04 Druids Sword by Sara Douglass

Author:Sara Douglass
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780732271565
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty Ltd
Published: 2006-11-22T05:00:00+00:00

For the next two days Ariadne took Grace into the Great Founding Labyrinth every morning. There they spent several hours, Ariadne doing what she had done with Noah, prompting Grace, nudging her (sometimes literally, with an elbow in Grace’s ribs) in the right direction, praising her when she made a huge leap forward.

These leaps became more and more frequent—by mid-Sunday morning all Ariadne had to do was to stand back and watch.

Dear gods, how had Stella missed this?

Grace was powerful. As powerful as Noah, although in a different way. She had a darker and even more instinctive grasp of the power of the labyrinth. She didn’t bring at her back the powers of Eaving as Noah did, but she more than made up for that with her command of the Darkcraft.

The Darkcraft, twice-bred in Grace as Weyland was both her forefather and her father.

But it was more than that, Ariadne finally, stunningly realised. It wasn’t that Grace commanded the Darkcraft in twice the measure that someone like Noah did; she commanded it an infinity of times more. It was as if Grace could somehow touch all the wielders of Darkcraft in her heritage (Noah, Weyland, Ariadne, and all the daughter-heirs of Ariadne’s up to and including Genvissa-Stella), and draw on all their power. Grace didn’t actually realise she was doing this—frankly, Ariadne believed that Grace had no idea at all of her potential or her power—but do it she could.

And all of this tied to Catling by that cursed hex.

Catling had not struck again after Friday afternoon, but Grace told Ariadne she could feel her watching, which made Ariadne worry.

If they spent the mornings inside the Great Founding Labyrinth, then they spent the afternoons talking.

Neither Noah nor Stella had told Grace anything of the heritage of the Mistresses of the Labyrinth (and Ariadne was not going to berate them for it, for she, too, should have attended to this), and so Ariadne took Grace for a long meander through history during these long afternoons.

She did this not so much as part of Grace’s training (which, indeed, it was), but because Jack had asked Ariadne to prepare Grace for that moment when he would ask her for the kingship bands.

Ariadne was not the only one who taught Grace her history. Silvius attended to this as well.

Silvius and Ariadne had enjoyed (although that was, perhaps, too strongly emotive an expression for it) a sexual relationship, off and on, for some years. They’d gradually drifted together, drawn not merely by a strong sexual attraction, but by the fact that, as a Mistress of the Labyrinth and as a Kingman (if minus the kingship bands), Ariadne and Silvius were naturally drawn together.

Besides, they had lived at roughly contemporary times in the Aegean world, and had shared memories and friends.

Ariadne had not asked Silvius to attend simply because they could get chummy over old times. She asked him, in part, because he could help as much as she in teaching Grace the history and antiquities

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