The Devil's Looking-Glass - By Mark Chadbourn Page 0,81
responded. ‘That will not occur until Dee decrees it.’
‘The doctor holds the sun at bay?’ Will said with incredulity. He had seen the alchemist at play with charts of the stars and potions and incantations, but never had the old man displayed the kind of power that could shake the heavens.
‘Dee has gone quite mad,’ she said, ‘and in his madness he has found a way to tap into forces that should never be conjured by mortals. This island too is a special place, where strange and troubling things occur, and whatever qualities it possesses only seem to serve to add to the old man’s magics.’
‘But holding back the sun,’ Strangewayes gasped. ‘Why, that is the remit of God alone.’
‘Then god he is.’ Meg looked up as the first fat drops of rain began to fall. ‘When he senses threat, he brings the night to confound his enemies, or calls storms to dash ships upon the rocks. And,’ she added, ‘the Mooncalf hunts better at night.’
Will heard the unseen creature snuffling and snorting in the undergrowth, breaking branches as it kept pace with them. It terrified the men with every step. But whatever it was, it seemed to obey the woman’s every word, so they were safe for now. ‘Men are not as easy to control as the Unseelie Court believe,’ he said. ‘They think they can run us like rats, but Dee has confounded them.’
‘How so?’ Strangewayes asked. ‘In posing as the angels he believed he contacted, he was lured away from the path of light, and eventually, when they were ready, they sent him spinning off into the dark. He took with him our last hope to repair our defences against them. And in their hands—’
‘But he is not in their hands. In Liverpool, the Enemy thought they could spirit him away as easily as they steal babes from their cribs. But they have been forced to chase him across half a world, right to their very doorstep. ’Twould seem to me that Dee had long since prepared his own defences, anticipating that the Fay would one day attempt to take him. And when they did try to exert their control, he unleashed his moon-side, which still holds sway.’ Will wiped the raindrops from his eyes, enjoying the cooling touch on his skin. ‘In his madness, he is unpredictable and uncontrollable, and, he would hope, beyond their reach.’
‘Then why come so close to their home?’ the other man asked. ‘Surely he would flee away from them.’
‘Dee is cunning. If he is here, there is a reason for it.’
The path wound round the hillside as it rose towards the tower. Emerging from the thickest part of the woods, they saw lightning crackling along the horizon and bands of heavier rain marching across the treetops towards them. In one white flash, Will found Meg staring at him and asked what troubled her.
‘You still look as young as that last day I saw you, so long ago, in Liverpool,’ she replied. ‘How can this be?’
‘And you have not altered one whit.’ He watched her face, ready to change the subject if she became distressed.
‘No,’ she said with a shake of her head, rubbing her fingers over her smooth cheeks.
‘’Tis true. Can you not see it?’
‘Dee allows me sight of no mirrors ’pon this island. The windows of the Unseelie Court, he calls them.’ Her brow furrowed. ‘You say the years have not taken their toll ’pon me?’
‘There have been no years, Meg,’ Will said gently. ‘For us, only ten weeks have passed since Liverpool.’
The Irish woman bowed her head, struggling to comprehend what she had heard. ‘This cannot be. My memory is filled with so many things happening here . . . so much struggle and misery, such loneliness that at times I thought I could not bear it. Coping with the old man’s caresses while my stomach turned, and listening to his ramblings about magic and philosophy and history. And yet . . . He told me once that in the home of the Fay, time did not march as you and I know it. It hovered or folded back upon itself. Oft-times the sands did not run at all. That is why, he said, the Fay never aged, and why their schemes run over years, and centuries, even. Perhaps this island has similar qualities.’
‘Perhaps so. If not the home of the Fay, mayhap it sits upon the borderlands in the shadow of that place.’ Will felt his heart go