After the Fall(61)
“Good boy,” she repeated, grasping, entwining her fingers in his mane. Leaning forward, she rested her head on his neck, and then thudded her heels against his sides. “Now, find Magnus.” Nothing. She gathered her willpower and tried again, but the beast only flinched, unsure of what she wanted.
What am I going to do? she wondered. The desperate situation both she and Magnus were in, the sheer odds against her success, threatened to crush her spirit. She looked down at her empty ring finger, her fear of losing Magnus made all the worse by Randegund’s evil deed.
If I could only … if …
No! Her resolve, her inner strength surged back, and she summoned every ounce of her courage. Forget the ring! Forget the witch! You can do this, Gigi!
Save your husband!
She gathered the reins in one hand, sat up, and whipped the leather straps across the horse’s haunches with as much violence as she could muster.
“Yah! Move it!” she shouted, and her chest seized, fighting for every breath. The beast leapt forward, nearly unseating her again, but she held on and dug in her heels a third time.
Together, they sped into the night, north to find Magnus, north to Ravenna.
• • •
The wind bore Randegund up the rocky slope, blowing at her back, hurling her forward.
Her left arm burned, throbbed with pain, and she blamed Magnus’s damnable ring for this new agony. She looked at her aching hand, wishing she could cast the ring to the winds, but not yet, not yet. Soon, she thought, for dawn was near, and then she would be rid of this terrible burden.
She stared out. The clouds were gray, low, but lifting from the horizon, the barest slash of color in the sky, as red as the hideous ring.
Final, tortuous steps. Randegund forced her leaden legs to move on. The summit lay just before her.
Suddenly, her chest exploded with crushing pain and she lost her footing, dropping to her knees. Gasping for air, she sensed Nemesis had attacked, lashing out and passing through her, in search of Victoria. She clutched the ring in her trembling fist, intending to fling it with a renewal of her old curse, but instead her eyes closed and she felt nearly paralyzed by the bone-shattering agony in her breast.
Then, abruptly, a vision seized her and Randegund saw an image of Magnus and Gigi kneeling over a prostrate Honorius. Magnus held something vile in his hand, something dark and phallic, yet a symbol of the Old Ones who worshiped fertility — surely a sign. She knew then he had it in his power to kill the emperor, the epitome of all-evil, Rome incarnate, yet Magnus appeared to hesitate.
No, no! With heart-stopping clarity, she realized this was the moment she had always foreseen, when Magnus could turn the world on its end, when he would become the destroyer of Rome and then live to regret what he had done, for in killing Honorius, he would also bring about his own destruction and that of …
New images surged into her thoughts: of Honorius crying out for his guards just before he died; then the bitch wife, Gigiperrin, dying horribly before Magnus’s eyes, her body hacked to pieces by the axes of the imperial guards, just after they rushed through the door; and finally Magnus’s fitting end: castration first, and then death by beheading.
With a last burst of strength, Randegund flung the ring into the air, intending to honor Nemesis by laying another curse on Magnus, to seal his fate and make sure he killed Honorius — but she found her mouth would not open, and she could not form the needed words.
“Ahhhh!” she managed to cry as the ring spun skyward and flamed, caught in the sun’s first rays. Then, with a final gasp, she tried to speak, but the only word that escaped was, “Onward.”
Birth. Love. Loss. Hatred. Revenge. Devastation. Randegund saw the long coil of her life twisting through time. And she knew Nemesis and Victoria and all the gods would vie with each other for thousands of years, time rolling ever onward. Yet once and a day, time would come ’round, like a viper striking its own tail, and the gods would rest for the briefest moment, before starting anew.
With her last breath, Randegund fell and her agony ceased: Nemesis had released her.
Stillness now, a last glimpse of pale pink sky, and then she was swallowed whole by a darkness like she never saw, the deepest, blackest night.
PART THREE
Chapter 17
Sunset was fast approaching, the full moon rising in the east. From a hill overlooking a valley already bathed in shadows, Gigi scanned the lowlands, watching the Roman soldiers who held Magnus. She wished she had the strength in numbers to sweep down into their camp and rescue him. But that was only a fantasy. She knew, until they reached Ravenna, all she could do was follow them, watch, and wait.