‘Is there nothing we can do—”
‘There is nothing we can do to save the baby,” Mag said, now barely visible, “but everything we can do to save Cornelia and this land. Put it back! Now!” Loth laid the limp baby gently to one side, his heart breaking for the loss of its life, then collected the now-flaccid weight of the womb in his hand. He paused, his face muscles clenched against what he had to do, then pushed the mass back inside Cornelia’s body.
He pushed hard, poking at the mass with insistent fingers, but the womb seemed intent on bulging back out again every time he thought he’d managed to push it just that little bit farther inside Cornelia.
Eventually, his eyes now screwed shut, he took the womb in his fist and, murmuring prayers against darkness and hurt, thrust the horrid mess as deep inside Cornelia’s body as he could.
He was glad she was insensible (dead) for he knew that had she been conscious, then he would not have been able to do it.
But eventually it was done, and the lips of Cornelia’s torn vulva closed in upon themselves again.
Loth pulled his trembling hand away from Cornelia’s body, and held it to his chest.
He opened his eyes again, and stared at Mag’s apparition. For a moment it flared strongly, and Mag smiled. “Thank you!” she whispered.
Then, in a voice that strengthened even as the apparition faded back to nothingness, Mag said,
“Genvissa must be stopped, Loth, stopped until we have the strength to fight against her. Cornelia will know what to do. Poor Cornelia…”
There was a sense of great sadness, then Mag vanished, and before Loth even had time to move, the door to the house opened, and Erith and Tuenna, Cador and Hoel directly behind them, walked in.
‘By Mag herself!” Erith breathed as one of her sons held up a lamp. ” What has happened?”
SHE’D BEEN WOKEN WITH A DEEP DREAD PREMONI tion of death, Erith explained as her sons first lifted Cornelia to her bed, then Loth back to his.
She’d come as soon as she could, and in explaining this, Loth realized that the events that had seen Cornelia wake with her first pain to that moment when he’d forced her torn womb back inside her body had taken only the shortest spaces of time.
Genvissa’s magic had been potent, indeed.
But then, so had Mag’s. Loth had not realized that the goddess had retained enough power to do what she had… and it made him further realize just why Cornelia was so important.
Cornelia did not simply hold Mag in her womb in the accepted sense that all Llangarlian women understood it—that she held a tiny piece of Mag’s power in her womb—but she literally held Mag within her womb.
No wonder Genvissa so feared Cornelia.
Cornelia was her nemesis. She carried within her the single power that might finally defeat Genvissa and the Game.
Loth lay back on his bed, accepting Cador’s ministrations in washing his body free of Cornelia’s blood, and listened to Erith and Tuenna fussing over Cornelia’s body across the way. The way forward was clear to him now. It was frightening, not only in the darkness of the path they would all have to tread, but in the length of that path and in the horrors he suspected they would all endure along the way.
He began to laugh, weakly, and more from fright and dismay at the thought of the road ahead of them than out of any sense of mirth, keeping it up until finally Erith snapped at him to stop.
‘Has Cornelia come back to life yet?” he said, sobering.
‘Come back to life?” Erith said. “She is bitterly torn, Loth, but she still clings to life. Now be quiet, for Tuenna and I have much work that needs to be done before morning.”
‘Nay,” Loth whispered so that no one else heard him. “I think the work will take much, much longer than this night, Mother Erith. Much longer.”
GGJsl lL**rRITHCAME TO SIT ON LOTH’S BED IN THE HOUR AFTER dawn. Her face was wan, the delicate skin under her eyes a translucent blue with weariness.
‘Cornelia should be dead,” she said. “Why is she not dead, Loth?”
He said nothing, but his eyes glinted.
‘When first I attended her,” Erith continued, “when Cador and Hoel lifted her to her bed, I saw that pieces— pieces, Loth—of her womb bulged from her body. I did what I could, thinking that fever and death would inevitably take her within the next few days. Yet just now, when I checked, I find that her womb has moved back to its normal place within her belly and it is apparently whole. All her bleeding has stopped, her tears have fused, her skin is cool and dry.”
‘She was dead,” Loth said. “Genvissa’s darkness had torn both her child and her womb from her.
Cornelia had bled to death before you arrived.”
He paused, and Erith waited.
‘Mag came—”
Erith’s eyes widened, and she drew in a shocked breath and held it.
‘—sick and tired and barely visible, and told me to push Cornelia’s womb back within her. She said it was her and our only hope.”
Erith frowned. “Why?”
Loth laughed, soft and somehow mirthless. “Can’t you see what Mag has done, Erith? How Mag has avoided Genvissa?”
Again Erith’s eyes widened, but now with understanding.
‘Mag is in Cornelia’s womb, Erith. Mag herself lives in Cornelia’s womb. It is where she hides from Genvissa.”
Erith stared at Loth, then turned to look at Cornelia. It made sense, but. . “But…”
‘What can we do?”
Erith nodded, and Loth’s head fell back on the pillow. “We give Mag the time she needs to regain her strength, Erith.”
‘And she can do that in time to prevent Genvissa and Brutus completing the Game?”
‘No.”
‘But—”
‘What Genvissa and her five Darkwitch foremothers have done, Erith, cannot be undone in a few weeks. Nor in a single lifetime.”
Erith shuddered, horrified at the implications of what Loth had said.
‘What will we do?” she whispered. “How can we survive that long?”
‘We must,” Loth said, simply.
LATER THAT DAY, WHEN CORNELIA HAD WOKEN AND eaten a little, Loth asked Hoel to carry him over to Cornelia’s bed, and set him on its edge. Balancing himself with his arms, Loth nodded at Erith, who brought over a small, blanket-wrapped bundle and placed it on Cornelia’s abdomen.
‘Your daughter,” Loth said softly.
Cornelia lifted her hand, hesitated, then slowly unfolded the blankets.
Underneath them lay the body of a tiny, perfectly formed baby girl.
Cornelia gently rested a hand on the girl’s cold body. She shivered, and tears slid from her eyes.
‘Genvissa did this,” Loth whispered. “Genvissa did this to you last night. She tore the baby from you and killed it in the doing. Genvissa did this to you and to your daughter.”
The tears trickled down Cornelia’s face. “I know, Loth,” she whispered. “I know.”
‘Cornelia, you have to—”
She lifted a hand to his mouth. “I know , Loth. You do not have to persuade me. Not anymore. I have seen what lies ahead.”
There was a long silence. Loth bowed his head, then pressed Cornelia’s hand more firmly against his mouth and kissed it before he let it go.
‘I need to do something,” Cornelia said eventually. “After all the death I have caused—”
‘You have caused no death! You have only been the receptacle for other people’s guilts!”
‘After all the deaths I have caused,” Cornelia said again, her voice very weary, “all I can do now is help. Mag grant me the strength I need.”
Loth felt tears sting his eyes, and balancing himself carefully on his hands, he leaned down and kissed Cornelia softly on the mouth.
‘You are Llangarlia,” he said, very soft, his lips still touching hers. “You are this land. There is a winter ahead such as I think we cannot imagine, but remember that spring always follows winter. And remember that whatever the deceitful promises of this false spring that Genvissa and Brutus have given us, you will be the one to bring this land back into sunlight again, Cornelia. You .”
‘Mag said to me,” she said, “that it would be many years, and many tears, but that it would happen.”
‘It will happen,” Loth said, now almost unable to speak through his tears. “It will happen.”
‘So many years,” Cornelia whispered, then raised her hand to Loth’s face, and laid her palm against his cheek.
ecevejsi EVENWEEKS PASSED. SPRING PASSED INTO SUM-
mer, and the skies passed from clouded to open and blue and warm. The sheep and cattle and goats dropped their young, and all were born healthy. A score of women within the Llangarlian and Trojan camps also gave birth, and mothers and infants grew hearty and strong. The crops in the fields and the fruits of the trees and vines waxed fat and hearty: this year’s harvest would be the best in a generation.