He lifted his hands, hesitated, then rested them lightly on her hips.
She did not react, but neither did she object.
Thus they rode, swaying in harmony with the horse’s movements, their bodies lightly touching with every jolt, both thinking of the Game, and of the power and the dance they would make together.
Genvissa guided the horse across the ford, then stopped at the base of Tot Hill on Thorney Isle.
“Within the circle of a day’s ride,” she said softly, “there are many holy hills and mounds. But there is a gathering of six of them, the most sacred of all, and it is these six which form the Veiled Hills. This,” she nodded at Tot Hill looming dark above them, “is the first of them. It guards this ford, and the roads that converge at this point from all corners of Llangarlia. It forms one point in the circle of light we make during our most important yearly rituals, and it is also the Assembly hill, where the Mothers of all Houses meet once every year at the time of the Slaughter Festival to settle disputes and discuss those issues needed to keep our society living in harmony. This year, this Assembly, I will talk to the Mothers of you, and of the Game.”
“Will they agree?” said Brutus softly into her hair. “And when? How long must we wait for this approval?”
He felt rather than saw her smile. “The Slaughter Festival is in a week’s time, Brutus. I will talk with the Mothers then. And yes, I will give them no choice.”
“How can you be sure, Genvissa?”
“Aerne is dying, Brutus. You saw this, surely.”
“Yes.”
“And his god Og is dead. The Mothers will have no alternative but to accept you. They need you, and me, and the Game, if this land is to survive.”
“Og is dead?”
“Aye.” She shrugged. “He had been dying a long time. Now shush,” she said, and he felt her body move under his hands, “and still your worries. They can wait until we reach our destination. It won’t be long. Wait.”
She urged the horse forward, and Brutus leaned in against her back, feeling her warmth, and put his concerns away as he enjoyed the swaying of her body.
They skirted the shoreline of Thorney Island, moving about its southern aspect, then turned north to cross another and much shallower ford, through the northern arm of the Ty River.
North of the Ty stretched extensive marshlands, but there was a raised road that wound through them, its perimeters clearly marked with pale stone. Genvissa pushed the horse into a trot.
“This is one of the roads that lead into the central heartlands of this island,” she said. “Within three days’ ride it leaves Llangarlia, entering the wild tribal areas of the central and western regions of Albion.”
“It is a well constructed road,” Brutus said, meaning the compliment. He’d rarely seen a road so smoothly graded, gravelled and clearly marked. “And it leads straight into wild tribal lands?” He chuckled softly. “No wonder you think Llangarlia needs the protection of the Game.”
“In our defence,” Genvissa said, “the central and western regions of Albion were not always as wild as they are now. Once they were stable, gentle farming communities, as we are, and the road was needed to trade with them. But over the past two generations dark tribes from the wild island to the west have overrun much of Albion, and now threaten us.”
They rode a further distance in silence, Genvissa eventually turning the horse north-east off the main road as it left the marshes. The ground very gradually began to rise.
Once they were on the trackway leading north-east, Genvissa dropped the halter rope of the horse, allowing it to continue forward unguided. “She knows her way now,” she said, and pointed ahead.
Brutus peered through the faint moonlight—it was close to the full moon, but the sky was heavily clouded—and saw a hill rising in the distance. It was a good size, girded about its base by several stands of trees, its slopes steep but smooth, its summit flattened.
He suddenly realised that, for the first time since he’d arrived, this area north of the Llan was completely free of mist or fog.
“The Llandin,” she said softly, and Brutus could hear the awe in her voice. “It is a place of immense power and holiness,” Genvissa continued. “It is the greatest of the Veiled Hills.
“See…” Again she pointed, this time to a vast tree standing at the base of the southern slope of the Llandin. “The Holy Oak, and beside it a spring-fed rock pool with water so clear and still that when you pour it into a bowl, and say the right words, you can see into the Far World.”
“And do you do that often, Genvissa?”
“Yes. Whenever I need to consult with my foremothers,” she said.
They’d reached the oak tree now, and Genvissa indicated they should dismount.
Brutus jumped to the ground, then reached up to help Genvissa down.
She rested her hands on his shoulders as she slid down, and smiled her thanks, then took his hand in hers, and led him to the foot of the tree, deep beneath its gnarled, twisting branches.
There was a faint, strange light here, and Brutus shivered.
Feeling it, Genvissa tightened her grip on his hand, and led him several paces away to where, amid several large, moss-covered rocks, a small stream bubbled out from deep underground into a waist-deep pool. It steamed in the night air: the waters were warm.
It was from the water that the light emanated.
Again Genvissa’s hand tightened, and she drew Brutus close to her. “For many generations, countless generations, Llangarlia’s mother goddess Mag lived in the waters of the land. This spring was her favourite haunt. Sometimes,” she drew in a deep breath, resting her free hand on her belly, “when a woman wanted to conceive, she came here and prayed to Mag to gift her child a soul great in power and mystery. She washed these waters over her breasts, so that when she suckled her newborn, it would be nourished with the wisdom of the earth.”
Brutus studied Genvissa’s face. Her eyes were downcast in reverie, settled on the bubbling water. A great gentleness had settled over her features, an emotion Brutus had hitherto not thought her capable of, and, without thinking, he lifted his hand and touched her cheek.
“Did you come here,” said Brutus, “before you conceived your children?”
She looked at him, startled, then smiled. “Yes. I came here before I conceived each of my three daughters. But Mag is weak now—” gone, where I cannot find her “—and these waters pretty but ineffectual, and I doubt I will come here before I conceive my daughter-heir. There will be far more power in her making than these waters can give.”
There was a message in her eyes, and Brutus understood it very well. “Your daughter-heir…will her conception form part of the Game?” he said.
“Partly,” she said, “but mostly her conception will be part of that smaller, but no less holy, game that is played between a man and a woman. The game between,” she paused, “you and me.”
He stared at her, not able to speak, feeling as if his entire body were frozen with a combination of longing and fear—fear that somehow this was all a dream, a phantasm sent by a malicious god who used hope to destroy.
Then, for no reason at all, Brutus remembered that night he and Cornelia had made love under the stars by the rock pools, and remembered how gentle she had been then, and willing, and sweet.
“I have a wife, Genvissa. I cannot just cast her aside.”
“Does she matter to you that much? Would a Kingman allow a wife to keep him from the Game, and the Mistress of the Labyrinth?”
He was silent, and the fact that he did not immediately agree with her infuriated Genvissa. But she hid her rage well, and all she did was smile, and lay her hand lightly on his chest. “If you had known of me and what I was before you married Cornelia, would you still have married her?”
“No,” he said, “I wouldn’t, but you chose to appear to me as Artemis. If perhaps you’d chosen your true form, and your true state, then I might not have been so ready to take a wife when I
did. Then you could have been my wife.”
“Neither MagaLlans nor Mistresses of the Labyrinth are ever wives, Brutus.”
He grinned slightly. “Then how can you object to Cornelia?”
Genvissa drew in a long, deep breath. Brutus saw that she used it to calm herself. He was amused by her jealousy, and also gratified by it. That she was jealous of Cornelia gave him some much needed leverage over her.
“She can never compare to you, Genvissa,” he said softly. “What is Cornelia but a girl, and a too-predictably tiresome one at that?”
Genvissa relaxed and gave him a brilliant smile. “As you say. We are lovers destined to power and immortality, and she is but a wife.”
He kissed her, enjoying her taste, her softness, and all the promise of her.
Eventually, reluctantly, she pulled back, and laughed.
“Climb with me,” she said. “Climb the Llandin with me.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
They stood, breathing heavily from the climb, on the summit of the Llandin. Genvissa still held Brutus by the hand, their fingers entwined, and she drew him to the southern rim.
“Behold,” she said simply, and the clouds parted, and silvery moonlight spilled over the land spread out before them.
The first thing Brutus saw, directly in front of him, was the great stretch of the Llan running east–west several thousand paces distant. Wetlands—tidal mud flats and marshlands—extended on either side of it, making its shoreline indistinct, and giving great swathes of land a shimmering, mystical aspect in the moonlight.
He looked slightly to the west, and saw where the Llan turned south, and the Ty River flowed to meet it, its two arms enclosing about Thorney Island in close embrace. On the other side of the Llan from Thorney Island, Llanbank slumbered dark and unknowing, only a few trails of smoke marking the existence of the sleepers within.
Genvissa had followed the direction of his gaze, and now she drew his attention to the east, to a hill rising halfway between the Llandin and the Llan.
It was a little smaller than the Llandin, but had a Stone Dance atop its summit.
“The Pen,” Genvissa said. “See,” Brutus followed her finger, “it also has a stand of trees at its base, and under those trees, as here at the Llandin, there is a sacred well. There, unlike where we stood, there is a small entrance into the hill and if a man or a woman is brave, and has no misdeeds to mar their soul, they can follow the twists and turns of the rock tunnel to a large cave, the roof of which is made up of great crystals. When you stand beneath this dome of crystal, and raise your torch, it is said that the light is brilliant enough to hurt your eyes.”
“You have not been?”
She shook her head. “It is not important to me. Ah, Brutus, can you see, beyond the Pen, there, to the east, on the bank of the Llan? Do you see those three smaller mounds?”
Forgetting the cave beneath the Pen, Brutus looked where she indicated. There, in the south-east, sitting virtually on the northern bank of the Llan, were three mounds only some twenty paces high. Two streams—the western one almost a small river—flanked the nearest of them. The wetlands had retreated here, and Brutus saw that the land on which these three mounds stood, and through which flowed the two streams, was solid and good.
Something flickered in his belly, and he knew what Genvissa would say next.
“That is where we will build our Troia Nova,” she said softly, squeezing his hand, “encompassing those three mounds. The one furthest from us, and the one closest to the Llan, is called the White Mount, and it, like the Llandin and the Pen, has a sacred well beneath it. The next mound, sandwiched in the middle, is Mag’s Hill, and the last, closest to us, is Og’s Hill. You can see where the ferry crosses the Llan, connecting the great northern road to the road leading to the coast. It is a good place, Brutus, commanding both the river and the roads, and taking as its base three of the Veiled Hills.”
Brutus drew in a deep breath. Troia Nova.
“By the gods,” he said, “this is an auspicious location. But,” he looked at Genvissa, “this site also encompasses deep troubles. I am a stranger, bringing with me many thousands of strangers, trampling into the most sacred site to build—with a powerful foreign magic—a city such as Llangarlia and its people have never seen before…never even conceived of before. Are you enough to ensure that all opposition is quelled? By the gods, Genvissa, surely there will be some opposition.”
She let go his hand, and he was not unaware of the significance of that action, then sighed.
“What must I say to convince you, Brutus? The Mothers will not oppose me, and the people of Llangarlia will do whatever the Mothers advise them. The Slaughter Festival is in a week’s time.”
“And the goddess Mag. What will she think?”
“Mag is irrelevant,” Genvissa snapped.
“Well then, what of that monster that Cornelia described? That creature who devoured Blangan. Your sister.”
“Do you think I have not mourned her loss, Brutus?” She drew in a deep breath. “Blangan talked to you of her role in the splitting of Og’s power.”
It was not a question.
“Yes. She told me of her rape, of the birth of her son, of how her—your—mother forced her to leave this land.”
“All true, Brutus. I deny none of it. But what I did, and what my mother did, was all done for this land. Og was weak anyway, as was Mag. They could no longer protect this land which I, as all my foremothers including Ariadne, loved so much. We knew how to protect it—rebuild the Game here—and yes, we took steps to ensure that both Game and land would flower. When you were fifteen, Brutus, you took steps to ensure your future. I, and all my foremothers, merely did the same thing.”
He nodded, his eyes moving past her to wander once more over the enchanted landscape that spread beyond the Llandin. “There will be no other opposition?” “No. Of course not. Who could there be?” He looked back at her, his eyes now unreadable. “There will be no trouble from Asterion?”
Asterion was barely more than a mass of unrecognisable tissue clinging relentlessly to the wall of the womb of Goffar’s wife, yet was nonetheless fully aware and wielding all the power of which he was capable. His simple body mass quivered in delight at Brutus’ words.
There will be trouble aplenty, he thought, but you will never see it coming until it has torn your entire world apart.
Profoundly shocked, Genvissa actually took a step back. “What?”
“Asterion. You know he walked free once Ariadne destroyed the Game in the Aegean, spreading evil and malevolence everywhere. He cannot be pleased at the idea the Game is to recommence—he cannot wish to be trapped again. Have you thought of Asterion, Genvissa? Will he come to tear out our throats while we sleep sated with love?”
“Why do you ask me of Asterion?”
Brutus nodded very slightly, looking at her. So. Asterion was a threat. “Cornelia mentioned him. The first night I took her, she asked me if I was Asterion, as if she were expecting him.”
Genvissa hissed, but Brutus continued.
“And I dreamed of her and him, in a great stone hall. She had invited him to lie with her, and he repaid her with death.”
Genvissa closed the distance between them and grabbed Brutus’ wrist. “She is his tool. Brutus, she must die.”
“Tell me of Asterion, Genvissa.”
“Cornelia must—”
“Tell me of Asterion! Damn you, Genvissa, I am your Kingman. I need to know. Don’t think that the pretty sway of your hips and the swell of your breasts have addled my wits completely.”
She drew in a deep breath, then let it out slowly and visibly relaxed her shoulders. “Asterion has lived many lives since Ariadne destroyed the Game and freed him.”
“Stop there. What no one has ever understood, Genvissa, is why Asterion should be free anyway. Was he not destroyed by Theseus?”
“Ariadne made a pact with his shade. She needed power to enact her revenge. Asterion gave her tha
t power in return for her destroying the Game and giving him rebirth into life.”
Brutus threw up his hands and walked away a few paces. “Gods, Genvissa. He is going to come after you—us—with every particle of his malignant humour.”
“No! No. Brutus…” Genvissa walked over to him and put a hand on his arm. “He is no threat. None whatsoever, thus I have not mentioned him to you.”
Brutus shot her a cynical look. He was “no threat”, yet she still wanted Cornelia dead just in case Asterion used her as his tool?
“My mother, Herron,” Genvissa continued, “cast a great enchantment—one so great it killed her in the doing. Asterion was due to be reborn, and she made sure that he was not only born into a weak and crippled body, one that gave him very little power, but was born in a place so far away that ten years’ travel would never broach the distance between here and there. He would know that the Game was being resurrected, but there would be nothing he could do about it.”
“So Asterion lives, crippled, a lifetime away.”
She hesitated, and Brutus seized both her hands. “Asterion lives, crippled, a lifetime away? Yes?”
“He killed himself,” Genvissa said, very low. “Recently. He is preparing for rebirth.”
“I can’t believe you did not think this important enough to mention to me, Genvissa. For all the gods’ sakes, I am your Kingman. I needed to know.”
“And what threat do you think a mewling infant is going to be, Brutus? Tell me that! We can rebuild the Game within six months…a year at the outside. He won’t even be toddling before he is again trapped. Asterion is no threat.”
Finally, Brutus nodded. “Don’t ever keep such a thing from me again, Genvissa.”
“Of course not.” She leaned forward and kissed him.
“And don’t,” he said, drawing back infinitesimally from her, “hurt Cornelia.”
Genvissa’s lips drew back, revealing her teeth, but whether in a smile or a grimace, Brutus could not tell.
Hades' Daughter Page 45
