"Hunting?" Will ventured. His mind raced to draw connections. Why was Cavillex interested in Dartmoor? What had happened there?
Before he could conclude his thoughts, the chair was flipped over again and the water flooded into his breathing passages with a force he had not experienced before. This time he blacked out quickly.
Cavillex roughly shook him awake. Will could see in his captor's drawn features that he had expected success much quicker.
"How do we break the defences that keep us from exerting our will over your land?" he asked.
"You will have to ask Doctor Dee that."
Taking a step back, Cavillex looked into the street below as he steadied himself. "You know you will not survive this hour. For the remainder of your brief life, there will only be a cascade of pain and suffering, tearing your mind into ribbons. Save yourself. Seek salvation. Tell me what I need to know and you will be spared that misery. I will end your life in an instant. You have my word."
"God gave us memories for when the world gets too harsh. I have much to remember," Will replied.
"Very well."
Will waited for the chair to be upturned again, but instead Cavillex nodded to one of his associates who ventured to the back of the room and returned with another silver tray. Cavillex placed it on the floor in the moonlight where Will could see it. Lined up across it was a row of cruel instruments, so strange that their use was barely imaginable. Will saw gleaming blades, tongs, bands, screws, needles, and clamps.
"The question remains: what makes a man?" Cavillex reflected. "We shall find out. Blood and gristle and meat and bone. This part fits that part. But where in that jumble of raw, bloody mass is the glimmer that thinks and feels? Or is it all just an illusion? Are men mere puppets made of meat that imagine themselves something more? Have you told yourself a lie for so long in your stories and mythologies that you have come to believe it?"
Turning his back to Will, he studied the tray of instruments, waving his slim fingers in the air over them until he decided on his selection.
"We have existed on the edge of your world for a long, long time," he con tinued. "Over the ages, we have probed the mysteries of this existence, plumbed the depths of life, climbed the peaks of experience. We have come to understand the minds of mortals with the eye of an artist. Like wizards, we can conjure miracles from the base stuff of your being. We can distil the finest evocation of pain from the mist of your lives. We have learned to draw out suffering in minute increments, each one blossoming like flowers into something beautiful and delicate." He turned back to Will and revealed what he held in his hand. "Once you have gained our attention, your time here is over."
"Get on with it," Will said. He focused his mind on the information about jenny with which Cavillex had taunted him. In it, he found hope, and strength.
He woke to find his captors sluicing the blood from the floor with a bucket of water. His body was a symphony of pain, his thoughts floating in and out of the rhythm. He had lost track of how long Cavillex had been working on him, but he knew he had not answered a question, and he had not given up Nathaniel. He would stay true to his vow to the end. That could be a long time coming, he knew. True to his words, Cavillex was an expert in drawing out suffering, building then releasing the pressure only to build it again. Survival was no longer an option. It had come down to a battle of wills, as Will had always known it would.
"What makes a man?" he said to Cavillex. "Defiance in the face of brutality and oppression."
"The Spaniard was right, you know. You think you are the hero in this play? You are not."
Will spat a mouthful of blood. "There are no heroes."
"You will tell me what I need to know."
Will sighed. "Let us dispense with this chat. You already torture me with your words. Boredom is your greatest weapon."
Nonchalantly, Cavillex selected another tool from the tray. Gritting his teeth, Will steeled himself.
Through the window came the distant sound of voices. Briefly, Cavillex hesitated, then continued towards Will as he considered which new part of his body to assault. The noise continued to draw closer, a crowd, shouting angrily. Hazy from the pain, Will couldn't make out the words.
The crowd washed up against the building, their voices so loud Will couldn't hear Cavillex's quiet words. Somewhere below them a window shat tered. Objects clattered against the side of the house. Puzzlement briefly crossed Cavillex's face, and he turned back to the window. Will watched his body stiffen as he studied the scene in the street below.
"It appears you have gained the attention of the good people of Edinburgh," Will said wryly.
A rain of missiles rattled against the wall, and a steady boom echoed from the front door as the crowd attempted to break it down. When Cavillex turned to Will, his expression was cold and murderous.
"Does it serve your purpose to stand and fight?" Will asked. "Or will you melt into the mist as you always do?"
Thoughts crossed Cavillex's face, all of them unreadable. He looked to his assistants and nodded.
"So, your pleasure has been cut short," Will croaked brightly. "It appears my life is to end much sooner than anticipated."
"No," Cavillex said.
"No?"
"I told you, our skill at drawing out suffering is unmatched. Your kind has woken an angry beast. And you have gained our attention. Your activities in the past were an irritation, easily forgotten, like all your kind. But this night you killed one of our own-"
"Who caused the death of one of my own."
"No matter. When you kill a rabbit in the field, do you give it a second thought? But you have slain something unique and wild and astonishing."
Will was surprised to see tears sting Cavillex's eyes.
"You have stolen from this world something wonderful. Yes, we have noticed you. And your crime against all there is must be punished."
"This is never going to end," Will replied. "You prey upon us, we shut you out. You attack us, we attack you. You kill one of ours, we kill one back. What is there to gain?"
"It will end, and soon," Cavillex said. "And your corruption upon the face of this world will be wiped away, and you will be forgotten."
The window burst inwards, showering glass all around Cavillex, but he didn't flinch. His attention was fixed solely on Will as if there was nothing else in the world that mattered.
"You have gained our attention," he repeated in a quiet voice that was filled with such emotion it carried above the roar of the crowd. "You have someone you love?" He let the final word roll around his mouth with contempt. "Not the one we spoke of earlier. Someone close to you now. A friend, perhaps, someone you hold in affection." His gaze was heavy upon Will.
Grace.
Cavillex nodded. "I see now. A woman. When we leave this place we will find her."
"No," Will said.
"We will take her. We will show her the heights of our skills. We will make the fibre of her being ring out with unimagined agonies. But she will live. Until we bring you back to us, and then we will slowly slaughter you in front of her, so that everything in her heart that she felt for you is corrupted by her final memory of your suffering. And then we will set her free to live with her misery. A life lived in that manner is usually short."
"No!" Will raged.
Cavillex's cold smile was the cruellest tool he had used that night.
"No!" Will roared until his throat burned, and tore at his bonds until his already bloody wrists were numb, and he threw himself against the chair in a futile attempt to break free. He thought of Grace, and he thought of jenny, and his anger consumed him. If he could have freed himself, he would have torn Cavillex limb from limb. All the pain he had suffered in his life, and the agony that so many around him had suffered, was to be magnified.