Darkwitch Rising by Sara Douglass

“He agreed, and thus undermined every notion I had formed of him. The world is turning into a strange place, my love.”

“What is Noah planning?” the Caroller asked.

The Lord of the Faerie told her, and the Caroller shuddered. “Catling will eat her,” she said.

“Then we must pray for her, and pray that either Noah, or Weyland, may overcome Catling.”

The Caroller gave a small shake of her head. “They both have the darkcraft within them. She will eat them. That is her nature!”

The Lord of the Faerie went white. “What can we do? We can’t just stand here and—”

“Hold the baby?” The Caroller laughed, the sound a lilting reflection of the Ancient Carol. “I think that is precisely what we should do. I think Grace may be the only thing that may save Noah.” She paused. “And Weyland besides, should we wish.”

Ringwalker walked slowly down the laneway towards where Weyland and Noah stood. He walked in his mortal form, as Louis de Silva, but there was no mistaking who and what he was, for power—and anger—radiated from him as if he burned with the heat of the sun.

“I wish I had never entered the cursed city of Mesopotama,” he said. “I wish I had never set eyes on you. I wish I had never—”

“Loved me?” Noah said. “I am sorry, too, Ringwalker, that you left it this long.”

The words stopped, and they stared at each other.

“You were both doomed, always,” said Weyland. “Do not now blame each other for it.”

“Do not dare to—” Ringwalker began.

“Weyland is right,” Noah said. “We were always doomed. The Troy Game could construct many things, and manipulate more, but it has no idea of love, does it? Whatever you and I might have been, Ringwalker, was murdered at the start by the Game.”

There were tears in her eyes as she finished, and it seemed to drain Ringwalker’s anger. “Noah, I am sorry. What can I do? You and I must…we must…’

“We must do many things,” Noah said, “but we are going to have to do them without those bonds of love which once we thought awaited us. I hope that we will walk on parallel paths, but I don’t think our paths will ever converge. Not now.”

Ringwalker’s eyes moved to Weyland. “Did you plan this?”

Weyland gave a grunt of humourless laughter. “I planned to use her, Ringwalker. I planned to destroy you through her, and then obliterate her. I planned to laugh in the doing. But what has this life wrought for any of us, save to demolish all ambitions and turn all plans into dust.” He paused. “Ringwalker, the prize is not Noah, not for either of us.”

Ringwalker cocked an eyebrow, his face set and hard.

“It is life,” Weyland said. “Freedom from the Troy Game. Its death is the only way any of us can live. Its death is most assuredly the only way any of us can live freely.”

“He’s right,” Noah said softly.

Ringwalker was looking back at Noah. “You need me for that.” He strode the distance between them, and took her chin roughly in one hand.

Weyland made to move, but Noah gestured to him to stay where he was.

“I know that,” she said. She did not move to free herself from Ringwalker’s grasp.

“You and I,” Ringwalker said, giving her chin a little shake, “are the Kingman and the Mistress of the Labyrinth. We control the Troy Game—”

To one side Weyland gave a short, derisory laugh.

Ringwalker’s face tightened. “We control the—”

“No, we don’t,” Noah said. “It thinks to control us.”

Ringwalker let Noah’s chin go. “You want to destroy it.”

Noah gave a small nod.

“You won’t succeed.”

“Not without you,” she said.

Suddenly all of Ringwalker’s anger and hurt boiled to the surface. “Why plead for me,” he spat at her, “when you have him?”

And with that, and with a final look of such fury that Noah had to avert her eyes, Ringwalker vanished.

They walked down Idol Lane to Thames Street, then walked west until they reached Pudding Lane just before Fish Street Hill.

There they stopped, both peering through the gathering darkness up the lane.

“Why here?” said Weyland.

“Because every dance must start somewhere,” said Noah, and she walked into the darkness.

The moment she vanished into the gloom of Pudding Lane, water sprites seethed up from the Thames, clambering over the wharves and docks that lined the river. There they lingered but a moment, taking only enough time to orientate themselves, before they scuttled forwards and vanished into the myriad alleyways connecting the city with its wharves.

In the Guildhall, Gog and Magog stirred, and sighed, and took up spear and sword.

Sixteen

London

Partway up Pudding Lane stood a large house owned by a merchant supplier called Thomas Farriner. He rose during the night to empty his bladder, then, driven by some presentiment, walked through the house, checking each of his ovens and hearths in turn.

All were safe, either covered with ceramic curfews or with their coals smothered under a thick layer of ash. He paused for the longest time before the baking oven, staring at it, unable to shake off his foreboding.

The baking oven stared back at him, cool and innocent.

Farriner chewed his lower lip, checked for the fourth time that the door to the oven was tightly closed, then walked yet one more time about his house, this time checking not only the hearths and ovens, but that all windows were tightly shuttered against draughts.

All was well.

Finally, Farriner went back to bed, lying down beside his wife, and closing his eyes.

He was unable to sleep.

Yet, even so, Farriner did not hear the soft footfall of the goddess within his house, and did not hear her open the baking oven’s door, and whisper into it words of power and darkcraft.

The merchant stirred only a half hour later, when the flames had already taken hold, and he heard their vicious crackle sweeping up the stairs.

He leapt to his feet, and raced to the head of the stairs.

The entire lower half of the house was encased in flames. As he stood, staring, too shocked and appalled for the moment to move, he heard the dull thud of an explosion in his cellar as tubs of tar and of fine brandy exploded.

“Get your wife,” said a soft voice in his ear, “and your children and maidservants, and escape as quickly as you may through the attic window into your neighbour’s house. There, hasten to raise the alarum, and tell your neighbours to gather their goods, and flee.”

Farriner stared at the lovely woman standing at his elbow. He thought she might be an angel, or perhaps—far more likely—a temptress risen with the flames from hell.

“Why?” he whispered. “Why have you done this?”

“To level the dancing floor,” she replied, “and to rebuild it to my needs. Now, go! Go, for the Death Crone creeps up your stairwell in those flames.”

With that, Farriner fled, screaming to his wife and children and servants.

In later weeks, when Parliament convened an inquiry into the fire, Farriner only told them that he had risen during the night to check the ovens and hearths.

He did not mention the woman, or what she had said to him, for he well understood that, in the hysteria and the search for a scapegoat following the Great Destruction, there were some things better left unsaid.

Over the next twenty-four hours Noah and Weyland moved slowly through the city. Noah was exhausted, and Weyland stayed close by her side. He did all he could to support her, but he could not help her, for Noah used all three aspects of her power to control the flames which now ravaged through the eastern portion of London: her darkcraft to fuel the flames, and to speed the unnatural easterly wind that fanned them; her powers as Mistress of the Labyrinth to dictate what path the flames must take; and her powers as Eaving, goddess of the waters, to slow the flames enough that citizens had time to escape from their homes, not merely with their lives, but with all their belongings as well.

London was tinder-dry. Its buildings were largely constructed of timber and lathe plaster, and its cellars—particularly along the waterfront—were packed with casks of flammable materials: pitch, spirits, canvas, hemp and rope. By rights the city should have exploded.

That it didn’t, and that over the three days that the fire crept slowly westwards only six people lost their lives, was due almost solely to Noah’s efforts in keeping it constrained, and secondly to Gog and Magog’s unceasing efforts to whisper into people’s minds, to encourage them to leave, and to herd them ever forward into safer fields.

The Great Fire was constrained, but not containable.

As Noah and Gog and Magog fought to save lives, the thousands of water sprites who had crept into the city at the start of the fire worked tirelessly (and with the utmost joy, for this was mischief such as they adored) to make sure no one could put the fire out.