Receiver of Many

by Rachel Alexander

  “Ixion’s Wheel,” Hades replied solemnly to her unspoken question.

  “And the man pinned to it?”

  “That… is Ixion.”

  She looked up in horror at the tortured, faceless shade, his arms and legs stretched across the disk, its spin sending him round with the regularity of a heartbeat.

  “Do not feel too badly for this one. I thought it would be a fitting punishment for a man who tried to violate the Queen of Heaven while he was a guest of Olympus.” Hades darkened. “I would do far worse to anyone who even contemplated such with you.”

  She listened to Ixion scream out as he looped around the burning wheel, his cries rising and falling with mesmerizing regularity until they became noise in the background. Persephone couldn’t see the Hundred Handed Ones yet. To their left lay an open plain of obsidian. Faceless shadows of souls endlessly repeated their actions like cranks and pulleys in a macabre mill. One shadow knelt to scoop up water that wasn’t there and bit in the air at a twisted shard of stone that for a moment looked like grapes hanging in a bunch from a vine. Another walked in circles, screaming, his hands plastered over his ears, begging the gods to make the thunder stop. Still more repeated their mechanical theatre, their minds transfixed for eternity on their punishments, unable to be freed, unable to sense or comprehend that Hades and Persephone were even there.

  “Who are they?”

  “I think Merope may have told you about the two who are closest to us. The one who hungers and thirsts for all eternity is Tantalus, who hungered and thirsted after the power of the gods. He fed the Olympians his own son and tried to steal the secrets of immortality itself. Your father told me what he did, and asked me to devise something… appropriate. Obsession was what drove him in life, and obsession is what drives him now to taste fruit he cannot eat and sip water he cannot drink. The one next to him is Salmoneus, brother of Sisyphus.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Before Sisyphus lay with his daughter and drove him to the brink of madness, Salmoneus would ride around in a chariot built onto a raised wooden platform, throwing silver javelins at his subjects and claiming that he was the king of the gods.”

  Her mouth twisted upward, incredulously. “He did this before he went mad?”

  “Yes, relatively speaking. Zeus insisted that he wander the fields with thunder echoing in his head for eternity. I believe that I could have come up with something a bit more elegant,” he said, his mouth twisting into a dark grin, “but who am I to argue with the King of the Gods?”

  They stood, watching the faceless shadows around them. Persephone shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other before Hades placed his hand on her arm to comfort and steady her.

  “I don’t send many shades here, sweet one. Only the ones who must be in Tartarus are here. Why put an end to the journey of a soul if I don’t have to?”

  Persephone silently looked below at the burning maw stretched out before them, swirling like water. Dark silhouettes of mortal shades rolled in their wake, filling the lake with the wails of the condemned.

  “I’d much rather they gain understanding and do better the next time. It serves all of us far better for them to learn from their mistakes, no?”

  She nodded quietly, his calm words balanced against the torment all around them. The smell of brimstone made her eyes hurt. She thought about poor Merope, whirling about in the fires, battered over and over against the jagged edges and felt sick. She thinned her lips and thought about Sisyphus.

  “We filled these pits with our enemies during the war. Then mortals who spent their lives destroying the lives of others arrived, and I had to do something with them. Asphodel is a place of peace. I certainly couldn’t send them to wander through the Fields with their victims.”

  She cringed for a moment as a faceless shade screamed and clawed at the sides of the gyre before it was swept away, its shadowy form smashing against the rocks as it went around.

  “Do not pity them, Persephone,” he said, squeezing her shoulder firmly. “Every single one earned their place here. Without hope for recourse— Tartarus is reserved for those who unrepentantly murdered, those who violated children, those who were kinslayers, and those who dined on human flesh.”

  “What other sins place someone in the Pit?”

  “A few, mostly related to circumstance. If we sent mortals to Tartarus using the litany of sins the priests and hierophants in the world above have created, then there wouldn’t be a soul left for Asphodel,” he said, shaking his head.

  “But why are those ones set aside?” Persephone said, pointing to the gross repetition of the few not bound to the fires. “Were their crimes different?”

  “Those condemned to the Field of Punishment are the ones that the gods want to make an example of to the living. Each of them is a warning, of sorts. They did no better or worse in life than the ones who burn.”

  Suddenly, the flames opened and spread away from the center just as the Phlegethon had when they entered Tartarus. They circled around the edges of the Pit. Out of their midst rose the hairless crown of a head, then another, fifty each, then the innumerable— or one hundred, she knew— arms of the beings known as Kottos and Gyges. They lifted out of the Pit, the flames and the condemned rolling away from them, not touching the Hundred Handed Ones.

  Their dark skin cracked like dry earth across their broad chests. Their fifty heads housed fifty pairs of eyes shining pale white without irises, yet all focused unequivocally on her. Kore, the girl she had been less than two months ago, screamed and clawed at Persephone’s insides and told her to run as fast and far as she could, but the Queen stayed where she was, swallowed, breathed through her nose, and willed herself to look upon the jailers of the Pit. Instead of running and screaming, the woman that was Persephone contented herself with squeezing her lover’s hand.

  The Hundred Handed Ones bowed to her. Their fifty heads fell in supplication like an avalanche. One of Kottos’s hands pressed to the pathway, reaching out toward her. The sharp iron nail of his smallest finger was as long as one of her feet. Kottos lifted one head and she could make out the barest of pinprick black pupils gazing back at her.

  “Persephone Praxidike Chthonios,” he said, “She Who Destroys the Light. We are your servants, mighty Queen.”

  His multitudinous voice was as deep and grinding as a gristmill. Her spine, her viscera shook at its register. Persephone stood tall and curtsied in response, then watched his body, a mass of limbs and heads attached to his thick torso, rise upright once again. The formalities were done. She stood now before those who could subdue gods and Titans; the ones who had helped her father destroy Typhoeus.

  24.

  “We are surprised to see you here,” Gyges said, fifty smiles showing flashes of teeth. “Especially so soon after your consort received you.”

  Received? she thought. Persephone inhaled slowly, her knees shaking under her long peplos. “I came because I have questions for you and your brothers.”

  “Of why you are here? Of why we call you our queen? Of why we know you even though you took up your mantle such a short time ago?”

  Her thought was to nod meekly in response, but she caught herself and stood tall.

  “Yes,” she said, answering firmly.

  Kottos grinned at her. The maelstrom of shadows and black flame still whirled about the brothers. “Look to your beloved consort beside you.”

  Aidoneus, my love… She debated whether or not the Hundred Handed Ones could hear her thoughts. They wouldn’t be the first beings in the Underworld who could. And if they spoke to her through their thoughts, it would explain how she could have heard them over the cacophony of the Keres. She inclined her head to meet her husband’s eyes. He stayed solemn. Even despite their eyes being lit by the Phlegethon, she could tell that he was looking at her in a way he never had, as though he were studying her distantly. His placid gaze and the contemplation behind it unsettled her.

  I’m just worried that you don’
t want me, as your consort, to be able to just create something like that my first time out. That what I did would somehow make you feel… emasculated… and that you wouldn’t want me afterward, Persephone had said to him. She grew flushed when she remembered his demonstration otherwise.

  Did he see her differently now? Perhaps her fears were unfounded. Then again, he didn’t know the extent of her power, her dominion over this realm, that day. The path through the ether she had opened in Nysa was a theatre trick compared to what they had seen so far in Tartarus.

  The Hundred Handed One continued. “He was given this lot, Praxidike. You, however, were born to rule it. Hades has believed this throughout his reign, at least in part. He knows its full meaning now.”

  Her eyes remained fixed on Hades as Kottos spoke. She thought back to when they were first traveling on the river, and he had silently warned Charon when the boatman asked Persephone about the Phlegethon and the riddle of her own name. She remembered Aidon’s reaction in Nysa when she had opened the ring of fire, and his heartfelt words when they had reconciled after their fight. He had declared her as his equal. Aidoneus knew. Not to what extent, but he knew.

  Persephone turned back to Kottos. “Why me?”

  “For all the aeons of the Tyrant’s rule, the Fates told us we would receive a queen, and that she would govern the hosts of Tartarus. That one is you, Praxidike.”

  “Why do you call me that?” she asked. “I’ve known since I was young that my birth name was Persephone. I didn’t know what it meant in the old tongue until a month ago, but I do know that no one, not even my husband, called me Praxidike before you did. So how do you know that this prophesied Iron Queen is me? What if it is someone else?”

  Gyges laughed at this, his voice shaking the Pit itself. “My queen, you made yourself known to us as soon as you opened a pathway directly to the Pit of Tartarus.”

  “W-what do you mean?”

  “None of the other deathless ones have been able to do that since order was restored at the end of the war. Your father, the King of the Gods, cannot. Your husband, the Lord of Souls, cannot. Even the Lady of the Crossroads, Hecate herself, cannot truly bridge the ethereal reach in the way that you can. When we saw you standing in Nysa, speaking softly to one of the shadows in the Pit as though no boundary between the worlds existed, we knew at once that it was you.”

  Kottos spoke. “So, Iron Queen, when I asked who you were, I was wondering if you know who you really are. You had questions then as you do now, and we have answers for you. You are Praxidike. Before you even took hold in Demeter’s womb, you were prophesied to rule here. The first-born daughter of the Children of Kronos was fated to be our queen. You drank from the Styx before you were born. Because of all these truths, you became Praxidike. The Iron Queen. Aristi Chthonia.”

  “Aristi…?”

  “In the old tongue, it means ‘the greatest of us below the earth’. Why do you think the House of Nyx calls this realm such? After your title? It is because all of this is yours, in truth. The mortals call this place Hadou, the House of Hades, but it was never really his, alone.”

  She stared up at Kottos as he continued.

  “On the contrary, in truth. Hades received this lot because he was sealed to you at the River Styx,” the Hundred Handed One said, watching both King and Queen hold their breath. “Because you were already our queen, the Fates decided that Chthonia should be given to him. Through you alone, Persephone, Hades became its Lord.”

  Aidoneus felt like the air had been knocked out of his lungs. She was their Queen. More so than he ever had claim over the Underworld, she truly ruled here— and not just Tartarus, but all of the Underworld. He tried to hide his shock from Persephone, but it was fruitless. Aidon knew his wife could feel every emotion he had, or would ever have. From the moment he brought her here, the moment he joined with her— Fates, before she was even born, before he was born for that matter, their souls were intertwined. He remembered Charon refusing her coin at the River. To think he’d always been here as little more than a regent, a surrogate. That Tartarus, the Hundred Handed Ones, the Fields of Asphodel, the entire house of Nyx dwelling above and below the Phlegethon, the very palace he himself built… were never truly his. They were hers.

  But you love her, his heart said, you would have made them hers, regardless.

  What Kottos said struck Persephone, and she grew anxious about how her husband must feel. Every conversation she ever had with Aidon up until now repeated in her head— his brief time in the world above, how long it took him to accept rulership of the Underworld, how he came to love this realm, albeit slowly. And now to find out that it was only because of her that he was here in the first place. Persephone wondered just how thoroughly Aidoneus must resent her for condemning him here.

  But hidden under the layers of his unreadable solemnity, there was warmth for her in his eyes. Then, for a moment only as long as was admissible in Tartarus, he smiled at her. What was said in forgetfulness by the shores of the Lethe, what she felt every time he held her, and what she thought in distress when they were attacked by the Keres rushed back to her. It filled her with a peaceful joy she hadn’t felt since she last saw the sun.

  She loved him.

  Persephone loved Aidoneus. She knew it for certain now. Then she panicked, wondering if he had just smiled to cajole her— that it meant nothing more. She feared she was too late and worried that he might cool to her knowing that she, a little girl dancing through the fields of Eleusis mere weeks ago, had stolen his birthright— that he was denied rulership over all, thanks to her.

  “Why was I chosen?” she asked Kottos when words finally returned to her. “There are so many far greater than I. I’m only Kore, a shadow of Demeter.”

  “You are Demeter’s daughter, but you were never her shadow. You are the firstborn of your generation, my queen. Your husband, firstborn of his. Charon the ferryman of the souls, is the firstborn of Nyx who herself was the eldest child of Chaos. My brothers and I were the first children birthed by Gaia and Ouranos. One wonders, Praxidike, about all of us who are here by birthright, here by the will of the Fates. And we wonder, what is the true inheritance in the division of the cosmos?” Kottos asked with fifty smiles. “The Fates know more than we. If you will pardon your humble servant saying so, your mother and father, their siblings and yours, are fools for thinking that Zeus controls the greatest lot and calls himself the God of Gods. For the only god of gods is ananke, the will of the Fates, and ananke has brought those who truly rule the cosmos here— to what the frail deathless ones above amusingly call the Underworld.”

  “K-Kottos, I thank you for your allegiance to me and to my husband, but you should not speak such things,” Persephone said, her mind now filled with more questions than she had answers. She was still vaguely aware of Hades’s hand grasped within hers, unmoving.

  “Forgive my brother’s forwardness,” Gyges said, “but there is a grain of truth in what he said. This is the eternal realm. The mortal world is temporary. Its people live there for but a moment. This place is their true home and birthplace. The gods above are as fleeting as the mortals over which they preside. You and your consort are eternal. The Olympians depend on the mortals who worship them. One day, they too will be forgotten as surely as all the tongues the mortals once spoke and the cities they first built. But you and your consort will endure.”

  “More so,” Kottos continued, “your realm keeps the world above alive and renewing itself. All waking life is but a thin film upon the surface of this world. A balance has existed here for all the years you’ve been alive, Praxidike. You are the one who transcends and connects the worlds. You are the embodiment of balance— born at the war’s end.”

  “Why is that important?”

  “With your birth, the boundary between the worlds was made fixed and immutable. No one can cross over to Tartarus except by way of the Phlegethon, as you and your consort did. Your role, your fate, is bound to those who reside here. Includin
g the Titans. The world above would not, could not survive the Tyrant or his servants being released.”

  “Where are the Titans?”

  Hades gripped her hand almost painfully, forcing her to look up at him. His eyes opened wide and he shook his head at her.

  “Aidon,” she whispered to him. “Please. I’ve come this far.”

  Hades swallowed. It wasn’t as if he could stop her anyway. He sighed and looked up at Kottos. “Is Briareos there?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  He turned to Persephone, his face cold and unreadable. “You know who is held in the deepest part of Tartarus. Please trust me when I say this, my love.” Hades took her free hand in both of his. “You have no idea how dangerous he is. Do not listen to him or believe a word he says. His mind is eternally bent on escaping his bonds and he will tell you— promise you anything, Persephone.”

  My love, she thought. Was it to be said to her after all this as only a forced endearment, now that he knew it was her fault that he was here in the first place? She stared into his eyes. My love. “Are you coming with me?”

  “I would never leave you alone with them. I don’t care whose fated Queen you are.”

  Persephone handed him the torch. He led once more, the path sloping downward into a perfectly round pit, its edges lined with obsidian bricks. Narrow stairs ringed the great circular chamber with an immense basalt column dominating the center. Ixion’s Wheel was far above them now, and Hades’s white torch provided most of the light.

  The stone path ended half way to the bottom and Persephone felt a heaviness like lead in her chest, as though everything were slowed here. Her feet were weighted down. Her body ached. Once they arrived at the last step, Hades handed the torch back to Persephone, her other hand firmly grasped within his. When he glanced at her to see if she was all right, she saw the hardship of descending into this place written across his entire body. Half his life he had been trapped in pain and darkness, then reborn into the long, bloody war fought to imprison those who were now bound here.