Druids Sword (43 page)

J
ust after dawn the fire chief came to speak with Noah, Weyland and Jack. “Every entrance down to the basement shelter is buried under tons of rubble,” he said, “and the bomb shattered both the water and sewer mains. I’m afraid the basement is flooding.” After witnessing so much death over the past month the chief was physically tired and utterly emotionally exhausted.

He’d watched his words and how he said them, at the beginning. Now he couldn’t be bothered. He wasn’t unsympathetic to the plight of the two men and woman standing before him (the parents and sweetheart of a girl buried in the nightmare that had once been Coronation Avenue, so he’d been told), but he had no more resources left to even try to summon tact or to wrap the terrible news in vaguenesses.

Noah laid a hand on his arm. “You must be able to do something.” Her words were softly spoken, but underscored with a terrible anxiety.

“We’re doing all we can,” the fire chief said. “I’m sorry. Perhaps it would be better if you went home and waited for news.”

His expression gave no doubt as to what news he thought that would be.

“We’re not leaving,” Noah and Weyland said
together, and the fire chief gave a tired shrug, then walked away.

Weyland turned to Jack. “Surely you can do something!”

Jack was so tired and so overwrought that his eyes filled with tears. “Do you think I haven’t thought of it? That I haven’t racked my mind for every possible thing I could do?
Goddamn
it, Weyland, I can’t shift tons of rubble on my own, either with my hands or with my power, and…and, Jesus Christ! There is
nothing
I can do!”

Noah shook her head slowly from side to side, then sank down to the ground, head lowering into her hands. “Grace…” she whispered. “I can’t reach her. Always before this I could feel her, touch her. Now there’s nothing but darkness.”

None of them could…Under normal circumstances any one of the three could easily have communicated with Grace with their abilities, but now, nothing. They’d tried desperately hard, but nothing.

Like Matilda, they all knew what that meant.

Unlike Matilda, none of them were willing to admit it, even to themselves.

Jack dropped to his haunches beside her. “Noah, we need to talk about what Catling said. What she
threatened!
Ecub and Erith are dead, and Matilda is dying. Grace is suffering gods know what and probably wishes she were dead. Jesus, she is crushed under rubble! She—”

Noah grabbed at one of his hands. “What will hurt worst, Jack? Completing the Troy Game, or watching Grace suffer?”

“May I make a suggestion?”

Jack and Noah looked up. Malcolm had appeared, carrying a tray on which rested a plate of sandwiches and three steaming cups of tea.

“Not now, Malcolm,” Jack said tiredly.

“Yes,
now
,” said Malcolm, setting the tray down on the ground before Jack, Noah and Weyland. “I have been speaking with the king,” he continued, and none of the others wondered at that. Malcolm had the air of someone who would damn well talk to whomever he wished whenever he wished. “George is making an effort to come view the situation for himself. Harry is also on his way. May I suggest that you commit to nothing until both those men arrive? Between them they head the mortal and Faerie worlds, and their input is not only needed, it is required.”

Jack resented Malcolm’s lecturing tone, but knew he spoke sense. “Grace suffers,” he said, and Malcolm rested a hand on his shoulder.

“I know,” he said gently.

“Matilda? Are you still there?”

That was such a silly thing to say, Matilda thought. Where would she go? But, oh, Grace’s voice. So lost and alone. So desperate.

“Yes,” she said, “I am still here.”

“How are you, Matilda?”

Well, I’m buried beneath tons of rubble. My shoulder and arm and abdomen and pelvis are crushed. My legs scream.

“My feet are wet,” Matilda said. It was the least troublesome of her burdens at present.

Grace took in a hiccupy breath, and Matilda realised she was trying hard not to cry.
Oh, how I wish I could touch her. Reach out to her.

“I wish Jack were here,” Grace said.

“Me too,” said Matilda, unable to keep the desperate longing out of her voice.
Oh, to have Jack here one last time. To have him hold me one last time.

“What was he like as a husband, Matilda?”

Matilda thought about laughing, but knew it would crucify her with agony. “He was a trouble,” she said, and there was enough humour in her voice for Grace to give a short, breathless laugh.

“I’m a little scared of him, Matilda.”

Matilda thought about that. “Not of him, you’re not. Of life, maybe.”

There was a long silence. Finally, Grace spoke in a whisper. “What should I do, Matilda?”

“Take a damn risk,” said Matilda. “That’s what I did. I never regretted it.”

“But you lost him.”

“Grace?”

“Yes?”

“I am dying, do you know that?”

Grace began to weep. “Yes.”

“Then hear me out, for I speak with the clarity of death. If you do not take the risk, then you will lose him. If you risk all for him, who knows?”

Grace didn’t answer.

“Grace…risk it all.”

At eleven a.m. the king and his queen arrived. Word had spread around London about the tragedy at Coronation Avenue, and crowds had been gathering since dawn. The site swarmed with rescue workers, but no matter how much rubble they shifted, they had still not even got near the stairwells leading down to the shelter, let alone started to clear them.

The area was cordoned off by police. To one side the Red Cross had erected a tent, and in that tent sat the relatives of those trapped.

Among them waited Noah, Weyland and Jack. Harry and Stella had joined them after dawn, and now all five sat slightly apart from the other ashen-faced relatives. Malcolm was still there, but spent his time helping the Red Cross distribute tea and sandwiches.

Harry brought the news that the Faerie had not been troubled during the previous night’s bombing. Catling had reserved all her ire for Grace, it appeared.

Jack’s face was less ashen than it was grey. “I can’t believe it has all come to this,” he said. “Sitting huddled in a tent by a mountain of rubble, being fed tea and sandwiches by charity workers. I’m sick to death of it. It has to stop somehow. Gods, Stella, where did we go wrong? What did we start?”

Stella sighed. “I don’t want to spend my time revisiting the sins of the past, Jack. Brutus and Genvissa simply don’t matter any more. I’m just grateful that now it isn’t my decision.”

Jack was about to say something more, but just then Harry looked out the tent flap at a convoy of cars arriving and straightened from where he was leaning against a table. “George is here,” he said. “Thank the gods.”

They all rose to their feet, huddling together but staying in the tent as the other relatives and members of the Red Cross went outside to watch the king and queen.

“He’ll come in to see us,” said Harry. “He knows we’re here. Wait.”

Matilda wished she could die. Her pain was growing too intense for her to ignore, or wish away, or to be able to concentrate on thinking of something else. To make matters worse, icy water was creeping slowly up her body. The coldness intensified and clarified the pain, and Matilda wondered if Catling had fated her to die, not from her crushing injuries, but from a slow drowning.

She thought this very likely. It would be just what Catling would do. The effect on Matilda was nothing—the effect it would have on Grace was
everything. For hours Grace had tried all she could, tried to summon every particle of power she had, in order to help Matilda.

Grace had not been able to achieve anything. She was so terribly injured that all her abilities as either Darkwitch or Mistress of the Labyrinth were as nothing.

Even had Grace been able to use her power, Matilda doubted she could do much.

After all, what was the power of gods when compared to the unmoveable force of hundreds of tons of masonry?

The king and queen talked quietly among the relief workers for twenty minutes, then they split up, Queen Elizabeth to talk to the relatives standing huddled in a teary-eyed, haggard-faced group to one side of the Red Cross tent, the king to duck inside the tent, waving back his courtiers and minders as he did so.

George VI stopped immediately inside the tent, his face lined with months of care, and looked at the group standing a few feet away.

“Who is in there?” he asked.

“Our daughter,” Weyland said. “And Matilda, Ecub and Erith. Ecub and Erith are dead, Matilda is dying, and Grace…” He couldn’t go on.

“Dear God,” George said, then went to Noah and hugged her tight. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered, cradling her head against his shoulder.

Then he looked over the top of her head to where Jack and Weyland stood. “What has happened?”

Weyland motioned for Jack to answer. Jack gave a sigh, then briefly told George VI of what had happened over the past night.

“What do I do, George?” In his exhausted emotional state Jack didn’t even care about the
appropriate honorifics. “Catling has the power to murder this city, this entire country, if she doesn’t get her way. But if Noah and I do what she asks…”

“Ah, God…” The king let Noah go and rubbed a hand over his face. “Harry?”

“The last thing I want is to see the land tied by the Troy Game,” he said. “I am opposed to Jack and Noah completing the Game.”

But what about Grace?
Jack wanted to scream at him. In the end he spoke mildly. “Catling is only going to get worse. The idea of what she might do after this appals me.”

“You want to complete the Game?” Weyland said, aghast.

“You want your daughter to suffer any more than she is? Or this land?” Jack countered.

“Stop,” said the king. “What are the alternatives? For Christ’s sake…my wife and I have toured the bombed-out areas of London week in, week out. The grief and destruction—not just of buildings but of lives—is more than I think I can bear. Do I want Jack and Noah to complete the Game and condemn this land to subservience to that
thing
who calls herself Catling? No. Do I want Catling to crucify my people because you refuse to complete her? No. Give me an alternative.”

“We thought there might be a way…” Jack began, then drifted off, not knowing how to explain about the shadow.

“Oh,” Noah said, “I forgot to tell you what I’d heard from Long Tom. George,” she said to the king, “can you stay ten minutes? You need to hear this.”

Jack, Weyland and Harry all opened their mouths, but Noah waved them to silence. “George?”

He chewed his lip and looked over his shoulder. “I have already stayed too long. Elizabeth and my minders will be wondering what I am doing. Can you
come to the palace in two hours? Yes, yes, I know you don’t want to leave here, but there’s not much you can do, and we need to discuss this in more detail than we can in this tent. Somewhere more discreet. I’ll talk to my private secretary on my way back to the car. He will stay behind and get you to the palace. Okay?”

“I can’t leave Grace—” Noah began.

“I’ll stay behind,” Weyland said. “The king needs Harry, Jack and you, not me. I’ll stay.”

Noah nodded, although she was clearly still unhappy.

Jack looked at Weyland. “Thank you,” he said.

I
lay there, listening to Matilda die, and couldn’t do anything for her. I
should
have been able to do something: ease her pain, move some of the rubble, still her breathing into the relief of death if that was what she wanted. I should have been able to do that for myself.

But I couldn’t do a thing. The rubble not only trapped me physically, but crushed and trapped most of the Darkwitch and labyrinthine powers I had as well. I had enough to dredge some light out of the single diamond band that was free, but that was all, and I wondered if that was not
my
power, but something residual of Jack in the diamonds. Even that died, after an hour or two, and we were left in the dark.

So I lay there and listened to Matilda die. I could hear her anguish in every breath: each harsh inhalation, each ragged exhalation. I could hear it in the way she cried sometimes, or the pitifully tiny movements I heard her head make as she struggled uselessly against the weight of the rubble about her. I kept calling her name. It annoyed her, I know, but
oh, gods, I so desperately wanted to hear her voice, to know that she
was
still alive.

To know she was still with me.

I couldn’t bear to think of what lay even further beneath us in the basement shelter. Ecub and Erith were dead.
Truly
dead. Gone forever, and both Matilda and I cried for them. But there were others, and in the first hours after the bomb blast, they were still alive. I knew, because at first I could hear pitiful cries for help coming from below us, or desperate scratchings at the rubble.

Oh, the image, those trapped people scratching away with broken fingernails at the bricks atop them.

I could also hear the trickling of water and, after some time (how long? Hours? Days?) the unmistakeable stench of sewage.

All the cries for help below us gradually ceased, and I no longer heard the pathetic scratchings at the rubble.

When Matilda said her feet were wet I wept, because I knew that somewhere a water pipe had been broken—a sewer, too—and that whoever had been left alive after the blast had now drowned. Now that horror threatened Matilda.

“Matilda?” I whispered. “Matilda?”

She didn’t answer, and after a moment I realised I could no longer hear her ragged breathing.

“
Matilda!
” I stretched out my fingers, trying to feel her face, thinking only to jab at her cheek and remind her to breathe, but my fingers encountered not dry flesh, but cold, watery rubble.

Matilda had slipped away, down further into the rubble, down, down, down into her grave.

I started to sob, not caring about the pain it caused my chest, calling out Matilda’s name over and over until I could barely breathe.

All about me there was silence, save for the gentle lap of water against my fingers and the gentle grinding of rubble as it settled deeper into the water.

After a while, Catling came to me.