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

‘And divest yourself of your clothes. Mag’s Dance will only accept you naked.”

I hesitated, unnerved not so much by any thought of modesty but because of the frigid air. How could Ecub stand so calmly, so still, when her flesh must be screaming for warmth?

‘You will be warm enough,” Ecub said, and so I shrugged off my cloak and kicked my shoes to one side.

Ecub looked at the faint lines of pregnancy still visible on my belly, and nodded. “Your fertility blesses you,” she said. “Enter.”

And with that she turned, and walked into the stones.

With no more hesitation, but with my unknown sense of fear growing every moment, I, too, stepped into Mag’s Dance.

WE STOOD WITHIN THE OUTER CIRCLE OF MONOLITHS, halfway between it and the inner, smaller circle.

‘This is the greatest Stone Dance of them all,” Ecub’s soft voice said. “This is Mag’s Dance, her Dance, her womb.”

She led me to the very center of the Dance through the inner circle of smaller and uncapped stones to where five great stone arches stood in a “U” shape.

‘The cup of the womb,” said Ecub, and reached down to the foot of one of the arches. She lifted up a flask. “Drink,” she said, and handed it to me.

I hesitated, and looked at Ecub.

The woman’s eyes glinted at me, daring me. “Are you afraid?” she said.

Yes, I wanted to answer. “No,” I said, raising the flask to my lips, drank deeply of the warm, pungent liquid within.

It bit into my throat, then into my stomach, and I gagged, spilling some of the liquid from my mouth as I all but dropped the flask.

‘Careful,” said Ecub, tut-tutting as if she was, indeed, my mother. “Do not drink too much.”

‘Who would want to?” I murmured, and she smiled, and took the flask and drank deeply of it herself.

She saw me staring as she finally lowered the flask. “I am used to it,” she said, her words lightly slurred, and I found that when I opened my mouth to comment my mouth, too, did not work well.

My tongue and throat felt thick, as if they were coated with rotten honey, and I gagged once more, and would have retched had not Ecub grabbed my arm and put a hand to my forehead.

‘Be still,” she said, and some of the rotten taste and thickness in my mouth and throat faded, and I felt easier again.

I relaxed a little, and Ecub must have felt it under her hands. She smiled, and I saw that her face was beautiful—far more beautiful than I had previously thought.

Was it the starlight? I wondered.

‘You are a mother,” she whispered, the hand on my arm now sliding over my breasts, oh, so slowly, and my belly. “You are beautiful in Mag’s eyes. Whatever happens here tonight, Cornelia, Mag will protect and nurture you. She is strong here tonight, stronger than I have felt her in many, many years.”

Ecub’s voice, oddly, sounded rather surprised. “I think you bring a blessing to this Dance, strange Cornelia.”

‘I had no thought to,” I said. “Where is Blangan? Should she not also drink?” “No,” said Ecub. “I have asked Blangan to wait at the outer circle. She does not know of the frenzy wine.”

Frenzy wine? I thought, and then realized that Ecub must have put this wine here earlier as she had very obviously carried nothing to the Dance on her way here with Blangan.

This night was planned long before we arrived.

‘Mag has brought you here,” whispered Ecub, and I thought her voice sounded as if it came from a distance greater than that of the stars. “But not through fear for Blangan, I think. She wants you to witness something, Cornelia.”

‘What…” I mumbled. The frenzy wine was coursing through my blood, and I could not think in a straight line. The stones about me blurred, melding one into the other until it seemed as if I were enclosed within a solid wall of stone.

‘You are within Mag’s womb,” Ecub whispered. “See…”

She spread her hand out before me.

Figures suddenly emerged from the stone. Men. Women. Beasts. A donkey, draped in ribbons and baubles. A stunningly beautiful white mare. An auroch, flowers festooning its horns. A wiry sheep, bleating pitifully.

‘Here, in this circle,” Ecub whispered, “in Mag’s womb, came men and women to celebrate the gift of life, and to offer dance and frenzy to Mag and Og in thanks for their fertility and life. See.”

And I saw the men and women, dancing and writhing, copulating on the ground and in the spaces between the stones.

One naked, muscular man stood out, for on his head he wore the bloodied antlers of a stag. He seized a woman, and rode her as a bull rides a cow, then let her go when she started to shriek. He took another woman, then another, then yet one more, and all shrieked, although whether in fear or joy I could

not tell.

The circles of stone blurred, and I felt faint, and only the pressure of Ecub’s hand on my arm kept me upright.

‘This is not now,” she whispered. “This is what is past. Do you understand?”

‘Yes,” I said, my eyes still on the man who wore the stag antlers. He had just left a woman, and stood not five paces from me.

Our eyes met, and held.

I moaned, wondering if he would take me, for I found myself wanting him more than anything I had ever previously lusted for in life.

The donkey wandered between us, and the man seized it.

I cried out, but both the man and Ecub laughed. The man grabbed the donkey’s hindquarters in his strong hands, and drew her toward him.

He mounted her, thrusting strongly, and the donkey and I shrieked at exactly the same time, and…

… then everything vanished, and I stood again amid the circles of stone, Ecub by my side.

The writhing, copulating couples had gone; the stag man had gone; the donkey had gone, as had all the other beasts.

Now Blangan walked toward us, summoned by a soft word from Ecub, her naked skin gleaming soft ivory in the starlight.

I had always thought Blangan somewhat plain, but here, now, within these magical circles and with the frenzy wine throbbing through my veins, I thought her beautiful. Her limbs were perfectly formed, her hips and belly, like mine, rounded through motherhood. Her breasts were small globes, like firm apples, and her nipples were likewise girlishly small and pale pink.

I jumped. Beside me Ecub had begun to clap a haunting rhythm with her hands; much like what her daughters had danced to, this beat was nonetheless far stronger and more potent.

It throbbed, as the frenzy wine throbbed, and both Blangan and I moaned,

‘Dance!” said Ecub, and Blangan began a hauntingly slow, beautiful dance.

Her movements looked first like a sapling bending in a breeze, then like a field of grain, waving in the wind. Her movement quickened, and although she never danced as wildly or as quickly as Ecub’s daughters had done, her dance nevertheless seemed far more powerful, and far more secret. Her feet blurred, their movements intricate, tapping out the rhythm of Ecub’s hands, and she swayed this way and that, weaving a pattern through the twin circles of stones, and the arches within the center.

She looked like one possessed, and yet at the same time everything she did, every movement, every tap of her foot and arch of an arm, was clearly part of a deliberate pattern of movement.

Her passage through and between the circles of stone was labyrinthlike, beautiful, demanding, complex. How could anyone learn these steps?

My own body yearned to sway and dip as did Siangan’s.

‘She remembers what Mag taught her as a girl,” Ecub said over the beat of her clapping hands. “This is Mag’s Nuptial Dance, Cornelia. Her mating dance.”

‘Mates with whom?” I whispered, yet knowing the answer.

The stag man, the wild beast of the forest.

I gave in to my impulses, and began to sway back and forth with the rhythm of Ecub’s hands.

‘Only initiates into Mag’s ways can dance this—” Ecub began, and then she stopped, or I failed to hear the rest of what she said, for the frenzy wine was soaring through my blood, and I found my feet moving, and my arms, and then I was in among the stones as well, dancing with Blangan.

Behind me I very faintly heard Ecub cry out something in surprise, or warning, but I did not care. I found that this dance seemed to rise from the very pit of my womb, as if I had known it all my life, and all my unborn life before that.

Blangan saw me, and her face suffused with joy. We laughed at each other, then rather like Ecub’s daughters, we effortlessly joined our dances into the one. We danced in counterpoint, each one mirroring the other’s movements through different quadrants of the circles.