He swallowed.
“Weyland…I know you want to control the Game. But have you ever thought about destroying it? Completely?”
He stared.
“It will destroy this land, Weyland,” she said, “and it will destroy us. It cannot be allowed to reach its full potential.”
He could not speak.
“Weyland?”
“You came back,” he whispered.
She gave a half sigh, half sob, and walked over and wrapped her arms about him. “I said I would, and here I am.”
“What did Brutus want?”
“Me.”
“But you came back.”
“Yes.”
His arms slowly lifted themselves and embraced her. They clung to each other for a long moment.
“Weyland? Will you help me destroy the Troy Game?”
He sighed. “It will eat you, Noah.”
“Not if you help me.”
“What will your Brutus have to say about that?”
She gave a small, unconvincing smile. “I hope that he will help, too. I think it will take all three of us to destroy it now.”
Weyland shook his head as if in disbelief.
“Weyland? If the Troy Game is destroyed, then we will be free. Free of this damned dance that has trapped us all.”
Again he sighed. “Yes, I will help you destroy the Game, but I think you are naive in thinking that doing so will free your precious land. I think that if we destroy the Game, we will also destroy the land.” He turned around and looked at Noah. “I think the Troy Game is going to take us all, Noah. The moment it realises that you are prepared to betray it, I think it will take us all.”
Seven
Cheapside and Whitehall Palace, London
Jane fled, almost believing that with every step she took away from Idol Lane she might, might, actually manage to escape.
She had reached Cheapside, a wild-eyed, frantic woman, before she came to her senses. She supposed she’d been heading for Charles at Whitehall, but then she realised her stupid error.
There was only one place Jane wanted to escape to.
Only one person she wanted to be with.
Eaving’s Sisters could have Charles the king. Jane wanted no one but the Lord of the Faerie.
She had to get back to the scaffold in Tower Fields. Surely he would be there, waiting…
“He’s not even thinking of you at the moment, bitch,” said a voice writhing with venom, and Jane’s heart almost stopped in her chest.
She spun about, knowing in the pit of her soul that she was dead.
“You told Noah what I was,” said Catling, emerging out of the shadows, the two imps hanging close behind her shoulders. “You poisoned her against me. If it wasn’t for you, she would be mine.”
“No,” Jane whispered, one hand held out piteously. “Let me—”
“I asked you not to tell,” said Catling, drawing closer. She only took the form of a tiny girl, but somehow her presence loomed about Jane like a great, dark malevolent cloud. “I said you’d be sorry.”
No! Jane screamed in her mind, but before she could put voice to her terror, Catling clicked the fingers of one hand, and the imps scuttled forward.
Charles sat in the ornately carved, gilded and velvet-padded chair in his audience chamber, his face propped in a hand, three fingers thrumming incessantly against his cheek. It was deep night.
Around the king, either seated casually or standing about the chamber, were those people and creatures Charles most trusted, valued and loved. Among them were Marguerite and Kate, his earliest companions; Catharine, his wife; Elizabeth and Frances, somewhat newer companions; Anne Hyde, now married to James, Duke of York, and some five months pregnant; James himself, looking nervous and unsettled; the giants Gog and Magog; and Long Tom and half a dozen Sidlesaghes.
Charles’ fingers tapped back and forth, back and forth, the crown of his head blurring between glossy black hair and the twisted crown of twigs and berries with each breath that he took. The Lord of the Faerie was not far away.
“Where is he?” Marguerite suddenly said, her nerves getting the better of her. “Dear gods, Ringwalker should have returned with Noah by now.”
Charles glanced at her. Ringwalker should indeed have returned with Noah by now, aye, but frankly, Charles was not greatly surprised that he hadn’t.
He was also worried about Jane. Noah had completed her training. Had Weyland let Jane go? Charles wished he could just rise and go down to Idol Lane, but there was too much else happening. This was a night of power, and for the moment Charles was not sure where he would most be needed.
“There is nothing to keep her with Weyland,” said Catharine. She had been seated in a chair close to Charles; now she rose and paced the chamber, her heavy silken skirts rustling with the sound of a dark wind through the forest. “She is Eaving and she is Mistress of the Labyrinth. With all the power at her command, and with her lover calling her, there is no reason at all why Ringwalker should not have returned with Noah—and with the bands of Troy—by this late hour.”
“The imps…” offered Kate. “Might they…?”
Silence. Elizabeth and Frances looked at each other, remembering all the vilenesses they had seen those imps commit.
“Noah is too strong for the imps,” said Charles, his entire form blurring gently between his mortal appearance and that of the Lord of the Faerie.
“I fear for her,” Long Tom said softly.
“You do well to fear,” said Ringwalker, suddenly appearing from the shadows behind Charles’ chair, “although whether that fear should be for Noah, or of her, I am not certain.”
“Ringwalker!” Charles leapt from his chair.
Ringwalker looked about at those gathered. “She would not come with me,” he said.
“Why not?” cried three or four voices as one.
Ringwalker paused a long moment before answering. “Weyland has asked her for shelter.”
Charles drew in a sharp breath, but it was Marguerite who spoke. “How did he know? How—”
“How do I know this?” Ringwalker said. “All I know is that I asked her to come with me. I begged her, and she would not. She returned to Weyland.”
“She can never move against him now,” said Marguerite. “She must shelter him! Oh, gods.”
“There is more,” Ringwalker said. “I sense a darkness within Noah that cannot be explained merely by her promise to Weyland.”
Charles frowned. “‘Darkness’, Ringwalker?”
“Believe it, if only because I tell you of it, Charles. There is a—”
“Dear gods,” said Charles, suddenly starting as if he’d been jabbed. “It is not Noah we should be fearing for this night, but Jane!”
She struck out at the imps with everything she had—limbs, hands, feet, teeth, and all the power she could muster.
But that power was nothing. Catling was too potent. For every ounce of power that Jane poured forth, Catling damped it with twice as much.
What have I done? thought Jane as the imps began to bite. What did Brutus and I do?
How did we go so terribly wrong?
And then the pain began, and Jane suffered as she had never suffered before.
They’d been so very wrong, she and Brutus. It was not Asterion who was the malignant evil which needed to be contained.
It was the Troy Game.
Charles cried out, screamed out. “Jane!”
“Charles?” Ringwalker said, grabbing him by the arm.
“I can’t go to her!” Charles cried. “I can’t, something is keeping me back! Something—”
“I am keeping you back.”
Charles turned around so quickly Ringwalker almost lost his grip on the man.
Catling stood just inside the door. “Jane’s dead,” she said. “Poor Jane. Those imps do have a terrible appetite.”
No one spoke. Everyone stared at Catling.
“Do not mourn her,” Catling said. “Listen instead to Ringwalker. There is truly a terrible darkness within Noah, and Jane was concealing it from all of you. For that, she had to pay.”
“What in the gods’ names do you mean?” Charles all but shouted.
“Noah is a Darkwitch,” Catling said. “Have you not felt her rise these past months? That is the darkness you felt, Ringwalker.”
There was a stunned silence. Everyone stared at Catling.
“What do you mean,” said Marguerite eventually, enunciating every word very carefully, “a ‘Darkwitch’?”
“Why, Ecub, my dear,” said Catling, moving forward slowly, deliberately, “did you not know that Noah is as much Ariadne’s daughter-heir as Jane was? Jane knew this, and conspired against all of you to keep Noah’s foul little secret!”
“That is not true,” said Ringwalker. His voice was flat.
Catling gave a small smile. “Oh, I was as shocked as you when first I learned it. But hear this. Ariadne had two daughters. An elder one whom she sent as bridal goods to Mesopotama, where she became Cornelia’s foremother; the younger one by Theseus became the foremother of Genvissa, or Jane as she is—was—in this life. Thus the Minoan clothes Cornelia wore, Ringwalker. Did you never once wonder why she wore Minoan fashion in a Greek court?”