Darkwitch Rising (69 page)

Weyland closed his eyes, part frightened, part lost. Her body pressed closer against his, and Weyland felt its warmth, and felt the rolling of the meadows and the waters within it.

She leaned back a fraction, and Weyland was appalled to hear himself moan.

“Come walk with me,” she said. And then, softly, “Trust me, Weyland. I am not Ariadne.”

No! No! No!
his instincts screamed at him.
Everything
within him shrieked,
Danger! Danger!

And yet there was one small place, one small haven within his soul, that said,
Trust her
.

“Come walk with me,” she whispered against his mouth, and the next moment she stepped back a little, her hand tugging gently at his, and Weyland found himself following her.

She led him through the kitchen, and through the empty, barren parlour.

She led him to the front door, which she opened with the gentlest of touches of her free hand.

She led him through the open door, and into something so extraordinary that for the moment Weyland forgot his fears, and merely stared.

“We stand,” she said softly at his side, “on the borderlands of the Faerie. Welcome to the land, Asterion.”

Weyland stared at the vista before him. He and Noah stood on what appeared to be the rise of a small hill. Before them stretched a series of rolling hills, carpeted with thick, almost impenetrable forest, wisps of mist floating about the tree tops and birds dipping in and out of the mists.

In the far distance rose great purple peaks gilded with snow.

During his many lives, Weyland had seen a score of stunning landscapes which had momentarily touched him. They, however, could not hope to compare with this. It was not so much what Weyland saw, but what he
felt
.

The sense of a land so ancient it was virtually incomprehensible.

A wilderness of power, drifting through the trees, and throbbing up through his boots from the very soil beneath him.

A sense of permanence so extraordinary Weyland thought that even if he threw all the power at his command at this land it would not touch it.

A loveliness so great he felt as if he would weep. He realised that this was the same landscape he’d seen in that vision he and Noah had shared—
Weyland, Weyland, what are we doing? Why can’t we stop? Why can’t we stop
?—but now that he stood here in reality it was incomparably more potent.

“Noah…” he said, at a loss at what to call her, for “Noah” did not manage in any manner to encompass all that she now was.

As soon as he had spoken, and so abruptly it left him breathless, Noah pulled her hand from his, and stepped back four or five paces. She was distancing herself from him, and Weyland was certain now that it was because she was about to attack him.

Then she looked down at the ground.

He followed her eyes.

A small hand suddenly shot up out of the turf, grabbing Weyland’s left ankle.

He gave a yelp, and started back, knowing that she
had
brought him here to destroy him, that she was as much a betrayer as ever was Ariadne, and once more he called forth his darkcraft, meaning to use it in any manner he could to—

The tiny hand let go his ankle, hovered a moment in the air, then patted at his boot, as if in approval.

Noah laughed, the sound both merry and so vastly relieved Weyland would not have been surprised if she had wept with the force of it.

Weyland stared at Noah, then looked back down at the turf…where a small, white-bodied and copper-haired creature was pulling itself free of the soil.

“It is a water sprite,” said Noah. “One of my servants, and closer to the land than, oh, than almost any other creature save myself and one or two others.”

“What is going on?” said Weyland, totally confused but somehow incredibly relieved. There
had
been danger present, he was sure of it, but now it had somehow miraculously vanished.

“You have been welcomed…I think,” said a man’s voice, and Weyland spun about.

Behind him stood a man dressed simply in leather breeches, and wearing a crown of twigs and red berries. He radiated infinitely more power than did Noah.

“The Lord of the Faerie,” said Noah.

Weyland was not sure if he was supposed to speak or not, but this strange Lord of the Faerie forestalled any attempt he may have made.

“The soil does not reject him,” the Lord of the Faerie said to Noah. “You have your answer.” He
relaxed, and smiled. “Thank the gods. We
all
have our answer, though how it may be, I do not know.”

Noah looked at Weyland, smiling with such loveliness that Weyland himself relaxed even further. This had not been a betrayal, but a test.
But a test of what
?

A cool hand slipped into one of his, and Weyland jumped. It was the water sprite, smiling up at him.

“He is among us, if from a great distance,” said the sprite and the Lord of the Faerie gasped.

“It cannot be!” he said.

“Ah,” said Noah, “but it can. It can.”

“What did the sprite say?” said Weyland. “What did he mean?”

Noah raised her eyes from the sprite to Weyland. “He said that you were among us.” She paused. “What he
meant
was that you are
one
among us. That you, too, are of the faerie folk, if from a very distant land and time. Weyland, was that truly a bull which mated with your mother? Or was it a god?”

Noah suddenly laughed, the sound rich and merry. “If poor Cornelia can find herself standing here, Weyland-Asterion, then there is no reason why you cannot, too.”

T
hey walked down a straight gravelled path, an overgrown park to either side of them. They walked mostly in silence, sometimes exchanging a meaningless comment or two. By and large, both were lost in their own thoughts: Noah relieved and happy in that relief, Weyland somewhat confused and disconcerted.

“What just happened?” Weyland said, eventually.

“I took you to the edge of the faerie world,” said Noah. “There are, in essence,
two
lands: the mortal and largely unaware, and the Faerie. Each of these worlds exist side by side, but also exist interwoven.”

Weyland considered what she had said. Two lands, two worlds. He had only been aware of
one
. An icy finger of sheer fright stirred about in his bowels.
What had been going on of which he had been unaware
?

“A great deal,” said Noah softly, and Weyland came to a halt, catching at Noah’s elbow so that he could stare at her.

“The Troy Game…” Weyland said.

“The Troy Game is largely of the mortal world,” said Noah. “When Brutus and Genvissa constructed the Game they did not use any of the Faerie in the Game’s creation.”

“But now?”

“But now, as I grow as both goddess of the waters and as Mistress of the Labyrinth, the realms of the Faerie and the mortal world grow ever closer. The battle for the Troy Game, Weyland, shall be fought through both worlds.”

“Then why take me there? Surely I, the Great Enemy, should have been left in ignorance of the Faerie?”

“There was a straightforward reason for me to take you there,” she said, finally, turning to resume her walk along the path, and forcing Weyland to follow, “and there was a not-so-straightforward reason.”

“The straightforward reason was to ‘test’ me?”

“Yes.”

“And this ‘test’ was…”

“To see if you had caused the plague, or not. If you had, the Faerie would have rejected you.”

Weyland considered this. She had not believed him when he’d said he hadn’t created this pestilence which gripped London. For a moment he contemplated a minor sulk over the matter, then grinned a little to himself. Over their past three lives he’d given her every reason not to trust him.

“And thus I passed,” he said. “Does that make you happy?”

She glanced at him, half-smiling herself. “Oh yes, it does.”

“And the second reason you wanted to take me into the Realm of the Faerie?”

She paused, and Weyland understood that what she was about to say would be difficult for her.

“Because I needed to be sure that what I was doing was the right thing. That the path I had taken was a true one.”

“And that path, Noah?” he said softly.

Again she stopped, Weyland coming to a halt
himself. “My goddess name is Eaving, Weyland. That is who stands before you now.”

He stared, and, as he remembered all the languages he’d learned during his various lives within England over the past three thousand years, then everything he’d intuited about asking her for shelter fell into place. “Gods,” he said, “your name means ‘shelter’!”

She smiled, dryly. “Aye. The unexpected shelter from the storm. The name dictates my nature. I must shelter any who ask me for it.”

He stared, his mouth hanging open.

“You did not know?” she said.

Weyland gave a small shake of his head. “I overheard you and Jane talking about shelter, and knew that it was important…but I was not sure why. All I knew was that whenever I mentioned ‘shelter’ to you, then a look of part-fear, part-resignation came into your eyes. I used it instinctively…Eaving.” He paused, thinking, then looked at her with sharp, calculating eyes. “What hold does that give me over you?”

“In its own way, a far greater hold than that of your imp.”

“Tell me what it means, precisely.”

She hesitated, the tip of her tongue touching briefly at her lower lip. “It means that I cannot betray you to Brutus-reborn. To do so would be to violate the trust of the shelter.”

“And has
he
ever asked you for shelter?”

Her eyes became brighter. “Yes.”

Weyland felt a jolt of sheer jealousy surge through him. “Have you slept with him, in this life?”

“Sheltering does not imply answering every question you might have, Weyland.”

He wanted to seize her, to shake the answer out of her, and was dismayed at how easy he found it to ignore the urge. “Eaving—”

She was walking again, and he had to take three or four quick steps to catch up with her.

“Weyland,” she said as he reappeared at her side, “you know none of this land’s magic, and recognise little of its beauty. And yet you could build your Idyll to the very borders of the Faerie. You are such an odd man.” She gave a strange little laugh. “You have passed your test, and I also, and to celebrate I thought I would bring you to this place, which is special to me.”

He realised she wanted to change the subject, and for the moment he was prepared to allow it. “Is this part of the Faerie?” he said.

“What do you think? What do you
feel
?”

“No. It is not part of the Faerie.”

“You are right. This is a beautiful spot, but it is not part of the Faerie. We are just beyond the village of Petersham, a place nestled in a curve of the Thames to the west of London. Do you feel it? The closeness of the river?”

She waited, and after a moment he gave a single nod.

Noah—he knew that in this guise she was Eaving, but somehow he could only regard her as Noah, and knew that name was, in its own right, as magical as Eaving—smiled, pleased. “See this path,” she said. “Is it not particularly lovely?”

He looked down the path, studying it. It was made of well-packed gravel, and very long and straight. To either side grew small, immature trees and shrubs amongst the waist-high grass. Weyland thought it had the feel of both man and nature, and because of that had a prettiness that was particularly attractive.

“This path is what remains of a great driveway,” said Noah. She nodded to her left. “Beyond that hill lies a magnificent house. Once this was its drive. If
we walked back for a half a mile we would come to padlocked and rusted iron gates that are five paces wide and eight tall. Some fifteen years ago the people who lived in the house decided to build themselves a new drive, a new approach to the house, and this new drive winds, manicured and tamed, some three or four miles to the west of us.
This
drive has been left to do as it willed.”

“Why show this to me?”

“Because this is a beautiful place to me, and because at the end of this drive, hidden among the grasses and trees, is a small gatehouse, gone to ruin—or gone back to the earth—as has this drive. I want to take you there.”

“Why?”

“To heal wounds.”

“What wounds?”

She put a hand on his chest. “We all have accumulated wounds, Weyland. All need to be healed.”

“Noah…
Noah
…”

“Come with me, Weyland.” Taking his hand once more, she led him down the overgrown driveway.

The gatehouse was a simple structure. Brick-walled and built on the octagonal, it had but one room, open to the elements now that the glass had been removed from its seven windows, and the door taken off to more useful purposes.

“See,” said Noah, halting with Weyland in the open doorway and looking at the leaves and dried grasses scattered over the tiled floor. “It has many walls, and many openings, but it is no labyrinth, no Game, no Idyll. It is a simple and good-hearted structure, with no traps, sitting warm and forgotten by mankind. This is a good place.”

“For
what
?”

“For healing my heart, and yours,” she said, and came to him, and kissed him, and drew him inside the gatehouse.

Later, as they lay entwined, Weyland thought he could perhaps feel the faintest of thrums vibrating through the tiles on the floor. Perhaps it was the worms, disturbed by his and Noah’s recent lovemaking. Perhaps it was just his imagination; perhaps just wanting.

And perhaps there was something beneath him that he could truly feel, lying here, on tile, above earth, a goddess in his arms. Either Noah, or perhaps his short trip into the Realm of the Faerie, had woken something hitherto unknown in him.

Already languid in the aftermath of lovemaking, Weyland relaxed even further, drifting into a semi-dreamlike state. Noah lay with her back pressed against his chest and belly, warm, her own chest gently rising and falling within the circle of his arms.