Druid's Sword

by Sara Douglass

  All Jack wanted was to take Grace home, and then get back to Copt Hall where he might sit and think.

  Grace fetched her jacket from the kitchen, then Jack escorted her outside to the car, both nodding their farewells to the clergyman as they left. Jack thought it highly likely that the man would telephone the Savoy within half an hour, to make sure that Grace arrived home unscathed.

  They didn’t talk in the car. Jack glanced at Grace from time to time as he drove, but she was apparently as reflective as himself.

  She hadn’t put the jacket on, and whenever Jack glanced at her, his eyes always slid briefly down to her wrists before looking back at the road.

  “Grace,” he said as he pulled up before the Savoy, “can I talk to you about May Day?”

  She stiffened. May Day had been the day of the Great Marriage.

  “About you, Grace. Not Noah. May Day was your birthday, wasn’t it?”

  She looked at him, startled. “How did you know that?”

  “Malcolm had mentioned it to me a while back, and, no, please don’t ask me how he knew, because I have no idea.” He paused, wondering how to put this. “I’m sorry we forgot that it was your birthday, Grace.”

  “There were grander events that day. My birthday didn’t matter.”

  I wonder if that is really so, Jack wondered. May Day was a powerful day for Grace’s birth. “Still, we should not have forgotten your birthday. Grace, will you let me give you a present?”

  She gave a small laugh, discomfited. “You don’t need to do that.”

  “I do, I think. Did anyone remember, Grace?”

  She looked down at her hands in her lap. “My father did.”

  Your father, but no one else? “Well, I shall make up for my tardiness. But give me a while.” He grinned a little. “I need to think of the perfect gift.”

  Jack thought she’d protest once more that he didn’t need to give her a gift, but instead she only thanked him, her face and voice grave.

  He nodded, got out, opened her door, and escorted her towards the steps leading to the residents’ private entrance. Just as they got to the top Jack caught gently at her elbow, stopping her before she opened the door. “Grace, I…ah, damn it. One half of me wants to demand that you stay here at home and keep safe, and the other half of me screams for you to continue to help me. I can’t do this by myself, and Noah is no help.”

  “I will stay out of trouble, Jack. I won’t stay out late again.”

  “No more going to dances to prove yourself, eh?”

  She smiled. “Not without you, Jack.”

  Jack drove a little way down the Embankment, then parked the Austin and sat in the car for hours, smoking and thinking, staring at the rising hulk of the Savoy.

  It took him a long time to simply order his thoughts. To say that what had happened tonight was surprising was akin to saying Hitler had been a little bit naughty over the past year or so.

  He was concerned about the attack—Grace had said very little about it, but Jack had fathomed enough to realise it had been terrifying. He wondered if Catling had indeed set the imps onto Grace, or if the pitiful creatures couldn’t resist snatching at Grace when they had the chance.

  Jack repressed a shiver. He wanted to demand that Grace not help him…but, oh, he needed that help so badly.

  And he wanted an excuse to keep seeing Grace.

  Especially after what had happened atop Ambersbury Banks tonight.

  Grace was…astounding. Every bit more that he got to know about her simply increased her mystery. Darkwitch and Mistress of the Labyrinth; daughter of Asterion; his perfect labyrinthine partner (to think of the harmonies they could create between them!); a woman inescapably tied to the Troy Game; a woman admired by ancient druids; a woman, a Mistress of the Labyrinth, who was the only one apart from himself who was capable of discovering the secrets of the shadow.

  And the bearer of four of the golden kingship bands of Troy.

  Jack had first realised this fact on the day he had come to the Savoy and tried to work out a means by which to free Grace of Catling’s hex. The instant he’d taken her wrist and infused her with his power, he’d felt them, buried under her skin. He didn’t think she knew they were there, but he had felt them buried deep.

  Noah may have thought that Grace had merely carried them into the Faerie, but Jack knew Grace had actually absorbed them.

  This wasn’t unusual. When a Kingman died, a Mistress of the Labyrinth often took his kingship bands into her keeping so that she could pass them on to the dead Kingman’s heir in a ceremony so imbued with power, it was second only to the creating of a Game as the most powerful ritual a Mistress and Kingman could undertake together.

  What this meant, Jack realised, as he lit yet another cigarette, was that from very early on Grace had been “selected” as the Mistress to hand back to him the kingship bands.

  The Mistress who was also his perfect match; who was the only one, except him, who could discover the puzzlement of the shadowed enchantment that hung over London.

  That all these were connected was undoubted.

  But who had done all this arranging and selecting? Not Noah. Noah had no idea of what she had bred.

  Ariadne? Possibly. This had her stamp all over it, but Jack wasn’t sure that Ariadne had the power to arrange it.

  Catling?

  Who else?

  Yet none of this had the feel of Catling, either…and if Catling had arranged it then she’d be screaming at Jack to take Grace as his Mistress for the final dance of the Troy Game. Together they’d make a much more powerful completion than the pairing of he and Noah.

  Ah! Jack stubbed out the cigarette. He could make no sense of the “who” behind the arranging, and thinking about what it all meant was frustrating.

  If not nightmarish.

  Jack recalled how he’d felt as he’d danced with Grace on Ambersbury Banks, and it terrified him.

  “This is the last bloody thing I need,” he muttered as he finally turned the ignition key on the Austin.

  SEVEN

  London

  June to September 1940

  GRACE SPEAKS

  There were three things about that night of Friday the fourteenth of June that made it memorable. The first was that Jack said to me, You have no reason, none, to think that you can only ever exist in your mother’s shadow, and actually sounded as if he meant it.

  The second was the confusion in his eyes as we danced. I had expected to see boredom, perhaps even some condescension. But not confusion.

  The third was when Catling appeared to me once I’d gone to bed.

  The night had started poorly enough. I have no idea what in the world made me think that going to the dance would prove my courage to anyone. It had been a stupid idea. Once I had arrived, I realised I would hate it, but I didn’t want to be rude and leave immediately. I didn’t fit in, I couldn’t share the gaiety, I didn’t want to dance with any of the young men, I didn’t want to chatter meaninglessly with the other women, and so I headed for the kitchen to wash the dishes.

  Gods, I am so hopeless.

  When Jack appeared behind me I was so startled I thought for one horrible moment I would actually faint. Then I discovered that Stacey had blabbed: Jack knew about the attack and I was sure he would demand then and there that I should stay home and be a good girl. He wanted to, I could see it, but he didn’t. I suppose I should have told him of that terrible sense of the shadow “rushing” at me during the imps’ attack, but I knew if I did, then Jack would demand I stop helping him. So that I kept to myself.

  Then he took me dancing, and then…then he took me to heaven and back, although it wasn’t the dance or anything he said. He did it by paying me the ultimate compliment of assuming I had both the skill and the courage to be able to handle his Kingman power. He made me feel as though I mattered, as if I wasn’t just a tragedy needing to be saved, and for that I think I would have given him anything, had he asked.

  The m
elding of powers. It felt magnificent, mostly because it made me feel intimately close to someone, and I hadn’t felt that since I was a tiny baby and not yet under Catling’s hex.

  So, it was a good night, and particularly when Jack remembered my birthday.

  I went to bed convinced I wouldn’t sleep; that I had too much to think about—and to anticipate—if I was to meet with Jack tomorrow to resume plotting out the course of the shadow. But I did sleep, almost as immediately as my head hit the pillow.

  About three a.m. I woke, suddenly, and saw Catling sitting on the chair in the shadowed recesses of the room.

  Instantly, all the good feeling and the warmth vanished. I felt sick, and chilled to the marrow of my bones.

  She rose, that hateful, cold-faced woman, and came close to the bed.

  Iciness radiated out of her, and I shuddered.

  “I thought you’d stay home and shiver,” she said, “after what those imps did to you. What they might have done.”

  “I wasn’t scared,” I managed, stunned to hear her speak. I had managed to convince myself that her words to me on Ambersbury Banks had been an aberration. “You don’t scare me.”

  My Lord, that sounded completely pathetic, and Catling laughed. “Very good,” she said, “I like that.”

  I opened my mouth, wanting to goad Catling into revealing what she actually meant by those words, but she forestalled me.

  “How did it feel,” she said, “when he held you in his arms?”

  That silenced me, and I gaped at her.

  “Tell me, Grace. I want to know. How did it feel? How did Jack’s body feel, pressed against yours in the dance? Did it delight you? Would you…” She paused, looking at me as if she were about to ask me something of the utmost importance. “Would you put everything else aside for him? Give your life for him?”

  “Go away. Leave me in peace.”

  “No. Answer me.”

  What preposterous questions. “If I tell you, will you go away?”

  “You want me to go away?”

  I closed my eyes, not sure if I could put into words the fact that my entire life was dedicated to wanting her to “go away”.

  “Were you delighted, Grace?”

  “Yes,” I whispered, opening my eyes again, “I was delighted.”

  “And would you give your life for him, Grace? Would you live in darkness, if it would save him?”

  “Would I be free of you, if I did?”

  She smiled, so cold. “Yes.”

  “Then, yes, I would die for him, or live in darkness for him, if that would free me of you.”

  Something shifted in her eyes, and I hoped I hadn’t made some horribly stupid vow with those words. I meant then to retract my statement, but suddenly Catling was gone, and I was left staring into the dark bedroom.

  Over the next weeks and months I continued helping Jack plot out the extent of the shadow. I was careful never to stay out later than mid-afternoon, unless I was in the company of someone else (often Matilda, or another of Eaving’s Sisters), and the imps did not bother me. Jack gradually relaxed (I had noticed him trailing me on more than one occasion, keeping an eye on me), and he and I slipped into a quasifriendship. It was an “almost” friendship, because even though Jack was friendly enough with me, there was a distance in his manner that hadn’t been there previously. We talked about what we were doing and discovering, or of light and inconsequential matters, but often I caught him studying me with those unreadable black eyes of his, and I felt as if I was being judged in some manner.

  If I grew obviously uncomfortable under his regard, then he relaxed it instantly, laughing and passing away the look with some light comment. Jack was very good at reassuring me, and I never worried, until the next time I would see him watching me with that peculiar, inscrutable stillness.

  He did not ask me to demonstrate my labyrinthine powers again, nor did he touch me with his Kingman power.

  That disappointed me more than I had thought possible, but then I knew Jack had so many things to trouble himself with, that I must surely be the least of them.

  He appeared to have forgotten my birthday present, but that did not concern me. The fact that he’d remembered my birthday had been gift enough.

  I met with him in teashops, once or twice at Faerie Hill Manor, and several times at Copt Hall where the enigmatic Malcolm served me tea and sandwiches. Occasionally Jack would drive me home to the Savoy, where he and Stacey nodded to each other warily. That amused me, mainly because it made me feel better, more confident, to think that there were some creatures who could still unsettle Jack.

  My mother often joined us. She was intimately involved with trying to decipher this puzzling shadow (I noticed now that neither Jack nor my mother ever called it a weakness in my presence), and what I discovered on my walks and explorations around London I shared as much with her as with Jack. I minded her presence, but not as much as previously. Every so often I would catch Jack’s eyes on me, and the ghost of his words would cross my mind: You do not stand in your mother’s shadow, Grace.

  Then I would remember how well we had danced together, and the confusion in his eyes, and suddenly the presence of my mother did not matter.

  Besides, however much I might have minded her presence, I couldn’t deny that we needed her. Within a week of the dance at the parish hall, Hitler opened his air offensive against Britain. On the Wednesday night following the dance, Cambridge was bombed, and thereafter on most days and nights German aircraft appeared in the sky somewhere over Britain, dropping their payloads of bombs onto factories, airfields, ports and, increasingly, houses and suburbs. The air of optimism—even gaiety—that had characterised the last few months now vanished. Day and night the RAF fighters went up against the bombers. People stood in fields, or outside their suburban houses, watching the dogfights going on overhead. I remember one day walking in the Greenwich area, and hearing in the far distance the drone of fighter planes, and looking up, seeing the faint lines of combat far to my south.

  The Battle of Britain, the papers had begun to call it.

  During the night of Saturday twenty-fourth of August, eastern London was hit with what appeared to be a few stray sticks of bombs. There was damage in Stepney, Walthamstow and Leyton, and also Tottenham and Islington in North London as the aircraft flew on.

  The next morning, Sunday, Harry called an emergency meeting at Faerie Hill Manor. Once we’d all arrived—me and my parents, Jack, Stella, even Silvius who I hadn’t seen for months—Harry didn’t waste time offering us a drink or asking us if we were comfortable.

  Instead he opened a door which opened off the drawing room (one I’d not seen previously) and nodded us through into the Faerie. “If you please,” he said.

  It was so unusual for me to be invited to the Faerie that for the moment I was absorbed only in the strangeness of it. How often had I been here? As a baby, and then for the Great Marriage, but that was about it. The door led us through onto the slopes leading up to The Naked, and I turned about slowly, taking it all in.

  Then I realised that the others (save Silvius, who was as much a stranger as I, by the way he was looking about) were staring at a hill in the middle distance.

  The Lord of the Faerie (“Harry” had been left behind on the other side of the door) was waving a hand at it. “Well?” he demanded.

  I looked, and instantly felt coldness sweep through me. There were several dark patches on the hillside, as if the trees there had been burned.

  “And here,” said the Lord of the Faerie, now pointing to a hillside slightly to the north of the other one, and a little closer. Here there was just one blackened patch, but it was considerably larger, and it was now obvious that the trees had been set alight. The leaves had all burned away, and the trunks and branches stood blackened and dead against the azure sky.

  Jack swore, which made me jump.

  “When did this happen?” he said. “This is nothing like the frost damage you showed me in March.”r />
  “It happened last night,” said the Lord of the Faerie. “When the bombs fell on London.”

  Everyone turned from the hillside to stare at the Faerie Lord. The implications were so obvious, but so appalling, that I think everyone was, like myself, too busy trying to deny the connection to actually speak.

  “As the bombs hit the East End,” said the Lord of the Faerie, “so this hillside—” he pointed to the one in the distance, in the east “—burst into flame. And as the bombs fell in the north of London,” now he pointed to the hillside closest to us, “so this detonated.”

  Still no one said anything.

  “Imagine,” the Lord of the Faerie said softly, looking at each of us in turn, “what will happen if the Luftwaffe mounts a blitzkrieg against London.”

  He and Jack exchanged a look then, and it was so bleak that I spoke, if only to break that terrible exchange between them.

  “It’s connected to the bombing?” I said. “But how? I didn’t think that damage to the mortal world would have reflected here.”

  “Catling,” said Jack. “This is Catling’s doing.”

  “Somehow Catling is sending the damage through,” said the Lord of the Faerie. “Reflecting it through.”

  “She’s getting impatient,” said my mother. She shivered, and wrapped her arms about herself.

  “Aye,” said the Lord of the Faerie, “but this is not all. Come with me.”

  We followed him up The Naked, and once on its summit, he pointed to the horizon. “What do you see?” he said.

  I frowned, for I couldn’t see anything. There was merely a clear horizon. What did the Lord of the Faerie want us to—

  “Oh, my gods,” whispered my mother. “The Idyll has gone.”