Flashing steel glinted in the ruddy light above him. Carpenter, Launceston and Red Meg hacked and slashed, blood and feathers spraying across the vegetation. Will scrambled to his feet and looked up at the chaos overhead. Driven back by the heat and confused by the billowing black smoke, most of the Spree-birds had turned on the Hunters, tearing them apart as they crawled down the cliff face. But it was only a momentary respite, Will knew. There were too many of the Fay stalkers, and they were too relentless, too brutal.
All around the dry vegetation was burning, set alight by smouldering vines falling from above. Ordering the others over the side once more, he followed them down, swinging and falling to each new level of the hanging gardens, until their joints burned and their chests were seared from the exertion. And the flames leapt up the cascading balconies, the pall of smoke obscuring the Unseelie Court’s grim fortress.
A sea of grey mist washed over the treetops below the final garden. The drop here was the longest. Will clambered down the vines first, letting the last of them slip through his fingers long before he could see the ground. Branches battered his body as he fell. He hit the softy, loamy soil of the forest floor, rolled and sprang to his feet. Every muscle burned. The others rained down around him in a shower of shattered branch and twig and leaf. Once they were sure no bones had been broken, they stopped and listened.
An eerie silence lay beneath the protective blanket of mist. Taking a deep draught of the hot, humid air, Will advanced with slow, careful steps, blade at the ready. A high stone wall stretching deep into the forest on either side appeared out of the folds of grey. An arched opening loomed ahead of them.
‘This has to be the labyrinth that leads to the outside world,’ Jenny whispered at Will’s side. ‘I heard Mandraxas tell of it. Many have been driven mad when they became lost in its depths as they sought to reach the riches of the City of Gold or flee the horrors they found there.’
As he looked around them, Will allowed himself a tight smile. The message in the captain’s journal on the abandoned Spanish galleon now made perfect sense. He reached into the battered leather pouch at his side and pulled out the torn page, reading again those scrawled words: Twice stare into the devil’s face, then bow all heads to God. Thrice more the unholy must call. Again, again, again until the end.
‘Two left turns, then a right, then three left turns. Count carefully: this sequence must be repeated until we reach the other side.’
The sound of crashing from above reached them through the mist. He guessed the Hunters were dropping from the cliff face into the treetops. Beckoning to the others, he hurried through the arched door. It was cooler in the deep shadow of the high stone walls, and the six fugitives seemed to shudder as one. The way was narrow, barely more than a sword-length between the lichen-crusted walls.
‘At least there is only space for those fiends to come at us one at a time,’ Carpenter growled as he ran.
‘Stay close, and watch your backs,’ Will called. At each junction, he mouthed the count to himself, and so they twisted and turned deeper into the heart of the labyrinth.
Soon the thump of feet on hard-packed earth rang off the walls. Their pursuers were closing fast. Will beckoned for Meg to join him, and slowed to whisper in her ear, ‘Lead Jenny and Grace ahead. And I beg of you, do not stop, whatever sounds you hear behind you.’
‘I am as good with a blade as any man,’ she replied, her green eyes flashing. ‘Better. You know that.’
‘I do, which is why I entrust such valuable lives to your care.’
The beautiful woman’s features softened. ‘Very well. But do not risk that handsome neck, my love. I still have plans to win your heart.’ Blowing him a silent kiss she waved the two other women ahead. Once they had disappeared along a branching path, Will said, ‘We take turns to hold the rear. When we tire, we make way for a fresh arm, yes?’ The other two spies nodded, their faces grim.
The footsteps at their backs now echoed with the relentless rhythm of driving rain on wood. Steel scraped on stone. Will wiped a trickle of blood from his nose, trying to imagine how many were in pursuit. After a moment, he pushed the thought aside. It was not good to dwell upon such things.
Left, left, right, left, left, left. The high stone walls sped by in a monotonous blur. Will found it impossible to tell if they were close to exiting the labyrinth or still meandering in the centre.
The feeling of iron nails rattling in his skull alerted him a moment before Launceston’s hissed warning. Glancing back, he glimpsed a bloodless face floating in the gloom. The unflinching gaze fell upon him. Out of the murk, the Hunter bounded like a wolf, silver hair streaming behind him. His hollow chest was bare, with leather belts strapped across it, his breeches grey and loam-stained. Clutched in the long, thin fingers of his right hand was a glinting sickle. Other shadowy figures loped behind.
Will’s chest burned as he stepped up his pace. Snatched looks caught flashes of steel and bared teeth, and the ghastly figure looming closer with each step. Launceston held the rear, seemingly oblivious of the thing drawing close to his back. When the sickle swung towards his neck, the aristocrat ducked at the last moment. As the curved blade whistled over his head, he half spun and plunged his sword into the Hunter’s right eye socket. The Fay spun backwards in silence, trailing a stream of bloody liquor. His fallen corpse slowed the progress of the pursuers behind, but it would not be for long, Will knew.
Within moments, Launceston had slashed his blade across another face before allowing Carpenter to drop back and impale a third Hunter upon his rapier. Blood spattered from wounds on both spies.
When Carpenter had despatched another, Will moved swiftly to the rear. A wall of snarling faces hovered before him as the predators pressed forward, sheer weight of numbers eliminating the advantage the three spies had maintained in the cramped space. Gritting his teeth, he whirled his rapier back and forth, peeling open white flesh in an arc. Bodies fell with each thrust, but the Hunters cared little about their own lives, he saw.
For a moment his vision swam with those hideous faces. As the stink of their meaty breath washed over him, he knew his time was done. Determined that he would not go down to Hell alone, he snatched one final thrust with his blade, then waited for the wave to break upon him.
Instead, he felt a hand grab his shirt and pull him back so hard his feet left the ground.
Will lay sprawled across the hard earth. Shafts of sunlight punched through a canopy of leaves rustling high overhead. Lurching to his feet, he saw it was Carpenter who had dragged him from certain death, for that moment at least. He was out of the labyrinth in a clearing in the dense forest. Grace, Jenny and Meg huddled together at the edge of the trees. Launceston waited nearby, his rapier point dripping gore.
Anger born of desperation surged inside him. Why were they not running? But then he followed their gaze, and turned to face a vast arc of Hunters, a grey army, with more still flooding out from the labyrinth. Silently, they waited, a thunderstorm about to break. All hope was gone. Now there was only time for dying.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
‘STAY YOUR GROUND. I am your queen.’ Jenny’s voice rang out across the still clearing, suddenly imperious, commanding. Holding her head high, she broke away from the others and strode out from the shadows to face the line of waiting Hunters. Will’s chest tightened. He watched the Fay, wondering if they would heed her words or fall upon her first. In their cruel white faces, their eyes looked like chunks of coal.
After a moment, he realized they were not going to attack, but nor were they retreating. ‘Jenny,’ he whispered, his voice hoarse, ‘take no risks, I beg you.’
When she turned her face towards him, he almost cried out at the sadness he saw there. She forced a smile. ‘There is no risk here, my love. They will not harm their Queen. As long as I remain their Queen, upon the soil they call their own.’
Will felt a chill run through him as the meaning of her words slowly settled on him. ‘No,’ he whispered
. ‘You cannot . . . I will not allow it.’
‘We were lost the moment your fellow slew Mandraxas,’ she said in a soft, desolate voice, still smiling in an attempt to soften his pain.
‘There is another way,’ he protested. ‘There must be.’
Jenny – his Jenny – shook her head, glancing back at the cold ranks of the Fay. ‘If I walk with you into the human world, I abdicate the throne and they will destroy us in an instant. All of us, doomed. If I return, at least I can ensure you leave with your life. All of you.’ Her voice rose and she looked at Grace. ‘Including my sister, whom I treasure more than life itself,’ adding so quietly he could barely hear it, ‘as I treasure you.’
‘I will not allow this sacrifice,’ Will protested, clenching a fist impotently.
‘Ah, but it is not for you to say.’ She swallowed. ‘There is more at stake here than you and I. We are as nothing compared to the devastation that would be wrought on all men by an Unseelie Court bent on avenging that which you – we – have meted out to their true Queen, and now their King.’
‘Then let all the world be damned,’ he uttered, his voice breaking. ‘If I could walk away with you, I could live with the world burning around us.’
‘No,’ she interjected quietly, ‘you could not.’
‘I would sacrifice anything for one more day with you.’
‘No,’ Jenny repeated, ‘you would not, though your heart were shattered into a thousand pieces. I saw inside you on that very first day we walked together, Will Swyfte. I know your true worth, perhaps more than any other person you call friend or lover. I see how the suffering of your last few years has formed a callus around you, but the good man within remains unchanged.’
‘You cannot return,’ Will whispered, his despair growing, ‘not now that I have found you again.’
Jenny took his blood-encrusted hand in her cool fingers. ‘And I have found you again,’ she murmured. ‘I remember everything. I feel all that I felt on that day I was stolen from you. If there was some way we could be together I would seize it with both hands. But Mandraxas’s death could unleash a hell upon earth. If I can prevent that, I will.’
‘You truly think the Fay will obey a mortal?’
‘They must. I am their Queen.’
‘And how long before you meet the same fate as Mandraxas? A dagger in the night? Poison?’ Will felt his eyes sting with tears.
‘I am no weak child. I will keep my wits about me at all times, and watch the shadows, and find allies, and plot and scheme as befits a true monarch,’ his lost love said, narrowing her eyes. When he saw the defiance in her face, Will recognized a steel he had not encountered before. ‘And I will keep heads spinning, and encourage factions and machinations and ruses so that the Unseelie Court will have no time to look out into the world of men, for they will be consumed by themselves.’
‘How long, Jenny?’ He felt hollow, numb.
She blanched, but kept a brave face. ‘As long as I can.’
‘I will not allow this,’ he cried, snatching up his rapier from where it had fallen. Anger and despair roared through him. He only had eyes for the cursed Fay, who still had their talons embedded in the one thing he valued. As he lunged towards them, Launceston and Carpenter grabbed his arms and struggled to hold him back.
‘Would you rather we all died here and now?’ the Earl whispered. ‘What good would that do?’
‘Listen to her, Will,’ Carpenter added with surprising tenderness. ‘Her heart is breaking, but she does this for a greater good. She shames us all with her strength.’
Still struggling, Will blinked away hot tears of anguish until Grace stepped in front of him and held his face in her hands. She leaned in, filling his vision and holding his attention. Tears streamed down her cheeks too. ‘No one wants Jenny home more than I,’ she whispered, ‘not even you. And it will destroy me by degrees to know she is a prisoner in this land of horrors. Though it is terrible to us both, you know in your heart that what my sister suggests is the right course. Think of the lives that will be saved, Will. Jenny is right – all of us mean nothing compared to that.’
‘And you can live with that?’ he snapped.
‘As I have for these last fifteen years. But now I know that she still lives, though we are separated by oceans, by worlds, by time itself. I know! And I will carry her in my heart for as long as I live, and never lose hope that one day we will brave the terrors of this place once more and bring her back to where she is loved and cherished. We will bring her home, I promise.’ She sucked in a deep breath to stifle a sob. ‘You must let her go, Will.’
He steadied himself, wondering how it could be that these two women were stronger than all of them. Running a hand through his hair, he nodded and moved to stand in front of Jenny. It felt as if sadness must fill every part of her, but still she smiled, for his sake, and that broke his heart. ‘It seems you have won this battle of wits,’ he said, grinning, for her sake.
Her eyes sparkled as she held his gaze for a long moment. No words were necessary. Then slowly her face hardened with the weight of her responsibility. She glanced up to the heavens. ‘You know what you must do.’
His chest tightened. He understood; it was what he had long planned. But with all of them free and sailing home to England; never like this. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I cannot. Leaving you behind is torment enough.’
‘If we are meant to be together, Will Swyfte, we will find a way.’
It felt too final, as if he were consigning her to the cold earth, but he knew she would never change her mind. ‘No ocean is too wide, no walls too strong, no danger too great. I will be back for you, Jenny.’ With trembling fingers, he felt under his shirt for the locket he had worn against his skin since Deortha had first dropped it in order to lure him here. Removing it, he gently fastened it round her slim neck, as he had done that day when they had sealed their love so long ago. ‘Wear this as I wore it: to remind you never to lose hope. Cradle it in your hands every night and know that I will be searching for a way back to you. Know that one day we will be together again.’
Her eyes glistened. Bowing, he took her hand and kissed the back of it. When he raised his head, they held each other’s gaze as they struggled to suppress all the hurt and the yearning, and then he took a step back and nodded. ‘Soon,’ he said.
‘Soon,’ she replied. She closed her eyes for a moment, and slowly her face transformed into that of a ruler, a Queen. Then she turned away from Will, from her sister, from Meg, Carpenter and Launceston, and walked back towards the labyrinth. Heads bowed in deference, the Hunters parted to let her through, and then turned to follow her. Will watched until he could see her no more.
When Grace reached out a hand to comfort him, he shook his head. ‘We are done here,’ he said, each word rolling out like a pebble falling upon wood. ‘But this is not yet over.’ Taking his bearings, he ignored the questioning gazes and moved to the trees. Looking up, he caught a glimpse of their destination through a gap in the canopy, and broke into a run. By force of will, he drove all his churning emotions deep inside him. Completing the task he’d set himself was now his sole aim. A memorial to Jenny.
The Tower of the Moon soared up through the trees, a cold sliver of grey stone with a bright white light burning at the summit. At its base, he halted to catch his breath and waited for the others. Meg was the first to arrive. ‘Whatever plan has gripped you, take care. I fear for you.’ Her voice was warm with concern.
‘You worry needlessly,’ he replied, his face betraying no emotion. ‘Stay here and ensure our Enemy does not have a change of heart.’
‘Where do you go?’
In reply, he simply raised his hand and pointed to the top of the tower high overhead.
Before the others had caught up and could question him further, he began to circle the base of the structure. As far as he could tell, there was no entrance. Only a series of stone footholds barely a finger’s length wide protruded from the walls, spiralling up towards
the top. Setting down his rapier, he took off his boots to get a better grip and hauled himself on to the lowest step. Pressing himself tight against the wall, he felt for small clefts that seemed to have been made as fingerholds. The others called out, urging him not to risk such a precarious climb, but his head felt numb and their words faded away. Gingerly, he shifted his weight from one step to the next, and then the next.
As he clawed his way around the tower, his nose wrinkled at the smell of the warm stone against his cheek, and the wet-wood aromas of the forest, and the hint of brine on the breeze blowing in from the coast. Sweat slicked his body in the day’s heat. He balanced on the precarious footholds, clutching on to the wall until his finger joints screamed with pain. When he sensed the quality of light change as he rose above the treetops, the bird-cries rang in his ears as the shadows swooped across him.
And higher still he climbed, into a world of grey stone, blue sky and golden sunlight. He felt the suck of the dizzying drop as the wind tugged at his limbs, and the queasy twist in the pit of his stomach, but not for a moment did he look down. His legs and arms shook. The slightest misstep would send him plunging to his death. But then a soft white glow enveloped him and he realized he was nearing the summit.
A moment later he hauled himself over the edge, and rolled on to his back, filling his tight chest with clear, sweet and untainted air. He blinked, unable to see the sky any more for the moonlike luminescence. Yet it was not a harsh light; he felt as though he was swathed in down. Something about this strange light reached inside him and plucked at his grief, and for a moment he felt overwhelmed by the sense of loss and despair. He shook himself, gritted his teeth and clambered to his feet. He would not give in.
The top of the tower was flat and fixed upon it was an iron plinth topped by a blue-green copper bowl. In it, what seemed like a glass sphere the distance of fingertip to elbow in diameter floated an inch above the surface, turning slowly. It was from this that the white light washed out.
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