Launceston raised his head, a finger’s breadth from an axe’s blade. A trickle of blood on his pale skin gleamed in the torchlight. ‘I know you,’ he said, fixing an eye on the Fay King. ‘I know you as I know myself, for we are much alike. A pale shell hiding a monster. For all your high words, you are the parasites, preying upon the flesh of the world. Creatures like us, we cannot survive for ever, for we are against nature. The things I see in other men, the small kindnesses and the great loves, they cannot be crushed by the millstone of your midnight power. They will survive. You will not.’
A hint of a smile ghosted on to Mandraxas’s lips. He allowed the pendulum to come to a halt and stared at the stone for a moment, as if weighing his next words.
‘And yet, for all your deceit and your cruelty and your brutality, you are fools. Poor, witless sheep,’ he continued as if he had not heard the Earl, his voice so low it was almost lost beneath the deep rumble. ‘You dared to trespass on the province of the Unseelie Court. You thought you could wander here, in the borders of the Far Lands, with impunity. This is not your world, mortals. This is a land of madness and terror beyond imagining.’
Shadows raced across his face as he began to swing the stone on its length of glinting chain just above his head. A low whistle echoed through the vast space, growing louder the faster Mandraxas whirled the sable stone. Will felt a corresponding queasiness in the pit of his stomach. He watched the Fay King’s smile grow.
‘The Spree-birds are coming,’ Mandraxas said.
Deep in the shadows high overhead, a shrieking rang out from all parts of the hall. Will was reminded of the haunting cries of hungry crows on a grey autumn morn. A moment later, the beating of wings filled the vault with thunder. The spy looked up, shocked by the thought of how many birds it would take to create such a roar.
Wind rushed by his face, the draught of that swooping flock as it passed, and his ears rang with the piercing shrieking. He clutched the wall and peered down, the circle of light now hidden behind a swirl of black bodies. Torchlight flickered through the flapping wings. When the shrill human screams soared up to the roof, Will tore out his rapier. Deortha grasped his shoulder to restrain him and whispered in his ear, ‘I have ensured your friends will be safe. Reveal yourself and they will surely die, as will you.’ His breath was icy.
Will felt sickened by what he saw, but he fought to contain himself. After a moment, he sheathed his blade and turned back to the carnage. The Spree-birds were feeding. In the torchlight, their black feathers gleamed, but their heads were little more than skulls. Most of the flock wheeled around the hall above, but many perched on the thrashing sailors, their long bony beaks stabbing like daggers. Blood pooled across the flagstones. Amid the cacophony of bird-cry and dying screams, Meg, Grace, Launceston and Carpenter looked on in horror as one by one the hellish birds rose and flapped away, white skulls stained red. A picture of starkest horror revealed itself. Where Sanburne and his crew had huddled, now only bones clotted with chunks of meat remained. As the last bird disappeared back to its hidden roost, a sickened stillness fell over the surviving mortals.
His anger boiling, Will turned to Deortha and whispered, ‘You have shown me this savagery so that I would know it hangs over the heads of my friends. Another way to bend me to your will.’ He glanced down to that bloodied circle of light and saw Jenny studying the scene without a trace of emotion. How far the Unseelie Court had twisted her away from the innocent woman he had known.
‘Come with me,’ Deortha demanded.
Will followed the sorcerer down flight after flight of steps until he found himself in a small, bare antechamber lit by a single torch. The Fay left him there, alone, for what seemed like a lifetime. He paced and brooded and made silent vows until he heard the door creak open.
Turning, he stared into the sorcerer’s pale eyes. Deortha stepped aside with a sweep of his arm to reveal Jenny, her expression dark with suspicion. Will felt his heart leap. His head spun with the thousand imagined speeches he had dreamed of making when they met again, but he uttered none of them. Instead, he found himself transfixed by the luminescence of her youth and beauty.
She had not changed in the fifteen years they had been apart. Her milky skin was smooth, her brow unlined, her cheeks full and her eyes bright. Unconsciously his fingers crept to his own unkempt, unshaven face, tracing the pattern of years, the wrinkles round his eyes from long spells under a mediterranean sun, the laughter lines bracketing his mouth from lush days in the Mermaid with Kit Marlowe and spicy nights with the doxies in Liz Longshanks’s stew. There was the true tragedy. He had thought her only a prisoner, but trapped in this timeless place she had drifted away from him in years and experience, the commonality of their life and the bonds forged by being in the same place at the same time shattered for ever. Though she stood only a sword’s length from him, she might as well have been a thousand miles away.
And yet it was still Jenny. He refused to allow sour thoughts to tarnish the moment, and moved to embrace her.
Sharper than a slap to his face was Jenny’s cold look. She half turned to the sorcerer and demanded, ‘Who is this?’
Will recoiled. In her eyes, he could see no trace of the Unseelie Court’s taint. Jenny truly did not recognize him.
His voice barely a whisper, he said, ‘This dark place has swallowed your memories. Cast your mind back to England, to Warwickshire and the village of your birth. Remember the hours we walked in the woods together, or dallied on the banks of the millstream.’ He watched her brow knit, but no recognition sparked in her features. ‘I am Will.’ He felt a lump rise in his throat.
She shook her head. ‘If we knew each other once, it is long gone. This place is all I remember. How could it not be? I have dwelled here now these past thousand years.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Silence lay like a shroud across the antechamber. In that emptiness, Will could hear his world crumble and fall away. At the door, Deortha listened for any intruders. ‘Dreams are elusive,’ the sorcerer said without emotion. ‘And sometimes the most fervent wishes float out for long years and return like an arrow through the heart.’
‘No,’ Will snapped. ‘I will not accept that.’
‘And what will you do? Stab it with your dagger? Plunge your sword through its heart?’ Deortha turned back to him, his pale eyes glowing in the gloom. ‘Here is an enemy that is immune to all your vaunted martial skills.’
Reaching out one imploring hand, Will stepped towards Jenny. She near-leapt away from him. ‘Stay back,’ she said. ‘No stranger can approach the King’s consort.’
Will felt his blood run cold.
‘And there lies the heart of this great tragedy,’ Deortha said with a sour undertone. ‘We are thrust together in a bitter struggle of monumental proportions. Many lives hang in the balance, and power, and the very shape of what has been and what will be. And all that we fight to achieve has been placed at risk. By this.’ He waved a contemptuous hand towards Will and Jenny. ‘By the insignificant desires of three lovesick fools.’