Druids Sword by Sara Douglass

“What can I do?” he whispered, his voice breaking. “What can I do?”

Ariadne looked carefully at him, looked at the bands about his limbs and then down to the diamonds twinkling through the fire about Grace’s wrists.

“There is something,” she said. “Something I did once for Noah and Stella.”

SIX

Silvius’ Palace, Alba

Monday, 23rd September 1940

GRACE SPEAKS

Ifelt it rather than heard it, a voice that intruded into my pain.

Follow me.

I hated it. I wanted to focus on bearing the agony, to try and concentrate enough that I could use the pain as Ariadne had taught me, and this voice was a distraction.

Follow me.

Catling had never attacked me in this fashion before. I hadn’t realised she had the capability. I wasn’t happy to discover it now. She’d taken over every square inch of my body—at least that’s what it felt like—and poured kerosene over it, and put a match to it. My skin burned and bubbled and—

Follow me.

Go away! I screamed at it. Let me alone!

Grace, please, follow my voice. I have found a cool, cool place for you.

It was Jack, I knew that, but I really didn’t want him now. I just wanted to concentrate on overcoming and then using the pain.

But it was so extreme. So consuming. I didn’t know if I could…

Grace, Grace, please. Trust me.

Trust Jack…

Come with me, Grace, please.

I followed him.

“Where are we?” I said.

I was amazed I could manage even those three words. The pain had vanished, and I was almost delirious with relief.

We stood in a courtyard, furnished only with a bench under an apple tree, and a pond full of flashing gold and silver fish.

“This was my father’s house in Alba,” Jack said, sitting down on the bench.

“Silvius’ house?” I said, taking a seat beside him.

“Aye. This courtyard was his inner sanctum, his favourite place. I only came here for the first time relatively recently, during my transformation into Ringwalker.”

That was significant, but I wasn’t sure why. “It was nice of you to bring me,” I said, then gave a soft laugh. “I’m sorry. That was a little banal. I’m so relieved that the pain has gone, and I do thank you for it from the depths of my heart. How did you manage it?”

“Ariadne suggested it. She used this enchantment to bring your mother out of her body during that time…um, during that time…”

“When my father tore her apart. I know about it, Jack.”

“Well, she told me how to bring you out of your body to a place of sanctuary. To somewhere you could endure without pain. A peaceful, cool place.”

I remembered what my mother had told me about that terrible day when my father had torn apart her and Stella, or Jane as she had been then. Ariadne had dragged them to Tower Fields, but only in spirit.

Their bodies had been left bleeding and torn on the kitchen floor of the house in Idol Lane.

As my body would still be writhing in agony on the floor of the drawing room at Faerie Hill Manor. But I was gone, I had escaped that tormented body, as Noah and Stella had once escaped theirs, and I felt boundless gratitude to Ariadne for suggesting it, and to Jack for calling to me.

I do not think I would have followed any other voice.

“And she told you to bring me here?” I said.

“No. She actually suggested Tower Fields. I thought this was nicer.”

I was pleased.

Jack took one of my hands, raising my arm slightly.

“Look,” he said, “the fish are mirrored in your diamond bands.”

Indeed they were. Flashes of gold and red and silver skittered up and down the tendrils and sprays of diamonds.

“Silvius told me he loved me in this courtyard,” Jack continued. “I had never realised that he loved me. It was a shock. I thought I was a disappointment to him.”

The significance of why he had brought me to this place now hit me.

“Grace,” his other hand now trailed gentle fingers over my face, “whatever you want is yours.”

Everything I had ever heard about this man had taught me to believe that he stampeded people, and bullied and pushed to get what he wanted.

This man here was quite different.

“How can you be so sure that I am what you want?” I asked.

“Because when I was waiting for you on Ambersbury Banks I realised that I would want to wait for no one else.”

I trusted Jack completely, but I also knew that I needed to take what he offered—a long, slow, gradual slide into whatever awaited us.

He smiled, slowly, reading my thoughts, then let go my wrist and leaned back against the trunk of the apple tree. “Catling says she does not have those bands.”

“Do you believe her?”

“I don’t know. She was furious. Completely. She said that my accusation was merely a ruse to hide the fact that I’d lost the final two kingship bands.” He swivelled his head a little so he could look me in the face. “That’s why she attacked you. She told me I need to find those bands. That if I don’t, then this,” he indicated my wrists, but meant the entire agony Catling had caused (was still causing) me, “was just the beginning. The longer I leave those bands, the more those closest to me will suffer. The more London will suffer.”

“Oh, Jack…” It was the threat to the people of London which concerned me. They had suffered so much already, and it appalled me to think what Catling might do next.

“I will find the bands, Grace,” he said. “Whoever has them, I will find them.”

“But if Catling doesn’t have them,” I said, “then who?”

“I have no idea. Aeneas said it was Catling. Who else would be wandering into the Otherworld masquerading as Catling, persuading a long-dead Trojan prince to hand her two of the most magical items in existence, and then wander off with them again?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“Don’t apologise for my ill-temper, Grace. I wasn’t irritated with you, but with myself. How could

I have let this get so out of control? How could I have lost the bands?”

That was an unanswerable question. He hadn’t, of course, “lost” the bands at all. He’d merely left them buried with the labyrinth atop Og’s Hill and then my mother had managed to take them and hide them.

That thought made my mind lurch in another direction. “Jack, isn’t it only someone who is associated with the Game…who the bands associate with…who can touch them? You, my mother, Aeneas—for he would once have worn them; Silvius for the same reason.”

He looked at me with narrowed, speculative eyes. “You.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Grace, don’t look like that. You’re right. It is only someone associated with the Game who can touch them. Your father couldn’t, could he?”

I shook my head. “He said they burned him.”

“But you could touch them. You carried them within your flesh all these years. So…how are you associated with the Troy Game? What part are you fated to play?”

“Catling tied me to her with her hex—”

“Perhaps. But you’re central in another way, I’m sure of it…and yet I can’t see it.” He grinned. “Guess I’ll just have to hang around you, and try to discover it.”

I was so relieved he wasn’t angry or suspicious that I laughed.

He smiled also, then sobered. “Who could have got them, Grace, if not for one of a very small band among us, or Catling herself? And Aeneas said it was Catling. What is she playing at, then, to hide them, and then accuse me and plague you with pain?”

SEVEN

Faerie Hill Manor

Monday, 23rd September 1940

Grace sighed, then sat up from where she’d been lying on the floor. “It’s all right. The pain is gone.”

“Thank the gods,” Noah said, finally relaxing and helping Grace back to the sofa. She looked over to Jack, now standing by the fireplace. When he had taken Grace “away”, both of them had remained in the room in body, but it was obvious their spirits had fled.

I wonder where he took her? Noah thought. I wonder what place was special to him?

Ariadne nodded to Jack, sharing with him a very small smile, then she looked about the room. “Well, then, what to do? The final two bands have been…misplaced, shall we say.”

“Lost,” Weyland muttered, casting a black look in Jack’s direction.

“Stolen,” said Harry, firmly.

“Nothing can be done without them,” Weyland said.

“I have four bands,” said Jack. “It is better than nothing. Far better.”

“Will you be able to scry out the nature of the shadow?” said Noah to Jack.

He gave a little shrug. “I’ll go down to London today. I won’t know until I’m down there.”