Hekate's eyes saw and did not see what seemed a stack of rags supported by a short stick that had wavered close and was about to fall on her. Dionysos shouted. Kabeiros was trying desperately to fling away the arm that was caught in his teeth.
It was too late. Out of the heap of rags came a long thin knife. Unable to stop, Hekate said two more words of the spell, three . . . insanely wondering whether the knife or the burning of the power would kill her first. The knife flashed down, missing her arm by a fingerwidth, to plunge into the base of Perses' throat, to be drawn viciously right and left to an accompaniment of thin, high shrieks.
Another shriek echoed, this one deeper, a man's, somewhat muffled as if his mouth was full. Hekate fought a terrible pain in her throat to complete the spell, but the intolerable flood of power into her had already stopped. The bundle of rags collapsed. Hekate frantically pulled her arms away from the blood that poured from Perses' slit throat.
Dionysos got unsteadily to his feet and staggered toward the pile—Hekate on the bottom, Perses atop her, and then the heap of rags. He picked up whatever it was the rags covered and tossed it aside, crying, "Hekate. Hekate. Are you all right?"
But Hekate could not have answered even if the bodies atop her had not deprived her of breath to speak. When she originally grasped Perses around the neck, she had turned her head to the right so her mouth would not accidentally take in the few strands of Perses' rank hair as she spoke the spell. At the moment the knife had ended Perses' life and the thin shrieks had issued from the heap of rags, she had seen the man Kabeiros appear on his hands and knees with Perses' arm in his mouth. A shock of joy mingled with an agony of loss deprived her of any ability to respond to Dionysos.
A moment later, Kabeiros had used a hand to free himself and flung the arm away, retching once and then swallowing down his bile to crawl—not trusting his balance—to Hekate. Dionysos was already pulling Perses' body off her; Kabeiros helped by shoving from his side and then lifting the crone to a sitting position. She shifted form in his arms, and he nearly dropped her because of the change in weight. Their gazes locked, tears filling both pairs of eyes.
Oblivious of the emotions racking them, Dionysos squatted on his heels beside them. He blew out a deep breath. "I'm so glad you are you again, Hekate. I thought your father had sucked out your life and made you old. I forgot all my good resolutions and threw everything I had at him." Past shock was mirrored anew in his eyes. "He should have died. . . ."
Hekate turned her head and put out a hand, which he took. "It's just as well you acted on instinct, Dionysos," she said. "I nearly killed us all by my hesitation."
"You were afraid," Kabeiros murmured, clutching her tighter to him.
"No," Hekate said quickly, then paused to think, and said much more surely, "No. I wasn't afraid. I was so surprised to see an old, old man that everything I planned went out of my head. But he wasn't old inside. He was as tough and strong as ever."
Dionysos nodded tiredly. "That was quite a fight," he said, "and it took all three of us to bring him down." He sighed. "I took him by surprise with my first blast, but when he started to fight back, I couldn't have held him if Kabeiros hadn't grabbed his arm. Even so, it's lucky I wasn't using magic. I couldn't have said a word after that first spell hit me. It went right through my shields; I could hardly breathe." He shook his head. "And despite all my power, even with the dog ripping off his hand, he still had me walled out from some deep inner part of himself. But then I felt him begin to weaken. That was when you began the draining spell, Hekate." He hesitated and then said softly. "That wouldn't have finished him, would it?"
"No," Hekate whispered. "It would have finished me. His power would have burned me out, killed me." She shuddered. "He had so much power, so much, all wrenched out of the dying agonies of so many, and it was all pouring into me." She closed her eyes. "Blood magic. All blood magic. All that pain. All that fear. All those lives . . ." She shuddered again. "I don't know how I will ever cleanse myself of the filth that poured into me." She buried her face in Kabieros' naked breast and wept helplessly.
"You will take it to the Mother," Kabeiros said softly, stroking her hair. "You will offer it up to Her. She will make you clean." Then a tension came into the arm that was holding her and Kabeiros' other hand froze on her hair. "Who killed him?" he asked, looking over Hekate's head at Dionysos and then beyond him to the pile of rags on the floor.
"It looked to me like an animated heap of rags," Dionysos said, turning around to look. "It still looks like that. Do you think there's anything underneath?"
"Wait, let me," Hekate said. "If it's some trap spell set to catch Perses when he was already distracted, I can probably disarm it."
Shakily Hekate and Kabeiros climbed to their feet, leaning on each other. Dionysos came to steady them both, although he, too, was trembling in the aftermath of his struggle with Perses. They stepped around the body, which had a strange, flaccid look, and turned their eyes to the limp pile of rags. Cautiously, Hekate bent down and touched a finger to them.
"No magic," she said, and sank to her knees to pull away what might have been veils at the top of the heap.
Then she stared at what she had exposed. A face so worn and wizened that the features were unrecognizable. She pulled the rags aside further to see better, and gasped. On the neck was a gaping wound with cuts to either side . . . Hekate's head whipped around to look at Perses. The wounds were identical . . . but no one had touched the creature festooned in rags and no blood had flowed from these wounds.
"Bespelled. Whoever that was was bespelled so that whatever happened to Perses also happend to him . . . her."
Suddenly Hekate remembered the pain in her own throat. She, too, had once been bespelled to suffer what Perses suffered. She raised a hand to feel her neck, but there was no wound in it. She had not inflicted the wound; perhaps that was what saved her. No, more likely when she freed herself from the compulsion against doing magic she had severely weakened the spell of concurrence. She bent lower to look again at the still face surrounded by rags and slowly her eyes widened in horror.
"Asterie?" she whispered. "Mama?"
"Oh dear Mother," Kabeiros breathed, kneeling down beside her. "Oh, Hekate, poor Hekate." He put one arm around her and with his other hand drew her head aside so she was not looking at the dead face.
Hekate didn't resist, but she stared into nothing. "I should have come back sooner. Perhaps if I had, I could have saved her."
"How much sooner?" Dionysos asked harshly. "This didn't happen in a year or two, and if you had come back without the draining spell what good would you have done? I asked you when you wanted to chase after Kabeiros how it would have benefited him if you were dead or enslaved. I ask you that again. In what way would your mother have benefited if you had confronted Perses without a weapon and died or been enslaved?"
"Hekate, she was lost already, long, long before," Kabeiros added. "You told me in the caves of the dead that when you left your father's house your mother was dead to you, had been for several years."
"But she gathered enough of herself to send me a warning," Hekate whispered.
"Yes, and she saved enough of herself to find that knife and hone it and, in the end, use it. But do you think there was really a thinking, feeling person under those rags?"
Hekate freed herself from Kabeiros' restraining hand and looked at the old woman again. "She's smiling," Hekate said, and began to sob heavily.
Kabeiros sighed. "Perhaps there was enough mind, enough person to be glad she had acted and was free. When I was slipping away into the dog, a stimulus could bring back the man for a moment or two. But then I was a dog again and forgot I had ever been a man."
"But you were saved, made a man again by entering the caves of the dead. If I had acted sooner, I might have saved her."
"No, Hekate. If I had stayed a dog any longer I would have been a dog in a man's body when I reached the caves of the dead. I almost was. It took me months, years, to escape from the dog . . . and I'm not sure I've completely escaped. I . . . even now I yearn for the dog." He gritted his teeth.
"Hekate, you're being a fool." Dionysos' voice was sharp. "Say there was some of your mother left in the body Perses so misused. Think of the effort she made to warn you you must run. Think what she would have felt if you returned to save her and lost yourself. Was that what she would have wanted? Do you think it would have added comfort to her remaining years with Perses to know you had died or were enslaved for her sake?"
Hekate covered the face she could barely recognize and stood up. Her lips quivered toward a smile. "My little Dionysos, you're quite right. To return before I was ready would have rendered worthless all my mother's sacrifice. Let me hold to my heart the look of peace and pleasure on her face. But you, who made you so wise?"
"Oh, Ariadne. She and you should be friends of the heart. She, like you, is always beating herself for not being wiser, quicker, not sacrificing herself more completely whether for a useful purpose or not. I think I have learned and used every argument there is to counter self-blame."
Hekate was about to reply when Kabeiros pulled at her. "We need to leave here," he said. "I may not be a dog any longer, but even my man's nose can no longer bear the stench here."
Awakened to an uncomfortable reality, Hekate looked around. The contorted creatures had mostly fallen as the spells fixing them in place had been drawn out. The stasis that had preserved them had also vanished, and they had begun to rot at an accelerated rate. Perses, too, had been in a sense preserved by magic, which was now gone. He was also rotting, his body liquefying and leaking an incredibly foul ooze.
"What can we do?" Hekate asked, swallowing sickly.
"Burn them," Dionysos said. "Burn it all. I can't imagine that there's anything here you want to keep. There must be oil in the kitchen or somewhere. If not, I'll go out and buy some. There's furniture up above. Fetch down what you can carry, Kabeiros, and clothes and hangings. We'll soak them in oil, and let it all burn."
Some frantic hours ensued. Still feeling soiled beyond bearing, Hekate left the men to the cleansing of the hidden workroom while she fled to the shrine in the forest. There she wept for her mother and accepted what she had known since she left Perses' house so many years before—that Asterie was beyond saving and lost to her.
Then she begged to be purified . . . and fell fast asleep. She never knew whether that sleep was the Mother's doing or whether it was a natural result of the terror, exhaustion, and grief she had suffered; however, when she woke not much later by the sun's decline, she knew exactly what to do with Perses' power, which now seemed to be in a tight ball separate from her power and her being. There was a remaining weight hanging about her, another sorrow to accept, but for now she must put that aside and attend to smaller but more immediate problems.
She returned to the house through the long rays of the sun gilding the fields, and went through it seeking servants or anyone else in the place. She released the doorman both physically and then from the compulsion spell that bound him and the five other servants. She told them that Perses was dead, that she was his daughter and now the mistress of the property—which Mahound, the doorman, confirmed. She told them also that they were free, but even after being relieved of their compulsion spells they could not imagine doing anything except living in that house and caring for it. They were more terrified of freedom than they were of slavery.
Most of all they feared she would blame them for the condition of the house. The master had ordered it, they said. He had not told them why, but he had told them he wanted the house to look abandoned. They were not to water the plants in the courtyard or care for the garden or dust or sweep the rooms, only to cook for him and prepare baths when he ordered them and keep his clothing clean and repaired.
Hekate understood, even if they did not. He had intended to work sorcery in his workroom, but wished to keep that a secret, and the best way was to make it seem that no one lived in the house. As to his discomfort, it would be brief and minimal, since most of the time he intended to live in royal luxury as the king of Byblos.
Then Dionysos came to fetch her, and she went down to the workroom, thankful that the mage lights on the walls were set spells that needed renewing occasionally but did not draw their power from Perses. She opened the door, which the men had closed to hold down the stench; she had to hold her breath, but she saw that one of them had brought down a divan and lifted her mother's body to that. She whispered, "Mother take you and reward you, Mama." And then. "Burn!" Drawing out and willing fire with all the blood-magic power that Perses had gathered. "Burn! Burn!"
Dionysos pulled her back from the inferno she had created and slammed the outer door of the passage shut. He sighed. "At least we don't have to worry about the fire spreading. It doesn't even matter if it burns through the door. It isn't going anywhere." He looked up the long flight of stairs and sighed again. "I'm tired," he admitted, as they started to climb up. "Do we have to go back to Byblos tonight?"
"No," Hekate said. "I hope you and Kabeiros didn't burn all the beds and the bedding, but if you did we can get some from the servants, I suppose. And the servants will be delighted to provide us with a meal." She frowned. "I told them they were free, but they wept and pleaded not to go. They want to stay here and go on being servants."
"Then let them serve," Dionysos said, shrugging. "Fix a homeplace for a leaping spell here. If you come once or twice a year to collect rents and the yield of the farms, the servants will be happy, you can keep an eye on the young king in Byblos, and you can have me and Ariadne as guests. There's lots of wine-making around here." He hesitated and then said, "Unless you can't bear to be here?"
Hekate thought that over for a few moments and then shook her head. "No. There was enough good in the early years when my mother was teaching me in the shrine in the forest. I liked the house then, and I always liked the garden and the forest. My father didn't bother with me much when I was young—except to teach me to speak mind-to-mind and—" her lips thinned "—to put his compulsion spells on me. But I didn't know about those until long after I left the house." She shrugged. "I wouldn't want to live here all the time, but for a few nights now and again to see to the farms and the servants, it will be fine. Actually it would be best if you could consider the house yours, Dionysos. I'll come as the guest. I can fix a spell for you that will give you a homeplace here. We can pay Hermes later."
He grinned. "I hoped you'd say that. This is close enough for me to visit my aunt—" his grin broadened "—that'll give her a shock. I'd like to see the Nymphae, too, and to visit my temples here and show them to Ariadne. Yes, I'll be here often enough to let you know if anything is going wrong that you have to look to."
They had reached the top of the stair by then. Hekate went through the door, turned to face it, murmured a sealing spell, and lifted her hand to complete it with a gesture. She stopped suddenly and dismissed the spell. "Sweet Hades," she said, "I almost sealed Kabeiros . . ." Her voice checked and she swallowed. "Kabeiros isn't a dog any more." She swallowed again. "Where is Kabeiros, Dionysos?"
"I don't know." Dionysos frowned. "He insisted on carrying down that divan—it's a miracle that we both didn't end up at the bottom of the hole—and laying your mother on it. He said you wouldn't want her on the floor with the other decaying monsters. And he said to tell you that she . . . her body wasn't rotting like the others. But when we came up, he went out. Maybe he went to wash the stink off him. Even as a man his nose is more sensitive than mine, I think."
She managed to say, "Thank you, Dionysos. Would you do another favor for me and tell the servants to clean rooms for us and prepare a meal? I'll set them to restoring the courtyard and garden tomorrow."
He agreed easily and turned in the direction she pointed out as where the kitchen was. She even managed a brief smile before she ran out the door. Inside, her heart was like a lead weight in her chest. He's gone, she thought. He couldn't even bear to wait to bid me farewell. But I must take some leave of him, I must. I must see him once more, at least once more . . .
Outside she stopped, shaking. It was growing dark. I'll never find him in the dark, she thought, but I must. Deep within she wailed *Kabeiros. Kabeiros.*
*I am here,* he replied.
Hekate stopped so suddenly that she almost fell. The mental voice was so close . . . She looked frantically down the path and from side to side, terrified she would not see him in the dim light. But he was there, along one of the side paths in the devastated garden, sitting on a bench that had once been sheltered by a magnificent flowering oleander. She started toward him. He had on a worn tunic that was far too short, barely covering his buttocks and genitals.
She wanted to fling herself down on her knees and plead with him to stay with her. She knew he would stay if she begged him, but that would be terribly unjust, terribly cruel, so she tried for a normal sort of remark.
"Did you burn all of my father's clothing?" she asked. "You were naked. Why didn't you take some things to wear?"
"I thought you wouldn't want to look at anything of his."
She had come up to the bench. He didn't raise his head to look at her but kept his eyes fixed on his long, elegant hands. "May I sit with you?" she asked.
"You may do anything you want with me. I owe you my life, my sanity, all my being . . ."
She had started to sit, but jerked upright. "You owe me nothing!" she said, her voice low but so intense it might have been a scream. "You helped me, supported me, sustained me . . ." Tears filled her eyes and she swallowed. "You even loved me when I needed it, even though you could hardly bear to touch me."
His head came up. In the very last of the light, she saw the golden eyes of a dog widen. "Hardly bear to touch you? Are you mad? I could hardly bear to keep my hands off you. Wasn't it wrong to take that, too? How could I ask you to lie with a creature that was more beast than man? You think I don't know why you never accepted the invitations of any man in Olympus? Even that natural pleasure you sacrificed to me. You knew how it would hurt me, and you denied yourself—"
"I denied myself nothing!" She leaned forward and took Kabeiros' head in her hands. "Kabeiros, don't you want to be free of me? You have been bound to me by necessity for so long. I was your anchor to humanity. Do you mean to say that you didn't resent that? That—" her voice started to rise into a protesting wail "—that I have been torturing myself uselessly with the fear that you would leave me as soon as you were free of the curse that bound you?"
"Leave you? I would never leave you of my own will. I love you so much, Hekate. I thought you would cast me out, shake off the burden I was to you as a dog sheds water, as soon as you were free of your binding."
"Free of my binding?" Hekate echoed, seeking within her. "But I'm not free of my binding. You are still here." She touched her breast. "Wound around my heart . . ." Her eyes fixed on him with urgent anxiety. "Dear Mother, don't tell me that now you can't change into a dog!" And after an infinitesimal pause, her voice grew light and cheerful. "We will have to begin all over again. You must not lose the dog. You love him—and so do I."
"You love the dog? It doesn't trouble you when I kiss you, when we couple, that part of me is a dog?"
"Oh, no. Not at all. When we have found the cure and you can shift man to dog and back again any time you wish, I would be delighted if you were a dog all day . . . and a man all night." She knelt down before him. "I love you, Kabeiros, dog or man. Won't you stay with me? I will let you go if you feel imprisoned, but if you will live with me, I swear I will not try to bind you in any way. I will let you come and go . . ."
He rose from the bench and pulled her up with him. "Hekate," he said, his lips beginning to twitch, "you are begging me to stay with you. I have been dying with fear that you were tired of the burden and would drive me away. Now I must ask you whether it is the burden you love or me?"
"The burden? What do you mean?"
"You love magic, Hekate. Your greatest pleasure is to work with spells, to do things no other can do with spells and to spells. What if I am not frozen into the form of a man? What if I can change from man to dog and do not need to be cured? Will you still let me stay with you?"
There was a long pause while Hekate examined Kabeiros' face as well as she could. Then she sighed gustily.
"You never intended to leave me," she said, and shook her head. "How could I be so stupid? How could I misunderstand you so completely? When you wouldn't lie beside me or you ran away when I changed my clothing . . . that was because the man desired what the dog did not and the pain was too great for you."
She took his face in her hands and kissed him gently. "And you have always put me first, not in things that endangered me—you might have done that because you needed me—but in consideration of my feelings. You endangered your own life and that of Dionysos to give my poor mother some dignity in her death, you were willing to wear a servant's cast-off so I would not need to see my father's clothing." She paused and sighed. "Have we both been tormenting ourselves for nothing?"
"Yes," he said succinctly. "And now that we've stopped . . ." He put both arms around her and pulled her hard against his body. "I'm very hungry."
"Direct as a dog," she said, laughing and wriggling her hips against him. Then her body stilled and she frowned. "You say you can change at will?"
Kabeiros dropped his arms, and the black dog stood before her, his white eyes fixed on her face. *Here I am, a dog. Why do you question me?*
*Because I still feel the binding to you around my heart. Not that I mind it. I would be empty without it, but I fear something is wrong.*
"No, love." He was standing before her, a man, his arms around her again. "Nothing is wrong. It could not be more right. What you feel I feel also. It is not a binding, but a bonding. We are life-bonded, my love."
"Life-bonded." She sighed with satisfaction and dropped her head to his chest. "We will have a wonderful time, Kabeiros. How would you like to go to fabled Chin and India?"
"Why not?" He laughed aloud. "You are free of your bindings and we are two together. We can go anywhere."