There was nothing that could be done about it. No means existed to reunify the Og power now divided between Aerne and his son, Loth. If Loth had been a daughter, it was conceivable that Aerne
could then have lain with his daugh ter (and granddaughter, as she would have been) when she came of age, and the son thus produced could have reunited the Og power into one body… but Gormagog had planted a son into Blangan, a son, a useless son…
For all of Mag’s power, and the power of the MagaLlan, the land itself began to wither and die.
Cattle and sheep birthed thin, deformed offspring. Crops tended more to failure than to bounty, and the winters extended well past their allotted span so that miserable sleet and destructive frosts afflicted the land even in the height of summer.
The daughters of Llangarlia, who traditionally had enjoyed healthy pregnancies and easy labors, now began to miscarry and, worse, die during childbirth. Even if both mother and child survived the perils of childbed, the infants often perished in the first few months of life, and their mothers proved barren of further children.
Older children fell victim to strange fevers, or unexplainable wasting diseases.
The dark creatures of the forests, the wolves and bears and the monstrous badgers, strayed from beneath the trees and into the fields and the sheep runs of the villages, not only destroying crops and hard-bred livestock, but mauling and ravaging adults and children alike.
Llangarlia was dying, and the powerless Gormagog, and his equally powerless and angry shadow, Loth, could do nothing.
Og was sliding toward death, and as he did, he dragged Mag with him. Unaffected as Mag was by the initial splitting of power when Aerne lay with Blangan, as her union with the crippled Og failed, so also did Mag’s power wane. Mag could do nothing for the land without a strong mate at her side.
Then, in the twenty-sixth year of the calamity, the MagaLlan, Genvissa (daughter of the MagaLlan who had presided over the disaster, and sister to Blangan), spoke to the Gormagog and to Loth, and said that she thought she could help. She spoke long and gently to them over many weeks, knowing they would resist her plan, knowing it would offend their male pride, but knowing that eventually they would also agree, for in this they had no choice.
Llangarlia must survive before all else.
THEY SAT ATOP THE MOST SACRED OF THE VEILED Hills, the Llandin. It was dawn, the time when minds were the clearest and the power of the land was the nearest.
‘Why?” said Loth, leaning forward, his dark green and faintly luminous eyes unblinking and intent.
“Why must you do this?”
The MagaLlan, Genvissa, regarded him calmly. Loth’s malformed, horrific skull was scratched deeply in places, the blood scabbing into unbecoming lumps in his thin hair, and Genvissa idly wondered which daughter of which House had so marked him.
It must have been a wild night.
As impotent as the Gormagog and Loth might be in the ways of power, their maleness had not suffered when it came to bedding the daughters of Llangarlia. It was almost as if they both somehow hoped to redeem that one malevolent bedding with each subsequent girl they bore down beneath them. It
was a useless effort, but Genvissa understood their need.
She was also a recipient of it herself, having borne Aerne three daughters over the past sixteen years.
‘There is the why,” she said to Loth, waving a hand toward the settlements south of the Llan. “This season over eleven daughters have died in childbirth, barely a half of the livestock born will grow into maturity, and a third of the crops has fallen to the mold blight. Can you help, Loth?” It was cruel, she knew, but the need was great, and if she didn’t persuade them soon then the chance would pass her by.
Loth’s lip curled, and he sat back, wondering if Genvissa hid a sneer behind her beautiful, serene face.
His feelings for Genvissa were a mass of conflicting emotions. He resented and desired her, reasonable reactions given her power compared with his relative lack of it, and her beautiful, seductive body that often had him sweating with frustrated desire.
But Loth also deeply distrusted Genvissa, and yet he could not say why. Unable to hold Genvissa’s even gaze, Loth looked at his father, Aerne, sitting hunched over his belly as if his impotency in the face of this crisis might send him to his grave.
‘We should take this to an Assembly,” said Aerne. His voice was soft, but even if his spiritual and magical powers had diminished into infirmity, his voice still held a vestige of his traditional authority. “The Mothers of Llangarlia’s Houses should meet on this.” He hesitated, and all remaining remnants of authority evaporated. “Shouldn’t they?”
‘The Mothers are not due to assemble again until the Slaughter Festival,” Genvissa said, remembering how powerful Aerne had been when she’d been a child. Now all that power had seeped away, along with his decisiveness, and Genvissa’s respect had vanished with it. He’d fathered three daughters on her, but their beauty and power was all from her, not him. He’d merely planted the seed. “That is almost a full year away. We cannot wait.”
‘We could call an extraordinary Assembly,” said Loth, insistent where his father hesitated and wondering why it was that Genvissa did not call an Assembly. Surely her plan demanded the consultation of the Mothers?
‘t’tVhy didn’t she want to call them?
Aerne looked at his son, and something he saw in Loth’s face made his back straighten. “We could indeed,” he said.
The skin around Genvissa’s eyes tightened momentarily, then she smiled, leaned forward, and put a warm hand on Aerne’s bare thigh. The movement made the material of her soft linen robe strain against her breasts and hips, accentuating both her sexuality and her success as a mother, and Loth, watching Aerne carefully, was appalled to see his father’s eyes actually water with desire.
‘Aerne,” she said, her voice soft, persuasive, compelling. “Would it not be best to delay a consultation with the Mothers? Then we can see if my plan works. Why get their hopes up with an Assembly now?
We should wait. Wait until we are sure of my plan’s success. Then we can put it to the Slaughter Festival Assembly. When we are sure.” Her hand tightened, gripping Aerne’s slack, aged flesh, and Loth looked away, sickened.
” Strange magic!” he said, spitting the words out as if they were pig filth. Genvissa’s plan repelled him, but only, if he was honest with himself, because its very existence highlighted his own inadequacies.
“What need have we of foreign magic?”
‘Every need, Loth.” Genvissa straightened, lifting her hand from Aerne’s thigh. She looked at Loth, her demeanor exuding certainty powered with a little impatience, as if Loth himself were the cause of the land’s troubles.
Then again, Loth thought, there was every chance that is what Genvissa did think. She had ever been impatient with him.
If only Loth didn’t exist, if only he hadn’t been conceived that fateful night, then Gormagog’s power would remain intact and Llangarlia would never have been overcome with blight.
Loth could imagine the words repeating themselves over and over in Genvissa’s mind.
Loth had no idea how wrong he was.
‘Og is impotent, perhaps even dying,” Genvissa continued. “We need a strong male magic to counter his lack, and to combine with my womanly Mag power to weave a web of protection once more over this land. I know where I can find this maleness. This… potency .”
There, the cruel word was said. Genvissa saw Aerne’s face flinch, and Loth’s set into mottle-cheeked animosity, but she steeled herself against their hurt. What she did was for her foremothers, from whom she had inherited her strange exotic darkcraft, and even darker ambition.
‘Og’s power may revive—” Loth began.
‘Og’s power has failed to revive in these past twenty-six years, Loth. How can you say, ‘Wait a little longer’? We must act now , or our land will die! I can bring that magic to Llangarlia, no one else.”
Genvissa looked to Aerne, and he nodded, his face resigned.
‘If we must, Genvissa. If we must.”
‘We must!” she said. “Mag demands it. She needs a mate of potency… not what she must endure now.” She paused, looking between both men. “The Mag is strong in my womb,” she continued, referring to the Mag magic that resided in every Llangarlian woman’s womb, but which flowered at its brightest in hers. “I can act. I can save this land. How can you think to prevent me?”
Loth opened his mouth to speak, but his father silenced him with a heavy hand on the younger man’s arm.
‘Then do it, Genvissa,” Aerne said, his voice thick with self-loathing. “Do it. Bring your strange magic here, and use it in a spell-weaving that will save us. Do if.”