In her arms she held a very small baby girl, naked and squirming.
Do you know what it is you lack in this false Idyll? she said, her plump red mouth moving in a slow, exaggerated motion, as if this were a dream. Do you?
Weyland stared at her, unable in his shock and horror to respond.
You lack a companion, Weyland. You are alone. You are unloved. I never loved you. I only pretended.
And then, as Weyland started slowly to turn about, she hefted the child in her hands, and tossed it squalling into the flames at her feet.
You are alone, Asterion, as always you were, and as always you will be.
“Ariadne!” he cried, reaching for her (or was it for the baby?) as he completed his turn about, but she was gone, and Weyland was left standing in his Idyll, gazing at nothing but emptiness.
He stood there, staring, for what seemed to him to be hours. Ariadne. Where had she come from? And what was it she had said: You are alone.
They bit, those words, but Weyland would not allow them any truth. Alone? He had always been alone. It had not troubled him up to this point, and Weyland refused to believe his solitariness could start to trouble him now. If he was troubled and irritated, unable to settle or relax within his Idyll, then it was because he was impatient for the Game to begin anew in this life. Impatient for events to occur which would enable him to get his hands on the kingship bands of Troy.
No, that vision had not been Ariadne. That had been the Troy Game, trying to unsettle him yet further. Weyland bared his teeth in a silent rictus of bravado. The king was returning; thus the Game struck out in pre-emptive threat, hoping to clear the king’s path.
What Weyland didn’t want to contemplate was how the Troy Game knew about his daughter.
Eight
Woburn Village, Bedfordshire
The harvest was in, and the people celebrated with the Festival of Ingathering. A parade wound its way through Woburn village on the weekend, and villagers danced in the field and went to church to lay sheaves of grain on the altar as thanks to God for their bounty.
Noah—Eaving—and her sisters celebrated in an entirely different manner. This was a time of great power for Eaving. Pregnant herself, she blossomed as the land ripened into harvest and as the creatures of field and meadow and forest dropped their young.
On the night of the Festival of Ingathering, Noah, Marguerite and Kate gathered in their bedchamber. Marguerite’s two children were asleep in their bedroom, while Kate’s baby was fed and laid down between them to sleep.
The three women sat in a circle in the midst of the bed. They were naked, their hair unbound, their eyes thoughtful and introspective. This would be the first time they had formed their own Circle.
“Will you go to…” Marguerite asked of Noah.
“Brutus-reborn? No. It is too dangerous. You have told me how Weyland has used the Circle once to confront him. I do not want to risk that happening again. Tonight we will walk the Faerie, using the power of the land and of the waters which river it. That is magic foreign to Asterion. With luck, we will stay safe from him.”
Marguerite raised her eyebrows and nodded at Noah’s belly, now gently rounded with the child she carried. The imp?
“I will risk it,” said Noah. “I am not willing to allow this imp to entirely control my life.”
At that Marguerite reached for the box she had brought with her from the continent, and she placed it before her.
“When Charles was fifteen and forced into exile,” she said, not raising her eyes from the box, “he took with him a small piece of the land. It was instinctive, that snatching, but powerful.”
She opened the box, and withdrew from it the dried piece of turf that had, until so very recently, accompanied Charles in all his travels while in exile. Charles had given it to Marguerite, saying that he and Louis would not form a Circle on their own, and that it was best that the turf return home. “I think we shall not be long following it,” Charles had said.
Now Marguerite held the turf cradled within her hand. Then she reached out and gave it to Noah.
Noah raised her eyes to Marguerite and Kate. “From now, until the ending of the Circle,” she said, “I live and breathe and speak as Eaving.”
A subtle change came over her as she said this. Her bearing and demeanour became both stronger and gentler; her eyes transformed from their normal deep blue into a dusky sage green shot through with lightning flashes of gold. Her thick, richly coloured hair, flowing down her back and over one shoulder, almost snapped as a surge of energy ran through it.
Her skin, so pale, now glowed in the darkened room, as if it were the moon itself.
Marguerite and Kate both took a deep breath, and bowed their head and shoulders to their goddess.
“Eaving,” they said as one.
Eaving lifted her hands, and tossed the turf into the air. Magically, as it always had for Marguerite, it transformed into the shimmering circle of emerald green silk, but then, unlike what it had done for Marguerite, it fluttered down towards the three women much larger than previously.
Just before it settled over their heads, Eaving spoke.
“Let us greet the land as it rises to meet us.”
They found themselves beyond the bedchamber, standing atop a grassed hill in gentle sunshine. All about them rolled many hundreds of forested hills, as if into infinity.
They stood within the Realm of the Faerie.
No longer naked, all three wore very soft, almost diaphanous, sleeveless loose-fitting robes of ecru, cream and silver, the colours all merging and shifting as each wearer breathed or moved. The material flowed down from the women’s shoulders, draping softly over breast and hip, to a calf-length hemline that seemed to fade rather than to actually end. At one point the material was still visible, at the next it appeared to dissolve, and at the next point it had vanished altogether.
“Welcome, Eaving,” said a voice, and Eaving turned to see Long Tom standing a few paces distant.
Eaving smiled, and Long Tom came to her and kissed her briefly on the mouth, before greeting Marguerite and Kate in the same manner. Then, as he turned back to Eaving, the other two women gasped in surprise, for they found their little group surrounded by a crowd of the most magical creatures they had ever seen.
They were of similar colours as the women’s gowns, and they were thin and very short, the tops of their heads coming only to the level of the women’s waists. They had very fine, copper-coloured hair, and round eyes the same sage green as Eaving’s.
“Water sprites,” said Eaving, and touched individuals gently on the crown of their head as they crowded about her, murmuring their names. Several reached up delicate hands and stroked her rounded belly, but as soon as they had touched her they turned away again, frowning.
Eaving frowned herself at this, and would have spoken of it, but Marguerite spoke first.
“Where do we stand?” she said, looking about her in wonder.
“We stand within the Faerie,” Long Tom said. “It wakes around us as its gods move towards rebirth. This hill is The Naked, and it is the heart of the Faerie.”
“And as the land wakes about us,” Eaving said to Marguerite and Kate, “so is the Lord of the Faerie rising. Soon he will walk among us again.”
Marguerite, rarely lost for words, hung her mouth open most unbecomingly.
Kate stared also, and although her brow creased she managed to keep her mouth in working order. “Who?” she said.
Eaving looked at Marguerite.
Marguerite’s face cleared and she clasped her hands before her in a gesture of utter joy. “Of course,” she said. “Coel. Coel-reborn. I should have known. Ah, no wonder he is so powerful in this life.”
“Can he be with us here, tonight?” Eaving asked Long Tom.
“No. He will not come back to the Faerie until it is time for him to be crowned, and that cannot happen until he sets foot on the land. Now,” he said in a graver tone, “where would you go this eve?”
“I would visit my daughter,” said Eaving. “I long so much to see her as you cannot imagine. Long Tom, is this possible? Can I use the Faerie to touch her?”
“You are not afraid of the imp?”
“I would visit the imp, as well, I think.”
“Eaving, your daughter may not be what you expect.”
“Marguerite said she would be different,” Eaving said, “for she has been to the Otherworld and back, but she is my daughter, Long Tom, and I want only to love her.”