Don Alanzo summoned one of those who stood behind Will. The Silver Skull stepped into the shaft of moonlight, his mask glowing with white fire, and fixed his bloodshot eyes on Will.
"Who are you?" Will asked.
"His identity is not important," Don Alanzo said. "There are many people prepared to sacrifice all they have to ensure England is destroyed. It is the sacrifice itself that matters."
"Play the hero in your game. We all do the same," Will said. "In the end, there are only winners and losers."
"Sadly, your role is already defined. If you think the lack of the Shield will slow our plans, you are sorely mistaken. This grand weapon has many uses. While it remains in our hands, you will always be in danger."
"Then my best endeavours will go to returning it to the Tower."
"I think not." Don Alanzo caught the Silver Skull's arm and guided him towards the door. "I take no pleasure in the suffering you are about to endure," he continued. "This is war, and the stakes are high, but still ... You will reveal the whereabouts of the Shield, and then it all ends."
Don Alanzo and the Silver Skull stepped out of the room, and for a while there was no response to Will's mocking questions. At his back, he felt the weight of the remaining people in the room, studying his strengths, mental state, resilience, turning over his flaws and weaknesses, like hunters circling their prey. He knew exactly what was to come.
Finally, Cavillex stepped before him. The superiority Will had witnessed at the palace had been replaced by a cold indifference, though Will thought he sensed an intense rage burning just beneath the surface.
"I have a question: how many of your kind have fallen by a mortal hand?" Will asked blithely.
Cavillex ignored Will's taunting. He was handed a small silver tray, but held it just above Will's line of vision.
"It was surprising. I found it just like killing a man," Will continued. "Or a dog."
"It is a while since you have eaten," Cavillax began. "Would you like a bite, to fill your belly?" From the tray he plucked a fragrant, golden biscuit and wafted it under Will's nose. The scent of honey, butter, and spices filled his senses, and despite himself, Will's hunger magnified unnaturally. "Or a drink of water?" Cavillex poured a goblet of crystal water from a silver jug. Suddenly, Will's throat was as dry as a summer street.
Overwhelmed by the urge to consume the biscuit and water, his head spun, but he forced himself to resist. He knew the consequences of accepting food and drink from the Enemy; he would not forget Kintour.
"Thank you," he said, "but my appetite has fled."
Cavillex leaned in and said quietly, "That would have been the easy road."
"I would give you the gift of a challenge," Will replied. "For life is nothing, if it is not tested."
"No challenge," Cavillex stated.
Behind him, Will could hear the sound of metal upon metal, the clink of objects being arranged upon another tray, the clack and whirr of items being tested. In his head, he began to picture their shape and purpose, and forced himself to stop.
"You will never defeat us," Will said.
"Us?" Cavillex said. "Ah. The brotherhood of man. You think yourself my equal. Of course. Yet in the New World, you treat your own kind like slaves, and slaughter them as if they have no value. As you did the Moors. As you have done, even your own countrymen, over the steady march of the centuries. We stood in our glades, and by our lakes, and on the hilltops, and watched, slack-jawed and silent, as you tore through your fellow creatures. When the Norman, William, invaded your nation, one hundred thousand fell before his will in the north. Thirty thousand dead of starvation in Ireland under your own queen's campaign. How many more have been sacrificed to your pathetic arguments about religion? You are animals falling on each other in the field. You do not deserve to exist."
Will could not deny the sting of truth in Cavillex's words. "That is not the sum of us," he replied.
"What makes a man, then?" Cavillex enquired. "Let us investigate."
Hands grabbed Will's shoulders roughly and flipped his chair backwards. Just at the point when he expected his head to slam against the boards, it came to a gradual rest. A member of the Unseelie Court supported the chair on either side, but he could not see the details of their faces.
Cavillex loomed over him with the water jug. "This gift is given freely, and without obligation," he stated.
He poured the water slowly from the spout, down Will's chest, allowing it to flood across his face and into his breathing passages. It was barely more than a trickle, but Will was forced to inhale it, and instantly he was overcome by a sudden sensation of drowning. His limbs thrashing involuntarily, he tried to draw himself up, but Cavillex's two helpers held him tightly in place. Choking, his attempts to breathe were crushed by an overwhelming feeling of water filling his lungs and of slow suffocation. Darkness closed around his vision and stars flashed across his mind.
When he thought he was about to die, the water flow stopped. Coughing and spluttering, he sucked in a huge gulp of air. His vision cleared to reveal Cavillex an inch away from his face.
"This is just the beginning," he said.
Retreating, Cavillex filled the jug from another source out of Will's sight with a meticulous, slow pouring. Will tried to respond angrily, but his throat was raw from his rasping breath, and the residue of the water in his lungs and nasal passages made him choke once more.
Hanging over Will again, Cavillex said, "Once more, before I begin my questions. To soften you." He poured again.
This time the flow was faster, the water gushing down Will's nose and filling his airways in an instant. He choked, thrashed, could not draw a breath of air as the sensation of the water flooding his lungs magnified.
I'm dying, he thought. It was the only conscious notion before the involuntary responses to drowning took over: a wild panic rising from the heart of him, lashing everything from his head beyond the darkness of death rushing in from all sides. Frantically, he fought, but his captors maintained their grip with ease. A fire consumed his chest. His throat was a solid block through which no air could pass. His brain fizzed and winked out.
When he came round, the chair had been set vertically once more. Uncontrollable convulsions gripped him briefly as his mind fought with the belief that it had died, and the acute sensation of water filling his lungs to capacity. Every time Will recalled it, panic surged through him; the experience had embedded it deep in his mind, beyond his control.
His heart thundered so hard the blood in his ears muffled every sound, and it took him a second or two to realise Cavillex was speaking. "I am told that is what it feels like to drown. You should thank me. I have given you knowledge that few men have: of the dark landscape beyond the edge of death."
"Free me and I will give you an experience beyond that," Will rasped through his raw throat.
"Where is the Shield?" Cavillex asked.
Will didn't respond. Shuddering, he filled his lungs with air and clung on to the memory of breathing.
The chair was upended roughly, and this time his head did slam on the boards. The water gushed onto his face a moment later.
After his ordeal, his consciousness returned in a flood and his furious reaction threw the chair to one side so that he slammed hard onto the floor. His captors left him there.
"What do you know of Dartmoor?" Cavillex asked.
Wrong-footed by the question, Will fought through the sensations of drowning that still washed through him. "Dartmoor?"
"What happened there?"
"I have heard tell of that wild place in the west, but I have never been there."
"What happened there!" Cavillex's voice cracked with emotion. For someone who had maintained his equilibrium from their first meeting, his loss of control was shocking.