Darkwitch Rising by Sara Douglass

Louis had been trying to pick up the larger pieces of the glass. Now he dropped them again, and walked over to Charles and Catharine, wiping his fingers over his lovely silver doublet.

“No,” he said, “she is not dead. Weyland would not allow her that mercy. She is alive…just.”

“You must not blame yourself, Louis, for not—” Charles began.

“I blame those damned giants!” Louis yelled. “If not for them, if not for their cursed interfering—”

The door to the chamber opened, and Charles half rose, his face flushing as he prepared to shout at whichever servant had chosen this terrible moment to enter.

But it was no servant, and, as they saw who stood there, Charles swallowed his anger and walked over to where Marguerite and Kate stood just inside the door.

He embraced them fiercely, and then Catharine ran to them, and Marguerite and Kate enclosed her within their arms. Louis also came over, and in turn was hugged by the women.

“Oh,” said Marguerite, “that we should meet under such circumstances. Matilda, it is so good to see you once more, but—”

“You felt it too, then,” said Charles.

“Aye,” Marguerite said. “We were riding into London when we felt it. Gods, Noah—”

“But are you well?” asked Charles. “And the children?”

“We are well indeed,” said Marguerite, “if saddened by the day’s events.”

“The children do marvellously,” Kate finished. “They remain in Woburn village, Charles, with a kindly neighbour.”

Charles nodded. “When matters have settled, I shall send for them to attend court.”

“What this natter of children and babies?” said Louis. “We should instead be talking of—”

“Louis,” Marguerite said, “Noah knew that something of this nature was going to happen. She—”

“She had no idea that she would be torn apart, for what else could explain such pain?”

“She needed to be there,” Marguerite said. “She needs to learn the arts of Mistress of—”

“Right now,” said Louis, his voice dangerously soft, “I don’t give a fuck about Noah learning the arts of the Mistress of the Labyrinth. I just care that she lies in agony, and none of us do anything save stand here and mutter useless words!”

To that no one had anything else to say.

It took Elizabeth and Frances until nightfall to clean and settle Noah and Jane as well as they could, and then scrub the kitchen and themselves. As shocked and benumbed by events as they were, the two girls nonetheless managed to wash the two women, bind their terrible wounds with strips torn from a clean sheet, and move them to the pallets to one side of the kitchen.

They could do little else. Both women lay as if dead, their skin cold, clammy and grey, their breathing hardly discernible. Neither stirred as Elizabeth and Frances worked over them, and both continued to seep blood; to the girls it was remarkable that they were alive at all, and it did not seem possible that they would survive the night.

Once they’d done what they could for the women, the two girls set to the nauseating work of cleaning the kitchen. The women’s blood had jellified into several putrid masses and had set rock-hard in the cracks and pockmarks of the flagstones so that it took back-breaking labour to scrub it out.

When the kitchen was finally clean, Elizabeth and Frances stripped themselves of their blood-soaked and wet clothes, and scrubbed themselves until their skin shone red and raw. Then, dressing themselves in some of Jane’s petticoats and chemises they found in a chest (what spare clothes they owned were resting unobtainable in their chamber in the nearby tavern), and throwing shawls about their shoulders, they lit a lamp against the growing darkness and sat down at the table.

Neither spoke. Both were still so paralysed by the horror of what they had witnessed they were literally incapable of speaking about it. Their minds could hardly process the events of the day.

There was only one thing they were sure of, one thing they had learned from this day, and that was that to run from this house was death. Neither doubted that Weyland would hunt them down…and now that they had seen what he could do when fully enraged…

Elizabeth and Frances had ever been in Weyland’s power. Now they were so terrified of him, so sure that he was the Devil himself, they were virtually incapable of independent thought or action.

During all of this Catling sat in her corner, her eyes following Elizabeth and Frances as they worked, but not moving or speaking.

As always, she had not lifted a finger to help.

The night closed in. High in his Idyll, Weyland could not see it so much as feel it.

But the gathering darkness was not the worst thing he could feel.

The entire building in which he sat throbbed with pain. It ran upwards like fiery rivulets defying gravity, sharp and agonising, pulsating with every beat of Noah’s heart, searing deep into every fibre of Weyland’s being.

Damn her!

He sat in the room he used for his bedchamber, on the floor, back against the wall, knees drawn up. He sank his face into his hands, his fingers clenched into his hair, and groaned.

Damn her!

The night drew on, and grew colder.

The pain continued to slither up through the beams of the house, slicing into Weyland’s bones.

The very soil beneath the house seemed to tremble, as if it wept.

A moan drifted up through the house, and Weyland knew it was not either of the women, but the land itself.

Weyland’s hands grew whiter where they gripped his hair.

Finally, cursing, he rose to his feet, stiff and sore from his long hours sitting on the floor. He marched through the Idyll and into the vestibule, where the imps sat cross-legged on the floor, rolling dice and picking their noses.

“Stay here,” Weyland said, and walked through the doorway into the house, slamming the door behind him.

Frances gave an incoherent cry of pure fear as he strode into the kitchen, retreating as far as possible against the back wall of the room.

Weyland sent her a look of seething ill will, then looked at Elizabeth.

She sat at the table, looking gaunt and wretched. She’d been resting her face in her hands, elbows on the table, and she merely raised her face and looked at Weyland as he entered.

Weyland shifted his gaze to where Jane and Noah lay. They were completely still, the blankets that covered them dark and heavy with their blood.

Weyland’s jaw visibly clenched, then he jerked his eyes back to Elizabeth. “Come here,” he said.

She tensed, her eyes almost starting from her head, but to her credit she did as he asked. Rising from the table, she walked stiffly to where Weyland stood.

He jerked his head at Noah and Jane. “I will need your help,” he said.

Elizabeth gave a small nod. “Anything,” she said.

Weyland’s eyes grew harder. “Anything?”

“Anything for Noah and for Jane,” said Elizabeth. “Not for you.”

Weyland had lived many scores of lives, but nothing anyone had said to him had hurt so much as that simple statement from Elizabeth. He remembered how she’d wounded him long ago, when he’d made love to her, and she’d spoken plain, unadorned words that had sent him reeling away. How had she this power, this simple girl? Where had she this majesty?

“For Noah and for Jane, then,” he said softly, “if not for me.”

And he turned to the women.

Elizabeth drew a deep breath, picked up the lamp, and followed a step behind him.

The girls had stripped Noah and Jane naked, although both wore a bandage wrapped about their abdomens and hips. Between them Elizabeth and Weyland rolled Noah over onto her stomach, then Weyland ripped the bandage apart.

He stopped for a moment, motionless, staring at the wound. It was the size of a plate, stretching from hip to hip and almost to her waist. All the skin had gone, the bones of her spine and part of her pelvis lay bare, and blood vessels continuously seeped blood.

By rights she should not have been alive.

Weyland raised his head and looked at Elizabeth.

She raised an eyebrow.

Weyland held her stare a moment, then he sighed, and laid his hands upon Noah’s back.

They met on a hilltop, amid an infinite vista of hilltops. The grass was warm beneath their feet, the gentle breeze mild, and yet, even so, the tears on her cheek felt like ice.

The very soil of the Faerie was moaning in grief.

“Why?” she said. “Why heal me? This is a greater torment than anything else you have done.”

A muscle flinched in his cheek, and he turned away, pretending to study the forested hills which rolled away from him.

She wrapped her arms about herself. “This must be a trick. You are the Minotaur. You do not ‘heal’.”