Darkwitch Rising by Sara Douglass Page A

no idea which of the men had fathered the child, or if, in some magical way, the baby was an amalgam of both men’s seed.She hoped it was the latter, and knew in her heart that it was entirely possible. Charles and Louis were inseparable friends (if it hadn’t been for Hyde, Louis would have shared the recent bed sport with as much enthusiasm as the other three) and when it came to conception, Kate thought her body would have accepted the seed of both men as indistinguishable.
    “I am glad you are here, Louis,” Charles said. “It is almost time.”
    “And Charles is worried,” Marguerite said. “He feels…”
    “He feels what?” said Louis. He had strolled over to the bed, kissed both Marguerite and Kate softly on their mouths in greeting, then stepped over to Charles, who he also kissed softly. “What is wrong?”
    “There is a disturbance tonight,” Charles said. “An…expectation, almost. Something is waiting for us.”
    Louis stilled, his dark eyes riveted on Charles’. “Then perhaps we should not form the Circle.”
    “We must,” said Marguerite and Charles together.
    “I will not be frightened off,” said Charles.
    “Those are the words of the thwarted king, not of the wise man,” said Louis. “Charles, we—”
    “I must ,” said Charles. “ We must. That I feel, too. Ah,” he made a frustrated gesture with a hand, “I cannot say why, but this night is both unknown and yet vitally important. Who knows, it may be Noah herself who is reaching out to us. It might be Asterion, yes, but it might also be Noah.” They had learned Cornelia-reborn’s name, not through the efforts of the Circle, but through discreet inquiries back in England. Who is the young girl living at Woburn Abbey? She of the lustrous hair and vivid eyes ?
    “Or myriad other unknown entities,” muttered Louis.
    “I wish Matilda-reborn was here,” Marguerite said. “The Circle would be so much more powerful with her presence.”
    Matilda-reborn, unlike Marguerite and Kate, had been born far distant and into high aristocracy—the daughter of the King of Portugal, no less. Catharine of Braganza, as Matilda was known in this life, was young and of great marriageable value. Her father, already aware of her attachment to the exiled Charles, was firm that she could not join him unless as his wife.
    Negotiations were under way, but Charles had little hope of winning Catharine until he had his kingdom in hand; the King of Portugal was not going to let his beloved daughter marry a penniless, if prettily titled, exile.
    In all save a few details it was history repeating itself: William, the Bastard of Normandy, had endured more than a few years of hardship in winning Matilda of Flanders, and Charles realised he would need to do the winning all over again in this life.
    Well, Matilda was worth it.
    But until she was with them, and the Circle of the three most powerful of Eaving’s Sisters complete, then they must make do with what they had.
    In the silence, Louis turned away and disrobed, as he had the first night Marguerite had shown them how to form the Circle.
    As Louis folded his clothes neatly on one of the chests, and Kate poured out water from the copper urns so that all could ritually cleanse themselves, Charles thought about the ever-increasing power and influence of the Troy Game itself.
    In their last lives, the Game had shown that it was remarkably aware and capable of influencing the course of events. It had decided it wanted Cornelia, reborn as Eaving the goddess of the waters, tobecome the Mistress of the Labyrinth and to dance out the final steps of the Game with the resurrected Stag God, Og, as Kingman. Brutus and Genvissa, the originators of the Game, were to be discarded.
    In this life, Eaving’s Sisters—Marguerite, Kate and Catharine—had been reborn with vastly more power than they’d ever commanded previously, and Charles suspected that this was as much the Game’s doing as it was the women’s