The Scar-Crow Men

disappeared, though her eyes were filled with desperation, and, perhaps, fear.

It was a silly thought, she told herself. Just a dream. Nothing more.

And as that notion faded, she was struck by another. She felt a chill run through her entire body.

She was not alone.

Rigid with fear, the young woman lay on her back on her hard bed. A shaft of moonlight fell through the window across the linen sheet lying loosely over her white nightgown. The rest of her chamber was in deep shadow, but she was convinced someone sat on the stool next to her bed.

Grace could sense the presence looming over her, and smell a hint of musk, but more troubling to her, she discerned a faint, wet smacking in the stillness of the room. Fighting back the rising panic, she strained to hear.

Lips, she thought. The smacking of lips.

Someone was eating.

The young woman shuddered. Flee! the voices in her head screamed. Save yourself! Her heart thundered, but she stayed calm, telling herself that if she made a sudden move the intruder could kill her before she was halfway across the chamber.

With an almost imperceptible movement, Grace eased her trembling hand through the dark to the small stool on the other side of the bed where she had left her comb and looking glass. Her fingers closed on the cool silver handle of the mirror and she brought it back up steadily.

The wet smacking sound now seemed as loud to her as a tolling bell.

Behind her fear, the young woman felt sickened. What was it eating?

Grace thought of lashing out with the mirror and then escaping in the confusion, but her curiosity was getting the better of her. She had to see. With a smooth, gentle movement, she eased the looking glass into the moonbeam and tilted it so the milky light reflected across her bed.

Her chest tight with apprehension, the young woman snapped her head round to see what was caught in the glimmer.

In her plain, grey nightgown, Elinor, the Queen’s maid of honour, was hunched over like a bird of prey, talons curled. Her eyes were wide and white in the moonlight, her hair a wild, wispy mane.

Grace shrieked.

The older woman leapt to her feet, knocking over the stool, and lurched out of the chamber with the door banging behind her.

Sitting up in her bed, Grace covered her face and tried to calm her racing heart. She told herself Elinor must have been sleepwalking, although every sign had suggested the maid of honour was wide awake. But the younger woman was troubled most by what she had seen her friend doing in that brief flash.

A lock of Grace’s long, well-combed hair had been clamped between the maid of honour’s thin lips. She felt the end of the strand, still wet with saliva.

Elinor had been eating her hair.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

In the sweet places inhabited by the Unseelie Court, there is always music in the air, and beauty, and joy, and the haunting fragrance of honeysuckle. But not here. Fabian of the High Family wipes away a single tear searing his cheek and wonders how long he must endure the miseries of the cold human world. It is dark, the grand horizons obscured by stone walls, and echoing through them the thunderous rhythm of hammers upon anvils beating out the final days of man.

Fabian dreams of mirrors.

Selecting a long shin bone from the jumbled pile beside him, the doleful being proceeds to carve shapes and symbols in the yellow-white surface. Dressed in inky doublet and breeches, his hair black, his eyes too, Fabian reflects on the harsh decisions forced upon his people, known at times in the tongue of men as the Fay. And harsh they certainly are, for all poor mortals, that race which he admires so, and pities too. If only his brothers and sisters saw the Sons of Adam in the same light.

Sons of Adam. Fabian laughs at that. The stories they tell themselves! If only men knew the truth.

Finishing his carving, the black-garbed Fay takes the shin bone and inserts it into a hole in a circular piece of stone cut from bedrock under the light of the full moon. Silver symbols glisten on the stone in the seething red light of a brazier. Fabian waves his slender fingers over the collection of objects scattered across the bench — the skull of a bird, a pink seashell taken from the beach at dawn, a five-bladed knife, a globe that throbs with an inner white light — and wonders which one to select next.

The booming of the hammers does not slow, and it never stops.

Two looking glasses stand in the gloom on the edge of the low-ceilinged chamber. The surface of one clouds and a dim light appears within it. When the surface clears, Fabian sees a spectral figure, tall and thin and dressed all in grey, his long hair a gleaming silver with a streak of black along the centre. Clinging to his arm is a hairless, ape-like creature with golden eyes. It stares too long, too hard.

‘Lethe,’ Fabian says in greeting, his attention still focused on his work. ‘The Corpus-Scythe sings to me. I can hear the shape it wants to be. Soon now. Soon.’

The silver-haired being inscribes a circle in the air with his index finger, and laughs.

‘Do not hurt them. They shine like stars, if only you could see it,’ Fabian whispers, his voice almost lost to the din.

‘Your pleadings are tiresome,’ Lethe sighs. ‘Whatever you have discovered in your unpickings, the fact remains that the race of men are the architects of their own destruction. Have you forgotten that our Queen is now held at the top of a tower in one of their palaces?’ He clutches a hand to his mouth for a moment, fighting queasiness. His voice rising to a shriek, he continues, ‘Our Queen, a prisoner. Alone, suffering, a victim of man’s betrayal. The fuel for the very defences that have locked us out of the land where we once sought our sport.’

The ape-thing places one paw upon its master’s cheek to calm him.

‘We will have our Queen back, Fabian. But that is only the start,’ Lethe continues, his voice trembling with emotion.

Fabian chooses the five-bladed knife and affixes it to the stone with gold wire, muttering the ritual words under his breath as he does so.

‘Then we are to proceed?’ he asks when he has finished the next stage of his long, intricate task.

The silver-haired being claps his hands together with glee. The hairless ape-thing mimics its master. ‘For the Fay, for the great, glorious Unseelie Court, a new age beckons. We step out from our sweet, shadowy homes into harsh light. This course has been thrust upon us, but we shall not flinch. We shall remain resolute. And soon, soon now, only one world shall exist. Our world.’

The second mirror clouds, then glows. Fabian glances up to see inscrutable Deortha, staff in hand, the skulls of mice and birds braided into his hair. Behind the conjuror, four candles flicker in the centre of a stone chamber, their flames reflected in a hundred golden-framed mirrors covering the walls. A black-robed man kneels in front of a wooden cross. Muttered prayers rustle out into the still room.

‘Da, quaesumus Dominus, ut in hora mortis nostrae Sacramentis refecti et culpis omnibus expiati, in sinum misericordiae tuae laeti suscipi mereamur.’

The praying man wears a devil’s mask on his face and the wings of an angel on his back. Deortha gives Lethe a cold smile and a deferential bow. ‘Exaltus. We are to expect you soon?’

‘Soon. I am eager to look out over my new realm.’ Lethe strokes slender fingers across the head of the golden-eyed creature. It mouths the same words as its master speaks. ‘Your puppet dances to the tune we play?’

Deortha glances at the praying man. ‘His weakness was easy to find, and even easier to prise apart. He has allowed his love of his God to unbalance his fragile wits, and now he sees his deity everywhere. Even here.’

The two Fay laugh. Fabian shakes his head sadly.

‘And so he finds sanctity in the blood he spills,’ the conjuror continues. ‘He kills by our design. The victim, the