She realized at once that, bright and beautiful as it was, the trinket in her hand was unlikely by chance to have escaped the notice of those who preceded her. And the rock shattering by accident while she was there? Nonsense, that was no accident.

  Her heart beat just a trifle faster at the thought that someone had set a lure to draw her. Who could it be? She had seen several of the young men of the city look longingly at her during the procession that welcomed the spring. But only one of the greater mages could have wrought the gem or cracked the rock, and none of them had seemed interested…but anyone rich enough could buy the artifact and the spell too. Caution bade her drop the jeweled flower and follow the others swiftly, but then she heard the older priestess’s impatient call.

  Kore’s soft lips hardened into a mulish line. No one would harm the daughter of the high priestess of the Corn Goddess, and if someone desired a few words with her enough to make or buy so elaborate a lure, surely that person deserved a hearing. Her hand closed around the flower-gem and she began to climb the rise, calling out as she did, “In a moment, Dorkas. I wish to pick a flower. I will follow in a moment.”

  White teeth flashed momentarily inside the shadow of the hood. If Dorkas was the priestess in charge of the group, success was all but assured. Pebbles clattered down toward the path as Kore climbed. A moment later a cautious hand made a warding gesture, but no remnant of power remained, and the hand reached toward the gem in the hollow. In the instant when the girl’s eyes were fixed on her prize, a part of the boulder seemed to separate itself. Kore’s eyes lifted, her lips parted.

  “Who—” she whispered.

  A hand as hard as stone caught her head and drew her face into the folds of the cloak so forcefully that her cry was muffled. She tried to raise her hands to push herself away, but the cloak that had covered her captor had been wound around her and then around again, binding her arms to her sides, her legs together; the hood pressed against her mouth served as a gag.

  “Forgive me,” a deep voice murmured. “I mean you no harm. I swear I will not hurt you. There is no other way. Forgive me.”

  Kore twisted and writhed to no avail. She felt his other hand behind her thighs, lifting her, and she tried again and again to scream but the hand behind her head never loosened its grip, and she knew the sounds she made would be heard by no ears but her own and perhaps her captor’s. She struggled to jerk her body up and down to break his grip, but she was wrapped so tightly in the cloak that her heaving had no effect. She could feel her captor walking swiftly and thought despairingly that he was strong as stone.

  The word triggered a frightening memory. Just yesterday, when she had been complaining to her mother about always
being the one who had to do the actual washing of the Goddess’s gown, Dorkas, behind her, had laughed and muttered to herself that doubtless the Queen of the Dead would do no washing. At the time Kore had not wondered why the woman had used those words. Dorkas was always murmuring nasty things under her breath, just loud enough for only one person to hear so she could not be accused of ill-speaking. Now Kore remembered and fear choked her. Had Dorkas truly ill-wished her into the power of the King of the Dead? Terror drove her to more violent contortions.

  “Be quiet. Be quiet. I will do you no hurt,” the deep voice soothed. “Your father has given me leave to take you.”

  Iasion, her father, was dead! In her effort to scream, to draw breath and scream, the woolen folds filled her mouth. Half suffocated and half mad with fear, Kore fainted.

  * * * *

  She regained her senses lying on a low pile of fleeces, covered by the cloak that had imprisoned her. For a moment she thought she had fallen asleep in a storage shed of the temple where she had sometimes hidden herself from her mother’s too-tender care when she was a child. But her eyes opened onto a roof of rough stone, plainly visible because each fleck of crystal in it glowed. It was so beautiful that for another moment Kore only stared, then memory and fear returned and her lips parted to scream.

  “Please, please do not be so frightened. I will do you no harm. Only listen to me and I will explain what I have done.”

  Kore’s eyes flew to the deep-voiced speaker. He sat, cross-legged, on another pad of fleeces a few feet from her, as if to give assurance that he would not touch her. She pushed herself upright, staring. Black hair, tightly curled, covered his head and curved around his ears. His mouth and chin were surrounded by a very short, neatly trimmed beard that left bare most of his cheeks. His skin was very white, paler than hers, which turned golden under the touch of the sun. The pallor only increased the darkness of his eyes, which caught and held hers. There seemed to be no bottom to those black pools.

  “Persephone,” the man murmured when he saw her eyes were fixed on him. “You are a dazzling brightness to me, so beautiful that you nearly stop my breath. I shall call you Persephone, if you will give me leave.”

  “Who are you?” Kore whispered.

  “I am Hades.”

  For a moment her voice was suspended by fear, but then she forced out, “The King of the Dead?”

  The man’s lips twitched as if he wanted to laugh, but he did not, and said quietly, “That is what many call me.”

  “Am I dead?” Kore asked, eyes wide.

  Hades burst into full-throated laughter. “No, of course not, my exquisite Persephone. Nor am I dead, nor do I expect to be, and I have a healthy appetite, which is why I seized you.”

  The laughter rang in the stone chamber. Stone of heart, stone of face, strong as stone, and black of eye—that was all she had ever heard of the Hades who was King of the Dead. Black-eyed this Hades was, and strong as stone; whether his heart was hard Kore did not yet know, but his face was alive with expression, laughter at the moment. Even in the laughter, however, there was admiration. She felt warmed by the glow in those black eyes and could not doubt that she was a dazzling brightness to him.

  Nonetheless, she lifted her head proudly and said, “You may name me, but that does not make me your Persephone.”

  If the parents did not seize their right of naming at birth, anyone could set a name to a child for ill or good. The newly named Persephone could not and would not reject the name Hades offered, even though he had abducted her. All her life she had hated being called Kore—girl, only girl. She had begged her mother and others, too, to name her, but no one would dare oppose the chief priestess of the Corn Goddess on a subject so near her heart, and all her mother said was that she would be Demeter in her turn, after her mother died. Kore had been sick at the thought. She did not want her mother to die, but she felt crippled without a name. And Persephone was a name of beauty and power, all hers, hers alone, not a hand-me-down from the dead.

  Hades had bowed his head. “Forgive me, Persephone,” he murmured. “That is the truth. You belong to yourself and to none other. You are no slave though I have captured you and though your father has agreed that you should become my wife.”

  “My father is dead,” she cried, her voice choked with renewed fear.

  “Dead? Zeus?” Hades gasped, putting a hand down and starting to rise. “But I saw him hale and strong only—”

  “My father was Iasion,” Persephone snapped.

  Hades settled back and smiled again. “Your blood father,” he said. “Do you not remember that Zeus adopted you not long after he became the Mage-King? You gave me a fright, saying your father was dead. I am fond of Zeus. He is my youngest brother.”

  Her lips trembled but she firmed them. “I am not fond of him,” she said. “And my mother never agreed to the adoption. Zeus has no rights over me.”

  “Demeter never opposed the adoption.”

  “Does one oppose the will of a conqueror?”

  Hades shrugged. “Perhaps not, but that was many years ago, and Zeus has not proved to be so dreadful a tyrant. Demeter could have protested the adoption later, saying that she feared to deny him at the time. She never did. By the laws and customs of Olympus, Zeus is your father and has the right to give you in marriage. For many favors owed, he has given you to me.”

  “I thought a free woman had the right of refusal. I refuse. Take me home.”

  At first he was silent; after a moment he shook his head slowly and said softly, “You may refuse to be my wife but not my priestess. I cannot take you home. I must have a priestess who is fit to rule a temple of the Corn Goddess and who can teach the women of my realm to bring grain from the earth. If that mystery is not brought to my people, they will soon starve. My realm is rich, but not in such stuffs as folk can eat.”

  He gestured to himself and Persephone noticed for the first time the broad collar and wide armlets of beaten gold set with gems, the belt, so encrusted with jewels that it glittered and flashed with Hades’s every breath and movement in the glow of the roof crystals. Even his boots had elaborate patterns of precious stones embedded in the worked leather.

  “The dead do not eat,” she said.

  His lips curved but his eyes were sad. “The ‘dead’ of my realm must eat. There is some hunting in the caves and on the mountains, but it is very dangerous, and one cannot make bread from flesh. In the past we have traded our wealth for grain, but the supply is too uncertain. There are too many of us now.”

  She shook her head. “Even the Corn Goddess cannot bring forth grain from rock. A plant needs the sun and the rain.” Her voice checked and then continued, trembling. “I need the sun and the sky, too. I cannot be buried under the earth and live.”

  “Do you fear this cave? Is this chamber too small for you? I can bring you to a place so large that it is hard to see the roof or walls, a many-pillared palace—”

  “I fear never to see the sun,” Persephone cried, shivering, “never to hear a bird sing or to see a rabbit hop or a lamb play. I do not wish to be the wife of the King of the Dead no matter how many cold gems you lavish upon me.”

  He sat with bent head, his hands open, palm up, in his lap. His sadness beat against her so that she had to bite her lip to keep back words of comfort. What comfort could she offer him when the only thing that would make him happy was to bury her alive? Nonetheless, a wave of sympathy flowed toward him.

  His head lifted slowly, his eyes so big and black—so hungry—that Persephone’s breath caught with fear. His cheeks were very slightly flushed, his mouth soft and full. He stared at her, seeking something, then gestured—and the glow of the roof grew so bright that she had to shut her eyes. She felt the light dim almost at once and looked at him again, prepared to defend herself, although she did not know how or against what, but he had turned his gaze down into his empty hands once more.

  At last he said, “I will not force you into marriage. I have already told you
that. Persephone, you are my sun. Will you not give light to my poor people, many of whom have suffered bitterly in the outer world? I promise you will see the sun and hear birds sing again, but there is life in the caves, too, some so beautiful and delicate that it can bring tears of joy. Will you not let me show you the glories of Plutos, give me a chance to win your forgiveness for stealing you away from your world into mine? We have a long way to go before I can bring you to an open place.”

  “Long way? You could not have carried me far. Take me back! That is not a long way.”

  The black eyes now raised to her were empty; the face might indeed have been carved of stone. Persephone shivered in the blast of freezing fury that flooded out of the man.

  “I am sorry,” Hades said. He did not sound sorry. “I will not take you back. You are only one woman, no matter how beautiful. My people are many and depend on me. I cannot let you have your way without regard for them. Your only choice now is to sit here in this cave, which you hate so much, or come with me to a place where you can sleep under the stars of the open sky and see the sun rise in the morning.”

  “I will sit here until I die,” Persephone spat, “rather than go with you farther and farther from my home so that I am utterly lost.”

  “You are utterly lost already,” Hades remarked, and his teeth flashed in what was not a smile. “But I have time. The valleys in which we must grow our grain are high. Spring has not yet come to them. There are several weeks before I must consider binding you and carrying you all the way.” Suddenly his cold anger at her refusal seemed to melt and he uttered what seemed a genuine chuckle. “I am strong enough, but you are no wraith and I would really prefer that you walked.”

  “Point the way, and I will walk home quickly enough.”

  Hades sighed and pointed to the ceiling. “That is the way. While you think over how to find a path, will you not have something to eat? I would not want you to think I was trying to make my task easier by starving you to make you lighter.”