Druid's Sword

by Sara Douglass

  No one had been able to find shoes to fit the girl, and so her legs emerged from under the hem of the coat like white, knobbly sticks, her bare feet overly large for her skeletal limbs.

  Every so often the ambulance rocked as it rounded a corner, and Grace had to brace herself against the partition that divided the driver’s cab from the back of the vehicle.

  “Who the hell are you, Grace Orr?” said Sister Marr.

  The girl smiled, and Marr was struck by how lovely her face was, despite being crowned by a head of hair that had been terribly decimated by the surgery on her skull.

  “I am the White Queen’s sister,” she said.

  The flowers that Noah had scattered about the labyrinth began to move, sliding towards the entrance. Jack and Noah continued their dance, but now they were approaching each other, gravitating, like the flowers, towards the entrance to the labyrinth.

  As they came to within ten paces of the entrance, the flowers rose one by one, weaving themselves into the form of a gate.

  And as the Flower Gate rose, so the darkness at the heart of the labyrinth slid along the labyrinth’s paths, towards the gate.

  The ambulance drew to a halt outside the west door of St Paul’s, and Sister Marr asked Grace if she needed help.

  Grace smiled again. “You have already been a wonderful aid, Sister Marr. Thank you.”

  And then she was gone into the evening gloom, hobbling slowly on bare feet up the steps towards the doors, the coat clutched about her.

  Noah looked at Jack with desperate eyes. The Dance of the Flowers was almost done, the Flower Gate within a few inches of being completed, and something loathsome approached from the dark heart of the labyrinth. This was to be expected…to a point. The entire purpose of a Game was to protect a city from evil by trapping such evil within the heart of the labyrinth. When the Game was opened, it began to attract the evil that naturally gravitates to the life and vibrancy of any city into its heart. Then, when the Game was closed with the Flower Gate, the evil would be trapped within the labyrinth for eternity—or so long as the Game lasted. During the final Dance of the Flowers, when the Kingman and Mistress of the Labyrinth raised the Flower Gate, Noah knew that it was to be expected that the evil within the dark heart should panic and try to escape.

  But it shouldn’t be able to escape very far from the dark heart through the corridors of the labyrinth, and it most certainly shouldn’t, as this creeping darkness was, be inching closer and closer to the entrance.

  Already tense, Noah began to feel panic chip away at the edges of what little composure she retained.

  Jack? Jack? What is happening?

  The Sunday Evensong congregation watched, incredulous, as the thin, battered girl with ragged hair and dressed only in a hound’s-tooth coat shuffled on precarious legs up the centre aisle of the nave.

  She was looking intently at the space under the dome, a frown on her face, and the further she advanced up the aisle, the faster became her pace.

  And the more precarious. Several people half rose from their seats as the girl occasionally stumbled and almost fell. But as she regained her balance, they sank down again.

  In his pulpit, the reverend delivering the sermon stopped speaking and stared over the rims of his spectacles, mouth agape.

  No one thought to stop her.

  “Jack?” Noah whispered. “Jack?”

  He didn’t respond. He was staring through the weave of the gate towards the approaching miasma of evil, and his face was grey and pale, as if he was holding onto life by a mere breath.

  That evil is coming for him! thought Noah. Jack was vulnerable without the final two bands, and the rising blackness knew it.

  The Flower Gate was almost complete, the final five or six flowers now slowly raising themselves from the floor towards the top bar of the gate.

  As they did so the creeping evil reached the gate where it seethed momentarily as if confounded, then formed itself into a gigantic hand that reached slowly, slowly, for the handle of the gate.

  “Jack!” Noah screamed.

  The girl reached the marble floor under the dome. Her face was now screwed up in such tight concentration that her eyes had virtually vanished. One hand was still clutched desperately in her coat, holding it against her, the other reached forward, as if for salvation.

  She took another step forward, then another, tottering badly, then she reached out her hand and brought it down as if on someone’s shoulder, saying in a tone as clear as a temple bell on a snowy night, “Jack. Don’t. Stop this now.”

  And then all hell broke loose under the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral.

  NINE

  London

  Sunday, 29th December, 1940

  At first Noah wasn’t sure what had happened. Jack suddenly reeled back, as if someone had grabbed him from behind.

  Jack. Don’t. Stop this now.

  Simultaneously the enchantment of the Dance of the Flowers was broken as Noah and Jack lost all concentration, and the gate collapsed into a tangled heap of flowers scattered over the floor of the cathedral.

  As the Flower Gate crumbled, the huge black hand that had hovered behind it closed momentarily into a fist, then leaped forward, past the heap of flowers, towards where Jack was only just managing to regain his balance.

  Then Noah saw the pathetic figure that stood behind Jack, and she shouted out with all her strength, “Grace! Grace! Get back!”

  Jack reeled around, only realising at Noah’s shout that someone stood beside him. His eyes widened—Grace!

  “Hello, Jack,” she said softly.

  He started to lift a hand, reaching for her, but before he could touch her, before he could say anything, before he could even smile at her, the black hand that had emerged from the heart of the labyrinth lunged forward and grabbed Grace, fully enclosing her in its massive maw.

  There was a single moment when both Noah and Jack leaped for the hand, still hovering in the space between them, and then it was gone, Grace with it, and Jack and Noah found themselves standing on the marble floor under the great dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, the entire Evensong congregation staring at them.

  Silence. Then, in the heartbeats after the barely dressed man and woman had appeared in the midst of Evensong service, bombs started to rain down about the cathedral, and the congregation rose and fled for the exits to the shelters.

  Catling and Grace faced each other in the dark heart of the labyrinth.

  Catling was furious, so angry her eyes and clenched hands blurred in and out of focus with each breath she took.

  She was shouting incoherently at Grace, who stood before her, wan and exhausted, but preternaturally calm.

  None of the words that streamed from Catling’s mouth were intelligible, but that hardly mattered. Grace did not need intelligible words to understand what Catling was trying to vocalise.

  “Stop it,” said Grace, “you don’t frighten me any more.”

  Catling stopped mid-invective, her mouth remaining open for a heartbeat before she slowly closed it.

  “You have only one weapon against me,” said Grace. “Only one effective weapon, and that is death. But to kill me you need to murder yourself as well, and, frankly, I don’t think you’re up to that right now.”

  Catling’s eyes glowed an intense silver, then settled back to a seething blackness.

  “Anything else you try to use against me,” said Grace, her voice now very quiet, “I will simply use to further my own power.” She slid her wrists out of the long sleeves of the coat, holding them up before Catling.

  The diamond bands glowed and sparkled in the dark evil of their surroundings.

  “Behold the agony you visited on me,” said Grace, “now celebrated and used. The hell you sent me to, understood and managed, and then utilised. Believe it, Catling—whatever you throw at me, short of your own death, I will likewise make use of to further my own power. Do you really want that? Do you really want me to grow much stronger?”

>   “What the fuck do you think you’re going to gain from this?” said Catling. “I will rain destruction on both land and Faerie! Do you want that?”

  “Better that than you holding complete dominion over land and Faerie,” said Grace quietly.

  “Really?” said Catling. “Come with me, then, and see what I can do.”

  In the panic to get to shelters, several people had left their coats behind in a vestibule, and Jack grabbed them for himself and Noah as they fled St Paul’s via a small door on the south face of the cathedral.

  “Sweet Jesus,” Jack muttered as he stared heavenward, “has Hitler sent the entire Luftwaffe?”

  Noah hunched into her coat, standing as close to Jack as she could. “Not Hitler,” she muttered.

  London was alight. The German bombers were dropping massive quantities of incendiaries intermixed with high explosive bombs, and wherever Jack and Noah looked, they could see fires glowing in rooftops and within the windows of buildings.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Jack said, pulling Noah forward.

  “Jack—”

  “I know. We’ll talk once we get out…Jesus Christ!” A huge blast from a warehouse not fifty yards away almost knocked them off their feet.

  Jack slid an arm about Noah’s waist, pulling her towards the street. Ordinarily he would have used his power to get them out of there, but both he and Noah were exhausted from their exertions in the cathedral—he far more than her—and Jack thought that even trying to use their powers would probably result in more injury to themselves than if they attempted to flee through the burning buildings.

  “Grace…” Noah said, trying ineffectually to pull herself from Jack’s grasp.

  “Grace will have to look after herself for a time,” said Jack. “For now, our hands will be full enough trying to save our own lives.”

  “Do you recognise this place, Grace?”

  She shook her head, looking about. Catling had brought her to the top of a hill that appeared to be in the northern suburbs of London. The summit was gently rounded, and its perimeter was marked by a score or more of standing stones.

  “This is Pen Hill,” said Catling, “as once it was. Now, of course, it is smothered in dull terrace-style housing and, so I believe, a murky little reservoir. But this is how it once was. One of the sacred Veiled Hills. Your mother had a fine time here, once.”

  Grace did not comment.

  “Do you recognise the standing stones, Grace?”

  Again Grace did not comment.

  “They’re Sidlesaghes. Been good friends to your mother over the years. Been important to her.”

  “Don’t do it, Catling,” said Grace. She had now turned and was looking steadily at Catling, her face as calm as it had been in the dark heart of the cathedral.

  “I want to impress upon you,” said Catling, “just how much I am going to make you pay for what you did in the cathedral.” Again, as it had in the dark heart of the labyrinth, Catling’s face suffused with anger, then blurred slightly. “I want your mother, and your lover, and all the Faerie besides, to know just how disappointed I am, and I want them to know it is your fault. You will get the blame for this, Grace! Yours will be the guilt!”

  Again, Grace just looked steadily at Catling, which only increased Catling’s rage.

  “I am going to murder them, Grace. What do you say to that, eh?”

  “That it is something you will spend eternity regretting,” Grace said, “as it is something which will sadden me for the rest of my days, but I refuse to bear the blame or guilt for your deeds, Catling. Do what you will, but bear the blame entirely.”

  Her astounding aura of calm had, if anything, deepened.

  London had suffered some disastrous bombing raids since the start of the offensive, but this night would go down in history for the ferocity and destruction of the raid. Within days the press had labelled it the Second Great Fire of London.

  But for this night, anyone caught up in it had only one thought.

  Survival.

  The high explosive bombs caused massive damage wherever they fell, but the true horror were the small and seemingly inoffensive incendiary bombs. About the length and diameter of a forearm, they fell in their thousands on rooftops and down chimneys and into gutters where they fizzed out a shower of molten sparks for several minutes. At almost one thousand degrees centigrade, those sparks set fire to anything flammable within several yards’ diameter.

  The incendiary bombs were easy enough to put out. All one had to do was dump a bucket of sand on them and they would go out.

  But there were not enough buckets of sand, nor enough people to dump them, for the hundreds of thousands of incendiary bombs that fell that night.

  It was a calculated tactic on the Luftwaffe’s part. It was the Christmas weekend, a Sunday, and the City would have very few people about to fight the incendiary bombs. If ever the Germans wanted to burn central London to the ground, this would be the best night of the year on which to attempt it.

  What they hadn’t counted on was additional support from a maddened Troy Game. Catling had been within a breath of completion—Jack had actually been going to complete her, not destroy her!—and had had her goal snatched from her at the last possible moment. She took what the German High Command sent, and made it immeasurably worse.

  Catling wanted London, as well as Jack and Noah and all associated with them, to pay.

  London burned.

  When the firemen tried to pump water from fire hydrants, they discovered that the high explosive bombs had shattered most of the City’s water mains, and there was little to no water available.

  When they tried to pump water from the Thames, they discovered a supernaturally low tide, and there was little to no water available from the river, either.

  Within an hour of the bombers first appearing overhead, central London was ablaze.

  Catling seethed. She twisted around and around in the centre of the ancient circle atop Pen Hill, her form moving so fast it blurred. Her arms were flung out, her head twisted back, and from her throat emerged a stream of noise so vile it appeared almost as if it would rend apart the very sky.

  Grace stood to one side of her, looking not at Catling, but at the surrounding stones.

  They were changing.

  Cracks appeared in their base, then zigzagged up the face of the stones.

  Grace was in touch enough now with her own power, both as a Darkwitch and a Mistress of the Labyrinth, to know what Catling was doing.

  She was unwinding the Sidlesaghes’ existence.

  “Don’t,” whispered Grace.

  Catling only increased her efforts, and the stones began to crumble. As they did so, a great wailing filled the air, and Grace knew it was the death screams of the Sidlesaghes.

  “Don’t,” Grace whispered again.

  Your fault, came Catling’s whispered reply. This is your fault. If you hadn’t stopped Jack and Noah, then the Sidlesaghes would not now be being torn apart.

  “This fault is not mine to bear, Catling,” said Grace.

  The stones were now metamorphosing into the shapes of the Sidlesaghes, and as they did so, Grace, despite her calm, cried out in horror.

  All of them, all of the beloved ancient sad songsters, were being torn apart before her eyes. A Sidlesaghe directly in front of her screamed as his right arm was wrenched away from his body, then fell to the grass as his right leg was torn away.

  “Grace!” came a tortured voice, and she whipped about.

  There, crawling towards her across the grass, came the wretched body of the Sidlesaghe she recognised as Long Tom.

  “Grace,” Long Tom said, his voice cracking as badly as his body, “take my hand.”

  And he held out to her a hand from which Catling’s power was slowly flaying the skin.

  Jack and Noah had managed to make it to Blackfriars Bridge. There were some forty or fifty people already on the bridge, all standing next to the railing as if they needed
the security of knowing they could plunge into the waters of the Thames any time they needed, and all of them were staring transfixed back towards the massive flames which had now engulfed the City.

  Jack and Noah joined them, standing together, Jack’s arm still about Noah as they leaned against the balustrade of the bridge, staring.

  As they watched, the smoke cleared a little, and there came a break in the flames and they saw the dome of St Paul’s rising amid hell.

  The cathedral was untouched.

  Noah abruptly twisted in Jack’s arm, leaned over the side of the bridge, and vomited.

  When she finally straightened, she glanced at Jack’s face, and was stunned to see there a faint smile.

  “Jack?”

  He glanced at her then nodded at the sky. “Do you see it, Noah? Do you feel it?”

  Noah frowned at him, then looked up at the sky over St Paul’s Cathedral.

  She gasped. The shadow was back, and it was stronger than Noah had felt it previously.

  “Grace is alive,” said Jack. “Damn it, she is still alive!”

  Tears slid down Grace’s cheek at Long Tom’s horrific dying, but she did not hesitate to step forward and reach for his hand.

  Don’t touch him, Catling seethed.

  Too late, said Grace, and grasped Long Tom’s bloody hand in hers.

  St Paul’s was surrounded by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century warehouses and offices, tightly packed together and separated only by twisting narrow streets.

  All of them were ablaze.

  As Grace took Long Tom’s hand, a shower of sparks rose from the conflagration and blew northeast, landing on the ancient Guildhall.

  It exploded into flames.

  Inside, the ancient beings Gog and Magog stirred, and shook their spear and sword.