Fearless

No. They are not here.

What was he feeling? Did his madness leave room for the desire to see his children, even though he’d wanted to kill them? Was that the other reason he’d built the trap, to force them to his side, even if they came only to seek power, not love? A motivation he probably understood better, anyway.

The Witch Slayer took off his helmet. He still moved painfully slowly, as though his dead body didn’t want to wake up. The hair revealed beneath his helmet was grey, the face wrinkled and pale. Guismond. Guismonde . . . his name was pronounced differently in Lotharaine. But his bynames were the same everywhere: the Cruel, the Greedy. And, of course, they’d also called him the Great.

He’d forgotten about the circle. He stumbled against it, felt the invisible wall with his wrinkled hands . . . and he remembered.

Go on! Your victims are already too weak to escape, and you must want your crossbow back.

The words came across his lips almost silently. Witch words.

The magic circle broke with the sound of shattering glass. Guismond kept the sword in his hand as he approached Jacob and the Goyl. The tinkling of his chain mail was the only sound Fox could hear. Guismond’s rasping breath. And the ticking of the clock. But Jacob wasn’t moving. He was so still. What if he was dead already?

No, Fox. The clock’s still ticking.

She laid it on the floor behind the pillar before she stepped out from its cover. Guismond was just reaching for his crossbow.

Fox shot the arm holding the sword. Yes, he still was just a human being. The scream from his sallow lips sounded like the screams that echoed through the corridors of the palace. Not alive, not dead. A man who’d wanted to kill his children so as not to get lost in his own darkness. The Witch Slayer turned to face her and to stare at the weapon that had injured him.

The next bullet got stuck in his chain mail.

You have to aim better, Fox!

His lips moved while he picked up his sword with his uninjured arm. She shifted shape before his curse could find her. It merely brushed through the vixen’s fur like frost. She ran towards him. Quick, Fox. Too quick for his body, which still belonged to death more than to life. Guismond struck out at her with his sword, but he had no strength, and Fox thanked the Fairy for the death she had planted in Jacob’s chest. The vixen dug her teeth into the flesh. It reeked of putrefaction. She jumped back while Guismond dropped to his knees, and she shifted shape once more. Vixen and woman, forever one. One was nothing without the other.

The Witch Slayer rubbed his hand over his face. His skin began to wilt. He thrust his sword at her, but his attack was so feeble, she could have parried it with the knife. And before he could utter his next curse, Fox rammed her blade into his unprotected throat. The blood gushing out of the wound turned to dust even as it dripped on to the white tunic, and the hands clawing at her coat withered before the fingers could close.

Fox stepped back from the body. The face was stiff, as if carved from wood, and the eyes were as empty as glass. An old man, nothing more. But she could sense him in the walls surrounding her, and in the darkness filling the room. She wanted to be far away.

She lowered her knife and listened.

The clock was silent. And Jacob stirred. His hair was dark again, and his face was the face she loved, but the Bastard stood next to him, and he was holding the crossbow.

No.

Fox drew her pistol, but she’d used all her bullets on the Witch Slayer.

The Bastard smiled. ‘Never trust a vixen. How often I heard my mother say that! They are cunning, and like you, Nerron, they are not afraid underground. What would she have said about a vixen saving my stone skin?’

‘Give me the crossbow.’ Fox drew her knife. Guismond’s dusty blood was on the blade. ‘You’d be dead without me.’

‘And?’

A scaly arm came around her neck.

‘They say shape-shifters can do magic,’ the Waterman whispered. ‘Prove it, vixen.’

He was wearing a dozen necklaces, a coat of Unicorn skin, and rings on all his fishy fingers. Fox struggled to free herself, but Watermen were strong.

Jacob tried to get up. His blood was painting the outline of a moth on to his shirt.

The last bite.

Too late, Fox. Where have you been?

CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

THE THIRD SHOT

Fox . . . Jacob heard her voice and felt her hands. But death was battling life in his body, and death was stronger. It was spreading through him, even though his skin was no longer that of an old man. The Fairy’s price had not been paid yet.

Let go. It’s over.

‘No!’ Fox grabbed him by the shoulders. ‘Jacob!’

He opened his eyes.

The Bastard was standing just a few steps away. ‘The Witch Slayer as a loving father . . .’ He stroked the crossbow’s gold-plated shaft. ‘Nonsense. I never believed that story about the third shot.’

The bolt in the crossbow was as black as his skin. He nodded at the Waterman. ‘Get her out of the way.’

Fox tried to pull her knife, but the Waterman struck it from her hands. Jacob was too weak even to lift his arm to shield her. He felt his life dissipating with every breath. What would become of Fox? It was all he could think of as the Bastard’s face blurred in front of his eyes. What would they do to her? Was the Waterman going to drag her into some pond, or would the Goyl shoot her? No, she’d escape. Somehow . . .

‘Look at the shaft. Just as I thought. It’s made of alder wood. Do you know what that means?’ Jacob heard the Bastard’s voice as though from a great distance. ‘No. You forgot all about them. But the Goyl remember. They lived even deeper under the earth than us, in their silver castles. Alderelves. Immortal. Devious. And masters at making magical weapons. The Fairies destroyed most of them, but there’s supposed to be a sword, somewhere in Catalunia, that was made by them.

‘The magic is always the same: the weapon brings death to its bearer’s enemies and life to his family. I always suspected that the crossbow is an Alderelf weapon, ever since the first time I heard the story about the third shot.’ The Goyl ran his finger over the reddish wood. ‘Who knows, maybe Guismond actually wanted to kill his son. He was probably already mad back then. After all, he’d been drinking Witch blood for years. But the crossbow wouldn’t allow it.’

He went to Jacob’s side.

‘How did he open the gate?’ he asked Fox. ‘It was easy, wasn’t it? It simply let him in.’

Fox didn’t answer him.

The Bastard drew the bow.

‘He himself explained it to me. The time spell only gives back life if it captures a relative. I most definitely don’t qualify, but Guismond was quite alive. Which means . . . ?’

Jacob could barely hear what the Goyl was saying. His own heartbeat was too loud, his laboured breath, his body’s final attempts to hold on to life.

‘That’s why the gate let him in. That’s why he was faster than I.’ Nerron’s throaty voice was getting louder, as though he could convince himself that he was the crossbow’s rightful owner. He caught himself doing it, and his next words again sounded as cool and cynical as they usually did. ‘Well, well, who would have thought, Jacob Reckless has the Witch Slayer’s blood running through him.’

Jacob would have laughed had he the strength for it. ‘Nonsense.’ He barely got the word out.