Jacob felt Fox’s arms around him before she slipped off the horse. Her warmth lingered like a promise as he swung himself from the saddle.
All will be well.
He ignored Valiant’s muttering and went to the fence behind which the ruins lay. The Dead City. Not a place he’d ever wanted to see this close. Even Chanute had always steered clear of it. Jacob thought he could hear voices, some kind of chanting, interrupted by hoarse howls. Maybe the lunatics who lived among those ruins sensed that this was going to be a special night. Supposedly, it was enough to merely touch the walls to succumb to the same madness. Jacob’s eyes searched for a path through the dead streets that led up the mountain. The city once had thousands of inhabitants. He saw stairs and bridges, crumbling churches. He saw towers and houses, their empty windows outlined by will-o’-the-wisps, and palaces with walls pocked with the nests of plague finches – the only kind of bird that thrived in places like this. If the palace really appeared, it was going to be a long way to reach it. And Jacob could feel his life slipping away with every breath.
‘I hear the Goyl’s still alive?’ Valiant appeared by his side. ‘Why didn’t you shoot him? Competition’s good for business?’
‘I’m not quite as quick with the shooting as you, remember?’ Jacob looked at the watchtower.
Fox was waiting by the door.
‘Did you have the body brought here?’
‘Indeed.’ Valiant let out a pitiful sigh. ‘I hope you have at least some idea of how difficult that was! I had to bribe the Giantling guard by the tomb with a year’s supply of elven dust, and then I had to hire the other two to bring the coffin here. I had to give a master performance in front of the Dwarf council to convince them that I was as disgusted as they were by the sudden disappearance of the body. I neglected my other business interests to come here. I want that crossbow. And I want to make a fortune from it! I’m planning on travelling to Albion myself, as soon as you have it. Wilfred the Walrus seems to be our most likely buyer, don’t you agree?’
‘Sure,’ Jacob answered.
He was just glad that Valiant didn’t know about his promise to Robert Dunbar. If that crossbow really did save his life, then he’d have to be careful the Dwarf didn’t shoot him.
The inside of the watchtower was empty, except for a few rusty lances and the remnants of a goat that had perished in its walls. The Witch Slayer’s body lay in one of the simple wood coffins in which the Dwarfs buried their dead mine workers.
Fox helped Jacob open the lid.
The simple coffin made the gown on the headless corpse look even more sumptuous.
Fox looked at him.
It had been a long hunt. But they’d made it this far, together. Just as they had promised each other in Valiant’s castle. Just the way their fellowship had shaped not only his but also her life for more than six years. There was hardly a memory from those years that was not shared by both of them. His second shadow. By now she was so much more than that. Nothing had ever made that clearer than these past months. She was a part of him, inseparably connected. Head, hand and heart.
‘What are you waiting for?’ His impatience was making Valiant stand on tiptoes in his bespoke boots. They had not only high heels but also soles that made him taller. Dwarf cobblers were very skilled at giving their customers a few extra inches.
Jacob first pulled the sack with the hand from his bag. As with the head, he barely felt anything when he touched the dead skin. He felt a brief twinge of worry that Guismond’s magic might have lost its potency after so many centuries. You’ll know soon enough, Jacob. The fingernails still had remnants of gold on them, but they were not mouldy, as one usually saw on the hand of a Warlock. Maybe Guismond had found a way to protect himself from that effect. The regular intake of Witch blood had terrible consequences. It attacked the brain and caused strong hallucinations. All Warlocks went mad at some point. If the archives in Vena were to be believed, already years before his death Guismond had began to distrust even his most loyal knights, and he had friends and enemies executed indiscriminately, usually by starving them to death in golden cages he’d hung from the walls of his palace.
The hand in the south.
Jacob leant over the body. The hand was stiff and cold, but it fit perfectly on to the stump of the arm, as though he was assembling a sinister doll.
The wind that came rushing through the tower’s windows was cold and damp like snow, and it made the lantern Fox was holding over the casket flicker.
Jacob opened the leather pouch that contained the necklace with the heart. He tucked back the burial gown until it revealed the gold-lined hole in the chest. The black heart Ramée’s granddaughter had worn around her white neck. Jacob felt nothing but a faint warmth as he took the jewel off the chain. It almost seemed to welcome his touch.
The heart in the east.
It fit into the gold-lined hole as though Guismond had a stone heart beating in his chest even when he was alive. And he may well have had.
The Goyl had kept the head in the same swindlesack Jacob had carried it in.
The head in the west.
Like the hand, the face was stiff and lifeless as Jacob pulled it out of the sack, but as soon as he put it on the stump of the neck, the golden lips parted.
The gurgle that emanated from the open mouth sounded like the last sigh of a dying man. The corpse’s pink skin turned grey, and the face began to crumble as though someone had shaped it from golden sand. The neck, the hands, the entire corpse crumbled into itself. Even the gown rotted in front of their eyes, until the casket was filled with nothing but grey dust mixed with a few specks of gold.
‘What the devil—?’
Valiant stared down at it, aghast, but Jacob breathed a sigh of relief. The Witch Slayer’s magic was still working. And he had found himself a new abode, like a bird that’s been let out of its cage.
Fox was already by one of the windows, looking at the ruins.
A shadow, manifested from the darkness of the night. It took shape very slowly, for what was moulding itself there was huge. Towers, battlements, walls. At first they were transparent, like smudged glass, but then they became stone, as sallow as the dust in the coffin.
The palace, which kept growing into the night like a stone thistle, had not been built to impress through its beauty. It was meant to do only one thing: inspire awe. Even from a distance, one could see the cages on the crenellated walls where Guismond had let his friends and foes starve to death. Beneath them Jacob could make out the Iron Gate. If the stories passed down from the times of the Witch Slayer were true, then the gate came to life with lethal force whenever an enemy demanded entry. A treasure hunter trying to steal Guismond’s crossbow was unlikely to be considered a friend.
Well, first you have to get to that gate, Jacob.
Outside, the Giantling was still piling rocks on his companion’s body. The higher he piled them, the more importance he accorded to his dead comrade. Every friend and relative who visited the grave of a Giantling added a stone, so that the graves often grew to the size of a small hill.
The prince was still unconscious. The Giantling had given him quite a thrashing, but he’d survive. Jacob wasn’t sure whether that was good news or bad. Imagining Louis on the throne wasn’t necessarily a comforting thought.
‘His father will feed you to his dogs!’ Lelou was screeching with a shrill voice. ‘He’ll have your hearts served for breakfast . . .’