The Midnight Gate (27 page)

“The noble?” said Euryale with a start that seriously alarmed the snakes, which went into a tongue-flicking frenzy.

“To stop the—”

“The Empress, I know. Has she found the Circle?”

“The what?”

“The stones, the standing stones? Has she found them?”

“I don't … maybe…” stammered Belladonna, remembering her dream.

“Typical,” muttered Euryale, wringing her hands and glancing up at the walls of the citadel. “I told her not to choose someone so young, but did she listen to me? Noooo. And now look where we are.”

“Where?” asked Belladonna, suddenly hoping that perhaps they'd found someone who could actually tell them what was going on.

“What?”

“Where are we? And who did she choose? Me? Are you talking about me?”

Euryale looked at her like someone who didn't realize she'd been speaking aloud. She shook her head sharply, making the snakes writhe and hiss in discomfort.

“Yes. No … It's not for me to say.”

“Um … are we going to have to go through this with all seven guardians?” asked Steve, rolling his eyes. “Because if we are, then it's going to take a really long time to save the Nine Worlds …
again
.”

Euryale spun around and glared at him. “You are a very annoying boy,” she hissed.

“I know,” said Steve, smiling. “Everyone says so.”

The gorgon continued staring at him, and Belladonna began to get the uneasy feeling that she was considering removing her mask, but she turned to Belladonna instead.

“Do you have a gift?”

“Yes,” said Steve, reaching into his bag and producing half a pencil and a ballpoint pen. “Here.”

Euryale's mask was stark and plain, but her stunned contempt for the proffered gift came through loud and clear.

“What,” she said slowly, “is that?”

“It's a gift. Hank said that—”

“Hank is an idiot. The gift does not need to
have
value, but it must be
of
value to one of you, at least.”

“Sorry?”

“Pencils and pens would not fall into either category.”

“What if it was a really nice pen, like one of those fountain pens they sell in the posh stationery shop in town?”

“Do you have such a pen?”

“No. But if I did, then it would
have
value, wouldn't it? So when you say that pencils and pens don't have any value, that's not strictly true.”

The gorgon just stared at him.

“I'm really tempted to just take off my mask and turn you to stone.”

“Don't do that!” said Belladonna quickly. She rummaged through her bag and produced the Wild Hunt's horn. “How about this?”

“What is it?”

“It's a horn. It calls the Wild Hunt.”

“Don't give her that!” said Steve. “We might need it.”

“It has to be of value. Here. Take it.”

“Fine,” said Euryale, snatching it off her without even looking. “Off you go, then.”

“Great!” said Belladonna in an artificially cheerful way that she knew would fool no one. “Thanks very much!”

Steve looked like he was about to say something else, so she gave him a shove toward the opening in the wall. The important thing now was to find the final coin. They'd just have to manage it without the help of the Hunt.

The gorgon watched them for a few moments, then made a disapproving smacking sound with her teeth and disappeared inside her temple.

“Hey!” said Steve, turning around. “Did you hear that? I've heard that before.…”

“Oh, come on,” said Belladonna.

They clambered over the last few rocks to the gap in the wall, which turned out not to be a gap at all but two dark pewter-colored metal gates that rose, smooth and unmarked, to the full height of the walls.

“How are we supposed to—” began Steve, but before he could finish, one of the great gates ground slowly open, just enough to let them pass.

“Yowza,” he whispered.

“Yes,” said Belladonna, “yowza.”

They looked at each other, took a deep breath, and walked into the House of Ashes.

 

19

The Guardians of the Gates

EVEN AS BELLADONNA
and Steve passed under the massive lintel at the entrance of the House of Ashes, the door began to swing shut, and as it crashed into place, Belladonna couldn't help feeling that there was a finality to the reverberating sound, a sense that from here there could be no going back.

She hesitated for a moment and stared at the gray metal of the door with its eight massive iron hinges and six rusty bolts.

“This is weird. I thought there'd be a courtyard.”

“What?” She turned around, but Steve wasn't really speaking to her.

He was right, though. She had assumed there'd be a courtyard too. In almost every castle she'd ever visited, either with her parents or on school trips, once you passed through the main gate, you were either in a central courtyard or in a passageway leading to a central courtyard. But the gates of the House of Ashes opened onto a street.

Not like a street at home, of course. This one was more like the pictures she'd seen of medieval towns, with buildings huddled close together and upper stories hanging so far out that they seemed about to tumble down from their own weight. At ground level were shops that opened directly onto the roughly cobbled street, where the worn tracks of millennia of cartwheels could be seen on either side of a wide stone gutter. Every detail was clear and it took a few moments for Belladonna to realize that it shouldn't be like that. It was night. Or it had been night outside the walls. Inside, it was something else altogether. It was as if the citadel were stuck in a perpetual dusk, like a rainy afternoon on a winter day, but without any actual rain.

“Come on,” she said, trying to sound grim and confident, “let's go.”

Steve nodded and they both took a deep breath and started to walk down the street. Their feet echoed in the stillness that lay over the place, and Belladonna imagined that this was what it must have been like for the first people who discovered Pompeii. The silence enveloped them as they passed by bakers, butchers, grocers, and garages. Nothing moved within the looming houses and shops, no breeze caught the awnings, and no birds or animals foraged or sang.

But Belladonna knew she and Steve weren't alone.

She knew that eyes were watching their every move, watching them glance into the shops and peer down the narrow passageways. They were watching from doorways and windows and craning to see them from the upper stories.

“Do you feel like someone's watching us?” whispered Steve, glancing left and right and trying to walk as quietly as possible.

Belladonna nodded. Once, she slowed down, convinced that someone was about to come out, but no one did. She imagined that this was what life was like for people who couldn't see ghosts: feeling the prickle on the back of the neck, the slight movement out of the corner of an eye, but never seeing a single spirit. For Belladonna, however, it was a totally new experience. It was as if these eyes and their owners were another class of ghost altogether, ones who hovered not between this world and her own but between this world and somewhere else entirely.

She decided to pick up the pace—there was no point in dwelling on who (or what) was watching them. They just needed to get to the Queen of the Abyss as fast as possible.

“Wait!” hissed Steve, raising a hand to hold her back. “There's someone there.”

“No, I think it's just our—”

“Who seeks to enter?” boomed a hollow, sickly voice.

Belladonna froze and looked at Steve, who was staring intently ahead. She followed his gaze and realized that what she had thought was just another shop door was actually a narrow iron gate that extended upward until it became lost in the general gloom. She looked around for the source of the voice and was finally able to make out a shadowy figure standing to the left of the gate, so completely swathed in black that he almost seemed to become one with it.

“Who seeks,” he repeated sternly, “to enter the home of She Who Watches?”

“Um … Belladonna Johnson,” said Belladonna.

“And Steve Evans.”

Belladonna flinched as their voices echoed up and down the street. The black-clad figure stepped forward, but she still couldn't make out any details of his face or figure.

“Are you living children?” he asked.

“Yes,” whispered Belladonna.

“Why would living children wish to enter the domain of the Mistress of Death?”

“We've come to ask for the Ninth Noble.”

“The what?”

“The Ninth Noble,” said Steve. “It's a coin.”

The black-clad creature stared at them. At least, Belladonna assumed he was staring. It really wasn't possible to tell
what
he was doing.

“Do you think,” he hissed finally, “that this is some sort of shop?”

“Well, obviously it's not really a coin,” said Steve testily. “It just looks like one.”

The black figure stared again, then turned and walked back to his post next to the gate.

“You must leave something with me,” he said.

“I know … um…” stammered Belladonna.

She swung her backpack to the ground and pulled out Dr. Ashe's bell.

“Will this do?”

The creature leaned forward, then seemed to nod.

“It is adequate. Place it on the ground before me.”

“But—” began Steve.

“It calls the Dead,” whispered Belladonna. “I really don't think we're going to need it here.”

“Oh. Right. Good point.”

“Place it on the ground!”

Belladonna did as she was told, and the guardian reached down and picked it up.

And then he was gone. He seemed to have melted completely into the shadows.

“Whoa,” whispered Steve. “These people are creepy.”

The tall iron gate slowly creaked open. Steve pulled it wide and they stepped through.

The street was gone. Now they were on a dirt road bounded by high stone walls. The path curved up toward the towers of the citadel like a massive spiral stair, and every hundred feet or so, torches burned in braziers set into the rock.

“I don't like this,” said Steve. “It's a bit too much like that thornbush thing of Dr. Ashe's.”

“Maybe we should find another way.”

Steve nodded and they turned back, but the iron gate had gone. In its place was just another piece of gray wall. It was as if the gate had never existed.

“Great.”

He glared at the wall as though he could make the gate reappear by sheer force of will.

“Come on,” sighed Belladonna. “This is going to take forever if we keep stopping.”

Steve reluctantly joined her and they began walking along the path.

“Have you got enough in there for all seven guardians?” he asked, nodding toward her backpack.

“I think so,” she said. “I've got a roll of Parma Violets, um … some ginger snaps, a photo of my Mum and Dad…”

“I've got my Geography homework, my thermos … the ruler.”

“You can't give the ruler away,” said Belladonna. “We might need it.”

“I know, but—”

Belladonna was destined never to know what he was going to say because at that moment, something else spoke. Something with a sibilant voice. Something that clearly thought it was whispering.

“These ones are alive!”

“No, they're not!”

“Yes, they are! Look, that one's tired. The climb is making it pant a little. Only the live ones do that.”

Belladonna and Steve stopped and stared at each other.

“Uh-oh,” said Steve.

Belladonna put her finger to her lips to stop him talking and strained to look ahead. There was nothing there, just more wall, but the voices had been real, and she could hear something else as well.

“Can you hear that?” she whispered.

Steve nodded slowly. The sound was like sliding or rumbling. They looked up. Above their heads the walls were topped with crumbling battlements, just like the ones Belladonna remembered from old films on television or the tops of castles on family holidays to Wales. But there was nothing there that could have spoken.

“Did you see that?” whispered Steve urgently. “There! Look!”

Belladonna looked up at the top of the wall where there was a larger break in the ramparts and she saw it. The shimmer of green scales and the flash of three-lidded eyes.

“What should we do?” whispered Steve.

“Walk.”

He nodded and they marched forward, straining to hear whatever was behind the wall.

Finally, after what felt like hours of hard slog up the steep pathway, they rounded a corner and found themselves facing another door. This one was set into the stone wall and its surface was smooth and gray. But there was no sign of a guardian. Belladonna glanced around, confused.

“Hello?” called Steve hopefully.

“Just a minute!” came the reply. “We'll be right there!”

“No, we won't,” muttered another voice. “And if you think I'm slithering over that wall, you are sadly mistaken!”

This time Belladonna knew where the voice was coming from—it was directly overhead.

They tilted their heads up to the top of the wall and saw three reptilian faces staring back. Belladonna smiled hopefully. The creatures looked very big, but not unfriendly, with their iridescent green scales and pointed faces. Their eyes were dark yellow flecked with black, and each had a narrow red stripe that ran over the top of its head across its nose and down to its mouth where a needle-like purple tongue continually tested the air.

“Hello,” said Steve again. “Are you the guardians of the gate?”

The creatures glanced at each other, then vanished from view, but Belladonna could hear them arguing in hushed, angry tones as they moved along the inside of the wall toward the door.