Dazzling Brightness

by Roberta Gellis

  “So you know. But above in Olympus, they do not. For all of Hermes’s brave words, they will not attack Plutos.”

  “Hades,” Persephone said softly, stretching a hand toward him. “Do you not see? They will not attack Plutos. They will attack you! And they will snatch me. You are not the only one who can abduct a woman.”

  Hades laughed again, but he had turned back to face her. “They will not take you by force if they do not want their pretty city swallowed up into the earth.”

  “That is why they will attack you first. They will kill you, Hades, to get at me.” She ran to him and threw her arms around him. “I love you,” she sobbed. “I do not wish to lose you when all I need is a few days or weeks to explain to my mother.” She turned her tear-wet face up to him. “She loves me, Hades. She will not want to see me weep for you and cry day and night of my loneliness and desire. She lost a man she loved. She will let me return to you and then will do the Goddess’s work at Olympus when she understands that Zeus did me the greatest kindness any man can do by giving me the perfect husband. I will tell her I am only happy with you.”

  “Would you cry for loss of me?” he asked.

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  He loosened her arms from around him and pushed her away, but gently and only far enough so he could see her face. “You never said you loved me before—not once in all the time we have been together, not even when you begged me to enter you. Why do you say it now?”

  She sniffed. “Because now I want you to be sure. Before, I wished to dangle the carrot of my confession to keep your big black eyes from looking elsewhere.”

  He shook his head. “If you mean that, you are as mad as your mother.”

  “You are a beautiful man, Hades, and a great mage—and you did not learn to make the kind of love that brings me to plead with you to give yourself to me without knowing other women.” She shrugged. “I thought it could do no harm to leave a little doubt in you so I would have a small extra weapon. I have seen women look at you. If my charms should grow stale with much use—”

  “You are mad. I grow hungrier and more in need of you each day. I can barely allow you to go to your duty in the temple and the far valleys—” He shook his head sharply and dropped the hand that had reached out to draw her close. “No, I cannot believe you. You have snared yourself in your own string of lies. If you were jealous as you claim, you would never leave me to console myself for your absence with Mother alone knows what bevy of beauties.”

  “I do not wish to leave you,” Persephone shrieked, “but I would rather be jealous of a living man than sure of a dead one!” Her eyes filled and the tears ran down her cheeks, but she dashed them away and shook her fist at him. “But if I find that you have taken another woman to our bed while I am gone, I—I will cut it off!”

  Mouth open to protest her denial, Hades choked and then began to laugh. He caught her to him and rested his cheek against her hair. His own eyes were full, but all he said was, “That is worse than cutting off your nose to spite your face.”

  She clung to him, trembling, frightened out of her wits because she realized her furious, if ridiculous, threat had somehow convinced him not only that she loved him but that he must let her go. Reason forced her along the path she herself had suggested, but she had clung to the irrational hope that Hades would propose a compromise, perhaps offer to come with her. She knew that was ridiculous. His presence would drive her mother into hysteria and convince Demeter that her daughter was only saying she loved him out of fear.

  His arms tightened and then one hand slipped down her back to press her closer; the other rose, brushing the side of her breast, touching her ear, and finally lifting her chin so their mouths could meet. He touched her lips with his tongue, delicately, but broke the kiss just as her mouth opened in response.

  “Before you cut it off,” he murmured, smiling although there were two bright streaks on his cheeks and a sparkle of teardrops in his curly beard, “shall we use it?”

  They made love for a very long time. Each unclothed the other bit by bit, kissing, caressing, fixing in memory the feel, smell, taste, and texture of the beloved. Long delayed, the climax that came upon them left them drained and weeping, but with the tears still wet, they reached for each other to begin again.

  When they had driven their flagging bodies into a new response and into a climax as fierce as the first, Hades lay utterly limp, staring at the first image he had set in gems on those walls. It was in the far corner and showed a small, lonely figure staring up into the barely lit immensity of the great cavern. He remembered the utter desolation of that moment—to be all alone even in a world of such beauty was death to the soul. He could not endure it again. He could not!

  With infinite effort, he lifted his hand and laid it on Persephone’s thigh. His first effort to lift himself and turn on his side toward her failed; he simply had not enough strength in his arm, and when he tried again, Persephone whimpered, “We cannot make love forever. Tomorrow will come. Help me, Hades. I am afraid. I do not wish to leave Plutos and become nothing—a Kore—again.”

  His hand tightened on her thigh. “Then do not leave.”

  “Give me a plan—give me even a hope—of saving Olympus from starvation and keeping Zeus and his mages from attacking us and I will not go.”

  “I am not afraid of them.”

  She pushed him away. “Why should you be afraid? You will be dead! The dead are at peace. You will not be troubled by the knowledge that Plutos has fallen into chaos and all those we love are suffering. You will not care that I am a prisoner, racked with grief for loss of you and agony for our people. What have you to fear?”

  “I might not be so easy to kill as you think,” Hades said, feeling a little hurt at the way she dismissed his abilities.

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” she shrieked, pushing herself upright. Do you think my slavery will be made more pleasant by the thought that before you died you managed to kill many people whom I liked? Do you think I will enjoy the thought of bright Apollo, clever Athena, or even wicked Hermes consumed by molten rock or entombed?”

  “I see whom you value more,” he said, also sitting up.

  “Oh, do not be a fool!” She burst into tears and flung herself on him. “You could entomb them all—and my mother with them—for all I care, if I thought we could win. But we cannot, Hades. There are too many. Each we could defeat, even Zeus, but together they are too strong. I would drain myself dry to help you, but it would not be enough, and—”

  “And a great many people beside me would be dead, not only men and women of Olympus.” Hades sighed. “I could not keep my people out of the struggle. Many have power and would try to support me. Aktaion, Sisyphus—Mother help me, I can imagine Arachne and Koios trying to fight.” He sighed again and stared over Persephone’s head at the little, lonely figure in the great cave. “Are you sure you can make your mother agree to stay in Olympus and bless the seed?”

  She looked up at him, eyes tear-drenched and lips down-turned. “She loves me, Hades. She was never cruel to me—nor did she oppress me in the sense you think. She was only trying to save me from”—her voice caught between a sob and a chuckle—“from just the kind of pain I am feeling now and will feel all the time we are apart. When she sees that pain and understands that her abandonment of Olympus is causing it and that you are the only balm and cure, she will agree to let me go and she will do her duty.”

  He was silent for several heartbeats, then asked, “How long must I wait for her to be convinced?”

  Persephone bit her lip. “It will take a little time,” she admitted. “Mother tends to understand only what she wants to understand.” She found a watery smile. “But my mother also does not like to be uncomfortable—and I will see that she is very uncomfortable every minute we spend together. Still, in case she is too stubborn and unreasonable, we must have a set time when I tell her that I am going back to you no matter what she does. After that time
you will come and fetch me back to Plutos.”

  The arm Hades had reflexively placed around her tightened and he drew a deep, deep breath, feeling as if an enormous weight had lifted. The doubt he had felt, despite all her protestations, the fear that she half wanted to return to Olympus and once there might well forget him and prefer to remain, was gone. Curbing his too-ready grasping at relief, he asked, “What set time?”

  “It must be before planting time here, of course, near the spring solstice. That will give me four—no, five—moons to convince my mother. If I can bring her to reason sooner, I will either buy a spell from Hermes and come home myself or send him with a message.” She frowned and then added, “Maybe it would be better not to trust Hermes or Zeus. Could I leave a sign in some cave near Olympus that you could look for? I could then go there and if the sign was gone, wait for you to come for me.”

  “I can make it even simpler. I can set a guard to wait in a cave not far from the temple. Any time you come, the guard can take you to a safe place and send me a signal through the caves. I will come at once.”

  “That is much better.” Persephone nodded. “Just in case mother is more stubborn or Zeus more devious than usual. As it is, we are cutting the time for our own planting rather fine. Our seed must be in a moon or six weeks after the solstice. Some of my priestesses have real power, but I feel it is too soon to allow them to work on their own. And I do not think that without my feeding them the power granted to me by the Goddess, any of them is capable of opening new valleys in addition to her own, which we must do each year. No, I cannot give mother more time than the spring solstice—”

  Hades’s black eyes were bright with laughter. “Good! We will make an anniversary of it. I will abduct you again on the very same day, the spring solstice.”

  “No!” Persephone exclaimed. “If I had not been allowed to leave on my own before then, I would be triply guarded on that day. I am afraid they would be lying in wait for you and hurt you. On the day of the solstice, I will make a public announcement that I have done my duty and now wish to return to my husband and my own realm.”

  “And if they will not let you go even after you demand your freedom?”

  Persephone lifted her head and smiled very sweetly. “I think a little warning might be in order. I am not sure how much you can do without exhausting yourself or frightening them into an attack. Perhaps swallowing up part of the temple—not the part sacred to the Goddess—”

  “I assure you I will not offend the Goddess,” Hades said, also smiling.

  Actually his smile was not nearly as poisonous as Persephone’s because he was feeling more and more cheerful. He was not pleased about losing his wife possibly for as much as half a year, but compared with his first fears, her absence would not be unbearably prolonged. Having a particular day after which he knew she would return was soothing. He could go out each night and watch the waxing and waning of the moon so he would know the time was passing.

  Beside that, he no longer felt helpless. By asking if he could cause part of the temple to be swallowed by the earth, Persephone had reminded him of a mighty weapon he could use against Zeus. When Zeus had convinced him to help overturn Kronos’s rule, he had agreed to lead Zeus’s army through the caves to the great cavern where Kronos imprisoned the slaves of Olympus. He had also agreed to bring his own army—a smaller one but much more dreadful, being made up of the dead—into Olympus “through a different way.”

  Zeus had, of course, assumed that Hades meant a different cave, and Hades did not contradict his devious brother’s mistaken impression. Instead, during the moons while Zeus gathered men and brought them to the agreed-on entrance to the underworld, Hades had hollowed out many places beneath the city—several beneath the palace, one beneath the throne room itself.

  Above those places, he had left a layer of earth and rock thick enough to support the buildings but thin enough for him to pass through—or bespell a small group of men to pass through—quickly. Now, while he waited for the spring solstice, he would have time enough to enlarge those hollows and thin the crust above them without exhausting himself and have his miners brace them so the braces could be destroyed all at once in widely separated places. The buildings would then collapse into the pits below. Oh, yes, they would return Persephone to him.

  He laughed aloud suddenly, realizing that the work below Olympus would bring him near Persephone. He would not dare show himself, or everything Persephone had told her mother would appear to be a lie—and might betray his activities to Zeus—but the notion of being close delighted him. He crushed her to him, eyes alight.

  “And if our little warning is not enough,” he said, “I will bring down half the city.” He kissed her hard before she could protest, which he knew she would do out of a fear of hurting anyone, then let her go and swung his legs out of bed. “Come love. I have just realized that we have not eaten and I have been working very hard. My poor stomach is clapping against my spine.”

  Hades’s increasing good humor frightened Persephone. Despite her occasional fits of jealousy—which were, she had to admit to herself, not owing to anything Hades did but to the self-doubt bred in her over the years in which she was nothing but her mother’s shadow—she did know how strong was Hades’s devotion to her. She knew how lonely he had been in the past and the deep joy he felt in their companionship. Had he been grim and quiet, she would have been content; that was the reaction she expected once he understood the necessity of their parting and set himself to endure.

  Merriment was wrong…unless he had thought of a way to keep her in Plutos. But would he not tell her that? Persephone tried while they were eating to think of a clever way to discover why he was so ready to laugh but she could not, and as he sat sipping at a final cup of wine, she asked him outright whether he had any hope of satisfying Zeus without letting her go. He shook his head.

  “I wish I had. I did think of ignoring your mother entirely and offering to lend you to Olympus during their time of planting—but that would be too hard for you, my darling. You are very strong, but you could not feed their priestesses and then return to Plutos and feed ours.”

  “I never thought of that,” Persephone breathed. “I could. Oh, Hades, I know I could. The Mother would support me. She would give me power, and I would only be parted from you a few weeks.”

  “Would the Goddess accept you in your mother’s stead in her temple? She did not grant power to Aglaia. Remember, this would be year after year. No, my love. If it had been only this once, I might have taken the chance. We would survive in Plutos one more year with tight belts if you could not enliven all of our seed and soil. But I do not give my word and then withdraw it, and I do not believe you could, or would, cheat Olympus or Plutos by half measures. If the Goddess did not support our decision, you would be drained year after year until your power was gone beyond restoration.”

  “But that would not happen. I am sure it would not. The Goddess is good!”

  Hades shook his head firmly. “Such trust is dangerous. We must try first to reconcile your mother. The Goddess is good, but She has Her own rules, and nowhere is writ what is a transgression until someone transgresses. That someone will not be you, Persephone. I would far rather die myself than permit you to be drained to nothingness.”

  Persephone blinked. Was that why Hades was so cheerful? Because if he could not get her back, he would drain himself utterly to bring down Olympus for revenge? He would not then need to face a long lifetime of loneliness. But what of her? Her lips parted to protest, and then she realized that he had already shown her the way to avoid the problem, but it was not a method she could admit to him she intended to use.

  “Yes, of course we must try to convince mother first,” Persephone said hastily to conceal her thoughts. “I had almost forgot that it is mother I must pacify. I keep fearing this is a plot of Zeus’s, but that is ridiculous. It is mother who wants me, not Zeus. Mother did go all the way to Eleusis to ask for me, and Zeus gave me to you to b
e rid of me. Zeus could not want me back, except to satisfy my mother’s demand.”

  She was babbling, covering the thought that Hades might be too honorable to go back on his word, but Zeus was not honorable at all. That, Persephone had decided, absolved her of any silly need to be like Hades. If her mother could not be brought to reason and Zeus planned to hold her, she would offer him her services for that spring, implying that the arrangement might be permanent, if he would let her go home to Plutos. That would not save Olympus from starvation forever, but it would show her whether the Goddess would support her, place her in no danger of being too exhausted if She would not, and give her another year to try to pacify her mother. She stopped speaking when Hades cocked his head at her and smiled at her nervous volubility.

  “I believe it is true that Zeus wanted to be rid of you,” Hades said, leaning across the dishes between them to kiss her. “But you have nothing to fear in any case. He will find any decision of his that keeps you past the spring solstice far too”—he grinned broadly—“earthshaking to cling to for long.”

  “Do not let my prejudice against Zeus make you act unreasonably,” Persephone begged uncertainly.

  Hades pushed back his chair and stood up, holding out a hand to raise her from her seat. “I have told you many times that I am fond of my brother. I have always believed he is fond of me. I do not expect to have to change that view and will certainly not allow your mother’s prejudice—even when spoken through your beautiful lips—to change it for me.”