The Firebrand

CHAPTER 1

Sparta

At this time of the year, light lingered late; but the last glow of sunset had faded now in the west, and mist had begun to drift in from the sea.

Leda, Lady of Sparta, rose from her bed where her consort Tyndareus lingered still. As usual after their coupling, he had fallen into a heavy sleep; he did not notice when she rose from the bed and, throwing a light garment about her shoulders, went out into the courtyard of the women's quarters.

Women's quarters, the Queen thought angrily, when it is my own castle; one would think that I, not he, was the interloper here; that he, not I, held land-right in Sparta. Earth Mother knows not so much as his name.

She had been willing enough when he came and sought her hand, even though he was one of the invaders from the north: worshipper of thunder and oak and of the Sky Gods, a coarse, hairy man who bore the hated black iron on spear and armor. And yet now his kind were everywhere, and they demanded marriage by their new laws as if their Gods were more than interlopers in the place of the Goddess who owned land and harvest and people. These iron-bearing folk expected the woman who wedded one of them to join in the worship of their Gods and to give her body only to that man.

One day, Leda thought, the Goddess would punish these men for keeping women from paying their dues to the forces of Life. These men even said the Goddesses were subservient to the Gods; which seemed to Leda a horrible blasphemy and a mad reversal of the natural order of things. Men had no divine power; they neither bred nor bore; yet somehow they felt they had some natural right in the fruit of their women's bodies, as if coupling with a woman gave them some power of ownership, as if children did not naturally belong to the woman whose body had sheltered and nourished them.

Yet Tyndareus was her husband and she loved him; and because she loved him she was even willing to indulge his madness and jealousy, and risk angering the Earth Mother by lying only with him.

If only she could make him understand that it was wrong for her to be shut up in the women's quarters, that as a priestess she must be out and around the fields to be sure that the Goddess was given her due of service, that she owed the gift of fertility to all men, not to her consort alone; that the Goddess could not restrict her gifts to any one man, even if he called himself a king.

A distant muttering of thunder reverberated from far below, as if it had risen from the sea, or as if the great Serpent who now and again caused the Earth to shake might be stirring in her depths.

A riffle of wind stirred the light garment about Leda's shoulders, her hair flew wildly 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 crackled 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.

She knew Tyndareus must now watch 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.

His 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's 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's 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 prohibit 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 favour 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, thunder, as a hot and demanding mouth took possession of hers.

Then suddenly it was over, as if it had been a very long time ago, a fading memory or a dream, and she was lying alone on the bed, feeling very small, chilled and abandoned and alone as the God towered over her - it seemed, to the sky. He bent and kissed her with great tenderness. She closed her eyes and, when she woke, Tyndareus was fast asleep at her side and she was not sure she had ever left her bed. It was Tyndareus; when she put out her hand to be sure, his flesh was warm—or cool—and there was not the faintest crackle of lightning in the hair which lay on the pillow beside her.

Had she only dreamed it, then? As the thought crossed her mind she heard from far outside the house the ripple of thunder; wherever he had gone, the God had not wholly left her. And now she knew that however long she might live with Tyndareus as his wife, she would never again look on her husband's face without searching in it for some sign of the God who had visited her in his form.