Cobweb Forest (Cobweb Bride Trilogy) (17 page)

“Wait, My Lord Hades! What do you mean?” Percy felt panic take over her mind, as the impossible notions rained down upon her like dark blows. “I thought that uniting the Cobweb Bride with her true death would at least begin to heal the world—as you had spoken earlier? But, oh, no
 . . . no, I
understand
at last.
Life
itself is broken.”

“Yes—as you indeed know at last,” Hades said. “If the Cobweb Bride accepts her fate, it will only resume death and dying. Mortals will indeed begin again to die as they always have, true. But it is only
half
of the divine function—
my
half. Persephone’s half still remains damaged, if not completely beyond repair. Persephone must come to me in love in order to create new life. But now—she comes to me in soulless desire, in disdainful hatred and despair, and I wait for her, terrified to the depths of my immortal being of what will become of us, and of the whole world, if—or
when
—she and I come together in union, whether it be here in the temporary place of Shadow or Below, in the Underworld.”

“Oh
 . . . My Lord!” Percy put her hands up to her mouth.

“The worst of it,” Hades continued, “is that even now I know she will come to me. That alone is inevitable, for, even broken, we are mated eternally. All I can do now is attempt to hold her back. For, she must not enter the Underworld—if she does—it is where we are—”

Hades grew silent.

“My Lord Hades,” Percy said. “If there is anything I can do now to help, please tell me what is to be done. I will try again to bring the Cobweb Bride here—”

“No,” he said. “Do not bother, not yet. She is not ready. Instead, you must do another thing for me—for Persephone and myself and the entire world—go to Hecate on my behalf. And bring to me the jar of ashes of my daughter Melinoë. It may be the only thing that could help now, the last resort.”

Percy did not pause even for an instant. “Yes,” she said, “I will do it, gladly! Only, how and where do I go? And how will I know Hecate?”

But the dark God smiled. “Fear not, for you know her already. Now, close your eyes, my Champion. And I will send you to her directly.”

Percy nodded, then took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

And the Hall of bones faded around her.

T
he moment that Percy was gone, a mortal man stepped forth from the shadows of one great ceiling-high bone column in the Hall, and he approached the dais of Death’s Ivory Throne, moving fearlessly through the cobwebs.

The black knight, Lord Beltain Chidair, had been listening to the entire exchange. For he had awakened in their guest boudoir in the D’Arvu villa in Tanathe just in time to see his beloved Percy step into the shadows and disappear, and he followed her immediately, and ended up here.

Beltain was going to call out to Percy and make himself known, and reproach her for leaving him in secret for no good reason, when he heard their conversation, the secrets of Persephone the Goddess and the whole sorrowful story of her loss and madness.

It stunned him, to learn most of this. Hopeless despair was now added to his worry on Percy’s behalf.

“So, mortal man,” Hades said to him, from his seat, glancing with narrowed eyes at the black knight. “You have been listening. Well, what have you learned?”

“Everything!” Beltain exclaimed in leashed anger, and stood before the Lord of the Underworld, ripping cobweb filaments away from himself in futile disdain.

Hades laughed. His deep voice rang in bitter hollow echoes in the infinite Hall. But there was no mirth in it, only darkness of the tomb.

“You have heard only what I have told her who is my Champion. Would it surprise you to know that I have spoken only in the language of her innocence and divulged just enough of the apex of the mountain, the tallest peak, to make her grasp the greater scheme? But know this—the bulk of the mountain reposes in the darkness of opaque mist, and while its tallest peak is visible, the roots of it go deep, the base of it is wide, and the foothills span the world. Thus, there is that much more of the
deep darkness
that had been left unsaid. Do you understand me, mortal man? For I speak to
you
now.”

Beltain listened, his slate-blue eyes unwavering upon the dark God.

“There is infinitely more I have not told her, nor could I ever speak of it to such as herself,” Hades continued. And there was a reflection of black flames licking in his pitch black eyes.

“But you can speak of it to me.” Beltain nodded at last, and a dark flush started to rise in him, for he understood the secret depth of the dark God, and his meaning.

“Yes.”

“Then tell me everything—all of it—that you have not told my Percy. Before I go after my love, before you send me after her, I must know.”

“Come closer,” said the dark God.

Beltain took a step forward, then another.

Hades regarded him with a suddenly lidded gaze, and he whispered, “Take my hand mortal man, touch it, so that you will know.”

Beltain reached forward and placed his large strong fingers upon the midnight skin of the god, upon his slim great fingers with their sharp claws.

Inferno of black fire . . . Ice shock and scalding flames . . . Agony and desire!

It seared him, and Beltain drew back involuntarily, letting go of the Lord of the Underworld and his utter hell. For Hades was burning, and at the same time he was encased in ice—the god was locked in a paradox of intensity, sharp like a razor’s edge and extreme.

Such was the dark God’s inner state of relentless, unrelieved, perfect
desire
.

And knowing it, Beltain felt himself burning also, burning in the dark flames and fierce in his own virile fury. For it came easy to him, this intensity, and it was his already, had he only known it. It took Hades’s touch to awaken him to what was already inside.

“Now you know my secret, mortal,” spoke the pitch-black God. “It is my nature and my curse and my infinite pleasure that I contain this eternal desire inside me, for all of my days, and all of my nights, as I wait for
her
who is my one true love. Only with
her
can this hell desire be quenched. And only for
one night
.”

“What?” Beltain stood before the God, reeling with his own desire, and in such agony of need that he was uncomprehending of what was being said.

“I have told your Percy of our union and the seasons, and how Persephone dies to bring the fruits of our union up Above into the mortal world. But now I tell you of what it is that happens between us, between Persephone and myself.

“The moment in which Persephone appears in the Underworld is the heart of autumn. I instinctively know the instant of her arrival, and I wait for her in the chamber, standing before the empty Black Throne until she materializes like rich pungent smoke from the sky—which in the Underworld is the nether side of the earth, and the roots of only the most ancient trees come to pierce it from above. Her scent arrives first—it is the breath of mortal air and distant extinct summer, a warmth of the fading sun, a crispness of an apple and the pungent juice of a pear, and the ruby seed of the pomegranate.

“My immortal heart begins to beat faster, as the ripe scent of her fills the dark chamber and turns to musk. Soon, her womanly shape is congealed from the tang of the well-plowed fallow earth and the rich smoke of burning wood, and she takes on physical form. When she is Above, Persephone is in her light Aspect, with her ruddy-gold hair and her blue eyes, her alabaster skin. But when she is Below, she is all exquisite darkness. Her hair deepens to bronze and then brown, with silken highlights of the fur of the fox and the bear and the bark of a maple, until it is near black, with only the shadow of rust remaining. Her skin darkens like sandalwood, and then sweetens to chestnut, and her eyes turn from blue sky to brown earth on a night illuminated by a harvest moon. She is like the wood and the forest floor, and she is beautiful, and she is desire itself given female form. . . .

“She opens her eyes and takes her first breath of subterranean darkness, and I am smitten all over again, as I gaze into her eyes. We look at each other, and she rises and comes to me silently. We stand, touching our hands only, locking our gazes, and we do not dare to embrace, not yet—for such is our restriction and secret sorrow. We may not come together yet, not until the heart of winter.

“Thus, we spend our days Below, in talk or silence, in contemplation or laughter, always in near proximity of each other, indeed, close enough to touch, so close that our breaths mingle and we can see the dark pupils of our eyes. We pass time together and we wait. We are waiting for the culmination, for the one night our union is allowed to take place.

“I admit it is a long dreary season, even as it harbors the pending joy of our togetherness, as autumn deepens into winter, and we know with every fiber of our being, every pore, even as we burn together and apart, the slow approach of the Longest Night.”

“All these days and nights, you do not share a bed with her?” asked Beltain, regarding Hades in surprise.

“No,” the Lord of the Underworld replied. “For, we dare not—the same way that you dared not lie down with Percy this last night, and it took all your inner strength to abstain from her body.
 . . .”

“I—” Beltain looked away, frowning with intensity. “I wanted to—”

You wanted to plunge inside her and to move in sweet agony until you died.
 . . .

He was not sure if the dark God had spoken those words, or if it was a lustful echo of what was ringing inside his own mind.

“Why can you not be with your own wife?” the black knight asked then, to distract himself from the scalding flames inside. “How can the laws of the immortal world prevent you so cruelly from this rightful union?”

“Ah, but it is not the laws of the world, but we ourselves,” Hades said. “Persephone and I both know what happens between us, and that it can only happen once, and only in the deepest coldest season, else the intensity of our passion will rip the world asunder.

“And thus it is, that as we fret away the time, and weather the winter, all the while our
need
for each other grows into a single point of absolute desire, sharp like the tip of a needle and the point of a knife. What I tell you next, mortal man, is a divine mystery. And the reason I tell it to you is the same that I gave my Champion Percy—there is not much time left in this world, and I am weakened, and the truth of things may be imparted to whomever would listen.

“The divine mystery is that as winter deepens, so do we, in our unresolved desire. We burn, and in flesh we are turned to coals, the blackest of black, like a hole in the universe, and thus I become my final darkest Aspect, the Black Husband, and she becomes my Black Wife. It is the deepest point of our need and the nadir of our ability to resist our union—the dark point of the universe, just before the end of the cycle.

“What comes next is the Longest Night of the year and the heart of winter. On this night, at last Persephone and I enter our intimate chamber, the deepest and smallest one of the seven in the Underworld. The chamber is hewn directly from the rock of the earth, has walls of black diamond, and is furnished with nothing but a resplendent bed, covered in ebony silk and satin and strewn with pillows. Two torches burn in two sconces on each side of the bed, and the bedposts rise into a canopy of gossamer black silk upon which are affixed small splintered diamonds that serve as subterranean stars.

“We enter the chamber together, wearing robes of flowing darkness, and we cast them aside. Persephone stands nude before me, and her breasts are heavy and weighted like anvils, her womb is the hungry abyss, and her wide hips are black iron. I stand before her and I am all pitch-black night. My muscular body is the side of a mountain, my bursting seed is incandescent, and I am the diamond rock of which the earth was hewn and which supports the weight of the mortal world.

“We reach for each other and we lie on the bed, and at last we do
not hold back
. There is nothing that can be said, for the world ends right there and then, the torches in the chamber go out with a hard snap of rising vacuum, iron grinds with iron, and we are one thing of desire, an impossible
mutual intensity
. I have no memory of flesh, even though our flesh meets. I enter her and I start moving within her, for a brief time. And then I
come
.

“There is a reason it is called the Longest Night. What for your mortal kind is but a few gulping moments of animal ecstasy, is an extended state of sacred elevation for the gods. In your temporal sense, I come for hours, and she too convulses around me in her own dark pleasure. And our pleasure is such that no mortal words can express. I pour my occult seed inside her all the while, enough to restart the mortal world.
 . . .”

“When it is done, Persephone, Demeter’s true offspring, is fertile Mother to All Things. Her womb is full to bursting, quickened with enough virile life force to perform her task when she is reborn Above. As she rises from our marriage bed, her belly is already rounded, even before the new day comes, and her breasts are great and pendulous with the milk of plenty.