Game, I had never truly examined them. Almost three fingers wide, the band was finely wrought in metal that was itself so refined it visibly glowed. About its surface craftsmen had worked the
symbol of the Trojan kings: the stylised crown spinning over the Labyrinth.
I rubbed a thumb over the decoration, and as I did so I swear that Brutus‘ scent rose from
the gold.
―Caela.‖
The Sidlesaghe‘s voice brought me to my senses, and I looked up.
―This you must do by yourself,‖ he said from where he still stood just outside the circle
of columns.
I frowned. ―You will not come with me?‖
―No. You must be the one to move it. This travail only you can accomplish. Use your
skills, Caela. Take it to Chenesitun.‖
I looked back to the band.
―You have not long, Caela. You must be back in Edward‘s bed by dawn.‖
I was irritated with the Sidlesaghe now, for all I truly wanted was to stand and inhale the
feel and scent of Brutus from this band…but he was right, and so I looked away from the
Sidlesaghe toward the south-eastern quadrant of the circle.
I concentrated, my eyes narrowing.
I became the land, and I saw.
There, a trail, winding through a rocky landscape. Not the landscape that was reality, for
that was not rocky at all, just sweet meadowland and marsh where the grasses bordered the river,
but some other landscape. Although I did not immediately recognise it, this place felt safe to me, and right, and so I stepped forth.
The instant I left the circle the columns faded, but the golden radiance that had lit that
circle now strengthened to such a degree that I felt I was walking through the noonday sunlight.
A path stretched before me. Composed of dirt and scattered gravel, it wound its way between
great piles of tumbled rock.
Paving, I saw, as I took my first steps along that path, the golden band still held in my
cupped hands.
I was walking through the ruins of a once great and mighty city.
Tears filled my eyes. I knew this place, even though I had never been here. I knew it
because I had heard stories of it from so many people: Brutus, Hicetaon, Corineus, even
Aethylla. It was Troy. Troy destroyed.
I was seeing this because this is what the band remembered. It had been here, it had
barely escaped the destruction itself, and it still sorrowed and wept for the great, beautiful city of
its birth and initial purpose.
I realised also that I was seeing this for another and more vital reason. I had become the
land in order to find my way to Chenesitun, but what the land became—in conjunction with the
band—was Troy. My land, my self, and the Game, had merged to such an extent that this land
was Troy, or at least, had absorbed the vitality and memories of that long-ruined place until
Troy‘s past had become part of its own past.
Or was it that I saw only one of many possible futures for this land that the Game played
out, over and over?
I continued walking. Great drifts of tumbled masonry extended to either side of me. In
some places the stones still leaked smoke from fires that raged within; in other, sadder, places
bloodied bodies lay sprawled across the stones.
I wept, so sickened was I by the destruction and the carnage.
All this a part of Ariadne‘s catastrophe. All this a part of her pact with her hateful
brother, the Minotaur Asterion.
And what was that pact, that Asterion thought to use it to taunt Swanne? What part did I
not understand?
Thinking of Asterion made me hurry my feet. They would know now that the band was
being moved: William, Swanne and Asterion. Still in Normandy, William could do nothing but
rage and fret. Swanne? Swanne would rage as well, and she might also fly into the night, seeking
that person who had dared touch the band.
Or would she? In Swanne‘s mind the only conceivable person who might touch the band
apart from William was Asterion, and I did not think Swanne ready for a confrontation with him.
No, I thought it unlikely that, this first time, Swanne would make a physical move.
That left Asterion, and I admit the thought of him did worry me. I didn‘t know Asterion, I
couldn‘t scry him out, I didn‘t know the extent of his power, and I couldn‘t be sure that he might
not be lurking behind the next pile of rubble I walked around.
So I hurried my feet. I was walking amidst enchantment, so I knew the journey to
Chenesitun would take a fraction of the time that would elapse if I walked the land in reality, but
still I hurried. I began to fret about what I would find when I reached Chenesitun. Where could I
hide the band? Did I have the skills to hide it from Asterion, as well as William and Swanne?
About me the destruction and horror grew even greater. The piles of masonry grew
higher, the smoke and fires thicker, the stench of the corpses more sickening. Blood now trickled
in rivulets across the path, and at every third or fourth step I had to make a small leap to avoid
soiling either my feet or robe.
My hands tightened about the band, for I was fearful it might dislodge. Somehow I knew
that if I let it fall, if it rolled away between the tumbled stones, then it would be lost forever.
My breathing grew quicker, deeper, harsher, and I prayed silently that I would soon reach
my destination.
I dared a glance ahead, and what I saw dismayed me. The smoking ruins of Troy
stretched on forever, as if into infinity.
It would take me all night!
I began to panic and, in that panic, one of my feet slipped on some loose gravel. I almost
lost my footing, and I cried out as my hands grabbed frantically at the band.
I stopped walking, taking a moment to try and calm myself. Gods, this was but the first
band, and was going to be the easiest to move, surely! I could not let a vision of the past upset
me.
Or was this a vision of the future? Not of old Troy destroyed, but of this
Troy— London— destroyed?
Panic again threatened to overwhelm me, but then I pushed it down with every ounce of
strength that I had, and I kept moving, one foot after the other, one foot after the other…and so I
endured.
Within minutes, in the space of three footsteps, or so it seemed, I walked from the
devastation of Troy into the strangest, most frightening chamber I had ever encountered.
In all of my existences.
Somehow I knew that this was Chenesitun, but not the Chenesitun I had once seen. Here
were no scattering of wattle-and-daub dwellings, here no low-roofed timber house of the thegn
called Cynesige. Here no barns or the soft lowing of cattle.
Instead, I stood within a chamber so vast I could barely comprehend it. It reminded me of
my visions of the stone hall that I‘d had both as Cornelia and in this lifetime, but only in its
dimensions. There was no peace here, but madly scurrying bodies of people dressed in alien
clothes. There was no joy here, but the irritation of bustling people, and I could feel from them a
cacophony of words and emotions: Late, late, late, hurry, hurry, hurry, delay, delay, delay, what
is the time? Where is the platform? Where is my ticket? Have you a timetable?
And then, more ominously: Hurry! Flee! Down! Down! The sirens have sounded!
A woman, dressed in a close-cut coat and skirt of a weave and material I could barely
imagine, stepped up to me and stared me in the face. Her face was garishly painted, her
shoulder-length hair elaborately curled and stiffened by some unseen agent. She held a small
boy, dressed in close-cut clothes similar to hers, save that he wore trousers rather than a skirt and
with a striped cap pulled low over his eyes.
―Do you know the way?‖ she asked me, her eyes wild—with fear, I thought, and perhaps
even some desperation. ―Which platform do I need?‖
―I…‖ What could I say? Everything around me was so strange, so foreign, more
terrifying even than Troy‘s destruction.
―You cannot just stand here!‖ the woman said. ―Save yourself!‖ Then, thankfully, she
turned her back and scurried off, pulling the boy behind her.
He sent me a single, pleading look over his shoulder, and then they vanished into the
hurrying crowd.
―My dear,‖ said a voice, and it was so soft and familiar I grabbed on to it.
―My dear…‖
I turned to my left, and saw, some ten or fifteen paces away, a collection of tables and
chairs. At one of the tables sat a man who, even though he was sitting, was of noticeable height.