Cassandra by Kerry Greenwood Read Free Book Online

The god will give her a child. Will you behave if I let you go?'
    I nodded and he released me. I was shocked and said nastily, `What of the impotent man? Do we mate with him, too?'
    `No need. His impotence is in his mind. The mind is our province, little brother. There. The birth is imminent.'
    Païs' cries had changed. She was panting. Shudders were running up and down her body. Her legs twitched. Two attendants lifted her gently onto a stretcher and carried her up the direct path to the outside world. They moved at a brisk jog trot and I followed them, blinking and crying in the sudden sunlight. They laid Païs in the cool temple of women and her attendant priest Achis caught the baby as it emerged, blue and red and ugly, on a burst of blood. I felt ill.
    He then wiped the creature clean, and tied and severed a throbbing blue cable which attached it to the girl's body. There seemed to be blood everywhere. It was the first birth I had seen and after the revelation that there were no gods, it was too much for me. I sat down suddenly and closed my eyes.
    I heard a thin wail and Achis' voice crooning `There, there, little man! Mother,' he urged gently, `here is your son.'
    Païs gave a tired laugh. I heard the swish of a cloth on the marble floor. The slaves were cleaning up, as a mess is distasteful to the god. Achis hauled me to my feet and I was led outside.
    `Overcome by the mystery, little brother?' he asked lightly, smiling. He knew what went on in the fraudulent dark. I hated him, violently and suddenly. I shook off his hand and ran, tears streaming down my face, into the temple and slid, falling in an ungainly heap at my master's feet.
    I did not look up but held onto a fold of his robe as the whole story tumbled out - the soldier removing the spear point and the barren woman mating with the priest in her sleep and the Achaean screaming. He heard it all, in grave silence. Then he raised me to my feet and dusted down my tunic.
    `Was it possible to remove the metal from Milanion's face?'
    `No, Master.'
    `Why not?'
    `It was too firmly fixed, Master, and the muscles had contracted.'
    `So the only way it could be removed was to make him sleep.'
    `Yes,' I agreed dubiously. `But we could have just drugged him.'
    `Yes, we could. Then where would have been the story?'
    `The story, Master?'
    `If consulting a god is as easy as ordering a wheel fixed, would men believe in it enough for it to work?'
    `I don't know, Master.'
    `Would the Achaean have screamed in any other place?'
    `No, Master.'
    `And the barren woman, would she have accepted a lover?'
    `No, Master.'
    `And the birthing woman - would she ever have allowed a man to touch her?'
    `Probably no, Master.'
    `Well, then. We need to heal, Chryse. It is our great task.'
    `But, Master...' I grabbed a fold of the dark robe, `Master, there are no gods.'
    `You saw a god yourself, once, little brother.'
    `That was Death, Master. There are no gods but Death, then,' I said mulishly. He smiled at me and patted my shoulder.
    `Every asclepid knows that, Chryse,' he said sadly.
    Â 
    `You have saved him from death and removed him from belief,' commented Poseidon. `And your maiden is in love with her twin brother. I don't understand how those two can ever come together. Meanwhile, what about my revenge? Is Troy to stand?'
    `Troy will fall,' said Apollo absently, staring down into the water at Diomenes asleep in the temple. `Have patience, Sea God.'
    `Troy will not fall' said Aphrodite with equal certainty. `See how brave she is, how beautiful! Your puppet will surely love my daughter Cassandra as soon as he sets eyes on her.'
    `Then he shall not set eyes on her. There is another he shall see first,' chuckled Apollo.

III
Cassandra
    I was not supposed to see the mystery called childbirth until I had become one of the Mother's maidens with my first bleeding of sacrifice blood. But I teased my teacher Tithone so incessantly that she set me fifteen pectoral herbs to learn perfectly and