NOAH SPEAKS

Why, why, why for all of this…if not for the fact that you, Cornelia-Caela-Noah, are as much my daughter as is Genvissa-Swanne-Jane?

Oh, I loathed Ariadne then. I reviled her. Not so much for the import of those words, what they meant or would come to mean for my life, but because they had wiped out in one foul sentence all the joy of Louis’ realisation at the Faerie Court. All I had wanted to do was to return to my pallet in Weyland’s kitchen and revisit every wonderful faerie moment of that court.

But no. This witch had to ruin it with her one, single devastating sentence.

“Ah,” said Ariadne very softly, “you know it, don’t you?”

“No,” I said. “I know nothing of it!”

She let go my wrist and reached behind her, pulling forth a basket that I had not noticed. She took out a cloth, spreading it before her, then produced a small bowl of fruit and a flagon and several glasses. She poured full the glasses, handing one to me and one to Jane, took a healthy sip from her own, settled herself comfortably, then began a tale of love and betrayal that I found horrifying, not merely because of its content, but also because I had so recently heard it from Weyland’s mouth.

“I became Asterion’s lover when I was, oh, perhaps thirteen or fourteen,” Ariadne began, taking another mouthful of her wine, “and just learning the skills of Mistress of the Labyrinth myself. He fascinated me, and I fancied myself in love with him.” She paused, looking at Jane over the rim of her glass as she took a sip. “You loved him in your last life. You should sympathise.”

“He bewitched me,” Jane said. “That was not true love.”

Ariadne shrugged, not put out by Jane’s answer. “Well, I found the feel and taste of that bull’s mouth running over my body quite stimulating—”

I shuddered. He was her half-brother!

“—so…animalistic. Better than a man.”

“Until you met Theseus,” I said.

Ariadne looked at me sharply. “I am currently talking of Asterion, my dear, not Theseus. Pay attention. So, as I was saying, I found his attentions reasonably stimulating. And I was young, and perhaps a little foolish, and so when I was eighteen I allowed myself to fall pregnant to him.”

“You sent the baby away,” I whispered. “A month after she was born. You were ashamed of her.”

“Yes. How did you know of that? Goddess intuition, perhaps? Or some memory from your—”

“No,” I said. I put my hands over my ears. I did not want to listen. I did not want to hear this!

Yet still her words penetrated inside my skull.

“Yes, well, I did send her away. After all, I’d fornicated with my own brother, and, frankly, the attraction of that bull mouth was starting to pall by then. I still needed the patronage of my father King Minos…he would not abide such an abomination in his place. So I sent the child to—”

No! No! No!

“—Mesopotama, a silly little place, but the king was prepared to take the girl in so she could be raised in his court and subsequently marry his son. He did not know of her fatherhood. All he knew was that she was the daughter of the Mistress of the Labyrinth of Knossos…and thus a powerful little minx to marry into his family.”

No!

“For the love of all the gods in heaven, Noah. You were Mesopotaman, but you wore the fashions of the Minoan court. Mesopotama escaped the wrath of my Catastrophe. You were plucked out of obscurity by the man destined to go on and establish the Troy Game. Did you never think back and put all these pieces together? Did you never ask Brutus why he chose you so precipitously? Did he never say to you, ‘I was godstruck, my dear, and simply had to have you?’ Did you never wonder why, when it was so apparent he hated you, he kept you close? Did you not even once stop to think why you, this tiny bellyaching spoiled little brat, were indeed so god-blessed? Why you became so tightly embroiled in the Troy Game with nary a thought about it in your witless, addled little mind? Did you never once wonder why it had picked you?”

Her eyes were slightly bulging at this point, and I think Ariadne was aware of it, for she stopped, and patted at her cheeks with fingers cooled in her wine.

“You were blood,” Ariadne continued, her voice and manner restrained. “You were chosen.”

She looked now at Jane, at whom I could not myself dare to look. “There was always more at work here than you and your ambition, Jane. There was the Game as well, always the Game, as there is now.”

I was trembling, unable to accept any of this.

No, there was only one thing I was unable, unwilling, to accept.

That I was descended of Ariadne and Asterion. That I was of their blood. Everything else was meaningless in my mind. That was all that mattered.

An hour ago I had thought my dreams almost complete.

Now I could see them lying shattered across the summit of The Naked.

What would Louis say when he knew? What vile words would he spit when he knew I was the daughter of…no! No, I could not even think of it!

Oh gods, I felt nauseated, and wondered if I would vomit my supper all over Ariadne’s pleasant little picnic.

“Am I not a good enough foremother for you?” said Ariadne, that damned eyebrow of hers raised again.

My hands were shaking. I clasped them tightly in my lap, and bent forward over them, unable to look at her any longer.

“And me?” said Jane. She sounded lost, and I spared a moment’s sympathy for her, though steeped in my own misery. She had thought herself Ariadne’s daughter-heir. The one and only. The favoured. And now she discovered that Ariadne had kept a spare, set aside all this time.

And what a spare. Cornelia-Caela-Noah. I could have laughed if I hadn’t been in so much pain.

“My dear,” said Ariadne, and I felt her move, saw her shadow as she leaned over and patted Jane on the arm, “I did not plan this, as much as you may think it. I was truly ashamed of my daughter with Asterion, and was glad I’d sent her away. At best I thought that if I never had another child, then perhaps I might recall her…if only I could overcome my revulsion.”

Revulsion. Oh, my line was repulsive.

“When Theseus arrived at Knossos,” Ariadne continued, “I fell instantly, stunningly in love with him. I threw myself at him, begged him to take me, conceived a new daughter the instant he lay with me. I was thrilled. Now I had a daughter-heir I could be proud of. Of course, Theseus proved a little disappointing, but I cleared that problem up nicely.”

Cleared that problem up nicely. Murdered tens of thousands, destroyed lives, lands, cities, cultures. Problem solved.

“When I took my new daughter to Llangarlia,” Ariadne continued, “when I planned to resurrect the Game in that land, I still had no thought for my first daughter, and whatever heirs she may have borne. I had my daughter. I had my ambition. Frankly, I don’t think I actually thought of my first daughter again during my lifetime.”

“What was her name?” I ground out. I could not bear to hear this child being dismissed so callously. Gods, Ariadne had borne a daughter—had she never once loved her? Cared for her?

Weyland had loved her, I was sure of it. I truly don’t think Weyland could have fabricated that sentiment he displayed when he talked of her.

I was looking at Ariadne now, and she gazed at me with an air of bewilderment. “I never gave her one. Why? She was just a daughter I meant to abandon…”

Abandon!

“I had no thought to name her.”

“Does…” I began, then stopped to gather the courage needed to ask this question. “Does Weyland know who I am? Does he know that I am his blood?”

A line appeared between Ariadne’s perfectly drawn, arched brows. “Weyland?” she said. “No, I don’t suppose so. Why should he?”

I didn’t know. Why had Weyland told me of his daughter if he hadn’t known?

“Anyway,” Ariadne said, returning to Jane and her question, “your foremother, my second daughter, was always intended to be my true heir. Her line was my truly powerful line—or so I intended. I didn’t ever think of my first daughter and what her line might be doing.”

“But you spared Mesopotama from the Catastrophe,” I said. When would this witch stop lying? “You must have thought of her.”

Ariadne looked a little uncomfortable. Clearly she did not like being caught amid her web of betrayal and deceit.

“I might have decided to spare her and her line, just in case,” she said finally. “But it was always my second daughter who was meant to bear my line and my ambition and my power. The Game thought differently.”

“So now you are going to teach Noah the ways of the labyrinth,” said Jane. “Maternity regained. How pleasant for you.”

Ariadne studied Jane for a long moment, and I was struck by how calm, how deeply mysterious, her black eyes looked.

“Yes,” she said. “I am. I was mistaken. It was my first daughter who truly carried the line of power, the ultimate power. Oh, you and your foremothers were powerful, Jane. But none of you would ever have been as powerful as Noah is destined to become.”

She looked at me, and, terrifyingly, I could see that the words she spoke now were complete truth. “Noah-Eaving will become the most powerful Mistress of the Labyrinth in history, more powerful than even myself. She will command all manner of magic. Her magic as Eaving. Her magic as the Mistress of the Labyrinth, counter-dancer to the most powerful Kingman who has ever lived. Brutus, reborn Stag God.”

She paused, and somehow I knew that in that silence a storm was gathering which would tear apart not only my life, but all lives associated and entangled with mine.

“And through the blood of her forefather,” Ariadne whispered, a whisper reaching throughout eternity and into all of my past lives and all of my future ones, “Noah will command the power of the darkcraft as the greatest Darkwitch that has ever lived.”

I tried to shut out her voice, but I could not. I could not.

“I had to bargain to win my command of the darkcraft, Noah,” Ariadne said, “but you have it inherent within you, if only you care to look. It is in your blood, as much as is the magic of the Mistress. That is why I will train you, and teach you all I know. You are the only one alive, the only one who has ever lived, who can put away Asterion once and for all. The one who can trap him in the dark heart of the labyrinth. He has grown too powerful for me, or for my line through my second daughter. You are the only hope left, Noah. Goddess, Mistress of the Labyrinth, and Darkwitch rising. You, and only you.”