Darkwitch Rising

by Sara Douglass

  And with that, I left him to his dreams.

  I had one final task that night. I called to me Gog and Magog, and the water sprites who tumbled joyfully amid the raging torrent under London Bridge. I spoke long and seriously to them, and, eventually, all nodded—the giants reluctantly, the sprites with the most marvellous joy.

  Mischief was about.

  I returned to Weyland, and with him went back to the house in Idol Lane.

  We sat at the table in the kitchen, a table around which so much had happened and so much had grown, and we waited for the following night.

  While we waited, Weyland talked. He did not stop for almost twenty-four hours, and he talked of nothing but the darkcraft.

  Fifteen

  London

  Weyland and Noah left the house at dusk the next day. They stood outside for a moment, close together, looking up at the house.

  “For the house,” said Weyland, “I care nothing. But what of the Idyll?”

  “Whatever happens,” said Noah, “the Idyll will survive. We may need to build ourselves some new steps, but the Idyll will survive.”

  He lowered his gaze from the house to her face. “Are you ready?”

  Noah gave a wan smile. “No. I feel sick to the stomach at what I must do. But do it I will. I am sick of dancing to the Game’s tune. Now I will construct the dancing floor, Weyland, and fashion it to my own needs.”

  “Catling is about,” he said. “I can sense her.”

  “Catling is all about,” said Noah. “She is under our feet and in the air that we breathe.”

  Weyland grasped her hand in his. “Noah, be careful.”

  She squeezed his hand. “I have you, and all of the Faerie with me. How can I fail?”

  Weyland had opened his mouth to reply, but before he could get out the first word there came a sharp and commanding step from the Tower Street end of Idol Lane.

  Weyland and Noah turned to look.

  And stiffened, their interlocked hands now tight, their faces guarded.

  It was Ringwalker.

  The Lord of the Faerie cradled the baby Grace in his arms, speaking soothing words to her, and carried her into the Realm of the Faerie. The woman who had once been called Jane, and who was now known simply as the Caroller, met him at the foot of The Naked.

  “It is Grace!” the Caroller said, raising her eyes to the Lord of the Faerie’s face.

  He gave a wry smile. “We are to babysit.”

  Then the Caroller saw the ribbons about the baby’s limbs. “Dear gods, I can understand that Noah might want to secrete the bands within the Faerie, but Weyland?”

  “He agreed, and thus undermined every notion I had formed of him. The world is turning into a strange place, my love.”

  “What is Noah planning?” the Caroller asked.

  The Lord of the Faerie told her, and the Caroller shuddered. “Catling will eat her,” she said.

  “Then we must pray for her, and pray that either Noah, or Weyland, may overcome Catling.”

  The Caroller gave a small shake of her head. “They both have the darkcraft within them. She will eat them. That is her nature!”

  The Lord of the Faerie went white. “What can we do? We can’t just stand here and—”

  “Hold the baby?” The Caroller laughed, the sound a lilting reflection of the Ancient Carol. “I think that is precisely what we should do. I think Grace may be the only thing that may save Noah.” She paused. “And Weyland besides, should we wish.”

  Ringwalker walked slowly down the laneway towards where Weyland and Noah stood. He walked in his mortal form, as Louis de Silva, but there was no mistaking who and what he was, for power—and anger—radiated from him as if he burned with the heat of the sun.

  “I wish I had never entered the cursed city of Mesopotama,” he said. “I wish I had never set eyes on you. I wish I had never—”

  “Loved me?” Noah said. “I am sorry, too, Ringwalker, that you left it this long.”

  The words stopped, and they stared at each other.

  “You were both doomed, always,” said Weyland. “Do not now blame each other for it.”

  “Do not dare to—” Ringwalker began.

  “Weyland is right,” Noah said. “We were always doomed. The Troy Game could construct many things, and manipulate more, but it has no idea of love, does it? Whatever you and I might have been, Ringwalker, was murdered at the start by the Game.”

  There were tears in her eyes as she finished, and it seemed to drain Ringwalker’s anger. “Noah, I am sorry. What can I do? You and I must…we must…’

  “We must do many things,” Noah said, “but we are going to have to do them without those bonds of love which once we thought awaited us. I hope that we will walk on parallel paths, but I don’t think our paths will ever converge. Not now.”

  Ringwalker’s eyes moved to Weyland. “Did you plan this?”

  Weyland gave a grunt of humourless laughter. “I planned to use her, Ringwalker. I planned to destroy you through her, and then obliterate her. I planned to laugh in the doing. But what has this life wrought for any of us, save to demolish all ambitions and turn all plans into dust.” He paused. “Ringwalker, the prize is not Noah, not for either of us.”

  Ringwalker cocked an eyebrow, his face set and hard.

  “It is life,” Weyland said. “Freedom from the Troy Game. Its death is the only way any of us can live. Its death is most assuredly the only way any of us can live freely.”

  “He’s right,” Noah said softly.

  Ringwalker was looking back at Noah. “You need me for that.” He strode the distance between them, and took her chin roughly in one hand.

  Weyland made to move, but Noah gestured to him to stay where he was.

  “I know that,” she said. She did not move to free herself from Ringwalker’s grasp.

  “You and I,” Ringwalker said, giving her chin a little shake, “are the Kingman and the Mistress of the Labyrinth. We control the Troy Game—”

  To one side Weyland gave a short, derisory laugh.

  Ringwalker’s face tightened. “We control the—”

  “No, we don’t,” Noah said. “It thinks to control us.”

  Ringwalker let Noah’s chin go. “You want to destroy it.”

  Noah gave a small nod.

  “You won’t succeed.”

  “Not without you,” she said.

  Suddenly all of Ringwalker’s anger and hurt boiled to the surface. “Why plead for me,” he spat at her, “when you have him?”

  And with that, and with a final look of such fury that Noah had to avert her eyes, Ringwalker vanished.

  They walked down Idol Lane to Thames Street, then walked west until they reached Pudding Lane just before Fish Street Hill.

  There they stopped, both peering through the gathering darkness up the lane.

  “Why here?” said Weyland.

  “Because every dance must start somewhere,” said Noah, and she walked into the darkness.

  The moment she vanished into the gloom of Pudding Lane, water sprites seethed up from the Thames, clambering over the wharves and docks that lined the river. There they lingered but a moment, taking only enough time to orientate themselves, before they scuttled forwards and vanished into the myriad alleyways connecting the city with its wharves.

  In the Guildhall, Gog and Magog stirred, and sighed, and took up spear and sword.

  Sixteen

  London

  Partway up Pudding Lane stood a large house owned by a merchant supplier called Thomas Farriner. He rose during the night to empty his bladder, then, driven by some presentiment, walked through the house, checking each of his ovens and hearths in turn.

  All were safe, either covered with ceramic curfews or with their coals smothered under a thick layer of ash. He paused for the longest time before the baking oven, staring at it, unable to shake off his foreboding.

  The baking oven stared back at him, cool and innocent.

  Far
riner chewed his lower lip, checked for the fourth time that the door to the oven was tightly closed, then walked yet one more time about his house, this time checking not only the hearths and ovens, but that all windows were tightly shuttered against draughts.

  All was well.

  Finally, Farriner went back to bed, lying down beside his wife, and closing his eyes.

  He was unable to sleep.

  Yet, even so, Farriner did not hear the soft footfall of the goddess within his house, and did not hear her open the baking oven’s door, and whisper into it words of power and darkcraft.

  The merchant stirred only a half hour later, when the flames had already taken hold, and he heard their vicious crackle sweeping up the stairs.

  He leapt to his feet, and raced to the head of the stairs.

  The entire lower half of the house was encased in flames. As he stood, staring, too shocked and appalled for the moment to move, he heard the dull thud of an explosion in his cellar as tubs of tar and of fine brandy exploded.

  “Get your wife,” said a soft voice in his ear, “and your children and maidservants, and escape as quickly as you may through the attic window into your neighbour’s house. There, hasten to raise the alarum, and tell your neighbours to gather their goods, and flee.”

  Farriner stared at the lovely woman standing at his elbow. He thought she might be an angel, or perhaps—far more likely—a temptress risen with the flames from hell.

  “Why?” he whispered. “Why have you done this?”

  “To level the dancing floor,” she replied, “and to rebuild it to my needs. Now, go! Go, for the Death Crone creeps up your stairwell in those flames.”

  With that, Farriner fled, screaming to his wife and children and servants.

  In later weeks, when Parliament convened an inquiry into the fire, Farriner only told them that he had risen during the night to check the ovens and hearths.

  He did not mention the woman, or what she had said to him, for he well understood that, in the hysteria and the search for a scapegoat following the Great Destruction, there were some things better left unsaid.

  Over the next twenty-four hours Noah and Weyland moved slowly through the city. Noah was exhausted, and Weyland stayed close by her side. He did all he could to support her, but he could not help her, for Noah used all three aspects of her power to control the flames which now ravaged through the eastern portion of London: her darkcraft to fuel the flames, and to speed the unnatural easterly wind that fanned them; her powers as Mistress of the Labyrinth to dictate what path the flames must take; and her powers as Eaving, goddess of the waters, to slow the flames enough that citizens had time to escape from their homes, not merely with their lives, but with all their belongings as well.

  London was tinder-dry. Its buildings were largely constructed of timber and lathe plaster, and its cellars—particularly along the waterfront—were packed with casks of flammable materials: pitch, spirits, canvas, hemp and rope. By rights the city should have exploded.

  That it didn’t, and that over the three days that the fire crept slowly westwards only six people lost their lives, was due almost solely to Noah’s efforts in keeping it constrained, and secondly to Gog and Magog’s unceasing efforts to whisper into people’s minds, to encourage them to leave, and to herd them ever forward into safer fields.

  The Great Fire was constrained, but not containable.

  As Noah and Gog and Magog fought to save lives, the thousands of water sprites who had crept into the city at the start of the fire worked tirelessly (and with the utmost joy, for this was mischief such as they adored) to make sure no one could put the fire out.

  London had burned on many occasions, and thus the city was well prepared for that moment when first the alarum was screamed into the night.

  The Lord Mayor arrived on the scene and, while he privately commented to a friend that he thought a woman might piss the fire out, he nonetheless made sure the fire watches were roused and the fire engines summoned. Both watches and engines duly arrived, bucket brigades hastily set up, and fire engines—marvellous contraptions of hand-held pumps and reservoirs—carried with much huffing and puffing up stairs to attack the fire from above.

  But, unseen by all those who thronged the streets—either fleeing or crowding about to gawp—water sprites wriggled everywhere. Their tiny, deft, sharp fingers sprang leaks in the leather buckets and pushed wads of sodden tobacco into the machinations of the fire engines so that they stopped. Others wormed their way into the city’s reservoirs and turned the cocks, so that all supplies of emergency water to the city were halted.

  When, in desperation, the fire watches started to pull down buildings in order to create firebreaks, the water sprites took great lungfuls of air, and blew fireballs into the sky so that fire rained down behind the firebreaks.

  The fire spread, slowly, inexorably, west and north-westwards, consuming almost the entire part of the old city, and setting the dead in the city churchyards to flaming like candles. Gradually, the fire moved in a pincer movement towards the cathedral of St Paul’s.

  On the third day, Tuesday, as the crackling flames drew near to the cathedral, Catling roused, and hissed.

  Then she picked up her length of red wool, and twisted it through her fingers.

  Since the start of the fire, St Dunstan’s-in-the-East had been guarded by the scholars of Westminster School, led by their dean, John Dolben. Tense and wary, they were nonetheless relieved as the fire spread ever westwards, away from the ancient church.

  On Tuesday morning, flames crept eastwards, against the prevailing wind, directly for Idol Lane. It was as if some malevolent hand directed them, for surely no natural fire could move thus.

  Nothing that the watch at St Dunstan’s could do managed to stay the flames. They were so concentrated in one snapping, frenzied river of fury which was so inexplicably purposeful that Dolben finally ordered the scholars to stand back. It was better to watch the ancient church burn than to lose lives.

  They gathered in the churchyard, sombre youths and men, their faces drained and smudged with soot, as that strange river of fire roared into Idol Lane.

  “God have mercy on all of us,” muttered Dolben, “for I fear the Devil himself directs that fire.”

  The fire had flowed to a point just north of the church. Then, as all watched, it suddenly, violently, inexplicably, exploded eastwards.

  Directly into Weyland Orr’s house.

  The house detonated with such a frightful roar that the blast threw Dolben and his scholars off their feet—at least five of the scholars fractured limbs or skulls as they impacted on headstones. By the time Dolben gained his feet, shaking his head clear of the effects of the blast, Orr’s house had vanished inside a tower of flame.

  The next instant, the top of the house erupted as if it were a volcano. Flames and molten stone burst over the entire area, and Dolben threw himself once more to the ground, sure that this time he would be killed.

  And yet once again not only he, but all his charges, survived.

  Unbelievingly, Dolben raised his face out of the hot earth.

  Before him Orr’s house had vanished, as had the bone house attached to it.

  And there was a small lick of flame peeking almost apologetically out of the timber struts of the church spire.

  “To work!” screamed Dolben as he stumbled in his haste to rise to his feet. “To work!”

  Eight hours later, the spire had collapsed into crumbled ruins and some of the outer buildings had been destroyed, but the main body of St Dunstan’s-in-the-East had been saved.

  Whatever malevolence had sent that hell-driven river of flame into Idol Lane had apparently found something else to play with.

  Ariadne stood atop the White Tower, as she had for three days and nights, wrapped in concealing magic, watching as the fire spread eastwards. She was clothed in her ancient Minoan finery, her red skirts and black hair whipping about her in the wind. The flames cast rosy shadows on her white skin
, and reflected the bright fear in her eyes. “Ye gods, Noah,” she whispered, “be wary!”

  Weyland felt it first. A tug. Tiny, yet insistent.

  They were standing on one side of Ludgate Hill, just below St Paul’s, watching the fire march relentlessly forward. Noah was concentrating, her body shaking with the effort, trying to hold back the flames so that the hordes of people darting about like ants had time to get out of the way, and save their precious belongings. Both Noah and Weyland were masked in magic, their forms hidden by the hot shadows thrown forwards by the fire.

  “Noah,” he said, and instinctively grabbed her shoulders.

  It was only just in time.

  The next instant Noah wailed as she felt something grab within her belly, and then both she and Weyland were hauled forwards, through the crowds, dragged forwards, forwards, forwards, up Ludgate Hill and through the open western doors of St Paul’s.

  Catling had called.

  Seventeen

  St Paul’s Cathedral, London

  “Well met!” the little girl seethed as Noah and Weyland finally came to a halt before her. She’d pulled them to the altar where, in the rosy glow cast through the stained glass windows of the cathedral by the approaching fire, Noah stood only because Weyland had her by the shoulders.

  Otherwise, exhausted, and so totally drained emotionally, physically and magically, Noah would have slumped to the floor.

  “You think yourself so clever,” said Catling. She was still in the form that Noah had last seen her, a beautiful black-curled little girl with porcelain skin and dark blue eyes, garbed in a black dress with a tight bodice and a full skirt that rustled about her like the flames in the streets outside.

  “You think to outwit me,” the girl continued, and took a step towards Weyland and Noah.

  Her eyes, blue a moment before, now reflected red and angry with the light filtering through the windows.