Druids Sword by Sara Douglass

She was too close to Jack, especially now that she, too, could sense this cursed “shadow”.

Weyland could bear, just, to watch Noah drift away, but he hated beyond anything Grace’s growing closeness to Jack. To lose both wife and daughter to him. Ah! That was too much!

He was wandering within a block of St Magnus late on the night of the third of September, cloaking his activities in power, when he felt the unmistakeable presence of the imps coming closer. He ducked down an alley, keeping himself cloaked in both power and shadows as much as possible, and crept closer to the church.

Weyland passed a policeman, standing in the darkened archway of a door, but the policeman, halfdozing, realised neither the presence of Weyland or the closing presence of the imps.

He arrived at the church, clinging to the darkened recesses of an alley’s entrance, just as the imps came down the main street. What he saw appalled him.

The imps were dragging between them a shrieking young woman.

Weyland stared, then looked back over his shoulder at the policeman. Surely, even with his mortal-cursed blindness, he could somehow sense this horror?

But the policeman merely yawned, and leaned more comfortably against the door jamb.

Weyland looked back to the imps. They had dragged their victim to the porch, where Bill kicked her legs out from under her, seizing her disordered hair as she fell to the pavement.

Before Weyland could move, before he could run out and somehow try to save the woman from her fate, both imps looked skyward.

“Do you like it?” hissed Jim. “Do you like your meal?”

“Does her terror taste good to you?” said Bill. “Is it enough for you?”

To Weyland’s horror he realised the imps were addressing the shadow. He froze where he was, unable to think, unable to act, wondering what in the gods’ names it was, hovering up there, that demanded such a sacrifice?

He clenched his fists, knowing he should act, knowing he should do something, but just as his muscles tightened to dash out, Bill leaned down to the woman and, evading her hands that tried to stop him, buried the blade of a knife deep into her belly.

Weyland froze in horror.

Bill dragged the knife back and forth in the woman’s abdomen, needing to use both his hands on the hilt to do it. Her heels drummed up and down on the pavement, shrieks bellowed forth from her throat, and her hands grabbed futilely at the knife—but none of it made any difference.

Bill was being deliberately slow, Weyland realised through a haze of sheer revulsion. He was drawing her death out, drawing her terror out.

So that the shadow could feed.

Jim was jumping about frenziedly, his face turned upwards, his hands dancing about at his sides. “Do you like it?” he shrieked. “Can you feel it?”

The woman was still struggling, but her screams had died to moans, and her hands were now only moving feebly.

The ground beneath her was soaked with blood.

Then Jim came to an abrupt halt, reached down with both hands into the ruined mess of the woman’s belly, and started to rummage about.

Weyland took a step back, unable to watch any more. Another step, and yet another one, and then he had turned and was running away.

Under the porch of St Magnus the Martyr, Bill and Jim looked up, blood spattering their faces and coating their hands.

“What was that?” said Bill.

“A rat, nothing more,” said Jim, and they bent back to their enjoyment.

NINE

Copt Hall

Friday, 6th September 1940

Silvius pulled his car in behind Weyland’s Daimler, turned off the ignition, then sat thinking for a few minutes as he finished his cigarette. He’d got a call from Jack earlier, asking him to come to Copt Hall this evening.

There was to be a council of war, apparently.

Silvius didn’t envy his son. Jack had screwed things up royally when he’d been Brutus and had founded the travesty of the Troy Game. Don’t use my murder to found the Game, Silvius had said to Brutus. It is no way to start a Game. But Brutus hadn’t listened, and now here they all were, desperately searching for some means to unwind the Game before it lost patience and bit.

It wasn’t all his son’s fault though, was it? Everyone had dirtied their hands in the matter: Cornelia, Genvissa, Ariadne, Asterion and, aye, even himself…Brutus had been his responsibility, his was the hand which had fashioned the pot, and maybe, Silvius thought as he sighed and opened the car door, he was as much to blame as anyone else.

Only Grace seemed to be innocent, and Silvius felt terribly sorry for her. She was the one to suffer the most, the one with all to lose, the one at the heart of the dilemma and, because of it, terribly, terribly isolated.

Malcolm opened the front door of Copt Hall as Silvius approached.

“Is everyone else here?” Silvius said as Malcolm took his coat, scarf and gloves.

“Yes, Mr Makris. They’re waiting for you in the drawing room.”

Waiting silently, as Silvius discovered when he walked in. Weyland and Noah were seated on one of the sofas before the fire, while Grace and Jack were sitting in opposing armchairs.

Everyone had looked up as Silvius entered, and Jack rose, and walked forward to embrace his father.

“Silvius! I am glad you are here.”

“Not too late, I hope,” Silvius said. He glanced at Weyland—the man was wan, the skin too tight over his cheekbones, and his eyes avoided Silvius’.

“Not at all,” said Jack. “Come, sit down and I’ll get you a whisky.”

Silvius nodded at the others as he sat down and took the whisky Jack handed him. He noted that there was a small satchel by the side of Grace’s chair, and Silvius wondered what it contained.

“Silvius,” Jack said as he sat down in his chair, “I’ve asked you to come here tonight to see if you can’t offer any suggestions. You were a Kingman, and the gods alone know we need every bit of help we can get.”

“Then why is not Stella here?” said Silvius.

“It is dusk,” said Noah. “She needs to carol in the twilight. Besides, she said that she could offer nothing more than I, or Jack.”

Or Grace? wondered Silvius, having heard from Jack that she was also a trained Mistress of the Labyrinth. He saw Jack glance at Grace as Noah spoke, and knew his son had thought the same thing. Interesting, Silvius thought. Noah forgets to include her daughter, but Jack remembers.

“Then Ariadne should be here,” Silvius said, swilling his whisky around in his glass, and watching out of the corner of his eye as Weyland’s face closed over even further.

“I can speak to her at a later time,” said Jack.

“I will do it for you,” said Silvius.

Jack raised an eyebrow, remembering other times Silvius had demonstrated a knowledge of Ariadne’s movements.

“I see her from time to time,” Silvius said.

“Is that so?” Jack said.

Silvius shrugged. “We like to talk over old times,” he said, “but we are not here now to talk of Ariadne and me—” Jack sent him a look which Silvius interpreted to mean that Jack, at least, fully intended to speak to him about it sooner rather than later “—but of your problem in trying to unwind the Troy Game, Jack.”

“Yes,” Jack said. “Grace, Noah and I have been trying to work out what is—” he glanced at Grace “—this shadow that hangs over London. Grace thinks it a trap of Catling’s making. Noah and I are more inclined to think it a weakness of the Troy Game.”

Silvius noted with some interest the play of emotions between the three of them at that point. Grace studiously examined her hands in her lap. Noah glanced first at Jack, then at her daughter, looking strained, while Jack looked steadily at Grace, as if willing her to raise her eyes and meet his.

Intriguing, Silvius thought. Then he looked back to Weyland, saw the expression on the man’s face, and his stomach curdled. He didn’t know if it was because of the emotional interplay between Noah, Grace and Jack, or because of what they’d said.

Look at me, man, Silvius willed Weyland, but Weyland kept his eyes averted, although he must have known of Silvius’ silent plea.

Then Jack spoke again, distracting Silvius away from his concern about Weyland. Briefly, Jack explained how, initially, only he and Grace could discern the difference, then how Noah sensed it after the Great Marriage.

“But only I and Grace can discover more of it,” Jack concluded. “It is as though it is a pattern etched into glass. Grace and I are the only ones who can rub away the years of accumulated grime to reveal more of it—at which point Noah can see the newly exposed section of pattern.”