Chapter Thirteen
The unnaturalness of the scene was quickly made apparent. A gale hit as soon as they emerged, a familiar chill on Dermot’s skin. Trees bore no leaves, branches languished in perpetual winter though they knew no snow. A perfect misery that made a pantomime of their island.
‘Dermot,’ Aubrey said as a particularly strong gust struck. ‘Please, won’t you tell me what’s going on?’
The world revealed itself as though distorted. Trees manoeuvred themselves so that, when seen again, they were out of place. Even the colouring of the realm was twisted, black but dusted with enough light to enable them to move forward.
Dermot sighed and walked away. It would do no good to linger in Maldred’s realm.
‘It is how Fand described. Your family have been poisoned by this creature.’ He spoke haltingly and without conviction, trusting Aubrey’s naivety.
The cruellest thing about the exchange was that he didn’t feel a tinge of guilt for his deception, only worry that Maldred might reveal the truth.
So content was he with Aubrey’s ignorance that, given an eternity, he would’ve willingly spoken not one word more.
‘I never knew there were such things!’ Aubrey cried, quietened only by Dermot shushing him. ‘Perhaps you did, being native to these lands, but I cannot believe how we’ve been treated. That poor woman and child, and my family! Do they even know themselves?’
At Aubrey’s audacious comparison, Dermot urged him on.
He couldn’t bear to listen to any defence.
Aubrey was an ignorant, sheltered as he was, seeing none of the tyranny below.
He was unlike Maldred, unsuspecting and without malice.
Though now, for the first time, innocence grated.
Robert and Tristan certainly knew themselves, the fiends, and Lord Stanley had tried to deprive them of their ancestral property.
The road was covered with dirt and became twisted as they advanced. With every step, the scene altered infinitesimally. Though Dermot was resolute, the woods themselves faltered, seemingly as bewildered as he.
‘Why would this creature torment us so?’ Aubrey said. ‘Doesn’t it see that everyone has been hurt?’
‘I don’t know,’ Dermot said. If Aubrey saw them together, surely a conclusion would be drawn. ‘Fand told me he may not be able to distinguish one human from the other. If he believes himself wronged, he will punish us all.’
‘I’m scared. What if he casts a spell on us? We don’t know…’ Aubrey murmured, startling as the path twisted again.
‘I think we’ve had enough speculation there,’ Dermot said. So far, faeries hadn’t proved particularly strong. Their power was trickery and subterfuge, not brute force.
‘Will killing this creature save my family?’ Aubrey asked.
‘It can’t undo what’s been done,’ Dermot said slowly. Rancid smoke struck them as he discerned a pair of faeries through the smog. A man and a woman were gazing sullenly at them, lying nude beneath a tree.
Seizing Aubrey by the shoulder, Dermot continued in the other direction.
The hilt of his sword sheened in the light of the crescent above.
He watched the moon haltingly, incredulous as it shifted into aunt and nephew, hanging dead from the pyre.
His actions repeated in the vision, including the night’s pleasures with Maldred.
His own wretched desire lay bare as innocents were snuffed out, and he could do nothing but cry out in horror.
‘No!’ Dermot screamed. He went down as though he’d been stabbed himself. Laughter was the only reply, sweet and saccharine, as he cried, ‘I lit the pyre. I struck the boy first!’
Dermot lurched, mud squelching uncomfortably against his backside.
Chest heaving with exertion, he met Aubrey’s eyes again, so black that flames reflected like a mirror to his soul.
‘You Stanleys are the bane of my life! And you, Robert, by far the worst! Why did I have to light it? Why couldn’t you have done it! ’
Aubrey said nothing. He raised his hand, but it faltered in midair.
Fog permeated the space between them. Dermot saw aunt and nephew dead, charred and burnt beyond recognition as Weston hauled them away.
The scene changed. No longer did Dermot stand dead-eyed, stooped over in the town square.
Fire followed him, swallowing every joy with malefic vengeance.
He watched as his village burnt, unable to move.
Hearing the cries of women and children, he tried to turn, but instead sat paralysed as men in armour rushed through him. They were Robert’s men.
‘Kill them all!’ a familiar voice crowed. More ghoul than man, frantic and wild. ‘Anyone who doesn’t tell you where my brother and that bastard are! Skewer them, throw them onto the fire!’
Tristan sat on his horse, clad in armour while the men dying around him wore their work clothes. He was as beautiful as Dermot remembered, skin pale and foreboding, though he wore his hair loose.
Dermot cried out. Striving to move an inch, he remained listless as he watched a woman being cast into the fire.
As Aubrey’s eyes met his, Dermot fell back with a scream.
They were surrounded. Faeries stared at them idly, each creature more abhorrent than the last. All were skeletal, lethargic and weak as if laced with poison.
‘Dermot,’ came one brilliant chime, ‘I see you’ve arrived without need for me to force you.’
Maldred stood near the rabble. A sheer robe hung loosely from his body as his eyes lighted on them. Dermot caught a glimpse of one thin, exposed ankle as it kicked Aubrey’s back.
Aubrey, to Dermot’s surprise, did not cry out. He merely inched towards Dermot, nestling into his shoulder.
‘And this is he!’ Maldred said, shrill. ‘Is he prettier than I?’ Satin flew through the air as Maldred came to meet them both.
He crouched like an animal, wild as he was deranged, fluttering between them as if to break his own neck.
‘Not so, he’s dark and cruel like a banshee!
And his face…’ His pretty fingers danced to Aubrey’s forehead, sweeping away at his curls.
With a cry, Maldred stood, stomping his bare foot onto the mud. ‘Haven’t I pleased you enough? We made a pact, you and I, with our tongues and far more besides.’
Dermot said, ‘We did no such thing. I was tricked into hurting my people, who you claimed to care for.’
‘So you let this invader cling to you, whose ancestors tormented your own? He’s from the family you hated!
Did you not despise them once, are you infatuated with them now?
’ Maldred spat, each accusation more caustic than the last. He lingered in front of Dermot, bright eyes staring down.
‘I would never hurt my people. Don’t you know that when tragedies strike, people are forced to revolt? ’
Dermot sat in the mud, Aubrey clasped to him.
The visions came unbidden; his mother’s house being torched.
He realised then that it was he who trembled, not Aubrey.
Eyes flitting to the demonic assembly, he said, ‘Just as they did when your father was killed?’ He never imagined he’d taunt Maldred, having been so meek in the past.
‘You…!’ Maldred screeched. ‘How can you speak of my father like that? He loved his people.’ In sharp contrast to any sort of mythological hero, he pointed at Aubrey.
‘And he forbade entry to outsiders. It is his family who tortures these people, not I. Dermot, why can’t you understand? I have only ever done right by you!’
‘You murdered two people!’ Dermot returned. Aunt and nephew burnt anew in his mind. ‘You know nothing, hidden away as you are. Many of these people don’t know your father’s name, never mind yours.’
Maldred screamed. ‘Why won’t they fight? Their own people are dying. Not even by burning, but starvation, poverty! All the wealth goes to one particular family, sparing not a jot for you and your kin. I have done all I can! No one will raise a finger…!’
Dermot got to his feet, prying Aubrey away.
Standing opposite Maldred, he realised he’d started to cry, much to his shame.
‘You will discover they are placid. No matter what wrongs are done to them, they will not fight for you. They’re perfectly content in bondage.
’ He recalled his miserable days in the kitchen, orchestrated by Béchard, but one word from Robert would’ve had them all without food and shelter.
Even Lionel Corrin, that lawyer at trial, wheedled like his life depended on it. All of them were enslaved.
The diatribe proved too complex for Maldred. ‘No! What of my father? Didn’t he die protecting them? And what of I, Dermot, having done all this? There must be some way to rid ourselves of these foul people, and you, Dermot, must lead!’
‘I will do no such thing,’ Dermot spat. Already his hand rested on the sword’s hilt.
‘We are all paupers. Exhausted men, terrified women, and children without food. How do you think our pitchforks will be met by Robert’s men, especially now he is so unhinged?
Soldiers will lay us out in a mere hour.
Then Robert will have a letter to parliament, decrying us as madmen who attacked him rather than the other way round.
We will be the villains! That is how it always ends.
’ He’d grappled with it all his life, defiant and proud, but no longer could he deny reality; raising a hand in defence warranted a massacre in reply.
‘Please, Maldred, say it is not true. That what I saw was a fantasy meant to frighten.’
Maldred said nothing. His eyes were glazed as he watched them, lip quirking.
‘What was it?!’ Dermot demanded. He rushed to Maldred, heart hanging in his chest like a man condemned. Hot tears sank to his lips so he tasted naught but bitterness. ‘My mother is there!’ He twisted his fingers around Maldred’s wrist and had the pleasure of hearing a crack.
‘I don’t understand why you will not help me,’ Maldred said. ‘Didn’t you say humans mate for life, that you and I had such a connection? And you claimed to hate those men! It is he, then, that has done this to you?’ His eyes lighted on Aubrey. ‘Seize that boy!’
‘You said you loved me,’ Maldred cried. Dermot heard the rustling of leaves as Aubrey was hauled up, but he could not afford to turn away. ‘I remember it, I do!’
As Dermot felt the boy tremble, he clasped his arms around him in an embrace. He ran his hands down the body he knew as the shivering subsided, then lower.
‘I do love you,’ Dermot murmured. He strove for calm as he continued caressing, Maldred having stilled against him, until at last his hand settled against the sword.
‘Then why do this?’ Maldred said. His eyes hadn’t strayed from Dermot’s, who had never before felt such intimacy. ‘You are one of my people. I love you too!’
At that declaration, Dermot tossed Maldred aside and stabbed him through the chest. All he knew was how tightly his fingers gripped the weapon, how his sword sliced through air until blood blackened his sight.
He had caught this wraith, a mythical beauty whose father he had prayed to as a child, and dirtied him until no divinity remained. At last, he pierced him with cold iron.
Maldred lay pale and statuesque, frailer than a man who’d lived one hundred years. He quivered in Dermot’s arms as he turned skeletal, skin almost transparent.
Bile spilled into Dermot’s mouth as he observed Maldred’s lips part and reveal fangs fit to devour a child. Upon the realisation that he’d allowed a monster to tempt him into bed, he near vomited.
‘You called me an angel once,’ Maldred said.
His sword struck true, and with all the strength his shaking hands could muster, he pushed Maldred forward, driving the blade deeper until the iron’s tip broke through his back.
To a cacophony of horror from the faeries, Dermot thrust him onto the earth and moved to get on top.
All that could be seen of the sword was the hilt secure in Maldred’s chest.
Maldred stared imploringly up at Dermot, still breathing. He did not have the strength to move or speak but he would not die.
The position resembling their trysts all too well, Dermot stood. Maldred had been bested twice now. Grimacing as he observed the blood on his clothes, he turned to Aubrey. The boy was surrounded by ash.
‘The others…’ Dermot began as Maldred sobbed.
‘They vanished,’ Aubrey said. He shivered as Dermot walked towards him, arms curled protectively around his knees.
Extending a hand, Dermot said, ‘Let’s go. What’s done is done.’
Aubrey’s palm fitted neatly into his own. The agreement with Fand was concluded.
He glimpsed Maldred caught in a perpetual loop, his soft skin healing only for the wound to burst back open. Then, he recalled the village. Fire stoked with the bodies of his kinsmen, people put to the flame with his name on their lips, and his own mother in danger.
Tightening his grip on Aubrey, Dermot raced towards the portal. It was his hope that word reached Fand, that she still held power that would stretch to the village. Mud squelched beneath them, screeches that might’ve been Maldred’s in the wind.
‘Dermot!’ Aubrey said. ‘What’s this? A trick?’
‘No,’ Dermot said, watching the scene. ‘Maldred’s last gift to us.’
He couldn’t bear to look. People being thrown onto fire replayed in his mind, Robert’s sterling force laughing all the while.
He could not imagine what had befallen his mother, knowing her to be brazen enough to challenge any man.
Tristan’s blood ran hotter than his kin; he was a simple sadist, one thoroughly revealed by Maldred’s potion.
‘Tristan!’ Aubrey gasped. ‘He’s at your village, the place is on fire! I recognise the same men who stood outside my room. Dermot, Dermot.’ The boy was in tears.
‘I caused this,’ Dermot admitted. ‘They’re the people I grew up with.
My mother is there. As soon as we step through that gate, I must set things right, and you need to run.
Hide in the forest nearby, let no one see.
Else Tristan will take you back to Robert, and I don’t know what will happen then. ’
‘But what about you?’ Aubrey cried. ‘They’re wearing armour, they have swords! Tristan’s had tutors! You’ll die!’
Dermot brought Aubrey into his arms as they stood against the portal, so close that the warmth of fire tickled his skin. Shaking his head, he said, ‘I can’t leave them.’
Then, taking him by the shoulders, Dermot said, ‘Run towards the forest as soon as we get there.’
Aubrey stared at him with wide, frightened eyes, saying nothing.
‘You’ll promise, won’t you?’ Dermot said. They still stood in Maldred’s realm, grass rotting beneath their feet.
Shifting his shoulders forward in a shrug, Aubrey murmured, ‘I suppose. But…’
They hadn’t time for pleasantries. As soon as Aubrey’s lips formed the words, Dermot threw them both into the portal.