‘Sure. Just that they don’t tend to live very long under your care.’ Nerron went to the first corridor and listened. Nothing. But the voices of the dead echoed out of the other two. Reckless and the vixen had obviously split up. Couldn’t afford to waste any time when you had death lurking in your chest.
The Waterman disappeared without a word into the first corridor. Nerron decided on the one to the left.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
AT THE GOAL
Jacob had been in many enchanted palaces. Every door could mean danger, and every corridor could end in a trap. Stairs disappeared. Walls opened up. But not here. Open doors, halls, courtyards. Guismond’s palace breathed him in like an animal whose stone innards were fermenting the past like an indigestible poison.
Horses scraping in empty stables. Weapons clanging on empty courtyards, the stars above still hidden behind dark clouds. Children’s voices from deserted nurseries. Invisible dogs growling. And all the time screams, echoing through the dark halls and corridors. Screams of fear. Screams of pain . . . Jacob felt Guismond’s madness like grime on his skin.
He found rooms filled to the ceiling with treasure, armouries with such precious swords that every one of them would have fetched enough to renovate Valiant’s castle. But Jacob barely looked at them. Where was the crossbow?
He wondered whether he should have taken one of the other corridors. He kept glancing at the candle in his hand, but its flame kept burning steadily. Fox was having no more luck than he.
HURRY, MY FRIEND.
YOU SHOULD HAVE SHOT THE GOYL.
He spun around a dozen times, thinking he’d heard steps, but all that followed him were the ghosts he’d aroused. Maybe that was Guismond’s magic: to make them roam his palace until they lost themselves in his past, becoming one of the ghosts whose voices were haunting them.
Another door.
Open, like the others.
The hall behind it seemed to have been an audience chamber once. The tiles on the floor were worn from countless boots, and the weathered stucco was streaked with the soot of long-snuffed torches. Jacob could feel anger, like acrid smoke, despair, hatred. The voices were whispering, dampened by fear.
Carry on, Jacob.
The door at the end of the hall bore Guismond’s crest.
He stepped through it – and took a deep breath.
He’d reached his goal.
Guismond’s throne chamber also brought the past to life, but not through voices. Jacob heard only his own steps echo through the silence. Here, just as in the tomb, Guismond’s lost world was evoked in paintings on the walls and ceiling. Their colour was hauled out of the darkness by swarms of will-o’-the-wisps. Battlefields, castles, Giants, Dragons, an army of Dwarfs, a sinking fleet, the city that was now crumbling outside, filled with people. The frescoes were painted so masterfully that Jacob forgot for a few breaths what he’d come here for. On the wall to his left was one particular picture that made him pause. A band of knights was galloping, swords drawn, through a silver archway. Their livery was white, like that of Guismond’s knights, and it was emblazoned with a red sword, but also with a red cross above the sword. Where had he seen this before? The Livonian Brothers of the Sword, Jacob. A knights’ order from his world, disbanded more than eight hundred years earlier, after they had usurped large parts of northern Europe. Jacob looked at the archway. It was covered with silver flowers.
Jacob had always wondered whether there was only the one mirror.
The answer was obviously no.
He looked around. The throne stood in the centre of the room. Narrow steps led up to the stone chair. The armrests and the back were upholstered in gold. An effigy of Guismond was staring at Jacob from empty eyes. But Jacob was looking for a mirror. And there it was, at the rear end of the room. It was huge, nearly double the size of the one in his father’s room. The glass was just as dark, but the flowers on the frame were not roses; they were lilies, just like on the archway in the picture. A skeleton stood next to the mirror, holding a golden clock in its bony hands. No clocks had existed in this world in Guismond’s time. But they had on the other side.
Jacob! Only the pain in his chest finally reminded him why he’d come here. He turned his back to the mirror and went to the throne.
The statue sitting on the throne wore the Warlock’s cat-fur coat, but it also showed Guismond as a warrior King. The helmet, which encircled his face, was shaped like the mouth of a wolf. Beneath the coat Jacob saw knee-length chain mail, as well as the white tunic with the red sword. Jacob had so often looked at the silver ringlet that surrounded the sword and never thought anything of it. Guismond sat with his legs apart, like a man who’d conquered a world. After he’d arrived here from another.
At the bottom of the steps stood a stool, and on it, on a golden cushion, lay a crossbow.
Jacob blew out the candle.
The tiles beneath his feet formed a round mosaic with Guismond’s crest. The stool with the crossbow stood right on top of the crowned wolf’s head.
Jacob was just a few steps from the stool when the moth took its final bite.
He dropped to his knees. He saw, heard, felt nothing, only pain. It seared the final letter from his memory like acid. The Dark Fairy had her name back. Then the moth rose from his skin. It peeled its furry body from his flesh as from a bloody cocoon and began to flap its wings. Jacob heard his scream echo through the throne room, and he flailed in agony on Guismond’s crest as the moth fluttered off, back to its mistress, taking her name – and his life – with it. All she left behind was the imprint on his raw flesh, and Jacob lay there and waited for his heart to stop. It stumbled and raced, clinging to the last bit of life left in his body.
Get up, Jacob! But he didn’t know how. He just wanted the pain to end, this hunt to be over, and Fox to be with him.
Get up, Jacob. For her.
He felt the cold of the tiles through his clothes and on his pain-numbed skin.
Get up.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
EXTINGUISHED
The voices were terrible. They quarrelled. Screamed. Cried. They were waiting behind every door, and as Fox drifted from room to room, from hall to hall, she found gold and silver, haphazardly piled loot from plundered cities, chests filled with precious clothes, golden plates on empty tables (which briefly brought back the memories of the Bluebeard’s dining room), beds under blood-red canopies, jewel-encrusted furniture. The light of her candle peeled them out of the darkness like unreal images – and the opulence just whispered of Guismond’s madness. The entire palace was a ghost. All the voices, the sinister hunger permeating it . . . the dead life that didn’t want to die.
The trembling flame lit a writing room. Books. Maps. A globe. The hide of a black lion spread out on the floor. The patterns on the carpet that hung on the wall announced that it could fly.
The candle died.
Fox felt her heart beat faster.
He’d found it.
Jacob had found the crossbow.
She shifted shape. The vixen would get to him much faster.
Jacob would live.
All was well.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
THE TRAP
On your feet, Jacob. The pain began to subside, but his heart was sputtering as though every beat could be the last.
Never mind, Jacob. Just a few steps.
Take the crossbow. Fox will be here soon.
He actually managed to get up.
What if she didn’t find him in time? Do you want to shoot that bolt into your own chest, Jacob? The thought was almost funny.
From this close, the figure on the throne looked so lifelike, as though Guismond had created it from flesh and blood. The dead eyes stared right through Jacob as he stepped towards the stool. Heavens. His feet were stumbling as badly as his heart.
‘You’re really not making death easy on yourself.’ The Bastard stepped out of the shadows, as quietly as he had in the tomb.
&
nbsp; 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 towards 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 damned 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 learnt 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. ‘Who 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 realise, even as he walked towards 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 particularly despised enemies, but the Witch Slayer wasn’t out for revenge. You should have 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 laboured 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.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
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 towards 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 1 Jacob’s face was so haggard that Fox barely recognised 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 that he was taking Jacob’s lifetime with snarling clockwork. Fox heard the hands move forward as she ran towards the clock.
A golden dial, held by bony fingers. Fox tried to push the hands back, 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 realise 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 eyes 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 t
o steal.
Guismond looked around. He steadied himself on his throne and felt for the sword that leant 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 sabre. 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 grey, 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.