On the northern bank of the Llan the walls grew to their full height, the gates for the main entrance to the city were built and hung, although not closed, and the preparations for the final dance of the Game neared completion.
Genvissa’s belly swelled toward her daughter’s birth, and the Mistress of the Labyrinth spent much time in laughter and joy as she toured the city with her partner in power, Brutus.
Across the river, in her darkened, lonely house in Llanbank, Cornelia grew stronger. She made a complete physical recovery from her daughter’s tragic birth, and an emotional one, too, for to many a.
person’s amazement, Cornelia often seemed almost cheerful.
They did not know that late at night when Hoel and Cador slept, Loth and Cornelia talked quietly for many, many hours.
If there were dark circles under Cornelia’s eyes, it was not through pain or loss, but through mere lack of sleep.
The weeks turned, the walls had their final cap stones put in place, Llan-garlia basked in the warm summer days, and, finally, the eve of the summer solstice arrived, and it was time for the final dance of the Game.
The Day of the Flowers.
THE FINAL DANCE OF THE GAME, THE DANCE OF THE Flowers, was held at dawn on the day of the summer solstice. The initial Dance of the Torches had been held at night, symbolic of the evil it was to trap. The Flower Dance was held at dawn, symbolizing the dawn of a new age of prosperity and happiness for the city the Game protected.
Evil would be trapped forever by the great sorcery of the flower gate that Brutus and Genvissa would erect at the entrance to the labyrinth.
In the hour before dawn people gathered on Og’s Hill. The labyrinth still lay open to the sky—after this dance was done Brutus would cause a temple to be built over it, sealing it forever against those who would unravel the Game and ensuring the city’s integrity against all attack.
The dancers were there, in one line this time, and still in alternating ranks of young men and women.
Now, however, they bore flowers rather than torches. They wore the flowers in garlands about their heads, and carried them in their hands, and where they had once held a ribbon to bind them, now they held a chain made of flowers. They encircled the labyrinth in a complete circle, but at a distance of some three or four paces, leaving a wide pathway between their line and the outer ring of the labyrinth.
They stood still, awaiting the first light of the dawn.
Brutus and Genvissa, both robed in luminescent white linen, stood in the space inside the circle of dancers and outside the outer wall of the labyrinth. Each stood a quarter circle away from the entrance, one on either side of the labyrinth.
As before, there was an assembly of witnesses. Many of the Mothers were there, although not as many as had witnessed the initial dance as the need for as many hands as possible to bring in the summer harvest had kept most Mothers close to their homes.
Of those Mothers that were in attendance, Erith, Mais, and Ecub were the only ones whose faces looked as though they were there to witness a catastrophe rather than a triumph.
Hicetaon, Corineus, and Aethylla were there, together with Deimas and some two score of Trojan elders. They were joined by a similar number of Llangarlians, daughter-heirs of the Mothers in attendance, and some of the elder brothers and sons.
Cornelia was there, standing slightly apart from everyone else, as she had lived slightly apart from everyone else these past months. Her gown was drab, her long, free-flowing hair slightly unkempt, her face very thin and pale… but her eyes were calm and steady.
Loth, watching from ten or twelve paces away, thought that her weight loss and the slightly emaciated lines of her face suited her. She’d lost entirely her girlish demeanor and, while she could not compete with Genvissa’s fertile beauty, still managed a dignity in her lingering sadness that Genvissa could not match.
Cornelia, finally, had grown up.
It would be enough. Cornelia, as Mag had said, knew what had to be done.
‘Loth?” whispered Hoel at his side. Hoel had carried Loth from the house to this hill without so much as a puff of breathlessness. Now he leaned down anxiously to where Loth sat on a broad stool, blankets wrapped about him and under the stool so that he could the more easily maintain his balance.
Loth waved a hand dismissively. “I am well enough,” he said. “Now, we should be quiet. Look, they are about to begin.”
The first rays of dawn had lit the hill, and the circle of dancers began to move. They danced sunwise about the labyrinth with slow, sensual movements, dipping and swaying, and holding out their flowers as if in offering to the strengthening rays of the sun.
They sang as they danced, a soft, rhythmic hymn that was accompanied by the aching, haunting beat of several drummers sitting to one side. Inside their circle, Genvissa and Brutus also began their dance. If the outer circle of dancers was sensual, then Genvissa’s and Brutus’ movements were the height of sexuality without ever descending into coarseness or lechery. Genvissa was stunning. Heavily pregnant, she nevertheless still moved with a grace and a fluidity that even the most nubile of young virgins would have envied. Her arms extended full and round, her legs, where they emerged from the thigh-length slits in her robe, were long and deliciously limber. Her hair hung free, slipping with raven silky suppleness over her shoulders and back and arms, her face was serene and beautiful, her eyes closed as she danced to the rhythm of drums and song.
Brutus, likewise, danced with the full strength of his confidence and sexuality. His movements were stronger than Genvissa’s, more powerful, but even so, nonetheless subtle and haunting. The armbands of his kingship glinted with every slow, deliberate movement of his limbs. His eyes never left Genvissa’s beautiful form.
The circle of dancers now increased the rhythm and tempo of their movements. As the circle passed toward the entrance to their labyrinth, its line dipped inward, and as each dancer passed the opening, she or he tossed down the flower they carried in a graceful arc.
The flowers, although apparently tossed without concern as to how they fell, did not pile up haphazardly at the labyrinth’s entrance. Instead each one moved slightly as it fell, so that the gradually accumulating flowers formed a pattern, a weave, at the entrance.
Loth, watching, saw that it was the movements of Genvissa and Brutus that controlled the flowers.
O They were weaving them into a gate, or a door, that would permanently seal the labyrinth and the evil within it.
And Brutus to Genvissa, Loth realized. If they completed this dance, no one would ever best them.
He caught Cornelia looking at him, and she inclined her head, softly, sadly.
She took a step forward.
Loth grimaced, both fearing and embracing what approached.
Cornelia took another step forward, no one seeing her, their eyes fixed on Brutus and Genvissa, and her right hand crept toward her robe, toward the deep pocket that ran down its right seam.
Then, as Brutus and Genvissa moved to within two paces of each other, their hands outstretched to clasp over the strange weave of flowers that hovered over the entrance, Cornelia ran forward.
She ran lightly, as if she had suddenly cast aside all her doubts and cares.
She ran quickly, too quickly for anyone to react, even Brutus who could see her approaching behind Genvissa’s back.
She ran surely, truly, and Genvissa never even knew she was there.
As she ran, Cornelia drew from the deep pockets of her robe a knife, wickedly sharp, with a curiously twisted bone handle.
‘Mag!” she cried as, with one final, long stride, she slapped her free hand on Genvissa’s shoulder, and as the woman’s head whipped about, her eyes both wild and startled, with her knife hand Cornelia sank Asterion’s malignant blade to its hilt into the base of Genvissa’s neck.
EVERYTHING STOPPED: THE BREATHING OF THE WATCH ers; the very movement of the dawn stars; the rising of the sun; the running of the deer in the forests above the Veiled Hills.
Then movement resumed. Cornelia, her face and eyes relieved and anxious all at once, took a pace back, as if to avoid the sudden, vicious spurting of blood from Genvissa’s neck. Genvissa, twisting as she sank to the ground so that her eyes, her wild, vicious eyes, never left Cornelia’s face. Brutus, crying out, reaching for Genvissa.
The mysterious weave of flowers, collapsing into an untidy heap at the entrance of the labyrinth.
Loth, laughing, the sound soft but joyful.
People, moving.
But none moved as fast or as maliciously as did Genvissa.