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

My chest tightened, my breath harshened, my feet blistered with the agony of the dance, my breasts and belly burned with the liquid tempo of my body.

Thoughts of the man with the stag antlers filled my mind, and I wished he could see me as now, wished he could see my dance.

The stones about me blurred, the stars in the sky became one blinding searing light, and I thought I must be near death…

… and then everything stopped.

I opened my eyes. I stood, breathing deeply but not heavily, under one the lintels in the outer circle of stone. Blangan stood directly opposite across the twin circles, under her own lintel.

Ecub stood between us, her hands fallen still, and I realized we had stop] dancing the instant she had stopped her clapping.

I gazed about me.

The mist that had been drifting between the stones when first I’d proached Mag’s Dance had now thickened. The stones themselves still loor through the mist, but the surrounding countryside had gone.

The stars had vanished overhead, and all the noises of the night—the w the rustling of grasses and shrubs, the sleep movements and chirping; birds—had stilled.

I looked again at Ecub—her hands folded before her, her face lowere and then at Blangan who was staring at me with such profound love on face that my breath caught in my throat.

‘Oh, thank you, Cornelia,” she said, her soft voice reaching me even the a vast distance separated us.

“Thank you for so blessing me tonight.”

I gulped, not so much at what she said, but because she looked lovelier 1 I had ever seen any woman. Her face was alight, her eyes shining, her me slightly parted to show the tips of her white teeth.

And then the foreboding roared through me more vicious that it heretofore been. For no other reason, I think, than the fear that gripped I remembered Hera’s warning: Beware of the Horned One. The Bull.

The En Asterion .

‘Blangan!” I cried, and would have moved to her save that she held hand to halt me.

‘Fear not for me, for I have seen what you are, and it comforts me. not sad, but blessed. Be still, Mag, for I am content in your love.”

I think I saw Ecub lift her head slightly at that last, and stare beb Blangan and myself, but I paid her no mind. The inner core of foreboding, terrible distress, had suddenly ebbed, but my own fear and love for Bla kept me tense and afraid.

‘Be still,” Blangan said again.

Then I heard footsteps.

Behind me.

I turned toward the sound, my heart thudding, and Hera’s warning denly very much to the forefront of my mind.

The footfalls approached steadily—yet with a deliberate slowness—that part of the fog that overlay the raised pathway leading to Mag’s D The archway under which I stood was the entrance archway into Mag’s D O and I should have been afraid, I should have been terrified , because whoever (whatever) made those footsteps would enter via this archway.

But someone spoke to me, I suppose it was either Ecub or Blangan, and said, Be still, Cornelia. This is not the Bull, not Asterion. Be still .

My hand hovered over my womb, and I felt a sense of safety so consuming I relaxed, and let my fears slide away.

Not the Bull. Not Asterion.

I straightened my shoulders, and lifted my chin, and waited.

WHEN HE—IT—WALKED OUT OF THE MIST I WAS NOT surprised.

It was the stag man I had seen copulating with the women and the donkey, and yet it was not. The man I had seen had antlers tied to his head with thongs, he had been a representation (of Og, something whispered in my mind) only.

This man had no antlers tied to his head; rather, he had four or five horned spurs growing from his skull. White protuberances that glistened with exposed blood vessels and bone… and yet that looked velvety smooth to the touch.

He was monstrous, his entire skull and forehead deformed into something that should not, could not, have been allowed to live. Everything bulged as if he had uncontrollable tumors within his brain that demanded an escape; in places his scalp had burst to allow those horns egress, in other places scant, thin brown hair covered other protrusions that threatened to break through at any moment.

He stopped beside me, so close I could feel the heat from his naked body. Apart from his head he was as any man: hard-muscled, generously proportioned, brown-skinned from the sun.

But that head… and that distended face beneath it… Oh, Hera, he was ugly.

He reached out, and touched my breast, gently at first, and then cupping it in his strong hand.

Then he ran his hand over my belly. “Mag is powerful with you,” he said, and I was stunned to hear such a melodious voice exit from such ugliness. “Yet how can that be in a stranger to this land? You draw me to you…” He sighed, and his entire body trembled. “If this had been another night, any other night, and you had danced for me, then I would have come, and together we should have protected and increased the herd.”

I understood little of what he said, yet I felt the same powerful pull that he spoke of. My body trembled, and my flesh broke into a sweat.

‘Perhaps—” I whispered, but he dropped his hand from me, and a hardness came over his face.

‘Not tonight,” he said. “Tonight is Og’s night only. His resurrection amid the witch’s death.”

And suddenly, horribly, I knew why he was here.

Why Blangan was here.

He snarled, unexpectedly, viciously, and I jumped, breaking the contact between him and me.

He did not notice. In a flurry of movement, so fast his form blurred, the stag man closed the distance between himself and Blangan.

I jerked, and cried out, and would have moved to aid Blangan, but just then I heard yet another footfall behind me, and there was Coel, and he had wrapped his arms tightly about me so that I could not move.

‘Leave it alone,” he whispered harshly in my ear. “This does not concern you.”

I wailed, horrified for Blangan, but Coel was too strong, and he raised one hand and clamped it over my mouth so that I could not even scream my horror.

All I could do was witness.

The stag man had grabbed Siangan’s hair in one hand, and twisted it back so that her throat was

exposed.

‘Darkwitch!” he hissed, and I gasped, for I somehow realized that this was Siangan’s son.

‘I loved you, Loth,” she whispered, her voice strained but nevertheless calm. “I love you still.”

‘Yet you destroyed the land!”

He dipped his head, and suckled at one of her breasts.

Blangan moaned. “It was not I,” she whispered, and I could see that she was finally afraid, and that she fought with herself not to struggle.

‘It is time,” this Loth-thing said, raising his mouth slightly from his mother’s breast, “to break the enchantment of your darkcraft and restore to Og his potency!”

His stance changed, and where one moment he had been suckling, the next he was biting, the muscles in his neck and shoulders bulging.

Blangan screamed, a thin high wail of absolute fear and torment.

Her son raised his head for an instant, and I caught a glimpse both of his blood-covered face, and of Siangan’s left breast, now hanging from her rib cage by only a thin rope of flesh.

I gagged beneath Coel’s hand, but I could not look away.

‘It is time your evil died, Blangan.”

And then he plunged his fist into her chest, shattering her ribs asunder.

THE WHITE STAG, ALREADY SKELETAL WITH LOSS OF power, writhed in its death agony as the hunter leaned down and tore out its heart.

It lay against the pure white of the stag’s coat, beating and throbbing in its extremity, and then it lay still.

With the stag’s last breath, Og’s crippled power vanished completely from the land.

BLANGAN’S DEAD BODY FLOPPED TO THE GROUND, her still heart lying exposed on her belly.

Loth staggered back, his face a mask of terror and disbelief. “No! No!” he cried, Ecub’s cries intermingling with his.

” What have I done?” Loth screamed, and I heard Coel cry out behind me.

‘What have you done? What have you done?”

There was a long, long silence, where I could do nothing but stare at Siangan’s corpse, and I could feel nothing but the viselike grip of Coel’s arms about me.

Then Ecub said, in a very small voice, “This was not supposed to happen, Loth. You were supposed to kill Blangan, not Og with her.”

NOT QUITE DEAD YET, SAID MAG WITHIN HER STONE hall Then, before it was too late and using most of the power remaining to her, she cast a spell-weaving over the corpse of the poor half-starved stag lying on the forest floor, and its heart gave a single faint beat —so faint it was barely a tremor — as it would beat just once a year from henceforth until…