Yet not a man at all, but a shade, for both shadows and a stray moth passed straight through him.
Loth did not recognize him. The stranger was a tall man, strong and mus cular, and dressed in the clothes and armor of a Trojan. He was of middle age, handsome enough if you liked the Trojan bluntness of feature, and with long, curly black hair tied with a thong at the base of his neck.
At his hip hung a sword, and in his hand he held a bloodied arrow.
His left eye was a mass of congealed blood.
‘Who are you?” said Loth.
‘My name is Silvius,” said the shade, “and I am the fool that fathered Brutus.” He started to moan, as if in agony, saying, “Oh, I was seer-warned when I had barely planted Brutus in his mother’s body, but I did not listen. I should have pummeled my son from his mother’s womb before she gave him birth! Then she would be alive, and I also.”
The shade of Silvius wept—horrible thick blood tears from his ruined eye—and handed the arrow to Loth. “Take this into the labyrinth tomorrow, Loth, and it will be your guide. Draw Brutus in, and I will take up the fight for you.”
A vision appeared before Loth, passing quickly in flickering images before his eyes.
The hunt.
The forest.
Brutus aiming his arrow into the bushes.
Silvius, crippled on the ground.
Brutus, seizing the opportunity and taking his father’s hair in one hand and the arrow in the other, and driving it deep into Silvius’ brain.
‘I should never have fathered him,” Silvius said. “Brutus is my responsibility. What happens to the Game he has started is my responsibility. Thus I will deal him death.”
And then, suddenly, horrifically, all hesitation and sadness were gone from Silvius, and he drew out his sword and roared, stabbing the sword toward the sky. “Brutus!” he screamed… and then was gone.
Loth stared at the place where he had been, then slowly lifted his hand and looked at the arrow. It was fouled with old, crusted blood, and Loth swallowed, momentarily sickened.
Then Loth jerked in shock with another and vastly more frightening surprise.
Cod’s voice, whispering through the forest. Think not that Brutus will allow Silvius to best him, my friend .
‘Coel! Coel!” Loth spun about, but could not see his friend.
Brutus has never allowed Silvius to best him, and I doubt he will on the morrow. Loth, be silent and listen to me: whatever happens, Loth, let no harm come to Cornelia. Let no one harm Cornelia. She is far more than she appears, and only she holds the key, only she knows the steps to the dance, only she can close the gate. Let no harm come to Cornelia!
And then Coel too was gone, and Loth was left alone, weeping for all that had been lost to Brutus’
vile sword.
‘TELL ME,” SAID GENVISSA, STROKING BRUTUS’ HAIR AS they lay side by side on the furs in his palace, “what form did the evil challenge you in the heart of the labyrinth yesterday?”
Brutus hesitated, then told her—all of it, the manner of his father’s death, and his own part in it.
‘Then that is what Loth will use against you tomorrow,” said Genvissa. “He will use what is there already.”
‘How—”
‘Shush,” she said, kissing him. “We will kill two birds with one sword tomorrow.” She grinned. “This is what you will do.”
Genvissa whispered to him, long and sweetly, and eventually Brutus laughed, and placed his hands on her breasts.
‘I am blessed with your care,” he said, kneading at her flesh, but thinking only of Cornelia, and the terrible sight of Coel atop her.
‘Aye,” she said. “You are. I will allow nothing to threaten the Game. Not Loth. Not Cornelia.
Nothing.”
CbAPGGR FIVHE DAY WAS COLD, HEAVILY OVERCAST, WITH A distant curtain of rain approaching from the northeast. For ^hW’ the group surrounding the labyrinth on top of Og’s Hill, the weather seemed only an outward manifestation of their own dispiritedness, their sense that somewhere, somehow, unwittingly (or even wittingly, which was even worse) someone had made a hideous decision that now no one could escape.
Loth’s challenge to Brutus was merely an outcome of that decision, not the decision itself. It was almost as if all of Llangarlia had lurched into a great darkness at some point in the past, and that darkness was only now revealing itself.
But what to do? Loth’s anger, or the anger he represented, needed an outlet. If not now, then later, when the outcome might be even more tragic.
The Trojan witnesses, Hicetaon, Corineus, Deimas, and a score of others, did not seem so badly affected by the blanket of gloom that overlay the Llan-garlian witnesses. The Trojans were used to war, to challenges, to sieges, to tragedy. Brutus, their leader, representative, and increasingly their demigod, would not fail them. He stood to one side of the entrance to the labyrinth, wearing only his bands of kingship and a pristine white hip wrap, an unsheathed sword in his hands, an expression of calm determination on his face.
Loth stood the other side of the entrance, a pace or two away from Brutus. Save for the bands of kingship, he was garbed similarly, but today he had shaved and oiled his head so that the great bony protuberances of his skull gleamed gleefully as if pleased they had finally won their freedom from the surrounding mat of hair.
His face was not so calm as Brutus’. He looked nervous and unsure, and he clasped nothing but a blood-encrusted arrow.
It was at this arrow that Genvissa stared, and which caused her, eventually, to look at Brutus with a small smile of victory.
If Genvissa looked certain of herself, and of Brutus, the rest of the Llan-garlians present, mainly Mothers, looked wan and desperately worried. The Mothers had met very early that morning to discuss Coel’s death. Both the manner of his death and the reason behind it—Brutus’ jealousy—were abhorrent to them. Cornelia had freely chosen to lie with Coel—how could Brutus wreak any kind of revenge at all when no wrong had been committed? Despite their allegiance to Genvissa, the Mothers may well have chosen to act against Brutus save that Loth had already acted for them. Fate would decide today who was right and who was wrong.
While all the Mothers looked pallid and anxious, Erith looked the most ashen and distressed. Her worry for Loth and the outcome of this challenge was superseded only with grief for her son. Very late the previous night she had been woken from her slumber by a neighbor, who had begged her to hurry to Cornelia’s house.
There she’d found her son dead, and a distraught and barely coherent Cornelia smeared with his blood.
Erith had no time for Cornelia; not then, not when her beloved Coel lay slaughtered on the floor. She
and her two other sons, Hoel and Cador, had carried Coel’s corpse back to his house where Erith and her daughters washed and tended it. He would be cremated and his ashes cast into the Llan later today, after this farce was over, when there might well be another corpse to weep and mourn over.
Erith may have ignored Cornelia last night, but she was sorry for the fact now. Cornelia had not been responsible for Coel’s death, not in any significant manner. She’d only accepted what Coel had been offering for months; and if her husband had then descended on the coupling pair with his revenging sword, then Erith thought that had more to do with Genvissa than anyone else.
Coel himself had to bear some responsibility for what had happened. He had known of the marriage contracts and beliefs of the Trojans, had known that if he lay with Cornelia he would call Brutus’ wrath down upon his head, and yet he had still allowed his lust to get the better of him.
Erith sighed, and looked to where Cornelia was standing by herself, isolated in her own patch of misery in a spot apart from both the Trojans and the Llangarlians. She had washed herself of what remained of Coel, but had taken little more care. Her robe was haphazardly pulled about her body, and Erith could see that its normally creamy wool was gray with dirt and sweat. Her hair hung lank and uncombed; her face was almost as gray as her robe, and almost as lifeless as poor Coel lying wrapped in his shroud in Erith’s house.
Glancing at Loth and Brutus, Erith walked over to Cornelia, stood by her side, then took her hand, giving it a slight squeeze. Cornelia shuddered, an momentarily leaned close to Erith, making the older woman even sorrier abou her seeming rejection of the girl last night.
‘Get it over and done with,” Genvissa said in a cold, harsh voice, makin most of the spectators jump.