The Devil

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

Silence lay like a shroud across the antechamber. In that emptiness, Will could hear his world crumble and fall away. At the door, Deortha listened for any intruders. ‘Dreams are elusive,’ the sorcerer said without emotion. ‘And sometimes the most fervent wishes float out for long years and return like an arrow through the heart.’

‘No,’ Will snapped. ‘I will not accept that.’

‘And what will you do? Stab it with your dagger? Plunge your sword through its heart?’ Deortha turned back to him, his pale eyes glowing in the gloom. ‘Here is an enemy that is immune to all your vaunted martial skills.’

Reaching out one imploring hand, Will stepped towards Jenny. She near-leapt away from him. ‘Stay back,’ she said. ‘No stranger can approach the King’s consort.’

Will felt his blood run cold.

‘And there lies the heart of this great tragedy,’ Deortha said with a sour undertone. ‘We are thrust together in a bitter struggle of monumental proportions. Many lives hang in the balance, and power, and the very shape of what has been and what will be. And all that we fight to achieve has been placed at risk. By this.’ He waved a contemptuous hand towards Will and Jenny. ‘By the insignificant desires of three lovesick fools.’

‘Enough,’ Will said. ‘Tell me some truths.’

‘Truths?’ Deortha glowered. ‘Do you remember aught of how you came to us?’ he asked Jenny.

‘I have always been here,’ she replied, her chin raised defiantly.

‘You are not one of us. You are a mortal.’

‘And you have always despised me for it,’ Jenny snapped.

Will was surprised to see anger in the sorcerer’s face. ‘If you have only contempt for humans, why did you steal Jenny away?’ he asked.

‘We are strong and you are weak,’ Deortha replied, pursing his lips, ‘but sometimes. . some of my kind. . are infected with a flaw of the spirit. A black corruption that eats away at their hearts. We keep our secrets well. We lie to ourselves and pretend. But our history is littered with the failures of those who have turned their affections towards your kind.’

Will watched Jenny’s face, a chill rising as he began to understand.

‘Our King. .’ Deortha formed the word as if he had a pebble in his mouth, ‘came across this woman while at play in your land. It is in his nature to give himself to foolhardy pursuits. Day after day, he watched her, until he believed his heart held affection.’ He waved a hand as if dispelling a stench. ‘Love.’

‘So he took her,’ Will said with quick anger. ‘He forced her to submit to his will.’

‘We have nothing but time.’ A cruel smile flickered on the sorcerer’s lips. ‘We can wait for the waves to turn the rocks to sand if we wish. Time does our work for us. Mandraxas only had to wait. Here in this place, the years eroded her resolve, which at the beginning was great indeed. Removed from the comforts of her own life, it became like a half-remembered dream. She saw only our home, and the wonders it contained, and slowly she fell into its embrace.’

As she listened to the sorcerer’s words, Jenny hung her head, a faraway look in her eyes as if something deep was stirring inside her.

‘How can it be,’ Will asked, ‘that only fifteen years passed in our world and a thousand here?’

‘The rules of existence are not as simple as your “wise men” would have you believe.’

Will felt hollow. He had always believed the solution to his suffering was simple — to bring Jenny home. But this. . this seemed insurmountable.

‘And still you think us devils, even though we show love for your kind,’ Deortha said. ‘Let me reveal one more secret. Then perhaps you will see who are the true devils. Your own kind knew where this woman had been taken, and why. Indeed, they encouraged it.’ The contempt was barely restrained.

‘Why would they?’ Will snapped, all his long-held suspicions turning to hot anger. This must have been what Grace overheard Cecil and Essex discussing as the court left Nonsuch.

‘A good question. Yes, why?’ The sorcerer smiled, but his eyes remained icy.

‘Tell me!’ Will fought the compulsion to beat the answer out of the Fay.

‘In good time.’ Deortha raised an index finger. ‘Firstly, nothing is ever lost. You must know that this is true. What was still stirs within her, if you can but find it.’

Will saw Jenny studying him. When he smiled, she did not look away. Perhaps there was hope yet, he thought. ‘And you tell me this out of the goodness of your heart?’ he said to the sorcerer sardonically. ‘What is it you require in exchange?’

‘I wish you to take this woman away from here.’

‘What gain is there for you in that?’

‘He would not have me whispering in the King’s ear,’ Jenny said acidly.

‘She has stolen what little steel Mandraxas had.’ Deortha ignored Jenny’s glare. ‘We cannot win this war while she sits beside the Golden Throne. And we will never have our Queen returned to us.’

‘How so?’

‘The King does not want the Queen returned from her imprisonment at your hands.’ Deortha circled Jenny like a carrion crow eyeing a wounded rabbit. She stared at the torch through heavy lids, pretending to ignore him. ‘He would lose both the Golden Throne and this woman he loves so much. The Queen would never allow such an abomination to continue. If she knew a mortal sat as King’s consort beside the Golden Throne, her fury would be terrible indeed.’

Will paced beside the black basalt walls, weighing the Fay’s words. His thoughts raced, confused by the revelations, and he fought to make sense of everything he had heard. After a moment, he smiled to himself. ‘Mandraxas does not want to free the Queen for he would lose what he cares for most,’ he mused. ‘And so the plots of Elizabeth’s court are reflected here. You are more like us than you realize.’

‘The King plays his games.’ Deortha nodded. ‘He shows the face of a determined ruler who will do all within his power to free our Queen. And yet he undermines every attempt, and obfuscates, and delays. Some would even say,’ the sorcerer said with studied disinterest, ‘that he plots to have the Queen, his sister, killed while she is in your hands.’

‘And to blame us for the murder. And thereby unleash an even greater fury among your people, a greater desire to commit atrocities against us.’

Deortha shrugged. ‘Perhaps. I would not pretend to know the King’s mind.’

‘You speak of love between Fay and man.’ Walsingham, the long-dead spymaster, and Cecil, the present one, and the grey faces of the Privy Council, paraded across Will’s thoughts, and his anger burned hotter still. He felt that at last he was beginning to understand. ‘Your King reached some agreement with my masters,’ he said finally.

The sorcerer steepled his fingers in front of him. ‘Mandraxas was allowed to wander your land with impunity to find a woman who met his desires. And then he was permitted to spirit her away, with no questions asked and no effort made to recover her.’

Will clenched his fist in anguish.

‘And she was not alone,’ Deortha continued. ‘We have been granted the right to take whom we wished from your people. Not many, not near as many as we stole before you built your defences. A child here, a wife or husband there. For the sake of love, in the main.’

The spy seethed. All those years of lies and deceit, all the pain he had suffered with the connivance of those he served. ‘And in return?’

‘The King agreed to contain those of the High Family who demanded slaughter on a grand scale to regain our Queen. His work has become more difficult in recent times. His brothers and sister have grown impatient with his failures and so his attempts to undermine their best endeavours have grown more determined.’

Will bowed his head. He felt devastated. Hearing the truth in the sorcerer’s words, he now understood so much. Deortha had been right. The epoch-shaking clash of high power between England and the Unseelie Court that had been rolling across the world with increasing brutality was little more than an illusion. In truth, the high drama of vast sweeping schemes and strategies came down to nothing more than raw emotions: passion, and yearning, and two suitors aspiring to the hand of one woman. He laughed bitterly at the irony of it.

‘Though you keep your teeth hidden, I suspect you have venom enough,’ he said, eyeing the sorcerer. ‘I would have thought if such an obstacle existed to the great plans of the Unseelie Court, it could be solved with a dagger in the night.’

‘And risk the terrible wrath of the King? Only a fool would follow such a course.’

While the Fay and Jenny glared at each other, Will slipped his fingers into his boot and withdrew his dagger. He hid it behind his back as he circled towards Deortha. Yet he felt the sorcerer’s words lying heavily on him. ‘If I take Jenny away from here, the King will be forced to act to reclaim her. You will find whatever it takes to win this war and bring about the destruction of humankind.’

‘If you leave her, you destroy yourself. Can you bring yourself to do that?’

‘You cannot take me away,’ Jenny said, her tone dismissive. ‘My King would never allow it.’ She clasped her hands behind her back, showing her face to each male in turn.

Will studied her features, seeing the fire he had admired so long ago. ‘You love this King?’ he asked.

‘I am his consort,’ Jenny replied, as if that explained everything.

Will stepped in front of Deortha, the unseen dagger cold in his hand. ‘And there is the difference between our people. Your King steals Jenny from her life because he sees something he must have, with no more thought for her than a beast in the field. And you expect me to take her back in the same way — because I want her more than the world itself. But she is no rag doll to be torn between warring children. She commands her own life and she must decide her own path.’

‘And you would allow her to choose life here in this fortress of madness and dark? Even after you have sacrificed the years of your youth to find her?’ Deortha asked, uncomprehending.

‘All I want for her is joy and peace. I would not see her heart broken to salve my own ache.’

He watched Jenny’s face soften at his words. Her gaze flickered across his features, a question in her eyes.

Will stifled his swirling feelings for her, ready to plunge the dagger into the sorcerer’s chest. If nothing else came of this dismal affair, the death of the Unseelie Court’s scheming adviser would strike at the heart of their aspirations.

Before he could decide, the door crashed open. Jenny cried out in shock, her hand flying to her mouth. In a flurry of snow white, Mandraxas swept into the antechamber, eyes afire, with three Fay guards at his side. The sorcerer’s eyes widened with fear, and in an instant he had pressed something hard into Will’s hand. The King hurried to Jenny to see she was well. As the spy slipped the object under his shirt and into the waist of his breeches, Deortha whispered an instruction. He had barely finished when Mandraxas turned his coruscating gaze upon them.

At the King’s order, the guards forced Will and Deortha against the stone wall with the cruel blades of their halberds. Will felt the tip of the spear dig into his neck; one thrust and his head would be gone. He cursed.

Mandraxas fixed his attention on Deortha and intoned, ‘Take the traitor to the Scalding Rooms.’

Horror flitted across the sorcerer’s face, but he fought to retain his composure. He glared coldly at the King, but reserved a more lingering glance for Will, urging, perhaps, that they had business in common. He strode out with a halberd pressed against his back. The King stepped to Jenny’s side, and placed one slender finger under her chin to raise her head. He gazed into her eyes for a long moment and then brushed his lips against hers.

Will felt a flare of fiery anger, and jealousy too, he could not deny that. He struggled to reach the Fay King, only for the remaining guards to press their halberds harder still. He felt sticky blood trickle down his neck. And yet, as Jenny’s lips met her master’s, he swore he saw her eyes look towards his own.

Leaving her at last, Mandraxas strode towards him with a triumphant grin. ‘I saw you once, long ago in your terms,’ he said with contempt. ‘A callow youth. Not fit to dally with this proud woman, my consort.’

Though the King held the upper hand, the two faced each other as equals in love, their faces cold. ‘I have sailed across an ocean of years and half a world to find Jenny,’ Will said. ‘I have sacrificed my youth, my innocence, my dreams, my morals, to get her back. I have turned my skin to flint and my heart to steel. There is nothing I would not do to free her from your cruelty.’ He could feel Jenny’s eyes upon him, but he kept his gaze upon the King.

Mandraxas’s face loomed a finger’s width from Will. His eyes gleamed golden, his pale skin almost translucent, his breath ice-cold. ‘I always knew you would come for her,’ he whispered. ‘I welcomed it. I needed you here, in my hands. You were always the one who might waken her from this long, peaceful sleep, even after a thousand years, but now I have you she will be mine for ever. And you will suffer a thousand hells for your failure.’