As the bombers appeared more clearly, so the faint luminescent lines (of the shadow! We were being shown the shadow!) glowed ever brighter, as if they were taking sustenance from the German aircraft.
Jack fumbled for my hand, and I clung to it. It’s the shadow, I whispered into his mind, and he gave a terse nod.
A bomb came down.
We knew there were many bombs coming down, but we saw only one. It twisted lazily through the sky, gusting this way and that as the wind caught it, and, as we watched, it seemed to be that the luminescent lines reached out to the bomb, and brushed against it.
Turning it now this way, and now that.
As the lines touched the bomb, they glowed anew, as if taking strength from the weapon.
I had eyes for nothing but the bomb, falling straight for the cathedral.
“Grace!” Jack said, then lurched to his feet, pulling me with him.
We stared a moment longer, mesmerised by the deadly sight, then Jack grabbed at my hand and arm, tugged so hard I felt my shoulder joint groan and almost give way, and then we were running down the nave, running back towards the west doors, running for our lives…
This was a trick of Catling’s, after all. She’d merely been toying with us. Playing with us for her own amusement.
We’d almost got to the doors when we stopped, and turned around. I don’t know why we did this, but we both seemed impelled to turn around right at that moment.
There was a terrible crashing and thundering noise, and then we saw the bomb, saw it as if it were only a few feet away, tumbling through the roof above the quire, then falling free of slate and rafters and stone, falling through the air.
And striking the High Altar, where it exploded.
The blast threw Jack and me off our feet. My head hit something, and I blacked out.
TEN
Faerie Hill Manor
Thursday, 10th October 1940
Grace sat on the sofa in the drawing room of Faerie Hill Manor, two plasters on the left side of her forehead. Her face was wan, her clothes stained and dusty and torn in places. Jack sat next to her, an abrasion on his chin, his jacket and trousers streaked with blast dust.
Noah, Weyland, Ariadne, Silvius and the Lord of the Faerie sat about in chairs, cups of coffee in their hands, looking at Grace and Jack.
For a long time no one said anything.
Grace had only blacked out for a few seconds after the blast, then she and Jack had stumbled out of the cathedral, somehow avoiding the scurrying members of the cathedral Watch, and made it back to Jack’s Austin. He’d driven straight to Faerie Hill Manor, sending a mental request to the others to meet them there.
He’d not said why, nor given them any indication that he and Grace had been so close to disaster.
In truth, Jack thought, he’d been closer to disaster when Noah and Weyland saw the state of their daughter. There had been a few tense moments as Noah fussed and Weyland went very still and silent. Ariadne and Silvius, arriving a few minutes later, had taken one look at the tableau and had just sat down silently, wisely deciding to wait for explanations.
Harry, who had opened the door to them, had instantly and instinctively metamorphosed back to his greater self as the Lord of the Faerie.
Once Grace had assured her parents she was but scratched and shaken, Silvius went off to organise some coffee.
Now everyone waited.
Jack sighed and set his coffee aside. He described briefly what had happened, from the voice he and Grace had heard, to watching the luminescent lines above St Paul’s and the descent of the bomb.
Once he had finished, there was silence as everyone stared at Grace and himself.
“Jack?” said Noah eventually. “What does this mean? Who is this voice? A shadow doesn’t have a voice. A weakness doesn’t have a voice.”
“I still think it might be Catling,” said Grace.
Knowing how Grace felt about the shadow, Jack was not surprised at this statement, but he was surprised at the level of doubt in her voice.
“Catling didn’t know anything about it,” he said. “On that I would stake my life. Besides, it just doesn’t make sense for it to be Catling.”
“There are very few possibilities,” said Silvius. “Everything concerning this shadow indicates it is labyrinthine in nature. Whoever this voice is must be trained in the arts of the labyrinth. How many people could that be?”
“And most are in this room,” said Ariadne, “save for Stella.” She raised her eyebrows at the Lord of the Faerie.
“Stella is in the Faerie,” he said. “She rarely enters the mortal world now. Besides, I don’t think she has enough interest in the Troy Game, and what may or may not destroy it, to go to these elaborate lengths. It isn’t Stella.”
“Could it be a member of the Faerie?” Jack asked the Lord of the Faerie, glancing at Noah to include her in the question. “Or some faerie spirit of the land? So ancient and unknowable we may not be aware of it?”
“It is possible,” said the Lord of the Faerie. “The gods know enough fey spirits and beings have walked through this land over the millennia. I don’t know them all—there are just too many shadows in the night. Noah?”
“I think it is likely,” she said. “I mean, who else?”
“But whoever it is must be trained in the labyrinth,” Silvius said. “Doesn’t that cut out any faerie spirit of the land?”
“Not necessarily,” said Noah. “The land and the Troy Game conducted an alliance thousands of years ago, and the labyrinth has been burrowing deep into the earth since Brutus and Genvissa first constructed it. Some of the stranger and older faerie spirits may well have learned enough from the labyrinth to become skilled in its ways.”
Jack turned a little so he could look directly at Grace. “Grace?”
She chewed her lip, and Jack could see indecision and doubt in her eyes.
“Perhaps,” she said, and Jack grinned. Grace seriously doubted any of this but was trying to be polite.
“No,” he said. “Not ‘perhaps’. What do you think? What do you feel? Catling? Some ancient faerie spirit we’ve all missed? Something else?”
Grace shifted a little on her seat. “Everything inside me screams Catling, but I doubt myself because, as you said, Jack, it just doesn’t make sense for her to have done this. I’m also afraid that because of the hex that binds me to her, every time something goes bump in the night I automatically ascribe it to Catling.” She gave a small shrug and a self-effacing smile. “Catling is my very own personal bogeyman.”
“A member of the Faerie, then?” Jack said.
Grace thought about it. “I don’t know enough about the Faerie to be able to say either yea or nay, Jack. Mother? What about the Sidlesaghes? Might they know?”
“Oh, moon and stars!” Noah said. “Why didn’t I think of that? Yes, they might know. They’ve spent millennia literally being a part of the land. They can certainly still teach me things I never knew. I’ll ask Long Tom. If he doesn’t know who this is, then he can investigate.”
“Good,” said the Lord of the Faerie. “Noah can ask Long Tom, and maybe he can sort out this mystery. Jack, Grace, what do you make of the bomb? What were you shown, and why?”
“We were shown the vulnerability of the Troy Game,” said Jack. “We were shown that it can be destroyed.”
“That shadow must be a weakness,” said Noah.
“I’m not sure,” Grace said slowly. “The path of the bomb was changed by the shadow that hangs over London. The bomb was directed. I don’t know if that actually indicates a weakness on Catling’s part. Perhaps…”
“Perhaps?” said Jack.
“Perhaps we were being shown a weapon,” said Grace.
“The bomb?” said the Lord of the Faerie.
“No,” said Grace, “the shadow itself.”
There was a short silence as people thought about it.
“Grace,” said Noah finally, “what do you mean?”
“What if…what if the shadow is not a shadow, or a reflection, or a message. What if it is a weapon?”
Jack sat back, studying Grace. A weapon? Was it feasible? “The only kind of weapon capable of affecting the Troy Game would be…”
He drifted off, his mind racing. What kind of weapon could be effective against the Troy Game? “It would need to be of the Game itself,” he finished, “of the labyrinth. Born of the labyrinth.”
Ariadne, who had been silent until now, leaned forward. “You’re right, Jack. Only something of the Troy Game could be used against the Troy Game.”
“What do you mean?” said the Lord of the Faerie.
Ariadne considered for a moment, trying to clarify things in her own mind before she tried to explain them to the Lord of the Faerie. “The Troy Game was constructed to protect. In that purpose it has succeeded magnificently, too magnificently. Rather than protecting London, it protects itself. Moreover, the Game protects by absorbing evil…anything sent against it would merely be absorbed. To be destroyed, the Troy Game must be destroyed from within, if you like. By something of the Game itself.”