The Iron Knight (24 page)

“What about Ariella?” I glanced at her, looking a bit lost on the edge of the platform. “She has the burden of knowledge as well, not just you, cait sith.”

“Ariella is a Winter fey, and we already have a Winter,”
Grimalkin replied easily, hopping onto the broken pillar of Knowledge, peering down at us all. “And I think you would be in favor of solving this quickly, prince. In any case, I believe we have to stand on the pillars together. That is generally how these puzzles work.”

The Wolf growled, leaping atop the broken stone, huge paws close together on the edge. “If this does not work, cat, I will make sure to eat you first before the scorpions get to us,” he muttered, balanced precariously on the small platform. Grimalkin ignored him.

Puck and I followed suit, jumping easily onto the broken pillars, as the sea of scorpions chittered and writhed below us. For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then, the sphinxes’ eyes opened, searing blue, their voices echoing through the room.

“You—” they breathed, sending a ripple of power over the sand “—have chosen … incorrectly.”

“What!” Puck yelped, but it was drowned by the furious buzz of millions of scorpions, stirred into a frenzy. “No, that can’t be right. Furball’s never wrong! Wait—”

“You—” the sphinxes breathed again “—will die.”

I drew my sword, tensing to drop down as the scorpions rushed forward, scaling the platform and spilling over the edge. Ariella gasped and stumbled backward, as the living carpet of claws and legs and stingers began covering the platform.

“Stay where you are!”
Grimalkin’s voice rang through the chamber, booming and steely with authority. We froze, and the cat turned wild golden eyes on Ariella, baring his teeth, all his fur standing on end. “Time!” he spat, flattening his ears. “Time is the fifth answer, the cog that turns the wheel! Stand in the center now!”

I clenched my fists as Ariella ran to the middle of the platform,
the flood of scorpions closing in from all sides. They swarmed up the pillars, crawling over my clothes, legs and pinchers digging into my flesh. I lashed out and sent dozens of them flying, but of course there were always more. They were not stinging … yet. But I felt the seconds ticking away, and knew that if the creatures beat Ariella to the heart of the dais, we were finished. Puck yelled a curse, flailing wildly, and the Wolf roared in fury as Ariella finally reached the center of the dais.

As soon as she set foot in the middle, a shiver went through the air, starting from the center of the dais and spreading outward, like ripples on a pond. The flood of scorpions halted, inches from swarming Ariella, and started flowing backward, leaving the platform and crawling down from the pillars. I shook the last of the tiny predators off me and watched the carpet recede, disappearing beneath the sands once more. In seconds, they had vanished completely, and the dunes were still.

“You have chosen … correctly,” the sphinxes whispered, and closed their eyes again.

Ariella was shaking. I leaped from the platform and went to her, wordlessly pulling her close. She trembled in my arms for a moment, then gently freed herself and drew away, smoothing her hair back.

“Wow,” Puck muttered, dusting off the front of his shirt, “now,
that
was weird. And to think, I never thought I’d live to see the day….” He trailed off, grinning.

I eyed him wearily. “Fine, I’ll bite. You don’t mean the scorpions or the sphinx. We’ve seen much stranger than that.”

“No, ice-boy. I never thought I’d see the day when Grimalkin was
wrong.
”

Grimalkin, still on his broken pillar, didn’t react, but I saw
his whiskers bristle as he glanced our way. “Goodfellow,” he said with an enormous yawn, “I feel obliged to point out that, had I been wrong, you would all be full of tiny holes right now. Anyway, we are wasting time. I suggest we move out, quickly. I certainly do not wish to be stuck here until the end of time with any of you.” And before we could reply, he leaped down and trotted off in the direction of the now-open door, passing between the sphinxes with his tail held high.

I looked at Puck, smirking. “I think you offended him, Goodfellow.”

He snorted. “If I ever worried about that, I’d never open my mouth.”

The door past the sphinxes opened to another narrow corridor, empty of fire-breathing dragons this time, but no less strange. It stretched away into the darkness, lit only by orange candlelight, flickering against walls. The flames seemed to float in the air, reflecting off the surfaces of hundreds of full-length mirrors lining the corridor on both sides.

Glancing at my own image, I paused, faintly surprised at the stranger in the mirror. The pale, dark-haired reflection stared back grimly, clothes tattered around the edges, eyes touched with exhaustion. I barely recognized myself, but maybe that was a good thing. After all, that was why I was here; to become something else, some
one
else. If all went as planned, Ashallayn’darkmyr Tallyn, third prince of the Unseelie Court, would no longer exist.

What will it be like as a human?
I wondered at my reflection.
Will I still be myself? Will I remember everything about my life in the Winter Court, or will all those memories disappear?
I shook my head. It was useless to wonder about that now, when we were so close, but still ….

“Come on, handsome.” Puck put a hand on my shoulder,
and I brushed it off. “Quit preening. I think we’re almost there.”

As we started down the corridor, wary of traps and pits and ambushes, I thought of Meghan, back in the Iron Kingdom. It would be dreadfully ironic, I mused, if once I earned a soul, I forgot everything about being fey, including all my memories of her. That sort of ending seemed appropriately tragic; the smitten fey creature becomes human but forgets why he wanted to in the first place. Old fairy tales loved that sort of irony.

I won’t let that happen,
I told myself, clenching my fists.
If I have to have Puck tell me everything, even if he has to go through our entire history, I will find a way to make it back to her. I will not become human only to forget it all.

The hallway went on. The flickering candles cast strange lights in the opposite mirrors, endless rows of flame, stretching to infinity. From the corner of my eye, I saw my own dark ref lection, walking along beside me. Smirking.

Except, I wasn’t.

I stopped and slowly turned toward the mirror, dropping my hand to my sword. In the glass, my reflection did the same … but it wasn’t me. It was someone who looked like me, pale and tall, with dark hair and silver eyes. He wore black armor, a tattered cape and a crown of ice rested on his brow. I drew in a slow breath and I recognized him.

It was me, the me I’d seen in the dream, the Ash who gave in to the darkness. Who killed Mab, claimed the throne and cut a bloody path through the Nevernever and the other courts. Ash the Winter King.

He was smiling at me, that same cold, empty smirk that showed the madness behind it, but otherwise our movements were the same, identical.

Backing away, I looked to my companions, who had also
discovered the new reflections in the mirrors. Behind me, Ariella stared in horror at herself, pale and statuesque in an elegant court gown. Her slender hands gripped an icy scepter. But her eyes were empty and cruel, her face without emotion. A circlet glittered on her forehead, not unlike the crown of the Unseelie King. A Queen of Winter, she stared with cold, impassive eyes until Ariella turned away with a shudder.

“Prince,” Puck murmured, coming up beside me, standing so that he faced my shoulder, his back to the mirror. His voice, though light, was curiously shaken. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing, or is it just me?”

I glanced at Puck in the mirror behind us and had to stifle the urge to shove him away and draw my sword. Puck’s head gazed over my shoulder, lips pulled into a vicious grin that was almost animalistic, teeth gleaming in the firelight. His eyes were narrowed gleefully, but it was the kind of mad glee that sent shivers through you, the type of glee that found humor in drowned kittens and poisoned cattle. This was the prankster whose jokes had turned deadly, who put adders in pillowcases, let wolves in with the sheep and made all light go away at the edge of a cliff. He was shirtless, barefooted and wild looking, the Robin Goodfellow I’d seen glimpses of when he was truly angry and out for revenge. The Robin Goodfellow that everyone worried about, because we all knew Puck could turn into this.

“You can see it too, huh?” Puck murmured when I didn’t say anything right away. I nodded, once. “Well, your reflection isn’t too encouraging either, ice-boy. In fact, it’s kinda weird seeing us like this, because you look like you really, really want to cut my head off.”

I pushed him away, and our images did the same. “Ignore them,” I said, walking toward Ariella. “They’re only reflections of what could be. They don’t mean anything.”

“Wrong.” Grimalkin appeared, trotting up and sitting down in front of a mirror, curling his tail around his legs. His golden eyes observed me lazily. “It is not what could be, prince. It is what already is. You all have that reflection inside you. You just choose to suppress it. Take the dog, for example,” he continued as the Wolf came loping back, his ruff standing on end. Ariella gasped, shrinking against me, and Puck muttered a curse under his breath.

The Wolf’s reflection was enormous, filling three mirrors side by side, a huge, snarling monster with blazing eyes and foaming jaws. It stared at us hungrily, red tongue lolling between huge fangs, eyes empty of rational thought.

“A beast,” Grimalkin said calmly as the real Wolf curled a lip at him. “A beast in its truest, savage nature. With no intelligence, no clear thoughts, no morals, just raw animal instincts and the desire to kill. That is what your reflections show you—yourself in your purest form. Do not dismiss them as having no meaning. You only deceive yourself if you do.” He stood and curled his whiskers at us. “Now, hurry. We have no time to stand around doing nothing. If the mirrors upset you, the logical answer would be not to look at them. Let us go.”

He lashed his tail and trotted off, back down the hallway into the dark. As he padded away, not bothering to glance back, I noticed that the cait sith’s reflection looked no different from the real Grimalkin. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised.

As we hurried after Grimalkin, I glanced at my ref lection once more and received another shock. It wasn’t there anymore, and neither were any of the others. The candles, the flickering flames, still cast their reflections, stretching away into infinity, but our images were gone.

“Hurry!” came Grimalkin’s voice, echoing out of the darkness. “Time is running out.”

We broke into a sprint, footsteps echoing down the narrow corridor, passing hundreds of eerily empty mirrors. I could see the candles flickering around us, thousands of orange lights reflected in the glassy walls. But other than the lights and the opposite walls, the mirrors showed nothing else. It was like we weren’t even there.

We came to a crossing, where another hallway stretched away in opposite directions, vanishing into the black. In the middle sat Grimalkin, calmly washing a front paw. He blinked as we stopped, gazing up with a bemused expression on his face.

“Yes?”

“What do you mean, yes?” Puck said. “Did your feline brain finally snap? You said to hurry, and now you’re just sitting here. What’s the deal?”

“The exit is farther down.” Grimalkin yawned, curled his tail around his legs, and smiled at us. “But I doubt you will ever reach it. I find it amusing that you can speak so freely of intelligence, when you cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is not.”

“What?” Puck looked startled, but the Wolf suddenly let out a snarl that raised the hair on the back of my neck. I drew my sword and looked up, searching for hidden attackers.

Robin Goodfellow smiled at me from the mirror’s reflection, arms crossed to his chest, a demonic grin on his face. I spared a quick glance at Puck, and saw him backing away, pulling his daggers, different actions from his image on the wall. His reflection waved cheerfully …

… and stepped out of the mirror.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Goodfellow smiled, drawing his own weapons as he faced the real Puck. “The party’s just getting started.”

Movement rippled behind me. I spun, throwing myself to
the side as the monstrous head of the other Wolf exploded from the frame and lunged at me. I felt its hot breath and heard the snap of its massive jaws inches from my head. Backing away, I drew my sword as it slid out of the mirror and into the hall, a monstrous creature with burning green eyes, drool hanging in ribbons from its teeth. It howled, making the mirrors tremble, and crouched to spring at me, and that’s when the real Wolf hit it from behind.

I leaped aside as the two giant wolves careened past, ripping and tearing at each other, vanishing down the side hallway. The smell of blood filled the air, the roars and snarls adding to the din of chaos. I turned to see Puck locked in battle with his twin and a second Robin Goodfellow stepping out of the mirror behind him, raising his blade.

An arrow streaked through the air, striking the second false Puck in the chest, causing him to explode in a swirl of leaves. Ariella, grim-faced and determined, raised her bow again, but a tall, pale figure slid out of the mirror beside her. I shouted and lunged forward, but the false Ariella raised her scepter and struck her twin in the back of the head. Ariella crumpled to the floor, dazed, and the false Ariella loomed over her with a vicious smile.

Roaring, I flew at the false Ariella, but the Ice Queen raised dead, cold eyes to me and slipped back into the mirror. I swung at her retreating form, and my blade struck the surface of the glass, shattering it. Shards flew from the force of the blow, glinting in the light, and the entire surface collapsed in a ringing cacophony, scattering pieces over the floor.

“My love.” The false Ariella appeared in another frame, empty gaze boring into me. I slashed at her, shattering another mirror, but she slipped into the one beside it, her eyes beseeching mine. “Why?” she murmured, fading back, appearing in a frame on the opposite wall. “Why was I not enough?
Why could I not keep you from giving in to despair?” She slid away, vanishing from sight, and I turned warily, waiting for her to appear again. “I loved you,” her voice whispered, giving no indication of where she was. “I would have given everything for you. But you couldn’t stop thinking of
her.
A human! You let a human replace me.” She finally appeared again, her face twisted into a mask of bitter hate, her eyes blazing with jealously. “So now you can
die
for her!”