‘THE VALNERINA,’ SAID Will, spreading out the yellowed map the next morning. ‘It follows the River Nera from these mountains’ – he pointed – ‘all the way down to the Tiber. We need to get there before Sinclair.’
Violet leaned in with Grace and Cyprian to look at the map.
They had gathered in the gatekeep. James, in his exquisitely tailored jacket and trousers, was leaning against the stonework by the mantel. The veiled lids and the languid pose was much as it had been last night, but his manner was that of a courtier deciding whether the room’s entertainments were worth his time.
The others were on edge, aware that the Hall was wide open, Sarah’s watch on the ramparts their only warning if Sinclair’s attack came. Because the Valnerina was not Sinclair’s only target. Sinclair was coming for this Hall even as he stretched his network out towards Italy. Sinclair’s reach was so large it seemed impossible to outpace or fight.
Violet said, ‘How?’
Will didn’t answer. The map stirred something uneasy in him. Even the names seemed to whisper to him. The Black Valley. The Blind Leap. The Black River. He knew very little about Umbria beyond the old books he’d read on his travels with his mother. It loomed in his mind as a place with its own history of Roman antiquity, the bones of a great past always present.
‘We pack and ride out.’ Cyprian’s shoulders were squared, ready to do his duty and leave, though the Hall was his life, the only home he had ever known. ‘Sinclair’s coming. We need to move fast, and stay ahead of him.’
‘There might be another way,’ said Grace.
Everyone turned to face her.
She shared Cyprian’s immaculate posture, but unlike Cyprian she often kept her own counsel. Now she spoke.
‘We don’t have to travel by ship,’ said Grace. ‘We don’t even need to leave the Hall.’
Will stepped forward, not understanding. ‘What do you mean?’
‘We can use one of the other gates.’
Will looked instinctively at the door. Outside, the immense gate to the Hall of the Stewards arched above them. He remembered riding through it for the first time, watching a line of Stewards vanish as they passed through a broken arch on the moors.
‘The other gates?’ Will said.
‘There are four gates.’ Grace pointed to the gate where they now camped. ‘North.’ And then she pointed to each direction. ‘South. East. And west.’
‘And?’ said Violet.
‘The Stewards only use one of them,’ said Grace.
The gate above them was carved with the image of a single tower. The idea that there were other gates was new. Grace’s words seemed to unlock a disturbing set of possibilities.
Cyprian was shaking his head. ‘There is only one gate. It opens onto the Abbey Marsh. The other gates lead to nowhere, to a kind of limbo, part of the magic that shrouds the Hall.’
‘Because they’re not open,’ said Grace.
Those disquieting words swirled in him. A door, he’d once said to the Elder Steward. A door that I can’t open. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Did you think the Hall was in England?’ said Grace. ‘It isn’t. The Hall of Kings was a meeting place. Each of the Kings came here from their own lands, to gather and converse. There are four gates. Four gates for each of the four Kings. Each one opens in a different place.’
‘You mean … the northern gate opens in England … but the others—’ The idea was so impossible it was difficult to absorb.
‘Open somewhere else,’ said Grace.
A gate that led to another country. It couldn’t be true, could it? A form of travel bypassing mountains and sea? Will’s mind raced with questions. Was this how the ancients had journeyed? Stepping from one part of the world to another?
Could they travel the same way? If so, could they reach Ettore in Umbria before Sinclair even knew they were gone?
‘How do you know this?’ said Cyprian.
Grace didn’t answer. Cyprian looked disturbed. It was likely unsettling to realise she knew things about the Hall that he didn’t. Only Grace had known of the chamber under the Tree of Light. Only Grace had known of the Elder Stone. Will wondered what other secrets Grace kept, details known only to the Elder Steward and her janissary.
‘Over the years, many artefacts have been unearthed in Italy,’ said Grace. ‘It’s a good bet that one of the gates opens there – or near there—’
‘We just need to find the right gate.’
Will said it as if it decided things. Perhaps this unconventional shortcut would give them the advantage they needed against Sinclair.
Yet there was something disturbing about opening a gate. Bringing power like that back was like waking a great beast that slumbered beneath the earth. Three great beasts, he thought. There was no way to know what would lie behind the three gates when they opened. They would be flaring a part of the old world into life.
‘If the gates are closed, how do they open?’ Cyprian said.
‘With magic,’ said Grace.
‘Stewards can’t use magic,’ said Cyprian.
It was inevitable, the drawling voice from behind them, the insouciant pose, ankles crossed, shoulders leaned against the wall.
‘But I can,’ said James.
‘No,’ said Cyprian.
James’s mouth twisted. ‘Wouldn’t want to pollute your pristine Hall with magic.’
‘It’s Dark magic.’
‘It’s not Dark magic,’ said Will. ‘It’s just magic.’
‘He’s killed Stewards with it.’
Cyprian’s green eyes stormed with a clear desire to cast James out. Or perhaps, like Elizabeth, to simply leave.
Will made himself say, ‘And now we’re using it to stop Sinclair.’
They gathered in the courtyard with packs and their horses.
With the threat of an attack from Sinclair looming, they had decided to split into two parties. At Will’s suggestion, Grace and Sarah would stay to find objects to barter for a ship’s passage to Italy, in case the gates didn’t work and regular travel became necessary. Violet and Cyprian would accompany Will with James to the gate.
Elizabeth was conspicuously absent.
Will tightened Valdithar’s girth and tried not to think about her avoidance of him. She was the only person here who had known Katherine. He wanted … he wasn’t sure what he wanted. His feelings for Katherine were raw-edged now that she was gone. He had viewed her as a means to strike at Simon, but everything had changed when she had kissed him and he had realised, wrenching away in shock, who she was.
He knew he didn’t deserve to mourn, and that Elizabeth was not his family. He bit down on the part of himself that wanted to find her, to check on how she was.
Grace and Sarah had come to see them off. James strolled up, and Violet handed him the reins to his black London thoroughbred. Cyprian was riding James’s white Steward horse, and Will watched James take this fact in with a little curl of his lips. But he said nothing, just took the reins Violet held out to him.
‘Your shield’s broken,’ said James.
‘You’re in yesterday’s clothes,’ said Violet.
The horses were laden with packs, sustenance for a day’s journey, with enough to spare in case the expedition ran long. Will had brought a wrapped parcel of his own.
‘There’s something I need to give you,’ he told Violet.
He went to Valdithar’s saddle pack. Unwrapping the cloth-swaddled bundle, he took out a sheathed sword. For a moment he just held it, feeling its weight.
‘Ekthalion,’ said Violet.
The sword that had been forged to kill him. In the ancient world, someone had wanted to do that badly enough that they had fashioned a magic sword for that single purpose … in those long-ago wars, it had been the only thing able to harm the Dark King. And now here it was, waiting.
Quiescent in its sheath, only its carved hilt could be seen. Etched into its blade beneath were the words of the prophecy. Will could read the old language, its true wording. He who wields the blade will become the Champion.
Violet looked nervous. The last time she had seen Ekthalion unsheathed, it had spewed black flame that had killed men and destroyed Simon’s ship, the Sealgair, its blade corrupted by the Dark King’s blood.
‘I took it from Simon,’ Will said. And with a single smooth motion, Will pulled it from the sheath.
Violet threw herself backward, shouting, ‘Will, no!’
It was a moment before she realised that nothing had happened. No explosion, no rain of death or coruscating black fire. She uncurled herself slowly, looking back at the sword.
The blade Will had drawn was pure silver. It winked in the daylight. There was no sign of the corrupting black flame.
‘You cleansed the blade,’ said Violet, in awe.
‘No,’ said Will. ‘Katherine did.’
Violet had come forward, drawn to the sword. ‘What about the prophecy? I thought whoever cleansed Ekthalion was destined to be some sort of champion.’
‘She was a champion,’ said Will, running his fingers along the writing on the sword’s sheath. ‘She was Blood of the Lady. But she came to the Hall too late.’
Too late for her, and too late for the Stewards.
He hadn’t known when he had followed the instructions of his mother’s old servant Matthew that he was stealing another child’s destiny. Even without the guidance of the Stewards, Katherine had found her way to the Hall. She had found her way to the sword. And she had drawn it against the Dark King.
Violet looked along the silver length of Ekthalion. Then she looked up at Will. ‘You should at least learn to use it.’ Her lips quirked.
She was doubtless remembering the few disastrous attempts he’d made to practise sword work with her. The missteps in footwork. The thunk of the blade into the bedpost.
He remembered it too, remembered her on the bed laughing, remembered the warm, good feeling of companionship that had been utterly new to him.
Then he remembered driving his sword into Simon’s flesh.
He had sworn to defeat the Dark King. He had sworn to stop the plans of his past self. And that meant that if anything … went wrong, he had to make sure there was someone who would kill him if it was necessary.
He looked down at the sword forged to kill the Dark King.
Then he looked back up at his best friend. Violet was a force for good. Violet wouldn’t falter.
He said, ‘I think … it should go to you.’
‘Me?’ Violet gave him a strange look, like she didn’t quite understand.
‘You’re the one I trust to do what’s right.’
He held it out.
Violet stared at it in a moment of decision.
On the ship, Ekthalion had burned out the bodies of any who had tried to touch it. It was cleansed now, but the memory of its destructive power lingered. Even reaching out for it was an act of courage. He remembered squeezing his eyes shut against battering fear as he held out his hand for it, anticipating his own death on the ship.
Squaring her shoulders, Violet took it, her hand wrapping around the hilt. She stood with sword and shield, and it looked right, Rassalon’s Lion on her left arm, in her right hand the sword of the Champion. She unbuckled her own sword, replacing it with Ekthalion.
They rode out.
It was unsettling to think they were following the path of the old kings, or that they might be about to open a gateway to the Valnerina, where Ettore held the key to stopping Sinclair. All you have faced will seem but a skirmish. He couldn’t guess what lay beyond the gate.
They rode deep into the citadel, where buildings gave way to untravelled ruins, the place so large the Stewards had inhabited and maintained only a small fraction of it. They reached sections of the Hall that Will had never visited, past cracked pillars, through rooms where shafts of light shone down from scraps of missing ceiling. Three times, they had to dismount and lead the horses over giant pieces of broken stone.
No one had come to this part of the citadel for years. It was ruined and deserted, as if it had been left to founder. It made him wonder why the gates had been abandoned, and what lay beyond them. Will imagined women and men of the old world streaming through the gates, fleeing to the Hall as the armies of the Dark closed in, the gates clanging shut for the last time. Which had been the final gate to shut? The last kingdom to fall? Serpent? Rose? Sun? Will buried the thought: his past self hadn’t fled with the refugees. He had been the one pursuing them.
They had been trekking through ruins for perhaps an hour, when they came upon the gate.
‘We’re here,’ said Will, looking up.
The courtyard was an uncanny, distorted mirror of the northern courtyard. Its size was the same, but most of the flagstones were rubble, the ground blanketed in weeds and grass that had spilled out of the cracks, clumps of dandelion, and scatterings of white clover.
The east gate itself rose to an apogee like steepled hands. Set in the outer wall, it was a different shape from the round arch of the northern gate. But like the courtyard, it was the same size, as if each of the four kings had entered the Hall with arrangements of scrupulous equality.
‘If Grace is right, one of the four kings lived beyond those doors,’ said James, his eyes on the gate.
‘You think it was the king I killed?’ said Violet, slinging her sword on her shoulder. ‘Or one of the others?’
The gate doors were barred with a thick metal crossbeam, rust-fused to the door iron. Where the northern gate was carved with the symbol of a tower, these doors bore a stylised rose. It matched the rose emblazoned on the throne in the great hall. Tower, rose, serpent, sun. Carved into the stone on either side of the doors, it seemed to confirm everything Grace had said.
Now that they were looking at it, the enormity of what they were doing bore down on him. Opening a hole in the world, with magic that had not been used in thousands of years. Will drew in a breath.
‘Before we can try any magic, we need to open the physical doors,’ said Will.
‘I’ll do it,’ said Violet.
They dismounted and tied up the horses on the far side of the courtyard. Violet approached the archway warily.
She looked small in front of the towering doors, a speck in front of a mountain. After assessing them, she put her shoulder under the metal crossbeam. The rusted bar screamed with the grating dissonance of tearing metal as her young body braced and flexed.
With a great metallic booming, a seam appeared, the doors opening on unnerving, empty limbo, from which came a peaty smell, as though the marsh lay beyond even if it could not be seen.
‘It’s as you said,’ Violet said to Cyprian, who was staring at her. ‘The doors open on nothing.’
The four of them looked out at the view, as Violet stepped back, panting.
‘My turn,’ said James.
He stepped forward, but there was no ancient script that he could read, or clear sign telling him what to do. Will walked forward with him, drawn by the leftmost carving of the rose. It was smooth, as if many hands had touched it, reminding him of the wall stone Grace had used to open the Tree’s underchamber.
‘This emblem …’ He put his hand on it.
James said, ‘I feel it too.’
He had mirrored Will, standing before the emblem on the right. The past felt very close. A ritual just out of memory.
James said, in a strange, slow voice, ‘Two symbols … it takes two people to open a gate …’
Lesser talents, Will almost said, and bit down on the words, which seemed to come from a deep place. He could almost see it, two robed figures, standing on either side of the gate, raising their arms to touch the carved emblems.
‘You’re strong enough to do it alone,’ said Will. He knew that, deep in his bones. And alongside that, a new quality to his pulse. A proprietary thrum. Prove it. Prove yourself. Show me.
‘The question is, what do I do?’ said James, coming forward.
‘Face the emblem,’ said Will.
James moved so that he stood right in front of the carved rose.
‘Can you try to – push magic into it?’ said Violet.
‘Push magic into it?’ James’s amused voice was dry.
Violet flushed. ‘I don’t know how it works.’
‘Clearly.’
‘Put your hand on it,’ said Will.
James reached out and placed his hand right over the rose. Nothing happened, but the sense of ritual intensified.
‘Fill it,’ said Will. ‘Fill it up with your power.’
James’s lips parted, and Will felt the sharp tang he felt every time James started to gather his power. The emblem under James’s hand started to shimmer. Will felt a throb, as if the air itself was pulsing. Then the arch itself began to shine, spreading up and out from James’s hand.
‘Tell it to open.’
‘I – Open,’ said James.
‘Say the true word,’ said Will.
‘Aragas,’ said James.
The air under the gate rippled. Scattered glimpses of something else began to appear and disappear, like fragments of a dream. The light was changing, the view growing darker. Will held his breath at the huge, impossible vision rising thirty feet from paving to arch top.
‘It’s working,’ said Cyprian, and the words sounded shaken.
‘Get the horses,’ said Will. ‘We cross as soon as it’s open.’
‘Why is it so dark?’ Violet’s voice, also shaken. ‘Is it night on the other side?’
It looked like night. The coalescing view was pitch-black in places, dark blue in others, with shafts of light filtering down from hazy patches of light above. Will could barely make out the ruin that swirled dimly into sight, wavering columns and huge broken steps. Tendriled plants swayed back and forward in the un-light.
And then Will saw a shape undulating across the sky, its motion languid, unnaturally slow for flight. Like a bird – but—
—it wasn’t a bird—
The horror of realisation, too late.
The gate wasn’t opening at night. It was opening underwater.
‘Close it! Close—’
His words were obliterated by the roar as, with the violence of a geyser, dark sea exploded into the Hall.
Will inhaled and choked, his lungs filling. He was thrown backward, water drowning him, wet salt in his nose and mouth. He struck out desperately for a hold, and found nothing, just the violent bursting swirl of the sea. In a jumbled panic, he thought the whole ocean would empty itself here, filling the citadel, until it too was submerged, like the ruin he had glimpsed beyond the gate.
And then, as suddenly as it had erupted, it ended.
The spume of water dropped to the ground, leaving them all gasping like fish thrown onto the planking of a boat.
The gate was closed, its magic source cut off.
James. Coughing out salt water, Will pushed himself up to his knees, his clothes soaked, dripping and heavy. To his left he saw Violet expelling water violently. One of the Steward horses had pulled free from its rope and reached dry land. The other looked drenched and aggrieved. Cyprian had been standing to one side of the gate, with the result that much of the ocean had missed him. He was sloshing across the remaining water, and offering a hand to Violet.
But he couldn’t see—
‘James!’ Will was racing over as James collapsed, his face dead white. ‘James!’ Will splashed to his knees in the water, pulling James up and against him. Ocean cold, James was barely breathing and his eyes were unfocused. It was more than just shock: he looked utterly drained, as if the gate had pulled out all his strength, Will the only thing holding him up. ‘James, can you hear me? James.’
‘Let’s not try that again in a hurry.’ James’s usual drawl was blurred.
The rush of relief was palpable, clutching James in his arms. Will let out a shaky breath.
‘What happened?’ Cyprian was staring at the gate.
The empty limbo was once again visible through the arch, making the underwater world they’d glimpsed seem surreal, as if it had never been.
‘That was the ocean,’ said Violet, in a soft, stunned voice.
‘An underwater kingdom?’ said Cyprian.
‘No,’ Will heard himself say. ‘It was a citadel, just like this one.’ A painful sense of loss sliced at him. ‘It’s been so long, it was covered by the sea.’
The thought of the other gates was suddenly awful. Who knew what might lie beyond their doors? Will forced himself to put aside the image of that watery ruin.
‘Whatever we saw, this wasn’t the right gate.’
‘Then we try again,’ said Cyprian. ‘There are two gates left.’
‘Oh, certainly,’ said James. ‘Just point me at them.’ Blond tendrils streamed water. He could barely lift his head, but his lip curled effectively.
‘He’s too weak,’ said Will. ‘He needs time to recover.’
He looked back up at the gate. He could feel James’s wet skin against him, beneath the layers of his sodden clothes. James was cold, too cold even to shiver, having poured all of himself into the gate.
‘And we need time to regroup. Whatever’s on the other side of the gate,’ Will said, ‘we need to be ready.’