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

most powerful ever constructed.

Power that Asterion could use.

” But only once you are dead, my friend, “Asterion said. “Then I shall take great pleasure

in tearing those bands from your cold, gray limbs and…”

And?

“And placing them about my own,” Asterion whispered, his mind racing as it encountered

a possibility he’d never thought of previously. He had been planning to use the Game’s one

fatal weakness to destroy it completely… but why should he?

Asterion’s belly contracted in sudden, almost sexual, flare of excitement. The Game was

powerful beyond belief. Better he control and wield that power than destroy it.

Once Genvissa was brought under control… and once he had those kingship bands.

Asterion’s eyes narrowed and the knife fell still in his hands as cunning consumed his

mind.

PART THREE LONDON, MARCH V kelton walked very slowly towards Genvissa, unable to sort out the confusion of emotions within him at the sight of her.

“My,” she said as he stopped a pace away, “that uniform suits you well, Brutus. What are we now? A captain? A lieutenant?”

“A major,” he said. “Jack Skelton.”

She smiled. “A major. And an American. Always the foreigner, eh?”

He studied her, taking his time about it. She was, as always, a few years older than himself, but she looked tired now, worn out. Desperate. Yet still that magnificent black hair curled about her face, barely restrained by the clip at the base of her neck. Still her seductiveness shone forth, even cloaked as it was by her heavy green woollen coat. Still her beauty radiated, touching him deep within.

“Look,” she said, pointing with a gloved hand to where the Thames curved away south before them. “Does this Embankment not remind you of that beach where first I came to you?”

“I have not come to lose myself in memories, Genvissa… ah, dear God, what name do you go by this time?”

“Stella,” she said. “Stella Wentworth.”

“And the others?”

She raised an eyebrow.

I9G ” Don’t play your games with me; I’m tired of them. Where are the others?” She looked to the dome of St. Paul’s. “You can find Loth in there.” Her mouth twisted cynically. “Wearing the cloth.

I find that quite amusing.” “And…?”

” And…? Oh, do you mean Cornelia?” ” Where is she?”

Stella shrugged. “I have no idea.” “Dammit, Genvissa… Stella. You must know —” ” I do not! If she is here, then I have not yet discovered her.” Skelton stared at her, wanting to shake the truth out of her, but knowing it would do no good. “Does Asterion have her, Stella? Does he have her, as well ?”

CbAPGGR OJSJ6 coRnelia speaks F YOU HAD LET ALL BE, IF YOU HAD MERELY

ALLOWED my people to walk out those gates and sail away, none of this would have been necessary! You are death incarnate, Cornelia. It stains your soul .”

I knew it, I knew it, and hearing it said so baldly and cruelly added no more pain to the guilt that was already coursing through me.

Oh, Hera, if only I had let be, if only I had not pestered my father into asking the king of Nichoria for aid, if only…

All I had wanted was a revenge for myself, my father, and Melanthus, and a return to the life I’d had.

What I had accomplished was the murder of my entire people.

Why had it all gone so badly, when the unknown goddess had said it would all work so well?

Brutus’ arm tightened even more painfully about my midriff and he dragged me through the streets of my home. I did not resist, nor protest, and made all the proper movements with my legs that were needed to propel me forward. But my mind was back with my father, mired in the stone with him, enduring his agony.

Ah, that is foolish! A girlish stupidity. How could I “endure,” even imagine , the agony my father must have gone through in his dying? How can I know what it feels like to have my back and legs and arm swallowed by stone? To have my bowels and lungs and brain surrender to rock? To take a breath and then to have it caught, unable to draw more… and yet all the while remain aware of my suffering and dying?

No, I cannot imagine that, even though it was all that consumed my mind as Brutus hauled me along streets choked with my people’s struggling bodies, and littered with the debris of collapsing buildings.

Fleeing Trojans buffeted us from all directions as they fled alongside us, but I felt not their bruises, nor heard their cries to hurry, hurry!

All I saw was my father, his hand held out to me in mute appeal, his eyes agonized.

I wish I had suffered with him. I wish the stone had swallowed me, too, but it did not, it did not because of this burden I carried in my belly, this Trojan child.

Isn’t that what Brutus had said?

I did not understand it, and for the moment I did not want to even try. All I wanted to do was die to escape my overwhelming guilt, and yet I knew that Brutus would not allow that… all for the sake of this child.

I HEARD HIM, EVENTUALLY, GASP SOMETHING TO HIS friend Membricus. His voice held immeasurable relief, and it stirred me enough to look about. We were beyond the gates now, on the road that led between the rows of vines toward the bay. Fleeing Trojans still crowded us, but their efforts was less now that they were free of the city,

Brutus stopped, again spoke to Membricus, and then turned about—me with him, still clasped tight in his arms—to stare back at Mesopotama. “Look,” he said, and then again, more forcefully. “Look!” I raised my head, and I moaned and would have fallen, had not Brutus still held me so tight.

Mesopotama was crumbling. It appeared as if an indistinct gray cloud hung over it—it might have been the dust from the collapsing masonry, but somehow I knew it was something far more vile and evil—and under the weight of that noxious cloud the city was collapsing into itself. Towers imploded, tenement buildings tumbled, palaces slid ignominiously into gutters, and the city walls turned into the consistency of sodden pastry and merely folded in upon themselves in resignation.

‘The evil swallows it,” Membricus said.

What evil? I thought, but did not dare ask.

What evil had my husband conjured?

All of my initial terror of Brutus, which had faded away over the past months, now returned to me a hundredfold. I had once feared Brutus as a murderer and a rapist, now I feared him as a sorcerer. Oh, Hera, Hera, had he known all along what I planned, and let me continue, just so I could damn myself?

How could I have been so foolish? How could I ever have thought to best him?

How could I so callously have gambled with the lives of everyone I loved?

And lost?

‘Did all our people escape?” Brutus asked Membricus, and I shuddered in his arms.

‘Aye,” Membricus replied. “All those who escaped the swordsmen’s blades. The last groups ran out the gate well before the final destruction.”

Brutus breathed deeply in some consuming emotion—I could feel it course through his body where it pressed against mine.

‘And now,” he said. “Troy.”

I closed my eyes. His dreams lived, mine were dead. As we stood there, his strong arms holding me

tight against his body, I watched Mesopotama fall into ruin, knowing that somewhere in there my father—perhaps still aware and screaming with his mind—was being finally entombed by the stone.

Melanthus… my father… Antigonus… all my people. All gone. Everything I had loved was gone.

The child stirred within me, and I began to cry with deep wracking sobs.

TROJANS THRONGED THE SHORELINE OF THE BAY AS they waited to board the ships lying at anchor some fifty paces out to water. A score of rafts ferried them out in groups of thirty or more.

The mood was calm, some people even managed to laugh, while the sun shone overhead, its heat alleviated by a cooling northerly breeze.

I found it strange that the world continued as if little of consequence had passed.

Undoubtedly sick of my weeping, Brutus handed me into the care of a broad-faced woman with a child slung in a blanket over her back. He told me her name was Aethylla, and that she would watch over me for the time being. It was, I think, the final humiliation: he thought so little of me—whether as a wife or as an enemy—that this simple peasant woman sufficed to either comfort me or guard me.

At that moment I suddenly remembered Tavia. Tavia! Oh, Hera, Tavia was entombed in Mesopotama’s destruction!

Ignoring Aethylla, who was watching me with ill-concealed disdain, I sank to the sandy ground and buried my face in my hands, my shoulders heaving with the renewed strength of my wretchedness. Tavia was gone, consumed with everything else I loved, and never again would she curl up with me in my bed, and sing me to sleep.