Darkwitch Rising

by Sara Douglass

  They’re no one reborn, Skelton thought. They’re bit players, unaware of just what kind of web they’ve been caught within.

  He was just reaching out for the cedar and glass doors, intending to push right into the house without waiting for Weyland, when one of them opened and a woman stepped through.

  It was Stella Wentworth.

  Genvissa!

  He’d seen her not eighteen hours previously, huddled under a lamp on the Embankment. There she’d looked beautiful.

  Here she looked stunning. Her black hair was glossy and left loose to hang down in waves to her shoulders. Her well-cut lavender suit hugged her figure, as did silken stockings her shapely calves.

  “Major Skelton,” she said, offering him nothing more than a casual tip of the head. “We’ve been waiting.”

  “Your lover detained me,” he said, and looked back over his shoulder.

  Weyland Orr had vanished.

  “My lover awaits you,” Stella said softly, and she stood back, holding open the door.

  One

  Idol Lane, London

  NOAH SPEAKS

  Weyland sent Elizabeth and Frances to collect their belongings as soon as Jane had gone, then he nodded to the two imps and Catling, instructing them to leave as well. I sat there and looked on, and raised no objections, telling Catling only to be good, and not to stray too far.

  I felt no great care at sending her off to play with two such evil companions.

  Weyland and I sat at that table, listening to the rattle of departing feet over the parlour floor, and then the sound of the front door opening and closing.

  “You were surprised,” he said without preamble, “when I told Jane to tell Charles not to go near the forests.”

  I said nothing, not knowing what to say. If he knew that, then he knew too much.

  He knew the significance of “shelter”, I was sure of it, and if he knew that, then I was lost. Everything was lost.

  And yet why did I not feel afraid? For an instant I recalled that strange vision he and I had shared when he’d healed me, then I forced the memory aside.

  “Jane told me not to underestimate you,” I said.

  He smiled, an easy, friendly boyish expression that sat well on his attractive face. “Jane is a very wise woman. The question is, though, can she overcome her dislike of you enough to teach you the craft of Mistress of the Labyrinth?”

  Weyland leaned slightly forward across the table.

  I moved back in my chair, the movement instinctive, and saw something in his eyes at my reaction that almost looked like…regret. Perhaps even hurt. I tried not to allow myself to be persuaded. After all, I’d learned a long time ago that Asterion was a good actor.

  “Let me tell you something of my origins,” he said, “for I would you came to know me better. Do you know from where I come, of how I came to be?”

  “You were trapped in the heart of the Great Founding Labyrinth of Knossos,” I said, wondering at this history lesson.

  “Yes, but from where did I come? Who were my parents? What my origins?”

  “How does this matter?” I said. I’d never seen Weyland like this, disarming, almost soft, although when he’d worn his glamour of Silvius he had often been humorous and teasing.

  “Do you not want to know who I am?” he said. “Do you not want to know why I act as I do?”

  “You want power, and you will stop at nothing to achieve it,” I said. “Murder. Destruction. Chaos. Agony, whenever you can cause it!”

  Again that cursed memory of the few minutes Weyland and I had stood on the hill came back to me. Weyland, Weyland, what are we doing? How can we stop?

  “And where do you think all that came from, eh?” Weyland’s air of boyish charm vanished completely. “Who taught that to me? Ariadne. What was I before she betrayed me, Noah? I was an object of disgust and shame, which was why I was imprisoned in the labyrinth in the first instance…ah!”

  He sat back, looking away. I could see the muscles in his jaw working, and I thought that he was, truly, upset. He spoke again, his voice once more soft, and he did not look at me.

  “I was conceived when Minos’ wife, Pasiphae, fell in love with a white bull. Imagine the manner of woman she must have been, to fall in love with a bull.”

  He hated his mother, I thought, and then my mind fled to my own lover, the white stag, lying so desolate in his glade, and my heart broke for Pasiphae.

  “She was determined to copulate with him,” Weyland continued, “no matter the injury to herself. She had a craftsman, Daedalus, construct for her a wooden cow with a convenient opening, I would imagine, at the appropriate spot. She then inserted herself into the cow, her legs down its back legs, her body within its body, and had a servant bring the bull to his ‘cow’, whereupon the bull mounted it.”

  He paused, probably thinking of that bestial moment, and for some reason I looked at his left hand which still rested on the table. I’d seen his hands before, surely, but I’d never really looked at them. It was a surprise, this hand. Large and square, but with fine skin and long fingers, tipped with well-kept nails.

  It was a sensitive hand. A gentle hand.

  “I heard that she screamed when the bull entered her,” he said, his voice now very low, “and begged the servant to pull the bull away. But the bull was strong, and intent on taking his pleasure. Can you imagine, Noah, the sight of it.” He turned his face to me, and I recoiled at the hatred I saw there. “The bull, grunting and thrusting atop Queen Pasiphae.”

  I closed my eyes briefly. I could imagine, all too well. Was this from where he got his dark power, I wondered? Power engendered by that terrible, tearing, agonising, stupid mating?

  If only Pasiphae had known what she was conceiving. If only…

  “And thus, I was engendered in agony and horror. My mother hated me, thinking only of the pain and the humiliation. Her husband, King Minos, loathed me…no doubt thinking of the ribald gossip running up and down the streets of Knossos: They say she fornicated with a bull, and that her child has been born so malformed that its mother cannot bear to gaze upon it. And that was true enough, for I was born malformed, born with the head of a bull, the head of my father.” He spat the word out, and I realised at that moment that none of this was acting, this pain was all too real.

  “Minos determined to hide me away,” Weyland continued. “It is said he instructed Daedalus to build a labyrinth, and then to place me within it, so that none might ever see my face again, save those that were sent to their deaths. But that is not strictly true. Knossos already had a labyrinth, the Great Founding Labyrinth, and it was into that they placed me—Daedalus was merely the fool sent to place the mewling infant into its heart. And there I stayed, and there I grew, and all the food they ever sent me, Noah, was human flesh. Twice a year, in batches of terrified youths, pissing themselves in fear. Do you blame me for eating, and for enjoying the meal?”

  My mouth was dry. I could not respond.

  “Everyone regarded me with loathing. Everyone. There was no one, Noah, to offer me any kind of shelter at all.”

  There! Again! He was watching me carefully as he spoke that last, and I knew that he saw my panic.

  “No one,” he said very softly, his eyes intense on mine, “to offer me any kind of love.”

  I managed, somehow, to swallow, and that gave me the courage to speak. “But Ariadne—”

  “Ah, yes. Ariadne. My sister. My lover. She was born eight years after myself…I assume the time difference was because it took Minos some time to bring himself to mate with a woman who had betrayed him with a bull. Anyway, Ariadne was born, and grew, and became the most powerful Mistress of the Labyrinth that had ever been.”

  “And, as part of her duties, she met you.”

  His expression softened. “Aye, she met me. She came to me, not only from curiosity, although that was certainly part of it, but driven by compassion as well.”

  That I found most implausible. Ariadne, driven by comp
assion?

  “We became lovers, and, oh, how I did love her! She was the only one I’d ever known who did not look on me with fear or loathing. She made me laugh.” He paused. “She made me feel wanted.”

  Weyland stopped, caught in his memories, and I stared at him, fascinated by this tale of rejection and horror.

  He saw me watching, and smiled, and it caught at my heart, it was so sweet. “We had a child…did you know?”

  Now he’d stunned me, and for some reason I felt a shiver of premonition. “No,” I managed, “I didn’t know.”

  “A little girl. Perfect. She had no bull nose, no horns, but merely tangled black hair and the loveliest of faces. Ariadne let me hold her. Once. Just once.”

  Tangled black hair and a lovely face. Just like Catling. I shivered again with that strange fearful premonition.

  “And then?” I said, trying to distract myself from my thoughts.

  “And then one day, perhaps a month after her birth, Ariadne came to me and said she had sent the girl away. She was ashamed, not of the girl—”

  Again I closed my eyes briefly.

  “—but of the beast who had got the child on her.”

  “Where did your daughter go?”

  “I don’t know. I never saw her again, and Ariadne never spoke of her.”

  Oh, gods…I was so confused now I didn’t know what to think. This the dreaded Minotaur? This the frightful beast evil incarnate? I knew that Asterion was most likely constructing this to sway me, to make me sympathise, to make me pliable…but there was something deep within me that screamed that this was truth.

  “But then Ariadne met Theseus,” I said. I needed to get past that child.

  “Ah, yes, Theseus. She met him, she wanted him. And so she sent him to me, and he slew me, and then he betrayed her, and this entire…” he waved a hand in the air, trying to find the right word “…debacle was created.” Again Weyland looked at me, and what I saw there I thought was as real as anything I’d ever read in anyone’s face. “Do you blame me for what I do, Noah? Do you blame me for fighting with all my might to prevent myself being thrown back into the labyrinth?”

  “Then walk away! We shall let you be, Brutus and myself. Walk away!”

  “No!” His hand—that sensitive, long-fingered hand—thudded into the table. “The instant the Game is completed, then so shall I be incarcerated once more into its heart.”

  “Then you must be true malevolence,” I said, “for otherwise that should not be your fate.”

  He said nothing, just looked at me.

  “Why cause myself and Jane all this pain?” I said. “Why tear those imps from us? Why, if not that you act out of hatred and maliciousness?”

  “I did that,” he said, “because I am nothing but what the labyrinth made me.”

  Now my emotions swept the opposite way. This pathetic tale had been all a lie, uttered to confuse me.

  Weyland sighed, and lowered his eyes. “I began this crusade against you and Brutus and Jane and all else involved in this bitter Troy Game,” he said, “out of malevolence and hatred. But do you know what, Noah?”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “I am tired of it, Noah.”

  I gave a small, disbelieving smile.

  “Why else should I have healed you?” he said.

  “To trap me,” I said. “To make me think you had a better nature.”

  He sighed. “I cannot blame you for thinking badly of me.”

  He stopped, looked at me, smiled in a strange, funny little manner, then he leaned over the table, closed the distance between us, and kissed my mouth softly.

  I did not move, and I told myself that this was because I was terrified into stillness.

  He leaned back, and I turned aside my face. I would not look at him.

  Again Weyland sighed. “You are free to come and go as you wish, Noah. I will not prevent you. I ask only that you do not see Brutus, that you sleep your nights here, and that you spend time with me. That you come to know me.”

  Freedom to come and go? This was a trap, I knew it.

  He smiled, soft and sad. “It is no trap, Noah. All I want is for you to have the freedom you need. To learn from Jane the ways of the labyrinth.”

  “You want me to become Mistress of the Labyrinth?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Can you imagine it, Noah? You and I, Mistress and Kingman? I can. I lie awake nights imagining it. Imagining you and I…”

  He leaned forward, and kissed me once more—my cheek this time, as I had my face averted.

  “Do you remember,” he whispered, his mouth brushing my flesh with every word, “when we met in dream on that strange hill top?”

  I wished I had the strength to deny it. “Yes,” I said.

  He had moved, and was now sitting on a chair next to mine, and his hands, so gently, had turned my face to his.

  “When you said to me, ‘Weyland, Weyland, what are we doing? How can we stop?’ Remember? I do. Those words have not once left my mind since you uttered them.”

  He kissed me yet once more. On the mouth again, very gently.

  “Noah, what did you mean with those words?”

  I began to cry, as I had on the hill top, and Weyland began to kiss away the tears. He moved closer still, and all I could think of was his presence and his nearness, and I was horrified that I did not find them fearful, nor unwelcome.

  What did I mean?

  “What did you mean, Noah?” he whispered. Another kiss, just behind my left ear this time.

  “I—”

  There was the sound of the door opening, and then came Elizabeth’s and Frances’ low voices, and Weyland muttered a soft curse, and sat back from me.

  Two

  Whitehall Palace, London

  “You’re not Brutus,” she said. “You’re not Brutus.”

  There was a slightly hysterical ring to her voice, and Jane had to forcibly shut her mouth lest she babble those words over and over.

  Charles sank down on his haunches before Jane, his eyes watchful. Louis, Marguerite, Catharine and Kate moved close about him, their eyes similarly on Jane; Louis had his sword drawn.

  Jane found it difficult to breathe. Any moment she knew she would feel the blade of that sword through her neck.

  Wielded by Brutus. Gods, somehow Coel and Brutus had swapped identities! The “why” of it Jane could understand—this way Brutus had free rein to do whatever he needed while Weyland, the fool, watched Coel-reborn like a hawk. But how? How?

  “You are Coel-reborn,” she said to Charles, using every ounce of courage she possessed to utter those words. “You are not Brutus.” You are the Lord of the Faerie.

  Aye, he responded, but of that we will not speak for the moment.

  “Aye,” Charles said aloud. He was studying her face, noting its new abrasions, the broken nose, the closed eye, and he frowned at them.

  “Jane,” he said, “is Weyland still ignorant of this deception? Does he think me Brutus-reborn?”

  She nodded, the movement jerky and slightly uncoordinated.

  Louis moved in closer, so close that Jane could smell the steel of the sword. He made a sudden movement, which made Jane flinch, then squatted down so he could look her in the face.

  “I won’t tell him,” she said, garbling the words in her fear. “I won’t!”

  “You want us to believe you?” said Catharine. “You? Lady Snake?”

  “Don’t trust her,” said Marguerite. “She was always the lying bitch.”

  Jane averted her eyes again, and she hugged her arms about herself, crouching a little lower to the floor. “I will not tell him,” she whispered. “Please, believe me.”

  “You have spent hundreds of years teaching us not to believe you,” said Louis, his eyes burning into her huddled form. “You would be better dead for all you have done to Coel, and to Cornelia-reborn. Dead, we can surely trust you. Alive? I am not so sure.”

  He shifted a little, only to readjust his balance, but
Jane cringed at his movement.

  Charles stood. “I want to speak with her alone,” he said. “If you could leave us, please.”

  “Charles,” Louis said, rising also. “I should be here. I—”

  “Leave us, Louis!” Charles said. Then he added, softer, “She is terrified, Louis. I will do better on my own than with this circle of vehemence about her. Sisters, please, leave us. I can accomplish what we need.”

  Louis looked at Catharine, Marguerite and Kate, and nodded. He glanced once more at Jane, then shepherded the women towards the door. Charles paced slowly about the chamber until the door closed, then walked back to where Jane knelt, and extended his hand to her.

  Very slowly, tremulously, Jane took it, and rose.

  Almost immediately she sank into a curtsey again.

  “I do not,” she said, looking up to him, “honour you as King of England, for which I care very little, but as—”

  “I know,” he said. “Jane, do not speak of the Faerie here. Not now. When next you go to Tower Fields, then we shall speak when you meet me by the scaffold. But not here.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Charles burst into laughter. “’My lord?’ Oh, that I should hear that from your lips! Hark, is that the sound of Genvissa and Swanne turning over in their cold, cold graves?”

  Jane smiled apprehensively. He was teasing her again, as he had when they’d met in dream.

  “In the realm of the mortal, you may call me Charles when we are alone, and any variety of honorifics of your choosing when we are in public. But when I come to you in the Realm of the Faerie…then…” he paused, his brow creased as he thought. “Well, when we are alone there you may call me Coel.”

  Again that apprehensive smile, and a little nod.

  “Good.” He still held her hand, and now he raised her to her feet, and he pulled her close. His fingers touched her cheek.

  “When did he do this?”

  “Last night. He was not well pleased that my face had healed. He wanted me ugly for you.”

  “Ah, gods, Jane, I am sorry. I had not thought he would punish you for that.”