I saw the gentle-faced man again, now standing next to a printing press, arguing with a typesetter. Londina Illustrata, he was saying, not Londinia Ilustratum!
I saw the shadow, writhing over London, and I saw what it was, what it could be, and I wept for our stupidity.
“I don’t know how this can be,” I said to the woman who now stood closer to me. “It shouldn’t be.”
“You and Jack have to sort it out,” she said, and I studied her very closely as she spoke. She looked so much like Catling—the beautiful, cold face, the thick tumbling curls of black hair, the slim body clothed in tight black silk.
“Who are you? Why do you look so much like Catling?”
She smiled, although it never quite reached her eyes, and did not reply.
“Why are you so cold?”
“I have never lived. Never drawn breath. You’d be cold also, if that was your fate.”
“What is your name?”
Again, that terrible smile. “I have never lived and have never been named. Some call me the White Queen, others call me the druid’s sword.”
I latched onto the first name only. The White Queen…cafe? “Mrs Stanford?”
“No. I appeared using a glamour of the real woman.”
I realised what had been tickling at my mind, and now I felt sick with stupidity. When we decide to see things one way, we are then incapable of seeing them any other way. “It has been you, at night, sitting with me all these years.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To get to know you.”
“Why?”
She didn’t answer that question. “Jack is going to do something very silly, Grace. You need to stop him, and for that you need to be able to break out of this little hell Catling has built for you far more than you need to know my whys and wherefores.”
“Why do you talk to me here, and yet not when you came a-visiting?”
Her eyes glittered with anger, and, oh, she looked so much like Catling then. “Why would I want to talk to you when you kept calling me ‘bitch’?”
I winced, and could not reply.
She took pity on me, and her face softened fractionally. “It is only very recently that you’ve been prepared to see me any other way than as the hated sister.”
Far too recently. “I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “Grace, listen to me. Catling fatally wounded you in the rubble of Coronation Avenue. If it wasn’t for Catling’s need to keep you alive, even if so indifferently alive, then your broken body would not still be drawing breath. She doesn’t need you whole, Grace, she just needs you alive. But you need to be whole, you need to be alive and walking and speaking, because you need to get to Jack as soon as you can, and stop him before he condemns all of us to the everlasting hell of the Troy Game. Grace, only you can break free of this. I can’t do it for you. Only you can. And you can. You just need to believe in yourself.”
SEVEN
Epping Forest
Monday, 16th December, 1940
“You think it is worth it, to have you dead?” Noah said. “The Troy Game completed, and you dead? That is a double tragedy.”
“A worse tragedy than seeing the land suffer as it is now?” Jack said. “A worse tragedy than watching the Faerie sicken and die? Better to complete the Troy Game and hope that, somehow, Grace returns from the living dead with some means of subsequently destroying the Game. Better I dead, than this nightmare continue.”
“The Troy Game will not be able to be destroyed once it is completed. Ariadne said—”
“Ariadne has been wrong before. All Games can be unwound, even one so powerful as the Troy Game. You’re a powerful Darkwitch, Noah, as is Grace. Between you—”
“Between us there will be nothing but grief if you were dead,” said Noah very softly. “Do you think Grace wants to return to find you gone? What will it do to her?”
“She will cope,” said Jack, but his face was terribly tight, and Noah could see the effort it took him to remain calm. He, and Noah, knew that if he died during the completion of the Troy Game, it wouldn’t just be a death…it would be an eternal damnation to whatever the malignant forces of the dark heart of the labyrinth chose for him.
Catling would not let him rest easy.
“Perhaps Grace can…” Jack’s voice drifted off.
“Perhaps Grace can pull you out of death? Jack, there are too many perhapses. This is such a stupid plan. We—”
“It is the only plan we have, Noah. Can you think of something better?”
Noah was silent.
“We have almost no room left to move, Noah. Catling will eviscerate both land and Faerie and Grace if we don’t complete her. We don’t have any means by which to unwind her—she is too powerful and I don’t have the final two bands. Besides, doing that will kill Grace more certainly than anything Catling has done to her. Noah, we must complete the Game, with whatever consequences, and pray that Grace returns with something.”
“Grace may not return, Jack. We have only Catling’s word that she will, and we all know what her word is worth.”
Jack did not reply, staring instead with dark, unfathomable eyes into the forest.
“We need to discuss this with the Lord of the Faerie and Weyland and—” Noah said.
Jack’s gaze swung back to her. “No. We don’t discuss it. We just do it, Noah. There is nothing left to discuss.”
EIGHT
St Paul’s Cathedral, London
Sunday, 29th December, 1940
The winter solstice was late. A week late, and that week, more than anything else, was an indication that Catling was spiralling not merely the Faerie and the land, but the entire planet, downward into oblivion.
There was no choice, in the end, except to do what she wanted. While the Lord of the Faerie, Weyland, Stella, Ariadne and Silvius did not know that the day could prove fatal to Jack, they did know that he and Noah meant to complete the Troy Game. Given the circumstances, and despite their terrible misgivings, they reluctantly agreed that completion of the Game was the only option left to them.
No one would survive another year if Catling did not get what she wanted.
When Brutus and Genvissa had started the final Dance of the Flowers atop Og’s Hill three and a half thousand years previously, it had been a grand occasion with virtually the entire population of Troia Nova and the Sacred Hills in attendance. Hundreds of Trojan youths, men and women, had accompanied Brutus and Genvissa in the final dance. It had been held in light and openness and majesty, and Brutus and Genvissa had come close to completing the Troy Game then and there.
But Cornelia—Noah—had stepped in and plunged Asterion’s horn dagger into Genvissa’s neck. Genvissa, dying, had cursed everyone to continual rebirth until she had her revenge.
But it hadn’t been Genvissa who had passed the real curse, had it? That had been the manipulative Troy Game itself, manoeuvring everyone it needed to do just what it willed.
Now, more than three thousand years later, Jack and Noah were about to do what the Troy Game wanted. They were sick at heart, and close to physical nausea because of what they were about to do, but they had no choice. It was not merely Grace’s life which rode on the night, but the life of the entire land and Faerie besides.
This was no glorious spectacle as the original Dance of the Flowers had been. No one attended save Jack and Noah. There were no dancers, no witnesses, no crowds.
Shortly after dusk Noah and Jack entered St Paul’s. They were clothed in magic and mystery, and as on those occasions Jack had come to the cathedral to talk with Catling, none among the cathedral staff saw them.
They walked very slowly up the nave towards the space under the great dome. Both had dressed in the simple white linen of Kingman and Mistress: a hipwrap for Jack and a long skirt for Noah. Neither wore any shoes, and they were bare of adornment save for Jack’s four golden kingship bands on his arms.
The markings about his shoulders writhed desper
ately, as if they wanted to escape.
Noah carried in one hand a small posy of flowers, sad insipid things, which had been the best she could find at this time of year.
Halfway up the nave she reached out her free hand and took one of Jack’s.
“I can’t believe it has come to this,” she whispered.
“Noah, we have to do it.”
“Jack…” Her voice choked with emotion, and Jack stopped and faced her, taking both Noah’s shoulders in his hands. “Noah, we have no choice.” He paused, taking a deep breath to steady his own nerves. “We have never had a choice.”
“I—”
“It should have been me you plunged that knife into so long ago, Cornelia,” Jack said, his mouth quirking a little as he called her by her original name. “Without me, we would have had none of this mess.”
She tried to smile at him, but it trembled and vanished before it had any chance at life. “This is so stupid. Here we are about to condemn the world to a nightmare, and there is no one here to watch.”
“Ah,” said Catling, stepping out of the shadows, “but there is me. Glad you could come. Happy you’re here.” Her voice hardened. “Now get on with it.”
Then she took another step closer. “Jack? No leg bands? What is this?”
“If I could find them I’d wear them,” said Jack. “But I can’t find them—and if you don’t know where they are, Catling, with your power, then don’t blame me for not being able to locate them.”
“Ah, don’t give me that! I know you have them! You just want me to believe you’re weak. I’m sorry, Jack, but I am not letting down my guard. Just get on with it, but know I’ll be watching for the first sign of treachery.”
Catling looked at Jack very carefully. “If I sense any duplicity in you, Jack, then what I have done thus far will be but a foretaste of what I can do. Try to trick me if you will, but you—and everyone else—shall live to regret it.”
“The land already regrets you,” Noah said.
“Don’t interrupt,” Catling snapped, her eyes not leaving Jack’s face. “Well?”
“No trickery,” Jack said. “I just want to get this over and done with.”
Catling stared a moment longer, then gave a small nod. “Good, then get on with it. I’ve waited way too long for this moment.”
The White Queen had gone, and Grace wandered alone in her hell.
Except it was not quite a hell any more, for Grace knew she had the means to not only control it, but use the power behind it.
“Jack is about to do something very stupid,” she whispered to herself, “and I have to stop him.”
And to do that she must manage two tasks: escape this hell, and escape it whole.
Grace sighed, and let her Darkcraft flow forth. Catling had used the power of the dark heart of the labyrinth to create this nightmare, and so Grace used the same power to manipulate it.
Show me, she commanded, and she saw before her a terrible sight.
Herself, fractured and wasted, lying still on a hospital bed. To one side sat Jack, in a chair, his head in his hands. The vision shifted, and Grace saw her parents on the other side of the bed, her father’s arm about Noah, their faces flat with misery.
“Oh,” Grace murmured.
The vision shifted a little more. Now Jack was back, and Grace saw several nurses, peering out from the nurses’ station, their eyes on Jack, their faces hopeless with love.
Grace smiled.
The vision shifted a final time, and Grace saw Jack and her mother in St Paul’s Cathedral.
“Oh,” she said again, her smile now gone.
“Don’t interrupt,” Catling snapped, her eyes not leaving Jack’s face. “Well?”
Noah and Jack stood under the dome of St Paul’s. Evensong service was in progress about them, the cathedral almost full with worshippers, and yet it was as if two cathedrals existed: the cathedral of the mortal world, where people sang and prayed and clerics preached; and the shadow cathedral, where ancient beings bowed their heads, and began a dance of such antiquity that it both physically and metaphorically undermined everything the mortal worshippers believed.
Jack and Noah were aware of the worshippers, but paid them no regard save for a mild ironic thought that they were to have an audience, however unknowing, after all.
They stood at opposite aspects of the dome: Noah in its eastern sector, Jack in its western.
For the moment Noah stood still, watching Jack. Before they could begin the Dance of the Flowers, creating the Flower Gate which would trap evil within the dark heart of the labyrinth and complete the Troy Game, Jack had to raise the labyrinth.
As Brutus, so many thousands of years ago, Jack had buried the labyrinth deep within Og’s Hill, where St Paul’s now stood. He’d done it to preserve the labyrinth, to save it until he and a reborn Genvissa could raise it again and finish what they had started.
It was difficult work, not merely because Jack had only four of the bands, but because it had been so long since he’d created the enchantment which had hidden the labyrinth. As Brutus he’d been racked with grief for Genvissa and consumed with anger at Cornelia, and it was now difficult for Jack to remember precisely what he’d done through the mists of both time and overwhelming emotion.
Noah, watching, found it almost unbearable. She could see the difficulty Jack was having, but she was almost overpowered by a sense of loss. This man, who she had hated and loved in equal measure, and who had been so much to her for so very long, was calling into daylight the means of his death.
Tears slid silently from her eyes. Noah was devastated, her heart ached with loss, but she was far more affected by the realisation that at some point in the last hours she had come to accept it.
Better Jack’s death than that of the land.
“Cornelia must indeed be dead,” she murmured, “and Eaving rampant, if I can think thus.”
Across the dome, Jack suddenly stepped back, raising his face to Noah.
She gasped. The black and white marble flooring under the dome had become translucent, and she could see, from far, far below, a huge labyrinth rising towards the surface.
Grace sighed and, remembering how she had used the power of the pain of her wrists, directed the power that had created the nightmarish world of fractured images and memories to release her.
Back to my body, she commanded, and a body that works, if you please.
As she left the hell that Catling had built for her, Grace saw Catling herself, deep in the dark heart of the Troy Game.
For a moment Grace stilled, not frightened, but curious, wondering if Catling saw her.
But Catling was oblivious. Grace was the last thing on her mind. Catling only had eyes for what her Kingman and Mistress of the Labyrinth were doing.
The marble floor under the dome of St Paul’s vanished, replaced now by the ancient unicursal seven-circuit labyrinth of Crete, laid out in cream and brown stones as it had been when first built by Brutus.
The dancing floor.
Noah took a deep, shaky breath, and raised her head to look at Jack.
He was staring at her. Very slowly, he raised his hand towards her.
Noah swallowed, summoned her courage, and allowed the power of the labyrinth to infuse her.
Grace rose from her bed, and nurses started back, shocked.
She stumbled, clutching to the back of a chair for support. “Damn these legs!” she said. Grace’s face tightened in concentration and her form seemed to glow for an instant, then she straightened and, although still weak and uncertain on her feet, was nonetheless stronger than she had been a moment ago.
She looked at the nurses. “Can you help me? If someone could take out this feeding tube from my nose…and I need a coat, and perhaps some shoes, and I need to get to St Paul’s very, very quickly. Does anyone have a car?”
The ward sister, a marvellously stern woman called Sister Marr, had experienced many crises and challenges during almost forty working years
on the wards of St Bart’s and, although slightly put out by the girl’s apparently miraculous recovery, was determined not to let the strangeness of the request unsettle her before the junior nurses.
After all, a lifetime’s reputation was at stake.
“Is this absolutely necessary, Miss Orr?” Sister Marr said.
“Absolutely vital,” Grace said.
“Well then,” Sister Marr said, “I do not have a car, but I can requisition an ambulance for you.” She looked Grace up and down. “After all, you still look as if you need it.”
Grace smiled, so sweetly it took the nurses’ breath away.
“Sister Marr,” she said, “you are a saint.”
They danced about the perimeter of the labyrinth, their movements graceful yet charged with a powerful sexuality. About them, unknowing, the congregation sang a hymn, and the slow, measured beat of the hymn penetrated into the magic surrounding Jack and Noah, and they danced to its rhythms and tempo.
The golden bands about Jack’s arms glittered as his arms moved slowly through the dance, his face kept turned to Noah.
He kept hold of the dance and the labyrinthine power which consumed him only with the most extreme effort. The lack of the final two bands was beginning to exhaust Jack, and he could feel, flickering at the edges of his consciousness, a dark and hungry presence.
As Noah danced, she allowed single flowers to fall from the posy she carried, and they drifted here and there about the labyrinth, apparently falling at random, yet somehow forming a pattern all of their own.
Something sinister started to rise from the dark heart of the labyrinth.
Sister Marr sat in the back of the ambulance and stared at the girl who sat opposite her. Someone had found her an ancient hound’s-tooth check coat, and she had it wrapped tight about her body.
The coat was meant for a large man, and it was so bulky about Grace Orr that it highlighted, rather than hid, her painful thinness.