Ecub’s face had gone white, but Coel was striding away before she could speak, and despite all her efforts, there was no opportunity to talk privately with him again before his party left the next morning.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“You knew that killing Blangan would draw Og to his final death.”
Genvissa raised her eyebrows, not looking at Loth, as if uninterested. They were walking—rather, Genvissa was walking with smooth, graceful strides, and a haggard-faced and furious Loth was progressing in a jerky gait at her side—through the meadowland that divided two of the Veiled Hills…Pen Hill and the Llandin. Loth had only just arrived from Mag’s Dance, his body and his hip wrap stinking of travel-sweat, and had accosted Genvissa on her daily walk among the sacred hills.
“You told me that in murdering my mother Og’s power would be restored.”
“Did I?”
“You said—”
She stopped, and rounded on him, irritated with his naive stupidity. “And you listened, you fool. The only thought you had was for power and the only tool you used to think with was this.”
She grabbed at Loth’s genitals through the soft material of his wrap, and he jerked back before she could bruise him too badly.
“You knew what would happen?” He had accused her, but had not thought she would admit to it.
“Yes.” Genvissa resumed walking.
He stared after her, then ran to catch up. “By Og, Genvissa, why? Why?”
“Because Og was useless. He needed to be replaced.”
“With Brutus?”
“With what Brutus can offer, yes.”
“How long have you planned this? What else have you done?”
“Enough, Loth. Now stop whining. I can ensure you a good enough place in—”
“No! No! I will go before the Assembly of the Mothers, Genvissa, and tell them what you have done.”
She turned on her heel and grabbed his chin in one strong hand. “You will not do so, Loth. If you open your whining mouth to anyone else I will personally tell not only your father, but the entire Assembly and through them, all Llangarlia, that you were the one who killed Og.” Her upper lip curled. “Like mother, like son. They will believe me, Loth. Not you.”
“I was only the weapon,” he said, wrenching his chin free, “not the hand of the murderer.”
Genvissa laughed softly. “How sweet, Loth. Who gave you those words, then? Ecub, I assume, as I can’t imagine you coming up with that concept by yourself.”
He flushed, humiliated. “Then why not kill me, too?”
“Because, my dear boy,” she patted him on the cheek, “I may yet have a use for you.”
“Darkwitch!”
Genvissa finally lost her temper. “And what of it? What I do, I do for this land. Mag and Og were old, useless, and this land was failing by degrees anyway. If I replace them, then I replace them with strength so that this land may flower in the sun again.”
She paused, her breasts heaving with emotion. “I love this land and its people as much as you do, Loth. Believe that. What I do, I do for Llangarlia.”
“What you do,” Loth hissed, “you do for your own gain only.”
He backed away a step, then another, his mouth—his entire face—snarling. “I will destroy you!”
“You are too late,” she said. “There is no weapon left.”
Part Five
London, March 1939
“I saw that satchel you gripped so closely when you left Waterloo, Major Skelton,” said the voice, whispering out of the darkness. “Were the remaining kingship bands in it, then? Are they back at Frank Bentley’s cheerful establishment, unguarded, waiting for me?”
“Asterion,” Skelton said, stopping and looking into the dark doorway from whence had issued the voice. “Are you so afraid to reveal yourself that you must speak from the shadows?”
Asterion stepped forth into the dim street lighting. He had taken his true form, his naked, muscular man’s body topped with the blue-black head of the bull.
Skelton glanced up and down New Bridge Street, but it was deserted. As always, Asterion had chosen the moment well.
“You were right,” Asterion said, “when you told my pretty Stella that this would be the last time, the last Gathering. I’ve grown tired, impatient. It is more than time that the Game was finalised.”
He walked further forward yet, close enough that he could reach up a hand and grasp Skelton’s chin. “This stupidity has gone on long enough. Give me the remaining kingship bands.”
Skelton wrenched his face free. “I’ll see you in hell first.”
Asterion laughed, low and sweet. “How, Brutus? The Game is all but over. There is no point in trying to fight on. No point in trying to deny me. Hand over the bands and—”
“And…what? You will treat me ‘mercifully’?” Skelton turned his back to Asterion, and began to walk away.
“You cannot finish the Game, Skelton. You know that. You cannot finish what you and Genvissa started.”
Skelton halted, and spoke to Asterion over his shoulder. “Then I will safeguard what I may. I will not let you destroy the Game, Asterion. I will not let you destroy this.” His chin tilted, and with its movement took in all the sprawling vastness of London.
“Walk away then, fool,” Asterion said. “Walk away. There is nothing you can do to stop me now. Nothing. You lost a long, long time ago. Walk away.”
Skelton whipped about, stung into fury, but Asterion had gone, vanished into the drifting London fog.
CHAPTER ONE
On the morning of the sixth day after they’d left Ecub’s village Coel led his party into a wide valley that seemed rich and fertile.
Here, unlike the relatively sparse lands they passed through from the Dart River, villages and farming communities were dotted at regular intervals. Here, fields and droveways stretched in every direction, their boundaries marked with ditches and well-tended hedges. Even now, in the early autumn, it was easy to see that this was a fruitful land: there were numerous flocks of sheep, cattle, pigs and goats, as well as gaggles of geese and poultry feeding along the stream and river meadows. In some fields there were still men and women harvesting late grain crops, and while blight had left some coarse and thin patches within the crops, in most the stalks crowded thick and tall, their grain heads heavy and generous. There were orchards and well-tended herb gardens, as also carefully managed coppices and lightly wooded areas where wild boar and deer roamed.
Roads wove their sinuous way through all this abundance, their surfaces carefully levelled and gravelled for wheeled traffic.
It was a countryside richer than Brutus could ever have imagined. In the lands in which he’d been born and spent his life hitherto, the thinness of the soils meant sparse fields and even sparser crops. He had never seen such an intensity of agriculture, nor such an easy wealth of food. Gods, if this land was not at its best, then how remarkable must it be when it was whole.
He rode his horse up level with Coel’s, and nodded at the surrounding countryside. “This is a good place.”
Coel and he had ridden in silence for two days after leaving Ecub’s village, and had then come to a silent agreement to clothe their disagreements with politeness. Since then their relationship had been cool, but not hostile.
Despite the thawing in his personal relationship with the man, Brutus kept a close and somewhat suspicious watch over Coel’s dealings with Cornelia. That there were none—Coel kept a great distance between himself and Cornelia—only increased Brutus’ suspicions. For the first part of the journey Cornelia and Coel had chatted as if they were old friends. Now they would have nothing to do with each other.
Something had happened, and Brutus wished he knew what it was.
“A good place?” Coel said, glancing at Brutus, then smiling to himself as he recognised Brutus’ admiration of the countryside. “This is the valley of the Llan,” he said, nodding forward to where Brutus could see a very faint wide expanse of
silver, “but it is only the beginning of Llangarlia’s wealth. From here to the north, and to the south-east, stretches some of the most wondrous land in this island. Mag and…and Og have blessed us indeed.”
“The Llan is close?”
“We will reach it this evening.”
“And the Veiled Hills?”
“Are on the northern bank of the Llan. Whether you see them or not depends on the MagaLlan and Gormagog’s goodwill.”
“When will I see them?”
“When you are settled this evening, I will send word. Then you will wait.”
Brutus nodded, lapsing back into silence as he thought of the MagaLlan—Genvissa. He’d had little time to think of her in the past two weeks: the journey, Blangan’s death and then his suspicions about Coel and Cornelia had filled his mind.
But now…now she was so close. What she had promised him was so close…
The Game.
Power—beyond anything he’d dared dream of.
Immortality.
In the late afternoon they wound their way north-east along a road that ran parallel with the southern bank of the River Llan. The dwellings, granaries and barns were becoming ever more frequent, and Brutus noted that they were among the best-constructed buildings he had seen since he had begun his journey through Llangarlia.
Further south the houses had been made largely of wooden frames for clay-daubed wickerwork walls, with thatched or turf roofs. Here the houses, while still predominantly circular, had walls of stone, and sometimes roofs of slate. Many of them had walls and roofs high enough to suggest several levels inside. Some of the buildings had even been constructed in the wide marshes and tidal flats that formed the southern boundary of the Llan. Solidly assembled wooden walkways ran out to the buildings sitting on thick stilts above the waterline.
Boats, some quite large, were either tied to posts within the river or were pulled up on the mud flats, and Brutus guessed that they were used both for fishing and trade.
“How far are we from the sea here?” he asked Coel.
“A day’s sail, or row, if your men are strong,” he answered, “and the river remains navigable many days to the west. For so many generations we have been blessed. Now?” He shrugged, and Brutus shot him a dark look at this oblique reference to Blangan.
The river bent northward, the road they were travelling with it, leading into a large bustling town constructed just east of the mud flats and marshes that lined the river.
Coel waved the party to a halt. He pointed to the river to their left, and indicated a small, hilled island at the mouth of a smaller river that emptied into the Llan on its western bank.
“That is Thorney Island,” he said, “and it marks the spot where the Ty River meets the Llan. Thorney Island also marks the first fording spot across the Llan above its mouth. Several of the coastal roads merge at this point to cross the ford; once across the Llan they again divide up, heading north, west and south to the very edges of the land.”
Brutus nodded, understanding why the settlement was so large. Here all trade routes converged on the ford across the Llan at Thorney Island. And the Veiled Hills were close.
As if reading Brutus’ thoughts, Coel now pointed to the north. “Above the town, which we name Llanbank for the river, the Llan curves to the east. It is on the northern bank of the east–west stretch of the river that the Veiled Hills sit.”
He looked again at Thorney Island. “On the island rises Tot Hill, and that hill marks the very south-western point of the Veiled Hills.”
“It is sacred?” asked Hicetaon, who had ridden up on Coel’s other side.
“Oh, yes,” Coel responded, “Tot Hill is sacred. Now, come, I shall show you to your house…” He grinned, looking over his shoulder to where Cornelia sat her horse, “which we shall call Cornelia’s House, as it is the custom of this land to name a household after the senior woman.”
He was rewarded with a polite smile, although it never reached Cornelia’s eyes.
The guesthouse to which Coel led them was large and substantial. Constructed of grey stone walls a pace thick and reaching well above their heads, it had a towering conical roof twice as high as the walls and densely thatched with new, sweet reeds. When they entered the single doorway it was to find that the floor was paved, and that there was a second level that could be used for extra sleeping space or for storage.
There were sleeping bays cut into the walls, with storage platforms above them and privacy drapes before them, and a bright fire burned in the central hearth, a pot already bubbling on its coals.
“You will be comfortable here,” said Coel. “In the morning, I will come for you.”
With that he was gone, and Brutus was left staring at the doorway, realising that not only was it their only way out of this substantial building, but that the long shadows outside revealed the presence of guards.
He doubted any of them would be allowed the freedom of Llanbank this night. He caught Hicetaon’s eye, and both men shrugged—they had expected little less.
Then one of the babies cried, and Brutus sighed, and turned to help the women settle before they tasted of the pot.
CHAPTER TWO
Brutus woke early, and prepared himself as best he could. He washed thoroughly with water he heated at the fire, and oiled his hair so that it shone and snapped into tight black curls, then tied it securely behind his neck with a new thong. His body likewise he rubbed with oil until his skin gleamed and the engraved bands of kingship about his arms and legs sparkled. He scraped his teeth with a stick, then rubbed them with astringent herbs, finally rinsing out his mouth with fresh cold water.
He wanted to look his best. He wanted to be at his finest.
Today he would meet with Genvissa, the MagaLlan.
And the Gormagog, of course, but frankly Aerne was not the one raising the excitement in his belly to the point where he was unable to break his fast for fear of retching the food straight up again.
He rose from the fire, its light catching the warm hues of his naked body, and wrapped a fresh loincloth about his hips.
Then, from the small pack he’d brought all the way from Totnes camp, Brutus lifted a closely-woven white tunic. It was sleeveless and came only to mid-thigh so that his bands of kingship would not be hidden. About his waist Brutus belted a leather strap studded with gold leaf insets, and to that he attached his sheathed knife.
He would not wear a sword to the meeting.
About his neck Brutus clipped a wide torc of gold that had been beautifully inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and on his feet he slid a new and finely crafted pair of shoes.
When he was done, he looked up and saw that Cornelia, Aethylla, Hicetaon and the two warriors were all awake, and variously propped up on elbows or sitting in their bed spaces, watching him.
“Will you win us a land today, Brutus?” Hicetaon asked. Beside him lay Aethylla, who had quietly taken to sharing Hicetaon’s blankets on the final leg of the journey north. She had a baby to each of her breasts, and watched Brutus with wide, appreciative eyes.
“This land is already ours,” Brutus said. “It is only that the Llangarlians have yet to realise it.”
Then, with a nod for Cornelia, Brutus grabbed his cloak and strode through the door.
Coel was waiting outside for him.
“You think to dazzle the MagaLlan and the Gormagog with that finery?” he said.
“I merely think to show myself as I am,” Brutus said, making Coel bark with laughter.
“You are a fine king, to be sure,” he said, “all a-glittering and a-gleaming.”
Brutus’ face stilled, then he pushed past Coel and mounted his horse.
Coel led the way on his horse, guiding Brutus through Llanbank’s wide streets towards the ford on the Llan. The morning was sweet and soft, people only just stirring, and what noise and movement there was came from the water birds on the riverside marshes, rising to begin their day’s feasting amid the river’s bounty.
Coel led Brutus along a raised and smoothly graded trackway that wound through the wide mud flats and marshes abutting the river. There were deep ditches on either side to drain away the marsh water, and Brutus wondered at the effort that must have gone into constructing such a causeway.
After some minutes the causeway led to the river itself, and here Brutus could see that the work had continued into and across the river, for the ford was a wide gravelled path under water that would reach to a man’s knees.
“We can only cross at low tide,” Coel explained as their horses splashed into the ford. “At high tide the Llan is the province of ships and fishes only.”
“And when the river floods?” Brutus asked. Most of the surrounding land was so low that he imagined it was at severe risk of flooding.
In answer, Coel grimaced. “We pray to Mag and Og to keep the river peaceful,” he said.
“And do they listen to your prayers?”
“Some years,” Coel said, and pushed his horse forward so that further conversation was impossible.
Brutus turned his attention to the far bank of the Llan, still some distance away. He could clearly see Thorney Island, rosy in the dawn light. It sat squarely in the mouth of the Ty River which had to split into two in order to flow around the island and into the Llan.
Thorney Island was not particularly large, rising from its spot at the junction of the two rivers to a central mound some eighty paces high. Much of the island, particularly about its shoreline, was thick with thorn bushes and beds of reed, and Brutus grinned to himself as he imagined the first men who dared to climb the island trying to push their way through that natural barrier—no wonder the name.