The central mound, Tot Hill, was clear of any shrubs and trees, and it boasted a large rectangular stone building on its southern slope that looked over the river and ford. At the very summit stood what appeared to be either an altar or the base of a pyre…or perhaps both.
Brutus had caught up with Coel now, and he nodded at the buildings. “The MagaLlan and the Gormagog live there?”
“No,” said Coel. “They live elsewhere. This is merely where they have chosen to meet with you.”
“But that building is very well constructed, and very large,” said Brutus. “It must be important.”
Coel sighed. “The island is used as a place of assembly,” he said. “The building houses a great meeting chamber.”
Brutus nodded; this must be the Assembly House Coel had mentioned on their journey north. He assumed that he would meet with the MagaLlan and the Gormagog in this building, but when Coel led the way from the river on to the island—fortunately through a path cut through the thorn bushes and reeds—he bypassed the turnoff towards the great stone building, and instead rode for the very summit itself.
Coel pulled his horse to a halt some twenty paces from the top, then slid to the ground, indicating Brutus should do the same.
“I will hold your horse,” he said to Brutus. “You are to go to the summit. Meet me below once you’ve done.”
When Brutus reached the summit there was no one and no thing there save the large raised platform of stone. He climbed on to the platform—the stones were creamy and pitted with age but still fitted together closely enough to form a completely flat surface—and looked about the surrounding countryside.
Llanbank spread out directly to his east across the river. Thick twists of smoke rose from the dwellings as fires were rekindled, children darted out from doorways and between the legs of those adults already out, and geese cackled and flapped their wings as they rose from their slumber and contemplated what mischief they might make during the day.
To the south, across the great bend in the river as the Llan turned westwards, fields spread as far as Brutus could see. Along one droveway close to the Llan’s marshes a shepherd drove a flock of wiry, pale brown sheep towards their morning’s grazing, a small black and tan dog barking at their heels.
To the west, more of the same marshes and fields, the riches of Llangarlia spreading either side of the great silvery expanse of the Llan. Where the ford across the Llan joined the western riverbank of the Llan, three roads forked out, each to their separate destinations. One wound to the north, one to the south, and one to the south-west.
Finally, Brutus turned to the north and north-east, the northern banks of the Llan, where stretched the Veiled Hills.
Nothing. Nothing save mist and mystery. Where the Llan was bathed in clear early morning light elsewhere, in its northern and north-eastern reaches it was lost in dense, ivory fog.
“The Veiled Hills,” said a voice behind Brutus, and he sprang about, angry that he’d been surprised.
“And not for you. Not now,” the man finished. “Yet, even so, I welcome you to my land, Brutus, great-great-grandson of Aphrodite.”
“You are the Gormagog,” Brutus said, staring unabashedly. “Aerne.”
“Oh, aye, I am the Gormagog,” Aerne said, his mouth twisting at Brutus’ uncomfortably frank inspection.
Brutus was not in the least intimidated, and certainly not overawed, by the man standing before him. The Gormagog was an old man who had, perhaps, once had a commanding presence, but who had lost that presence many, many years previously. He was tall, but stooped, his shoulders and back bowed, his limbs now almost too thin to be able to support the weight of his over-heavy bones. His body, near naked save for a plain leather loin wrap, was thin and stringy, with the slack skin and the sagging belly of age. Across his chest, still visible among the wrinkles and the pouches of flesh, were the faint outlines of an ancient tattoo of a full spread of stag antlers.
His huge hands, hanging with a slight tremble at the end of his arms, did nothing more than remind Brutus of the spades that farmers used to clean out piss-heaps and pigpens.
Overall, Aerne the Gormagog gave the impression of a man who may once have been powerful and impressive, but who was now a pitiful shadow of his former self.
He also carried about him the grey miasma of a man dying: it was discernible in the milkiness of his once hazel eyes, in the tremble of his grey lips, and in the rapid, shallow thudding of a weary heart pounding at the confines of his rib cage.
Brutus felt disgust rise in his gorge. This was a man who had raped his own daughter. “Where is Genvissa?” he said.
“I am here to greet you, Brutus. Am I not enough?”
“No, you are not. Your power is gone; you failed many years ago. Genvissa needs me to save this land. Why am I here talking to you?” He made a gesture of impatience. “By the gods, why is she toying with me like this? I must see her, speak with her. If she is not what I need, and what the Game needs, then all this prattling is useless.”
“Then we will cease with the useless prattling,” said a soft voice behind Brutus, “and speak of the you and me, Brutus.”
He turned about, taking deliberate ease in doing so, angry that she should have sent Aerne to waste time.
Standing several paces away from him on the platform was Artemis herself, draped in her hunting costume, her hunting bow over her shoulder.
“Genvissa,” Brutus said, in a curiously flat voice.
“Artemis” laughed, soft and musical, and then she appeared to waver, as if a waterfall of light had cascaded over her, and then Artemis was gone and standing in her place was the woman of Brutus’ vision.
Tall and straight, her figure rounded by motherhood, her black curling hair cascading down her back with its peculiar russet lock gleaming in the morning light, she stood proud and beautiful, sure both of Brutus and of her world.
Genvissa. The woman with whom he would play the Game. His partner in immortality.
“Finally,” he said. Stepping forward, Brutus took her face between his hands and, without hesitation, laid his mouth on hers.
CHAPTER THREE
Aerne, who had loved Genvissa for all the years of her life, turned his head aside, shocked that this inevitable moment could cause him so much misery.
Eventually, Brutus lifted his mouth away from Genvissa’s, but only barely, and only very reluctantly.
“I am Genvissa, the MagaLlan of Llangarlia,” she whispered, “and it was my foremother, Ariadne, who stole the Game from your world and brought it here. It was I, her fifth daughter-heir in direct line, who appeared to you and set your steps on the path for Llangarlia, not Artemis. She lingers cobwebbed with all your other gods. I have the Game now, and all I needed to activate it was you.”
His thumbs rubbed slowly over her soft cheeks. “Then why the pretence of Artemis?”
“You know why. Because you would have believed her over a strange woman.”
“Genvissa,” he said, “if you had appeared to me as you stand here now, in my hands, and offered me the same promises as Artemis, then I would have walked barefoot over burning charcoal fields to have reached you. I would have brought you the sun itself, if that is what you had demanded.” He paused. “But toy with me no longer. If indeed you have the Game—”
“I do.”
“And if Ariadne was indeed your foremother—”
“She was.”
His fingers tightened fractionally around her face. “Then that must mean, it must mean, that you are—”
“You know what I am. You can feel it through your hands. I am the Mistress of the Labyrinth.”
Genvissa laughed as she saw the flare of hunger in his eyes, heard the sharp indrawn breath of jubilation. She pulled herself free, taking a half step back, her eyes shining, her chin tilted up very slightly. “But this is no place to speak. Not of that. It is too cool and windy, and far too open for what I have to say. Will you join me in the meeting house? I have food
spread out, and we shall be more comfortable there.”
Walking past Brutus, her hip and shoulder brushing his, she caught and held Aerne’s gaze for a brief moment, then led the two men down the hill towards the stone Assembly House, Aerne hobbling with the pain in his stiff muscles and joints, Brutus never once taking his eyes off the supple sway of Genvissa’s body as she walked several paces in front of him.
She trailed power behind her like a scent, and Brutus knew he would never be able to breathe enough of it.
This Assembly House was a building such as Brutus had yet to see in Llangarlia, although he’d seen similar buildings regularly in his travels about the Aegean and Ionian seas. The House was rectangular, its stone courses well laid out, although its walls were only barely higher than the head of a tall man, and with a slate roof. It had windows, somewhat poorly constructed as if someone had known what windows were but had not been truly able to pass the concept on successfully to the builders, but the openings were nevertheless windows, and Brutus had not seen them in any other Llangarlian construction.
The building faced east–west, and on the eastern, shorter wall there was a large arched doorway, flanked by two (slightly cracked) columns that supported a (sagging) porch.
The wooden door stood open.
Genvissa led Aerne through, then, hesitating only slightly, Brutus followed.
The interior of the building was composed of a single space. Running parallel to, and two paces inside, the long walls were twin rows of wooden posts supporting the heavy roof. Apart from those wooden posts the space was nearly empty save for a waist-high stone platform halfway down the hall that Brutus supposed could serve either as table or altar.
There were three high stools pulled up to this platform, on which was spread an array of platters containing food.
Table today, then, not altar.
Genvissa aided Aerne on to one of the stools, then took one herself, while Brutus settled himself on the remaining stool, looking at the table. It held four or five platters containing a selection of herbs and salads, cooked vegetables, and cold meats and sauces.
Brutus hesitated, deciding, then took one of the small joints of meat and bit into it.
“Tell me of Ariadne,” he said to Genvissa.
She took a large leaf from one of the platters of herbs, and wrapped a slice of meat in it, biting into it delicately.
Swallowing her mouthful, Genvissa said, “My fifth foremother came to this land a stranger, Brutus. She was brought here by a merchant who found her and her girl-child on an all-but-barren island north of Crete. He had thought to sell her as a slave, but the then MagaLlan, who had lost all her daughters to a fever—a sudden and most unexplainable tragedy—recognised that this stranger woman had the aura of power about her, and adopted her as her daughter-heir, training her in the ways of Mag.
“Ariadne began a new life here with her daughter,” Genvissa continued, “bred on her by her betrayer-lover, Theseus. She took over the duties of the MagaLlan when her adopted mother passed through to the Far World, accepting Mag into her life and Llangarlia as her home. She did this willingly, for both Mag and Llangarlia had accepted her when her own world and its gods had cast her aside.”
“Her own world and its gods had ‘cast her aside’?” Brutus said, watching Genvissa carefully. “That is not the tale I heard.”
“Ariadne was a scorned woman, and there is little more dangerous, Brutus, than a scorned woman.” She half smiled. “That is always good to remember. Ariadne, determined to not only have her revenge on her own lover and world, but to reward the gods and the land which had given her love and succour, determined to steal the Game away to Llangarlia.”
Now Genvissa’s smile blossomed, and her eyes snapped merrily. “She succeeded! And what happened, Brutus, what happened?”
Brutus knew that Genvissa didn’t truly want an answer to her question, but he gave it anyway. “Irrelevance. Decay. Death. Catastrophe. My world was torn to pieces, Genvissa. And did Ariadne feel the better for it? Did she?”
Genvissa leaned very slightly towards him, her eyes locked into his. “Would you have me undo it, Brutus? Knowing what loss that would thereby bring to your life? Your ambitions?”
To one side, a silent but watchful Aerne poured out barley beer into three beakers and slid two across the table to Genvissa and Brutus.
Both ignored them.
“Well?” Genvissa said, very softly. “Could you bear to reject what I offer you?”
“You cannot afford to have me reject you…can you?”
She laughed, leaning back and, breaking eye contact with him, took her beaker of barley beer and drank of it deeply. “I need a Kingman,” she said, placing her beaker down. “You are he.”
He lifted his arms, the golden bands of kingship glinting. “For the sake of everyone and everything murdered and destroyed by Ariadne,” he said softly, “am I the only one left?”
“Yes. You are the only one left. All the others, their lines, their heritage, their powers, lie dead in the rubble of the Catastrophe.”
“Was that merely ill-luck, Genvissa, or design?”
“You are the one I need,” she said.
Unbidden, Brutus suddenly thought of his father Silvius’ death. Gods, was that his hand that had driven the arrow deep into his father’s brain…or?…
Genvissa’s eyes crinkled, just very slightly. “You needed to be able to dare the dark heart of the Labyrinth, Brutus.”
Brutus dropped his gaze from her, and studied the platters of food.
A long silence ensued.
Eventually he looked back at her and, when he spoke, his voice was even, non-judgemental, as if he had come to an acceptance within himself.
“Is it true,” he said, “what I have heard, and seen evidence of, that this land is failing? Rain and cloud have closed in? Livestock dropped from the womb deformed? Children and trees dying to unknown diseases?”
“Yes,” Genvissa said.
“So you ask that I and my people rebuild Troy here in this land,” he glanced about at the building they sat in, realising that someone, Ariadne perhaps, had tried to get the less-skilled Llangarlians to build her something of what she’d known in Knossos, “and that we use the Game—”
“The ‘Troy Game’,” she said, nodding at his Trojan kingship bands.
“—to tie city and land together in a magical association to protect both. You want us to use the Troy Game to strengthen this land against the evil that blights it.”
“Yes,” she said. “Both land and city will be the most wondrous the world has ever known, or ever will know.”
“You must know, Genvissa, how dangerous the Game is.”
“We will be able to endure it,” she said, favouring him with a smile.
“It will take many months to recreate the Game,” he said. “And we will both need to live through those months, otherwise we will destroy both ourselves and this land.” Brutus knew he had to emphasise that point. Gods, if either of them died before the Game was completed…
“We are both young and strong. We can live a few more months, I expect.” No need, she thought, to mention Asterion. He could do nothing to stop them. “Imagine the power,” she said, very softly. “Imagine, Brutus. You and I, tied forever together in the stones of Troia Nova.”
He took a deep breath, seduced both by her sexuality and by the power she offered. Immortality. They would live forever in the stones of the city.
Brutus dragged his thoughts back to the present and looked at Aerne.
“Your people?” he said. “The Game is foreign and powerful magic. Will they accept it?”
“If it means security for their lives and life for their children and livestock, then, yes, they will accept it in the same manner I have.”
Brutus frowned slightly. Aerne’s voice had not been as certain as he would have liked. “There will be some opposition?” he said.
Genvissa shrugged slightly. “No doubt some people will rais
e their voice against it. But they will be few.” And easily silenced. “Brutus,” she said, leaning far enough over the table that she could place her hand over his, “we have talked enough for today. I will come for you tomorrow, and show to you the Veiled Hills, show to you the site where we will build our fabulous city. For the moment, go back to your house—you are comfortable enough?—and rest, and tell your companions that your journeying is done.”
They rose, making superficial comments about the food, the fine weather, the beauty of the view from the porch of the Assembly House, then, as they were about to go their separate ways, Genvissa turned one last time to Brutus. Best to dispose of Cornelia now.
“Your wife? She is well? It is just that I heard she has recently had a child…”
For some reason Brutus thought of that night under the stars on their journey north when Cornelia had turned to him with such wild abandon. He smiled crookedly, the memory showing in his eyes.
“Oh yes, she is well,” he said.
Something in Genvissa’s face froze, then she smiled easily. “I heard you had some trouble at Mag’s Dance, Brutus. Do ask Cornelia about it. I believe she witnessed it all.”
And with that she took Aerne’s arm and led him away.
Brutus stared at their retreating backs, and he did not think at all of the fact that Genvissa had referred to her older sister’s death only as “some trouble”.
All he could think about was that Cornelia had lied to him.
Again.
As Aerne and Genvissa watched Brutus stride down the hill to where Coel waited with the horses, Aerne said, “What did you mean when you said to Brutus that he had some trouble at Mag’s Dance? What happened at Mag’s Dance?”
“A trifling incident only,” Genvissa said, and kissed Aerne’s cheek. “Do not fret about it. It need only concern Brutus and his wife.”
CHAPTER FOUR
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