“Poor Cornelia,” Mag whispered to herself. “I am sorry to be the one to set you down such a path.”
There was a step in the great distance within the hall.
Mag raised her head. Her expression was calm.
Another step and then, in the shadows at the distant eastern end of the hall, a man stepped forward.
He was of a haunting dark beauty.
ASTERION WALKED SLOWLY. HE HAD EXPECTED THIS IN-
vitation, but he kept an expression of mild surprise on his face, as if both circumstance and stone hall were curious to him.
The hall stank of the girl he had seen giving birth beneath the Poiteran’s sword. Cornelia.
Asterion almost nodded to himself. Yes, Cornelia was going to be as useful as he had hoped.
He caught sight of the small, dark, and undoubtedly fey woman standing by the labyrinth carved into the floor of the hall. He smiled, and stepped confidently towards her. He was not even
going to have to work for Cornelia. The poor innocent was about to be handed to him on a plate.
MAG WATCHED HIM APPROACH, WATCHED HIM SMILE malevolently when he saw the word that was carved into the heart of the labyrinth.
“This is a place of great power,” he said, now standing at the edge of the labyrinth, opposite from Mag. Very slowly he began to walk about the outer rim of the labyrinth, playing ignorance to perfection. “Who are you?”
“I am Mother Mag, the mother goddess of a realm called Llangarlia where Genvissa, fifth daughter-heir from Ariadne, now seeks to build this.” She nodded at the labyrinth.
“Why am I here?” Asterion said. He was three parts of the way about the labyrinth now, every step deliberate, his unblinking dark eyes never once leaving Mag.
“You are here so that I may offer an alliance,” Mag said.
“You know who I am?” He had almost reached Mag now.
“Yes.”
Suddenly he was upon her, and he allowed his heavy hand to fall on her shoulder.
She jumped under his touch.
‘You are terrified,” he said, leaning down so he could whisper the words in her ear.
“I am filled with terror, yes, but I am not afraid of you.”
He drew in a sharp, affected breath, as if it were he who was afraid. “Have I met my match?”
She twisted away from his touch. “Do not make fun of me, Asterion. We both want the same thing, yet we are weak singly.”
Her face was averted from him, and she did not see the gleam of amusement in his eyes at her words.
“If we ally,”she continued, “then we will be powerful enough to stop Genvissa.”
“But why is it,” Asterion walked a few paces away, wagging a finger as if he deliberated a mighty problem in his mind, “that I feel that once you were allied with Ariadne.”
“I welcomed her into my land. I thought her magnificent. I thought she was what I had been seeking. But she betrayed me, and she betrays my land with her Game. If she constructs this Game you will be trapped forever and my land will be turned into a dustbowl. We were both once allied with Ariadne, Asterion. Once we both loved her. Now we suffer for it.”
He had turned back to her now, all affectation dropped. “And your proposal is…?”
She nodded about her at the stone hall. “That we use Cornelia to work our will for us.”
“The girl who just gave birth.”
“You know of her already?”
“Her screams drew my vision to the place where she gave birth. The land of the Poiterans.
They shall prove useful, I think.”
“You will be reborn among the Poiterans?”
“They seem a kindly enough race for my liking.”
“It will take you years to act on your own.”
Of course, you stupid bitch, Asterion thought, keeping his face neutral . This will not ever be over with a single sweep of the knife. What I plan is going to take far longer than just “years”. “,’ know this .”
Again Asterion walked away, as if considering the matter. In truth, there wasn’t much to be considered at all. He needed a tool, a knife-hand, and Cornelia would do as well—better— as any other. It also did no harm to allow Mag to think that he was indeed weak, and that he needed this alliance as much as she did.
Asterion stopped, his back to Mag, allowing his triumph a momentary release across his face.
He knew very well what Hera had told Mag, and what Mag now planned.
Fool! She had no idea of what power she was toying with .
“Very well!” he said, turning about on his heel. He offered Mag his hand, and she took it. “The bargain is made!” He grinned. “Shall we cement the bargain with the sweat of our bodies?”
” Don’t patronize me. Besides, you have no time. See? Go,’far of the Poiterans is already arranging your rebirth .”
KING GOFFAR OF POITERAN, FURIOUS HIS MEN HAD been driven back, stormed into his long house. He threw to one side his sword, and tore the cloak from his shoulders.
Beneath the cloak his body was naked, although glistening with sweat and the blue clay that had been carefully daubed into intricate blue designs across his belly and thighs.
His wife came to meet him, concern in her eyes.
He hit her, his rage finding an acceptable outlet in the person of his long-suffering mate.
She fell to the floor, a shocked gasp escaping her lips. Goffar leaned down, seized her by the hair, and, as she shrieked, dragged her to the bed pile by the fire.
* * *
IN HER BED GENVISSA WOKE, WIDE-EYED AND STARING, her heart thudding.
She sat up, staring about her, but could not discern the reason for her fear.
Then, just as she’d convinced herself that it had been a mere nightmare, and she lay down to sleep once more, she realized what it was.
Asterion was no more. He was dead.
Genvissa drew a deep breath and held it. What did this mean? Should she fear?
What if Asterion was about to reincarnate again?
Then Genvissa smiled, and laughed softly.
And what if he did? Brutus would be here soon, and they would build the Game into its full power within six months, a year at the outside.
There was nothing a mewling babe could do about that. Nothing at all.
Genvissa slept.
Cb&PGGR FOUR THE NARROW SEAS N THE EVENT, THE CROSSING OF THE SEA BETWEEN the land of Poiteran, where Cornelia had given birth, and the island of Albion took two days.
A stiff north-northwesterly wind sprung up as they turned west, and combined with a strong tide, the fleet was pushed a little farther south and west than Brutus had originally wanted.
Nevertheless, when one of Hicetaon’s men woke Brutus at dawn, Brutus knew why.
The fore-looker had sighted land.
Leaving Cornelia sleeping, the baby safely wrapped and held tight in her arms, Brutus threw on a tunic against the cool wind and hurried forward.
Hicetaon, a bloodstained bandage wrapped about his head where once his left ear had been, was standing by the stem post of the ship.
Before them, just visible in the dawn’s faint lightening, rose a line of green-swathed cliffs. In several places the face of the cliffs had crumbled, sending the trees and under-vegetation tumbling into the sea, and in these gashes white chalk glowed eerily.
Hicetaon nodded to the line of cliffs. “Is this it, Brutus? Is this what we’ve been sailing and fighting toward all these past months?”
Brutus stared at the coastline before them, a tight knot of excitement in his gut. “Aye. This is the island of Albion, and here the realm of Llangarlia. I know it. I feel it.”
Hicetaon, nodded, and Brutus suddenly noticed the shadows under his eyes, and the lines etched into his face. “You have not slept.” “No. My head aches abominably, and the wound still drains.” “The physician…” “Has seen it, and mutters darkly about the blade that sliced into me.” Hi cetaon stood straight, and shrugged. “It is a wound, no more, Brutus. I am fit enough to continue.”
‘Have you sent a man to rouse Corineus?”
‘Aye, and Deimas as well,” Hicetaon replied. He hesitated, his gaze returning to the cliffs. “I pray to all
gods that be, Brutus, that this land finally brings the Trojans luck. That here, at last, we can rest in the favor of the gods.” He paused. “Surely… surely there can be no more ill luck left in this world that we have not already endured?”
Brutus shifted uneasily, his mind filled with the image of the great Minotaur Asterion atop Cornelia’s body.
‘We have left ill luck well behind us,” he said finally. “Of this I am certain.”
WITHIN HALF AN HOUR, JUST AS THE SHIPS WERE TURN-ing into the wind to tack north along the coast, Corineus, Blangan, Deimas, and Cornelia, who had insisted on joining them, stood with Brutus and Hicetaon on the small deck by the stem post. Cornelia walked carefully, her post-birth discomfort still obvious, but she looked healthy and her color was good (and her eyes unusually bright as she stared at the distant coast); Aethylla had privately remarked to Brutus as she’d taken the infant Achates away for his morning feed that Cornelia was recovering well from the birth.