The Silver Skull

CHAPTER 21

rom the pitch of the roof, Will looked out across Edinburgh's jumbled mass sprawling around the winding, ancient ways, the grand stone houses glimmering with candlelight, the soaring backdrop of the great hills beyond. The wind tearing at his hair brought with it the salty aroma of the port at Leith two miles distant.

He stood atop one of the highest lands in the city, after picking his way past crowded apartments to bribe his way through the window of the topmost lodger. Balancing on the ledge with the dizzying drop to the cobbles far below, he briefly wondered if he was as mad as the lodger accused him of being, before hauling himself up and over the edge onto the slick tiles.

"I wish you could see this, Nathaniel," he said. "The world looks less harsh from on high."

Steadying himself on the balls of his feet, Will loped along the pitch of the roof. Progress was hazardous. The gusting air currents channelling through the wynds threatened to pluck him down the steep slope to the vertiginous drop at the end. Occasionally the wind direction changed and he was blinded by choking smoke from the rows of chimneys.

Whenever he came to one of the wynds that broke up the run of housing, he leapt the narrow gap, constantly aware of the black gulf beneath his feet. His landings were always a scramble for purchase, one wrong foot or twisted ankle a death warrant, but he kept up a relentless progress towards his destination.

As he neared the Fairy House, he leapt onto the roof of one of the lands and felt it shift beneath his feet. The highest story had been attached only recently, with nailed boards and beams but no proper joints as far as Will could tell. It felt as insubstantial as a pile of randomly heaped firewood, swaying whenever he shifted his weight, held up by luck and hope more than anything. Dropping to all fours, he edged along the top until he could move to the adjoining roof.

Finally he landed with barely a whisper of a footfall on the roof of the Fairy House, a five-story residence that had long since seen better days. Missing and broken tiles peppered the roof, and tufts of grass and elder sprouted from where birds had dropped seeds.

Flattening himself out, he moved down the pitch of the roof to the edge where he could peer over to the cobbles far below. A black carriage drawn by a sable stallion waited outside the front door of the house. There was no sign of any driver. All of the house windows were dark, and no sound issued from within.

Crawling back up the pitch to the roof's ridge, Will inspected the chimney stack, which was cold. As he'd guessed, the hole was wide enough to admit him, though a tight squeeze. The biggest danger was that he would climb down into the maze of flues and become trapped, especially in a chimney that had not been kept in good repair.

Steadying himself on top of the stack, he lowered himself into the hole, feeling for footholds in the crumbling brick. Amid the suffocating stink of soot, his clothes and skin were soon black. Unable to see anything in the dark, his senses focused on the tips of his fingers searching for cracks in the brick and the ache in his leg muscles as he braced himself against the sides of the chimney to stop him falling.

As he made his way down, intermittent noises floated up from the lower floors: garbled voices speaking no tongue he recognised, their emotions seesawing in an extreme and disturbing manner, from barks of anger to frightened mewling to shrieks of insane laughter and mocking whispers; a sound like a blacksmith's hammers on an anvil, which came and went, echoing dimly then resounding near at hand; a dog growling that sounded disturbingly close, on the other side of the brick; and then music, pipes and a fiddle, eerie and haunting, fading in and out.

Feeling with his feet, Will came to a junction in the flue and decided to take the right-hand path. After a few feet, it turned so sharply he had to force himself around the bend a fraction of an inch at a time, leading with his sword which he had to flex and maneuver through the gap. His muscles were compressed so hard they ached, and his chest constricted so tightly that he could barely catch a breath.

Halfway around the turn, he became afraid he was jammed, unable to go forwards or backwards. He rested for a moment, fighting to breathe, and then relaxed his muscles just enough to edge on.

Finally, he rounded the turn, but he'd barely lowered himself another six feet when he realised the flue was blocked. Some of the stones had collapsed in on another turn-he could feel them grinding beneath his feet-but however hard he pressed, the obstruction would not shift.

There was no way to go but back. Steeling himself, he dug his fingers in the cracks between the stones and hauled himself up. Sweating, choking, every muscle burning, he came back to the turn. It was even harder going up, and it took him the better part of half an hour to maneuver himself around it in tiny increments, dragging with his fingertips and pushing with the tips of his boots. Again he got stuck halfway around, and this time it took so long to relax his muscles, he became concerned he would suffocate before he could move.

Once he'd pulled himself up to the junction and rested his head for a moment, breathing deeply, he realised there was a current of air rising through the other flue. It gave him heart, and once again he began his slow descent.

He'd passed the worst of it, and now there were regular junctions that led down to the large stone fireplaces in every room. But though the distant sounds continued to rise through the flues, there never appeared to be any noise coming from any room he passed.

When Will estimated he'd reached the second floor, he slid down towards a fireplace, bracing himself just above the hearth to listen. When he was sure the chamber was empty, he dropped into the hearth in a cloud of soot. The room was bare apart from a cracked mirror above the mantelpiece which revealed a white-eyed black figure. Moving swiftly across the dirty floorboards to stand by the door, he waited for any who might have heard his arrival.

The house was silent. What had happened to all the noises he had heard in the chimney? he wondered. Opening the door a crack, he peered out into the corridor where a candle flickered in a holder on a small table.

Not so empty, then, he thought.

He moved quickly along the corridor, checking the rooms on either side. All were bare. Outside the last room, the boards creaked loudly, and there was a corresponding growl from the first floor, followed by heavy paws padding onto the stairs. Lightly, Will bolted up to the next floor.

Flickering light on one wall brought him to a halt just near the turn. Peering round, he saw a figure-male, although the brown hair was longmoving away from him slowly, holding a candle aloft. Below, the sound of padding paws continued up to the second floor, accompanied by another deep, penetrating growl.

Caught between the two, Will weighed his choices. Just as he had decided to draw his sword, a door at the far end of the corridor opened and light flooded out. The figure paused and communicated in a low whisper with someone within before entering the room. The door closed behind him and the light winked out.

Instantly, Will darted to the nearest door, listening briefly before opening it slowly. The room was in darkness. He slipped inside.

Closing the door, he pressed his ear against it and waited. The padding reached the top of the flight of stairs and then moved towards him. It paused outside the door and growled again, disturbingly loud in the quiet. Will held his nerve. After a second, he heard the dog move on, and listened intently until silence returned.

Will wondered if it was the same dog that had accompanied the Hunter in Alsatia. That would mean the Hunter was probably there too, he thought coldly, and perhaps even the Silver Skull.

"Who are you?"

He started at the voice, soft and dreamy with the burr of a Scottish Lowlands accent. In the dark of the room, a man sat on a chair looking out of the window, his back to Will.

Drawing his sword in an instant, Will waited for the alarm to be raised, but the man did not move. After a second, Will cautiously approached. As the moonlight broke through the window, Will saw it was a man, not one of the Enemy. He was in his forties, grey streaks in his black hair, and grey eyes that had the faraway look of a sleepwalker.

"Who are you?" Will asked.

"John Kintour," he replied. "Advisor to my queen, Mary."

"Mary is dead."

"No ... no ... I saw her this morn. So beautiful. The sun made her hair glow like fire." His voice was as insubstantial as the moonbeam breaking through the window.

Will passed his hand in front of Kintour's face, but he did not blink. "How long have you been here?"

"A day? A week? A month? A year?" He paused thoughtfully, then said, "They gave me food and drink. The most wonderful food ... The taste ... I had never experienced anything like it."

Will realised what had happened. One of the first rules during his induction as one of Walsingham's men was that he should never eat or drink anything offered by the Enemy, for it would allow them to take complete control of you. Normally it was how they lured their prey for their sport, usually simple country folk drawn to hear the music on the hilltops or in the fields at night. Kintour was clearly not being kept a prisoner in the house for sport.

"You have had a busy time here," Will said gently.

"Yes. So many questions."

"And you answered them all?"

"As best I could. Some were beyond even me. The location of the Shield-"

"The Shield? What is that?" Thinking he heard a noise outside, Will glanced towards the door. After a moment he returned his attention to Kintour.

"The Shield protects against the foul diseases released by the Silver Skull, of course," Kintour said lazily. "It allows a man to move freely among the ranks of the infected and the dead, without any mark appearing upon him. That is what the Templar Knights said."

It was as Will had thought. Without the Shield, the Skull was a blunt instrument, laying waste to vast swathes of an enemy. With it, the attacker could loot the dead, or achieve more specific aims.

"What do the Templar Knights have to do with this?" he asked.

Kintour's head rolled from side to side and he smiled faintly. "I was keeper of the records at the palace. So much to read ... so many secrets. Among the sheaves of crumbling parchment, I found many relating to the Knights Templar. At first they made little sense. It was only when I realised they were written with an obscure cipher that the truth began to emerge. The Knights encountered the Silver Skull in the Holy Lands, and knew the terrible threat it was to all Christendom. They had to act to protect all good Christian men."

"What did they do?"

"Separated the Skull from the Key and the Shield so it could not be used. They brought the latter two back here, to Scotland, and hid them well. The Skull ... I do not know what happened to that."

"The Key and the Shield were hidden at the Palace of Holyroodhouse?" Will asked.

"Hidden well. The Knights had many strong connections with Edin burgh and the surrounding area, and they were involved in advising King David when he built Holyrood Abbey in 1126. There were rumours of secret chambers beneath the abbey, and extending under the palace west of the abbey cloister. It was one of the secret locations across Europe where the Knights stored items of vast importance."

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 passing, 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.