Cobweb Forest (Cobweb Bride Trilogy) (31 page)

“Well done, Jen!” Percy patted her again, and pressed her in another hug, while her heart slowly started to ache, thinking of her parents and sisters in their suddenly transparent hovel with its badly thatched roof, all fading away. . . .

Jenna turned around and for the first time noticed Beltain, sitting right near the fire. “Oh!” she said. “The Black Knight!”

“And hello to you too, Jenna,” he replied with a light smile, at which Jenna almost shrieked.

“Lordy Lord! He knows my
name!
”

“Well of course he knows your name, Jen, what do you think he is, a dolt? He’s been in our company for days.”

“Oh, Percy! You ain’t afraid of calling the fearsome Black Knight a
dolt?
”

“She’s called me far worse,” Beltain said, taking a swig from the hot mug.

Jenna raised the back of her hand to her mouth.

At which both Percy and Beltain laughed. It was good to laugh innocently, even for a moment, and when it was over, their faces sobered, both of them remembering what was being discussed before Jenna’s untimely interruption.

“It’s so odd, isn’t it!” Jenna said meanwhile, not seeing their darkened mood. “How we all went to be Cobweb Brides, and then none of us turned out to be, and then no one ever found her! Wonder where she is, that dratted Cobweb Bride? It would sure be nice to finally find her and make the world all right again!”

Across the fire, Lady Leonora was watching Jenna speak, staring with her glassy dead eyes. Her expression was unreadable.

Percy threw her one tentative brief glance, then looked away again, not wanting to put her on the spot.

Jenna continued chattering, and wanted to drag Percy with her back the Oarclaven fire, but Percy gently disengaged herself and promised to come by and visit them later.

Eventually Jenna ran off, and went back to her Oarclaven group, frequently turning around and stumbling in the snow, and waving to Percy all the way.

Before they realized it, dusk was here, an early evening in this thick winter overcast.

When the shadows started to coalesce on the other side of the tent, and between the sparse stands of trees, Percy stood up from the fire. Beltain had been holding her hands, warming them both between his large palms, rubbing them to get the blood flowing.

But now she pulled away and she said, “I must go.”

“Percy!” he started to rise after her, but she put her hand on his shoulder gently, pushing in vain against the hard metal armor.

“Beltain, please wait here,” she said. “I promise I will not be gone for long. But I must do this alone.”

There was pain in his eyes. A moment of hard decision.

And then he nodded and sat back and watched her go, with an impassive face.

Percy did not look back because she could not bear to see his eyes. She approached the nearest shadow, and reached out with her death sense.

Immediately there was the familiar grey mist.

She stepped through it.

P
ercy found herself inside Death’s Hall of bones. But immediately she realized that something was wrong.

There was a new quality to the light here, a deepening of dusk. The illumination was low enough that the shadows appeared longer, the dark places pitch-black between the columns stretching in rows unto infinity, and the cobwebs cast a forest of secondary shadows of their own—something that had never been seen in the Hall before.

Cobwebs casting shadows
, she thought.

And where it had been neutral pallor, the dusk hung deep and oppressive.

“Lord Death!” Percy said loudly, suddenly feeling the beginnings of fear. “I am here, Lord Hades!”

For a long time there was no answer. The silence was so thick that Percy could hear the pounding of her own temples.

And then a familiar deep voice replied, only this time he spoke soft as a whisper. His voice failed to raise even a single echo.

“Come to me.
 . . .”

Percy blinked, and she saw the faintest stirring of dust at her feet, as a weak breeze rifled the cobwebs and pointed her in the direction she had to go.

She emerged into the great portion of the Hall, with the ribcage structures rising to the ceiling, the dais in the center, and upon it the great Throne of Ivory.

Percy strained to look at the throne and see
him
, the one who was Death, Lord Hades. She blinked repeatedly, willing her eyes to perceive, and only after several long moments could she see a translucent figure of the one she knew to be Hades, seated in a slouching form upon the chair, hands grasping the armrests in weakness, his head bent forward. There was a look of
mortal
illness about him—which was surely impossible. He exuded abysmal weariness and infirmity of limbs, in the way his hands lay passive, and the head was motionless, fixed in vulnerability. For the first time, the infinite compounded ages of men and gods weighed heavily upon him, wearing down his immortality into a brittle husk.

“My Lord Hades!” Percy exclaimed. And then she rushed forward, forgetting for once the repulsive obstacle of the cobwebs. She stopped before him, having climbed up all the steps of the dais, and he was only a foot away.

My Lord . . . what has become of you?

Her thought was unvoiced, but as always, there was no need for speech.

The dark God was within her mind. Had always been.

My Champion
. . . .

Percy reached out and placed her fingers upon the great swarthy hand with sharp-clawed nails—his supple ethereal skin no longer had the skeletal pallor of Lord Death, but the deeper black hue of Lord Hades.

And immediately she was transported into a serene place without a frame of reference. No up, no down, only unrelieved grey.

It was here she had seen him once as the glorious White Bridegroom, and he had given her a bit of his own heart and his power through a kiss.
 . . .

But there was no White Bridegroom now.

Hades stood before her, a mere shadow of himself. Wan and sickly dark he was, like coals that had partially burned down and had a veneer of white ashes coating them.

“What has happened here, My Lord? What happened to
you?
” Percy said.

“
She
has happened,” the God replied softly. “My love was here and she tried to pass through to the Underworld, and she did not succeed.”

“You stopped Persephone!” Percy exclaimed, hope surging inside her. “It is a good thing, is it not?”

But the dark God’s lips barely moved into a bitter shadow of a smile. “I merely delayed her entry. She will persist and she will enter my kingdom eventually and come unto me, and together she and I will bring this mortal world to its final destruction. But for now—yes, a reprieve. . . . Only, it has cost me, dearly. I am weak, as you can see. And—”

Hades grew silent, watching her with eyes of despair.

“Was this why we ended up in Lethe instead of coming here, all those Tanathe people and Beltain and I? Was your Persephone here at that exact time?”

“Yes. I could not have her see you
 . . . and thus I simply gave all of you passage directly to where you had to go.”

Percy felt the burden of sorrow come upon her like a soft blanket that begins with the illusion of comfort and then weighs more and more with each breath, stifling her.

“Would it help,” she said, “if I brought the Cobweb Bride here
now
, if I
forced
her against her will to come before you? It pains me to think this way, but—I have already forced so many dead to pass on in the battlefields. . . . What is but one more already dead person? Indeed, if her death might restart the normal process of dying in the mortal world, one more normal thing, maybe it might help somehow—”

And Percy grew silent, horrified at her own ruthless thoughts in this grey monochromatic place of serenity.

But Hades continued watching her, and he slowly shook his head with its dark locks and the faint shadows of snakes. “It is too late now. . . . I can no longer
take
the Cobweb Bride in the proper way that would restart the cycle of death in the mortal world.”

“What?” Percy stared in disbelief, while despair was suddenly all around, thick and palpable.

“Look at me,” said the Lord of the Underworld. “I myself am fading from your world Above. Soon, Death, my mortal aspect will be no longer, and I will only be present Below in my darkest aspect.”

“But how?”

“Do you see the White Bridegroom? He is gone now, quenched by the unfulfilled, unrelieved dark stage of my divine function, swallowed up by my immortal need,
darkened
out of existence. Without the White Bridegroom, other mortals can still be put to rest. But the sacred light that is the White Bridegroom is required in order to re-ignite the complete cycle of death.”

“Then there is nothing that can be done?”

Hades fixed a stare of grim intensity upon Percy, and he said, “
You
can still do something. . . . My Champion, it is only
you
alone now who can put the Cobweb Bride to final rest. For you have glimpsed me as I have been once, a pure
white light
that no mortal might see without passing on—you are the only mortal who have seen me thus and have not died. You carry it inside you now, together with my power. And you can
show
her the White Bridegroom in the moment of passing.”

“But—but what if I cannot do it properly?” Percy was numb with cold at the implications of what she had just heard. “What if I do it
wrong?
”

“Then she will simply be put to rest as all the others. And the natural divine function that is the cycle of death in your mortal world will still be
frozen in place
, stuck because of a small cog stopping the great machine, with nothing ever to restart it—not even all the gods put together, myself included.”

“How is that possible?” Percy exclaimed in sudden anger. “Holy Lord! What manner of bizarre, idiotic world order and Divine Scheme this is, that a single act of one puny mortal such as myself can determine the fate of the rest of the world?”

At this Hades smiled. “Ah, but such is the intricacy, the complexity of the divine mystery that each
act
of each tiny
being
determines the direction and fortune of the
many
, and indeed the
all
. It is rather a perfect Divine Scheme actually, for it guarantees that nothing is ever insignificant, and everything has consequences. Every tiny motion of the tiniest mote in the infinite sea of celestial spheres and here on earth affects the rest of the universe. Some acts and motions are puny in the greater scheme of things and appear to be swallowed by the sheer size of the universe even though they ultimately affect the balance, while others—such as this one possible act set before you, Percy—might be the most important act of all. Make the choice, and you might restart death. Do nothing, and nothing will be the end result—for all.”

“My mother once told me and Belle and Patty the story of Atlas who carried the Heavenly Sphere upon his shoulders,” Percy mused. “And there was the hero Hercules who briefly relieved him. If I might remind you, My Lord, that while
you
might be akin to Atlas, I am definitely not Hercules—”

“I
knew
both Atlas and Hercules. And no, you’re not, and neither am I,” the dark God replied. “Indeed, you are yourself, and it makes you the best one to do what must be done.”

“Since I am once again talking inside my own head, and all of this is not real, would you mind humoring me a bit more? Tell me where my mother is now. And my sisters, and my father! Where do the pieces of the world go when they fade and disappear?”

“Where do you think? Ah, but you know already. . . . Everything has gone to
me
. It is here, Below.”

“In the Underworld? But you have told me once, Lord Hades, that the Underworld is but a small place consisting of a house with seven rooms!”

The gaze of his eyes was causing her to experience a new vertigo. Was it his hair or snakes undulating lightly around him? Percy was quickly losing the last of her sense of reference.

“The Underworld
was
a small place, before. And now—now it has been
changed
by all the events of the mortal world. It holds more than you can imagine. And it holds less—for it too has been transformed by Persephone, my
changed
love.”

Percy was blinking hard, for everything was starting to turn, and the already translucent form of Hades was fading rapidly into the universal grey.

“Go and do what you must, My Champion,” he whispered. “The Cobweb Bride is your task now.”

“But my mother and father are in the Underworld! And my sisters—”