The labyrinth, sinking.

    Deeper and deeper, writhing through the dirt and rock and gravel of the

    hill like a worm.

    And the hill, embracing it.

    Time passing.

    Above, atop the hill, swarms of blue-clay-daubed naked warriors led by a man of such beauty and such evilness, that he appeared to suck all of the

    world's life into him.

    Below, the labyrinth sinking deeper, deeper, embraced by the land.

    The naked warrior—Asterion!—raging as Brutus had once raged, but for

    differing reasons. Time, passing.

    The labyrinth now lay buried far into the land. As yet it had not grown appreciably in physical size but, as Caela watched, she saw that small earthen creatures wandered its twists and paths—worms and moles and beetles, and foxes and badgers, too, who had burrowed deep to see what it was that hummed so beautifully within their midst. Time, passing. Tree roots, extending (reaching) out from the northern and western

    forests, touched the extremities of the labyrinth.

    Drew back, then, carefully, touched again.

    And the tree roots, as the moles and badgers and foxes and worms sighed, found that touch good, and merged with the labyrinth.

    It was a process that Caela understood happened over many hundreds of years, perhaps over a millennium, and she understood that it happened principally because Og rested within the heart of the labyrinth, and his presence drew in the creatures and the forest. But once met, the labyrinth—the Troy Game—and the land and its creatures found each other well met, and discovered that they could live together with ease, and that, above all, they could be

    good for each other.

    And this, Caela understood, was what Mag-who-once-had-been and who now lived as Caela's flesh had known so long ago, and what she had foreseen. The Sidlesaghe moved close enough behind Caela that their bodies touched briefly, and Caela shuddered.

    "See," he whispered, extending a hand to the waters. "See how the Game has spread its tentacles, grown its labyrinth under the area of the Veiled Hills. It tunnels and it worms, and it waits."

    "For…"

    "For you, of course, and for its Kingman."

    Caela's eyes flickered to where Og lay motionless, then she looked back to the images within the pond.

    "Look," she said, and now it was she who pointed.

    A dark stain was spreading over the pond from its eastern extremity. A cloud of malignancy.

    "Asterion," the Sidlesaghe said.

    "He lurks within the court," said Caela. "But he is too powerful, too cunning for me to perceive him. Long Tom, why is that so? I should be able to perceive him, to know him."

    The Sidlesaghe frowned, and his mouth dropped open in a low moan. "Oh," he said, and the sound was more a low moan than a spoken word. "You cannot see him? You cannot see him?"

    "No. Long Tom—"

    "Oh! You cannot know him?"

    "Do you know who he is?" Caela said sharply.

    The Sidlesaghe's mouth thinned, and he shook his head.

    "Are you sure?" Caela asked.

    The Sidlesaghe nodded. "He is dangerous," he said. "Highly so."

    "Yes. I know."

    "He wants to destroy the Game."

    "I know."

    "We must keep it safe."

    "Yes, I know, but, Long Tom—"

    "Asterion is very, very dangerous, dear girl."

    "I know this, Long Tom!" Now Caela was getting frustrated.

    "We want you to move the bands. Keep us safe. Keep the land safe. Both the Game and the land want you to do this. It will aid both, but principally it will aid the Game to grow in strength as well as in magnitude."

    Caela's mouth dropped open. "That is what the Game needs me to do to help it?" Then, "Can I move them?"

    The Sidlesaghe regarded her, and for a moment Caela felt as if she were being judged. "Yes," he said finally, "this is how you can help the Game, and, yes, you will be able to move them. The Game wants you to move the kingship bands of Troy. If Asterion cannot find the bands, then not only shall the Game remain safe for the time being, but you shall have time to—"

    "To discover the means to persuade Swanne to hand to me her powers," Caela said, "and to establish those circumstances in which Og can be reborn. Yes, I can understand why the Game wants the bands moved."

    The Sidlesaghe gave a nod, his eyes still watchful.

    "And it will not be difficult." Caela had not said that as a question, but the

    instant the words had left her mouth the Sidlesaghe's eyes narrowed, and his very being stilled.

    "Will it?" Caela said.

    The Sidlesaghe hesitated. "Not inherently."

    "Not 'inherently'?"

    The Sidlesaghe sighed. "The instant you touch the bands, Caela, Asterion will know. And William and Swanne will know. And the instant they know the bands have been found, and are being moved, they will panic… and then they will hit out."

    CUD6CV

    Rouen, Normandy

    ILLIAM'S BODY MOVED EASILY WITH THAT OF

    his horse, a great bay stallion he'd bred and trained himself. His face was relaxed and his eyes dreamy as he let his mind wander in the late autumn sunshine. He wore no armor, merely a heavy tunic against the cool wind and a cloak thrown back over his shoulders and left to drape as it would across the stallion's rump. A sword hung at his left hip, a bow and quiver of arrows were slung across his back.

    About him rode his companions, nobles and retainers. No one spoke, easy in their companionship and the delight of the day. All were in more or less the same state as the duke: easy, dreamy, relaxed, waiting.

    Some fifty paces ahead of the band of riders spread a semicircle of twelve or thirteen men on foot. In counterpoint to the men on horseback, they were taut and watchful, their eyes constantly sliding about the sparse forest about them.

    In their hands they held either crossbows or short hand bows; quivers of arrows jounced across their backs. At their heels stalked huge, well-trained, tense, silent pale hounds.

    It was a good morning for the hunt. The sun was two hours risen, and the dawn mist cleared from the ground. The quarry—deer and boar, and perhaps even a wolf—would be moving from the open grass and meadowlands back into the comparative safety of the forest.

    This was the part of the hunt that William enjoyed the most. Oh, the heat and excitement of both chase and kill were fine enough, and the back-slapping, jesting camaraderie that came after, but nothing surpassed this gentle dreamtime as they stalked the prey.

    Did the stag and the boar know what came? wondered William. Did some primeval part of them, some forestal part of them, understand that today men would come stalking, and that only strength and courage and daring might

    save them from the arrows that pierced the air? Were they even now standing still, quivering, heads raised, ears and nostrils twitching, striving to catch that first noise, that initial scent, which would give them leave to leap into

    flight?

    He drew in a deep breath—part suppressed excitement, part sublime happiness—and exchanged a glance and a smile with Walter Fitz Osbern who rode several paces away to his right. How many hunts had they participated in together? How many times had Walter stood to one side, sounding the horn, as William bent down with his short, broad knife to finish off the stag at

    his feet?

    William relaxed further, his every movement part of those of the horse beneath him. A small smile played over his face as he remembered the previous night's loving with Matilda. Gods, but he and Matilda were well-matched! He hadn't thought to find one like her. William had known from an early age who he was, and what lay both behind him and before him. Who lay behind and before him. When William was a young man he'd hungered for Genvissa—for Swanne—and he'd remembered Cornelia with bitterness and anger. He'd known he would take a wife, but he'd thought she would simply be a bedmate, a mother to the heirs he needed, a chatelaine for his estates and castles and manors, and someone to be easily and quietly set aside when William had achieved what and whom he needed.

    But Matilda! Ah! He had not thought she would make such a difference to him and to his life. Strong, loyal, passionate, a match and counterpoint to his every mood and want.

    If he'd had her in his earlier life… William grinned to himself. If it had been Matilda instead of Cornelia who had plotted his ruin in Mesopotama, then William had no doubt that he would have been murdered and cast into the bay beside the city. Matilda would have succeeded with flair and triumph (and more than a few scorching words), where Cornelia had only failed

    miserably.

    William remembered what he'd said to Matilda that night a few weeks past: You have taught me a great deal during our marriage… strength, and tolerance, and maturity. What I thought, and felt, fifteen years ago, are no longer so

    clear to me.

    He'd thought about those words a great deal since. William had initially spoken them as a comfort to Matilda, but even as they slid smoothly from his lips, William had realized their truth—and the greater truth that lay beneath them. Matilda had been god-sent, he was sure of it. He had learned from her strength and tolerance and maturity, and it was not simply that what he had felt fifteen years ago was not now so clear to him.

    What he had felt two thousand years ago was now not so clear to him. The great peaks of love and hate he'd felt then had been smoothed out by his marriage to Matilda. Bitterness and hatred and love all had been… modified.

    Gentled. He did not yearn for Swanne with the passion he once had, and when he thought on Caela, then his thoughts were strangely tolerant, given his once all-consuming hatred of her when she had been Cornelia. Above all, Matilda had taught him what it was to be a good husband, and William was aware that he had once been a very bad husband, indeed.

    He shifted a little on his horse, newly uncomfortable. How might his life have been different two thousand years earlier if he had been a tolerant husband, rather than a hateful one? How might his life have been altered if he had studied Cornelia with the understanding Matilda had given him, rather than with Brutus' indifferent callousness?

    Suddenly one of the hounds bayed, and the huntsmen shouted, and William jerked out of his reverie.

    "There!" cried Walter, and William followed his friend's pointing finger and, indeed, there it ran—a huge red stag, bounding through the dappled shadows of the forest.

    William swept the bow from his back and fitted an arrow, digging his heels into the flanks of his stallion and guiding him only with voice and knees.

    The horse surged forward, his hooves pounding through the grassland, then crashing through the first line of shrubs in the forest.

    The stag careened before William, leaping first this way, now that, his head raised, his eyes panicked, his nostrils flaring.

    Behind William crashed the horses of his companions, but they raced a full six or seven paces behind him, and it was William who had the first, clear shot.

    The stag bounded behind a dense thicket, and William let his arrow fly.

    It struck, he heard it, as he heard the cry of the stag and the sound of its heavy body plunging to the forest floor.

    "I have him!" William cried as he seized the reins of his stallion and pulled the beast to a plunging, snorting halt. He lifted his right leg over the horse's wither, jumping to the ground, and ran behind the thicket, his knife drawn.

    The stag lay convulsing in a carpet of fallen leaves and dried summer grasses, the arrow through his left eye.

    William's stride slowed, and he drifted to a halt, staring at the stag.

    Except it was no longer a stag lying there at all, but his father, Silvius, his hands to the arrow, his voice screaming to his son for aid.

    Sick to his stomach, William took a step forward, then stopped, the knife suddenly loose in his sweat-dampened hand.

    Silvius was no longer screaming. Instead he stared at his son, his hands still about the arrow, blood and gore dripping down his cheek. You shall not have her! he whispered within William's mind. Never have her! You had your

    chance. She's mine, now.

    "No!" William said, very low. His gaze transfixed on his father.

    Never have her…

    Something flowed forth from Silvius, and William took an intuitive step back. It was evil. Malignant evil, seeping from every pore of his father's body.

    You shall never have her… she's lost to you, now…

    "No!" William said again.

    And took another step back.

    "My lord?" Walter Fitz Osbern walked up beside William, his eyes drifting between William and the downed stag, now screaming with a harsh, guttural

    cry. "My lord? Should I…?"

    There were more steps behind William: other fellow hunters, and the huntsmen. They were quiet, watching William, one or two of them wincing at the terrible sound made by the stricken stag.

    Walter's eyes settled on William's face. The duke was staring fixedly at the stag, his skin pale and clammy, as if he saw before him a devil, or some imp from hell. "My lord?" he said yet one more time, hoping that William would break free of whatever spell had claimed him.

    Still no response, and Walter exchanged a worried look with one of the

    other nobles.

    "Damn you!" William suddenly whispered, and Walter jumped, thinking

    his duke spoke to him.

    But William was still staring fixedly at the stag, and now he stepped forward, almost stumbling. The stag cried out yet more harshly, his hooves flailing dangerously, and Walter was sure the duke would be struck, but somehow William managed to avoid the stag's hooves and legs. He stepped around behind the stag, sheathed his knife, grasped one of the stag's magnificent antlers to steady the beast's head, then took the arrow with his other hand and, frightfully, sickeningly, thrust the arrow deep into the stag's

    brain.

    The creature gave one more frightful spasm, and then lay still, save for one

    hind leg, which continued to quiver slightly.

    "Butcher it," said William harshly, standing back. "Butcher it now.'"

    He turned away, but then staggered, and Walter stepped close and took

    one of his arms to steady him.

    "My lord?"

    "Will he never leave me be?" whispered William, bending over as if he were going to vomit. He gagged, then again a little more violently, before managing

    to regain control of his stomach. "Will he never leave me be?"

    One of the huntsmen came forward, taking William's other arm, but then William straightened, wiped his mouth, and managed a smile.

    "I am well enough," he said, seemingly himself again, and the two men relaxed—as did all the others standing about watching with worried countenances.

    "Likely the meat you took for breakfast was rotten," Walter said, and William accepted the excuse.

    "Aye, likely it was. My apologies if I have concerned you, but I am well enough now. Where is my horse? Ah, thank you, Ranuld."

    He took the stallion's reins from the huntsman who had brought him forward, and swung into the saddle.

    But just as he settled on the horse's back, gathering up the reins, there came a distant shout, then the sound of approaching hooves.

    "What is wrong?" said William, swinging his stallion about so he could see.

    There was a rider hurtling across the meadowlands toward the patch of forest where William had downed the stag. He wore the duke's livery, and William recognized him as one of the squires from his garrison within the castle of Rouen.

    "It's Oderic," mumbled Walter.

    "And with dire news," said Ranuld, the huntsman who had also come to William's aid. "See the lather on his horse."

    "My lord duke!" Oderic called as he pulled his exhausted horse to a stumbling halt. "My lord duke!"

    "What?" snarled William, kicking his stallion forth and grabbing Oderic by the shoulder of his tunic before almost hauling Oderic from his mount. "What news, man?"

    "Earl Harold of England," Oderic managed to gasp. "Earl Harold…"

    "Yes? Yes" William gave Oderic an impatient shake.

    "Earl Harold…" Oderic could barely speak, caught between the extremity of his news, his desperate battle for breath, and his duke's furious grasp on his shoulder.

    "Yes?" William thought he would strangle the news from the man if he did not spit out the words within an instant.

    "Earl Harold awaits in your castle, my lord duke."

    "What?" William was so surprised he let Oderic go, and the squire almost fell off his horse as a surprised, concerned buzz of comment rose among William's retainers and huntsmen.

    Earl Harold awaited in Duke William's castle?

    "My castle?" said William stupidly, unable to comprehend what Oderic said. "Here? In Rouen?"

    "Aye, my lord. A patrol discovered him last night, he had embarked from

    a fishing vessel on the coast two nights previous."

    "What does he do here?" William mumbled to himself, then waved away

    the question. "Never mind. Walter. We ride. Now!"

    Part Four

    Pay me my fare, or by Gog and Magog, you shall feel the smart of my whipcord!

    Coachman to passengers at Barthlomew Fair,

    London, late 1700s, cited in William Hone,

    Ancient Mysteries Described,

    London, March

    [ ^ADDY!

    Dear gods, his daughter! He'd thought her dead, a victim first of Genvissa's malevolence, and then of Asterion's.

    And yet there she was, standing in the street outside Frank's house, holding the two lost kingship bands of Troy, and calling to him.

    Skelton pulled on his uniform trousers, fumbling with the buttons on his fly, then hauled on a shirt, opened the door, and took the stairs three at a time before he'd done up a single button.

    Violet stepped out of the kitchen, butter knife in hand. "Major?"

    Skelton ignored her, opened the front door and ran into the street.

    The little girl was gone.

    He stood there, barefooted, his shirt flapping in the cold wind, staring up and down the street.

    Gone.

    "Major?" Violet was at the front door now, her pretty face crinkled up with doubt, her voice cautious. "Is there anything the matter?"

    "Old chap?" said Frank, now standing directly behind Violet, a hand on her shoulder, staring at Skelton. He had raced out of his bedroom when he'd heard Skelton's mad dash for the front door.

    Skelton ignored them. He turned this way, then that, his movements abrupt, frantic, his face distraught.

    Frank's hand tightened momentarily on Violet's shoulder, then he walked over to Skelton. "Old chap… what's up?"

    "She was here," Skelton muttered, the skin of his face gray. "She was."

    Frank glanced back at Violet. "Who?"

    "My daughter."

    Now Frank openly stared. "I say, I didn't know you had… in England?"

    "A long time ago," Skelton whispered.

    The door to one of the neighbors' houses opened, and two women came out. They were both in their late thirties, their short waved hair freshly combed, and with matching dark blue candlewick dressing gowns tied about their trim figures. Both looked somewhat amused at the sight of Major Skelton standing half-naked

    and crazed in the street.

    Frank looked embarrassed. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Flanders. A bit of a disturbance,

    I'm afraid."

    Mrs. Flanders pursed her lips, but her eyes sparkled with humor. "And just as I have my sister staying, Mr. Bentley. Mrs. Ecub is quite overwrought by such a

    sight, I'm sure."

    At that Skelton turned about and stared at the two women. "My God," he said.

    "Matilda? Ecub?"

    They both grinned at him.

    "We're all gathered," said Matilda, whom Frank had addressed as Mrs. Flanders.

    "Every one of us."

    Skelton took a step forward. "Where is my daughter?" he said.

    "Perhaps Stella has her," said Mrs. Ecub.

    "I do apologize," said Frank, "But Mrs. Flanders, how can you possibly know

    Major Skelton?"

    "We've had many dealings over many years," said Matilda Flanders. Then her face softened from humor into pity, and she stepped forward, took Skelton's hands, and kissed him softly on the mouth. "Welcome back, my love," she said so softly that only he could hear. "Welcome back."

    Caela Speaks

    SAT WITH MY LADIES—HOW I HATED THIS SITTING

    about, spending my days in nothing but courtly gossips and embroideries!—and understood that Harold had arrived in Rouen. I shivered, unable to keep at bay that memory of William tearing Coel's lifeless body from mine.

    Coel's blood had been so very warm, as he had himself been so very warm, and so very loving.

    I could feel—very faintly, but the knowledge was there—William's confusion, anger, and uncertainty as he heard of Harold's arrival. Everything, in fact, he had felt that night Genvissa had sent him to murder me.

    Keep him safe, I prayed silently. Keep him safe.

    I closed my eyes, and in the strength of my prayer I think my body wavered somewhat, for instantly, concerned voices were raised about me, and tentative hands touched my arm.

    "Madam? Madam? Are you well?"

    I opened my eyes, and caught Judith's gaze. She nodded, understanding.

    "No," I murmured, allowing my voice to waver just so very slightly. "I am not well. I should rest awhile before our noonday meal. Judith…?"

    She took my arm, and I nodded a dismissal at the other women who clustered about me. Slowly we retreated from the private solar, where I spent most of the day when I was not in court, to the bedchamber, where I spent all my cold, loveless nights.

    Once the door closed behind us, I straightened and Judith dropped my arm.

    "Madam?" she said.

    I smiled wryly. I wished she would call me Caela in private, but now that I was doubly "royal" in Judith's eyes, I doubted there would be little chance of that now.

    "I am glad that we have this time alone," she said. "There is something I need to speak of to you."

    "Yes?"

    "Saeweald… over the past days I have spoken to Saeweald on many

    occasions on this matter…"

    Her voice had drifted off, her cheeks mottling, and her eyes avoiding

    mine.

    "Judith?" I said. "What is wrong?"

    "It is something of which you spoke to us—that you and Og-reborn will complete the Game as Mistress and Kingman of the Labyrinth."

    "You find this difficult to accept."

    "It is difficult enough," she said, "but this is not what eats at me."

    "And that is?"

    She hesitated, mouth hanging partly open, eyes averted. "It is that

    Saeweald believes he shall be Og-reborn."

    There, it was out, and Judith finally allowed herself to look at me from

    under her lashes.

    "Oh," I said on a long breath, and now it was I who averted my eyes.

    "Ah," said Judith.

    By the gods, we were playing some silly childish prattling game.' "Oh" here and

    "Ah" there!

    "Is Saeweald…? Will he…?" Judith said.

    Then, gods help me, I lied, for if I told her who Og-reborn was fated to be, then I would have lost her, as well Saeweald and Ecub, in one foul-tasting

    word.

    "I cannot know," I said, holding her gaze. "It shall be who the Troy Game and the land demands. Maybe Saeweald, maybe not… but I dislike it that he already has voiced his ambitions to the office." I put some distaste into that final phrase, some goddess-like offense, and it diverted Judith magnificently. "I should not have presumed—"

    "He should not have presumed!"

    Judith dropped her gaze again, her cheeks mottling an even deeper shade of humiliation. I placed a hand on her arm. "I am sorry to snap, Judith. I had not thought that Saeweald would have jumped so easily to that possibility. But it is nothing to do with you, and I am glad you have told me. Here," I kissed her face. "I am not cross with you."

    "I will tell him—"

    "No. Do not mention it. I shall speak to him when appropriate." And yet

    when was appropriate? "I am sorry, Saeweald, but you have no place in what is to come?" Oh, I could not lose him so quickly. I had need of him yet. As did… as did he who would become Og.

    "And now," I continued, all business, "I asked you here because I have need of your aid."

    "Anything," Judith said, trying to atone.

    I felt abashed, and took her hand and led her to a covered chest, which stood beneath the chamber's only window. We sat down, and I kept hold of her hand, although I think I was trying to reassure myself more than her.

    "Judith, there are tasks I will need to do, places I shall need to go. I will need to spend much time away from the palace. Both at night, and during the day."

    She nodded, the eagerness to please in her eyes intensifying. "This will be difficult for me. I am the queen, I cannot just wander about the streets as I need—"

    "But at night…"

    I shrugged slightly. "Nights contain more freedom for me, surely, but even they are dangerous. What if Edward or his bowerthegn should wake, and I not be there? More importantly, there are days when I will have the need to leave the palace. I need more freedom, far more than my existence as 'queen' allows."

    I also needed more security if I was to move the bands, or even to communicate with the Sidlesaghes as I needed. I constantly worried that some action or ill-considered word might draw either Swanne's or Asterion's suspicion; had I already said or done something that may have alerted them? This concern ate at me. I needed to move about both more freely and unobserved. How to do this as the constantly watched queen, whose every movement was noted?

    I had struggled with this problem over the past few days, and could see only one solution. I hated to do it, for it would put another in the danger that I sought to escape, but if I was careful, then maybe she would not suffer.

    Maybe.

    "Judith, I need a glamour."

    Her eyes grew huge, and she drew in a deep breath and held it for a long moment as she watched me unblinkingly. "A glamour?" she said finally. "Do you want to use me to—"

    I shook my head. "Not you, for I will need you awake and aware of what goes on about me." I grinned briefly. "If I can drag you away from Saeweald's bed long enough…"

    She blushed, and I thought that if she kept this up I would need to ask Saeweald for some whitening alloy to dab on Judith's cheeks.

    "No, I will need someone else with which to create the glamour."

    "Ah. You would like me to find her for you?"

    "Aye. Judith, I hate to do this—to use an unwitting woman as my dupe. I

    fear for her, and what might happen to her if she… is discovered. But without her I shall be too constrained for my purposes. Judith, do you know of anyone who lives in Westminster, who has no children or husband who… who…" Who would be left bereft if my mistake killed her.

    Judith dropped her gaze to where our hands lay entwined, thinking. Eventually she raised her face, then nodded.

    "There is a woman who I think would serve you well. Her name is Damson, and she is the widow of a stone-cutter and now partly earns her way as a laundress. She is, oh, some forty-five or fifty years of age, and has the freedom of both Westminster and London as she wanders looking for small pieces of work. Everyone knows her. Damson is a simple woman, but true and good-hearted. If you ask her I am certain that—"

    "I cannot 'ask,' Judith. She must not have any understanding of what I do, or else the glamour shall not work sufficiently—it will not be deep enough. Can you bring her to me, and say only that I have need of her services? Would she accept that?"

    "Aye."

    "When could you bring her to me?"

    "I saw Damson about the palace courtyard this morning, probably looking for work in the laundries, or even the dairy. If I find her quickly, then I could have her before you within the hour."

    "Go, then, and find me this Damson."

    GUDO

    /bright day it might be, but inside rouens

    castle the sunshine had yet to penetrate. The air was chilled and the breath frosted from the mouths of those not fortunate enough to have secured a close position by the fire that burned within Duke William's Great Hall.

    Matilda and Earl Harold were two of the fortunate few. They sat in intricately carved oak chairs only two paces distant from where the fire cracked and leapt in the stone hearth, cups of the duke's best wine in their hands, making conversation until the duke himself could be summoned from the hunt. Rather than Norman French or Anglo-Saxon, they spoke in the more general French dialect that most European nobles (as merchants and craftsmen) learned as children.

    Their ability to converse in a mutually comfortable language was not the only reason both found the conversation relatively effortless. Matilda was fascinated with the earl and he, quite obviously, with her. This might be their first meeting, but each had heard so much of the other over the years that they felt each other already well acquainted.

    "My husband shall doubtless be surprised to find you here," said Matilda, gracing the earl with a smile over the rim of her wine cup. She was deeply intrigued by his face, for although it wore the hard lines of a warrior and man used to great command, it also had an aura of sensitivity, even mysticism, that one found generally only in the faces of poets, or religious recluses.

    Or, indeed, in lovers.

    Apart from that sense of mysticism, Harold was a highly attractive man, with his dark eyes framed by his graying blond hair and darker beard. Matilda liked the fact that, unlike so many Saxons, Harold kept that beard very short and neat, and did not hide beneath a shrubby, flea-ridden haystack.

    "There was a time," said Harold, intrigued in his own way by this tiny, stern-faced woman before him, "when dukes and earls and princes spent their time only in the pursuit of the bloody sport of war, and it was with war that they solved every one of their dilemmas. I like to think that I and your

    husband are more civilized men, and that words and vows might be used to accomplish more than the agony and futility of war. I come to court an ally,

    not to incense an enemy."

    "You are a poet!" Matilda murmured into her wine cup before taking a sip

    of the heavily spiced wine within.

    Harold gave a small, sad smile. "I am a man, and a father, and a leader of many men and fathers. I value life before needless death. Thus I sit here with you this fair morn, waiting for your lord to return from the hunt."

    "And for my part," said Matilda, "I am more than pleased to have this chance to sit and pass words with you. Tell me, how goes Edward?"

    "Heavily, and with bad grace," said Harold. "He thinks only of the next life, and of his salvation. He is less the king, and more the repentant, mewling constantly for a chance to redeem himself before whichever altar he can

    find."

    "And thus you are here," said Matilda. "I understand. So, if Edward declines, then may I ask after your own family? Your wife, and children? Your

    sister, and brother?"

    Harold studied her, wondering what she knew. "My wife…" He shrugged as his voice drifted off in uncertainty as to what to say, and was then surprised at the glint of understanding in Matilda's face.

    "She does not suit you, then."

    He did not answer, and Matilda smiled into her wine as she sipped it.

    "Your children are well?"

    This time she was rewarded with a natural and very warm smile, and her

    regard for the man grew. He loved his children. "Aye," Harold said. "They are my delight."

    "The queen?" Matilda said. "I have heard she has been unwell."

    "She is better now."

    Harold's manner had become extremely guarded, and Matilda wondered further if some of the more salacious rumors she'd heard about Harold's relationship with his sister might, in fact, have a kernel of truth to them.

    "And Tostig…" she said.

    "Madam," Harold snapped, "your manner is more direct than any of the

    Holy Father's inquisitors!"

    Matilda laughed. "I have heard rumors of Tostig's penchant to treachery. Moreover, I suspect that Hardrada is tempting Tostig away from his loyalty to

    his family."

    "Then I could do with access to your intelligence, madam, for I think it

    better than mine."

    Matilda began to say something, but then there came a clatter of hooves in the courtyard beyond the narrow windows, and the shouts of men.

    "My husband," she said, watching Harold carefully, and noting the manner in which his face closed over and he set his wine cup aside with great care. He took a deep breath, and Matilda saw that he was nervous.

    Strangely, this gave her no sense of satisfaction, nor of advantage, but only saddened her somewhat. This man, she thought, has no business seeking out the throne. He is too good, and too valuable, to be wasted on kingship.

    The doors at the end of the Great Hall flung open, and William strode into the Hall.

    Harold and Matilda rose.

    "My lord duke," said Matilda as William strode up to them.

    William ignored her. He was sweaty from his hard ride back to the castle, his hair—even as short as it was—was disheveled, and his black eyes were as hard as flint.

    They did not waver from Harold's face.

    "My lord duke," Matilda said again, unperturbed by William's disregard. "My lord Harold, Earl of Wessex and favored of King Edward, has graced our castle with his presence. He has come with words, not swords, and speaks of peace and alliances where others might speak of hard deeds and war."

    There, she thought, glancing at Harold. I have done my best for you. Strangely, Matilda's sympathies tended more to Harold in this encounter than to William, even though she lusted for the spoils of England almost as much as her husband.

    William suddenly appeared to notice that Matilda had spoken, and he gave a brief nod in her direction. His eyes did not move from Harold's face.

    "I greet you well, Harold," William said, recovering some of his usual calm demeanor, and he stepped forward and offered Harold his hand. "Welcome to Rouen, and to my duchy of Normandy."

    Harold took William's between both of his, and the instant he did so, William's world turned upside down.

    As Harold's flesh touched his, William knew who he was reborn. Coel. Coel!

    A thousand emotions surged through William: jealousy and fright at their head. He remembered that terrible night he'd burst into his house in Llanbank to find Coel atop Cornelia's body, sweating in the labors of love. He remembered that appalling moment that he'd caught his hand into Coel's hair, and hauled back his head so that for an instant they'd stared deep into each other's souls, before Brutus had sliced his sword across Coel's throat.

    Cornelia's cry of terror and loss, Coel's eyes still locked into his as he died.

    Coel? Coel had reappeared in this guise on the same day that Silvius had once again writhed on the forest floor before him? What, in the gods' names was going on? What frightful magic had them in its hold?

    O

    And why had Swanne not told him this? Gods, Swanne had taken Coel to her bed, bred him children, and she had not told William of it?

    William recalled what Swanne had said that day so long ago when they'd met. He'd asked her then if Harold was anyone reborn, and she had said no. He was a mere man. Gods! She had lied to him! Why? Why? "William?"

    William realized he was not only still gripping Harold's hand, but he was staring maniacally at the man. In the same moment William also realized that Harold had no memory of his life as Coel. He had come only as Harold, Earl of Wessex and pretender to the English throne, not as Cornelia's lover come for revenge… or whatever else it might be that he sought.

    But this was no coincidence. Surely. And what was Coel doing back? What? "William?" Matilda said again.

    "Forgive me," William managed, dropping Harold's hand. He even managed to find the strength and fortitude of spirit to give Harold a small smile. "Your arrival has truly surprised me, my lord of Wessex."

    "Aye, I see that it has." Harold, his hand now free, had taken a step back, and was watching William speculatively.

    "Wine, husband?" Matilda murmured. She stood holding out a freshly poured cup to her husband, and very apparently taken aback by her husband's reaction.

    A servant hurried forward with another chair, and William waved them all down, his equanimity now apparently fully restored.

    "It has been a most surprising morning," William said. "First, I brought down a great stag, who reproached me with his dying."

    Matilda gasped in superstitious dread, but Harold only watched William with narrowed eyes.

    "And now," William continued, "I find before me England's greatest lord, save for Edward. A most strange and unexpected visitor, given the circumstances. What mysteries swirl about us today, I wonder?"

    The question was half rhetorical, half real. A most strange and unexpected visitor, given the circumstances. There, answer me that, Harold-Coel, if you dare. "No mysteries but those of mortal men," said Harold. He had set his wine cup to one side, and now leaned forward in his chair. "You must know why I am here, William."

    To reproach me for your death? "To beg me to take England's throne once Edward is dead?'

    Matilda repressed a wince at the bluntness of both men. So much for the soft beauty of poets.

    Harold held William's stare a long moment before answering. "I come for

    England," he said softly, "I come as England." William's face assumed a strange expression at that, but Harold ignored it. "We are both great lords here, William. To be blunt, I come wondering if you shall be my ally, as you have been Edward's, or my rival. Which one, William?"

    William sat back in his chair, his dark eyes hooded. "I am ally to Edward for only one reason, my friend."

    Harold's mouth quirked at that "my friend."

    "Not ally, then."

    William gave a small smile, but his eyes were humorless.

    "Edward is heirless," Harold said, "and the unfortunateness about all this is that we both have a claim to the throne. You through your great-aunt Emma, Edward's Norman mother, I through my place and standing as England's pre-eminent lord, defacto ruler throughout Edward's long, pious slide into irrelevancy and death."

    Ah, thought William. You and I again, Coel, standing on each side of the chasm. You for the old, dark ways of the land, I for the new bright ways of the foreigner. I won last time, Coel. What does that say about this encounter?

    "I not only claim through the distant blood of Emma," William said, "but also through Edward's promise."

    Harold raised a patently disbelieving eyebrow.

    "I sheltered Edward for many years during his time of exile," William said. "During those years when Cnut held England captive. For my aid, when no one else would help him, Edward promised to me the throne of England, should he die without heir to his body." He paused. "I believe that he has no heir, unless Queen Caela quickens with a child I do not know about—and that possibly Edward does not know about?"

    Something in William's voice and face became aggressively confrontational with that last sentence, and Harold frowned over it.

    "There is no heir, either walking or breeding," he said. "Caela remains chaste and untouched. Gods' Concubine, they call her, for the fact that the saintly Edward has so consistently refused to have dealings with her."

    William gave a strange half smile. "So, then, Edward's promise to me stands."

    "England has only your word for that," said Harold, "I have only your word for it, and neither England nor I will ever accept it."

    "Truly?" said William, his tone now far more aggressive.

    "England has had enough of foreigners imposing their word and law over us!" Harold said, his eyes snapping with anger. "England will not accept you. I have the witan's promise that come that day when Edward fails, then they will elect me to the throne. England wants Saxon rule, William. Not Norman."

    "England is already half Norman! God, Harold, half your clergy are Norman imports, while Norman interests hold high office and control much land. Norman—"

    "Those interests and offices shall not continue long past the day I am crowned," Harold said, very quiet now. "The clergy shall be replaced with Saxon men, loyal to England. Norman influence in England ceases with Edward's death. Completely. That is the message I bring you."

    "You are afraid of me," William said, his own voice now very quiet. "That, essentially, is the message you bring me."

    "England will stand against you, William. We are not boys, playing with wooden swords. We are seasoned men, and we will fight for our land. Come at your own peril but, for your own sake, and that of this lady your wife, and for the sake of all Englishmen, I ask you to rest content with Normandy, for what more could a man want?"

    Immortality, thought William, staring at Harold. Power beyond knowing. The Troy Game, in my hands.

    "England will stand against me?" William said. "Really? How strange, for the reports I have so recently received suggest very much the opposite."

    Harold glanced at Matilda. "You mean my brother Tostig." He put down his cup of wine, then rolled up the short tunic he wore and undid his shirt.

    His chest and upper belly were marred by red scarcely healed scars.

    "This is Tostig," said Harold softly. "He thought to murder me." He did up his shirt and pulled his tunic down. "He came to me as I and my wife were preparing for bed, and he thought to earn a reward from Hardrada for his actions."

    "But you bested him, or you would not be here to show me the scars."

    "Aye," said Harold. "But only through the aid of my sister, who sent aid. My wife," he spoke the word contemptuously, "merely stood back and laughed as Tostig tried to murder me."

    William went very still, and Matilda sent him an unreadable look.

    "That was not the action of an honorable woman, let alone a wife," she said to Harold.

    "It was the action of a woman who lives by deceit," Harold said. "She is not a woman to be trusted."

    William dropped his eyes to his wine, swirling it about his wine cup.

    "I say that," Harold said softly, not taking his eyes from William, "because I think you need to know very particularly, my lord of Normandy."

    William looked up, his gaze unreadable.

    "I know Swanne is your eyes and ears at court, William. Does she send you her love besides?"

    Harold suddenly shifted his gaze to Matilda. "Did you know, my lady

    duchess, that my wife Swanne thinks to plot against me for William, and against you as well? She hopes to take your place at William's side, should he ever win for himself the throne of England. She has said that William has promised her this."

    Harold looked back to William, sitting open-mouthed in shock, staring at Harold. "How long has she been whoring for you, William? And how can you plan to set aside this wondrous wife of yours to take Swanne Snake-Tongue as your queen, if you ever gain England?"

    CbAPG6RGbR

    Caela Speaks

    WAS LYING ON THE BED WHEN JUDITH BROUGHT

    Damson to the bedchamber, and as they entered I had to smile at / what my other ladies must have thought of this simple woman who I admitted to my presence when they were left in the solar.

    Damson was a woman well marked by her years and her travail. She was fair of hair, and ruddy of complexion, with stooped shoulders wearied by life, and hands roughened and gnarled by labor. Her eyes were pale water-blue, currently filled with anxiety.

    "My lady queen!" she cried the instant she saw me, dropping to her knees despite Judith's hand on her arm. "I have meant no harm through my actions!" I was rising from the bed as she said this, and my own eyes filled with tears at the thought that the only reason Damson could conceive for her presence before me was to be accused of some transgression.

    "Of course not, Damson," I said in as gentle a manner as I could. "I have asked you before me only to serve me, not to reproach you."

    Damson's face crumpled in relief, and my sorrow for her increased.

    "My lady Judith has told me of your difficulties," I said, "and I thought

    only to help."

    And may all the gods forgive me for that particular lie. Damson had her hands clasped before her face, which was lowered almost to her breast: the poor woman could not even look upon me.

    What trials had this land been through that women acted in such a manner? I shared a glance with Judith, then bent to Damson, grasped her hands between mine, and raised her to her feet.

    Damson finally managed to lift her face, and she visibly gulped, then blinked some of her tears free from her eyes.

    "I have many fine linens, and rare embroideries," I said, "and I hear tell that you are the finest and most trustworthy of laundresses. Will you take

    charge of my linens, Damson, and watch over them for me, and attend to them as needed?"

    All those years I had spent as unknowing Caela, my head bent over my sewing, watching the needle ply in and out, in and out, in and out. Years, I had spent curled about my damned needlework.

    Frankly, I did not care if Damson took the entire corpus of my embroideries and hurled them into the mud of the river's low tide. I did not think I could bear a single hour more bent over my needles and wools.

    "My lady…" Damson said.

    "You agree?" I said, and hated myself, for I was asking Damson to agree to much more than the care of my ever-cursed linens.

    "Oh. Aye, madam. I would do anything for you! Anything!"

    The hope and happiness in her eyes almost made me waver, but I steeled myself.

    "Damson," I whispered and, summoning both courage and power, I leaned forward and kissed her full on the mouth, sliding my tongue gently between her parted lips.

    THE FIRST THING I BECAME AWARE OF AS I GAZED OUT

    of Damson's eyes and into my own bemused face was the scratchiness of her rough and ill-fitting clothes. Then I became aware of the different weight and feel of her body, of the way it moved. And then I became aware of its aches and pains, its sadnesses and strains, and I almost wept for the poverty of this woman's life.

    "What is happening?" said my voice, issuing out of my face.

    Poor Damson.

    "It is nothing but a dream," I said very softly, and reached forward and cradled Caela's confused face in my hands. "Nothing but a dream. Sleep now, and when you wake you will remember nothing of this."

    "Sleep… yes, I would like to sleep…" she said.

    I led Caela-inhabited-by-Damson to the bed, and lay her down, pulling a coverlet over her.

    Within an instant, she was asleep.

    Caela, so it would appear to everyone who saw, asleep on her bed.

    And so it was, but only Caela's body, not her soul or her spirit. They now lived in Damson's body, able to use Damson's body to move relatively unhindered wherever they wanted to go.

    "Madam?" said Judith, and reached out a hand to my (Damson's) face.

    "Aye," I said. "It is me." I shivered, embarrassed that I so loathed this body. I was grateful that Damson's thoughts and memories had traveled with

    her into my body; I did not think I could cope with whatever weight of worry she carried about with her through her dreary days and nights.

    "Madam, what if I need you to return while you are gone? What can I do to summon you?"

    I nodded at the figure asleep on my bed. "Shake my—her shoulder, and call my name forcefully. I should return at that."

    "In body?"

    I hesitated. "No. In soul and spirit only. So do this only if highly troubled, Judith. Otherwise you risk having Damson wake within herself in circumstances which may drive her witless."

    "I understand." She paused. "What will you do now?"

    "Now?" I grinned. "Why now I shall gather some linens, and I shall walk from this chamber with my head and shoulders bowed, and then I shall spend the rest of the day wandering free."

    My smile widened at the thought, and then it faded. "Judith, stay here with…" I looked to where Damson-in-Caela lay on the bed. "Stay with her, and let no one touch her. Tell everyone that I am unwell, and want only to rest. I shall not be long. Not this first time."

    Poor Caela. I had the feeling that she was going to be spending a great many days lying unwell on her bed over the coming months.

    With another reassuring smile for Judith, I gathered up some linens, and left the chamber.

    CbAPCGR FOUR

    V

    ELL?"

    Matilda's anger was evident in the rigidity of her stance, her flinty eyes, and the tight, clipped tone of her voice. She and William had retired to their bedchamber, Harold and his companions seen to their own chamber and offered food and the means to refresh themselves.

    "He is bolder than I had thought him." William turned his back to his wife, and walked to the window, fiddling with the catch on one of the shutters.

    "I was not talking of Harold. I am talking of the fact that you have apparently promised this Swanne a place at your side as queen."

    "I have never promised that!"

    Matilda's only answer consisted of her archly raised eyebrows.

    "Never!"

    "You swore that you would not betray me," she said, walking to and fro in her agitation. "You swore that I would be queen. Not Swanne! Did you lie? Do you truly mean me to be queen of England at your side? You have been lying to one of us. So, which one? Me, or Swanne?"

    He caught at her wrist as she swished past him, and forced her to a halt. "You!" he said, his voice low and vibrating with emotion. "You! I meant that vow… dammit, Matilda, Swanne will never be my queen. You will. You!"

    "Does she understand that?" Matilda asked quietly, then gave a soft, harsh laugh as William averted his eyes.

    "You promise me one thing, husband, and you allow her to believe another. Where do any of us stand in your affections, eh?"

    "You will be my queen, Matilda."

    "You cannot trust her, William, if only because too many people know she is your agent. For sweet Christ's sakes, husband, did you not hear what Harold said? That she stood by and laughed as Tostig tried to murder her husband?"

    William closed his eyes, trying to repress the memory of Coel lying dead at his feet, and Genvissa standing before them, laughing…

    "And you trust that kind of witch?"

    "I…" She lied to me about Harold. He is Coel. Coel! And she lied to me

    about it…

    "She does not harbor a soul that can be trusted, husband," Matilda said very low. "And Harold knows she is your agent! If he knows, then who else?"

    "For all we know, only Harold—"

    "Harold is one too many people, my love," she countered.

    "Aye. I know." William's shoulders suddenly slumped, and he walked to a chair and sat down heavily.

    "Harold is far more knowledgeable than any of us thought. Had you ever considered that he knew of his wife's efforts on your behalf?"

    "No. I had not thought he might know."

    "And how does that affect our plans, William?"

    "I would imagine it shall affect them very little."

    "Don't play me for a fool!" Matilda snapped. "Harold knows his wife has been your spy at Edward's court! Have you not thought through the implications?"

    William was silent, his face impassive. Matilda did not know if he was holding back, if he was so furious to learn that Harold knew of Swanne's treachery that he could not yet speak of it, or if this knowledge had so thrown him that he did not know what to say, or how now to act.

    "How long do you think Harold has known, William?"

    Silence.

    "How long do you think Harold has been feeding misinformation to his

    wife and then to us?"

    William's face, if anything, grew even more impassive.

    Matilda all but hissed. "You are so certain of this woman?'

    William hesitated, opened his mouth, and then closed it.

    "Are you more certain of her than you are of me?"

    "No." He finally met her eyes. "I have never been more certain of anyone in my life than I am of you."

    She softened slightly. "My love, how can you trust a woman who stands by and laughs as her husband is murdered? That is not mere disloyalty, that is witchcraft so bleak and so deadly that none can ever trust it! Not even you, my love, no matter how much she protests that she loves you."

    Swanne lied to me about Harold, William thought, unable to let the thought go. She lied to me about Harold. Why? What purpose could that have served, save

    to intentionally deceive me?

    "William, what I see in Harold is nothing but honor. What I understand about Swanne is that she is a Darkwitch who will destroy anything and anyone who stands in her path."

    Cornelia's face suddenly flashed before William's eyes, and he blinked.

    "I cannot believe that you are certain you are immune."

    "Enough," William said wearily. "God, does Harold have any understanding of how bitterly he has struck into the very heart of my household?"

    "It is Swanne who has struck into the very heart of our household, husband. Not Harold." Then Matilda sighed. "Ah, I shall not continue haranguing you about her. Harold is the guest within our household, and it is with Harold that we should concern ourselves."

    Matilda walked over to a table, which held a ewer of wine and some cups. "Harold is far stronger than we thought," she said, pouring out two cups of wine, handing one to her husband.

    "Aye." He took a long draught of the wine.

    "Edward was terrified of the father… how now should you feel of the son?"

    "I am not 'terrified' of him!"

    "I think you should be very wary of him, William. He cannot be discounted."

    Again William sighed. "I know that." He is Coel-rebom. He is back for a reason.

    "William…" Matilda came to his chair, and sank to her knees beside him. She placed her hands on his thigh, and looked earnestly into his face. "William, England is not going to lay down and offer itself to you on a golden plate the moment Edward dies. What Harold says is truth—the Saxon earls are not going to want a foreigner to rule over them. They will unite behind him."

    William was silent, the fingers of one hand scratching through his clipped beard, his eyes unfocused as he thought.

    "You spent thirty years uniting Normandy behind you," Matilda continued, her eyes steady on her husband's face. "Can you afford to wait another thirty to gain full control of England? Can any of us afford to wait that long? Is England worth it, truly?"

    "Yes!" William said quietly. He looked down at Matilda's face, still looking into his so earnestly, and smiled. "The mere fact that Harold is here tells me something."

    "Yes?"

    "He is uncertain. No man sure of his support would come all this way to tell me to abandon my own ambitions. Tostig's attack—as Swanne's treachery—has unnerved him."

    "Perhaps he truly thought he might persuade you to an alliance against Hardrada and Tostig. Harold does not want his countrymen and women's blood wasted in futile war."

    "Harold fears simultaneous invasions on Edward's death. He is here to try and deflect at least one of them."

    Matilda shrugged. "Simultaneous invasions could work against you and me, and Hardrada, as well as against Harold."

    O

    "Aye…" William's voice trailed off as he drifted back into thought.

    "Caela," Matilda suddenly said, very firmly. "Caela is important."

    "What?" William jerked up in his chair. "Caela?" Then he narrowed his eyes at his wife. "What has your own spy told you?"

    Matilda chose her words carefully—not in any attempt to deceive her husband, but only because she, and her agent at Edward's court, relied so greatly on their shared intuition about the queen.

    "She is," Matilda finally said, "so very quiet, some would say timid, and yet so strong. People are drawn to her. I have heard it said by some military strategists that the most important and influential person in any realm, or battle, or diplomatic negotiation, is not the person who speaks the loudest, or who bullies or acts in the most aggressive manner, but that person who sits silent and watchful and then, at the critical moment, utters a single quiet word, a word which alters the course of nations and history. Caela strikes me as such a person. There is a storm gathering, husband, and she sits quiet and unmoving, and so very, very strong, in the very heart of it."

    "She sounds like a person not to be trusted."

    "I think that, besides Harold, Caela is the person most to be trusted in the tempest ahead of us. Not Swanne, William. Never Swanne."

    William sighed, and for a moment Matilda feared she had gone too far. "Then what do you counsel me to do about Harold?" he said, and she

    relaxed.

    "I think you should befriend him, husband, for he shall be a friend such as

    you have never had before."

    THAT NIGHT, AS WILLIAM SLEPT, HIS DREAMS DREW him back again to that terrible night when he'd rushed from Genvissa's bed to find Coel atop Cornelia.

    He recalled how he'd been overwhelmed by an anger and—oh gods, and by a jealousy!—so profound, he had drawn his sword and acted without thought.

    Without humanity.

    He saw again the blood that had streamed from Coel's body, the tragedy

    in Cornelia's face.

    Genvissa, laughing.

    In his dream, Matilda stood there also, and she was studying him with such a mixture of pity and disgust on her face that he could not bear it, and turned away.

    CbAPCGR F1V

    Caela Speaks

    SPENT MANY DAYS WANDERING IN DAMSON'S body, and I spent most of this time within London itself. Here I / found many signs, subtle and otherwise, of the influence of the Troy Game on the Londoners. Children, playing a hopping game on flagstones, weaving a path through a maze of cracks and flagstone edgings to what they called "home"—safety. "Step on a crack," they sang, "and the monster will snatch." Women also, embroidering or weaving simplified patterns of the labyrinth into their clothes: I found the pathways of Brutus' labyrinth decorating many a collar and cuff, or twirling about the hem of a robe. In the center of the marketplace that ran off Cheapside was inscribed a stylized labyrinth: here traders and housewives alike could pause in the business of market day and play a game with sticks and balls through the labyrinth. They called the game "Threading Ariadne's Needle," which I might have found amusing under any other circumstances.

    And, of course, the Troy Game that Silvius had led on Smithfield. As tempting as it might be to believe he had directed the entire enterprise, apparently he had not. It was the men of London who were responsible for the games that day. They had thought up the game, patterning it on the legends of the fall of Troy. Silvius had only come late to these preparations, suggesting himself as the leader of one of the lines, and then proving his suitability on the practice field a week beforehand.

    As the Troy Game had merged with the land, so it had also merged with the city. Whatever was built on this site would always become a living extension of the Troy Game. As the Londoners went about their daily tasks, so also they stepped out in the intricate patterns of the Game in a hundred different

    ways. Even the pattern of the streets… so many parts of the city now reflected the purpose of the Game.

    I wondered if Brutus had ever realized how powerful his Game would

    become.

    During these wanders I invariably found myself drawn to St. Paul's Cathedral. At first I supposed this was because the cathedral sat directly over the site where Brutus had originally built the labyrinth. The Game, and its labyrinth, had grown, I knew that, but still here lay its heart.

    Then, as I sat within the nave, ignoring all the people who prayed and chattered and wept about me, I came to another realization, one that stunned me. St. Paul's was the stone hall of my dream.

    Not precisely. It was not as grand as the stone hall of my dream, but there was something about it, some sense, some voice tnat called silently to me, that told me this was, indeed, the stone hall of my vision.

    But my vision showed it as it would one day be: not in this lifetime, but in

    one to come.

    And what that told me was that all would not be accomplished within this lifetime. The hall had to grow, and once that was done, then I and the Game could accomplish our mutual goal.

    I can't say precisely how my understanding that all would not be accomplished within this lifetime made me feel. Sad, certainly. Frightened, a little. Frustrated, beyond measure.

    Yet, unsurprised. Mag and Hera had known, I think, that it would take a very long time. That there were so many twists to be taken that several lives might be needed. But, oh, to have to come back again and again…

    Beyond all this, as I sat in the gloomy, frigid interior of the cathedral, staring at the altar and yet seeing none of it, I felt a deep fear.

    I should have known this, surely? Not only that St. Paul's was the stone hall of my vision, but that the playing out of the Game to its conclusion would take so long? Mag and Hera had known it… but was I not Mag-reborn? Did I not hold Mag and all that she was within my flesh? Was I not everything that

    she had been, yet more?

    So why had I not known this? Why had it taken me this long to realize,

    rather than instinctively know?

    The sense deepened that there was an emptiness, some "unrightness" about my power, my bond with the land. I was far more than I had been as Cornelia, but I was not yet all that I should be.

    What was missing? What had I yet to learn?

    Was this some omission on my part? Had Mag been wrong in trusting me

    to be all that was needed?

    I wanted to talk to one of the Sidlesaghes—oh, how I wished I had discussed

    this with Long Tom when we walked the forest paths of the Game—but no matter how much I wandered, and wanted, I saw none of them. They seemed to have their own sense of time, and of how events should be placed and paced out within that time, but I knew none of it. Long Tom had told me I needed to move the bands, but had then left me alone all this time—a week, longer, without a word.

    And so I had wandered, about Westminster, about London, and invariably to St. Paul's where I sat, and worried.

    One market day, when the lowing of cattle and the bleating of sheep and goats from the markets of Cheapside disturbed even the relative calm of St. Paul's, I sat huddled on a bench in one of the aisles. Many of the traders and their customers had come inside the nave of the cathedral to do their business—I supposed it was raining outside, and the cathedral more conducive to trade than the rain-washed street—and the aisle was one of the few spots within the cathedral where remained any peace. I had decided to return to Westminster, the walk would take me an hour, and poor Damson needed her body back for her evening chores, and so I had shuffled forward on the bench in preparation to rising, when a cloaked figure dropped down beside me, making me cringe back on the bench. What was this? A robber? A lecher? Worse, a monk come to pry out my sins?

    "Don't leave," said Silvius.

    I stared at him, not sure if he knew who it was within this poor woman's body.

    "My lord," I began, but Silvius laughed, and waved a hand in the air.

    "Oh, no need for such formalities, Caela. But this body…" His eyes traveled over Damson's squat outlines with patent disapproval. "You could not find better?"

    "How did you know it was me?"

    His teeth flashed inside the hood. "I know all about glamours, Caela. I am no fool."

    "I did not ever mistake you for one," I said quietly. My eyes had got used to the darkness beneath the enveloping hood, and now I could see his face clearly. He was grinning, obviously enjoying my discomfiture.

    "Glamours were used in the ancient Aegean world, as well as here," he said. "Mag was not the only one to know of them."

    "Ah. I did not know."

    "I have watched you these past days," he said, all teasing dropped from his voice. "You keep coming back here. Why?"

    "It is the stone hall of my vision."

    He nodded. "I had wondered when you would see that."

    "Is there anything you do not know?"

    Again he laughed. "Very little, although I suspect that what I don't know is what you need desperately to know, and perhaps why you sit here with Damson's rough-worked face all wrinkled with worry."

    I wondered how to reply to that, then finally decided that it would not hurt to talk to Silvius. I felt safe about him, cared for and comforted, and I knew he was someone in whom I could confide.

    "There are several things all at worry within me," I said.

    "And they are?"

    "Well… the lesser is that Judith has told me that Saeweald expects himself to become Og-reborn."

    Silvius grinned. "The pretentious fool," he said. "Has he no idea?"

    I shook my head. "Should I tell him?"

    "Oh, nay. I think not! Imagine the consequences. Ah, Caela, do not worry. He will come to terms with his disappointment, I am sure. He will do what is

    best for the land."

    "I hope so," I said, lowly.

    "He will."

    I chewed at my lip, then nodded.

    "Very well. What else eats at you?"

    "There is something missing within me," I said. "Some part of who I

    should be is… not there."

    He frowned. "What do you mean?"

    I lifted one hand, then let it drop uselessly. "An emptiness, Silvius. An un-rightness. I can explain it no more than that."

    "You are not all you should be?"

    "Yes. That is it, perfectly."

    He was silent, and I looked at him. He was smiling gently, his face so like, and yet unlike, Brutus' in its gentleness that I felt like weeping.

    I was suddenly very sorry that I was here in Damson's body and not my

    true one.

    His smile widened a little. "I could tell you what is so amiss, but you might

    not want to know."

    "What is it?"

    Now he was grinning enough that I could see his teeth, and the wetness of his tongue behind them. I smiled, responding to the mischievousness in his face, and to the warmth and life dancing about in his remaining eye.

    "Let me see," he said. "How can I put this without having you shriek down

    the cathedral?"

    "Tell me!" I said. Then I laughed, for suddenly it seemed as if Silvius had taken all my cares into his capable hands, rolled them up into an insignificant ball, and tossed them carelessly aside.

    "Well now." He struck a pose, as if considering deeply, and without thinking I reached out and touched him.

    "Tell me."

    He took my hand, curling it within his own.

    His flesh was very warm. Very dry. Very sensuous.

    My heart began to thud strangely within my breast, and I knew he could feel the pulse leap within my wrist.

    "Let me see," he said again, but now all the laughter had gone from his voice, and his gaze as it held mine was direct and strong. Confrontational, but still reassuring.

    "You are Mag-reborn within Caela. Yes?"

    My hesitation was only slight. "Yes."

    "And you are queen of England, wife to the oh-so-pious Edward. Yes?"

    "Yes."

    "As Mag you are the land, fertility personified, you are Mother Mag. You are the bounty of the land."

    I had a glimmer where he was going. "Oh."

    "Oh, indeed. But as Caela, queen of England, wife of Edward the Confessor, you are," his lips twitched, "God's Concubine. A virgin. Imagine," he said, "how this undermines everything you are as Mag-reborn."

    "Oh." I let out a long breath—I had not realized I'd been holding it.

    "No wonder you feel a lack," he said, and he laughed, breathily, and his hand tightened about mine.

    "But what can I—"

    He roared with laughter, and I looked about, sure the entire cathedral would be staring at us.

    But in the hustle and bustle, no one was paying us any attention and so I looked back to Silvius.

    "You are a poor wretch indeed," he said, "if you do not know how to fix the situation."

    I could see nothing but his black eye, feel nothing but the pressure of his hand, the warmth of his body, the skittering of fets pulse. I could read the solution in his eye, feel it in his touch.

    "I am not my son," he said, very softly. "Never mistake me for Brutus."

    I knew what he saying. Do not take me only because I remind you of Brutus.

    I swallowed, and pulled my hand away.

    He let it go easily. "It would be best," he said, "that, if you do decide to relinquish your state as God's Concubine, that you do not do it in Damson's body."

    "Yes," I said, adding, without thinking, "she is no virgin, in any case."

    "Is that so?" He laughed again, and I colored.

    I forced my mind back to what he had said. As Caela I was a virgin, and that contradicted everything I should be as Mag, as Mother of this land, as its

    ^ "The winter solstice approaches," Silvius said. "It would be the best night." The best night in which to lose my virginity.

    "In which to wed yourself entirely to the land." His gaze had not once wandered from my face. "To fill that lack."

    He was right. Everything he said was right. Virginity was anathema to Mag and to all she represented, and the night of the winter solstice, the night when the land needed every particle of aid and fertility it could summon to see it through the long, frigid winter, was the perfect occasion to… "To wed myself entirely to the land," I whispered. "And to the Game," he said, as low as I, "should you choose aright." Ah, I knew what he suggested, and I knew then what I would do. "Do not come to me as Damson," he said, and his voice was thick with desire. "Not as Damson."

    "No," I whispered. "Not as Damson."

    SI*

    WANNE WAS FEELING EDGIER BY THE DAY.

    There was something happening, yet she could not scry out the "what" of that happening. Caela had changed, had become far more confident within herself, and Swanne did not like that. The Game was setting children to hopping over lines in the flagstones outside St. Paul's (and their fathers to battling out the Troy Game in labyrinthine horse games). Harold had vanished, ostensibly to his estates in Wessex, but Swanne had sent him a message there several days ago and he had yet to reply.

    Was it that Harold was ignoring her… or was it that he was not in Wessex at all? Was this punishment for her failure to aid him during Tostig's attack? For her laughter? Damn! Swanne supposed she should have managed some pretense at caring… but then, Harold was no threat, surely. Was he?

    As Harold irritated and worried Swanne, so also did William. Rather, his refusal to answer her pleas for the location of the kingship bands of Troy irritated her. Gods, he must know that Asterion hunted them down! He could not afford to let them lie vulnerable!

    To cap all of this was Edward's decision to request Swanne to accompany himself, the queen, and a small group of courtiers and clerics to view the almost-completed abbey of Westminster. Swanne could not understand why he'd invited her. Edward and she barely spoke, and Swanne only attended the king's court when Harold was in attendance. On the occasions when they did speak, their mutual dislike was obvious. Edward disliked the Danelaw wife of Harold, not only for the sensual beauty that Swanne never bothered to drape with modesty, but because Swanne and Harold's union was not recognized by the Holy Church and was therefore, in Edward's eyes, a horribly sinful affair. He even had referred to her and Harold's children as bastards on more than one occasion.

    In Swanne's view, Edward was a contemptuous and cowardly old man, hiding behind his religion and his sharp, sarcastic tongue.

    Edward's one great love was the almost-completed abbey. It had been fifteen years in the building (the fact that Edward had been married to

    Caela for fifteen years as well, and that his Grand Plan for the abbey was conceived at the same time he wed her was the occasion of much ribald comment: Edward found in stones and mortar what he could not find in his wife) and had absorbed one-tenth of the entire wealth of the realm. Edward meant the building to be a marvel of its kind, the most wondrous abbey in Europe and, Swanne supposed, most Christians would think he had mostly

    succeeded.

    The abbey was enormous, by far the largest single structure in England. It

    occupied the western portion of Thorney Isle, its central tower crowned with a cupola of wood, rising some several hundred feet into the air, its cruciform layout (still a novelty in Europe) stretching over five hundred feet east to west. The abbey was constructed of great blocks of gray stone, unusual in a country where most churches—indeed, most buildings—were constructed of wood or wattle and daub, had a magnificent lead roof, a graceful rounded apse at its eastern end, and dazzlingly beautiful stained glass filling its windows. In the two towers at the western end of the abbey hung five great bells that were to be rung for the first time this day. From the southern wall extended the foundations and partly constructed walls of the cloisters, infirmary, rectory, and the infirmary gardens: that would be completed within the

    next few years.

    Edward, accompanied by Eadwine, abbot of Westminster, a bevy of other clerics including Aldred, Wulfstan of Worcester, and the bishop of London, his queen, Caela, two or three of her ladies, a handful of earls and a score of lesser thegns, guards, hangers-on, and three ragged children who tacked themselves on to the very end of the party, set out for the short walk on foot from his palace to the abbey at midmorning. Swanne, who had decided that attending might give her a better opportunity for observing Caela than that provided her within the confines of court, walked a few paces behind the queen and her ladies. It was a fine day, if crisp and cold, and most people had wrapped themselves in fur-lined cloaks and heavy woolen robes, with sturdy leather boots on their feet. A fresh southerly breeze blew, tugging at the veils of the women and making everyone's eyes water.

    Swanne kept her eyes on the ground, her skirts lifted delicately away from the ever-present mud. Gods, she thought, could not Edward have seen to the laying of a few flagstones to make the way a little easier?

    As they approached the eastern apse, the bells of the western towers

    suddenly burst into tongue.

    Swanne flinched, as did most people. Although everyone had known the bells were to sound out for the first time this morning to welcome the great king into the new abbey, the actuality of their tremendous peal was a shock to both ears and nerves.

    If Swanne flinched, then Edward stopped dead in his tracks (forcing everyone to stumble to a halt behind him) and crowed with delight, clapping his hands and raising his face heavenward.

    "Glory be to God on high!" he shouted, and the shout was dutifully taken up by the clerics clustered in a small adoring flock behind him.

    Glory be to God on high!

    Swanne mumbled something that she hoped would be taken for a similar response, feeling such a rush of loathing for the entire Christian church and its damned crucified sons, saints, and sundry martyrs that for an instant she had a surge of sentimental longing for Mag. At least that silly bitch hadn't wrapped herself and her followers about with ridiculous conditions, sins, and unachievable objectives in order to keep them unthinking and under control.

    At least Mag hadn't demanded the building of cold, dark, and useless stone tombs in which to herd her mindless minions.

    Swanne looked ahead, and realized with a jolt that Caela had turned and was looking at her with a small smile on her face—almost as if she knew exactly what Swanne was thinking. The fine linen veil Caela wore about her forehead and over her hair had fluttered loose in the wind, as had a few wisps of her dark hair. The wind had also brought a glow to her cheeks and a sparkle to her eye, and for a moment, a single moment, Swanne was struck at how lovely the woman looked.

    How certain. How happy.

    Then Swanne hardened both her heart and her face, and Caela turned away as Edward resumed his triumphant march into his abbey and his immortality.

    AS SWANNE HAD EXPECTED, THE INTERNAL SPACE OF

    the abbey could have been a block of ice, for all its warmth. The abbey's nave was also full of dust, dirt, and a few remaining scaffolds for workmen to put the final touches to the sculptures about Edward's soaring walls.

    At least the screech of the bells was muted in here.

    Edward was almost capering in his joy, pointing out this and that for his equally joyous sycophants.

    Swanne turned away, trying to seek out Caela in the shafts of weak sunlight that filtered through the stained glass windows.

    "Is this not a sight to gladden one's heart?" came a voice behind her, and Swanne managed, just, to put a pleasant smile on her face as she turned about.

    It was Aldred, the archbishop of York, beaming at her as if she would truly think this abbey the most wondrous site in creation.

    O

    "Indeed," she said, inclining her head politely.

    Aldred looked about, checking that no one was within hearing distance. "And won't William enjoy it, don't you think? So… Norman."

    Swanne drew in a sharp breath of dismay, her eyes glancing about, praying to whatever gods were listening this morning that no one had heard Aldred's remark. The fat fool!

    "You need not be so indiscreet!" she hissed.

    His face hardened. "Indiscreet, madam, is passing written intelligence from your chamber to his!"

    "To which you have ever been a willing party," she retorted. Aldred had been her means to contact William for the past eight or nine years. He was a Norman who had come to England when Edward returned from exile some twenty years previously. As part of his admiration of all things Norman (and his desire to irritate the Saxon Godwineson clan at every opportunity), Edward had elevated Aldred from mere monk to bishop to, eventually, archbishop. The cleric's girth increasing in direct proportion to the importance of each elevation. In between clerical promotions, Edward also used Aldred as his ambassador to Rome, Cologne, and Jerusalem, and as many smaller and less important realms.

    Swanne found him repulsive, but he was necessary to her cause. Aldred was a man of great influence, who knew many people and was a Norman sympathizer. Over the years he had told her (in foul-breathed whispers… his liking of sweet pastries had rotted away most of his teeth) that he would like nothing else than to see William ensconced on England's throne, and would work with her to ensure this end.

    Swanne wasn't sure if she could truly trust the man… but he had not failed her over all the years she'd been communicating with William, and Swanne was sure that if a treachery was to have been forthcoming, then it would have engulfed her by now.

    Now Aldred had his hands clasped across his not-inconsiderable girth, his eyes narrowed as he studied her. "I have heard that Harold has set Caela to procuring him a more suitable wife, my dear. One who can comfortably sit next to him on a Christian throne. One who is not…" he drew out his pause with infinite delicacy "… tainted."

    Swanne ignored the jibe; Aldred, after all, was a cruel man underneath his jovial flab and enjoyed a taunt almost as much as he enjoyed a pastry. "Are

    you certain?"

    Aldred raised an eyebrow. "Of course, my dear. Now you are more, ahem, married to William's cause than ever, eh? A pity about Matilda, though. I hear

    also—"

    Swanne gritted her teeth.

    "—that William has promised Matilda that she shall be crowned next to him. What place for you in all this, then? Neither man seems to want to publicly associate himself with you. And yet, one or the other shall surely be England's king."

    "William will never—" she began, leaning close to the archbishop, when his eyes widened, and one plump hand whipped out and seized her forearm.

    Swanne snapped her mouth closed.

    "My good lord archbishop," Caela said, inclining her head politely to both Aldred and Swanne as she walked close, "do you find this abbey pleasing?"

    "Most pleasing, gracious queen," Aldred said. "It is a true monument to Edward."

    Caela glanced about the frigid, empty stone interior. "Oh, aye, it is that," she said, not a hint of sarcasm in her voice. "And you, my lady sister, what think you?"

    Swanne tried to smile politely, then abandoned the effort, realizing she was failing miserably. "I find it empty," she said, tired with all the pretense and the lies. "And cold."

    Caela nodded slightly at her, consideringly. "Not many people would have spoken such truth, sister. That was well done of you."

    Swanne momentarily closed her eyes, fighting back the impulse to slap the patronizing bitch across her glowing cheeks.

    At that moment, one of Swanne's sons, Alan, who had accompanied the party, came over and greeted his mother and the archbishop. He exchanged one or two words with them, then made a small bow to Caela.

    "Madam," he said, "forgive me for not speaking to you first, but your beauty this morning, in this cold gray hall, struck me dumb, and I could not find the words with which to adequately greet you."

    His eyes sparkled as he spoke, and Caela burst into delighted laughter.

    "Ah, I was standing in the good archbishop's shadow, my dear," she said, "and it was only now that you saw me. You thought to cloak oversight with flattery." She paused, her grin widening. "You shall make a true courtier, indeed."

    Well, well, thought Swanne. You grace my son with your laughter and insult the archbishop all in one. From where did you discover this courage? She glanced at Aldred, saw his face tighten with humiliation, and she had to dampen a moment's grudging admiration for Caela.

    Her boy had turned to Aldred, engaging him in a conversation about the estates of his archbishopric, and Caela moved a little closer to Swanne, taking her arm and moving her away a pace or two.

    "I am glad to have you to myself a moment," she said, "and Alan's delightful interruption has made me curious about something. Let me phrase this as delicately as I might, considering always that there are other ears about."

    Swanne stiffened. She held Caela's gaze with easy arrogance, but the queen did not let her eyes drop.

    "Swanne," Caela said, "I remember that you, a very long time ago when I was but a naive girl, said that you only ever wanted daughters. Yet here you are, a mother of three fine sons to Harold. How can this be? Has my recently returned memory somehow… misremembered?"

    Swanne knew what Caela was truly asking. How does a Mistress of the Labyrinth bear sons when she only truly wants daughters?

    "I am glad for the sons," Swanne said, sure she could actually hear her teeth grate, "for otherwise Harold would have set me aside."

    "Ah," said Caela, and the expression on her face said: The truth of the matter. And then Swanne knew, as surely as she drew breath, that Caela was hiding something from her. Something deep.

    She remembered how long ago, long, long ago, when she had been Genvissa and Caela had been Cornelia, how she had continually felt something strange about Cornelia. Something hidden.

    Now she felt it again. The woman was hiding something, something sly. What? What? Not Mag, for Mag was dead. What else?

    Again Swanne felt a shiver of fear slide through her. What else? Alan had departed, and Swanne became aware that Aldred was looking most peculiarly between the two woman.

    Swanne laughed, daintily and prettily, and patted his hand. "You must forgive us, Father, for our chatter about babies. I am sure you are bored by it."

    "Indeed not, madam. You would be surprised at how much matters of the womb amuse me."

    Then he changed the subject, talking first about the abbey, and how splendid it must be for Eadwine to be able to conduct services within its grandeur ("My cathedral of York is, I am afraid, a sad affair, indeed"), then about Harold ("Has anyone seen the great earl recently? I confess to have missed his wit about the king's court this past week"), then about the River Thames itself ("So gray and lifeless, don't you think? I cannot but agree with those Holy Fathers who preach that such wide expanses of water are but examples of sinful wasteland, unfit for consideration"), before, eventually, bringing the subject back to the matter of children. "My dear, gracious queen—"

    Swanne looked at Caela, and saw that her face was strained and paler than it had been. Either Aldred himself was beginning to try her (a distinct possibility, as far as Swanne was concerned) or some of what Aldred had bean talking about had somehow upset her, and Swanne found herself intrigued by that possibility.

    "—I have always sorrowed that your womb has borne no fruit," Aldred continued, his face all wrapped up in palpably false sorrow and concern. "It must be a great tragedy for you that—"

    "I am afraid, my good archbishop, that I can see my husband looking about for me. I should rejoin him."

    Swanne's eyes had not left Caela's face. So, she was upset over something.

    "—you have proved so barren," he finished. "Should I pray for you?"

    From the corner of her eye, Swanne saw something quite horrible slither across his face. She half turned so she could see him more clearly, when Caela gave an audible, and patently horrified, gasp.

    Swanne looked back to her, then saw that Caela was staring at the altar, some distance away.

    Curious to see what it was that had so distracted Caela, Swanne looked also…

    … and froze, so terrified she could barely continue to breathe.

    The altar was not yet fully completed, and there was still some scaffolding behind it. This scaffolding was perhaps some fifteen or twenty feet high, and hanging from its central supports, in a frightful parody of the Christian crucifixion, stretched Asterion.

    He was completely naked, his muscular body gleaming with sweat, his black bull's head twisting slowly from side to side as if he moaned in agony.

    Swanne was vaguely aware that Aldred was still babbling on about babies and wombs and barrenness, but she could not truly distinguish a word he said. All she could see was Asterion, crucified before her, blood trickling down his arms, his chest, his belly.

    Then, horrifyingly, Asterion's head stopped rolling from side to side, and his eyes opened, and they stared directly at Swanne.

    Do you know, the Minotaur whispered in her mind, of what Ariadne promised me? Do you know, of how much she enjoyed me?

    Swanne realized, frightfully, that the Minotaur was fully erect.

    Do you have any idea of how much good I could do you?

    And then he was gone, and Swanne was left staring open-mouthed at the altar, trembling so badly that she thought she would tumble to the flagging floor at any moment.

    "Swanne!" she heard Caela say, and felt the woman grasp at her arm. "Swanne!"

    And then, in her mind, It was trickery, Swanne. Ignore it! He thinks only to taunt you!

    Swanne, so slowly she could feel the tendons behind her eyes popping with the movement, dragged her eyes away from the altar and to Caela. The woman was staring at her, looking almost as horrified as Swanne felt.

    "Swanne," Caela whispered, close enough now that she could put an arm about Swanne's waist. "Ignore him, I beg you."

    "Ignore me?" Aldred said indignantly, staring bemusedly between the two women. "Have I said something to upset such noble ladies?"

    sevejN

    XHAUSTED BY HIS DAY SPENT INSPECTING THE

    abbey, Edward fell into a dreamless sleep as soon as he closed his eyes. The bowerthegn likewise, prompted less by exhaustion than a little too much ale taken at supper. Judith, who often slept in the trestle bed at the foot of the king and queen's great bed, was not there. Caela had told her she could spend the night with Saeweald, if she wished. That she, Caela, had no need for her.

    In truth, Caela did not want Judith—who had not realized Asterion's appearance—awake and near, fretting over Caela's patent and unexplained worry. And so Caela lay awake and alone, staring at the canopy over the bed, replaying the events of the day over and over in her mind.

    Her hands lay over the bedcovers, twisting and warping the material until, eventually, broken threads began to work themselves loose from the weave.

    The night deepened.

    Well past midnight, when even the owls were silent, Caela's hands paused, and she raised herself up on one elbow.

    A trapdoor had materialized within the floor.

    "Praise the lady moon!" Caela whispered and, rising from the bed, she threw a gown hastily over her nakedness, slipped her feet into some shoes, and snatched at her cloak that hung from the back of the doorway.

    The trapdoor opened, and an arm and hand emerged, beckoning Caela.

    She stepped through the trapdoor as the arm disappeared, unhesitant.

    SHE WALKED WITH THE SIDLESAGHE THROUGH A

    tunnel that seemed not of this world, or of any that Caela could remember. Above them and to either side, curved walls made of red clay bricks of a uniformity of shape and color and of size that Caela had never seen previously.

    Even stranger, the floor of the tunnel consisted of a thick layer of gravel upon which her feet continually slipped and slithered. Stranger yet, through

    this gravel ran two ribbons of shiny metal as wide and as high as the palm of her hand.

    Every so often Caela noted that the ribbons of metal quivered violently, shaking to and fro, and when they did this, then a moment later, there invariably came a rush of air so violent that it almost blew Caela off her uncertain feet.

    "We walk through a part of the Game that is yet to be," said the Sidlesaghe. "Sometimes this happens."

    Caela nodded, curious but not unbearably so. Asterion, his naked form, his malevolent words, rich with unknown meaning, kept repeating themselves over and over in her head.

    Eventually they came to an opening within the wall on their right. It was the height and just over the width of a man, and the Sidlesaghe turned and entered the aperture.

    Caela followed, swallowing down her apprehension.

    The footing was firmer here, gravel no longer, but what felt like brick.

    Whatever relief the footing afforded was consumed almost immediately by the fear caused by the dark. Caela put her hands to either side of her, using the enclosing brick walls to orientate herself and to give her some comfort within the blackness. She could not see anything before her, but could hear the Sidlesaghe's footsteps ahead of her.

    Occasionally she bumped into his back, and, whenever she did that, Caela lifted one of her hands from the brick walls and rested it momentarily on the Sidlesaghe's shoulder, seeking reassurance in his nearness and warmth.

    They walked for what seemed like hours, but which, Caela realized, was probably for only a fraction of that time, until a faint light emerged before them.

    A doorway into the night.

    Caela gave a great sigh of relief as she followed the Sidlesaghe into the cold night, taking a moment to recover from her claustrophobia before she looked about her.

    They stood within London before the northern approach to the bridge. Immediately before Caela was the bridge itself; the two stones of Magog and Gog standing to either side of its entrance-way.

    The Sidlesaghe put a hand in the small of Caela's back, and she walked forward.

    As she did so, the stones wavered in the gloom, and metamorphosed into Sidlesaghes, slightly shorter than Long Tom, who had brought her through the tunnel, but otherwise virtually indistinguishable.

    "We saw Asterion," said the one who had been the stone Magog.

    Caela nodded, her hands pulling the cloak closer about her shoulders.

    "He spoke," said the one who was Gog.

    "It was vile," said Long Tom.

    "What did he mean?" said Caela, looking between the three Sidlesaghes. "What did Ariadne promise Asterion?"

    "Who can tell?" said the Gog. "Perhaps it was a falsehood, sent to disturb you, and Swanne also. Perhaps it was a truth."

    "If it is a truth," said Caela, "then it will be a dangerous one."

    "We agree," said all three Sidlesaghes simultaneously.

    "We have little time," added Long Tom.

    "The bands," Caela said.

    "You must move the first one tomorrow night," said Magog. "Long Tom shall aid you."

    Caela shivered, and Long Tom placed a surprisingly warm hand on her shoulder.

    eigbc

    Rouen

    HEY HAD LEFT THE CASTLE AT ROUEN BEFORE

    dawn, heavily cloaked against the frost, their horses' hooves dull ^■p*"*" thuds on the straw-strewn cobbles of the castle courtyard, and then the frost-hardened mire of the streets that led to the city gate. They were a small party: William of Normandy; Harold of Wessex; Walter Fitz Osbern; Ranuld the huntsman, on horseback himself for this dangerous adventure; Thorkell, a thegn from Sussex, and Hugh, a thegn from Kent, both of them close companions of Harold's who had accompanied him on his journey to Normandy; and, finally, two men-at-arms from William's own personal guard at Rouen. All eight men were heavily armed with swords and knives and the men-at-arms also carried with them wickedly-sharp, long pikes, two apiece, which they could share with any other of the hunters as

    need be.

    The gatekeepers were awake and alert, having been forewarned of this expedition the previous night. They bowed as William rode up on his black stallion, then set in motion the grinding and clanking which signaled the rising of the portcullis. William and Harold and their companions sat waiting silently, their eyes set ahead, their expressions drawn, their thoughts on what lay before them, while their horses stamped and flicked their tails with impatience, lowering their heads and testing the strength of bit and rein and the hand of the man who held them.

    The portcullis rattled into its place in the heights of the gate, and the riders kicked their horses forward.

    "Which way?" William said over his shoulder to Ranuld, riding several

    paces behind.

    Ranuld nodded toward the line of trees that stretched along a creek some two miles distant. "There, my lord. The report I had last night said they had nested along that creek bed."

    "Take the lead," William said, and Ranuld kicked his horse forward, guiding the party toward the distant trees.

    For the first few minutes of the ride, they kept to the road, and William pulled his horse back until he rode side by side with Harold. He'd given the Saxon earl one of his best stallions, better even than the one William himself rode, and William noted that Harold controlled the spirited bay easily and gently. The horse was unmanageable for most riders, and William had given it to Harold as a test.

    Strangely, as he'd watched Harold gather the stallion's reins and mount, William had found himself hoping that Harold would be able to control the beast. He didn't want to see Harold tossed into the mire of the stable yard, or suffer the humiliation of having the horse bolt from under him while half the garrison watched from dormitory doorways or leaned over the parapets.

    And why not? Brutus would have relished the chance to arrange Coel's humiliation.

    Wouldn't he?

    The horse had given one initial plunge as he felt Harold's weight settle on his back, but then Harold had taken control, soothing the stallion with a calm but firm voice, reining him in with a determined yet gentle hand, and stroking the horse's muscled neck when he'd finally settled.

    Then Harold had turned amused eyes to William, knowing full well that he'd just been set a test.

    William had given the earl a single nod—that was well done—and then mounted himself, leading the party out.

    They'd not spoken since. But now, riding through the hoar-frosted countryside beyond Rouen's walls, William felt the need to talk.

    Honestly.

    Harold had been with William now for some time, and all this time had, after their initial conversation, been spent in hedging and wary verbal circling, interspersed with long and significant periods of eye contact over the rims of wine cups. Neither wanted to concede anything to the other, but both wanted to scry out the other's strengths and weaknesses as much as possible.

    They were, after all, likely to meet on the battlefield, and this time spent together was as much a part of that distant battle as would be the eventual clash of sword on sword.

    Through all of this, William had not forgotten Matilda's injunction to be Harold's friend. His wary circling had as much been sounding out Harold's character as it had his strengths and weaknesses.

    And William had discovered that he did, indeed, like Harold. The earl was as honest and true a man as ever William had met, in either of his lives, and William had come to regret bitterly the actions of his previous life.

    Kb

    William checked to ensure that Ranuld, as the riders following them, were not within easy earshot, and said, "Tell me of Swanne." He made no attempt at dissimulation, for that would have been an insult to Harold's own integrity. "Did you ever love her, and she you?" Is that why she lied to me about you, because then she loved you?

    Harold shot William a wry look. "What is this, William? She has not told you everything that has passed between us?"

    No. "She has only mentioned that she is your wife, but nothing more." Harold raised his eyebrows, although his gaze had returned to the road before them. "I am her husband, I am the man who should rightfully succeed Edward, and I am thus the one she betrays the most, both as husband and as future king. How strange that she has not mentioned me, apart from naming me as her husband."

    He turned his head, looking at William once more. "If Matilda betrayed you with, for instance, the duke of Gascony, and plotted to hand him your duchy, would you not expect her to hand him some reason for this betrayal? Would you not expect the duke to ask, 'Why, madam, do you betray your husband and your homeland in this manner?' I find it passing strange, William, that Swanne does not 'mention me.' You never thought to ask?"

    "I asked her once, many years ago. She said you were but a man. Nothing

    more."

    Harold laughed bitterly. "Just a man. Nothing more. When I first married her I loved her more dearly than I had thought possible. She bewitched me. You have surely heard of her loveliness, if not seen for yourself." William nodded, his eyes now on the road before them. "God, William. I could not believe I had won such a trophy to my bed. In the early years together, she provided me with bed sport such as I'd never enjoyed before." William winced.

    "And then…" Harold hesitated. "And then…?"

    "And then, as years passed, I realized that Swanne's loveliness was only a brittle thing. A sham, meant to bewilder and entrap. Swanne uses her beauty and love only as a weapon." He paused. "I do not think Swanne knows what love is. Not truly. William, how is it you have fallen under her spell? What did she use to entrap you?"

    Power. Ambition. The promise of immortality. "I am not 'trapped,'" William

    said.

    Harold grunted.

    "I hear tell you lust for your sister," William said, stung into attack. To his

    amazement, Harold only laughed.

    i

    "You would have done far better to recruit Caela to your cause, William. Caela could have been born the lowliest of peasant women, and still she would have been a queen." He looked directly at William, forcing the duke to meet his gaze. "She has true power, William, not Swanne, and that is beauty of spirit, not darkness of soul."

    "Caela is well served in you, Harold. She has always been so."

    "And I in her," Harold said quietly, and for a time they rode in silence, each wrapped in their own thoughts.

    "Harold," William said eventually, "you cannot fight me. When Edward dies, I have the closest blood link to the English throne. I will have the stronger claim. Don't oppose me." Please.

    Harold grinned, easy and comfortable, and William felt his stomach turn over. Gods! Was this guilt? A conscience?

    "A tenuous blood link," said Harold, "through your great-aunt, and well you know that the English throne is not handed automatically from father to son… or from king to—what are you?—great nephew through marriage. The witan approves and elects each new king. If there is a strong son with a good claim, then it will lean to him… but they will not elect you, William. Never."

    They lapsed into silence again. Ranuld had led them from the road, and now their horses were cantering through stubbled meadowlands, the hay long since cut and carted for winter fodder. The pace had quickened, and everyone's hearts beat a little faster.

    The tree line of the creek bed loomed.

    "I will invade," William said. "Believe it."

    Harold shrugged. "Then you will meet the might of the Saxon army. You will meet England."

    "For sweet Christ's sake, Harold, I have a battle-hardened force second to none! I have spent thirty years fighting for this duchy, and I will loose all that experience on you!"

    Unwittingly, Harold echoed Matilda's words. "And you are prepared to waste another thirty trying to seize England, William? For I assure you, thirty years of Norman spilled blood is what it is going to take."

    Furious now—although at quite what, William was not sure—he kicked his horse forward with a terse, "As you will."

    They descended into the all-but-dry creek bed, their horses slipping and sliding down the steep slope before splashing into the bare inch of water that wound its sludgy way around the larger of the stones of the bed.

    At the head of the party, Ranuld reined his horse to a halt and held up his hand. "Prepare yourselves," he said once the seven other men had pulled up behind him. "They are not far."

    He extended the hand he'd held up until it was pointing straight ahead. "There," he said, his tone quieter now. "See? In those bushes lining that slope?"

    The other men peered, some swallowing in nervous anticipation, others tightening their mouths in grim attempts at fortitude.

    All reached for weapons, and Thorkell and Hugh, Harold's men, took a pike each from the men-at-arms.

    All eight looked between each other, then forward again, to the distant bushes.

    At this time of morning, when the sun had barely risen, the shadows were so long and strong about the shrubs that it was difficult to distinguish detail.

    Then a shadow moved, deepened lightly, and a single ray of sunlight, penetrating the deep creek bed, revealed the roundness of flesh.

    A shoulder, perhaps, or even a haunch.

    The shadow moved, shuffling about, and then, for an instant, the watchers saw a head with thick curved tusks and small, bright, mean eyes.

    William very slowly withdrew his sword from its leather scabbard and, even with that slight sound, the creature hiding in the bushes squealed in anger, and the world erupted into a seething mass of leaves and branches and hot flesh and terrible grinding tusks.

    The riders scattered, the horses—even as well trained as they were— terrified by the suddenness of the attack.

    A boar, half the size of a horse, its hairy hide mottled tan and black and pink, had roared from the shrubs and charged down the creek bed toward the group of riders. It moved with the agility, grace, and power of a master swordsman, and it used its vicious, deadly tusks with as much effect, breaking a leg on no less than three horses on its first charge.

    The horses went down in a flurry of snorting fear and flailing legs, tossing their riders onto the sharp stones of the creek walls and bed.

    A man-at-arms was one of those who was tossed. Horribly, he had fallen directly in the path of the boar, which had made a nimble turn, and was making a returning charge at the now disarrayed hunting party.

    The man screamed, rolling away. He got to his knees, his hands reaching for the roots of a tree higher up the bank, his feet scrabbling for purchase, then the boar slammed into his back, driving its tusks deep into his ribs.

    The man-at-arms screeched, so terrified—or so paralyzed by pain and shock—that he did not even think to reach for his sword or knife.

    The boar twisted its head and, aided by the immense muscles in its neck and shoulders, bodily lifted the man off the ground and tossed him some feet away.

    The man, still screeching, landed with a sickening thud, his head smashing into a large rock.

    He convulsed, then lay still.

    The rest of the party had either gotten their horses back under control or, in the case of the two riderless men who had regained their feet relatively uninjured, had grabbed pikes. Now the remaining seven men closed in on the boar, which had now turned its ire on one of the luckless horses, disemboweling it with two vicious sweeps of its tusks.

    Harold was the closest and, guiding his horse in with the pressure of his knees and calves, he hefted his sword. As the boar swung to meet him, he plunged it with all his strength into the boar's back.

    The blade of the sword missed the boar's spinal cord by a mere inch, burying itself into the thick muscle that bounded the creature's ribs.

    Harold leaned back, meaning to pull the sword free so he could strike again.

    The boar screamed in rage, rather than pain or despair. Before Harold could twist the sword free, the boar twisted himself, throwing the weight of his body against the legs of Harold's horse.

    The stallion slipped to its haunches and Harold, still gripping the haft of the sword, was pulled out of the saddle both by the motion of the horse and by the continual maddened twisting of the boar.

    He fell, grunting in surprise as he hit the stones of the creek bed, and slipped in the shallow water as he tried to right himself.

    The boar, Harold's sword still sticking from its back, had turned and was now watching Harold with his vicious, intelligent eyes.

    Even though there were other men and horses milling about, and even though Harold could hear the frantic shouting of Ranuld and William, and of his two companions Thorkell and Hugh, it felt to him as if there were only two creatures in this world on this morn: himself, and the maddened, murderous boar.

    Very slowly, Harold managed to rise to his knees, his eyes never leaving those of the boar, and slowly drew free the long-bladed knife from his belt.

    To one side, William kneed his horse forward, grabbing a pike from one of the other men, and hefting it in his hand.

    The boar had its back to him, and would be an easy target.

    "No," whispered Walter Fitz Osbern. Then, a little more strongly, "No!"

    He grabbed at the reins of William's horse, pulling it to a sudden halt and almost unseating William.

    "Let the boar and Harold settle this," Walter said, meeting William's stunned and furious gaze. "Let God decide who has the right to take England's throne, here and now."

    "You fool!" William yelled, and, leaning forward, struck Walter a great blow across the face that almost unseated the man from his horse.

    Frantic, not even wondering why he should be so frightened, nor so determined, William turned his horse back toward where the boar faced Harold in the bed of the creek.

    To his side, Thorkell and Hugh were already moving forward.

    They were all too late.

    The boar had charged.

    Harold was still on his knees, weaving backward and forward unsteadily from either the force of the initial impact in the fall from his horse or in panic at the boar's murderous rush, and had barely time to raise his knife.

    "Harold!" William yelled, discarding the pike and jumping down from his horse. He dashed forward, his sword drawn.

    The boar was roaring again, a horrible, terrible noise of squealing and grunting and screaming, all in one, and as it came to within two paces of Harold, it tucked its head down against its chest, presenting its tusks and broad

    forehead.

    In that instant, that instant when the boar could not see, Harold fell back, his legs before him, the back of his head slamming into the trickle of cold

    water.

    The boar was upon him, terrible pounding feet, hot, foul breath, a grunting and screeching that sounded as if it emanated from hell.

    Harold cried out involuntarily as the boar's front feet slammed into his belly and chest and then, as the boar surged forward, as the boar's great pendulous abdomen brushed over Harold's chest, Harold brought up the knife with all the strength he had left, plunging it into the boar's soft underbelly and allowing the forward motion of the creature to tear itself open.

    Blood and bowels erupted over Harold, smothering him, and in the next moment the entire weight of the boar crashed into his neck and head, then, mercifully, rolled off to one side.

    "Harold! Harold!"

    William was upon him, sure that the blood and entrails that coated Harold

    must be the man's own.

    "Harold!" William fell to his knees, straddling Harold's body, and pushing

    aside the worst of the gore.

    Beneath it, Harold slowly opened his eyes.

    "Harold?"

    Harold raised a hand, waving it weakly from side to side. He was gasping for air, and William realized that the boar's death plunge must have winded

    him severely. If not worse. "Harold?"

    "I have… have… but lost… my breath…" Harold eventually man-

    aged. "And… and my chest and belly throb from where the boar stood on Tostig's treacherous scars. But I think it is nothing more than bruises."

    William breathed a sigh of unpretended relief. "Thank Christ, our Lord," he said.

    "I thought the boar had me," Harold said.

    "I have never seen such bravery," William said, and all who now crowded about heard the admiration and respect in his voice.

    William rose.

    "I had thought you might have hoped the boar would have taken me," said Harold, slowly raising himself into a sitting position. He grimaced as he saw the blood and entrails and pig shit that coated him, and in that grimace missed the cold look that William shot Walter Fitz Osbern.

    "You are my guest, and my equal. I had not wanted you dead," William said.

    Harold looked up at him. "And you didn't think that my death here and now would be only to your advantage?"

    William stared at Harold for a long moment before answering. "I did not want your death now," he finally said, quietly but with great feeling, "as I do not want it for the future. England would always be the sorrier place for your lack, Harold. I would be the sorrier man for your death."

    And he held out his hand.

    "You are a most strange adversary," Harold said, gripping William's hand and using it to pull himself upright.

    "I am not your enemy," William said. "I will not be one to laugh over your corpse, Harold."

    Now upright, Harold changed his grasp so that now both men gripped each other by the forearm rather than by the hand. Strangely, he seemed to know what William was thinking. "Do not trust Swanne," Harold said softly, only for William's ears. "Never trust her."

    In answer, William merely stared, then gave a very small nod. In this they understood each other.

    Then he let Harold's arm go, turned, and dealt Walter Fitz Osbern such a heavy blow to his chin that the man staggered and fell to his knees.

    "Never dishonor me again," William said, then stalked off for his horse.

    Caela Speaks

    OVING THE BANDS HAD SO MANY INHERENT

    dangers, yet the first and most difficult task (or so I believed at the time) was simply ensuring I was not missed. Moving the i^c*nd was something Long Tom had told me I could not do as Damson, so somehow I had to ensure that no one would make note of the queen's absence for what might be virtually the entire night.

    In the end, this first obstacle was reasonably and easily accomplished. I gave a moan during our supper, placed a hand on my belly, and looked apologetically at Edward, who had paused with a spoon of broth half raised to his

    open mouth.

    I managed to color. "My flux," I murmured, lowering my eyes modestly.

    And so I removed myself to the solar, where I usually slept during these phases of the moon. Edward kept his bowerthegn, and I dismissed all my ladies, save for Judith.

    There, at the darkest hour of the night, Long Tom came to me.

    WE DESCENDED THROUGH ANOTHER OF HIS STRANGE,

    eerie trapdoors (I resolved that I should ask him how he managed it, this descent into the twists of the labyrinth), and into that even stranger tunnel he had led me only the previous night. Again the metal rails that lined the gravel bed trembled and vibrated from time to time, and again I was overwhelmed as, from time to time, a great rush of air filled the tunnel and rushed past us.

    A part of the Game that is yet to be.

    "We will have to be very careful tonight," the Sidlesaghe said, and I nodded, lost in thought of what was to come.

    "This will be the one time you are going to be able to do this in relative safety," he continued.

    "I know," I said. "Once Asterion and William and Swanne realize that one band has been moved, then they will be alert for a further…" I stopped, not knowing how to express myself.

    "Intrusion," said the Sidlesaghe, and again I nodded. He took my hand, and squeezed it. "So we will make the most of this night, eh?"

    I tried to smile for him, but in truth I was nervous. Not so much by the thought of Asterion's—or any other's—wrath and reaction, but at touching the bands themselves. I remembered how they had always been so much a part of Brutus, so much a wholeness with him, that I could barely imagine the thought of the bands away from him.

    And yet they were apart from him, were they not? And were they not also to be given to another, in time? I remembered the vision of the Stag God Og, alive and vibrating with power, running through the forest, the bands about his legs. My lover, and thus I must be the one to take these bands, and give them to him.

    At this moment, walking down this otherworldly tunnel with the Sidlesaghe, it all seemed impossible.

    "Faith," said Long Tom, giving my hand another squeeze. "What seems hopeless when you look across a vast distance, to what must be ultimately accomplished, seems possible when you only look at the task a step at a time. Tonight you will move one of the bands and make the Game and this land just that little bit safer. In a little while, perhaps a week, perhaps a month, you will move another band, and we will cope together with whatever danger threatens us on that occasion."

    "You say I must move the bands. Are you not able to touch them?"

    "No," he said. "Only the Kingman or the Mistress of the Labyrinth can truly touch them, and not suffer."

    "Then how can I? I am not yet—"

    "But you will one day be." The Sidlesaghe paused, both in speech and in walking, and I stopped as well and watched him as he tried to find words for what he wanted to express. "The Game sometimes shows portions of itself which are yet to be," he said, "and sometimes it can accept things that are not yet, but which will be."

    "Because it wants me to be the Mistress of—"

    "No. Because you will one day be the Mistress of the Labyrinth."

    My mouth twisted. "The Game hopes?"

    "The Game knows. It has already created the future, and in some manner, already lives it."

    I was suddenly, inexplicably, angry. "Then why do I fight, or strive, if all this will be. Why do I worry, if all this is set into stone as surely as… as…" I waved my hand about the strange tunnel.

    Just then there was an eerie whining in the tunnel, and one of those almost incomprehensible rushes of air. The gravel rattled under our feet, and the metal strips vibrated and sang, and both the Sidlesaghe and I had to take a deep breath and steady ourselves until the phenomenon had passed.

    "Because," the Sidlesaghe said, very gently once the wind had passed, and our world had calmed, "the Game needs you to strive."

    I stood there, gazing into the creature's gentle face, and felt like weeping. At that moment I did not feel like Mag, or the queen of England—I just felt… I just felt like poor, lost Cornelia, caught in a struggle that she neither wished for nor instigated.

    The Sidlesaghe reached out his large hand and laid it softly, warmly against my cheek. "There are many futures," he said, "all existing side by side. We all need to strive to ensure we reach the right future."

    I nodded wordlessly, hating the tears in my eyes. That I could live with. The possibility of many futures, not just one certain one.

    "And in all of them," he said, "you will be the Mistress of the Labyrinth. Thus you can touch the bands."

    I nodded again, feeling a little better.

    "And in some of them," the Sidlesaghe continued, "you will also be Asterion's whore, his creature, his vassal. We must avoid that future." My mouth dropped open in my horror. "You can see—"

    "I know only of the possibilities," he said. "No more." I shuddered, and we walked forward. We held our silence for some time, then I spoke again, wanting to hear the Sidlesaghe's amicable voice again.

    "I sometimes feel an emptiness within me," I said. "An incompleteness. Is this because I am a virgin, and this is anathema to what I should be as Mag?" Long Tom nodded. "This is very true. I am glad you thought of it." It was Silvius who had thought of it, but I thought it best to let the Sidlesaghe believe I had come to this understanding on my own. "I need to unite myself to the land. Mate with it."

    "Aye," the Sidlesaghe said, looking sideways at me, his mouth curling in a smile. "Choose well," he said, and winked.

    I laughed, partly at his mischievousness, but mostly because he had allayed those few niggling reservations I'd had about what Silvius had suggested.

    "Oh," I said, "I shall." Who better than Silvius, who was so closely associated with the Troy Game?

    We lapsed into silence once more, and eventually the Sidlesaghe led me into a side tunnel, as narrow as that which once had brought me to the approach to London Bridge.

    This time we did not emerge before the bridge, but just before the great west gate of London. In former times, when I had been Cornelia, the sad,

    abused wife of Brutus, this gate had been called Og's Gate. Now the people called it Ludgate, after Lud Hill.

    The gates—thick, wooden constructions—hung between two ten-pace-high stone towers. The towers had narrow slit windows so that archers could shoot at any approaching enemy—I half expected an arrow to fly toward us at any moment—and parapets at their tops where further archers and spearmen could let fly their missiles.

    Beyond the gates stretched the ancient stone and brick walls of London: part Roman construction, part British, part Saxon and, for what I understood of them and of what had founded them, of part magical construction as well.

    I looked back to the towers to either side of the barred gates. I knew that normally guards watched atop these towers at night. I peered closely, and saw motionless shadows just behind some of the stone ramparts.

    I looked at the Sidlesaghe.

    "Shall they see us?" he said softly, returning my querying look with one of his own.

    It was a test, but of understanding rather than of power.

    "No," I said. "We do not exist within their perception. We are here, but not within their own expectations of reality. We are beyond what they expect, or can even imagine, and so they will not see us."

    "And if it were Asterion, or Swanne, or William watching on those towers?"

    "Then we would be discovered."

    "Aye. Come."

    We walked forward and when we reached the gates, they swung open as if by invisible hands, closing silently behind us once we had walked through. The Sidlesaghe led me through the empty street leading to St. Paul's atop Lud Hill, and as he did so, I thought about what I had said.

    The guards could not see us because we existed beyond their expectations of reality; beyond what they could even imagine.

    If that was so, then what could I see if I truly opened my eyes?

    The instant that thought had passed through my mind, and I had opened myself to possibilities beyond what I expected, the empty street suddenly filled with life. A great, shadowy crowd thronged the street. These people were not alive, not in this present, but they were the memories of people who had been and the possibilities of people who would be.

    I stopped, gazing open-mouthed at people dressed in the strangest of apparel, the great draperies of Roman senators, or the tightly clothed passengers, who sat in horseless vehicles that seemed to move of their own volition, placing burning fags in their mouths, as if in enjoyment!

    "Don't!" the Sidlesaghe said.

    I jerked my eyes to his face.

    O

    "We have not the time for this now," he said.

    And I heard his unspoken thought, Besides, if you see the myriad possibilities inherent in the many futures that await you, then you may not have the heart

    to continue.

    I blinked, suppressing… not the vision as such, but the understanding of

    the possibility of it.

    Slowly, the shadowy, unnatural throng faded from view.

    "You have the power to see too much," the Sidlesaghe said, more gently now, "and you will overwhelm yourself. Now, come with me, and we will walk

    softly for a time."

    In a short while we stood at the base of the steps leading to the western— and main—doors of St. Paul's. I raised my foot to begin the climb, but the Sidlesaghe's grip on my hand tightened, and I stopped.

    "We do not enter?" I said.

    "No."

    "Where do we go?" I said.

    "Tonight we will move the closest band. Brutus hid them both within the city, and about its boundaries."

    I turned slightly so I could look down the street we had traveled to reach

    St. Paul's. "Ludgate?"

    "Aye," he said. "An obvious choice, and one Asterion himself thought of."

    "Why couldn't he find it, then? There cannot be many places to hide a golden-limb band for one who is prepared to raze everything to the foundations and beyond."

    "Because the band must be approached in a certain manner." He faced me completely, taking both my hands in his. "Caela, what do you understand of Asterion? Of his nature?"

    I thought, remembering all I had been told, and what I had gleaned during • my long wait in death. "He is the Minotaur, the creature in the heart of the labyrinth whom Theseus slew."

    "Aye. And…?"

    "Asterion controls great power, dark power, the power of the heart of the labyrinth, which is… which is…" I did not know quite how to phrase it, and the Sidlesaghe, seeing that I understood and lacked only the ability to explain in words, finished the sentence for me.

    "Asterion controls the power of the heart of the labyrinth, his dark power is kept in check by the labyrinth, by the Game, itself."

    "Yes, thus Asterion wants the Game destroyed so that he and his dark power can ravage free across the world."

    "Brutus hid the golden kingship bands by using the power of the Game,

    which—"

    "Which Asterion does not yet know how to use or control, thus he cannot find them!"

    The Sidlesaghe laughed in delight. "Yes!"

    Now it was my turn to smile. "But you know the Game, and you are of the land. Both land and Game know where the bands lie. You know how to approach them." I paused. "But only I can touch them."

    "So I will show you the path, and walk it with you, but when it comes to the band itself, you are the only one who can touch it. You are the only one who will be a part of their future."

    I thought of my lover, running wild and free and strong through the forest, the bands glinting about his limbs. "Apart from… him."

    "Aye." Again he squeezed my hands. "Caela, I must say something. When we reach the band, there will be a shock waiting there for you."

    I did not like the sound of this. "A shock?"

    "Brutus," he said.

    CbAPGGR G6JM

    /^%T ^HE SWALLOWED, AND THE SIDLESAGHE COULD

    •"T⁸"""""""¹^ see the fear, and want, and the desperate love in her face.

    "I do not know if I dare see him again," she said, and began

    to weep.

    The Sidlesaghe groaned, and gathered her to him, rocking her back and forth until her weeping had abated somewhat. Caela might face dragons and imps from hell, and the Sidlesaghe knew she would face them with courage and resolve, but confront her with the man she had loved so desperately and Caela's resolve and courage vanished in an instant.

    "You must," he eventually said. "It will not be as difficult as you think."

    "How so?" she said, leaning back and dashing away her tears with her hand.

    "He will not know you are there, but only, only if you do not allow your eyes to meet with his. I will be with you, and I must abide by the same command myself. Neither of us can allow our eyes to meet with his. If we keep our eyes cast down, then he will overlook us, just as the guards in the towers

    overlooked us."

    She nodded, some of her composure regained. "And if he sees us?"

    "Then we, and this land, are undone. The band will vanish, turn to dust. Asterion shall have won."

    Caela closed her eyes, drew in a deep breath, held it, then let it out. "Long Tom… where are we going to move the band to?"

    The Sidlesaghe laughed, and stroked one of her cheeks with a thumb. "We will move this one in honor of your brother, Harold."

    She frowned, puzzled.

    "To the west of Westminster," the Sidlesaghe said, "is a small manor and village where once Earl Harold held court in the hall of a trusted

    friend."

    Her frown deepened, then suddenly cleared. "Cynesige, who controls the estates and village of Chenesitun. He has ever been a true friend to not only Harold, but to our entire family."

    "Aye. Chenesitun is the place to where the Game wants this first band moved."

    "Why there?"

    "Because the earl's court will become a focal point in the Game that is yet to be played," the Sidlesaghe said, then grinned wryly at the confusion on Caela's face. "Or where it is playing, in some corner of the Game's existence. This is what the Game requires, and so this is what we shall do. It will make the land a little stronger. Once the band has been moved, you will feel the renewed strength within yourself and within this land."

    "Long Tom," Caela said, frowning a little, "how is it that you—and your kind—and the Game 'talk'? How do you know these things?"

    The Sidlesaghe laughed, joyous, and Caela realized that he must spend much of his existence laughing. "We sing to each other, my love. Under the starlight. We hum."

    "Oh," she said, not quite able to imagine this.

    The Sidlesaghe grinned. "Now, are you ready?"

    She nodded, but the Sidlesaghe saw that her knuckles had whitened where her hands clutched at the cloak.

    "We will survive this night, at least," he said, "if you remember what I said about not meeting Brutus' eyes."

    Again Caela nodded, and so the Sidlesaghe took one of her hands, and he led her about St. Paul's, first sun-wise, then counter-sun-wise. He walked deliberately but briskly, keeping Caela close by his side so that they walked almost as one.

    Once they had completed the counter-sun-wise circuit of the boundary of St. Paul's, the Sidlesaghe led her north along a narrow street, then after a few minutes executed a sharp turn to the east, crossing through a vegetable garden.

    "What…" Caela began to ask, then apparently realized herself. "We are traversing the labyrinth," she said.

    "Aye. Not quite the same labyrinth that Brutus caused to be built atop Og's Hill, but one very similar if a little more convoluted. He hid each band within its own labyrinth—or, rather, guarded it by its own labyrinthine enchantment—so that only one skilled in the ways of the labyrinth could find them again." He paused. "Or one whom the labyrinth allowed to enter."

    "The Game will not allow Asterion to traverse the labyrinthine ways to the bands."

    "No. There are six labyrinthine enchantments for each of the six golden bands of Troy, and Asterion does not know them. He cannot traverse them."

    "Without either Brutus—William—or you, or another of your kind."

    "Or you," the Sidlesaghe said, noting, but not this time laughing at, the

    sudden frown on Caela's face. "And he shall not have me, nor as many of the bands as we can hide from William. Come, enough chatter. The night fades, and we have much work to do before morning."

    They continued to walk through London, their pace picking up further speed, the greater distance they traveled through the labyrinthine enchantment. The Sidlesaghe led Caela through twists and turns, great circles and tight curves, traversing the greater part of the city west of the bridge.

    Eventually the Sidlesaghe brought Caela to a stop before Ludgate.

    Save that now the twin towers and the walls and the very gates themselves had vanished.

    Instead there rose before them a small circle of standing stones, like, yet unlike, the Stone Dances that Caela had seen in her travels as Cornelia. They were as tall as the uprights in the Stone Dances, but more graceful, being composed of tapered fluted columns, which were topped with stone scrollwork. There were twelve of these columns, and they encircled a clear space that was lit with a soft golden radiance.

    "These stones," Caela murmured, transfixed by the sight. "Are they…?"

    "Aye. They are of our number as well. When Brutus first constructed this enchantment, they were of his world, bloodless, lifeless creatures. But as the years passed, we inhabited them, one by one."

    "So now the Sidlesaghes stand guard over the bands."

    "And you, now." The Sidlesaghe's hold on Caela's hand tightened momentarily, then he led her forward.

    As they approached the columned circle, he paused, and whispered against Caela's ear, "Remember, do not meet his eyes."

    She nodded, her eyes on the radiance beyond the columns.

    They walked forward slowly.

    As they reached the columns, and paused between two of them, the Sidlesaghe felt Caela tense. "Remember!" he whispered, and she managed a tight nod.

    Brutus stood in the center of the circle.

    He was naked, save for the six golden bands of Troy he wore about his limbs. His tightly curled black hair flowed down his back, lifting a little in some unfelt breeze.

    He was walking very slowly and very deliberately about the center of the circle, his head down, his eyes fixed on the ground intently, as if he studied it

    for flaws.

    Then suddenly he stopped, and raised his head, and looked directly toward where the Sidlesaghe and Caela stood.

    The Sidlesaghe looked at Caela's face, then tugged urgently at her hand.

    Caela had been looking straight at Brutus, as he'd stopped and raised his eyes to them, a look of utter want on her face, and she only managed to jerk her eyes downward in the barest instant before her gaze would have met that of Brutus'.

    The Sidlesaghe kept his eyes fixed on Caela's face. "Remember!" he hissed at her.

    Brutus walked slowly toward them.

    The Sidlesaghe felt Caela tremble.

    Brutus halted a pace away and the Sidlesaghe could sense his puzzlement, even if he could not directly look at Brutus' face.

    "Genvissa?" Brutus said. "Is that you? Genvissa?"

    Caela moaned, then bit her lip, and the Sidlesaghe understood the effort it took her not to look at Brutus.

    "Genvissa?" Brutus said one more time. He stood still, looking forward intently, and the Sidlesaghe knew that Brutus felt something.

    "Oh gods," Brutus said, his voice breaking, "where are you, Genvissa?"

    The Sidlesaghe thought Caela would break at that moment. Her breath was coming in short jerks, her entire body was shaking, her head was trembling uncontrollably.

    Any moment she was going to lift her eyes to Brutus, and call his name.

    "In one of your futures," the Sidlesaghe said, very softly, "it will not be her name he calls, and then you will be able to lift your head and meet his eyes. Remember that."

    The compassion in his voice steadied Caela. She closed her eyes, gained some control of herself, then squeezed the Sidlesaghe's hand very slightly.

    / will not look.

    "Genvissa?" Brutus said one more time, but his tone was less sure now, less urgent, and after a moment he turned and walked back to the center of the circle.

    He stood—fortunately now with his back to the Sidlesaghe and Caela, which meant they could watch him directly—and looked down for a long time, then he sighed and seemed to come to a decision within himself. He lifted his left hand and, slowly, with great precision, slid the golden band that encircled his right forearm down over his wrist.

    He hesitated as it reached his hand, and, the muscles of his back visibly clenching, he slid the band over his hand, squatted, and placed the band on the ground before him. He lifted his right hand, and made a complex movement over the band as it lay on the ground.

    "He is creating the labyrinthine enchantment that we just traversed," the Sidlesaghe whispered into Caela's ear, and she gave a small nod.

    Brutus finished, standing upright.

    And then, in the space of a breath, he vanished, and both Caela and the Sidlesaghe let out their breaths in long, relieved sighs.

    "Take it," the Sidlesaghe said, nodding to the band where it lay on the ground. "Take it. You will be safe."

    Caela paused, then walked into the circle. She stood before the band, then leaned down and, without any hesitation, picked it up.

    Part Five

    Don't jump on the cracks, or the monster will snatch!

    Traditional children's hopscotch song

    London, March

    - '%/^/% ^ATILDA FLANDERS TURNED TO FRANK BENTLEY,

    who was still looking at her open-mouthed. "Frank," she said, "I wasn't a staid widow all my life. I was a young girl once." She glanced at Jack Skelton, then looked back to Frank and winked. "And kicked up my heels a bit, if you know what I mean."

    Bentley blushed.

    "With Major Skelton?" Violet Bentley said.

    "I wasn't always so old and haggard," Skelton said dryly. "Matilda, Ecub, I need to speak with you. Please."

    "Major—" said Frank.

    "Just for fifteen minutes," said Skelton, turning to Bentley. "I won't hold you up. Go inside now, and have that breakfast Violet has cooked."

    Bentley stifled his curiosity, nodded, then put his arm about Violet's shoulder and led her back into their house.

    The instant the door closed behind them, Skelton turned back to the two women.

    "Where is my daughter?"

    Matilda and Ecub glanced at each other.

    "Probably with Stella," said Matilda. Then, hastily, as Skelton's face registered his dismay, added, "Stella will—"

    "My daughter is with the greatest of Darkwitches that ever lived?" Skelton said, his voice rising. "With Asterion's whore?"

    Ecub stepped forward, grabbed his arm, and pulled him toward Matilda's front door. "Don't be a fool, Jack. 'Asterion's whore' can take care of her as well as anyone."

    "But—"

    "For gods' sakes, Jack!" Ecub hissed. "Don't you know that in her last life Cornelia asked Stella to look after the child should …"

    O