Coel straightened up from his position crouched against the point where the thatched roof met the outer walls, his expression thoughtful.
The “Game”? This was the Trojan magic Genvissa had brought to Llangarlia? And Genvissa was this “Mistress of the Labyrinth”?
This he must tell Loth, and soon.
But…Cornelia. Coel couldn’t believe that she’d kept so much silent. She’d protected him, she’d protected Ecub, she’d protected Mag in that she had not told Brutus of the Dance or of some of the mysteries she had been privy to.
I do not deserve such a wife as you, Brutus had said, and Coel agreed wholeheartedly with him. Brutus most certainly did not deserve a wife such as Cornelia.
All Coel’s curiosity regarding Cornelia resurfaced a hundredfold. Yes, she’d told Brutus about Loth, but that was to be expected. Genvissa had placed Cornelia at the scene, and Cornelia had to tell some of the truth or risk further discovery.
Loth had to hear all of this. Now.
Besides, Coel was desperate to tell Loth that he believed Blangan innocent of the original darkcraft, and to learn what, if anything, had happened between Genvissa and Loth.
Coel looked about. Bladud was lazing about in the mid-morning sun at the door of a house some distance away. If anything else interesting was going to happen inside this house, then Bladud could just as easily spy as Coel.
Coel jogged towards him, whistling softly to catch Bladud’s attention as he drew close.
“I have a task for you,” he said as Bladud rose.
Once again astride his stocky, shaggy horse, Coel rode eastwards through Llanbank until he reached the outer market area and livestock pens of the town. Here the main road from the south-east coast joined the north–south road, and here, three times a year, the major trading and market fairs of Llangarlia were held. Livestock traded hands, shepherds won themselves work for the next year, tin and copper from the mines in the far west were traded for gold and silver, and for fabric from the foreign merchants who had sailed up the Llan from the coast eager for the metals to take back to their homelands.
Coel turned his horse along the northern road which twisted through the mud flats and tidal marshes of the Llan as it flowed east towards the coast. There was no place to ford the river here, the water being too deep, but a sturdy ferry operated to transport the traffic to the northern road where it continued at the far bank.
He was in luck. The ferry was waiting on the southern bank, the ferryman looking pleased to see someone to distract him from the boredom of his morning.
“Few people on the road today?” Coel said as he led his horse into the flat-bottomed boat.
The ferryman nodded towards the deep bank of fog on the northern shoreline of the Llan. “It makes people think twice,” he said, “even though the road skirts the dangerous places.”
“Well, that’s as it should be,” Coel said, and the ferryman nodded, now too busy with his oars (and with shouting at the two other oarsmen to put their backs into it) to answer.
Besides, he knew Coel, and he knew Coel had no reason to be afraid of the mist.
On the far side, Coel thanked the ferryman and his assistants, saying that he would sacrifice metal on their behalf.
Pleased, the ferryman bobbed his head, and grinned contentedly. “Will you be wanting transport back to the southern shore?” he asked.
Coel nodded. “Wait for me. I should not be long.”
From the ferry, Coel rode northwards for a time along the road. It led through the eastern sector of the Veiled Hills—many of the six sacred mounds and hills rose to the north-west, but two of the most sacred mounds were directly to his east—but was safe enough for the ordinary traveller so long as he or she did not leave the road.
But Coel was not especially ordinary and he knew Loth would give him protection, so when he’d ridden only some four or five hundred paces he turned his horse off the road towards the north-east where, a short ride away, lay the edge of the great sacred forest.
Where ran Loth.
Normally Coel would find Loth waiting for him among the outer trees of the forest, but today Loth met him halfway across the grassland, emerging out of the mist a few paces ahead of Coel’s horse, making the beast snort in startlement.
Loth smiled gently as he walked up and placed a hand on the horse’s forehead; it quieted instantly.
Then Loth raised his eyes, still and hard, to Coel. “There is more doing here than we ever realised.”
Coel slid from his horse. “I know,” he said. “Will you speak first, or shall I?”
“I,” said Loth. He closed his eyes briefly, and drew in a deep breath, humiliated to have to confess this. “I was used. Used by Genvissa. She tempted me with power and her body, then sent me to murder Blangan in order to finally destroy Og.”
“I thought as much,” Coel said softly. He could hardly bear Loth’s pain, and moved close enough to him that he could rest his hand on Loth’s shoulder.
“She has me trapped,” Loth continued. “If I try to move against her then she will say I murdered Og in my own maddened quest for power…and maybe that’s the truth, Coel. Maybe it is.”
“Do not be so harsh on yourself, Loth. Genvissa is not alone in this…she has the help and support and work of the five damned foremothers before her. This has been planned far longer than I think you realise.”
Coel told Loth what he’d surmised: that Blangan had never been the one to wield the darkcraft that had split Og’s power. Then he told Loth what he’d heard: that Genvissa was what she had termed the Mistress of the Labyrinth, and that the Trojan magic she’d brought to Llangarlia with Brutus involved something called the Troy Game and the building of a mighty city.
“What is this ‘Game’?” Loth said. “Of what manner of power does it consist? And what meaning this reference to the labyrinth? By all the gods in every land, Coel, what is going to happen?”
Coel shrugged his shoulders unhappily. “Perhaps at the Assembly we can—”
“Genvissa controls great power, Coel. What we know is not what the Mothers will see. If Genvissa tells the Mothers that she has a means, even through a strange magic, to counter the downfall of Og and ensure that their daughters will not die in childbirth, then they will do whatever she says, even if it means they must lie down with dogs.”
“And your father?”
“Has been Genvissa’s willing tool for too many years to change now.” He paused. “Genvissa told me there was nothing I could do, that there was no weapon left. Bitch! What if she is right, Loth? What if she is right?”
“Loth, listen to me. I need to speak to you of Cornelia.”
“What of her? She had little—”
“Loth, listen.” Coel summarised what he knew of her. Cornelia’s strange attraction to the land; her unexplained knowledge of the Stone Dances; the feel of Mag within her womb, so strong when Coel had entered her in the rock pool; her uninvited appearance at Mag’s Dance and her intimate knowledge of Mag’s Nuptial Dance.
“Moreover, Loth,” Coel continued, “she remembered all that had happened. Neither the drugged wine she’d drunk in Ecub’s house, nor the frenzy wine she’d imbibed in Mag’s Dance hid the memory.”
“But later,” Loth said, “when Blangan was dead, there was no power left in her. I, too, had thought there was something, but…”
“She’d fainted, Loth. Might that not explain it?”
“I don’t know…”
“There’s something else you need to know, Loth. Genvissa told Brutus to ask Cornelia how Blangan had died.”
Loth went very still, and the mist rushed in close about them.
“Brutus was furious that she had kept this secret from him. He threatened her, with his voice and his fists.”
Loth lifted his lips in a silent snarl, and the mist trembled.
“Yet even so threatened, Cornelia only told him of you, and of the manner in which you killed your mother.”
“She did not mention Ecub, or what happened in Mag’s Dance before I arrived? She did not mention you?”
“No.”
“She did not mention the Nuptial Dance that she made with Blangan?”
“No.”
Loth frowned. Cornelia had no reason to protect Mag (or, indeed, anyone who had been within Mag’s Dance). None. Unless…
Loth finally looked at Coel from out of his hideously deformed face. “This woman is very enigmatic,” he said. “Very much so. Not only because she has protected so much when Brutus, as you say, threatened to beat it from her…but that Genvissa was so careful to set Brutus against her. Why would Genvissa feel threatened by Cornelia?”
“Because she is Brutus’ wife, when Genvissa wants him in her bed, as she surely does?”
Loth shook his head. “A wife here or there would not bother Genvissa. A wife would just be something to be ignored. No, she is somehow disturbed by Cornelia, and that makes me more than curious to discover why.”
He considered, looking away into the mist as if he could find hope there.
When he finally looked back to Coel, his friend thought that maybe he had.
“I think that you are going to find Cornelia’s company a compelling thing over the next few weeks,” he said. “I think you are going to become a very great friend to her.”
Coel smiled, very gently, very warmly. “And I think that your suggestion will not be a hard thing, Loth. I think that I will not find it an arduous task at all.”