Hades Daughter by Sara Douglass

Brutus, and I can give you everything you could possibly want.”
    Her tone, her wandering hand, the tip of her tongue between her teeth, left Brutus in no doubt whatsoever that the “everything” included Artemis.
    “Troia Nova,” he said. “And you.” All his life he’d felt that there was something towards which he should be moving, something which awaited him. His father had smiled at him, the companions of his childhood had jeered. Others had been indifferent. No one had believed him save these men who currently slept at his back.
    Now…he swallowed, almost overcome both by the presence of the goddess and by what she offered him.
    Artemis watched his reaction, and knew the thoughts that jumbled through his mind. She turned her hand so that its back was against his skin, and she let it drift lower, down to his belly where she could feel his muscles quivering in excitement.
    “Where?” he said, his voice almost breathless now in his excitement. “Where is this strong and bright land?”
    “You will reach it in time, Brutus. First, however, you must sail south for two days to a city called Mesopotama.”
    “My long and dangerous travail.”
    “Aye.” Her hand was moving more deliberately now, and she could feel how much her touch excited him; their eventual matching would be all she had hoped for. “Mesopotama is ruled by a king called Pandrasus. There is a great test for you in this city of Mesopotama, one you will pass only if you have the strength and ability to rebuild Troy.” And win me. “When—if—you have won through, and have set your fleet to sea once more, sail a further day’s journey south, and you will find an island. Seek me out there, and I will show you the path to your Troia Nova.” She pressed her hand deeply into his flesh, then withdrew it and stood away from him. She smiled, holding his eyes, then stepped forward and brushed past him.
    He turned as if to follow, but she held out her hand, halting him. “Do as I say, Brutus,” she said, and then, suddenly, Artemis was gone, as if she had never been.
    In a land far distant, so distant it was almost incomprehensible to either Trojan or Llangarlian, a naked youth of particularly dark beauty sat in a barren, dry plain in the valley of an alpine landscape. Above him reared snow- and ice-capped mountains, about him whistled frigid winds, but none of this did he notice.
    He sat cradled within the dark heart of the unicursal labyrinth that he had scrawled in the dry earth with a knife. The knife lay on the soil before his crossed legs, its blade pointed outwards towards the entrance of— the escape from —the labyrinth, its curious twisted-horn haft pointing towards the youth.
    Asterion sat, his black eyes riveted on the knife, drawing strength from its curious dark power, thinking on what he had just learned: one of Ariadne’s daughter-heirs had made her initial move in the resurrection of the Game.
    And here he sat, “trapped” in this calamitously weak body.
    He smiled, as cold and malicious as the landscape about him. Asterion had known exactly what Herron was doing when she interfered in his rebirth, forcing him into this body and this distant land. He had expected it, had known that either Ariadne or one of her daughter-heirs would try to negate his power, so they could restart the Game. Having anticipated the betrayal, Asterion could very well have stopped it, and escaped Herron’s darkcraft.
    But that was the very last thing Asterion wanted to do. Above all else he wanted Herron and whoever followed her to believe he was incapacitated, that he was trapped and impotent.
    Asterion’s smile grew colder, his eyes darker. Weak his body might be, but his power was stronger than ever.
    He reached out a hand, and touched the knife gently, loving it. This knife was very precious to him, for it was of him. In his first rebirth after Ariadne had enacted her Catastrophe, ruining the Game in the Aegean world, Asterion had journeyed back