“Always.” I whispered the word.
“Why tell me now?”
I flinched at the coldness in his voice. “I brought the bands here so that Brutus could not take them, Weyland. When I went to him, he demanded them of me. I refused.”
Weyland stared at me, then he uttered an obscenity and rolled away, sitting on the side of the bed.
His back was towards me, stiff and angry. “You will betray me. You have betrayed me.”
“No. No!”
And then another voice, one which ripped all that fragile love between Weyland and myself apart.
“But of course she will betray you, Weyland. Betrayal is in her very blood. Didn’t you know that?”
I gave a low cry and sat up.
Ringwalker stood framed in one of the beautiful arched doorways, naked, tense, and with a great spread of blood-red antlers rising from his curly black hair.
Weyland gave a strange, incoherent cry, and flung himself at Ringwalker, the force of the impact sending them rolling into the chamber beyond.
The imps moved the instant Weyland attacked Ringwalker. As Noah moved to the doorway, watching aghast as the two battled, the imps scuttled unseen and silent from a shadowed corner to the bed, where the baby lay on her back.
One tried—mostly unsuccessfully—to make happy faces at Grace. The last thing they needed was for the baby to start to squall, and attract her mother’s attention.
The other imp reached forward.
Between his hands he held an intricate web of red wool.
He slipped the twisted strands of wool over the baby’s wrists, binding them tightly.
Then the imps stood back, desperate to be gone, but needing to know that Catling’s hex had worked successfully.
The baby waved her bound wrists, mildly puzzled.
Suddenly the wool glowed in red hot lines of power, flashed, then sank into the baby’s flesh.
Within an instant they were gone, and the imps breathed in sheer relief, and vanished also.
Grace stared at her wrists, still waving back and forth in front of her face.
Her face creased, and her mouth wavered.
And then she began to scream.
I made a sound, but whether shout, cry or roar, I am not sure. All I knew was that my entire world was about to be destroyed.
And I did not know what I should do. I stood in the doorway, watching Ringwalker and Weyland battle, and hesitated.
As I hesitated, Grace screamed, a cry of pure fear.
I whipped about. She was lying on the bed where I’d left her, waving her arms about, obviously terrified at the sounds coming from the other chamber.
I ran back and grabbed her, holding her against me so tightly she was in danger of suffocation. Then I turned back to the battle, screaming at Ringwalker and Weyland, trying to tear their attention away from each other to me.
It was impossible.
I can hardly describe what I saw as I stood in the doorway.
Both Ringwalker and Weyland maintained their human forms, although both forms blurred now and again as each warped power through his flesh and into the flesh of the other. Not merely their forms, but almost their every movement was blurred.
They were intent on tearing each other to pieces. There was no finesse about this, no elegance, no dignity, no majesty. Two men, yet beings far more powerful than any mortal man, punching and grappling and shoving and roaring and twisting and pummelling and biting and raking. It was a bitter, hateful, vicious, brutal exchange fed by raw emotion and long-nurtured hatred.
Ringwalker drew on his powers as both Kingman and Stag God, although he was as yet so new to the realm of the forest that his powers as Stag God-reborn were muted and uncertain, and nowhere near as natural to him as those of Kingman.
Weyland fought with everything he could draw on as Minotaur. He fought with darkcraft, and with enough murderous resentment that it could have darkened the moon all by itself.
He also fought with the power of four of the golden bands of Troy.
I have no idea how Weyland did this, or even if he was aware of it. Somehow, merely having the bands so close to him within the Idyll imbued Weyland with extra power, and it was enough that he was in danger of murdering Ringwalker. He’d driven Ringwalker to the floor, pinned him against a far wall, and was standing over him pounding him with his fists about his head and neck and shoulders.
Ringwalker resisted as well as he could, but Weyland had driven him so far down that it would be all but impossible for him to rise against the rain of blows.
Blood dripped down Ringwalker’s nose and chin, and spattered across his chest.
One of Weyland’s fists drove into Ringwalker’s neck, and I heard something crack, and Ringwalker cried out.
“Weyland!” I screamed. “Stop! I beg you! Stop!”
Hugging Grace—still screaming in terror—against my breast, I ran as close as I dared. It was not just the physical violence which frightened me, but the power which roped between the two men. A fist fight would not have done much damage to either one of them, but each strike had other power behind it, and it was that which was proving so deadly.
Especially to Ringwalker. He had slumped to the floor now, and I cursed him for his damned stupidity. What had he hoped to accomplish by coming here?
Weyland took a half step back and, clasping his hands together into one gigantic fist, raised it above his right shoulder, preparing to drive it down into Ringwalker’s skull.
They paused momentarily at the apex of their swing, and I saw power glowing from Weyland’s fists.
“No!” I screamed, and without any care for either myself or, indeed, for Grace, threw myself down over Ringwalker’s form.
“Damn you!” Weyland cried, but his fists unclenched, and the power drained from them, and he reached down to grab me and pull me out of the way.
But just then Ringwalker came to his senses and, seizing my shoulders, pulled us away from Weyland’s reach.
“Did she tell you, fool,” Ringwalker rasped as Weyland started forward, “that it was not Jane who taught her the craft of the labyrinth, but Ariadne?”
No!
Weyland stopped dead.
“What?” he whispered, staring at me.
“Did she tell you, fool,” Ringwalker continued, “that she is as much of Ariadne’s blood as Jane was, that she is descended from—”
No! Weyland could not hear this now, not like this.
I twisted in Ringwalker’s grip, and I swear I hit him as hard as Weyland had been about to but a moment ago. “No!” I hissed.
“She is a treacherous bitch,” Ringwalker hissed. “Ariadne taught her well.”
Oh, gods, where had Ringwalker found these words? Nothing could have wounded Weyland more, nor more easily cut away that fragile trust we had built between us.
Weyland was staring at me, his face an absolute mask of horror. “Is it true?” he whispered. “Did Ariadne teach you?”
“Yes, but—”
He gave an incoherent cry of loss and betrayal, and there was so much agony in it that I cried out too.
Then I felt Ringwalker’s hands tighten about my shoulders, and I knew what was about to happen.
“I am not Ariadne!” I screamed as Ringwalker’s power enveloped me, and I felt myself being torn away from the Idyll.
I am not Ariadne!
Just before Ringwalker pulled me from there entirely, I lifted Grace in my hands, and tossed her towards her father.
I am not Ariadne!
The last thing I saw was Weyland, snatching his terrified daughter from midair, his face twisted with hate, or loss, or perhaps both.
Eleven
Whitehall Palace, London
“What was that I saw?” Ringwalker said. “A baby? I cannot believe that—”
“Enough,” said Noah, her voice tired. “I want none of your judgement.”
They faced each other in a private chamber of Charles’ palace in Whitehall. To one side the Lord of the Faerie sat on a throne (with a strange incandescence rising behind it), Marguerite, Kate and Catharine standing to each side of him, and Long Tom and several other Sidlesaghes yet further back.
“I just want to understand,” Ringwalker said, and Noah’s eyes flashed at him.
“No. You don’t want to understand at all. You want me to justify myself, and I have no intention of doing that.”
“You are a Darkwitch,” Ringwalker said. “Trained in the ways of the labyrinth by Ariadne. Bred of Ariadne and Asterion himself. Lover of Weyland. Mother of his child. Spiller of secrets into his mouth. Is there anything in that list you wish to deny?”
Noah’s chin tilted. “Am I on trial?”
“You are not on trial,” the Lord of the Faerie said, and Noah glanced at him gratefully, her eyes widening very slightly as she saw the incandescence behind his throne.
“Is that so?” said Ringwalker. “I think that she is—”