"Roberta Gellis - Bull God" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gellis Roberta)

with satisfaction because it was not she who would be exposed to no purpose; her father, serious,
perhaps hopeful but ready to accept the lack of response; Androgeos, eyes lowered, head turned slightly
away, sympathetic enough to desire not to see her shame but helpless; the courtiers, already whispering,
mildly contemptuous. Well, she would not be shamed. Her hands rose and pushed the priestesses away.

"The ritual is for me to perform," she cried.

She saw the shock in their faces, heard gasps and cries from the people ranged below the dais, saw the
glance each priestess gave the other to judge whether they should seize her and force her. Then a strong
voice came from behind.

"I have come."

The crowd cried out with one voice and Ariadne spun on her heel to look across the altar at the painting
of the god. It still glowed on the wall, the right hand of the god holding a vine from which depended a
cluster of ripe grapes and the left resting lightly on the shoulder of a young satyr, who nuzzled his horned
head against one of the god's thighs while one cleft hoof rubbed shyly the back of a goatlike hairy leg.
Now before it stood a living beingтАФliving, but not a man, Ariadne thought. She had never seen a man so
tall or so strong, with the skin exposed by his scant tunic the color of milk and hair seemingly of coiled
gold wires.

"Dionysus," she whispered, stretching her hands toward him over the altar.

He stared at her, his too-large eyes open wider than she had seen them in the scrying bowl, but his face
bore no more expression than that of the painting behind him. Ariadne heard two soft thumps. The
priestesses had fallen to the floor, either in obeisance or in a faint. She wondered whether Dionysus was
waiting for her to flatten herself and press her face to the floor and felt bitterly disappointed. The sweet
smile that had drawn that last Calling from her had held nothing of that kind of pride.

From the waiting crowd came gasps and whimpers, rustles, as robes stiff with jewels and metal-thread
embroidery creased and crumpled while their wearers sank to the floor, but Ariadne didn't, couldn't,
move. And then the god did. He whispered a word she didn't understand and made a gesture, and the
sounds from behind her were cut off as if a door had closed.

"YouCalled me?" he asked.

"Yes, Lord Dionysus," she whispered, tears in her trembling voice. "It is the ritual. It is done at each
change of season."

"I heard no Call last solstice nor for many, many years before that."
 "That was while the old priestess, my father's mother, served your shrine. I don't know what she did
wrong that you didn't hear her. She died and I was chosen to take her place." She swallowed. She
couldn't say that she had wanted him to come. A god might be able to read her heart; if he learned she
was lying . . . "I performed the ritual very exactly."

"But you are only a little girl, a child. How dare they offer me so unripe a fruit."

His eyes passed over her to stare at the kneeling worshipers beyond. Although his face still showed little,
Ariadne heard the fury in his voice and terror caught at her. She had no idea what would be done to her
if he rejected her. That had never happened in all the time the shrine had existed. He had come in the