Brutus peered through the faint moonlight—it was close to the full moon, but the sky was heavily clouded—and saw a hill rising in the distance. It was a good size, girded about its base by several stands of trees, its slopes steep but smooth, its summit flattened.
He suddenly realized that for the first time since he’d arrived this area north of the Llan was completely free of mist or fog.
‘The Llandin,” she said softly, and Brutus could hear the awe in her voice. “It is a place of immense
power and holiness,” Genvissa continued. “It is the greatest of the Veiled Hills.
‘See”—again she pointed, this time to a vast tree standing at the base of the southern slope of the Llandin—”the Holy Oak, and beside it a spring-fed rock pool with water so clear and still that when you pour it into a bowl, and say the right words, you can see into the Far World.” “And do you do that often, Genvissa?”
‘Whenever I need to consult with my foremothers,” she said. “Yes.” They’d reached the oak tree now, and Genvissa indicated they should dismount.
Brutus jumped to the ground, then reached up to help Genvissa down. She rested her hands on his shoulders as she slid down, and smiled her thanks, then took his hand in hers, and led him to the foot of the tree, deep beneath its gnarled, twisting branches.
There was a faint, strange light here, and Brutus shivered. Feeling it, Genvissa tightened the grip on his hand, and led him several paces away to where, amid several large, moss-covered rocks, a small stream bubbled out from deep underground into a waist-deep pool. It steamed in the night air: the waters were warm.
It was from the water that the light emanated.
Again Genvissa’s hand tightened, and she drew Brutus close to her. “For many generations, countless generations, Llangarlia’s mother goddess Mag lived in the waters of the land. This spring was her favorite haunt. Sometimes”—she drew in a deep breath, resting her free hand on her belly—”when a woman wanted to conceive, she came here and prayed to Mag to gift her child a soul great in power and mystery. She washed these waters over her breasts, so that when she suckled her newborn, it would be nourished with the wisdom of the earth.”
Brutus studied Genvissa’s face. Her eyes were downcast in reverie, settled on the bubbling water. A great gentleness had settled over her features, an emotion Brutus had hitherto not thought her capable of, and without thinking, he lifted his hand and touched her cheek.
‘Did you come here,” said Brutus, “before you conceived your children?”
She looked at him, startled, then smiled. “Yes. I came here before I conceived each of my three daughters. But Mag is weak now”— gone, where I cannot find her—”and these waters pretty but ineffectual, and I doubt I will come here before I conceive my daughter-heir. There will be far more power in her making than these waters can give.”
There was a message in her eyes, and Brutus understood it very well. “Your daughter-heir… will her conception form part of the Game?” he said.
‘Partly,” she said, “but mostly her conception shall be part of that smaller, but no less holy game that is played between a man and a woman. The game between”—she paused—”you and I.”
He stared at her, not able to speak, feeling as if his entire body were frozen with a combination of longing and fear—fear that somehow this was all a dream, a phantasm sent by a malicious god who used hope to destroy.
Then, for no reason at all, Brutus remembered that night he and Cornelia had made love under the stars by the rock pools, and remembered how gentle she had been then, and willing, and sweet.
‘I have a wife, Genvissa. I cannot just cast her aside.”
‘Does she matter to you that much? Would a Kingman allow a wife to keep him from the Game, and the Mistress of the Labyrinth?”
He was silent, and the fact that he did not immediately agree with her infuriated Genvissa. But she hid her rage well, and all she did was smile, and lay her hand lightly on his chest. “If > ou had known of me and what I was before you married Cornelia, would you still have married her?”
‘No,” he said. “I wouldn’t, but you chose to appear to me as Artemis. If perhaps you’d chosen your true form, and your true state, then I might not have been so ready to take a wife when I did. Then you could have been my wife.”
‘Neither MagaLlans nor Mistresses of the Labyrinth are ever wives, Brutus.”
He grinned slightly. “Then how can you object to Cornelia?”
Genvissa drew in a long, deep breath. Brutus saw that she used it to calm herself. He was amused by her jealousy, and also gratified by it. That she was jealous of Cornelia gave him some much-needed leverage over her.
‘She can never compare to you, Genvissa,” he said softly. “What is Cornelia, but a girl, and a too-predictably tiresome one at that?”
Genvissa relaxed and gave him a brilliant smile. “As you say. We are lovers destined to power and immortality, and she is but a wife.”
He kissed her again, enjoying her taste, her softness, and all the promise of her.
Eventually, reluctantly, she pulled back, and laughed. “Climb with me,” she said. “Climb the Llandin with me.” eigbcHEY STOOD, BREATHING HEAVILY FROM THE climb, on the summit of the Llandin. Genvissa still held Brutus by the hand, their fingers entwined, and she drew him to the southern rim of the summit.
‘Behold,” she said simply, and the clouds parted, and silvery moonlight spilled over the land spread out before them.
The first thing Brutus saw was the great stretch of the Llan running east-west several thousand paces distant directly in front of him. Wetlands—tidal mudflats and marshlands—stretched on either side of it, making its shoreline indistinct, and giving great swaths of land a shimmering, mystical aspect in the moonlight.
He looked slightly to the west, and saw where the Llan turned south, and the Ty River flowed to meet it, its two arms enclosing about Thorney Isle in close embrace. On the other side of the Llan from Thorney Isle, Llanbank slumbered dark and unknowing, only a few trails of smoke marking the existence of the sleepers within.
Genvissa had followed the direction of his gaze, and now she drew his attention to the east, to a hill rising halfway between the Llandin and the Llan.
It was a little smaller than the Llandin, but had a Stone Dance atop its summit.
‘The Pen,” Genvissa said. “See”—Brutus followed her finger—”it also has a stand of trees at its base, and under those trees, as here at the Llandin, there is a sacred well. There, unlike where we stood, there is a small entrance into the hill, and if a man or a woman is brave, and has no misdeeds to mar their soul, they can follow the twists and turns of the rock tunnel to a great cave, whose roof is made up of great crystals. When you stand beneath this dome of crystal, and raise your torch, it is said that the light is brilliant enough to hurt your eyes.”
‘You have not been?”
She shook her head. “It is not important to me. Ah, Brutus, can you see, beyond the Pen, there, to the east, on the bank of the Llan, do you see those three smaller mounds?”
Forgetting the cave beneath the Pen, Brutus looked where she indicated. There, in the southeast, sitting virtually on the northern bank of the Llan, were three mounds only some twenty paces high. Two streams—the western one almost a small river—flanked the nearest of them. The wetlands had retreated here, and Brutus saw that the land on which these three mounds stood, and through which flowed the two streams, was solid and good.
Something flickered in his belly, and he knew what Genvissa would say next.
‘That is where we will build our Troia Nova,” she said softly, squeezing his hand, “encompassing those three mounds. The farthest from us, and the one closest to the Llan, is called the White Mount, and it, like the Llandin and the Pen, has a sacred well beneath it. The next mound, sandwiched in the middle, is Mag’s Hill, and the last, closest to us, is Og’s Hill. You can see where the ferry crosses the Llan, connecting the great northern road to the road leading to the coast. It is a good place, Brutus, commanding both the river and the roads, and taking as its base three of the Veiled Hills.”
Brutus drew in a deep breath. Here. Troia Nova.
‘By the gods,” he said. “This is an auspicious location. But”—he looked at Genvissa—”this site also encompasses deep troubles. I am a stranger, bringing with me many thousands of strangers, trampling into the most sacred site of your people to build—with a powerful foreign magic—a city such as Llangarlia and its people have never seen before… never even conceived of before. Are you enough to ensure that all opposition is quelled? By the gods, Genvissa, surely there will be some opposition.”