“None of us lived pretty lives, Brutus,” Aeneas said. “You have been no worse than any of your line.”
“Not even in re-creating the Troy Game,” said Jack, “in such a vile form that—”
“Brutus,” Aeneas said, “the Troy Game was always vile. What do you think destroyed Troy?”
Jack stared, shocked.
“It wasn’t the Greeks,” said Aeneas. “Not at the final count. Our Game, she who was supposed to protect us, decided she wanted to destroy the city of Troy and all who lived in it.”
Jack was still staring at Aeneas, unable to speak, so the Lord of the Faerie asked the obvious question. “Why?”
“She wanted to move on,” said Aeneas. “She saw in the land of Llangarlia, and the site that is now London, far greater power. Brutus, be careful.”
“Gods!” Jack muttered. “But you think that she can be destroyed?”
“Who knows? I cannot see that from here.”
Jack took a deep breath. “I need the kingship bands, the final two. Coel,” he nodded at the Lord of the Faerie, “said that he gave them to you.”
Aeneas smiled at the Lord of the Faerie. “Of course he did. And I kept them safe for thousands of years.”
Jack looked carefully at Aeneas. “Kept them safe?”
“I no longer have them. I gave them to the young woman in the black dress.”
Jack did not think he had been so profoundly shocked, or horrified, in all his lives. “You…did…what?”
Aeneas’ calm demeanour altered in the space of a breath. His face contorted in anger, and he leaned forward and dealt Jack a slap across the chest. “I gave them to the young woman in the black dress. Your daughter. She—”
“She is not my daughter! She is the Troy Game incarnate!”
“She said she wanted them,” finished Aeneas. “She said she would keep them safe for you. I believed her.”
“What have you done?” Jack said, then he turned and half ran, half walked back down the road into the Faerie.
Aeneas looked at the Lord of the Faerie, who appeared almost as shocked as Jack.
“She was his daughter,” Aeneas repeated. “Of course I trusted her.”
The Lord of the Faerie grabbed at Jack’s arm as Jack started to run down The Naked.
“Jack! Jack!”
“How could you have done this to me?” Jack snarled, and the Lord of the Faerie stepped back horrified, letting go of Jack’s arm.
“Jack, I had no idea that Aeneas would give them to Catling!”
Jack stared at the Faerie Lord. “I can’t believe that Catling had the power to do that. I can’t believe that Aeneas handed her the fucking bands!”
He paused and visibly collected himself. “Coel, I am sorry. I should not have shouted at you, and you are not to blame for what has happened. But Aeneas…Aeneas should have known!”
There was a long silence.
“Jack,” the Lord of the Faerie said, “what are you going to do?”
Jack ran a shaking hand over his eyes. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
FIVE
St Paul’s and Faerie Hill Manor
Monday, 23rd September 1940
He went straight to St Paul’s, to the crypt, to Catling. It was mid-afternoon, and the crypt of the cathedral was filled with workers, staff and members of the cathedral Watch, but none of them saw the dark-haired man who stormed down the steps from the nave, nor did they see the young woman dressed in black who waited for him by the Duke of Wellington’s tomb.
Jack was still dressed in the white linen wrap of the Aegean Kingman, and Catling’s eyes gleamed with pleasure at the sight of the four golden bands which glowed on his arms.
“You have done very well,” she said. “I am pleased. When will you retrieve the final two?”
Jack’s temper shattered. “You have them! Why? Why? What is the point? Give them to me, Catling.”
Catling’s eyes widened and she leaned back, a hand to the base of her throat, as if she were afraid. “I? I have not taken them. What is this, Jack? What manner of excuse?”
“You went to the Otherworld and you tricked Aeneas into giving you the—”
“I did not! Have you lost the bands, Jack? Have you lost the remaining two kingship bands?”
They were standing close, and the air between them crackled with anger. Jack raised his hand, stabbing a forefinger at Catling.
“You bitch! What game do you play? What point, first in taking the bands, and now in this pretence of innocence?”
Catling had gone very white, far paler than normal, and the black of her gown rippled, as if it were as furious as the entity it clothed.
“Don’t speak to me like this, Jack.”
“I want those bands!”
“And I want you to have them. Damn it, what kind of a fool are you! Did you think I would believe this tale of ‘Oh, the bands are gone, and you have taken them, Catling’? No, no! I have not taken them. You have lost them!”
Jack forced himself to take a breath before answering her. Dear gods, this pretence of innocence was so transparent!
“You’re holding them to blackmail me,” he said. “Holding them to ensure I do what you want. Holding them to make sure I don’t try to harm you. Holding them to force Noah and myself to come down here to dance your final completion. Where are they, then?” Jack spun about, his eyes searching out every corner of the crypt. “Where have you secreted—”
Catling stepped forward and seized Jack’s wrist.
“I don’t like this, Jack. I don’t like this at all. I am going to be very angry indeed if you can’t find those bands.”
Her grip tightened until Jack, despite himself, cried out in pain.
“I need you to have those bands, Jack. I don’t believe this prattle. You could, surely, have come up with something a little more believable. Now—” her grip tightened yet more so that Jack’s knees sagged, and he managed to prevent himself from sinking to the floor only with a supreme effort of will “—I have been very patient. Too patient. I’ve had enough. All my good temper has evaporated. I need to impress on you my authority, I think. What I do now, Jack, is merely the beginning. You need to find those bands. The longer you leave it the more those closest to you will suffer. The longer London will suffer. Find those bands, Jack!”
She released her grip, and Jack finally sagged to the floor.
The next moment he heard a cry of such agony it tore through to his very soul.
Jack didn’t have the final two bands!
Catling didn’t know what to think. Who had them? How could they have vanished from the Otherworld?
Her instinctive reaction had been to wrap Grace in as much agony as she could, simply because that would keep Jack occupied for a while.
Catling needed to think.
“The imps,” Catling muttered to herself. “They might know where they are.”
But no matter how much Catling hunted through London, she could not find the imps.
Grace had been waiting with her parents, Stella, Ariadne and Silvius at Faerie Hill Manor. When the Lord of the Faerie materialised before them (forgetting in his anxiety to assume his mortal form as Harry), they all rose from their seats, but the Lord of the Faerie spoke before they could ask him the question.
“They’re gone,” he said. “The final two bands have gone. Catling has them.”
Noah gasped, while Grace took a step back, then sank down to the sofa.
Her face was stricken.
“Catling took them?” Noah said. “Why? And how? If she has the power to reach into the Otherworld…”
“Who knows the how or the why,” the Lord of the Faerie said, finally morphing into the gentler form of Harry. “Jack has gone to St Paul’s to confront Catling.”
“That is not such a good idea,” said Grace softly.
Noah sat back down beside her. “Grace—”
“Not such a good idea,” Grace whispered, raising her wrists to her che
st.
“Grace—”
Before Noah could say anything more, Grace cried out, then convulsed, falling to the floor with the extremity of her pain.
In an instant Ariadne joined Noah at Grace’s side, the others standing close about.
“Gods,” Noah whispered, “I have never seen it so bad!”
Ariadne had to admit that she hadn’t seen it this bad either. When Catling had attacked Grace in Ariadne’s apartment, only Grace’s wrists and forearms had been involved. Now it appeared as if all of Grace’s body was wrapped in fiery lines of suffering. Her wrists were encased in a vicious red glow, and out from this glow spun lines and tendrils of fire that curled all over and about Grace’s body.
Save for her face: left clear, if only for the reason that everyone could witness her anguish.
Ariadne put a hand to Grace’s shoulder, then seized it back instantly. Grace’s body felt as if it were on fire. Ariadne wanted to tell Grace to use the pain, as she had that day Catling attacked her in Ariadne’s apartment, but Ariadne realised that what Catling did now was so much worse, so extreme, that it had consumed Grace completely.
Grace had no time for thought, no chance to turn the pain to her own use.
Suddenly Jack was there, pushing none-too-gently through the circle of watchers and dropping down beside Ariadne.
He reached out to touch Grace, then jerked his hands back as Grace cried out.
“What can I do?” he whispered, his voice breaking. “What can I do?”
Ariadne looked carefully at him, looked at the bands about his limbs and then down to the diamonds twinkling through the fire about Grace’s wrists.
“There is something,” she said. “Something I did once for Noah and Stella.”
SIX
Silvius’ Palace, Alba
Monday, 23rd September 1940
GRACE SPEAKS
Ifelt it rather than heard it, a voice that intruded into my pain.
Follow me.
I hated it. I wanted to focus on bearing the agony, to try and concentrate enough that I could use the pain as Ariadne had taught me, and this voice was a distraction.
Follow me.
Catling had never attacked me in this fashion before. I hadn’t realised she had the capability. I wasn’t happy to discover it now. She’d taken over every square inch of my body—at least that’s what it felt like—and poured kerosene over it, and put a match to it. My skin burned and bubbled and—
Follow me.
Go away! I screamed at it. Let me alone!
Grace, please, follow my voice. I have found a cool, cool place for you.
It was Jack, I knew that, but I really didn’t want him now. I just wanted to concentrate on overcoming and then using the pain.
But it was so extreme. So consuming. I didn’t know if I could…
Grace, Grace, please. Trust me.
Trust Jack…
Come with me, Grace, please.
I followed him.
“Where are we?” I said.
I was amazed I could manage even those three words. The pain had vanished, and I was almost delirious with relief.
We stood in a courtyard, furnished only with a bench under an apple tree, and a pond full of flashing gold and silver fish.
“This was my father’s house in Alba,” Jack said, sitting down on the bench.
“Silvius’ house?” I said, taking a seat beside him.
“Aye. This courtyard was his inner sanctum, his favourite place. I only came here for the first time relatively recently, during my transformation into Ringwalker.”
That was significant, but I wasn’t sure why. “It was nice of you to bring me,” I said, then gave a soft laugh. “I’m sorry. That was a little banal. I’m so relieved that the pain has gone, and I do thank you for it from the depths of my heart. How did you manage it?”
“Ariadne suggested it. She used this enchantment to bring your mother out of her body during that time…um, during that time…”
“When my father tore her apart. I know about it, Jack.”
“Well, she told me how to bring you out of your body to a place of sanctuary. To somewhere you could endure without pain. A peaceful, cool place.”
I remembered what my mother had told me about that terrible day when my father had torn apart her and Stella, or Jane as she had been then. Ariadne had dragged them to Tower Fields, but only in spirit.
Their bodies had been left bleeding and torn on the kitchen floor of the house in Idol Lane.
As my body would still be writhing in agony on the floor of the drawing room at Faerie Hill Manor. But I was gone, I had escaped that tormented body, as Noah and Stella had once escaped theirs, and I felt boundless gratitude to Ariadne for suggesting it, and to Jack for calling to me.
I do not think I would have followed any other voice.
“And she told you to bring me here?” I said.
“No. She actually suggested Tower Fields. I thought this was nicer.”
I was pleased.
Jack took one of my hands, raising my arm slightly.
“Look,” he said, “the fish are mirrored in your diamond bands.”
Indeed they were. Flashes of gold and red and silver skittered up and down the tendrils and sprays of diamonds.
“Silvius told me he loved me in this courtyard,” Jack continued. “I had never realised that he loved me. It was a shock. I thought I was a disappointment to him.”
The significance of why he had brought me to this place now hit me.
“Grace,” his other hand now trailed gentle fingers over my face, “whatever you want is yours.”
Everything I had ever heard about this man had taught me to believe that he stampeded people, and bullied and pushed to get what he wanted.
This man here was quite different.
“How can you be so sure that I am what you want?” I asked.
“Because when I was waiting for you on Ambersbury Banks I realised that I would want to wait for no one else.”
I trusted Jack completely, but I also knew that I needed to take what he offered—a long, slow, gradual slide into whatever awaited us.
He smiled, slowly, reading my thoughts, then let go my wrist and leaned back against the trunk of the apple tree. “Catling says she does not have those bands.”
“Do you believe her?”
“I don’t know. She was furious. Completely. She said that my accusation was merely a ruse to hide the fact that I’d lost the final two kingship bands.” He swivelled his head a little so he could look me in the face. “That’s why she attacked you. She told me I need to find those bands. That if I don’t, then this,” he indicated my wrists, but meant the entire agony Catling had caused (was still causing) me, “was just the beginning. The longer I leave those bands, the more those closest to me will suffer. The more London will suffer.”
“Oh, Jack…” It was the threat to the people of London which concerned me. They had suffered so much already, and it appalled me to think what Catling might do next.
“I will find the bands, Grace,” he said. “Whoever has them, I will find them.”
“But if Catling doesn’t have them,” I said, “then who?”
“I have no idea. Aeneas said it was Catling. Who else would be wandering into the Otherworld masquerading as Catling, persuading a long-dead Trojan prince to hand her two of the most magical items in existence, and then wander off with them again?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t apologise for my ill-temper, Grace. I wasn’t irritated with you, but with myself. How could
I have let this get so out of control? How could I have lost the bands?”
That was an unanswerable question. He hadn’t, of course, “lost” the bands at all. He’d merely left them buried with the labyrinth atop Og’s Hill and then my mother had managed to take them and hide them.
That thought made my mind lurch in another direction. “Jack, isn’t it only someone
who is associated with the Game…who the bands associate with…who can touch them? You, my mother, Aeneas—for he would once have worn them; Silvius for the same reason.”
He looked at me with narrowed, speculative eyes. “You.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Grace, don’t look like that. You’re right. It is only someone associated with the Game who can touch them. Your father couldn’t, could he?”
I shook my head. “He said they burned him.”
“But you could touch them. You carried them within your flesh all these years. So…how are you associated with the Troy Game? What part are you fated to play?”
“Catling tied me to her with her hex—”
“Perhaps. But you’re central in another way, I’m sure of it…and yet I can’t see it.” He grinned. “Guess I’ll just have to hang around you, and try to discover it.”
I was so relieved he wasn’t angry or suspicious that I laughed.
He smiled also, then sobered. “Who could have got them, Grace, if not for one of a very small band among us, or Catling herself? And Aeneas said it was Catling. What is she playing at, then, to hide them, and then accuse me and plague you with pain?”
SEVEN
Faerie Hill Manor
Monday, 23rd September 1940
Grace sighed, then sat up from where she’d been lying on the floor. “It’s all right. The pain is gone.”
“Thank the gods,” Noah said, finally relaxing and helping Grace back to the sofa. She looked over to Jack, now standing by the fireplace. When he had taken Grace “away”, both of them had remained in the room in body, but it was obvious their spirits had fled.
I wonder where he took her? Noah thought. I wonder what place was special to him?
Ariadne nodded to Jack, sharing with him a very small smile, then she looked about the room. “Well, then, what to do? The final two bands have been…misplaced, shall we say.”
“Lost,” Weyland muttered, casting a black look in Jack’s direction.
“Stolen,” said Harry, firmly.
“Nothing can be done without them,” Weyland said.