The Devil's Looking-Glass - By Mark Chadbourn Page 0,94

I tell a tale of weakness and betrayal? Or—’

‘Your lies are wasted on us,’ Launceston interrupted, unfamiliar passion edging his voice.

Will swished his rapier from side to side. He was ready should the other Fay creep forward in the impenetrable dark. If he could keep Lansing engaged, at least he could pinpoint the Fay lord’s position in the chamber. ‘What are you?’ he asked. ‘In all the stories we are told, your form and nature change with the teller. Imps, sprites, spectres, bloodsuckers. Fallen angels and demons from the depths of Hell. Are you the devil’s children?’

In the ringing silence that followed his question, Will thought he was being ignored, but then Lansing began, ‘You think this world belongs to man? We were here first.’ Bitterness swelled his voice. ‘No man could ever understand our pain, our grief, our loss. You call us devils, but in truth we are angels. Saviours—’

Carpenter snorted with derision. ‘Our saviours?’

‘This world’s saviours. From our new homes under hill and lake and sea, we watched your slaughters and your brutality, the destruction you set in motion with barely a thought for consequence. When you put women and children to the spear, and burned others at the stake, and seared flesh with hot iron and put out eyes and lopped off limbs, we saw you were unworthy of this land that you inherited.’

‘All men are flawed. But we deserve the right to aspire to greater things,’ Will replied. Sensing a presence only a hair’s breadth from his cheek, he whipped his rapier around, but the steel met only thin air. He felt cold eyes upon him nearby, and flexing fingers keen to tear out his throat or turn his innards to straw or stone.

‘It is too late for that,’ the Fay lord replied. ‘Perhaps . . . once . . . before you stole our Queen and meted out your atrocities upon our kind. But now this world will be better without the infestation of man.’

‘A fight to the death, then,’ Will said.

‘’Twas always going to be that way,’ Launceston sighed. ‘Could you imagine our two races living side by side? Let us be done with it, though the world burn down in the process.’

‘And there is man in essence,’ Lansing whispered. ‘Let us be done with it.’

Trusting his instincts, Will lashed his rapier downwards. The blade sliced into one of the Fay creeping towards him through the dark. A furious howl filled the chamber. Beside him, he could hear Launceston and Carpenter putting their blades to work, and cursing at their inability to see. As he swept his sword back and forth, a haunting song reached his ears from the stone steps beyond the door, the words growing clearer as the singer neared. A woman’s voice, it was, and it could only be Meg.

‘There were three ravens sat on a tree,

They were as black as they might be.

With a down, derry, derry, derry, down, down.’

Dee’s potion still gripped her, Will thought, and he called out to warn her away, but still she sang.

‘Then one of them said to his mate,

Where shall we our breakfast take?

Down in yonder green field,

There lies a knight slain under his shield . . .’

Notes of sadness and regret drifted out through her lilting voice. Even the Unseelie Court seemed entranced, for Will sensed them pause in their attack. When the door swung open, candlelight glowed. Glancing back, he saw Meg framed in the archway. Bafflement filled him; he saw no trace of stupor in her face. But then he noticed her smile, darkly triumphant, and he recognized the Meg of old, when such a smile preceded a length of bloody steel. Yet her eyes were filled with the deepest sadness, and that puzzled him.

‘His hounds they lie down at his feet,

So well they can their master keep.

His hawks they fly so eagerly,

There’s no fowl dare him come nigh . . .’

. . . she sang, and then she raised her candle up so her red hair was all aglow, and beckoned behind her. The roar that echoed up the stairs would have chilled even the most hardened warrior. Will thrust Carpenter and Launceston to one side. On the other side of the chamber, the Fay crouched like cornered animals, mouths black slashes in their bone-white faces.

Something thundered up the stone steps. Will glimpsed only a flash of oily black skin and fierce white eyes as the Mooncalf bounded past him with a full-throated roar that made his ears ring. No