One by one the mirrors misted as the Fay of the High Family departed until only Deortha remained. Will felt chilled. Only horrors beyond imagining lay ahead. Realizing what he had done, Strangewayes dropped his rapier with a clatter. He held Grace’s gaze for a moment, perhaps hoping for forgiveness, and when he saw none he turned and ran into the shadows.
‘Tobias, come with us,’ Grace called after him, but Will caught her arm.
‘You cannot save him, and you will only condemn yourself,’ he said, wincing at the hurt he saw in her face. But she stifled her grief and nodded, allowing herself one last glance into the gloom as she went to her quietly sobbing sister where she knelt beside Mandraxas’s body.
From his mirror, Deortha levelled his gaze at Will. The spy saw no triumph there, no contempt, not even superiority, only the icy satisfaction of a long-gestating plan finally come to fruition. Breaking the stare, Will looked from Meg to Launceston and Carpenter and nodded. The silent communication was more than enough and his three colleagues went in search of the door out of the chamber.
Will hurried to the two sisters. ‘Jenny, I am sorry. Truly I am,’ he said, his voice gentle. She looked at him. Her face was unreadable – pale, tear-stained. ‘And for you, Grace. But we must all grieve later.’ He swept his left arm out to direct them to the end of the chamber. Grace ran ahead, but Jenny turned back and pressed her lips close to Will’s ear. ‘I remember . . .’ she breathed, and paused. ‘I remember a kiss. Under the great oak on an autumn evening when the leaves were turning gold. Our first kiss.’ And in her eyes he saw the Jenny he knew. She hurried after her sister before he could respond.
Carpenter and Launceston waited either side of a low, arched door. In a tunnel beyond, Meg had found and lit a torch and was beckoning to Grace and Jenny to join her. Will saw unease in the Irish woman’s stare. So close to victory they had been, and now they could all feel the winter chill of impending doom enveloping them, he thought bitterly.
He turned to Carpenter, but before he could speak the other man snapped, ‘No pity. For now, I have my own wits about me.’
‘Good. Then it is like old times, John.’ Will touched his torn cheek before clapping a friendly hand on Carpenter’s shoulder. He flashed a searching glance at Launceston, who gave a curt nod of reassurance. Ahead, the golden glow of Meg’s torch washed across the glistening stone walls, and the three men plunged into the gloom in pursuit.
As they scrambled along the low-ceilinged tunnel, they could hear the dull tolling of the alarm bell reverberating ever more clearly, each throb seeming to match the beat of their hearts. Torchlight flickered across faces struggling to contain hopelessness and dread.
‘Why run when those bastards know which path we take?’ Carpenter growled. ‘They will never let us leave. We are already dead.’
‘It is the only way out of here,’ Will replied. ‘And we died a long time ago – the moment we set foot in this cursed place. Every breath we take now is a boon.’ Visions of Unseelie Court galleons sweeping out from the New World flooded his mind, each one filled with more horror than any man could bear.
‘And if we escape,’ Carpenter continued bitterly as if he could read Will’s mind, ‘what do we escape to? An England made Hell? Better we die here.’
Will stopped suddenly, catching the other man’s arm as he turned. ‘Is this the John Carpenter who fought his way out of Muscovy alone, after I had abandoned him to a fate worse than death? In all our time in service to the Queen, we have never given up, though we faced overwhelming odds. Even if all the Unseelie Court and their night-terrors snap at our heels, we fight on, until the last drop of blood flows from our bodies and our rapiers fall from our dying hands.’
At first Carpenter would not meet Will’s eyes. But then he nodded in apology. ‘Aye, Will, let us die as we have lived. For the Queen, for England. Let those pale bastards come and we shall see how many I send to Hell afore me.’
Will nodded in approval. As he turned to continue along the cramped tunnel, Meg called back, ‘I see light ahead.’
Moments later, they stepped out on to a wide stone balcony protruding from a sheer cliff face towering above their heads. Will saw it was a lush garden of some kind, with creepers, shrubs and blooms in sickeningly unnatural blues, blacks and purples clustering around the low enclosing wall. He forced his way through the vegetation to the edge and peered over. A series of further gardens cascaded down the cliff into the mist far below. In the distance, he could just discern a black basalt tower thrusting up from the dense forest with a glowing orb on top of it. It could only be the Tower of the Moon, the beacon that kept open the way between worlds.
As he turned back, he saw the others looking up to the sky. It could have been on fire. Flames rolled out across the arc of the heavens, the horizon burning a deep shade of crimson. Silhouetted against it, Manoa, the Unseelie Court’s City of Gold, seemed to transform. Will blinked, attempting to comprehend what he was seeing. For a moment, the fortress appeared to be surrounded by massive, circling, grinding rings of iron. Was this the true form of that foul place, he wondered, as the Fay hid their own ghastly appearance behind illusions of beauty?
All life is illusion, Dee had said. If that was so, what could they truly believe?
As the tolling of the bell boomed out into the burning sky, shapes flooded out of the fortress and began to descend the cliff. Realization dawned on Will, and he yelled, ‘The Hunters are coming. We must flee. Now.’
Yet even as they raced to the edge of the balcony and searched for a way down, another noise tore through the hot, still air. Will frowned, trying to place the origin of that teeth-jarring whistle. And then he had it: it was the sound made by the black stone Mandraxas had whirled around his head in order to summon those flesh-eating predators, the Spree-birds.
Barely had the thought come to him before a black cloud swept out of the fortress. It circled for one moment and then swooped down. The air was torn by the thunder of a multitude of wings, and a shrieking as if Hell had given up its lost souls.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
THE SEETHING, ROILING mass blotted out the fiery sky above Manoa. Like a tropical storm the Spree-birds swirled, their shrill shrieks tearing across the treetops. Will glanced from the avian predators to the Hunters swarming down the cliff face, like angry ants spilling out of a disturbed nest. He breathed in the acrid stink of burning and heard Grace’s whispered prayer caught on the wind. Taut faces turned towards him; only Launceston seemed unruffled.
But then, when all hope seemed to have departed, he felt a surprising calm descend upon him. He ran back to the dense vegetation edging the spacious stone balcony, ignoring all the sounds of Hell, the cries of the blood-crazed birds and the grim tolling of the bell and the grinding of revolving iron, and studied the strange blooms and dry, thorny bushes.
‘Our steel will be of no use against those birds.’ Meg’s voice was ragged. The others stood beside her. ‘And we cannot outrun them. They will have the flesh from our bones in no time.’
‘We could hide in the tunnel,’ Grace ventured.
‘Of what use is that?’ Carpenter turned his back to them, watching the skies as the black cloud wheeled above them. ‘They will come for us soon enough. No, better to make our stand here, and die like men.’