Darkwitch Rising by Sara Douglass

So I would draw back, but then, inevitably, I would slide into his arms again, fascinated by him, and enthralled by what he revealed of himself.

Falling ever deeper into Weyland Orr.

I began to trust him and, inevitably, I began to betray all that I had ever been, and all I had ever promised to do.

I no longer thought of myself entirely as Noah, or as apprentice Mistress of the Labyrinth. There were moments, hours, sometimes even days, when, as I strolled through the myriad complexities of the Idyll with Weyland at my side, that I thought of myself only as Darkwitch, rising.

My slide into complete betrayal began so innocuously. We’d eaten with Jane in the kitchen, retired to the Idyll, bathed, and had then gone to bed. We hadn’t made love, for tonight I felt uncommonly tired, and Weyland was content merely to hold me as we both slid into sleep.

I fell almost immediately into a profound, and profoundly disturbing, dream.

I was trapped in the heart of the labyrinth, trapped by Catling. I could feel the labyrinth closing in about me, feel it imprisoning me, and I fought with all I had, but to no avail.

The labyrinth had me trapped.

Why should the labyrinth do this to me? I was not evil. There was no reason to trap me.

I became aware that I was covered in a sticky, warm, thick liquid. It irritated me, and unnerved me.

A light very gradually grew about me, and I looked down to my hands, and saw that I was covered in blood.

I gagged, for the instant I realised what I was smothered in, so the smell of the coagulating blood hit me.

As I doubled over, retching, I saw the body of my daughter lying on the floor.

Not Catling. My daughter. That sad little wrapped bundle that Loth had put in my arms that night so long ago when Genvissa had forced her from my body. A tiny baby, too young to breathe on her own.

I crouched down, and turned back the covers from the baby’s face, hoping against hope that somehow this time she was alive.

But she wasn’t. She was cold, her white flesh marbled with grey.

Dead…as she had been for almost three thousand years.

I began to cry, and it was then I realised where the blood had come from.

I was weeping blood, weeping away my life over the corpse of my daughter and of all that could have been.

“Noah!”

Weyland’s voice jolted me out of the dream. For an instant I resisted, wanting to reach down and touch my daughter again, but then I woke, and in waking I still wept—but salty tears now, rather than blood.

But, dear gods, it felt as though those tears were wrenched from the very pit of my soul. I turned in Weyland’s arms, buried my face against his chest, and sobbed hard enough to rattle every house in London.

He held me for the longest time, rubbing my shoulders, murmuring my name, saying none of those pathetic platitudes that the witless use: It was only a dream. You’re awake now. Come, I’m here, no need to be afraid.

Finally, when I had quietened a little, he stroked the hair back from my brow, and said, “Tell me.”

“Catling had me trapped in the heart of the labyrinth. Why me? I was covered in blood. And there…there…on the floor…” I had to stop, and sniff, and try to steady my breathing.

“And there…?” He kissed my cheek softly, reassuringly.

“There, on the floor, was my daughter. Dead. Oh…gods…dead!”

“Catling?”

“No. My daughter.”

“Ah,” he said, “the daughter you lost to Genvissa.”

I nodded, too upset to speak of it.

“And Catling is not your daughter?”

I was silent a long time, realising my mistake. I thought about how I could lie convincingly, and finally I decided I’d had enough of lies when it came to Catling.

“Catling was my daughter in name only,” I said. “I bore her, but she was never a daughter to me, although I only discovered it after I’d come here, to you.”

He waited.

“Catling was a trick,” I said.

I felt rather than saw Weyland’s eyes harden with speculation.

“She was the Troy Game made flesh,” I said. “The Troy Game used me to assume living, breathing life. That was what I’d seen in my visions. Not a loving, natural daughter.” I stopped, looking at the soft blues and purples of the ceiling, and wondering how Weyland would react to this. Fury? Triumph? Hate? He’d harboured the Game within his house and had not known.

I saw from the corner of my eye that Weyland stared at me, then he abruptly lay down and rolled onto his back, staring at the ceiling as I did.

Then, stunningly, he began to laugh: softly and, from what I could discern, with true humour.

“I had the Troy Game incarnate within my house,” he said, eventually, “and I did not know. What trickery, eh? What trickery.”

“I did not know,” I said, wanting him to believe that I had not kept this a deliberate secret for too many weeks, “until that night I cast her from this house.”

Now he turned back to me. “You were angry that night, almost incandescent with rage. Why?”

“Because I realised then the depth and length of the deception. Not merely that the Game used the false promise of a daughter to manipulate me, but that it did manipulate and deceive me. When I realised what Catling truly was, then I realised what the Game is truly capable of.”

“But still you want your daughter,” Weyland said, very softly.

“Yes,” I said, weeping once more. “Yet she was only ever a lie.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and pulled me close and held me until, once more, I had managed to stay my tears.

“Do not trust your imps,” I said.

“Why not?”

“She has both of them under her control.”

He drew in a sharp breath. “Why tell me?” he said. “Why tell me what Catling truly is, and that she controls the imps?”

Why had I? “Because I wanted to pay the Game back some of the pain it had dealt me,” I said, and, stunningly, realised it was true. There, Troy Game, I’ve told your archenemy what disguise you wear.

He burst into loud, genuine laughter, pulling me close and rolling me over and over in the bed until I thought we would fall out.

“You have a fine career as a wicked witch ahead of you, Noah,” he said finally, when we had stopped rolling about and he lay atop me, pinning me to the mattress, his face close to mine. He kissed me, and I ran my hands through his hair, and then we were smiling at one another, enjoying the joke.

The joke. I had just told Asterion that the Game walked incarnate. The “joke”.

And I did not care. It had actually made me feel a little better.

“I’m sorry about your daughter,” he said.

“Aye, I know.”

“And I never did like Catling.”

I laughed. “Thank you.”

He grinned, slowly, his eyes watching me very carefully. “What is this then? Are we not supposed to be enemies? Patrolling opposite sides of that great chasm of ambition that divides us?”

“Perhaps we share an enemy,” I said, and then a chasm did open, save that it had opened under my feet, and not between Weyland and myself.

“Gods, Noah,” he whispered. “What are you saying?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Weyland was watching me with troubled eyes. He lowered his face, and kissed me, and said, “Noah? Will you be my shelter?”

There. He had asked it of me and I could not refuse. I knew why he had chosen this moment—laughter notwithstanding, Weyland would have been truly shaken by what I had just revealed. Thus he had moved swiftly to consolidate his control over me, knowing he had lost control elsewhere. He had asked me for shelter. I wondered that the stars were not screaming, or that the land was not twisting and turning, or that I could not hear the Sidlesaghes moaning atop their blasted hills.

But all I could hear was Weyland’s gentle breathing, and all I could feel was his body atop mine, his weight on mine…and a profound sense of relief, that finally he had asked me, and I need not fear the question any more.

A profound sense of relief, that finally I would be able to say, “I had no choice. He asked of me shelter.”

“Yes,” I said. “I will be your shelter.”

The next morning I asked Jane to arrange a meeting between myself and the Lord of the Faerie. I needed him to arrange a meeting between Louis and myself.

I needed to know where I was going.

Seventeen

The Realm of the Faerie