said slowly, “you say that only to taunt me. Giving Eaving to Coel is not required. It is not even
possible. She cannot be given to Coel. Nor would he accept her.”
“But you having her is possible?” Matilda asked.
Skelton looked at the woman who, so many centuries ago, had once been his wife. His
only answer was a small, tight smile and the slightest of nods.
Both Ecub and Matilda burst into delighted laughter as if he were a favourite child who
had just passed a crucial test. Matilda rose, and, stepping forward, placed her hand on his bare
chest.
His skin was very warm, the muscles beneath very tight, and her touch brought back
many memories for both of them.
“Tell me what to do,” Skelton said. “Tell me what I have to do to win Eaving back from
whatever darkness consumes her.”
ONE
Matilda was always a light sleeper, drifting in and out of awareness as a night progressed.
She would wake to hear William‘s heavy breathing beside her, and she would smile, and touch
him, knowing all was well with her world, and drift back into a deeper unconsciousness for a
time. William lapsed into deep sleep the instant he lay down, slumbering soundly the entire night
through, but Matilda did not for an instant begrudge him his deep rest. Those secret, brief
moments when she would wake, and touch him, were precious to her.
She woke this night as she so often did, still half-dreaming, and reached out to touch
William‘s arm.
The instant her fingertips touched his skin, he burst from the bed, shouting, screaming,
incoherent with… what? Matilda did not know. She cried out herself, stunned, unable for the
moment to make any sense of a world which had so suddenly erupted into the unexplainable.
Were they under attack?
Were there assassins in the bedchamber?
William was raging about the chamber, crying out imcomprehensibly, beating at walls, at
his head, smashing a ewer and several wine cups halfway across the chamber.
The door burst open, and men-at-arms and valets and chamberlains, groggy with either
sleep or shock or both, staggered into the room to instantly reel out of the way as William
continued his maddened rampage.
―William!‖ Matilda shouted, snatching at a robe to clothe herself as she stumbled from
the bed. ― William! ‖
―The band!‖ he screamed. ―The band!‖
Matilda burst into terrified sobs, certain that her husband had been struck with a brain
fever so appalling he would shortly drop dead. She sank to her knees, unable to cope, her hands
laced over her bowed head, while above her William continued to shout, to rage and to roar.
― The band! Who has laid hand to the band? ‖
Like William, Swanne also knew one of the bands had been touched, handled by
someone other than her or William.
Who? Who? Who?
Unlike William, Swanne did not roar and rage. Instead she curled up in her bed, sweating
in terror, the coverlets pulled up to her chin, staring frantic-eyed around the darkness of her
chamber.
If it was William who had laid a hand to the Kingship band, then she would have known
it.
But this was not William‘s doing. This was the work of someone else.
Who?
No! No! Not…Asterion?
Swanne whimpered, feeling all her habitual arrogance and surety bleed away into the
unknown night. It was no accident, surely, that so soon after Asterion had taunted her ( Do you
know what Ariadne promised me? Do you know how much she enjoyed me? ) a band was moved.
Swanne fought back panic.
She had never felt so alone, so powerless, in her entire life.
Asterion had been awake, torturing with cruel words and spiteful fingers a small naked
boy he had tied face down spreadeagled across his bed.
He stopped suddenly, frozen half-bent over the sobbing boy, then he slowly raised his
head, his eyes narrowed, his lips drawing back over his teeth in a silent snarl.
―Who?‖ he hissed. ―Who? Who has found a band?‖
William? Had William slunk unnoticed into the country?
Asterion felt a moment of intense fear. He had not expected William to be this bold!
And yet why not, eh? What if William was not willing to dance to Asterion‘s tune? What
if he had decided to circumvent everything Asterion had so carefully planned?
What if William had donned the garb of a merchant, or a common seaman, and jumped
off ship in London dock, seeking out the bands before Asterion was ready to intercept him?
―No!‖ Asterion said. ―It cannot be William. Think, man.‖
He looked down to the boy, who continued to cry, save that now his wails grew louder as
he twisted his face about and saw the expression on the face of the man standing over him.
The man reached down and touched the boy, tweaked him, and the boy shrieked.
―Not William,‖ said Asterion softly. ―Not William at all.‖
Who then?
Her. It had to be. Damn her to all hells. It had to be her.
―But how has she found them? What magic has she employed?‖
Was she stronger than he thought?
That thought disturbed Asterion, and he sighed, and considered the boy. It would have
been fun to play with him a little longer, but…
He took hold of a large wooden crucifix that hung on the wall next to the bed and dealt
the boy a shattering blow to the back of his head, then one to the back of his ribs, and then yet
again to the boy‘s neck.
When he had done, the boy lay still, barely alive, blood seeping from his battered body.
In any other circumstances, the sight would have stimulated Asterion into the heights of
sexual passion. Tonight, however, he merely tossed the crucifix down on to the boy‘s body with
a grunt, and reached for his robe.
When he had garbed himself, and wiped away spatters of the boy‘s blood which marked
his face, he left the chamber.
―Throw him in the river,‖ he said to the shadowy man waiting patiently outside, and the
man nodded, and slipped inside the door.
By the time the man emerged, the boy‘s shattered body wrapped in a blanket, Asterion
had long vanished into the night.
―Harold!‖ William suddenly declared, and Matilda carefully raised her head.
There had been the suggestion of sanity in that single utterance.
―Harold,‖ William said again, his voice firmer now. ―Harold.‖
To Matilda, it seemed as if William uttered that name as a mantra, as the lifeline that
would pull him back into reality.
She very carefully rose to her feet. About the chamber stood various men-at-arms and
servants, all staring, none knowing what to do or say.
―Harold,‖ William said one more time, then, as naked as that moment he‘d erupted from
the bed, shouldered his way through the watching men and half ran through the halls and
chambers of the castle toward Harold‘s chamber.
Grabbing a cloak, Matilda hurried after him.
TWO
Harold shared a chamber with Thorkell and Hugh off a cloistered walk some distance
away in the castle complex.
That distance gave William time to think.
At first he‘d raced from the bedchamber he shared with Matilda as though every moment
it took to reach Harold would somehow mean another moment for whoever it was to steal the
armband away completely. William could feel which band it was—the lower right forearm band,
that which he‘d secreted at the western gate of Troia Nova—and could feel its movement away.
He couldn‘t have explained that sense of ―away‖ to anyone else, let alone himself. The
armband, his kingship band, his power, his future, was being stolen from him.
Away.
And yet how could this be? That band, all the bands, were protected by a labyrinthine
enchantment that meant only another Kingman or William‘s partner in the Game, Swanne, could
touch it, let alone find it.
And it could not be Swanne, for he had not told her where the bands were.
Yet she had asked for their location. Could she have scried out the bands‘ resting places,
and decided to move them anyway?
It was the only explanation that William could think of, unless…unless Asterion had
somehow managed to find a band.
Could he move it?
William didn‘t know. Possibly. Asterion was a creature of the Labyrinth and of the
Game; he was the brother of Ariadne, the most powerful Mistress of the Labyrinth who had ever
been, and he had increased in power and knowledge through all the lives he had enjoyed since
Ariadne had set him free of both death and the Game.
Could it be Asterion?
―Oh God,‖ William groaned, and stumbled to a halt just as he reached the door of
Harold‘s chamber.
He was vaguely aware that he‘d been followed in his mad dash through the castle by a
bevy of servants, men-at-arms and Matilda, all of whom doubtless thought he was about to