“I doubt we’ll ever know the answer,” she said neutrally. “Lewis might have told us, but he’s dead.”
“There’s still the Monk,” said Jordan, helping her to her feet.
“Yes,” said Taggert. “There’s always the Monk.”
Jordan looked around him, and saw Gawaine was still kneeling beside the body of his dead wife. He walked over to the knight, and stood awkwardly beside him. “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I thought I could save her. I did try, Gawaine.”
“It’s my own fault,” said Gawaine. “I shouldn’t have left her alone for so long. She was always easily led.” He got clumsily to his feet. “Let’s go, Viktor. You have a throne waiting for you.”
“Do you think I care about that now?”
“Yes!” said Gawaine. “You have to! Because if you don’t, Emma and everyone else who’s followed you will have died for nothing! Now go in there and take the throne, Viktor. It’s waiting for you.”
“Yes,” said Jordan. “I suppose it is. There isn’t anyone left to stand between me and it any longer.”
From inside the hall came an explosion of light and sound, culminating in harsh, echoing laughter. Taggert looked at Jordan.
“The gateway, Viktor—we forgot about the bloody gateway.”
She stepped forward and threw open the double doors. Jordan stepped in beside her, and his stomach lurched sickly as he saw the new gateway. Midway between the doors and the throne, the Monk hung unsupported on the air. His robe was flung open, revealing a surging mass of light and color. There was no trace of a body within the robe, or that there ever had been. The Monk had become a living gateway, through which the Unreal could enter the Real world. Creatures out of a nightmare dripped in a steady stream from inside the Monk’s robe, like maggots from a rotting carcass. They fell to crawl, slide, and scuttle across the floor, and there were always more close behind. A gusting wind blew from the gateway, hot and prickly and rank with burning ammonia. And above it all, the Monk’s laughter rang on and on without ever a pause for breath.
Jordan stared in horror at the Unreal that had already taken root in the Great Hall. Horrid creatures scuttled up and down the walls, and clung upside down to the ceiling, feeding delicately on tiny morsels of fresh meat. Blood dripped from the ceiling in a steady stream. The floor was cracked and broken, and jets of flame shot up into the hall. The throne sat intact upon its dais, untouched by all the madness, but a barrier of seething thorns had grown up around the dais, sealing it off. Jordan looked helplessly at Taggert.
“I can’t do anything to stop this madness until I can get to the Stone, and I’d need an army at my back just to reach the damned throne. What am I going to do, Kate?”
“Only one thing we can do, Viktor,” said the steward evenly. “We’ll have to destroy the gateway. You did it once before.”
“That was different,” said Jordan. “This time the gateway’s aware and intelligent. And Unreal. The Monk’s got to be Unreal.”
“Right. I always thought he was, but I wasn’t even allowed to run tests on him as long as he was under Lewis’s protection. We’ve got to stop him, Viktor. If the balance here shifts too far, Castle Midnight will become one huge gateway through which the Unreal can run loose in the world.”
Jordan swallowed hard, and wished there was somewhere he could run to and still be safe. But as long as the gateway was open, nowhere would ever be really safe. He looked quickly around him. Roderik and the guards stood clustered at the main doors, their faces white with shock and horror; but Cord, Taggert, and Gawaine stood calm and ready to back him up. Their confidence gave him strength, and he nodded abruptly.
“All right, everyone, we’re going into the hall. You’ll have to try and hold off the Unreal while I make a dash for the Stone. Stay close together, watch each other’s backs, and if you get a chance at the Monk, take it. You might not get another.” He took a deep breath, and let it go. Keeping his voice calm and steady was one of his greatest acting triumphs, even if no one else appreciated it. “All right, my friends. Let’s do it.”
He moved forward into the hall, and the Unreal surged toward him in a monstrous tide. Misshapen creatures that had no place in the waking world boiled across the floor, and Jordan’s guards met them with flashing swords. The tide faltered and broke against the unflinching steel, and Jordan and his people pressed forward. Gawaine fought at Jordan’s left, his ax glowing bright as the sun. Taggert fought at his right, her balefire sword spitting and crackling as it hewed through flesh and bone alike. Behind them, Cord threw away his mace, and it vanished in midair. He pulled out of nowhere a huge and terrible war hammer, and swung it double-handed. The solid steel head alone had to weigh at least twenty pounds, and it was set on the end of five feet of polished oak. An ordinary man couldn’t even have hefted it, but Cord swung the hammer as though it was all but weightless. He was no more Real than the creatures he fought, but still his face twisted with loathing at the sight of what faced him. He might have been born of the darkness, but his heart and his loyalties lay with the light. And above them all, the Monk rotated slowly on the disturbed air, and madness surged through him into the world.
Things that looked horribly like men crawled up out of the cracks in the floor. Something huge and dark scuttled lightly down the wall and dropped onto a guard, crushing him to the floor. Gossamer strands of pink and purple drifted on the air and wrapped themselves around the fighters, tightening inexorably into glistening cocoons that devoured their contents. One whole wall became a vast inhuman face. A dozen men looked into its great golden eyes and went insane from what they saw there. And still Jordan and his people struggled ever closer to the throne.
Sir Gawaine fought tirelessly, his ax falling and rising with grim efficiency. He gave no thought to anything save the struggle, and blood ran down his face like tears. With Emma’s death, all his emotions had run out of him, save for a simple cold need for revenge. Nothing else mattered. Nothing mattered but killing the monstrous things that were responsible for all the evil in Castle Midnight. His ax rose and fell, rose and fell, and the creatures of the Unreal fell back before him. Gawaine cut them down and moved on to the next, feeling nothing, nothing at all.
Taggert fought at Prince Viktor’s side, and smiled savagely as her balefire sword sliced through every monstrosity that walked or crawled of flew within her reach. Nothing got past her to strike at Viktor, though many tried, and a slow steady pride burned within her. Even in the midst of blood and carnage, she still had time to find a small smile at how fast her feelings toward Viktor had changed. He’d not been a bad sort before his exile: just weak and easily led by the wrong people. She hadn’t cared much about him then, one way or the other. But the man who’d emerged from the chaos of King Malcolm’s death had been a much finer sort. A true prince of the Blood, worthy to be king. And a man Kate Taggert was growing increasingly fond of. She smiled again, and then put the thought firmly out of her mind. She’d think about that later. Assuming there was a later. She fought on, sweat running down her face, and soaking her chest and sides as a grinding fatigue grew slowly inside her. The balefire was a constant drain on her strength, but she didn’t dare give it up for an ordinary sword. It was the only advantage she had. She just hoped her magic would last long enough for Viktor to reach the Stone. If it didn’t, then perhaps everything they’d been through had been for nothing, after all. Taggert cut viciously about her with her shimmering sword. She wasn’t unhappy. She was doing what she’d been trained to do, in a cause she believed in, for someone she cared for. There were worse ways to die.
Cord swung his war hammer with murderous ease, and the Unreal fought each other for the privilege of dragging him down. Cord stood his ground and let them come to him. He felt no anger toward them. They were his brothers, in a way, born like him of random chaos and unreality, without mother or father, sprung adult and fully formed into a world that was forever alien to them. Cord looked like a man and felt like a man, but he had never made the mistake of believing himself to be a man. He was a whim made flesh and blood, a possibility given form and motion, nothing more. He was Unreal. And a traitor to his own kind, perhaps. But still he fought on, guarding the back of a man he’d come to admire, and a woman he might have loved, if he’d been Real.
Roderik cut and thrust with his sword, and wondered how everything could have gone so horribly wrong. His plan had seemed so perfect in the beginning, so simple and straightforward. Everyone had said so. But first the little things had got out of control, and then the bigger things, until finally he had come to realize that he was only a part in someone else’s plan. A bitter resignation was all that kept him going now: that, and a burning hatred for the vile creatures that swarmed around him. Whatever he might have been and done, the castle was his home, and always had been, and while he might not fight for a prince or a king, he’d fight to preserve his home from the foulness that threatened it.
Jordan swung his sword with an aching arm, stumbling and sliding on the blood-soaked floor. His blows were getting slower and weaker, and his lungs burned in his chest as he fought for air. He was an actor, not a soldier, and he knew he couldn’t last much longer. His will and determination were as strong as ever, but there was a limit beyond which even they couldn’t drive his failing body. He glanced about him as he fought, trying to see how the battle went, but the hall had become a confused mess of struggling bodies that defied any clear interpretation. There seemed no end to the Unreal, and no matter how many creatures fell, there were always more to take their place. His guards were fighting fiercely, but one by one they were falling beneath bloody fangs and claws, and not rising again. His colleagues around him were still fighting well, but he could see strain and fatigue stamped clearly on their faces. The throne on its dais stood safe and secure, and the throne barrier that surrounded it was only a few feet away, but it slowly occurred to Jordan that he might not have enough strength left to take him those last few feet. He worked his way over to Taggert, and they fought side by side.
“Kate, how much magic have you got left?”
“Not much, Viktor—I was trained as a steward, not a sorcerer.”
“Think you’ve got enough left for one good blast? Enough to clear me a path through the thorns to the dais?”
Taggert looked briefly at the gap between them and the throne. “Maybe. But that would take everything I’ve got. It’d be a hell of a risk. You’d only get one chance at the throne, and then the creatures would be all over you. You sure you want to risk that?”
“If you’ve got a better idea, I’d love to hear it.”
Taggert laughed shakily. “All right, you’re on. But you’d better be right about this, Viktor. Because if I get killed here, I’ll never forgive you.”
They shared a quick smile, and then Taggert focused her awareness inward, calling up the light of life that burned within her. It was already seriously diminished from what it should be, but there was enough left to do the job. If she was lucky. She dismissed her shimmering sword and discharged all her power in one controlled blast. Balefire flared up all around her, seething and churning, and then roared away from her toward the throne. The creatures in its path were incinerated in a moment, as though they had never been, and the thorn barrier exploded in a mass of flames. When the light died away again, a pathway to the throne stood clear and open. Jordan ran toward the throne, with Sir Gawaine close at his side. Unseen behind them, Taggert stumbled and almost fell as the last of her strength went out of her. Cord was quickly there at her side, beating back the Unreal with a cold, unyielding ferocity. Roderik gathered the guards together for one last desperate stand.
Jordan sprinted down the narrow aisle Taggert had opened up in the barrier. He could hear the thorns stirring feebly, but kept his eyes fixed on the throne. He scrambled up onto the marble dais, and then a barbed tentacle shot out of nowhere and scored a jagged red line across his shoulders. He gasped at the sudden pain and almost dropped his sword, but Gawaine was close behind him, urging him on, and a moment later they were both crouching beside the empty throne. Unreal life boiled all around the dais, but none of it dared draw near the Stone that lay beneath the throne. Jordan waited a few moments to get some of his breath back, and then pulled at the throne’s arm. It didn’t budge in the least. He looked at Sir Gawaine.
“All right, Gawaine, how do we get to the Stone?”
“Just say the words, Your Highness. The old words, handed down by tradition. Then the throne gives up the Stone, which rolls forward …”
“I know all that, Gawaine, but what exactly are the damned words?”
Sir Gawaine looked at him blankly, and then shook his head in disgust. “I’m sorry, Viktor. Of course you don’t know the words. The King would have told the Regent, but it was up to him to pass them on to whoever was designated as heir. Stand back, Viktor. I’ll get you the Stone.”
He thrust the head of his ax beneath one side of the throne and heaved upward, using the ax’s haft as a lever. The throne groaned and shifted, but didn’t lift an inch. Gawaine put his back into it. Muscles corded on his arms and back, and he grinned mirthlessly as his face grew taut and strained. The ax head glowed brightly, its magic negating the spells that protected the throne. The Unreal began to press slowly closer. And then the throne suddenly heaved up and fell over on its side, revealing the ancient Stone. Sir Gawaine stood panting beside it, his eyes half-closed with exhaustion.
“Well-done, Gawaine,” said Jordan. “Now what do I do?”
“Spill your Blood on the Stone, and swear allegiance to it as king. Then the Stone will accept you, and give you power over the Unreal.”
Jordan looked at him blankly. “Oh my God,” he said softly.
“What is it?” said Gawaine. “What’s the matter?”
“I thought I just had to say the right words, once I had the crown and seal … I never thought …”