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

She let go his hand, and he was not unaware of the significance of that action, then sighed.

‘What must I say to convince you, Brutus? The Mothers will not oppose me, and the people of Llangarlia will do whatever the Mothers advise them. The Slaughter Festival is in a week’s time.”

‘And the goddess Mag. What will she think?”

‘Mag is irrelevant!” Genvissa snapped.

‘Well, then, what of that monster that Cornelia told me of? That creature who devoured Blangan?

Your sister?”

‘Do you think I have not mourned her loss, Brutus?” She drew in a deep breath. “Blangan talked to you of her role in the splitting of Og’s power.”

It was not a question.

‘Yes. She told me of her rape, of the birth of her son, of how her— your—mother forced her to leave this land.”

‘All true, Brutus. I deny none of it. But what I did, and what my mothei did, was all done for this land.

Og was weak anyway, as was Mag. They couk no longer protect this land which I, as all my foremothers including Ariadne loved so much. We knew how to protect it—rebuild the Game here—and, yes we took steps to ensure that both Game and land would flower. When yoi were fifteen, Brutus, you took steps to ensure your future. I, and all my fore mothers, merely did the same thing.”

He nodded, his eyes moving past her to wander once more over the en chanted landscape that spread beyond the Llandin. “There will be no othei opposition?”

‘No. Of course not. Who could there be?”

He looked back at her, his eyes now unreadable. “There will be no trouble from Asterion?”

ASTERION WAS BARELY MORE THAN A MASS OF UNRECOG nisable tissue clinging relentlessly to the wall of the womb ofGoffar’s wife, yet wa: nonetheless fully aware and wielding all the power of which he was capable. Hit simple body mass quivered in delight at Brutus’ words.

There will be trouble a-plenty, he thought , but you will never see it comin| until it has torn your entire world apart.

PROFOUNDLY SHOCKED, GENVISSA ACTUALLY TOOK £ step back. ” What?”

‘Asterion. You know he walked free once Ariadne destroyed the Game ir the Aegean, spreading evil and malevolence everywhere. He cannot be pleasec at the idea the Game is to recommence—he cannot wish to be trapped again Have you thought of Asterion, Genvissa? Will he come to tear out our throat; while we sleep sated with love?”

‘Why do you ask me of Asterion?”

Brutus nodded very slightly, looking at her. So. Asterion was a threat . “Cor nelia mentioned him. The first night I took her, she asked me if I was Asterion as if she were expecting him.”

Genvissa hissed, but Brutus continued.

‘And I dreamed of she and him, in a great stone hall. She had invited hirr to lie with her, and he repaid her with death.”

Genvissa closed the distance between them and grabbed Brutus’ wrist. “Sh< is his tool! Brutus, she must die!”

‘Tell me of Asterion, Genvissa.”

‘Cornelia must—”

O ” Tell me of Asterion! Damn you, Genvissa, I am your Kingman. I need to know. Don’t think that the pretty sway of your hips and the swell of your breasts have addled my wits completely!”

She drew in a deep breath, then let it out slowly and visibly relaxed her shoulders. “Asterion has lived many lives since Ariadne destroyed the Game and freed him.”

‘Stop there. What no one has ever understood, Genvissa, is why Asterion should be free anyway.

Was he not destroyed by Theseus?”

‘Ariadne made a pact with his shade. She needed power to enact her revenge, Asterion gave her that power in return for her destroying the Game and giving him rebirth into life.”

Brutus threw up his hands and walked away a few paces. “Gods, Genvissa.

He is going to come after you— us—with every particle of his malignant humor!”

‘No! No. Brutus…” Genvissa walked over to him and put a hand on his arm. “He is no threat. None whatsoever, thus I have not mentioned him to you.”

Brutus shot her a cynical look. He was “no threat,” yet she still wanted Cornelia dead just in case Asterion used her as his tool?

‘My mother, Herron,” Genvissa continued, “cast a great enchantment—one so great it killed her in the doing. Asterion was due to be reborn, and she made sure that he was not only born into a weak and crippled body, one that gave him very little power, but was born in a place so far away that ten years’

travel would never broach the distance between here and there. He would know that the Game was being resurrected, but there would be nothing he could do about it.”

‘So Asterion lives, crippled, a lifetime away.”

She hesitated, and Brutus seized both her hands. “Asterion lives, crippled, a lifetime away? Yes ?”

‘He killed himself,” Genvissa said, very low. “Very recently. He is preparing for rebirth.”

‘I can’t believe you did not think this important enough to mention to me, Genvissa. For all the gods’

sakes, I am your Kingman ! I needed to know!”

‘And what threat do you think a mewling infant is going to be, Brutus? Tell me that! We can rebuild the Game within six months… a year at the outside. He won’t even be toddling before he is again trapped. Asterion is no threat !”

Finally, Brutus nodded. “Don’t ever keep such a thing from me again, Genvissa.”

‘Of course not.” She leaned forward and kissed him.

‘And don’t,” he said, drawing back infmitesimally from her, “hurt Cornelia.”

Genvissa’s lips drew back, revealing her teeth, but whether in a smile or a grimace, Brutus could not tell.

coRnelia speaksWEPT, FOR MY OWN FOOLISHNESS MORE THAN ANY-

thing else. How could I have left it until that moment when my rival stood before me to realize that I loved Brutus, and wanted him more than anything else in my life, even Achates?

Are other women this foolish, or did I invent the condition?

Oh, Hera, this Genvissa… I had never imagined a woman so beautiful, so powerful, so sure of herself and of Brutus.

I remembered Coel’s words to me: Genvissa wants Brutus, Cornelia. She will make sure, one way or the other, that you will be set aside .

No! No, surely I could do something…

After all, Cornelia, it is hardly as if Brutus loves you, is it.

I wept. Who was I compared to fcer? A foolish girl who had surely destroyed any chance she ever had to make Brutus love her. Maybe Brutus would set me aside, maybe not. But even if he did not, I doubted I would be anything more than an irritating and gratefully occasional distraction.

I would be the butt of everyone’s jests, and pity.

I remembered Brutus once saying that he would make me queen of this new land to which we sailed, and I wept yet more. I would be an empty husk of a queen, sitting forgotten to one side while the real queen, Genvissa, basked in the adoration both of my husband and of legend.

I was nothing, and it had taken me all this time to realize it.

BRUTUS CAME BACK SEVERAL HOURS AFTER DAWN, brimming with excitement. He spared me a glance, dismissive and cold, then clapped Hicetaon and Corineus on the shoulders and drewthem into discussion.

I heard her name mentioned, many times, and with that same hunger and admiration he’d used when she’d come for him during the night.

In the end, driven to distraction by Brutus’ mutterings with Hicetaon and Corineus, and by Aethylla’s barely concealed amused glances in my direction (did she revel in the knowledge of Genvissa, then?), and not able to hear my husband say Genvissa’s name one more time, I wrapped myself and Achates warmly against the cool gray of the day, and escaped the house.

Would Genvissa take Achates, too, when she took my husband?

I suppose at some level I knew where I was going, who I was going to. I had only one friend, one person I could talk to, and that was Coel: Corineus had become ever more distant with me since he’d realized I’d witnessed his beloved Siangan’s death and not said anything. In the end, I did not have to find Coel at all, for, as always it seemed, he waited for me in the shadows of a house some twenty paces distant.

‘So,” he said, “you have met Genvissa.”

I said nothing.

‘You must not judge us all by one woman,” he said, and I looked away, determined not to succumb to weeping again. What must this man think of me?

‘Have you eaten this morning?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I am not hungry.”

He tsked softly, but did not comment further on the subject of food. “Would you like to meet my family?” he asked. “My mothers and sisters and aunts and their children?”