Cobweb Forest (Cobweb Bride Trilogy) (2 page)

“There she is, the Cobweb Bride!” said Hades, his voice breaking through the mesmerizing flood of rushing memories. And Percy came to, finding herself upright and back in the Hall of shadows.

The dark God had released her hand and was regarding her.

“You know who
she
is now, do you not?” he said softly.

Percy inhaled deeply and the image from her own memory stood out clear as day in her mind.

Leonora.

How did she not see it before? Lady Leonora D’Arvu was the only maiden among them all to “survive” being freed from the bonds of power. And yet—even
then
she had appeared to Percy to be pale and sickly, as though there was something slightly wrong with her, something off. . . . If it hadn’t been for the fact that she had no death shadow at her side, Percy would have eventually recognized her as someone
dead
.

She realized now that Leonora’s death shadow had been taken from her and attached to Melinoë instead.

But how? And for what purpose?

“Yes,” Percy replied audibly, to answer Hades. And then she added: “We had her, and we let her go.
 . . .”

She then explained to Beltain and the others what she now knew.

Beltain exhaled in frustration. “The Count D’Arvu and his family have gone away at the same time as we did. They are gone into hiding to escape the Sovereign’s wrath—where to, it is unknown,” he mused. “They could be anywhere!”

“Well, this is all very entertaining,” Lady Amaryllis spoke up suddenly. “But surely there must be a reliable way to catch this annoyingly elusive female Bride creature, once and for all? Why not send out one of those infamous Hell Hounds? Cerberus, is it?”

Amaryllis was the fastidious, disdainful, and sarcastic beauty from the Silver Court, dressed in clothing that had at one point been the height of fashion and was now rumpled and dirty from their recent misadventures. She, together with her companion Lord Nathan (even more disheveled than Her Ladyship) and several young girls, had inadvertently found themselves stuck in Death’s Hall after escaping imprisonment in Chidair Keep, sailing in a boat upon the River Lethe, and being “contaminated” by touching the twilight water. Death had told them that they had to remain here until the Cobweb Bride was found and the order of the world restored.

“Indeed! I would really love to get out of this woeful place
 . . .” the dark and handsome yet woefully unkempt and unshaven Lord Nathan said carefully, echoing her. He then glanced sideways, with a rational degree of caution, at both Hades and Demeter . . . who both seemed to regard the mortals with the same level of curiosity with which he himself might have observed a chattering squirrel.

“Oh, yes! I don’t wanna be stuck ’ere forever!” exclaimed a grimy and freckled girl by the name of Catrine.

“Me neither!” blurted Faeline, a small blonde girl dressed in simple village clothing, then put her hand over her mouth and glanced at Hades in abject terror.

The god seemed to observe her fear with amusement—indeed, all of their fears—for a faint smile returned to the corners of his dark chiseled lips.

It was rather curious, thought Percy, but Hades—this grim God of Death, oblivion, the demon Death-Thanatos, the Underworld, and every utter horror known to humankind—seemed to smile and find quite a few things amusing, in the short amount of time that she had been in his divine presence.

And once again he must have read her mind. For the piercing gaze of two impossibly beautiful, pitch-black eyes slithered over her, making her skin prickle and rise in goose bumps.

I am not what you think, Persephone, my sweet Champion. I promise, in the end you will come to know me as I truly am. . . .

Percy blinked, then again found herself trembling. But it was not only fear, no; there was something else, something electric. The same kind of sweet prickling as she felt when she looked at Beltain—

No!

Percy was abruptly horrified at herself. And it was in that moment that she thought she heard divine laughter. In her mind alone Hades laughed, his heavy sensual gaze upon her, slithering dark, overwhelming sweetness.

Do not fear me, not in that way
, his rich, low voice sounded inside her head.
And do not fear yourself. You are mine in your soul’s essence, and thus you are drawn to me, and you respond to me. . . . You are Persephone, and yet you are not. You can never be her, my one and only love, just as I can never be him, your faithful true lover—this man who now stands at your side. You are thus safe from me, my Champion, safe from me and my regard. And he is safe also, the one you truly desire.

He is yours. I relinquish you to him for all of your mortal life.

“. . . Percy!” Beltain was speaking to her, squeezing her shoulders, and she realized she had lost track of time, yet again, in a strange hallucinatory daydream.

But no, it was all the dark God’s doing. He had made it happen, and she was his instrument, and yet she was entirely her own.

And as she glanced at Hades she saw him barely incline his head in acknowledgement.

“My Champion,” said Hades, and this time he spoke out loud so that everyone heard him. “I give you the means now to find this maiden Leonora who had eluded us for so long. Her own death shade will lead you to her. It stands now, lost and forsaken, its natural life bond twisted by dark immortal sorcery, so that it does not know its master.”

And then Hades lifted his hand and he pointed to the pitiful billowing thing, the slate-grey pillar of death smoke, and he said, “Come!”

And immediately the death shadow floated toward the Lord of the Underworld, until it stood before him. It occurred to Percy that no one but Hades and herself—and possibly the Goddess Demeter—could actually see what was taking place.

Hades extended one jet-black finger, and he touched the air where the shadow paused. It reacted to him, as though to a jolt of invisible force, by writhing and contracting, then unfurling once more into the vague human shape that it owned.

“It is done now. It remembers itself and its true mortal bond,” said the God, while everyone stared in confusion. “You must follow it, as you would a hound, and it will obey you in every manner, as do all the other deaths out there.”

“I understand. . . .” Percy reached out with her own hand and called to the vaporous thing with a single thought.

Come to me.
 . . .

The death shadow immediately responded. Like a soft cloud of darkness it started to float toward Percy.

Stop.

The thing obeyed. It now hung in the air halfway between Percy and Hades.

“I assume there is something there,” said Lady Amaryllis with annoyance. “For I see nothing, and it very well better be something.”

“It is here,” Percy spoke, looking before her.

“Aha! Well then, splendid!” Lord Nathan grunted and stood up from the bottom stair of the dais of the throne of bones where he had been reclining, and made a show of stretching. “But why in Hades—that is, begging all pardon of Your Divinity—why must this tedious quest be enacted
yet again
by this poor girl Percy and presumably an invisible ghost, when you are both immortal gods with untold powers? Now that you are free, and no longer bound by Lethe’s odious water and have your godly minds back, why not simply pop on over there as you gods supposedly do, and just grab this Lady Leonora and bring her here? You are gods, are you not? Or are you drunken louts? What is the point of power and immortality if you must employ peasant girls?”

There was silence.

“I would hush now, if I were you, Nathan . . .” Amaryllis whispered, with a very strange expression.

But Hades did not even turn to look at the insolent mortal. His face was now pensive and cold, like beautiful stone.

Instead, it was Demeter who spoke. “Unfortunately I have no influence over the dead. And Lord Hades has limited powers in the world of the living. Furthermore he must remain here at the source, the twilight place that stands at the entrance between the two worlds,” she said, and her bittersweet gentle voice was a warm breeze of ripe summer. “He must guard it . . . and he must prepare now. He must gather all his strength, for the coming struggle with his love.”

The countenance of Hades deepened with tragic gravity, and became even more remote, as the golden Goddess continued: “He alone has the ability to stop her. For my daughter approaches even now, with her armies covered in your mortal blood. Persephone, my lost child, comes to destroy and to conquer and to rule—the worlds Above and Below. And as she is now, he must never allow her back into the Underworld.”

P
ercy’s mind was reeling.

Persephone, her namesake, the terrible Goddess of the Underworld was one and the same as the Sovereign! She was the terrifying dark queen of the Domain, who had caused untold death and suffering and had somehow become what she was now.

She was
broken
.

Those were the first words that Demeter the bright golden Goddess had used to refer to Persephone of the Underworld. What did it mean?

Apparently the gods could always read thoughts, for as Percy thought all this, Demeter replied again. “Something else had happened to her, child, something after I had drunk the water of Lethe. I still do not know what it is, but
something
changed her. Something else other than her already overwhelming, bitter grief.”

“She is wicked! And so frightening
 . . .” Percy said.

“You do not know my Persephone, none of you!” Hades said suddenly, and his voice rang with angry echoes in the deathly Hall. “She was not like this! She had never been like this! The murder, the destruction—yes, I have seen it all in your memories, Percy, you who are my Champion—and none of it makes sense! She was deep in mourning, yes, and so was I, so was my Lady Demeter of the Bright Harvest—it is why we have drunk the waters of Lethe together, all of us, to
forget
. . . . But now—now I am in mourning yet again, this time for my lost love!”

Percy felt a cold heavy weight fill her chest. There were so many unspoken questions, burrowing inside her. “My Lord,” she said. “When I find the Cobweb Bride, and she is reunited with her shadow, will that make everything right again? Will it cure your Persephone? Will it
 . . .
heal
her?”

“No.” Hades looked at her with his tragic eyes. “If you had asked me this question earlier, while I was still under the influence of the River Lethe’s oblivion, I might have answered differently. But now my mind is clear again and I have learned the extent of the destruction. Thus I tell you in truth: no. The resumption of the Dark Harvest will only
begin
to heal the world. Whatever had happened to my love, it is something else entirely.”

“I believe,” spoke Demeter, “that she may be responsible for what has happened to all mortal things, but I do not know how or why. I suspect she herself bound the Cobweb Bride and bound her death to me in paradox of immortality, and thus made all death stop as a result.”

“Once and for all, how does that work, exactly? The death stopping part?” Nathan spoke again, rather fearlessly, scratching his wildly tousled head of dark hair. “What I don’t understand is how can Percy, Death’s Champion, put the dead to rest individually, when death has ceased overall? Why cannot Death—Lord Hades—perform this task himself?”

Hades turned at last, to look in the mortal man’s eyes, and Nathan was transfixed.

“You ask, and I will tell you,” said the black God. “Death is the Dark Harvest. It is my common and best-known function in the scheme of the world. I reap all of you mortals in a continuous sequence of cause and effect. Imagine a mortal harvest of wheat in the fields of your own world. The peasants come out as one, and the land is worked tirelessly by the masses, in orderly fashion, and the wheat is cut and gathered and loaded onto carts. Imagine next, the first sign of inclement weather. If the harvesters do not finish reaping before the storm comes, they are told to stop and return home, for it is useless to work effectively in the rain while the stalks and chaffs of wheat grow heavy and laden with water and the ground turns to mud. The harvest labor has been halted—indeed, the remaining crops are about to be ruined—but an individual harvester, armed with a scythe, can continue working despite the bad weather, if willing. He or she will not get much done, but will manage to do
something
, nevertheless.

“Such is the situation now—Percy is my Harvester, and she may manually reap individual souls on my behalf. But such reaping is not effective, nor can it maintain the eternal order of things in the mortal world. The Dark Harvest itself must resume, a great mechanism of being. The Cobweb Bride is the rainstorm halting the Harvest, and she is a small cog caught in the gears of the machine, a cog that has jammed and now prevents the entire great mechanism from running.”

Hades went silent and looked around him at all the mortals gathered in the Hall.

“It is now time for you to go—all of you.”

“What? We can leave also?” Nathan and Amaryllis spoke in near unison. And the four girls, Catrine, Faeline, Regata and Sybil, exchanged glances of excited relief.