“No,” Noah whispered.
“Did you not realise, Jane,” Ariadne said, her eyes not moving from Noah, “that Noah is as much my daughter-heir as you?”
“What?” Jane said. She felt as if her heart had stopped.
No, Noah said, whispering the word with her power.
She moved as if to rise, but Ariadne reached out and snapped her hand closed about one of Noah’s wrists.
“If you’re here with me tonight,” said Ariadne, “if you have been a part of the Game since you were the whining little Mesopotaman princess, if it was you that Mag chose to hide within, and to be reborn within…then why was that? Why was that? Because you just happened to be handy? Because you just happened to be handy to the whims of gods?” Her head whipped around, and she stared at Jane. “And you, Jane. Why did you so instinctively hate her? Why work so assiduously to remove her? Why fear her so greatly?
“Why, why, why?” Ariadne said, her voice softening a fraction. “Why, why, why for all of this…if not for the fact that you, Cornelia-Caela-Noah, are as much my daughter as is Genvissa-Swanne-Jane?”
Eight
Tower Fields, London
NOAH SPEAKS
Why, why, why for all of this…if not for the fact that you, Cornelia-Caela-Noah, are as much my daughter as is Genvissa-Swanne-Jane?
Oh, I loathed Ariadne then. I reviled her. Not so much for the import of those words, what they meant or would come to mean for my life, but because they had wiped out in one foul sentence all the joy of Louis’ realisation at the Faerie Court. All I had wanted to do was to return to my pallet in Weyland’s kitchen and revisit every wonderful faerie moment of that court.
But no. This witch had to ruin it with her one, single devastating sentence.
“Ah,” said Ariadne very softly, “you know it, don’t you?”
“No,” I said. “I know nothing of it!”
She let go my wrist and reached behind her, pulling forth a basket that I had not noticed. She took out a cloth, spreading it before her, then produced a small bowl of fruit and a flagon and several glasses. She poured full the glasses, handing one to me and one to Jane, took a healthy sip from her own, settled herself comfortably, then began a tale of love and betrayal that I found horrifying, not merely because of its content, but also because I had so recently heard it from Weyland’s mouth.
“I became Asterion’s lover when I was, oh, perhaps thirteen or fourteen,” Ariadne began, taking another mouthful of her wine, “and just learning the skills of Mistress of the Labyrinth myself. He fascinated me, and I fancied myself in love with him.” She paused, looking at Jane over the rim of her glass as she took a sip. “You loved him in your last life. You should sympathise.”
“He bewitched me,” Jane said. “That was not true love.”
Ariadne shrugged, not put out by Jane’s answer. “Well, I found the feel and taste of that bull’s mouth running over my body quite stimulating—”
I shuddered. He was her half-brother!
“—so…animalistic. Better than a man.”
“Until you met Theseus,” I said.
Ariadne looked at me sharply. “I am currently talking of Asterion, my dear, not Theseus. Pay attention. So, as I was saying, I found his attentions reasonably stimulating. And I was young, and perhaps a little foolish, and so when I was eighteen I allowed myself to fall pregnant to him.”
“You sent the baby away,” I whispered. “A month after she was born. You were ashamed of her.”
“Yes. How did you know of that? Goddess intuition, perhaps? Or some memory from your—”
“No,” I said. I put my hands over my ears. I did not want to listen. I did not want to hear this!
Yet still her words penetrated inside my skull.
“Yes, well, I did send her away. After all, I’d fornicated with my own brother, and, frankly, the attraction of that bull mouth was starting to pall by then. I still needed the patronage of my father King Minos…he would not abide such an abomination in his place. So I sent the child to—”
No! No! No!
“—Mesopotama, a silly little place, but the king was prepared to take the girl in so she could be raised in his court and subsequently marry his son. He did not know of her fatherhood. All he knew was that she was the daughter of the Mistress of the Labyrinth of Knossos…and thus a powerful little minx to marry into his family.”
No!
“For the love of all the gods in heaven, Noah. You were Mesopotaman, but you wore the fashions of the Minoan court. Mesopotama escaped the wrath of my Catastrophe. You were plucked out of obscurity by the man destined to go on and establish the Troy Game. Did you never think back and put all these pieces together? Did you never ask Brutus why he chose you so precipitously? Did he never say to you, ‘I was godstruck, my dear, and simply had to have you?’ Did you never wonder why, when it was so apparent he hated you, he kept you close? Did you not even once stop to think why you, this tiny bellyaching spoiled little brat, were indeed so god-blessed? Why you became so tightly embroiled in the Troy Game with nary a thought about it in your witless, addled little mind? Did you never once wonder why it had picked you?”
Her eyes were slightly bulging at this point, and I think Ariadne was aware of it, for she stopped, and patted at her cheeks with fingers cooled in her wine.
“You were blood,” Ariadne continued, her voice and manner restrained. “You were chosen.”
She looked now at Jane, at whom I could not myself dare to look. “There was always more at work here than you and your ambition, Jane. There was the Game as well, always the Game, as there is now.”
I was trembling, unable to accept any of this.
No, there was only one thing I was unable, unwilling, to accept.
That I was descended of Ariadne and Asterion. That I was of their blood. Everything else was meaningless in my mind. That was all that mattered.
An hour ago I had thought my dreams almost complete.
Now I could see them lying shattered across the summit of The Naked.
What would Louis say when he knew? What vile words would he spit when he knew I was the daughter of…no! No, I could not even think of it!
Oh gods, I felt nauseated, and wondered if I would vomit my supper all over Ariadne’s pleasant little picnic.
“Am I not a good enough foremother for you?” said Ariadne, that damned eyebrow of hers raised again.
My hands were shaking. I clasped them tightly in my lap, and bent forward over them, unable to look at her any longer.
“And me?” said Jane. She sounded lost, and I spared a moment’s sympathy for her, though steeped in my own misery. She had thought herself Ariadne’s daughter-heir. The one and only. The favoured. And now she discovered that Ariadne had kept a spare, set aside all this time.
And what a spare. Cornelia-Caela-Noah. I could have laughed if I hadn’t been in so much pain.
“My dear,” said Ariadne, and I felt her move, saw her shadow as she leaned over and patted Jane on the arm, “I did not plan this, as much as you may think it. I was truly ashamed of my daughter with Asterion, and was glad I’d sent her away. At best I thought that if I never had another child, then perhaps I might recall her…if only I could overcome my revulsion.”
Revulsion. Oh, my line was repulsive.
“When Theseus arrived at Knossos,” Ariadne continued, “I fell instantly, stunningly in love with him. I threw myself at him, begged him to take me, conceived a new daughter the instant he lay with me. I was thrilled. Now I had a daughter-heir I could be proud of. Of course, Theseus proved a little disappointing, but I cleared that problem up nicely.”
Cleared that problem up nicely. Murdered tens of thousands, destroyed lives, lands, cities, cultures. Problem solved.
“When I took my new daughter to Llangarlia,” Ariadne continued, “when I planned to resurrect the Game in that land, I still had no thought for my first daughter, and whatever heirs she may have borne. I had my daughter. I had my a
mbition. Frankly, I don’t think I actually thought of my first daughter again during my lifetime.”
“What was her name?” I ground out. I could not bear to hear this child being dismissed so callously. Gods, Ariadne had borne a daughter—had she never once loved her? Cared for her?
Weyland had loved her, I was sure of it. I truly don’t think Weyland could have fabricated that sentiment he displayed when he talked of her.
I was looking at Ariadne now, and she gazed at me with an air of bewilderment. “I never gave her one. Why? She was just a daughter I meant to abandon…”
Abandon!
“I had no thought to name her.”
“Does…” I began, then stopped to gather the courage needed to ask this question. “Does Weyland know who I am? Does he know that I am his blood?”
A line appeared between Ariadne’s perfectly drawn, arched brows. “Weyland?” she said. “No, I don’t suppose so. Why should he?”
I didn’t know. Why had Weyland told me of his daughter if he hadn’t known?
“Anyway,” Ariadne said, returning to Jane and her question, “your foremother, my second daughter, was always intended to be my true heir. Her line was my truly powerful line—or so I intended. I didn’t ever think of my first daughter and what her line might be doing.”
“But you spared Mesopotama from the Catastrophe,” I said. When would this witch stop lying? “You must have thought of her.”
Ariadne looked a little uncomfortable. Clearly she did not like being caught amid her web of betrayal and deceit.
“I might have decided to spare her and her line, just in case,” she said finally. “But it was always my second daughter who was meant to bear my line and my ambition and my power. The Game thought differently.”
“So now you are going to teach Noah the ways of the labyrinth,” said Jane. “Maternity regained. How pleasant for you.”
Ariadne studied Jane for a long moment, and I was struck by how calm, how deeply mysterious, her black eyes looked.
“Yes,” she said. “I am. I was mistaken. It was my first daughter who truly carried the line of power, the ultimate power. Oh, you and your foremothers were powerful, Jane. But none of you would ever have been as powerful as Noah is destined to become.”
She looked at me, and, terrifyingly, I could see that the words she spoke now were complete truth. “Noah-Eaving will become the most powerful Mistress of the Labyrinth in history, more powerful than even myself. She will command all manner of magic. Her magic as Eaving. Her magic as the Mistress of the Labyrinth, counter-dancer to the most powerful Kingman who has ever lived. Brutus, reborn Stag God.”
She paused, and somehow I knew that in that silence a storm was gathering which would tear apart not only my life, but all lives associated and entangled with mine.
“And through the blood of her forefather,” Ariadne whispered, a whisper reaching throughout eternity and into all of my past lives and all of my future ones, “Noah will command the power of the darkcraft as the greatest Darkwitch that has ever lived.”
I tried to shut out her voice, but I could not. I could not.
“I had to bargain to win my command of the darkcraft, Noah,” Ariadne said, “but you have it inherent within you, if only you care to look. It is in your blood, as much as is the magic of the Mistress. That is why I will train you, and teach you all I know. You are the only one alive, the only one who has ever lived, who can put away Asterion once and for all. The one who can trap him in the dark heart of the labyrinth. He has grown too powerful for me, or for my line through my second daughter. You are the only hope left, Noah. Goddess, Mistress of the Labyrinth, and Darkwitch rising. You, and only you.”
Nine
Whitehall Palace, London
It was very early morning, and most of the palace was still asleep. In the king’s inner chambers, however, both the king and queen and their private inner circle were awake, if exhausted.
Charles and Louis sat alone in the king’s bedchamber at either side of an unlit hearth; Catharine, Marguerite and Kate were in the outer chamber. Facing each other across the fireplace, the two men reclined in chairs covered with fabulous, woven scarlet and lime-green silken brocades, each dressed only in linen breeches, their chests and arms and feet bare. Each held a beautiful cut-glass goblet of wine.
Charles showed little sign of interest in his wine, his right arm hanging relaxed over the arm of the chair, dangling the glass loosely from his fingertips so that it caught glints of light off the two candles burning from wall sconces. He was watching Louis, who looked, as if fascinated, into the empty grate.
“How do you, Louis,” he said. “How has this past night altered you?”
Louis grunted softly. “Do you need to ask?” He sighed, and set his wine down on the floor. “Gods, Charles, I do not know how to answer that. Impossibly glad and relieved that I am not forgotten and still have a part to play in what comes. But, oh, what a part. What a role. Tell me,” he looked at Charles directly for the first time since they had returned and sat down, “did Noah—Caela as she was then—feel this way when she first discovered that she did not merely carry Mag in her womb, but was all that Mag had been, and more besides?”
“I do not know,” said Charles. “I was unknowing when this happened to her. When I did remember, what little time we spent together was not wasted in talking of such matters.” His mouth twisted a little. “It was Asterion, in the guise of Silvius, who talked with her, and heard her fears and her uncertainties.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“I wish I could have spent longer with her last night,” Louis said.
“You have your own journey to undertake,” said Charles. “It will not involve her for the longest time. And Noah needs to learn the ways of the Mistress of the Labyrinth.”
“Do you think Jane will teach her? I saw Jane only briefly, but what I did see of her bespoke only bitterness.”
Charles thought a moment, introspective. “She’s changed. I think Jane no longer cares so much for power, nor for the Game. I think Noah will be taught the ways of the labyrinth. Have no fears for that.”
Louis shot Charles a cynical look, and Charles grinned. “Truly, Noah will learn,” he said. “Trust me, and do not concern yourself with worry over it. For the moment, think only of yourself, and your journey.”
Louis spread a hand out to his side, indicating his helplessness and confusion. “How, Charles? How? I still cannot believe that I was chosen. How could this land choose me?”
“Indeed, I have spent these past hours wondering the same thing,” said a new voice, and both Charles and Louis straightened in their chairs and looked to the door.
James stood there. He clicked the door closed behind him, and walked slowly to where the other two men sat.
“I have had the strangest night,” he said. “I have dreamed the strangest things. My world has been turned upside down.”
His face was largely expressionless, and neither Charles nor Louis could read him. Charles glanced at Louis, then looked back to James.
“Will you sit, brother,” Charles said softly, “and talk with us?”
James hesitated, then took a chair, as ornately furnished as those Charles and Louis sat in, and dragged it from its position near the bed, finally setting it down between the other two, and at some little distance from them—that distance telling Charles and Louis far more than James’ face did.
James spent some time thinking, then raised his face and looked at Charles. “I thought you were Brutus.”
“The deception was intentional,” said Charles, “although it was meant for Weyland rather than for you. The fact that you were also misled was of concern to me.”
“You did not tell me!” James said. “Not of the Brutus deception, and…God, not that you were the Lord of the Faerie.” Suddenly James seemed to realise who he was snapping at, and he made a move to apologise, but Charles waved him to silence.
“You should have known of
both matters,” Charles said, “but you, Loth-reborn, did not know. That told me volumes of you, James. You turned your back on me, on the land, and on the role you had to play. You turned to Christianity, and fought to forget, and you succeeded marvellously.”
“Why the deception?” James said, ignoring what Charles had said, and ignoring for the moment the greater revelation that Charles was the Lord of the Faerie.
“Until last night,” Louis said, “I would have told you that it was because I needed the time and space and anonymity to gather in the golden bands of Troy. But now…”
“The true reason, which Louis has only just realised,” said Charles, “was that Louis would need the time and the space to assume the mantle of the Stag God. The bands could wait until he had attained his full powers. Weyland needs to think that Brutus sits useless and frustrated in this,” Charles waved a hand about, “sumptuous, decaying palace. Thus the deception. Weyland will concentrate on me—I shall gnash my teeth in irritation at my immobility from time to time to keep him happy—while Louis…”
James turned dark eyes now burning with anger and resentment on Louis. “You. Brutus. To become the Stag God. I cannot believe it.”
“And there we find ourselves in some considerable agreement,” Louis muttered.
“I find your distaste difficult to accept,” said Charles to his brother. “You have run as hard as you can, in this life, from the responsibilities of your past lives. Why now sit there and moan, eh? What care you?”
“But Brutus…to run as Stag God over this wondrous land!”
“And again I ask,” Charles said, his tone now dangerously low. “What care you?”
James slid down in his chair, refusing to look at either Charles or Louis and staring straight ahead at the fireplace. He did not answer.
“I want you to care,” Charles said. “I want you to have some say in what happens to this land, to Louis, and to myself. That you do have some role is obvious, for the Sidlesaghes invited you to the Faerie Court.