When he finally did sleep, Genvissa lay back beside him and closed her eyes.
Inside, she seethed, both with triumph and with frustration.
Og was dead, as Genvissa knew he would be when Loth murdered his mother—it was the final weaving in the darkcraft her mother Herron had cast.
But where was Mag? Genvissa had been certain she was lurking deep within Blangan’s womb. While there had been a sudden drop in Mag’s power as Og died, there had been no cessation of it, as there surely should have been had Mag been caught within Blangan’s dying body.
Thus, Mag must be alive somewhere else, albeit weakened beyond measure.
Genvissa sighed, putting the problem aside. In the end, it was of little matter. Mag was essentially powerless without Og, and could do little to stop Genvissa now.
Alive or dead, Mag was nothing.
Coel grunted as Cornelia’s body fell slack in his arms, and he lowered her carefully to the ground.
“In Og’s name,” he said, staring at Loth who was standing, white and shaking. “What has happened here?”
Loth did not answer him. He did not look as if he had even heard.
Coel turned to Ecub. “Ecub? What has happened? Has Og’s power been restored?”
She swallowed, and shook her head.
Her skin was almost as pale and as clammy as Loth’s.
She opened her mouth as if to answer, but before she could speak, Loth moaned pitifully, and fell to his knees beside Blangan’s corpse. He grabbed at her silent, blood-clotted heart and tried with shaking hands to shove it back inside her chest.
“What has happened?” Coel shouted, Loth’s and Ecub’s obvious distress terrifying him.
“Og was destroyed when Loth killed Blangan,” Ecub whispered.
“I didn’t know,” Loth cried out. “I had no idea.”
“But Og’s power was supposed to be restored when Loth killed Blangan,” Coel said, his heart thudding painfully in his chest. Og’s power could not have been destroyed. It could not have been. “Blangan’s death was supposed to have shattered the darkcraft which had split Og’s power. It was supposed to have—”
“Be quiet,” Loth screamed, twisting about to face Coel. He was holding his bloodied, trembling hands at chest height, his fingers curled into claws. “Be quiet!”
“Loth,” Ecub said firmly, “you were not to know. Genvissa had told you…”
There was a long, horrified silence.
Loth managed to get to his feet, his hand still held before his chest. “Genvissa,” he said. “I must speak with Genvissa.”
Swift as a striking adder, Ecub grabbed one of his wrists. “This was her doing, Loth.”
“No, no, it could not be—”
“This was her doing. She had no need of Og. She has her Brutus now; her Trojan magic. This was her doing, Loth. Believe it.”
“I must talk to her…there must be some reason…” Now it was Loth’s voice that drifted off. “Oh, Ecub, what have I done?”
“Listen to me, Loth, Coel.” Ecub’s eyes flitted between the two. “We can do nothing until we find out exactly what has happened, and what caused it. We watch and we learn. For the moment that can be our only course of action.”
“Og is dead,” Loth said, his face a tragic mix of pain and horror. “I killed him.”
“You were the weapon which killed him,” Ecub said, “but you were not the hand that wielded it.”
“I have killed Og,” Loth said, the trembling of his hands now far worse.
Ecub slapped him across the face, hard enough that Loth rocked on his feet.
He stared at her with pitiable eyes, but Ecub had no time for pity.
“You go back to the Veiled Hills,” she said. “Find out what you can, but tread lightly, Loth, for Mag’s sake if for no one else’s. We must find out what is happening.”
He nodded. “I…I must wash my hands.”
“Then do so in a stream as you travel north. Waste no more time here. Get to the Veiled Hills before Coel brings Brutus there. Find out what is happening.”
Ecub’s words finally filtered through Loth’s numbed mind. “Yes. Yes, I will.” He looked at Cornelia, lying senseless on the ground. “What do we do about her?”
“Coel and I will take care of her. Go, Loth. Go!”
When he’d gone, Ecub turned to Coel who by now was looking almost as wretched as Loth had been.
“Take Cornelia and put her back to bed with Brutus. She’s had many draughts of frenzy wine…if any god-favour is still with us then she will remember nothing when she wakes.”
For a long minute they stared down at Cornelia’s immobile, naked form.
“I thought she had some connection to Mag,” said Coel eventually. “She drew me to her with such strength…and when I entered her…I felt such…such…ah, I must have dreamed it. She is so powerless now. Just as an ordinary woman.” He lifted his face to Ecub. “Did you feel anything from her?”
“I felt something—but maybe it was just a passing phantasm. So much is wrong in our world that I think nothing can be trusted, not even our senses.”
Some of what Coel had said finally made some sense in Ecub’s mind. “You lay with her?”
He shrugged. “Briefly. I entered her, but she drew away almost immediately.”
Ecub looked down at Cornelia, still senseless, breathing quietly. “And what did you feel?” she said.
“I thought I felt Mag. But I must have been mistaken. There is nothing about her now that calls so powerfully to me.”
“Yet she danced Mag’s Nuptial Dance,” Ecub said, still studying Cornelia.
“What? I did not see that.”
“Well, she did. Although Blangan could have taught it to her.”
“Perhaps,” Coel said, but neither of them sounded convinced.
Ecub sighed, exhausted by the events of the night. “I suppose she will have to remain a mystery to us for the moment, Coel. But watch her as you travel north. Sensible or senseless, she is still a puzzle. Take her back to her bed, Coel. Do it now. First light is not far distant.”
He nodded, and bent down to Cornelia.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Blangan! Blangan is gone!” Brutus lurched out of his sleep, his mind confused with dream and weariness. Beside him Cornelia had sat up, the bed covers clutched to her breasts, her eyes wide and disorientated.
Corineus stood by the central hearth of the house, his hair mussed, his chin stubbled, his entire stance taut with worry. “Blangan is gone.”
“She has likely gone to the privy pit,” Brutus murmured, yawning and rubbing at his eyes with one hand.
“She is not there! I looked. She is nowhere in the village.”
Brutus’ hand stilled, and he looked at Corineus with a peculiar kind of intensity, as if the possibilities contained within the fact of Blangan’s disappearance were only now occurring to him.
“Move over,” he said to Cornelia, who drew up her knees and swivelled to one side so he could climb past her. The covers tangled in Brutus’ legs as he tried to slide out of the bed, and he cursed and tugged hard enough at the blankets that he pulled them completely from the bed, leaving Cornelia naked and shivering in the sudden cold.
Brutus tossed Cornelia her robe and pulled his own tunic quickly over his head, belting it as he slid on his shoes. He grabbed his cloak, and looked about the house.
Everyone was accounted for: Coel and his companions, Hicetaon—now also out of bed and dressing—and Aethylla and the babies, the two Trojan warriors who accompanied them, and Ecub and the members of her household.
“Coel?” said Brutus, buckling his sword belt to his hips.
Coel, sliding from Ecub’s bed, shrugged. “I have no idea,” he said.
Brutus looked at the Mother. “Ecub?”
She also shrugged. “How would I know? The woman hardly spoke to me. She is a stranger. I cannot tell her mind.”
Brutus studied her, hating her words. If Blangan did not
speak then it was because she had been made to feel wholly unwelcome within Ecub’s house.
He was also disturbed by Ecub’s lack of care. She seemed completely unperturbed about Blangan’s disappearance when on two counts she should have been at least mildly worried: firstly, her ability as a Mother would be seriously called into question if a guest of hers had come to harm under her roof (but would that truly matter if the guest in question was the hated Blangan?), and, secondly, as the head of her household and the village, Ecub should at the very least be slightly anxious that a stranger was wandering around unsupervised.
Especially if that stranger was the hated Blangan.
“We will need to search for her,” Brutus said, finally taking his eyes off Ecub. “Hicetaon, take our men and search the village. Corineus, you and I will take Jago and Bladud and search the surrounding fields. Coel…” Brutus paused, and gave Coel a hard glance as well; the man had such a bland face on him that Brutus wondered if he were hiding something. “Coel, you come with me.”
“We should try the Stone Dance,” Corineus said. He was shifting from foot to foot, almost twitching with impatience and dread. “Blangan talked of it yesterday. Perhaps she was drawn there last night.”
“Perhaps,” said Brutus, sending Ecub one more speculative look, then he motioned to the other men, and they left the house.
As soon as the last man had gone, Ecub looked over to Cornelia.
Cornelia blanched, and stepped back against the bed, almost tripping over the blankets Brutus had left tangled on the floor.
Ecub’s mouth hardened into a thin line.
They found her almost immediately. There was little to search in the village that Corineus had not already checked, and so Hicetaon and the two other Trojans rejoined Brutus, Corineus and Coel just as they approached the Stone Dance.
They knew even before they entered the circles: crows and ravens were heaped in a squawking, heaving mass of feathers, wings and flashing beaks on the far side of the Dance.
Corineus gave a ghastly cry, and ran towards the birds before Brutus could stop him.
As soon as he arrived to within two paces of the shuffling mass of birds, Corineus threw himself at them, shouting madly.
They erupted in a dusty, foul-smelling cloud of black feathers and flew off, screeching in disgust at the interruption.
As they lifted away, Corineus gave one long, despairing cry and sank to his knees, his hands to his face.
When Brutus reached his side, he took one look, then turned aside his head, swallowing: even his battle experience had not prepared him for this.
What was left of Blangan lay by one of the stone uprights; it was a hideous, twisted mess of blood and flesh. The birds’ feeding had damaged her, but even so it was clear enough what had been done to her before the birds had descended.
Her left breast had been ripped almost from her body, its flesh mangled as if it had been chewed.
Her heart lay exposed, half out of her chest…and in the clotted blood that covered it Brutus could clearly see the fingermarks of her murderer.
Corineus was keening, thin and high, one hand now patting at the air above Blangan’s corpse as if he wanted to touch her, but did not dare.
Hicetaon—glancing at Brutus who stood staring at Blangan with anger so deep it seemed quite possible that he’d take his sword to the stone as revenge for Blangan’s murder—squatted down by Corineus, and put his arms about him. He hugged Corineus tight, murmuring words of comfort.
Brutus took a very deep breath, then looked at Coel who had stopped a little distance away.
His face had not altered from its carefully composed blandness. “Who did this to her? Who, Coel? No one hated Blangan, save for your people.”
“Take your hand from your sword,” Coel said. “No one from among my men or this village did this to her. If Blangan died here, and in this manner, then it was the work of gods, not of man.”
“Do gods have murdering fingers?” Brutus shouted, jabbing his hand at the marks about Blangan’s heart. “Damn you and your dark gods, Coel. Blangan was a woman innocent of any wrongdoing. Do not blame her for the split in your Og’s power, for she was a victim as much as this blighted land of yours.”
Coel’s face had lost some of its composure, but the fact that Brutus could still see no sympathy or understanding there drove him even deeper into anger. “Do you know what she told me, Coel? Do you? She said that as a terrified thirteen-year-old girl she was raped by her father, and she had no more ability to weave darkcraft than she could command the tide to retreat. Someone had cast that darkcraft, Coel, but it was not her.” Brutus flung his hand at Blangan’s corpse again.
Something shifted in Coel’s eyes, an uncertainty perhaps, but it did not reflect in his voice. “She had no right talking to you of matters that did not—”
“She had every right, Coel. Every right. She was terrified…she knew she had come home to die. All she wanted, Coel,” Brutus’ voice dropped, now soft in its disgust, “was for someone to believe in her.”
He turned away, and dropped down by Corineus, leaving Coel staring at him in sudden horror.
They carried Blangan’s corpse back to the village, a silent line of men wrapped either in thought or in grief, and into Ecub’s house.
Ecub hurried to meet them, exchanging a quick, knowing look with Coel, then taking charge.
“Cornelia, Aethylla and my daughters and I will tend her,” Ecub said, “while you men build a funerary pyre. Go now, and leave women to tend to women.”
Brutus nodded, grateful to hand the horrible corpse over to Ecub. Then he saw Cornelia’s pale and frightened face. “Cornelia? Are you well?”
“How can I be well, Brutus, when I loved Blangan so dearly? Go now, please, leave us alone.”
As Brutus turned away, Coel caught Cornelia’s eyes, and saw the fright within them.
Frenzy wine or not, Cornelia remembered.
The women took the entire morning to wash Blangan clean, stitch her wounds, and wind her in her shroud. Their work was done in silence, save for the odd query regarding their hideous handiwork.
Ecub shot Cornelia many a reflective look, but Cornelia refused to catch her eye, and Ecub could not talk to the woman with Aethylla or her daughters present.
At noon, Blangan’s body tended, they called in two of the men to carry her out to the funerary pyre.
The flames caught, snapping and twisting at the base of the huge pile of wood and brush on which Blangan lay. Corineus knelt in the dirt a few paces distant, his face twisted into tearless grief, his hands held out, keening softly and desolately. Everyone else—Ecub and her family, the villagers, the Trojans, and Coel, Bladud and Jago—stood about in a circle. After a word with Coel, Ecub had seen to it that Cornelia stood distant from Brutus or any other Trojan, and that Coel stood next to her.
“Cornelia,” Coel said softly, his eyes remaining steady on the now flaming pyre.
She did not answer.
“Cornelia,” he said again, “I am sorry that you are fearful.”
“You stopped me from aiding her.” Her voice was flat, toneless, yet carried many layers of accusation within it.
“If you had gone to her then you, too, would have died.”
“I wish I had, Coel. I loved Blangan. I cannot believe that you could have abetted such a cruel death.” Her voice became harsh, horrible. “I cannot believe that I let you touch me and hold me in that—”
“Cornelia,” Coel hissed, “keep your voice down! Do you think that Brutus will thank you now if he finds out you witnessed Blangan’s death? What will he think if he knows you kept a silent tongue in your head for all this long morning?”
Cornelia said nothing, but from the corner of his eye Coel saw that she gave an uncertain glance Brutus’ way.
“Blangan knew she came home to her death,” he continued, his own voice calmer now. “She knew it, and I think that you knew it, too, even if she had not put her knowledge into words for you
. There is…there is treachery going on about us, Cornelia. Blangan’s death was part of that treachery.”
“And yet you allowed it to happen!”
“Then, I did not know what I do now. Cornelia, there are things you need to see, and words you need to hear, but I am not the one to—”
“Not that Loth, surely.”
She had turned to face him now, her wide eyes furious and frightened all in one, and Coel cursed silently, knowing that her movement had made Brutus turn his eyes their way.
“You need to know why Blangan died,” he said, staring fixedly at the fire and talking through lips that barely moved. “You need to know who killed her.”
“Loth killed her!”
“No,” Coel said. “Loth did not kill her at all.”
Cornelia looked at him, then looked at Brutus, still watching them, then she lowered her eyes, and said no more.
When the pyre had burned completely, and Corineus, weeping, gathered the ashes into an urn, Coel moved to speak with Ecub.
“I do not think Cornelia will talk, not to Brutus. She is too frightened.”
“Watch her. I do not know what to make of her. I still do not truly know why she came to Mag’s Dance in the first instance, nor how she knew how to dance with Blangan Mag’s Nuptial Dance. She is a mystery, and in these dark, blighted days I find that mysteries unnerve me.”
Coel could see that Brutus, at Corineus’ side, was still watching him, and he knew he could not afford to spend too long whispering with Ecub.
“Mother Ecub, there is something I think you should know.”
“Yes?”
“Brutus said something to me that made me think. Ecub, I cannot explain it, nor justify what I am about to say, but I think that Genvissa, or, more probably her mother, was the one to cast that darkcraft over Og. Blangan was blameless, a victim, just as Og himself has been.”
“Coel—”
“I have stood here all through this afternoon, watching Blangan’s body burn, and thought about it. Ecub, we have no time to talk of this now, but think on this: you said last night that Loth’s manipulation and Og’s death was Genvissa’s doing. I think you’re right. Moreover, I think that all the darkcraft which binds us is of her, and her line’s, working. MagaLlan? Nay, I think not. Darkwitches indeed, all of them.”