Druid's Sword

by Sara Douglass

  “Damn it, Jack!” Harry said, now edging forward in his seat. “What do you see!”

  “I have never imagined a Game so complex or farreaching in terms both of power and of physical range,” Jack said. “What we see here is how far the Game extends in and about London, but I suspect it travels further out into the countryside…if the Game makes use of the London Eleanor Crosses, then why not also those extending into Hertfordshire and Northamptonshire? Christ, the White Queen has spent two thousand years building this…its intricacy is unbelievable.”

  “And is that good or is that bad?” said Harry.

  Jack gave a small shrug, but Harry noted with some disquiet the glance he again shared with Grace.

  “It is good insofar as it means that this Game is unbelievably powerful,” Jack said, “but it is bad in that any Kingman or Mistress of the Labyrinth who tries to wield its power…” He broke off, not able to finish.

  “Gods,” whispered Ariadne, “any Kingman or Mistress who tries to work it will be killed!”

  There was a short silence, broken by Weyland. “Of course,” he said. “Has it not been feeding off death for the past eighteen months?”

  “Weyland,” said Jack, “we don’t truly know that the imps were ‘feeding’—”

  “Damn you!” Weyland interjected. “Look!” He rose, moving forward so he could stab down at the map with a rigid forefinger. “What is it that you don’t see? The heart of this new labyrinth lies under old London Bridge. Yes? Then what was the gateway to old London Bridge, eh?”

  Everyone was staring at the map. No one answered.

  “The church of St Magnus the Martyr was the entrance to old London Bridge,” Weyland said, his voice much quieter now. “The road to the bridge literally led under its porch. Noah, how many times have you walked under the porch of St Magnus to get to the bridge to watch the sprites at play? Gods alone know I’ve been under it many, many times.” He paused, taking a deep breath. “The imps left the corpses of the women under the porch of St Magnus, leaving them as close as they could to the heart of the Shadow Game, and tossed the women’s wombs into the Thames to feed the Game. They not only knew what the shadow was, they knew where lay its heart. Please don’t delude yourselves that these murders had nothing to do with the White Queen or her Game. This is a vicious black Game, Jack, and I do not like the idea of my daughter dancing it into existence.”

  Jack felt sick. He did not like the idea of Grace dancing it to her death, either.

  “It is the Danse Macabre,” said Silvius very quietly. “The Dance of Death. No wonder it is strong enough to deal with the Troy Game. What else could?”

  Noah shivered, rubbing her arms. “You can’t dance this, Jack. Nor you, Grace. Why? Why? It will kill you!”

  “We’ll all be dead sooner or later,” said Harry, his voice harsh. “The Faerie is crumbling as we sit here and moan.”

  Jack lit up a cigarette, his hands trembling. He couldn’t believe it. To come this far, to discover the extent of the Shadow Game, and then to learn its true nature.

  A trap. A death trap. For the Troy Game, but also for himself and Grace. No wonder Boudicca had called the White Queen a double-edged sword. No wonder the imps had fed her Game living flesh.

  It would slice their heads off on its return swing.

  He glanced at Grace. She was very pale, but composed, and she smiled very slightly at him when she caught his look.

  “We don’t know it all yet, Jack,” she said. “Perhaps my sister has left us an escape.”

  “But not one that’s apparent here,” said Jack. He drew deeply on his cigarette, then knelt down on one knee by the map, a finger tracing slowly over the outlined paths of the Shadow Game. “I’m torn between admiration for this Game’s construction, and horror at what it actually is.”

  “Jack,” Grace leaned forward, “perhaps we’re not seeing this clearly. Yes, this is a Game of darkness and death, but, dear gods, think of what it is designed to trap! Maybe the Shadow Game is merely a reflection of its prey. Maybe…”

  “All these maybes and perhapses,” said Silvius, “don’t change the fact that this Game will be a nightmare to dance. The power it will generate…no one, not you, not Jack, not Noah or Weyland, not even Ariadne—” he picked up Ariadne’s hand and kissed it as he spoke her name “—could survive the power that will rope out of this Game’s birth.”

  “Silvius is right,” said Ariadne. “The White Queen has used Darkcraft to build this Game. Noah and Grace, who have had the Darkcraft bred within them, are first and foremost Mistresses of the Labyrinth. But their daughter and sister…I think her allegiance is first and foremost to the Darkcraft.”

  “I do not like the sound of that,” said Harry. “I say again, as I have said before, why should we trust her? Even more, now you tell me she has built this death trap, why trust her?”

  Jack stubbed out his cigarette. “Because she is all we have, Harry, and this Shadow Game is all we have to destroy the Troy Game.”

  Harry sat back in his chair, his eyes flat, his expression hard. “She is all we’ve got,” he repeated, “and yet she has never shown herself to us—”

  “That’s not quite right, Harry,” Grace put in. “She has sat at my side all my life and—”

  “And never announced herself!” Harry said. “Curse it, am I the only one here with a suspicious mind? She has done nothing to earn our trust.”

  “She has kept out of Catling’s way,” Grace said quietly, her eyes steady as she regarded Harry, “and she has worked for this land’s freedom. She is our only hope. Harry, I don’t think either Jack or me, or anyone else present in this room, can afford for the moment to ignore what she has done. Jack’s right, the Shadow Game is all we have. It is our only hope. Somehow, we’ll just have to learn how to use it.”

  EIGHT

  The Savoy

  Saturday, 15th March 1941

  Jack felt as if he were caught on a never-ending emotional roller coaster. The elation of discovering the heart of the shadow labyrinth was so closely followed by the horror of realising the power and dark cruelty of the Shadow Game that he had to battle to keep bleak despondency at bay. The group broke up just after lunch, Noah and Weyland returning to the Savoy, Harry and Stella to Faerie Hill Manor, and Ariadne and Silvius to Kensington. By early evening Jack began to feel that he needed to get out of Copt Hall, and away from any discussion of either the Troy Game or the Shadow Game. He also wanted some time alone with Grace, without Malcolm threatening to interrupt. So it was that, as soon as Malcolm had cleared away their supper dishes, Jack suggested to Grace they go dancing.

  “Dancing?” she said, pausing in the act of rising from her chair.

  “You like dancing.”

  She grinned, straightening up and brushing crumbs from her skirt. “That must have explained my complete enjoyment at St Margaret’s parish hall dance.”

  You most certainly enjoyed dancing atop Ambersbury Banks that night, Jack said in her mind, then spoke aloud. “Real dancing. Weyland used to take you dancing in the Savoy. You enjoyed that.”

  “Well…yes, but—”

  “No buts, Grace. I need to get out. Come dancing with me. Let’s get away from Copt Hall, just for one night.”

  She looked at him, and he could read her thoughts—“Dancing” is not getting away from the Game—but after a moment she nodded.

  “Ariadne put a lovely dress into the suitcase of clothes that she brought to Copt Hall,” Grace said. “I can wear that.”

  When, an hour later, Grace met Jack at the foot of the staircase, he had to take a deep breath to quell the sudden emotion surging through his chest.

  The gown she wore—off-the-shoulder ivory silk that hugged her figure and draped softly from the hips to the floor—was lovely, and the fur coat she had folded over one arm and her carefully applied make-up made her look far more sophisticated than he was used to seeing her, but it was Grace’s air of confidence and her overall poise that so affected him
. When he had first met Grace she’d been so lacking in self-assurance, so desperate to fade into the background, that he could never have imagined then how she might grow into the woman who stood before him now.

  She stopped on the final step, one hand resting on the banister, and Jack saw that diamonds glittered about her wrist and up her forearm.

  He held out his hand and, with a slight smile, she stepped down and took it.

  Jack drew the car to a halt on the verge of the road at the top of a hill just north of London. For several minutes they sat there, the only sound the ticking of the cooling motor, looking towards the blacked-out capital.

  “Can you feel it?” Jack finally asked, his voice soft.

  “Yes.” Grace turned her head and looked towards the east. “The Luftwaffe is sending a massive raid tonight. They are not far away. An hour, perhaps.”

  “Do you still want to go?”

  She turned her head to look at him, and in the dark of the car he could not make out her expression. “I am not afraid, Jack.”

  He didn’t reply.

  “Jack…”

  “That Game will kill us, Grace.”

  “You were not afraid to die when you tried to complete the Troy Game with my mother.”

  Now he turned back to her. “I am not afraid for me, but for you. I will not do anything that will harm you, Grace.” He was going to say more, but his voice had thickened during that last sentence, and now Jack swallowed, and silently damned whatever fates had led Grace to this point. What was the White Queen about, to save Grace with one breath, and then send her on the path to inexorable obliteration with the next?

  “We don’t fully understand the White Queen’s Game,” Grace said. “Who knows what is yet to be discovered?”

  Jack gave a short, humourless laugh. “You are so young, to have so much optimism.”

  She smiled, and laid one of her hands over his as it rested on the steering wheel. “I have you, Jack.”

  I have you. Dear gods, he thought, I am as likely to kill her as save her.

  Her hand tightened fractionally over his. “Jack, I am sure there is a way, and I am sure we will find it.”

  “I am so bloody useless. Nothing I do seems to—”

  “Jack, for a man who worked so valiantly to persuade me to go dancing tonight, and who has then driven me to this lonely spot where he has killed the motor, then, yes, I would agree that you are bloody useless. Take me dancing, please.”

  “Grace…”

  “Take me dancing, Jack.”

  He sighed, and started the motor, and Grace returned her hand to her lap.

  As Jack drove, her head turned once more to the eastern skies.

  The Luftwaffe was coming.

  The air raid sirens had sounded by the time Jack and Grace entered the foyer of the Savoy. Nonetheless, the sound of the Savoy’s famous Orpheans still filtered out from the ballroom, and the cloakroom girl took Grace’s coat and Jack’s cap without a murmur.

  “The hotel closed it for the first few weeks of the bombing,” Grace murmured to Jack as they entered the ballroom, “but after a while everyone got so used to the raids, that as far as management is concerned, as long as people remain to dance, then the Orpheans will continue to play.”

  Heads turned as, following the maitre d’hotel, they threaded their way through the tables about the dance floor. Jack wasn’t surprised. Grace looked so beautiful in her gown and with the diamonds glittering up both forearms that he felt privileged to be the one following her to their table.

  As the maitre d’ seated them, and signalled to a waiter to take their drink orders, Jack gave a wry grin. “You look so young and lovely and untouched, Grace. I’m the last man who should be here with you tonight.”

  She grinned. “Big bad Jack. Destroyer of maidens and hopes and dreams. I shall have to keep my wits about me, indeed.”

  He knew she was joking, but even so his stomach turned over in guilt and not a small degree of desperation. “Grace—”

  He was interrupted by the waiter setting down their cocktails.

  “Jack,” she said, before he could resume. “We are here to dance. Please, can we dance?”

  He took a sip of his cocktail, then a more healthy swallow. “I’ll have every man in this ballroom tapping me on the shoulder to—”

  “I only want to dance with you, Jack.”

  There were any number of rejoinders he could have made to that, but as Jack looked at Grace, and saw the certainty and composure in her eyes, he suddenly relaxed. “A dance then.” He rose, took her chair as she stood up and, a soft hand in the small of her back, guided her onto the dance floor. “Do you remember, Grace, how we danced atop Ambersbury Banks?”

  Instantly the mood between them changed. She slid him a glance over her shoulder, and at the same time her movements became much more sinuous—her hips and shoulders gliding along almost as if they were fluid rather than flesh and bone.

  They were on the dance floor now, and she turned into his arms. “I thought you’d never ask,” she said, and she ran her hands up the sleeves of his jacket, pressing briefly each time they passed over one of his kingship bands.

  This is where we belong, Jack, on the dance floor.

  They fitted together so perfectly. Jack remembered that night on Ambersbury Banks, how he’d felt she was his perfect match, and how she’d been unaware not merely of what he’d felt, but of how he had reacted to her.

  Not tonight.

  Tonight Grace was in her element as a Mistress of the Labyrinth, and she was fully aware of how perfectly, how completely, her power slid into his, commingled with his, danced with his.

  The dance floor was crowded, but for these first magical moments, it was as if no one else existed. Jack and Grace danced, not merely as man and woman, but as Kingman and Mistress, spinning harmonies and magic as they turned.

  Every turn they made spun power.

  Every step, every dip of the head, every slide of hip and shoulder twisted harmonies out of the earth and the air and the skies, and cradled them in mystery.

  Jack felt breathless and his heart was thumping so hard in his chest that he was terrified it would disrupt the harmony of their dance.

  He had never known it could feel like this.

  What he had achieved with Genvissa had been a jest. With Noah, a mere shadow of what might be.

  There was a distant thump, at the furthest margins of his consciousness, and Jack realised that bombs were falling on London.

  I hear them too, Grace whispered in his mind, and she moved slightly in his arms, tilting her head to one side, as if searching out the sound of more explosions.

  Jack didn’t worry about them. There was nothing for him at this moment but Grace, in his arms, dancing.

  Twisting power out of the heavens.

  The Orpheans were still playing, but now their music was underscored with the regular thump, thump, thump of bombs.

  “Do you hear?” whispered Grace.

  One of his hands ran the length of her back, tracing out the gentle bumps of her spine. “There is nothing for me but you,” he said.

  She smiled. He couldn’t see it, for her face was tilted away from his, but such was the connection between them at this moment that he knew it. “The bombs, their rhythm, is ringing out the beat of the Orpheans’ music,” she said.

  “Really?” he said, totally uncaring.

  She relaxed against him, and for a long moment, Jack couldn’t think at all.

  “There should be something that we—” Grace began to say, but just then Jack’s rhythm faltered and he tensed against her.

  “Jesus bloody Christ,” he said.

  She tipped back her head, laughing at his cross tone. “What, Jack?”

  “Your mother and father are here as well. I’ve only just seen them.”

  “Well, what of it? They live here, and both like to dance. I’m sure they came down for the same reason we did, to dance a while, and forget in the doing.”
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  Jack was staring across the dance floor. The dancers had thinned out in the past minutes, possibly due to the increasing sound of bombs falling in the distance, and he’d only just seen Noah and Weyland on the far side of the dance floor.

  “Damn it,” he said.

  “Well, then, you shouldn’t have brought me here. Jack, forget them.”

  “Your father is looking murderous.”

  She laughed. “No doubt. His beloved daughter in your arms. Leave it, Jack. The dance floor is big enough for all of us.”

  Slowly he relaxed and slid back into the rhythm of their dance. Once more Grace leaned in against him, her cheek against his shoulder, her body pressing lightly against his.

  “You have better things to worry about than my parents,” she said, and he laughed a little breathlessly.

  “Oh, aye, that I do.”

  They continued dancing for several minutes. Couples slowly left the floor—somewhere in the distance bombs were pounding down; Jack could feel them almost in harmony with his heartbeat—and very soon there were only four or five other couples left on the floor with himself and Grace and her parents.

  “I guess this would be a really bad time,” Grace said eventually, “to tell you that your father and Ariadne are here, too.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Well, look for yourself.”

  Jack glanced in the direction Grace indicated, and groaned. There was his father, debonair in the latest Saville Row dinner suit, dancing with an Ariadne resplendent in a figure-hugging red dress.

  “Doesn’t she ever wear any other colour?” he said.

  Grace laughed. “She knows what suits her. Ah, Jack, relax. Your father has been bringing his dates here for years.”

  “Ariadne is hardly a ‘date’,” Jack murmured. He couldn’t believe that Noah and Weyland and Ariadne and Silvius had decided to come out dancing tonight.

  “Jack,” Grace said slowly, her face now tipped up to his, both her hands in the small of his back, holding him against her, “feel the music, dance with me. Forget the others. Dance with me.”