Hades Daughter (61 page)

“This city itself will be the magic,” Genvissa said, seeing the expressions in the women’s eyes. “It will be as a talisman to us, protecting us for an eternity against all evil and ill-favour, and using an ancient magic called the Game.”

“Tell us of this ‘Game’,” Erith said.

Genvissa cast a glance Erith’s way, but was satisfied by the curiosity she saw there. “The Game is used at the foundation of new cities, played first when the initial course of the city walls is laid down, then again when the walls have risen to their full height and are gated. It is a powerful spell-weaving that binds the city
to the land, as its protector, but,” she stressed, as a few Mothers murmured again, “its most potent benefit is that it attracts and then traps all evil besieging a country. Who can deny that evil and blight spread over this land and through our families?”

Genvissa paused, and when she resumed her voice was low, but powerful. “The Game will absorb that evil, trap it, and the blight that has plagued us will vanish as if it had never been. Llangarlia will be strong again, stronger than previously.”

“How does it work?” asked a Mother called Lilleth.

Genvissa smiled. She knew she would have them with this next. “It is danced,” she said, watching delighted surprise light up many faces. “A labyrinthine dance, very much like Mother Mag’s Nuptial Dance, that uses the power of the male and the female to bind and empower the spell-weaving. There are two dances. The first is performed when the foundations of the city walls are laid, and this is called the Dance of the Torches. This first dance raises the evil and blight from the land and traps it in the labyrinthine enchantment of the Game. Then, when the walls are completed, comes the second and last dance, the Dance of the Flowers, and this will trap the evil forever by erecting a gate of great beauty and sorcery at the entrance to the labyrinth.”

“And who will dance?” cried one of the Mothers.

“Myself, and Brutus,” said Genvissa. “I need a
strong
partner,” she looked sadly to Aerne, who, humiliated, turned his face aside, “who can withstand the forces of evil the Game shall attract.

“Brutus, the Kingman of the Game, and I will be the male and female forces that weave the Game and tie it to this land. Mothers, I know you distrust strangers, but within a few generations we will all merge into the one people. Look how easily my foremothers assimilated into your society.”

Ecub opened her mouth to say something, but Erith clamped a hand on the woman’s arm and sent her a warning glance.

“The Trojans
are
our only hope,” Aerne said. “They
are
the only thing that stands between us and total annihilation. If we refuse them entry, if we turn them away, then we risk two fates. One, the Trojans will not accept our denial, and will attack us as enemies, seizing our land. Second, even worse, is that they will sail away, taking their magic with them, and our grandchildren or great-grandchildren will suffer and die under the swords of the blue-faced invaders. Without them, Llangarlia is doomed. With them, it will survive into glory.”

Aerne and Genvissa continued to speak, arguing persuasively that the Mothers needed to take this step for the future of their peoples. It was a difficult decision, it was a decision that went against everything they’d ever thought right and proper, but it was the decision they
must
make, and it was a decision that they, the Gormagog and the MagaLlan,
knew
the Mothers were
courageous
enough to make.

“Do you think that this has been easy for
me
?” Aerne said. “First watching as the Darkwitch Blangan stripped me of my power, and then as Og failed into death. Watching this land succumb to blight and pain and knowing there was nothing I could do about it. You cannot imagine what a bitter blow it has been to me that my long struggle to ease Llangarlia’s plight has been in vain; what a bitter blow it is that now I say to you that I and Og are useless. Accept this Trojan magic, accept their Game and their Kingman, or die.”

It was enough.

When Genvissa asked if there were any dissenting voices, the Mothers gave her only silence.

“They capitulated?” Loth said, his eyes blazing.

“Aye,” said Mais.

“And you added your voices to theirs?” Loth said, looking at Mais, Ecub and Erith individually.

“We had little choice, Loth,” said Erith. Then, at his frown, she continued, “If we had spoken out we would have been dead by dawn. As it is, Genvissa will undoubtedly suspect us.”

They were standing on the northern bank of the Llan, slightly to the east of the White Mount. It was deep night, long after the Mothers had agreed in Assembly to the MagaLlan and the Gormagog’s plan: allow the Trojans to not only settle within Llangarlia, but allow them to build over three of their sacred hills. Ecub, Erith and Mais had been circumspect in meeting Loth, leaving it until late at night when most others were well in bed and gathering in sleep the strength they would need for tomorrow’s Slaughter Festival.

“She may not be confronted directly, Loth,” Erith continued. “You must know that.”

He snarled, more in frustration than anger, and turned away.

“What is this Trojan magic Genvissa speaks of?” Loth eventually said over his shoulder. “What is this ‘Game’?”

They told him what they knew, and at the end of it Loth was even unhappier.

“Evil? This Game will attract and then trap evil? What if it goes awry? What if it attracts…but doesn’t trap? I do
not
like this.”

Erith shrugged. “The Game will take the evil
from
this land, Loth. No Mother was going to argue against any means of doing that.”

“Not even you,” Loth said bitterly.

“What do you want, Loth?” Erith said, her nerves strung so taut that she was prepared to confront a man
to whom she normally only showed total deference. “For Mag’s and Og’s dear sakes, what do you
want
?”

“I want this land to shake off the Darkwitch’s power. I want this land to lie blessed under the benefice of Og and Mag, our Father and Mother, not some stone monstrosity that sits atop trapped evil. Is that so wrong, Erith? Is that so damned, cursed wrong?”

She hung her head, and it was Ecub who spoke next.

“She has taunted you with having no weapon, Loth. There is nothing left with which to fight her; not you, not your dying father, not even Mag, whom none of us can touch any more. The Mothers have agreed, the Game will be played. There is no weapon we can use against Genvissa.”

Loth was silent, then he looked up, his green eyes alight. “Yes, there is!”

“Cornelia,” said Erith.

“Yes,” said Loth. “Cornelia is the weapon. I don’t know how, or why, but even Genvissa is as instinctively afraid of her as
I
am instinctively drawn to her.
Cornelia
is the weapon. All we need to do is learn how to wield her.”

“What can we do?” Erith said.

He grinned. “Tomorrow is the Slaughter Festival,” he said. “There will be power about, weak as it might be. I will ask Coel to bring Cornelia to the summit of the Pen, but I will need you there as well.”

“We will be there,” Erith said.

“
T
hey agreed,” Genvissa had told Brutus as soon as she met him at her house that evening, and he had visibly relaxed.

“Good,” he said. “Tomorrow I can send Corineus south to arrange the passage of the rest of my people.” He’d chuckled at that. “I hope they have not settled in too happily while waiting for word from me.”

Genvissa had smiled, content at the light in his eyes, and, taking him by the hand, led him into her house.

Now Brutus sat with Genvissa by the fire, replete with the tasty meal her three daughters had prepared for their mother and Brutus.

“They are lovely girls, Genvissa,” Brutus said, watching lazily as the three girls sat gossiping and laughing over their spindles at the far end of Genvissa’s house.

Genvissa smiled, and leaned against Brutus. Apart from her daughters, she and Brutus were alone: Aerne, ill and weak, had elected to stay at one of the houses in Llanbank.

For the moment, almost dozing with the effects of the meal, Brutus was content to watch the girls. He almost grinned, remembering the performance they’d put on in the serving of the food. The three girls had been all wit and humour and unconsciously (perhaps) provocative movements as they laid dishes before him. In feature
they looked much like Genvissa herself, save that they were slightly shorter, slimmer and more girlish.

The eldest one, Llana, touched Brutus particularly. She had an air of sadness and loss about her eyes, and she was far less a child than the other two. Keeping his voice low, Brutus asked Genvissa about her.

“She still grieves for the child she lost a year ago,” Genvissa said, very low. “She conceived him when she was thirteen, bore him when she was fourteen, and lost him the same year.”

“How did he die?”

“A fever.” Genvissa shrugged. “Poor Llana. Still, she will no doubt bear more children.”

“I had thought your own daughters would be protected against this blight.”

Genvissa looked at him strangely. “My family must be seen to suffer, as does every other,” she said.

Poor Llana indeed,
thought Brutus and then, before he could follow that thought through with anything close to a judgement, Genvissa leaned more firmly against him, and he felt the heaviness of her breast against his arm.

His breath caught in his throat…and then he leaned back a little from her. “And you are sure about Asterion?”

“There is no need to talk of Asterion,” Genvissa said and, taking one of his hands in hers, put it to her breast.

He glanced towards Genvissa’s daughters, and, as he saw that they still bent their heads low about their spinning, ran his hand softly over her breast.

“We can’t do this,” he said. “If we lie together now it will ruin the order of the dances.”

Genvissa’s mouth twisted ruefully as Brutus dropped his hand from her.

“When I sailed towards this land,” Brutus continued in a quiet voice, “I dreamed of you all night, thought
of you all day. Now you are so close,
this
close, the waiting is torture.”

“And yet,” Genvissa breathed, moving close to him again, and putting her mouth to his ear, then to the back of his neck, then to his throat, “the Kingman and the Mistress of the Labyrinth may come together for the first time only on the night of the Dance of the Torches. And that night must wait until the foundations are ready. Months and months.”

He pulled her face to his, and kissed her. “You don’t need to remind me.” Then he pulled away completely. “Don’t do this to me now, Genvissa. You’re teasing me, for no purpose, for I am yours.”

“And yet you took a wife.”

“I did not know of you then. Do not worry about Cornelia. She is nothing to me.”

“Then put her aside. Renounce her. Give her to…to Corineus, perhaps.”

Brutus’ face hardened the moment she spoke, and something severe and uncompromising came into his eyes. “I will
not
give her to Corineus.”

Genvissa fought down a moment of panic. “Brutus—”

“If you are denied me for months to come,” said Brutus, “then I have need of a wife.”

“You cannot truly mean to lie with her.”

“Why does she upset you so much, Genvissa?”

“You know why. How many times has she betrayed you? Kept things from you? And Asterion…you have said yourself how she mentioned his name as if she expected him, and you saw her lying with him in vision—”

“But Asterion is no threat. This you keep saying. Should I think different?”

“Asterion
is
no threat.” Inwardly seething, Genvissa forced a pleasant look to her face. “I am jealous, Brutus. That is all. If I sought to alleviate my desire for
you in some other man’s bed, would you not also be dismayed?”

“Aerne…”

“He is an old man. I have not shared his bed for years.”

Brutus smiled, and the gesture was so gentle and so beautiful it brought tears to Genvissa’s eyes. “I can wait for you,” he said. “Cornelia does not tempt me.”

“If you find the waiting hard,” she said, touching his cheek with soft fingers, “and you need relief, then you may take one of my girls—”

Brutus rose suddenly, leaving Genvissa sitting awkwardly with her hand extended into empty air.

“You are surely the woman towards whom I have been moving all my life,” Brutus said, his voice flat, “but you must know that I am not a man who enjoys violating children.”

Before she could respond, Brutus was gone, and Genvissa was left staring incredulously after him.

Then where were your principles when you bore Cornelia down to bed?
Genvissa thought.
She was no older than my Llana.

“Mother?”

It was Llana, come to see what ailed Genvissa.

“It is nothing, Llana. Be a good girl, now, and see your sisters to bed.”

As her daughters moved softly about the house, Genvissa went to stand outside, staring into the blackness towards the distant Llanbank.

“Who are you, girl?” Genvissa whispered, unconsciously echoing what Coel had once said. “What are you? And what
danger
are you?”

Why had she been at Mag’s Dance when Blangan had died?

Why did she mention Asterion’s name, and feature in visions beneath his body?

Why, in the name of all that was honest, did Brutus demur about putting her away?

Why had he not killed her when he learned she had deceived him about Blangan’s death? Or even after Cornelia’s treacherous instigation of the Mesopotaman rebellion?

Why, why, why?

“Cornelia?” Genvissa said, narrowing her eyes. Don’t hurt her, Brutus had said.

Ah! He was bewitched only by her youth. If she died then he would not really miss her…

But best not to move until she had Brutus completely. The night of the Dance of the Torches.

Cornelia,
she thought, her mouth twisting viciously.
Cornelia is as good as dead.