Druid's Sword (The Troy Game, Band 4) - Hardcover

Chapter One

Waterloo Station, London
 
Saturday, 2 September 1939
 
Major? Major? I'm sorry to wake you, sir, but the train has arrived at Waterloo and you'll have to disembark."
 
Jack Skelton jerked too fast from deep sleep into wakefulness, and for several disorienting moments stared into the face of the conductor leaning over him, his mind unable to let go the dream images that skidded through it.
 
Frank Bentley and his insipid wife, Violet. Stella Wentworth, standing beautiful and untouchable under the embankment light. Matilda and Ecub, suburban housewives in dressing gowns. Asterion--Weyland Orr--taking him to Pen Hill. Faerie Hill Manor, and both the Lord of the Faerie and the king of England, George VI, waiting for him.
 
Grace--everyone's doom.
 
"Sir, I must ask you to--"
 
"Yes, yes. I'm awake." Jack Skelton struggled to his feet, one hand clutching at the overhead luggage rack for support as his head reeled.
 
The conductor stepped back. "It's been a bad few days, sir," he said, watching the American major curiously as he straightened his tie and uniform jacket, then lifted his greatcoat down from the rack. He wondered why the American was here, and hoped that it might be some indication that the Yanks wouldn't leave it as long to help out in this war as they had left it the last. "We've heard news on the wireless that the PM has sent an ultimatum to the Nazis. Get out of Poland or we'll go to war."
 
The conductor paused, his face glum. "No chance that the Germans will back off, d'you think, major?"
 
Finally fully awake and oriented, Jack studied the man, knowing there was no chance for peace, and wondering if the man wanted false reassurances or the truth.
 
"It is too late now," he said. "I'm sorry."
 
The conductor's face tightened, and he gave a small nod. "Let me help you with your bag, sir."
 
 
Once on the platform, Jack tipped the conductor then stood motionless, looking about. Because he'd been so deeply asleep when the train had pulled in, and had probably then slept for fifteen minutes or more before the conductor woke him up, most of the other passengers had departed, and now the great cavernous space of Waterloo Station was all but deserted. He shivered, and tried to put it down to the cold night air.
 
The conductor had got back on the train, and now the platform was empty save for himself and several baggage handlers at the far end of the train, standing about an empty trolley, smoking and talking.
 
About the forthcoming war, no doubt. The Germans had invaded Poland earlier today, and war was inevitable. Jack could feel it seeping over the vast stretches of land and water between where he stood and where the Poles battled desperately. It was only a matter of time before it reached London.
 
He shivered again, and hunched deeper into his greatcoat, lighting his own cigarette then flicking the match away. He drew a deep breath, taking comfort in the smoke. Jack had first come to this land almost three and a half thousand years ago as Brutus, the exiled Trojan prince. With Genvissa he'd thought to resurrect the ancient Troy Game, but everything had fallen apart when his then-wife, Cornelia, had murdered Genvissa before they could complete the game. For three and a half thousand years Jack had--as Brutus, then as William, Duke of Normandy, and subsequently Louis de Silva--fought to finish what he had started so long ago. But always events and people (and that mostly Cornelia in her rebirth as Caela and then Noah) conspired to prevent him.
 
God, how long had it been since he'd last been in England? Almost three hundred years, give or take a decade or two. Oh, he'd come back briefly now and then, stepping through the realm of the Faerie, to meet with either Coel, the Lord of the Faerie, or with his father, Silvius, but apart from those fleeting visits . . . nothing. He'd walked away from the smoking ruins of London in 1666, walked away from the disaster of his hopes and dreams.
 
Walked away from Noah, who had abandoned her love for him to live with Asterion, and give him a child.
 
Walked away from the Troy Game.
 
Walked away from it all.
 
To roam.
 
He'd wandered first in the form of Louis de Silva rather than in his magical form of Ringwalker. He'd gone back to his father's estates in France, and from there, desperate, restless, angry beyond knowing, he'd drifted through the forests and fields and pleasure halls of Europe. Then, as the years passed, he assumed the form of a priest, because in his anger that amused him, and desecrated his way through Egypt and Arabia. From there, to India, and then even farther east, and as the decades spun by and his resentment and bewilderment at what had happened deepened, he became a sailor in a Portuguese man-of-war that had berthed in the Philippines, and fought and squandered his way across the oceans of the world.
 
Then he'd landed in America--new and brash and uncaring--and here Jack had found a home. He settled in the Appalachian mountains, finding solace in their high mountain lakes and dark forests. He lived there for a hundred years or more, spending more and more time not as a man but as Ringwalker, the name he took when he assumed the mantle of the ancient Stag God, roaming the wild paths and tracks through the wilderness as he had once roamed the forests in England.
 
He found peace, and a renewed purpose. It was about this time, perhaps almost two hundred years after the Great Fire of London, that Jack made contact with the Lord of the Faerie again. Just a touch, a glimmer of friendship sent through the Faerie, but it was enough to begin rebuilding the bonds between them. From that point they'd met once every five or six years, sometimes in the forests of America, sometimes in the Faerie. These meetings lasted only a short while, less than an hour, and they rarely talked. They just spent time together.
 
About forty years ago, when they'd met in a lonely spot of the Faerie, the Lord of the Faerie had put his hand on Ringwalker's shoulder, and said, "My friend, John Thornton is back, a prince of the realm now. Loth is back also, and as wedded to the Christian church as he was when last he walked."
 
Ringwalker had tensed. "The others?"
 
"None of the rest of us had to be reborn. We have all done much as you have for the past few hundred years--moved in and out of the Faerie and in and out of mortal form as it suited us. Apart from John and Loth, we've all gone too far to be trapped by birth and death now."
 
We're all way too powerful. Too fey.
 
"And her? Is she still with him?"
 
"Noah? With Weyland? Of course, for they love each other deeply. Ringwalker, please, the land needs you back. We need you back. All of us."
 
"I don't think I can--"
 
"You must," the Lord of the Faerie had said quietly, and Ringwalker had bowed his head in acceptance.
 
Five months ago dreams began to pervade Jack's sleep. Each night, over and over, he dreamed of arriving in London, meeting with a nervous man called Frank Bentley, then walking about London, meeting in turn each of the people who had become caught up in the Troy Game.
 
Everyone save Noah.
 
Jack never met Noah in his dreams.
 
He knew what the dreams meant. It was time to go back. Time to move.
 
Time to find Noah.
 
And so now here he was, Major Jack Skelton, standing on the empty platform at Waterloo Station at ten p.m. waiting for someone to meet him. Jack had sent word (together with a request he hoped the Lord of the Faerie could accommodate) a week ago that he'd be here....