Druids Sword by Sara Douglass Read Free Book Online

sorry. We can leave it until tomorrow, but I thought that as Walter will be leaving after breakfast, and we’d need to talk to him before then, I’d—”
    “Okay. Okay. Let’s talk now then, if you insist.”
    “Jack, you still need to take one more step to assume your full powers as Ringwalker—you need to be marked. Damn it, the forests—the land —need you. Don’t snarl about it.”
    All Jack wanted to do was to fall into bed and sleep, and hope that tomorrow would be a better day. But no, here was Harry fretting at him. Still, that gave Jack a chance to voice something that had been worrying him.
    “Harry,” he said, “I understand this needs to be done, but I also have concerns about it.”
    “In what way?”
    Jack managed to keep the stunned surprise off his face. In what way? Coel had truly been subsumed in the Lord of the Faerie if he needed to ask that. “I like who I am, Harry. I don’t particularly want to become a bloody deer full-time.” Jack had assumed the role of the Stag God, who watched over the forests and who was closely associated with the health of theland, from Og, a magnificent white deer with bloodred antlers.
    Harry burst out laughing, and Jack imagined he could hear the faint rumble of conversation within the drawing room stop at the sound.
    “You can be who you like,” Harry said. “Og was a deer to begin with, so that is the form he assumed as god of the forests. You can keep your far prettier form, if you want.”
    Now it was Jack who gave the wry smile. “Am I the first man to hold the job?”
    “Actually, you are. The forests shall have to get used to the idea. Jack, I hadn’t realised you were worried about it.”
    Jack gave a slight shrug. “Do you think Walter will be willing to help in the marking?”
    “Walter will do whatever he needs to in order to escape his past. Is there a place you have in mind?”
    Jack thought of the times he had roamed Epping Forest when he’d lived as Louis. “Yes,” he said. “Ambersbury Banks.”
    Harry nodded. “It is a good site, if a little stained by blood. This needs to be done fairly soon, Jack.”
    He’d been such good friends with this man, Jack thought, Brothers, almost. But now he realised that much of that friendship had vanished. Coel—Harry—was now far more the Lord of the Faerie than anything else.
    Jack felt a great sadness overwhelm him. “I’ll speak to Walter about it.”
    Harry nodded. “Good.” He put a hand on Jack’s shoulder briefly. “Sleep well in your new home, Jack. Oh, and Jack? Join us for breakfast in the morning. The table is laid from eight.”
    At that he turned, and went back into the house.
    Inside the drawing room, Noah carefully avoided everyone’s eyes as she walked over to the drinks table, poured herself a whisky, and drank it straight down.
    Just then, as they heard Harry’s steps coming across the terrace towards the door and Jack’s steps retreating towards the lawn, Grace gave a gasp of sheer relief.
    The fiery bracelets had vanished with Jack.
    Catling’s little lesson for the night had ended.

F IVE
Copt Hall and Faerie Hill Manor
Sunday, 3 rd September 1939
    C opt Hall stood silent and broken in the still, frosted night. The wrought-iron gates hung slightly askew and, while the lawn before the hall appeared to be neatly trimmed, the blades of grass had been cropped by the hungry mouths of rabbits, not the scythes of tending gardeners.
    A hall had stood on this site at the north-western edge of St Thomas’ Quarter of Epping Forest for almost eight hundred years. Kings and queens had either banqueted or hidden here; families had been raised within its walls, and families condemned within them; a community had thrived, their babies welcomed and their weary funeralled.
    Four-storey walls reared into the night sky, a shifting mass of purples and silvers and greys in the faint moonlight.
    The walls had no roof, nor glass to fill their gaping windows. Staircases wound upwards