The wall was broken in four places. The greatest gate, called Og’s Gate by Trojan and Llangarlian alike, pierced the wall on its western aspect just beyond the foot of Og’s Hill itself. In the northern wall was a very low arch—barely rising from ground level—which allowed the Wal into the city, as well as a small and heavily fortified gate which allowed the northern road exit from the city. Finally, on the southern aspect, which ran atop the cliffs along the northern bank of the Llan, there were two openings: one very wide, but equally low arch which allowed the Wal exit into the Llan, and a small gate at the Llan ferry’s northern wharf, where travellers would need to access the northern road which would, for its first part, run through the growing city of Troia Nova itself.
Inside the walls the city of Troia Nova was emerging from what was once free meadowland. There were still large patches of open ground—their green often buried beneath the hoar—where gardens and orchards would prosper in the spring and summer, but now gravelled roads and streets crisscrossed the entire enclosed area, and to either side of these roads and streets rose the emerging skeletons of houses and public buildings.
Many of the public buildings were of stone, but most of the houses were built in the Llangarlian manner: circular configurations, their walls of ill-dressed stone or of wattle and daub topped with conical roofs of thatch or, in a few cases, slate. The Llangarlian houses were easy and quick to build—by summer most of the Trojans hoped to be able to move themselves and their goods inside the walls. Eventually, the Trojans expected to replace the Llangarlian structures with the houses they remembered from their Aegean towns and cities, rectangular solid stone or brick houses. For now, however, the native style of building would suffice.
Brutus’ palace grew to cover the entire top of the White Mount. It was a beautiful structure, many-towered and -windowed, with deep eaves and balconies and airy rooms, hung currently with thick woollen tapestries and draperies against the Llangarlian winter and warmed with hot fires built in the huge central hearths of the main chambers.
Genvissa moved herself and her three daughters into the palace. No one opposed her; no one thought to. Genvissa’s power was complete. The blight that had afflicted the land had lifted; women and livestock gave birth easily, plants and landscape recovered from the malaise that had afflicted them. It might still be winter, but the change for the better was noticeable.
The Llangarlians whispered Genvissa’s name, as Brutus’, almost as that of a god. She and her Kingman had saved the land, and even if the strangeness of a city now covered half of the sacred hills, and if there was no Gormagog to watch over them (or, as was increasingly rumoured, no Og), then that was no matter, for there was Genvissa, and there was Brutus.
Cornelia, if she was remembered at all by the majority of the population (now an easy co-mingling of Llangarlians and Trojans), was regarded only with contempt. As Brutus’ former whorish wife and, it was said, a traitress who had caused the deaths of tens of thousands in her home city of Mesopotama (and of Coel, for if Coel had died then that was Cornelia’s fault as well), Cornelia’s company was rarely sought out.
Loth likewise. People still regarded him with some affection, even some respect, but his powerlessness—and his foolishness in trying to challenge Genvissa and Brutus, the pair who had led Llangarlia back into the sunlight—as well as his reclusiveness (Loth rarely left the immediate surrounds of Cornelia’s house) made the majority of people forget him.
For Llangarlia, life blossomed, and day by day the labyrinth drew more and more of the evil that had once afflicted the land deeper into its heart.
Its influence extended even beyond the shores of Llangarlia, but Asterion, growing safe in his mother’s womb, chose to disregard it. This time he would win, and the Game lose.
Often, at night, when Brutus was asleep, Genvissa would rise from his side, throw a heavy cloak about her naked shoulders, and walk to the balcony which adjoined their sleeping chamber. There she would stand for hours, immune to the frost, staring across the Llan and over the muddied and jumbled Trojan settlement to Llanbank, to where Cornelia shared her house with the crippled Loth.
Genvissa would stand, very, very still, one hand resting inside her cloak on her own swelling belly, thinking about Cornelia’s child.
Genvissa was not concerned about Achates. All men desired a son at some point, especially someone like Brutus who had been raised in a society where heirdom was passed down the male line. It wouldn’t happen here, of course, for Genvissa was determined that Brutus’ heir (and Genvissa’s heir, and heir to this powerful city and to the Troy Game, the only Game in existence and therefore the only Game that would ever be) would be their daughter, but Genvissa did not begrudge Brutus his son.
Time enough to do something about him in later years if Brutus’ attachment grew too strong.
But Cornelia. Genvissa could hardly believe that once again Cornelia had escaped Brutus’ deadly wrath. Dear gods, why would he not finally kill her? It made Genvissa doubt what Brutus said about Cornelia—that he did not care for her, that he regarded her only with disdain, that he would never again touch her or caress her or lie with her—because no matter how Genvissa arranged it, when it came to that killing blow, Brutus always hesitated.
Cornelia was not going to live, and this time Genvissa would do the deed herself. No mistakes. Not this time. Cornelia (and that damned daughter of hers!) would not see the summer.
Whatever the Llangarlians and the Trojans thought, the Game was still vulnerable. It had yet to be closed, and if anything happened to either her or Brutus before it was…
Every time that thought darkened Genvissa’s mind, her face twisted, and she looked over the darkened landscape to Llanbank, and she plotted murder.
One night, darker and wetter and colder than most, something else caught Genvissa’s attention.
Across the Narrow Seas, in the long house that was the residence of the king of Poiteran, King Goffar’s wife struggled in the agony of birth.
She had been in labour now over two full days, and she was growing weak.
King Goffar stood by her side, looking at the mound of her belly. He raised his eyes and stared at the two midwives standing on the other side of the bed.
They shook their heads slowly.
Goffar looked back to his wife, ignoring her pleading eyes, then his eyes slid to a table that stood to one side.
In its centre lay a twisted-horn handled knife that Goffar had come upon by chance in the forest five days ago. Admiring it, he’d taken it for his own.
Now it lay awaiting his will, its blade glinting in the torchlight.
Another movement caught Goffar’s attention. The baby, struggling for life within his wife’s belly.
He reached for the knife.
Two minutes later, amid his wife’s frightful shrieks, Goffar pulled a perfectly formed male child from the ruins of her belly.
“A son,” he cried. “A strong, lusty son.”
The child wailed, the sound announcing the truth of Goffar’s words, and one of its waving hands fell against the hilt of the knife still in Goffar’s hands, and the boy grasped it tight.
If Membricus, Brutus’ friend and one-time lover, had still been alive and witness to this scene, he would have recognised it for the vision he had wrongly attributed to the birth of Achates and the death of Cornelia.
She sat bolt upright in bed, her hands on her belly, breathing in harsh, heavy breaths.
“What is it?” Brutus said, rousing to wakefulness at the sound of Genvissa’s distress.
“Asterion,” she whispered. “He is reborn.”
“In Poiteran?”
“Aye. Son to Goffar.”
He laid one of his hands over hers. “We are almost there,” he said. “The walls are almost ready. He cannot touch us.”
Very slowly, she relaxed. “Yes. Of course. You are right. He is too late.” She smiled, and leaned over to kiss Brutus. “He’s too late.”
Far away, Goff
ar looked to where he’d laid the knife.
It was gone.
One cold, wet night, when winter had given way to an equally cold and brutal spring, Genvissa left Brutus’ sleeping side and went, completely naked, not even a cloak about her, to stand on the balcony. She stared over the Llan and the Trojan settlement (now rapidly emptying as Trojans moved inside the city walls) to Llanbank, where Cornelia slept in her house.
Save for the crippled, useless Loth, Cornelia was alone. Genvissa knew that this night, unusually, Cador and Hoel had gone back to their mother’s house after settling Loth. There would be no one to summon help.
No one, save Loth, to hear Cornelia’s screams.
Genvissa smiled, sure of herself and her power. She rested her hands on her swollen belly (she was five months gone with this daughter, and it was time, finally, to remove any threat to herself, her daughter and the Game), and began the first of the incantations that would see both Cornelia and her daughter die in agony.
Genvissa could have done it quickly and cleanly, but that was not in her nature.
Genvissa’s hand tightened on her belly, then she tipped back her head, closed her eyes, and pushed down with all her might.
CHAPTER SIX
CORNELIA SPEAKS
I woke barely an hour or two after I had lain down, the horrifying pain ripping through my entire body. I grunted, curling about myself, protecting my belly, refusing to believe what the pain told me.
My daughter was being born.
It was far too early. She needed to grow another two months at least in my womb.
Panicked, grunting with the pain—the contractions were coming so fast, and yet they had barely started—I sat on the bed, gathering my breath and my strength, and then stood up.
I should have to summon help.
Damn it! That this should happen on one of the few nights that Cador and Hoel were not here. I had gone to bed grateful to have a night spent without their constant rumbling, now I would have given anything to be able to merely reach across the hearth and shake one of them awake, asking him to fetch his mother.
“What is it?” Loth’s sleepy voice said from across the darkened house.
“The baby.”
“But—”
“I know! I know!” I tried to keep the panic out of my voice, but couldn’t manage it. It was too early…even with the benefit of a skilled midwife like Erith, it was way too early.
Far too early.
“Genvissa,” whispered Loth.
“No!”
“She will not want your daughter to threaten hers, Cornelia.”
“No!” But at the same time I remembered what Mag had said to me: I can give you all you want in your daughter, 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…
“Yes! Ah, curse my legs. Cornelia, you must get help. Fast. If Erith or Tuenna can come, and bring their pouch of remedies, they may be able to stop the contractions. Cornelia, you must get—”
“I know it.” I struggled to my feet, then screeched as a jolt of pure agony swept through my body.
Achates’ birth had been bad enough, but it had never been like this.
“Gods, Loth, I cannot—”
Yet another pain, this tenfold worse than the last, and I screamed, and fell to the floor, clutching my belly. The baby had shifted brutally, almost as if she were being pushed into her birth journey by a vicious hand.
She was tearing me apart internally. My body wasn’t ready to give birth, my pelvis hadn’t relaxed, my birth canal was still closed…and yet something—Genvissa—was pushing this baby down with such force that—
I screamed again, writhing in agony.
No, no, gods, no, not my daughter! Please, please…Mag, anyone, save my daughter…
She was all I had left.
Something ripped apart within me, and I felt hot, thick blood gush from between my legs.
Then a thump, and some part of me realised Loth had pushed himself from his bed and was crawling towards me.
More blood, more agony.
I think my womb had ruptured.
I was incapable of speech, incapable of releasing my foetal crouch about my belly. I think I thought that if I curled myself tight enough about my daughter, then somehow I could save her.
Loth reached me, grabbed at me.
I shrieked, and hit out at him—more in my agony, I think, than in any sensible thought of keeping him at bay.
“Cornelia,” he said, and I heard that his voice was breaking. “Cornelia…”
And at that moment that black-hearted witch pushed with all her might, and my daughter and womb both were torn from the walls of my belly and expelled from my body.
There was a moment when I lost all sense, and when they returned to me all I could feel was the continuing agony in my belly, and Loth’s hand scrabbling between my legs, trying, I think, to aid my daughter in any way that he could.
It was hopeless. I knew that. There was a cold rock that had once been my heart, and it told me that Genvissa had murdered my daughter and probably me as well, for I could feel the hot blood pumping out from between my legs.
Loth was shouting, at what and at whom I do not know, and I cared not.
My daughter was dead, and I was dying. There was no point to life. Not any more.
The next moment I lost all my senses, and I knew no more.
I died.
I walked through the stone hall, comforted that I should have come here in death.
The small, dark woman I had seen with Hera in this hall so long ago was here again now, and she folded me in her arms, and hugged me, and loved me.
It was Mag. She’d been with me all this time, and I’d not known it.
“Hush,” she said, leaning back and taking my face in her hands. “Do not succumb to that dreadful guilt of yours again.”
“My daughter…”
“Your daughter lives still, in this stone hall. Do you see her?”
Mag’s hands fell from my face, and I looked about. Ah! There she was, playing with some dolls in the shadows of the aisles. I made as if to go to her, but Mag stopped me.
“Not yet,” she said, and I wept.
“There is something more for you to do,” Mag said, and she took my hand and led me to the very centre of the hall where, to my disbelief and dismay, lay carved into the floor the very same labyrinth that Brutus had caused to be constructed on Og’s Hill.
“This is your future,” said Mag.
“No.”
“This is you.”
“It can’t be.”
“Sweet Cornelia.” Mag kissed me, and then she spoke, very low, very fast, for a very long time.
When she had done, and I was more numb than I thought possible, she said, “Will you do this?”
“It is such a long way,” I whispered.
She was silent, regarding me.
I sighed, and looked to where my daughter still played.
She was far away, but nevertheless my daughter felt my eyes upon her, and she looked up from the dolls in her hand, and saw me, and cried a most strange word: “Mummy!”
Although I did not understand that word, it nonetheless brought joy and comfort to my heart.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I will do it.”
Mag had my hand in hers, and she gave it a squeeze. “Look,” she said, and pointed into the heart of the labyrinth.
There lay a knife with a curiously twisted horn handle.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Loth sobbed with fear and shock and hatred. He should have foreseen this, he should have known that Genvissa would murder Cornelia and her baby. Genvissa could not afford to let Cornelia live; even if she was not precisely aware of the “why”, Genvissa knew that Cornelia must die.
The house was dark, the oil lamp usually left burning through the night was dead, and Loth wondered if somehow this was part of Genvissa’s plan as well. After all
, what was the murdering of an oil lamp flame when she could accomplish the death of a woman and her child with so much ease?
He patted at Cornelia’s body, trying to discover if there was anything left he could do.
There was a steaming, bloodied mess between her legs—what was left of the baby, as well as Cornelia’s womb and, for all he knew, half of her other pelvic organs as well. Loth lifted his hands away in horror, wiping some of the thick blood that coated them on his bare chest. Then he felt up Cornelia’s body to her chest.
She was not breathing.
“Cornelia,” he cried out. “Cornelia.” Absurdly furious with her that she should have died so easily, Loth grabbed at her shoulders and shook them as hard as he could.
He felt her head flop about, but there was no response.
There was, however, the faintest echo of a laugh in his head, and Loth knew that it was Genvissa, returning satisfied to Brutus’ bed.
“Cornelia,” he whispered, feeling in her cooling, dead flesh the final loss of everything he had tried to save: Mag and Og, Llangarlia itself.
Everything gone, lost to Genvissa’s Game.
“Is there warmth left in her womb? There must be, for I can speak.”
Loth’s head, which had dropped to Cornelia’s breast, jerked upright.
There was the faintest of luminescences rising on the other side of Cornelia’s body. As Loth watched, it resolved itself into the faint outline of a small, dark woman.
Mag, but a Mag so weakened she was almost gone.
“Is there warmth left in her womb?” Mag whispered, her every word an agony of effort.
Loth stared, then fumbled a hand back to the mess between Cornelia’s legs. He could feel the womb, hard taut muscle, still stretched with the baby it contained.
It was warm, but only just.
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