Now Genvissa was absorbing the last remaining vestiges of Mag’s power, using it to further Genvissa’s own plans for this land. Mag knew that if she couldn’t find the means to counter Genvissa soon, she would fade away as Og had done. Mag’s name might still be invoked, and her power used, but Mag herself would be dead, and Genvissa, and those who succeeded her, would wield Mag’s magic.
But what could she do? What? Mag needed somewhere to hide, somewhere to lick her wounds and regain her strength. But there was no place in this land, no womanly harbour, in which she could conceal herself. Genvissa knew all the dark spaces of every hill and every woman’s body; there was no escape into any of them for Mag.
Nowhere to go, once Genvissa had drawn away from Mag every last iota of her ancient power, save for extinction.
Mag twisted and wept, and felt yet more of her power drain away.
Her life, once measured in aeons, was now measured in weeks at the most.
CHAPTER FOUR
Northern Epirus, on the west coast of Greece
The beach lay in a glimmering white crescent, semicircled by the steep slopes of a forested mountain, drenched in heavy moonlight. Several hundred men lay wrapped in blankets on the sand, deeply asleep and enslaved to dream, incapable of movement. Five fires had been lit along the line of beach and the ranks of sleeping warriors, but now they were all but dead, cooled into mounds of greying coals. At each fire stood a sentry, leaning on a spear; all five slept, their chins resting on their chests, soft snores rattling through their slack lips.
Beyond the beach three low-slung warships bobbed gently at anchor in the ocean swells of the bay, uncaring witnesses to the enchantment settling upon the sleepers.
The waters at tide’s edge were calm one moment, bubbling silently the next. A woman rose from the shallows, strangely dry for the manner of her arrival.
For a heartbeat she shimmered, as if she were a mere apparition…then her figure hardened, and became as if real.
She was tall, and sturdily built, her dark auburn hair bundled carelessly into a knot on the top of her head, her small, high breasts left bare, her hips clad with a short green kirtle bound about her waist with a few twists of a leather thong.
Across her back rested a quiver of golden arrows, and over her left shoulder lay a silver hunting bow of exquisite workmanship.
The woman strode across the beach and paused at the edge of the first wave of sleepers. Her lip curled, as if she found them not to her taste.
She stepped over them and walked, loose-hipped and confident, between the ranks of sleepers to the very far end of the beach.
Here, slightly apart from the others, lay a single warrior. To one side lay his clothes, a waistband of twisted leather wound about with scarlet and gold cords. His scarlet waistcloth, fresh-washed from the sea, lay folded neatly beside it.
He had thrown off his blanket, as if it constrained him, even in sleep, and his body lay naked save for the bands of gold he wore about his biceps, upper forearms and just below his knees.
Fine craftsmen had wrought these golden bands, and on each of them they had embossed the same repeating symbol: a spinning crown over a stylised unicursal labyrinth.
They were the bands of kingship, yet this man ruled over no kingdom.
They were the bands of the Kingman and were the only set surviving from the catastrophes that had enveloped the Aegean world; yet this man had no partner with which to dance through the sorcerous twistings of the labyrinth.
The woman stood, her face expressionless, staring down at him.
He was not a handsome man, being too blunt of feature and his black eyebrows too straight, but he was well made with wide shoulders, flat belly, slim hips and long, tightly muscled limbs, and she knew that when his eyes opened they would be of that liquid blackness she had always craved in her lovers.
And his hair. She smiled. His hair was long and black and tightly curled, jouncing out of the thong which held it at the back of his neck into a riot of wildness across his shoulders. She longed to free it, to perfume it with scented oils, to run her fingers through it and bring it to her lips, and to sink her fists into it so tightly that he could never escape her.
She could see Aphrodite’s blood in that hair, and it excited her.
Her body trembled, and, suddenly sick of her silent watching she bent down, grabbed the man’s beautiful hair, and gave his head a hard yank.
He jerked instantly out of dream, and, as instantly, knew by the bow and arrows who it was bending down over him, staring at him intently.
“Artemis?” he whispered. He rose on his elbows, his face showing both confusion and awe. “I thought you dead!”
She smiled, pleased with her deception. “Me? Dead? How so when I am so fully fleshed?” She pulled her hand from his hair. “Rise, and walk with me.”
He did so, not once taking his eyes off the Goddess of the Hunt, his movements fluid and graceful, warrior-trained and battle-honed.
He did not reach for his waistcloth, treating the goddess with the same respect he would one of his warriors.
Once he was standing Artemis turned and walked a few paces away, and the man followed, tense with excitement. They walked in silence, Artemis a pace or two ahead of the man, until they had reached the very end of the beach where rocks rose in a sheer face to the first of the forested slopes of the mountain.
“You have been wandering now…for how long?” she asked as she turned to face him. She leaned back, resting her buttocks on a rock and folding her arms. She considered him carefully, not bothering to disguise the admiration with which she ran her eyes down his body.
It was, after all, what she and hers had so long been waiting for.
“Fifteen years.” He regarded her evenly. There was still awe in his eyes, but caution and speculation also, and that pleased Artemis.
This man was no fool.
“Fifteen years. And what have you learned in those fifteen years?”
“Hunger.”
She smiled, the expression predatory. “Hunger for what?”
He took a deep breath, his wonderful black eyes losing some focus, and she needed no more answer.
She laid a finger on one of the golden bands about his right arm. “You hunger for your heritage. You hunger for power. You hunger for Troy.”
“Aye.” His voice was tight, almost breathless.
“Yet how can this be? Troy has been ashes for over ninety years.”
“Troy is in my blood.” He placed his left hand over her finger where it still lay on the golden band. It was a bold move, touching a goddess. “And I wear it about my arm. I cannot forget.”
“No, of course you cannot.” She pulled her finger out from under his hand—slowly, teasingly—and rested her hand on the warm skin of his chest. “Brutus,” she said, rolling about her tongue the Latin name his dying mother had given him. “If I offered you power, would you take it?”
He hesitated, but she knew it was only because he was considering her, not because he was afraid. “Yes.”
“And if the path I showed you to this power was strange, but resulted in you reaching this power stronger than you have ever been before, would you nevertheless take it?”
This time no hesitation. “Oh, yes.”
“If I tested your resolve and your courage and your training along this path, would you resent me for it?”
Her hand was still on his chest, and he leaned very slightly into it. “And what,” he said, “would be my prize at the end of all this travail?”
She moved closer to him, her face barely an inch or two from his, their breath intermingling, their bodies touching at a half-dozen different places, their mouths a single, dangerous moment away from a kiss.
Me. The word hung between them, and Artemis actually put her mouth against his to verbalise the word.
“Troy,” she whispered.
He drew in a sharp, shocked breath, and his muscles jumped under her hand.
She moved away
from him, just slightly, the better to see the incredulity, the lust, in his face.
Oh yes, this was the man she wanted.
“Troy?” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Do you not wear the kingship bands of Troy?” Her hand was moving in warm, slow circles over his chest.
“Troy is gone. Ashes. Crumbled stone. It would take me a thousand years to rebuild it.”
“And what if I offered you that thousand years?”
Now the look on his face made her laugh, and she relented. “Not the old Troy, Brutus, for this world is diseased and could no longer support the power and glory of”—you—“such a magnificent and glorious city. No, I shall send you to a new land, a strong land, a bright land. Build me a new Troy, Brutus, and I can give you everything you could possibly want.”
Her tone, her wandering hand, the tip of her tongue between her teeth, left Brutus in no doubt whatsoever that the “everything” included Artemis.
“Troia Nova,” he said. “And you.” All his life he’d felt that there was something towards which he should be moving, something which awaited him. His father had smiled at him, the companions of his childhood had jeered. Others had been indifferent. No one had believed him save these men who currently slept at his back.
Now…he swallowed, almost overcome both by the presence of the goddess and by what she offered him.
Artemis watched his reaction, and knew the thoughts that jumbled through his mind. She turned her hand so that its back was against his skin, and she let it drift lower, down to his belly where she could feel his muscles quivering in excitement.
“Where?” he said, his voice almost breathless now in his excitement. “Where is this strong and bright land?”
“You will reach it in time, Brutus. First, however, you must sail south for two days to a city called Mesopotama.”
“My long and dangerous travail.”
“Aye.” Her hand was moving more deliberately now, and she could feel how much her touch excited him; their eventual matching would be all she had hoped for. “Mesopotama is ruled by a king called Pandrasus. There is a great test for you in this city of Mesopotama, one you will pass only if you have the strength and ability to rebuild Troy.” And win me. “When—if—you have won through, and have set your fleet to sea once more, sail a further day’s journey south, and you will find an island. Seek me out there, and I will show you the path to your Troia Nova.” She pressed her hand deeply into his flesh, then withdrew it and stood away from him. She smiled, holding his eyes, then stepped forward and brushed past him.
He turned as if to follow, but she held out her hand, halting him. “Do as I say, Brutus,” she said, and then, suddenly, Artemis was gone, as if she had never been.
In a land far distant, so distant it was almost incomprehensible to either Trojan or Llangarlian, a naked youth of particularly dark beauty sat in a barren, dry plain in the valley of an alpine landscape. Above him reared snow- and ice-capped mountains, about him whistled frigid winds, but none of this did he notice.
He sat cradled within the dark heart of the unicursal labyrinth that he had scrawled in the dry earth with a knife. The knife lay on the soil before his crossed legs, its blade pointed outwards towards the entrance of—the escape from—the labyrinth, its curious twisted-horn haft pointing towards the youth.
Asterion sat, his black eyes riveted on the knife, drawing strength from its curious dark power, thinking on what he had just learned: one of Ariadne’s daughter-heirs had made her initial move in the resurrection of the Game.
And here he sat, “trapped” in this calamitously weak body.
He smiled, as cold and malicious as the landscape about him. Asterion had known exactly what Herron was doing when she interfered in his rebirth, forcing him into this body and this distant land. He had expected it, had known that either Ariadne or one of her daughter-heirs would try to negate his power, so they could restart the Game. Having anticipated the betrayal, Asterion could very well have stopped it, and escaped Herron’s darkcraft.
But that was the very last thing Asterion wanted to do. Above all else he wanted Herron and whoever followed her to believe he was incapacitated, that he was trapped and impotent.
Asterion’s smile grew colder, his eyes darker. Weak his body might be, but his power was stronger than ever.
He reached out a hand, and touched the knife gently, loving it. This knife was very precious to him, for it was of him. In his first rebirth after Ariadne had enacted her Catastrophe, ruining the Game in the Aegean world, Asterion had journeyed back to the devastated island of Crete. There he searched out the remains of his former body—the body that Theseus had murdered with Ariadne’s aid—and cut from its skull the two great curved horns. These Asterion had then worked, with the skills both of power and of craftsmanship, into the twisted-horn handle that now adorned the blade of the knife.
In the months and years ahead this knife was going to be his friend and his ally, his voice, and the weapon that he would use against Herron’s daughter-heir Genvissa and this man she had picked as her partner in the Game.
Weak? No, Asterion was stronger than ever.
His smile died, and his eyes glittered.
Brutus stood for a very long time watching the moonlight play out over the crescent of sleepers and the waters wash in gently, gently, gently to the sand.
Troy. He was to rebuild Troy.
He could feel the excitement deep in his belly, as powerful an urge as the sexual longing Artemis had roused in him, and he lifted his arms and placed his hands on each of the golden bands that encircled his biceps.
Troy. Home regained.
It was ninety-eight years since Troy had fallen to trickery and betrayal; ninety-eight years since the Trojans who survived that betrayal had first wandered homeless about the lands of the Mediterranean. Ninety-eight years during which thousands had died, more thousands had been enslaved, and others, like himself and his comrades, had journeyed purposeless, fighting as mercenaries when asked, sometimes fighting when not asked for the sheer relief of it, sometimes settling for a season or two to aid some tiny community sow and harvest crops, always constantly searching.
Now, the searching might not be completely done with, but the waiting was over. Brutus was to regain his heritage: Troy.
He took a deep breath, tipped back his head, and opened his arms to the moonlight in silent exultation.
The next moment he was crouching in the sand, eyes moving warily about the beach, as a shout of sheer terror swept over the sleepers.
Men rolled out of their blankets, hands grabbing at weapons, and Brutus, vulnerable in his nakedness, ran to where his sword lay.
But by the time he had reached his tangled blanket, both he and the other men were relaxing. The shout had come from one of the sleeping men.
A dream, no doubt.
There were a few murmured words and a snort of laughter, then men lay back down to their sleep once more, but Brutus could see which sleeper it was who had shouted in dream terror, and his shoulders were again tense.
Membricus, tutor, friend, one-time lover and, Brutus knew only too well, a powerful seer.
“Membricus,” Brutus said, kneeling where his friend sat wide-eyed, “what have you seen?”
Membricus, a lean, older man with wide, thick lips, even but yellowing teeth, and a shock of grey curls twisting around the sides of his balding pate, turned to look at Brutus. His grey eyes, normally cool and distant, now had retreated to the colour and warmth of ice.
“The Game has begun,” he said, low and hoarse.
“The Game is dead,” Brutus said, perhaps too sharply. “It died with Ariadne’s betrayal.”
Membricus shook his head, then looked at where his hands clutched into his blanket. Brutus could see that their fingers trembled. “The Game has only been waiting. Now it has woken.”
“It was a dream, Membricus. A dream.”
Membricus raised his eyes to Brutus and they were o
nce again clear and part of this world. “The Game is stirring,” he said, then he sighed, turned away from Brutus, and rolled himself back into his bedding.
The Game is stirring? Brutus slowly stood, staring at Membricus’ form.
Power, the goddess had offered him. His heritage.
Again Brutus’ hands strayed to the golden bands about his biceps. “Of course,” he whispered, and shuddered at the thought of the degree of power that would be his if the Game was indeed stirring.
A thousand years, she had teased him.
And perhaps that was no tease at all.
Brutus did not sleep the rest of the night. Instead, he paced up and down the beach, staring out to sea, watching the light catch on the crescents of the breaking waves, waiting impatiently for the dawn and the start he could make towards his heritage.
CHAPTER FIVE
In the morning, when the men rose and were set to break their fast, Brutus called them to stand before him and announced that they were to sail two days south to a city called Mesopotama.
“And from where has this idea sprung, Brutus?” asked Membricus, laying down the bowl of maza one of the other men had handed him. The older man looked tired and drawn, as if the fear of his dream still lingered within him.
“Last night, as we slept, the goddess Artemis came to me,” Brutus said, addressing the crowd of warriors rather than answering Membricus solely. “She announced to me that it was time for me to resume my great-grandfather’s inheritance.” He drew in a deep breath, his face joyous. “We are to rebuild Troy in a land untouched by troubles! Troia Nova! A city, not of ill luck and trickery, but of strength and nobleness, blessing and peace.”
Instantly, men shouted questions at Brutus, but he held up his hands and hushed them back to silence. He still had not dressed, and, standing naked under the morning sun, the golden bands gleaming against his deeply tanned skin, his wild black hair flowing about his shoulders, Brutus looked like a god himself.
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