The Midnight Gate (33 page)

Miss Parker smiled briefly and walked on to the center of the room, where she was suddenly surrounded by several small, hunched creatures that seemed more like rounded piles of old clothes and trash bags than anything else. She spoke quietly with them for a few moments, after which two scuttled off in different directions. She turned around, obviously expecting Belladonna to be right behind her.

“Come over here!” she said. “This is no time to be dawdling. Tell me about your foster parents.”

Belladonna told her about Mr. and Mrs. Proctor and about Grandma Johnson trapped in a nonexistent room in the nonexistent building.

As she spoke, the two small creatures returned, each carrying a tray covered with a black cloth.

“How interesting,” said Miss Parker, in a tone that suggested it wasn't interesting at all. “These are your things; take them.”

She pulled the cloth from the trays and revealed the gifts that Belladonna and Steve had left for the guardians. They eagerly put everything back into their bags and raced to catch up with Miss Parker as she strode across the cavernous hall.

“Hurry,” she said, without looking back. “We have to go.”

They passed out of the hall and through a succession of dismal rooms.

“And these bad dreams … describe them to me.”

“They lead me outside and Mr. Proctor puts something around my neck. Then … I say some Words, but it doesn't feel like it's me. It's as if I'm watching from a corner inside my head.”

“Hm. Clever,” muttered Miss Parker as they reached the foot of a spiral staircase. “Carry on.”

“And then these stones appear. A stone circle. But it's not like any of the ones in Steve's mum's books. It looks new. And I keep saying Words and the Shadow People come.”

They climbed the staircase in silence and Belladonna found herself staring at another of the spider curtains. She glanced back at Steve, who was on the stair behind her, and saw him shudder at the sight of the entwined arachnids.

“Bartamakh,”
muttered the Queen of the Abyss.

The spiders immediately sprang to life, crawling over one another away from the right-hand doorjamb. The effect was like a curtain drawing itself, and as soon as the opening was wide enough, Miss Parker marched through.

Belladonna felt the cold sting of night air on her cheek as she followed, stepping out onto the roof of one of the soaring towers of the House of Ashes.

“We must go to Mynydd Anhrefn,” said Miss Parker calmly.

“Where?” said Steve.

“It's a mountain. Hop in.”

Just as Belladonna was wondering what, exactly, they were supposed to hop into, the clouds parted and the bright moonlight illuminated the top of the tower.

Steve's mouth dropped open, and Belladonna felt for a moment as though her heart had stopped. She'd never seen anything like it. There, on the roof, a mere two meters away, was a large black chariot inlaid with gold and dripping with mourning crepe and the braided loops and tassels of funeral passementerie. It had two huge black wheels, the outer spokes of which were studded with deadly curved blades that glistened in the moonlight.

“Get a move on,” said Miss Parker, in a tone most people use when they're urging the reluctant family dog to jump into the back seat.

Belladonna and Steve stepped into the chariot and looked around. There was no seat, just a narrow bar across the top, over which a set of black reins had been loosely draped. Belladonna peered into the darkness in an effort to make out what would be pulling the chariot, but all she could see was something large and dark shifting about in the shadows.

Miss Parker jumped in beside them, picked up the reins, and gave them a sharp tug.

“Come on, Odysseus!” she snapped. “Wake up!”

A growl issued from the shadows. The sort of growl that Belladonna had once heard from the lions at the zoo right before they had been fed. It was deep in the throat and so low it was felt more than it was heard.

The creature in the shadows slowly uncoiled itself and shuffled into the light, stretching its great leathery wings and tasting the air through its open beak.

Steve gasped and stepped back from the front of the chariot.

“That's a pterodactyl!” he whispered.

“Yes,” said Miss Parker. “He's rather magnificent but terribly bad tempered.”

She snapped the reins again and the pterodactyl hissed at her, his deadly white teeth catching the moonlight and sending a shiver down Belladonna's spine, but he obediently took his place at the front of the chariot.

Belladonna shifted uneasily; she couldn't see how the whole heavy equipage was ever going to get airborne, but before she had time to really think about it, Miss Parker struck the chariot sharply with her staff.

“Adhu-bakha!”
she commanded.

The chariot slowly rose up and hovered about three feet above the top of the tower. Miss Parker snapped the reins again and the pterodactyl spread its huge wings and launched itself off the battlements, dragging the chariot behind as it plummeted toward the ground. Belladonna held her breath as the crenellated walls beneath rushed up to meet them. But just as she'd decided that there was no way they'd ever be able to pull out of their dive, the dinosaur caught an updraft and soared up and away, his wings beating lazily in the darkness.

The chariot shuddered as he hauled it upward, gaining altitude with each strike of his wings.

“He does this on purpose,” said Miss Parker. “Always so dramatic.”

The mourning cloth and passementerie snapped and fluttered in the wind as the chariot circled the House of Ashes twice, while clouds of bats poured from the tops of the towers and formed a throbbing escort.

Belladonna looked down as they sped over the lake, the inky waters shimmering in the moonlight. Ahead were the forests that bounded the lake and the sweeping expanse of desert with its huge, knife-edged dunes.

The journey to the lake seemed so long ago and she wondered what Elsie and her parents were doing now. Had they stayed at the lake, waiting for their return? Or had they driven back to the spectral version of the town? She glanced up at Miss Parker, the Queen of the Abyss, as she stood tall and regal, her hair and robes barely moving in the icy wind, the black reins wound around her long white fingers, and for the first time she thought that everything really might work out alright. After all, the Proctors were nothing, less than nothing when compared to this woman who had seen the worlds born and would probably see them die. How could they even think that whatever they had planned could possibly work?

“Miss Parker?” she yelled, straining to be heard above the clash and clatter of the wind and the chariot.

“Yes?”

“What did the Keres mean when they said the walls between the worlds were coming down?”

Miss Parker turned her head slowly and looked at Belladonna.

“What?” she said.

And in that moment, that split second, Belladonna noticed something in the eyes of the Queen of the Abyss. Something that didn't belong, something that she immediately knew the ruler of the Land of the Dead had never experienced before, and something that shattered her new optimism.

She saw fear.

 

23

The Ninth Noble

THE CHARIOT RATTLED
and hissed as it flew through the night sky. Belladonna stared into the darkness, afraid of what she had seen in Miss Parker's eyes and unwilling to make things worse by asking any more questions.

Steve seemed not to have noticed. He was gripping the bar at the front of the chariot as though he were on the best fairground ride ever, his eyes shining as he watched the powerful beating of the pterodactyl's wings. He noticed Belladonna watching him.

“This is superb!” he yelled, straining to be heard above the howling wind.

Belladonna smiled. She had to admit, all things considered, that it actually was pretty superb.
I mean,
she thought,
that's an actual dinosaur!
And they were flying. Really flying.

She looked up at the starless sky of the Land of the Dead and at its shining blue moon, half hidden behind burgundy clouds. All was quiet except for the wind, the steady thump-thump of Odysseus' wings, and the occasional high-pitched chirp from the bats that crowded on either side of the chariot. It was all so beautiful. She held on to the crossbar, closed her eyes, and leaned back, drinking in the wind and the freedom of the flight. Tomorrow she would have to face the Proctors, but tonight she was flying with the Queen of the Abyss and she decided that she really needed to take a page out of Steve's book and just enjoy the moments that were fun without thinking too much about a future over which she really had no control.

“We're here,” said Miss Parker eventually, her voice cutting through the sound of the chariot and the roaring wind with no more effort than if she were back in her office.

The pterodactyl wheeled to the left and shot toward the jagged peak of a huge black mountain. It circled the summit twice, then plunged toward the ground with a sick-making lurch. As far as Belladonna could make out, there was nowhere to land on the massy crag, but the great beast knew otherwise and brought the chariot in to a surprisingly gentle landing on one of the few areas that was reasonably flat.

Once they were on the ground, the bats flew off to roost in the caves and canyons of the mountain while Odysseus wrapped his wings around his muscular body, hissed once at his mistress, and curled up under an overhanging boulder.

“We'll have to climb the rest of the way,” said Miss Parker, stepping down lightly. “Follow me.”

She marched off, leaving Belladonna and Steve running to catch up. The ground was littered with rocks and boulders of various sizes, but the Queen of the Abyss seemed oblivious. She strode through the wasteland as if it were nothing more than a park on a summer's day, and even when she started to climb, it seemed to take no effort at all, while Belladonna and Steve lagged behind, struggling to find hand- and footholds in the crumbling black rock.

Belladonna strained to see the summit. It had seemed clear when the chariot had circled it, but now it was shrouded in dense black clouds that roiled around the serrated pinnacle, and the closer they got, the darker it became. Soon rain began to fall, then sleet bit into their faces and fingers, but still the Queen of the Abyss climbed on as lightning flashed among the clouds, and the thunder rumbled around their ears.

Belladonna had to admit that the mountain was certainly a great hiding place—no one would come here unless they absolutely had to. But the sheer effort involved made her wonder all the more about the coins. English coins with Welsh names. Why were they so important? When was
someone
going to let them in on the secret?

She was wet and freezing and the more she thought about the coins and the cryptic “explanations” they got from everybody they spoke to, the more irritated she became. She glanced over at Steve. His teeth were clenched in an effort to stop them chattering and he seemed to be trying to concentrate on the next handhold rather than looking ahead into the storm. This seemed like a good idea, so she made an effort to drive all speculation about the coins from her mind, put her head down, and just get on with it.

She was still trying to think only about the next step when the howling of the wind and the rumble and crash of the lightning were shattered by laughter. She looked up. Miss Parker was standing above them, completely dry and composed.

“Get a move on,” she said. “I've got a parent/teacher meeting at four.”

“We're going as fast as we can!” yelled Steve. “It's freezing up here and I think the storm is getting worse!”

“Oh, it is,” said Miss Parker. “I designed it that way.”

She smiled briefly, then turned toward the storm and raised her staff.

“Megar!”

It was like turning off a switch. No sooner was the word out of her mouth than the rain, thunder, and lightning stopped and the clouds dispersed through the sky like ink in water.

Belladonna didn't know what she expected to see, but it certainly wasn't what she was looking at: a small rocky waste without even a cairn to mark it as the summit.

“There's nothing here,” she said, trying to keep the disappointment out of her voice.

“That's the idea.”

Miss Parker held her staff out and pointed it at the ground in the center of the mountaintop.

“Erpad!”

At first nothing happened and Belladonna wondered if it was going to work. She knew that the word meant “reveal,” but the barren ground seemed to be unwilling to show whatever it was Miss Parker wanted to see.

Crack!

The noise was loud, like the snapping of a heavy branch, and Belladonna watched as the ground in front of them seemed to split. At first the opening was slight, nothing more than a thin strip, but soon there was a second crack and a third and a fourth and before long, there was a gaping wound in the plateau, a chasm into the mountain's heart.

The Queen of the Abyss stamped the earth twice with her staff, and the earth began to shake beneath their feet. Belladonna and Steve almost lost their balance, but Miss Parker never had so much as a single hair out of place as slowly, painfully, something began to rise out of the hole. It was a rock, a black boulder, eroded into an almost perfect sphere but in every other way no different from any of the other rocks on the mountain.

Belladonna watched as it rolled slowly across the ground to the feet of Miss Parker, who just stared at it.

“I had thought,” she said, “when I concealed this here, that there would never be a need for it to be seen again.”

She sighed and stared at it for a few moments. Moments stretched to minutes, and Belladonna and Steve glanced at each other. Why didn't she just get on with it?