Although the trees were well spaced, I had the sense that they were crowding about me, watching me as I started up the incline of a hill that itself seemed to be a living, breathing entity. I could see a cleared space at the top of the hill, lit with the faint luminescence of magic, and my movements slowed even further. I inched forward, careful silent step by careful silent step, taking cover behind every tree, every shrub, until I worked my way to the eastern edge of the clearing, and found myself a massive beech tree behind which to crouch. There was a small crab apple just to one side of it that was more shrub than tree, and it enabled me to peer from behind the beech without chance of discovery.
To be frank, I have no idea what I was expecting, but the group that met my eyes was quite extraordinary. Harry, I was not surprised to see, but I had so rarely seen him in his existence as the Lord of the Faerie that I stared at him for long minutes. Staid Walter Herne was standing half-naked by a large stump, looking as if he wanted to be anywhere but. Malcolm lurked on the other side of the clearing with blue paint smeared all over his face, looking like something from a history book; his appearance did not surprise me at all, but his presence did make me feel uncomfortable. Then Jack…Jack, standing before the Lord of the Faerie, dressed only in his trousers.
My eyes lingered on Jack, but eventually returned to the Lord of the Faerie. I’d known Harry all my life—but I barely knew the Lord of the Faerie. The Lord of the Faerie existed only in the Faerie, where I’d spent so little time, and Harry had been…well, Harry had been Harry whenever he appeared in this world, and him I knew quite well.
Perhaps a little too well.
A few years ago we’d been lovers, briefly. It had been Harry’s idea—at least he’d been the one to suggest the liaison—and I’d acquiesced out of loneliness, curiosity, and a deep sense of needing to do something other than be Catling’s victim.
It had not been a particular success. It had taken exactly one night to sate whatever curiosity I’d had (Harry had been my first, and thus far, only lover), and I’d sensed very quickly that Harry’s heart was not in it. He’d been kind, thoughtful, but, in the end, slightly distracted. I’d asked him why he’d wanted to do this: why, when all knew full well he had heart only for Stella, he’d decided to take me as a lover, and he’d shrugged and said only, “I was trying to help”, which was no damned help at all.
So while I knew Harry reasonably intimately, during my adult life I’d never seen much of the Lord of the Faerie and, crouching behind the beech and peering through the crab apple, I suddenly wished it had been the Lord of the Faerie who had taken me as a lover, and not Harry. The Lord of the Faerie had such vibrancy, such vigour, such authority, that I felt a moment’s envy for what Stella enjoyed, and I had not.
Walter was fidgeting with something on the stump now—I could not see what—but Jack and the Lord of the Faerie appeared to be engaged in a brief but intense discussion. The Lord of the Faerie had his hand on Jack’s shoulder, then abruptly he shifted it into Jack’s hair, grabbing at it and giving Jack’s head a little shake. It looked almost as if the Lord of the Faerie was trying either to ascertain Jack’s agreement for whatever was about to happen, or was trying to talk him out of it.
I squirmed about so that I was sitting comfortably—I didn’t want to be struck with a sudden and catastrophic cramp if I got too cold and stiff—and peered even more closely through the crab-apple.
Walter had stilled now, and was looking intently at the Lord of the Faerie.
Everyone’s attention was on the Lord of the Faerie. Even Malcolm on the other side of the clearing appeared to be transfixed by him.
Then Jack gave a small nod, and some of the tension dissipated.
“You are sure, Jack?” I heard the Lord of the Faerie say, and Jack nodded again.
“This can’t be undone.”
“I know,” Jack said.
The Lord of the Faerie gave a small, tight smile, looked at Walter, and inclined his head.
Then, so suddenly I almost gasped with the shock, the Lord of the Faerie used his hand buried amid Jack’s hair to push Jack face down over the stump, his chest centred on its top. I am sure Jack wasn’t expecting that, for he gave an audible gasp, and for an instant tensed as if he wanted to struggle.
Then he relaxed, although I could see it took a conscious effort.
My heart was thumping. Suddenly that stump no longer looked like a stump, but an altar, and Jack its sacrifice.
Walter lifted a hand, and let it rest flat-palmed between Jack’s shoulder blades.
I could see Jack’s muscles tense again, even from my distance.
With his other hand Walter lifted something from the stump to Jack’s side. It was shiny but other than that I could not quite make it out.
Then Walter spoke, and what he said was so strange I assumed I had not heard aright.
“I remember,” he said. “I remember it all.”
I stared at him, frowning, and then realised that somehow the dynamics within the group had changed. No one had moved—the Lord of the Faerie and Walter still stood either side of the stump with Jack pushed face first atop it, and Malcolm still stood to the far side of the clearing—but something had changed.
Everyone, Jack included, was focussed on something to the south of the clearing.
I looked, and my heart felt as if it had stopped.
A ghostly white stag with blood-red antlers had stepped forth from the forest into the clearing. I wasn’t so silly or so protected that I had no idea who it was. It was the ghost of Og, he who had been the god of the forests before Jack assumed that mantle.
And ghost surely, because the creature was so ethereal that I felt a goodly gust of wind would blow him away entirely.
Welcome, friend, I heard—felt—the Lord of the Faerie say.
I felt Jack shudder (I have no idea how), and my eyes flew back to him.
Walter smiled, cold and terrible.
His right hand, that which held the shiny instrument, moved and I saw that he held a scalpel.
I felt sick. More than anything I wanted to edge back from the clearing, and fade away into the forest, but I knew that if I made a single movement everyone would become aware of my presence.
And that would be dangerous. I understood that so clearly that I felt as if a terrible, icy hand was squeezing at my stomach.
If they realised my presence now they’d be worse than furious.
I shouldn’t have come. I shouldn’t be here. This wasn’t for me. This was some nightmarish, arcane ritual in which I had no place. For the gods’ sakes, I was Grace, tied to Catling, and I hexed everything I touched.
Walter finally lowered both his eyes and his right hand…
And began to slice into Jack’s flesh.
I jumped. I couldn’t help it. I jumped and the movement shook the crab apple and the leaf litter crackled under my body.
At the same moment that I moved (and created what sounded to me like my own little hurricane of noise), Jack cried out.
It was the most terrible sound I have ever heard. His body twitched, his hands, to either side of the stump, grabbed onto the wood, his head jerked back and he cried out with a haunting, hoarse cry of…oh, gods, it sounded like a man lost. There was pain in it, yes, but there was such an undercurrent of bewilderment, isolation and uncertainty to the cry that I had to momentarily close my eyes.
If he was this uncertain, this isolated, this bewildered, then what hope had any of us?
No one within the clearing reacted to Jack’s cry. Walter kept cutting. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but his hand was moving as if possessed.
Only a slaughterman could cut so deftly.
There was blood everywhere. It flowed over Jack’s arms and down his back until it stained his trousers. He hadn’t made a sound since that initial cry, but I could see every muscle in his back and legs and arms tighten until I couldn’t believe that the stump itself didn’t implode under the pressure.
Walter kept on cutting.
I forced my eyes away from him and Jack, and saw that the Lord of the Faerie and Malcolm stared, not at Jack, but at the stag.