Destroyer of Light Read Free

patiently. “She is Kore no more, but Persephone would not color it thus, nor do I.”
    “Get out!”
    Hecate ignored Demeter and slowly strolled around the room, pausing at the tapestries of the House of Celeus, as though she were admiring their handiwork. “Your roots have taken a firm hold here. The Queen of the Earth, they call you. It would be a shame, Demeter Anesidora,” Hecate said, raising her voice almost imperceptibly, “if you were to find the pathway to the rest of the earth choked with thorny brambles. How sad and limited is the existence of the local, rustic god. How long, do you think, before the Eleusinians realize that?”
    “You wouldn’t dare…”
    Hecate stood still, staring placidly at Demeter. Both knew that it could be done. The white witch held dominion over the ether, and could bar Demeter from traveling that path if she willed it. She smiled at her former student and offered the torch again. “Walk with me.”
    It was more command than request. Demeter roughly grabbed the torch from Hecate’s hand. The goddesses made their way to the back of the palace and stepped through the doorway onto the portico. The small garden below was alive, the last place outdoors that grew any food, mercifully shielded from the wind by the amphitheatre of the hills above and shielded from Demeter’s wrath by her protection of this village. But the fertile rows of wheat, barley and millet were not Hecate’s destination.
    “Do you feel it? The cold?”
    Demeter didn’t answer.
    “I thought not. Propitiations come to you now like ants to spilled honey. I would be surprised if any sensation could touch you.”
    “Why have you come here, Hecate? Why pull me out into the snow?”
    “To show you your daughter.”
    “Kore…” She stiffened. “Did you bring—”
    Hecate’s silent glare stopped her. She motioned for Demeter to follow her. The hillside was steep, the northern wind growing stronger the higher they climbed. The torches smoldered orange, the barest blue flame flickering at Hecate’s bidding.
    Demeter recalled the last time Hecate had led her uphill by the light of a long torch, both of them stumbling up a rocky path at twilight to the heights of Olympus. She remembered the low fire Hestia had created with pine, cypress, and oak, shielding any light that might alert their enemies on Mount Othrys of their presence. Hera had nervously looked about and braided a peacock feather into her rich brown tresses. Poseidon had argued tactics with Zeus by the fire. Aidoneus had sat apart from the rest, looking out over Thessaly, blood dried onto the sword he always wore strapped to his back. Some of the rebelling Titans came as well— Tethys, with the split nautilus she would always wear around her neck, and Metis, who had dutifully recorded all with her stylus on the clay tablet that never left her arms. The clever trickster Prometheus and his hot-tempered brother Epimetheus were there that night.
    The night she conceived Kore.
    Demeter followed Hecate up the hill, the waxing moon lighting the wide bay and mountains. She heard a groan coming from the south, and for the first time saw blocks of ice scattered across the water, cracking and grinding against each other, the sea rolling beneath them. She pursed her lips. It served Poseidon right for how cruelly he’d mocked her.
    “What do you see?”
    “Eleusis and the sea,” Demeter said, frustrated, the wind biting through her clothes.
    “Look again. Northward.”
    “Hills. You said you would show me my daughter! Where is she?”
    “You glance with you eyes. Look. As I taught you how to look.”
    Demeter scowled, then acceded, closing her eyes and facing north, the wind whipping the veil back from her diadem. North, across the hills and beyond. And further still, until the north abruptly stopped, replaced by a great blanket of ice, fathoms higher than mountaintops, crushing all in its path.
    “Now do you see? How it crawls closer? The wall of ice