The Silver Skull (25 page)

Thoughtfully, he returned to the plinth. The key was there, he was sure. The warning to those who wished to use the Shield for evil, that was clear. But a clue to help the needy? He read the legend again, carefully.

The second half of the legend was specific in its warning. What if the first half was too?

Under God's ever-watchful eye.

Walking back to the line of cross-marked stones, Will peered up to the ceiling high overhead. It would normally have been obscured by gloom, but a sacrifice in the fires of heaven and hell had revealed in blazing illumination what was hidden there. Will smiled, understanding the minds of the good Christian Templar Knights. The unworthy would focus on the perils of the fires. The worthy would look to the heavens for salvation.

The stones across the ceiling mirrored the ones on the floor, each marked with a Templar cross-as above, so below-except that a few were marked with an eye.

God's watchful eye.

If he followed the trail of the eyes, would he find his way through to the Shield? The reasoning appeared sound, but there was only one way to be certain. Placing his boot firmly on the flagstone beneath the first eye, Will shifted his weight onto it. The flag held.

Quickly, he followed the route, shying away from the roaring columns of flame.

Occasionally, he had to wait for the thick smoke to clear so he could follow the safe path, and he realised that if he had cracked any more of the fire-stones, the smoke would have completely obscured the guiding eyes above. There was something symbolic in that, too.

The path turned left and right, weaving across the entire width of the chamber, but moving inexorably towards the niche. Finally, he stood before it. In the niche, resting on an angled plinth, was a silver amulet on a chain, inscribed in black filigree with symbols and words in a language Will did not recognise.

Snatching the amulet and turning to retrace his steps, he spied Reidheid waiting on the far side of the chamber, his sword drawn. Reidheid nodded slowly as he saw the thoughts play out on Will's face.

"Traitor," Will intoned gravely.

"I am not alone," Reidheid replied. "There are traitors everywhere among Walsingham's men. Sometimes I wonder if there are more traitors than loyal followers of the queen."

Holding the amulet behind him, Will strode back along the path. "How could you betray England?"

"England endures, whatever happens. The question is: how could you not betray the queen and her government? You have seen the Enemy's abilities. We can never win."

"What have they promised you, Reidheid? Riches? Congress with the most beautiful women in the land? A life eternal? They prey on human weakness, and find the spaces in our character that they can prise open from crack to chasm. You know that. They cannot be trusted."

"They promised me freedom from fear." A fleeting expression of desperation crossed Reidheid's face. "Imagine what that would be like. No longer glancing over your shoulder in search of death's looming, bony face. No longer waking with such bleak thoughts in the morning that you are unable to appreciate the new dawn, and no longer fighting to find sleep each night as the terrors race through your mind."

"We are mortals. There is no true freedom from fear. We live with it and learn to accommodate it. That makes us human. And that is where we gather our strength."

"Yes, we are mortals. We hate each other for being Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Moor, English, Spanish, or French. There is no hope for us. We must get what we can from this world, before heaven beckons."

"Or hell."

Steadying himself, Reidheid waved his sword towards Will. "Enough. Our philosophic discourse can be continued at another time. Give me the Shield."

"So you can in turn give it to the Enemy." Will held the amulet by the chain so that it turned slowly, reflecting the gold and scarlet of the flames.

"It matters not to you." Reidheid stepped to the edge of the crossmarked flags. "Another turn in a war that goes on forever."

Will smiled tightly. "I see the Enemy treats you like their dog, chained up in the kennel and thrown tidbits. Do you not know what is truly at stake here? You betray not only the queen and England, or your fellow man, but your own family, your daughter, Meg."

"And why should I believe you either?" Reidheid snapped. "Will Swyfte, who lives a lie as the greatest hero England knows, a fairy tale to soothe the nightmares of men and women so they think themselves protected by gods, and not, in truth, by an assassin ... a torturer ... a man of grey morals. You are no better than me. We have our ambitions and we pursue them vigorously."

Protecting the amulet in his fist, Will came to a halt a few flags short of Reidheid and drew his sword. "You speak like a child. Is this some revelation to you? That we all wear masks?

Which is the true face? The truth is, there is none. We are all many things, and all of them insubstantial. Good and evil are elusive. But there is one thing that divides us. You do what you do for your own gain."

Reidheid's cheeks flushed and he held out his hand. "The Shield."

"It is here. You may take it, or try to." Will raised his sword.

Reidheid hesitated. "I am not afraid. The Unseelie Court will be here soon, and you will not escape their attentions."

"I think not. It is my belief that this place is protected. No Enemy foot can tread here without risking destruction. It is you and I, Master Reidheid. I hear you were a fine swordsman in your prime. Do your recall your skills?"

Reidheid stepped onto the closest of the cross-marked flags, and by chance it was one beneath an eye. Hesitating, he looked around at the blazing pools and realised Will was leading him into a trap.

He smiled and stepped back. "Clever, Master Swyfte. But you are at the disadvantage.

The Unseelie Court even now prepare to close off your options for escape, and the Spaniard has been dispatched to collect your assistant. He will not last long."

"Then let us end this." Will raced along the true path across the flags, but at the last he stepped on the fake flag nearest to Reidheid. It crumbled under his boot, but his momentum carried him over it as he ducked the swing of Reidheid's sword and rolled across the solid stones of the chamber's entrance area.

As flames rushed up from the black pool, Reidheid reeled back, one arm raised before his face against the blast of heat.

On his feet in an instant, Will spun, planting one boot in Reidheid's gut. With a cry, he doubled-up and fell back, but a well-hidden agility came to the fore as he rolled across the chamber floor to avoid the thrust of Will's sword.

He was up quickly, blocking Will's driving thrusts and responding in kind. Their fight ranged along the edge of the cross-marked flags, evenly matched as Reidheid settled back into the duelling skills he had learned in his youth. Resounding off the chamber walls, the clash of their blades sang, thrust and parry, high and low.

But Reidheid was out of condition and after a few moments he began to tire. As his strength dwindled, Will saw his opening. He kicked one of the cross-marked flags next to Reidheid, withdrawing his boot sharply as the silvery dust fell. When the flames roared up, they engulfed the left side of Reidheid's body. Screaming, and ablaze, he dropped his sword and staggered away.

Instantly, Will knocked him to the floor and rolled him over continually until the flames were extinguished. The skin of Reidheid's face and most of the left side of his body was blackened, but he was alive. Will dragged him to his feet and propelled him towards the tunnel.

"You are fortunate I am not the man you thought I was."

Near the entrance, the flames made their shadows dance along the tunnel walls, but soon they were in the dark again, with only the shaft of light from the abbey above to guide them on.

Whimpering in pain, Reidheid offered no resistance. Beyond his cries, Will listened for any sign of threat in the abbey above, but all was quiet.

"Nat," he whispered loudly, but received no response.

Beneath the shattered flag, he cupped his hands to propel Reidheid up, and then leapt to draw himself into the abbey. It was empty. Had Nathaniel gone to investigate the festivities, to ensure the Enemy was not closing on the abbey?

"Make no sound," Will said quietly to Reidheid as he held him by the arm, "or I will retract my previous decision and run you through."

At the door, Will listened. He could hear the distant music from the king's festivities, but there appeared to be no one nearby. Moving out into the short corridor that joined the abbey and the palace, he saw the quadrangle was now illuminated by the silvery light of the moon.

Darkness hung heavily in the cloisters.

"Father!" Meg's cry rang out from the nearest cloister along the eastern edge, and a second later she separated from the darkness of a doorway accompanied by another figure. It was the Hunter, and he gripped her wrist tightly. Tearfully, she struggled to free herself so she could run to Reidheid, but the Hunter held her fast. As she fought, he moved a cruel, curved knife to her throat.

"See what you have done?" Will said coldly.

"Meg." The desolation in Reidheid's voice rose up above the pain of his injuries. "Leave her be."

In the moonlight in the quadrangle, several figures appeared, though there had been no sign of them before. Cavillex stood at the head of the other members of the Unseelie Court.

"There are places we cannot walk, but our influence never fades when we can always reach into human hearts," he said.

Drawing his sword again, Will thrust Reidheid away. Slowly he backed to the wall, his eyes darting along his branch of the cloister.

"Kill her," Cavillex ordered. "And then the rest of them."

Reidheid cried out, but before he could move, Nathaniel lurched from a doorway where he had been hiding. He manhandled a hefty iron candlestick and brought it down hard on the Hunter, who fell to the ground, his knife spinning across the flags.

"Run, Nat!" Will called. As he turned, he caught a glimpse of Nathaniel grabbing Meg by the hand and dragging her towards the abbey. Cavillex's orders echoed across the quadrangle, but Will was already racing along the cloister towards the tower in the far corner. He hoped to escape through the door to the gatehouse, but the Unseelie Court moved silently and stealthily past the entrance, revealed only by the moonlight throwing their fleeting shadows on the stone.

At the end of the cloister, Will plunged through a door that led to a spiral staircase passing windows with a view over the formal gardens. Only one pursuer appeared to be climbing the stairs behind him-the Hunter, Will guessed, seeking revenge for the wound Will had inflicted in the Fairy House.

At the top of the steps, he crashed into the outer chamber of a bedroom, dark with wood panelling. Each panel on the ceiling was marked with the royal seal, and as he ran into a chamber with decor that suggested it belonged to a woman, he realised he had arrived in the old quarters of Mary, Queen of Scots. Moonlight broke through the window across the boards. A wooden cabinet inlaid with red hearts and gold stood by a closed door to what he guessed was a dressing room, and a four-poster bed rested against one wall next to another door.

Will leapt onto the bed and drew the curtain. Steadying his breathing, he listened, and waited. The thunder of boots crossed the floorboards, and then his pursuer skidded into the room, coming to a halt as though he could sense Will was nearby. Will listened as he moved around the chamber. A soft tread, the brush of fingers on wood. The door to the dressing room thrown open.

The cabinet knocked to one side. The other door torn open, a blast of chill air stirring the curtains around the bed.

The footsteps came to a halt, followed by a moment of searching silence, before they moved towards the bed and stopped on the other side of the curtain. Soft exhalations disturbed the quiet. Will pictured them only inches apart, looking directly into each other's eyes.

Will felt calm, his heartbeat steady. He was focused, staring directly at the thick, embroidered drape. A long moment of deathly quiet.

The curtains were torn back forcibly. For a second, Will's gaze locked on the Hunter's dark eyes, and he saw in their infinite depths a coruscating intelligence. Then, with a single fluid motion, he drove his sword through the Hunter's throat.

"For my friend," Will said quietly.

He continued to watch the eyes flicker in shock, and then roll towards white as the Hunter slid backwards, off the sword, his hands going to his throat. Will leapt from the bed and thrust his weapon through his adversary's heart, and held it firmly in place until the Hunter crashed to the boards, dead.

Standing over him, Will surveyed the body for a moment, seeing something less than the Enemy that had haunted the nightmares of Englishmen, thinking of Tom Miller, dead at the end of a rope long before he had begun to reach his potential. Thinking of Jenny.

"Not even a balance," Will said coldly. He withdrew his sword and wiped it on the body.

From outside came a keening sound that set his teeth on edge, and he realised it was the sound of grief from a world beyond the one he knew. Somehow the other members of the Unseelie Court had sensed the death of one of their own.

As the sound of running feet echoed from the spiral staircase, Will bolted through the other door of the bedchamber into the Queen's Lobby, and then to a long gallery. Bounding down a flight of stairs, he encountered a mass of guards rushing towards him, led by the king himself. Fear burned in all their faces, and though they held swords and torches, there was little sign that they would be used.

"Master Swyfte," King James began, "I expected to find you at the heart of this disturbance."

"Apologies. I fear I have upset some of your guests."

A slight smile curved James's lips.

"They will not trouble you, but I believe they may want to introduce me to an unpleasant end," Will continued.

"Then I suggest you leave the palace forthwith, Master Swyfte, and we shall do all we can to ensure your pursuers are engaged in entertaining conversation! I hope you enjoyed the hospitality at the Palace of Holyroodhouse. You are welcome here any time."