chapter FOURTEEN
JUST A CARD
He ran and ran. He had no feet any more, but he stumbled on, on bloody stumps, through a forest that was darker than the one in which he’d faced the Tailor. Always following the man who he knew was his father, even though that man never turned around. Sometimes he just wanted to catch up with him; sometimes he wanted to kill him. It was a dark forest.
‘Jacob! Wake up!’
He shot up. His shirt was so wet with sweat that he shivered in the cold night air. At first he had no idea where he was. He wasn’t even sure which world he was in, until he saw the two moons through the branches above and Fox kneeling next to him.
Flanders, Jacob. Soggy meadows, windmills. Broad rivers. The bedbugs had eaten them alive at the last inn, so they’d decided to sleep outside. They were on their way to the coast to catch a ferry to Albion.
‘Everything all right?’ Fox looked worried.
‘Yes. Just a bad dream.’ An owl screeched in the oak above them. Fox was still looking anxious. Of course, Jacob. Now that she knows the truth, every sneeze sounds like dying. He took her hand and placed it over his heart. ‘Feel it? Strong and regular. Maybe Fairy curses only work on those who were born in this world.’
Fox attempted a smile, but it wasn’t very convincing. They both knew what she was thinking: his brother had also not been born into this world, and yet he’d grown a skin of jade.
They’d left the mine four days earlier and had not rested since. Jacob was quite certain he knew what the inscriptions on the tomb floor meant, but the only proof would be holding the crossbow in his hands. They’d both seen the mutilated corpse and had immediately realised that head, hand and heart were missing to make something disappear. It was a common enough spell. But it was the alabaster words that had revealed to them that it wasn’t merely the crossbow that Guismond had made vanish. Fox and Jacob had turned and twisted the words every which way, until they were convinced it could mean only one thing.
The Witch Slayer had three children. His elder son, Feirefis (or Firefist, as he later called himself ), had claimed the crown of Albion while his father lay on his deathbed. Albion lay to the west. His younger brother, Gahrumet, the one who’d supposedly been saved by the crossbow, was made King of Lotharaine, the southern part of Guismond’s empire. Guismond’s only daughter, Orgeluse, had founded the dynasty of Austrian Emperors by marrying one of her father’s knights and bearing him two sons. Austry lay to the east.
THE HEAD IN THE WEST.
THE HAND IN THE SOUTH.
THE HEART IN THE EAST.
Feirefis had received his father’s head. Gahrumet the hand. Orgeluse his heart.
TOGETHER THEY SHALL POSESS WHAT EACH DESIRES.
It wasn’t hard to guess that this was the crossbow.
CONCEALED WHERE THEY ALL BEGAN.
Guismond’s children had all been born in the palace above the Dead City, which he’d built and which had been nothing but an empty plain since the day of his death. To conceal the crossbow, the Witch Slayer had made an entire palace disappear, and he’d left macabre clues as a riddle to his children. If the madness to which he’d succumbed in the final years of his life had convinced him this would sow peace among his offspring, then that wish was not to be granted. They’d hated each other as strongly as they’d hated their father. Some stories claimed that their mother was a Witch and that she was the reason for Guismond’s deep hatred of all Witches. Others claimed the Witch had been his second wife and that she had revealed to him the path by which he became a Warlock. Whichever was true, Guismond’s children had warred with one another without ever solving their father’s riddle, and it was quite likely that they’d never even read the inscriptions in his tomb. But the Bastard had, and Jacob had no illusions about whether the Goyl had also deciphered them. The only question left now was who’d be faster finding the three macabre keys.
Head, hand, heart. West, south, east.
Fox had suggested they make the longest journey first. That meant Albion. With any luck, they would be there in two days, provided the ferries were running. This early in the year, storms often kept them in port. Two, three months. Maybe less. It was going to be tight, even if the Bastard didn’t manage to find any of Guismond’s gruesome parting gifts before they did.
Fox pulled the fur dress from her saddlebag.
‘Who do you think the Bastard’s working for?’
She still shifted nearly every night, even though she realised herself how quickly the fur stole her years. But he couldn’t presume to say anything about it. He’d never stopped going through the mirror – not for his mother’s sake, nor for Will’s – and he definitely wouldn’t have done it in exchange for a less perilous and potentially longer life. When the heart craved something so forcefully, then reason became nothing but helpless observer. The heart, the soul, whatever it was . . .
‘He usually works for the onyx, as far as I know,’ Jacob said. He pulled from his saddlebag the tin plate that had saved him from many hungry nights. ‘His father is one of their highest lords. If the Bastard finds the crossbow, then I guess the Goyl will soon have a new King.’
Jacob rubbed his sleeve over the plate, and immediately it filled with bread and cheese. He wasn’t really hungry, but he was afraid of falling back asleep and finding himself in that forest again, stumbling endlessly after his father. He never really acknowledged the thought, but it was always present, like an annoying whisper: You’ll actually die without ever having seen him again, Jacob.
Fox had swapped her human clothes for the fur dress. It kept growing with her, like a second skin, and it still had the same silky sheen as on the day Jacob had seen it the first time.
‘Jacob . . .’
‘What?’ He could barely keep his eyes open.
‘Lie down. We’ve not had a rest in days. There won’t be a ferry until the morning, anyway.’
She was right. He reached for his backpack. He still had some sleeping pills from the other world somewhere. If he remembered right, they were from his mother’s nightstand. For years she hadn’t been able fall asleep without them. A card dropped out of the backpack on to the frost-covered grass, and he picked it up. NOREBO JOHANN EARLKING. The odd stranger who’d vouched for him at the auction and been so interested in his family’s heirlooms.
Fox shifted shape and licked her fur, as though she had to clean the human scent off. She quickly snuggled up to him the way she used to when there was still a child hiding under that fur. They were both children when he’d found her in the trap. Jacob stroked her pointy ears. So beautiful. In both bodies.
‘Be careful. The hunters are already out stalking.’ As if he really needed to remind her.
She snapped at his hand – the vixen’s way of showing her love – and then she disappeared between the trees, as silently as if her paws weren’t carrying any weight at all.
Jacob stared at the card he was still holding in his hand. He’d meant to ask Will to find out more about his strange benefactor. Where was his head? Yes, Jacob, where? Death is breathing down your neck. Norebo Johann Earlking will have to wait, no matter how much you disliked the colour of his eyes.
He threw the card back into the grass. Two, three months . . . Two days on the ferry, and who knew how long it would take them to find the head in Albion? Then back to Lotharaine and Austry for the hand and the heart. Hundreds of miles, with death hard on his heels. Maybe his last chance really had come along too late.
The wind blew through his sweat-soaked shirt and brought the stench of a nearby swamp. The two moons disappeared behind a dark cloud, and for an instant the world around him became so dark and strange that it seemed to want to remind him it wasn’t his home. Where would you like to die, Jacob? Here or there?
A few wilted leaves blew into the fire – and Earlking’s card went with them.
It didn’t burn.
The leaves it had landed on crumbled to ashes, but the card was as unblemished as when Earlking had first put it into his hand. Jacob drew his sabre and used its blade to flick the card out of the flames. The paper was lily-white.
A magical object.
How had it come to the other world? Stupid question, Jacob. How did the Djinn get there? But who had brought the card through the mirror, and had Earlking been aware of what he was putting in his hand? Too many questions, and Jacob had the nasty feeling that he wouldn’t like the answers.
He turned the card around. The back side had filled up with words, and when he brushed his finger over them, it came away with a trace of ink on it.
GOOD EVENING, JACOB,
I REGRET THAT WE MET ONLY SO BRIEFLY, BUT I HOPE WE SHALL HAVE MORE OPPORTUNITIES IN THE FUTURE. MAYBE I CAN BE HELPFUL SOMETIME WITH THE TASK YOU’RE FACING. NOT FOR PURELY UNSELFISH REASONS, OF COURSE, BUT I PROMISE YOU MY PRICE WILL BE AFFORDABLE.
The writing disappeared as soon as Jacob had read the last word, and the card again showed nothing but Earlking’s printed name.
Grass-green eyes.
A Leprechaun? Or one of the Gilches that the Witches up in Suomi moulded from clay and awakened with their laughter? But in Chicago? No. This had to be some cheap trick, the prank of an old man who’d happened upon a magical object. Jacob was tempted to throw the card away, but then he wrapped it in his gold handkerchief and tucked it into his pocket. Fox was right. He needed sleep. But as soon as he lay down next to the dying fire, he heard shots, and then he could only lay there and listen to the darkness until, hours later, he heard the vixen’s paws and Fox herself a little later as she spread her blanket next to his.
She was soon breathing deeply and steadily, in a sound sleep. And as he felt her warmth next to him, Jacob forgot the dreams awaiting him and the card that brought him words from the other world, and he finally fell asleep.