Druid's Sword

by Sara Douglass

  Harry and Jack exchanged a long, meaningful glance. In previous lives both of them had led the armies of a nation into war, and neither envied Chamberlain his forthcoming experience.

  “Evil things we shall be fighting against,” Noah said. “He has no idea how evil.”

  They ate a light lunch—most eating as little at lunch as they had at breakfast—and then Weyland brought his car round to the front to take his family, Harry and Jack down to London.

  Jack whistled in admiration as soon as he saw the huge silver and red-enamelled Daimler.

  “Nice,” he said, then gave a small grin. “Bet it’s going to make a spectacular target in moonlight.”

  “Weyland has been asked to paint it something more subdued,” Noah said as Weyland put their small bags into the boot. “He’s been resisting until now.”

  “This morning’s announcement has put paid to the silver,” Weyland said, shutting the boot. “I’ll get one of the mechanics at the Savoy’s garage to dull it down somewhat.”

  He walked to the driver’s door. “Come on then,” he said. “Load up.”

  Noah moved to the front passenger side, leaving Harry, Jack and Grace to accommodate themselves on the back bench seat. Jack found this a little awkward. Grace hadn’t said a word all day, and frankly, he didn’t know what to say to her. It was obvious she wasn’t one for light chitchat, and in fact actively avoided conversation at all by refusing to look anyone in the face.

  She looked extraordinarily tired with pallid skin and dark rings under her eyes, and Jack wondered if there was any residual soreness in her wrists after Catling’s attack last night. He couldn’t see her wrists as the sleeves of her blouse, and now the cardigancoat she’d put on against the autumn chill, effectively hid any sight of them and he had no idea how to broach the subject.

  Jack walked around to the driver’s side of the car and folded himself into the back seat. On the other side, Harry indicated Grace should sit in the middle, and Jack barely stopped himself from squirming closer to the car door as Grace slid in beside him. He wanted to make a bit more room for her, but was worried she might take the movement as one of revulsion.

  Her silence, her introspectiveness, was beginning to intimidate him.

  As soon as Harry had closed his door, Weyland pulled away.

  “London,” he said.

  The journey was accomplished in complete silence. By the time they drew close to the City—the inner square mile of ancient London—Jack was ready to scream. The sense of awkwardness had grown by the minute during the drive, and Jack wasn’t sure if it was due to Grace’s terrible reserve, or to the fact that what lay between Noah, Weyland and himself simply couldn’t stand close confinement in a car for longer than two or three minutes.

  Eventually, when Weyland pulled over close to the Tower of London, Jack had to restrain himself from throwing open the door and exiting with indecent haste.

  Noah leaned over the front seat. “Harry, will you and Jack join us for dinner? Weyland needs to hand over the keys to Jack’s car, and you might as well stay for a meal.”

  Dinner? Jack couldn’t think of a worse way to spend the evening. All he wanted to do was get out of this car and get as far away from Grace and Weyland and Noah, and their memories, as fast as he could.

  “We’d be delighted,” Harry said, his voice sounding so natural Jack’s mouth almost dropped open. Hadn’t he felt the tension?

  “Besides,” Harry continued, “Jack said last night that he’d like to take a closer look at Grace’s wrists…Catling’s hex. Perhaps he can do that this evening.”

  Noah looked over to Jack, who by now had his door ajar with one foot on the roadway. “Jack, that would be wonderful. Thank you.”

  Jack managed a smile, and slid even further towards the world beyond the Daimler.

  “You don’t have to,” Grace suddenly, extraordinarily, said, and Jack froze, staring at her.

  She was looking him directly in the face, the first time she’d done so all day, and Jack could see that strong emotion roiled inside of her, although he couldn’t tell what it was.

  He had a horrible thought that she knew full well how desperate he was to get away from both her and the car.

  “You don’t have to,” she repeated.

  Now every eye was on Jack, and Weyland had even swivelled around to mark Jack’s response.

  “I don’t want to be a nuisance,” Grace said, and now both her words and the expression in her eyes (terror, that he would think her a burden), made Jack instantly ashamed of himself.

  He halted partway out of the car, then slid back in. He reached out his left hand, grasping her right hand gently, then sliding his fingers under the cuffs of blouse and cardigan to encircle her wrist.

  It felt like the wrist of a child; so thin, the bones so vulnerable.

  “Anyone in this car,” he said, “can tell you I’ve never bloody well troubled myself with ‘nuisances’. Not for three thousand years and more. I’m not going to start now.” His face relaxed slightly, the skin about his dark eyes crinkling. “You are not a nuisance, Grace.”

  And then he was gone, the door closing behind him, and Grace was left with her right hand a little extended, as if she could still feel Jack’s fingers about it.

  “She must be tearing Noah and Weyland apart,” Jack said to Harry as they watched the Daimler disappear into the traffic.

  “That’s extraordinarily perceptive of you,” Harry said, “particularly when you’re not normally given to that quality.”

  “Is she always so difficult to reach?”

  Harry nodded. “No one really knows her. The gods’ know we’ve all tried.” He paused. “I was her lover for a while, but even then—”

  Jack’s mouth dropped open. “I don’t believe you,” he said. Then, before Harry could answer, Jack grabbed Harry by the shoulder and turned him slightly, using his other hand to pat down Harry’s back. “No. I don’t believe you. You’re not full of holes, and if you’d been Grace’s lover I am certain Stella would not have hesitated to fill your back with puncture wounds. Did she know?”

  “Well, yes,” Harry said. “I imagine so. I’m sure I mentioned it to her.” Then he laughed at the expression on Jack’s face. “I doubt that there are too many other pretty young girls I could have taken as my occasional lover without Stella turning slightly murderous, but Grace is the exception. Stella is probably closer to Grace than anyone, including Noah and Weyland.”

  “Stella doesn’t pity her,” Jack said.

  “My,” Harry said softly, “you have acquired some perception. Now, Jack, let’s walk about this damn city and you tell me what it is that we face. Noah keeps telling me the Troy Game grows stronger and darker, but, the gods alone know, that’s not what I want to hear from you.”

  They began to walk, slowly and silently, about the northern side of the Tower. Harry hung back a little, allowing Jack to take the lead. When they got to Great Tower Hill, on the immediate western wall of the Tower, Jack stopped and turned back to Harry. “I want to walk about the old route of London’s wall, up north, then west, then south to Blackfriars Bridge. Then across that to Southwark and east along the river back to Tower Bridge. Are you up to it?”

  Harry nodded. “Is it enough?”

  “Not particularly ‘enough’, but it will do. It’s a broad circular route through the oldest part of the city, and it will give me Catling’s strength.” Strange, he thought, that now he could only think of the Troy Game as Catling. “Good Lord, Harry. This place has changed.”

  He looked down to his feet, and tapped one shoe against the tarmac. “There’s a subway down here.” He lifted his head, turning it westwards towards the city. “They riddle the city.”

  “Aye. Since the late Victorian age the railroaders have been digging under the streets. Jack…are they…?”

  “A part of Catling? Yes. Every tunnel, every walkway, every subway, every street and laneway add to her web.”

  “You’ve be
en gone too long.”

  Jack lifted his eyes up to Harry’s. “I couldn’t have stopped this, Harry. I don’t think anyone could.”

  They began to walk, skirting the Tower once again and moving on to the ancient street known as the Minorities, which led up to Aldgate. Harry expected Jack to cross straight over and continue north-west, following the ancient line of the city walls, but at Aldgate Jack stopped and stared west towards the junction of Leadenhall and Fenchurch Streets. The City was quiet. Not only was it a Sunday, but most people would have sought the comfort of family on this day of all days, and there was little to obstruct Jack’s view. Suddenly he turned left.

  “Jack?”

  Jack held up a hand. Soon, Harry. Give me a moment. He strode down to the junction of the two streets, where stood an ancient water pump, and stopped there, a frown on his face, looking up and around at the buildings, then into the sky, and then downwards, a foot once again tapping at the tarmac.

  “Jack?”

  Jack gave a slight shake of his head. “There’s something here, Harry. I don’t know what. It feels…different. Sideways.”

  “What feels ‘sideways’?”

  “I don’t know…I don’t know. Last night I felt something at St Paul’s, but I thought it just imagination. But now, whatever it is, is just that little bit stronger than it was last night. More…alive.”

  Harry stood, watching Jack. “Is it the Troy Game?”

  Jack shrugged. He stared down Leadenhall Street, then walked along it, crossing over to the north side as soon as a lorry rumbled past them.

  It was full of military personnel.

  Harry hurried after him. “Jack…?”

  “It’s the same thing,” Jack said, walking past a jeweller’s, then a tailor’s, then a bookshop, all closed for the day. “It’s down here as well. A…a…damn it…there is something different. Something odd. Something I don’t understand.” He stopped and gestured in frustration at his head. “Something that I just can’t grasp. Something…elusive. But something that makes my Kingman blood tingle.”

  And then he was off again, striding—almost jogging—towards Cornhill, and then north past the Bank. Here he stopped yet once more, shook his head, and moved on.

  For the next two hours Jack and Harry moved through central London. From the Bank up to London Wall, then west to Aldersgate, which ran south towards St Paul’s, all the time ducking in and out of narrow alleys, into blind courts, up service laneways. Every few minutes Jack would stop, look about, look up, think, frown, then move on. By the time they reached Aldersgate Harry was so tense his shoulders had bunched up towards his neck and his back was so tight walking had become painful.

  What the hell is it, Jack?

  “I want to go down to St Paul’s,” said Jack. “Please, Harry, bear with me a while longer.”

  Harry wasn’t sure he could live a moment longer, let alone “bear” with anything, but he grimaced and merely followed Jack as he walked down towards St Paul’s. Of all places in the city, the cathedral seemed the most active. People may have wanted to attend the regular services, or simply wanted to sit in the nave or one of the side chapels to pray silently.

  Jack halted in the churchyard, almost where he’d waited for Walter Herne the previous night.

  “It is here as well,” he said. “It is all over.”

  “Jack…talk to me,” said Harry, who was relieved his normal voice came out, instead of the scream that threatened.

  Jack had been looking skyward, past the great mass of the cathedral. Now he looked back to Harry.

  “Had Noah said anything to you? Stella? Ariadne, if you’ve had any contact with her? Weyland?”

  “No. What is it?”

  Jack took a deep breath. “From this brief walk, Harry, I can tell you that Catling—the Troy Game —appears healthy and vibrant and, yes, dark and dismal and so strong I don’t think all the gods in their heavens could ever dislodge her. But there’s something else hanging over and about and through London. Something other. Shadowy. Insubstantial. Whether or not it relates to Catling, and the labyrinth that Genvissa and I built…I don’t know. If it did relate to Catling then I would have thought that Noah or Weyland, or any one of the others trained in the arts of the labyrinth, would have picked it up. Maybe I have been away too long. Something has happened here, Harry. Something I can’t even comprehend, let alone explain.”

  “Jack—”

  “There’s only one thing I do know, Harry, and that is that whatever this is, it is huge. What we’ve covered today is only a fraction of it. Tell me, what is happening in the Faerie? Is there any intimation of something ‘different’ reflected into the Faerie?”

  “No. Only the growing presence of the Troy Game, bad enough as that is. Nothing else.”

  “None of the creatures of the Faerie have mentioned anything to you?”

  Harry shook his head. All the lines had deepened in his face, making him look so physically weary, and so emotionally exhausted, that Jack reached out a hand and rested it on his shoulder.

  “I’m sorry, my friend,” he said softly, “but there is something very, very wrong with this city.”

  NINE

  The Savoy

  Sunday, 3rd September 1939

  NOAH SPEAKS

  Oh, how terrifying, how incredible, how nerveracking, how relieving to have him back.

  How wonderful.

  I don’t think I can possibly put into words all the emotions that surged through me when first we realised Jack—as he called himself now—was coming home. Guilt—oh yes. Excitement—yes, I’ll confess to that also. Terror, at what he would say to me, and what he would think of me.

  During the seventeenth century I’d destroyed his world. He’d wanted me, had loved me, had thought to build a life together with me.

  Believed he and I would complete the Troy Game together.

  Instead I had abandoned him and the life together I’d promised him to love Weyland Orr, the Minotaur and Brutus-Jack’s hated enemy, and I had abandoned the Troy Game, claiming it would be our destroyer, not our saviour.

  He’d walked away, hurt beyond knowing, and bitter, and I am not the one to blame him for that.

  Meanwhile, Weyland’s and my own little paradise, so briefly enjoyed, fell apart about us. We’d had a beautiful daughter, Grace, who healed so many wounds: Weyland’s at losing the daughter Ariadne had given him so many thousands of years ago, and mine, at losing my own tiny daughter to Genvissa’s malevolence.

  Then Catling snatched, twisting her red wool hex about baby-Grace’s wrists, and our daughter, our beloved, so-much-wanted daughter, became an open wound of her own.

  These few hundred years between the terrible events of 1666 and 1939 had been…difficult.

  Ah, let me be frank. They’d been a waking nightmare. Grace suffered so terribly, and we could do nothing. Our daughter twisted in upon herself, losing all warmth and gaiety and love, until no one could reach her. Gods alone know I tried, but I was too emotional I think, too desperate, and eventually she pushed me away. The closest anyone came was Stella. I don’t know why—what was it about Stella that I didn’t have?—but I did not tax either Grace or Stella with it. If Grace found a little more companionship with Stella than with me, then so be it.

  Yet even that friendship had waned over the past fifty years or so as Grace isolated herself more deeply than ever. She talked, she breathed, she occasionally came out with a sentence or two (her “almost conversation” with Jack in the car outside the Savoy had stunned me. I hadn’t heard her say so many words at one time in years), and she washed and dressed herself.

  She suffered whenever Catling chose to visit her with agony.

  She didn’t live. Not really.

  Weyland and I were at our wits’ end. We loved her so much, we wanted so much for her, we wanted to help her so badly.

  And in the end we couldn’t do a thing for her.

  Now Jack was back. And he’d said he would look at Grace’
s hex! I tried not to think that somehow tonight Jack would make it all right, that he would find what everyone else had singularly failed to do—the means of removing the hex. After all, he was a Kingman, and he created the Troy Game, and maybe he did have the skill and knowledge to help Grace.

  I tried not to hope too much, but I am afraid that after we dropped off Jack and Harry, and all through the day as we waited within the Savoy for them to arrive for dinner, I went about with a silly smile on my face.

  Weyland commented on it as soon as we’d arrived back in our suite and Grace had gone to her room.

  “Noah?” He didn’t have to say any more. There was an infinite weight of questions in that single word.

  “What do you think, Weyland?” I went to him, and slid my hands about his waist, leaning in against him. “Do you think Jack can do something for Grace?”

  He studied me a moment, his hazel eyes clouded with something I couldn’t quite read. “Is that hope all that’s fuelling the light in your face, Noah?”

  Ah, gods, when would Weyland realise how much I loved him? “No,” I said, and leaned closer and kissed him. “I’m thinking also of how we might entertain ourselves once our guests have gone for the night.”

  He smiled, but it wasn’t convincing. He extricated himself from my embrace and walked over to the sideboard in our sitting room and poured himself a drink.

  “Weyland—”

  He turned about. “Noah, I have been both dreading and hoping for this day for so long. We all need Jack if we’re going to have a hope of destroying the Troy Game…if we’re going to have a hope of saving Grace. But he’s such a wild card. He can both save us or destroy us. He could take you from me with a single word—”

  “Weyland, don’t be ridiculous—”

  “—with a single look. Gods, he is so much more powerful now than he was as Louis de Silva. Did you not feel the power rippling out from him when he spoke to Walter? And that was but a fraction of what I think he’s capable of commanding.”