She stepped into the pool and, despite its apparent shallowness, sank from sight.
MAG’S REALM WAS ONE OF EMERALD LIGHT AND ETER nal space. As Genvissa sank deeper and deeper, she caught sight of strange ethereal creatures at the very edge of her vision, sprites from the Far World, Mag’s familiars.
Where is she? Where is she? Genvissa hissed at them. Where is the ancient hag ?
There was no answer, save a scattering as the sprites withdrew, and Genvissa hissed once more.
Where is she? Where is she ?
But Mag, stunningly, had gone.
AS GENVISSA HAD STEPPED INTO THE WATERS SO MAG had summoned every remaining scrap of power she’d still commanded and did what Genvissa would never have expected her to do—flee into the darkness of the unknown beyond Llangarlia.
She risked annihilation, for this was alien to her, and she could do little to protect herself were she to be attacked.
Leaving herself vulnerable to Genvissa, however, was a far worse fate. Better the unknown than the Darkwitch.
Almost as soon as she had left the boundaries of Llangarlia’s magical protection, Mag felt something reach out for her. At first wary, she resisted, then realized that this presence was comforting, reassuring, sisterly , rather than aggressive or destructive.
It most certainly was not Genvissa.
Sister? whispered a voice at the very limits of its reach.
Who are you? Mag responded, not yet ready to trust entirely.
My name is Hera, said the voice, and I have somewhere for you to hide. I have someone who can aid you. Will you come with me ?
Mag allowed herself to follow the voice, and in the blink of an eye she found herself standing in something so abhorrent she gagged instinctively, managing to stop herself retching only by the most extreme effort.
She brought her stomach under control and stood straight, looking about her. She stood in the center of a stone hall so vast there appeared to be no end to it. It stretched east to west—Mag felt, if not saw, the presence of the rising !O sun toward the very top of the hall—and above her a golden dome soared into the heavens. Beneath her feet lay a beautifully patterned marbled floor; to her sides soared stone arches protecting shadowy, mysterious spaces.
Mag relaxed a little. It was not as bad as she had first thought. As a creature of the fey, the womb and the water, she usually hated beyond measure any enclosure of stone, but this hall had a warmth about it, a comfort, as if… as if…
‘You stand in a womb,” said a woman’s voice, and Mag recognized it as the voice of she who had called out to her. Hera.
She turned toward it, and saw a woman approach her from beneath one of the side arches. She was tall, graceful, and had about her the faint aura of power, but Mag could see that she was dying.
Streaks of decay stretched up and down the woman’s arms, and marred her smooth cheeks.
‘Hera,” Mag said.
Hera nodded, and smiled, then held out her arms to her sides, displaying them. “See what the Darkwitch Ariadne has done to me.”
‘Ariadne was the first of the Darkwitches to come to Llangarlia’s shores,” Mag said. “I trusted her.”
‘As did we,” said Hera. “Once I was one among many; now I am the only one left, and I am close to death. Soon what once was many will be none. Mother Mag, Ariadne’s daughter-heir will do this to you as well—”
‘She already has! She has broken the power of Og, and drained me to—”
‘Hush, Mag. I know. Listen to me. If I say to you that I can give you the power, the key , to undoing Ariadne and her daughter-heirs’ darkcraft, will you take it?”
Mag did not even have to think about it. “Yes.”
‘It will be a strange power to you. Can you accept that?”
‘Yes.”
‘And in order to wield it, to build the circumstances in which you can wield it, you shall need to make the most loathsome of alliances. Can you do tfeaf?”
‘Yes. If it will restore my land, then yes. Yes.”
‘Then look below you,” Hera whispered, “and see what the Darkwitches used to destroy me and mine, and are using to destroy you.”
Mag looked down, and to her surprise saw that she no longer stood on a marble floor, but on a plain sandstone floor into which had been carved the outlines of a unicursal labyrinth. She and Hera stood in its very heart, on a flat gray rectangular stone that had carved in it a most strange set of symbols: IG ‘It is a prophecy,” said Hera. “I cannot read it, for it is a strange language, but I know what it means.”
She hesitated.
‘Yes?” said Mag.
‘It means,” said Hera, not lifting her eyes from the stone slab, ” I will rise again.”
‘You?” said Mag.
Hera shook her head. “I will never rise again. It is hope and darkness which will be reborn, and you must be the one to manipulate them both so that it is hope which prevails. Only you, and I pray you have the cunning.”
She sighed, and the sound shuddered through her. “Mag, we stand in the heart of the labyrinth, and it is this which Ariadne used to destroy me and mine, and which her daughter-heir Darkwitch—Genvissa?—now deploys against you and against your land. It is called the Game, and I am going to teach it to you, Mag, that you know what you face, and so that one day you can teach it to she who can—perhaps—use it for its true purpose rather than the dark one that Genvissa turns it to. Used well, Mag, the Game is a great and glorious thing. Used darkly…”
‘I will teach it to… who? Hera, I don’t understand.”
Hera nodded toward the eastern end of the great hall.
There walked a girl on the verge of womanhood. She paced slowly, her eyes looking up and about her, clearly overawed by the surroundings.
She did not see the two goddesses standing in the heart of the labyrinth under the dome.
‘Her name is Cornelia,” said Hera, “and she is your last remainingweapon.”
Just then the girl looked up, and started, as if she had finally seen Mag and Hera.
‘This”—now Hera cast her eyes upward—”is her womb, Mag, and in it is not only your succour, but the only hope that you have.”
‘And this most loathsome of alliances?”
Hera actually laughed. “Oh, I have so much to tell you, Mother Mag. Bend close now, and listen…”
FAR, FAR AWAY, A YOUTH OF HAUNTING DARK BEAUTY sat within his scrawled labyrinth in the dirt of the high Himalayan pass. Before him lay the knife, but Asterion no longer looked at it. Instead, he stared into the middle distance, his eyes glazed and unseeing as he contemplated the strange alliance he had just witnessed.
Resurgam… it is hope and darkness which will be reborn, and you must be the one to manipulate them to ensure only hope prevails.
IG Asterion was astounded. Did they think they could manipulate him? Gods, did they also think he was as weak and helpless as a baby ?
Had the entire world gone to fools? It was of no matter, of course, all this only worked to Asterion’sadvantage, but he was beginning to wonder if there would be any pleasure in his eventual victory at all .
“Resurgam indeed, my fine ladies,” he said, “but there will be no hope in that black, bubbling day. Not for you, not for anyone.”
CbAPGGR GblRGGejM MESOPOTAMAITHIN THE HOUR, NO CASUAL PASSERBY
could have believed that a battle had recently been fought in the gorge, and that scores of chariots and horses and hundreds of men had been consumed by the river.
The Acheron burbled peacefully over its shallow bed, the cool shadows of trees quivered to and fro at the edges of great pools of sunlight, and birds and small animals rustled within the forests that lined the gorge walls.
The only thing that might have indicated a battle were the groups of men who sat cleaning their swords and armor in the patches of sunlight. But, then none of them were wounded, or even out of breath, and they were calm and cheerful, and if they were cleaning swords then that might have been merely because of the damp of the morning dew.
But if that passerby had stopped, and peered closer, he might have seen that the swords and armor plate being so carefully cleaned were stained with the blood of men, and that, under one tree sat an older man and three younger ones, all dejected, and all carefully guarded.
DEIMAS, WHO’D WATCHED FROM HIGH IN THE GORGE, had drifted down to join Brutus, Membricus, and Assaracus. Now the group of four men sat under a tree some little distance from Antigonus and his three sons. During the brief battle of the Acheron, Brutus had realized quickly Antigonus’ value—his insignia were clearly those of an important man, and the three younger men he’d been calling out to were just as clearly very dear to him—but it was only in the past minutes that Assaracus had told him exactly who he’d captured.