Druid's Sword

  Long Tom had grasped her hand so tightly Grace could feel his flesh sinking into hers.

  “D’you see?” Long Tom whispered in a horrible rasping tone.

  “Yes,” whispered Grace. “Yes, I see. Thank you, Long Tom.”

  The roof of the Guildhall collapsed, showering the wooden forms of Gog and Magog with sparks.

  They caught alight instantly.

  The wooden statues, alive with ancient power and with fire, stepped from their pedestals and began a slow dance about the flame-puddled floor of the Guildhall.

  “Hello, Grace,” they whispered.

  What are you doing? Catling said, coming to stand next to where Long Tom lay semi-prone on the grass, Grace bending over him, their hands still entwined. What are you doing?

  Seeing, said Grace. Seeing that which you don’t wish me to know.

  Let him go! shrieked Catling, her hands grabbing those of Long Tom and Grace.

  Way, way too late now, said Grace.

  Robert Stacey, Sidlesaghe and concierge of the residents’ wing of the Savoy, slowly rose from his desk in the foyer of the private entrance.

  Outside, bombs rained down, and he could hear the roar of the inferno within the ancient City, even though it was many blocks away.

  He was alone. Everyone else had fled for the shelters long since.

  Hello, Grace, he said, and the next moment a nearby bomb blast shattered the glass door of the entrance foyer, and a sheet of glass fully five feet long and almost two wide impaled the Sidlesaghe.

  Across Britain, the ancient stone circles, or dances, that had stood for so many thousands of years, shuddered as one, and then lost…life. They became shapeless, grey, lichen-covered stones, and nothing else. The dances were dead.

  Long Tom lay lifeless at Grace’s feet. Very slowly,

  reverentially, she let his hand go, and straightened up.

  “You bitch,” said Catling. “You can’t beat me.”

  “I know that,” said Grace. “I won’t even try.”

  With that, she turned her back, walked down the

  hill with small careful steps, and vanished, leaving Catling standing amid the tattered remains of what had once been Sidlesaghes.

  Beneath Blackfriars Bridge the water sprites screamed.

  “Jack!” Noah gasped, grabbing onto his arm for support. “Gods…Jack!”

  “What is it?”

  Noah gulped a huge, shocked breath. “The Sidlesaghes are dead,” she whispered. “Every one of them. Catling has murdered the Sidlesaghes.”

  Before he could answer they were both reeling back as Catling appeared not a pace away.

  “The Sidlesaghes tonight,” she hissed, “and whoever I feel like in the morning. I will work my way through the creatures of the Faerie until you come back and finish what you started. How long will it take, eh? How many deaths?”

  And with that she was gone.

  The streets and buildings of the City, the ancient square mile of London, had seemingly been replaced by an impenetrable firestorm. Firemen did their best, but combined with the ferocity of the blaze, its extent, the abnormal low tide of the Thames and the fractured water mains in the City, there was very little they could accomplish. The incendiary bombs set roofs and gutters alight, and then the following high explosive bombs tore buildings apart, scattering burning fragments far and wide and setting hithertountouched buildings ablaze.

  Many fire crews had to abandon their equipment and run for their lives, holding their breath against the searing, ember-choked air.

  One of the escaping firemen had an IB fall and embed itself into his back.

  He burned alive, and no one could do anything to save him.

  The wave after wave of German bombers returned to refuel and reload bombs at their airfields in France. The first raid of the night had been a stunning success, and as aircraft were refuelled, their crews chattered excitedly about their experiences flying over burning London.

  “Like flying over bubbling pea soup,” one pilot exclaimed, referring to the sight as each newly dropped stick of bombs “bubbled” up through the churning clouds of smoke and flames. Others remarked on the stomach-dropping experience of having their aircraft suddenly hurtled thousands of feet into the air by the super-heated air over the City, only to just as suddenly drop thousands of feet once the aircraft were past the conflagration.

  At the planes, ground crew struggled with the payload for this return raid. Gone were the IBs—they had already done their task—and the bombers were now loaded with Satans, massive eighteen-hundredmegaton bombs which would be used to literally blow central London apart.

  As the crews chatted, and the aircraft were refuelled and reloaded, something strange began to happen on the beaches of France.

  A young woman dressed in nothing but a heavy hound’s-tooth check coat walked barefoot along the sand at tide’s edge, the grey waves of the Channel foaming about her ankles. She walked heavily, as if exhausted, or as if she had been weakened by some serious illness, but nonetheless carried about her an air of serenity that counteracted any heaviness of gait. She held her forearms a little out from her body, waving her hands and fingers to the beat of a melody only she could hear.

  The beat of the land.

  She smiled as she walked, occasionally humming, occasionally speaking a few words as if murmuring a conversation to someone, and sometimes laughing out loud.

  At one point she tipped her head back, shook out her loose mop of curls, and ran lightly—stunningly lightly considering the heaviness of her gait to this point—along the sand, the waters splashing about her bare legs.

  Diamonds flashed and glowed about her wrists and lower arms.

  After a while, her form became indistinct, as if a fog coalesced about her.

  At Luftwaffe airfields, crews raced to their aircraft as the signals sounded that indicated refuelling and loading was completed. The crews clambered aboard, and the engines of the aircraft roared.

  One after another, the bombers taxied onto their runways, their crews looking forward to an easy bombing run.

  As the aircraft took off one by one, circling their respective airfields until their particular squadron was in the air, phones began ringing in airfield control rooms.

  On the beaches of France, the young woman had vanished, hidden within the thick yellow fog which now blanketed the coastline, rising to almost nine thousand feet.

  She may have been invisible, but as the fog thickened even more, coiling and twisting up from the Channel waters, there came a faint laugh, and some merry, whispered words.

  Just like bubbling pea soup.

  One after another, Luftwaffe pilots swore as the hastily radioed orders came in.

  Return to base! Return to base! Flying conditions now extremely difficult.

  Not to mention landing conditions, thought pilots as they exchanged glances within cockpits.

  Now they’d have to get their bombers safely back on the ground…without their satanic payloads exploding.

  At midnight, precisely, exhausted fire crews and emergency personnel in London were astounded to hear the All Clear sound.

  All had expected the Luftwaffe to return and finish what they had so devastatingly started: the IBs had clearly been dropped to create fires to act as beacons for returning bombers.

  No one had any way of knowing that the reason those bombers didn’t return was walking slowly through the surf in the churning, thick yellow fog that had suddenly, inexplicably, blanketed the Channel coast.

  TEN

  London

  Monday, 30th December, 1940

  While suburban Londoners could not fail to have been aware of the massive air raid

  overnight, because of reporting restrictions very few had any idea of the amount of damage resulting from the raid. All that the BBC reported that morning was: Enemy aircraft attacked towns in the south of England during the night causing some damage. Fires were started and casualties have been reported. Unknowing, tens
of thousands of people caught trains into work in the City as usual on Monday morning, only to stand outside London Bridge railway station, or Waterloo Station, mouths agape in horror at what they saw.

  Twisted, blackened, smoking rubble where once there had been buildings.

  Where once there had been the City.

  Almost without exception, every one of those workers tried to find their way to work. They picked their way through streets littered with debris—masonry, twisted steel beams, shattered glass, stillsmouldering bodies—to their place of work…if it was still standing. It took some workers almost five hours to reach their workplace, only to stand for ten minutes talking with comrades before starting the painful return journey to the railway station once more. Others managed to get to their work in more timely fashion, to spend the day sorting out debris, tidying what they could, rescuing what remained, and, if practicable, settling down to the day’s business. Still others, deeply moved by the exhausted firemen about them, silently took sandwiches and thermoses from their lunch boxes and handed them out among the fire crews.

  The GPO sent out the mail as usual, and postmen picked their careful way around fire crews and over rubble in order to deliver their letters.

  Determined not to allow themselves to be cowed, Londoners did their best to resume their normal routines as soon as possible.

  Jack and Noah stayed on Blackfriars Bridge until well after dawn, looking north to where the dome of St Paul’s still rose from amid the destruction.

  “No doubt the papers will claim it a miracle,” Jack said dryly.

  “Jack…what are we going to do?” Noah looked exhausted. Her shoulders were slumped, her face was smudged with soot, her hands trembled slightly where they clutched her coat.

  “Indeed!” said a new voice. “What are you going to do?”

  The Lord of the Faerie had appeared behind them, and Jack and Noah turned to the sound of his angry voice.

  “The Sidlesaghes have gone!” said the Lord of the Faerie. “Murdered! And I heard what Catling said to you—sweet gods, she will work her murderous way through the entire Faerie! I didn’t agree with you completing the Troy Game, but I think I agree even less with your abandoning the attempt.”

  “Coel—” Jack began.

  “What happened?” the Lord of the Faerie continued. “Why did you stop? Look!” His hand cast out at the destruction beyond the bridge. “Can you even imagine what the Faerie looks like this morning? Can you—”

  “Coel!” Jack reached out and seized the Lord of the Faerie’s shoulders. “Be still a moment. Listen to me. Grace is back. She—”

  “Grace cannot fix what you have so gloriously mangled!” the Lord of the Faerie said.

  “The shadow is back, too,” said Noah quietly.

  The Lord of the Faerie sent her a furious glance. “And what good has that cursed shadow done any of us to this point? None!”

  “Please, Coel,” said Jack, “please. I know how you fear. But listen to me. There is something happening, something…good. The All Clear sounded at midnight…why? The Luftwaffe should have returned, but they didn’t. And the Sidlesaghes…I’m not entirely sure they are completely gone. When Catling spoke to us she was unsettled, badly so. She only hauls out the huge threats when she feels threatened. She—”

  “You didn’t complete her,” the Lord of the Faerie said. “She wasn’t threatened, she was angry.”

  “She didn’t use Grace as a threat,” Jack said. “Catling snatched Grace from before Noah’s and my eyes within the cathedral…but when Catling came to us here she didn’t use Grace to threaten us as she did when Grace was buried under Coronation Avenue. That means she didn’t have Grace. And if Grace could have escaped the terror that was Catling last night, if she could have risen from her deathbed, then Grace has managed to access some power, or some knowledge, that thwarted Catling. Coel, let me talk to Grace. Believe me, trust me, for there is hope, and her name is Grace.”

  The Lord of the Faerie stared at Jack, then gave a tight nod. “Gods help you if you’re wrong on this, Jack.”

  With that he vanished, and Jack and Noah were left standing on the footpath of the bridge, staring at the space he had inhabited.

  “What did you mean,” Noah said, “when you told the Lord of the Faerie that the Sidlesaghes had not completely gone? I can’t feel them…what can you sense?”

  Jack paused a bit before answering, his eyes focussed on the dome of St Paul’s in the distance. “I can’t feel them either,” he said eventually. “It was just that, when we felt them die, I also sensed…a passing. I don’t know how else to explain it. They’ve gone, but I am not sure they’ve gone quite into death.”

  ELEVEN

  Copt Hall

  Monday, 30th December, 1940

  GRACE SPEAKS

  Ifound myself on the road to Epping Forest somewhere around Leytonstone. I had no idea how I had come to be there—the last thing I remembered was the French beaches—but I knew there was only one place I wanted to be right now, and that was Copt Hall. Somehow the combination of Malcolm and Jack felt so right, so comfortable, that I almost wept at the thought of the distance I had yet to go.

  I didn’t think I could use anything save my shaky legs to get me there. Whatever power I commanded had been totally exhausted with the efforts of the past hours. I was completely exhausted. If I had managed to get myself off a bed most people expected me to die in, then it had only been possible through the effort and expenditure of power and whatever reserves of strength remained to me. It was December, I knew, because I could feel it rising through the soles of my feet and in the sharpness of the air; that meant I’d spent weeks, months, wasting away in that hospital. I hadn’t managed to bring myself back to full vitality. I’d managed only to get myself awake and up, and after what I’d done over the past night, I obviously wasn’t going to be able to walk to the nearest telephone box, let alone the final five or six miles to Copt Hall.

  I slumped down on the verge of the road and huddled as deep inside the hound’s-tooth coat as I could. It was freezing, although thankfully not raining, and the coat was all I had. My feet were bare, my scalp stung where it had healed from Catling’s nasty gift of that concrete lintel, my cheeks and nose felt as if they were succumbing to frostbite.

  I had to get to Copt Hall soon.

  I looked around. It was mid-morning and, while the war had thinned out traffic, a lorry or bus would come along sooner or later. I had no money for the bus fare, but surely a kindly lorry or bus driver would give me a lift to the gates of Copt Hall. I wouldn’t even need to explain away my strange appearance—dishevelled and disorientated victims of the bombing were an all-too-frequent sight in London and its environs. The driver would merely assume I’d escaped the raid of last night and was travelling to…a kindly uncle, perhaps, who would give me shelter.

  Just then I heard the purr of a motor on the road leading from London. I struggled to my feet and moved to the side of the road, peering in the direction of London, hoping the driver, whoever it might be, would be kind enough to stop.

  A big black sedan hove into view, and I recognised it instantly.

  It appeared to glow a little in the early morning light, as if its driver was very, very angry.

  I swallowed, momentarily considered darting for the cover of some nearby shrubbery, then discarded the thought. I wasn’t strong enough to dart anywhere.

  So I straightened up, wondering whether looking exhausted would work better for me or if I should go for the calm and confident and “delighted to see you so unexpectedly” look. In the end I had the choice made for me when Harry pulled his car over beside me, opened the door, got out, and glowered angrily at me.

  Exhausted it would be. It certainly wasn’t a look I would have any trouble maintaining.

  “Harry?” I said.

  “Grace,” he said, and instantly metamorphosed into the Lord of the Faerie, which made me realise just how angry he was. “What have you been doing?”
he said.

  Well, I’ve been lying mostly dead on a bed for months, my Lord of the Faerie, and if things have gone wrong, then think not to blame me for it.

  “Not much,” I said.

  He moved around the side of the car and came to stand directly before me, so close I had to crick my neck painfully to look him in the face. Intimidated, I tried to huddle a little deeper into the coat. Catling might not scare me any more, but her I loathed. The Lord of the Faerie was someone I respected, and I hated it that he was angry towards me.

  “Why did you stop Jack and Noah from completing the Troy Game?” he said.

  “Because it would have been tragic if they had completed it.”

  “And it isn’t ‘tragic’ that now Catling has vowed to destroy every creature in the Faerie until she is completed? Damn you, Grace, the Sidlesaghes are gone, and within hours she will start on—”

  I sighed, which was the wrong thing to do, because the Lord of the Faerie went almost into apoplexy.

  “The Faerie is being destroyed and you can only sigh in irritation?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Harry…or Coel, or whoever you are. Look, I can stop her, but I don’t have the strength to blow out a match right now. If you want me to stop her, I can, but you’re going to have to help me.”

  I don’t think that was what he expected me to say.

  “You can stop her?”

  “I can stop her from murdering any more of the creatures of the Faerie, at least. More than that I don’t know. But…I…need…you…to…help…me.”

  He realised then that I was close to collapse, and he put out a hand onto my shoulder. “What do you need?”

  “I need you to take me to Catling.”