Darkwitch Rising by Sara Douglass

Release, freedom, a new life, and possibly, possibly, love.

And all for a song.

When she had left the Faerie, and its lord, he had said to return to him the next time she and Noah came to the Tower. “We will show you the Ancient Carol,” he said, “so that you may best know how to greet dawn and dusk.”

What the Faerie asked of her was simple (and yet so complex within that simplicity), and what they offered rich beyond expectation…but first Jane had to escape Weyland. He could still control her, should he want.

He could still kill her, and Jane was very afraid that he would do just that the moment Noah completed her training and Weyland felt that Jane was superfluous to his needs.

This single fear regularly interrupted her otherwise happy reveries with a stomach-knotting terror.

Freedom and hope lay proffered before Jane, but between her and that offer lay that single insurmountable hurdle.

Weyland Orr.

Three days after Noah’s initial training session (and Jane’s strange ordeal atop the summit of The Naked) Ariadne had called them back to the Tower.

It was three days too long for Jane. The instant Ariadne met Noah at Lion Gate (her lover not in evidence this time), Jane turned her back and walked to the rotting scaffold, and then beyond. She could barely contain her excitement—The Lord of the Faerie awaited!—and the moment she reached the scaffold she looked about, breathless, her eyes wide.

“I remember when you were Swanne,” a gentle, amused voice said behind her, “you could not wait to be rid of me.”

Jane spun about. “Coel!”

He was leaning, arms folded, against a massive tree trunk two paces away (Tower Fields had again vanished, replaced by the ancient forest). He straightened as Jane came over, and took her hands, and kissed her mouth.

“Welcome home, Jane,” the Lord of the Faerie said, very softly.

He conveyed her to The Naked. On this occasion, both the summit and the slopes were bare of anything save grass, the Lord of the Faerie’s throne set to the eastern portion of the summit, and the magpie, sitting on an arm of the throne.

“Master Magpie,” said the Lord of the Faerie, “shall be your song-master.”

At that he let go her hand, and stood back, and Jane felt a pang of great loneliness. But she took a deep breath, and stepped forward, and the magpie smiled (its beak curving most marvellously) and bowed its head, and spoke.

“Welcome, Caroller. Have you come to learn the ways of the dawn and the dusk?”

Jane’s sense of loneliness abated as curiosity and eagerness filled her.

“What have I missed all these years?” she said, looking down at the magpie.

Life, came the Lord of the Faerie’s whispered reply in her mind. Joy.

“And thus,” said the magpie, “you shall greet the dawn and dusk with life and joy, and with majesty and reverence, so that both the day and the night shall grace the Faerie. Is this something you can accomplish?”

“I wish to,” said Jane, and that appeared to be the right answer, for the magpie smiled once more, and then began to hum. It was but a simple phrase, repeated over and over, but Jane could hear a great complexity running through it. She frowned, concentrating, and wondered if she could ever master its intricacies.

“Sing it,” the Lord of the Faerie said, and Jane jumped slightly, for suddenly he was behind her, his hands resting lightly on her shoulders.

“Sing it,” he whispered. “Complete your penance.”

And so Jane, drawing a deep breath to steady her nerves, opened her mouth, and began to sing.

She’d never thought she had a good singing voice, but somehow the melody she sang, that simple repeated phrase the magpie had hummed to her, created a richness of its own. To her stunned surprise, Jane heard the complexity she’d recognised in the magpie’s voice repeated in her own, yet ten times over, so that the phrase became redolent with meaning and imagery, even though she sang only with tone and not with words.

Jane stopped suddenly, amazed.

The magpie and the Lord of the Faerie laughed, the magpie flapping his wings, the Lord of the Faerie sliding his hands down Jane’s body to her waist, turning her about, and kissing her once more.

“Each time you come back to The Naked,” he said, “Master Magpie shall teach you another phrase of the Ancient Carol until you have accomplished it all, and then, who knows? I loved you once, maybe I shall again.”

“Don’t tease me,” she whispered.

“I only offer possibilities, Jane.”

Another moment of silence, in which they looked at each other, and then looked away.

“Jane…” the Lord of the Faerie said, his voice drifting away. Then he sighed. “It is time to go. Noah has done for the day.”

Ariadne asked Jane, many times, where she went while she and Noah spent their time within the Tower, and Jane affected a bored air, and said that she did little but wander about the grassy spaces of Tower Fields plucking at flowers.

At this Ariadne always rolled her eyes, and Noah looked at Jane with such cynicism as she delivered her “I spent the day being bored” explanation, that Jane wondered if perhaps she had some idea of what truly happened. But Noah did not question her closely, and so they continued, Jane and Noah travelling every few days to the Tower. There Jane would watch Ariadne and Noah disappear inside the Lion Gate, then she would walk to the scaffold.

There, always, waited the Lord of the Faerie, and he would take her to The Naked. There, each day, Jane would learn a new phrase of the Ancient Carol, and fall a little deeper into hope, and even deeper into love.

Thirteen

At sea on the Woolly Fleece

The master of the Woolly Fleece was somewhat bemused by his two strange saturnine passengers, but they had paid well enough, and the master had been at sea for too many years to question gold coin placed in his hand. The two youths, Tim and Bob, kept themselves to themselves, bunking down with the sailors in the hold at night, and, strangely, crouching under the deck railing at the very prow of the ship during the day. The master thought they looked like hunched black monkeys as they huddled there, drenched with sea spray, bright eyes peering ahead.

They had sailed from the Pool of London ten days ago, making good time to The Hague where, over three days, they’d off-loaded their cargo of wool, then reloaded with fine woven cloth from Flanders and Venice. During these three days the two youths had absented themselves from the port, reappearing but an hour or two before the master was to shout the orders to cast off for England. He’d regarded them critically—as he did all passengers and sailors after a stay in the Low Countries—but they were bright of eye, and quick of movement, and he could see no sign of the sickness within them. If it was there, then doubtless it would appear on the voyage back home, and if that were the case, well then, the master would take care of it as he took care of all passengers or crew who happened to show signs of fever, or exhibited any lumps under their armpits or in their groin.

A regretful smile, and a quick shove off the deck. The rolling grey sea was, so far as the master of the Woolly Fleece was concerned, the best remedy of all for the plague.

But these two youths appeared well enough. They carried with them two small casks, which the master duly inspected.

They were packed with black feathers.

The master raised an eyebrow at the youths.

“We have a mistress,” said one of them, “inordinately fond of her feathers. The best of the black are to be found here, in the Low Countries.”

It was the strangest response the master had ever heard, but harmless enough, so he shrugged, and walked away.

An hour later, the Woolly Fleece was on her way back to England and her home port of London.

“Well?” said Catling. She sat on a bale of wool (part of the cargo awaiting the Woolly Fleece which would, within a day or two, be on its way to Flanders with this particular consignment).

The two imps stood before her, each with a cask under his arm.

“Collected from the very pits of the contagion,” said one.

Catling smiled, and jumped lightly down from the bale. “Good,” she said. “You may begin tonight. Not all, mind, just a handful here and there. I want this to spread slowly. Next week, a handful or two more, elsewhere.”

The two imps crouched atop a section of the crumbling medieval wall of London by Cripplegate. They had one of the casks between them. They sat there for several hours, absorbing the night, watching as lights winked out in houses, and the streets emptied of the last of the tavern customers.