Darkwitch Rising by Sara Douglass

“Be my lover,” she said, and he nodded, the movement brushing his mouth against hers.

“Yes,” he whispered, and he felt then the land itself sigh, content.

Inside the stone hall the imp stirred, made mildly uncomfortable by the woman’s closeness with the man she lay with. It sent a query to its master, but because the imp itself was merely mildly put out, and only mildly curious, its master dismissed the event.

“It is of no matter,” he told the imp. “She can whore with whoever she wants. It will give her no respite, no relief, no escape.”

The imp grinned, and settled back for that day when its master would need more of it than the occasional report on the activities of the woman the imp inhabited.

Then the imp’s grin faded, for this stone hall was a cold and barren place (or so it appeared to the imp), and it sighed, and wished its master would find a need and a purpose for the imp soon, for it grew lonely and bored.

Eleven

The Realm of the Faerie

He twisted in sleep, his mind consumed with images of Cornelia.

Of Cornelia—with a man who he did not recognise. Jealousy rippled through him, and for a moment threatened to wake him.

But he overcame it, and slid so deep into dream that when he slipped into the Faerie it was so effortless a transition he barely realised it.

He woke, and he was no longer in his borrowed bedchamber in the governor’s castle on Jersey.

Instead he stood atop a hill. He felt as though he stood on an island, for while the hill on which he stood was bare of anything save a smooth carpet of grass, all the other hills which rolled away into the distance were covered with forest. Mist drifted about the valleys between the hills, but his summit was bathed in sunshine.

“Greetings, Coel.”

Coel turned about.

A tall, pale spindly creature with a long, expressive face and melancholy eyes stood a few paces away. He wore nothing but some poorly made leather jerkin and trousers, from which poked overly large hands and bare feet.

Coel frowned, and then memory filtered back to him, and he smiled. “Greetings, Long Tom,” he said.

Long Tom held out both his hands, and Coel walked forward and took them.

“Why am I here?” said Coel.

“What is ‘here’, Coel?” said Long Tom.

Coel looked about him. Then he gasped, and colour flooded his face. “I am in the Realm of the Faerie!”

Long Tom laughed in delight, and squeezed Coel’s hands. “Yes! You stand in the land of the Faerie. I remember when I came to you that day I pointed you towards Pen Hill and Caela. Then, you thought I’d led you into the Realm of the Faerie, but this time I have truly, and this day waits an even greater blessing than Caela.”

“Why am I here, Long Tom?”

Long Tom gave his hands another squeeze, then let them go. “Look,” he said, pointing.

Coel turned. A throne stood on the eastern segment of the summit, and on the seat of the throne lay a crown of twisted twigs and sprigs of red berries. As he watched, the sunshine which bathed the summit became particularly intense above the throne, and Coel frowned as the crown of twigs turned a rich gold.

“What is that?” he said.

“Your crown,” said Long Tom.

For a long moment Coel said nothing. He stared at the throne with its crown, before finally looking back at Long Tom.

“How is this so?” he said.

“How can it not be so?”

“I am not…” Coel’s voice drifted off.

“You cannot deny it,” said Long Tom. “You are unable to.”

“I…”

“You made Eaving atop Pen Hill. Do you not remember?”

Coel’s brow furrowed.

“You were the land,” said Long Tom. “You made Eaving.”

“I made love with her.”

“You made her. You were the land. You always have been.”

Coel did not answer. He studied the grass, as if it could somehow reveal to him all the answers for the questions which flooded his mind.

“When you return to England,” said Long Tom, his voice now low and vibrant with power, “will you accept the crown? Will you stand forth as the Lord of the Faerie, the land’s first and last defence?”

Coel kept his face turned to the grass for a very long time, but finally he lifted it, and looked at Long Tom. For so long he had felt directionless, unwanted, unfulfilled.

Now…

His face flooded with joy as, finally, he realised he had found his purpose.

“Yes,” he said. “I will take the crown.”

Twelve

Idol Lane

Two years later

She had first become aware of it as an irritation. A sore on her forehead that would not vanish no matter the time and effort she put into it.

Then came a rash, then a fever, then more reddened weeping sores, and in more intimate places.

The day Jane Orr confronted the truth of what had happened to her was one of the worst days of her life, of all of her lives, and she thought she had suffered unendurably before this.

But this…the pox. She had contracted the pox. This was to what her pride and ambition, her heritage and promise, her power and beauty had brought her.

The pox.

Given to her no doubt by one of the sailors Weyland had forced on her.

A whore, and now a poxy whore.

MagaLlan, Darkwitch, Mistress of the Labyrinth: inheritor of a heritage so proud, so stunning, that few could have comprehended it, and this is to what it had brought her.

A poxy whore. Despised by all who laid eyes on her. That Jane no longer worked the mattresses was of no consequence. Everyone who saw her knew her profession from the open weeping sores on her face. All would despise and pity her, men and women alike.

How could she—MagaLlan, Darkwitch, and Mistress of the Labyrinth—have come to this? A poxy whore.

The temptation was there to blame Asterion for all of it—for her downfall, for her degradation, for her daily humiliations—but Jane no longer had the energy to evade the truth. She was as much to blame for this as he: her blindness, her stupidity, her damned arrogance…

Oh gods, her ambition to rule the world through the Troy Game. Perversely, rather than hating Weyland, Jane found herself hating Brutus. If it wasn’t for him…if only they hadn’t attempted to create the Troy Game…if only they hadn’t ignored the danger of Asterion…

If only she had never met Brutus, and had lived out her life as MagaLlan and Darkwitch and nothing else. Gods, then she would have had the respect of all who beheld her.

Now she lived her life in the house that Weyland had purchased in Idol Lane. She was its mistress, a fact Weyland often remarked upon with a small smile on his face. You are the mistress only of a whore-house, Jane. And generally, after that, some crude jest upon the labyrinthine ways of the whore’s bed.

Jane ran the house as well as those pitiable girls that Weyland dragged in from the streets to work for him for a few years. She wasn’t sure where he found them, but find them Weyland did, and he gave them to Jane to feed, wash, manage and advise. They lived and worked in Idol Lane for a year or two, perhaps three, and then Weyland grew tired of them, and set them loose back into the streets. Where they went from there Jane did not know, but she worried about it from time to time, wondering what kind of lives these girls faced, alone and friendless. Weyland might do many terrible things to those girls, but at least he’d fed them, and put a roof over their heads.

Weyland had no financial need to run a brothel, but Jane suspected that it amused him. Most certainly he enjoyed humiliating and tormenting Jane, and grew fat on her despair.

At least Jane now lived in some manner of comfort. Weyland had moved her here from that terrible, stinking tiny room they had shared for so many years. It was a strange house, growing almost organically as it did out of the bone house of St Dunstan’s-in-the-East, and in a state of disrepair when first they’d moved in. Weyland had hired men to fix the roof and to replace the floors and to glass the hitherto unglazed windows, and now the house was not only more than comfortable, but a comfort in itself. Here there were many rooms, places where Jane could exist for hours at a time in some solitude and in some manner of peace.

Her favourite room was the kitchen. How Genvissa and Swanne would have laughed! That they had come to this, a whore who took pride in her kitchen. Kitchen it might be, but the room was one of the largest in the house, and it was comfortable, and warm, and it did not stink of sex for sale. The girls (three at the moment) that Weyland had working for him lived in a tavern cellar on Tower Street (he would not keep them at the house), and fulfilled their duties to Weyland and to every lustful carter and sailor and ironmonger in two rooms on the first floor of this house. They came to the kitchen to eat, and to rest, and to sit in silence, partaking of the same comfort in the room as did Jane.