watch for you,‖ he said, his voice somehow immensely soothing. ―As we have always watched
for you.‖
TWO
This time the Sidlesaghe led Caela through a complex labyrinthine enchantment that
eventually brought them to the low-arched opening in London‘s wall that allowed the Walbrook
entry into the city. They stood once more just beyond the ring of columns encircling Brutus who, once again, was taking a band from his arm—his left forearm this time—and placing it in the
centre of the columned circle. He made the complex enchantment with his left hand, the band
vanished, and then so did Brutus.
As Brutus disappeared, the Sidlesaghe felt Caela relax under his touch.
―One day,‖ he whispered to her, ―you can allow him to meet your eyes.‖
She made a dismissive motion with her head, clearly not wanting to talk about Brutus.
―Sweet one,‖ said the Sidlesaghe, ―if Asterion meets you within the ruins of Troy while
you are moving the band, he will kill you. Caela,‖ the creature‘s voice roughened, and he had to pause and clear his throat, ―don‘t walk through those ruins. Run. Run, for your life depends on it.‖
She drew in a deep breath. ―To Holy Oak,‖ she said. It had been the Holy Oak when she
had been Cornelia, and still it graced the tiny bubbling spring at the foot of the Llandin.
Mag‘s pool, still there after all these years, and Caela‘s natural escape route, should she
need one.
―I will be there to meet you,‖ the Sidlesaghe said, and his voice had dropped so low that
Caela had to strain closer to hear him. ―Be safe, sweet lady. Be safe on the journey.‖
She touched his cheek, then stepped forth into the circle of glowing light, and picked up
the band.
Asterion was roaming. He‘d known even before the sun sank that tonight would be
special, that tonight she would attempt to move another of the bands.
Asterion grinned. And if she did move a band, then it was of no matter. He didn‘t care if
she moved it to the cold heart of the moon, for he would still be able to find it.
Now that he controlled her.
But he had to play his part. There was no point in causing suspicion—and thus
unexpected actions—through inactivity. So he needed to make it appear as if he wanted to snatch
the band as it was being moved. He needed to appear angry.
―Frustrated,‖ he whispered. ―Inept!‖
And he laughed.
He did not want to attempt the ruins of Troy again. The memory of that land was still too
vivid.
Besides, the ruins bored him. Best to make an appearance where she would
emerge…which was…Asterion lifted his bull nose to the wind and sniffed.
North.
It would be north… north-west.
Asterion‘s smile stretched even further. He knew where she was going.
Caela once again traversed the terrible path which wound through the ruins of Troy, the
band clutched tightly in her hands.
But this time, mindful of the Sidlesaghe‘s concerns, she ran as fast as she could while still
able to avoid tripping over loose rocks or the rigid hand or foot of a corpse that lay partway
across the path.
Troy lay bloody about her, the dead lay mouldering in their stinking heaps as they had
previously, but Caela did not find them so disturbing this time. Instead she concentrated on holding the band, and keeping her every sense strained for indication of pursuit. Every twenty or
thirty steps she paused and half-turned, her breath still, her body motionless, her face white,
listening.
Nothing, save the dying of Troy.
Then she would hurry forward, her face even more strained, so that, perversely, she did
not hear the sound of someone behind her.
Was he ahead? Crouching behind rocks to her side?
The further Caela moved through the destruction of Troy, the quicker became her steps,
the tighter her face.
Eventually, safely, she reached the end of her journey.
Asterion could feel the passage of the band, feel its movement closer and closer towards him. It almost felt as if the band were rushing to meet him, and, as he stood before the rock pond
under Holy Oak, Asterion literally held out his hands as he intuited her imminent arrival.
There was a sound, a great sound of rushing water and wind and song, and suddenly a
figure burst from the air before him, directly into his arms.
He laughed in sheer enjoyment, but turned it into a roar, as if of fury, and grappled
clumsily with the figure, allowing it to slip partly from his grasp. He grabbed at it again, meaning
to pinch a little, but just as he tightened his fingers it seemed as if the air itself erupted about him.
Asterion‘s composure evaporated as tall, bleak figures surrounded him. He panicked, not
so much because he was afraid, but because these strangenesses were so entirely unexpected.
The figure, she, slipped from his grip, but he was not worried about that, only the who and the what of that which attacked him.
Gods, they were singing, and such a mournful sound.
Asterion began to flail about with his arms, trying to see what it was that surrounded him,
what gripped him, what was trying to smother him, but all he could make out was enveloping
greyness, as if he were enclosed within a thick, viscous fog.
There was the sound of water splashing, and he knew that she had escaped. Furious (not
with her escape, but with the unknowns which attacked him), Asterion lashed out with virtually
the full extent of his darkcraft.
The air exploded, and there came the sound of moaning as the strange creatures fell back.
There came the sound of a single sob, and then Asterion was standing alone by Mag‘s
Pond, the ancient oak tree stretching out its bare limbs cold and dark above him.
Caela heaved in great gulping breaths, hardly daring to believe she had escaped the
Minotaur. Oh gods, the feel of his hands upon her, the heat of his body, the stench of his breath!
She looked around. She still stood close by Holy Oak, save that now the countryside had
vanished, replaced with a terrible aspect that, for one frightening moment, made Caela believe
she had fallen back into the ruins of Troy.
She stood in a landscape covered over with bricks and mortar, pale smooth stone, and a
wide roadway of hard blackness along which dreadful beasts roared. People moved shadowlike
about her, and Caela realised she was seeing with that awareness she‘d tested inside Ludgate on
the night she had moved the first band.
Women, mostly, bustling along busily with baskets over their arms, and clothed in tight
gowns that came only to their knees. Most of them wore hats; silly, small round bonnets that
clung to stiffened curls. Some of the women had children with them, or pushed babies before
them in wheeled conveyances that looked to Caela for all the world like backward-running carts.
There were some men hurrying along the crowded street. They were black, like ravens,
and one or two of them swung sticks covered in material in their hands.
What to do with the band? Where to leave it?
She looked across the road, and saw there a small red-brick building. Access was via a
large arch which Caela could see led to an open paved area beyond the building. People stood
about on this paved area, looking anxiously to and fro as if expecting something.
She turned her attention back to the building. Just inside the building was a small window
in one of the walls, barred with metal, and she could see behind this window the tall form of a
Sidlesaghe.
He was looking at her, and once he saw that he had her attention, he lifted a hand and
motioned to her, slowly, yet managing to convey the utmost sense of urgency.
Again Caela looked around, her hands now gripping the band even tighter in her anxiety.
To reach the building and the Sidlesaghe, she had to cross this strange roadway.
And there were great beasts that periodically roared along the road, black and blue
creatures, twice the size of oxen, and red creatures the length of five oxen, and three times as
high.
―Oh, gods,‖ she whispered. ―What possibility is this the Game has created for me?‖
She looked at the Sidlesaghe again—he was still motioning to her to hurry, hurry—and
then back to the road.
It appeared to be clear.
Taking a huge breath, Caela stepped on to the road, moving as fast as she could without
risking tripping over the sodden robes that clung about her legs.
Something roared past her.
She shrieked, almost dropping the band, and stopped motionless in the middle of the
road.
She didn‘t know what to do. Her very will seemed frozen. She could step neither
forwards nor backwards, and Caela was certain that her life would be snatched by one of those