The Iron Knight (26 page)

“Idiot,” I told him, to hide the relief on my face. His grin widened as if he saw it anyway, and I scowled, embarrassed. “Come on, we’re not out of here yet.”

“No, you can’t leave!” hissed a voice behind me. I spun, bringing up my sword, as Other Ariella lunged out of the mirror, her eyes blank and terrible.

Something streaked past my face from behind, and Other Ariella jerked, freezing in place, as the shaft of an arrow jutted from her chest. She slumped, reaching out for me, then evaporated from sight, the arrow dropping to the ground and shattering on the floor.

I turned and saw Ariella on her feet beside the Wolf, her bow raised and the string still vibrating from where it had loosed the shaft. Her gaze met mine, eyes hard, and she nodded.

“Well, that was fun,” Puck stated as we hurried over, passing the two Grimalkins, watching us with identical bemused
expressions. “I’ve always wanted to see myself die in a horrible ice explosion. You never pulled that stunt while
we
were dueling, ice-boy.”

“Save it for later,” I said quickly. “We have to keep moving.”

“It is too late.”

We turned as the Grimalkins stood, waving their tales. “You have failed,” one of them stated, regarding each of us imperiously. “Your time is up. The doors are getting ready to close.” And, in true Grimalkin fashion, he vanished without a trace.

“Hold on,” Puck said, pointing to the one remaining cat. “Which Grimalkin disappeared … ?”

“Puck, there’s no time! Come on!”

We tore down the mirrored hallway, past our reflections, which were back to normal again. The corridor finally opened into a large circular room with pillars soaring up into the darkness of the ceiling. On the other side, through another long corridor, I could just see a tall, rectangular space of light.

And it was shrinking.

As we tore across the room, voices suddenly echoed around us, low moans and wailings, making the candles flicker. From the walls and the floors, pale, misty figures began emerging, clawing at us as we passed. A troll, coming up through a broken pillar, latched on to my belt, trying to drag me down. I struck out with my blade, cutting through its arm, dissolving it into mist. With a wail, the troll drew back, but its arm reformed and knitted itself back onto the elbow, coming at me again. I dodged and continued my mad rush to the door.

The chamber was rapidly filling with wraiths, grabbing for us, snatching at clothes and limbs as we passed. They didn’t hurt us, only latched on and held tight until we cut ourselves free. “Staaaaaay,” they whispered, reaching for us with ghostly
hands, dragging us down. “You cannot leave. Stay with us, those who have failed. Your essence can remain here with us forever.”

The Wolf gave a defiant growl and surged forward ahead of us all, but for the rest of us, it was too late. As we sped across the room and down the corridor, I already knew we wouldn’t make it. The rectangle was just a tiny square now, the stone door slowly grinding shut. So close. We were so close, only to run out of time in the end.

The Wolf hit the door with just enough room to slide out, lowering his head to dart beneath the opening. But instead of going through, he slammed his broad shoulders into the bottom edge, splaying his feet to brace himself in the opening. Panting, he locked his legs against the frame and heaved up against the inevitable push of the door, and amazingly, the huge stone rectangle ground to a halt. Wraiths crowded around him, grabbing his legs and fur, leaping onto his back. He snarled and snapped at them, but didn’t move from his position in the doorway, and the ghostly figures could not budge him.

Slashing at wraiths, I reached the doorway first and whirled around, waiting for Puck and Ariella. Wraiths followed them, clawing and grabbing. One snagged Ariella by the hair, yanking her back, but Puck’s dagger sliced down, cutting through its hand and pushing Ariella on. She stumbled into me, and I caught her before she could fall.

“Puck—” She gasped, turning in my arms.

“I’m fine, Ari!” Puck howled, leaping back from the crowding wraiths. “Just go!”

I nodded and released her. “Go,” I repeated, echoing Puck. “We’re right behind you.”

She rolled beneath the door, barely avoiding a banshee that
lurched out of the floor. I stabbed the wraith through the head and glanced at Puck.

He was backing down the corridor, stabbing at hands and dodging the fingers that grabbed for him.

“Geez, you guys. I know I’m popular and all, but seriously, you’re a bit too co-dependent for me. I’m going to need you to step away from my personal bubble.” A wispy vine-woman curled ivy tendrils around his arm, and he sliced through them with his dagger. “No! Bad wraith! No touchie!”

“Will you get over here?” I shouted, stabbing a redcap clinging to my leg.

Puck gave a final swipe with his dagger and lunged toward the door, scrambling through the opening. I turned to help the Wolf.

He was covered in wraiths, so many that I could barely see him through the ghostly figures. And more were floating up, rising out of the floor and coming through the walls, trying to drag us back into the room. An ogre lunged through the wall from behind, reaching for my arm, and I twisted away.

“Don’t worry about me,” the Wolf snarled. “Just go!”

I sliced through a ghostly sidhe knight that reminded me faintly of Rowan. He dissolved instantly but began reforming as soon as my blade passed through his body. “I’m not leaving you here to die.”

“Foolish prince!” The Wolf glared back at me, baring his fangs. “This is your story. You must reach the end of it. This is why I came—to ensure the story would go on.” He snapped at a goblin near his face, and the thing erupted into a misty cloud. “The wraiths cannot leave the temple, it seems, but they are not letting me through, either. Go now, while there is still time!”

“Ash!” Puck called from the other side of the door. “Come on, ice-boy, what are you waiting for?”

I gave the Wolf one last glance, then dove through the opening, rolling to my feet on the other side. The wraiths wailed, crowding beneath the door, reaching out for us, but they could not get past the threshold.

The Wolf panted, shaking from the strain of holding the door and the dozens of bodies that tugged and yanked at him. “Get going, prince,” he growled, looking me in the eye. “You cannot help me now. Finish your quest, complete the story, and don’t forget to mention me when you pass it on. That was our bargain.”

I stared at the Wolf, my mind churning, trying to think of a way to help him. But the Wolf was right; there was nothing we could do. Raising my sword, I gave him a solemn salute. “I won’t forget what you’ve done.”

“Pah!”
The Wolf, despite the strain, bared his teeth in a disdainful laugh. “You think this will kill me, boy? You should know better than that. Nothing in this pitiful gauntlet can harm me. Nothing.”

I seriously doubted that. The Wolf was strong, and he was immortal, but he could be killed. He could die, same as anything else.

“Now, go,” he told us, a hint of irritation creeping into his voice. “I’m getting tired of watching you gape like a herd of startled deer. I will hold the door for your return, assuming we will have to come back the same way. Nothing will move me until we are done here for good.”

“How very … doglike,” said Grimalkin, appearing beside Ariella, gazing at the Wolf in disdain. “Brave. Loyal. And ultimately stupid.”

The Wolf panted, baring his teeth. “You wouldn’t understand, cat,” he growled, curling a lip in his own show of contempt. “Your kind knows nothing of loyalty.”

“As if that is a bad thing.” Grimalkin sniffed and turned
away, waving his tail. “And yet, who is on the correct side of the door? Come, prince.” He twitched an ear at me. “We did not come all this way to be stopped at the finish line. The dog has made his choice. Let us move on.”

I gave the Wolf one last glance. “I’ll be back,” I told him. “Try to hang on. When I’m done with this, I’m coming back for you.”

He snorted. Whether it was because he didn’t believe me, or because it took too much strength to talk, I didn’t know. But I turned my back on him and walked the final few paces out of the temple.

Grimalkin was sitting at the end of the hall, silhouetted beneath a stone archway, his tail curled primly around himself. Beyond him, I could see a black sky littered with stars. But they were huge, glowing things, almost blinding, as if we were far closer than we had been in the Nevernever. I heard the roar of water as I approached Grimalkin, and heard Puck’s slow exhale as we joined the cat at the end of the hall.

The vast emptiness of space stretched before us, endless and eternal. Stars and constellations glimmered above and below, from tiny pinpricks of light to huge pulsing giants so bright it hurt to look at them. Comets streaked through the night sky, and in the distance, I could see the gaping maw of a black hole sucking in the surrounding galaxy, billions of miles away. Huge chunks of rock and land floated, weightless, in empty space. I saw a cottage perched on a boulder, spinning endlessly through space, and a massive tree grew from a tiny plot of grass, its roots dangling through the bottom. Beyond a stream of jagged rocks, past a treacherous-looking rope bridge over nothing, an enormous castle floated among the stars.

Below our feet, the River of Dreams flowed from beneath the hall and roared over the edge into empty space, falling into the void until we couldn’t see it anymore.

I drew in a deep, slow breath, feeling my companions’ amazement match my own.

We had reached the End of the World.

Ariella found the stairs. We made our way down the narrow, crumbling path to the bottom of the cliff, gazing out into the void. A rock floated past my face; I tapped it and sent it spinning away into space.

“The end of the Nevernever,” Ariella mused, her silver hair floating around her like a bright cloud. She sounded sad again, and I wanted to comfort her, but restrained myself. “How many have been here, I wonder? How many have seen what we’re seeing?”

“How many have dropped off the edge and are drifting through space right now?” Puck added, peering over the end of the cliff while hanging on to a sickly tree trunk growing from the rocks. “I keep expecting a skeleton to float by. Or maybe they just keep falling forever?”

“Let’s not find out,” I said, turning to the castle, feeling it beckon me like a distant siren call. “The Testing Grounds are our goal—we’re going to reach it without anyone falling off the edge of the world or drifting through space. Watch out for each other, and be careful.”

“Hey, don’t worry about me, ice-boy. Gravity isn’t so much
of a problem when you’re a bird.” Puck glanced at me and sighed in mock aggravation. “Someday, I have
got
to teach you people how to fly.”

A river of floating rocks stood between us and the castle. Grimalkin strode up to one and looked back at us, twitching his tail.

“I will meet you at the castle,” he stated, and hopped lightly onto one of the rocks. It spun lazily, easily holding the cat’s weight. Grimalkin blinked at us as the rock drifted away. “I trust you can make it to our destination without me for once,” he said, and headed for the castle, leaping from rock to rock with the inborn grace of a cat.

“You know, sometimes I just hate him,” Puck grumbled.

I stepped onto one of the rocks, bracing myself as it tilted slightly, but it appeared to hold my weight well enough. “Come on,” I said, holding out a hand for Ariella. She took it, and I pulled her up beside me, though she didn’t meet my eyes. “We’re almost there.”

We picked our way over the treacherous terrain, leaping from rock to rock, trying not to look down. I glanced back once and saw the door of the temple jutting from the face of a cliff, and that cliff sprang from a wall of briars, stretching away to either side, farther than I could see. It emphasized the vast infinity of this part of the world and made me feel very small.

“I wonder if anything lives out here,” Puck mused as we crossed a shattered stone bridge, twirling aimlessly through space. “I thought the End of the World was supposed to be filled with monsters and
here there be dragons
and things like that. I don’t see any … oh.”

I knew by the tone of his voice that I wasn’t going to like what I saw next. “Don’t tell me.” I sighed without turning
around. “There’s some sort of huge monster out there, and now it’s coming toward us.”

“Okay, I won’t tell you.” Puck sounded faintly breathless. “And, uh, you probably don’t want to look down, either.”

I peered over the side of the bridge.

At first, I thought I was looking at a continent floating beneath us; I could see lakes and trees and even a few houses scattered about. But then the continent twisted around with a flash of scales and teeth and drifted toward us, a leviathan so huge it defied belief. It spiraled up beside the bridge, a mountain of scales and fins and flippers, rising out of the void. Its eye was like a small moon, pale and all-seeing, but we were insects beneath its gaze, dust mites, too microscopic for it to know we were there. An entire city was perched on its back, gleaming white towers standing at the edge of a glistening lake. Smaller creatures, as big as whales, swam beside it, looking like minnows compared to its bulk. As we stood gaping at it, unable to move or look away, it twisted lazily through the air and continued into the etherealness of space.

For a long moment, we could only stare after it, hardly able to process what we had seen. Finally, Ariella drew in a shaky breath and shook her head in disbelief. “That … was …” She seemed unable to find the right description.

“Incredible,” I finished softly, still gazing after the creature, and no one disagreed with me. Not even Puck.

“Here there be dragons,” he murmured in an awed voice.

Gathering my wits, I took a step back. “Come on,” I said, glancing at the others, who seemed a little dazed. “Let’s find the Testing Grounds and get this over with so we can go home.”