When Loth tore out his mother’s heart, he also tore out Og’s heart.
Louis stopped dead on the pathway, breathing heavily, although more from inner turmoil than from any effort. He heard the footfalls further down the way—Silvius, hunting him—but for the moment he paid them no concern.
He knew what was going to happen, and why.
He knew what part both Silvius and James—Loth-reborn—had to play.
And it terrified Louis.
Why all this lack of courage to face your own death, Brutus, when it was but a simple matter to arrange my murder and to execute it?
Louis straightened and spun about, all in one movement.
His father, Silvius, stood fifteen or sixteen paces behind him.
It was Silvius in his prime. He stood straight and tall, tightly muscled, skin bronzed with good health, crisply-curled black hair tied with a leather thong at the nape of his neck, and white waistcloth beaded with scarlet and emerald and tasselled in gold.
Both eyes stared at Louis, dark, liquid, intense.
About his limbs shimmered six bands of light—Silvius might no longer have the bands, but their legacy still gleamed about his arms and legs.
Silvius held a hunting bow in his hands, a single arrow strung and ready for flight. He had no other arrows.
Louis stared at that arrow, unable now to keep his fright contained, then looked at his father. “Silvius—”
Silvius bared his teeth. Run! Run! I am the hunter, and you the hunted. I will not kill a standing prey, for there is no honour in that. Run! Run!
Louis looked at his father a single moment longer, his eyes wild, then he turned and ran.
Behind him Silvius grinned, and raised the bow to his shoulder.
Then, the bow still held to his shoulder, he also began to run, although he moved with a curious high-stepping gait, his back straight, his arms held almost at shoulder height in order to keep the bow in position, his head high and unmoving, his eyes sighted down the length of the arrow.
It was as if Silvius did not so much run down that forest pathway, but dance.
Ahead of him, panting now, Louis ran as desperately as he could. What if the true test was escaping his father’s justice?
There is no escape for you, murderer.
Louis slid to a halt, staring wildly ahead. Just as that new voice had spoken inside his mind he’d run into the opening approaches to a wide and pleasantly shaded glade.
Standing in the centre of the glade was a man, hobbled and knobbled, crippled and distorted, a terrible mixture of Loth and Saeweald.
In his hand, dangling loosely at his side, this nightmarish creature held a knife, a long, wicked blade.
Louis looked over his shoulder, certain that Silvius was, at any moment, about to run into him.
But instead he heard his father call out from behind some intervening shrubbery.
Hark? Hark? Is that a stag I hear crashing about in that leafy gloom?
“No!” Louis screamed. He tried to duck, to turn aside, to run, but before his brain could send that message to his muscles, the shrub before him parted, as if by magic, and a single arrow sped through it.
No! Louis screamed in his mind, one of his hands instinctively raised to his face, and in the next instant the arrow thudded into him, punching straight through the palm of his hand and embedding itself in his left eye.
The force of the impact sent Louis sprawling to the ground. He writhed, in agony. The arrow had skewered his right hand to his left eye, and as he moved the hand, instinctively trying to pull it away, it tugged at the arrow, making its barbed point wriggle deeper and deeper into Louis’ orbit, scraping against bone and nerve endings.
He screamed, his back arching off the forest floor, his heels thudding frantically on the ground.
A man stepped up to him, and Louis knew it was his father. “For all the gods’ sakes,” he screamed, his voice now hoarse with pain and fear. “Do it! Do it!”
No, said Silvius.
“For gods’ sakes…” Louis moaned. “Please, push this arrow in, and kill me. Do it now! Now!” Oh gods, the agony, the agony…
No.
Six
The Idyll, Idol Lane, London
NOAH SPEAKS
“Don’t fret,” Weyland said, with a charming grin to take away any sense of sarcasm. “This is no trap. If you want to leave, then I will show you the way. But it is, in its own way, a manner of test. A Mistress of the Labyrinth would know the way out. If you learn well, then eventually you won’t need to ask me for guidance every time you want to leave.” Then he nodded at a blue-tiled archway to my left. “In this Idyll, tonight, that is the way back into the house of Idol Lane.”
“Tonight?”
“Every time you enter the Idyll it is slightly different, slightly reconfigured. Not much, but enough to confuse.”
“You have built yourself a tricky haven.”
“And do you blame me? With all these gods and witches and Kingmen and Mistresses and the gods know what other faerie creatures out to trap me?”
I could not answer that, and I found his gaze too direct, too challenging. I looked away, hating that he’d forced me to that evasive action.
“Noah…” He moved very close now, our linked hands pressed warm and tight between our bodies. “Do you want to trap me?”
“Of course. Every time you set that imp to work within my body I cursed you, and wished you every foul fate I could devise. I will see you trapped once more within the heart of the labyrinth, Asterion, if it is the last thing I—”
He kissed me, stopping the flow of my words.
I pulled my mouth away.
“I am sorry for that imp,” he said, very softly.
“No,” I said, “you enjoyed it.”
He kissed my neck, my ear. “When I set him, yes, of course I did.”
I flushed, remembering that night he’d taken on the glamour of Silvius, and taken my virginity within the stone hall.
“And when, in this life, you were far distant from me, then yes, I am afraid I enjoyed it when I set the imp to work. I knew it caused you pain and sorrow, and that fed my hatred of you.”
“And this,” I said, meaning his closeness now, his kisses, “does this feed your hatred of me?” Sweet gods, he knew how best to use his mouth. Damn it, this man was my forefather! I battened down my thoughts. I couldn’t let myself think of this now, not with Weyland so close.
He stood back, watching me curiously. “I don’t hate you now, Noah. If I hated you, then I would never have brought you to my Idyll.”
“You want to manipulate me, to use me.”
“That is why I brought you to Idol Lane, yes. But that has changed. It is what I no longer want.”
My face set in hard, disbelieving lines.
“I loved Ariadne, and in return she had me murdered. For millennia, Noah, I hated the very thought of love. I distrusted it.” His voice became very soft. “But what if I had been mistaken? What if love provided, not a trap, but a shelter?”
I went cold. There, again, the use of the word shelter. All he had to do was to ask me for shelter and I would be lost. My goddess name meant shelter, it defined who I was. If he asked for shelter, then I would need to give it. Worse, Weyland was defining shelter in terms of love. I need shelter, Noah. I need love. All he had to add to that was, Give it to me, I ask it of you, and I would—both shelter and love, for Weyland had bound the two concepts together so tightly they could not be separated.
How did he know? How?
I tried to feel panic, fought for panic, but in the end all I could summon was a quiet calmness at the prospect. Perhaps that was resignation.
Perhaps.
Weyland stepped back, although he still held my hand loosely. “Come to bed, Noah, and talk with me a while.”
“We can talk here well enough.”
His mouth twitched. “When we lie side by side, naked, then there can be no secrets between us. That makes for good co
nversation.”
I stared at him, and he laughed at the expression on my face.
He led me to a chamber several archways and bridges and cloisters distant from the entry vestibule. The chamber was intimate, although not claustrophobic, with a domed ceiling painted a deep blue and patterned with pink and scarlet flowers rioting amid soft grey-green leaves. It was beautiful, and I think I might have embarrassed myself by staring at it a moment too long. I lowered my gaze eventually, and saw that directly under its apex stood a circular bed loosely draped with silken sheets and scattered with soft pillows.
“There is a washing chamber through there,” Weyland said, indicating a small arched doorway to one side, “and a closet stocked with robes and linens through there.” He nodded to another doorway. “There is nothing you can lack for. Except Brutus, of course.”
His voice became tighter at this last, and I glanced at him, surprised by this evidence of jealousy. He hadn’t been jealous when he’d lain with me as Silvius and all I’d thought about was Brutus.
But now he was. Why?
Weyland was disrobing, laying his shirt and breeches carefully atop a chest to one side of the bed.
I averted my eyes and turned my back, twisting my arms behind myself to undo the buttons of my bodice. I could have used the washroom, but that would have admitted defeat.
The next moment I heard him step up behind me, and then his hands brushed mine aside, and he deftly undid the buttons and laces of both bodice and skirt.
“They will need to be hung,” I said, thinking to take them from his hand and into the clothes room where I might escape his presence, even for a moment. But Weyland paid me no attention, draping the clothes over a chair which had mysteriously appeared just to our side.
I closed my eyes, gathered my courage, and stepped out of my chemise and petticoat, and then my underdrawers.
“Where is the bracelet, Noah?”
I held up my left arm, and, lo, there it twinkled. It came and went mostly to my summons.
He touched it, and it vanished.
That startled me, for it was not of my doing.
“I did not like Cornelia,” he said. “Perhaps we can do without the bracelet.”
I nodded, and glanced at the bed. Thank the gods it had silken linens for me to hide my nakedness beneath.
In the instant before I bolted for the bed I felt his hand caress my back, running lightly over the scars the imp had made, and I flinched away.
“You said you would not touch my naked body.”
Abruptly the warmth of his hand vanished. “I apologise. Now, come to bed, Noah, and talk to me before we sleep.”
I turned and walked the few steps to the bed, climbing in and sliding the silk sheet over me, trying not to appear as if I rushed, but knowing from the amused gleam in his eyes that he had noted my hurry.
He lay down beside me, not bothering to hide his nakedness.
“Of what do you wish to speak?” I said.
“Ah, how formal you are.”
He lay close to me, not touching, but I could feel his warmth even so.
“Talk to me of Catling, Noah,” he said.
My eyes filmed with tears. Damn him. That hurt was too recent for me to talk of it unemotionally.
“Noah?”
Ah, gods, if that care and concern in his voice was forced pretence then he was a far better actor than I had ever given him credit for.
I heard and felt him turn over.
“Was it because she was not a daughter of Brutus that you disliked her?” he said. “You always seemed so detached from her. I found that odd.”
“You never commented on it,” I managed to say.
His voice was amused. “Being an evil Minotaur, I had other things on my mind than mother-daughter relationships.”
“Do not jest about it!”
“Noah, I’m sorry. What could she have done that has caused you so much distress?”
How to answer that? Well, Asterion, you see, I brought the Troy Game itself into your house, save that I did not know she was the Troy Game, because I thought she was my beloved daughter.
“I lost a daughter once,” I said.
“I did not know,” he said. There was infinite sympathy in his voice, and no question. He had left it up to me as to whether or not I continued.
Naturally, at that sympathy, and that tact, I began to babble.
“In my life as Cornelia, Brutus hated me, had gone to Genvissa, and I thought that the only way to get him back was to fall pregnant to him. I did, a daughter…oh, I wanted her so much! I wanted someone to love me. My son was all Brutus’ child, and I thought that even if I lost Brutus to Genvissa completely then I would have his child, and she would love me…”
I stopped, aware that not only was I babbling nonsense but I was crying openly, and completely unable to stop myself. All the emotions of the past few days had bubbled to the surface at Weyland’s kindness (false kindness it may have been, but at this point any kindness at all had the power to undo me). One of my hands, dangerously trembly, dashed at the tears, and I continued relentlessly along the road to utter destruction.
“I was seven months pregnant, Brutus had abandoned me completely. Genvissa thought to rid herself of me, and of the child. One night she…she—”
“You lost your daughter through Genvissa’s malevolence.”
“And my own life as well…but Mag came to me, and saved me, and set me on the road to—”
“To my complete obliteration. Yes. But the daughter? Mag did not save her?”
I had never thought of that. Mag had saved me, but not my daughter. I was the more severely damaged of the two of us. If Mag could have saved me then she could have given breath to an infant that was but two months shy of full-term.
She could have saved my daughter, and yet she didn’t.
“No,” I said. “No. And I thought…I believed I would have my daughter back one day…and Catling…”
“Catling was not what you expected.”
I couldn’t talk about it. I put my hands over my face, hating my tears.
With a sigh, Weyland moved closer and gathered me into his arms.
“Noah…” he began, kissing my brow in comfort rather than passion, and then—
Then it was if the chamber vanished. And all I could see was Silvius, leaning down to Louis, driving an arrow through Louis’ hand and deeper and deeper into Louis’ brain.
I gasped, unable to help myself, and Weyland’s arms tightened about me.
Seven
The Forest
“Do it now!” Louis screamed, only wanting to feel that arrow slide into his brain so he could embrace oblivion and death. “For gods’ sakes, Silvius, do it now!”
Silvius took firm hold of the arrow with both his hands, and pushed down.
Louis tensed, terrified, yet glad it would soon be over.
Silvius pushed the tip of the arrow into the bone of Louis’ left orbit, and twisted, grinding the arrowhead slowly deeper and deeper, mangling bone and nerve endings both.
If Louis had thought he was in pain before, then this was suffering such as he’d never known. The pain in his hand was bad enough as the shaft of the arrow twisted slowly through flesh and bone, but what the arrowhead did to his skull was indescribably agonising.
Worse was the terrible knowledge that Silvius knew what he was doing. He could have easily sunk that arrowhead through the rear of Louis’ orbit and deep into his brain, killing him instantly, but he chose not to.
Louis’ left hand beat uselessly at Silvius, his feet kicking more uselessly. None of the blows made any difference. It was as though Silvius was totally insubstantial save for those terrible hands, gripping the shaft of the arrow.
Thus you have brutalised me for three thousand years, Silvius whispered into Louis’ mind. Thus have I suffered.
Louis managed to speak. “I…killed you…instantly. There was no…suffering.”
There was no suffering? To see my
own beloved son come up to me, his face expressionless, to see him look at the arrow, look at my kingship bands, and then look back to the arrow in my eye with an expression of such murderous ambition on his face that all I had ever been, all I had ever loved, was murdered with that single look? That was not suffering? Do you know what it is like, Brutus-William-Louis, to be murdered by that person you have loved the most?
He ground the arrowhead back and forth, back and forth, scraping terrible grooves in Louis’ orbit.
“Father…kill me now. I beg you!”
You think this is suffering? Do you not know that your greatest suffering, your greatest despair, is yet to come?
And then, dimly, gradually, Louis became aware that someone else was standing at his side, and he knew it was James.
And he knew what James held in his hand, and, perhaps understandably, Louis thought that the greater suffering Silvius referred to would be at the hands of James.
Eight
The Idyll, Idol Lane, London
NOAH SPEAKS
Isaw all of this, and was appalled by Louis’ suffering, as also James’ need for revenge. And yet I was still wrapped in my tears and all that long-buried pain that had cruelly bubbled to the surface.
And all through that terrifying scene of Louis’ suffering, truly I was conscious of only one thing.
Weyland’s arms about me, and his silent comfort. I didn’t know if he could scry out my thoughts—the gods alone know that Weyland had the power to somehow sense, if not share outright, the vision I experienced—but I think he would have reacted if he had. I think I would have known if he was there with me.
All he did was lie beside me, and hold me, and try and comfort me.
I pulled back a little from the vision, and stirred. He leaned back, and pushed away some of my hair that had fallen over my face. “I lost a daughter,” he said. “Not so painfully as did you, but for years I wondered if she was dead or, if she lived, if she was well, or if she suffered in life, or if—”
Darkwitch Rising Page 45
