“You’re really not making death easy on yourself.” The Bastard stepped out of the shadows, as quietly as he had in the tomb.
Where did you have your ears, Jacob? The oldest mistake in the world: to forget all caution once the treasure is within reach. He was going to die like an amateur.
The Bastard looked at the pictures on the walls as he walked toward his rival. Jacob reached for his gun, but death was slowing him down, and the Goyl had a pistol trained on him before Jacob could pull his own from his belt.
“Don’t force me to further shorten these final minutes of your life,” Nerron said, aiming at Jacob’s head. “Who knows? Maybe you even have an hour. How did you open the gate? That damn iron even burnt my hands.”
“I don’t have the faintest idea.” The crossbow was so close, all he’d have to do was reach out, but Jacob could see that the Goyl would shoot. He’d learned to read the speckled face. It reminded him, even now, of his brother’s. “Who freed you?”
“The Waterman. I had a feeling it would prove useful to keep him alive. Though there were a dozen times in the past weeks when I’d have loved to wring his scaly neck.” Nerron looked around. “Where is the vixen?”
Draw your gun, Jacob. At least try. What have you got to lose?
But maybe there just wasn’t enough life left in him.
Nerron stopped in front of him.
“She is very beautiful, and I don’t usually say that about human women. You think she’ll allow me to comfort her? After all, she also went with the Bluebeard.”
Yes, Jacob would have loved to shoot him.
“I’m sure the obituary for the great Jacob Reckless will be in all the newspapers.” Nerron stepped closer to the crossbow. His pistol was still aimed at Jacob’s head. “Maybe they’ll come to me, to hear how you breathed your last. I promise, I’ll describe it most touchingly.”
Jacob touched the bloody imprint on his shirt. So close. His hand trembled. “Whom will you sell it to?”
“I’m sure you’d be surprised.” Nerron reached for the crossbow.
Snap.
The ticking began as soon as the Goyl had lifted the weapon off the stool. But he paid no attention to it. He still didn’t realize, even as he walked toward the edge of the circle and ran into the invisible wall. The curse he uttered would have made a Dwarf blush. He tried to step out of the mosaic in another place, but of course the stones wouldn’t let him go.
Jacob derived little comfort from the fact that the Goyl had been just as blind. At least he had the excuse that impending death didn’t make you smarter.
It was a trap. From the beginning. They’d been caught in it from the moment they read the words in the tomb, and whoever’s body they’d found there, it was not the Witch Slayer’s. The fingernails should have made you suspicious, Jacob! No sign of decay? Where did you have your senses?
He looked at the figure on the throne. The Witch Slayer was sitting in front of them, and the trap he’d set more than eight hundred years ago had finally snapped shut.
The Bastard threw the stool against the invisible wall so hard that it broke.
“Damn! What gave us away?”
Jacob dropped to his knees. “Nothing,” he said. “He thinks we’re his children. That’s the problem.”
He pulled out the pouch with Louis’s hair and threw it far from him, even though it was already too late. “The trap was meant for them, but they were smarter than us. It’s a time spell.”
The Witches used Hourglasses, but Guismond had used the clock he’d brought from the other world. You saw it, Jacob! Where was your head? A magic circle and a clock. That’s all it took.
“Time spell?” The Goyl struck out at the invisible wall. It sounded as though his claws were hitting against glass. “Never heard of it. How does it work?”
“Every minute will cost us a year.” He was going to be an old man after all.
The Witches used the spells to dispatch of particularly despised enemies, but the Witch Slayer wasn’t out for revenge. You should have already seen this in the tomb, Jacob!
“If you catch your own children in the circle—” his voice was already sounding hoarse “—then you can use the years you take from them for yourself. You’re just taking back the life you gave them in the first place. The more of it, the better. After all, Guismond didn’t want to be reborn as an old man. So he tried to lure all three of them here.”
“Reborn?” The Bastard stared at Guismond’s effigy.
“Yes. That’s not a statue. It’s his body. The Witch Slayer wanted to return from death, even if that meant killing his children.” Tick-tock. The clock’s whirr sliced through the silence and Jacob felt his flesh wither. “It might have worked with Louis,” he said, “but we won’t do him any good. It’ll still kill us, though.”
And Fox couldn’t do anything to free them. Only Guismond could break the circle. Jacob wasn’t sure what he wished for more: that she found them while he still lived or when it was all over.
“Did you hear, Witch Slayer?” Nerron screamed at the corpse on the throne. “You caught the wrong prey. Let us go! Your children weren’t as stupid as we are, and they are now as dead as you.”
Every minute a year.
The Bastard sank to his knees. His breathing grew as labored as Jacob’s, but the spell wouldn’t show as clearly on him. Goyl skin barely aged.
“Admit it!” he panted. “Admit it. I won!”
Jacob closed his eyes. No, he didn’t want Fox to find him like this. He wished she’d never find him and that none of this had ever happened. But how had it all begun? With him going through the mirror. And had he never done that, he’d have never met her, and the vixen would have perished in the trap.
He lifted his hand. It looked like that of an old man.
He didn’t want her to find him like this.
64
LIFE AND DEATH
Fox didn’t comprehend. What she saw was too terrible. Jacob on the floor, the Goyl next to him. She shifted as she ran toward them. Only as she got closer did she see the crossbow lying between them.
Jacob.
She tried to reach him—and was stopped by an invisible force. The air around him was made of glass, and Fox saw the mosaic that had caught him and the Goyl in its circle. A magic circle, but what was it doing to them? The Bastard seemed unchanged, though his breathing was shallow, like a dying man’s. Jacob’s face was so haggard that Fox barely recognized it. His skin was like parchment, and his hair as white as snow. He stirred as she called his name, but his cadaverous body shuddered as a clock’s tick cut through the silence.
The spell that stole years, made people wither like leaves.
Fox looked around desperately.
The ticking came from the back of the room.
The Hourglasses of the Witches stole their victims’ time silently, but it befitted the cruelty of the Witch Slayer’s that he was taking Jacob’s lifetime with a snarling clockwork. Fox heard the hands move forward as she ran toward the clock.
A golden dial, held by bony fingers. Fox tried to push the hands backward, but they wouldn’t budge. She gave up, fearing Jacob would never get his years back if she broke the clock. She implored the vixen and everything that had ever given her strength, but the hands kept moving.
Please!
Fox lifted the housing from the bony hands, but not even her knife could crack it. The mirror that hung next to the clock showed her the despair on her own face. It was so large that its glass reflected the entire room.
At first Fox didn’t quite realize what she was seeing in the mirror.
The figure on the throne was moving.
The gloved hands closed around the armrests, and the mouth gasped raspingly for air. Guismond turned his head. Fox hid behind a column before his eye
s could find her. The face was barely visible beneath the helmet, but she remembered the gilded image staring from the door to the tomb. Whose had been the body in the sarcophagus? A double Guismond had created through witchcraft? A soulless hull that had taken his place in the coffin, soaked with enough black magic to make everybody think the corpse was his?
The Witch Slayer staggered to his feet, but the clock in Fox’s hands was still ticking. Good, Fox. That means it is still finding life to steal.
Guismond looked around. He steadied himself on his throne and felt for the sword that leaned against it. His hands were shaking. Of course. The life he was stealing came from a dying man.
Fox pulled out her knife, wishing she had Jacob’s saber. A knife against a long sword. No. She tucked it back into her belt and pulled out the pistol. The Witch Slayer was not a Bluebeard, nor was he the Tailor from the Hungry Forest. He was human.
He moved unsteadily as he climbed down the steps from his throne. With Jacob’s breath, his heartbeat. The cats’ hides dragged behind him, and he held his sword in his hand.
Only he can break the circle, Fox. And then she would have to kill him. And hope that Jacob got back the life the Witch Slayer had stolen from him. She ducked behind another pillar as Guismond looked around once more. She longed for her fur. Not yet. The vixen wouldn’t be able to kill Guismond.
His steps were unsteady, like those of a sleepwalker. He stopped on the last step and stared down at the men caught in his magic circle. Only two men. Strangers. Fox thought she could smell his disappointment. His body yearned for more life.
He looked around.
No. They are not here.
What was he feeling? Did his madness leave room for the desire to see his children, even though he’d wanted to kill them? Was that the other reason he’d built the trap, to force them to his side, even if they came only to seek power, not love? A motivation he probably understood better, anyway.
The Witch Slayer took off his helmet. He still moved painfully slowly, as though his dead body didn’t want to wake up. The hair revealed beneath his helmet was gray, the face wrinkled and pale. Guismond. Guismonde… his name was pronounced differently in Lotharaine. But his bynames were the same everywhere: the Cruel, the Greedy. And, of course, they’d also called him the Great.
He’d forgotten about the circle. He stumbled against it, felt the invisible wall with his wrinkled hands… and he remembered.
Go on! Your victims are already too weak to escape, and you must want your crossbow back.
The words came across his lips almost silently. Witch words.
The magic circle broke with the sound of shattering glass. Guismond kept the sword in his hand as he approached Jacob and the Goyl. The tinkling of his chain mail was the only sound Fox could hear. Guismond’s rasping breath. And the ticking of the clock. But Jacob wasn’t moving. He was so still. What if he was dead already?
No, Fox. The clock’s still ticking.
She laid it on the floor behind the pillar before she stepped out from its cover. Guismond was just reaching for his crossbow.
Fox shot the arm holding the sword. Yes, he still was just a human being. The scream from his sallow lips sounded like the screams that echoed through the corridors of the palace. Not alive, not dead. A man who’d wanted to kill his children so as not to get lost in his own darkness. The Witch Slayer turned to face her and to stare at the weapon that had injured him.
The next bullet got stuck in his chain mail.
You have to aim better, Fox!
His lips moved while he picked up his sword with his uninjured arm. She shifted shape before his curse could find her. It merely brushed through the vixen’s fur like frost. She ran toward him. Quick, Fox. Too quick for his body, which still belonged to death more than to life. Guismond struck out at her with his sword, but he had no strength, and Fox thanked the Fairy for the death she had planted in Jacob’s chest. The vixen dug her teeth into the flesh. It reeked of putrefaction. She jumped back while Guismond dropped to his knees, and she shifted shape once more. Vixen and woman, forever one. One was nothing without the other.
The Witch Slayer rubbed his hand over his face. His skin began to wilt. He thrust his sword at her, but his attack was so feeble, she could have parried it with the knife. And before he could utter his next curse, Fox rammed her blade into his unprotected throat. The blood gushing out of the wound turned to dust even as it dripped onto the white tunic, and the hands clawing at her coat withered before the fingers could close.
Fox stepped back from the body. The face was stiff, as if carved from wood, and the eyes were as empty as glass. An old man, nothing more. But she could sense him in the walls surrounding her, and in the darkness filling the room. She wanted to be far away.
She lowered her knife and listened.
The clock was silent. And Jacob stirred. His hair was dark again, and his face was the face she loved, but the Bastard stood next to him, and he was holding the crossbow.
No.
Fox drew her pistol, but she’d used all her bullets on the Witch Slayer.
The Bastard smiled. “Never trust a vixen. How often I heard my mother say that! ‘They are cunning, and like you, Nerron, they are not afraid underground.’ What would she have said about a vixen saving my stone skin?”
“Give me the crossbow.” Fox drew her knife. Guismond’s dusty blood was on the blade. “You’d be dead without me.”
“And?”
A scaly arm came around her neck.
“They say shape-shifters can do magic,” the Waterman whispered. “Prove it, vixen.”
He was wearing a dozen necklaces, a coat of Unicorn skin, and rings on all his fishy fingers. Fox struggled to free herself, but Watermen were strong.
Jacob tried to get up. His blood was painting the outline of a moth onto his shirt.
The last bite.
Too late, Fox. Where have you been?
65
THE THIRD SHOT
Fox… Jacob heard her voice and felt her hands. But death was battling life in his body, and death was stronger. It was spreading through him, even though his skin was no longer that of an old man. The Fairy’s price had not been paid yet.
Let go. It’s over.
“No!” Fox grabbed him by the shoulders. “Jacob!”
He opened his eyes.
The Bastard was standing just a few steps away. “The Witch Slayer as a loving father…” He stroked the crossbow’s gold-plated shaft. “Nonsense. I never believed that story about the third shot.”
The bolt in the crossbow was as black as his skin. He nodded at the Waterman. “Get her out of the way.”
Fox tried to pull her knife, but the Waterman struck it from her hands. Jacob was too weak to even lift his arm to shield her. He felt his life dissipating with every breath. What would become of Fox? It was all he could think of as the Bastard’s face blurred in front of his eyes. What would they do to her? Was the Waterman going to drag her into some pond, or would the Goyl shoot her? No, she’d escape. Somehow…
“Look at the shaft. Just as I thought. It’s made of alder wood. Do you know what that means?” Jacob heard the Bastard’s voice as though from a great distance. “No. You forgot all about them. But the Goyl remember. They lived even deeper under the earth than us, in their silver castles. Alderelves. Immortal. Devious. And masters at making magical weapons. The Fairies destroyed most of them, but there’s supposed to be a sword, somewhere in Catalunia, that was made by them.
“The magic is always the same: the weapon brings death to its bearer’s enemies and life to his family. I always suspected that the crossbow is an Alderelf weapon, ever since the first time I heard the story about the third shot.” The Goyl ran his finger over the reddish wood. “Who knows, maybe Guismond actually wanted to kill his son. He was probably al
ready mad back then. After all, he’d been drinking Witch blood for years. But the crossbow wouldn’t allow it.”
He went to Jacob’s side.
“How did he open the gate?” he asked Fox. “It was easy, wasn’t it? It simply let him in.”
Fox didn’t answer him.
The Bastard drew the bow.
“He himself explained it to me. The time spell only gives back life if it captures a relative. I most definitely don’t qualify, but Guismond was quite alive. Which means…?”
Jacob could barely hear what the Goyl was saying. His own heartbeat was too loud, his labored breath, his body’s final attempts to hold on to life.
“That’s why the gate let him in. That’s why he was faster than I.” Nerron’s throaty voice was getting louder, as though he could convince himself that he was the crossbow’s rightful owner. He caught himself doing it, and his next words again sounded as cool and cynical as they usually did. “Well, well, who would have thought, Jacob Reckless has the Witch Slayer’s blood running through him.”
Jacob would have laughed had he the strength for it. “Nonsense.” He barely got the word out.
“Really?” Nerron stepped back and lifted the crossbow.
“Let me shoot. Please!” Fox’s desperate voice cut through the rush in Jacob’s head.
“No.” Nerron took aim. “How else can we prove this isn’t about love?”
Fox’s cry was stifled by the Waterman’s hand.
And the Goyl shot.
His aim was good. The bolt struck Jacob’s chest right where his blood was painting the moth on his shirt. The pain stopped his heart. Dead. You’re dead, Jacob. But he could hear his heart. Strong, and no longer stumbling. It hadn’t beat this regularly in a long time.
He opened his eyes and closed his fingers around the bolt that was sticking out of his chest. His heart hurt with every beat, but it was beating. And the wound did not bleed.
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