It bit into my throat, then into my stomach, and I gagged, spilling some of the liquid from my mouth as I all but dropped the flask.
“Careful,” said Ecub, tut-tutting as if she was, indeed, my mother. “Do not drink too much.”
“Who would want to?” I murmured, and she smiled, and took the flask and drank deeply of it herself.
She saw me staring as she finally lowered the flask. “I am used to it,” she said, her words lightly slurred, and I found that when I opened my mouth to comment, my mouth did not work well.
My tongue and throat felt thick, as if they were coated with rotten honey, and I gagged once more, and would have retched had not Ecub grabbed my arm and put a hand to my forehead.
“Be still,” she said, and some of the rotten taste and thickness in my mouth and throat faded. I relaxed a little, and Ecub must have felt it under her hands. She smiled, and I saw that her face was beautiful—far more beautiful than I had previously thought.
Was it the starlight? I wondered.
“You are a mother,” she whispered, the hand on my arm now sliding over my breasts, oh, so slowly, and my belly. “You are beautiful in Mag’s eyes. Whatever happens here tonight, Cornelia, Mag will protect and nurture you. She is strong here tonight, stronger than I have felt her in many, many years.” Ecub’s voice, oddly, sounded rather surprised. “I think you bring a blessing to this Dance, strange Cornelia.”
“I had no thought to,” I said. “Where is Blangan? Should she not also drink?”
“No,” said Ecub, “I have asked Blangan to wait at the outer circle. She does not know of the frenzy wine.”
Frenzy wine? I thought, and then realised that Ecub must have put this wine here earlier as she had very obviously carried nothing to the Dance on her way here with Blangan.
This night was planned long before we arrived.
“Mag has brought you here,” whispered Ecub, and I thought her voice sounded as if it came from a distance greater than that of the stars. “But not through fear for Blangan, I think. She wants you to witness something, Cornelia.”
“What…” I mumbled. The frenzy wine was coursing through my blood, and I could not think in a straight line. The stones about me blurred, melding one into the other until it seemed as if I were enclosed within a solid wall of stone.
“You are within Mag’s womb,” Ecub whispered. “See…”
She spread her hand out before me.
Figures suddenly emerged from behind the standing stones. Men. Women. Beasts. A donkey, draped in ribbons and baubles. A stunningly beautiful white mare. An auroch, flowers festooning its horns. A wiry sheep, bleating pitifully.
“Here, in this circle,” Ecub whispered, “in Mag’s womb, came men and women to celebrate the gift of life, and to offer dance and frenzy to Mag and Og in thanks for their fertility and life. See.”
And I saw the men and women, dancing and writhing, copulating on the ground and in the spaces between the stones.
One naked, muscular man stood out, for on his head he wore the bloodied antlers of a stag. He seized a woman, and rode her as a bull rides a cow, then let her go when she started to shriek. He took another woman, then another, then yet one more, and all shrieked, although whether in fear or joy I could not tell.
The circles of stone blurred, and I felt faint, and only the pressure of Ecub’s hand on my arm kept me upright.
“This is not now,” she whispered. “This is what is past. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said, my eyes still on the man who wore the stag antlers. He had just left a woman, and stood not five paces from me.
Our eyes met, and held.
I moaned, wondering if he would take me, for I found myself wanting him more than anything I had ever previously lusted for in life.
The donkey wandered between us, and the man seized it.
I cried out, but both the man and Ecub laughed. The man grabbed the donkey’s hindquarters in his strong hands, and drew her towards him.
He mounted her, thrusting strongly, and the donkey and I shrieked at exactly the same time, and…
…then everything vanished, and I stood again amid the circles of stone, Ecub by my side.
The writhing, copulating couples had gone; the stag man had gone; the donkey had gone, as had all the other beasts.
Now Blangan walked towards us, summoned by a soft word from Ecub, her naked skin gleaming soft ivory in the starlight.
I had always thought Blangan somewhat plain, but here, now, within these magical circles and with the frenzy wine throbbing through my veins, I thought her beautiful. Her limbs were perfectly formed, her hips and belly, like mine, rounded through motherhood. Her breasts were small globes, like firm apples, and her nipples were likewise girlishly small and pale pink.
I jumped. Beside me Ecub had begun to clap a haunting rhythm with her hands; much like that which her daughters had danced to, this beat was nonetheless far stronger and more potent.
It throbbed, as the frenzy wine throbbed, and both Blangan and I moaned.
“Dance!” said Ecub, and Blangan began a hauntingly slow, beautiful dance.
Her movements looked first like a sapling bending in a breeze, then like a field of grain, waving in the wind. Her movement quickened, and although she never danced as wildly or as quickly as Ecub’s daughters had done, her dance nevertheless seemed far more powerful, and far more secret. Her feet blurred, their movements intricate, tapping out the rhythm of Ecub’s hands, and she swayed this way and that, weaving a pattern through the twin circles of stones, and the arches within the centre.
She looked like one possessed, and yet at the same time everything she did, every movement, every tap of her foot and arch of an arm, was clearly part of a deliberate pattern of movement.
Her passage through and between the circles of stone was labyrinth-like, beautiful, demanding, complex. How could anyone learn these steps?
My own body yearned to sway and dip as did Blangan’s.
“She remembers what Mag taught her as a girl,” Ecub said, over the beat of her clapping hands. “This is Mag’s Nuptial Dance, Cornelia. Her mating dance.”
“Mate with whom?” I whispered, yet knowing the answer.
The stag man, the wild beast of the forest.
I gave into my impulses, and began to sway back and forth with the rhythm of Ecub’s hands.
“Only initiates into Mag’s ways can dance this—” Ecub began, and then she stopped, or I failed to hear the rest of what she said, for the frenzy wine was soaring through my blood, and I found my feet moving, and my arms, and then I was in among the stones as well, dancing with Blangan.
Behind me I very faintly heard Ecub cry out something in surprise, or warning, but I did not care. I found that this dance seemed to rise from the very pit of my womb, as if I had known it all my life, and all my unborn life before that.
Blangan saw me, and her face suffused with joy. We laughed at each other, then, rather like Ecub’s daughters, we effortlessly joined our dances into the one. We danced in counterpoint, each one mirroring the other’s movements through different quadrants of the circles.
My chest tightened, my breath harshened, my feet blistered with the agony of the dance, my breasts and belly burned with the liquid tempo of my body.
Thoughts of the man with the stag antlers filled my mind, and I wished he could see me now, wished he could see my dance.
The stones about me blurred, the stars in the sky became one blinding, searing light, and I thought I must be near death…
…and then everything stopped.
I opened my eyes. I stood, breathing deeply but not heavily, under one of the lintels in the outer circle of stone. Blangan stood directly opposite me across the twin circles, under her own lintel.
Ecub stood between us, her hands fallen still, and I realised we had stopped dancing the instant she had stopped her clapping.
I gazed about me.
The mist that had been drifting between the
stones when first I’d approached Mag’s Dance had now thickened. The stones themselves still loomed through the mist, but the surrounding countryside had gone.
The stars had vanished overhead, and all the noises of the night—the wind, the rustling of grasses and shrubs, the sleep movements and chirpings of birds—had stilled.
I looked again at Ecub—her hands folded before her, her face lowered—and then at Blangan who was staring at me with such profound love on her face that my breath caught in my throat.
“Oh, thank you, Cornelia,” she said, her soft voice reaching me even though a vast distance separated us. “Thank you for so blessing me tonight.”
I gulped, not so much at what she said, but because she looked lovelier than I had ever seen any woman. Her face was alight, her eyes shining, her mouth slightly parted to show the tips of her white teeth.
And then the foreboding roared through me, more vicious than it had heretofore been. For no other reason, I think, than the fear which gripped me, I remembered Hera’s warning: Beware of the Horned One. The Bull. The Enemy. Asterion.
“Blangan!” I cried, and would have moved to her save that she held up a hand to halt me.
“Fear not for me, for I have seen what you are, and it comforts me. I am not sad, but blessed. Be still, Mag, for I am content in your love.”
I think I saw Ecub lift her head slightly at that last, and stare between Blangan and myself, but I paid her no mind. The inner core of foreboding, that terrible distress, had suddenly ebbed, but my own fear and love for Blangan kept me tense and afraid.
“Be still,” Blangan said again.
Then I heard footsteps.
Behind me.
I turned towards the sound, my heart thudding, and Hera’s warning came suddenly to the forefront of my mind.
The footfalls approached steadily—yet with a deliberate slowness—from that part of the fog that overlaid the raised pathway leading to Mag’s Dance. The archway under which I stood was the entrance into Mag’s Dance, and I should have been afraid—I should have been terrified—because whoever (whatever) made those footsteps would enter via this archway.
But someone spoke to me, I suppose it was either Ecub or Blangan, and said, Be still, Cornelia, this is not the Bull, not Asterion. Be still.
My hand hovered over my womb, and I felt a sense of safety so consuming I relaxed, and let my fears slide away.
Not the Bull. Not Asterion.
I straightened my shoulders, and lifted my chin, and waited.
When he—it—walked out of the mist I was not surprised.
It was the stag man I had seen copulating with the women and the donkey, and yet it was not. The man I had seen had antlers tied to his head with thongs; he had been a representation (of Og, something whispered in my mind) only.
This man had no antlers tied to his head; rather, he had four or five horned spurs growing from his skull. White protuberances that glistened with exposed blood vessels and bone…and yet which looked velvety smooth to the touch.
He was monstrous, his entire skull and forehead deformed into something that should not, could not, have been allowed to live. Everything bulged as if he had uncontrollable tumours within his brain that demanded an escape. In places, his scalp had burst to allow those horns egress. In other places, scant, fine brown hair covered protrusions that threatened to break through at any moment.
He stopped beside me, so close I could feel the heat from his naked body. Apart from his head he was as any man: hard-muscled, generously proportioned, brown-skinned from the sun.
But that head…and that distended face beneath it…oh, Hera, he was ugly.
He reached out and touched my breast, gently at first, and then cupping it in his strong hand.
Then he ran his hand over my belly. “Mag is powerful with you,” he said, and I was stunned to hear such a melodious voice exit from such ugliness. “Yet how can that be in a stranger to this land? You draw me to you…” He sighed, and his entire body trembled. “If this had been another night, any other night, and you had danced for me, then I would have come, and together we should have protected and increased the herd.”
I understood little of what he said, yet I felt the same powerful pull that he spoke of. My body trembled, and my flesh broke into a sweat.
“Perhaps—” I whispered, but he dropped his hand from me, and a hardness came over his face.
“Not tonight,” he said. “Tonight is Og’s night only. His resurrection amid the witch’s death.”
And suddenly, horribly, I knew why he was here.
Why Blangan was here.
He snarled, unexpectedly, viciously, and I jumped, breaking the contact between him and me.
He did not notice. In a flurry of movement, so fast his form blurred, the stag man closed the distance between himself and Blangan.
I jerked, and cried out, and would have moved to aid Blangan, but just then I heard yet another footfall behind me, and there was Coel, and he had wrapped his arms tightly about me so that I could not move.
“Leave it alone,” he whispered harshly in my ear. “This does not concern you.”
I wailed, horrified for Blangan, but Coel was too strong, and he raised one hand and clamped it over my mouth so that I could not even scream my horror.
All I could do was witness.
The stag man had grabbed Blangan’s hair in one hand, and twisted it back so that her throat was exposed.
“Darkwitch!” he hissed, and I gasped, for I somehow realised that this was Blangan’s son.
“I loved you, Loth,” she whispered, her voice strained but nevertheless calm. “I love you still.”
“Yet you destroyed the land!”
He dipped his head, and suckled at one of her breasts.
Blangan moaned. “It was not I,” she whispered, and I could see that she was finally afraid, and that she fought with herself not to struggle.
“It is time,” this Loth-thing said, raising his mouth slightly from his mother’s breast, “to break the enchantment of your darkcraft and restore to Og his potency!”
His stance changed, and where one moment he had been suckling, the next he was biting, the muscles in his neck and shoulders bulging.
Blangan screamed, a thin, high wail of terror and torment.
Her son raised his head for an instant, and I caught a glimpse both of his blood-covered face, and of Blangan’s left breast, now hanging from her rib cage by only a thin rope of flesh.
I gagged beneath Coel’s hand, but I could not look away.
“It is time your evil died, Blangan.”
And then he plunged his fist into her chest, shattering her ribs asunder.
The white stag, already skeletal with loss of power, writhed in its death agony as the huntress leaned down and tore out its heart.
It lay against the pure white of the stag’s coat, beating and throbbing in its extremity, and then it lay still.
With the stag’s last breath, Og’s crippled power vanished completely from the land.
Blangan’s dead body flopped to the ground, her still heart lying exposed on her belly.
Loth staggered back, his face a mask of horror and disbelief. “No! No!” he cried, Ecub’s cries intermingling with his.
“What have I done?” Loth screamed, and I heard Coel cry out behind me.
“What have you done? What have you done?”
There was a long, long silence, where I could do nothing but stare at Blangan’s corpse, and I could feel nothing but the vice-like grip of Coel’s arms about me.
Then Ecub said, in a very small voice, “This was not supposed to happen, Loth. You were supposed to kill Blangan, not Og with her.”
Not quite dead yet, said Mag within her stone hall. Then, before it was too late and using most of the power remaining to her, she cast a spell-weaving over the corpse of the poor half-starved stag lying on the forest floor, and its heart gave a single, faint beat—so faint it was barely a tremor—as it would beat just on
ce a year from henceforth until…
Until all has come to pass, Mag said, and then fainted in her own extremity.
Someone else said something, I know not what, for I felt a terrible loss within me, and I fainted.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Cradled in sleep, wrapped in Genvissa’s arms, watched by her appraising eyes, Aerne, the Gormagog of Llangarlia and living representative of Og, suddenly screamed into wakefulness, hot torment coursing through his chest and brain.
He jerked upright, his hands clutching into the greying hair on his chest, his eyes staring almost out of their sockets, his mouth gaping in a rictus of agony.
“Aerne?” Genvissa cried, pressing herself against him. “Aerne?”
He expelled a wheezing breath, his fingers still scrabbling in his chest hair, jerked in another breath, then howled in both pain and loss.
“Aerne?” Genvissa cried again.
“Og is gone,” Aerne managed to say. “Something terrible has happened!”
“What? Where?”
“I do not know—” Aerne was about to say more, but then he howled in pain again, and his entire body stiffened and then jerked.
He lay a long time, breathless, grey-skinned, sweating, as Genvissa whispered endearments and comforts to him, then, just before dawn, he whispered, “I am dying, Genvissa. All the life has been pulled from me. Maybe not today, or even next week, but death is close now.”
“What can I do? Oh, dear Aerne. What can I do?”
He tried to smile for her, his beloved Genvissa, and lifted his hand and grasped hers in a weak grip. “You have already done what was needed, beloved. Bringing to Llangarlia’s shores the Trojan magic. I will soon be gone, and Og’s power is lost. Loth cannot replace me, or be what it is that this land needs. If Llangarlia is to survive it will need the Trojan magic. Genvissa, I have doubted you, but now I can see that what you have done is truly for the best.”
She smiled. “Of course it is, Aerne. Of course it is. Sleep now. Rest.”