Weyland sometimes joined them. He ate in the kitchen, and he usually tormented either Jane or one of the girls while he was there, but generally Weyland was either out in the city, or he was upstairs on the top floor of the house, where he had constructed something…strange.
Weyland had felt it as soon as he had climbed the stairs on that first day he’d wandered into the house from Idol Lane. The first floor was nothing, merely a collection of small rooms that would serve well as bedchambers, the next floor no different, but the top floor of the house…well, that was something special. It was one large open space, and it stank of magic and power. Weyland had spent hours up here that day; firstly, searching the space with his eyes and his darkcraft, making sure it could truly be what he needed and, secondly, trying to scry out the source of the attic’s power. In the end, after hours of seeking, he could not manage to discover the source, but that did not trouble him. Indeed, he felt that the power was not antagonistic to him, but rather in some strange way was actually sympathetic.
This was the place he’d been searching out for so many years.
This would be his home, his sanctuary.
His Idyll.
The instant that damned wool merchant had spoken the word “idyll” Weyland now realised the house had been calling out to him.
Here I am! Here I am!
And here it was indeed. Once the house had been repaired and Weyland moved in, he had made it abundantly clear to Jane and the other girls that the attic space was out of bounds.
“It is my den,” Weyland said to them as they stood in a line before him, faces solemn, hands clasped behind their backs. “My lair, my nest, my shadowy corner of hell. Keep away from it.”
They had. Weyland had infused enough threat into his voice to impress even Jane. He kept the top floor of the house in Idol Lane to himself, and out of this space Weyland fashioned his Idyll.
It took him over a year, and he needed almost every particle of his darkcraft to accomplish it. Weyland knew that so much expenditure of power would bring him to the Troy Game’s attention, and he had been worried for many months. But nothing had happened.
And the Idyll had grown.
It was far better than Weyland ever expected. It was his hidey-hole and his sanctuary, but it was also something far deeper. It was Weyland’s expression of self, of what perhaps he might be, given the chance…and the kingship bands.
It was his kingdom.
Yet, even so, Weyland was somehow dissatisfied with his Idyll. Oh, it was pleasant enough and beautiful enough to keep him happy and contented for many a long night, but there was still something missing—some tiny element that Weyland could not quite put his finger on—and that irritated him. He wanted his Idyll to be perfect and to have perfection evade him by a fraction, and to not know what it was that he needed to fill that small, missing space…well, that was frustration incarnate, and those days that Weyland spent hours in his Idyll, studying it, and fretting over what might be needed to complete it, those days were the ones when his temper too often frayed, and either Jane or one other of his whores was likely to feel the full force of his temper in her face.
Weyland understood that he had years to wait until the time was right to make a play for the kingship bands, and he was furious that he might have to spend those years fretting over what, probably, was no more than a small detail of decoration.
He was greater than that, surely.
Part Two
THE POWER OF THE CIRCLE
London, 1939
Jack Skelton threw his bag into the boot of the car, then jumped in the passenger seat, silently cursing the British preoccupation with tiny vehicles. He slouched down in the seat, reaching for his cigarettes just as Frank put the car into gear.
“It’ll take us at least half an hour,” Frank said. “The Old Man’ll be furious. We were supposed to report in at—”
“I’ll take responsibility,” Skelton said, drawing deeply on his cigarette, relishing the smoke in his lungs. There were very few things he liked about this twentieth-century world, but this was one of them.
“But you are my responsibility,” Frank said. “The Old Man told me to—”
“Oh, for gods’ sakes, Frank! Calm down. The ‘Old Man’ will cope if we’re twenty minutes late. Now, get this damned conveyance moving, why don’t you, before we’re twenty hours late.”
Frank’s mouth thinned. He crouched over the steering wheel in that peculiar manner he had and pushed his foot down on the accelerator.
The car moved forwards, and Skelton slouched down even further. He was getting very tired of Frank, and hoped he didn’t have to work too closely with him at—
A huge black four-door sedan hurtled around the corner ahead and screeched to a halt before them. Frank slammed his foot on the brakes, and Skelton muttered an obscenity as he was thrown forward against the dashboard.
“Jesus, Frank! Where did the English learn to drive?”
A slight, fair-haired woman in the uniform of a WREN leapt out of the sedan.
Frank groaned. “Christ. It’s Piper.”
Piper hurried to Frank’s window, leaning down to peer first at Frank and then, more curiously, at Skelton. “Hello, Frank!” Piper said, her eyes again slipping to Skelton, who studiously ignored her. “There’s been a change of plans. I’m so glad to have caught you!”
“Yes?” snapped Frank. Patently he didn’t like Piper much, which perversely made Skelton like her immensely.
“The Old Man’s left London,” said Piper, her voice breathless. “Gone up to his weekend place. Wants to see you and,” yet again she looked curiously at Skelton, “the major there. You’re to report to him for lunch.”
“The weekend house, eh?” murmured Skelton, throwing Piper a grin. “If I’d known I’d have brought my tweeds.”
“Very well, Piper,” said Frank. “Are you coming as well?”
“Oh, yes,” said Piper, and her mouth twisted. “I’ve the Spiv in the back.”
“The Spiv”, Skelton thought. The “Old Man”. Do the British not once use a cursed name? He looked ahead, trying to see into the back seat of the black sedan, but cigarette smoke obscured his vision, and all he could make out was the vague form of a man, partly hidden behind the newspaper he was reading.
Piper was walking back to her sedan, and Frank once more put his own car into gear, waiting for Piper to drive off.
“So where is it we’re going?” said Skelton. “Where is this weekend house?”
“Epping Forest,” said Frank, unaware that Skelton had stiffened at the information. “The Old Man’s got a house there, inherited from some boffin in his family. It’s called Faerie Hill Manor.”
The heart of the Troy Game, and Antwerp, the Netherlands
Long Tom, oldest and wisest of the Sidlesaghes, sat by the prostrate white form of the Stag God, Og, as he lay in the glade in the heart of the forest. The flanks of the stag rose and fell with discernible breath, and his heartbeat, not once in millennia, but now at least once an hour, close enough that the watching eye might catch it.
Og was waking, moving towards rebirth. Long Tom kept watch this night, as he did many nights, but this night, that of the first of May, became something unexpected.
As he sat, something moved in the forest which surrounded the glade.
Long Tom raised his head and looked about as he heard a noise coming from behind the trees.
“Who goes there?” he called, wondering if Asterion had gained enough power to dare the heart of the Game.
Then the stag moaned, and something most unexpected walked free of the forest.
Long Tom stared.
The being that had stepped forth smiled, and then it spoke.
Long Tom listened, his large mouth dropping ever so slightly open. When the being had stopped speaking, he frowned, but then nodded.
“I will see that it is done,” he said.
The chamber, like the house which contained it, was large, yet sparsely furnished. The floorboards were well swept and bare save for a single rug sprawled before the fire. There were two plain elmwood chests pushed against a far wall, and a table of similar material to one side of the room with the remains of a meal scattered over it. Candles sat on both the table and the chest. A fire burned brightly in the grate, and before it, and slightly away from the direct heat, stood five large copper urns, steam rising gently from their openings.
A huge tester bed, again of plain unadorned wood, dominated the room. The bed curtains which hung down from the tester, threadbare and dulled with years of use, had been pushed back towards the head of the bed. The creamy linens and the single blanket—both linens and blanket expertly patched here and there—were piled towards the foot of the bed.