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But the meeting with Hades must come first. By his very nature, the Ruler of
the
Underworld was vastly more powerful and important than Dionysus was ever
likely
to become.
He did not wish to try again to explain to this mere mortal how he, Shiva,
could
be so certain that his many enemies were trying to entrap him. Besides, there
were other matters, like trying to arrange his alliance with Hades, that were
really of overriding importance. Seeing to it that the right human got to
wear
the Face of Dionysus was certainly a task worth doing, but Shiva did not
think
that his own fate depended utterly on the result.
To Perses he said, "The Lord Hades has expressed a wish of forming an
alliance
with me."
"Great are the ways of the gods," the king murmured placatingly. Now the man
was
being so ostentatiously awe-stricken that Shiva found his attitude
irritating.
"How soon does my lord plan to conclude this alliance?" No doubt the humble
tone
of the question was intended to make it sound less impertinent, but the
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effort
did not succeed.
"Very soon," Shiva responded shortly. Later there would be time to deal
properly
with impertinence.
The current human avatars of Hades and Shiva had never met, and, as far as
Shiva
could remember, none of the contacts between their respective earlier
embodiments had been more than brief and incidental; so Shiva knew he must
approach their impending conference warily.
In a little while the humans who were working as liaison between himself and
Hades came to Shiva and told him where Hades wanted to meet him, and when.
The
rendezvous was scheduled to take place on a new volcanic island, many miles
from
Corycus, and still almost glowing with heat. Shiva had already scouted the
place, airborne, from a distance; he supposed that Hades and his creatures of
the Underworld could stand on it unscathed, but Shiva and everyone else would
find it excruciatingly hot. Shiva expected that he could stand there and
shield
himself from damage, by an exertion of will, but he could not be comfortable.
The attitude of these human servants of Hades toward him was not at all like
Creon's. Shiva burned with inward rage at being treated with arrogance by
these
mere mortals; yet he dared not strike them down, or even rebuke them
strongly.
And they were so confident in their impudence that they did not even flinch
when
he allowed the lid of his Third Eye to open slightly. Perhaps they did become
just a shade more respectful.
These humans were relatively new to their job; their predecessors had been
discharged if that was the right word to describe their fate in a general
shakeup of Hades's staff following last year's encounter with Apollo.
The meeting got under way at last.
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Lightning flared, rain fell toward rocks still not cooled very far below
their
melting point. The falling water, caught up in the rising heat, was turned to
steam before it even touched the rocks, and so sprang up again at once,
hissing
and boiling away in white clouds that spread across the cooler ground, knee
deep
on mortals and deities alike.
There were no formal introductions made, and most of those present seemed to
be
taking steps to cloak their identities. For a moment Shiva wondered whether
all
these who were gathered here were part of the great conspiracy against him.
Well, even if they were, it was too late now to simply turn around and leave.
Hades had to remove his Cap of Invisibility before he could be seen, even by
his
fellow gods. But even before the cap came off, Shiva was certain that he
could
feel that mighty presence near.
And then he saw it, standing where the shadows of the thunderclouds above
seemed
to be deepest. Not so much a shape, as a gathering of darkness, only vaguely
human. It was difficult to be sure of Hades's size, though he received a
definite impression of a shaggy head and massive, rounded shoulders, with a
dark
chain of some kind hung around the neck.
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