Paternus by Dyrk Ashton

Author:Dyrk Ashton [Ashton, Dyrk]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: mythic fiction, modern fantasy, fantasy adventure, mythic fantasy, contemporary fantasy, gods monsters myth
ISBN: 9780997173703
Google: BMg9jwEACAAJ
Amazon: 099717370X
Publisher: Paternus Books Media
Published: 2016-03-24T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Mendip Hills 4

Bödvar would really like to be holding his Mighty sword Kladenets right now, but it might appear threatening and he would rather not provoke The Leech. He’s also heard she can absorb a slash or jab from all but the highest class of Astra blade, anyway. Mortal and Mighty weapons supposedly slide right off. No one can grip her. She can’t be crushed. Except by Father.

Bödvar simply has to trust Baphomet’s word that he’s safe with her. Or trust the pledge Lamia has made to Baphomet and the Master, more precisely. Bödvar wonders what they promised to persuade her to join their cause. Maybe freedom from persecution, or a lifetime supply of tender parvulus babies to suck on. Perhaps it’s the life of The Madman himself. Bödvar knows the story. They all do.

Father had taken Myrddin’s parvulus mother while frolicking in a bog, waist deep in black water. Neither were aware that a leech had attached itself to her thigh. Nor would they probably have cared. Father’s seed overflowed the woman, swirling in a milky cloud and enveloping the leech, which was swelled with the blood of the woman.

When Father noticed the parasite on the woman’s leg an hour later, his curiosity got the best of him. Instead of pinching it to oblivion he placed it in a basket of tightly woven reeds filled with water. Within days, a single soft cocoon had formed on the leech’s ventral surface, and eight months before the birth of Myrddin Wyllt, The Leech was born. She grew strong and healthy, fed by Father on rodents and fish. Then one night, she escaped.

Though only a foot long at the time, she followed the heat and sound to the infant Myrddin, newly born. He lay mewling in his sleeping mother’s arms when Lamia attached herself to his chest. The child made no sound, but the mother woke and raised the entire tribe with her cries. Father tore Lamia from the babe, but couldn’t bring himself to kill the wretched thing. Instead, he sealed her in a vessel made from a gourd, trekked to the coast and threw her into the sea.

No one knows where the currents took her, where she might have washed ashore and escaped from that gourd, and Lamia is one of the few Firstborn who does not tell tales. There are stories of her from many parts of the world, however, that others have been all too happy to convey. Perhaps the most famous of these comes from her time in the region of Africa now known as Libya, back when it was a tropical and damp place. Though she’s had many names, she was worshipped there by her Truename, Lamia. Cloaked as a human, she reigned as their bloody queen, reviled and supreme, for a thousand years. Then Vidar, the petit god who had stolen one of Father’s oldest names of Zeus, discovered her true identity and drove her from her throne.

Since then she’s been hiding in dark wet places of the world.

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