Achates’ birth had been bad enough, but it had never been like this.
‘Gods, Loth, I cannot—”
Yet another pain, this tenfold worse than the last, and I screamed, and fell to the floor, clutching my belly. The baby had shifted brutally, almost as if she were being pushed into her birth journey by a vicious hand.
She was tearing me apart internally. My body wasn’t ready to give birth, my pelvis hadn’t relaxed, my birth canal was still closed… and yet something— Genvissa!—was pushing this baby down with such force that—
I screamed again, writhing in agony.
No, no, gods, no, not my daughter! Please, please… Mag, anyone, save my daughter …
She was all I had left.
Something ripped apart within me, and I felt hot, thick blood gush from between my legs.
Then a thump, and some part of me realized Loth had pushed himself from his bed and was crawling toward me.
More blood, more agony.
I think my womb had ruptured.
I was incapable of speech, incapable of releasing my fetal crouch about my belly. I think I thought that if I curled myself tight enough about my daughter, then somehow I could save her.
Loth reached me, grabbed at me.
I shrieked, and hit out at him—more in my agony, I think, than in any sensible thought of keeping him at bay.
‘Cornelia,” he said, and I heard that his voice was breaking. “Cornelia…”
And at that moment that black-hearted witch pushed with all her might, and my daughter and womb both were torn from the walls of my belly and expelled from my body.
There was a moment when I lost all sense, and when they returned to me all I could feel was the continuing agony in my belly, and Loth’s hand scrabbling between my legs, trying, I think, to aid my daughter in any way that he could.
It was hopeless. I knew that. There was a cold rock that had once been my heart, and it told me that Genvissa had murdered my daughter and probably me as well, for I could feel the hot blood pumping out from between my legs Loth was shouting, at what and at who I do not know, and I cared not. My daughter was dead, and I was dying. There was no point to life. No anymore.
The next moment I lost all my senses, and I knew no more. I died.
I WALKED THROUGH THE STONE HALL, COMFORTED THAI I should have come here in death.
The small, dark woman I had seen with Hera in this hall so long ago was here again now, and she folded me in her arms, and hugged me, and loved me.
It was Mag. She’d been with me all this time, and I’d not known it.
“Hush,” she said, leaning back and taking my face in her hands. “Do not succumb to that dreadful guilt of yours again.”
” My daughter…”
“Your daughter lives still, in this stone hall. Do you see her?”
Mag’s hands fell from my face, and I looked about. Ah! There she was, playing with some dolls in the shadows of the aisles. I made as if to go to her, but Mag stopped me.
“Not yet,” she said, and I wept.
“There is something yet for you to do,” Mag said, and she took my hand and led me to the very center of the hall where, to my disbelief and dismay, lay carved into the floor the very same labyrinth that Brutus had caused to be constructed on Og’s Hill.
“This is your future,” said Mag.
“No.”
“This is you.”
“It can’t be.”
“Sweet Cornelia.” Mag kissed me, and then she spoke, very low, very fast, for a very long time.
When she had done, and I was more numb than I thought possible, she said, “Will you do this?”
“It is such a long way,” I whispered.
She was silent, regarding me.
I sighed, and looked to where my daughter still played.
She was far away, but nevertheless my daughter felt my eyes upon her, and she looked up from the dolls in her hand, and saw me, and cried a most strange word: “Mummy!”
Although I did not understand that word, it nonetheless brought joy and comfort to my heart.
‘Yes,” I said. “Yes, I will do it .”
Mag had my band in hers, and she gave it a squeeze. “Look,” she said, an pointed into the heart of the labyrinth.
There lay a knife with a curiously twisted bone handle.
&
OTH SOBBED WITH FEAR AND SHOCK AND HA-
tred. He should have foreseen this, he should have known that Genvissa would murder Cornelia and her baby. Gen-vissa could not afford to let Cornelia live; even if she was not precisely aware of the
“why,” Genvissa knew that Cornelia must die.
The house was dark, the oil lamp usually left burning through the night was dead, and Loth wondered if somehow this was part of Genvissa’s plan as well. After all, what was the murdering of an oil lamp flame when she could accomplish the death of a woman and her child with so much ease?
He patted at Cornelia’s body, trying to discover if there was anything left he could do.
There was a steaming, bloodied mess between her legs—what was left of the baby, as well as Cornelia’s womb and, for all he knew, half of her other pelvic organs as well. Loth lifted his hands away in horror, wiping some of the thick blood that coated them away on his bare chest. Then he felt up Cornelia’s body to her chest.
She was not breathing.
‘Cornelia!” he cried out. “Cornelia!” Absurdly furious with her that she should have died so easily, Loth grabbed at her shoulders and shook them as hard as he could.
He felt her head flop about, but there was no response.
There was, however, the faintest echo of a laugh in his head, and Loth knew that it was Genvissa, returning satisfied to Brutus’ bed.
‘Cornelia,” he whispered, feeling in her cooling, dead flesh the final loss of everything he had tried to save: Mag and Og, Llangarlia itself.
Everything gone, lost to Genvissa’s Game.
‘Is there warmth left yet in her womb? There must be, for I can yet speak.”
Loth’s head, which had dropped to Cornelia’s breast, jerked upright.
There was the faintest of luminescences rising on the other side of Cornelia’s body. As Loth watched, it resolved itself into the faint outlines of a small, dark woman.
Mag, but a Mag so weakened she was almost gone.
‘Is there warmth left in her womb?” Mag whispered, her every word an agony of effort.
Loth stared, then fumbled a hand back to the mess between Cornelia’s legs. He could feel the womb, hard taut muscle, still stretched with the baby it contained.
It was warm, but only just.
‘Yes,” he said. “There is a little warmth left.”
‘If there is warmth left, there is life,” Mag said, her voice fading in and out so that Loth had to strain to hear her. “It must be returned to Cornelia’s body. It is my, our, only hope.”
‘How? How can I put it back inside?” Loth’s voice broke in horror.
‘The baby is lost for this time; poor Cornelia, I had tried to tell her. We can do no more for the baby.
But Cornelia we must save. Tear the baby from the womb, Loth, my son, and then take the womb in your hand and slide it back inside Cornelia. You must do this.”
Appalled, Loth stared at the apparition. Even now it faded, almost gone, and Loth knew that if he didn’t act now , then not only Cornelia but Mag would be lost as well.
Hauling himself into an upright sitting position, carefully balancing his weight on his dead hips and legs, Loth put both his hands about the solidness of womb and baby. “Tear her out?” he said. ” Tear her out? I will destroy the womb if I do that.”
‘What can be torn can be mended. Do it !”
Taking a deep breath, and closing his eyes even though he couldn’t see what he was doing anyway, Loth dug his fingernails into the walls of Cornelia’s womb, and began to tear.
It was brutal, horrible work. The womb was strong, banded with muscles that not only bore the weight of Cornelia’s child-baby, but had the strength to then push that baby out when it was time for it to be born. Loth had to use every ounce of strength he had in his arm and shoulder muscles, and the feel of his fingers tearing deeper and deeper into the smooth muscles of the womb made him retch, once so violently that he had to momentarily stop what he was doing.
But in the end it was done, and he had made an opening large enough to pull the baby through into his hands.