Druids Sword by Sara Douglass

“Hope,” said Noah. “Thank the gods.”

“May I ask something?” said Silvius.

Jack gave his father a small smile. “Sure. So long as I have an answer for it.”

“If the Troy Game can be destroyed…what happens to the majority of people in this room who have been caught up in its machinations, reborn life after life? Will you be gone as well?”

“No,” said Jack. “We all exist independently of the Troy Game, and we’re all tied either to the land or to each other now. Only if the land is destroyed will we cease to exist.”

“Thank goodness for that,” said Silvius with a grin. “I was just starting to enjoy everyone’s company.”

Harry had been silent while the Mistresses of the Labyrinth and the two Kingmen talked, but now he put a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Jack, I take it from this conversation that you are prepared to commit to the Troy Game’s undoing?”

“Yes,” Jack said. “Not that it does you any good, but yes. The Troy Game needs to be destroyed, unwound, undone, put away…whatever. It is a vileness, and…oh, gods, I wish I had never created the damned thing!”

“And I wish the land had never conducted its vile alliance with the Game,” said Harry, “but wishes will do us no good at all.”

“Catling knew what choice I would make,” Jack said. “She had her threats all to hand.”

“I still can’t come to grips with the idea that the daughter we conceived was, in fact, Catling,” said Stella. “All these years I have thought of her, and of what she could have been…and here she was, before us all the time. Catling.”

“I wish my daughter had been born,” said Noah softly. “Who knows what she may have been.”

Stella dropped her eyes.

“Enough,” said Harry. “There are no recriminations, no guilt. What has happened has happened, and we need to move forward.”

“Straight over the cliff?” muttered Ariadne, inspecting her scarlet fingernails.

Harry shot her a black look, but did not otherwise respond to her. “The Troy Game is the greatest threat this land has ever faced,” he said, “and the land needs to be as strong as it can be to face the Game. Jack, Noah, for three and a half thousand years you have been antagonists, one way or the other. Jealousies and ambitions have driven you apart. It is time, finally, to put a stop to it, because, damn it, you are causing this land almost as much damage as Catling!”

Harry paused, looking between them. “It is time to make the Great Marriage. Time to give the land the strength it needs to fight back. You will do this.”

It was a directive, not a request, and it created an interesting undercurrent of emotion in the room. Jack and Noah looked at each other, and then as quickly away again. Silvius studied his son carefully; Ariadne grinned somewhat lasciviously and Stella sent her a glance of irritation.

Jack finally gave a tired little smile. “Noah?” he said. “Can we put our past behind us?”

“Of course,” she said, her response quick, but her face and words underscored with a little nervousness.

“Will Weyland accept this?” Jack said.

Now it was she who gave the tired smile. “I will talk to him.”

“He will not stand in its way,” Harry said, and, again, it was not a request.

“I will talk to him,” Noah repeated.

“Noah—” Harry began.

“I will talk to him, Harry, and he will agree. Okay?”

“Make sure that he does,” Harry said quietly. “Now, as to the when. The sooner the—”

“No,” said Jack. “Sooner is not necessarily better. The Great Marriage is best done on May Day, Harry. That’s eight months away. We could do it sooner, yes, but if we do it on the strength of the rising spring, then it will achieve its greatest power.”

“He’s right, Harry,” Noah said.

“But that’s so far away,” Harry said.

“Harry, I know,” Jack said. “But we can’t rush into this. We need to deal with the Troy Game, and we will do it, I promise you.”

To one side Ariadne gave a soft snort of laughter, then reached into her purse for a cigarette, which Silvius lit for her.

“We will do it,” Jack said, glancing at Ariadne, “but we’re only going to get one chance at this. If we delay the Great Marriage until May Day then we’ll ensure the land, as well as Noah and myself, are at our strongest before we attempt—”

“The impossible,” Ariadne muttered, and drew down deeply on her cigarette.

“Goddamn you!” Jack spun about, and marched over until he was standing directly in front of Ariadne.

She didn’t flinch, merely regarded him calmly through the drifting smoke of her cigarette.

“You had your part to play in this mess,” said Jack, “and you will damn well have your part to play in its fixing. Yes?”

Ariadne gave a tilt of her head, which was as close as she could come to an apology. “I will help, yes. So, what do you have planned, great god of the forests?”

Jack caught his father’s twinkling eye, and barely managed to repress a smile. Ariadne was taunting him, but she was doing it in good humour, and he was suddenly very glad she was here.

“Jack needs to get the kingship bands,” Harry said.

“Of course,” said Noah. “Whenever he wants them, I will fetch them.”

Jack slid Noah a quick look, then just as quickly looked away.

Ariadne was watching him, and smiled to herself.

“We need to work out how we can get around what Catling has told Jack,” Stella said. “Whatever she says, surely there is a way to unwind the Game.”

“So what do we do first?” Harry said. “Jack? Do you want your bands?”

How the world has changed, Jack reflected. For two lifetimes Noah, as Caela and then Noah, and Harry, in his earlier incarnation as Harold, had spent much of their time trying to keep him away from the bands. Now they were his for the asking.

“Not until Noah and I have made the Great Marriage,” he said. “I really do want to delay making any move for as long as I can—sudden action is only going to murder us all. If I have the bands then Catling will want Noah and me to weave the final binding enchantment, completing the Game, immediately. Not having the bands will buy us time.”

“Catling will get impatient,” Ariadne said. “And once Catling gets impatient,” she blew out a plume of smoke, “Catling will get nasty.”

“And thus we need to do some war planning,” Silvius said. “What are we going to do?”

“I need to discover just what it is that appears out of place about London,” said Jack. “I have no idea at all what this damned shadowy difference is, save for the fact that it clearly derives from the labyrinthine arts. Given that Noah and Stella have not detected anything, or Silvius or Weyland, and given that all of you with your knowledge of the Troy Game and the labyrinthine arts should be able to do so, I have no idea what it could be.”

“Jack?” said Ariadne.

“Yes?”

“Would you mind filling me in? I’m not sure that Silvius knows anything about this, either.”

“Oh,” said Jack. “Sorry.” He paused, trying to gather his thoughts. “When I arrived in London a week or so past, I felt something, um, different…about the city. Harry and I spent an afternoon walking about the City. There is something hanging over London. A shadow—that’s the only way I can think of it. Whatever the shadow is, it involves labyrinthine power, although there is a ‘disassociation’ with the Troy Game. I’m sorry, I can’t explain it better than that, Ariadne, and I have no idea if it works against us or for us. But we do need to know precisely what it is and it worries me that Noah and Stella can’t sense it. You, Ariadne? Silvius?”

Both shook their heads. “But you can be sure we’ll send our senses scrying the instant we get back to London,” Silvius said.

Ariadne frowned. “Catling said nothing about it?”

“No,” Jack said, “but then we didn’t have the longest of conversations.”

“Have you asked Grace?”

“Grace called it a ‘wrongness’,” Jack said, “but I can’t help thinking that she knows what it is.”

“Grace wouldn’t hide anything from you,” said Noah.

Jack stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray. “Grace hides many things.”

“Grace is an innocent in all of this,” Noah said.

“There are no innocents in any of this,” Jack said, “and certainly not Grace. She should, for instance, have mentioned she has undergone her training as a Mistress of the Labyrinth.”

“What?” Noah said.

“You didn’t know?” said Jack. “Grace is your daughter, and you a trained Mistress of the Labyrinth yourself, and you didn’t know?”