What if, instead of completely destroying the Game, he sought to control it?
Asterion stood within the Great Hall of Westminster, clothed in the guise he wore every
day to confuse and deflect, watching Edward in his Labyrinth, his thoughts all on that prize: the
Troy Game. To control the Game Asterion needed the six kingship bands of Troy, which were
instrumental not only in the Game‘s creation, but in its controlling.
The bands were a pitiful means to an end, considering that Asterion had the power to
raise and destroy empires, but the bands continued to elude him as they had from that moment
when Asterion, in his rebirth as Amorian the Poiteran, had invaded and razed Brutus‘ Troia
Nova. He had not been able to find them then. He had continued to fail in their retrieval for two
thousand years. Brutus had hidden them well, imbuing their secret places with such protective
magic they remained hidden from Asterion.
And, by all the gods and imps in creation, how Asterion had tried to uncover their
location! He had thrown everything he had at that city…
He knew they were somewhere within London‘s walls, just as he knew that the Game
Genvissa and Brutus had begun was alive and well.
Asterion knew it, because every time he destroyed the city, whether in sheer fury or in
another attempt to unearth the bands, the city regrew. Under Asterion‘s direction the Celts, the
Romans, the Scotti, the Picts, the various tribes of the Anglo-Saxons, and finally the Vikings,
had invaded the land and razed or otherwise destroyed London in its entirety or by sections. In
those lifetimes when invasion had not threatened, Asterion sent mysterious fires that swept
through buildings, reducing swathes of the city to smoking cinders, or agonising plagues which
left the city‘s streets full of rotting corpses.
Every time the city was struck down, it somehow recovered. Perhaps not overnight, but it
did recover. Other cities would have succumbed and vanished beneath the waving grasses of
wild meadows. But not London. It refused to stay dead.
This told Asterion many things. One, that the bands were still here, for otherwise the
Troy Game would not be able to function. Two, that the Game begun so long ago remained alive
and well and grew more vital with each disaster as it absorbed the evil that attacked it. Three, the
Game‘s success at absorbing the successive waves of evil that washed over the city told Asterion
he could not dare personally to attack, or attempt to control, the Game until he had the kingship
bands. Finally, the city‘s continued regeneration told Asterion where the Game was—where lay
its heart.
When Asterion, as Amorian, had razed Brutus‘ Troia Nova, he had not been able to
determine the location of the actual Troy Game itself, where lay the Labyrinth. For decades the
area surrounding the Llan River and the Veiled Hills had remained desolate. Then, very
gradually, a modest village grew in the small valley between Og‘s and Mag‘s hills. The villagers
traded with communities further upriver, and the village grew and became a small, prosperous
town.
Flushed with their success, which they attributed to the beneficence of the gods, the
town‘s citizens built a temple of standing stones atop Og‘s Hill. The town grew rapidly—and
was then torn apart by Asterion‘s fury in the guise of the invading Celts. The area surrounding
the ancient Veiled Hills remained desolate for almost a century.
Then the Celtic Britons built there, a larger town this time, in the same spot that Brutus
had erected Troia Nova, their streets following the contours of his streets. The town prospered,
and the Celtic Druids erected a circle atop Og‘s Hill, which they now called Lud Hill after one of
their gods. This community Asterion murdered through disease, a horrific plague that wiped out
much of the population of southern Britain in the third century before Christ.
Then came the Romans, who built a magnificent city reflecting their own pride and
achievements. It, like the Celtic township, also followed the contours of Brutus‘ Troia Nova, and
atop Og-now-Lud Hill the Romans built a great temple to Diana.
Diana, the Roman Goddess of the Hunt, who had been known during the time of the
Greeks as Artemis.
Asterion, who walked through Roman London as one of Rome‘s overly-abundant
generals, looked at that temple, and knew.
The Labyrinth was there. It had to be. It attracted to it the veneration, and the temples, of
every manner of people who had lived within the city.
And yet the Game and the Labyrinth it hid would not allow Asterion to uncover it. No
matter how many times he caused the temples and churches atop Lud Hill to be razed, Asterion
could never discover the Labyrinth.
No matter how deep he caused his minions to dig.
Now a Christian cathedral graced the top of the hill. St Paul‘s, the third construction on
this hill to bear that name after Asterion had caused the first to be consumed with fire and the
second to be razed by the Danes.
To his eye, still yearning for the grace and colour and beauty of the temples and halls of
the ancient Aegean world, St Paul‘s was a homely, stooped thing. To the English Saxons,
Asterion supposed it was a wondrous construction, given that most of the other buildings in
London were wattle and daub, wood, or ungracious and poorly-laid stone. Shaped as a long hall,
a rounded apse to one end and a squat, ugly tower straddling the nave‘s mid-section, the
cathedral sat in a cleared space running east–west along the top of Lud Hill. The Londoners
certainly adored it enough, and not merely for reasons of worship—most days the nave was
almost as filled with market stalls as was Cheapside.
Suddenly Asterion‘s eyes refocused on Edward. The fool had worked his way through the
Labyrinth to its heart, and then back out again. Now he was calling for cups of wine to be handed
out, so he could raise a toast to William of Normandy.
A servant handed Asterion a cup, and Asterion put a smile on his face, nodding
cheerfully to Edward when the king looked at him, and toasted William of Normandy with wine
while in his heart he cursed him.
Asterion was wary of William. Very wary. As Brutus, his magic had been powerful
enough to outwit Asterion in his hunt for the kingship bands. Brutus‘ power was the principal
reason Asterion, for two thousand years, had kept those blocks in place which prevented William
and Genvissa‘s rebirth (and thus preventing the rebirth of everyone else who had been caught up
in the battle).
But Asterion had never uncovered the bands, and thus, a few decades ago, frustrated
beyond measure, he removed the blocks. One by one, women across western Europe had fallen
pregnant and given birth to babies who, as they grew, drew on the remembered experiences and
ambitions of a past life to shape their decisions in this life.
It was a nasty shock that Brutus had managed a rebirth so close to England.
Very nasty, and even now contemplation of it made Asterion uneasy.
Still, he kept William busy and distracted with problems within his own duchy. Asterion
did not want to meet William until he, Asterion, was well and ready.
And Asterion did not want to meet William, or to have to cope with the problem of
William, until he had both the bands, but… Her. His eyes slid from Edward to the door through
which Swanne had vanished.
―Enjoy what happiness you can find, Swanne,‖ Asterion said. ―It won‘t last long.‖
FOUR
Marriage to Harold had brought Swanne many benefits—her current proximity to
London, and so the Troy Game, being prominent among them—but, at this moment, Swanne was
grateful only for the fact that their seniority within Edward‘s court meant they had a private
bedchamber.
She had brushed aside Harold‘s concerns, she had brushed aside the concerns of her
attending woman Hawise, and now Swanne stood wonderfully alone, her back against the closed
door of the bedchamber.
―Brutus,‖ she whispered, the tears flowing again down her cheeks. Then, more loudly,
more emphatically: ― William! ‖
William of Normandy! Oh, what a fine jest that was, that Brutus was reborn within the
land where the savage Poiterans had lived so long ago. Yet, how right it seemed. Brutus as the
military adventurer, the struggler, the achiever…the foreigner. With her new knowledge, the
future became instantly clear to Swanne: once again Brutus would invade, once again he would
seize control of the land.
Once again, he would reign as king over England and London and over her heart. And
this time, they would succeed…into immortality.
―William,‖ she whispered, rolling the word about her mouth, loving the feel of it, joyous
in her new discovery.
He had sent that ball of string as a message to her! He yearned for her as much as she for