Druids Sword (15 page)

Through the soles of his bare feet he could feel the forest—feel the
land
—as a thrumming warmth, almost a breathing, caring curiosity. It would be a witness, too.

Tonight he would gain familiarity and completeness.

Wisdom, too, he hoped.

And eyes, with which to see.

Walter stood behind the altar. Jack could see that he was tense and fearful. His shoulders were rigid, his eyes glittered, he held his arms stiffly at his side.

“Hello, Walter,” Jack said.

Walter inclined his head.

“Can you do this, Walter?” Jack said. “Will you let go the Stag God entirely into my care? Do you
dare?
”

Something happened in Walter’s face. A deep emotion flittered over it. Jack thought for a moment it was fear, then remembered how the Lord of the Faerie—when Charles II—had told him that James (as Walter had been named in that former life) had been deeply excited at his return to England after all his years in exile, however much he professed a devotion to Christ, and Jack realised it was excitement he could see in Walter’s face now.

Whatever Walter said, the core of his being still vibrated to the ancient rituals.

“Do
you
dare, Jack?” Walter said, and Jack grinned.

He glanced down at the top of the stump and saw what Walter had laid out there.

A surgical scalpel. Three razor-edged blades. Gauze swabs.

The mortar and pestle, and the dirt, leaves and berries within the bowl of the mortar.

“Shall we begin?” Walter asked, and Jack jerked his eyes back to the man’s face.

“Do you remember, Walter, how once we battled it out in the heart of the labyrinth atop Og’s Hill?”

“How could I forget? I battled to save the land from you and your foreign magic. You battled to save your labyrinth. And you broke my spine.”

“How stupid we were,” Jack said softly, “when all the time we should have been standing here.”

Walter moved away a little, fiddling with the instruments he’d laid out. “Let’s get this done,” he said, “and then let me walk away.”

Jack gave a terse nod, then turned about—and jumped slightly in startlement. While he and Walter had been speaking, the Lord of the Faerie had moved about silently and now stood directly facing Jack.

“How at home are you with the Ringwalk, Jack?” the Lord of the Faerie said.

“I feel it as if it is my own flesh,” Jack replied.

“Really?” said the Lord of the Faerie. “
Really?
”

I
followed. Of course I did. I knew something was happening tonight, and I knew it involved Jack, and I knew also that Harry was somehow concerned. I knew that Harry and Jack had been planning Jack’s marking, together with Walter. I knew that my parents knew something about it, but they did not speak of it to me. I’d never felt more the “outsider” than I had over the past week as I watched the small glances, and the occasional significant words, pass to and fro. It wasn’t much said or done, but there was enough.

Oh, gods, I so much wanted to be a part of something, to not be continually pushed to the outer.

To
share.

I was also terrified of what might be about to happen. I was so unsure of Jack, and of the desperately fine balance he could (almost certainly
would)
upset, that this sense of something momentous happening was enough to set my nerves on edge.

As well, over the past three nights Catling had sat grinning with such apparent satisfaction from her shadowy corner of my bedroom that I was certain something terrible was imminent.

So, while my mother was out with her Sisters, and my father had taken his shift atop the Savoy on ARP duty (earlier in the year he had volunteered as a warden), I had sat in our apartment feeling such an ominous weight of dread about my shoulders that I could no longer bear it.

I used my Darkcraft.

I rarely touched it, but tonight I was prepared to risk using it. To be honest, I think I might have torn my hair out if I’d been forced to use the trains or buses to get to Epping Forest (I had no doubt that Jack’s marking would take place there), not to mention the walk I’d then be forced to take to reach Faerie Hill Manor once I’d arrived at either train station or bus stop. I did not drive, so I could not take one of my father’s cars.

So I used the Darkcraft. I sat on my bed in our apartment, wearing the first thing I’d found to throw about me, and allowed the Darkcraft to well up and consume me.

It was terrifying, if only because I thought Catling might reach out and bite. But she let me be, and I surrendered to the Darkcraft, closing my eyes against its power…

And opened them on the terrace of Faerie Hill Manor to find myself looking at Jack’s back as he stood on the terrace. I knew he’d intuited my presence, and so I spoke, and he came over and sat down to talk to me.

I was more unnerved than ever, because I could feel his deep unease. He had, of course, wanted to know why I was there…I could hardly tell him it was because I was morbidly curious about this marking, and so I rattled on senselessly about my mother and how I feared he was going to upset things and…

Oh dear. I must have come across like a stupid young girl. I
knew
I’d come across as a stupid young girl because Jack had snapped at me, and all I’d
wanted to do was to run away, to cease to exist, because he was so angry at me, and I was so mortified.

Then he’d been apologetic (and appeared as if he meant it, too), and from then on the conversation had oscillated between fear and candour and suspicion. I was furious with myself for allowing him to realise I’d been trained as a Mistress of the Labyrinth; he was furious to discover it.

And, I think, disappointed. He must have thought I was a pathetic Mistress of the Labyrinth.

I don’t know why I told him about Catling sitting with me at night. I’d told no one for hundreds of years—why him? Jack had a terrible habit of just sitting and watching me from behind the smoke dribbling from his cigarette, and words seemed to tumble from my mouth.

Anything, to fill the silence.

We’d gone back inside eventually, and Harry, just arrived back from whatever he’d been doing in the Faerie, professed some surprise at my presence. He’d told me to spend the night, and that he’d have me driven back to the Savoy in the morning, and then he and Jack had, separately, left.

I waited ten minutes after Jack had left, then followed.

I followed Jack, rather than Harry. Harry had vanished from my perception, but I could sense Jack’s movements through the forest, although I don’t know what power I used to do so. It was hardly as if I had any natural connection with the forest, or with Jack himself, but once I left Faerie Hill Manor I turned about slowly in the driveway…and I felt a glimmer of Jack’s movement to my north.

And so I trailed him. Very quietly, using every ounce of natural and magical quiet I could (although I was very circumspect in using my Darkcraft).

The forest was very dark and, for me, very unknowable. I rarely spent much time here at all. I’d been to Faerie Hill Manor a handful of times in the past few years, and I don’t think I’d ever walked in the forest itself. As soon as I stepped beneath the trees and felt the “foreignness” of the forest, its deep, mystical power, I realised how much of my life had been spent tucked away in some quiet room in whatever house or apartment my parents had at the time. I’d been so sheltered (by both parents, although of course my mother had been the better at it) that I’d experienced very little of the outside world, let alone the Faerie magic of a place like Epping Forest.

I hadn’t even been back to the Faerie since I was a baby. I think everyone had thought it might be unwise. Think of all the damage that Catling might wreak there through me.

I’d spent my life huddled in rooms, as if I were a prisoner.

Yet now, here I was,
creeping
through a forest which seemed to watch every movement I made.

I was more unnerved than ever, but paradoxically more determined. I would
not
be frightened. I had the Darkcraft. I could keep silent. Harry and Jack would never know I was following them.

I could
participate,
even if silently and unknowably, rather than be told six weeks after the event.

The journey through Epping Forest in Jack’s trail took about half an hour, I suppose. We were heading north towards the town of Epping, and I did not know if Jack meant to go all the way to the town, or if he had a destination somewhere closer.

Somewhere closer, as it turned out.

I became aware eventually that he’d stopped moving, that he’d
arrived
at wherever he needed to be, and my own movements became far more
cautious. I crept as best I could, every nerve straining for danger or chance of discovery, my Darkcraft simmering, begging to be allowed full rein.

Although the trees were well spaced, I had the sense that they were crowding about me,
watching
me as I started up the incline of a hill that itself seemed to be a living, breathing entity. I could see a cleared space at the top of the hill, lit with the faint luminescence of magic, and my movements slowed even further. I inched forward, careful silent step by careful silent step, taking cover behind every tree, every shrub, until I worked my way to the eastern edge of the clearing, and found myself a massive beech tree behind which to crouch. There was a small crab apple just to one side of it that was more shrub than tree, and it enabled me to peer from behind the beech without chance of discovery.

To be frank, I have no idea what I was expecting, but the group that met my eyes was quite extraordinary. Harry, I was not surprised to see, but I had so rarely seen him in his existence as the Lord of the Faerie that I stared at him for long minutes. Staid Walter Herne was standing half-naked by a large stump, looking as if he wanted to be anywhere but. Malcolm lurked on the other side of the clearing with blue paint smeared all over his face, looking like something from a history book; his appearance did not surprise me at all, but his presence did make me feel uncomfortable. Then Jack…Jack, standing before the Lord of the Faerie, dressed only in his trousers.

My eyes lingered on Jack, but eventually returned to the Lord of the Faerie. I’d known Harry all my life—but I barely knew the Lord of the Faerie. The Lord of the Faerie existed only in the Faerie, where I’d spent so little time, and Harry had been…well,
Harry had been Harry whenever he appeared in this world, and him I knew quite well.

Perhaps a little too well.

A few years ago we’d been lovers, briefly. It had been Harry’s idea—at least he’d been the one to suggest the liaison—and I’d acquiesced out of loneliness, curiosity, and a deep sense of needing to do something other than be Catling’s victim.

It had not been a particular success. It had taken exactly one night to sate whatever curiosity I’d had (Harry had been my first, and thus far, only lover), and I’d sensed very quickly that Harry’s heart was not in it. He’d been kind, thoughtful, but, in the end, slightly distracted. I’d asked him why he’d wanted to do this: why, when all knew full well he had heart only for Stella, he’d decided to take me as a lover, and he’d shrugged and said only, “I was trying to help”, which was no damned help at all.

So while I knew Harry reasonably intimately, during my adult life I’d never seen much of the Lord of the Faerie and, crouching behind the beech and peering through the crab apple, I suddenly wished it had been the Lord of the Faerie who had taken me as a lover, and not Harry. The Lord of the Faerie had such vibrancy, such vigour, such
authority,
that I felt a moment’s envy for what Stella enjoyed, and I had not.

Walter was fidgeting with something on the stump now—I could not see what—but Jack and the Lord of the Faerie appeared to be engaged in a brief but intense discussion. The Lord of the Faerie had his hand on Jack’s shoulder, then abruptly he shifted it into Jack’s hair, grabbing at it and giving Jack’s head a little shake. It looked almost as if the Lord of the Faerie was trying either to ascertain Jack’s agreement for whatever was about to happen, or was trying to talk him out of it.

I squirmed about so that I was sitting comfortably—I didn’t want to be struck with a sudden and catastrophic cramp if I got too cold and stiff—and peered even more closely through the crab-apple.

Walter had stilled now, and was looking intently at the Lord of the Faerie.

Everyone’s
attention was on the Lord of the Faerie. Even Malcolm on the other side of the clearing appeared to be transfixed by him.

Then Jack gave a small nod, and some of the tension dissipated.

“You are
sure,
Jack?” I heard the Lord of the Faerie say, and Jack nodded again.

“This can’t be undone.”

“I know,” Jack said.

The Lord of the Faerie gave a small, tight smile, looked at Walter, and inclined his head.

Then, so suddenly I almost gasped with the shock, the Lord of the Faerie used his hand buried amid Jack’s hair to push Jack face down over the stump, his chest centred on its top. I am sure Jack wasn’t expecting that, for he gave an audible gasp, and for an instant tensed as if he wanted to struggle.

Then he relaxed, although I could see it took a conscious effort.

My heart was thumping. Suddenly that stump no longer looked like a stump, but an altar, and Jack its sacrifice.

Walter lifted a hand, and let it rest flat-palmed between Jack’s shoulder blades.

I could see Jack’s muscles tense again, even from my distance.

With his other hand Walter lifted something from the stump to Jack’s side. It was shiny but other than that I could not quite make it out.

Then Walter spoke, and what he said was so strange I assumed I had not heard aright.

“I remember,” he said. “I remember it all.”

I stared at him, frowning, and then realised that somehow the dynamics within the group had changed. No one had moved—the Lord of the Faerie and Walter still stood either side of the stump with Jack pushed face first atop it, and Malcolm still stood to the far side of the clearing—but
something
had changed.

Everyone, Jack included, was focussed on something to the south of the clearing.

I looked, and my heart felt as if it had stopped.

A ghostly white stag with blood-red antlers had stepped forth from the forest into the clearing. I wasn’t so silly or so protected that I had no idea who it was. It was the ghost of Og, he who had been the god of the forests before Jack assumed that mantle.

And ghost surely, because the creature was so ethereal that I felt a goodly gust of wind would blow him away entirely.

Welcome, friend,
I heard—
felt
—the Lord of the Faerie say.

I felt Jack shudder (I have no idea how), and my eyes flew back to him.

Walter smiled, cold and terrible.

His right hand, that which held the shiny instrument, moved and I saw that he held a scalpel.

I felt sick. More than anything I wanted to edge back from the clearing, and fade away into the forest, but I knew that if I made a single movement everyone would become aware of my presence.

And that would be dangerous. I understood that so clearly that I felt as if a terrible, icy hand was squeezing at my stomach.

If they realised my presence now they’d be worse than furious.

I shouldn’t have come. I shouldn’t be here. This wasn’t for me. This was some nightmarish, arcane
ritual in which I had no place. For the gods’ sakes, I was Grace, tied to Catling, and I hexed everything I touched.

Walter finally lowered both his eyes and his right hand…

And began to slice into Jack’s flesh.

I jumped. I couldn’t help it. I jumped and the movement shook the crab apple and the leaf litter crackled under my body.

At the same moment that I moved (and created what sounded to me like my own little hurricane of noise), Jack cried out.

It was the most terrible sound I have ever heard. His body twitched, his hands, to either side of the stump, grabbed onto the wood, his head jerked back and he cried out with a haunting, hoarse cry of…oh, gods, it sounded like a man lost. There was pain in it, yes, but there was such an undercurrent of bewilderment, isolation and uncertainty to the cry that I had to momentarily close my eyes.