NOAH SPEAKS

Isaw all of this, and was appalled by Louis’ suffering, as also James’ need for revenge. And yet I was still wrapped in my tears and all that long-buried pain that had cruelly bubbled to the surface.

And all through that terrifying scene of Louis’ suffering, truly I was conscious of only one thing.

Weyland’s arms about me, and his silent comfort. I didn’t know if he could scry out my thoughts—the gods alone know that Weyland had the power to somehow sense, if not share outright, the vision I experienced—but I think he would have reacted if he had. I think I would have known if he was there with me.

All he did was lie beside me, and hold me, and try and comfort me.

I pulled back a little from the vision, and stirred. He leaned back, and pushed away some of my hair that had fallen over my face. “I lost a daughter,” he said. “Not so painfully as did you, but for years I wondered if she was dead or, if she lived, if she was well, or if she suffered in life, or if—”

I didn’t hear the rest of what Weyland said, for a memory had suddenly filled my mind. Long Tom, speaking to me when I was but a child, and on my way to my life at Woburn Abbey.

“Old wounds must be healed,” Long Tom had said. “All of them.”

“Old wounds?”

“The wounds caused during your first life: not those caused only by you, but those caused and suffered by everyone caught in the Game.”

I caught my breath. Gods, gods, gods!

Wounds must be healed, all those caused and suffered by everyone caught in the Game.

“Weyland,” I said. “I am so sorry.”

Then I reached my hands up, and slid them into his hair, and pulled his face down to mine.

We kissed, once, twice, and then again and again, and I felt a shiver of desire at the base of my spine. “Weyland,” I said on a breath, and that was all I said for a very long time.

James squatted down beside Louis, still writhing beneath his father-held arrow.

James raised the dagger in both hands high above Louis’ heaving chest, then plunged it down, down, down…

There came the sickening crunch of bone, and then Louis screamed, terribly.

I saw all this, and some small part of me suffered with Louis’ suffering, and yet the most of me was concerned with the moment I was caught in, and the man I was with.

“Noah…are you certain?”

I answered him with my mouth against his, and my hands on his body.

Louis could not stop screaming, even though the knife had lacerated both his lungs and air now bubbled up through the blood that welled around the blade.

“Here it is,” said James, almost conversationally, and he plunged his hand into the frightful cavity in Louis’ chest.

I sorrowed for Louis; wished that he could undergo his rebirth as Stag God in some way other than that he currently endured.

But, oh, there was very little for me now bar Weyland, and the sweetness and warmth and overweening comfort of our lovemaking.

James grunted with effort, then, with some difficulty, raised his hand.

It held a beating heart.

I cried out, and clutched frantically at Weyland. His hands ran over me, everywhere, his mouth following, and I felt him trembling, and that touched me deeply, that he should tremble so…

Louis was somehow still alive, although desperate. His left hand, the one that wasn’t pinned by the arrow, waved weakly in the air, begging his father to push that arrow deeper, to murder him, finally.

Silvius hesitated, then, with a look of immense love on his face, leaned all his weight on the shaft and pushed the arrowhead deep into Louis’ brain.

I cried out once more, for as that arrow had pierced into Louis’ brain so Weyland had slid deep into me. He was murmuring meaningless, soothing words, and I wept and hugged him to me, feeling Louis’ relief at death enveloping him at the same time as my body dissolved into sweet relief. I let my body go limp, let my mind free, let Weyland hold me, closed my eyes, and felt nothing but the warmth of his arms about me and heard nothing but the sound of his voice, whispering my name.

We lay for hours, so it seemed, sweaty and replete, our bodies still tangled, our hands now and again stroking at the other, caressing, exploring. Occasionally we kissed, deep and velvety.

We did not speak, and for that I was grateful, for I did not know what words to use. All I knew was that somehow I had done something right.

All I knew was that I had stepped forth on a path so dangerous that I could not know where it would lead me, or him, or any that I loved.

Eventually, I opened my eyes, and saw Weyland’s face a few inches away, looking down gently at me.

“What are you thinking?” he said.

“That the paths of the labyrinth are most twisted indeed,” I said, and pulled him back down to me.

We made love a further three times that night. Very gently, very sweetly. When, finally, we lay exhausted, I allowed my mind to drift back to something Silvius had said to Louis.

You think this is suffering? Silvius had said. Do you not know that your greatest suffering, your greatest despair, is yet to come?

I wondered if I was to be that suffering, and I thought that if that were so, then so be it. I had had enough of guilt.

The little girl sat, arms about her legs, chin resting on knees, on the gently sloping roof of a warehouse in Thames Street.

She stared towards Idol Lane, but she saw none of the rooftops or chimneys or steeples that rose between her and it.

Instead she saw Noah, writhing in pleasure beneath Weyland’s body.

“Fool!” whispered the girl. “Would you destroy everything that can be, out of spite? Do you truly think that Weyland could be what you need?”

Something moved beside her, and she turned her head slightly. It was one of the imps.

“We have a problem,” said Catling.

“Yes?” said the imp, his eyes gleaming.

“It appears that my erstwhile mother has developed a ‘closeness’ with Weyland.”

“Really?”

“We must turn her away from him.”

“How?”

Catling smiled. “With something that should cause you great pleasure, my friend.”

“What is it?”

Catling laughed softly at the eagerness in the imp’s voice. “Something I need you to fetch from Holland.”