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but their beauty and power was all from her, not him. He’d merely planted the seed. “That is almost a full year away. We cannot wait.”
    “We could call an extraordinary Assembly,” said Loth, wondering why it was that Genvissa did not call an Assembly. Surely her plan demanded the consultation of the Mothers?
    Why didn’t she want to call them?
    Aerne looked at his son, and something he saw in Loth’s face made his back straighten. “We could indeed,” he said.
    The skin around Genvissa’s eyes tightened momentarily, then she smiled, leaned forward, and put a warm hand on Aerne’s bare thigh. The movement made the material of her soft linen robe strain against her breasts and hips, accentuating both her sexualityand her success as a mother, and Loth, watching Aerne carefully, was appalled to see his father’s eyes actually water with desire.
    “Aerne,” she said, her voice soft, persuasive, compelling. “Would it not be best to delay a consultation with the Mothers? Then we can see if my plan works. Why get their hopes up with an Assembly now? We should wait. Wait until we are sure of my plan’s success. Then we can put it to the Slaughter Festival Assembly. When we are sure.” Her hand tightened, gripping Aerne’s slack, aged flesh, and Loth looked away, sickened.
    “ Strange magic!” he said, spitting the words out as if they were pig filth. Genvissa’s plan repelled him, but only, if he was honest with himself, because its very existence highlighted his own inadequacies. “What need have we of foreign magic?”
    “Every need, Loth.” Genvissa straightened, lifting her hand from Aerne’s thigh. She looked at Loth, her demeanour exuding certainty powered with a little impatience, as if Loth himself were the cause of the land’s troubles.
    Then again, Loth thought, there was every chance that it is what Genvissa did think. She had ever been impatient with him.
    If only Loth didn’t exist, if only he hadn’t been conceived that fateful night, then the Gormagog’s power would remain intact and Llangarlia would never have been overcome with blight. Loth could imagine the words repeating themselves over and over in Genvissa’s mind.
    Loth had no idea how wrong he was.
    “Og is impotent, perhaps even dying,” Genvissa continued. “We need a strong male magic to counter his lack and to combine with my womanly Mag power to weave a web of protection once more over this land. I know where I can find this maleness. This… potency .”
    There, the cruel word was said. Genvissa saw Aerne’s face flinch, and Loth’s set into mottle-cheeked animosity, but she steeled herself against their hurt. What she did was for her foremothers from whom she had inherited her strange exotic darkcraft, and even darker ambition.
    “Og’s power may revive—” Loth began.
    “Og’s power has failed to revive in these past twenty-six years, Loth. How can you say, ‘Wait a little longer’? We must act now, or our land will die! I can bring that magic to Llangarlia, no one else.” Genvissa looked to Aerne, and he nodded, his face resigned.
    “If we must, Genvissa. If we must.”
    “We must!” she said. “Mag demands it. She needs a mate of potency…not what she must endure now.” She paused, looking between both men. “The Mag is strong in my womb,” she continued, referring to the Mag magic that resided in every Llangarlian woman’s womb, but which flowered at its brightest in hers. “I can act. I can save this land. How can you think to prevent me?”
    Loth opened his mouth to speak, but his father silenced him with a heavy hand on the younger man’s arm.
    “Then do it, Genvissa,” Aerne said, his voice thick with self-loathing. “Do it. Bring your strange magic here, and use it in a spell-weaving that will save us. Do it .”
    Genvissa smiled, thankful that Aerne had summoned enough authority to override his son’s suspicions.
    Eventually, of course, she would have to do something about Loth.

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