Dazzling Brightness

by Roberta Gellis

  The path Hades chose was an easy one. It led away from the outer world at a sharp angle to the passage from which they had entered. Persephone thought Hades was wary as he indicated their path. Perhaps he expected her to cry out against going deeper into the caves, but she felt no reluctance, being utterly content to go anywhere so long as she was with him. Since she was not prepared to admit that, she merely remarked that she hoped there would be no climbing or crawling.

  Hades said he could not promise, he only knew the way was open. When she groaned dramatically, he promised to carry her if the passage became difficult, and she rejected his offer with a show of indignation, commenting that he had already insulted her by saying she was heavy. He assured her blandly that he liked well-fleshed women, and she had turned to him, quite cross, until she saw the gleam in his black eyes, whereupon she said, equally blandly, she was glad of it, since she did like to tuck into a meal. Hades threw up his hands like a fencer who acknowledges a point, and she giggled and asked a perfectly inoffensive question about how Hades lived in Plutos.

  She found his answer so interesting and so evocative of further questions that she was quite surprised when Hades stopped and said they would go down through the rock and be within a short walk of the hot baths. Persephone found sinking into the stone floor more terrifying than passing through it in the passage. It was quite dreadful to see Hades’s feet and legs swallowed up, and she bit her lip and hid her face. Hades patted her comfortingly and, surprisingly, admitted he did not like the look of sinking either.

  They were so long in passing that Persephone would have screamed or wept when she discovered she could not ask Hades if anything were wrong, but she could not scream or weep either. Her mind was a black pit of horror, and she prayed to the Mother for death, which would be far, far preferable to being entombed forever alive, able to think but not to see or hear or feel. That last word saved her from despair and madness because she realized she could feel; a soft pressure slid upward over her body as if she were sinking into mud. Hot mud, too, she thought, and found something new to worry about: whether Hades had misjudged the place and would bring them out into a cavern full of molten lava.

  They came out quite safely, but not as Persephone had begun to imagine, after realizing the heat was growing no more intense, feet first into empty space. Hades laughed for quite some time over that idea when she told him of it, chuckling over a vision of them hanging from the roof with their heads in the rock and dropping, who knew how far, to the floor below. What did happen was that when the sensation of sliding downward stopped, Hades took a single long step sideways and they were out into…Tartarus?

  The great cavern certainly looked like a place of torment. It was barely lit by Hades’s power, except immediately around them, because the roof and walls were so far away, and gouts of steam billowed up with giant hissings from basins worn into the floor by water spilling from cracks in the ceiling. The place smelled of sulfur and hot metal too.

  “Mercy!” Persephone exclaimed. “I said I wanted a hot bath, not to be boiled alive.”

  Hades only laughed and took her free hand, leading her surely past the steaming basins to where an overflow had carved a quiet stream. She could choose her own temperature, he told her, hotter near the center, and cooler, though never cold, as it approached the wall of the cavern, where it disappeared into a jagged crack in the rock already worn smooth near the base.

  He left her to drop the cloak, remove her gown, and enter the knee-deep water, returning a short time later with the cup full of sand as fine as powder. Persephone’s hand half rose to hide her breasts, but she used it instead to take the cup from Hades, who was extending it blindly, his head politely turned away. She did not look around to see where he was but used the sand vigorously to rub away the stains of earth on her hands and more gently on those on her thighs. She was smiling a little when she rose from the water and did not attempt to hide her body while she reached for her gown to dry herself with its cleaner parts.

  That done, she pulled the cloak around her almost regretfully—and not because it was really too warm in the cavern for a cloak. But when she looked around, Hades was nowhere in sight, and she wrinkled her nose, not sure whether she was annoyed or relieved. It never occurred to her to be afraid she had been abandoned, and after a moment’s thought, she knelt beside the stream and washed her gown, slapping it on the rock border as she had been taught to do with the garments of the Corn Goddess.

  Persephone laughed when she thought of her complaint about always being the priestess who had to do the washing, and then again when she remembered Dorkas saying she would need to do no washing when she was Queen of the Dead. But then she sat back on her heels. Surely that remark implied that Dorkas knew she would be taken by Hades. And how had Hades known she would be on that road at that time? Not by chance. No, it was not by chance, because Hades had told her he had caches of food and probably of other essentials like clothes and blankets too. Almost certainly it was Dorkas who had told Hades—no, not Hades, Dorkas was afraid of Hades. She had told Zeus and Zeus had told Hades.

  Absently, Persephone wrung the gown as dry as she could and then sat staring down at it. Dorkas and Zeus had wanted to be rid of her? No, Hades had told her he had asked Zeus for a priestess of the Corn Goddess. But why had Zeus chosen her and suggested abduction? He could have asked her mother to send Aglaia or Dorkas herself—no, not Dorkas. Persephone wrung the gown again. Dorkas was warming Zeus’s bed. In any case, Zeus had not raised the question with her mother at all. He had deliberately exposed himself to the deepest fury of the high priestess of the Corn Goddess by suggesting Hades take her.

  Because he wanted Hades to have a suitable wife? Persephone remembered Hades saying more than once that he was fond of Zeus, and that regard might easily be returned, for Hades, surprising as it might be, was a man easy to love. For a moment Persephone lost the thread of her thought while she considered just how easy she found it to love Hades.

  Zeus, however, was not a woman, and there were many suitable partners for Hades in Olympus. After all, the priestess and wife did not have to be the same woman. Zeus would need more than a desire to see his brother well wed as a reason to incite her mother’s wrath. Which brought Persephone around to her first thought: Zeus wanted to be rid of her, and Dorkas had been willing to help him.

  It was an unsettling notion, and Persephone was grateful when Hades suddenly loomed over her. His hair and beard sparkled with water, and he was carrying his damp tunic in his hand. The wide collar of gem-studded gold looked even more exotic against his pale skin. He caught her eyes resting on it and smiled when they moved away to examine more carefully his well-muscled body, but all he said was, “I can lay your gown out over some hot rocks nearer the center away from the water. It will dry fast there.”

  She started to hand it to him and had a vision of the poor thing all creased and crumpled in ways that would make her body appear thick and ugly. “I would rather lay it out myself,” she said.

  “It is hot,” he warned, but, unlike her mother, did not continue to caution her when she rose to her feet.

  He wore an odd little smile that Persephone did not entirely like as he watched her fold the gown into careful, long pleats, but he made no remarks about it, although he only dropped his own tunic over some nearby rocks. She tchked at his carelessness and smoothed the garment carefully. When she was finished, he led her back into a passage that was brilliant with lit crystal, set the rolled fleeces against the wall so they could sit in comfort, and began to teach her how to grow a layer inside her skin that would allow no energy in or out.

  At first it was surprisingly difficult. Even when she caught the concept of growing an inner skin, she forgot to cover parts of herself and Hades would send out a Need that leapt upon her Gift wherever it was exposed and sucked at it. The gown was dry long before she learned the lesson, and they set out on their way along the crystal-lit passage. Oddly, Persephone found it easier to concentrate on
her inner body when her outer was occupied in a rote task that required no thought. And at last Hades found an image—repulsive though it was—that made the feat possible.

  “It is like a wet bladder in an uneven crock,” he said. “When you fill the bladder, it bends and creases into every irregularity. When it dries, you could create another crock with the same holes and cracks and lumps by pressing clay to the outside of the bladder.”

  She saw it hanging limp, wet and slimy inside her. She filled the bladder with power and felt it expand; filled it fuller, and it snapped into place, sealing her off, heart and mind, from everything. It was a horrible feeling, as if there were a thin wall cutting her off from life. She saw Hades blink, as if he had seen something that shocked him, and then she felt him open his Need into a yawning maw. Previously he had waited for her to say she was ready, but the suddenness of his attack did not affect her.

  Nothing poured out of her wrists, as it had when she had forgotten to include her hands in her protective envelope, or trickled from behind her eyes or from inside her ears. She was aware of everything; she could see, hear, touch, smell, even taste the typical musty coolness of the water-carved passageway through which they passed, but she felt no response to those stimuli. She knew Hades was trying to draw power from her. She saw his black eyes narrow, his brows knit, his lips thin, but she did not feel his Need. Whatever was within her lay quiet, untouched by his effort. Hades smiled and nodded.

  “You have it,” he said.

  His approval brought no pleasure. “Hades,” she whimpered, catching at him, “I am locked inside myself. Let me out. Let me out!”

  He clasped her to him. She could feel his arms around her, feel the warmth of his body, but she felt nothing.

  “Softly, love, softly,” he murmured. “You closed yourself in, only you can unlock yourself. To be open is the easy part.” And he began to suggest images she could use to be rid of the wall inside herself.

  What he said was not necessary. His calm assurance was enough. She had shed the inner skin before he was done talking—emptied it first, then made it thinner, like fine tanned human skin, and finally crumpled it into a little leathery lump, which she stored below her heart. Hades stopped explaining abruptly and Persephone realized he was aware she was open and vulnerable again. Before he could urge her, she had drawn out the crumpled leathery bag, refilled it, and retreated within herself. As before, he knew without telling that she was protected and launched first a most persuasive plea and then a violent assault.

  After she was content with her mastery, they talked about nothing and laughed a great deal, until Hades led her outside again. There was little to be gathered in this valley this early in the spring, although there would be berries and nuts in the autumn. Seemingly in the past it had been gleaned too thoroughly of plants with edible roots and bulbs for those to restore themselves, but Hades brought down two thin hares with his sling and they ate the rather stringy meat with some of the remaining cooked arum.

  “You would eat better if you were willing to let me hunt hudorhaix,” he said when she remarked that her jaws were tired of chewing.

  “We will see,” she replied, but this time she did not shudder at the thought.

  She enjoyed being out, but she did not mind going in again. By now she looked forward every moment to seeing some new marvel of beauty when a passageway opened into a cavern, and she was not disappointed. The shapes and colors into which the rock was carved were infinite. In one small open space, a clear pool held what appeared to be perfect pearls of all sizes, and in another there were huge white crayfish.

  They had those for supper that night, and after eating, Hades began to instruct her on how to control the flow of her power. She found that, which he had apparently thought would be the most difficult, very easy. She had only to imagine little holes in the skin gloves inside her fingers through which the power could ooze and be directed and which she could even shut off temporarily by clenching her fists.

  Nonetheless, she was very tired by the time she had each detail of management perfect and said so. Instead of eagerly spreading the fleeces, Hades looked away. Persephone had just begun to wonder, sick at heart, whether he had found joining their bodies distasteful, when he looked back, his brow furrowed with anxiety.

  “I must tell you—not because I care but because it will be dangerous to you—that when you close off your power…” He looked down at his hands which were tightly clasped in his lap.

  “What?” Persephone breathed, “I saw you look strangely at me when I first did it, and I saw that you knew when I had freed myself from my inner wall. What makes you so uneasy?”

  “You lose much of your beauty,” he said flatly.

  “I see,” she said, equally flatly. “But that is your problem, not mine. Do you want a wife and priestess who is no beauty and shows no trace of a Gift or one who is falsely lovely and might make other mages envious?”

  Hades grinned broadly. “I want a wife and priestess named Persephone no matter how she looks. Beauty is a good thing, but there are many beautiful women, more beautiful than you even when you are enhanced by power. What I have never found is a woman of your charm and wit and courage.”

  “You are a most skillful flatterer,” she said, pleased—until her eyes widened with the realization that he had trapped her into an open admission that she would accept his offer to make her wife and priestess. “Ooohh,” she breathed. “That was a sly trick. Was any of that tale true?”

  He laughed. “Well, the change is slight, but I felt it at once, so another mage might also notice and find a clue to your Gift. Since you cannot live all the time with your power sealed off—” Persephone huddled in on herself at the thought of living totally cut off from life, and Hades put an arm around her. “There is no need for that. Your Gift is only apparent when you give or someone draws from you, apurpose or by accident. Tomorrow, you can try to retain the enhancement of your beauty while binding within you all else. Now we must sleep. You must be very tired.”

  Persephone sighed agreement but roused from her troubled thoughts to ask why Hades was separating the fleeces by a substantial distance—unless, she said, her new ugliness had given him a distaste for her.

  “Do not be a fool,” he snapped. “If I lie with you, I will keep you awake all night. I thought you would want time to heal.”

  “Have you so little self-control?”

  “Yes,” he said rather grimly. “You have only a choice of a hard bed or a hard man.”

  Whereupon they both burst into laughter and Hades piled the fleeces together. As he had foretold, they had a restless night—about which neither complained—and slept late into the third day. Not long after they finally started out, Persephone caught at Hades’s arm and told him that she smelled the moss of a blue-light cave. After some argument, she agreed to let him go ahead and look for trouble. He was soon back, assuring her she would be safe if she stayed near where the passage entered, away from the water.

  Then Hades hunted while Persephone gathered the topmost, tenderest shoots of the spicy moss and a whole basketful of mushrooms. She did not see and did not ask what he had killed. The dripping slabs of meat he unwrapped from layers of moss when they reached a good place to sleep looked no different than those that were carved from cattle by the slaughterers of Olympus, and they tasted delicious when broiled on a bed of red-hot stones.

  More than enough remained for the next day, but proved to be unnecessary, which annoyed Persephone, who would have gladly left the basket behind if she had known. The passage they started into in the morning grew more and more difficult. Twice they had to climb sheer walls by handholds and footholds and once they needed to crawl. Although she made no complaint, Persephone was starting to worry when she had to flatten herself to her belly.

  Then Hades, who had been staring at walls and floors in an abstracted fashion all morning, took them sideways and possibly farther down through a mass of fractured rock. That was, Persephone found, a m
ore horrifying experience than the long descent to the cave of the hot pools because of the intermittent flickering through reality and the non-world of being inside stone. She was somewhat dazed when they came out in a cave of exquisite fluted pillars and crystal-laced walls, but it was not the beauty of the place that fixed her wandering wits. Her eyes had found the one unnatural thing in the place—bundles stacked against the walls.

  A hasty unpacking exposed well-wrapped meat and cheese and bread held fresh by spells, blankets and grass-stuffed pallets, a packet with a fine silver comb and brush and scented creams and oils and fine pumice stones for grooming, and two gowns that made Persephone’s eyes stare with greed.

  “I owe you three more,” Hades said, looking at her from the corner of his eye as he spread them before her.

  Persephone could not help licking her lips, but she did her best to seem indifferent and answered coolly, “Yes, but I do not think either of those will be very practical if we have much more climbing and crawling to do.”

  One gown was a fine rich purple wool with long sleeves bordered in gold, the collar and hem set with pale topazes and bright amethysts. The other was a very dark blue, held with bright pins on each shoulder, of so thin a fabric that Persephone could see her hand as a pale blur though it when she lifted the skirt. It was quite stiff, being embroidered in wide bands with silver thread, but between the bands the wearer’s body would show, barely veiled.

  “I assure you your trials are ended,” Hades said. “This would have been our first night’s stop if we had gone the way I planned. From here, all the passages are easy and all the caverns safe and beautiful. I intended to make my home palatable to you, you know.”

  She looked up from the rich gowns. “In honesty—I will give you my promise to quicken your fields and seed no matter what you tell me—how palatable will Plutos be to me?”