Gods Concubine (53 page)

Swanne’s eyes were wide with terror, but still her efforts to repel him doubled.

“Enough!” barked Aldred, and the hand and arm which held Swanne became as stone. He shifted his hand slightly so that it covered both Swanne’s nose and her mouth.

She stiffened underneath him, her breasts heaving in their frantic fight for air.

Suddenly, desperate beyond knowing, sure she was about to die, Swanne sent forth a surge of power, trying to push him away with that surge, where her muscles had failed.

“No, my dear,” Aldred whispered. “We can’t have that, can we?” Without any seeming effort he blocked the power, and sent it churning back into Swanne.

She heaved beneath him, unable to bear the twin agonies of lack of oxygen and the painful bite of her power within her own flesh.

A moan gurgled in her throat, and her eyes rolled back into her head. Her struggles lessened, her hands relaxing away from their fists and sliding slowly down the broad expanse of his back.

“Listen to me,” Aldred whispered, leaning over her until his eyes stared into her dying ones. “I will not allow you to slip into either unconsciousness, nor even into death. None of that escape for
you.
Indeed not. Instead, you can listen to what I have to say, and watch what I have to show you.” He paused. Then, “Can you hear me, Swanne, my dear?”

Swanne’s eyelids slowly dropped in acknowledgment.

Aldred could feel her body twisting beneath his, and he grinned, pleased.

She would exist in this agony of half death until he thought to release her.

Then, of course, she would endure something much more terrible.

“Swanne, beloved…I may call you that, yes?”

She made no response, but Aldred carried on regardless.

“You may be suffering under some disillusionment,” he said. “You may think that the darkcraft is yours, free and clear—even if it hasn’t been of much use to you in this life. You may have believed that Ariadne won it from me completely.”

His voice and body both became rigid with threat. “But there was a condition, my sweet. A condition. And now has come the time for you to pay it out.”

Swanne, who lay suspended between life and death, found her mind filled with images so clear they might have been enacted before her.

…
Ariadne clasped to Asterion; the Minotaur’s hand in her waistband.

“I want you to teach me your darkcraft,” she begged. “You are the only one who has ever learned to manipulate the power in the dark heart of the Labyrinth. Now I want you to teach
me
that darkcraft. I will combine your darkcraft with my powers as Mistress of the Labyrinth, Asterion, to free you completely.”

At this point Ariadne paused, and rested her hands on Asterion’s ruined chest. “I will combine our powers together, beloved brother, to tear apart the Game once and for all. Never again will it ensnare you. That will be my recompense to you for my stupidity in betraying you to Theseus and my payment to you for giving me the power to tear apart Theseus and all he stands for.”

“She was persuasive, wasn’t she?” Aldred whispered. “Who could resist such hair, such eyes, such a mouth…and those breasts! She had just betrayed me to her lover, she had arranged my murder, and here she was, cooing all over me, offering herself to me, and asking me to give myself and my power to her completely. Of course I allowed myself to be tempted! After all, Ariadne was offering me the ultimate aphrodisiac: a life where I’d thought to endure only death.”

He paused, and he grabbed at one of Swanne’s breasts, squeezing it painfully. “Of course, I was not a complete fool for her.”

He held her eyes steady, looking for deception. “You would destroy the Game? Free me so that I may be reborn into life as I will?”

“Yes! This is something that only I can do, you know that
…
but you must also know I need the use of your darkcraft to do it. Teach it to me, I beg you.”

“If you lie
—
”

“I do not!”

“If you do not destroy the Game—”

“I will!”

He gazed at her, unsure, unwilling to believe her. “If I give to you the darkcraft,” he said, “and you misuse it in any manner
—
to trick me or trap me
—
then I will destroy you.”

She started to speak, but he hushed her. “I will, for there is one thing else that I shall demand of you, Ariadne, Mistress of the Labyrinth.”

“Yes?”

“That in return for teaching you the darkcraft, for opening to you the dark heart of the Labyrinth, you will not only destroy the Game forever, but you will allow me to become your ruler. Your lord. Call it what you want, but know that if you ever attempt to betray me again, if you do not destroy the Game, I demand that you shall fall to the ground before me, and become my creature.”

“Of course!”

His expression did not change. “‘Of course’? With not even a breath to consider? How quickly you agree.”

“I will not betray you again, Asterion. Teach me the darkcraft and I swear
—
on the life of my daughter!
—
that I will use it to destroy the Game utterly. It will never entrap you again.”

Aldred’s fingers were still groping at Swanne’s breasts, but the pain of his sharp-nailed fingers could do nothing to eclipse the sickening dread that now coursed through Swanne.

Aldred’s hand on Swanne’s mouth and nose loosened a little, allowing a thin draught of air to trickle between his fingers, and Swanne’s chest bucked in the effort to heave precious oxygen into her lungs.

“And what did you do, Swanne-who-was-once-Genvissa?” Aldred whispered. “What did you do? Why, you started the Game again, thinking that I was too far distant to stop you. I don’t care to hear of your excuses and your reasons, for I know them all. All I do care to hear is your acknowledgment of Ariadne’s oath. She is the one who is going to destroy you, Swanne. Not me.”

His hand removed from her mouth, and Swanne gulped air into her lungs. Aldred sat back, sitting on her lower legs, one fat, dimpled knee to either side of her hips, his hands to his own hips, regarding her with amusement.

“Well?” he said.

“What?” Swanne gasped, and then screamed, her body contorting as Asterion’s power surged through her.

“Do you acknowledge Ariadne’s oath?”

She was still shrieking, and Aldred lifted a hand and struck her hard across the face.

Blood spattered in an arc across the bed.

“
Do you acknowledge Ariadne’s oath?
”

“Oh gods,” Swanne moaned. “How can I…?”

She screamed again as a counter blow sent her head smashing into the wall.

“It was an oath made on power and on the life of Ariadne’s daughter, my dear. One that bound not only Ariadne, but through that daughter, all Ariadne’s daughter-heirs. What a foremother, hey? What a legacy.” Aldred laughed, the sound rich and deeply amused. “Now, do you acknowledge Ariadne’s oath?”

She tried to deny it. She tried with every fibre of her being, but, desperate as she was, Swanne could not force a denial from her throat. Instead, there came a voice from her mouth that was not only hers, and not just Ariadne’s, but the voice of all her foremothers, Ariadne and her five daughter-heirs before Genvissa.

“Yes,” that voice whispered, a ghastly, echoing utterance that coiled about the room. “Yes, I—”
we
“—acknowledge the oath.”

Aldred’s body tensed, and Swanne was dimly aware it was because he had drawn in a great breath of triumph. “You know what is going to happen now, Swanne, don’t you?”

Swanne whimpered. It was all she could articulate in her overwhelming sense of horror.

“You are going to fulfil Ariadne’s bargain for her, seeing as she is no longer about to do so herself. And well you
should
pay, Swanne, since it was you who began the Game again!
You
who tried to trap me!”

“No, no! I beg you. Anything but—”

“
Everything
, Swanne. Everything.”

“Please…no…”

Aldred’s hands were now fumbling under the great dewlap of his belly, and before Swanne’s appalled gaze he brought forth his erection.

“No!”

“And now, my lovely, we are going to seal Ariadne’s bargain by the same means she and I originally sanctioned it. Are you ready?”

Swanne tried to scream, but she felt Asterion wrap his power about her, and she could do nothing but whimper.

She tried to hit at him, but her arms were leaden.

She tried to roll away from him, but because Asterion still chose to cloak himself within Aldred’s massive bulk—the ultimate humiliation—she could do nothing.

Aldred lay down over Swanne, resting his full weight on her, and grunted.

Swanne felt something vile, something cold, probe at her.

She tried to writhe, but could do nothing, nothing, as Aldred shifted his hips, and grunted again.

Something so cold and so painful that it felt like splintered, jagged ice slithered its way inside her.

Aldred’s hips bucked, then pushed down deeply.

Agony coursed between her hips and deep into her belly, but even beyond this, Swanne felt something else.

Something cold and painful, a splinter, sharp-edged, icy, twisting its way into her soul.

“You’re mine now,” whispered Aldred, and he forced his mouth over Swanne’s, and pushed his tongue inside her.

His hips began to work frantically, and Swanne knew that she would have died under the suffering of his brutal assault—both on her body and her soul—had not Asterion deliberately kept her alive.

Aldred lifted his mouth a little away from hers, his fat face wobbling with his efforts, and slicked with sweat that rolled from his skin’s open pores.

“
Everything
you shall lay bare to me!” he said, and Swanne felt as if she was sliced open, her every secret laid bare, her every knowledge made understandable to this horror inside her.

She felt her soul, her very being, kneeling in subjection before him.

And then something terrifying, unendurably agonising, exploded within her belly, and Swanne mercifully lost consciousness.

When she woke, her body throbbing in torment, Aldred was sitting—fully dressed—on the edge of her bed.

“There,” he said, “that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

Swanne tried to swallow, but her throat felt as if it had been stripped of its flesh, and she gasped in agony partway through the movement.

“Poor dear,” Aldred said, and patted her hand where it lay on the bed.

Then his entire demeanour changed, and malevolence shone through the man’s fat features. “You are now wholly my creature,” he hissed, and his hand tightened claw-like about hers. “You may make no move, and you may make no utterance, without my permission and guidance. Your powers as Mistress of the Labyrinth you shall use only as I direct. Do you understand me?”

Tears now coursed down Swanne’s face, but she managed a tiny nod.

And then a wince, as if even that tiny movement caused her pain.

Aldred’s rubbery lips stretched in a grin. “I may not always be close, but there is a part of me always with you, always watching you, always
knowing.
Do you feel it?”

Benumbed, Swanne could do little but blink at him in incomprehension.

“This,” said Aldred, and lifted Swanne’s hand so that it lay on her belly.

He pressed her hand down.

Swanne’s eyes slowly widened in appalled understanding.

“My little incubus,” said Aldred, his very voice as sibilant as a snake’s. “Always within you, always ready to bite and to whisper and to
be.
You are my creature, Swanne.” He laughed. “The Game is half mine.”

Then Aldred sobered, and bent his vile face close to Swanne’s. “And all you have to do is please me, my dear. To start with, I think you can bring me William.”

A pause. “Won’t that be nice for you? Eh?”

Within her belly, the incubus bit deep with its tiny, icy fangs, and Swanne’s mouth opened in a silent scream.

Her body arched and bucked, and Aldred waited patiently until the agony had subsided and Swanne lay relatively still, even though her moans had not quietened.

“Later,” he said, “I might find some errands for you to run. Yes?”

She gave a single, agonised nod.

“You
will
do whatever I want,” he said, and Swanne sobbed, hopelessly, knowing that indeed, yes, she would do it.

Within her, Asterion’s little incubus twisted happily.

Darkcraft, come to life and form.

In the morning Hawise exclaimed in horror at the blood covering her mistress’ sheet, and at the haggard painfilled face of Swanne herself.

But Aldred, arranging the heavy golden crucifix on its chain over his chest, told Hawise that it was of no consequence. “It is but Swanne’s monthly flux,” he said. “A little more burdensome than usual. No need to send for the physician.”

He turned to Swanne, fixing her with a cold, hard eye. “My lady should perhaps take as her inspiration the queen, who so valiantly struggles with her own womanly complaints. The physician is not needed, eh?”

Swanne looked at him, then at Hawise, staring incredulously at her. “The physician is not needed,” she said hoarsely.

Part Six

Early 1066

With Edward’s gentle piety was blended …

W
ith Edward’s gentle piety was blended a strange hardness towards those to whom he was most bound…his alienation from his wife, even in that fantastic age, was thought extremely questionable.

A. P. Stanley,
Memorials of Westminster Abbey
, 1886

London, March 1939

“
W
hat do you need to do to win Eaving back from whatever darkness consumes her?” Matilda said. “Why are you so sure that darkness consumes her?”