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

"A royal virgin," Ariadne said, smiling up at him tremulously. "Is that not your demand? If it isn't, I will
make clear what you do desire to my father and have it written in the records of the shrine so there is no
mistake in the future. But I hope you won't turn me away. Please? I wish to serve you. I am ready. Truly
I am."

He laughed suddenly, made a gesture as if he were drawing a line around them, and said, "Epikaloumai
melanotes."

Ariadne's sight seemed to dim, not as if ill had befallen her eyes, but as if someone had drawn a very thin
gray silk curtain between her and the others. The priestesses had backed to the very edge of the dais and
were still down on their faces, but her father and brother and some of the others were now standing and
saluting the god. She saw that their mouths were moving, speaking or praying, but she couldn't hear them,
and she realized that she had been seeing that for some time without "noticing" it.

"What is it?" she asked, clinging tighter to Dionysus. "What have you done to them?"

"Nothing at all," he said. "I didn't wish them to hear what I said to youтАФit's no business of the common
folk to hear what a god says to his priestessтАФso I put a wall of silence around us. And then I added a
wall of darkness. Do they think we of Olympus are animals that we couple in public?"

She could feel the blood rush into her face as excitement and anxiety twisted together quickened her
heartbeat. "Then you will take me?"

He laughed again, softly, and that smile of infinite sweetness changed his eyes so that, still bright, they did
not glare or look hard. "As my priestess, yes, and gladly, but I cannot couple with a little maid who
should be playing with toys in the nursery."

Tears filled her eyes again. "They will not understand. They expect to see the god sowing the land in the
person of his priestess."

"I never did!" he said indignantly, stepping down off the altar and lifting Ariadne down as if being on it
might trap him into an action he rejected. "Even with my chosen priestess, whom I dearly loved, and she
was a woman in her middle years. I never coupled with her in the sight of all."

Ariadne shrugged, surprised that she should feel so disappointed by his refusal to take her after all her
earlier fears. "I don't know where they came by the notion, but they believe that the fertility of the land is
bound to the coupling of the god and the priestess."

His eyes narrowed. "And they will punish you if I do not perform like a rutting beast?"
"I will have failed my purpose," she said very softly. "There will be no assurance of a rich crop of sweet
grapes, of wine that is sweet and potent with no bite and sourness of acidтАФ"

"We don't need to couple for that. You are a priestess who can Call me. When you do so, I will come
and run along the hillsides and dance among the casks."

"Will you?"

He smiled down at her. "Your eyes are like dark stars. They are black as obsidian and yet so bright!
Yes, I will bless the vines and the wine." Then his lips thinned. "But I willnot copulate with you before