Dazzling Brightness

by Roberta Gellis

  “You may come in, but it is not much warmer inside. I have no fire. I can offer you a blanket in which to wrap yourself. All fear the curse that befell me so much that they will not even buy my clothes and furniture, lest it spread to them from those things.”

  Persephone did not answer that directly, only went through the garden and stood by the door. Pontoporeia followed her, opened the door, and gestured her inside. As she entered, Persephone invoked the spell and poured her power into it. She could feel it spread, like a black coating over the inside of the old woman’s house. She said, “I was asking Eulimine about obtaining fresh fish—”

  “I have no fish. I have no boat—”

  “No, I understand.” Persephone repeated her fabrication about her cantankerous father and her fear of the rough sailors.

  Pontoporeia shrugged. “I will take your copper and bring you a fish together with word of who caught it, if you will give me the head and the tail.”

  “Better buy two fish,” Persephone said. “I dress plainly when I am in the town because I am alone and afraid if I wore rich clothing that someone would rob me, but my father is not a poor man.” She took a handful of copper pieces from her purse, and handed them to the old woman.

  “That is too much,” Pontoporeia said.

  “You are an honest woman, considering your need.” Persephone smiled. “Bring back what remains.”

  As soon as Pontoporeia left, Persephone began to have doubts. If Poseidon really did hate the poor woman for some unknowable reason and a scryer had seen her come here, Poseidon might order that Pontoporeia be seized and questioned. Still, Persephone felt she would have no better chance than this. Sooner or later she would have to make the next move toward freedom, and every day she waited was one day closer to the time when she might be prevented from acting at all or when her message might arrive too late to save Hades or Olympus. At least if Pontoporeia refused, she would have no one to tell about the crazy woman who asked her to carry a message to the King of the Dead.

  That doubt temporarily quieted, Persephone began to plan how to introduce the fearful idea of dealing with the dead. She also realized she must be very careful about the message she asked Pontoporeia to carry. If her doubts had some foundation and the woman was questioned by Poseidon, nothing in the message must implicate Hades. She had barely decided what to say, when the old woman returned. Persephone had not realized quite how close they were to the docks. There was only the steep path down the hill and the short road past the buildings where the salting and pickling was done.

  When Pontoporeia pushed both fish and nearly all the copper across the table toward Persephone, telling her to take the one she preferred, Persephone took the nearest without even looking at it and put it in her basket. She did not want the fish, but needed it to maintain the fabrication about her sick father. She pushed the copper back to Pontoporeia while she dutifully repeated the names of the ship and the captain who had caught the fish.

  When she had those pat, she did not rise but said, “My father is not really just cross. He is very, very sick, and he has a task to perform. I was going to do it, but he is too sick for me to leave him now. Your life here is not happy. If I could arrange for you to leave Aegina and give you gold and jewels enough so that you could live out your life in ease on the mainland, would you take a token and a message to Eleusis for my father?”

  “No ship will carry me,” Pontoporeia said.

  “No ship will carry Pontoporeia, but any ship will carry Lady…er… Halkyon of Eleusis, returning home after a visit to Lady Demeter.”

  The old woman laughed rustily, as if she had not laughed in a very long time. “Who would believe me a lady?”

  “When you are dressed in a fine gown with jewels on your fingers and arms and a golden chaplet to hold down the fine veil that will hide your face from common folk, who will not believe?”

  Pontoporeia stared at Persephone, then looked at her own work-gnarled hands, then back at Persephone. “Rings on these hands?” she muttered.

  “If you hold your veil with the fabric over your hand only the glitter of the gold and jewels will show,” Persephone said impatiently. “Are you telling me that you are willing to carry this message if such small matters can be worked out?”

  “Yes, I am willing, but am I able? This must be an urgent and dangerous message. I am a simple woman. What if I make some mistake?”

  “It is urgent, but not so dangerous or so difficult as you might think. Listen to the end before you deny me. My father has a message that must be delivered to the King of the Dead—”

  “The King of the Dead?” Pontoporeia whispered.

  “Please, I beg you to hear me out. I was just about to say that you need not carry the message to Hades himself. Near Eleusis there are caves in which the living may speak to the dead. I would prefer that you went yourself and gave the token, which is only a small wooden box, and delivered the message directly to the dead who will come to face you, but if you fear the dead, you may ask assistance from King Celeus in a private audience.”

  “Why should I fear the dead, I, whose loved ones are all dead?” Pontoporeia asked slowly, then shook her head. “But I have heard the seamen talk—before I became one of the outcast—and it was said among them that it is no easy task to find that cave. A king might be slow about granting a private audience, not to mention assistance to an unknown woman.”

  “Not if you ask in the name of the Lady Demeter, and say it is she who desires the token and the message to be delivered to the dead. King Celeus will send a messenger if you are afraid to go yourself, or send a guide with you.”

  At the mention of Demeter, Pontoporeia’s expression grew less bleak. She said softly, “In the Lady Demeter’s name? She is one chosen by the Goddess, and our farmers bless her name five times a day. I will serve in her name.” She suddenly stood up and went to the cold fireplace, where a blackened pot sat on the tripod. She picked up the pot and brought it to the table. “Tell me your message,” she said, “and I will go direct with it to King Hades and to all those I love, who are in his realm now. A spoonful of this draught brings me sleep for a few hours, but if I drink it all, I will never wake. I will not need your gold and jewels.”

  “No!” Persephone exclaimed, snatching the pot away. “I am not sending you to your death. The dead in the cave will do you no harm and Hades himself is not dead. If you died, who knows how long you might wander before he would get my father’s message? I cannot take such a chance. You must swear to me by the Mother of All that you will faithfully do as I ask and try no short paths that may lead me and many others to disaster.”

  “What disaster?”

  “The less you know the better, but I can tell you this. The King of the Dead has lost something, and he threatens to wreak great havoc unless it is returned.”

  Pontoporeia stared for a moment at the pot Persephone held and then around the room. Then she sighed. “You are real, and what you say is real. I had begun to think that I was finally mad. But I see the fish on the table. That must be real.” Tears began to run down her face. “Can I ask about my menfolk when I speak to the dead?”

  “So long as you first give the token and speak the message, you may ask anything you like. I cannot promise what kind of answer you will receive. I am not dead, nor my poor father…”

  Persephone’s voice faded as a new, wonderful idea came to her, an idea, if it were properly worked out, that might lead to her escape. She rose hurriedly and said she must go back to her father. If Pontoporeia could find out when a ship—with a captain honest enough not to steal her goods and drop her overboard—was leaving for Eleusis, she would bring the clothing and jewels and the token. As she left, however, she laid her hand on the doorframe and whispered the words that transferred the spell. Her power would fade from it if she left it too long, but she could renew it each time she came.

  Chapter 17

  Hades stared at the tiny jewel-flower that had fallen out of the thistledow
n packing in the small wooden box into his palm. “Tell me the message again,” he said.

  The messenger tried to steady his panting breath. He had run and climbed for nearly a full day, the last of a long relay that had started in the cave near Eleusis nine days earlier. “The words were: The sacrifice was not made to Zeus and cannot be retrieved from him whatever the wrenching. Be patient and the sacrifice will return of itself to you.” Hades nodded. “And who brought the message?” He knew this runner could not have seen the person who carried Persephone’s token and, presumably, her words, but the keeper of the cave at Eleusis should have been alerted by the mention of Zeus’s name to examine the petitioner with care and pass along a description. Only the most devoted and cleverest men and women were allowed to serve as liaison between the dead and the living. They often needed keen wits to deal with half-mad lovers and parents who came to plead for the return of their dear ones, or fools who thought the dead could predict the future or twist fate. The devices used to try to bribe or befool the keepers were myriad, but only rarely did one succeed and the living pass the portal to wander the caves until death—or one of Hades’s patrols—ended the wanderings. This keeper had not failed.

  “A woman brought the message,” the messenger said, his breath coming more evenly. “The keeper said she was old, but strong. Her dress was rich and her jewelry, the keeper thought, was surely made by your hand, but she was startled when she saw the keeper and dropped the veil she had drawn across her face. The keeper said her face and her hands were coarse and worn, a woman who had worked all her life.”

  “Anything else passed along by the keeper?”

  “For herself, the woman asked after a husband and two sons, a father, and a brother, all lost at sea. The keeper spoke the usual comfort about the dead being at peace and unwilling to touch the world of the living again because that caused them pain since she was sure those four were not among the sacrifices made to us.”

  “That was right,” Hades said, but absently, his mind being elsewhere. Rousing himself momentarily in response to the still-heavy breathing of the messenger, he added, “Go now and rest. I have no message to send to Eleusis.”

  His eyes went back to the jewel-flower he was turning between his fingers. He thought it was the one he had used to tempt Persephone, but he had made nearly a score of the pretty trinkets and traded them to Zeus for a herd of cattle. Zeus.

  Hades got to his feet and moved restlessly around the narrow confines of the small dead-end cavern he had chosen as a living space for himself. He had to turn sideways to pass between the chair and the small table, and there was just room for him to pass along the side of the narrow cot. Three steps farther took him to the curtain-hung entrance. He hesitated, tempted to walk down the passage to the larger cavern in which his miners ate and slept, but a freer space to pace was not worth the curiosity his behavior would awaken. He muttered an oath when his knee grazed the bed and turned again, reminding himself that he was usually too tired when he came here to do more than eat and drop into the bed.

  When he came to the curtain again he stopped and stared at it, then lifted his hand and looked down at the jewel-flower he still held. Zeus. His brother had never yet betrayed him, but Zeus had an indifferent reputation. Hades had heard enough of his brother’s deceptions to make him wary, and aside from the war on Kronos and Zeus’s offer of Persephone—which was scarcely reassuring when considering Zeus’s honor—they had had little intercourse of a serious nature. Usually their business was very unimportant, like the trade of cattle or grain for jewels or gold or metals for Hephaestus. Occasionally Zeus had asked Hades to take into Plutos a man or woman whom he did not wish to kill but had to be rid of for political or personal reasons—like Arachne. Only once had one of those made trouble. Hades had been forced to confine Tantalus and finally to kill him, but Zeus had warned him that Tantalus might be incorrigible.

  Hades clenched his hand on the jewel-flower, opened it and clenched it again. This was different. He did not dare trust Zeus when Olympus itself was at stake. It was possible that the message he had received was truly from Persephone, but if it was and she was not in Olympus, why had she not said where she was? On the other hand, the woman who carried the message sounded like a native and it was not very likely Zeus would use a native and send her all the way to Eleusis. But perhaps it was likely. Zeus had a devious mind and might have counted on his brother making the assumption that Eleusis, where Zeus did not have a temple, was an unlikely place. And yet…

  Uttering another oath as he caught his hip on the table, Hades took the three necessary strides, threw back the curtain, and started down the passage. The caverns he had chosen as a kind of camp while he was hollowing out the rock under Olympus, were a full candlemark’s walking time from the city. In a way it was a nuisance, but the caves and passages nearest to the city were sometimes explored, particularly by the older children, and he had wished to be far enough away to be sure there would be no accidental sightings. Just now, he told himself as he set out, he was glad the distance was considerable. By the time he reached the workings under Zeus’s palace, he would have had time to examine all the ramifications of the message he had received.

  Unfortunately, neither the exercise nor the delay brought conviction that the message was genuine. In fact, each step he took made him more furious because he would not believe that Persephone had deliberately failed to say where she was. If he let himself believe that, he must also believe that she did not want him to come to her rescue and that would mean…she did not want him.

  Hades suppressed the thought at once, which left him with the conclusion that the message must be false, a device to delay his coming to rescue his wife.

  Persephone must have told whoever held her—Zeus?—that if she were not released, her husband would come for her. Indeed, an assurance that Zeus was innocent and a vague promise of Persephone’s return would be typical of the first step Zeus would take to fend off his brother’s wrath. But would Zeus have used such an infelicitous word as “sacrifice” in referring to Persephone? Surely only she herself would have thought in those terms. But if the word was hers, then she had deliberately withheld information on who was holding her prisoner and where, and that meant—

  No, it did not mean she did not love him. Hades walked faster, recalling the last day and night they had spent together. He could not doubt the warmth of her kisses, the wild response to his lovemaking. But it was now more than three moons that they had been apart. If another man tempted her… No! She was a prisoner, and the message was false. It had to be, and the only one who could profit from holding her was Zeus.

  Usually Hades made sure what time of day or night it was and where Zeus was before he decided to show himself. This time he did not care. As soon as he sensed above him the forms he recognized as Zeus’s palace, he caught up a ladder, wedged the hooks at the top into the first convenient holds carved into the stone wall, and climbed it, disappearing headfirst into the rock above. He rose from the earth in the inner courtyard of Zeus’s palace with his bared sword in his hand. The lone guard at the door only gaped with voice-stilled fear, the whites of his eyes gleaming in the darkness, his mouth a round black hole.

  “Go and fetch Zeus,” Hades said softly, because if he released what was in him enough to shout, it would escape altogether and melt the ground beneath his own feet, sending him, as well as Zeus’s entire palace, to destruction. “Tell him his brother Hades has a few questions to ask him—and do not tell me it is not your place to disturb your master or I will bury you alive.”

  The guard turned and ran. After a moment Hades followed. He would be in greater danger inside Zeus’s palace than in the courtyard, but he did not wish to give his agile-minded brother even the time it would take to walk from his bedchamber to think up excuses.

  He heard the guard challenged. In the next moment the marble floor turned red and cracked under the challenger’s feet, and he screamed and leapt away, dropping to the ground to tear
at his sandals. The outside guard threw open a door and called, gibbering with terror. Hades heard Zeus’s voice.

  “Go away,” he said, thrusting the man aside as he walked in the open door and slammed it shut behind him.

  Zeus came from an inner chamber clutching a night robe around him just as Hades thrust the locking bar home. He gestured, and crystal lamps fastened to the wall—Hades’s gifts—lit. “Hades!” he exclaimed. “I have been dreading this moment. I do not have her.” He dropped heavily into a chair. “I seem to have been saying that for years. But I do not. I did everything that lying bitch Demeter demanded, but she did not keep her part of the bargain.”

  “And you expect me to believe that you do not know where she is or whether my wife is with her—”

  Zeus looked startled. “Of course I know where they are. Demeter would not return here before Kor—”

  “Do not—” Hades’s voice, cold and quiet as death, cut Zeus off and the tip of Hades’s sword rose a trifle. “Do not call my wife by that name.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Zeus said quickly. “I still think of her as a little girl. Well, Demeter said she would not return here before Queen Persephone joined her, so it was arranged—at least I thought it was arranged—that Hermes bring Queen Persephone to her mother, rest a day, and then bring them both here.”

  “But?”

  Zeus shrugged. “Demeter would not come. She says that Queen Persephone rejects her and that her daughter’s physical presence does not satisfy her demand that they be reunited. Until she and Queen Persephone become one, as they were in the past, Demeter will not come near Olympus nor do the Goddess’s work here.” Hades sheathed his sword and his lips lost some of the grimness that had made them a hard gash in his face. Perhaps the message was true. If Persephone were still trying to convince her mother to return to Olympus, she might not want him to fetch her away, in which case she might not want him to know where she was.