Renate De Belmondo had been in the service of the great Goddess for nearly forty years. She came to the temple almost every day. The sounds here were as familiar as her husband's breathing. The fountain bubbling and the sounds of the tiny waterfall cascading into the sacred pool were like the voices of old friends. Even in her giddy and confused state they comforted and caressed. She tried to sit up. The someone who had been holding her head between her legs helped her to lean back against the wall. Then it came to her, as she tried to focus her eyes. The fountain had been reduced to oozing droplets, the cascade to accumulating drips falling slowly into the clay bowl instead of the rock pool. She blinked and then screwed her eyes up, willing them to focus. The pool swam into clarity.
It was brimful. And the glad cascade was running stronger than she'd ever seen it. She breathed a sigh of relief. At least their troubles were over.
Then, as a very angry male face leaned into hers, Renate De Belmondo realized that her troubles, on a personal front, might just be starting. And being nearly seventy and the high Priestess of the great Goddess weren't necessarily going to help.
"What was 'Lessi doing down here?" he demanded angrily. "And where the hell is Maria?"
It was a question she really didn't want to have to answer. She struggled to focus her mind, to draw on some of her powers. She looked at him. He was bare-chested, and muscled like a stevedore across that chest and those shoulders. When she'd first met Benito Valdosta he'd looked like a mischievous imp of a young man. Now . . . he looked like some kind of dangerous wild beast.
"Men are not allowed in the Mother's temple. You will be curs—"
He shook her again. Respect for persons or places was not with him. "I want Maria! And as for your God-forsaken temple, I'm here because you left my daughter where she could drown. The nymphs from your private water supply—that you've been enjoying while the citadel's people went thirsty—called me because my daughter has an undine for a godmother."
She put her hands to her head. "Please don't shout. You must leave now. I understand why you came, but the great Mother Goddess's temple is forbidden to men. I see you have committed various sacrileges—I am sure unknowing, because you are still alive. But you must go and never return. Be assured there was no water here before the rite, and the baby was in no danger. Now go. You will leave Maria's child here. I have sworn by the great Mother that I will see that she is taken to Katerina Valdosta."
Benito took a deep breath. Renate De Belmondo saw deeper into people than most mortals, if not as deeply as the undine Juliette. She saw the wildfire in there. Wildfire accepts no limitations.
"She's my child, too. I always thought she was Caesare's baby. It doesn't matter to me anyway. Long before I knew, the undine asked me if I loved her. I do. She as good as told me I was the father then, but I didn't understand."
The words were tumbling out of him in no particular order, but Renate was used to hearing hysterical words tumbling out of distraught women, and managed to make sense of them, or at least, as much sense as could be made, since she had no idea of who, or what, most of the people he was talking about were.
"She told me it was my responsibility to look after Alessia. I accepted it then and I accept it now. I'll look after her if anyone but her mother is going to. Maria told me about Katerina and babies. Kat might be better when she has her own, but for now I'm keeping her. As for you: 'Lessi was cold, wet, and miserable and whether you admit it or not, in danger while you were supposed to be looking after her. I'm keeping her. Try if you can to stop me."
He stepped over to pick her up.
Reluctantly, Renate called on the power of the great Goddess to prevent it.
And realized that absolutely nothing was happening. Benito picked up the baby, and cradled her as naturally and easily as any mother.
"The great Goddess obviously feels the justice of your claim," said Renate, reluctantly. "But I did promise her mother. I must admit she thought you were dead."
"Where is she?" said Benito, in a calm voice that Renate could feel paper-thin skin over a volcano of emotion.
The priestess took a deep breath. There was no avoiding it. "She has gone to be the bride of Aidoneus."
Benito gave her a flat stare that said: If you thought one man and an altar cloth were sacrilege—I haven't even started yet.
"I'm more patient than Maria, but not that much. We're in the middle of a war. Maria only married Umberto for Alessia's sake. And now you come with a cock-and-bull story about Maria getting married—now—and just abandoning Alessia. Merde. I'm going to find her if I have to pull the Citadel and every person in it apart. I'll start right here if I have to."
Renate held herself in stillness, and acknowledged the justice of his words. If Maria had known he was still alive—she would never have gone. Renate had not tricked her, but . . . there it was.
"Maria went, as a willing sacrifice, to live in the underworld with Aidoneus, the Lord of the Dead. Believe me, she only did this because . . . because she believed you were dead, and that her baby was dying. She did this to save Alessia. To save the island."
"Sacrifice. You killed her."
It was not a statement. It was a death-sentence. Renate saw it in his eyes.
"She's alive. I did not touch her. I swear by the great Goddess, as Her high priestess." He looked at her without understanding. "She is alive; only a living bride can go to the Lord of Shadows. She will probably live a very long time; the last bride must have been nearly a hundred before she died in the body. It is magic, Benito. She has gone, living, into the Underworld."
She shook her head. "I'm sorry Benito. There is nothing you can do about it. She's alive. But there is no way back."
Benito looked at her with eyes of flame. "Hear me . . . Priestess," he spat the word out. "I want her back from wherever you've hidden her. Alive, unhurt, now. Or there won't be any priestesses, or any temple. I'll hunt down all of you. And I won't send you to any play-play Lord of the Dead. I won't be stopped. WON'T."
The baby wailed at his anger, interrupting his tirade—he suddenly had to turn his attention back to the child, which would have been comical, except that it wasn't. There was heartbreak for him. He just hadn't figured it out, yet. "There, Alessia. It's all right. I'll fix it."
"You aren't letting yourself understand, Benito Valdosta." Renate had gathered herself by now, and stood straight, looking him directly in the eyes. "The Lord of the Dead is as real as your brother's Lion, or Eneko Lopez's Saint Hypatia. His kingdom is just as real. The magic that allows a living bride to serve as the channel for his power is as real as that which allows your brother to serve as channel for the Lion, or Lopez as the channel for his angels. The choice was hers to make. She has gone to spend the rest of her life in the Kingdom of the Dead. The real dead. You can kill me. I won't even try to resist. You can kill every priestess on the island. You can destroy the temples of Mother, of the great Goddess. All it would take would be enough gunpowder."
Somehow, that was starting to get through to him. Perhaps it was her conviction and her steadiness. Perhaps it was the Mother, reaching him past his anger.
"You could be an inhuman monster to make Emeric look pleasant," she continued, sternly. "Massacre dozens of innocent women. It wouldn't make any difference to Maria. Believe me, I didn't want to make this happen; in fact, I didn't make it happen at all, it just did. The priestesses and devotees have been dreading it. We are a peaceful fertility cult, and we have never taken an unwilling woman to be the bride. But there has to be a bride, an opposite for the Lord of the Underworld, just as there has to be a male as well as a female for fertility. And it has to be a fertile woman. I love my husband dearly, and still, I would have gone rather than Maria. But I couldn't. There was only one among us who could, and did, at the crucial moment."
She took a deep breath. His anger was fading, but the bleakness that was taking its place was painful to see. "Accept it, Benito. Accept it as you have accepted your daughter. No one comes back from the Kingdom of Aidoneus. She is trapped there until her body is returned to be buried with honor in the sacred glade. I'm very, very sorry, Benito. There is really nothing you or I can do, other than accept it and honor her sacrifice."
There were tears in Benito's eyes. But his voice was rock steady. "You can accept it. And the consequences. I'm not going to. I'll keep trying to find a way, if I have to study magic until the day I die." He pointed an accusing finger at her. "She wasn't due to die. You did this to her. I'm not finished with you—or this place—but I need to get Alessia out of your hell-hole. Besides, I want to mourn among decent people and not with a murderess. You can run if you like. But it won't help you."
Renate was a high priestess and not without pride. "I won't run. And I'm just as unhappy as you are."
"Ha."
"Benito, this was her choice; she was a willing sacrifice."
"Alessia and I aren't willing. And if I can't get her back, I'll at least see there are no more victims. I will clean up this rotten mess if it is the last thing I do."
He turned on his heel and walked away into the darkness, toward the cave-mouth, holding the baby in his arms.
He was scarcely out of sight when the two nymphs came sinuously out of the pool. "It had to be that one's lady-love, didn't it? You humans are such fools."
Now that Benito had gone, Renate allowed herself the weakness of tears. "She was willing, and she thought he was dead."
One of nymphs looked at her with disgust. The other stamped her foot. "And now he's going to blow up the sacred pools, dig up the glades, burn the groves."
"The great Goddess has always had the power to stop that. We endure."
One of the nymphs said dourly, "And who do you think the current embodiment of the great Goddess is? And how do you think she's going to respond to your requests for help, when she sees who you want help against? Especially if she thinks you deceived her about him being dead."
"I didn't know!"
One of the nymphs rolled her eyes. "You could have found out, though. Minor magic. And Aidoneus would have known. I've been through a fractious bride-period before. But that woman's lover was a fool and as ordinary as dung. This one . . . he's been on a knife-edge between good and evil—or, worse, what he's probably going to inflict on Corfu. The kind of narrow intolerant 'good' that's worse than evil, even."
"I don't see what you expect me to do."
"Nothing. As usual," said the one nymph cattishly.
Renate sighed. "If they could only talk. It's . . . it's all just a terrible misunderstanding. We all did it for the best."
"Well, let him talk. Let him go and see her."
Renate shook her head "Aidoneus can see out through the shadows and together they can affect all things living and dead, but short of being in the land of the dead they can't see each other. They can't talk."
"So let's send him there," said the one nymph, tugging at a tangle in her hair.
Renate drew herself up. "We don't kill."
The nymph clicked her tongue at her. "Oh, you don't have to be dead to go to Shadowkeep. That's the easy way. It's been done the hard way before a couple of times and by different ways, but you short-lifers have probably forgotten."
The one nymph turned to the other, cocking her head. "What do you think, Sister? Acheroussia?"
The first nodded. "If the limnaiad there is willing."
Renate sighed again. "Well, let me at least make sure the rituals of spring still happen this year."
"Very well. We'll ask Valdosta if he wants to visit the Lord of the Dead, and make arrangements with she of lake Acheroussia."