The Devil's Looking-Glass

Chapter FIFTY-THREE





WILD SHADOWS DANCED across the stone walls. Beyond the crackle and spatter of the flames in the hearth, silence lay heavily across the hall. Feeling bruised and battered but ready for a fight, Will weighed the rapier in his hand, checking that it was indeed the one that had been taken from him when he and Deortha had been captured. He whisked the tip of the blade through the air, making a play for the eyes of the Enemy he felt upon him. He glimpsed the Fay’s cold, haunted faces. Were they hungry for his death, fired at the prospect of bloody entertainment, filled with loathing for one of the men who had taken their Queen from them? Of one thing he was certain: none of them could countenance anything but his defeat.

Mandraxas shrugged off his white cloak and pushed his shoulders back. For a moment he watched Will with undisguised contempt, then drew his own rapier and flexed the tip against the flags. Will ignored him, looking instead at Jenny, drawing strength from the concern he saw in her face. She leaned forward on her throne, and her eyes did not waver when they met his. She remembered him now, and what they shared, he could see. If he were to die there and then, that would be reward enough for all the years of searching and striving and disappointment.

He bowed. ‘Consider now what we fight for,’ he said, levelling his blade at the King. ‘This is not man against Fay, or two bitter enemies waging war for the good of their country. No, we are rivals of the heart, about to clash swords for the hand of the woman we love. No great affair, this. Indeed, ’tis a private matter.’

Mandraxas all but snarled. ‘Like all your kind, you are deluded. That matter has already been decided. I have my Queen and you have nothing, and soon less than nothing.’

‘Look in your Queen’s face, Your Highness, and repeat your words with conviction,’ Will taunted, enjoying the anger that sparked in Mandraxas’s features. In any sword fight, such emotion was weakness.

‘Let us be done with this,’ the King said with a theatrical sigh. He levelled his own rapier and gently tapped the end of Will’s blade.

And the storm broke. The cold sea of predatory white faces seemed to fade away as Will’s vision closed in upon his opponent. Barely had their swords clashed before he found Mandraxas as threatening as he had boasted. Will moved with the speed of a snake as the Fay struck with quicksilver strokes. The King’s rapier glowed with the reflected flames from the hearth, slashing high, for Will’s throat, then low, to disable. A thrust to the heart ripped open the spy’s shirt, drawing blood on his chest. Unable to anticipate the rapid strokes, Will knew he must rely on instinct.

And yet when he looked past Mandraxas’s lupine grin into those haunted eyes, Will thought he understood his foe. The Unseelie Court always found the flaws in men’s hearts, but now he had discovered the Fay’s weakness. No monster of the night, this. The King was weighted with all the fear of any man afraid of losing the woman he loved.

As if he could sense Will’s probing of his vulnerability, the Fay snarled in fury and suddenly lunged at his opponent’s face. The spy skipped back a step, feeling his cheek bloom hot from the steel’s breath. Will knew he would not last much longer in the face of such an onslaught.

The time had come.

Parrying another lightning thrust from the Fay King, Will reached behind him with his left hand and withdrew the object that Deortha had pressed on him earlier, and he’d hidden under his shirt. In the firelight, the devil’s looking glass burned like the sun.

Mandraxas hesitated, suddenly unsure. Will sensed the rest of the Unseelie Court bracing itself, claw-like hands clutching, barely resisting the urge to fall upon him and tear him apart. He refused to acknowledge the threat, and glanced into the smoky depths of the obsidian mirror.

The mist cleared, and there was the hooded gaze of the sorcerer. Deortha’s whispered words sizzled in his head: ‘Fulfil our agreement. Slay the traitor.’

As Deortha’s lips shaped some silent incantation, his visage faded. It was replaced by Mandraxas, as though the mirror was but a window on the scene in front of him. Yet the mirror-King thrust upwards a moment before the real King, and as Mandraxas struck the spy stepped aside. Will smiled as a flicker of surprise crossed his opponent’s face. How the sorcerer must hate his King, to give up such a prize so readily, a mirror which could see across all time, even if it were only one moment from now.

As Will parried each of his foe’s strikes with ease, so the triumph ebbed from the Fay King’s face. Balancing on the balls of his feet, the spy danced around his foe, making his opponent look a fool. As the looking glass revealed the weaknesses in Mandraxas’s defence, so Will jabbed and thrust with growing confidence and fervour. He slit the King’s doublet, his breeches, his silk sleeves, then nicked his cheek. And each strike could have been a killing blow.

The Fay stumbled back under the relentless assault until he sprawled against his throne. A murmur rippled through the Unseelie Court. Mandraxas’s features grew taut with shame.

‘Herein lies a lesson,’ Will said, the tip of his rapier hovering over the King’s heart. ‘Pride comes before a fall.’

‘Deceit and trickery,’ the King snarled. ‘Your nature remains true – your kind are lower than snakes.’

‘I would not wish to disappoint you, Your Highness. And yet, in your arrogance, you saw no need to define the rules of my engagement, as I did of yours.’

His face twisting with rage, Mandraxas flung himself forward. Almost lazily, Will stepped aside, and tripped his opponent. The Fay King tumbled across the flagstones. The spy could feel how close he was to being ripped limb from limb by the ghastly figures hovering close by, and he spun away from the duel to the huddle of his friends.

‘Be prepared,’ he whispered. ‘When I give the signal, we make our move.’

‘You are as mad as always,’ Carpenter snapped, nearly hysterical. He frantically raked his fingers through his hair as though his head was fit to burst. ‘Those pale bastards will be on us like wolves before we have taken a step.’

‘John, you must trust Will,’ Grace implored. Though her hands trembled, she kept a brave face.

Will heard Mandraxas scramble to his feet, but before he could turn Launceston caught his eye with his unsettling gaze. ‘What deal have you made to gain the advantage that mirror gives you, I wonder?’ the Earl hissed.

‘I have agreed to kill the King,’ Will replied without emotion, ‘thus damning all mankind to immediate destruction at the hands of a vengeful Fay army.’ Sweeping out one hand, he added with a sardonic smile, ‘But at least we will be allowed to leave unharmed, with Jenny.’

Grace’s face drained of blood. ‘No. Will, you cannot.’

Will felt a twinge of hurt when he saw Meg’s face harden. ‘Some would say that is too high a price, even for the love of your life,’ she said with faux-sweetness. ‘I would think again, my darling.’

‘The only choices worth making are the hard ones,’ he replied, turning back to Mandraxas. Clearing all extraneous thoughts from his head, he added, ‘And I would have an end to my suffering, one way or another.’

When Will raised his rapier, the King feinted and thrust, though his attack lacked guile or power. His confidence was ebbing, the spy saw. It was time to finish this play. As Mandraxas searched for an opening, Will wiped the sweat from his brow. He had been delaying that moment of no return, he knew.

The mirror glinted, and once again he glimpsed Deortha’s cold, watchful eyes urging him on to damnation. He dealt a flurry of ferocious blows, catching the King off guard and driving him back. With a flick of his wrist, he whipped his foe’s blade from his hand and thrust his rapier towards the Fay’s throat.

Jenny leapt from her throne. ‘Do not kill him,’ she cried. Will ignored her, though his heart ached at her concern for his foe.

The Unseelie Court surged closer, white faces contorted with bestial rage. Sword poised to strike, the spy thundered, ‘Stay back. I will slay your King without a moment’s thought for my own safety.’ Hands hooked, the Fay slowed close enough for Will to smell their loamy odour. ‘Meg. Robert. Some help, if you will.’

Launceston and the Irish woman grabbed daggers from two of the nearest Fay and held the blades against the King’s neck. Stepping back, Will sheathed his sword and then held out his hand. After a moment’s hesitation, Jenny took it. He could feel the fury of Mandraxas’s gaze upon him as Carpenter and Grace hurried to his side. The Fay surrounded them and, Will guessed, countless more were gathering in the fortress beyond.

‘How can we ever escape?’ Grace whispered as if reading his thoughts.

‘Deortha, show me the way out,’ Will commanded into the looking glass.

The surface cleared and he heard the sorcerer speak: ‘First, kill the King.’

‘Do you take me for a fool? Once we have our freedom, you can have your monarch’s life.’ After a moment’s hesitation, the sorcerer uttered the words Will needed to hear. He grinned at the others, a reassuring show of bravado. ‘Stay close at my back. And if any here dare threaten you, prick the King till he squeals. Our Enemy will think twice before daring to lay a hand on you.’ With Launceston and Meg guarding their prisoner, Will slid out his rapier and brandished it in front of him. The wall of Fay parted and he began to lead the way through them. Cadaverous faces loomed from the half-light on either side, hungry eyes staring and jaws snapping. A choking sense of dread enveloped him.

At the hall’s great door, he turned back and looked across the Unseelie Court. Waving the tip of his rapier towards Mandraxas’s face, he announced, ‘Your King has betrayed you. He has conspired to leave your Queen a prisoner of men so that the Golden Throne can be his alone.’

‘Lies,’ Mandraxas bellowed.

With a smile and an arched eyebrow, Meg dug her blade deeper into the King’s neck and breathed into his ear, ‘Quiet now, my sweet. I can cut out your tongue and still keep you alive. For a while.’

‘Trust not my words,’ Will continued, his voice clear and strong. ‘Seek out your court’s wise adviser, Deortha, who is now incarcerated, upon your King’s orders. Free him from his cell where he has been locked away along with the truth and listen to what he has to say. Then you will learn that we are not so different, Fay and men.’

Will turned to Jenny and drank in all the things he had missed, the sparkle in her dark eyes and the way her brow knitted as if she was always questioning, and the colour in her cheeks and her lips, in case this was their last moment. Gently, he cupped the back of her neck and pulled her to him. She showed no resistance. He closed his eyes. Their lips met and he felt a jolt run through him, and all the lost years melted away. Once again he was in Warwickshire with the sun on his shoulders and the future ahead of him. Blood throbbed through his head, driving out all thoughts. And when he opened his lids, he watched a light appear in her face as if she were waking from that dream. All is illusion, and sometimes the truth is hidden, he thought with a surge of pure joy, the first he had felt in many a year. But it is here, now.

Turning back to the ranks of glowering faces, he called, ‘Our time here is done.’ He bowed deeply, flinging out his left arm with a flourish. ‘And so I bid you farewell.’

And with that, he pushed open the doors and led the others out into the dark alleys of a fortress teeming with the Enemy.