Druids Sword by Sara Douglass

The Battle of Britain, the papers had begun to call it.

During the night of Saturday twenty-fourth of August, eastern London was hit with what appeared to be a few stray sticks of bombs. There was damage in Stepney, Walthamstow and Leyton, and also Tottenham and Islington in North London as the aircraft flew on.

The next morning, Sunday, Harry called an emergency meeting at Faerie Hill Manor. Once we’d all arrived—me and my parents, Jack, Stella, even Silvius who I hadn’t seen for months—Harry didn’t waste time offering us a drink or asking us if we were comfortable.

Instead he opened a door which opened off the drawing room (one I’d not seen previously) and nodded us through into the Faerie. “If you please,” he said.

It was so unusual for me to be invited to the Faerie that for the moment I was absorbed only in the strangeness of it. How often had I been here? As a baby, and then for the Great Marriage, but that was about it. The door led us through onto the slopes leading up to The Naked, and I turned about slowly, taking it all in.

Then I realised that the others (save Silvius, who was as much a stranger as I, by the way he was looking about) were staring at a hill in the middle distance.

The Lord of the Faerie (“Harry” had been left behind on the other side of the door) was waving a hand at it. “Well?” he demanded.

I looked, and instantly felt coldness sweep through me. There were several dark patches on the hillside, as if the trees there had been burned.

“And here,” said the Lord of the Faerie, now pointing to a hillside slightly to the north of the other one, and a little closer. Here there was just one blackened patch, but it was considerably larger, and it was now obvious that the trees had been set alight. The leaves had all burned away, and the trunks and branches stood blackened and dead against the azure sky.

Jack swore, which made me jump.

“When did this happen?” he said. “This is nothing like the frost damage you showed me in March.”

“It happened last night,” said the Lord of the Faerie. “When the bombs fell on London.”

Everyone turned from the hillside to stare at the Faerie Lord. The implications were so obvious, but so appalling, that I think everyone was, like myself, too busy trying to deny the connection to actually speak.

“As the bombs hit the East End,” said the Lord of the Faerie, “so this hillside—” he pointed to the one in the distance, in the east “—burst into flame. And as the bombs fell in the north of London,” now he pointed to the hillside closest to us, “so this detonated.”

Still no one said anything.

“Imagine,” the Lord of the Faerie said softly, looking at each of us in turn, “what will happen if the Luftwaffe mounts a blitzkrieg against London.”

He and Jack exchanged a look then, and it was so bleak that I spoke, if only to break that terrible exchange between them.

“It’s connected to the bombing?” I said. “But how? I didn’t think that damage to the mortal world would have reflected here.”

“Catling,” said Jack. “This is Catling’s doing.”

“Somehow Catling is sending the damage through,” said the Lord of the Faerie. “Reflecting it through.”

“She’s getting impatient,” said my mother. She shivered, and wrapped her arms about herself.

“Aye,” said the Lord of the Faerie, “but this is not all. Come with me.”

We followed him up The Naked, and once on its summit, he pointed to the horizon. “What do you see?” he said.

I frowned, for I couldn’t see anything. There was merely a clear horizon. What did the Lord of the Faerie want us to—

“Oh, my gods,” whispered my mother. “The Idyll has gone.”

“Aye,” said the Lord of the Faerie. “It vanished, so one of the Faerie folk told me, the instant the first hillside burst into flame.”

I felt sick. First the damage to the trees, and now my father’s Idyll had been destroyed? “Is this my fault? I mean…I came here for the Great Marriage, and now this damage. Is Catling using me as a conduit to hurt the Faerie?”

Was that why the Lord of the Faerie had invited me here now? To judge me?

“No!” my mother cried, but before she could speak further Jack strode over to me, taking one of my wrists in his hand. He was wearing his military uniform, and while I could not see it, I felt those marks sliding down his arm, and an instant later saw them cascade over the top of his hand, across his fingers, and flow into my scars.

The instant they touched me I gasped and tried to pull away, but Jack had me in his grasp too tightly to allow me to escape.

He stared at me, then, after a moment, his eyes crinkled in a slight smile. “No,” he said, “Catling is not using you as a conduit. Do not blame yourself, Grace.”

He let my wrist go, turning his attention to the rest of the group. “Catling is stronger than ever. This,” he waved his hand in a sweeping arc, taking in all the damage to sky and trees, “she can do by herself.”

Then he turned to my father. “Weyland? Has the Idyll been destroyed?”

My father shook his head. “No. It has just retreated into itself. Fled. I imagine the only way into it now is via the steps of the spire of St Dunstan’s-in-the-East.”

“And if the Idyll is afraid,” said the Lord of the Faerie, “then so am I. The only problem, my friends, is that, unlike the Idyll, the Faerie has nowhere to retreat.” The Lord of the Faerie paused. “I can’t believe it. The Great Marriage was supposed to strengthen land and Faerie against this kind of attack.” Another pause. “Catling is strong. Too strong.”

Again there was a silence as we all contemplated this, finally broken by Silvius.

“What did you mean,” he asked the Lord of the Faerie, “by saying Catling was ‘reflecting’ the damage through?”

“Why expend effort yourself,” said Stella, silent until now, “when you can merely reflect—or redirect—damage from one realm into another?”

“The ‘how’ of this is largely irrelevant,” said the Lord of the Faerie, looking at Jack and my mother. “What I need to know is how and when you can stop it. If Hitler sets London afire then the Faerie will burn as well!”

Jack and my mother exchanged a glance, then Jack sent a brief look my way before he answered the Lord of the Faerie. “Coel, we are still trying to discover what this weakness is, and how best we might use it to—”

“Damn it!” shouted the Lord of the Faerie. “That is not what I want to hear! When can you stop her?”

Again Jack glanced at me before responding to the Lord of the Faerie. “The short answer to that, my friend, is that we can’t. Not yet. I know you’re desperate—so am I! But I have no idea how Noah and I can exploit this weakness, and to attempt to do so before we understand it is to invite catastrophe!”

To that the Lord of the Faerie made no response, save a baring of his teeth in a snarl of sheer frustration.

EIGHT

St Magnus the Martyr, London

Tuesday, 3rd September 1940

Weyland had been unsettled and unhappy ever since Jack had reappeared in London, but his sense of foreboding had grown stronger since he’d realised the imps were responsible for the Ripper murders. That the imps murdered occasionally, Weyland had no doubt, but this series of murders…

There was something about them.

Something sinister.

Something purposeful.

Something, Weyland knew, that should scare him halfway to death.

All the bodies of the women had been laid out under the porch of St Magnus the Martyr. Weyland had no idea about the significance of that location, although he worried at it, and worried Silvius about it. The police had a constant but surreptitious presence in the vicinity of the ancient church, watching both the porch and the streets and alleyways leading to it, but their presence had not stopped the murders, or stopped the bodies mysteriously appearing under the porch within the blink of an eye.

The imps were using power to lay the bodies out, but Weyland could match power with power, and he could see what police surveillance could not.

Unable to find the imps at their house, or anywhere else within London, Weyland had spent weeks, off and on, watching St Magnus the Martyr. Noah had asked him what he was about at night, but he had merely shrugged, and passed his absences off as nocturnal wanderings, or extra ARP warden duty atop the Savoy. Noah didn’t believe him, and her disbelief, as well as his absences, contributed to the growing rift between them, but Weyland didn’t want to confide in her.