Darkwitch Rising by Sara Douglass

“None better,” said Louis. “Lord of the Faerie, what happens tonight? What do I do?”

“You step forth on the Ringwalk, my friend.”

“What is this Ringwalk?”

“It is the path the Stag God takes over the land and through the souls of its inhabitants.” Once more the faerie lord extended his hand over the landscape. “See.”

The previously random scattering of lights over the landscape had resolved themselves into a pathway of twinkling lights. It stretched from the foot of the Llandin, from the Holy Oak, east and then northwards, leading deep into the forests.

“What happens when I set foot on the Ringwalk?” Louis said.

“That, my friend, is up to you,” and the Lord of the Faerie’s hand gave Louis a very gentle push towards the hill as it sloped down towards the Holy Oak.

Louis hesitated, then he turned his back and set off down the hill.

The Lord of the Faerie smiled, cold and feral. “Die well, my friend,” he whispered. “Die well…or die not at all.”

Idol Lane, London

Later that night Weyland asked Jane once again to leave Noah and himself alone in the kitchen. Weyland had been fiddling about by the hearth, and as Jane left the room he moved back to the table where Noah sat, sitting opposite her.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“For what?” Noah said.

“For whatever happened with Catling. She has done something to hurt you,” he said.

“What care you if I hurt or not?” she said.

“I find I care very much, Noah.”

She stared at him. Slowly, his eyes not leaving hers, Weyland gently took one of her hands in his.

Noah tensed, but did not withdraw her hand.

“I am glad Jane will teach you the craft of the Mistress of the Labyrinth,” he said.

“You shall be able to use me splendidly, then.”

He gave a short laugh. “Learning the ways of the Mistress will make you more beautiful, more desirable. Any woman would be enhanced by learning the craft of the Mistress of the Labyrinth. You will be graced. I find I look forward to that very much.”

“I will never love you, Minotaur. Do not think to trick me into love!”

“Then I shall harbour no expectation of your love.” His mouth quirked again. “Although I still find myself confused by what you said atop the hill.”

“Then forget it, I pray you!”

Weyland let go her hand and looked about the kitchen, as if seeing it for the first time.

“This is a poor room,” he said finally. “A poor place to sleep.” He glanced at Noah, and saw panic light her eyes.

“I find it warm enough, and pleasant,” she said.

He grinned. “Nevertheless, I would prefer that you spend your nights with me from now on.”

“No.”

“I said I would ask a terrible price of you, Noah, for leaving the bands to lie undisturbed until you learn the art and craft of the labyrinth. This is it. Your choice. Spend your nights with me, or I will force you to fetch the kingship bands.”

She stared at him, clearly appalled.

“This price is not so terrible as you may fear, Noah. Let me deal plainly with you. Spend your nights with me—I am demanding no sexual favours or comforts from you—and I will agree that the bands can stay where they are until you have completed your training, and I will give you and Jane the complete freedom you need so you can learn from her teaching. See what a good humour I am in. I have even given you a bonus.”

“You think I should believe you?”

“I do not play with words. I will not force you to any sexual play that you do not want—that you do not ask for—but we will lie together side by side, and talk, and share sleep. For this you receive your freedom to do what you must, and you receive my word that I will not force you to take the bands until you have finished your training. It is a bargain, Noah.”

“Why?”

Because I want you. “Because I want to know you better, and I want you to know me.”

Noah frowned, and Weyland could see her trying to fathom the trap.

“No trap,” he whispered.

“With you there is always a trap.”

“No trap.” Not for her, maybe.

She was silent, still thinking, then, with some obvious reluctance, she nodded. “Very well.”

“We must seal the bargain with a kiss.”

“You said no sexual play I did not ask for!”

“It is but the conclusion of a pact, Noah, and common enough. Come now, a kiss.”

He leaned across the table, and laid his mouth very gently against hers. He let it go at that, waiting, and was rewarded when she sighed, and moved her mouth more firmly under his.

He increased the depth of his kiss, but still kept it undemanding, and, very, very slowly, he felt her relax under his mouth.

Oh, gods, he had not felt this way since Ariadne first offered herself to him. All these thousands of years, all the women he had taken, and raped, and forced, and squandered, and he had never kissed nor been kissed with this sweetness, until now. Until Noah…

“Dear heavens, Noah! What are you doing!”

Noah sprang back from Weyland’s mouth as he forced down a curse, sat back in his chair, and turned around.

Jane stood in the doorway, looking at Noah with such an expression of astonishment on her face that Weyland thought she looked like a little girl who had caught her parents in frenzied sexual congress.

“I had not thought that you…with him…!” Jane said. “No wonder he asked me to leave the room.”

“It was not what you think,” Noah said.

“Noah shall be spending her nights with me from now on,” said Weyland casually, enjoying the renewed expression of astonishment, tempered with horror, on Jane’s face. “A platonic agreement, naturally. Noah agrees to this because it will please me so much that I will allow both you and she as much freedom as you need to teach and learn the ways of the labyrinth.”

If possible, Jane gaped all the more at Noah. “You told him—”

“I told Weyland that you had agreed to teach me the craft of Mistress of the Labyrinth,” Noah said quickly.

Jane managed to close her mouth. “Oh.”

“And I am most pleased,” Weyland said. “Most pleased.”

Jane shot him a dark look.

“He would know anyway,” said Noah, still looking hard at Jane. “Why not tell him?”

“Precisely,” said Weyland. “And now, I see that it is late, and I am tired. Noah, we should go to bed, I think.”

Weyland looked back to Noah. Her face had closed over, and Weyland knew that she wondered what lay ahead of her, in that unknown den above them.

“It shall not be as you fear,” he said softly. Three

Three

The Ringwalk

Louis walked down the hill. He was unsettled and nervous, more by the glimpse of the potency of the ancient power of this land as it emanated from the Lord of the Faerie than by what might happen to him this night.

The Holy Oak loomed before him, and Louis stopped beneath its ancient spreading branches and looked to the small pool formed by the spring that bubbled forth from the rocks at the foot of the tree.

The pool, the place where he’d rescued Cornelia from Loth and Erith and from where he’d carried her back to their home and conceived with her their daughter.

There was a movement in front of him, and Louis looked up. A fox had emerged from the undergrowth and was standing directly before him, staring into his eyes with his own unblinking yellow orbs.

Then the fox turned, and walked down a pathway which led from the pool into a small grove of trees.

The gravel and earthen floor of the path glowed with a faint luminescence.

The Ringwalk.

Louis took a deep breath, and stepped forward to follow the fox.

Everything changed.

The first thing Louis noticed was that his clothes and shoes had vanished, leaving him naked.

The second thing he noticed was that the forest had changed. The trees seemed different. Foreign.

Louis frowned, puzzling it over as he walked deeper into the forest.

The third thing he noticed was that it was now daylight rather than night.

And warm. Hot, even, as if this was a foreign land rather than—

“Oh, sweet gods!” he muttered, coming to a stop, staring almost frantically about him.

The fox had vanished, and there was only the forest, and the warm scented air, and the soft touch of a breeze across his naked and now goosebumped flesh.

Louis knew where he was, and that knowledge terrified him.

He was in the forests outside his Italian birthplace of Alba on the River Tiber.

Where he had hunted and killed his father, Silvius.