Their faces were frantic, wreathed in horror, yet their gaping mouths gave forth no sound.
‘Membricus!” Brutus shouted. “I could use your aid!”
And Membricus blinked, gathered himself, and pushed into the flowing throng to help as best he could.
DEIMAS YANKED CORNELIA ALONG AS FAST AS POSSI ble, but the girl was proving more than difficult. For every pace he managed to force her down the street toward the gates, she dragged him several paces sideways.
She kept calling out for her father, her voice frantic, and nothing Deimas could do would deflect her from her purpose.
‘Stupid girl!” he shouted at her. “Can you not see you will die if you linger?
Your father, wheresoever he be, is doomed, along with all your kin! Look! Look! See their feet sink deeper into the stone?”
Deimas was not sure what kind of magic Brutus had worked, but it was proving cruelly effective. All about him Dorians swayed in hopeless efforts to free their feet from the stone paving that held them fast.
Deimas even saw one man, one of Cornelia’s hired swords by the look of him, so desperate that he held his sword up high, then swung it down in a frightful arc, cutting through both his legs at the ankles.
He roared in agony, falling over and dropping his sword, but almost immediately tried to struggle forward, dragging himself by his hands.
His efforts were useless. As soon as he had fallen over, his hip had sunk into the stone paving, and he was stuck as fast as previously.
The man’s roar turned into a horrific, high-pitched squeal as he struggled desperately against the grip of the stone, his lower legs spraying blood over whoever came within three paces of him.
As Deimas watched, one hand still buried in the shoulder of Cornelia’s gown, the man thankfully fell senseless to the ground, and Trojans, seeking whichever was the quickest way forward, stepped uncaring over him.
Then a woman cried out, and pointed, and Deimas jerked his eyes in the direction the woman indicated.
To his right, and perhaps some eight or nine paces before him, stood the wall of a substantial house. It rose windowless and smooth some twelve paces into the air. Yet now its smoothness had been adulterated, for cracks spread from the ground upward, like fast-flowing rivulets of water.
The cracks were as wide as the palm of a man’s hand, and they were filled with gray, as if all the smoke that had disappeared from the sky had been drawn into their depths.
There were several more shouts, and Deimas jerked his gaze about. Cracks were spreading up every wall he could see.
The city was disintegrating.
To his left, Cornelia gave another lurch, trying to escape him, still crying for her father.
‘Curse you, Cornelia!” Deimas cried out, his fear and frustration combining into a fury that gave him enough strength to pull her struggling body close and to deliver her a stinging slap across her cheek.
She reeled away from him, and would have fallen save that Deimas still had tight hold of her gown, one of her hands to her reddened cheek.
‘Come!” Deimas said, and pulled her forward at a stumbling and, thankfully for the moment, unresisting trot down the street.
Every few paces they had to dodge another Dorian man or woman or even, horribly, a child, mired in the stone. Without exception the trapped Dorians twisted and turned, tried frantically to escape, their faces ravaged with despair, their hands held out for aid from those streaming past them.
None helped them.
Every so often Deimas glanced at Cornelia, and saw that her face was white (save for that cheek), and her eyes wide and appalled at the scene about her.
He hoped she felt some measure of guilt.
They managed to travel relatively unimpeded through the city to a point only some hundred paces from the gates. Around them the buildings were crisscrossed with wide cracks that seethed with gray; the buildings groaned, and some of them trembled, as if they knew their doom was upon them.
Deimas, although still anxious, was beginning to foster some small hope that he and Cornelia, and all other Trojans about them, were close to escape when, suddenly, Cornelia once more lunged to the side, managing to finally pull herself from Deimas’ grasp.
Cursing, he managed to push through the crowds of escaping Trojans about them to see her standing by what at first he thought was a statue attached to one of the buildings.
Then he realized Cornelia’s hands were twisted in her hair, and she was screaming, and that the statue was no statue at all, but Pandrasus, more than half fused into the wall of a building.
Cornelia cried out, and reached for her father, but just before she touched him, Deimas lunged forward and grabbed her, managing to pull her back from him.
‘You witless girl!” he cried. “Touch him and you risk being dragged into that wall as well!”
Pandrasus, his eyes wide and staring, was straining one of his arms toward his daughter writhing and sobbing within the circle of Deimas’ arms, but his arm was caught fast from elbow to shoulder, and all Pandrasus could do was waggle his hand helplessly at his daughter.
He tried to speak, but all that issued from his mouth was a moan… and dust, as if the mortar from the wall embedded in his back had been forced out his throat in his desperate efforts to speak.
‘He is dead, Cornelia. Leave him,” Deimas said.
‘Father!” she sobbed, reaching out to him again, and Deimas had to wrap both his arms tightly about her and physically wrench her away.
‘Deimas!”
He swiveled his eyes in the direction of the shout and felt a surge of relief.
Brutus and Membricus were pushing through the crowd toward them.
‘I can’t get her away from her father!” he said as the two men reached him.
Both Brutus and Membricus stared at Pandrasus, still straining hopelessly toward his daughter, then at Cornelia, who gave no sign that she realized her husband was at her side.
Membricus’ gaze went from father to daughter. “How is it she can still walk?” he said.
‘Her child is Trojan,” Brutus said, “and her legs are needed to carry it from this tomb. That is all that has saved her. Deimas, give her to Membricus and myself. We can drag her away, and you look exhausted.”
Deimas exhaled gratefully as Brutus managed to take Cornelia from him.
She struggled, still weeping, her arms still outstretched toward her father.
Brutus tightened his hold on his wife, and Membricus grabbed her wrists, but she struggled violently against them, kicking out with her feet, and started a high-pitched keening, as if that could break their hold even if her physical efforts were in vain.
She managed to free one of her hands, and hit Membricus a heavy blow on his head.
‘Foolish child!” Brutus seethed, and tightened his hold so much she gave a shriek of pain. “Do you see your father there, mired in the stone? Do you see your fellow Dorians, dying in the streets? Do you understand, can you understand, that their deaths are on your conscience? Can you ? If you had let all be, if you had merely allowed my people to walk out those gates and sail away, none of this would have been necessary ! You are death incarnate, Cornelia. indeed.”
HIGH ATOP HER SACRED HILL, GENVISSA BARED HER breasts to the sun, tipped back her head, and ran the flower lightly across her nipples.
She shuddered, then sighed, content, even though Brutus had not allowed that damned bloated wife of his to die within the crumbling mausoleum that was her home.
Never mind; Cornelia would always wait for another time (definitely before she had time to bear that ugly little son she was brewing) and the most important thing had come to pass. Brutus had passed the test. He was strong enough to manage the Game. What he could destroy, he could also build.
All was well.
All was very, very well indeed.
Genvissa closed her eyes against the sun’s warmth, and once more traced the flower over her nipples.
A WORLD AWAY TO THE EAST, ASTERION SAT WITHIN THE dark heart he had constructed for himself. The bone-handled knife was in his hands now, and he turned it slowly over and over as he thought.
Perhaps therewould be an enjoyment in his eventual triumph. The world had not gone
entirely to fools after all. Despite himself, Asterion was as impressed as Genvissa by Brutus’
skill: he would make a fine adversary .
But, as with everyone else Asterion faced, the man had a weakness— a weakness that would
eventually prove Asterion’s strength. The man’s power derived largely from his kingship bands
— Asterion was sure of it— and the kingship bands of Troy were very powerful. Possibly the