Mark Chadbourn - The Silver Skull

The passage was dry and dusty. Rats scurried ahead of them. They continued in the dark for a little way, wishing they had brought the candle with them, until a soft glow appeared ahead. Swords raised, they edged forwards slowly.

From the dark, a figure clattered a sword against Launceston's weapon. The fight was brief and the attacker driven back, until the half-light washed over them.

"Marlowe!" Carpenter exclaimed.

Relief flooded Marlowe's face and he lowered his sword. "Thank all the powers there are," he breathed. "I am more dangerous with a quill than a sword. I thought this was the end of me."

He led them along the passageway to a series of windowless rooms. In the first, Nathaniel waited with Walsingham and Dee, their faces drawn. Through the half-open door to the adjoining room, they could just make out the queen, seated on a chair, her head bowed, her face as white as Launceston's in the gloom. Without her red wig to cover her grey stubble she was a picture of age and impotence far removed from the regal figure they had all seen in public.

"She would not have you see her like this," Walsingham said quietly. He closed the door a little more, but there was only one light and he did not want to plunge her into darkness.

"Is it as bad as we fear?" Dee asked.

"Worse. The Enemy has the run of the palace," Carpenter replied.

Walsingham hung his head dismally. After a moment, he said, "The queen would already be lost if Master Marlowe and Master Colt had not raised the alarm. There is still hope-"

He was interrupted by a loud crash echoing from the queen's bedchamber, followed by more as the furniture was thrown roughly around.

"Trapped," Launceston said. "How long before they find the passage?"

CHAPTER 57

crambling out of the window, Will pulled himself up onto the roof. The lichen-crusted tiles threatened to crumble beneath his boots and pitch him to the courtyard far below. The door to the Lantern Tower hung open, and though Cavillex had ventured inside, Will knew it was the place Dee mysteriously treasured most and he would have installed a series of doors and defences.

The tower was one of the newest constructions within the palace complex, erected rapidly not long after the beginning of Elizabeth's reign by her decree and under Dee's strict design. Around the top of the tower, beneath the conical tiled roof topped by a weather vane, ran decorative battlements to give the tower gravitas. Will hoped the stone was secure enough to take his weight.

A golden dawn dispelled the gloom that would have made his task impossible. Weighing the grapnel he had recovered from the store of unwanted ships' items in which he had hidden, he steeled himself, and then whirled it around his head before loosing it. His first attempt didn't even reach the tower. The second time the grapnel bounced off the stone wall with a resounding clang that he feared might draw attention. The third attempt failed too, and the fourth. A quarter of the way up the tower, the globe's ruddy glare was visible through one of the windows.

On the fifth occasion, the grapnel caught on the battlements, slipped a little, and then held tight. Wrapping the oily rope around his wrists, he put all doubts out of his mind and launched himself off the roof.

The battlement held. Bracing against the impact, he steadied himself and began to climb rapidly. One floor below the top, he swung in an arc to crash through one of the arch-shaped windows. Jagged glass tore the skin on his hands and arms, and he tumbled into a bone-numbing landing on the stone steps. Scrambling to his feet, he drew his sword. Above him, the way was barred by a heavy oak door marked with a series of Dee's sigils. From beneath it, the familiar green light gently pulsed.

The stairs spiralled down to another floor, and from somewhere below that he could hear the sound of Cavillex talking in a language he didn't recognise. As he prepared to descend, an odd feeling convulsed him: his thoughts twisted like the eels they hauled from the muddy waters of the Thames, and his stomach knotted and heaved. Blood dripped from his nose.

Cavillex, he thought. But the notion did not seem correct.

Before he could consider what it meant, a door crashed open below. Bounding down the steps, he found himself in a room that covered the entire floor of the tower, and on a table in the centre was the Shield.

As he made to grab the artefact, a trapdoor into the room burst open. A queasy feeling of dread filled the space. As his senses skewed, shadows flew, accompanied by a distorted noise that reminded Will of crows in a winter sky. The dank, underground smell of loam. He knew what was coming, and however much Dee prepared him to deal with the disorienting qualities of the Unseelie Court, he was never ready.

Grey figures surged. Will caught only the briefest impression of hateful eyes and churchyard faces amid a pooling dark before he was enveloped in a furious battle.

His perceptions slid around the room's new occupants. All he could do was slash and lunge with his sword in wild abandon, feeling some blows parried, others tearing through bodies. One of the Enemy fell at his feet. Another thrust a blade that tore open the flesh on Will's neck. The Enemy were faster than most men, their stamina greater, and though Will's swordskill was more refined, the fight was unequal.

Briefly, Will glimpsed Cavillex, red-rimmed eyes flaring, his contempt too strong to contain, but it felt like the dark was closing in from every side. Somehow he managed to keep himself between the Shield and his opponents.

Three of the Unseelie Court moved around him like ghosts at twilight. But they were substantial. He laid one down with a thrust through the heart, but the other two surged forwards from opposite sides. Will parried the first, rolled quickly out of the way of the other.

As the second drove a sword towards his chest, Will dropped to his knees and flipped backwards. When he came up, he caught the toe of his boot under a stool, thrashing it viciously into his opponents' faces. The crunch of shattering bone echoed across the room and one of them went down. As the other attacker sprawled over the falling body, Will laid open his throat with the tip of his sword, following through with two heart-thrusts to end their lives.

Another attacker ran forwards. Will didn't even attempt to confront him. Stepping to one side at the last moment, he rammed his hand at the back of his enemy's head, propelling it into the window, and through it. As the broken glass ripped open his opponent's face, Will heaved both elbows onto the back of the neck, driving the shards at the base of the window through the throat.

The elemental fury that consumed Cavillex was so potent Will could barely look at him. "How honourably you kill." The voice, like stones dropped on a coffin, echoed from all parts of the room.

"There is no honour in any of this," Will replied. "Only survival."

As Cavillex stalked forwards, Will levelled his sword and said with a humourless grin, "We have business, you and I."

"Why, we have been in business for a long while," Cavillex said enigmatically. A bone white hand gestured towards the Shield. "You transported that item to the place where we needed it to be."

Will laughed, but Cavillex's oppressive aura sucked any humour from his voice. "You try to make a cake out of crumbs."

"I make the truth out of shadows ... shadows to you. What safer place for the Shield than here? If we had kept it in Edinburgh, you would not have let us rest. With it here, we could go about our work untroubled, knowing the item we valued most was ready for us when the time was right."