NOAH SPEAKS

Noah, Mistress of the Labyrinth. That alliance of name and title had a certain ring to it. Most certainly it had been something I’d needed to achieve for well over a lifetime so that I could be Mistress to Brutus-reborn’s Kingman and complete the Troy Game.

What surprised me was this: once I began to learn the ways of the labyrinth, then I wanted it as well. Badly. Ariadne said it was my blood coming out. I’d been bred to it; thus, once my eyes were opened and I realised my potential, then I could not wait a single moment before I reached out with both hands and seized that potential and that heritage, and made it mine.

The power of the labyrinth was sublime, exciting, sexual, enlivening, addictive. I could not get enough of it. I wallowed in it. I was proud of my natural abilities, and lived for Ariadne’s smile, her nod, her rare, “That was well done, Noah”. For six visits Ariadne took me about the White Tower (although to our perception it rose above us in a twisting mass of darkness rather than whitewashed ragstone) in meandering circles, but we did not enter it. Ariadne did not so much teach as draw forth from me understanding that I had not realised was there, and which made me wonder if indeed I had been bred for this task, rather than having it thrust suddenly upon me. Then, at the end of my sixth visit, I realised that Ariadne had not been leading me in meaningless perambulations about the White Tower at all, but in clearly defined patterns.

As we had walked, so we had recreated the windings of the labyrinth. I exclaimed, and told Ariadne of my realisation, and she smiled, and patted my arm, and said, “So. Now you are ready.”

On my seventh visit to the Tower, Ariadne took me inside the White Tower itself. Here, entwined in representative form—although only our eyes could see it—the harmonies of stars and tides, moon and brain, blood vessel and forest path. Here, I would learn to control and, eventually, to manipulate these harmonies.

The labyrinth of creation.

It was terrifying and exhilarating, all in one.

Managing the power within the Great Founding Labyrinth was not easy: even as eager as I was, even with the heritage I had, I found it a troublesome task. To open myself up to the harmonies was to allow so much apparently chaotic discord to flood my being that I found it difficult to concentrate for longer than two or three minutes. Ariadne told me my initial training was to enable me to cope with this flood of sensory information; later stages would enable me to control and manipulate it.

To rebuild the labyrinth to my own needs.

“Previous Mistresses of the Labyrinth and Kingmen have rebuilt it only for reasons of protection,” Ariadne said to me one day as I sat on the outer steps of the White Tower, nursing my aching head in my hands. “It was all we knew how to do. You? You may go much further, do more with the labyrinthine enchantments than any before you.”

She shrugged, seemingly disinterested. “And maybe not.”

Ariadne may have affected dismissive indifference on occasion, but there was one thing about me which fascinated her—and myself, come to that.

I was not simply Noah, long-lost daughter-heir returned to Ariadne, nor even an Asterion-bred Darkwitch. I was also Eaving, goddess of the waters and fields and fertility of the land, and, as Eaving, I had a peculiarly strong bonding with the labyrinth. I was deeply attuned to the seasons and the turning of the tides and the years, and this meant I was even more attuned to the harmonies of the labyrinth than I might otherwise have been. Eaving complemented what natural skills I had as Mistress of the Labyrinth, and my increasing skills as Mistress of the Labyrinth complemented my abilities as Eaving.

“I should never have been so dismissive of my role as MagaLlan,” Ariadne said thoughtfully one day as we walked back to share our usual ale with Frederick Warneke. “Imagine what I might have achieved had I truly realised how complementary were the land and the labyrinth.”

I shot her a dark, cynical look. Ariadne controlling both powers as goddess and labyrinth would have sent the stars themselves into a panic.

And myself? Was I worthy of panic?

“Ariadne,” I said. “Should I use the darkcraft within me? What of this dark heritage? I am terrified of using it…or of it using me.”

“The darkcraft is not to be feared, Noah. It will be a better lover to you than any man ever could be. Even Weyland.”

I could not smile. The truth was that the thought of just having the darkcraft inside me was terrifying. What would it do if ever I unleashed it? What did it feel like? Would it corrupt me? Would it alter who I was as Eaving, and as a Mistress of the Labyrinth?

If I was unsure about the darkcraft, then I was terribly uncertain about the Troy Game itself. I still had no true idea of why the Game had decided to emerge as flesh incarnate, and the fact that Catling was on the loose in London worried me from time to time. My faith in the value of the Troy Game to this land had been severely undermined. I most certainly no longer believed in “the one true way”. I was no longer ready to accept that there was merely the one path, and that it was my duty as female representative of all things good and fair to walk its straight and narrow boundaries.

I was learning that life, like the labyrinth, and like creation itself, is made up of varied subjective interpretations.

I was realising that for any one problem there were many solutions, many paths which could be trod.

All this meant but one thing: I was no longer prepared to accept without question the future that the Troy Game had mapped out for me.

I was becoming…independent. A strange state, for me.

Partly this was because of the Troy Game’s—Catling’s—unnecessary deception. The utter cruelty of that deception had cost the Game dearly in terms of unquestioning loyalty.

And, partly, my new independence of thought and my questioning of old loyalties was because of Weyland Orr.

Asterion.

Each afternoon after I’d been to the Tower (perhaps twice a week), Weyland would kiss me, taste the growing power in my mouth, and smile at both myself and Jane.

Each night he and I repaired to the Idyll. Each night we talked, then we went to that sumptuous bed.

Each night, invariably, we made love.

And we talked, far into each night. There were a few nights where neither of us slept, and then in the morning we would be irritable and cross with each other and with Jane. Oddly enough, our bickering on these mornings tended to set her suspicions to rest for a while, because she could not believe such a squabbling couple could be involved in any matter of the heart.

Any matter of the heart.

This was not what I meant to achieve that night I first lay with Weyland. I had convinced myself (in the heat of the moment when possibly I was grasping for any excuse) that this was a matter of healing of an ancient wound. But the sex was not the healing. No, the healing of Asterion’s wounds was something infinitely more dangerous.

Those wounds needed true companionship. Those wounds needed trust. Those wounds needed love.

Over three thousand years I’d had a pitiful handful of lovers—Brutus and Coel (and then Coel again, as Harold), then Asterion, once, in his glamour of Silvius, and finally John Thornton—but Weyland made me forget them all. There was no pining for Brutus whenever I was with Weyland.

There was only Weyland.

One night we lay, sweaty, slightly out of breath, recovering from the heat of our passion. Weyland’s hand was slowly tracing its way up and down my back, sending delicious little thrills of pleasure through my body. Then, on one downward sweep, his hand went much lower than it had previously, and it rubbed and bumped over the ridged scars left after that hateful imp had eaten its way out.

His hand jerked away, and he went very still.

“Why?” I said. “Why be so malicious? You didn’t need to cause us so much agony. You didn’t need to tear Jane and myself apart in order to impress Charles.”

Weyland kept his hand still for a long time, and did not move it again until he finally spoke. “I was fed hatred from the time of my birth. My mother, leaning over my cradle, spitting at me. King Minos devising the worst possible means to keep me caged. The population of Knossos, of all Crete, invoking my name to frighten their children.”

His hand was now running from the nape of my neck, down my back, over my scars, over my buttocks, slowly, caressingly, and then up again, travelling as leisurely on its return journey as it had on its journey thither. I was trembling, partly at what Weyland was saying, mostly at his hand.

“Hate became for me not merely a means of existence, but the very nature of existence. It became more than that. It became a vehicle, a means of achieving my ambitions, and it became a safe place to hide.”

A glib enough explanation on the face of it, but there was something about Weyland’s voice and the way his eyes wouldn’t meet mine, that made me realise he was telling me the way that it truly had been for him. For a man such as Weyland, this opening and sharing was painful and dangerous, and so I kissed his mouth, and stroked his face, and after a moment or two he continued.

“It is no excuse, not to such as you, but it was who I was.” He paused, and finally allowed his eyes to meet with mine. “Hate is something too easy to fall into, Noah. It is…addictive. Safe. It demands nothing save that it be fed.”

“Do you still hate, Weyland?”

“Not here, not with you.”

I gave a soft, somewhat breathless laugh. “I am so very afraid of you, Weyland. Of what we are doing.”

Weyland, Weyland, what are we doing? How can we stop? How can we stop?

“On some days,” he whispered, “I am nauseous with fear. All I want is to force you to get those bands for me, to force you to my will…and yet…”

“What is different about this life, Weyland? Why these doubts and hesitations now?”

“You,” he said. “I had no thought for Cornelia, she was merely a piece to be moved on the chessboard. I despised Caela. But you—”

“I have grown a little.”

“You have grown a great deal. But…” His thumb traced about the borders of my face, over my forehead, down my cheekbone, around my jaw. “Ah, Noah, I have never encountered such a jewel as you. Not in any life. Not in any place I have travelled.” His voice changed, became full of laughter. “You are still my concubine…but freely now. Not forced. That has been a strange lesson for me to learn—that I can achieve more through granting freedom than through forcing with fear.”

Aye, still his concubine. And more dangerously trapped now, than ever I was with his imp inside me.

We were quiet for a while after that, touching and stroking, kissing now and again, moving closer to lovemaking once more, but as yet too indolent to be bothered.

I eventually spoke, thinking to use the intimacy of this moment to ask something about one of my deepest fears. “Weyland, talk to me of the darkcraft. I had thought you might try to apportion some of the blame for your actions on that. ‘See, I am consumed with dark power. I am its slave’.”

He laughed, rolling over on his back. “I wish I had thought of using it as an excuse. Would you have accepted it?”

“No. I would have loathed you for it.”

His smile died. “The darkcraft is but power, Noah. It imparts no moral values, and has no destination or objective of its own. What I have done, in all my lives, is my own burden to bear. Not that of the darkcraft.”

“So…darkcraft does not corrupt?” I held my breath, waiting for that response.

His mouth twisted slightly. “Not unless he who wields it is corruptible.”

I relaxed. I had the darkcraft quiescent within me. It would not corrupt me…not unless I was myself corruptible.

So, did I trust myself? Was I true?

And true to what?

Weyland was now watching me quizzically. “Why these questions? And why these emotions I see rolling over your face?”

I tried to distract him with humour. “I merely wanted to know precisely what I shared a bed with.”

Something in his face changed. “Well, my lady Noah, perhaps you should experience precisely what it is you share a bed with.”

Weyland’s hand touched me again, but this time it was as if a different man had touched me…no, as if a different world had touched me.

“Weyland!”

“You want to know what the darkcraft is, Noah? Then let it love you, let it lie with you, let it inside you.” His body was resting full-length and firm against mine now, his hands were at my back, my shoulders, my breasts. “Let all of me make love to you, Noah.”

Thus began a journey, an experience, from which it took me days to recover and to regain my equilibrium. Weyland took me down the paths of the darkcraft, allowing it to envelop me, consume me, wash through my very soul.

It was the most frightening, exhilarating, joyous, dangerous, unbelievable encounter of all of my lives.

Initially I was terrified, for power such as I had never imagined swept through me.

Worse, I could feel that untried and unopened potential deep within myself respond to it, wanting to join with it. I dared not allow it, because then Weyland would realise I had kept critical knowledge from him and he would never trust me again (and why was that so important, eh?), but also because I knew instinctively that if I did allow it, Weyland and I would be joined by forces so powerful that I would never be able to break free from him again.

But as the moment passed, and I became a little more used to Weyland’s darkcraft washing through me, I realised that, first, I could keep my own potential quiescent without too much trouble, and that, second, I was enjoying this experience so much that, frankly, I did not want to put a halt to it. Ariadne was right, this was the greatest lover imaginable.

Warm, dark, caressing, safe.

Exciting. Stimulating. Erotic. Addictive.

Use it, Weyland whispered in my mind, to make love to me.

And so I did. I growled, feeling his darkcraft bubbling through me, and I sank my teeth into his shoulder. He laughed, and began to do things to me that, had I been told of them by another, would have shocked me to the core.

But now…now, oh, gods…now…

We did not so much make love, as we revelled.

On a later night, when we lay quiet, I asked Weyland why he had made the Idyll, and why in this house. It was a night of exploration, and, as neither of us could sleep, it was a good enough topic of conversation.

“I purchased this house years ago,” he said, “after hunting for many months. I found better houses than this, more spacious, grander, more solidly built, but this house…” He paused.

“I walked into this house,” he resumed softly, “and it called to me. I walked up the stairs, and entered the chamber at the very top of the house.” Again he paused, remembering. “It was as if it spoke to me, and offered me possibilities.”

“What kind of possibilities, Weyland?”

He was silent a long time, and I wondered what it could be that was so difficult for him to say.

“It offered me a home,” he finally said, so low I barely heard him. “Safety. Peace. Comfort.”

Tears sprang into my eyes. “Then I thank you for bringing me here,” I said.

I had my hand on his chest, and I felt his breathing slow, and deepen.

“This place was waiting for you,” he said.

I closed my eyes, unintentionally squeezing out two of those gathered tears.

“Do you know what this place is?” I asked. I doubted he did, for it had taken me weeks of climbing these stairs every night to realise the significance of both house and Idyll, and Weyland did not have the same understanding as I.

“What do you mean? This is the Idyll, sitting within my house in Idol Lane.”

“And where does this house sit?” I said. “Where does Idol Lane sit?”

“I don’t know what you’re asking me, Noah.”

Again I closed my eyes briefly, and wondered why I was about to speak.

Weyland, Weyland, what are we doing? How can we stop? How can we stop?

“Weyland, this part of London covers Cornhill.”

“Yes?”

“In ancient times, in Llangarlian times, this was known as Mag’s Hill.”

His hand, which had been stroking my neck, suddenly ceased.

“The goddess hill,” I said, my voice now almost a whisper. “My hill. Idol Lane follows exactly the ancient mystery track to the summit. This house only sits close to the top of the hill, but the top floor, where we are now, is level with the summit. Weyland, you have built your Idyll figuratively, and almost literally, on the summit of the goddess hill. Every time you climb the stairs to the Idyll you metaphorically climb into the realm of the goddess. Yes, this place was waiting for me. I am what makes it complete.”

We did not speak for a long time.

Finally, just as I was drifting into sleep, I heard Weyland whisper, “Noah, Noah, what are we doing?”

There was a dark corner turned that night, but whether it was towards the light, or into greater darkness, I did not know. Even then, I think, I knew there was no going back for me.