“I could ask the same of you! I awoke when you were leaving, and I followed you through the shadows. I was there when you talked to Lord Hades. . . . And then he sent me here directly, after you. Why did you go without me, girl?” He spoke in haste, with emotion. And his anger, she understood, was not directed at herself, but was merely a form of worry.
“I am sorry . . .” she mumbled. “I did not want to disturb you, and I simply had to speak to Hades and tell him what Lady Leonora said—”
“And this could not wait until I was up and at your side?”
“I think I was—afraid,” she replied. “I don’t know what made me rush like that, and I am so sorry! Truly, I did not think! I am an idiot, My Lord!”
She had wanted to say “my love,” but felt a little strange uttering it in front of the girls. Because the whole lot of them came out, peeking through the door, until Lizabette said, “For Heaven’s sake, have His Lordship come indoors already! You’re both standing neither here nor there, and letting in the freezing cold! And yes, you are an idiot, Percy Ayren.”
Beltain stepped through the doorway into Grial’s parlor. “So, is Mistress Grial here?” he asked, glancing around him at the girls and the spots of spilled flour on the floor.
And they all told him. For the next several minutes they were speaking all at once, regaling him with the unbelievable information about Hecate who was Grial.
Beltain and Percy both listened, and Percy finally said, “I am here because Lord Hades wanted me to see Hecate about something.”
“Yes, I know,” Beltain said softly. “I heard.”
“Goodness, have a seat, Your Lordship!” Lizabette fussed meanwhile. And Marie started to clear the pillows and bedding from the sofa.
“Anyone want some tea?” Catrine asked, heading into the kitchen.
“Tea! Ah, now that’s a perfectly splendid thing on a chilly morning like this, dumpling! Let’s all have it!”
Grial’s sonorous ringing voice sounded from the back of the parlor, and the rocking chair was suddenly creaking with motion. . . . Everyone started and turned at the sound of it, and there she was, Grial, or better to say, Hecate, even though she was in her mortal aspect, seated in the wooden rocking chair, and smiling at them with an eccentric grin.
Percy looked and did not know what to say. The same familiar dark eyes, warm and comfortable, the same wildly frizzy hair, the plan coat, her funny wide-brimmed winter hat with its knitted scarf earflaps. . . . Hard to reconcile all this with the notion that this indeed was Hecate.
“Percy!” said Grial or Hecate. “How good to see you again, my dearie! Did Hades send you to me now?”
“I—yes—how did you—” Percy stuttered and was even surprised at herself and her own dumbfounded reaction. Considering how many gods she had met already, why was it so odd to meet Hecate? Maybe because this was motherly Grial, someone she had come to care for and trust like a friend, and it made it oh-so much more peculiar?
“H-Hecate . . .” Percy said. “I am glad to see you, and please forgive me, but I don’t know if I should call you—that is, what should I call you?”
“My dear Persephone Ayren,” said the Goddess, looking at her with her very dark human eyes that were both warm and unreadable, containing somewhere in the very back a bittersweet sorrow. “It matters not what you call me, because I am still Grial, just as you are both Persephone and Percy. So let’s make it simple! Now, tell me, what has happened with the Cobweb Bride? Any progress there? Have we found the poor creature yet?”
And Percy told her the events of the last few days, shyly skipping the part about her new intimacy with Beltain. But as she carefully gleaned over those personal events, it seemed that Grial read precisely through her words and saw into her secret mind and heart. Indeed, a very warm sense of profound understanding emanated from the ageless goddess, as she glanced at Beltain and Percy. Even Beltain, seeing Grial’s wise appraisal, started to blush and averted his normally steady blue eyes.
“. . . And so I am told to ask you for the jar that has the ashes of Melinoë,” Percy concluded. All the girls were staring in rapt curiosity.
There was a pause of silence. Outside the window was a grey overcast morning. Hecate looked at Percy thoughtfully, while her chair continued to rock softly. Creak-creak.
“All right, I will let you have it, my dear child,” Hecate said. “Now, go to the kitchen and look in the pantry, top shelf—no, second shelf from the top. Should be a blue ceramic jar with a cork stopper and a bit of gold glaze. Bring it here.”
Percy nodded and carefully went back to the kitchen, where Catrine was filling the teakettle. She rummaged around the pantry, and found the jar as described—large, cornflower blue like the summer sky, glazed with an iridescent sheen of soft gold. It was indeed stoppered with a wide cork. Percy carefully lifted it and carried it into the parlor.
“That’s it,” said Hecate. “Now, take it to him, and be careful not to drop it. Though, I’ve never opened it myself, so cannot guarantee its contents. My poor divine sister, Persephone—not you, but the Lady of the Underworld—she claims that it contains the ashes of her shadow child—death’s true child. But now, knowing that she was already damaged when she had agreed to give up her daughter, now I can hardly know what to think. Thus, I know not what is inside that dratted jar. . . .”
“Is it possible that Melinoë’s ashes are not there?” Percy asked.
“Everything is possible.” Grial’s eyes watched Percy, unblinking. “But now, you must hurry, dearie. No time to waste! You must be gone from here, from this place, from Letheburg itself! And you must not come back unless you absolutely must!”
“Why is that?” A strange minor chill ran down Percy’s back.
Beltain threw her a concerned glance.
“Because she’s coming!” Hecate said softly, and her eyes appeared momentarily to be staring into space, as though she was not present in the room—as though she was listening to something from beyond, from a great distance that no one else could hear. “Persephone is coming here, in her mortal aspect of the Sovereign, and she will be at the walls of Letheburg within the hour. I have done all I can to fortify this city, and Claere, the dear girl did all the rest. But even with the magical wards set in place, Letheburg, or what’s left of it—what with all the portions that have disappeared and gone down Below—may not stand against the immense army and the power of the Goddess of the Underworld.”
“Oh, no!” Marie made a small, terrified sound, Lizabette stifled an “eek,” and the other girls became very still, like cornered deer.
“Go, child!” Hecate said, rising from her seat. “She must not find you here! For, among other things, she wants you now, and your ability as Death’s Champion. And whatever happens, she must not have it!”
“I—understand,” Percy said, clutching the jar, while Beltain took a step closer to her and placed his hand on her arm.
“And you, young man—” Hecate turned to the black knight. “You take very good care of her, now, you understand? Do not let her slip away again, for the world depends upon both of you to remain together! Hear that, Your Lordship? Never let her out of your sight, sleep with one eye open in case she bolts again, and don’t make me send the puppies after you, because Cerberus has a mean bite!”
“I assure you, I will guard her with my life,” said Lord Beltain Chidair with an intense look.
“Precisely!” Hecate said. “Now, I don’t want to see the two of you in this city ever again! Or at least not while everything in the world is broken. Now, back to Hades you go! And give my divine brother my warm regards! Normally I would send some apple jam too, but that will have to wait for another day.”
And Hecate clapped her hands together.
The world shimmered and was gone.
Percy and Beltain were back in Death’s Keep.
Duke Ian Chidair, known as Hoarfrost, stood on top of a twelve-foot square platform erected for him by the dead, a platform of wood and
rock and compacted snow, balanced atop another platform with wheels, so that it could be dragged around the city walls perimeter, not unlike the siege towers. It allowed him to observe the entirety of the battlefield and the countryside for leagues around the city of Letheburg, to see the low banking fires still burning in spots around the city walls, and mostly a blackened stretch of scorched earth, shaping a moat around the outer pomoerium.
The dead army had scaled the walls in numerous places, but along each spot they were met with an invisible wall of resistance—a wall that had not been there before last noon.
“What’s this, new blasted sorcery!” railed the Blue Duke, his barrel-chested torso covered with a new layer of snow and ice, so that he looked even less a human man and more like a thing carved of frozen water and wood and bracken debris, with a wild brush tangle of hair like an untrimmed hedgerow. “The King of Lethe in his cowardice has no other means of keeping us at bay! First fire, now this invisible witch fence! But never you fear, Osenni, I will find a way past this latest obstacle you set before me, and then I shall drag you from your Palace and your throne like the old wine sack that you are!”
At his side, a few steps away, near the edge of the platform, stood Lady Ignacia Chitain, wearing a fine fur-lined cloak of ermine, with the hood raised closely over her face against the chill wind. She was the only living being outside the city walls, if one was to discount the young boy who handled her carrier birds—and naturally he was never to be counted. All around was the wallowing dead army.
Lady Ignacia had grown strangely inured to the horrifying sight of dead grotesques everywhere she might turn. Men with damaged skulls and deep head wounds, missing limbs, cloven torsos and other mortal damage to their bodies, were moving and working to enact Hoarfrost’s military orders. Their wounds had long since bled out, and were now encrusted with a strangely beautiful, delicate-pink, crystalline layer of frost.
Frost reigning over what had once been blood. . . .
The situation was hardly tolerable in every sense, but Ignacia could only wait for the arrival of her liege, the Sovereign of the Domain. In the meantime, her one task was to keep Hoarfrost docile enough when it came to her own person, and to keep him from inflicting mortal damage to her own body, in a latest outburst of madness. It was a precarious situation at best.
The time was no more than a few hours after dawn, and the sky overhead was grey monochrome infinity. There was no sun to observe through the thickness of cloudmass, and the day promised another snowfall.
“Damn you, rotten cowards!” Hoarfrost cried in the direction of the city walls, taking in a deep swig of air to balloon his lungs. This was in response to seeing a large catapult-hurled boulder come crashing against the sorcerous wall and bouncing back, only to land a few feet from the ranks of the dead army outside the city.
“As soon as Her Brilliance arrives, this so-called sorcery will have no chance against her or you, Your Grace,” said Lady Ignacia in a soothing tone.
Hoarfrost whirled to stare at her. “So you say now, little bird!” he barked. “But you’ve been saying it for days, and yet, where is she, this marvelous Sovereign of yours? How much longer must we wait? I’d hoped to have the city two nights ago, and would’ve had it too, if not for this new infernal witchery! They were weakened, hardly able to keep us back, and even the snow had quenched their firewall. . . . But now, this!”
Ignacia blinked, gathering herself to reply with something comforting and innocuous. But then her gaze happened to span south, and she noticed something at the distant grey horizon.
Movement. . . .
And blood.
She stilled, her breath catching in her throat and a kind of mesmerizing excitement coming to her, for she recognized the seething line of red at the horizon for what it was, the pomegranate color of the Trovadii vanguard.
“She is here!” Ignacia said, continuing to look south and never blinking.
“What did you say?” Hoarfrost swiveled his torso in the direction of her gaze.
“My queen comes . . .” whispered Ignacia in a rapt voice. “See the moving army, there on the horizon! The Sovereign is here!”
“I see blasted nothing!” Hoarfrost said. “But then, what is one to expect to see out of these dead marbles? I expect we shall see them when they approach closer. Wait, ah, I do see! Something crawling in red, yes! She comes in blood, does she not, your Liege?”
“It is the color of Trovadii.”
“And a fine sight for dead eyes it is! About time!”
Meanwhile, the southern horizon was filling up with the red incoming tide. It surged closer, resolving into tiny figures, into precise formations, divisions of cavalry and infantry, and a distant peculiar hum which then became subdued thunder. There was no other sound, not a birdcall, not a creak of a branch, but the strange dull pounding.
They were deep bass drums. The sound they made resonated in the earth and did not echo, because of the dampening snow cover, but it vibrated richly, making the ground tremble. . . .
Or maybe not.
Those were not merely drums, but the pounding of feet in unison, heavy and lifeless limbs like tree trunks set in motion, as the infantry came. And the cavalry, heavier rumble, came in counterpoint.
“Make room, boys! We have company!” Hoarfrost exclaimed, motioning to his own men to part and group alongside the perimeter of their siege. The Lethe dead obeyed him, and there was a slow stirring in the ranks all around, as waves moved in a semblance of order.
Lady Ignacia finally tore her gaze away from the approaching Trovadii and glanced around. She looked up at the city parapets and saw the dead there, massing thickly against the wall of invisible force, and they had all turned around and were staring downward at the newcomers approaching from the south. Beyond the thicket of the dead, up on the battlements, within the safety of their sorcerous wall, the living defenders of Letheburg observed warily the commotion below.
As soon as Percy and Beltain were gone, Hecate adjusted her funny Grial hat, patted down her coat and said to the girls, “Well, dearies, it seems like she is here already, and so I am needed back up on the city wall fortifications.”
“Who is here, your divine—Hec—that is, I mean, Grial?” Lizabette asked.
“Why, Persephone,” Hecate replied. “And I don’t mean our Percy Ayren, but the other one, the immortal with the nasty dead army. You know her as the Sovereign of the Domain. She is now at the walls of Letheburg, and things are about to get a little hot under the collar.”
Marie made a small, terrified sound and bit her knuckle, while Catrine, Niosta and Faeline all looked at her with wide eyes.
“Are you—are you goin’ to be fightin’ her, Grial?” Niosta wiped streaks of leftover flour from her freckled nose.
Hecate made a very loud typical Grial-cackle of laughter. “Goodness gracious! Me, fight? Why, that’s a real lark now, girlie! What do you think I am, an armored cavalry knight? No, I think there’s going to be some pointed conversation, and then possibly a bit of posturing, and diplomatic strong language. And then, just then, which I dearly hope to avoid, there may be a show of power. But fighting? Gracious, no, I certainly hope not!”
“Why is she here?” asked Marie.
“Aye, what does she want here in Letheburg?” Catrine added. “Ain’t there some other fancier place for her to go? Like the Emperor’s Silver Court?”
Hecate shook her head slowly and continued pushing her frizzy hair around the hat’s brim and the scarf flaps. “Apparently not. They say she went right past the Emperor and his Court and headed straight here.”
“So why Letheburg?”
“You do ask a very fine question, ladies.” Hecate looked around them, gifting each girl with a penetrating gaze of her black eyes. “And thus, I am afraid I will have to tell you. But you must promise me to keep this to yourselves and mum’s the word—or is it chrysanthemum?—as far as the neighbors are concerned.”
They all nodded, with very serious, at
tentive expressions.
“You see,” Hecate said very solemnly, “there could be two very good reasons why Persephone wants Letheburg. One of the possible reasons was just removed from the premises, and hence from the city environs, by Percy Ayren, in a blue jar. . . . The other reason—” the Goddess paused. “The other reason is still here, unfortunately. And it cannot be taken away so easily. It’s this.” And Hecate sighed and wearily pointed at her old wooden rocking chair in the corner of the parlor.
The girls stared uncomprehending.
“Beg pardon?” Lizabette said, glaring at the chair and then back at Hecate.
“You mean—your rocker?” Niosta said in absolute disbelief. “She wants your ole’ rocker?”
The Goddess sighed again and nodded. “Yes, ladies, believe it or not, she wants this old thing. But—let me explain. This is not just any old rocker. It is a very special one. It is as ancient as the oldest wood you can imagine, and it is much more than it seems. You see, my dears, this old chair is the only other remaining immortal seat in this mortal world, a means of divine transport from Above to Below. In short, it is a Throne to the Underworld.”
There was complete silence. And then, one by one, the girls slowly stepped back and as far away from the chair in the corner as possible. Marie, finding herself backed to the wall with its colorful wallpaper, whimpered. . . .
“Now, now!” said Hecate. “Nothing to be afraid of, everyone! It’s just a rickety old chair, as far as all of you are concerned. You’ve sat in it dozens of times, all of you, isn’t that so?”
“Yes . . .” Lizabette responded faintly.
“Jupiter’s balls! I was just sittn’ in it today!” cried Niosta.
“Precisely! And nothing happened, pumpkin. So there you have it, perfectly safe for mortals. It’s only when one of us immortals takes a seat that we can travel downstairs, if you get my drift. And yes, this very unusual throne belongs to me. . . . Now, there are two other such thrones in the mortal world, the first one being Death’s Throne of Ivory in the great shadowed Hall of his Keep, and the second being the Sapphire Throne in the Palace of the Sun in the Domain. The Sapphire Throne belongs to Persephone, and she uses it normally. But I am afraid that something has happened to it—it is now just as broken as she is. I felt it happen in the same moment when death stopped, a fatal crack, a profound shutting down—for I am aware of all things that give passage to other places. Indeed, for a hundred years the Sapphire Throne somehow endured and functioned with an earlier hairline crack the making of which I felt also—that first crack came about the instant when Melinoë was brought Above from Below. But now—the Sapphire Throne no longer has the power to transport the gods.”