Druid's Sword

by Sara Douglass

  There was nothing else. Not a book, not a scatter rug, not a cushion.

  Not a scarf or a frippery to be seen.

  Nothing save functionality.

  Why hadn’t she seen this before now, as well?

  Grace was sitting on the end of her bed, watching her mother carefully. She was dressed in a plain blouse and skirt, and Noah almost wept at the sight.

  Grace was so lovely…she should be dressed in silks and velvets and brocades.

  She should live in a palace, and have emperors sprawl at her feet.

  She should live free, not a slave to terror.

  “Hello, Grace,” Noah said, and, walking over to the bed, sat down next to her daughter and gave her a kiss on her cheek.

  “Jack told you,” Grace said, and Noah realised she looked nervous.

  Noah looked down at her hands, which had begun to fidget in her lap. What should she say?

  After a long moment—a long moment in which Noah could feel Grace physically tensing—Noah looked up, smiled as naturally as she could, and said, “I am so proud of you.”

  Then, as Grace stared, Noah lifted a hand, placed it against Grace’s cheek, and leaned forward once more, this time planting a lingering kiss on Grace’s mouth.

  “What a fool I am for not realising,” Noah said.

  Then she rose, and left the room.

  Weyland stood as Noah walked back into the room. “Noah?”

  She sat down, but did not speak.

  Weyland hesitated, then sank down beside her.

  “Noah?”

  “Jack spoke to Catling last night…and then he spoke to us.”

  “You and Harry.”

  Noah drew in a breath. “And Stella, Silvius and Ariadne.”

  Weyland, if possible, stilled even more. Ariadne had betrayed him, had arranged his murder, in Weyland’s first life as Asterion. His loathing of her was monumental, and even though the ancient witch had been living in London for the past three hundred years, Weyland had avoided her as carefully as Ariadne had avoided him.

  “Weyland, just listen to me for a few minutes, and then we can talk.” In a hushed terse tone, Noah told Weyland what had transpired at the meeting at Faerie Hill Manor (keeping silent, for the moment, about the discussion of the Great Marriage). Weyland was shocked by what Jack had to say about Catling (surely she could be destroyed), but when Noah revealed that Grace had trained as a Mistress of the Labyrinth, and that Catling appeared often to her at night, Weyland looked so ill Noah thought he might actually faint.

  “Why didn’t we know?” Weyland said.

  “We were blind, Weyland. We were too busy trying to protect her, when what we should have been doing was encouraging her to fly.”

  “But—”

  “I know,” Noah said, taking both of Weyland’s hands in hers. “I tried to shelter her, it is largely what I lived for, and yet I think that ‘shelter’ was the last thing Grace needed.”

  Weyland did not reply as he tried to make sense of what he had just heard. They had spent so many years, and so much of themselves, trying to keep Grace from further harm, and trying to protect her, and believing that she was so fragile that she needed to be wrapped in as much parental security as possible, that to consider allowing Grace “to fly” was almost incomprehensible. Even more than Noah, Weyland’s every breath had been devoted to safeguarding Grace. He had lost one daughter; to lose this one as well was unthinkable.

  “She is trained as a Mistress of the Labyrinth?” he said, eventually.

  Noah nodded.

  “And we didn’t know.” Weyland paused. “She’s either very powerful or we are very weak.”

  Noah tried a small smile. “I prefer to think that she is very powerful.”

  “Who trained her?”

  “Stella.”

  Weyland gave a soft snort of laughter. “All that time I tried to persuade Stella to teach you, and she wouldn’t. Then, just for the fun of it, she trains our daughter. At least it wasn’t Ariadne. I do not think I could have borne that.”

  “There are a couple of other things I should tell you.”

  Weyland’s eyes, which had been lightening up, suddenly went cold and hard again, and Noah bemoaned the fact that even now, after so much time together, he found it so difficult to trust her love for him.

  “Grace and Harry have been lovers,” Noah said, and watched Weyland digest the information.

  “Thank the gods Stella didn’t murder her,” he said, and Noah laughed, squeezing his hands, glad he had accepted it so readily.

  “Talking of Harry…” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “He has asked Jack and me to make the Great Marriage. Unite and strengthen the land as much as possible to face whatever Catling decides to throw at it.”

  “Of course you agreed,” Weyland said, and now both his voice and face were flat.

  “Yes, we did,” said Noah. “Weyland, it will be a single night. It won’t mean—”

  He shot her such a terrible look, composed of equal parts of fear and hatred and despair, that Noah quailed.

  “I know,” she whispered, and Weyland pulled his hands away from hers.

  All in all, Noah thought later as she sat back on the sofa, a whisky and soda in her hand, alone in the room, it had been a frightful day.

  For the moment Noah was not thinking about Grace or Weyland. Two other subjects consumed her: the Great Marriage, and the revelation that the daughter Brutus and Genvissa had conceived had been Catling.

  Noah felt a little sick at the idea of the Great Marriage. Seeing Jack again, after all these years, had confused her deeply. She was so sure of Weyland, so sure she loved him, so happy in her choice, and yet when Jack smiled, or slid his eyes her way, or, damn it, kissed her, then doubts assailed her. It made Noah realise that no matter how much she loved Weyland, she could not simply set to one side what she had once felt for Jack. As Cornelia and Caela, and in her early years as Noah, she had loved Jack with an all-consuming passion.

  Then had come Weyland, and Noah thought she’d left her love for Jack far in the past.

  Now Noah wondered if it was as far behind her as she’d thought.

  She loved Weyland. She truly did, and was happy with him, and didn’t want their marriage to fall apart, but, oh, that moment when Harry had mentioned the Great Marriage, and she and Jack had exchanged glances, everything almost had fallen apart.

  “Gods,” muttered Noah, putting her drink down so she could rummage about the room looking for a cigarette. She didn’t smoke, or only rarely, and right now she felt a cigarette might just save her life.

  Five minutes and no cigarette later, Noah slumped back on the sofa and drained her drink. She forced her mind away from Jack, and thought about the child he, as Brutus, had conceived with Genvissa.

  Catling! Noah wasn’t too sure whether to be glad she’d murdered Genvissa when she had, delaying the Troy Game’s emergence into flesh, or to wonder if she’d only increased Catling’s malevolence in the doing. Did I make things worse?

  For hours Noah sat there, drinking too many whisky and sodas, thinking about Jack and Catling and, eventually, the daughter Noah had lost in her first life. Genvissa and she had both lost daughters. Genvissa’s had been Catling…but what had Cornelia been carrying? Just an innocent baby, the victim of Genvissa’s (Catling’s, more like) hatred, or something else?

  Noah remembered how her daughter had been conceived using the power of Mag’s Pond.

  “Surely nothing bad could have come of that,” she whispered, eventually, when the apartment was cold and dark. “Surely.”

  Then she sighed, set the empty glass to one side, and went to look for Grace.

  Weyland had gone to find the imps. He discovered them wandering the Embankment, not too far from the Savoy, as if they knew he would be needing them.

  “Well?” said Weyland, leaning over the stone wall and looking at the Thames.

  “My, we’re in a fierce mood today,” said Jim.<
br />
  “I am in no mood for your witticisms,” snapped Weyland. “What have you learned?”

  “Jack has been doing what anyone who knew him, and you, and Noah, could have expected,” said Bill, instantly professional. He reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a small notebook, flipping through the pages. “He has established himself at Copt Hall. Spends many nights running the forests. Has an eccentric manservant.”

  At that Bill looked up from his notebook and both he and Jim intoned as one, “We don’t like Malcolm.”

  “Why is that?”

  “He is unreadable,” said Bill.

  Weyland gave a slight shrug. “He’s working for Jack. Isn’t that enough reason to dislike him?”

  The imps grinned, and Bill went back to his notebook. “Your wife has been out to see Jack. Twice.”

  “I know that.”

  “She went for a walk in the woods with him.”

  “So?”

  “We could have taken photographs, if you had asked.”

  Weyland felt like reaching out and strangling the damned imp. “Photographs of what?”

  “They kissed,” said Jim.

  Weyland closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. “And?” he said, opening his eyes again.

  “That’s it,” said Jim. “Just a kiss.”

  “But she clung to him,” said Bill.

  Then he fell silent, and both imps looked steadily at Weyland. For his part, Weyland suddenly wished he’d never set the cursed creatures on Jack’s trail. He realised he didn’t want to know what Jack and Noah got up to.

  “And this wrongness that Jack has been carrying on about?” said Weyland.

  “Don’t know what he’s talking about,” said Jim.

  “But it sounds scary,” said Bill.

  Weyland narrowed his eyes. “You’re hiding something.”

  “Never,” said Jim.

  “You’re looking way too pleased with yourselves,” Weyland said.

  The imps looked steadily, brightly, at him, but didn’t say anything.

  “What about these murders?” said Weyland. “What do you know about them?”

  “Why ask us?” said Jim.

  “Lucky guess,” said Weyland. “Look at you, all bright confidence one moment and shifty-eyed discomfort the next. If there is one thing, lads, that you should have learned over the past three hundred years it would be a greater knowledge of the art of dissembling.”

  “We don’t know anything,” said Bill. “Nothing.”

  This time his voice was surer, and both imps were back to regarding Weyland as if they had never been guilty of anything more foul than stealing a pie left to cool on a windowsill, but Weyland knew, with every piece of intuition available to him, that they were involved somehow.

  Weyland felt sickened, and suddenly wanted nothing more to do with the imps. “I think we can consider our arrangement at an end,” he said. “You’re not as useful as I’d thought you’d be.”

  “Wait!” said Jim. “What about some payment, then?”

  Weyland looked back over his shoulder as he walked away. “I gave you life and freedom. Is that not payment enough?”

  ELEVEN

  September to November 1939

  Jack had committed to destroying the Troy Game—and if he was honest with himself, he had committed to it a long time ago—but he wouldn’t be pushed by anyone into moving precipitously. Catling was too powerful (Jack’s mind shied away from “invulnerable”) and whatever chink she had in her armour (if it existed) would be so tiny, so transient, that Jack knew he not only needed to be very, very sure of it, but that he would only ever get one chance at it.

  In Jack’s mind there were two puzzles which needed to be solved. Firstly, he needed to discover what manner of strange labyrinthine shadow it was that hung over London. Every day that Jack rose from his bed he became more convinced that it concerned the Troy Game, even if it wasn’t a direct part of it. Secondly, Jack needed to plumb the equally strange labyrinthine shadow that was Grace. She was so important, yet so unfathomable. That could be due to cunning, or, as he’d thought earlier, it could just be defensive.

  Jack leaned more towards the defensive. Gods alone knew she had enough reason for it. More importantly, however, when he’d tested her on Ambersbury Banks the marks had seen no harm in her. There was no direct danger to himself from her.

  Besides, Matilda liked her. She has isolated herself within a ring of fire and of suffering, and can’t escape, Matilda had said to him. Jack was not always certain of his own judgement, but he was sure of Matilda’s. If he had been Brutus, or William, or even Louis, Jack thought, he would have distrusted Grace on sight and would probably have blamed her for every dark cloud that scudded across the sun.

  But now…no.

  Grace was a puzzle, and she needed to be solved, but during September and October Jack spent almost every waking hour trying to discover as much as he could about the shadow over London. In this he had to be very circumspect. If whatever was so different could be used against Catling, then Jack couldn’t risk alerting her to its presence (and why was it Catling did not know of this? How could she not?).

  What Jack wanted was to walk every street of London, plotting out carefully what he saw, felt and intuited along each of those streets, but this he could not do. Nothing would have alerted Catling faster. Certainly, Jack could take the occasional stroll down a street here, an alleyway there…but a systematic perambulation of all London (and beyond, if the difference stretched even further than the metropolis)? No. He was aware that Catling might be watching his every move.

  It would be easier if Noah, Stella and Ariadne could sense the shadow as well, because then the four of them wandering here and there about their daily business would be able to assemble a good picture. But none of the women could sense the difference, and were useless to him.

  But Grace could; Jack had absolutely no doubt of that. He meant to talk to her about it, and perhaps even enlist her aid, but for most of the two months following his meeting with Catling in St Paul’s crypt, Jack did it on his own. He wanted to learn as much as he could by himself, before he spoke to Grace.

  So Jack crisscrossed the city, one journey every two or three days, finding an excuse whenever possible to travel as widely as possible. There was a maze in Greenwich Village he needed to view, and mazes in Peckham, Richmond and Clapham as well. Every one of the ancient Veiled Hills of Llangarlia had to be visited, as did the far newer docklands in east London.

  Noah helped, handed an excuse by Queen Elizabeth who made a radio broadcast urging women everywhere to do their bit for the war effort. Noah used this broadcast as the perfect reason to establish, as her very own effort, a mobile canteen (rather aptly named “Noah’s Ark”). She purchased a van, had it fitted out as a canteen, and most nights she and Eaving’s Sisters drove about, taking refreshments—tea, hot chocolate, and sticky buns—to the various air raid shelters about London.

  Her mobile canteen gave Jack the perfect pretext to visit. Two or three nights a week he would find a reason to track her down, and visit for five or ten minutes. Noah knew of the motive behind these visits, and cooperated by giving him a reason to visit: to talk about the arrangements for the Great Marriage; to discuss how and when they might do the Dance of the Flowers; and, in order not to make Catling too suspicious, to worry about what might happen after the completion of the Troy Game. Could they survive it? Was it worth risking the destruction of the land and Faerie to try to thwart Catling?

  All this meant that Jack did, indeed, manage to visit a fair proportion of London, but there was a catch. The only way he could sense this “difference” hanging over the city was to walk the streets: to physically feel the city and what underpinned it throb up through the soles of his feet. Obviously Jack could not walk all these distances, because to do so would be to arouse Catling’s suspicions. If he needed to go somewhere then he necessarily had to drive his Austin convertible to get there, and thus the only time he
managed to add to his store of understanding about the shadow was when he got out of the car.

  Those few moments when he walked from car to building, or to Noah’s mobile canteen; the longer moment when he could stretch his legs walking around a hill, or a block or two of a suburb, but Jack had to have a reason for all these walks. He couldn’t just be walking, or at least not too much.

  He was desperate that Catling should have no idea of his intentions.

  Particularly after the night she tracked him down and asked him what he was doing.

  Jack was in Peckham Rye, a suburb to the south of London, very late at night. His excuse for this excursion was that he wanted to visit the ancient site of Nunhead graveyard where, when he’d been William, two of his squires had been buried. The graveyard had been levelled (and the contents evacuated) during the nineteenth century when train lines had come through the area and terraced suburbia had spread either side of the twin rails like a black stain, but the faint memory of the squires’ souls still lingered, and Jack knew that the journey would be no waste of time, no matter what he discovered about the shadow.

  He was walking quietly up Ferndale Road, a nondescript street of late Victorian brick terraces, when he heard steps behind him.

  Jack stopped, and turned around.

  Catling stood a few feet away.

  Her white face floated like a rotting moon within all the blackness surrounding her, and Jack had to swallow, suddenly nauseated.

  “Well, well, Jack,” she said, using a strange, sliding gait to move closer. “What do you here?”

  “Visiting old friends,” he said.

  She raised an eyebrow, and moved to the side of him, forcing Jack to turn in order to keep her in sight. “Old friends?” she said.

  “I had two squires when I lived as William,” he said. “Henry and Raoul. They took wives after the invasion, and settled here, in this parish.” His shoe tapped against the tarmac. “They were buried here, a thousand years ago. I came to pay my respects.”

  “How loyal. I am pleased. I like loyalty. I hope also that you will remember your loyalty to me.”