The Firebrand Read Free

like a solitary bird in flight. Faint lightning suddenly flared all the courtyard alight, and silhouetted against the squared light of the doorframe she saw her husband coming in search of her. Leda shrank inwardly; would he berate her for leaving the women’s quarters, even at this hour of the night?
    But he did not speak; he only moved toward her, and something in his step, the deliberate way he moved, told the woman that despite the well-known form and the features now clearly visible in the moonlight, this was not her husband. How this could be she did not know, but around his shoulders a flicker of errant lightning seemed to play, and as he walked his foot struck the flagstones with the faintest sound of faraway thunder. He seemed to have grown taller, his head thrown back against the levin-light which crackled in his hair. Leda knew, with a shudder that bristled down the small hairs on her body, that one of the stranger Gods was now abroad within the semblance of her husband, riding him as he would mount and ride one of his own horses. The lightning-flare told her it was Olympian Zeus, controller of thunders, Lord of Lightning.
    This was nothing new to her; she knew the feel of the Goddess filling and overflowing her body when she blessed the harvests or when she lay in the fields drawing down the Divine power of growth to the grain. She remembered how she seemed to stand aside from her familiar self, and it was the Goddess who moved through the rites, dominating everyone else with the power within Her.
    Tyndareus, she knew, must now be watching from within, as Zeus, the master of his body, moved toward his wife. She knew, because Tyndareus had once told her, that of all his Gods it was for the Thunder Lord that he felt most devotion.
    She shrank away; perhaps He would not notice her and she could remain unseen until the God departed from her husband. The head that now was the God’s head moved, that flicker of lightning following the loose flying movement of his hair. She knew He had seen her; but it was not Tyndareus’ voice that spoke, but a voice deeper, softer, a profound bass rumble filled with the distant thunders.
    “Leda,” said Zeus Thunderer, “come here to me.”
    He put out His hand to take hers, and obediently, mastering the sudden inner dread—if this God bore the lightnings, would His touch strike her with the thunder-stroke? —she laid her hand in His. His flesh felt cold, and her hand shivered a little at the touch. Looking up at Him, she perceived on His face the shadow of a smile wholly unlike Tyndareus’ stern and unbending look, as if the God were laughing—no, not at her, but with her. He drew her in under His arm, casting the edge of His mantle over her, so that she could feel His body’s warmth. He did not speak again, but drew her along inside the room she had quitted only a few moments ago.
    Then He pulled her close to Him, inside the mantle, so that she could feel His manhood rising against her body.
    Do the laws against lying with any other man ban a God in my husband’s very shape and form? she wondered wildly. Somewhere inside, the real Tyndareus must be looking out at her: jealously, or pleased that his woman found favor with his God? She had no way to know; from the strength with which He held her she knew it would be impossible to protest.
    At first she had felt His alien flesh as chill; now it seemed pleasantly warm, as if fevered.
    He lifted her and laid her down; a single swift touch and somehow she was already open, throbbing and eager. Then He was over and within her, and the lightning played around His form and face, its echo deep in the pounding rhythms of His touch. For a moment it seemed that this was not a man, that in fact it was nothing human at all, but that she was alone on a great windswept height, encircled by beating wings, or a great lapping ring of fire, or as if some beast swept round her and ravished her with confusion and ecstasy—beating wings,