Hades’ Daughter. Book One of the Troy Game by Sara Douglass

‘It is weak,” he said, laying a reassuring hand on Brutus’ shoulder. “Barely alive. It still casts some protective enchantment over Mesopotama, but if I am right, it does not hold enough power to truly hurt you.”

Brutus gave a very small, wry grin. “I wonder why your phrases ‘if I am right’ and ‘not hold enough power to truly hurt you’ do not reassure me as greatly as they were intended to?”

Membricus gave a soft laugh. “I will be here. Remember that.”

Brutus put the pail of pitch down on the stairs, then stepped down to the paving slab just before the carving of the intertwined flowers that marked the entrance to the labyrinth. He stared at them, knowing that if he failed the flowers, then everything else was lost.

As Membricus watched Brutus step up to the intertwined carving of flowers he unaccountably thought of Cornelia, and for the briefest of moments thought he saw the blade of a dagger, its handle curiously carved from twisted bone and its blade thick with blood, slice through the air.

He shuddered with foreboding.

THE TROJAN EXODUS WAS GOING WELL, IF SLOWLY.

Forewarned of the fires—and that they had been set to panic rather than to incinerate—the Trojans moved as quickly as they could through the streets toward the gates and the eight-hundred-pace walk to the edge of the bay. They were anxious, constantly looking over their shoulders for the swordsmen they’d been warned about, and just as constantly hoping that Brutus had been mistaken, and that there were no swordsmen at all. Men and women, wearing Dorian clothes, walked with as much arrogance as they could, aping the habitual movements of the Dorians. Their children were silent, clinging to their mothers’

shawls and skirts, chastened by their parents’ strict warnings to be quiet once they’d left their homes.

Brutus’ warriors, together with Assaracus’ swordsmen, moved among the crowds, reassuring and hustling, their eyes lifting above the crowds for any sign of strangers or the glitter of swords.

A man shouted at the sound of running feet, causing everyone to tense, but the cause of his cry was soon apparent: not swordsmen, but panicked—and strangely short-haired—Dorians, running from their homes to intermingle with the Trojans.

Hicetaon caught the eye of Deimas, standing three or four steps up in the entranceway to a house, and nodded in satisfaction. All was going well.

BRUTUS STOOD BEFORE THE ENTRANCE TO THE LABY rinth, his head bowed, then slowly he looked up and made a sign with his left hand.

Membricus gasped, awed by the ease with which Brutus had raised the gateway.

Hanging before the entrance, where before there had been mere air, was a gateway of entwined flowers—the same flowers that moments before had rested as a lifeless carving in the stone floor.

It was the magical protection of the labyrinth: it guarded against entry… and against escape. It was, to be blunt, a plug, and what it dammed was evil.

Brutus spent another few moments studying the gateway hovering before him, then, without any hesitation, reached into it and pulled forth one of the flowers.

‘For the Mistress of the Labyrinth,” he said, then kissed the flower and threw it gently back against the rest of the gateway.

Instantly the entire gate collapsed, and as each flower hit the stone floor, it vanished.

The Dance of the Flowers, negated.

The death of a city.

FAR, FAR DISTANT, ATOP THE LLANDIN WHERE SHE SAJ alone and undisturbed in the summer sunlight, Genvissa breathed one wonder-fillet word. “Brutus!”

Then she lifted out her arms, and tipped back her head, and laughed witl delight and love.

Before her, on the ground, lay the flower that Brutus had kissed and tossed bac) against the flower gate.

BRUTUS HEFTED THE PAIL OF PITCH IN HIS HAND ANI stepped into the labyrinth. He turned to his left first, walking a track that le< through the midsection of the labyrinth, then around its top, before the pat wound back upon itself to take him to the second-most outer right track of th design.

In this first section of the labyrinth it seemed as if nothing had changed, a if he would do nothing more than walk in ever-varying degrees of semicircles and about turns until he reached the black heart of the labyrinth. But as he turned once more, this time onto the extreme left-hand outer path, it seemed to him that the cellar chamber about him faded, and he walked not a stone floor, but a field of waving wheat.

Then, as he turned yet again, the field vanished, and Brutus found himself in a forest surrounded by the

horns of the hunt and the pounding hooves of horses.

He began to sweat, knowing what the black heart had waiting for him.

THE PRESS OF TROJAN AND DORIAN BODIES, ALL HEAD-ing for the gates, worsened immeasurably, and Hicetaon fought down panic. If they were attacked by Cornelia’s hired swordsmen, then the press would work in their favor… but such a tightly packed and half-panicked crowd might just as easily turn on itself, crushing people underfoot and against enclosing walls.

There came another shout, far above the crowd, and Hicetaon looked up in its direction.

There, high above the crowd on the flat roof of house, stood Cornelia and her father… and Pandrasus had a sword, and he was waving it at the crowd.

BRUTUS GRIPPED THE PAIL TIGHTER, AND SOME OF THE pitch slopped out, making him jump aside to avoid splashing his booted foot. The labyrinthine path led through tall trees and thick shrubbery, rustling with the stiff breeze. Overhead the canopy of the trees swayed and shifted, allowing occasional shafts of hot sunlight to illuminate the path.

On all sides came the sound of the hunt: the thud of horses’ hooves and the snort of their breath; the shouts of the hunters, alive with excitement; the angry shrieks of wild birds, disturbed from their roosts; the gasping terror of the quarry.

Brutus hefted the pail of pitch once more, trying to maintain his grip in his sweaty palm, and was unsurprised when he felt in his hand not the wooden handle of the pail, but the sweet soft feel of a beloved bow.

He lifted it, and knew it at once. It was the bow of his youth, the one his father Silvius had gifted him for his fifteenth birthday… and this day was his fifteenth birthday, and he was in no labyrinth, but in the forest, out to shoot the stag that would signal his ascent into manhood.

‘THEY ATTACK!” CRIED HICETAON, AND THE CRY WAS passed over the crowd so that soon all heard.

Within the crowd, in groups of four or five, men dropped sacks or the folds of the thick blankets they had over their arms, and drew forth swords.

They lifted them, and looked for Trojans to attack.

‘They have disguised themselves!” Cornelia cried from her perch on the roof, her voice angry.

BRUTUS FITTED AN ARROW TO THE BOW, AND LIFTED IT to his shoulder. He could hear the crashing of hooves in the shrubs just to his left, could see the flash of the stag’s antlers above the greenery, could hear the beast’s terrified exhalations.

Excitement flared in his chest, and he let fly the arrow.

There was a silence, then a shout of horror from beyond the path.

‘Our king! Our king! He has been struck!”

And the excitement in Brutus’ chest collapsed into dread, and he knew what he had done.

FRUSTRATED, AND ANXIOUS THAT THEY WERE THEM selves trapped, the hired swordsmen struck out in all directions. Dorian and Trojan alike were struck down, and in the press and the heat and the panic, more people were injured or killed as the crowds surged, trying to escape the death being dealt among them.

Hicetaon, Idaeus, Assaracus, and Deimas called for calm, and urged on their own swordsmen to fight their way through the crowds to those who were inflicting such injury among the throngs, but it was nigh impossible to get through.

High above, Cornelia shouted, but it was a cry of fear rather than triumph.

SUDDENLY THE FOREST WAS GONE, AS ALSO THE BOW in his hand. Again Brutus walked the labyrinthine path in the subchamber beneath the guardhouse, and again he held the pail of hot pitch in his hand.

But there was one difference. In the black heart of the labyrinth, and Brutus was almost there now, sat his father Silvius.

He was contorted in agony, both his hands wrapped about the shaft of the arrow that had pierced his eye.

ISO AT CORNELIA’S SIDE, PANDRASUS CURSED, AND LEAPT down the stairs that led to the street.

Sobbing, her senses swamped both by the horror enacted in the streets below and by the growing fires that had by now cast a great pall of smoke over Mesopotama, Cornelia grabbed at her skirts and followed him.