Druid's Sword

“Aye,” said the Lord of the Faerie. “It vanished, so one of the Faerie folk told me, the instant the first hillside burst into flame.”

  I felt sick. First the damage to the trees, and now my father’s Idyll had been destroyed? “Is this my fault? I mean…I came here for the Great Marriage, and now this damage. Is Catling using me as a conduit to hurt the Faerie?”

  Was that why the Lord of the Faerie had invited me here now? To judge me?

  “No!” my mother cried, but before she could speak further Jack strode over to me, taking one of my wrists in his hand. He was wearing his military uniform, and while I could not see it, I felt those marks sliding down his arm, and an instant later saw them cascade over the top of his hand, across his fingers, and flow into my scars.

  The instant they touched me I gasped and tried to pull away, but Jack had me in his grasp too tightly to allow me to escape.

  He stared at me, then, after a moment, his eyes crinkled in a slight smile. “No,” he said, “Catling is not using you as a conduit. Do not blame yourself, Grace.”

  He let my wrist go, turning his attention to the rest of the group. “Catling is stronger than ever. This,” he waved his hand in a sweeping arc, taking in all the damage to sky and trees, “she can do by herself.”

  Then he turned to my father. “Weyland? Has the Idyll been destroyed?”

  My father shook his head. “No. It has just retreated into itself. Fled. I imagine the only way into it now is via the steps of the spire of St Dunstan’s-in-the-East.”

  “And if the Idyll is afraid,” said the Lord of the Faerie, “then so am I. The only problem, my friends, is that, unlike the Idyll, the Faerie has nowhere to retreat.” The Lord of the Faerie paused. “I can’t believe it. The Great Marriage was supposed to strengthen land and Faerie against this kind of attack.” Another pause. “Catling is strong. Too strong.”

  Again there was a silence as we all contemplated this, finally broken by Silvius.

  “What did you mean,” he asked the Lord of the Faerie, “by saying Catling was ‘reflecting’ the damage through?”

  “Why expend effort yourself,” said Stella, silent until now, “when you can merely reflect—or redirect—damage from one realm into another?”

  “The ‘how’ of this is largely irrelevant,” said the Lord of the Faerie, looking at Jack and my mother. “What I need to know is how and when you can stop it. If Hitler sets London afire then the Faerie will burn as well!”

  Jack and my mother exchanged a glance, then Jack sent a brief look my way before he answered the Lord of the Faerie. “Coel, we are still trying to discover what this weakness is, and how best we might use it to—”

  “Damn it!” shouted the Lord of the Faerie. “That is not what I want to hear! When can you stop her?”

  Again Jack glanced at me before responding to the Lord of the Faerie. “The short answer to that, my friend, is that we can’t. Not yet. I know you’re desperate—so am I! But I have no idea how Noah and I can exploit this weakness, and to attempt to do so before we understand it is to invite catastrophe!”

  To that the Lord of the Faerie made no response, save a baring of his teeth in a snarl of sheer frustration.

  EIGHT

  St Magnus the Martyr, London

  Tuesday, 3rd September 1940

  Weyland had been unsettled and unhappy ever since Jack had reappeared in London, but his sense of foreboding had grown stronger since he’d realised the imps were responsible for the Ripper murders. That the imps murdered occasionally, Weyland had no doubt, but this series of murders…

  There was something about them.

  Something sinister.

  Something purposeful.

  Something, Weyland knew, that should scare him halfway to death.

  All the bodies of the women had been laid out under the porch of St Magnus the Martyr. Weyland had no idea about the significance of that location, although he worried at it, and worried Silvius about it. The police had a constant but surreptitious presence in the vicinity of the ancient church, watching both the porch and the streets and alleyways leading to it, but their presence had not stopped the murders, or stopped the bodies mysteriously appearing under the porch within the blink of an eye.

  The imps were using power to lay the bodies out, but Weyland could match power with power, and he could see what police surveillance could not.

  Unable to find the imps at their house, or anywhere else within London, Weyland had spent weeks, off and on, watching St Magnus the Martyr. Noah had asked him what he was about at night, but he had merely shrugged, and passed his absences off as nocturnal wanderings, or extra ARP warden duty atop the Savoy. Noah didn’t believe him, and her disbelief, as well as his absences, contributed to the growing rift between them, but Weyland didn’t want to confide in her.

  She was too close to Jack, especially now that she, too, could sense this cursed “shadow”.

  Weyland could bear, just, to watch Noah drift away, but he hated beyond anything Grace’s growing closeness to Jack. To lose both wife and daughter to him. Ah! That was too much!

  He was wandering within a block of St Magnus late on the night of the third of September, cloaking his activities in power, when he felt the unmistakeable presence of the imps coming closer. He ducked down an alley, keeping himself cloaked in both power and shadows as much as possible, and crept closer to the church.

  Weyland passed a policeman, standing in the darkened archway of a door, but the policeman, halfdozing, realised neither the presence of Weyland or the closing presence of the imps.

  He arrived at the church, clinging to the darkened recesses of an alley’s entrance, just as the imps came down the main street. What he saw appalled him.

  The imps were dragging between them a shrieking young woman.

  Weyland stared, then looked back over his shoulder at the policeman. Surely, even with his mortal-cursed blindness, he could somehow sense this horror?

  But the policeman merely yawned, and leaned more comfortably against the door jamb.

  Weyland looked back to the imps. They had dragged their victim to the porch, where Bill kicked her legs out from under her, seizing her disordered hair as she fell to the pavement.

  Before Weyland could move, before he could run out and somehow try to save the woman from her fate, both imps looked skyward.

  “Do you like it?” hissed Jim. “Do you like your meal?”

  “Does her terror taste good to you?” said Bill. “Is it enough for you?”

  To Weyland’s horror he realised the imps were addressing the shadow. He froze where he was, unable to think, unable to act, wondering what in the gods’ names it was, hovering up there, that demanded such a sacrifice?

  He clenched his fists, knowing he should act, knowing he should do something, but just as his muscles tightened to dash out, Bill leaned down to the woman and, evading her hands that tried to stop him, buried the blade of a knife deep into her belly.

  Weyland froze in horror.

  Bill dragged the knife back and forth in the woman’s abdomen, needing to use both his hands on the hilt to do it. Her heels drummed up and down on the pavement, shrieks bellowed forth from her throat, and her hands grabbed futilely at the knife—but none of it made any difference.

  Bill was being deliberately slow, Weyland realised through a haze of sheer revulsion. He was drawing her death out, drawing her terror out.

  So that the shadow could feed.

  Jim was jumping about frenziedly, his face turned upwards, his hands dancing about at his sides. “Do you like it?” he shrieked. “Can you feel it?”

  The woman was still struggling, but her screams had died to moans, and her hands were now only moving feebly.

  The ground beneath her was soaked with blood.

  Then Jim came to an abrupt halt, reached down with both hands into the ruined mess of the woman’s belly, and started to rummage about.

  Weyland took a step back, unable to watch any more. Another step, and yet
another one, and then he had turned and was running away.

  Under the porch of St Magnus the Martyr, Bill and Jim looked up, blood spattering their faces and coating their hands.

  “What was that?” said Bill.

  “A rat, nothing more,” said Jim, and they bent back to their enjoyment.

  NINE

  Copt Hall

  Friday, 6th September 1940

  Silvius pulled his car in behind Weyland’s Daimler, turned off the ignition, then sat thinking for a few minutes as he finished his cigarette. He’d got a call from Jack earlier, asking him to come to Copt Hall this evening.

  There was to be a council of war, apparently.

  Silvius didn’t envy his son. Jack had screwed things up royally when he’d been Brutus and had founded the travesty of the Troy Game. Don’t use my murder to found the Game, Silvius had said to Brutus. It is no way to start a Game. But Brutus hadn’t listened, and now here they all were, desperately searching for some means to unwind the Game before it lost patience and bit.

  It wasn’t all his son’s fault though, was it? Everyone had dirtied their hands in the matter: Cornelia, Genvissa, Ariadne, Asterion and, aye, even himself…Brutus had been his responsibility, his was the hand which had fashioned the pot, and maybe, Silvius thought as he sighed and opened the car door, he was as much to blame as anyone else.

  Only Grace seemed to be innocent, and Silvius felt terribly sorry for her. She was the one to suffer the most, the one with all to lose, the one at the heart of the dilemma and, because of it, terribly, terribly isolated.

  Malcolm opened the front door of Copt Hall as Silvius approached.

  “Is everyone else here?” Silvius said as Malcolm took his coat, scarf and gloves.

  “Yes, Mr Makris. They’re waiting for you in the drawing room.”

  Waiting silently, as Silvius discovered when he walked in. Weyland and Noah were seated on one of the sofas before the fire, while Grace and Jack were sitting in opposing armchairs.

  Everyone had looked up as Silvius entered, and Jack rose, and walked forward to embrace his father.

  “Silvius! I am glad you are here.”

  “Not too late, I hope,” Silvius said. He glanced at Weyland—the man was wan, the skin too tight over his cheekbones, and his eyes avoided Silvius’.

  “Not at all,” said Jack. “Come, sit down and I’ll get you a whisky.”

  Silvius nodded at the others as he sat down and took the whisky Jack handed him. He noted that there was a small satchel by the side of Grace’s chair, and Silvius wondered what it contained.

  “Silvius,” Jack said as he sat down in his chair, “I’ve asked you to come here tonight to see if you can’t offer any suggestions. You were a Kingman, and the gods alone know we need every bit of help we can get.”

  “Then why is not Stella here?” said Silvius.

  “It is dusk,” said Noah. “She needs to carol in the twilight. Besides, she said that she could offer nothing more than I, or Jack.”

  Or Grace? wondered Silvius, having heard from Jack that she was also a trained Mistress of the Labyrinth. He saw Jack glance at Grace as Noah spoke, and knew his son had thought the same thing. Interesting, Silvius thought. Noah forgets to include her daughter, but Jack remembers.

  “Then Ariadne should be here,” Silvius said, swilling his whisky around in his glass, and watching out of the corner of his eye as Weyland’s face closed over even further.

  “I can speak to her at a later time,” said Jack.

  “I will do it for you,” said Silvius.

  Jack raised an eyebrow, remembering other times Silvius had demonstrated a knowledge of Ariadne’s movements.

  “I see her from time to time,” Silvius said.

  “Is that so?” Jack said.

  Silvius shrugged. “We like to talk over old times,” he said, “but we are not here now to talk of Ariadne and me—” Jack sent him a look which Silvius interpreted to mean that Jack, at least, fully intended to speak to him about it sooner rather than later “—but of your problem in trying to unwind the Troy Game, Jack.”

  “Yes,” Jack said. “Grace, Noah and I have been trying to work out what is—” he glanced at Grace “—this shadow that hangs over London. Grace thinks it a trap of Catling’s making. Noah and I are more inclined to think it a weakness of the Troy Game.”

  Silvius noted with some interest the play of emotions between the three of them at that point. Grace studiously examined her hands in her lap. Noah glanced first at Jack, then at her daughter, looking strained, while Jack looked steadily at Grace, as if willing her to raise her eyes and meet his.

  Intriguing, Silvius thought. Then he looked back to Weyland, saw the expression on the man’s face, and his stomach curdled. He didn’t know if it was because of the emotional interplay between Noah, Grace and Jack, or because of what they’d said.

  Look at me, man, Silvius willed Weyland, but Weyland kept his eyes averted, although he must have known of Silvius’ silent plea.

  Then Jack spoke again, distracting Silvius away from his concern about Weyland. Briefly, Jack explained how, initially, only he and Grace could discern the difference, then how Noah sensed it after the Great Marriage.

  “But only I and Grace can discover more of it,” Jack concluded. “It is as though it is a pattern etched into glass. Grace and I are the only ones who can rub away the years of accumulated grime to reveal more of it—at which point Noah can see the newly exposed section of pattern.”

  “But I am, most apparently,” said Noah with a disarming grin, “no good at cleaning.”

  “And you can’t discern it at all,” Silvius said to Weyland. Talk! Tell me what is wrong!

  But Weyland just gave a terse shake of his head, still averting his eyes from Silvius, and it was left to Noah to explain.

  “I have taken Weyland outside,” she said, “and tried to show it to him, but he felt nothing.”

  Silvius might have stood up and walked over to shake Weyland at that point, save that Jack asked Grace to explain what she’d discovered of the shadow.

  Grace sat forward and laid a hand on the satchel at the side of the chair. “Are you sure it is safe?” she asked Jack. “Catling spends her life peering over my shoulder.”

  “The hall is wrapped in ancient druidic magic for the next few hours,” said Jack, making Silvius raise his eyebrows in surprise. “We shall be safe from Catling’s prying for the time being.”

  Grace nodded, and lifted the satchel to her lap. She opened the flap and pulled out a folded map, which she proceeded to unfold and spread out on the rug between the chairs and sofa.

  Despite his growing concern about Weyland, Silvius leaned forward and studied the map. It was a large and detailed map of Greater London—so large it virtually filled the space between the chairs and sofa—and it had been marked in a myriad of places with red ink.

  “Jack and I have spent the past months walking the city,” Grace said, “tracing out what we have felt.” She explained how it was that they actually had to put foot to pavement to be able to trace out the pathways of this strange phenomenon, and thus the slowness in their accumulation of data.

  “We’ve done nothing systematically for fear of alerting Catling,” she said, a hint of apology in her voice, “thus the haphazard nature of what we’ve discovered.”

  Haphazard, indeed, thought Silvius, although he acknowledged the reason behind it. There were groups of lines splotched here and there about the map. A group to the east centred on Greenwich, another to the south around Peckham, yet another to the west around Clapham. Besides the centre of London which they had mapped out in some detail, in all there were some nine areas where Jack and Grace had discovered manifestations of what they called their “shadow”. But even with all this work, they had thus far covered only about a fiftieth of London; there wasn’t enough marked on the map, there wasn’t enough known about this shadow, to be able to clearly define it.

  Yet there was enough to tantali
se.

  “It’s labyrinthine,” said Silvius, one hand extended as he slowly traced the lines out with his forefinger.

  “Aye,” said Jack, “but it makes no sense. None! If it is labyrinthine, and it is, then it must, must, be connected to the Troy Game. There is no other reason it could exist.” He hesitated. “I should have asked Ariadne here tonight. Her input would have been valuable, and I will make sure to ask her the next time I gather you together to discuss this. Now, Silvius, what I can’t make out, and neither can Noah or Grace, is how all these separate sections—” he waved a hand over the ten areas they’d mapped so far “—connect up. Look,” he leaned over to the hearth and picked up a poker, which he used to trace over the map, “if we extrapolate these groups of lines here, and here, then nothing makes sense. If this is some kind of reflection of the Troy Game, which it must be, damn it, because nothing else can explain it, then it simply doesn’t ‘fit’ the Troy Game. It is…”

  “Skew-whiff,” said Grace, with an apologetic shrug for her unscientific term.

  Jack grinned at her, the casualness of which sent a jolt of surprise through Silvius.

  “Aye,” said Jack. “It is skewwhiff.”

  “And that’s why,” Noah said, “Jack and I think it is a weakness of the Troy Game. Something has gone wrong with it.”

  “Do you think that because the Game has been left so long for completion,” Silvius said, watching out the corner of his eye as Grace slid back in her chair, once more studying her hands in her lap, “it has…warped? Grown thin? Started to deteriorate?”

  “Yes!” said Noah. “Jack and I both think that it is a weakness.”

  “But Grace doesn’t think so,” said Silvius.

  “Grace,” said Jack, “believes it is a trap set by Catling. Something designed to fool us.” He turned to look at Grace directly. “Grace, I acknowledge your point of view, but Catling’s behaviour—the fact she hasn’t pushed for completion as hard as I expected—indicates some vulnerability.”

  “The shadow is malevolent, Jack,” Grace said.

  Jack narrowed his eyes, suspecting that Grace kept something from him.