“It has died a thousand times,” said Antony. “Each time one of its heads was cut off, it went to Hades. Now all of its dead selves are here, guarding the doorway to the gods. Only one of the heads is immortal, still living.”
He lashed out, slicing at another striking head. Cleopatra readied herself to run, but then something changed.
The monster was no serpent.
“Stop!” Cleopatra screamed.
It was Selene’s face, appearing out of the dark, her eyes shining, her cheeks rosy. Her child.
Cleopatra took a step forward, and as she did so, Antony’s sword slashed forward across Selene’s face, leaving a long wound.
Cleopatra tore Antony’s sword from his hands and, in moments, had him on his knees.
“How dare you—”
Selene’s mouth opened, wide and shocked, and Cleopatra reached for her.
Selene hissed.
Antony looked up at her, his eyes sad. His skin was nearly transparent now. She could see the wall through his heart.
“We have to go through the beast,” Antony said, and stood, reaching out his hand for his sword. Cleopatra found that she could not let go of it.
Hissing and spitting came from the dark behind her. Cleopatra’s head spun to the side to track the Hydra’s location, and when she turned back again, there were two Antonys.
“Don’t trust him,” Antony said.
“No,” Antony said. “Don’t trust him.”
She still held the sword. The coils of the Hydra slipped past her calves. The invisible areas behind the serpent sparked with intelligence, with evil, and she heard the shifting of the monster’s bones. Her two husbands looked pleadingly at her. One of them stood.
“Follow me,” he said, but she would not. “You know me. I am yours.”
“What are the words?” she asked, her voice scarcely loud enough to be heard. She took a step toward him. He was her husband, surely. His face filled with love for her.
“Te teneo,” said the other Antony.
The false Antony before her hissed, darting forward, venom dripping from his jaws, his mouth open for Antony’s throat. Cleopatra lunged forward and threw herself upon the serpent. A scalding drop of something landed on her arm, and she gasped at the sensation, a blistering fire that did not go out but spread, and lit her fingers like torches.
She screamed in agony, and her husband grabbed her and pulled her from the serpent’s clutches, heaving open the door that led to the lords of Hades, a door gilded with dark metal, glowing with moonstones and black diamonds.
Silence closed around them, a sense of tremendous space, as though they had stepped behind a waterfall and into a cavern. Cleopatra put her hand out and felt Antony beside her.
Only then did she open her eyes.
Their thrones were as tall as buildings, and their robes held the night sky in their folds. In the apex of the chamber’s ceiling, a crescent moon glowed feebly. Cleopatra looked up, shuddering with the pain of the Hydra’s venom.
Persephone’s stony features danced with shadows. She was lit with the cold light of a phosphorescent sea, but her lips were those of a young and beautiful girl, and her eyes shone like the oil the Romans had poured over Cleopatra. Stars hung in her long, twisting hair.
Antony pushed Cleopatra forward.
“I bring you a queen of Egypt,” Antony said.
Cleopatra hesitated for a moment, and then bowed her head.
The goddess bent forward, slowly, and scooped Cleopatra and Antony up in her hand.
“We greet you, queen of Egypt,” Persephone said. She moved her fingers so that her husband could view the two small figures on her palm. “We greet you, though you do not belong in this place. You are not living. You are not dead. We have not seen one such as you here before. The way is hard, and it is not a place most choose to enter.”
“And you? Are you not a king?” The Lord of Hades had a face carved in granite. His voice shook the walls of the chamber, and boulders fell from the ceiling and rolled across the floor.
“No,” said Antony. “I am a soldier.” He stopped, stammering. “I was a soldier.”
Persephone smiled. In her other hand, she held a piece of gleaming black fruit. She put the fruit to her lips and bit into it. Her teeth were pearl white and shone in the dim light of Hades. The fruit dripped crimson juice.
Cleopatra felt a pang of sudden hunger, the first since she’d arrived in the Underworld.
“Well, soldier. Citizen of Hades. What is it you wish? Do you petition for your release? We cannot send you back to the land of the living with your companion. She no longer dwells there.”
Antony looked at Persephone.
“I offer myself,” he said. “Her soul is tied to an Old God. She cannot die, and she does not live. You may use me however you choose. I was a soldier, and many of my former men dwell here. I would organize an army in Hades. Or send me to Tartarus for your amusement. Do with me what you wish. I only ask that you help her regain her soul.”
Cleopatra was horrified. “He is not an offering,” she cried. “That is not what I want!”
“That is true,” said the god. “He is ours already. He is only a shade. You are something else. What do you offer us?”
The god turned his gaze on Cleopatra. His eyes glittered and she was reminded of the Hydra. Could this god be trusted? Could anyone?
“I am a mortal,” she began. “Yet my soul is shared by Sekhmet. I bargained with her, but now I would be free of the bargain.”
Persephone laughed a bitter laugh.
“The gods do not release their prizes easily,” she said, and her husband glanced at her, his eyes flashing. She extended her free hand and placed it upon his thigh. He took her fingers in his and touched them, a strange look of amusement on his face.
He turned to Cleopatra.
“Your goddess is not one of us. I cannot do anything about your soul.”
“Then I wish to stay here with Antony,” Cleopatra said.
“A love story,” said Hades. “And I thought you brought us something new. Do you think all lovers do not ask the same boon?”
Cleopatra felt desperate. Was there nothing for her, then? Would she return to earth and wander, homeless and hopeless? She might take vengeance on Rome, but when that was finished, what would she do? Augustus would die, whether at her hands or simply through the passage of time. Her children would die.
Sekhmet would live and grow stronger. Cleopatra would be a slave to the goddess, feeding her, killing for her. She would never be free.
“Let me die!” she begged. “I have lost my country, my family—”
“As have many. Why are you different?” said Hades, impatient.
“You are dead already,” Persephone informed her, and her voice was gentle. “But you are not for the peace of the grave.”
“The goddess you woke grows stronger,” Hades said. “The banks of Acheron are crowded with the unmourned. Whole villages have died, and none are left to bury the dead. Your goddess is insatiable. She has sent one of her children to hunt on her behalf.”
He motioned over his goblet, and Persephone held Cleopatra and Antony up to look into the liquid therein.
A shooting star fired across the dark surface of the Underlord’s wine and landed, igniting a hillside somewhere on earth. The creature that was left when the fire went cold was something Cleopatra had never seen before, a slicing thing, a sleek and deathly thing, like a cat but also like a shark, like a flame, and also molten metal. It smiled a terrible smile and bounded down the hillside and into a small village, its feet scarcely touching the ground.
In the town the creature entered, a pale inferno consumed each it looked upon. Cleopatra could easily see the flames surrounding each victim, though the victims did not notice them until they began to writhe with pain. They collapsed in the streets, in their doorways, in their beds, and they burned until they were dead.
“This creature aboveground, and the things it has wrou
ght? They are your doing,” the Lord of the Dead told Cleopatra. “You brought them to my country.” She knew he was right.
“You must repair it,” said Persephone.
“She cannot repair it,” her husband said. “It is done. Her goddess will do as she wishes. We do as we wish, do we not?”
“Not always,” said Persephone, and bit into her fruit again, the crimson juice flooding out over her hands. “We do not always do as we wish.”
Hades gazed on his wife for a moment, as though thinking of an old argument.
“I would give everything I have to undo what I have done. I would be free,” Cleopatra said.
Antony looked at Cleopatra. His face was grief-stricken.
“Give her what is left of my strength. I would have her take it.”
Persephone looked at her, glanced at her husband, who nodded, and then she reached down and gave Antony a droplet of the juice she drank. A change came over him. His body became more solid, and his skin flushed.
He turned to Cleopatra, and he was her Antony again, completely, a solid, living man.
He kissed her, and she felt all that he had been in that kiss, all that he had wanted, all that he had dreamed. She felt his strength flowing into her and tried to pull away. It was as though she drank his blood.
Then it was done and she was alone again, in the hand of Persephone. Antony had disappeared. Cleopatra could not keep from crying out.
“Do not fear for him. He has gone back to the Fields of Mourning,” said Persephone.
Cleopatra was startled. “What do you mean? Why isn’t he where the heroes are?”
Hades looked at her. “He did not go to Elysium. He killed himself.”
“For love of you,” Persephone said. “He made Hades ring with crying your name.”
Cleopatra held herself tightly. She would have died of love for Antony, and now their love had kept him from his heaven.
“And I?” Cleopatra managed.
“You go back into the world, dreamer,” said Hades. “You waken.”
“I would ask a favor, then,” said Cleopatra.
The god of the Underworld leaned forward, his eyebrows raised. “There are no favors here. If I do something, I do it because something has been done for me.”
His lady stood up, shaking her head slightly, her face unreadable, and drifted from the throne room.
“You are a strange woman to seek to gamble again with a god after losing so much. A brave woman. Or a fool, perhaps,” said Hades.
“I know what I ask,” said Cleopatra. “And I ask it anyway.”
Hades nodded. “What are your terms?” he asked.
“I will give you Sekhmet’s Slaughterer,” Cleopatra said.
“What use have I for such a creature?” said the god. “It fills my realm with unmourned souls. Death comes for all mortals.”
“Mortals will outwit death,” Cleopatra told him. “You will have need of a servant to bring you citizens. Hades will empty as time passes. The dead will go elsewhere. They will cease to sacrifice to this realm. It is happening in my country. It happened to Sekhmet. I visited her temple, and it was falling to dust. The other temples cannot be far behind. Once, the rituals of mourning were greater, were they not? Blood and honey poured into the earth to feed the dead. Now the shades here languish, starving. Your realm is shrunken. The gods of Egypt are fading because of you and your kind, and the gods of Rome will fade for some other. The Slaughterer will bring you souls when that time comes. It will be a useful servant for you.”
“And if you bring me the Slaughterer, what do you desire in return?” asked Hades, his mouth curling up at the corner. “I cannot imagine it will be a small bargain.”
“My love will go to the Duat. My children, if any of my children have died in this country, if any of my children are already in Hades, will go with him.”
“That is a large request,” Hades replied. “I hold no sway over Egypt’s Underworld.”
“You must bargain, then,” she said. “I desire Antony to go to his place in the Beautiful West. I desire him to go to my heaven, and our children with him.”
“Do you seek to meet him there, queen?” Hades asked. “You cannot. You will not be welcomed in the Duat. The goddess who owns your soul was banished from there, and you will not pass the gates. You do not offer me enough.”
“I am not finished,” Cleopatra said. “I will bring you another. An enemy of your own.”
Hades laughed.
“What enemy?” he asked.
“There is a priestess on earth who brings power to the goddess Hecate. They mean to overthrow you.”
“Hecate,” the god said, smirking. “Hecate has no power. She is a servant to her betters, punished for meddling in affairs that did not concern her. She’s a dog now, chained at the gates. They will not succeed.”
“They will try,” Cleopatra told him. “If I am bested, they will use Sekhmet. My goddess is older than you. Hecate is older as well. Perhaps together, they are stronger.”
Hades sat up in his throne. “They are not stronger.”
“I will bring you the priestess who assists Hecate. I will deliver her to the gates. It is no small task. I ask another boon for it.”
“What is your price?” the god asked.
“I desire the soul of Augustus, emperor of Rome, and I desire it for eternity. He will not go to Elysium. He is no hero. He will travel with me, no matter the mourners, no matter the sacrifices, no matter the prophecies.”
The god of the Dead looked at Cleopatra, his eyes endless depths, and he smiled.
“Will you accept my bargain?” Cleopatra asked.
“I will,” he said. “It is a good bargain.”
Suddenly, there was a quaking, a groaning at the very base of Hades, and a sound of chains dragging across the ground.
14
Dark magic traveled through the corridors while Auðr worked at the fates of those in Krimissa. She looked up, distracted by the sounds coming from Chrysate’s chamber. She had thought the Greek witch was merely working a love spell on the emperor, but now she could hear screaming from her room. The sound had been, at first listen, disguised as the song of nightingales and larks, but Auðr suddenly heard it for what it truly was.
A murder of crows, screeching over a victory.
Auðr moved as quickly as she could toward Chrysate’s chambers, hobbling into the witch’s rooms through the half-open door.
The floor of the chamber was covered with black petals, like ashes left behind after a tremendous fire. Dozens of crows clung to the bed frame, their dark wings unfurling as they looked down into the bed. The curtains were drawn, but the seiðkona could see movement behind them. A shadow shifting in the candlelight, bending over something stretched on the mattress.
The witch’s hand moved. Auðr watched it in silhouette, drawing a line from one end of the figure on the bed and downward.
“You will love me,” Chrysate said.
“Yes,” said the girl.
“You will love only me,” said the witch.
“Yes,” said Selene. There were tears in her voice. A ragged sound in her breath, but her voice was certain and pure.
“None but I will have you,” said the witch, and her voice changed in that moment into something ancient and murderous, the voice of earthquake and landslide, the voice of dead rivers and poisoned flowers. The vicious and brokenhearted hounds of Hades howled beneath her tone.
The crows began to scream their song.
The wind rose up and tore away the curtains, and Auðr saw what they had been hiding, the creature crouched atop Cleopatra’s daughter, and the girl, her skin pale with loss of blood, stretched upon the bed like something already dead. Auðr saw Chrysate’s snarling face, the ravaged skin, the single, glowing green eye, the knotted hanks of hair, the bloodred lips stretched over sharp teeth.
“I sacrifice this child to Hecate!” Chrysate cried. “I take her body for my own, in service to Hecate!”
&nb
sp; The priestess had torn open the girl’s chest and climbed inside, though the girl still lived. The witch’s claws tore still deeper into the girl’s breast, and she began to twist her body into the space beneath Selene’s skin.
Auðr raised her distaff, the fate like a thorny vine wrapping around it. She could feel Hecate in this room. So foolish. She’d been thinking only of Sekhmet and had not noticed what was growing only a few doors away.
“Hecate,” Chrysate whispered, and the girl repeated it. Their voices twisted into spell, pulling at the gates of Hades, pulling at the chain that bound Hecate below the earth, even as Auðr pulled in the opposite direction.
Blackened petals flew and the crows shrieked.
Selene turned her tearstained face toward Auðr and reached out her hand.
“Tell my mother I did not mean to leave her for Rome,” she whispered, her voice ragged.
Clutched in Selene’s hand was the silver box containing Cleopatra.
She threw it, and as it spun through the air, time slowed. The corners of the room flashed with light, the birds on the canopy rose as the wind shook them, and the witch of Thessaly howled with wrath as she leapt for the box.
Cleopatra’s prison tumbled through the open window and clattered onto the stones of the courtyard two stories below.
“NO!” screamed Chrysate, and threw herself out the window after the box, but it was too late. The box was open. Auðr ran to the window and looked out.
There was a moment of stillness, of nothing. It was empty, Auðr thought in terror, and its contents missing. Someone else had stolen them. Had Cleopatra been given to Hecate? If so, there was nothing more to be done. She’d made a terrible mistake, fumbling with the fates of mortals when she should have been spending all the time she had left on binding Cleopatra below the earth. She had seen the possibility of disaster and ignored it. She’d believed Cleopatra might be mistress of her own fate, might split from this and change the future herself.
The ground of the courtyard trembled, and the wailing began, millions of lost souls crying to come to the surface. The air was suddenly scented with asphodel and with the waters of the rivers of Hades. Lethe, with its limitless, soothing black depths, and Styx, whose waters ran with the blood of slaughtered innocents. Acheron, made of salt tears; Cocytus, whose waters wailed like grieving widows; and Phlegethon, whose surface burned with eternal flames.
Queen of Kings Page 30
