Darkwitch Rising

by Sara Douglass

  “I have power, Eaving. I am not disinclined to use it to discover what I need.”

  “What are you doing here?” I said, gesturing about at Tower Fields and the built-up areas to the east and west of us. “And like this.” Now I gestured at her clothes.

  She laughed. “Oh, this is not the manner of dress I normally affect, Eaving. Generally I ensure I’m much less noticeable.”

  “You mean you’re living here?” Jane said. “In London?”

  “I drift in and out, from time to time,” Ariadne said. “I have an arrangement with the Gentleman of the Ordnance of the Tower.”

  I could well imagine what kind of arrangement she might have, but I wondered if the Gentleman of the Ordnance of the Tower knew quite what he had invited into his bed. And why should Ariadne want to be there? I opened my mouth to ask, but Jane got the question out first.

  “Why are you back? For what purpose?”

  Poor Jane. I imagine she was somewhat disturbed to discover that great-great-great-granny Ariadne had been flitting around not ten minutes walk from Idol Lane.

  Again that fearsome, predatory smile. “For my place in the Game, of course, what else?”

  I went cold. She couldn’t possibly think that she…

  “You have no right—” Jane began.

  “I have every right,” Ariadne said. “If not for me then neither of you would be toying with such greatness! If not for me, then neither of you would be—”

  “Writhing about on a kitchen floor having our flesh torn apart,” I said.

  “Well, well, minx,” said Ariadne, stepping closer to me and grasping my chin with one of her hands.

  I could feel her fingernails digging into my flesh.

  “Such spirit,” she said. “What is your heritage then, to spark so brightly? What was your name and heritage in your first life, before the Troy Game caught you in its web?”

  Ah, if Ariadne could know my goddess name then surely she would know this. But for the moment I played along with her game.

  “My name was Cornelia, and I lived in the city of Mesopotama, on the eastern side of—”

  “I know where it was,” she said. Her hand fell away from my chin. “An insignificant city. Dull. Who were you, Cornelia of Mesopotama? A servant’s brat? A baker’s bastard? A—”

  She was needling me, and most successfully. “I was the daughter of the king, Pandrasus, and heir to the throne itself.”

  “Ah,” Ariadne said on a long breath, although it was obvious none of this came as any surprise to her. Then, “Mesopotama was spared the Catastrophe. Tell me, Cornelia-reborn, princess and heir to that long-lost throne, did you ever wonder why?”

  Jane spoke then, and I was glad, for I had no answer to Ariadne.

  “Aren’t you afraid that Asterion, Weyland Orr now, might find you wandering about the Tower, Ariadne?”

  “The Liberty protects me,” she said.

  “The Liberty?” I said.

  “The Tower of London exists under its own jurisdiction,” said Jane. “It is free from the laws of London. This Liberty came into being after your last life, Noah. You would not have known of it as Caela.” Yet still Jane looked puzzled, for that alone could not explain how Ariadne managed to hide from Weyland’s sight.

  “Indeed,” said Ariadne, “the fields and streets surrounding the Tower of London form their own jurisdiction. The Gentlemen of the Tower have even managed to claim all rights to the cattle and horses that fall off London Bridge, and the swans that wander into the Tower moat.” She laughed prettily.

  “But none of this explains why Weyland can’t—” I began.

  “Think, Eaving! What lies beneath the Tower?”

  I frowned, then suddenly remembered. “The God Well!” It was where Brutus and I had been buried in our first lives, and where, as Caela, I had met William the night he had killed me.

  “Aye,” said Ariadne. “It took some skill, of which I have a small measure, to manage to entwine the power of the God Well with the legal entity of the Tower Liberty to form a protective ward. So long as I don’t leave the Liberty, Weyland can’t detect me.”

  I felt uncomfortable. As Eaving I should have sensed this, for Ariadne would have used her ancient knowledge of the land in this enterprise, and yet even I hadn’t felt a thing. For the first time I had a true understanding of Ariadne’s power.

  “You will come back to me here,” said Ariadne, “once your bodies have healed.”

  “Why?” said Jane.

  “You know why,” said Ariadne. Then suddenly she paled, and wavered on her feet. “I cannot hold you any longer,” she said. “You must return now…but come back, come back in the flesh, come back to Tower Liberty…”

  Her voice faded, and I saw the fields about the Tower waver and then vanish, and the next moment the terrible bloody stink of the kitchen of Idol Lane assailed my nostrils.

  Eleven

  Whitehall Palace and Idol Lane, London

  Charles’ journey from London Bridge to his palace at Whitehall was a living nightmare. The procession took several hours to reach the palace precinct and, once there, Charles endured two further hours of speeches in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords.

  Through it all he smiled and waved, and spoke pretty and gracious words. It had been the most difficult thing he had ever done in…well, in all three of his lives thus far. Noah’s pain had abruptly ceased when he was but a third of the way down Cheapside. Charles hoped it was because she had mercifully fainted.

  Now, finally, at ten at night, he and Louis and Catharine had managed seclusion within the royal apartments. The instant the door closed behind the last servant Charles sank down into a chair, dropped his wearied face into his hands, and muttered, “Gods…”

  Louis was standing on the far side of the sumptuous chamber. He watched Charles for a moment, then turned to a table, meaning to pour himself a glass of wine. His hands were shaking so badly he dropped the decanter, sending red wine spilling over the beautiful parquet floor.

  He swore, the obscenity rolling across the room, and Catharine gave a single sob and sank to the floor by Charles’ chair.

  “Is she dead?” she said.

  “Is she dead?” Charles said. “I do not know. Louis?”

  Louis had been trying to pick up the larger pieces of the glass. Now he dropped them again, and walked over to Charles and Catharine, wiping his fingers over his lovely silver doublet.

  “No,” he said, “she is not dead. Weyland would not allow her that mercy. She is alive…just.”

  “You must not blame yourself, Louis, for not—” Charles began.

  “I blame those damned giants!” Louis yelled. “If not for them, if not for their cursed interfering—”

  The door to the chamber opened, and Charles half rose, his face flushing as he prepared to shout at whichever servant had chosen this terrible moment to enter.

  But it was no servant, and, as they saw who stood there, Charles swallowed his anger and walked over to where Marguerite and Kate stood just inside the door.

  He embraced them fiercely, and then Catharine ran to them, and Marguerite and Kate enclosed her within their arms. Louis also came over, and in turn was hugged by the women.

  “Oh,” said Marguerite, “that we should meet under such circumstances. Matilda, it is so good to see you once more, but—”

  “You felt it too, then,” said Charles.

  “Aye,” Marguerite said. “We were riding into London when we felt it. Gods, Noah—”

  “But are you well?” asked Charles. “And the children?”

  “We are well indeed,” said Marguerite, “if saddened by the day’s events.”

  “The children do marvellously,” Kate finished. “They remain in Woburn village, Charles, with a kindly neighbour.”

  Charles nodded. “When matters have settled, I shall send for them to attend court.”

  “What this natter of children and babies?” said Louis. “We should instead be tal
king of—”

  “Louis,” Marguerite said, “Noah knew that something of this nature was going to happen. She—”

  “She had no idea that she would be torn apart, for what else could explain such pain?”

  “She needed to be there,” Marguerite said. “She needs to learn the arts of Mistress of—”

  “Right now,” said Louis, his voice dangerously soft, “I don’t give a fuck about Noah learning the arts of the Mistress of the Labyrinth. I just care that she lies in agony, and none of us do anything save stand here and mutter useless words!”

  To that no one had anything else to say.

  It took Elizabeth and Frances until nightfall to clean and settle Noah and Jane as well as they could, and then scrub the kitchen and themselves. As shocked and benumbed by events as they were, the two girls nonetheless managed to wash the two women, bind their terrible wounds with strips torn from a clean sheet, and move them to the pallets to one side of the kitchen.

  They could do little else. Both women lay as if dead, their skin cold, clammy and grey, their breathing hardly discernible. Neither stirred as Elizabeth and Frances worked over them, and both continued to seep blood; to the girls it was remarkable that they were alive at all, and it did not seem possible that they would survive the night.

  Once they’d done what they could for the women, the two girls set to the nauseating work of cleaning the kitchen. The women’s blood had jellified into several putrid masses and had set rock-hard in the cracks and pockmarks of the flagstones so that it took back-breaking labour to scrub it out.

  When the kitchen was finally clean, Elizabeth and Frances stripped themselves of their blood-soaked and wet clothes, and scrubbed themselves until their skin shone red and raw. Then, dressing themselves in some of Jane’s petticoats and chemises they found in a chest (what spare clothes they owned were resting unobtainable in their chamber in the nearby tavern), and throwing shawls about their shoulders, they lit a lamp against the growing darkness and sat down at the table.

  Neither spoke. Both were still so paralysed by the horror of what they had witnessed they were literally incapable of speaking about it. Their minds could hardly process the events of the day.

  There was only one thing they were sure of, one thing they had learned from this day, and that was that to run from this house was death. Neither doubted that Weyland would hunt them down…and now that they had seen what he could do when fully enraged…

  Elizabeth and Frances had ever been in Weyland’s power. Now they were so terrified of him, so sure that he was the Devil himself, they were virtually incapable of independent thought or action.

  During all of this Catling sat in her corner, her eyes following Elizabeth and Frances as they worked, but not moving or speaking.

  As always, she had not lifted a finger to help.

  The night closed in. High in his Idyll, Weyland could not see it so much as feel it.

  But the gathering darkness was not the worst thing he could feel.

  The entire building in which he sat throbbed with pain. It ran upwards like fiery rivulets defying gravity, sharp and agonising, pulsating with every beat of Noah’s heart, searing deep into every fibre of Weyland’s being.

  Damn her!

  He sat in the room he used for his bedchamber, on the floor, back against the wall, knees drawn up. He sank his face into his hands, his fingers clenched into his hair, and groaned.

  Damn her!

  The night drew on, and grew colder.

  The pain continued to slither up through the beams of the house, slicing into Weyland’s bones.

  The very soil beneath the house seemed to tremble, as if it wept.

  A moan drifted up through the house, and Weyland knew it was not either of the women, but the land itself.

  Weyland’s hands grew whiter where they gripped his hair.

  Finally, cursing, he rose to his feet, stiff and sore from his long hours sitting on the floor. He marched through the Idyll and into the vestibule, where the imps sat cross-legged on the floor, rolling dice and picking their noses.

  “Stay here,” Weyland said, and walked through the doorway into the house, slamming the door behind him.

  Frances gave an incoherent cry of pure fear as he strode into the kitchen, retreating as far as possible against the back wall of the room.

  Weyland sent her a look of seething ill will, then looked at Elizabeth.

  She sat at the table, looking gaunt and wretched. She’d been resting her face in her hands, elbows on the table, and she merely raised her face and looked at Weyland as he entered.

  Weyland shifted his gaze to where Jane and Noah lay. They were completely still, the blankets that covered them dark and heavy with their blood.

  Weyland’s jaw visibly clenched, then he jerked his eyes back to Elizabeth. “Come here,” he said.

  She tensed, her eyes almost starting from her head, but to her credit she did as he asked. Rising from the table, she walked stiffly to where Weyland stood.

  He jerked his head at Noah and Jane. “I will need your help,” he said.

  Elizabeth gave a small nod. “Anything,” she said.

  Weyland’s eyes grew harder. “Anything?”

  “Anything for Noah and for Jane,” said Elizabeth. “Not for you.”

  Weyland had lived many scores of lives, but nothing anyone had said to him had hurt so much as that simple statement from Elizabeth. He remembered how she’d wounded him long ago, when he’d made love to her, and she’d spoken plain, unadorned words that had sent him reeling away. How had she this power, this simple girl? Where had she this majesty?

  “For Noah and for Jane, then,” he said softly, “if not for me.”

  And he turned to the women.

  Elizabeth drew a deep breath, picked up the lamp, and followed a step behind him.

  The girls had stripped Noah and Jane naked, although both wore a bandage wrapped about their abdomens and hips. Between them Elizabeth and Weyland rolled Noah over onto her stomach, then Weyland ripped the bandage apart.

  He stopped for a moment, motionless, staring at the wound. It was the size of a plate, stretching from hip to hip and almost to her waist. All the skin had gone, the bones of her spine and part of her pelvis lay bare, and blood vessels continuously seeped blood.

  By rights she should not have been alive.

  Weyland raised his head and looked at Elizabeth.

  She raised an eyebrow.

  Weyland held her stare a moment, then he sighed, and laid his hands upon Noah’s back.

  They met on a hilltop, amid an infinite vista of hilltops. The grass was warm beneath their feet, the gentle breeze mild, and yet, even so, the tears on her cheek felt like ice.

  The very soil of the Faerie was moaning in grief.

  “Why?” she said. “Why heal me? This is a greater torment than anything else you have done.”

  A muscle flinched in his cheek, and he turned away, pretending to study the forested hills which rolled away from him.

  She wrapped her arms about herself. “This must be a trick. You are the Minotaur. You do not ‘heal’.”

  He whipped back to her. “And why not? Am I such a blackhearted beast that I cannot aid?”

  “You are a destroyer, nothing more. And if this man who stands before me is real…then you cannot be the Minotaur. A simple problem. Either you are the Minotaur, who has nothing for a heart save black ice, or you are an impostor, who pretends to be the Minotaur for his own purposes.”

  He came very close to her. “A simple problem, eh? Have I no ability to change? To feel? Tell me, are you still that shrieking harpy of a girl you once were, shallower even than the rivers of happiness that run through Idol Lane, or have you grown into something else?”

  She was silent, and her eyes dropped away from his.

  “And if you can grow,” he said, “why not me?”

  There was a long silence, Weyland staring at Noah, she looking at the ground. About them the warm breeze
wafted, gentle and caressing.

  Eventually, Noah looked up and spoke words that were part prophecy, part bewilderment. “Weyland, Weyland, what are we doing? How can we stop? How can we stop?”

  Twelve

  Whitehall Palace and Idol Lane, London

  As she lay on the floor of the kitchen through that long night of the 29th, Jane dreamed that she stood in the fields outside the Tower of London.

  Ariadne was not here now. But the fact that Jane was here made her realise something that had niggled at her while she and Noah had talked with Ariadne. The ancient witch had used vast power to pull Noah and Jane to her—her power as Mistress of the Labyrinth.

  Jane stood in Tower Fields and frowned: Ariadne had used her power as Mistress of the Labyrinth to pull Noah and herself to this spot. Jane knew there was something about this fact she should grasp, but just before she actually managed it, she heard a soft footfall behind her.

  She whipped about, sure it must be Weyland.

  But it was a man, tall and brown-skinned, dark hair shifting slightly in the breeze, dressed only in a pair of leather breeches and wearing a crown of twigs and red berries on his head.

  Jane knew who he was instantly, although she had never, in any of her lives, met him. Still, she had once been MagaLlan, and she knew who he was.

  The Lord of the Faerie.

  A vicious chill swept through Jane.

  Was he here to murder her? What other reason? She took a half step away, then halted as he spoke.

  “I thought you were Noah,” he said. “I felt…I wanted…I thought you were Noah. It was why I came.”

  Pain swept through Jane. She’d suffered terribly at Weyland’s hands, but nothing he had done to her, not even when the imp had torn itself free of her body, had wounded her this deeply.

  Everyone always wanted Noah, never her.