His pulse racing, the hand that held his sword now clammy with sweat, England’s greatest spy took the steps two at a time. Fiddle and pipe music swirled dimly from the chambers below, but above him all seemed still.
At the top of the steps on the third floor, he leaned against the throbbing wall and drew in a deep breath to steady himself. Ahead lay a corridor lit by a single torch with doors along the right wall. Will noticed his sword hand trembling as all the years of yearning for this moment rushed out of him, and he knew he had to steady himself.
Calm descended on him. He was ready. He crept along the corridor, his senses alert to the slightest sign of danger. At the third door, he raised the latch and pushed gently with his shoulder. It didn’t move. It was locked.
His heart beat faster. He pressed his ear against the rough wood, listening for any sound from within. All was quiet. Visions of what horrors might lie on the other side of that door flashed through his mind. He hesitated for a long moment, his chest tightening. Dare he call out?
When he had weighed his choices, he leaned closer until his lips were almost brushing the timber and whispered, ‘Jenny. It’s me.’
Silence followed, and his heart grew heavy. But then he heard movement on the other side of the door, drawing closer. He held his breath. After a moment a woman’s voice hissed, ‘At last.’ It was Jenny.
The hairs on the nape of his neck tingled with anticipation. How much richer her voice sounded in life than coming through the glass of the obsidian mirror.
A bolt was drawn. The door swung open.
The only light came from the ruddy glow of a hissing brazier in one corner of the chamber. Will’s eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom. A figure loomed in the half-light: tall. . much taller than he remembered. He saw the silhouette of a staff, pale fingers wrapped around it. They looked unnaturally long, the curved nails sharp, like talons. Other details emerged as if a curtain were being drawn back. Robes, seemingly too thick for the unbearable heat, a faint gold filigree glinting in the brazier’s light. Yellowing skulls of birds and mice, and trinkets, all braided into gold and silver hair. And finally the face appeared from the shadows, hollow-eyed and sunken-cheeked.
Deortha, sorcerer to the Fay High Family, reached out his right hand, palm up. With a sly smile, he murmured, ‘The looking glass, if you will.’
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
The brazier’s acrid smoke drifted across deortha’s cold features. Will’s mind reeled as he watched the shadows play on the Fay’s face in the incarnadine glow of the chamber. ‘You made a play of being Jenny all along?’ he croaked. Despair flooded him.
He remembered the first time he had ever cast eyes upon the Unseelie Court’s sorcerer, on that awful moonlit night on Dartmoor six years gone. It was after Deortha had departed that he had found Jenny’s locket upon the grass, his first real evidence that she was still alive and a prisoner of the Unseelie Court, or so he’d thought. At the time he should have questioned the coincidence, but he had wanted to believe it so much it had clouded his wits.
There had been so much more: the whispered words of Christopher Marlowe’s devil telling him Jenny still lived in a hot land across the sea; his love’s face in that devil’s looking glass, insisting he ignore her while encouraging him to do the opposite, all of it luring him to this place, this moment. And all of it a play, an illusion. He was a fool to have believed so easily, because he wanted to, because he loved, and the Unseelie Court were nothing if not expert in finding the flaws in every man. Time meant nothing to them. They wove their schemes across the years, not caring how long it took to achieve their aims. And in his weakness he had delivered into their hands the one thing they wanted: that terrible mirror.
Deortha smiled as if he could read all his thoughts.
‘Where is Jenny?’ Will asked in a low voice. Yet he was afraid to hear the answer. He raised his rapier until the point quivered over the sorcerer’s heart. ‘Where is she?’ he asked again, this time raw anger flaring from the embers of his dismay.
‘You wish to know if she is alive or dead.’ Will sensed mockery in Deortha’s calm tone and felt his anger grow hotter still, but the sorcerer only gave a low laugh.
Will snatched the devil’s looking glass out of the leather pouch and held it high, ready to dash it on the flags. ‘I will destroy this before I would ever let you use its power.’
‘And you think that here, in our home, at the very heart of our authority, you have any control over your own actions? Here you are a puppet, no more than that, and I hold your strings.’
Will’s sword arm felt as heavy as stone. He thrust his blade at the sorcerer’s chest, but something unbidden stayed his hand. However much he tried, he was powerless to drive the point home.
He felt the chilly touch of despair caress his spine. ‘Tell me now,’ he said, his voice low and hard, ‘what befell her?’ And as the words left his lips he realized how afraid he was of the answer.
Deortha eased the obsidian mirror from his fingers. Peering into the glass, the sorcerer nodded and caressed the black rim. ‘She lives,’ he said, distracted. ‘She is here.’
All thought of the mirror vanished. Will’s breath left him in a rush, but he hardly dared believe the sorcerer. ‘And you have not harmed her?’ he demanded.
Deortha raised his head and gave a strange smile. ‘She is safe. She is an honoured guest of the Unseelie Court.’
‘Take me to her. Please.’
‘That was always my intention.’ The pale eyes glinted. ‘It was my intention from the moment we met upon the moor.’
‘What trick are you playing, devil?’ Will’s voice was hoarse with grief, anger and hope.
‘All life is illusion,’ the sorcerer replied, echoing the words Dee had spoken shortly before the Corneille Noire departed the island for the New World. ‘And in the midst of that, all appears trickery when the truth is hidden.’
Will’s eyes narrowed. There was no gain in showing the pain he felt, he knew — he might as well bare his throat to the cruel Fay — and so he forced himself to put on a grin, and with a swagger that he didn’t feel he sheathed his rapier. ‘Then I can take from your words that it is not your intention to kill me yet,’ he said. ‘I would see Jenny, now.’
‘All in good time.’
Will nodded, trying to seem unruffled. ‘What plans do you have for the mirror you have fought for for so long?’
Deortha turned over the mirror as if it were unimportant. ‘For those who know how to use it, this mirror reveals all places, all times. No secret can ever be hidden. Whoever wields this mirror controls everything.’ Waving his right hand as if wafting away a foul smell, he added, ‘But for now that is of no interest.’
The spy frowned. ‘Of no interest? A weapon that can uncover the flaws in any enemy’s defence, and divine future plans? The world is now yours.’
‘The world always was ours.’ Deortha stepped towards the door and beckoned for him to follow. ‘Will Swyfte, I have work for you.’
CHAPTER FIFTY
The torches sizzled at the bottom of the vast gulf of dark. In the pool of light, pale faces gleamed, eyes frozen wide in terror. Captain Sanburne showed a cold face to the ones who waited in the shadows, but his men shook as the deep rumble of mighty hammers enveloped them. High above the knot of frightened sailors, Will gripped the stone wall of the gallery whither Deortha had brought him. As he peered down the well of the great hall, he wondered how the captain and his crew had been seized. He felt relieved that they were all still alive, but he feared for their future.
Deep grinding echoed all around. Disoriented, he felt as if the basalt and gold of the hall were revolving like a millstone, crushing the husks of the men cowering below. More torches hissed into life, widening the circle of light. The hidden figures flickered into view, a near-army of Fay guards surrounding the men. Grey and indistinct, their faces were cloaked by shadow. Silver breastplates and helms glinted in the dancing flames. The guards bristled with cruel
weapons: spike-topped halberds, double-headed axes and broadswords.
The circle of guards parted to allow four figures entry. Will’s heart thundered with joy as he watched Meg, Carpenter, Launceston and Grace step forward. He could scarcely believe they lived. Bloodied and bedraggled, they still held their heads up defiantly, he saw.
Halberds levelled at their necks brought them to a halt, and Will’s jubilation drained away. He looked back at Deortha, but the brooding sorcerer gave no sign of what was to come.
A distant door slammed shut, the echoes rippling through the hall. A moment later he heard another door, and then another, the successive booms growing louder as they approached until the hall rang with the steady beat of a funeral drum. The sailors’ heads turned in the direction of the sound, the men fearful at the thought of what was approaching.
Finally the Unseelie Court circle parted once again. Agleam in a silver winged headdress, glistening robes and a white cloak that swept the flagstones, a tall, slender Fay stepped forward. Will leaned over the stone wall, squinting to get a better look. Here was a leader of sorts, perhaps even a King, he thought, his eyes narrowing; the architect of all their suffering.
The regal Fay glided towards the Englishmen. Beside him came a smaller figure, and Will gasped. His memory reeled across the vast ocean of years to the day when Jenny had been swept away into mystery. Her face as she had crossed the cornfield was burned into his mind’s eye, every moment they had shared, the depth of the emotion he had felt, all wrapped up in that single sunlit image. Could this be another of the Unseelie Court’s cruel tricks, he thought, as he peered down at the woman who stood beside the King?
Cold breath chilled his ear. ‘Yes,’ Deortha whispered, ‘it is she.’
Jenny. His heart pounding, his thoughts awhirl, he drank in every familiar movement, feeling a pang of bittersweet remembrance. His gaze drifted to her white skirts edged in gold, and the gold at her wrists and in the band snaking around her forehead, and he saw that she walked at the King’s side without any sign of defiance or resistance. As far as he could tell, she seemed to look on the Englishmen without compassion or recognition. No prisoner this, Will thought, growing cold. She accompanies the Fay willingly.
‘You have spun your magics to seduce her to your side,’ he snarled into the dark of the gallery. ‘For that you will pay a harsh price, I vow.’
‘There is no glamour. She is what she seems,’ the sorcerer replied.
‘You lie, as your kind always lies,’ Will spat. Yet he knew there could be no other explanation. His knuckles whitened round the hilt of his rapier as he fought the desperate urge to rush down to the floor and tear Jenny — his Jenny — away from those foul creatures.
Until then Grace had remained silent, head bowed, eyes fixed on the stone floor. Now, as if waking from some deep slumber, she twitched as if someone had called her name, and looked up. When her gaze alighted on Jenny, her mouth fell open and tears flooded her eyes. Arms outstretched, she rushed to embrace her, and would have fallen under the Fay guards’ halberds had Meg not lunged to stop her. She staggered back with Meg’s arms wrapped round her, incomprehension turning to devastation when Jenny turned her calm, cold face towards her. No sign of recognition flickered in the elder sister’s hard features.
The Fay King looked down on the tableau before him, the group of confused and frightened humans caught in the small circle of light, and said, ‘I am Mandraxas, highest of the High Family. In my sister’s absence, the Golden Throne is mine, here in this place beyond places that your kind call Manoa. It is my word that rings out across this world, across all worlds; my design which shapes this war; my judgement that hangs over all the heads of your people. Do you fear me, men?’
Sanburne showed a defiant face, but the other seamen cowered.
From a pouch, Mandraxas pulled out a black oval stone on a silver chain. He let it swing in front of him like a pendulum. ‘We are the oldest beings in the great sweep of existence. We are the silver of the moon and the cool mist of dawn and the dark shadow of night. And we are the gold of the sun and the searing heat of the forge. And we will no longer be defied.’ He paused and looked around him, still swinging the stone from side to side. ‘In that time before times, we knew only beauty, only wonder. And then your infestation spread across the fields in which we played. Your urge for blood, and power, consumed you and corrupted all that had been made. And then you sought to challenge us. Is there no end to your arrogance? Now, though, the age of man is passing.’
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.
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