Cobweb Forest (Cobweb Bride Trilogy) Read online

  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.”

  Percy’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.

  “Yes. You were made to wait here in my Hall because Death, my most limited aspect, was not aware of the whole truth. You have been marked and tainted by the waters of Lethe, but nothing prevents you from departing into the mortal world. You will however carry the taint with you—the taint of mortality and the premature yearning for oblivion.”

  “Good heavens, is that all?” Amaryllis gave a disdainful laugh. “I’ve been yearning for oblivion and relief from this tediousness of being stuck in the mortal coil for as long as I can recall, Lord Hades—indeed, much longer than a few days or weeks.”

  “Your propensity for ennui has indeed been stupendous,” remarked Nathan, glancing at her. “As for me, I’ll take a nice dish of braised beef long before I’d take oblivion.”

  “Take care, mortal maiden,” said Hades very softly, “that you do not yet regret your indifference for life. . . .”

  “She does tend to take many things for granted,” Nathan said. And then he added, “Now that it’s all decided, when may we depart?”

  Percy was about to speak, but Beltain neared her and she again felt his powerful armored frame standing behind her like a wall of safety. “While Death’s Champion searches for the Cobweb Bride, what happens here?” he said. “And what of her, the goddess who is Persephone, the one whom we knew as the Sovereign? Her armies ravage our homeland even now, and the Realm falls before her. Is there any hope of stopping her?”

  “That, I cannot tell you,” Hades said gravely. “Your Realm may fall, and the entire world after it, before she finally comes to knock at my gates here. I can feel her even now, slowly approaching. Even broken as she is, I feel her, always. Even when my mind was not entirely my own, under the influence of Lethe’s waters of oblivion, I felt her as an anonymous entity that compelled me to linger in this shadow Hall, at times confusing my yearning for her with a yearning for the Cobweb Bride. Now, Persephone is moving north. And she comes for me.”

  “What will she do, My Lord?” Percy whispered. “What does she want, really? Conquering the world seems like such an—empty thing.”

  “Conquering the world is nothing. The world is already hers—has always been. She is hurting, even if she does not know it. She may want simple destruction, or she may want revenge for all things she has had to suffer. . . .”

  “What things? This is your wife and consort that we are speaking of, is it not? Have you been beating her, Lord Hades?” Amaryllis inquired archly. “Seriously, what odious manner of revenge might she want to extract from you? And for what?”

  “You do not know of what you speak, O mortal maiden with a bitter tongue,” said the God, “and I may not tell you.”

  “Oh, but Lord Hades, do feel free to enlighten us.”

  “Amaryllis. . . .” Nathan cleared his throat. “You really ought to desist at this point.”

  “Will both of you, Lordships and Ladyships, shut up already?” said Catrine, the freckled urchin. “That is, ahem, beggin’ pardon—but enough, please! Before the Lord Hades strikes us all down for your big an’ fancy fool words! Me, I just wanna be outta here!”

  The Lady and Lord of the Silver Court went immediately silent and stared with amazement at Catrine.

  Percy took the opportunity to speak. “It is indeed time to go, My Lord,” she said to Hades. “How shall we proceed out of this Hall?”

  The Lord of the Underworld was again impassive, his beautiful face becoming a mask. He glanced at all of them, at the Hall of bones and sea of cobwebs high overhead, and then he walked up the dais back to his Throne of Ivory. He sat down, pitch-black and unreal upon the ivory, a study in impossible contrast.

  Unlike his limited Death aspect, Hades sat upon the Pale Throne like a confident master. Where Lord Death reclined, lingered, Hades dominated the seat. Braced hands came to grasp the bone armrests, and his back was straight against the tall chair.

  “Now,” the black God said, “tell me where you would go, all of you. And I will send you there in your next blink. First, all the rest of you. Then, leaving for the last, my Champion. Speak now! But think well, before you decide upon your destination.”

  “Oh dear . . .” Amaryllis said, taking a few paces to stand at Nathan’s side. She then looked up at him.

  “Uhm . . . where to, my dear?” Nathan said, finding himself suddenly at a loss.

  “I suppose we could go home to my Papa’s northern estate in Morphaea, or to your family’s lovely residence near the court in Duorma—”

  “There is no Duorma,” said the black knight. And then he quickly related the events of the city’s disappearance, as had been described to him by the Duke of Plaimes. “The Kingdom of Morphaea is in shambles,” he concluded. “The Sovereign and her Trovadii army have passed through
it on their way north, and the Silver Court is likely besieged.”

  “Where then shall we go?” Nathan’s demeanor was for the first time truly grave and serious.

  “To Silver Court, naturally,” replied Amaryllis.

  “But it is under siege, my dear. We will be in grave danger—”

  “Perfect,” replied the lady. “It is precisely where I would like to be.”

  Nathan signed. “It is surely madness, but then, we have always been the League of Folly, have we not, sweets? Well then. To Silver Court!”

  “Close your eyes, mortals,” Hades said, looking at them with his mesmerizing gaze.

  Amaryllis took Nathan’s hand, and then they both shut their eyes.

  Hades snapped his fingers.

  A small funnel of grey wind appeared out of nowhere, moving like a dust devil, and it spun wildly, growing larger. In seconds it arrived behind Hades and his throne, standing behind him like a wall of moving air. Overhead, the cobwebs billowed wildly, everywhere airborne dust arose from the floor . . . and the jet-black, softly curling hair on top of the God’s head was now moving like undulating snakes. . . .

  Percy had no time to blink more than twice, when Lady Amaryllis and Lord Nathan were simply gone.

  “Who is next?” Hades said softly.

  Regata and Sybil looked at one another, and they stepped forward, fearfully. “Home, Your Divine Lordship,” they said. “That would be Letheburg.”

  “But Letheburg is under siege too! It’s surrounded by a dead army,” Percy reminded them.

  “Yes, my accursed father’s army,” Beltain added. “Duke Hoarfrost and all the undead rabble of the Kingdom of Lethe have gathered outside its walls. Do you really want to go there?”

  “Well, we have nowhere else to go,” red-headed Sybil said. “And besides, Grial’s there too, isn’t she?”

  “Oh, what the hell—Hades—I mean, hell! That, is, beggin’ all pardons!” Catrine said, stepping forward to stand with the others. “Then I’ll go to Letheburg too, since my sis Niosta is there with Grial an’ all. Isn’t that right, Percy?”