The Silver Skull

by Mark Chadbourn

  Will recalled the stories of the Knights Templar he had heard told at court, and how the religious military order had brought back many secrets and riches from the Crusades. Dee had even suggested that the disbanding of the Order and the killing of many of the Knights was down to the machinations of the Enemy. The Enemy’s greatest victory, Dee had called it.

  “Mary charged me with finding the location of the Key and the Shield,” Kintour continued. “I searched through the old papers and spent long days and nights breaking the ciphers the Knights used. I found the Key.” His brow furrowed.

  “Yes, the Key was found,” Will responded. “But you could not locate the Shield?”

  “Only that it was hidden somewhere beneath the abbey. But where … and how …” He shook his head sadly. “And so you still search?”

  “Yes, we still search,” Will said reassuringly. His mind raced as he tried to guess the Enemy’s plan, which was clearly more subtle than he had anticipated. If the Silver Skull was simply a doomsday weapon, they would ensure it was triggered to wipe out the population, with no thought for the man who wore the Mask. But if the Enemy needed the Shield to protect themselves, it suggested they wished to move through the areas where the disease ran out of hand. Why would they want to do that?

  “How close have you got to locating the Shield?” he asked.

  Kintour bowed his head in shame. “I have the reference to the entrance, and the guide to the defences, but I cannot understand it.” He pulled a piece of parchment from his pocket and handed it to Will with trembling hands. Will inspected it briefly before slipping it into his own pocket. “I know you requested an answer by this evening, and I am sorry … I am sorry …” He began to sob softly. “Please do not hurt me any more. Let me dream.”

  Will studied the wretched figure and wondered how long he had been a prisoner of the Enemy, without truly knowing where he was or what he did for them. “Why have they … we … not descended on the abbey and torn it apart to find the Shield?” Will enquired.

  “Why … part of it is protected? You cannot walk there?” Kintour replied, baffled.

  “So mortal agents are needed to search,” Will mused. “You will not have to remain here for much longer. Firstly, I must find where they have hidden the Silver Skull here, but then I will return you to your life. Do you understand?”

  Kintour nodded slowly until his chin drooped onto his chest and he fell into a deep stupor. Will crept back to the door and slipped out as soon as he had confirmed the corridor was clear.

  The house pulsed with a strange atmosphere that reminded Will of a churchyard after a funeral, a hint of regret, a resonant note of grief, yet somehow the joy of a new day like the sun breaking through the branches of the yews. Behind it all, though, was an underlying tone of threat, rumbling so deep it was felt not heard.

  He paused outside the door through which the Enemy had ventured, but there was no sound within. He hesitated, thought better of it, and moved on to the next floor; he could always return to that room if the rest of his search turned up nothing.

  There was a different atmosphere in the next corridor, as though he had walked from one season into another. The air was rich with the perfume of a summer garden: he smelled lavender, rose, honeysuckle. The first door was locked, as was the second.

  In the third room, it took a second for his eyes to adjust to the deep dark until he realised thick velvet drapes hung over the window. Pulling them back, he allowed the moonlight to illuminate the chamber. His initial shock at seeing glassy eyes upon him turned gradually to anger when he saw the pile of human heads in one corner, rising almost halfway up the wall. He guessed there were at least fifty, the features and bone structure heavy with the weight of poverty. Some of the heads were so badly decomposed only traces of flesh remained on the bone; others looked so fresh they may well have been placed there that night. The Enemy’s sport, he knew, plucked from the dark, overcrowded wynds where the lowest stratum of society was all but ignored by the city authorities.

  There, in one stark image, was the entire reason for his life’s work, and why Walsingham and Dee, for all their flaws, were right. Damping down his anger, he moved swiftly back into the corridor and continued to search the house floor by floor.

  More doors were locked, more rooms empty, although many held a tantalising sensation that they had only just been vacated, a wisp of scent in the air or a fading echo.

  Finally, in a room at the end of the corridor, he found lion Alanzo, asleep, his sword by his side, on a four-poster bed with the curtains partly drawn. In a chair next to the bed, head on his chest in slumber, was the Silver Skull. The two of them together in the same room, in that position, was an odd sight, and Will couldn’t tell if they were under the spell of the Enemy. But he knew that an arm around the throat of the Silver Skull for just a few moments with the pressure at the right point, and he would be able to transport him out of the room unconscious without waking his guard. The question then would be how to escape the house with both the Skull and Kintour.

  The room was furnished with more warmth than the other chambers in the Fairy House, but there was an underlying stench of decomposition that drew Will’s attention to one single rotting head on the mantelpiece.

  Even here, Will thought. A reminder to the occupants of their mortality.

  Searching for any creaking board, he edged across the room to within a foot of the Skull without any change in their breathing. But as he reached out a crooked arm to slide it around the Skull’s neck, the head on the mantelpiece tore open its mouth and began to shriek.

  The bloodcurdling alarm rang through the still house.

  Shocked awake, the Silver Skull leapt to his feet, knocking over his chair. Grabbing his sword, lion Alanzo rolled off the bed and thrust himself between Will and the Skull.

  “Intruder!” he yelled, unnecessarily, almost drowned out by the head’s deafening shriek.

  Deep in the house, doors slammed.

  Will saw it was futile to attempt to escape with the Skull. “I will return to finish this at a later date,” he said, backing towards the door. “Until then, enjoy your stay in Edinburgh.”

  Activity rumbled throughout the house, punctuated by the loud barks of the sentry dog. The sensible option would have been to enter one of the empty rooms and clamber back into the chimney, but Will couldn’t bring himself to leave Kintour. The archivist had already suffered greatly at the hands of the Enemy, and Will felt instinctively that he would become superfluous to their needs very soon.

  Racing for the stairs, he drew his knife. He took the steps three at a time, crashing onto the landing below where a shadow on the wall had already warned him of an impending assailant. Dropping and rolling, he brought the knife up sharply vertical into the groin of the waiting figure. The inhuman cry of pain made Will’s head ring.

  Without looking back, he ran for the next flight of stairs. Four more of the Enemy pounded up the steps to meet him.

  On the top step, he threw himself forwards, crashing hard into the first attacker, who was propelled into the ones behind. They careered down the stairs with Will rolling across the top of them to land on his feet on the next landing. As he fought his way through to the corridor where Kintour’s room lay, he found the Hunter waiting just before the door. Eyeing Will contemptuously, he put his fingers to his mouth and whistled. From below, his dog answered with a hunting howl.

  Everything Will saw in the Hunter’s face—arrogance, a dismissive regard for a lesser species, cruelty—made him desire revenge for Miller’s death with a fierce determination, but he knew it would mean his own death; behind him, the other combatants had picked themselves up from the tangle at the foot of the stairs and were already advancing.

  Will ran. The Hunter’s eyes narrowed as he casually prepared to repel the attack. Instead of meeting him head-on, at the last Will leapt to the left-hand wall, propelled himself off it to the right-hand wall, and launched himself past the wrong-footed Hunter. In passin
g, Will’s knife tore open the Hunter’s cheek. The cry of anger-tinged agony brought a surge of black pleasure in Will.

  “Something to remember me by,” Will said.

  He kicked out at the Hunter as he moved by him, knocking him off balance, and then he was in the room and sliding the bolt across the door.

  “Come, we must leave this place,” Will said, shaking Kintour from his stupor. Bodies were briefly thrown at the door before the bolt began to slide back of its own accord.

  Staggering, Kintour allowed himself to be moved towards the fireplace. He was like a puppet, with no will of his own.

  “We climb,” Will urged. “You first. I will follow to hold off any pursuit.”

  Kintour was leaden, his fingers feebly feeling for handholds. Will put his shoulder to the man’s behind and launched him up the chimney, climbing quickly behind him while bracing himself against the sooty stones with his legs. Black showers rained down all around.

  In the room, the door crashed open and the heavy beat of boots crossed the boards. A wild barking followed in the wake.

  “Where are we?” Kintour’s dazed voice floated down to Will.

  “On the road to freedom. Now: climb faster!” He gave Kintour a rough shove as the sound of canine scrabbling echoed from the fireplace below.

  In the dark, Kintour began to panic. Will patiently explained what was occurring as they inched along the flue.

  “What if we become trapped here?” The edge of fear in Kintour’s dreamy voice was eerie.

  “I came down. Ergo we can climb out,” Will shouted up.

  The snuffling and snarling began to rise up the chimney. Somehow the dog was climbing after them.

  “No dog at all, then,” Will muttered to himself before calling, “Climb faster, now.”

  As they drove up through the flue system, Will looked down between his boots and glimpsed the glint of the dog’s teeth as it snapped only a few feet below him. Finding near-invisible footholds, it climbed with relatively little purchase on the blackened stone, so that it almost appeared to be gliding upwards.

  “What is happening?” Kintour cried. The edge in his voice grew more intense as he surfaced from the spell.

  Finally, they broke out into the chill night. Disoriented, Kintour almost pitched off the roof until Will burst from the chimney and caught hold of his shirt. The dog wriggled up the final few feet, snapping its jaws like a gamekeeper’s trap.

  “Along the roofs,” Will urged. “We can be away from here before—”

  “No!” Kintour clutched his head as though in pain, his legs buckling. Will held on to him tightly as his feet slipped on the tiles. “I … I remember now,” Kintour stuttered.

  Clambering fully from the chimney, Will attempted to guide Kintour along the roof’s pitch. “Do not look down,” Will said. “Keep your eyes on my face.” The fingers of the gusting wind tugged at them. At their backs, the dog’s snarling echoed from the chimney.

  Kintour looked up at Will with an expression of devastation. “They told me … I could never …”

  There was a faint poof and Kintour burst into silvery-grey dust. In shock, Will grasped for the glittering power, but it drained through his fingers, was caught on the night wind, and blew out across the city. Within a second, where a man had stood, there was nothing.

  For a second, Will was rooted, aghast. His incomprehension at Kintour’s sudden fate was eventually supplanted by the certain knowledge that the Enemy—the unholy, Unseelie Court—were capable of any atrocity. He was shocked back into the moment by the dog thrusting its head out of the chimney. Eyes glaring, it thrashed savagely as it attempted to extricate itself.

  Will threw himself rapidly along the pitch of the roof as he heard the dog crash onto the tiles, slipping and scrabbling until it found purchase and balance. Caution was no longer an option—the dog’s speed and strength would punish even the slightest hesitation—but at the speed he was travelling, one misstep meant certain death.

  At a wynd, Will threw himself across the gap without slowing his pace. Tiles flew out into the void under his heels. He half slipped, caught himself on the brink of careering down the roof and over the edge to the cobbles far below, and almost fell the other way as his weight shifted. The dog thundered along the roof behind him.

  When he landed on the roof of the haphazard construction he had passed through earlier that night, it swayed beneath his feet. A notion struck him. Casting an eye towards the dog bounding along the roofs and the Hunter loping with supernatural ease in its wake, he hammered a foot through the tiles and yelled at the two occupants he spied inside to vacate their rooms.

  At the edge of the next roof, he braced his back against a chimney and pressed his feet into the shuddering roof he had vacated. After a second, it began to move.

  The dog slammed onto the roof, only feet away from him. It was too late to escape now. Grunting, he drove all his strength into his feet. The roof shifted away from him, gathering speed as it moved, and with a lurch and a loud rending, it tore free from its slipshod moorings and slid off the top of the building. Frantically paddling to keep its balance, the dog continued to snap savagely, even as it fell away with the roof, over the edge and down. The cries that rose up from the ragged remnants of the tenements’ lower floors were drowned out by the explosive boom of the entire floor smashing into the street.

  Feet kicking, Will dragged himself up onto the next roof. As he caught his breath, he looked back to see the Hunter standing on the far side of the newly formed gulf, watching him with a cold, malicious eye, the gaping wound on his cheek visible in the moonlight. Will had no doubt that the dog had survived the fall, but it felt like a small victory and a marker for what he would do the next time he encountered the Hunter.

  With a sardonic salute to his adversary, he continued along the roofs, filled with conflicting emotions, but sensing he had come a step closer to stopping the Enemy’s plans.

  HAPTER 22

  ill made it back to Reidheid’s house on Cowgate within twenty minutes, taking care to scan every street and wynd he passed for the Enemy who would soon be flooding in pursuit.

  “You have protection here?” Will asked as he bounded over the threshold when Reidheid opened the door.

  Reidheid indicated the trail of salt and herbs across the doorway. “Every entrance to this house is defended. The Enemy will never enter. It is a safe haven.”

  “That is reassuring. I fear at this moment that the Enemy may well be consumed with a desire to see the inside of your house.”

  “Your mission was a success?” Reidheid guided Will into the drawing room, where Nathaniel and Meg sat in deep, quiet conversation. They left quickly at Reidheid’s gesture.

  “The Silver Skull is here in Edinburgh, as we presumed. Unfortunately, the time was not right to bring it back with me, but it is clear the Enemy is not ready to use the destructive force it carries with it. They need the Shield to complete their plan, and they have not yet located it.”

  “And do you know what this plan is?” Reidheid asked.

  “Not yet. But now I have my own plan.”

  Reidheid smiled broadly. “Of course. I would expect no less from the great Will Swyfte! Could you enlighten me?”

  “I am going to find the Shield myself.”

  Reidheid’s eyes narrowed as he tried to ascertain if Will was serious. “But the Enemy have been searching for the Shield without any result.”

  Will shrugged. “But I am not the Enemy. And there are places I can go where they cannot. Do you know a man by the name of Kintour, a keeper of the records at the palace?”

  Reidheid nodded. “He has been missing for a long time … since the days of Mary. Many felt he was loyal to the queen and fled when she fell from grace. That, or dead.”

  “He is dead now, another thing for which the Enemy must pay.” From his pocket, Will withdrew the parchment Kintour had given him. He studied the scrawled writing. “He had found a guide to the whereabouts of the Shield,
but had not yet broken the cipher.”

  “Oh? May I see?”

  “Perhaps later. You have a library? With books pertaining to Edinburgh and the palace?”

  “Of course,” Reidheid said. “I have many books. Come.”

  Reidheid led Will through the house to a large library at the rear. The smell of great age lay across the shelves of leather-bound books. Reidheid indicated the volumes on local history and left Will to study them at a table by the light of a candle.

  After several hours, when the bright morning light flooded the room, Will had become so engrossed in his work he didn’t notice Nathaniel enter until a goblet of wine was placed before him.

  “Thank you, Nat. You are thoughtful, as ever,” Will said without looking up. “I see you have found a friend in the beautiful Meg.”

  “It is pleasant to speak with someone who is untarnished by this business of ours,” Nathaniel replied. “She is entertaining and witty. A novelty,” he added pointedly.

  Will allowed himself a small, unseen smile. “Then enjoy yourself, Nat. God knows there are few entertaining distractions in this work.”

  His curiosity getting the better of him, Nathaniel leaned over Will’s shoulder to examine the book he was reading. “It is also a novelty to see you with an open tome rather than a woman in your lap and a goblet in your hand. Which is why I brought you that drink, to right a world that has gone mad. What do you read?”

  “The object of our search and the key to our success in defeating our Enemy is hidden at the Palace of Holyroodhouse. A ciphered text left by the Templar Knights points to its location.”

  “The Templar Knights? Their job was to protect good Christians in a dangerous world. What do they have to do with this?”

  “There was more to the Knights than the world knows,” Will mused while turning the pages. “As there is more to everything than the world knows.”

  Nathaniel picked up the parchment. “This is the cipher? The protection lies where the heart of truth beats, beneath the Holy Rood where the martyr stands in black and white.” He considered the words for a moment and then suggested, “Under a statue of a martyr in the palace?”