Druid's Sword

by Sara Douglass

  Moreover, Noah had to build a devising that Ariadne and Silvius could work.

  “Damn you, Jack,” Noah muttered tiredly as, finally, she rose stiff and exhausted from that chair. “Why not allow me to work this? Why not?”

  Once out of the room in Faerie Hill Manor Noah went back to the Savoy, where she slept for eighteen hours.

  Then she rose, bathed, ate—all under the concerned gaze of Weyland—then kissed her husband, and said she needed to speak with Ariadne and Silvius.

  “I’ll be back tonight,” she said, and left him, still staring after her with worried eyes.

  Ariadne and Silvius were at home in their Kensington apartment, and it was Silvius who opened the door to Noah.

  “Ariadne is in the drawing room,” he said. “Come through.”

  From the look on Noah’s face, and the weariness in her eyes, there was a great deal more Silvius could have said, but he thought it prudent to leave it for the moment.

  Ariadne rose as Noah entered, kissing her on both cheeks, then offering her an easy chair in which to sit.

  “Well?” Ariadne said as Noah sank down.

  “I can build a devising,” said Noah, “and I have a place in which to shelter Noah—”

  “Where?” said Ariadne.

  “The Idyll,” said Noah. “You have heard of it, surely.”

  Ariadne and Silvius nodded. “But I thought that Catling could—” Ariadne began.

  “I can build a devising to thwart her,” Noah snapped. “My only dilemma is, can you, both of you, control it?”

  “We are not to blame for Jack’s decision,” Silvius said softly.

  Noah sighed. “I am worried for Grace, Silvius. You will hold the life of my daughter in your care, and I need to know if you can control this devising.” She tapped a hand over her heart. “I need to know here.”

  “We will do all we can,” Silvius said, and something in the steadiness of his gaze apparently answered some of Noah’s doubts, for she visibly relaxed.

  “I am building this devising with everything that I am,” said Noah. “Mistress of the Labyrinth, Darkwitch and Eaving, goddess of the land. Neither of you will have any trouble with the labyrinthine parts of the devising, and Ariadne will have no trouble with that part of it constructed from the Darkcraft, but as for that part of the devising constructed from my powers as Eaving, then—”

  “Noah,” said Ariadne, “you forget that once I was MagaLlan of this land. I may not have been particularly devoted to the land, but I learned well and true. If you bring into this devising the power of the land, then I can understand it, and wield it.”

  “And you forget that for countless centuries I lay in the heart of the labyrinth with the dying Og,” said Silvius. “The power of the land is not as foreign to me as I think you assume.”

  Noah stared at them, then she smiled, and relaxed even further. “I had forgotten, both of those things. Ah, what is the matter with me? Maybe we have a chance, after all.”

  On the afternoon of Friday the eleventh of April Jack and Grace were walking through Epping Forest when the White Queen appeared to them.

  She startled them so greatly, suddenly appearing on the path as they turned a corner, that both of them jumped and gasped.

  “Next week,” the White Queen said, not giving either a chance to speak. “Wednesday the sixteenth.”

  “What?” Jack snapped. “Should we expect the second coming then?”

  To his and Grace’s surprise, the White Queen’s mouth actually twitched in a smile.

  “You can expect a large raid that night,” she said. “A very powerful one.”

  Grace glanced at Jack, then looked back to the White Queen. “You want us to open your Game that night.”

  “Are you ready?” the White Queen said.

  “To open the Game, yes,” said Jack.

  Again the White Queen twisted her mouth in a smile, but this time it was humourless. “And when shall you be ready to finish it?”

  “Soon,” said Jack.

  “You have a month,” said the White Queen. “The best time to close it, and to trap the Troy Game, will be the night of the tenth of May.”

  “Another air raid,” said Jack. “No doubt destructive.”

  “You need all the power possible,” said the White Queen. “Are you not capable of handling it?”

  “I am sickened by it,” said Jack, “knowing what horror it wreaks.”

  “You cannot warn people,” said the White Queen. “To warn them will be to warn Catling.” Then she took a step forward. “Will you be ready, father-Jack, to close out my Game in a month’s time? Can you do it?”

  Without giving him time to answer, the White Queen swung her cold black eyes to Grace. “Are you ready, Grace? Ready to do what is needed, even though you will be trapped in the—”

  “She will be saved,” said Jack.

  “Really?” said the White Queen, and then she vanished.

  Really? The word rustled about them, twisting away on the wind, and Jack took Grace’s hand, and smiled at her.

  “Really,” he said, his voice solid with certainty.

  She did not return his smile.

  FIVE

  The River Thames

  Wednesday, 16th April 1941

  The Luftwaffe swept in just after eight in the evening with over six hundred bombers dropping parachute flares over the city. There was high but light cloud and a low mist clinging to the river, and the flares drifted down brightly only to mute and blue as they finally fizzled out in the mist.

  Ten minutes after the flares came the high explosives. The Luftwaffe had orders to concentrate on the docklands to the east of the Tower of London, and the wharves about Southwark and Rotherhithe; while the docks had been targeted on many occasions previously, the Luftwaffe kept coming back again and again, determined to completely destroy the vital ports of London. Within an hour the docklands were ablaze, and great sheets of flame roared into the night sky in Rotherhithe as the Metropolitan Gas Works exploded.

  Most people who were not part of the emergency response teams spent that night deep within shelters, praying that something would be left for them when they emerged in the morning. But there were nine people who preferred to spend the night within the thick of the raid, surrounded by clinging mist and ash and falling sooty debris.

  Ariadne, Silvius, Stella, the Lord of the Faerie, Noah, Weyland, Malcolm, Jack and Grace stood on the southern river bank just opposite St Magnus the Martyr which rose on the northern side. All were dressed, not as modern men and women, but in the robes of when they had first lived: Jack and Grace wore the attire of a Kingman and Mistress of the Labyrinth—a white linen hipwrap for Jack and a skirt of similar material for Grace. Jack’s golden kingship bands glinted and Grace’s diamond bracelets danced in the flickering lights of the fires.

  Almost four thousand years ago, tens of thousands had witnessed the Dance of the Torches which had opened the Troy Game. This night there would be only seven witnesses to watch the Kingman and Mistress of the Labyrinth open a new Game.

  There were no lines of lithe, beautiful dancers. There were no torches or ribbons or singing. There was no ambition or fear or hatred.

  There was merely death falling from the sky, horror creeping along the river and bankside streets, and the small group of participants who had, between them, made such a nightmare of the original intent to build a Game to benefit Troia Nova.

  They waited until almost one in the morning, when the fires had built—and merged—to such an extent that the continually exploding bombs made no visible flash impression within the conflagrations. The mist over the Thames had almost dissipated, but enough remained that the river was shrouded in an eerie yellow and orange haze.

  Jack looked at Grace, shared a silent thought with her, then turned to Noah.

  “Eaving,” he said, using her goddess name, “I need your permission to—”

  “Do whatever you need,” said Noah. “Use whatever you wis
h. You do not have to ask my permission.”

  Jack nodded, then turned to the river. He took a step forward so that he was only some three or four feet from the water’s edge, and very slowly raised one arm so that it extended out before him at shoulder height, his fingers reaching out over the water.

  About his shoulders, his marks began to writhe.

  For long minutes nothing happened, then, very slowly, lights rose up from the riverbed.

  Tens of thousands of lights.

  Water sprites, rising from the depths of the river, the lights of the firestorms reflecting in their coppercoloured eyes.

  His arm still extended, Jack turned his head very slowly towards Grace.

  She took a deep breath, then stepped forward to his side. She lifted a hand, running it slowly over his shoulders, allowing her fingers to entwine with his marks, and ran her hand lightly down his outstretched arm until it lay over his hand.

  The lights just under the water’s surface moved in what at first appeared to be an aimless and chaotic manner, but which within minutes resolved into a complex dance. When they’d finished, when the sprites had stilled, their eyes cast upwards to reflect the light, they had formed a gigantic unicursal labyrinth just under the rippling surface of the water. The labyrinth was vast, extending from bank to bank and from the Tower of London down the river to Blackfriars Bridge.

  Combined with the smoke and haze and mist, and the leaping light of the fires, the underwater labyrinth of light shone with an ethereal luminosity that was, even within the destruction of the air raid, one of the most beautiful things any of the watchers had ever seen.

  “Grace?” Jack said very softly, and she smiled at him, and nodded.

  She lifted her hand from his—Jack lowering his arm as she did so—and stepped a pace away from him.

  “Behold,” she said, softly but with such clarity that all heard her, “the Kingman stands before the labyrinth, here, on this night wrapped all about with mystery and magic.”

  As she spoke, both Jack and Grace twisted down from the sky the powerful harmonies of the air raid—the pain and the fear and the destruction, and the jubilation of the Luftwaffe pilots, the roaring power of the fires—until it suffused their very beings, and throbbed through their bodies with every beat of their hearts.

  We don’t allow it to corrupt us, Jack. We only use it.

  He gave a nod, and she continued.

  “Here, this night, in this ancient and beloved land, he will raise up a great mystery which will, in turn, lift from the land that which has corrupted it so that the land, and all who depend on her and live on her, may live better lives because of it.” Grace’s voice strengthened. “Here, tonight, we shall witness the rebirth of hope, and light, and watch as our Kingman consecrates the talisman which shall raise us from the tarnish that besets us!”

  Grace raised up her arms as she spoke that last, and the light from the water sprites’ eyes pulsed forth once, twice, then a third time.

  She lowered her arms, and her head besides, and seemed almost to fade into the mist. Her task now was simply to keep watch, and to maintain, with Jack, the power they were spiralling down from the air raid.

  Now Jack stepped forward. As he had, so many thousands of years ago when he had been Brutus, he danced into the labyrinth, but this time he danced atop the water, his feet resting on the hands of the water sprites held just under the surface, rather than over the stone paths of the labyrinth he had constructed for the Troy Game.

  He lifted his left hand high. When he had been Brutus, Jack had carried a ball of pitch in that hand. Tonight he held a similar ball of darkness, except that it appeared to be comprised of writhing darkness rather than pitch. His right hand Jack held out before him, his arm slightly curved, as if he held a woman within its bounds.

  His body moved slowly and sensuously, displaying its beauty as he danced deeper and deeper into the labyrinth, his feet making a tiny splash each time he set one down. With each dance step one of his legs lifted, its foot turned slightly outwards, held in place, then lowered, moving the dance forward with measured deliberation.

  With each dance step, his left hand, high above his head, moved a little, twisting the ball of darkness this way and that, his head moving slowly, deliberately, counter wise below his hand.

  As that ball of darkness twisted first this way and then that in Jack’s hand, so tendrils of darkness slithered out of the city, all from the northern bank, and vanished into the ball. The watchers on the bank (save for Grace, who kept her head down, concentrating) winced every time a new tendril of darkness slunk out of the night, seeping into the ball.

  Everyone knew what they were.

  For over an hour Jack danced his way deeper and deeper into the labyrinth. He was too far away now for any on the bank to see the expression on his face, or to witness the trembling of his muscles, but Grace, standing so close, was clearly struggling to maintain control, not merely of the Dance of the Torches, but also of the malevolent power she and Jack were twisting out of the destruction around London. At one point Noah made a small sound, and moved as if she wanted to go to her daughter, but Ariadne whipped out a hand, and held her back.

  They must do this alone, Noah.

  So Noah restrained herself—barely—but her eyes did not leave the form of her daughter.

  Eventually, Jack reached the heart of the labyrinth.

  He had danced his way through the entire labyrinth on top of the river, but as he reached its centre, Jack found himself once more standing within the crypt of St Thomas’.

  For a long moment he stood, his left hand still held high, his right leg frozen in an arc.

  Then he very slowly set himself in motion again, and danced the final few steps to the altar.

  Here he stopped, standing upright, lowering his left hand until he held the ball of darkness in both hands, slightly extended out before him at waist level.

  When he had been Brutus and dancing the opening of the Troy Game, a variety of evils and darknesses had followed him through the labyrinth into its dark heart. But the Shadow Game was constructed not to entrap evil in general, but only one evil; thus the darkness that had accumulated in the ball Jack carried represented only that evil which had created the Troy Game.

  Jack stood before the altar of the crypt of St Thomas’, then, achingly slowly, his muscles trembling as if this cost him the greatest effort, Jack pulled out, one by one, objects from the ball.

  The first object Jack pulled from the ball was an arrow, its tip stained with old, dark blood.

  The arrow with which Brutus had murdered his father, Silvius.

  Jack laid it on the altar.

  The next object he pulled from the ball was a dark eye patch, encrusted with old blood like the arrow.

  Silvius’ eye patch, which he had worn through all those centuries when he had hated his son.

  Then Jack drew forth from the ball a stunningly beautiful ruby and gold bracelet.

  Cornelia’s bracelet, representing everything she had once been.

  One by one, Jack drew forth from the ball—and added to the altar—the sword with which he, as Brutus, had murdered Coel; Ariadne’s flounced red silk skirt; Asterion’s twisted-horn dagger, its haft cracked with age, and its blade nicked and dulled; the necklaces and rings that Genvissa had worn; and a cracked and terribly misshapen skull—what remained of Loth’s malformed head.

  Only then, as he drew forth the final object, did the ball vanish.

  The instant it did, Jack heard a wail coming from the back of the altar, and he whipped around.

  Grace lay there, her beautiful skin bloodied and bruised, her white linen skirt torn and dirty, her hair awry, her face twisted in such desolation that Jack thought his heart would fail.

  She extended one hand towards him. “Don’t leave me here, Jack! Please, Jack, don’t leave me here!”

  Jack knew what he was seeing. As he had when he founded the Troy Game, he confronted his own fears and his own darknes
ses within the dark heart of the labyrinth.

  And, as previously, Jack knew what he had to do in order to found the strongest Game possible.

  He stared at Grace, hoping that she would read his love for her etched into his face.

  Then he turned, and left her.

  SIX

  Epping Forest

  Thursday, 17th April 1941

  Just as Jack turned his back on Grace, a bomber flying high overhead disgorged its last stick of high explosive for the night.

  One of the bombs fell erratically, wildly, on a far different track than its fellows.

  It struck the roof of the north transept of St Paul’s, bursting through, then hit the floor of the cathedral where it exploded, the explosion creating a massive crater into the crypt.

  The White Queen’s Game had taken its first bite.

  Catling seethed into life. She had been unsettled the entire night…something was happening…but she couldn’t define what it was, and wondered if perhaps she was mistaken. Maybe it was just the massive air raid which made her shudder so, or maybe it was the nightmarish conflagrations within the eastern and southern parts of London that made her so edgy.

  Maybe.

  And maybe Jack and Noah were opening their move against her.

  She crouched amid the dust and debris that filtered through the crypt, and snarled. None of the emergency workers or the members of the cathedral Watch could see her, but they could all feel the malevolence in the air.

  They put it down to the bomb and the destruction it had wrought, not realising for a moment what else inhabited the crypt with them.

  Jack…Catling whispered.

  Jack emerged back into Epping Forest. It disorientated him, because he had expected to appear back on the Southwark bank where he had left Grace and the others.