Mark Chadbourn - The Devil

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.’

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.