Brutus gave a very small, wry grin. “I wonder why your phrases, ‘if I am right’ and ‘not enough power to truly hurt me’, do not reassure me as greatly as they were intended to?”
Membricus gave a soft laugh. “I will be here. Remember that.”
Brutus put the pail of pitch down on the stairs, then stepped down to the paving slab inset before the carving of the intertwined flowers that marked the entrance to the labyrinth. He stared at them, knowing that if he failed the flowers, then everything else was lost.
As Membricus watched Brutus step up to the intertwined carving of flowers he unaccountably thought of Cornelia, and for the briefest of moments thought he saw the blade of a dagger, its handle curiously carved from twisted horn and its blade thick with blood, slice through the air.
He shuddered with foreboding.
The Trojan exodus was going well, if slowly. Forewarned of the fires—and that they had been set to panic rather than to incinerate—the Trojans moved as quickly as they could through the streets towards the gates and the eight-hundred-pace walk to the edge of the bay. They were anxious, constantly looking over their shoulders for the swordsmen they’d been warned about, and just as constantly hoping that Brutus had been mistaken, and that there were no swordsmen at all. Men and women, wearing Dorian clothes, walked with as much arrogance as they could, aping the habitual movements of the Dorians. Their children were silent, clinging to their mothers’ shawls and skirts, chastened by their parents’ strict warnings to be quiet once they’d left their homes.
Brutus’ warriors, together with Assaracus’ swordsmen, moved among the crowds, reassuring and hustling, their eyes lifting above the crowds for any sign of strangers, or the glitter of swords.
A man shouted at the sound of running feet, causing everyone to tense, but the cause of his cry was soon apparent: not swordsmen, but panicked—and strangely short-haired—Dorians, running from their homes to intermingle with the Trojans.
Hicetaon caught the eye of Deimas, standing three or four steps up in the entranceway to a house, and nodded in satisfaction.
All was going well.
Brutus stood before the entrance to the labyrinth, his head bowed, then, slowly, he looked up and made a sign with his left hand.
Membricus gasped, awed by the ease with which Brutus had raised the gateway.
Hanging before the entrance, where before there had been mere air, was a gateway of entwined flowers—the same flowers that moments before had rested as lifeless carvings in the stone floor.
It was the magical protection of the labyrinth: it guarded against entry…and against escape. It was, to be blunt, a plug, and what it dammed was evil.
Brutus spent another few moments studying the gateway hovering before him, then, without any hesitation, reached into it and pulled forth one of the flowers.
“For the Mistress of the Labyrinth,” he said, then kissed the flower and threw it gently back against the rest of the gateway.
Instantly the entire gate collapsed, and as each flower hit the stone floor, it vanished.
The Dance of the Flowers, negated.
The death of a city.
Far, far distant, atop the Llandin where she sat alone and undisturbed in the summer sunlight, Genvissa breathed one wonder-filled word: “Brutus!”
Then she lifted out her arms, and tipped back her head, and laughed with delight and love.
Before her, on the ground, lay the flower that Brutus had kissed and tossed back against the flower gate.
Brutus hefted the pail of pitch in his hand and stepped into the labyrinth. He turned to his left first, walking a track that led through the mid-section of the labyrinth, then around its top, before the path wound back upon itself to take him to the second-most outer right track of the design.
In this first section of the labyrinth it seemed as if nothing had changed, as if he would do nothing more than walk in ever varying degrees of semicircles and about-turns until he reached the black heart of the labyrinth. But as he turned once more, this time on to the extreme left-hand outer path, it seemed to him that the cellar chamber about him faded, and he walked not a stone floor, but a field of waving wheat.
Then, as he turned yet again, the field vanished, and Brutus found himself in a forest surrounded by the horns of the hunt and the pounding hooves of horses.
He began to sweat, knowing what the black heart had waiting for him.
The press of Trojan and Dorian bodies, all heading for the gates, worsened immeasurably, and Hicetaon fought down panic. If they were attacked by Cornelia’s hired swordsmen, then the press would work in their favour…but such a tightly packed and half-panicked crowd might just as easily turn on itself, crushing people underfoot and against enclosing walls.
There came another shout, far above the crowd, and Hicetaon looked up in its direction.
There, high above the crowd on the flat roof of a house, stood Cornelia and her father…and Pandrasus had a sword, and he was waving it at the crowd.
Brutus gripped the pail tighter, and some of the pitch slopped out, making him jump aside to avoid splashing his booted foot. The labyrinthine path led through tall trees and thick shrubbery, rustling with the stiff breeze. Overhead, the canopy of the trees swayed and shifted, allowing occasional shafts of hot sunlight to illuminate the path.
On all sides came the sound of the hunt: the thud of horses’ hooves and the snort of their breath; the shouts of the hunters, alive with excitement; the angry shrieks of wild birds, disturbed from their roosts; the gasping terror of the quarry.
Brutus hefted the pail of pitch once more, trying to maintain a grip with his sweaty palm, and was unsurprised when he felt in his hand, not the wooden handle of the pail, but the sweet, soft feel of a beloved bow.
He lifted it, and knew it at once. It was the bow of his youth, the one his father Silvius had gifted him for his fifteenth birthday…and this day was his fifteenth birthday, and he was in no labyrinth, but in the forest, out to shoot the stag that would signal his ascent into manhood.
“They attack!” cried Hicetaon, and the cry was passed over the crowd so that soon all heard.
Within the crowd, in groups of four or five, men dropped sacks or the folds of the thick blankets they had over their arms, and drew forth swords.
They lifted them, and looked for Trojans to attack.
“They have disguised themselves!” Cornelia cried from her perch on the roof, her voice angry.
Brutus fitted an arrow to the bow, and lifted it to his shoulder. He could hear the crashing of hooves in the shrubs just to his left, could see the flash of the stag’s antlers above the greenery, could hear the beast’s terrified exhalations.
Excitement flared in his chest, and he let fly the arrow.
There was a silence, then a shout of horror from beyond the path.
“Our king! Our king! He has been struck!”
And the excitement in Brutus’ chest collapsed into dread, and he knew what he had done.
Frustrated, and anxious that they were themselves trapped, the hired swordsmen struck out in all directions. Dorian and Trojan alike were felled, and in the press and the heat and the panic, more people were injured or killed as the crowds surged, trying to escape the death being dealt among them.
Hicetaon, Idaeus, Assaracus and Deimas called for calm, and urged on their own swordsmen to fight their way through the crowds to those who were inflicting such injury among the throng, but it was nigh impossible to get through.
High above, Cornelia shouted, but it was a cry of fear rather than triumph.
Suddenly the forest was gone, as also the bow in his hand. Again Brutus walked the labyrinthine path in the sub-chamber beneath the guardhouse, and again he held the pail of hot pitch in his hand.
But there was one difference. In the black heart of the labyrinth, and Brutus was almost there now, sat his father Silvius.
He was contorted in agony, both his hands wrapped about the shaft of the arrow that had pi
erced his eye.
At Cornelia’s side, Pandrasus cursed, and leapt down the stairs that led to the street.
Sobbing, her senses swamped both by the horror enacted in the streets below and by the growing fires that now cast a great pall of smoke over Mesopotama, Cornelia grabbed at her skirts and followed him.
She stumbled often, her bulk and awkwardness combining with fear to trip her feet, but there was no one there to aid her. Pandrasus had long gone, vanished into the swirling throng. Cornelia had left Tavia back at the palace, and she was now no doubt either caught in the fires or in the desperate struggle through the streets.
Brutus stepped into the dark heart of the labyrinth, and looked at his father.
Silvius, blood streaming in a thick, rich river down his cheek and neck, gradually became aware of him. He dropped his hands from the shaft of the arrow, and held them out in appeal to Brutus.
“What have you done?” he said, his voice a groan. “What have you done?”
Brutus looked at his father for a long moment. There was no pity on his face.
“I have taken my heritage,” he said, and, placing the pail on the floor, he leaned down and took the arrow in one hand and a handful of his father’s hair in the other.
Steadying himself, and firming his grip on his father’s head, Brutus said: “This I do for all Trojans, but I leave the Dorians—and all kin who ally with them—to their fate.”
And then he thrust the arrow brutally deep into his father’s brain.
High on her sacred hilltop, Genvissa bowed her head, and smiled secretly and kissed the flower that Brutus had sent to her.
He was the man she needed.
Cornelia reached the door of the house on which she had stood, and stopped, staring at the chaos before her.
Suddenly Deimas materialised out of the crowd, blood streaming from a cut in his scalp, his face both pale and furious.
“Witch!” he spat. “Look at what you have done.”
More angry than he could ever have thought possible, Deimas seized Cornelia by the arm and shoved her back inside the house.
“Know that I save Brutus’ son, not you,” he hissed.
His father’s corpse vanished, leaving Brutus breathing
heavily, staring at the now empty, blackened floor of
the heart of the labyrinth.
“Quick!” Membricus called. “People die!”
Without acknowledging him, Brutus picked up the pail and the bristle brush, and turned to the path that led back out of the labyrinth. He began to tread it slowly and most awkwardly, for as he went he bent down between his legs and drew a long line of pitch from the black heart of the labyrinth out along the path that led to the steps.
As Brutus walked, a growing line of black trailed behind him, leading the darkness from where it had been trapped in the labyrinthine heart to its escape at the foot of the steps.
And as he walked, Brutus was very careful never to look behind him, never to look at that trail of pitch.
He could not afford to see what followed him along that black path from the heart of the labyrinth. If he saw it, if it knew he had seen it, it was close enough to snatch him.
Brutus was leading forth the evil that for centuries the labyrinth had contained. It was the heart of the Game, the seduction and then the entrapment of evil.
Membricus, who could see, moaned, and turned aside his head.
Deimas shoved his face close to Cornelia’s. “Call them back,” he shouted, trying to make himself heard above the shrieking and crying of the crowds. “Call your hired swords back!”
She stared at him, as if wondering who he was, then managed to collect herself. “I cannot,” she said. “Who could make themselves heard in this tumult? Besides, I doubt they would listen to me. Not now.”
She was right—no one person could now make their voice carry over the horrific din of the crowds and the fighting and the roaring fires—but that did not stop Deimas giving her a sharp, frustrated shake.
Then he looked back out at the death flowing down the streets, his face despairing.
Brutus worked quickly and methodically, the sounds of the chaos outside sifting through the guardhouse and down to its sub-chamber.
He had almost reached the path’s final curve when Membricus, against all his better judgement, looked at what followed Brutus along the line of black pitch.
Deimas, one hand buried in the shoulder of Cornelia’s robe, studied the crowds, then abruptly lunged into them, dragging Cornelia behind him.
She cried and beat at his hand and arm, but Deimas ignored her as best he could, and dragged her deeper and deeper into the press.
He prayed to whichever gods were listening that the Trojan swordsmen would soon put a stop to the slaughter.
Membricus saw a dark, swirling cloud of darkness; pure evil—all the evil trapped in the labyrinth since the day the city had been founded and the Game called into being.
He groaned again, then sobbed, and turned his face aside once more, a hand over his eyes, wishing he’d not been so foolhardy as to look at what he knew would be there.
“Courage, Membricus,” Brutus muttered as, finally, his back aching with having to walk doubled over, he reached the foot of the steps. He painted the pitch up to the foot of the first step, then stood up, wincing as he straightened his back.
“We must get out of here,” he said. “Now!”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Brutus and Membricus shouted at the single warrior remaining in the guardhouse to flee, then they burst into the street.
And instantly stopped, unable to move for the press of the crowd that fought to pass through the narrow gate in the walls.
“Gods!” Membricus muttered. “I had not thought it would get this injurious.”
Brutus didn’t even bother to reply. He placed one hand on Membricus’ shoulder, then gave a great heave, pushing him along the wall of the guardhouse and away from its door. With his other hand, Brutus grabbed at the warrior who had followed them out, pulling him to safety as well.
There had not been an instant to spare. Blackness seethed out the doorway and instantly poured upwards, as if seeking the light. It combined with the smoke of the fires, acting upon it as would cold water poured on red-hot metal.
There was a crack, followed almost immediately by a hissing and spitting so violent that the crowds forgot their desperate need to push and shove, and instead crouched down, hands over their heads.
Then, stunningly, the blackness and smoke overhead disappeared, leaving nothing but uncorrupted blue sky above them.
There was a stillness as, for a time, no one dared to move, then, from far away, came a faint shout.
“The fires have gone out! The fires have gone out!”
Membricus, lowering his hands from his head, looked at Brutus, and frowned.
“There is great danger,” said Brutus. “We must get our people out. There is no time to waste.” He shouldered his way into the now rising and murmuring people in the streets.
“Trojans, hear me,” he shouted, his voice carrying far back into the city. “This city is doomed. Run, run, run for the bay and the ships!”
There was another long, still moment, then a sudden surge of movement as people once again grabbed at the hands of children, and at the baskets and packs tied to their backs, and hurried towards the gate.
“Quick, but calm,” Brutus shouted and, amazingly, people seemed to heed him, for there was no more pushing and shoving, nor was there undue panic, although faces were tight with anxiety. “Quick, but calm. If we hurry we will be safe. We will be safe!”
And the Trojans, composed but hurried, poured in an ever-increasing stream through the gates of the city and ran down the road towards the beach.
Brutus strode into the street, moving several paces away from Membricus, shouting encouragement and urging people ever forwards. Membricus was about to follow him, when he stopped, astonished.
While people were now more rel
axed, and were moving quickly and far more efficiently through the streets towards the gate than they had previously been, not all people were moving.
Stranded here and there were immobile islands of people, sometimes composed of a single person, sometimes of a group of three or four or more. About them parted and flowed the stream of Trojans on their way to the gates…and escape.
“Who…?” Membricus murmured, then stopped, knowing the answer.
This I do for all Trojans, but I leave the Dorians—and all kin who ally with them—to their fate, Brutus had said as he murdered (once again) his father, and now Membricus knew what it meant. The Trojans were free to go, free of the long-trapped evil that Brutus had released to settle on Mesopotama, but the Dorians, and presumably the swordsmen that Cornelia had hired to kill the Trojans (kin allied with the Dorians), seemed as if they were stuck, their feet mired into the street paving.
Their faces were frantic, wreathed in horror, yet their gaping mouths gave forth no sound.
“Membricus!” Brutus shouted. “I could use your aid!”
And Membricus blinked, gathered himself, and pushed into the flowing throng to help as best he could.
Deimas yanked Cornelia along as fast as possible, but the girl was proving more than difficult. For every pace he managed to force her down the street towards the gates, she dragged him several paces sideways.
She kept calling out for her father, her voice frantic, and nothing Deimas could do would deflect her from her purpose.
“Stupid girl,” he shouted at her. “Can you not see you will die if you linger? Your father, wheresoever he be, is doomed, along with all your kin! Look! Look! See their feet sink deeper into the stone?”