chapter SIXTY-THREE
THE TRAP
On your feet, Jacob. The pain began to subside, but his heart was sputtering as though every beat could be the last.
Never mind, Jacob. Just a few steps.
Take the crossbow. Fox will be here soon.
He actually managed to get up.
What if she didn’t find him in time? Do you want to shoot that bolt into your own chest, Jacob? The thought was almost funny.
From this close, the figure on the throne looked so lifelike, as though Guismond had created it from flesh and blood. The dead eyes stared right through Jacob as he stepped towards the stool. Heavens. His feet were stumbling as badly as his heart.
‘You’re really not making death easy on yourself.’ The Bastard stepped out of the shadows, as quietly as he had in the tomb.
Where did you have your ears, Jacob? The oldest mistake in the world: to forget all caution once the treasure is within reach. He was going to die like an amateur.
The Bastard looked at the pictures on the walls as he walked towards his rival. Jacob reached for his gun, but death was slowing him down, and the Goyl had a pistol trained on him before Jacob could pull his own from his belt.
‘Don’t force me to further shorten these final minutes of your life,’ Nerron said, aiming at Jacob’s head. ‘Who knows? Maybe you even have an hour. How did you open the gate? That damned iron even burnt my hands.’
‘I don’t have the faintest idea.’ The crossbow was so close, all he’d have to do was reach out, but Jacob could see that the Goyl would shoot. He’d learnt to read the speckled face. It reminded him, even now, of his brother’s. ‘Who freed you?’
‘The Waterman. I had a feeling it would prove useful to keep him alive. Though there were a dozen times in the past weeks when I’d have loved to wring his scaly neck.’ Nerron looked around. ‘Where is the vixen?’
Draw your gun, Jacob. At least try. What have you got to lose?
But maybe there just wasn’t enough life left in him.
Nerron stopped in front of him.
‘She is very beautiful, and I don’t usually say that about human women. You think she’ll allow me to comfort her? After all, she also went with the Bluebeard.’
Yes, Jacob would have loved to shoot him.
‘I’m sure the obituary for the great Jacob Reckless will be in all the newspapers.’ Nerron stepped closer to the crossbow. His pistol was still aimed at Jacob’s head. ‘Maybe they’ll come to me, to hear how you breathed your last. I promise, I’ll describe it most touchingly.’
Jacob touched the bloody imprint on his shirt. So close. His hand trembled. ‘Who will you sell it to?’
‘I’m sure you’d be surprised.’ Nerron reached for the crossbow.
Snap.
The ticking began as soon as the Goyl had lifted the weapon off the stool. But he paid no attention to it. He still didn’t realise, even as he walked towards the edge of the circle and ran into the invisible wall. The curse he uttered would have made a Dwarf blush. He tried to step out of the mosaic in another place, but of course the stones wouldn’t let him go.
Jacob derived little comfort from the fact that the Goyl had been just as blind. At least he had the excuse that impending death didn’t make you smarter.
It was a trap. From the beginning. They’d been caught in it from the moment they read the words in the tomb, and whoever’s body they’d found there, it was not the Witch Slayer’s. The fingernails should have made you suspicious, Jacob! No sign of decay? Where did you have your senses?
He looked at the figure on the throne. The Witch Slayer was sitting in front of them, and the trap he’d set more than eight hundred years ago had finally snapped shut.
The Bastard threw the stool against the invisible wall so hard that it broke.
‘Damn! What gave us away?’
Jacob dropped to his knees. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘He thinks we’re his children. That’s the problem.’
He pulled out the pouch with Louis’s hair and threw it far from him, even though it was already too late. ‘The trap was meant for them, but they were smarter than us. It’s a time spell.’
The Witches used hourglasses, but Guismond had used the clock he’d brought from the other world. You saw it, Jacob! Where was your head? A magic circle and a clock. That’s all it took.
‘Time spell?’ The Goyl struck out at the invisible wall. It sounded as though his claws were hitting against glass. ‘Never heard of it. How does it work?’
‘Every minute will cost us a year.’ He was going to be an old man after all.
The Witches used the spells to dispatch particularly despised enemies, but the Witch Slayer wasn’t out for revenge. You should have seen this in the tomb, Jacob!
‘If you catch your own children in the circle,’ – his voice was already sounding hoarse – ‘then you can use the years you take from them for yourself. You’re just taking back the life you gave them in the first place. The more of it, the better. After all, Guismond didn’t want to be reborn as an old man. So he tried to lure all three of them here.’
‘Reborn?’ The Bastard stared at Guismond’s effigy.
‘Yes. That’s not a statue. It’s his body. The Witch Slayer wanted to return from death, even if that meant killing his children.’ Tick-tock. The clock’s whirr sliced through the silence and Jacob felt his flesh wither. ‘It might have worked with Louis,’ he said, ‘but we won’t do him any good. It’ll still kill us, though.’
And Fox couldn’t do anything to free them. Only Guismond could break the circle. Jacob wasn’t sure what he wished for more: that she found them while he still lived or when it was all over.
‘Did you hear, Witch Slayer?’ Nerron screamed at the corpse on the throne. ‘You caught the wrong prey. Let us go! Your children weren’t as stupid as we are, and they are now as dead as you.’
Every minute a year.
The Bastard sank to his knees. His breathing grew as laboured as Jacob’s, but the spell wouldn’t show as clearly on him. Goyl skin barely aged.
‘Admit it!’ he panted. ‘Admit it. I won!’
Jacob closed his eyes. No, he didn’t want Fox to find him like this. He wished she’d never find him and that none of this had ever happened. But how had it all begun? With him going through the mirror. And had he never done that, he’d have never met her, and the vixen would have perished in the trap.
He lifted his hand. It looked like that of an old man.
He didn’t want her to find him like this.