The Year-god's Daughter: A Saga of Ancient Greece (The Child of the Erinyes Book 1)

by Rebecca Lochlann

He wasn’t the only one tormented by dreams.

  She’d asked for the story. It was a common question, one he’d tired of answering long ago. She assumed he’d received the scars in war, and asked how many men he’d killed.

  Menoetius rose and paced to the far end of the chamber. He struck a flint and lit a lamp. Its light helped him locate a silver casket, once a possession of his mother’s, or so Alexiare claimed. He found what he wanted inside and held it up— an apple carved from red coral, complete with a stem and two leaves, no bigger than the tip of his little finger, but exquisitely formed and polished bright. This souvenir, acquired six years ago on Crete, cost him an engraved cup and tooled leather breastplate. Looking at it brought an image of Princess Aridela to mind; the day he’d breakfasted with her, ripe apples had filled the air with sweetness. His ability to recall her face hadn’t faded in the years since he’d seen her, but he knew she must have changed, as he had, and he often wondered what she now looked like.

  As he watched light play across the delicate coral, he remembered one afternoon at Labyrinthos, when he and the beautiful flaxen-haired Selene lay in bed, lust momentarily quenched. She noticed the trinket and picked it up, turning it over in her fingers.

  “What makes you smile?” Menoetius asked her.

  She turned her mesmerizing eyes to his as she placed the souvenir on his chest. “Do you know why we call this island Kaphtor?” she asked.

  “No. I’ve always known it as Crete.”

  “It means Sea of Apples.” Her breath tickled his ear, prompting a shiver. “It unites us with the isle of Hesperia, where our kings go after consenting to their deaths.” She closed her eyes, opening them again slowly, dreamily. Lifting one of the braids she’d woven into her hair, she stroked the end of it across Menoetius’s cheek. “Have you heard of Athene’s paradise?”

  “No,” he said, hearing his voice catch. He swallowed.

  “Some say Hesperia lies in the far north, beyond the land you call Boreas. Some believe its shores drift westward, on the far side of the earth-river Okeanos. Others claim it resides south, near the ancestral homeland of Kaphtor’s people.”

  He found his voice had gone as rusty as Alexiare’s, and could only stammer, “What is it like?”

  “Hesperia accepts only those heroes willing to dive beneath the torrents of Okeanos without expectation of rising again. It is a fabulous garden, home to wondrous creatures, eternal springtime, and a grove of apple trees that bear fruit of solid gold. Its guardian is Ladon, a serpent larger than any you can imagine. Hesperia’s nymphs welcome our kings and make their lives joyous. Their voices are clear and serene, and the songs they sing to Mother Gaia and Athene Gorgopis will melt a mortal’s heart.” She picked up the apple again and warmed it between her palms. “This is why we give every king three golden apples on the day of his death— to appease the serpent Ladon and transform our heroes into gods.”

  Selene’s voice melted into memory. Menoetius shivered, though his chamber was hot.

  Crete and the two females, one a wisp of a girl and the other a woman with whom Menoetius had shared several memorable interludes, led his thoughts to Idómeneus’s war-plans.

  An unexpected tremor crawled up his spine. Mycenae’s warriors would attack Crete. He himself would help it happen. It was the way of the world; it made sense to overthrow such a wealthy society before someone else did. Yet the idea made his teeth clench.

  One year ago, Mycenae made war on Iolkos, in Thessaly. Idómeneus thought this small kingdom would be an easy conquest, but the natives waged a surprising fight and slaughtered many invaders with arrows as they landed from the nearby bay. The screams of dying warriors interspersed with the ominous peal of warning gongs, the way the water turned red with blood, thick with bodies, remained hideous in Menoetius’s mind. But his most vivid recollection was of Chrysaleon. His half brother laughed when he cut down one of the enemy’s finest soldiers, who happened to be the king’s youngest son. He hacked the warrior’s leg halfway off at the knee and left him to bleed to death. Later he’d sliced a woman’s throat from one ear to the other because she refused to stop keening her grief over a dead warrior. After the battle, Chrysaleon and a gang of Mycenaean soldiers raped and sodomized numerous captive women and young girls. Many were killed. Menoetius tried to rein in his brother, but Chrysaleon, drunk on bloodlust, wine and victory, wouldn’t be stopped.

  They came to blows. Three of Chrysaleon’s cronies overpowered Menoetius from behind, knocking him unconscious with the butt of a sword against his temple. The next day, all Chrysaleon said was, “You brought it on yourself.”

  Menoetius’s hand tightened around the coral apple as he imagined the sack of Knossos. He remembered Chrysaleon’s lecherous expression as he’d brought up Crete’s female ruler being forced to bear the offspring of her Mycenaean conqueror. Thank all the gods, all who had ever existed or would exist, that ruler would not be Aridela or Selene.

  Even so, they were both at risk for rape and slavery. He didn’t know about Aridela, but Selene would die rather than submit to an attack by any man.

  The hair on the nape of his neck lifted. At the edge of his mind, the lion growled; Menoetius relived the terror of crouching in the long grass, knowing he must stand up. He must draw his sword and fight. The woman must be freed.

  The lion in the dream stood as tall as an eight-foot spear. Its paws were the size of a king’s pectoral necklace. Its thunderous growls made the ground vibrate; yellow canines curved, as long as a warrior’s dagger. It made the beast that attacked him in real life, large in her own right, seem a kitten.

  He heard the trapped woman sob as she pulled at the manacle binding her to the oak wall of her prison. Her anguish tore his soul. Each time he endured this nightmare, Menoetius fell deeper into the woman’s possession. Until she was free, he would suffer and so would the world, in an endless rage of fire.

  Scarcely breathing, he strode to the bed, hearing the voice from his dream. Thou wilt give to her the offering of thy blood.

  The command melted into his throat like fresh warm honey. He uncurled the slave-woman’s hand and placed the apple in it.

  It would do.

  * * * *

  The training field lay abandoned but for a lone raven pecking in the earth. The sun, just rising, sent beams of light throughout the sky, lending the clouds rosy iridescence. Menoetius spoke soothing words to his Thessalian stallion as he curried it and waited for Chrysaleon. His brother was late. When last he’d noticed, the prince was slumped in his chair, too drunk to keep his eyes open. Disappointment marred Theanô’s lovely patrician face as her hopes for reconciliation and romance faded.

  “He won’t come, Argo.” The horse nickered and shook its head as if agreeing. Chrysaleon hadn’t yet learned a warrior’s discipline. Beneath the bragging, talent with a sword, and eagerness to confront danger, he remained hardly more than an untried, overprotected boy.

  Squinting into the implacable blue of the heavens, Menoetius remembered his time on Crete. The surface image was one of pleasure and spoiled ease, the women absurdly concerned with baubles, face paint, and hairstyles, the lean Cretan men often more lavishly painted than the women. They spent hours oiling their bronze skin, combing their long curls and lounging in the shade with their exotic pets. As a society they seemed to care for nothing so much as beauty in all its forms. From the moment they woke to the moment they fell asleep, they strove to exceed the beauty of the day before.

  If any Cretan saw him now, if that child with the black, far-seeing eyes, Princess Aridela, saw him, he knew what she would think.

  He sensed that, much like the sky above, a mirror disguised what the Cretans displayed to the world and the truth behind it. They were not as shallow and frivolous as they seemed. His instincts told him they could transform swiftly into battle-ready warriors, shrewd judges, cold and pitiless opponents.

  Yet the rumors claimed their sharp, deadly queen, Helice, had grown dull and lazy in the last six years.
Was her island truly ripe for invasion?

  At one time he would have prayed to Lady Athene for guidance. But he and Athene parted ways the day the lioness flayed skin from bone. Now Menoetius prayed to no Immortal.

  “I dreamed last night,” he said.

  The stallion’s ears perked. It lifted its head from grazing. Menoetius saw his face reflected in its liquid brown eye.

  “I heard that same voice.”

  Thou wilt give to her the offering of thy blood. The words left a lingering sense of fear and reluctance, of impending failure.

  “The woman was there.”

  The steed nuzzled his chest with a velvety nose.

  “Manacled in an oak tree. Who is she, Argo?”

  By now, her black hair, black eyes and olive-toned skin were as familiar to him as the knuckles on his own hands.

  “A phantom.” He snorted. “I search for a dream in every girl I pass, or speak to, or lie with. But none are ever right.”

  Argo switched its tail at a fly and blinked to ward off another.

  Love words and kisses from the wrong mouth irritated him. The smell never matched what he imagined hers would be. The feel was off. Most nights he spent alone, not always because of his scars.

  The voice that whispered in his nightmare didn’t demand blood every time. Once, after he woke and lay shaking, he heard it clearly say, Follow the sacred one, though she travels far and brings grief beyond endurance.

  No living person had ever said those words to him. Who was he meant to follow? How would he know her?

  The dispassionate promise, grief beyond endurance, left him dreading the future.

  Argo stomped one hoof, breaking into Menoetius’s reverie. Chrysaleon stumbled across the dirt toward them, head lowered.

  “No doubt his night was enjoyable,” Menoetius muttered. “Now he’ll pay the price.” He slapped Argo on the rump, sending him lumbering away. Rubbing his hands, he said, “We agreed on daybreak, and here it is, nearly mid-morning. You’ll suffer an audience to your defeat.” He swept out one arm to indicate the gathering cluster of soldiers.

  Chrysaleon’s eyes were red-veined, puffy, his skin pasty. Yet at Menoetius’s words he lifted his chin.

  “Babble on, Captain,” he said. “When you lie on your stomach with my knee in your spine, you’ll use a different tone.”

  One of the men brought them spiced mead.

  Menoetius snorted, remembering something Chrysaleon said a year or so back after a night of hard drinking. You’re the only man who doesn’t lick my boots.

  He probably had no memory of making such an incautious speech to the one he loathed more than any other.

  In truth, as captain of the king’s guard, Menoetius couldn’t afford to show weakness, not even to his prince. His position and future depended on strength. If he lost the respect of his men, he’d soon be banished, forgotten, no matter how much the king favored him.

  Draining his cup and passing it to the soldier, Menoetius began to circle. Chrysaleon moved in the opposite direction.

  The prince snatched at Menoetius’s arm. Menoetius twisted, grabbed Chrysaleon’s outstretched arm before he could pull it back and hooked his leg, using the prince’s own momentum to flip him to the ground.

  Chrysaleon gasped as he struck the earth. The observing warriors bellowed their pleasure at the swiftness of their captain’s triumph.

  Menoetius waited, allowing Chrysaleon to catch his breath and rise, yet that seemed to offend him. With a feral snarl, Chrysaleon barreled headfirst into his brother’s belly. Menoetius fell backward and struck the ground hard. It was his turn to gasp for air.

  “You dare coddle me?” Chrysaleon jabbed Menoetius’s groin with his knee.

  “Spoiled king’s son.” Exploding pain turned Menoetius’s voice to a hoarse mutter. “You’ll use any means to win.”

  Fury butchered Chrysaleon’s usual rough handsomeness and accentuated the ravages of too much drink.

  The soldiers shouted and stomped, calling, “Menoetius. Captain. Show him!”

  Chrysaleon threw them a squinted glance. His jaw tightened. Anyone but his brother would have missed it.

  The old jealousy.

  Coiling his legs, Menoetius catapulted the prince off him and sprang to his feet. They circled again, the earlier façade of friendly camaraderie discarded.

  “The men look up to me as their captain,” Menoetius said.

  “Is that so, bastard?”

  “You’re the king’s trueborn son. No one disputes it.”

  “Some say Idómeneus wishes you were trueborn.”

  “Who says that?”

  Chrysaleon lunged. Stepping to the side, Menoetius kicked him behind the knee, causing him to vault awkwardly onto his back. He rolled onto his stomach. Any self-respecting wrestler would now jump on top of the victim and twist his arms into excruciating immobility. A foe could be dispatched in such a vulnerable position with a wrench to the neck.

  But as Menoetius straddled his brother for the winning pin, a swoop of dizziness dimmed his eyesight; he lost the ability to know up from down, in from out, east from west.

  The lion materialized from a cloud of mist and loped toward him, teeth bared, snout wrinkled. Menoetius froze; he couldn’t even raise his arms in defense. The teeth sank into his stomach as they had many times in nightmare. He felt his body jerk, his flesh rip, his blood gush.

  Something changed. The lion blurred, transformed into Chrysaleon, its shaggy mane becoming Chrysaleon’s tawny hair. Wicked teeth merged into a curved sickle. Wielded by his brother, it was the sickle tearing his stomach.

  The dizziness evaporated. Menoetius heard catcalls from the sidelines. Hot sunlight beat against his face. He lay sprawled on the ground, but had no memory of falling.

  Chrysaleon stumbled to his feet, scowling at the soldiers. Smears of dirt ran with sweat on his forehead.

  Menoetius couldn’t stop shivering. His belly roiled with nausea. Slick sweat covered his face and chest. He felt like a sick old man as he gathered his legs underneath and hoisted himself upright.

  He didn’t respond smoothly to Chrysaleon’s lunge, and missed an opportunity to knock him off balance with the heel of a hand to the jaw. Chrysaleon swung his arm wide, fist clenched, toward his brother’s chin, but Menoetius managed to block it with his forearm. Impressively swift, Chrysaleon grabbed Menoetius’s arm with his other hand and stomped on his foot. Menoetius jerked backward, giving Chrysaleon the opening he needed to hook his leg then yank him forward, propelling him facedown to the ground.

  Chrysaleon didn’t hesitate. He knelt on his brother’s spine and twisted his arm back. “Here we are,” he muttered. “As I knew we would be.”

  Silence fell, stretching outward, encompassing the soldiers, their horses, the sky itself.

  Finally, the raven cawed. Time drew breath and moved again.

  “Poseidon guides you.” Menoetius sensed the displeasure from the sidelines. A few from his company were there. He felt their anger. They knew him the better wrestler. They didn’t understand. Neither did he.

  One of Idómeneus’s generals stood among the group, his expression unreadable.

  Chrysaleon panted. Argo neighed. The image of Chrysaleon’s triumphant grin as he ripped out his brother’s intestines hovered on the edge of Menoetius’s awareness.

  Increasing the pressure on Menoetius’s arm, Chrysaleon let him know he could break it if he wished.

  With a cheerful laugh he jumped off, giving Menoetius a buffet between the shoulder blades. “A decent morning tussle, brother. I feel alive again.”

  Menoetius stood.

  The sallow tinge was gone, replaced by exultation. Chrysaleon’s eyes sparkled. Menoetius suspected he was now the one who looked as though he’d spent the night drinking.

  Throwing an arm around Menoetius’s shoulder, Chrysaleon drew in a deep breath. “It’s early yet.” He turned his head up toward the sun, closing his eyes. “I’ll have Alexiare sneak Theanô away fro
m her father.” Lower, he added, “Cocks need training too— as much as they can get.” He opened his eyes and affected mock sympathy. “That is, when the sight of one doesn’t make a woman puke.”

  The warriors crowded around, congratulating Chrysaleon, avoiding Menoetius’s gaze. They pulled the victorious prince away toward the palace, offering their own slave-women if Theanô couldn’t be found.

  Soon the field lay quiet. The crimson sun yellowed as it rose higher. Heat wavered among blades of grass. Menoetius sat down, watching the raven peck for insects.

  Argo returned and snuffled at his hair.

  Rage, so keen it could consume him if he allowed such weakness, crept up his spine, spreading like palsy through his arms and legs.

  “He’s heir to the high king’s throne,” he said. “Women fight over him. He’s fathered children and won renown in battle. Yet he is ever jealous of me. The scarred, ugly bastard who can never be any threat. Nothing pleases him as much as my failures.”

  Argo made damp, breathy sounds of reply.

  “He’ll see me dead one day.”

  Menoetius’s throat clenched as the image of Crete came to him again, vividly, as if sent from the gods. He heard weeping. He saw warriors cut down, fire leaping among the olive groves, women shrieking as they tried to escape lust-crazed men soaked in their husbands’ and sons’ blood.

  He saw the face of that singular child, Aridela. Heard her giggle when he used the wrong word and said something that made no sense. Recalled the tears pooling in her enormous black eyes the day he sailed for home, tears that glistened and hung like dew on her lashes.

  He imagined Chrysaleon yanking her off-balance and dragging her away by the hair.

  He realized he was trembling and clenched his fists, trying to regain control.

  “Argo,” he said. “What am I to do?”

  The stallion made no sound now. It simply gazed, unblinking, at him.

  “I wish he’d let the lioness kill me.”

  He hated what he owed his brother.

  Rising, he led his mount toward the citadel then changed his mind. Such a mood couldn’t tolerate the company of his men. They would avoid the subject of the wrestling, but there would be scorn in the eyes of the youngest, anger or worse, pity, in the eyes of older men who would think he threw the match on purpose to protect his standing.