Darkwitch Rising

by Sara Douglass

  “It cannot be!” he said.

  “Ah,” said Noah, “but it can. It can.”

  “What did the sprite say?” said Weyland. “What did he mean?”

  Noah raised her eyes from the sprite to Weyland. “He said that you were among us.” She paused. “What he meant was that you are one among us. That you, too, are of the faerie folk, if from a very distant land and time. Weyland, was that truly a bull which mated with your mother? Or was it a god?”

  Noah suddenly laughed, the sound rich and merry. “If poor Cornelia can find herself standing here, Weyland-Asterion, then there is no reason why you cannot, too.”

  Twenty-two

  The Gatehouse, Petersham

  They walked down a straight gravelled path, an overgrown park to either side of them. They walked mostly in silence, sometimes exchanging a meaningless comment or two. By and large, both were lost in their own thoughts: Noah relieved and happy in that relief, Weyland somewhat confused and disconcerted.

  “What just happened?” Weyland said, eventually.

  “I took you to the edge of the faerie world,” said Noah. “There are, in essence, two lands: the mortal and largely unaware, and the Faerie. Each of these worlds exist side by side, but also exist interwoven.”

  Weyland considered what she had said. Two lands, two worlds. He had only been aware of one. An icy finger of sheer fright stirred about in his bowels. What had been going on of which he had been unaware?

  “A great deal,” said Noah softly, and Weyland came to a halt, catching at Noah’s elbow so that he could stare at her.

  “The Troy Game…” Weyland said.

  “The Troy Game is largely of the mortal world,” said Noah. “When Brutus and Genvissa constructed the Game they did not use any of the Faerie in the Game’s creation.”

  “But now?”

  “But now, as I grow as both goddess of the waters and as Mistress of the Labyrinth, the realms of the Faerie and the mortal world grow ever closer. The battle for the Troy Game, Weyland, shall be fought through both worlds.”

  “Then why take me there? Surely I, the Great Enemy, should have been left in ignorance of the Faerie?”

  “There was a straightforward reason for me to take you there,” she said, finally, turning to resume her walk along the path, and forcing Weyland to follow, “and there was a not-so-straightforward reason.”

  “The straightforward reason was to ‘test’ me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And this ‘test’ was…”

  “To see if you had caused the plague, or not. If you had, the Faerie would have rejected you.”

  Weyland considered this. She had not believed him when he’d said he hadn’t created this pestilence which gripped London. For a moment he contemplated a minor sulk over the matter, then grinned a little to himself. Over their past three lives he’d given her every reason not to trust him.

  “And thus I passed,” he said. “Does that make you happy?”

  She glanced at him, half-smiling herself. “Oh yes, it does.”

  “And the second reason you wanted to take me into the Realm of the Faerie?”

  She paused, and Weyland understood that what she was about to say would be difficult for her.

  “Because I needed to be sure that what I was doing was the right thing. That the path I had taken was a true one.”

  “And that path, Noah?” he said softly.

  Again she stopped, Weyland coming to a halt himself. “My goddess name is Eaving, Weyland. That is who stands before you now.”

  He stared, and, as he remembered all the languages he’d learned during his various lives within England over the past three thousand years, then everything he’d intuited about asking her for shelter fell into place. “Gods,” he said, “your name means ‘shelter’!”

  She smiled, dryly. “Aye. The unexpected shelter from the storm. The name dictates my nature. I must shelter any who ask me for it.”

  He stared, his mouth hanging open.

  “You did not know?” she said.

  Weyland gave a small shake of his head. “I overheard you and Jane talking about shelter, and knew that it was important…but I was not sure why. All I knew was that whenever I mentioned ‘shelter’ to you, then a look of part-fear, part-resignation came into your eyes. I used it instinctively…Eaving.” He paused, thinking, then looked at her with sharp, calculating eyes. “What hold does that give me over you?”

  “In its own way, a far greater hold than that of your imp.”

  “Tell me what it means, precisely.”

  She hesitated, the tip of her tongue touching briefly at her lower lip. “It means that I cannot betray you to Brutus-reborn. To do so would be to violate the trust of the shelter.”

  “And has he ever asked you for shelter?”

  Her eyes became brighter. “Yes.”

  Weyland felt a jolt of sheer jealousy surge through him. “Have you slept with him, in this life?”

  “Sheltering does not imply answering every question you might have, Weyland.”

  He wanted to seize her, to shake the answer out of her, and was dismayed at how easy he found it to ignore the urge. “Eaving—”

  She was walking again, and he had to take three or four quick steps to catch up with her.

  “Weyland,” she said as he reappeared at her side, “you know none of this land’s magic, and recognise little of its beauty. And yet you could build your Idyll to the very borders of the Faerie. You are such an odd man.” She gave a strange little laugh. “You have passed your test, and I also, and to celebrate I thought I would bring you to this place, which is special to me.”

  He realised she wanted to change the subject, and for the moment he was prepared to allow it. “Is this part of the Faerie?” he said.

  “What do you think? What do you feel?”

  “No. It is not part of the Faerie.”

  “You are right. This is a beautiful spot, but it is not part of the Faerie. We are just beyond the village of Petersham, a place nestled in a curve of the Thames to the west of London. Do you feel it? The closeness of the river?”

  She waited, and after a moment he gave a single nod.

  Noah—he knew that in this guise she was Eaving, but somehow he could only regard her as Noah, and knew that name was, in its own right, as magical as Eaving—smiled, pleased. “See this path,” she said. “Is it not particularly lovely?”

  He looked down the path, studying it. It was made of well-packed gravel, and very long and straight. To either side grew small, immature trees and shrubs amongst the waist-high grass. Weyland thought it had the feel of both man and nature, and because of that had a prettiness that was particularly attractive.

  “This path is what remains of a great driveway,” said Noah. She nodded to her left. “Beyond that hill lies a magnificent house. Once this was its drive. If we walked back for a half a mile we would come to padlocked and rusted iron gates that are five paces wide and eight tall. Some fifteen years ago the people who lived in the house decided to build themselves a new drive, a new approach to the house, and this new drive winds, manicured and tamed, some three or four miles to the west of us. This drive has been left to do as it willed.”

  “Why show this to me?”

  “Because this is a beautiful place to me, and because at the end of this drive, hidden among the grasses and trees, is a small gatehouse, gone to ruin—or gone back to the earth—as has this drive. I want to take you there.”

  “Why?”

  “To heal wounds.”

  “What wounds?”

  She put a hand on his chest. “We all have accumulated wounds, Weyland. All need to be healed.”

  “Noah…Noah…”

  “Come with me, Weyland.” Taking his hand once more, she led him down the overgrown driveway.

  The gatehouse was a simple structure. Brick-walled and built on the octagonal, it had but one room, open to the elements now that the glass had been removed from its seven windows,
and the door taken off to more useful purposes.

  “See,” said Noah, halting with Weyland in the open doorway and looking at the leaves and dried grasses scattered over the tiled floor. “It has many walls, and many openings, but it is no labyrinth, no Game, no Idyll. It is a simple and good-hearted structure, with no traps, sitting warm and forgotten by mankind. This is a good place.”

  “For what?”

  “For healing my heart, and yours,” she said, and came to him, and kissed him, and drew him inside the gatehouse.

  Later, as they lay entwined, Weyland thought he could perhaps feel the faintest of thrums vibrating through the tiles on the floor. Perhaps it was the worms, disturbed by his and Noah’s recent lovemaking. Perhaps it was just his imagination; perhaps just wanting.

  And perhaps there was something beneath him that he could truly feel, lying here, on tile, above earth, a goddess in his arms. Either Noah, or perhaps his short trip into the Realm of the Faerie, had woken something hitherto unknown in him.

  Already languid in the aftermath of lovemaking, Weyland relaxed even further, drifting into a semi-dreamlike state. Noah lay with her back pressed against his chest and belly, warm, her own chest gently rising and falling within the circle of his arms.

  “Weyland,” she said, very softly.

  “Hmmm?”

  She turned within his arms. “Do you know,” she said, a note of wonder in her voice, “that you are the only man I have shared a bed and a house with who has ever treated me with even a modicum of respect and of friendship?” She paused, and when she resumed speaking laughter had replaced the wonder in her tone. “I speak, of course, of that time after you tore that damn imp from my body.”

  He did not reply for a minute or two, and when he did his voice was heavy with regret. “I wish I had not done that. I wish…” I wish I had thought sooner that friendship and respect would win more from you than pain and terror.

  “We all wish,” she said softly, “and yet all wishes ever achieve is to expose our sorrows.”

  Again, a silence, then Weyland spoke.

  “Do you know,” he said, the fingers of one hand very gently stroking her shoulder, “that you are the first woman I have ever liked? It is a strange feeling, this liking.”

  Her mouth twitched. “I have made Asterion ‘like’,” she said. “I am a witch indeed!”

  Twenty-three

  Idol Lane, London

  NOAH SPEAKS

  There was a corner turned that day. I finally decided I could trust Weyland, and I finally decided I could trust myself. I had stepped down the right path, even if it was a strange, sometimes frightening, and totally unknowable one.

  I learned also, however, that Weyland had hidden depths. That somehow he also had the Faerie in him, and that likely it had come from his strange father. A bull? Truly? Or had it been a god disguised as a bull, which would explain why Asterion’s mother had been so severely smitten? (I mean, a bull?) The heavens alone knew how much those impractical Aegean gods liked to cavort about in animal form, seducing women here and there.

  I also decided, finally, that the Troy Game was, in all likelihood, far more malevolent than Asterion had ever been. We had all been trapped by it, deluded into thinking that it would defend us and be some great protective amulet from all manner of evil.

  Instead, the Game was all manner of evil, and the land’s alliance with it had been a sad mistake, and one we might yet all live to regret.

  Still further, I learned something more from that day, but it took a few weeks for the lesson to sink in.

  I learned that going to Weyland, opening myself to him, had been no mistake. It had been something that I had needed to do.

  It had been the right thing to do.

  Three weeks after we had made love in the gatehouse in Petersham, I realised I was carrying his child. I realised not through any physical symptoms, but because, unlike my experience with Catling, I was able to communicate with the growing life within me. One day, a day so extraordinary I shall never forget it, the new soul reached out to me, and spoke.

  A daughter.

  I wept. I wept for joy, and for all the pain I knew I would cause to those I loved, because suddenly my path opened up before me with an intense clarity that left me reeling, and because, finally, I would have my daughter.

  Not she who I had lost as Cornelia—I knew and accepted now that she would never come back to me—but a daughter conceived with a man I loved.

  That shocked me. I think I must have loved Weyland for months, but had never dared admit it to myself.

  Weyland, Weyland, what are we doing? Why can’t we stop? Why can’t we stop?

  I was a goddess, I was Eaving, and I understood from the very depths of my soul that I did not ever conceive by accident or whim, but because it was something I wanted.

  And I only ever wanted to conceive with a man I loved.

  For the first time in three thousand years I felt at peace, and it was a wonderful place to be.

  Two days after I realised I was pregnant I found my way out of the Idyll by myself for the first time. This had little to do with my approaching maternity, and everything to do with my growing skills in the way of the labyrinth.

  Weyland watched me, a little concerned, but proud also. Pride—not satisfaction.

  That made me happy, but I did not yet tell him of my pregnancy. For the time being I wanted to enjoy it for myself.

  “Noah the mother,” I murmured to myself that evening.

  Noah the destroyer, for that was the only way I could ever protect my daughter, and the land.

  Part Eight

  DARKWITCH RISING

  London, 1939

  Jack shook the king’s hand. “Why are you back?” George VI smiled sadly. “I loved Noah. Why else?”

  Skelton looked about. “Is she here? Is she upstairs somewhere, cavorting with Weyland?”

  The Lord of the Faerie took Skelton’s elbow, guiding him through double doors to their right, ignoring his question.

  “We need your aid, Jack,” the Lord of the Faerie said. “Desperately.”

  “We have a problem,” the king said, falling into step besides Skelton.

  “And, naturally,” said Stella, now a step behind the men, her high heels striking sharply against the hard floor, “it involves Noah. When haven’t the entire world’s problems involved her?”

  Skelton glanced over his shoulder at her. Stella sounded exasperated, but nothing more. Apparently her ancient hatred of Cornelia had vanished.

  “Jack.” The Lord of the Faerie drew him to a halt inside the double doors. “How much loyalty do you owe the Troy Game?”

  Skelton looked at the Faerie Lord carefully. “What do you need me to say, Coel?”

  “Would you put Noah before the Game?”

  Skelton lowered his eyes. “Does she remain corrupted?”

  “You have never truly loved her, have you?” said George VI, softly.

  Skelton made a sound of exasperation. He would have said something, but just then came a soft cry. A wail, as if a young girl cried gently.

  He looked into the drawing room of the house, where the Lord of the Faerie had led him.

  There was a huge stone fireplace in the far wall, a fire within, burning brightly.

  And before it, sitting on the carpet with her legs neatly tucked underneath her, was a girl of some sixteen or seventeen years.

  Some part of Skelton’s brain registered that she was lovely, and that she reminded him of Cornelia when first he’d seen her, but his eyes were drawn immediately to her hands and wrists.

  They were held out before her as if tied, and to Skelton’s startled gaze it appeared as if they had been bound with red-hot wire.

  “This is Grace,” said the Lord of the Faerie quietly, “and we love her dearly, even though she is our doom.”

  One

  The Bone House, St Dunstan’s-in-the-East, Idol Lane, London

  NOAH SPEAKS

  It was the ni
ght before Christmas, and Weyland had brought me to the bone house of St Dunstan’s-in-the-East to celebrate. He had decorated the chamber warmly for the Christian celebration: scores of guttering candles among the piles of bones on their shelves; a table set in the clear space at the centre of the chamber and spread with good glass and silverware all entwined with holly and mistletoe; golden silk draped over the chairs set at each end of the table; a skull taken from the trove stacked against the east wall, set squarely in the centre of the table and overflowing with candied fruits.

  Soft music filtered through the bone house. The choir were at song around the altar of St Dunstan’s, the muted sound of their voices riddling through the cracks of the church and monastery walls and all the dark, unknown spaces between; trickling out from the joints of the bones tumbled higgledy-piggledy about the shelves and the outer edges of the chamber.

  Weyland was watching me, trying to gauge my reaction to this interesting spectacle.

  I slid a glance his way from the corner of my eye. “The bone house,” I said. “How sweet. And only you could have thought of it.”

  His eyes narrowed a little, as yet unsure of my reaction.

  “Let me see,” I said, taking a step forward and staring at the scene critically. “This could be a trap set by the Minotaur—perhaps any moment now these bones will rise up and snatch at me. But, no. I think not. Too obvious even for the Minotaur.”

  Another glance his way. He was still watching me carefully.

  “A test,” I said. “Perhaps you wish me to reassemble all these bones to prove my abilities with the labyrinthine enchantments, and the harmonies of the earth and stars. But, no. I think not. That kind of task is best left for the Redeemer, Lord Jesus Christ. He has specifically said, I believe, he wants to do that at His second coming. I wouldn’t want to pre-empt Him.”

  Another glance, and I thought I saw the corner of Weyland’s mouth twitch.