Origin- The Beast and His Bride Read online

  ORIGIN

  The Beast and His Bride

  Belinda Burke

  Origin: The Beast and His Bride © 2016 by Belinda Burke

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  Please purchase only authorized editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials.

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter One

  The sunset flowed over the edge of the horizon, a wine-red spill of fading light that Nyctimus watched in silence over his father’s shoulder. Music played on in the background, then grew inaudible beneath the discord and debauchery of this, his twenty-seventh brother’s wedding feast.

  Nyctimus sat with a jaundiced eye, passing his gaze now and again over the assembly, then turned away as his newlywed brother plied his new bride with drink. Phineas did not make innuendo, did not ask their other brothers to light torches and lead the way to his marriage bed.

  Instead, in defiance of all custom, all good sense and tradition, he looked likely to take the woman here, on the feasting table, and set a new fire of rumor running down the mountain into the city. Perhaps it no longer mattered. Not anymore, not when the name of this house had already become a scandal on its own.

  Dimly, through the gray mist of time that separated him from the past, Nyctimus remembered the childhood he had spent learning how a man should live. The earliest days in his experience, in which his father had been his father. Laughter had strangled the crush of licentiousness, and there had been, at least on the surface, something of the law-abiding life that should exist in a king’s palace.

  But now…

  He could neither eat the meats set before him nor drink the wine, mixed so carefully in his golden cup. Could only stare, rigid with disbelief and revulsion, at the sight of Phineas hefting his new bride onto the table, spilled food and drink under the parted lushness of her thighs. The brute exposed one of her breasts and took the tip of the other in his mouth, through the thin-woven fabric of her torn gown.

  The woman laughed, revealing herself a harlot, no fit wife for a prince. It was her wedding day, not even her wedding night, and already her husband’s brothers and all the servants and slaves had seen as much of her as her husband.

  “Is it not enough? Is it, truly, not enough?” Nyctimus did not speak loudly, but the words went up the table anyway. They came to his father Lycaon in the midst of his amusement and cut the King’s laughter off at the knees.

  “Something troubles you, my son? Something, perhaps, that you wish to say?”

  A moment of silence expanded between them. Nyctimus wondered if he dared crash through it, dared speak the words brimming on his lips, and could no longer find it within himself to sit restrained. “Is this the way we celebrate a prince’s wedding? The way we acknowledge the addition of a new royal woman into our household? This is the way we honor the gods, the future of our endeavors? The wine spilled. This rich feast put aside for my brother, for his animal lust. For the way he chose to feast, instead, on his wife!”

  Furious, he knocked his cup from the table, added its golden glint to the spilled and broken cutlery on the ground. There was grumbling around the table. Here and there a hint of laughter. Phineas stared at Nyctimus with a snarl on his face. As if he were truly a beast, displeased to be interrupted in his pleasure.

  “This is the sum, then, the truth of the princes of Pelasgia and her King. Forty-nine brothers, and our father too, but I am the only one who sees something wrong here? The sons of Lycaon are not men but animals, ravaging this kingdom with their gluttony, their lechery, as they ravage the feasting table here, that poor woman -”

  But the poor woman let out a sound somewhere between laughter and a noise of lust. Phineas looked back at Nyctimus over her shoulder, down the long table to where he was standing. There was no shame in his elder brother, nothing except a rash, raw irritation, not even anger.

  “Perhaps you are just unhappy to see someone doing what you cannot, brother. Pleasing a woman.” He lifted his new bride, turned her and spread the wet folds of her sex open to the watching eyes of the rest of the table. “Watch closely. Or perhaps you would rather go bring your little wife back with you. Share her with us, let us see how well you take care of her.”

  Low laughter came from many places around the table, even from his father. The King, his father, encouraging this behavior among his sons. But Nyctimus refused to look at his brother’s new bride, shook his head and stood back from the table.

  “You would like that, wouldn’t you? To see my exquisite Arcadia stripped down to shining skin. But I will keep my wife my wife, not make a whore of her.” They gulped, all of them outraged. He kept his smile to himself as he went away from the feast with only loathing in his heart.

  If only the gods would strike them down. If only he might be part of the doing of it! Pelasgia needed cleansing, even if that meant burning the palace to the ground. But one man against fifty, one his own father, the rest his brothers, all older and stronger men… What could Nyctimus do?

  He made his way to the tall house at the edge of the wood, his thoughts racing without purpose. A faint glow of torchlight to guide him to the rich, dark chamber he had built for his bed and his wife, but there would be no sleep for him tonight. He would stay awake, sword in hand, after that feast and the words that had sent him away from it.

  Arcadia was waiting for him, dressed for bed; had heard the new rumor already. He was not surprised that word of the confrontation had spread before him. “What do we do, husband? What can we do?”

  He shook his head, sent her in to sleep and sat by the window, his sword reflecting the moonlight, naked in his hand.

  ~ ~ * * ~ ~

  In bits and pieces, rumor came up the Mountain. The wind forsook its advance, blowing knowledge and rumor up from the world. Before Zeus, Olympian King, the airs of the Earth bowed, giving up the ghosts of rumors they had carried far.

  Displeasure stirred the God as he listened to the whispers that reached him. Not all those he could call kin were carrying themselves as that high relation demanded. Not all of them were models for other men.

  It was, he knew, the way of things, but it had never been easy to watch the unraveling of the mortal lines he had begun. Were they not his children, all of them? What was the line of time that divided them, so thin in his reckoning? Father, or grandfather, what was that to him?

  Each time men failed, his disappointment was renewed and his wrath invoked. Each time he remembered all those before. How little they had proved worth it. And now this one…

  Lycaon, ruling Pelasgia, the ancient heart of the land.

  The kingdom on its own sparked new thoughts. Old memories. God that he was, he had loved there, lost there. He scowled, thinking to himself of how the last time would probably not be the last. Did she still not understand, proud Hera, that the mortals he chose were no more to him than the flowers of the fields were to mortals? Here today, gone tomorr
ow. Still precious, but lasting even less than the brevity of their full span once he had laid hand to them.

  But this time, that would not matter. This time, a far less pleasant endeavor than love was before him. In earlier days, he had seated himself at the table of his son in mortal form, had announced openly the God he was. Now he thought that perhaps such time was were past, and would not come again.

  Lycaon had become more than selfish in his old age. The host of sons he had sired moved as a horde of locusts across the land, stealing women, wine, the pick of the herds, fine longhorn steer, goats and sheep well-fattened. Even the yearling lambs they slaughtered on the spot, with no thought for the future.

  All this, taken from the people, when their own lands and their father’s could have fed five times as many men, and still they raped the landscape, stole until farmland and herd-stocks both were lean and bare. All that was the physical substance of Pelasgia, gone to the glutted hungers of these sons of Lycaon, now no more than beasts.

  Still. They were his kin. He would go down among them, go to Lycaon’s palace himself. What would be his reception, if he appeared among them disguised as some vagrant mortal, a wandering beggar? Would they obey the laws that they should follow? Honor the stranger at their hearth with all hospitality? Pass the wine-bowl first to him; share the best and fattest portion eagerly with their guest?

  The Thunderer foresaw darkness, but duty was upon him. Divine inspections were most likely to lead to divine retribution, but the truth was the truth, regardless.

  It was time.

  The clouds spoke their farewell in shallow voices to the meadow below the Mountain as he left them behind. Through rain, he came to Pelasgia. Through the weight of gray skies, gathering their mantle about his shoulders; with thunder in the lifting of his eyebrow, lightning in the glare of his eyes.

  He would test Lycaon and his sons, their mortal obedience to immortal order.

  A rumble of uncertain thunder descended with him into the city, and Zeus made his way here and there, listening, as he put on the show of an old beggar. A growing list of troubles, stories of Lycaon and his sons’ misdeeds, were the greater part of what made its way to his ears.

  A daughter, stolen and later returned, broken. The theft of goods on a far worse scale than he had been told, when what he had been told had been enough to leave the land empty, the springs of plenty run dry.

  None of this was spoken in whispers any longer. The days when it had been a silent sort of scandal were long past. Silence lingered now only around the thought of swords - there would be no rebellion, no revolution here. The violence they were capable of, that savage horde of men!

  Only one among the sons of Lycaon received the village’s approbation, the youngest of them all: Nyctimus, son of a mother wedded, bedded, delivered of her child and then dead. He alone lived as a man should live, protecting his wife and the people as best he was able from the excesses of his kin.

  “Yet what can he do? One young man alone against forty-nine brothers? And his father, too, old Lycaon, old but not yet dead!”

  They were resigned to their lot now, these people. Resigned to a slow, black death. There was no pride left in them, only the knowledge of the palace above them and the people in it, moving through depravity and into something else. Something else…something so far beyond it mortals had never known it before, and so had never given it a name.

  Furious now, Zeus strode up the slopes, holding himself only by will to the limits of this human form, its mortal potentials. He ignored the people along his way, made his way to the palace and there began to beg his bread at the threshold.

  The first prince who saw him sneered at him. That alone sealed his fate. Beside him was another man, a younger brother. He smiled openly, reached out to clasp the hand of the old man’s shape that hid Zeus’ radiance, and greeted him. “I bid you welcome to my father’s high house, old wanderer. Would you come and stay awhile, warm yourself by a good fire? Eat and drink with me, then tell me something of your travels? You have the look of a man who has come far.”

  Dark hair curled rich at his forehead, near his shoulders. His eyes were blue and piercing, but warm with welcome, and the aquiline lines of his nose and jaw reminded Zeus of his lost Niobe, this boy’s grandmother. Here was one with promise. In the hands of this golden youth, well-muscled and bronzed by sun but barely bearded, the god allowed himself to be lead away from the main door. Behind Nyctimus, the God passed up the mountain to a smaller house at the edge of the wood.

  Inside, he accepted a warm mantle of soft, thick fleece, and a chair by the fire, inlaid with gold and ivory. Serving women brought in tables, laid platters of carven meat, sliced cheese and jars of honey, bowls of ripe pears and figs, and bread on trays, all set near to hand.

  A bowl of unmixed wine was brought before them. With no little pleasure did Zeus hear the prayer spoken by this son of Lycaon as he added water, filled the cup of his guest before his own. “Zeus! Forefather, old Thunderer, the futures of men and gods are yours alone. Whatever fate becomes mine, let it bring renown, and better fortunes - and for this stranger, too, a worthy life and ending.”

  He tipped out the libation from his golden cup. Zeus repeated his prayer, word for word, aware of its fulfillment in the moment of his utterance. “Now, young man, by your age and by your temper I guess you to be Nyctimus, the youngest son of old Lycaon who rules these parts.”

  “So it is. You are well informed, for a stranger. Am I visited by one of the deathless gods, come in mortal form to mingle, sit beside us? I am not worthy.”

  Zeus smiled, but would not give up the game. Not yet, not when he had yet to meet Lycaon and forty-nine other sons. No. Forty-eight. Already, he had met one fool at the palace gate.

  Nyctimus flushed then, as if suddenly aware of his breach of good manners. “Forgive me. After you have eaten and drunk, that will be time enough for the story of what brought you here, the reason you came to this palace, seeking aid.” He sighed, and now his true age was visible on his face, all the youth squashed out of him by care. “I fear you have not come to an easy place at an easy time. But come. We are all slaves to hunger, even the richest man.”

  They set to their meal in silence, but there was not time for them to finish before there was a great noise at Nyctimus’ door, the sturdy wood pushed open, and there on the other side: Lycaon. The King himself, gilded sandals on his aged feet, a mantle of fur flowing over his fine tunic, and the crown on his head held steady on a lofty brow. His hair was white, but still thick and gleaming. He had the hearty shape of a warrior who had not let himself go to seed.

  Time had been kind to Lycaon, but the look in his eyes was pinched. A hot, dark cloud of darker intentions was drawn close about this man. What did he know? What had he been told about his son’s guest that brought him here so quickly, so out of sorts?

  Son of his son. Did the King recognize the God in him, even disguised as he was now? But the questions Lycaon asked were all for his son. The greed of him illuminated the man.

  “What do you have here, boy? What beggar, what kind of immortal guest, what kind of God?”

  Nyctimus only shook his head, had no real answer to give. The boy knew already. See the look on his face? His father would not approve of mere hospitality as an explanation.

  “I have not had time to find out, father. We had not yet finished with our food.”

  A watchful sort of look took over the King’s face. There was a shift in the lines about Lycaon’s eyes. “No? Well, a man is always hungry, is he not? When you and your guest are finished, you must come to me. There are things for us to discuss, the two of us, a father and his son. And you, sir -” He turned to Zeus, uncertainty apparent in him, the fragility of his filial knowing.

  Lycaon smiled, but there was neither good feeling nor humor in it. “Be at your ease. Come tonight and feast among us. Sit at the high table beside this son of mine, if he so pleases you.” A glitter was birthed in his eye. “Or choose some other
, if you prefer. It is a feast to follow the sacrifice, our annual dedication to the Thunderer.”

  Zeus had some interest, hearing that. He wondered how these rites would be performed, and if the smoke and echo of them would be enough to stay his building wrath.

  Chapter Two

  When his guest was settled, and the quiet of the afternoon was fading into late afternoon’s shadows, Nyctimus went to his father, obeying his earlier request. But his father was not in the orchard, as was his wont in this season, at this time of day. Neither was he in his high seat, in his long hall, nor with any of his many wives.

  Instead, almost by chance, Nyctimus found his father alone near the fires that had been lit and left to lie, turn to beds of embers. Where the sacrifices would be made, the meat roasted, the thighbones burned in Zeus’ name.

  His father sat with his back to the wall, whetting one of the axes that was to be used in the sacrifice. The shadow of the house lay over him as the sun sank further into the west. “What was it you wanted of me, father, that you went to such trouble to summon me and yet were so hard to find?”

  Silence stared from Lycaon’s face. “There was work to be done. Tell me of the stranger now, the one I saw you with. Where does he hail from? Is he mortal or one of the deathless gods come down among us again?”

  Nyctimus sat on a stool beside his father, looked at the ground, the grass growing sparsely here, at the scuffed front of his sandals. “How could I tell for sure? He spins an eager tale. Says his name is Aethon, that he has only recently arrived on foot. It could be true, but all the while he spoke, his eyes were on me, laughing. But what was the good in doubting him? If he is a God, he will reveal himself in time, and if he is just a man, the laws of hospitality still apply.”

  Something searing, scornful, came into his father’s voice then. “Laws of hospitality? I remember making no such law, and I am the only king here!” Eager now, hungry, the sound of the whetstone grew more piercing, the ax’s edge ground moment by moment to perfect sharpness. “And why is it always you, I wonder, daring to stand in the way, to speak other than according to my desire? Was it not you at your brother’s wedding feast, so few days passed, complaining about how he treated his own bride?”