My eyes had strayed to Loth, and now I jerked them back to her, and I flushed a little. “Yes,” I said, spreading my hands over my belly. “Yes, I feel her.”
And indeed, I think that I did. There was a tingling deep within me, a warmth. It was nothing like the growing heat of sexual passion, but as if my womb contained a roughened ball slowly turning within its confines, rubbing against its walls.
A hand, perhaps, slowly turning deep within me.
I shuddered. “Yes, I feel her.”
As I was speaking Erith had crooked an eyebrow at Loth, but all she said to me was to walk to the pool and step in until the waters reached my waist.
I did as she said, sliding my feet one by one carefully into the water in case the footing was slippery, my arms now at my sides, outstretched for balance.
I shivered in delight at the warmth of the water and, as the footing proved soft but not uncertain, I moved easily into the centre of the pool, then turned and looked back at Erith and Loth, now both standing at the edge of the waters.
“Close your eyes,” said Loth, his voice very soft.
I did as he asked.
“Can you feel your womb?” said Erith.
I nodded.
“Can you imagine it squirming with child?” said Loth.
I smiled, and nodded. My belly felt suddenly full, distended, my womb stretched with the child it carried.
A girl, I could almost see her curled up within me, dreaming of the day when she would be born and free. Plump and healthy, with tight black curls plastered to her scalp by the waters that cushioned her and strong healthy limbs that she moved languidly about within my womb, pushing against its confines.
“Yes,” I whispered. “She is lovely…my daughter.”
“What would you like her to be?” said Erith. “What kind of woman do you want your daughter to grow to?”
I felt as if I would melt with happiness. “She will be strong and beautiful, and lucky in every way. She will choose her own path in life, spending all her days in love and laughter.” My hands were again wrapped about my belly, but where it had been only gently rounded when I had stepped into the waters, now it was huge, distended, roiling with the life it contained.
Loth said something, I could not catch the words, and then Erith repeated his words.
“Open your eyes, Cornelia,” Loth said, “but say and do nothing, whatever strangeness your eyes encounter.”
I did as he asked, then only barely managed to restrain my gasp, and to hold myself still in the waters.
A small woman stood in the water before me. Dark and fey, with very bright eyes, she was the woman I’d seen with Hera in the stone hall.
“Mag?” I whispered.
She lifted a hand from the water and placed it over one of mine on my belly.
“I can give you all you want in your daughter,” she said, “although it will do you no good now. It will be many years, Cornelia, before you hold your daughter in your arms. Many years and many tears…”
Her voice drifted off, and then the pressure of her hand on mine increased, and suddenly I saw a vision of such horror that I gasped.
Fire, so consuming that everything before it crumbled to ash.
Invaders, clay-daubed like those who attacked Brutus and his men on that night Achates was born, only infinitely more frightening, more murderous.
Fire and invaders, together, dropping from the sky, and a presence so evil behind them that I cried out, and tried to twist away from the woman’s hand.
“Cornelia, Cornelia,” she said, and I saw that she was crying, as if this vision terrified her as much as it did me. “Only you, Cornelia. Only you, Cornelia.”
“No!”
“Tread down the steps, Cornelia, through fire and death, into the darkness, into the heart, around and about, mouth to mouth, soul to soul, ‘mid deafening bells, through sirens’ call, ‘twixt thunderous roar and shattering wall. Face the evil, turn it about, dance with your lover, and seal the gate.”
There was a silence, reverberating with her frightful words.
“And then, Cornelia,” she whispered, and her other hand was at my cheek, wiping away the tears, “then you will have your daughter.”
“No,” I cried. “I want my daughter now. Now!”
“And surely you shall have her now, but never in your arms, never in your arms…”
Then she seemed to relent, for she smiled, and said, “Bathe your breasts in these waters, and you shall have the daughter you desire.”
And she was gone, and I stood in that pool, scooping water over my breasts, putting everything she had said to me out of my mind, save that I would have my daughter…I would have my daughter…
I calmed, breathing deeply, thinking only of the girl I would conceive tonight, and then…
I saw Genvissa, standing outside her house, staring wildly at Brutus, who rode away into the night.
“Come back,” she cried, holding out her rounded white arms in appeal. “Come back…do not go to her. Not tonight. Not tonight.”
But she was too late, Brutus had already gone.
Genvissa turned, and saw me somehow, and her face twisted into a mask of spite.
“Your belly is meaningless, girl,” she said. “It is mine that shall count, mine that shall birth the most beautiful girl the world will ever see. Mine. My daughter. Not yours, Mag.”
I gasped, and found myself sinking as if a great weight had grabbed at my legs. I screamed, flailing in the water, then there was a great splash, and Loth was beside me, holding me up, and guiding me to the edge of the pool.
“What happened?” I heard Erith say, and then I knew no more for I fainted.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Is she breathing?” Erith said, trying to roll Cornelia over on to her back.
“Yes,” Loth said. Then he looked up at Erith. “Gods, Erith, what happened?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know—neither of us shared her vision. Quick, grab her clothes…she’s wet, and in this cold…”
Loth grabbed at Cornelia’s robe, somehow managing to slip it over her head and arms and drag it down her wet body.
“Did it work?” Erith said.
Loth, in the process of pulling Cornelia’s robe down over her hips, stopped, and slid his hand over her belly.
“Yes,” he said. “If she lies with Brutus tonight she will conceive this daughter she wants so badly.”
Far distant, in her house north of the Veiled Hills, Genvissa leaned in the open door and watched Brutus ride into the night.
Back to Llanbank.
Back to Cornelia.
Back to plant within her a daughter.
As the MagaLlan, Genvissa had a powerful connection with Mag’s pool, and she understood where Mag had got to the instant Cornelia sank beneath the pond’s waters. Mag had hidden within Cornelia. No wonder she felt so uncertain about Cornelia, no wonder there were so many shadows hanging about her. It was not just that she shared Brutus’ bed; it was not just that she had once mouthed the name of Asterion, or that Brutus had seen Asterion riding her; it was that Mag, the poisonous bitch-goddess, had secreted herself within Cornelia’s womb.
And now Mag was going to give Cornelia a daughter. Genvissa’s mouth curled. That was one daughter-heir that was never going to draw breath. It could not. Genvissa dared not allow it.
Only one daughter-heir could live, and Genvissa was determined—obsessed—that it would be hers.
Genvissa drew in a breath, not surprised to find it shaking.
“You spiteful, plotting bitch, Mag,” she whispered. “For this deception you can die along with Cornelia’s brat.”
For a long time Genvissa waited in the door of her house, sensing what was happening, then, finally, walked back into her house and lay down on her bed, knowing she would never sleep.
Cornelia gave a heave, retched, then vomited forth a little water. She lurched upwards, her arms flying about, hitting Loth a stinging blow across his face.
>
“Cornelia! Cornelia!” Erith shouted. “You are safe.” She tried to grab Cornelia’s arms, but it took both her and Loth to subdue the struggling girl.
“The fire,” Cornelia finally managed to splutter. “The fire, oh Hera! The fire!”
“What fire?” Loth said evenly.
“The fire, from the sky, evil, so bad, the heart, the soul, the pit, the blackness…”
Cornelia was rambling, and Erith and Loth exchanged looks.
“I saw Genvissa,” Cornelia said. “Genvissa! She saw me.”
Both Erith and Loth stilled, their eyes locking.
“Genvissa was in the pool?” Loth said very quietly.
“I saw evil and destruction, and heard things that must have come from Hades’ realm,” Cornelia whispered, her eyes staring.
Again, Erith and Loth locked eyes. What had happened?
“Cornelia…” Loth began to say, then stopped. He was still looking at Erith.
We cannot allow her to conceive this child, he said in Erith’s mind. Fire? Destruction? And Genvissa? Evil? No, no, this child must not be conceived.
Erith held his glance a heartbeat, then nodded. “Cornelia,” she said, “it would be best if you slept at my house tonight. You’ve had a shock, and have swallowed some water into your lungs. It is best that—”
“No,” Cornelia said, struggling to her feet, and tugging her damy. “No. I must go to my own home tonight. You understand that. I must—”
“Not conceive this child,” Loth said, and stepped up to Cornelia, taking her arm. “You must not conceive this child.”
“No,” Cornelia said, struggling with him, “what are you saying? You bring me here, and now you say I can’t conceive this child? Nothing is going to stop me conceiving my daughter. Nothing!”
“What you spoke of in the water is an aberration. And Genvissa was there? No, you must not conceive this child,” Erith said, her voice frantic.
“What are you trying to do to me?” Cornelia said. “I don’t understand. Let me go…let me go.” She started to cry, sobbing wretchedly, and slapping ineffectually at Loth’s strong grip about her wrist. “Let me go…”
“You will come with me tonight,” Loth said. “I’m sorry, Cornelia, but I—”
“What are you doing? Let her go, you monstrosity. Let her go.”
There was a flurry of hooves, and the heat of a horse’s body as it pushed into the struggling group.
Taken by surprise, Loth lost his grip on Cornelia’s arm and fell to the ground as the horse careered into him.
Brutus reached down and grabbed at Cornelia, who had raised her arms to him. He lifted her behind him on the horse, then turned it about in a tight circle, making both Erith and Loth, who had managed to regain his feet, scurry backwards.
“Leave…her…alone,” Brutus said very slowly, very menacingly, his eyes furious. Cornelia had wrapped her arms about him, and melded her body to his back, sobbing even harder than she had been previously.
And then Brutus twisted the horse’s head about, and they were gone, and Erith and Loth were left staring helplessly after them.
“Damn her,” Loth whispered, then flung out his arms and screamed into the night. “Damn her.”
Far away, in her nest, Genvissa snarled. “Damn him,” she whispered.
Cornelia cried out, arching her back and pressing her body as hard against Brutus’ as she could.
He drove into her, again and again, possessed by her wildness, crazed by lust as he had never been before. Her fingers were scratching at his back, digging into his buttocks, her teeth were deep in his shoulder, drawing blood.
He had only barely dragged her off the horse outside their house, meaning to ask her what she’d been doing out there at the Llandin so late at night with Erith and Loth, when she’d thrown herself at him, tearing at her clothes and his before they’d even stumbled in the door.
They’d barely made the bed before she’d grabbed at him and pushed him inside her.
Now he was as wild as she, his weariness forgotten, everything forgotten but the scent and the feel and the tightness and the movement of the woman beneath him.
When he finally fell, spent and exhausted, across her body, she continued to move under him, as if intent on dragging forth from him every last drop of essence that she could.
Eventually Cornelia stilled, her eyes closed, a smile on her face.
Deep within her, her womb burned.
Loth and Erith were still at the edge of the pool under the oak. Loth sat, his head in his hands, slowly shaking it back and forth in denial.
“What can we do?” he whispered.
“Nothing for the moment,” Erith said. She shivered. “The child is conceived. I can feel it. Loth…”
He looked up, his entire face haggard.
“We can kill the child before it is born. It would be easy enough to—”
“No.” Loth leapt to his feet. “How can you suggest that? No one takes the life of a child, no matter how much they fear it.”
He sighed, the breath shaky. “We need her, Erith. We can’t threaten her child…that would turn her away from us completely.”
“As if what we did to her tonight won’t,” Erith muttered.
“We have to destroy the Game. We can’t let Genvissa continue with it. I don’t know how, Erith, or when, but we have to destroy the Game…or watch it annihilate everything we hold dear. And…” he hesitated, the uncertainty sitting uneasily on his normally sure face, “we will have to use Cornelia to do it. That much, at least, Mag has made clear to us. Cornelia must be our weapon.”
“The ways of Mag are wondrously muddled,” Erith said sarcastically. “Rely on Cornelia to help you destroy the Game? You might as well wish the stars themselves from the sky to aid you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CORNELIA SPEAKS
I think I conceived that night…but I was not sure. I desperately wanted to have conceived that night, but I didn’t want my desperate wish to mislead me. I wanted to be able to tell Brutus I had conceived another child, this time a daughter who would be most wondrous…but I thought that if I told him, and was then proved to be mistaken, it would be the end of whatever regard he had left for me.
I had made so many mistakes of judgement, I didn’t want to curse myself completely with another one.
Besides, two weeks after that passionate, wild night, I began to bleed. Not much, just a faint smudging, nothing like my regular monthly courses…but it was in itself enough to make me hesitate yet further. My breasts were tender, as if in pregnancy, but my womb seemed uncertain, and no matter how much I rubbed my belly, and closed my eyes and concentrated on my womb, all I felt was a continuance of confusion.
And my dreams of the stone hall had ceased completely.
So, for weeks, many weeks, I did not take Brutus’ hand, and lay it on my belly, and smile, and say we had made another child between us.
He still slept at my side at night, so I felt relatively safe. Genvissa had not yet taken him to her bed, so it would be my womb to quicken with his child, not hers. It must, it must.
Yet even if he slept at my side, he made no further attempt to use me sexually. I tried to rouse him. I ran my hands over his body and spoke sweetly and softly in his ear, but he brushed aside my hand, and turned aside his head, and said that he felt weary, the building work was draining, and he would prefer to sleep.
One night, six weeks after I’d bathed in the pool under the Llandin, I made a particular effort. I took his hands and rubbed them across my naked breasts. I pressed my body against his, and reached down my hand to his member, that I might rouse him to use me.
This time he did more than just turn aside claiming weariness.
“I may not, Cornelia,” he said roughly, as if my initiative irritated him. “The ceremony to bless the city and begin the Game is only two weeks distant, and I must keep myself unsullied.”
“I would sully you?” I said, trying somewhat unsuccessfu
lly to keep my voice down in the house that Hicetaon and Aethylla still shared with us. “You did not use that excuse the night you so roughly took my virginity, as I remember.”
“It was different then.”
“Oh, yes, it was different then. Then you merely took what you wanted; now, when I want, I am cruelly brushed aside. Brutus, you said to me the day after Achates was born that we should make the best of the marriage we were doomed to. I have tried…have you?”
“Cornelia, there are great matters that you cannot understand—”
“There is only one ‘great matter’,” I said, truly angry now. “Her name is Genvissa.”
“You cannot possibly understand,” he said, his voice cold and dismissive. “You are but a girl.”
And with that he rolled over, presented his back to me, and feigned sleep.
I lay awake the rest of the night and seethed, and in the morning, when he was gone, I went to see Erith.
I had avoided her since that night at the spring. In part because she had tried to keep me from Brutus’ bed that night (why, I have no idea, for had she not aided me in my quest to conceive?), but mostly because I felt slightly ashamed. I had behaved badly—again—and I did not wish to see the gentle censure in her eyes.
But I need not have worried. Erith greeted me kindly, did not remark on how long it was since I had been to see her, and hastened me inside from the wintry weather into the warmth and comfort of her house.
Coel was there, his clothes mudstained as if he had only recently arrived himself, and he, too, greeted me warmly, bending to brush my cheek with his. I had not seen him much recently, and I felt a surge of guilt. Coel had been as good a friend to me as ever I could want, and—again—I had treated him poorly.
I peered over his shoulder into the depths of the house, and was glad to note that Loth was not present.
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