It was a night like any other. Tavia had made sure of my comfort, and had then lain down on her pallet at the foot of my bed.
Snores had soon issued forth from that darkness beyond my feet. (The snores once had irritated me beyond measure, until I realized that they informed me of when the night was mine to confide either in Hera or in my dreams as intimately as I wanted.)
I lay quietly, a smile on my face, my hands on my breasts as I thought of Melanthus. Tavia—and her snoring—would have to find somewhere else to sleep once he was my husband.
At that thought my smile increased, and I wriggled in my bed, a vague, unknowable wanting deep within my body making me restless. I was about to whisper Melanthus’ name as a mantra (the more I spoke it, then surely the sooner he would be mine) when suddenly… suddenly… I was no longer within my bed, nor even within my home.
Instead I stood on a blasted rock, the sea churning about me, drenching me with its waters. Above me wheeled immense black birds, screaming and shrieking so horribly I put my hands to my ears and cried out in terror.
‘Beware!” spoke a voice, and I spun about, almost losing my footing on the treacherous rock.
A woman, wraithlike, so insubstantial the waves cascaded straight through her, stood a pace away at the very edge of the rock.
‘Who are you?” I whispered.
The wraith reached out a hand, and as it neared my face her flesh solidified so that warm flesh touched my cheek, and I knew instantly who it was.
‘Hera!”
‘Beloved child,” she said. I saw in her newly fleshed face that her lovely eyes were awash with tears.
“Beloved child, beware, for you have a great enemy.”
I put my hand over hers, and pressed it more deeply against my cheek. “Hera,” I whispered, so overcome with her presence I paid virtually no heed to her words. “Hera…”
‘A great enemy. The Horned One. Asterion. He will hunt you down one day, Cornelia. Be prepared.”
‘Asterion?” The name was vaguely familiar, but I forgot anything I might have known about it as the import of Hera’s words finally sank into my consciousness. An enemy, and one who sounded so malevolent? My fear, initially comforted by the goddess’ presence, now reasserted itself, and I sobbed.
‘The Bull. The Horned One. Keep watch for him, Cornelia. He hunts, and he will hunt you.”
‘What… who… what do you mean?”
Hera’s other hand lifted, and for one blessed moment she held my face cradled between her two
hands. “You are so beautiful,” she whispered, and I wondered that she, the most lovely of goddesses, could say this. “So beautiful, and you must learn also to be strong, and courageous, for nothing else will stop him.”
‘You could—”
‘No. I am dying, and I am among the very last of my kind. I have not much longer before the waves of the Catastrophe engulf me completely. Cornelia, listen. The Game has been stolen from us, but it will find you again. When it does, my dear, learn it. Learn the Game, child. Learn the Game. It is all that can save you—and through you all of mankind—from Asterion.”
I had no idea what she meant. “Hera—”
‘You shall meet a distant sister of mine, sad and weary, and damaged by Ariadne’s viperish curse as well, but far more cunning than I, and whose well of power has not been destroyed as has ours. She will aid you. She is all that is left, now.”
Her hands dropped away from my face, and she stepped back, and her form became insubstantial once more.
‘Hera!” I cried, reaching out to her.
‘Farewell, beloved,” she whispered. “Farewell.”
And she was gone.
I WOKE, FULLY CONSCIOUS, INTO THE DARK OF MY bedchamber.
Tavia snored on, unperturbed.
‘Asterion?” I whispered. I lay awake a long time, then drowsiness overcame me, and I succumbed to sleep.
I dreamed again, but it was of Melanthus, and its effect was such that when I woke into the bright daylight with Tavia bustling about the chamber, I remembered almost nothing of Hera’s visitation.
WITHIN THE MONTH WHAT I WOULD LATER RECOGNIZE as Ariadne’s curse reached out and overwhelmed me, and the Catastrophe finally, calamitously, lay waste to my entire life.
Cb&PGGR GUDO LLANGARLIA, SOUTHEAST BRITAIN CHE LAND WAS ANCIENT, SCARRED BY THE TRA-verse of glaciers, oceanic inundations, and, most recently, the axes and awls of humankind. Most of the island’s forests had fallen victim to needs of men and women; in the past one thousand years 100
million trees had fallen, leaving vast windswept moors where once had been thick forests, and meadowlands where once had flowered dense thickets.
Even if the island had lost its enveloping vast canopy, then there still remained great swaths of green forests that ran through the land like the ancient mystical roads of the gods. In these dark strange woodlands ancient riddles gathered in the twilight shadows, and murderous giant badgers and gray wolves and brown bears roamed paths rarely trod by human feet. Here sprites and imps lived and died,
and history itself sank deep beneath the virulent leaf waste that gathered at the base of twisted, prehistoric trees.
Save for those especially marked by the gods, the human population left the forests and woods well enough alone. They worshiped the great stag-god Og who sheltered within the trees’ shadows, venerating him with song and dance and sacrifice, but spent their lives amid the sunlit meadows and fields their braver ancestors had carved out of the Neolithic groves. Here, hares and hedgehogs, robins and larks, gamboled, lesser—and far more manageable—creatures than their forest counterparts, and no threat to the herds of domesticated cattle, sheep, and pigs kept to feed the village populations of the land.
In the southeast of the island, a green and verdant land where the forests were fewer and the fields richer than elsewhere, dwelt the people of Llangarlia. The Llangarlians centered their lives, their culture, and their religion about the great River Llan that wound its languid and peaceful way through the southern central parts of the island to its mouth on the eastern coast. As the forests were the home of the stag-god Og, so the Llan and its tributaries, lakes, and springs were the home of the great mother goddess Mag, under whose benefices the Llangarlians grew their crops, bred their livestock, and raised the strong-limbed children that graced their hearts and homes. Llangarlia basked in the union between Og and Mag, and in the marriage of forest and water.
To the south of the Llan lay the fields and villages of the Llangarlians, but on the northern bank of the river spread a series of wild and mystic hills and mounds that the Llangarlians called the Veiled Hills after the mist that often enclosed them. These hills and mounds were the sacred heart of Llangarlia, resting as they did between the dark forest that spread to their north and west and the river to their south.
Here, amid the Veiled Hills, the ordinary people of Llangarlia walked only during holy festivals when their footsteps were directed and protected by the MagaLlan, the living representative of Mag, and the Gormagog, the living representative of Og. Between them, the MagaLlan and the Gormagog guided the spiritual lives of the Llangarlians and the physical health of the land, personifying as they did the holy marriage between Mag, the waters, and Og, the forests.
For the past fifteen hundred years, ever since the Llangarlians had replaced those strange, forgotten people who had built the Stone Dances, this union had been one of great soundness. The Llangarlians had lived in health and peace, the men reaping the wealth of field and river while the women bred children of exquisite beauty and well-being, the most elderly and respected Mothers among the women of the land presiding over the Houses, or families, of Llangarlia.
Now, however, a blight had fallen over the land. It had begun one dreadful night twenty-six years previously when the Gormagog, Aerne, had lain with his own thirteen-year-old daughter, Blangan. In itself this was not particularly unusual, for many Mothers asked the Gormagog to lie with their daughters and get children of exceptional beauty and power on them, but on this occasion the sexual act turned into a cataclysmic disaster. In that instant the Gormagog spilt his seed into Blangan he felt his Og power torn apart. Half of it he managed to retain, half vanished into the son he had planted within Blangan’s womb.
Divided, the Og power had become virtually useless. There was no point in even trying to abort the child; the damage was done.
It was a disaster not only for the Gormagog, as also for his son, but also for the god Og. As Gormagog was crippled, so also was Og. With every year that passed Og weakened yet further, and as he weakened, so his union with Mag, which kept the land healthy and productive, also waned.