She ran surely, truly, and Genvissa never even knew she was there.
As she ran, Cornelia drew from the deep pocket of her robe a knife, wickedly sharp, with a curiously twisted horn handle.
“Mag!” she cried as, with one final, long stride, she slapped her free hand on Genvissa’s shoulder and, as the woman’s head whipped about, her eyes both wild and startled, with her knife hand Cornelia sank Asterion’s malignant blade to its hilt into the base of Genvissa’s neck.
Everything stopped: the breathing of the watchers; the very movement of the dawn stars; the rising of the sun; the running of the deer in the forests above the Veiled Hills.
Then movement resumed. Cornelia, her face and eyes relieved and anxious all at once, took a pace back, as if to avoid the sudden, vicious spurting of blood from Genvissa’s neck. Genvissa, twisting as she sank to the ground so that her eyes, her wild, vicious eyes, never left Cornelia’s face. Brutus, crying out, reaching for Genvissa.
The mysterious weave of flowers collapsing into an untidy heap at the entrance of the labyrinth.
Loth, laughing, the sound soft but joyful.
People, moving.
But none moved as fast or as maliciously as did Genvissa.
She reached to the hilt protruding from the junction of her neck and shoulder and gripped it with both hands.
“Witch,” she hissed at Cornelia, now standing two or three paces away.
Brutus was at Genvissa’s side, distraught, no eyes for anyone but his stricken lover.
He grabbed at her shoulders, and she turned her face back to his.
Blood was now bubbling from her mouth, and her chest was heaving in her desperate effort to breathe.
“You should have killed her,” she whispered. “See this knife? It is Asterion’s knife, and she his tool. You should have killed her.”
Before anyone could react or say any more, her hands tightened about the hilt of the knife, and with a shriek of pure fury she pulled it forth.
Blood spouted from the wound in her neck, and Brutus tried to staunch its flow with his fingers, as if his touch could somehow stave off her death.
“Save the Game,” Genvissa said, her voice now horribly liquid. “Hide it, for Asterion is surely on his way.” Then, with one frantic, desperate look into Brutus’ eyes, she pushed him away with her remaining strength.
Brutus fell back, and Genvissa, stunningly, managed to struggle to her feet.
She swayed, her lifeblood pumping out of her, then caught her balance one final time.
Long enough to do what she needed.
“Think not to have bested me,” she bubbled to Cornelia, her eyes sliding also to Loth. “Think not to have destroyed the Game. Not when I control it.”
And with that she tossed the knife high in the air.
Its blade was thick with blood, and as it flew, so heavy globules of blood also flew, spattering Brutus, Cornelia, and, as the knife descended, Loth also.
As the hot blood hit them, they flinched as if burned.
The knife fell to the ground with a clatter, sliding several paces until it came to a stop just before Corineus.
He had been staring, as appalled and shocked as everyone else, at the desperate trio of Brutus, Genvissa and Cornelia.
Now his eyes slid down to the knife, paused, and then, very slowly, turned to Loth.
Genvissa swayed, and would have fallen had not Brutus risen and grabbed at her.
“Listen, all you marked with blood,” she said, her voice now heavy and barely intelligible, yet nevertheless deep with power and malevolence and with the measured beat of witch-speak. Her hands moved, slow, coarse with death, in a spell-weaving of such force and intent she did not take a single breath throughout its uttering. “Dance with me through deadly vale, through birth again until the day we stand afresh at this gate, the dance to end, the Game to play, the flowers to grow, the walls to hold ‘gainst fear and flame. Dance with me, dance with me, never shake me free.” Her voice was lowering, made horribly incoherent by the blood that filled her throat and lungs. “Dance with me, dance with me, never shake me free,” she bubbled, and, with a frightful grimace on her face, she fell to the ground and died.
Brutus moaned, bending to his knees and burying his face in her breast, and then again against the mound of her belly.
Unremarked, Corineus leaned down and took Asterion’s knife in his hand.
Brutus raised his face and stared at the circle of people still standing at a distance; his features were obscured by Genvissa’s blood.
“You witch,” he shouted hoarsely at Cornelia, laying Genvissa down gently and standing up. “True Hades’ daughter. Do you know what you have done? Do you know what you have done?”
“Yes,” she said.
“You willingly conspired with evil? With Asterion?”
“Yes.” Cornelia’s voice was very soft, and her eyes were deep with pain.
“At the cost of this?” Brutus flung a hand out, indicating the city and the land surrounding it. “The Game has not been completed, you have left the way open for Asterion. You have brought catastrophe to this fair land.”
“No, I have saved it,” she whispered, but he did not hear it.
“Have you no idea of what you have done, bitch?” It was all, now, that Brutus seemed able to say. “Genvissa is dead! Dead.”
“I am sorry, Brutus. I know you loved her.”
That was too much for him. He stepped forward and hit her a blow across the jaw, snapping her head back and sending her tumbling to the ground with a cry of pain.
“What we had begun,” Brutus screamed at her sprawled body, “we had to complete together. Together! Now? Now we—”
“Now?” Loth interrupted in a strong voice. “Nothing has changed much, Brutus, save the length of time between the first dance and the last. Did you not hear Genvissa? We’ll all be back again some day, bound by Genvissa’s hatred and Mag’s need, bound in the struggle with and against her. At least, I can pray that when I come back my legs will be strong once more.”
“Then start praying,” said Corineus. He had Asterion’s knife in his hand, and now he stepped forward and, as Cornelia had done to Genvissa, sank the blade into the juncture of Loth’s neck and shoulder with a sickening crunch. “This I do for Blangan, your mother. I hope, you monstrous bastard, she hunts you down through all eternity.”
Loth was staring at Corineus with eyes filled with pain and, curiously, joy. Blood bubbled out of his mouth but, like Genvissa, he made a last supreme effort to speak. “I will greet her in death with love, Corineus, as I should have done in life.”
Corineus’ face twisted, and he would have said more, but then Loth collapsed, and died, and Hoel shoved Corineus to one side to bend over Loth’s body, grieving.
Brutus stared at Corineus for a long moment, then he sank back to Genvissa and cradled her body in his arms. He looked across to Cornelia, struggling into a sitting position, wiping blood from her mouth. “Bitch daughter of Hades,” he said in a voice flat with hatred. “I wish I had never seen your face.”
Across the Narrow Seas in the long house of Poiteran, the dark-haired baby boy lay waving his arms and legs before the fire.
He was overwhelmingly joyous in his youth and his strength and in the devastation of Genvissa’s and Brutus’ plans.
The Game was begun but not completed. It would sit and wait, wait for Genvissa’s and Brutus’ rebirths, wait for the Mistress of the Labyrinth and the Kingman to return and finish what they had commenced.
Return Genvissa and Brutus would, but not under their terms. Oh no…never that. He would seize control of their rebirth, he would dictate the terms under which Genvissa and Brutus drew breath again; after all, Herron had shown him the manner in which it could be done. A time and a place of Asterion’s choosing, not theirs. A Gathering of all those who had a place in the Game.
Of course, the Gathering would be a little more crowded than Asterion had anticipated. He hadn’t expected Ge
nvissa’s dying curse, the scattering of her thick blood that would pull back with her and Brutus all that it had touched, but that was no matter. Cornelia and Loth, and whoever else had been stained by Genvissa’s blood, were of no consequence and had no role to play in what Asterion planned. They would merely be incidental, witnesses to Asterion’s ultimate victory.
The baby lay, waving his limbs back and forth, admiring their sheen in the firelight. Now all he needed was to grow into adulthood, seize the kingship bands either from Brutus’ aged limbs, or the younger and less experienced ones of his son, arrange the Gathering at a time of his pleasing, twist Genvissa to his will (did she realise in death what she had forgot in life? That in restarting the Game she must become Asterion’s creature entirely?) and take control of the Game, using its power to his will, and his will alone.
Dark, vicious joy surged through Asterion. In time, the power of the Game would be his and, through that, all of the world he cared to take.
CHAPTER TEN
That evening, with Genvissa’s now-dried blood still caking his face, Brutus burned her on a pyre atop Og’s Hill.
When she was nothing but ashes, Brutus took those ashes, and buried them at the entrance to the labyrinth.
There he stood for many hours, entirely still, grieving, feeling such loss that he thought he could not bear it.
Then, in that still, dark hour before dawn, Brutus raised his head and looked east towards the Narrow Seas.
Two or three days’ journey, nothing more, and there sat Asterion. Waiting. Evil personified. A baby of no more than a few months old who had infinite patience and infinite time on his side.
There was little he could do, but what he could, Brutus did. He took from his limbs the golden kingship bands, for if Asterion was going to seize the Game, he would need these. Then, using a combination of his power and that of the Game’s, Brutus cloaked his actions against Asterion and buried the bands at strategic points within and about Troia Nova, murmuring incantations as he did so. Now, no one could find, or remember, where the Game lay.
There. Let Asterion find those, if he could. Amid all his grief and his anger, Brutus found a dull satisfaction in knowing that Asterion would never have expected him to relinquish the kingship bands in order to hide them.
Gods, he’d never expected to voluntarily take those golden bands from his limbs, either.
When he was done, and the bands hidden away and protected as best he could manage, Brutus raised his head and looked about him as the first of dawn’s light stained the sky. His beautiful city, Troia Nova, would not last for many years beyond his death. Asterion would destroy it in his desperation for the bands…but better that than allow Asterion the bands themselves.
“Damn you,” he whispered, thinking of Cornelia, rather than of Asterion.
Then he roused himself, damped down both his grief and his anger, and went in search of his engineers, for there was one more thing he could do to ensure that when he and Genvissa were reborn, they would be able to complete the Game.
He needed to keep the labyrinth safe from Asterion.
Within the week construction began on a magnificent temple on Og’s Hill. Its beautiful stone flooring covered completely the labyrinth, and to its walls Brutus tied the concealment magic of the kingship bands. Once it was fully constructed the magic of the labyrinth would combine with the magic of the bands (the labyrinth would continue to listen to the instructions of its Kingman) and would turn Asterion’s eye from the site. He would know the labyrinth existed, but he would never be able to find it. Not without the kingship bands. It was the best he could do to keep the labyrinth safe until he and Genvissa, returned, could retrieve the Kingman’s bands and once again raise the magic of the labyrinth. He hoped.
Once the temple was completed, Brutus dedicated it to Artemis in honour of Genvissa.
He thought she would have laughed at that.
It was all he lived for now, to hear Genvissa’s laugh again…and to hear it, he would need to die.
Until then, there was only revenge.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Twenty-seven years later
CORNELIA SPEAKS
He took me back to wife, as unbelievable as that sounds, although it took more than three years (three years I spent in confinement, never allowed to see the sun, nor feel the soft breath of Llangarlia on my face), and even though in the rest of our lives together he never said a word to me. He ordered me to his empty palace from that cold prison, demanded my presence in his bed, and thought there to punish me with his coldness and hatred. He believed to torture me with his lack of love, with his constant remembrance of Genvissa, with his constant sure hope of meeting and loving her again in that future life to which she had damned us all.
When the dance and the Game would be completed.
Although we could wash the redness of her blood from our skin, its stain never left our souls. Brutus and I might have left Og’s Hill that dreadful day still breathing, but we were in many ways walking corpses, waiting only for death, and the battle to be renewed in a later life.
The years passed, cold and lifeless. The city grew, as yet unsoured by the lack of completion of the Game. Brutus continued as its king (no longer Kingman, for his golden bands had mysteriously disappeared), apparently joyous and content in his power and the beauty of Troia Nova, inwardly cold and dying, yearning and angry, using the years left to him in this life only to punish me.
We had two more sons. Two years after Brutus had commanded me back to his bed I discovered myself again with child. I could not believe it for several months, until the hard swelling of my belly left me in no doubt, for I thought my womb had been entirely destroyed when Genvissa had murdered my daughter.
But then I had Mag, didn’t I. I smiled, and put a hand over my womb.
She lived there still, sad, sorrowing as much as me, but with eyes for the future, and the struggles that lay before us.
Brutus considered my unexpected pregnancy a triumph, a further mark of his conquest of my spirit, and when another son followed two years after that, he could hardly contain his malicious glee.
I could not love either child very much. I did not hate them, nor resent them, but rather I regarded them with nothing but indifference. Besides, as sons, and as happened with Achates, they were absorbed completely into Brutus’ world, removed from mine almost as soon as they were born, for Brutus would not allow me to suckle them.
“I shall not have them imbibe her hate and malevolence,” he remarked to the midwives who attended me. “Take them from her as soon as they leave the womb, for my sons will have no dealings with the witch that bore them.”
Oh, to call me a witch, when it was his sorceress lover who had set us all on the path of destruction.
He had other children, daughters as well as sons, with women he took as concubines. Their laughter rang up and down the corridors of the palace, their every footstep and joyful shout a stab wound in my heart.
I missed my daughter, my beloved daughter, with every beat of my heart and with every breath I drew for so long as I lived. She had been my only hope for love.
The only hope…in this life, at least.
Twenty-seven years after that dreadful day, Brutus lay dying on his bed as a cancer ate out his throat. He had lived out his time, and none truly grieved, save, I think, for me. I loved him, in a sad, terrible way, and I sorrowed for him, and for me, and for Coel and Loth and all that might have been.
Achates would take Brutus’ place as king, his younger brothers supporting him. He knew nothing of the Game. Brutus had told him nothing, had taught him nothing, remarking to the air one morning as he rose from our cold, hateful bed (he would not speak to me, but he was much given to speaking to the air as if it were a beloved companion) that there was little point. There was no Mistress of the Labyrinth, no hope of completing the Game save when Genvissa’s magic (her malevolence, more like) could pull us all together again to finish what I had interrupted.
&n
bsp; “My son will be the lesser man,” he said, fastening his belt and striding from the chamber, “for the evil that walks as his mother.”
And yet still I could not hate him. I cannot truly say why, given the cruelty with which he treated me, but still I could not find it in myself to revile him. I often recalled that day we stood above the hill behind the Altars of the Philistines, and the love that had almost blossomed then. I remember how he had bent his face to mine, his hair blowing about me like a swarm of wild bees, his mouth and tongue tracing lines of desire across my flesh…and yet never laying that warm, wonderful mouth to mine. Teasing me with its closeness, its wantonness, but never laying it against mine.
Never had he laid his mouth against mine.
Apart from my daughter’s death, this was the greatest regret of my life—that I had been so filled with folly and pride as to swear before him on our wedding night, when all vows and words were binding, that I would never allow his mouth to touch mine.
What would have changed had I allowed him that? What folly and murder and madness would have been avoided had I allowed him to kiss me? Would we have been real lovers before we ever set foot in Llangarlia, too close even for Genvissa’s ambition and magic to tear us apart…or was this only wishful thinking? Had she sunk her claws into him long before we ever reached Llangarlia’s shores? When I had wasted so much time in childish hatred of Brutus, had she been even then comforting him, tempting him, offering him a woman, where I had offered him only a girl?
When Brutus lay dying, he called out for Genvissa.
I knew she lurked just the other side of death’s door, waiting for him. I had no doubt whatsoever that my husband sank the quicker into death in his haste to meet her.
When he did die, drawing his last rattling breath, I cried for all that could have been. I bent down to him, saddened beyond reason, and laid my mouth on his.
But his lips were cold and stiff, and all that issued from his mouth was the stink of death.