Hades Daughter (74 page)

None disputed him.

Save the whispers in the heart of the Game.

There sat the shade of Silvius, grey and weary and heartsick at his continual failure.

He should have put a stop to Brutus as an unborn baby.

He should have put a stop to Brutus here in the heart of the Game.

He sighed, and his entire form trembled.

Beside him, the all-but-dead white stag sighed also, and Silvius lay down so his cheek rested on the shoulder of the stag, and together they slept.

Waiting.

Behind them, yet another shade, barely visible, but also caught through murder into the twisting of the Game.

Coel.

Silent.

Watching.

Waiting.

C
ador and Hoel, Erith’s surviving sons, carried Loth from that bloodied hilltop, while Erith and her daughter Tuenna aided me. We stumbled our way to the ferry and then back to my lonely, deserted house in Llanbank.

I was out of immediate danger, Erith’s cloth belt having staunched the flow of blood, but Loth…Loth was alive, but only just, and existing in such a state of agony that I thought I would have to scream myself, if only to vent some of my own horror.

Was this my fault, too?

Erith took charge as soon as we’d reached the house. She set Tuenna to stitching my neck back together, while she directed her sons to lay Loth on what had once been Aethylla and Hicetaon’s bed.

Once Tuenna was done, I looked at Loth. Erith and her sons had been busy while her daughter had attended me. Loth was quieter now, and I saw that Erith had given him some frenzy wine that she’d caused to have brought from her house.

I stumbled forward, desperate to see.

Loth lay on his side, facing into the centre of the house. A dribble of wine ran down his chin and his eyes lacked focus. Nevertheless, he saw enough to know I was there, and he held out a hand for me.

“Cornelia,” he croaked.

His hand trembled.

I walked forward some more, close to the bed, feeling Erith’s and her children’s eyes on me, and slowly lifted my hand to take his.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“Don’t be,” he said, and laughed a little.

It was a horrible, guttural sound, and I must have flinched, because he cut it off mid-chortle as he regarded me.

“Don’t be sorry,” he said. “There’s still you.”

“No.”

“There is still you,” he said again, and that thought apparently gave him some comfort, for he smiled very slightly, then lapsed into unconsciousness, so that Erith and her kin could work whatever aid they could on his body.

In the end it was not much. They saved Loth’s life, but they could do little else.

What Brutus had done to Loth’s back would never heal. Not completely.

The sword had cut deep, severing Loth’s spine just above the swell of his buttocks. Bone, muscle and tendon had been shattered, and no matter how carefully Erith and Tuenna picked and probed, they could not remove all the fragments of bone from Loth’s flesh.

Neither could they restore his spine. Loth lost all movement from his waist down, as well as control over his muscles. He became as a baby, save with the bitterness and hatred of a man, soiling and wetting his bedclothes several times each day, needing either myself or Erith or one of her children to roll him over and clean and dry him and change his bedding.

Erith’s two sons, Cador and Hoel, became his constant companions. Loth was a dead weight, and it needed men to help shift him. And, as the weeks
passed and his wound closed over—his physical wound, at least—then Hoel and Cador would lift him from the bed, wrap him well in blankets and furs, and carry him outside, and sometimes down as far as the river.

I think I existed in a state of constant misery as an accompaniment to Loth’s constant pain. My throat hardly troubled me, for Tuenna had done an excellent job, and I was left with barely a scar, but I was now completely isolated from the Trojan community, and most particularly from Brutus, and my son Achates. Brutus lived in the rapidly expanding palace in Troia Nova now, rarely leaving the just as rapidly growing city walls. Aethylla and Hicetaon lived with him, and Achates, my son.

And Genvissa.

I had lost my husband. I had lost my son. I had lost all to that witch-woman who was even now carrying Brutus’ child.

As was I, although Brutus refused to acknowledge her. My growing pregnancy was the only thing that kept me from throwing myself into the Llan. At night, listening to Loth muttering and twisting in his sleep, or to Hoel’s or Cador’s ever-present snores, I would wrap my hands about my small, hard round belly and feel my daughter inside.

I longed for the day when she would be born, when I could hold her in my arms, and feed her—
no one would take this child from me!
—and we could laugh at and love each other. Then perhaps the hurt at losing Brutus would dull.

Then I would cry, as silently as I could, and still always Loth would hear me, and he would sigh, and call my name softly.

Sometimes, not always, but sometimes I would rise from my bed and lie down beside him, careful of his injury.

He would put an arm about me, and hold me as I cried some more, and always he would say, “Genvissa. Genvissa has done this to you, as she has ruined this land. What will you do about it, Cornelia? What will you do?”

Over and over, his voice a bitter repetition, until his words were as close to me as the child growing in my womb.

Will you aid us now, Cornelia? Will you?

W
inter lengthened and turned to an equally hard spring, the frost growing thick and bright on the ground each morning at dawn. It was cold, but not overly wet, and work on the walls progressed apace. By the turn of the year they had grown to the height of a man. The wall itself was composed almost of three walls. On the outer and inner faces heavy, pale, dressed stone blocks rose smooth and unclimbable. Into the internal spaces of the wall, supporting the outer and inner faces of stone, men poured rubble and clay and flint, pressing it down as hard as they could. At three-score pace intervals semi-circular bastions protruded from the wall like the swelling bellies of pregnant women. Eventually these would be topped with guardhouses and filled with watchful eyes and hands filled with lances and bows, human defenders standing atop stone where once only the goodwill and care of Mag and Og had shielded the land and its people.

The wall was broken in four places. The greatest gate, called Og’s Gate by Trojan and Llangarlian alike, pierced the wall on its western aspect just beyond the foot of Og’s Hill itself. In the northern wall was a very low arch—barely rising from ground level—which allowed the Wal into the city, as well as a small and heavily fortified gate which allowed the northern road
exit from the city. Finally, on the southern aspect, which ran atop the cliffs along the northern bank of the Llan, there were two openings: one very wide, but equally low arch which allowed the Wal exit into the Llan, and a small gate at the Llan ferry’s northern wharf, where travellers would need to access the northern road which would, for its first part, run through the growing city of Troia Nova itself.

Inside the walls the city of Troia Nova was emerging from what was once free meadowland. There were still large patches of open ground—their green often buried beneath the hoar—where gardens and orchards would prosper in the spring and summer, but now gravelled roads and streets crisscrossed the entire enclosed area, and to either side of these roads and streets rose the emerging skeletons of houses and public buildings.

Many of the public buildings were of stone, but most of the houses were built in the Llangarlian manner: circular configurations, their walls of ill-dressed stone or of wattle and daub topped with conical roofs of thatch or, in a few cases, slate. The Llangarlian houses were easy and quick to build—by summer most of the Trojans hoped to be able to move themselves and their goods inside the walls. Eventually, the Trojans expected to replace the Llangarlian structures with the houses they remembered from their Aegean towns and cities, rectangular solid stone or brick houses. For now, however, the native style of building would suffice.

Brutus’ palace grew to cover the entire top of the White Mount. It was a beautiful structure, many-towered and -windowed, with deep eaves and balconies and airy rooms, hung currently with thick woollen tapestries and draperies against the Llangarlian winter and warmed with hot fires built in the huge central hearths of the main chambers.

Genvissa moved herself and her three daughters into the palace. No one opposed her; no one thought to. Genvissa’s power was complete. The blight that had afflicted the land had lifted; women and livestock gave birth easily, plants and landscape recovered from the malaise that had afflicted them. It might still be winter, but the change for the better was noticeable.

The Llangarlians whispered Genvissa’s name, as Brutus’, almost as that of a god. She and her Kingman had saved the land, and even if the strangeness of a city now covered half of the sacred hills, and if there was no Gormagog to watch over them (or, as was increasingly rumoured, no Og), then that was no matter, for there was Genvissa, and there was Brutus.

Cornelia, if she was remembered at all by the majority of the population (now an easy co-mingling of Llangarlians and Trojans), was regarded only with contempt. As Brutus’ former whorish wife and, it was said, a traitress who had caused the deaths of tens of thousands in her home city of Mesopotama (and of Coel, for if Coel had died then that was Cornelia’s fault as well), Cornelia’s company was rarely sought out.

Loth likewise. People still regarded him with some affection, even some respect, but his powerlessness—
and
his foolishness in trying to challenge Genvissa and Brutus, the pair who had led Llangarlia back into the sunlight—as well as his reclusiveness (Loth rarely left the immediate surrounds of Cornelia’s house) made the majority of people forget him.

For Llangarlia, life blossomed, and day by day the labyrinth drew more and more of the evil that had once afflicted the land deeper into its heart.

Its influence extended even beyond the shores of Llangarlia, but Asterion, growing safe in his mother’s womb, chose to disregard it. This time he would win, and the Game lose.

Often, at night, when Brutus was asleep, Genvissa would rise from his side, throw a heavy cloak about her naked shoulders, and walk to the balcony which adjoined their sleeping chamber. There she would stand for hours, immune to the frost, staring across the Llan and over the muddied and jumbled Trojan settlement to Llanbank, to where Cornelia shared her house with the crippled Loth.

Genvissa would stand, very, very still, one hand resting inside her cloak on her own swelling belly, thinking about Cornelia’s child.

Genvissa was not concerned about Achates. All men desired a son at some point, especially someone like Brutus who had been raised in a society where heirdom was passed down the male line. It wouldn’t happen here, of course, for Genvissa was determined that Brutus’ heir (and Genvissa’s heir, and heir to this powerful city and to the Troy Game, the only Game in existence and therefore the only Game that would ever be) would be their daughter, but Genvissa did not begrudge Brutus his son.

Time enough to do something about him in later years if Brutus’ attachment grew too strong.

But Cornelia. Genvissa could hardly believe that once
again
Cornelia had escaped Brutus’ deadly wrath. Dear gods, why would he not finally kill her? It made Genvissa doubt what Brutus said about Cornelia—that he did not care for her, that he regarded her only with disdain, that he would never again touch her or caress her or lie with her—because no matter how Genvissa arranged it, when it came to that killing blow, Brutus always hesitated.

Cornelia was not going to live, and this time Genvissa would do the deed herself. No mistakes. Not this time. Cornelia (
and
that damned daughter of hers!) would not see the summer.

Whatever the Llangarlians and the Trojans thought, the Game
was
still vulnerable. It had yet to be closed, and if anything happened to either her or Brutus before it was…

Every time that thought darkened Genvissa’s mind, her face twisted, and she looked over the darkened landscape to Llanbank, and she plotted murder.

One night, darker and wetter and colder than most, something else caught Genvissa’s attention.

Across the Narrow Seas, in the long house that was the residence of the king of Poiteran, King Goffar’s wife struggled in the agony of birth.

She had been in labour now over two full days, and she was growing weak.

King Goffar stood by her side, looking at the mound of her belly. He raised his eyes and stared at the two midwives standing on the other side of the bed.

They shook their heads slowly.

Goffar looked back to his wife, ignoring her pleading eyes, then his eyes slid to a table that stood to one side.

In its centre lay a twisted-horn handled knife that Goffar had come upon by chance in the forest five days ago. Admiring it, he’d taken it for his own.

Now it lay awaiting his will, its blade glinting in the torchlight.

Another movement caught Goffar’s attention. The baby, struggling for life within his wife’s belly.

He reached for the knife.

Two minutes later, amid his wife’s frightful shrieks, Goffar pulled a perfectly formed male child from the ruins of her belly.

“A son,” he cried. “A strong, lusty son.”

The child wailed, the sound announcing the truth of Goffar’s words, and one of its waving hands fell against the hilt of the knife still in Goffar’s hands, and the boy grasped it tight.