Read Hades Daughter for Free Online

mothers proved barren of further children.
    Older children fell victim to strange fevers, or unexplainable wasting diseases.
    The dark creatures of the forests, the wolves and bears and the monstrous badgers, strayed from beneath the trees and into the fields and the sheep runs of the villages, not only destroying crops and hard-bred livestock, but mauling and ravaging adults and children alike.
    Llangarlia was dying, and the powerless Gormagog, and his equally powerless and angry shadow, Loth, could do nothing.
    Og was sliding towards death, and as he did, he dragged Mag with him. Unaffected though Mag might have been by the initial splitting of power when Aerne lay with Blangan, as Mag’s union with the crippled Og failed, so also did Mag’s power wane. Mag could do nothing for the land without a strong mate at her side.
    Then, in the twenty-sixth year of the calamity, the MagaLlan, Genvissa (daughter of the MagaLlan who had presided over the disaster, and sister to Blangan), spoke to the Gormagog and to Loth, and said that she thought she could help. She spoke long and gently to them over many weeks, knowing they would resist herplan, knowing it would offend their male pride, but knowing that eventually they would also agree, for in this they had no choice.
    Llangarlia must survive before all else.
    They sat atop the most sacred of the Veiled Hills, the Llandin. It was dawn, the time when minds were the clearest and the power of the land was the nearest.
    “Why?” said Loth, leaning forward, his dark green and faintly luminous eyes unblinking and intent. “Why must you do this?”
    The MagaLlan, Genvissa, regarded him calmly. Loth’s malformed, horrific skull was scratched deeply in places, the blood scabbing into unbecoming lumps in his thin hair, and Genvissa idly wondered which daughter of which House had so marked him.
    It must have been a wild night.
    Impotent the Gormagog and Loth might be in the ways of power, but their maleness had not suffered when it came to bedding the daughters of Llangarlia. It was almost as if they both somehow hoped to redeem that one malevolent bedding with each subsequent girl they bore down beneath them. It was a useless effort, but Genvissa understood their need.
    She was also a recipient of it herself, having borne Aerne three daughters over the past sixteen years.
    “ There is the why,” she said to Loth, waving a hand towards the settlements south of the Llan. “This season over eleven daughters have died in childbirth, barely half of the livestock born will grow into maturity, and a third of the crops have fallen to the mould blight. Can you help, Loth?” It was cruel, she knew, but the need was great, and if she didn’t persuade them soon then the chance would pass her by.
    Loth’s lip curled, and he sat back, wondering if Genvissa hid a sneer behind her beautiful, serene face. His feelings for Genvissa were a mass of conflictingemotions. He resented and desired her, reasonable reactions given her power compared with his relative lack of it and her beautiful, seductive body which often had him sweating with frustrated desire.
    But Loth also deeply distrusted Genvissa, and yet he could not say why.
    Unable to hold Genvissa’s steady gaze, Loth looked at his father, Aerne, sitting hunched over his belly as if his impotency in the face of this crisis might send him to his grave.
    “We should take this to an Assembly,” said Aerne. His voice was soft, but even if his spiritual and magical powers had diminished into infirmity, his voice still held a vestige of his traditional authority. “The Mothers of Llangarlia’s Houses should meet on this.”
    “The Mothers are not due to assemble again until the Slaughter Festival,” Genvissa said, remembering how powerful Aerne had been when she had been a child. Now, all that power had seeped away, along with his decisiveness, and the remnants of Genvissa’s respect had vanished with it. He’d fathered three daughters on her,