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Lyssa knows this: The day Heracles was born, the goddess Hera sent two snakes to destroy him in his cradle. God-begotten as he was, he squeezed the snakes dead in his chubby fists, laughing and waving them about.
Quick as a thought, Hera summoned Lyssa to her side. As she stood before heaven’s queen, Lyssa could feel her own fury burning from the goddess’s eyes.
“So be it,” Hera said in her wrath. “Though I cannot kill him, he shall be yours. The hounds of Lyssa shall be his table-companions, and Madness the partner of his bridal bed. I consecrate him to you now as your husband. Unless he joins the immortal gods, he shall have no wife but you.”
Hera had power over marriage, and if she said a marriage was fixed, then it was so. Lyssa looked down from Olympus’s height at her future bridegroom. She felt nothing; he was an infant, with few distinguishing features. After a moment, she realized she felt a little sorry for him.
Lyssa was born of a noble kindred: daughter of ancient Night, begotten from the blood of Uranus, she was the spirit of madness and raging fury. When a god or a goddess called upon her, Lyssa performed her duty. She took no pleasure in her visitations, driving mortals to madness and despair. The light-footed Bacchantes invoked her with cries and dances, beating the ground with their vine-wreathed rods, and called her to send her fleet hounds against the daughters of Cadmus. Lord Dionysus wished it, and she obeyed: Agave and her sisters in their frenzy hunted down Agave’s own son Pentheus and tore him into pieces. Far-shooting Artemis called upon her to punish Acteon’s impiety, he whose too-daring eyes beheld the goddess bathing. At her command, Lyssa maddened Acteon’s faithful hounds, and they dragged him down like one of the stags they had hunted.
And Heracles—
Lyssa was not offended when she heard he had wedded Megara of Thebes, Creon’s daughter. Either Hera’s word would someday come true, or it would not. He had a fine reputation, certainly, for his heroic deeds. The demigods, children of gods and mortals, tended to suffer. Their fate was great tragedy or great glory, or often both. Even the gods could not always save a beloved son or daughter from the grip of death. Lyssa could not guess which would be Heracles’s fate: to ascend to Mount Olympus as a god, or sink into the darkness of the underworld where even heroes were insubstantial squeaking shades.
It was only when Iris, the gods’ messenger, led her to the roof of Heracles’s house and set out her task that she realized what Hera had meant in consecrating him hers.
Though she was Madness, it was not her way to rave. She spoke calmly, asking Iris to release Heracles from this punishment. But Iris was the messenger of Hera’s hate, and Lyssa must be the instrument of her vengeance. Though reluctant, she bowed to the goddess’s will.
Walking to the edge of the roof, Lyssa looked down into the courtyard. Heracles stood before the altar of his household gods, his wife and young sons beside him. Lyssa breathed in, and with her outward breath, she breathed madness into his breast. Heracles twisted and shook like a bull stung by gadflies. His blood burned with frenzy, his eyes shone with a strange light. To his distorted sight, those dearest to him seemed to take the shape of his deadliest enemies.
No one could defend them; Heracles had been the strength and glory of this house, and he whose mighty hand should protect them was now their hunter. The servants screamed and fled. Lyssa watched, with the impassive gaze of a divine power, until it was over.
At last the frenzied fit left him. Heracles staggered and fell thunderously to the floor.
Lyssa stepped down through the air and alighted at his side. The floor, the walls, the pillars of the house were splashed with blood. She had no power of healing; she could only inflict the wound and not cure it. She waited silently by Heracles’s prone body until his bloodied fingers twitched on the ground, and he groaned and stirred.
It was the cruelest moment: when the gods’ victim opened no longer maddened eyes to see what they had done. Lyssa saw realization dawn in his eyes, as she had seen it so many times before. Horror followed, and grief, disbelief and despair.
Lyssa knelt down, careless of how her tunic trailed in the pooling blood. She took Heracles’s face in her hands and turned it toward her, away from the crumpled bodies of those he had slain.
“Goddess,” he said hoarsely. “Was it you, or was it some power of the underworld that brought swift death here? What curse has struck this house?”
“I am no goddess, but a divine spirit.” Lyssa leaned forward, so that their foreheads were almost touching. “I offer you the one gift in my power—to forget, for a little while.”
He nodded almost imperceptibly. She leaned in just a little more and kissed him. Her power twined into him from her mouth, and the tortured grief left his face as her divine frenzy took him. She made her madness lull him rather than sting; he trembled, but he was not seized by the murderous rage of before.
He must recover his senses soon enough. But for this moment, she held the stricken hero in her arms, and her madness kept him safe.