The Midnight Gate (37 page)

“Watch out!”

Steve glanced back, then deftly rolled away, springing to his feet and tossing the sword from hand to hand as he looked at the two creatures.

“Morwenna! Paderau!” yelled Belladonna. “Briallen!”

Only three stones remained and she could feel the thing in her head getting weaker, but the melting form on the other side of the circle was becoming more defined. She reached up and pulled the burning Nomial from around her neck. The thing inside her head vanished and she could think again.

“Steve! I think you have to break the circle! The Shadow People!”

Steve looked from the Kere and the Allu out to where the Shadow People continued their relentless circuits of the stone circle. He hesitated for a second and then the sword was gone and in its place he held what appeared to be a long pole that seemed far too unwieldy for him to handle easily, but once more he brandished it as if he had been born to it. He held it in the middle, like a tightrope walker, then spun around and swung it through the ring of Shadow People, scattering them to right and left like mown grass.

“Lowri!” yelled Belladonna. “Rhianwen!”

Another two stones disappeared and she became aware of something else. As the stones returned to the earth, Shady Gardens was vanishing too. She could see right through it, right to the church in the distance. The clock was striking—it was three o'clock.

“Belladonna!” Elsie was kneeling on her piece of carpet, desperate to help. “Look out!”

But the Kere had already grabbed her and thrown her to the ground, and Belladonna felt the weight of the goddess pinning her down.

“You will not defeat us a second time, Spellbinder!”

She looked into the pale face and the black eyes and for a second, for just a split second, it was gone. Like a television changing channels and then immediately changing back. One second it was the Kere holding her down in the dirt of Shady Gardens and the next second it was … Mrs. Evans. Steve's mother! Belladonna gasped, but as soon as she'd seen it, it was gone and the Kere was back.

“Let's see how well you resist with a little less blood in your veins!”

The Kere held up her index finger and ran it across Belladonna's wrist. The long black nail was so sharp that at first she thought nothing had happened, then she saw the blood—her blood—running out and into the dirt.

“How are you feeling now?” sneered the Kere.

“I'm feeling fine, no thanks to you!” said a familiar voice.

Thwack!

The Kere slumped to the ground, and Belladonna found herself looking at the one person she had been longing to see.

“Gran!”

“The very one,” grinned Grandma Johnson. “Good job I always carry a spare crystal ball.”

She pulled her scarf from her neck and tied it tightly around Belladonna's wrist.

“But how did you—?”

“The building is going. It's nothing but mist. Now get up—you have something to finish, I think.”

Belladonna scrambled to her feet. On her right she could see Steve still scattering the Shadow People. The Allu was stalking across the circle toward him.

“Never you mind that, Belladonna, he can manage.”

Belladonna looked at her grandmother. She felt woozy from the loss of blood and was still shivering from the fever that the Nomial had induced, but she knew her Gran was right—the main thing was to get rid of the stones.

“Where was I up to?” she asked.

“The last one was Rhianwen, I think.”

Belladonna nodded and closed her eyes for a moment, letting the Words come. Then she opened them and stepped forward, but before she could speak, another voice cracked through the air.

“Spellbinder!”

It was the faceless Allu. One claw was around Steve's neck and had hoisted him into the air. The quarterstaff lay at his feet and as Belladonna watched, the weapon shrank back to an ordinary plastic six-inch ruler. He was defenseless.

“Restore the stones or your Paladin dies!”

She hesitated and looked back to Grandma Johnson and then to Elsie, but both just stared in horror at the scene before them.

“Say the last name, Belladonna, say it!” gasped Steve.

Belladonna bit her lip, then turned back to the melting mass and the final stone.

“Skatha!”

The stone vanished and the last anchor for the opening to the Dark Spaces was gone. The opaque blackness that remained in the space between where the tallest stones had been began to swirl and writhe, like a whirlpool, and slowly the Shadow People, the pieces of the Dark Spaces, began to be pulled back into its vortex.

“Idiots!” screamed the Allu. “What have you done? You will pay with your lives. Starting with you, you sorry excuse for a Paladin.”

“I'm not done yet,” whispered Steve.

“You have dropped the Rod of Gram. Everyone knows that is the Paladin's strength. That is the way they have all died in the end.”

“I'm not like everyone else,” said Steve, coughing slightly.

Belladonna stepped closer, holding her breath. She glanced at Elsie, who had her hands clasped in front of her, willing him to win.

“Stay back, Spellbinder!” commanded the Allu.

Steve coughed again. He looked over at Belladonna and Elsie and grinned.

“Watch this.”

He took a deep breath, opened his mouth, and let go with a withering blast of white-hot fire. The Allu screamed, dropped Steve, and clawed at its faceless head, staggering around the circle until it came too close to the vortex and was grabbed by the Dark Spaces.

“Nooooo!” it howled.

But it was too late; the Allu was gone.

Belladonna smiled as Steve retrieved the ruler, but as she turned to speak to her grandmother she found herself face-to-face with the last of the Shadow People. For a moment they just stared at each other, then it grabbed her by her wounded wrist and started to drag her toward the vortex. She felt she should have been able to break its grip, but it was like a vice and was dragging her toward an eternity of nothing.

Whap! Crack!

The quarterstaff hit it squarely on what would have been its chin. It staggered back, letting go of Belladonna's wrist. Steve hit it again, and this time it reeled back toward what little remained of the vortex, which grabbed the last of the Shadow People before dribbling away, like water down a drain, leaving only a fenced-in demolition site and a billboard promising “new luxury residential units soon.”

“Thanks.”

“Belladonna,” whispered Steve, helping her to her feet. “Don't tell anyone it touched you.”

“What?”

He led her over to Elsie. “Tell her.”

“They said … the Conclave said that it was really bad. The Shadow People
are
the Dark. You can't let them touch you.”

“But it's alright, see?” Belladonna showed them her wrist. “It grabbed the scarf; it didn't touch me.”

“That looks like an awful lot of blood, Belladonna,” said Steve.

She looked at the scarf. He was right.

Her grandmother put her arms around her. “Don't worry. You'll be fine.”

Then everything went black.

 

26

Secrets

SHE WOKE UP
in her own bed at home, with her grandmother by her side and her parents hovering anxiously near the foot of the bed. She looked at her wrist, which had been expertly bandaged.

“I did that,” said Grandma Johnson proudly. “I was in the St. John's Ambulance Brigade once. Great way to get into football games for free.”

Belladonna smiled, then remembered Mrs. Lazenby. She looked at her grandmother, suddenly anxious.

“Don't worry,” she said. “They have no record of you or the Proctors. Miss Parker may not be able to leave the school, but her reach is still very long.”

“How do you feel?” asked her mother.

“I feel … actually, I feel fine,” said Belladonna, surprised. “This hurts a bit.”

“You're staying off school this week,” continued Mrs. Johnson. “I just can't believe these people. Putting children in the way of danger like that! They should be arrested! I'm going to make the dinner.”

And with that, she disappeared, followed within moments by the sounds of rattling pans and silverware in the kitchen.

“You did very well,” said her Dad. “And that young lad. Very good.”

Belladonna smiled and closed her eyes. She was home.

*   *   *

“Mr. Evans.”

No answer.

“Mr. Evans!”

Steve was staring out of the window at the trees and the clouds, the end of a pencil in his mouth and absolutely nothing on his mind.

Madame Huggins strode up to his desk and rapped on it loudly.

“This is a classroom, Mr. Evans! It is for learning.”

Steve's eyes came into focus and he shrugged.

“Sorry.”

“Right. Now I asked if you could conjugate—”

Steve was never to find out what he was going to have to conjugate because at that moment the classroom door opened and Mrs. Jay stepped inside. Twenty-five pairs of eyes shifted their attention from Steve's inevitable dressing-down and detention to the bulldog face of the school secretary.

“Sorry to interrupt,” she said, not looking sorry at all, “but Miss Parker would like to see Belladonna Johnson and Steve Evans in her office.”

“What, now?” asked Madame Huggins.

“Yes. Now.”

Belladonna and Steve got up and followed Mrs. Jay out of the classroom, through the school and up the stairs to Miss Parker's office. As they reached the landing, there was a loud bang as the office door slammed shut and Sophie Warren, her face like thunder, pushed past them on her way down the stairs.

“Score,” whispered Steve, grinning at Belladonna.

Mrs. Jay pretended she hadn't heard, opened the office door, and leaned in.

“Johnson and Evans.”

They stepped inside and Mrs. Jay closed the door quietly behind them, returning to whatever it was she usually did.

“Sit down,” said Miss Parker.

Two chairs had been placed in front of the huge desk. Belladonna sat in one and Steve perched nervously on the other.

“You have done very well. Much better than I had expected. I was quite sure we'd be looking for a new Spellbinder by now.”

She smiled somewhat disconcertingly. Belladonna wasn't sure she liked being thought of as disposable.

“There are a couple of things, though.… Um … Mr. Evans, I am told that you breathed fire. Is that correct?”

“Yes,” said Steve, unable to suppress a grin.

“I despair, I really do,” sighed Miss Parker. “Do you still have this ability?”

“No, it went away,” said Steve ruefully. “It was totally cool, though! You should have seen that faceless thingy! Aaaargggh!!!”

He grabbed his face and did a passable impression of the injured Allu. Miss Parker rolled her eyes, and Belladonna tried to suppress a giggle.

“And you used a quarterstaff?”

“Yes,” said Steve, grinning. “Actually it was a buck-and-a-quarter staff, but don't tell anyone.”

Belladonna giggled. “I am him for whom thou theeketht!” she lisped in her best Daffy Duck voice.

“What about the nobles?” asked Miss Parker, ignoring them.

Belladonna reached into her pocket and handed them over.

“Good.”

Miss Parker placed them on the desk in front of her and pushed them into the shape of a circle, then she waved her finger over them and sat back as the coins slowly rose above the desk and began to spin slowly around. Belladonna and Steve watched, mesmerized, as the coins spun faster and faster.

Miss Parker whispered a Word, then clapped her hands together sharply. The coins immediately shot in toward one another. There was a brief flash and something heavy fell to the desk.

“It's a Nomial!” said Belladonna.

“Yes,” said Miss Parker, picking it up. “It's a toadstone. Now we have three.”

“Four,” said Belladonna.

“Four?”

She reached into her pocket and removed the amulet that Mr. Proctor had placed around her neck.

“Ah,” cooed Miss Parker, “the Cornerinal. The bloodstone. Some call it the fever stone. A rather nasty thing. Excellent. Good. Now.”

Silence. She looked from one to the other, and Belladonna could see Steve bracing himself for the worst.

“I have arranged for some extra classes.”

“What!?” blurted Steve, horrified.

“Ancient languages, mythologies, self-defense, that sort of thing. It really was irresponsible of us to select a Spellbinder so young, and you have both proven that you have a great deal of natural talent. It just needs honing.”

“But … didn't we win?” asked Steve.

“Yes, you did.”

“Well … then, isn't it over?”

“No. She got through,” said Belladonna quietly, realizing the truth. “Mrs. Proctor … the Kere … she said that the Empress could only escape if the Dark Spaces took another body. She said there had to be balance. But the Allu … the Dark Spaces took the Allu. It got its body and she's … the Empress is still here.”

“Yes. Yes, that would seem to be the situation. She's got a lot to learn, though. Your world has changed a great deal since she was last here, and she wasn't able to bring any of her minions from the Dark Spaces with her, so there should be plenty of time. Classes start next Monday. That is all. You may go.”

They drifted out of the office and stood on the landing, staring at the floor.

“We failed,” said Steve finally. “After all that, we failed.”

Belladonna thought about it for a moment. “No. We stopped her doing what she wanted. Now she's just stranded here, isn't she?”

“She's very powerful, though.”

“Yes.”

“We should probably take the classes.”

“Yes.”