Dazzling Brightness Read online

  Dorkas bit her lip. She must make it impossible for Zeus to endure Demeter. She would have to arrange that Demeter accuse him again, with the jewel-flower as evidence. Everyone knew Zeus had gifted Hera with similar pieces when he was trying to make peace with her. Likely Hades had made those too and given them—or sold them—to his brother. Yes, that would send Demeter off to confront Zeus, screaming like a virago and demanding—if Zeus denied he had used the gem as a lure—that he begin an inquisition among the mages and other rich and powerful families to discover who had bought the piece from Hades.

  Eagerness to show Demeter the gem she had found in the hollow of the boulder made Dorkas jump to her feet and start out of the glade at a near run, but by the time she was close to the temple her pace had slowed. Her first impulse, simply to thrust the gem in Demeter’s face, had been dismissed almost as quickly as it arose. Then Dorkas had tried to think of a way to present the jewel-flower, and realized she could not simply say, six moons after the abduction, that she had found it near where Kore had disappeared. Demeter would remember she had said she searched the area for Kore and would ask too many questions about where and how she had suddenly come across the bright jewel.

  In fact, Dorkas reluctantly admitted to herself, it would not be safe to show Demeter the jewel-flower so soon after Zeus had virtually told her he had used her and discarded her. Whatever else he was, Zeus was no fool. He would at once connect Demeter’s evidence and knowledge with his discarded mistress’s dissatisfaction.

  At the winter solstice, the Goddess’s garments would be washed again. What could be more natural, Dorkas thought, than that she should go with Aglaia to look—not because she expected to find anything but as a sad tribute—at the last place she had seen Kore. Aglaia was easy to manipulate. If Aglaia found the jewel-flower by the foot of the rock, she would certainly bring it to Demeter. There would be no way for Zeus to connect his rejection of her with Demeter’s presentation of the jewel as evidence that Kore had been lured into his power.

  Dorkas was sufficiently afraid of Zeus to use the six weeks before the winter solstice to plan every detail, including what she would say to Demeter if the high priestess was too thick-headed to connect the jewel with Zeus on her own. Even if she could avoid that, she knew she would have to “confess” to Demeter in private that she had mentioned Kore’s excursion out of the temple grounds to make the connection between jewel, Zeus, and abduction absolute. She could extract a promise that the confession be under the seal of secrecy. Demeter would not ordinarily break that seal, but if she did in this case—Dorkas shivered, then smiled—she would simply deny she had said it and say in public that Demeter was mad.

  Several days before the rites, Dorkas set into Aglaia’s mind the idea of climbing to the boulder where she had seen the print “of Kore’s dear little foot” (never mind that Kore’s feet, commensurate with her height, were not little at all). On the day, when they neared the boulder on the way to the Mother’s pool, Dorkas slyly twisted the hand of the child novice nearest her. The little girl of course cried out. Dorkas busied herself with the child’s tearful complaints and did not climb up to the boulder with Aglaia.

  Of course the jewel-flower was there already, just tilted up above a little pile of dirt so the sun would hit it and bring forth its most brilliant gleams. Dorkas was around the curve of the road when Aglaia cried out with surprise at her find and took care she was not even present when Aglaia brought the jewel-flower to Demeter.

  Dorkas had remained to perform the rite and wash the Goddess’s gown, sending Aglaia back with no more than a sigh and a shake of the head over the possibility that the jewel was a lure Kore had dropped when she was surprised and taken. She said nothing directly about the similarity of the jewel-flower to the gems Hera had. Aglaia knew as well as anyone else who had the most exquisite jewelry in Olympus.

  Dorkas’s plan worked perfectly in the sense that Demeter did not suspect that Dorkas had picked up the gem at the time of Kore’s abduction; unfortunately, neither did Demeter associate the jewel-flower with Hera’s pieces, and through Hera, with Zeus. And Aglaia, who was trusting but not an idiot, did not—as Dorkas hoped she would—point out the connection. Thus, Demeter, whose mind was half elsewhere, only looked at the gem with indifference and returned it to Aglaia.

  “It can have nothing to do with Kore,” Demeter said impatiently, “even if it was found where Dorkas last saw her.”

  Aglaia’s expression of intense relief focused Demeter’s attention. She became aware that her acolyte must have been too afraid not to bring the piece to her but almost equally afraid that it would catch her interest and renew her efforts to find her daughter. Mingled despair and fury tore at Demeter.

  “Out!” she screamed. “You do not care if grief drives me mad! You want me to be mad! You want my place!”

  Her voice checked on those last words as her eyes caught the horror in Aglaia’s face when she turned to flee. Demeter swallowed hard. She knew Aglaia did not want to be high priestess; in fact, the older woman had held the office temporarily before Demeter had been chosen and consecrated, and she had hated it. Now Aglaia thought she was mad. Demeter uttered a bark of laughter. There was no “now” about it. Everyone already thought she was mad. For the last few moons when she searched for her daughter, doors had been opened with laughter and jeers. The mages she suspected of being willing to help Zeus hide Kore had passed beyond irritation to contempt. Demeter covered her face with her hands.

  It was too late for searching, Demeter knew. It had been too late for a long time, but what could she do? Accept the loss of her daughter? No one wanted Kore to be found. They were all completely convinced now that, as Zeus had said, Kore had run away of her own free will and was hiding from her mother. Demeter knew that was a lie. Kore was a loving child who would not do such a terrible thing; Kore knew how much grief and sorrow had filled her mother’s life and knew she was her mother’s one solace. The priestesses had spread the story that Kore wanted her freedom, that she wanted her own name, that she did not want to be high priestess. All lies.

  “They want me to seem mad because they all want to be rid of me,” Demeter moaned softly to herself, weeping with self-pity.

  When she heard the words, she blinked away the tears—having shocked herself into awareness of a truth she had not previously faced. She had not a friend in all of Olympus; even her priestesses had turned against her. Even her priestesses? The lesser priestesses were the last to want Kore back. While Kore was with them, they had accepted the fact that Demeter would always be high priestess, that Demeter would live again in her new-named daughter after her old body died. Now that Kore was gone, ambition had wakened in them.

  Gone where? Demeter uttered a sob. She was not in Olympus, not in the city, and not in the whole valley. For a moment ice trickled down Demeter’s back as she once again grappled with the fear that her daughter was dead, raped and finally murdered to enforce silence. Then she shook herself. The Goddess would have warned her of that. Yet the comforting thought had a twinge of discomfort in it. Why had the Goddess not aided her search?

  For some reason the jewel-flower, almost certainly Hades’s work, came into her mind, and ice ran up and down her spine again. Then she shook herself. Kore was not dead, and Hades had nothing to do with the living. Demeter’s memory of Hades had been seared into her mind and heart when she had met him again and again as she searched for Iasion after the battle in which Zeus had conquered Olympus. Hades had stalked the streets with his scarred, crippled minions, turning over every body, gathering up the dead. And his knife had run red with the blood of those not quite dead to whom he had given grace. Demeter sighed. At least the screaming and moaning had stopped. And Hades had been just. He had not gathered in those wounded who could recover. Those his walking dead had placed in the carts of the healers that also followed him. He would not touch Kore, who was young and healthy.

  That assurance notwithstanding, the icy frisson that had crawled along
Demeter’s spine seemed to have settled around her heart. She could no longer bear to be alone, but she did not desire the company of her cruel and scornful priestesses. She rose and hurried from her apartment to the oval chamber at the front of the temple that was sacred to the Goddess. Sun poured in through the slices of crystal set in lead that circled the dome over the image, bent the light from whatever angle it came, and bathed the effigy in light. Demeter turned right, walked around the statue, and stood facing it. She felt no particular touch from the Goddess; nonetheless, she was comforted. She had just raised her hands to speak an invocation when she heard weeping.

  For a moment Demeter was tempted to ignore the sound. If it was one of the children, Aglaia would soon be there to comfort her. But almost as soon as the thought was defined, Demeter realized that the sound was too harsh and heavy to be a child. If a priestess was weeping that desperately, Demeter wanted to know why. She walked to the other opening in the back of the sanctuary and found Dorkas crouched just outside in the corridor that led to the acolytes’ chambers and the dormitories.

  Demeter was so surprised to see Dorkas weeping so bitterly that she was frozen in place. Dorkas, who was as hard as any person Demeter had ever known, had never been a favorite, and Demeter had developed an active distaste for the woman when she heard rumors that Dorkas lay with Zeus. Moreover, Demeter had grave doubts about Dorkas’s real devotion to the Goddess. She had come from one of the least important families among the Olympians and had likely chosen the temple as a way out of poverty. Before Demeter could back away, Dorkas looked up.

  “Oh, forgive me my lady,” she sobbed.

  “Forgive you?” Demeter had some difficulty commanding her voice. For some reason Aglaia’s find leapt into her mind as she forced out, “For what?”

  “That jewel, it must have been the temptation that drew Kore from the path when we were around the curve and could not see her. She called out to me that she wished to pick a flower. A flower, she said, not some flowers. I never thought it was a strange thing for Kore to say until after Aglaia showed the gem to me.”

  A wave of relief that Dorkas’s “crime” was so innocent swept through Demeter, impelling her to answer with grudging kindness, “Well, I might not have thought it strange myself. I do not see that your mistake is anything to weep over, particularly since I cannot believe that pretty trinket has been there all this time.”

  “But I fear it has,” Dorkas cried, beginning to sob again. “I did not believe you when you said that Zeus had taken Kore, but that jewel-flower is so like those Zeus gave Hera, so like…” She bent her head to her knees, hiding the expression on her face as Demeter put a hand to the wall to support herself.

  “Mother,” Demeter breathed. “I knew I had seen that kind of jewel before, and that where I had seen it could not have anything to do with my Kore. Of course! I had seen Hera wearing those gems—and Hera would not take Kore. But it was Zeus who gave the gems to Hera.”

  “Yes, and that makes me guilty of worse,” Dorkas wailed, lifting a tear-streaked face. “But I did not know! I did not know! I told him.”

  “Told him? Told who? Zeus? What did you tell him?”

  Dorkas closed her eyes and tears ran down under the closed lids. “We were lovers. You knew that. I did not try to hide it. Often he would ask questions about the temple—” She opened her eyes and for a moment her old defiance flashed in them. “I always told him what I knew and what I thought.” She brought up her hands to hide her face—and also to shelter it if Demeter struck her. “How could I guess he would conceive such an abomination against his own daughter? He asked me whether you ever let Kore go without you outside the temple grounds. I thought he was only curious or that he wished to meet her, speak to her. I told him…” Her voice sank to a whisper. “…that you did not accompany Kore when she washed the Corn Goddess’s garments in the Great Mother’s pool.”

  Demeter stood staring down at the hunched and trembling Dorkas. Her eyes were blank with the shock of comprehending her own blindness. How could she have forgotten that few people knew Kore ever left the temple grounds without her mother? The question was obliterated by fury. Had she remembered, she would have known that Dorkas had told Zeus of Kore’s vulnerability at that time and place. It had to be Dorkas and Zeus, because no other priestess had a liaison with a great mage. She could have dragged Dorkas with her and demanded a public confession. Even now she could force Zeus—

  “My lady,” Dorkas sobbed, catching hold of her skirt. “Do not tell him I told you. He will blast me.”

  There was fear in those words, real fear. The thought “real fear” echoed through Demeter’s confusion, and she realized that the genuine fear had exposed the false regret. Tears and trembling and confessions were completely out of character for Dorkas.

  “Then why did you tell me—now, when it is too late for the knowledge to do me good?”

  “Because he cast me aside,” Dorkas spat.

  That was genuine, too, Demeter thought, but Dorkas was still speaking.

  “It is not too late,” she urged. “Take the gem. Show it to all. Aglaia will go with you and tell where and how she found it. Demand that Zeus bring Kore back from wherever he took her.”

  “Back from…” Demeter echoed.

  Half stunned by a new revelation, she pulled her skirt from Dorkas’s grip and walked past her into the short corridor that opened into the apartment she had once shared with Kore. “Back from”…the words echoed again in her mind. What had ailed her all these moons to search and search again places where she knew Kore was not held? First her mind shuddered away from her own question as a brief fear that the Goddess had clouded her thinking lashed her. But she knew Her Lady could not be so cruel, and she soon realized that she wished to blame the Goddess because fear had made her shrink from a truth she dreaded.

  She had known since the first harvest that Kore was not in the city or valley of Olympus, but she had refused to acknowledge it because that would mean she would have to leave her temple, her home, to search for her daughter among the native people. She had really known it from the beginning, known that none of the mages would try to conceal Kore in Olympus. Most of the great mages visited the native towns. They purchased a spell from Hermes that would take them from Olympus to some particular place among the native folk, often to a temple in their honor.

  Demeter shook her head, distracted for a moment from the enormity of the task before her. Poor little people, they were so simple. They feared even the weakly Gifted among themselves and worshipped the great mages as gods—mostly Zeus, who took special delight in their praises…and in despoiling their virgins.

  Suddenly Demeter’s eyes opened wide. Fool! she mouthed silently. Fool! Kore would be in one of those temples—but which? There were so many. She would have to force him to tell her. She would take Aglaia and the gem… The familiar ring of those words brought her mind up short. There was a little stink about them, something, a warning of falseness. Of course! Dorkas had said those words.

  Demeter took a deep breath and walked from the doorway, where she had been standing absorbed in thought, to her favorite seat. Now that she had swallowed the unpleasant medicine of knowing she must leave Olympus, she must think carefully about what to do. If Zeus guessed what she had learned, he would stop her.

  “Oh!” she breathed, sinking down into the chair before which she had been standing. Dorkas had told her to go to Zeus and confront him. “That sly bitch!”

  So Dorkas thought her confession would be a double-edged sword. One cut would revenge her on Zeus and the backhand stroke would… But how would Demeter’s accusation revenge Dorkas on Zeus? More than six moons since Kore was taken, he could claim anyone had dropped the gem. No, of course not. He would admit he had lost the gem, possibly even confess he had brought it to give to someone…someone? Dorkas! And she would support his “confession.”

  Demeter gripped her hands together tightly. It was a plot between them to be rid of her. No, Dorka
s’s hurt and fury when she said Zeus had cast her aside were genuine. And her fear of Zeus was genuine—but her advice to confront Zeus was false. So the plan was Zeus’s. Demeter knew Zeus was aware she hated him and had never trusted her; it was no surprise that he wished to be rid of her—and of the daughter she had trained to dislike and distrust him.

  Then suddenly all the different thoughts settled into a clear pattern. Dorkas and Zeus had one purpose that bound them together: He wanted a high priestess he could bend to his will, which meant he must be rid of Demeter and the daughter who would be another Demeter, and Dorkas wanted to be high priestess, which meant she must be rid of Demeter and Kore also. Although Demeter knew it was foolish not to have seen that obvious fact sooner, she was not as disturbed as by her earlier blindnesses, which had been owing to fear and an avoidance of the truth. Her blindness with regard to Dorkas was a result of Goddess-given knowledge.

  Demeter suppressed a small pang of guilt. She knew that Dorkas could not be high priestess, that the Goddess would never accept her. Because she had known that, she had dismissed the problem of jealousy of Kore as a source of her disappearance. Aglaia had not the strength to hold the place—her short tenure as high priestess had drained her power so deeply that she nearly died—and she had willingly retired; Dorkas was unfit. Demeter sighed. She had chosen Dorkas as acolyte for that reason, so that there would be no older candidate to challenge Kore’s claim to be high priestess. Perhaps that was wrong. Perhaps Kore’s disappearance was a punishment for that selfish act. She should have trusted Her Lady more completely.

  Oddly, that thought made Demeter much happier. Kore was so perfectly fitted to serve the Corn Goddess aspect of the Mother that Demeter could not doubt she would be safely returned to the temple. Perhaps she should do nothing, just wait until the Lady sent Kore back to her? No, that was not right either. One did not wait for the Corn Goddess to plough the fields or sow the grain. To accomplish a purpose, one must act. Demeter took a deep breath and began to think out those actions.