Loth looked to Brutus, now approaching the heart of the labyrinth. His movements were strained now, more restricted, as the coils grew ever tighter as they led him to the center.
Gods, what would Brutus do when the horror caught up with him at the center of the labyrinth?
Loth looked back to Genvissa, expecting to see her still standing, face lowered, at one side of the labyrinth’s entrance.
But she had moved. Now she stood just inside the entrance, her face up, her eyes shining, a gentle smile curving her mouth.
Brutus reached the center of the labyrinth, and stood, as Genvissa had been, his head down.
But he still held the ball of pitch aloft.
The darkness writhed closer and closer, picking up speed as it approached its goal. It was muttering now, a horrid hum of angry whisperings, as if it couldn’t wait to feed.
One more turn, one more slither forward, and it, too, had reached the heart of the labyrinth.
The outer lines of dancers stopped, heads down, torches pointing to the earth, as still as death.
Brutus turned, and faced the evil.
Faced the evil within himself.
BR UTUS FITTED AN ARROW TO THE B OW, AND LIFTED IT TO his shoulder. He could hear crashing in the shrubs just to his left, could see the flash of the stag’s antlers above the greenery, could hear the beast’s terrified breath.
Excitement flared in his chest, and he let fly the arrow.
There was a silence, then a shout of horror from beyond the path.
“Our king! Our king! He has been struck!”
And the excitement in Brutus’ chest collapsed into dread, and he knew what he had done.
He darted behind the greenery, fighting his way through, and came to a small glade.
In its center sat his father Silvius.
He was contorted in agony, both his hands wrapped about the shaft of the arrow that had pierced his eye.
Brutus moaned, and walked over to stand a pace before his father. Silvius, blood streaming in a thick rich river down his cheek and neck, gradually became aware of him. He dropped his hands from the shaft of the arrow, and held them out in appeal to Brutus.
“What have you done?” he said, his voice a groan. “What have you done?” Brutus looked at his father for a long moment. There had been pity on his face, but now it had metamorphosed into something else… speculation, perhaps.
“I am taking my heritage,” he said, and he leaned down and took the arrow in one hand and a handful of his father’s hair in the other.
Steadying himself, and firming his grip on his father’s head, Brutus said, “It is time your kingship bands adorned my limbs.”
“No, no,” said Silvius. “How can you base your reign on the corruption of your own father’s murder? Everything you do, everything you touch from this time on will be corrupt! Brutus, I beg you, do not murder me. Take this arrow from my eye, do not thrust it farther!”
“I can accept your murder,” Brutus said, and Silvius felt his son’s hand firm on the arrow, the head of the weapon slice infinitesimally farther through his flesh. “I have raised you, and loved
you, how can you do this to me?” “Easily,” and the arrow slid farther.
Silvius shrieked in agony. “You would found your city on this? On my murder? On the destruction of everything that has loved you?”
“I feel no guilt,” said Brutus. “Not you, nor anyone else, can use it to hurt or bind me. This act has made me the stronger man, and it has marked me a king.”
The agony was unbearable now, but still Silvius found the courage to scream one last warning.
“This is not how the Game should be played! It is not what I taught you! If you found the Game on corruption, then—”
‘,’ was ever sick of your words as a child, Silvius, and I find them even more tiresome now. I shall play the Game as I wish !”
And then, as Silvius shrieked and writhed, Brutus thrust the arrow brutally deep into his father’s brain.
‘I SHALL PLAY THE GAME AS ,’ WISH,” SAID BRUTUS TO the evil before him and, lifting the ball of pitch, tossed it forward and high into the air.
The gathered darkness shrieked, and surged upward as if to catch the ball, but it had gone too high and sailed too far forward, and the mass fell back upon itself, howling in frustration.
The ball of pitch burst into flames, disintegrating midair.
Genvissa muttered a spell, weaving the pattern with her hands, and as the flaming pieces of pitch fell to the labyrinth they marked out the path Brutus must follow to escape.
Brutus stepped around the mass of darkness as it writhed about looking for the ball of pitch.
It did not see him, so horrified was it at losing the pitch.
Slowly, yet with far more eagerness in his movements than before, Brutus began to dance his way out of the labyrinth. He kept his hands clasped before him, and his eyes on Genvissa, who had her own hands held out to him.
He danced the path marked by the burning pitch, and as he passed, so the pitch fell into ashes, and the path went dark.
Behind him the darkness twisted, and howled, seeking a way out of the labyrinth, always missing the path, confused by the twists and turns of the circuits of the labyrinth. It hunched about and about the central chamber of the labyrinth, becoming ever more frantic, its cries ever more desperate.
‘He’s trapped it!” Coel said in an undertone. “He’s trapped evil at the heart of the labyrinth!”
‘And that is good?” muttered Loth. “How can it be good to found a city on a bed of evil?”
Brutus was now very close to the outer entrance of the labyrinth. The dancers around the outer wall of the labyrinth had now lifted their torches again, and were singing joyously, and Genvissa stood, her arms outstretched, her brilliant eyes locked in to Brutus’, willing him ever forward away from the trapped
evil.
Finally he stepped forth, and a great shout went up as, in the center of the labyrinth, the mass of darkness fell to the ground and, in the blink of an eye, vanished.
As Brutus stepped forth, so Genvissa stepped to meet him, and they fell into each other’s arms, Brutus picking her up and spinning her joyously about.
Then, suddenly, extraordinarily, they disappeared, and Og’s Hill was left bathed in light and joy and the celebrations of the thousands about it.
He twisted and kicked now, partaking in the celebrations atop Og’s Hill. Tht Game had begun!
OnceAsterion would have been enraged by this knowledge, for the Game’s completion would mean his reimprisonment within its black heart, unable to find hit way out into freedom.
Now? Now he was overjoyed. He was certain that he could seize control of the Game—rather than it seize him—and use it for his own ends. Not just yet, but soon… soon enough.
He knew also that Brutus and Genvissa were together now, indulging their success in the pleasures of the flesh. They thought they had begun a triumph; instead they had embarked upon an agony so vast it would take them aeons to comprehend it.
Many years and many tears, Mag had said to Cornelia. Many years, indeed. And more tears than anyone could possibly imagine .
Best enjoy your celebration while you may, the Minotaur thought and wriggled some more for the sheer joy in bringing his mother discomfort .
ASTERION WAS GROWING WITH EVERY BEAT OF HIS mother’s heart, and his body mass was large enough by this stage that when he twisted and kicked she would put her hands on her belly, and pale.
PART Six LONDON, MARCH he cathedral stood open, waiting, and Jack Skelton entered through the great west doors. He walked along the empty nave ^btgf*’ until he stood under the massive dome, its heights lost in shadows, staring at the marble flooring, remembering that terrible night long ago when vision had become reality.
Although he could not visibly see it, he could feel the word “Resurgam” bum-ing up through the marble.
There was a sound of footsteps behind him, and the soft scrape of crutches, but Skelton did not move.
“You’re back, then.”
“Aye.” Skelton finally turned about, looking at the man leaning on crutches before him. He wore dark vestments, the collar of a cleric, and the thin, lined face of a man who lived with constant pain.
“I am scarcely prettier than you remember,” the man said, then held out his hand. “But at least
this time I have no homs to my head. I am Walter Heme, an apt enough name, don’t you think?”
Skelton shook Heme’s hand, introducing himself. “I have seen Genvissa, and Asterion. But not Cornelia. Do you know where she is?”