Dazzling Brightness Read online

  He did not mind her watching him—in fact, nothing delighted him more than to see her pleasure and amazement as precious gems and exquisite jewelry took shape under his hands—and he would have been glad to satisfy her five times a night. Unfortunately, he could not believe she only craved his company and his body. This was something like the snatching at him just after he had told her of her mother’s demand, but not exactly the same. It was a kind of long farewell, as if she were trying both to store him up within herself and fill him with her against the famine of a long parting.

  Hades told himself it was all nonsense. He was master of the underworld, and no force could wrest Persephone from him. Unless she demanded the right to leave… He always pushed that thought down deep and smothered it with memories of her kisses and fondling, the way she would take his hand for no reason at all, the way she would look around their bedchamber or the great cave. The love she bore him and the place was plain. And if she did not ask to leave, no one could force her.

  Nonetheless, Hades was well pleased when Ixion returned alone. Angry and abashed at his failure, the man said, “She would not come. She insisted that you were trying to trap her among the dead so that she could not bring her daughter back to the outer world.”

  “All know that my promise to return a person to the outer world is good.”

  “The woman is mad. She knows only what she wants to know and has the fixity of purpose of the mad. She would not listen to a word I said. When I told her Kore did not exist and Queen Persephone was your wife and priestess, she said you had no right to name her and she had no right to accept the name.”

  “That is nonsense. The reason parents choose a name before the character of the babe is known, before a babe is shown to anyone, is to prevent another from fixing an evil name on the child.”

  “You know it. I know it. All the world knows it—but Demeter will not accept the truth. She has her own fixed idea, that she would name her daughter Demeter on her own deathbed and so live on. Nor would she accept the right of a father, of blood or of adoption, to give a daughter in marriage. A daughter is a mother’s, she insisted.”

  Hades shrugged. “I am sorry if Persephone is disappointed that her mother would not come, but Demeter’s madness cannot change law and custom. I knew she would be difficult, but I thought her desire to see her daughter and offer her comfort—if she believed Persephone needed comfort—would overcome her fear and suspicion. You have done well enough. I cannot promise you a valley of your own, because none may be available until long in the future, but some reward I will find for you.”

  He waved Ixion away, but did not go to the temple himself or send anyone to fetch Persephone so he could tell her at once. In fact, he kept putting it off, until they were ready to get into bed, when he turned toward her abruptly and simply blurted out, “I sent Ixion to invite your mother to visit us, but she would not come.”

  To his intense relief, Persephone smiled brilliantly. “Was that what has been on your mind these past weeks, and most of all today? You looked at me so strangely.”

  “I looked at you strangely? Is it any wonder? Have you not been acting peculiarly? And you have done your share of looking too.”

  Persephone laughed. “I was a little worried. I guessed you had sent someone to bring my mother here. You said you would and, although you did not mention her again, I know you always do what you say. So when you did not mention mother again, I began to be afraid you had decided it would be the right thing to give me back to her if she insisted.”

  “What?”

  The roar made her blink and then laugh again. “You are so careful of what is right, and you did abduct me—which, after all, is not right.”

  “I try to speak the truth and keep my word, Persephone, but I am not an idiot. I had your fath—Zeus’s permission. Even so, if you were unhappy here, if you hated me, I might have considered letting you go, now that you have trained some priestesses who can train others. It would break my heart to part from you, but if you wished to leave me, I would set your good above my own. Your good. No one else’s. No one will ever take you from me against your will. I swear, I would make the earth swallow Olympus or bring the mountains down upon it, before I would yield you to your mother or anyone else.”

  “No Hades!” She flung herself into his arms and buried her face in his breast. “Do not make such an oath!”

  “I have made it already and long ago although I did not speak it aloud,” he said, his mouth grim. “You are the dazzling brightness that has lighted my soul after a long, long darkness. I was not unhappy. To me the dark is comfortable and I had duty and sometimes satisfaction. But I never had joy. You are my light, my joy. That it is new to me makes it so much more precious. Do you think I would allow any man—or woman—to take you away from me and hold you against your will?”

  Chapter 13

  Demeter turned her back on the evil, deceptive thing that wore the lineaments of Ixion. She knew that Zeus had cast Ixion into Hades’s realm with a blast of lightning for trying to make love to Hera. Had Hades sent Ixion as his messenger because he hoped she would listen to another Zeus had wronged? Then why had he not sent Iasion? She shuddered and told herself it was because Iasion, who loved her and loved his daughter, would have refused to carry such a message. But what had sprung into her mind with the question and lay behind everything she thought and everything Ixion said, was the terrifying knowledge that she would not have known Iasion’s face. What if she met him by chance among the dead and did not know him?

  Quite unaware of the fact that she was clutching Hades’s ring in her hand, she fled into the sunlight. Behind her she could hear Ixion calling, begging her to return, begging her to listen and consider, promising to remain so that if she changed her mind she could return to the cavern. When she was beyond the sound of that pleading voice, she sat down on a stone to catch her breath. What a terrible fear Hades must arouse in the dead to make his messenger plead so eagerly. What a terrible fate he must have planned for her… What a terrible fate had overtaken her Kore!

  Raising her hands to hide her face, she became aware that one was tightly clenched. She opened it and stared at the exquisite setting and the ruby, which in the sunlight glowed like pulsing blood. With a squeak of revulsion, she dropped the ring, but it lay winking at her, unchanged. It had not become a stinking turd netted in matted hair as had the rings on the hand Ixion had thrust across the trough. This was, indeed, from Hades’s own hand. She remembered that when he stalked the streets in Olympus and brought a quick end to the dying, his jewels had glittered in the torchlight amid the rags and loathsome decorations of those who followed him.

  After a moment, she bent and picked up the ring, holding it gingerly. But she sensed no magic in the thing. It was a beautiful ring, no more. Perhaps it only spread a spell in Plutos, but she was not going there, not even for Kore!

  “But that is not for lack of love,” she cried aloud to the empty countryside. “That is because I can be of more use to Kore, more able to arrange her escape to freedom, where I am than if I myself were a prisoner in the underworld.”

  Even spoken aloud the words held little comfort. She really had no idea what to do next. It had not occurred to her that once she discovered his abduction, Hades would refuse flatly to restore Kore to her. She had been shocked mute when Ixion said boldly that Hades had named her daughter. She shook her head in furious negation. A name of such power!

  Demeter had expected Hades to set a high price, but she was not concerned over the cost of redeeming Kore. She knew she could wrest virtually anything—even one of his daughters to replace Kore—out of King Celeus, who was in such awe of her now that the field she had blessed was ten times as fertile as all the others, that he probably would not have stopped her from dropping his infant son, whom she often held and fondled, into the fire. But instead of setting a price, Hades had refused to return Kore, had said Kore did not exist, and invited her to visit Queen Per—no, she would never accept th
at name!

  The invitation was a trap. It must be. Demeter knew Hades’s reputation. Even Zeus, who trusted no one, almost trusted him. Nonetheless, honorable men had been known to bend when the prize was great enough. Kore was so high a stake… Had Hades learned of Kore’s Gift? If so, he would never give her up willingly. Someone would have to steal Kore, as he had stolen her. Demeter stared down at the ring. Kore was not completely out of her reach. Hades had invited her to Plutos with a safe conduct.

  A violent fit of trembling struck her. No, she could not do it herself. He would suspect her. Behind the surface thoughts, behind the smooth, brilliant surface of the ruby that held her eyes, was a tall form that stretched his arms to her and called her name…but his face was blank and she could not paint features on it. Her hand closed over Hades’s ring. She would find a hero to rescue Kore and give him the safe conduct.

  The decision gave her renewed hope and she rose and walked downhill to where the Eleusinian guard waited to escort her back to King Celeus’s country palace. When she told the king the excuse she had concocted—that she was prohibited from entering Hades’s realm lest her powers of fertility be contaminated by the sterility of death—and broached the plan of sending a hero in her place, he did not refuse, but he did not suggest any man, only stared at her hopelessly.

  “So, great king,” she challenged him, “is there none, not one man in your entire kingdom who would do my bidding?”

  “Great lady, you can order that one of my warriors, even my eldest son Triptolemus, go. He or any other will obey your bidding, but to what purpose? Can you believe that even with the ring to bring him safely into Plutos my son or the strongest of my men could wrest your daughter from Hades’s grasp? Hard and strong as stone is Hades. What man can match a god?”

  She could not deny Hades was a god. Somehow the native peoples had lost knowledge of the Mother and worshipped strange animistic beings or, more and more often, the great mages of Olympus. Her own power over King Celeus rested on the fact that he believed she was a god.

  “I did not expect a man to wrestle with Hades but to—” But to what? Trick him? She could not think of any plan herself, so what could she expect of these poor creatures? She shook her head. “No, I will bid no man do what he does not believe he can bring to a successful conclusion. I will reward any person who can convince me he—or she—can bring back my daughter, but I do not desire useless sacrifices that are only likely to annoy the King of the Dead.”

  If Demeter could have laughed at anything, she would have laughed at the expression on Celeus’s face. Ungrateful dog! He had profited enormously from trade with Plutos and from extending his hospitality to her, yet she could read in his eyes that he wished he had never heard of either of them. And he looked down at the stone floor of his inner audience chamber with such horror that Demeter was suddenly stricken with a new realization. If she got Kore back by trickery, how was she to keep her? Hades could come up out of the earth at her feet wherever she fled.

  It was that problem that occupied her mind more than whether King Celeus had indeed spread word of the reward she had offered to anyone who would bring her daughter out of Plutos. Certainly while summer peaked and passed, no one came to suggest a plan to her and ask for the ring that would provide safe conduct. Some small satisfaction warmed Demeter’s heart when Celeus ordered that a handsome temple be built for her in the city. Another satisfaction came to her when the Eleusinians gathered their richest harvest in memory.

  The temple was dedicated at the harvest ceremonies. The large stone porticos and storerooms were not complete, but the altar and Demeter’s sacred chambers were liveable. Taking Iambe, who had been freed, and several other women in whom she had detected a Gift, Demeter moved into the temple. Her life began to approach the pattern she had established in Olympus, except that her acolyte and priestesses worshipped her instead of envying her.

  She had not forgotten Kore. Sometimes she took Hades’s ring out of the golden box in which she kept it and wept a little. But she had forgotten the problem she had created in Olympus, and even if she had remembered it she would not have associated the disastrous harvests in Olympus with Poseidon. Thus she felt nothing but a mild surprise when a temple servant told her that an aged seer called Nerus had begged audience with her.

  In a moment the surprise was displaced by anxiety. What if Poseidon resented the fact that Celeus had built her a temple? She had, she now recalled, promised to teach the mysteries of the Corn Goddess only with his approval. What would Celeus do if confronted by a contest between her and Poseidon? No, it must not come to that. She had become very fond of the people of Eleusis.

  “Bid Nerus come here to my private apartment,” she told the servant.

  Her mind raced madly, seeking explanations and palliations in the few minutes it took the woman to shepherd Nerus into her sitting room, and it was all wasted.

  “Hermes has come seeking you in my master’s palace,” Nerus said. “King Poseidon thinks it unwise to say you did not stay after the spell brought you because that mischievous trickster is sure to winkle out the truth from some unsuspecting servant. The king is willing to deny he knows to where you took ship, since fewer know that, but he thinks it useless. Word of the crops that have been garnered in Eleusis will soon come to Zeus’s ears.”

  Demeter stood up, tears of fury springing to her eyes. Zeus! Always Zeus who tore away her little comfort, even the shreds of peace she had patched together here. Her mounting rage was such that it wiped from her both fear for herself and consideration for the people who loved her.

  “I do not care whether Zeus knows where I am or not,” she spat. “The mystery of the Corn Goddess is mine to give, not to withhold, as Zeus himself told me. And if he thinks to blast my temple and harm the people of Eleusis, I do not think the other mages will long endure his tyranny. I may be first to suffer his wrath, but who among them will believe he or she will not be next? Will he blast Hera’s temples? Athena’s? Ares’s?”

  “Forgive me, my lady,” Nerus said. “In my eagerness to pass on my master’s message and explain that he wishes only good to you, I have given you a false notion. Zeus has made no threats. Hermes only said he was asked to find you and bring you back to Olympus.”

  Zeus wanted her back? For one moment she was utterly bewildered, able to think only that Zeus begrudged her the worship of the Eleusinians and wished to deny them the rich harvest she had given them. Then she remembered that the harvest in Olympus must have been a disaster. Aglaia and Dorkas could not have properly quickened the seed. Zeus wanted her back to force her to restore fertility to Olympus.

  “I will not go! I will stick a knife between Hermes’s ribs if he tries to hold me close to transport me, and—

  “Please! I have no intention of forcing you, Demeter. That would defeat Zeus’s purpose and make him angry at me.”

  Both Demeter and Nerus jumped. Just inside the door stood the tall, curly-haired Hermes, his lips curved just a trifle upward with the suppressed amusement of having appeared where he was not expected or wanted.

  Demeter scrabbled on the small table beside the chair in which she had been sitting and caught up the little knife she used for paring fruit. “My Lady does not love magic,” she breathed, her eyes staring with near madness, “but I know one spell that will dry up the earth past ever again bearing and wither a man’s virility so that he is less than a eunuch.”

  “Demeter!” The laughter was gone from Hermes’s mouth and his eyes were plain brown. “I will not move from where I am. And I will cast no spell while I am near you, none, for any purpose at all until you give me leave—I swear by the Styx, which never sees the sun and to which I will be confined if I lie. Just listen to me. I think you will be very glad of what you hear.”

  “I am glad of no message that comes from Zeus.”

  “He only wishes to speak to you, Demeter. He will give whatever assurance you desire that you come and go freely.”

  “But I do not wi
sh to speak to him! I said all I had to say nearly two years ago, I want my daughter back. I know now Zeus himself did not take her. He sold her to Hades—for what, I do not know, perhaps the jewel-flowers that Hera wears. When Zeus buys back my daughter and gives her to me, I will listen to a message from him.”

  “But Demeter, Zeus cannot—

  “Go away, Hermes,” Nerus said hastily as Demeter closed her eyes and began to whisper to herself, “quickly! She is beyond reason and will destroy us all.” The young mage flung himself out of the door near which he had been standing, and Nerus shook Demeter lightly. “He is gone, my lady. Do not cast a spell that can do me little harm at my age, and will dry up all your power.”

  She opened her eyes and, after a moment, smiled. “I should have gone with Hermes and cast the spell in Zeus’s court.”

  Nerus stared at her without reply, but apparently it was not her threat that silenced him because suddenly his eyes glazed. “There will be no need to speak the spell of living death,” he mumbled. “You will get back your daughter, but not Kore, never Kore, and Pers—”

  “Wake up, old man!” Demeter snapped, stepping forward and slapping his face lightly.

  She had heard Nerus called a seer several times and recognized instantly a moment of prophecy. Unuttered, it might be unfulfilled, and Demeter was not about to hear any worse than she had heard already, even if startling Nerus out of his trance killed him. Nonetheless, she felt guilty enough to steady him while his eyes rolled up and he jerked and shuddered. He shook his head dazedly when the fit was over and looked around the room, then sighed.