Shadow of Athena by Elena Douglas

Author:Elena Douglas [Douglas, Elena]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knox Robinson Publishing
Published: 2017-07-03T23:00:00+00:00

XXVI

THE VINEYARD

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Thrasios walked slowly around his ruined vineyards, moving from one plant to the next, touching leaves that were brown around the edges. The grapes were stunted on the vine. Though he felt like closing his eyes in despair, he forced himself to stand straight and look around.

Row after row, as far as he could see, was the same. Withered leaves. Bunches of grapes the size of tiny pebbles, wrinkled, green, dying unripened.

Klonios, he thought. He promised me ruin.

Even before this, merchants had stopped buying his wines. That was Klonios’s doing. But could Klonios have wrought a disaster of this proportion? It was not just his vineyards that were dying. Other vintners had reported failures—some form of rot that attacked the vines. Other crops were dying in the fields, and most of the barley and wheat had not even sprouted.

To make matters worse, the rains had not come. All of Naryx, all of Lokris itself, was falling into ruin. Dying. And he had no power, no knowledge, nor even the will to fix it.

These worries were too big for him to think of when all was not well in his own domain. Amaltheia walked through her days like a living ghost, her eyes hollowed in dark circles, the flesh dropping from her bones. She performed all her household duties but never looked at him nor spoke to him. That made little difference in his life since he rarely occupied her bed. But there was the matter of his own failure. He no longer visited his favorite hetaira in Naryx, for he could not trust himself to perform as a man should. These things could only be happening because of the wrath of a god. Or a goddess.

It did not take him long to see which goddess.

His mind turned to the daughter who had previously occupied so little of his thoughts. All at once he was angry. Marpessa was chosen, and it was her chance to uphold the family’s honor. It should have been a simple enough thing to go to Troy and do the goddess’s will. Unworthy. Athena found her unworthy. Or there would have been no raid. She would not have been killed. And none of this would have happened.

As he walked back through his vineyards to his empty warehouse, he felt his shoulders slump and his steps drag like those of an old man.

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