The Sixth Labyrinth

The series skips a few thousand years to take up Aridela’s story in Victorian Scotland.

Athene first clues in Aridela about what will happen in The Thinara King. Aridela doesn’t understand the message then, but she will, in time. Here’s what Athene tells her:

I have lived many lives since the beginning, and so shalt thou. I have been given many names and many faces. So shalt thou, and thou wilt follow me from reverence and worship into obscurity. In an unbroken line wilt thou return, my daughter. Thou shalt be called Eamhair of the sea, who brings them closer, and Shashi, sacrificed to deify man. Thy names are Caparina, Lilith and the sorrowful Morrigan, who drives them far apart. Thou wilt step upon the earth seven times, far into the veiled future. Seven labyrinths shalt thou wander, lost, and thou too wilt forget me. Suffering and despair shall be thy nourishment. Misery shall poison thy blood. Thou wilt breathe the air of slavery for as long as thou art blinded. For thou art the earth, blessed and eternal, yet thou shalt be pierced, defiled, broken and wounded, even as I have been. Thou wilt generate inexhaustible adoration and contempt. Until these opposites are united, all will strangle within the void.

 

The Sixth Labyrinth

Winter, 1853. Every cottage in the village of Glenelg is deliberately burned, the residents deported or left to starve so landowners can repopulate the area with sheep.

Douglas Lawton won’t put his family on the refugee ship, though his wife is in labor. As night falls, they make their way into the meager shelter of the forest.

His wife dies in the snow after giving birth to a daughter whose paternity will always be questioned.

Chivalry, by Frances Bernard Dicksee, representing Morrigan Lawton

These mountains in the remote West Highlands of Scotland offer a backdrop to the continuing story of three lives linked through time. A silenced but enduring Goddess has seen her place in the souls of humans systematically destroyed, but she bides her time. For Athene, thousands of years mean nothing.

Framed within the Clearances that ravaged the Highlands, one woman struggles against the confines of iron-fisted patriarchy. Her buried psyche is that of a queen who possessed unlimited power, yet in this life she exists as little more than serving maid, sex object, and baby maker.

For thousands of years two men have fought for the heart of Athene’s daughter. Will either triumph? What are the consequences of winning? Ancient prophecy is unfolding, leading our triad into the shadowed corridors of The Sixth Labyrinth.

Would you like to read an excerpt? Follow this link.

Daniel Day Lewis, representing the fisherman with a mysterious past.

Jude Law, representing the laird of Kilgarry.