The Midnight Gate (29 page)

“What is today?” asked Steve.

“I don't know. Friday by now, I should think.”

“No, the date. What's the date?”

“The twenty-eighth of February.”

“Huh.”

“What?”

“It's my birthday.”

“Really?” Belladonna was surprised—not that he had a birthday, of course; obviously, he had to have one of those—but that he told her about it. For some reason, he was never particularly forthcoming about the non-Paladin side of his life. She knew about the shop and she knew that his mother had disappeared, but other than that, she didn't know very much. She'd always just assumed that he saved his real conversations for his football-chess-club-tormenting friends.

“It's not really on the twenty-eighth,” he said, “it's on the twenty-ninth.”

“You were born in a leap year?”

“Yes.” He turned to her and grinned. “I'm really only three.”

Belladonna laughed, “Happy birthday.”

“Thanks.”

The clouds parted and the bright blue moon of the Land of the Dead shone down on the glistening lake and the dark fortress.

“It feels so far away,” said Belladonna.

“I know. Like the Proctors and the Empress and the school don't exist at all.”

“What if we can't figure it out? If we don't know what to do to stop them … and her?”

Steve turned away from the window and looked at her.

“We can't think about that now. If you start thinking about all the things that could go wrong, you can't do anything. You just have to pretend that everything's okay and then just deal with things when they come up.”

“Oh, I see,” said Belladonna, smiling. “That's how you manage at school, isn't it? You just don't think about how late your French homework is or how you're going to explain when Mr. Fredericks and Miss Venable actually compare notes.”

“Yes, I suppose it is. It's just
school,
you know. They're only teachers. It isn't the end of the world.”

Belladonna glanced at him sharply.

“Okay, yes,
this
could be the end of the world. But we can't worry about things we have no way of knowing. Right now we just have to concentrate on getting to the Queen of the Abyss. We'll figure everything else out later.”

Belladonna nodded. She felt envious of Steve's ability to set things aside and just tackle the problem at hand. It might not serve him well in the long run, but she'd give anything, right now, this minute, to be able to stop worrying—about the Empress, the Proctors, the names on the coins, and whether the Queen of the Abyss would be good or bad. She leaned further out of the window, examining the walls, the lake, anything to try to take her mind off it all.

“Um … having said that. There is one other thing,” said Steve.

“Yes,” said Belladonna, closing her eyes and letting the soft breeze riffle through her hair. “The day after tomorrow is the Day of Crows.”

She opened her eyes, turned away from the window, and smiled at Steve.

“Onward and downward?”

“Yes.”

They left the window and walked toward an open door on the far side of the room.

“Maybe the Queen of the Abyss will have a birthday cake for you,” said Belladonna.

“Oh, I'm sure she will. And balloons.”

They continued on their way, passing from one vast empty room to another. There was no furniture anywhere, no decoration on the walls, and barely any light, but they kept marching on through the great fortress toward the Queen of the Dead.

Hours seemed to pass, but just as Belladonna was beginning to think she might need a rest, she saw something up ahead. Something shiny, something that glistened in the moonlight. And it seemed to be swaying slightly, like fabric.

“Look! What's that?”

As they got closer, she could see that it was a curtain set into a carved stone archway. A slight breeze wafted in from a narrow window high on the wall and gently fluttered the material. Belladonna reached forward to push it aside.

“Ow!”

She snatched her hand back.

“What is it?”

“Something bit me!”

Steve peered at the curtain, then suddenly jumped backward.

“Oh, yagh!”

Belladonna rolled her eyes and leaned forward, then it was her turn to start in surprise—the curtain wasn't fabric at all, but a rippling sheet of spiders. Thousands of tiny black spiders.

The small creatures were linked together by their legs and small pieces of web, each grasping the next. Separately, they were nothing more than rather unimpressive spiders no more than half an inch across, but together they made an impressive symbiotic life-form. (Belladonna remembered symbiosis from Miss Kumar's Biology class, though she did wonder why she remembered it now when she couldn't recall it for the life of her during the test last month.)

She considered the problem, then slowly moved her hand toward it again. This time she noticed how the spiders moved toward the point where her hand would reach the curtain.

“Hello?” she said tentatively.

The spiders were just spiders, however, and declined to respond.

“You're talking to spiders,” said Steve drily.

“I think they're guardians.”

She considered the problem for a moment, then swung her backpack onto the stone floor and began rummaging through it. She pulled out the half-empty packet of ginger snaps again, then hesitated. It was the last food they had (other than whatever was in Steve's thermos), and if it took too long to complete the journey, there was a possibility that they might be forced to eat the food of the Dead. Or starve. But the results would probably be the same. On the other hand, if they didn't leave a gift for the spiders, they'd be stuck on this staircase until the crack of doom.

She put the cookies on the floor and pushed them toward the spiders with her toe. At first, nothing happened; the packet just lay there, rocking back and forth slightly. Then, with a movement so fast that Belladonna wasn't even sure she saw it, the curtain was gone and the spiders were on the cookies, a single pulsating mass of shining black.

Steve shuddered and Belladonna had to agree that the heap of spiders was definitely much worse than a gently wafting sheet of them. She gave them as wide a berth as she possibly could and walked through the archway.

“Come on!” she urged, as Steve hung back, staring at the spiders.

“I'm coming,” he said, rather unconvincingly. But he closed his eyes, got as close to the wall as he could, and inched through the arch.

“I'll bet Edmund de Braes wasn't afraid of a few spiders,” said Belladonna.

Steve ignored her and moved further into the new room and away from the spider arch.

“We're outside!”

He was right. A cold breeze whipped around their faces and there was suddenly light and air. It was still dark, of course, but at least now they were outside with the blue moon shining above and dusky clouds trailing across the sky.

Belladonna breathed deeply, feeling as though she had been trapped in a dismal cellar for weeks. And now they were in a garden.

Sort of. Or maybe it was a patio. It was obviously in the middle of the palace and was the size of a small lawn. Just about the size of the back garden at home, actually. Only here, instead of a border of skinny rhododendrons, the whole garden was bounded by a covered marble walkway, its coffered roof held aloft by elegant columns. In the center was a narrow path, bisected by a small reflecting pool. On either side of that, clusters of herbs released their heavy fragrances into the night. Without realizing what she was doing, Belladonna moved into the garden, reaching for the plants. She brushed their leaves gently and drank in their aroma.

She had never been a particularly garden-y person. Weeding and planting and water features held no charms for her. But ever since last October, when she'd seen what a truly dead world could be like, she'd had a new appreciation for everything green.

“Belladonna…” Steve was whispering and his voice sounded strange.

Then she sensed it.

They were being watched.

 

20

The Manticore

BELLADONNA SPUN AROUND
—there was nothing there, but Steve moved in close behind her.

“We need to move,” he whispered.

She noticed that he had the plastic ruler in his hand and wondered how he knew. How did he know that now was the time for the Rod of Gram? He hadn't taken it out when the harpy had threatened them, or when Euryale had first appeared, with her mask and head of venomous snakes.

“There's a door. Over there. Let's go.”

Belladonna nodded. They started to move slowly across the garden toward the door.

This time she really thought she saw something. A movement, just to her left, but too far back to be sure. They stopped and waited. Nothing.

But it was still there.

They took a few more steps. This time there was no question. She saw a tail—a long, muscular tail—vanish behind one of the columns.

“Was that a cat?” whispered Steve. “It sort of moved like a cat.”

“A really big cat,” said Belladonna warily.

They stood still and listened … and watched. Nothing.

“Okay,” said Steve finally, “this is stupid. We'll just go to the door, leave something for whatever it turns out to be, and carry on.”

Belladonna nodded and they both marched forward with what she hoped were looks of steely determination, but before they reached the end of the short garden, there was the crisp clicking sound of claws on stone, and the creature that had been stalking them leapt in front of the door.

Belladonna gasped and stumbled back, almost falling into the reflecting pool. Steve backed up slowly, standing between her and the creature while she scrambled to her feet. She was really impressed with his unruffled reaction because this was a creature like no other she'd ever seen.

Its body was that of a lion, but bigger than she remembered from trips to the zoo, and its fur was a weird sort of red color that darkened almost to burgundy on the legs and tail. The claws were dark and metallic, and clearly didn't retract, scraping the stonework and leaving white marks wherever the creature went. But it wasn't the body or the claws that were most striking about this guardian. It was the head and tail.

At first glance the tail seemed to be just the tail of a lion, thick, powerful, and twitching irritably. But as it moved, Belladonna became aware of something else, something at the end, where there should have been a small brush of fur. It was only as the creature took another step forward into the moonlight that they could see what it was—spines. An egg-shaped cluster of spines, each about four inches long, that generated a high-pitched whistle as the tail whipped through the air.

And then there was the head.

It was the head of a man, his bald pate glistening in the pale moonlight, eyes black and shining with the kind of bloodthirsty anticipation she'd seen on hyenas in nature documentaries, right before they ripped some unsuspecting antelope to shreds. He had a beard, short and ragged and the same shade of red as the body. But it was the teeth that really got her attention.

She didn't see them at first. The mouth was closed as he paced back and forth in front of the door, his tail whistling through the night air. Then he stopped and smiled, but this was no ordinary smile. The mouth was far wider than a human mouth could ever be, and the teeth that the smile exposed were narrow and sharp, more like needles than teeth, and like the claws, they appeared to be metallic. All of which was bad enough, of course, but then he opened his mouth as if tasting them on the air, and revealed three rows of the murderous daggers, each row tipping slightly backward to make absolutely certain that any prey, once caught, would never escape.

Belladonna thought of the Venus flytrap that she used to have on the windowsill in her room and was suddenly filled with sympathy for the flies. She glanced back at the archway with the spider curtain, every instinct telling her to run. Steve shook his head.

“He'd get us long before we reached the spiders,” he whispered, then turned to the creature. “Are you … the guardian of this door?”

The tail whipped back and forth as the creature stared at them. It occurred to Belladonna that it might not be able to talk, human head or not.

“Because—”

“I am,” it said suddenly, as if the act of speaking was an annoying postponement of the eating portion of the evening, “I am the
only
guardian.”

Belladonna had to agree with him there. So far the guardians they'd encountered had been little more than glorified ticket takers.

“We're trying to reach the Queen of the Abyss,” she said, feeling more confident now that he had spoken.

“No,” he spat. “You both die here.”

He stepped forward. Belladonna and Steve stepped back.

“What … are you?” asked Steve.

“I am a manticore,” he said. “My name is of no concern to you. Stand still. You'll only make it worse by running.”

Belladonna thought that was very unlikely. She took another step back and her foot went straight into the reflecting pool. She ignored the feeling of the cold water seeping into her shoe and up her sock, and slowly removed her backpack.

“We were told that if we left a gift with each of the guardians, we would be allowed to pass.”

“You were told wrong,” said the manticore.

Belladonna glanced at Steve, but the ruler was still just a ruler. She reached a hand into her bag and removed Dr. Ashe's book.

“What is that?” demanded the creature.

“It's a book.”

“I can see that. How can a book help you now?”

“It's a book of magic,” said Belladonna, opening it slowly.

“Is it, now?” said the creature, scornfully.