Gods Concubine (65 page)

“We pounce,” Swanne had whispered into the beast’s mouth as he bent to kiss her.

“William will do anything for you,” Asterion said.

“Anything,” Swanne murmured.

“And when we have him…then he will do everything for
us.
Tell me, my love, do you think the bands will look elegant encircling my limbs?”

Swanne had run her hands over the creature’s thickly muscled biceps. “They were meant for you,” she’d said, and Asterion had smiled, and had given her more of the darkcraft that night than he had hitherto.

Now Swanne sat by the fire, shivering despite its heat, and waited.

Mag would come to her today. She could
feel
it—not merely that Mag would come, but that the trap she and Asterion had set was about to be sprung.

Swanne closed her eyes, blessing Asterion for the renewed sense of darkcraft within her, then composed her face and put upon it the expression of the battered victim—that of equal parts fear, hope and submission.

The door opened.

Swanne took a deep breath and opened her eyes…then could not help widening them as she saw who it was.

Damson?

Ah! Mag had ever had a penchant for obscure, worthless fools.

“Damson?” Swanne said in her most chilling voice—she could not let the tiresome witch know she’d been expected. “What do you here? The linens have already been changed and I have no further use for you. You may leave.”

But Damson did not leave, as Swanne knew she would not.

“Madam,” Damson said, carefully closing the door behind her and looking about the chamber to ensure they were alone.

“Damson,” Swanne said again, stiffening in her chair as if deeply affronted.
“You may leave!”

“I cannot, Swanne,” the Damson-who-was-not-quite-Damson said, and she came directly to Swanne, hesitated, then pulled up a stool close to Swanne’s chair and sat herself down.

“How dare you sit in my presence!” Swanne said, allowing a note of anger to creep into her voice.

“I am not Damson,” said the woman. “Not entirely.”

And she looked directly into Swanne’s eyes.

Swanne did not have to fake the surprise that flared across her face.

“Gods!” she whispered.
“Mag?”
This was not the Mag Swanne had known in her earlier life, but one infinitely more dangerous, far more powerful. This was, somehow, a
youthful
Mag, a Mag at the beginning of her promise, a Mag who could grow into a true threat.

How had she done this?
Swanne barely managed to keep herself still in her chair. She had a wild urge to dash to the window and fling aside the shutters, and scream for Asterion.

No, no. She must be calm. He would be here soon enough.

And yet it wouldn’t be soon enough, would it? No time would be soon enough to rid themselves of this unexpectedly powerful enemy.

“Mag,” Swanne said again, her voice more controlled now.

Damson-Mag gave a slight nod. “I am she who walks as the mother goddess of this land,” she said. “Not dead, after all, Swanne.”

“You always did know how to slip away from danger, didn’t you?”

“I draw on a long association with the Darkwitches, Swanne. I have learned well.”

Swanne bared her teeth in equal amounts smile and snarl.

“And now you have come to gloat?” she said.

Damson shook her head. “Swanne, I have come to make you an offer.”

Oh! The smugness of it. “An
offer
! And what might that be?”

Damson took a deep breath. “In return for your freedom from Asterion’s malicious grip, in return for your
life,
because Asterion is surely murdering you by degrees, I need you to teach me the ways and powers of the Mistress of the Labyrinth.”

Swanne stared unblinking at Damson, her lips slightly parted, shocked into total silence. There was nothing, absolutely
nothing,
that Damson could have said to stun her more. “You…
what
?” she finally managed.

“The Game has changed,” Damson said. “Altered.”

Swanne said nothing, still staring at Damson as if she had turned into a frog before her eyes.

Damson took a deep breath, as if coming to a decision within herself. “The Game has grown in the two thousand years that Asterion kept everyone within death. It has merged with the land itself, allied with it. Now Game and land have a single purpose.”

Swanne still said nothing. Her mind was racing, trying to take in all Damson was saying, and what this was leading to. Mag? Wanted to be the Mistress of the Labyrinth?
Why?

In her lap, Swanne’s hands twisted over and over.

Again Damson took a deep breath. “The Game wants myself and Og to complete it as the Mistress and Kingman.”

Swanne’s mouth dropped open even further, and her eyes widened impossibly. It was not so much that the Game and land had apparently decided between themselves that Mag and Og should complete the Game as Mistress and Kingman, although that was unbelievable enough, but that Og still lived!
Og? Alive?

“Og…” she managed to get out, more a groan than a word. “Og is…
alive?”

Damson gave a single nod.

Swanne slumped back into her chair, unable for the moment to accept it. “But Loth slew him when he slew his mother, Blangan.”

“He almost did, yes. But Mag was in that Stone Dance as well that night, secreted within Cornelia’s womb, and she cast an enchantment upon him that has kept him alive, just, all these years. He rests, waiting.”

Swanne noted that Damson-Mag still did not say “I”, but “Mag”. Why that distance? “Where?” she said.

Damson hesitated, then apparently decided that truth would persuade Swanne more quickly than falsehood. “In the heart of the Game.”

“Gods,” Swanne whispered. Her mind was still whirling.
Asterion should know this! Soon!

Damson mistook Swanne’s shock for indecision, and she leaned forward and took Swanne’s hands in her own.

Swanne did not resist.

“Swanne, please, let me help you. You and I share no friendship, nor even a semblance of respect each for the other.”

True enough,
thought Swanne.

“But I can help you. I can free you from Asterion. I know he masquerades as Aldred.”

Swanne wanted to scream at the stupid bitch that Asterion was not Aldred, but managed to hold her tongue.

“If I aid you to freedom, Swanne, I would that you teach me the ways of the Labyrinth in return.”

“Foolish” could not possibly encompass the inanity of this suggestion,
Swanne thought, allowing a frown of indecision to crease her forehead, as if she truly considered what Damson offered.
Hand to her my powers as Mistress of the Labyrinth? How could she ever have thought that I would do such a thing?

“A deal, Swanne,” Damson said, now grasping Swanne’s hands very tightly and leaning in very close to her. “In return for your freedom from Asterion, you hand to me your powers as Mistress of the Labyrinth.”

“I…” Swanne said, and then her eyes altered slightly, as if she saw something behind Damson.

In an instant Swanne’s hands twisted in Damson’s, grasping them in a cruel grip.

Damson pulled back, but could not break free from Swanne’s grasp, and in the next moment her own face went as slack in shock as Swanne’s had been for most of their conversation.

Two heavy hands had fallen on her shoulders, pinning her to the stool.

“Well, well, Mag,” said a chilling male voice. “What a posy of surprises
you
have turned out to be.”

Damson struggled on the stool, but she was caught in the twin grips of Swanne and Asterion.

Swanne looked to her lover, an expression of unfeigned love and rapture on her face. “Asterion,” she breathed. “Oh, how I have missed you.”

Both expression and words were enough for Damson to let out a shocked cry. “No! Swanne! No! What are you doing?”

Swanne turned her face back to Damson, her expression now twisted with hate and loathing. “Think you that I would ever hand
you
my powers? Think you that I have any intention of completing the Game with
William?
Nay,
this
is my lover, my partner, my mate, and
this
time, my dear darling Mag, you are to be given no chance of flight at all.”

She let go Damson’s hands and, although Caela-within-Damson tried to wrench herself free of Asterion’s hands, and tried to use every piece of power she had against him, he held both her form and her power in check with infinite ease.

Swanne rose and, with deliberate slowness, reached with one hand into the pocket of her robe.

Very gradually, very deliberately, keeping her own eyes steady on Damson’s frantic face, she drew her hand forth.

In it she clasped the twisted-horn handled knife of Asterion.

“Do you recognise it, you witless bitch?” Swanne whispered. “Do you remember how you made Cornelia plunge this into
me?
Well, now you feel what it is like, Mag, to have cold metal end your ambitions and hopes.”

And with that she hefted the knife, then plunged it into the soft, tender skin at the juncture of Damson’s neck and shoulder.

S
EVENTEEN

S
aeweald, Ecub and Judith were keeping company with Caela’s body as it lay still on the bed.

Within, Damson’s soul slept unknowing.

Suddenly, all three gasped as a bright red spot appeared at the base of Caela’s neck, which then flowered into a crimson pool of blood.

“No!” cried Saeweald, and lunged forward.

“Oh gods,” Swanne moaned, as if in the ecstasy of lovemaking, “how I have
longed
to sink this knife into Mag! At last! At last!”

Behind Damson, Asterion was almost doubled over with laughter although he kept his hands firmly on Damson’s shoulders.

Swanne twisted viciously on the knife until the blade sank completely into Damson’s body. “I only wish you were Caela, bitch, then my happiness would be complete.”

Damson’s hands were grasping at Swanne’s, but they were slippery with the blood that now pumped out of her neck, and she could not dislodge Swanne’s grip on the knife.

“No,” she said in a horrible bubbling whisper. “No, Swanne, please…”

But Swanne was not listening. Her eyes were wide and glassy, her mouth open, and her hands twisted again and again as she leaned so hard on the knife that she forced even the twisted-horn handle into Damson’s body.

Saeweald grabbed at Caela’s shoulders, shaking her as violently as he could. “Come back now!” he shouted. “Now! For Og’s sake, Caela!
Now!”

Behind him Judith was screaming something, and Ecub was shouting, but Saeweald took no notice of them.
“Return home now!”
he shouted.
“Now! Now!”

Caela’s soul obeyed, even though it did not want to, even though it was almost fatally mated with that twisting, murderous knife in Damson’s body.

It left Damson, and fled shrieking back to its own body, passing Damson’s soul halfway.

That soul seemed curiously resigned, even peaceful, even though as it neared its own body it knew what awaited it.

Death.

Caela’s body came to life under Saeweald’s hands, and she grasped instinctively at her neck where blood was pumping forth, even though her skin was apparently unbroken.

“No!” she cried out, then fell insensible as the blood flowed from her.

“Stop the bleeding!” Ecub said, rushing to Caela’s side as Saeweald tried to staunch the flow of blood.

“It won’t stop until Damson’s heart stops beating,” Saeweald said in a curiously flat tone. “Pray that that happens soon.”

There was a single, appalling silence.

“Or Caela will die with her.”

Swanne was panting as she leaned with all her strength into the knife.

Damson had stopped struggling, and was regarding Swanne with flat, hopeless eyes; beyond her Asterion was hopping from foot to foot, his eyes almost popping out of his head as he watched Swanne.
This was so much better than he’d planned!

Damson’s hands were fluttering at her sides, scattering bright drops of blood over both Swanne and Asterion. Her mouth had fallen silent, even though it still moved.

The blood continued to pump from her neck.

“Curse her sturdy heart!” cried Saeweald, as he uselessly tried to stem the flow of blood from Caela’s neck. “Why can’t the damned peasant woman
die?”

Judith took one futile step towards the door, as if she meant to run to Aldred’s palace and wrench Damson’s head from her body.

If Caela died now then all was lost, for the Mag force within her would finally vanish.

Damson gave one great shudder, and Swanne let go the knife and took a step back, staring wide-eyed at Damson.

Damson gave a soft moan, shuddered again, then fell forward, snapping her head back as her chin caught the edge of the stool which she’d pushed in front of her during her struggles.

Her neck snapped, and with it snapped Damson’s life, and the connection which bound her to Caela.

“It’s stopped!” Saeweald said. “She’s died at last. Thank all gods in existence!”

Judith came back to the bed. “Is
she
still alive?”

There was a long, terrible pause.

“Just,” Saeweald eventually said. “And
only
just.”

Swanne looked over Damson’s body to Asterion.

Both of them were covered in blood.

“My lover,” she breathed, and he stepped forward over the corpse and took her in his arms.

Later, while Saeweald, Judith and Ecub were still grouped about Caela, willing her every breath, Silvius rushed through the door, not even bothering to knock.

“Gods!” he cried. “What has happened?”

The next morning as the waterman was poling his craft from the fish wharves just below the bridge towards Lambeth on the southern bank of the river, he saw a bloated white body half submerged in the water.