Gigantic bone fires now roared into life on the summits of all the sacred hills and mounds, and, as they did so, black figures began to twist and turn about them in wild dance.
She pulled out of his arms, and turned to face him. Her cheeks were streaked with tears, her eyes pools of distress.
“I have lied to him and plotted against him,” she said. “I have destroyed lives—I destroyed my father, my home and all who lived in it. Idaeus is dead because of my actions, as also Aethylla’s husband. Is it any wonder he turns to Genvissa? Look at her! He wants a queen by his side, Coel…why should he want me?”
“You are a greater—”
“Don’t patronise me,” she shouted. “I don’t want to be a little girl whom people think to ease with lies and platitudes.”
And with that she was gone, running into the night.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
As the bone fires roared into life, the Slaughter Festival moved from formal rite to popular revelry. Flasks of honeyed mead were produced and consumed, the carcasses of pigs and cattle were spitted and roasted, and the wail and throb of pipes and drums worked their sinuous magic among the crowds.
Atop Mag’s Hill, Brutus and Genvissa and her three daughters made their way down to the river, then across to the southern bank to partake of the revelry and merrymaking, as did those Mothers who had cast their metal into the river.
Coel initially made after Cornelia, but she was younger and fleeter of foot than he, and she easily outran him in the dark.
In the end, he slowed to a halt after only a short chase. Cornelia may have outrun him, but Coel had also seen the direction in which she had unwittingly run, and knew that something other than her grief was guiding Cornelia’s footsteps this night.
Cornelia fled, seeing only Brutus leaning towards Genvissa, seeing only his hand lifting to her cheek as he had laid his mouth to hers.
In the first minutes of her flight Cornelia had seen other people—dark shapes moving slowly through the night—but once she’d moved a little distance from the river the shapes drew back and Cornelia was left alone in the night.
She stopped eventually, her chest rising and falling in agony, her legs quivering and weak. She bent over, resting her hands on her thighs as she tried to regain both breath and composure.
After a few minutes she straightened, and looked about her, suddenly realising not only how far she had come, but how isolated she was in this strange landscape in the middle of the night. She twisted around, trying to get her bearings.
To the north and west fires flickered on hills. She turned the way she had come—there, the faint outline of the river, marked with further fires and smoky torches and the dancing, twisting shapes of thousands of revellers.
The dull sound of distant music and laughter reached her, and Cornelia’s face creased as she again fought back tears.
What was she doing here?
“Cornelia.”
She gasped, twisting around so violently towards the voice that she tripped and sprawled in the turf.
“Cornelia.”
A figure emerged out of the night, and Cornelia drew in one terrified breath, then froze, sure she was about to be murdered.
“Cornelia,” said Loth yet one more time, strolling completely out of the darkness to stand above Cornelia’s sprawled form.
Her eyes were wide, terrified, her breast heaving, her unblinking eyes unable to move from Loth’s terrible head.
“If I did not kill you in Mag’s Dance,” he said, his voice soft, “why should I do so now?”
He stretched down a hand to her, holding it there, waiting.
Her eyes flickered from his face to the outstretched hand, back to his face, then finally settled on the hand.
Slowly, she lifted her own hand, hesitated just as she was about to take his, then, holding her breath, slid her palm against his.
He grasped it tight, then leaned back, pulling her to her feet.
“I am Loth,” he said, “the Horns of Llangarlia—as useless a title as can be, now. You are Cornelia, and everyone has yet to discover who you truly are, and whether you encompass usefulness…or uselessness.”
His eyes narrowed, studying her, and even though she pulled against his hand, he would not allow her freedom.
“Who are you, Cornelia?” he whispered, and he was so close she blinked as the warmth of his breath played over her face. “Why do you, a stranger, carry Mag in the pit of your belly?”
His pressure on her hand increased, and, despite herself, Cornelia found herself being pulled closer.
“Do I frighten you?” he said. “Do you think me dangerous?”
“Yes,” she whispered, and he laughed, soft and gentle.
“Good,” he said, so low his voice sounded like part of the night. “Very good.”
Then his grip on her hand changed, and he moved forward, and Cornelia found herself being pulled along by his side as he walked further into the night. She tried to baulk, to pull away from him, but again he was too strong for her, and he gave her hand such a strong tug that she almost tripped as she stumbled after him.
“We are going to dance for Mag,” he said.
He stopped abruptly, surprising Cornelia so that she inadvertently stumbled against the warmth of his near-naked body.
“You did not tell Brutus of that night,” he said. “Not all of it. Why?”
“I don’t know,” she said, drawing back as much as she was able.
He lifted their intertwined hands, pulling her close yet once more. “You do not like Genvissa. Why?”
“Because she is so much better than I,” she whispered, frightened now not so much by his appearance and power as by his nearness and warmth. “And because of that, because of her power and wit and magic, my husband wants her and not me. I am but a child. She is a woman.”
He snarled, his teeth glinting wetly in the faint moonlight. “You are very young if you think Genvissa is better than you,” he said, then resumed walking, tugging her after him, “and your husband is but a foolish man whose lusts for flesh and power have trapped him.”
As they did me, he thought.
“Where is Coel?” Cornelia said, trying to look over her shoulder. “I was with him and—”
“Coel is not wanted now,” Loth said. “Not tonight. Not where we are going.”
“Where are we going? Please, let me go. I want to go home, back to my son…”
His only answer was a tightening of his grip on her hand.
Cornelia almost cried out with the pain, then did begin to cry with her anxiety. “I am frightened,” she said.
“We all are,” he snapped, “but it would help if you walked with me, and did not try to pull me back. Cornelia, I will not hurt you, I am not interested in hurting you, and what I will show you tonight few of our people, let alone strangers, are allowed to witness. Now, will you walk with me?”
Her only answer was a very slight nod, and a lessening of the pressure she was exerting on his hand and arm, but it was enough, and he relaxed and smiled, then laughed out loud at the stunned expression on her face.
“Yes, even I can be comely enough when I am happy, Cornelia. Walk with me now.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CORNELIA SPEAKS
The change that came over him when he smiled shocked me so thoroughly I think I followed him throughout the rest of that long night in the simple hope of seeing him smile again.
His great, misshapen, monstrous head became as nothing when he smiled, for the light and warmth in his eyes and mouth negated everything else about him. All that the watcher saw was a joy so great that it had the potential to extinguish all the darkness and horror that collected in everyone’s life. I wondered at this: that a man who, quite literally, carried such a weight on his shoulders that its very oppressiveness must have doomed every piece of gladness in him should still be able to laugh with such merriment, such lack of care, that he thereby took away from his listener every care that they, too, c
arried.
I followed him, ran to keep up with his long strides, merely so that he would turn to me again, and smile.
He led me to a hill on which stood a Stone Dance. The Dance was much smaller than the great Mag’s Dance, but it had an elegance to it that Mag’s Dance lacked.
“Where is this?” I said, a little breathless.
“This hill is named Pen,” Loth replied, stopping so we could gaze up at the dance. “Its cap of stone hides its greatest secret—”
“Which is?” I was no longer afraid of him, and risked even teasing him.
I was rewarded with another of his smiles, and I felt myself smile back. I suddenly realised, in a bolt of understanding, that this man had the ability to make the entire world laugh with him, if only he had the will to laugh.
“A hole,” he said. “A light hole.”
I frowned, and would have asked more, but Loth started to climb the hill, and pulled me after him.
He may have been joy incarnate when he smiled, but I was truly getting sick of all this pulling and tugging.
“I will follow by myself,” I said, and pulled away from his hand.
This time, he let it go. “Your feet are on the hill,” he said. “I have no need to lead you.”
All my breathlessness had returned by the time we reached the top of Pen, and for a few long minutes I did nothing but haul in deep, painful breaths. Loth had walked inside the Stone Dance, but I turned back to look at the view spreading below me.
I could see the river, stretching out all silver and mystery in the deep of the night, its waters at the southern shoreline reflecting the light and movement of the Slaughter Festival revelry.
I wondered for a moment where Brutus was…what he and Genvissa were doing (Were they lying together? Coupling to the frenzy of the music?) and I felt a cold fist clutch all the entrails in my belly into one twisting, jealous mass.
I hated her so much…
I wanted to be like her so much…
“Cornelia.”
I turned about, back to where the Stone Dance rose behind me.
Ecub stood under one of the great stone arches, completely naked, and I was not surprised.
“Join us,” she said, and without prompting I slipped the shoes from my feet, and the cloak and robe from my body, and walked into the circle of the Stone Dance.
The cold and frost of the night did not touch me, nor did the sudden roar of flames within the Dance perturb me.
Erith was inside the Dance as well, and another woman I did not know and who was introduced to me as Mais. Loth joined us, as naked as were we four women.
Fire was everywhere. I think the flames came from the stones of the Dance themselves, but they did not touch me, nor did their heat sear me.
As the quiet words of introduction finished, Loth drew me to one side, and the three Mothers—Erith, Ecub and Mais—began a dance. It was like, yet unlike, the dance that Blangan had drawn me into inside Mag’s Dance. It had the same sensuality, but not its sexuality. It had the same sinuosity, but not its complexity. They danced in a circle, weaving their way about each other, their outstretched hands brushing each time they passed.
Their heads they kept bowed, as if in homage.
It was a dance, I thought, that only women with the wisdom of maturity and experience could execute: a younger woman would only have blundered the steps.
I blinked, for suddenly their forms appeared indistinct to me. They were still there, I knew that, for something within me could sense not only their presence but their continued dance, then as heartbeat succeeded heartbeat their forms vanished completely, and all I could see was the centre of the circle about which the Mothers moved.
It was filled with a vision.
A pond, crystal clear, yet with unknowable depths.
A grassy verge, verdant with health and life.
A white stag with blood-red antlers, skeletal and dying, his eyes frantic, his breath heaving in agony from his bloodied, foamed, gaping mouth.
His heart, torn from his breast, and hanging by a tendon.
It beat. I could not see it, but I knew it. That heart continued to beat, but so slowly that its measure had to be counted in aeons, not in moments.
Beside me Loth muttered something, his voice tight with excitement, but I paid him no attention.
All I could see, all I knew, was that pitiful stag crawling on its belly towards the pond, dying—literally—for a draught of its healing waters.
I cried, and held out my arms to the stag, and would have gone to it, save that Loth held me back.
The waters of the pond stirred, and an arm rose from its depths. It was an arm of no natural creature, for it was composed of the water itself, and it glittered with the shards of firelight leaping about the Stone Dance.
It reached for the stag, but in vain, for the pitiful creature was as yet too far from the edge of the water.
The arm moved in a gentle circle, as if waving, or summoning.
Cornelia, whispered a desperate, dying voice, so strangled and breathless it was barely audible, let alone understandable. Cornelia…Cornelia…
And then the vision was gone, and everyone there was staring at me.
I cried out, I think, and Erith hurried forth, holding my clothes. She assisted me to dress, wrapping my cloak warmly about me, and all the time she sent Loth wondering glances.
I knew that whatever she and her companions had thought would happen tonight within the Stone Dance, what had happened was not it at all.
Loth had garbed himself quickly in his hip wrap, and had built a fire in a cold ring of stones in the centre of the circle. He beckoned myself and the three now clothed Mothers in close, and we sat about the growing flames, grateful for its warmth and comfort.
“Og is alive!” Loth said eventually, his voice wondering and relieved and mystified in equal amounts. “Og is alive!”
“Barely,” said Ecub, always the one to see the dour side of things, though her voice was rich with relief.
“But alive,” said Erith. “Alive, and that is all we need for hope.”
“And Mag called Cornelia’s name,” said Mais.
“Aye,” said Loth. “She has picked Cornelia to help her. That is clear.”
Then, as one, Loth and the Mothers looked at me. “Mag needs you to help her,” Erith said.
“Against Genvissa?” I said.
“Of course,” said Loth, “against everything she and Brutus plan.”
“No,” I said.
“How can you say no—?” Mais began, but Erith silenced her with a raised hand.
“Why do you say ‘No’, Cornelia?” she said.
“Because if I did this, if I set out against Brutus, then I would lose him forever.”
“Do you not love this land, Cornelia?” Loth asked.
“Not so much that I would lose Brutus for it.”
“You must aid Mag,” Ecub said. “You must! She named you, she—”
I shook my head, forcefully, side to side. “No. I will not.”
“Cornelia,” Loth said, “if you help us against Genvissa, if you help destroy the Game, then you will have Brutus back.”
“No. No. He will destroy me if I plot against him again. I will not do it.” I could feel my voice rising, and I could not stop it, nor did I want to. How dare these four try to set me on a course that would destroy any regard that Brutus had left for me (and Hera alone knew how little that was)? “I…will…not…do…it.”
“Cornelia,” Loth began, his voice hard and heavy, but Erith forestalled whatever he was going to say.
“Cornelia is tired, and cold, and shocked by what she saw—as are we all. This is no time for us to argue, nor to persuade Cornelia to a course she fears. Loth, be gentle now. Walk Cornelia back to the ferry.”
I sent Erith a glancing smile, grateful to her, and was even more grateful when Loth’s face relaxed and he gave a nod.
“Yes,” he said. “Perhaps that would be best. Come, Cornelia
. I will walk you back to the Llan.”
We walked in silence for a long time, and finally it grew so uncomfortable that I blurted out the first thing I thought of.
“How is it your head grew like that?” I said. “Were you born with those great bony spikes?”
I wished to snatch back the words as soon as they had left my mouth, but Loth did not seem perturbed by them. Presumably he’d faced similar questions all his life.
“I was born as any other child,” he said, “and grew as did any other child. But when I was six or seven, I was stricken with aches in my head so painful, so agonising, I could barely move. I could not stand light, and I was racked with nausea so bad that whenever I retched my head exploded in pain infinitely greater than what I already experienced.”
“And that was the growth of these horns?”
“No. I endured these pains and spasms for many months, with scarcely a single pain-free day in all that time. I would not eat, and lost so much weight my father and aunts thought I would die.
“Eventually, driven to desperate measures, they trusted in an old man with a cruel skill. He was a head borer, a lifter of evil spirits.”
He stopped, not only talking but walking as well, and I could see his face twist with the memory.
I wanted to tell him to stop, that I did not want to know, but somehow the words would not come out.
“They thought that if they released the evil spirits from my head then I would be well again,” he said, “and so one day they caused me to drink great quantities of honeyed mead—I retched most of it up again, but enough stayed down to blot out much of my consciousness—and held me down. And this old man took to my head the tools of his trade.”
I gaped at him, appalled.
“He had a drill made of hardened bone, and this he drilled into my skull.”
Without thinking I took his hand, feeling the shudder that shivered his flesh.
“They say,” his voice had dropped, “that when he drilled into my skull, great black matter bubbled its way free…” He took a deep breath. “They bound up my head, and waited. For some days it seemed as if the hole had indeed let escape the vile spirits that had plagued me…but then one day the headache struck again, infinitely worse than usual, and in a different part of my head.”
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