Hades Daughter (6 page)

Genvissa was an extraordinarily powerful woman, but her power encompassed far more than the Mag power she held within her womb. She was of a line of five foremothers, singular women all, the first of whom, Ariadne, had brought to this land an exotic dark sorcery.

Ariadne had escaped from Naxos aboard a merchant’s vessel six days before Thera exploded, nurturing both her revenge and her newly won darkcraft. She found a home in Llangarlia, which accepted her (and more importantly, added to her power), and she settled, waiting. Waiting for the right moment, the moment when Asterion, now wandering the earth reborn, was distant enough that Ariadne could risk working the final part of her revenge.

That moment had not come in Ariadne’s lifetime, and such was the strength of her hatred and ambition, she had not truly minded. The time would eventually be right: Asterion would be far enough away and, hopefully, weak enough that he could not interfere, and one among her daughter-heirs would be the one.

So Ariadne had nurtured her darkcraft, and then handed it down to her daughter-heir, who nurtured and fed it in her own right before handing it, in turn, to her daughter-heir. For well over a hundred years the women had passed it down their line, mother to daughter, each adding to the store of the power which, by the time Genvissa’s mother, Herron, came into her full malevolence, had grown into a dark, twisting thing indeed.

It was Herron who laid the foundations for the final part of Ariadne’s plan: the eventual reactivation of the Game far, far from the Aegean world and its gods. First, she had engineered the splitting of Aerne’s Og
power so that Og, and through him, Mag, would be too weak to interfere. Well might the Gormagog despise himself for his weakness in losing half of his power to his newly conceived son, and thus crippling Og (and, by association, Mag), but in reality he’d been the victim of Herron’s spell-weaving rather than his own unwitting error. Aerne and Loth blamed the pitiful Blangan for the catastrophic event—they still lusted for her blood—but Blangan had simply been a means, a vessel to be used.

Blangan had been Herron’s eldest daughter, and thus expendable in a world where it was the youngest daughter who inherited.

Then, in a final act of darkcraft so powerful it had ended her life, Herron had caused Asterion—at that moment moving from one life to the next—to be reborn into a body calamitously weak
and
so far distant that he, like Og and Mag, would be able to do nothing to deter Herron’s daughter-heir Genvissa from the final fulfilment of Ariadne’s design.

Even though all these women had held the office of MagaLlan, none of them had much regard for Mag herself; they were content to mouth their respect while all the time drawing on the goddess’ power. They loved this land which sheltered them, but they secretly despised the gods who had protected it and, as generation succeeded generation, plotted to overthrow them.

After all, they had something far better than Mag or Og planned for this land.

Standing at the edge of the Llan, shivering as the cold water lapped at her ankles, Genvissa sent a prayer of thankfulness and honour her mother’s way. Now it was Genvissa’s turn to build upon her five foremothers’ work and execute the final turn of the labyrinth, place the final piece of the puzzle, work that magic that would allow power once more to rise from the ashes of her fifth foremother’s betrayal.

The time was finally here. Asterion was far, far away, currently trapped in his weakest incarnation ever, and the man Genvissa
did
need was in place—and much closer than Asterion.

Genvissa shivered again, but this time with desire rather than cold. She’d had many lovers in her lifetime, but they were as nothing when compared to the man who by blood and by shared knowledge, power and training was destined to be her mate.

The man she needed to bring to Llangarlia.

The man she (as her five dead foremothers) needed to bring all their plans to fruition.

The one man, that single man remaining, who could aid Genvissa in her quest.

A Kingman. The last one left out of the catastrophes that had racked the Aegean world over the past five or six generations. The one man who had the power to match her step by step in the twin dances of power. The one man who could earn Genvissa’s respect and match her strength and wit. A Kingman: the only one who could weave with her that enchantment which would raise this land to everlasting greatness.

A fitting mate.

A Kingman. Genvissa, still hesitating at the Llan’s edge, placed a hand on her belly. She had two years’ more of life in her womb, two years remaining in which to conceive and bear her heir…and she’d be damned if she’d allow Aerne to get this one on her.

Genvissa took a deep breath, then dived headfirst into the river, sliding smoothly beneath its waters and into the power reservoir of the ancient goddess Mag.

Deep in her watery cave-womb, Mag wailed. The Darkwitch was with her again, draining yet more of her life-force, and there was little Mag could do to prevent it. Once Og could have protected her, but now
he was impotent, reduced to helpless whimpering as he crawled on his belly through the forests.

For six generations the Darkwitches had held the office of MagaLlan, and for six generations they’d been binding Mag tighter and tighter in their spell-weavings. At first Mag had been able to resist them; now her resistance was a tame thing, and she was all but the MagaLlan’s pet. She still retained some of her power, but it had become a mere servant to the MagaLlan’s wishes. The MagaLlan before this, Herron, had even used Mag to cripple her own mate, Og.

Now Genvissa was absorbing the last remaining vestiges of Mag’s power, using it to further Genvissa’s own plans for this land. Mag knew that if she couldn’t find the means to counter Genvissa soon, she would fade away as Og had done. Mag’s name might still be invoked, and her power used, but Mag herself would be dead, and Genvissa, and those who succeeded her, would wield Mag’s magic.

But what could she do?
What?
Mag needed somewhere to hide, somewhere to lick her wounds and regain her strength. But there was no place in this land, no womanly harbour, in which she
could
conceal herself. Genvissa knew all the dark spaces of every hill and every woman’s body; there was no escape into any of them for Mag.

Nowhere to go, once Genvissa had drawn away from Mag every last iota of her ancient power, save for extinction.

Mag twisted and wept, and felt yet more of her power drain away.

Her life, once measured in aeons, was now measured in weeks at the most.

Northern Epirus, on the west coast of Greece

T
he beach lay in a glimmering white crescent, semicircled by the steep slopes of a forested mountain, drenched in heavy moonlight. Several hundred men lay wrapped in blankets on the sand, deeply asleep and enslaved to dream, incapable of movement. Five fires had been lit along the line of beach and the ranks of sleeping warriors, but now they were all but dead, cooled into mounds of greying coals. At each fire stood a sentry, leaning on a spear; all five slept, their chins resting on their chests, soft snores rattling through their slack lips.

Beyond the beach three low-slung warships bobbed gently at anchor in the ocean swells of the bay, uncaring witnesses to the enchantment settling upon the sleepers.

The waters at tide’s edge were calm one moment, bubbling silently the next. A woman rose from the shallows, strangely dry for the manner of her arrival.

For a heartbeat she shimmered, as if she were a mere apparition…then her figure hardened, and became as if real.

She was tall, and sturdily built, her dark auburn hair bundled carelessly into a knot on the top of her head, her small, high breasts left bare, her hips clad with a short green kirtle bound about her waist with a few twists of a leather thong.

Across her back rested a quiver of golden arrows, and over her left shoulder lay a silver hunting bow of exquisite workmanship.

The woman strode across the beach and paused at the edge of the first wave of sleepers. Her lip curled, as if she found them not to her taste.

She stepped over them and walked, loose-hipped and confident, between the ranks of sleepers to the very far end of the beach.

Here, slightly apart from the others, lay a single warrior. To one side lay his clothes, a waistband of twisted leather wound about with scarlet and gold cords. His scarlet waistcloth, fresh-washed from the sea, lay folded neatly beside it.

He had thrown off his blanket, as if it constrained him, even in sleep, and his body lay naked save for the bands of gold he wore about his biceps, upper forearms and just below his knees.

Fine craftsmen had wrought these golden bands, and on each of them they had embossed the same repeating symbol: a spinning crown over a stylised unicursal labyrinth.

They were the bands of kingship, yet this man ruled over no kingdom.

They were the bands of the Kingman and were the only set surviving from the catastrophes that had enveloped the Aegean world; yet this man had no partner with which to dance through the sorcerous twistings of the labyrinth.

The woman stood, her face expressionless, staring down at him.

He was not a handsome man, being too blunt of feature and his black eyebrows too straight, but he was well made with wide shoulders, flat belly, slim hips and long, tightly muscled limbs, and she knew that when his eyes opened they would be of that liquid blackness she had always craved in her lovers.

And his hair. She smiled. His hair was long and black and tightly curled, jouncing out of the thong which held it at the back of his neck into a riot of wildness across his shoulders. She longed to free it, to perfume it with scented oils, to run her fingers through it and bring it to her lips, and to sink her fists into it so tightly that he could never escape her.

She could see Aphrodite’s blood in that hair, and it excited her.

Her body trembled, and, suddenly sick of her silent watching she bent down, grabbed the man’s beautiful hair, and gave his head a hard yank.

He jerked instantly out of dream, and, as instantly, knew by the bow and arrows who it was bending down over him, staring at him intently.

“Artemis?” he whispered. He rose on his elbows, his face showing both confusion and awe. “I thought you dead!”

She smiled, pleased with her deception. “Me? Dead? How so when I am so fully fleshed?” She pulled her hand from his hair. “Rise, and walk with me.”

He did so, not once taking his eyes off the Goddess of the Hunt, his movements fluid and graceful, warrior-trained and battle-honed.

He did not reach for his waistcloth, treating the goddess with the same respect he would one of his warriors.

Once he was standing Artemis turned and walked a few paces away, and the man followed, tense with excitement. They walked in silence, Artemis a pace or two ahead of the man, until they had reached the very end of the beach where rocks rose in a sheer face to the first of the forested slopes of the mountain.

“You have been wandering now…for how long?” she asked as she turned to face him. She leaned back, resting her buttocks on a rock and folding her arms.
She considered him carefully, not bothering to disguise the admiration with which she ran her eyes down his body.

It was, after all, what she and hers had so long been waiting for.

“Fifteen years.” He regarded her evenly. There was still awe in his eyes, but caution and speculation also, and that pleased Artemis.

This man was no fool.

“Fifteen years. And what have you learned in those fifteen years?”

“Hunger.”

She smiled, the expression predatory. “Hunger for what?”

He took a deep breath, his wonderful black eyes losing some focus, and she needed no more answer.

She laid a finger on one of the golden bands about his right arm. “You hunger for your heritage. You hunger for power. You hunger for Troy.”

“Aye.” His voice was tight, almost breathless.

“Yet how can this be? Troy has been ashes for over ninety years.”

“Troy is in my blood.” He placed his left hand over her finger where it still lay on the golden band. It was a bold move, touching a goddess. “And I wear it about my arm. I cannot forget.”

“No, of course you cannot.” She pulled her finger out from under his hand—slowly, teasingly—and rested her hand on the warm skin of his chest. “Brutus,” she said, rolling about her tongue the Latin name his dying mother had given him. “If I offered you power, would you take it?”

He hesitated, but she knew it was only because he was considering her, not because he was afraid. “Yes.”

“And if the path I showed you to this power was strange, but resulted in you reaching this power
stronger than you have ever been before, would you nevertheless take it?”

This time no hesitation. “Oh, yes.”

“If I tested your resolve and your courage and your training along this path, would you resent me for it?”

Her hand was still on his chest, and he leaned very slightly into it. “And what,” he said, “would be my prize at the end of all this travail?”

She moved closer to him, her face barely an inch or two from his, their breath intermingling, their bodies touching at a half-dozen different places, their mouths a single, dangerous moment away from a kiss.

Me.
The word hung between them, and Artemis actually put her mouth against his to verbalise the word.

“Troy,” she whispered.

He drew in a sharp, shocked breath, and his muscles jumped under her hand.

She moved away from him, just slightly, the better to see the incredulity, the
lust,
in his face.

Oh yes, this was the man she wanted.

“Troy?” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

“Do you not wear the kingship bands of Troy?” Her hand was moving in warm, slow circles over his chest.

“Troy is gone. Ashes. Crumbled stone. It would take me a thousand years to rebuild it.”