Once In a Blue Moon (60 page)

There was no answer. King William looked down onto his transformed ornamental gardens, full of strange forms and thrashing shapes, illuminated by the brilliant lights blazing from every window of Castle Midnight, and he was content.

•   •   •

P
rince Christof met the Champion Malcolm Barrett again, running through the panicked corridors towards the Court. There were crowds everywhere, clutching at one another in tears and terror, calling out desperate questions that neither Christof nor Malcolm could answer. Though they both knew the Unreal when they saw it. They quickly learned to avoid even glancing at mirrors, or looking out the windows, and gave a wide berth to anyone or anything they didn’t immediately recognise. Christof thought he knew some faces he’d seen before only in ancestors’ portraits, and once, Malcolm ran right through a ghost. He didn’t stop to apologise. He wouldn’t have known what to say anyway.

A woman ran screaming past them, pursued by the viciously grinning husband whose horrid ways she thought she’d escaped when he died. Malcolm paused to cut the man down with his sword. He was still the Champion, and he still knew his duty. He remembered the husband. He shook the blood from his sword and quickly caught up with Christof again.

“What has my father done?” said Christof.

“Given what we’re seeing, I think we know what he’s done,” said Malcolm. “Question is how did he do it?”

“Can we stop it?” said Christof. “Put this Unreal back to sleep again?”

“I wouldn’t even know where to start,” said Malcolm.

They came at last to the closed double doors of the Court, and found the Steward and the Prime Minister already there, ahead of them. There were no guards this time. Elias Taggert and Gregory Pool were both pounding on the closed doors with their fists, calling out the King’s name and demanding to be let in; but there was no response. Christof and Malcolm joined them, waited a moment to get their breath back, and then pounded on the doors too, adding their voices. And then they broke off as the doors swung suddenly, silently, open before them. They all looked at one another, and then Prince Christof led the way into King William’s Court.

The great empty hall seemed even darker than before, only this time the throne was surrounded by a great display of unbearably bright light, almost too fierce to look at directly. They pressed forward, screwing up their eyes against the glare, until finally the four men stood before the throne. And there was their King, sitting on his throne. The unbearable presence was gone, but he was smiling his terrible smile again.

“Father!” said Christof. “What have you done?”

“The Castle’s come alive again,” said King William. “I have given Castle Midnight its heart back.”

“You’ve filled it with ghosts and monsters!” said Malcolm. “All the Unreal dangers your grandparents worked so hard to rid us of!”

“I have made the Castle strong again!” said the King. “Made this country strong again!”

“How have you done this?” said Gregory Pool. “What hideous Power did you make a deal with, to be able to do this? My brother couldn’t have . . . Where is he, anyway?”

“I didn’t need him,” said the King. “This power is mine, as King. The old power, from the old Royal line.”

“Blood Magic,” said Prince Christof. “You’re talking about the old inherited Blood Magic . . . but none of us have had that since Good King Viktor’s time.”

“It’s back,” said the King, still smiling. “I brought it back. The power to command one of the elements. Let there be fire!”

The ancient elemental magic of the Redhart line beat on the air like the wings of some gigantic bird, and huge crimson flames burst up round the King’s throne; rings of fire, floating unsupported on the air, blasted out a heat so intense that the four men standing before the throne had no choice but to back away. The sheer heat of the flames should have been enough to consume and incinerate the man sitting on the throne; but King William sat there untouched and unaffected, still smiling that troubling smile. The flames snapped off, gone in a moment, though the awful heat still hung on the air, slowly dispersing. The four men looked blankly at their King, and he laughed softly in their faces.

“Your turn, Christof,” he said cheerfully. “You have the Blood. Let’s see you do something with it.”

Prince Christof stood there for a moment, frowning. He could feel a change working within him, now that he knew what to look for. It was like suddenly knowing how to play a piece of music he’d known all his life. He concentrated, and it began to rain inside the Court. A pounding, heavy rain, a great storm, falling down out of nowhere. The others cried out and huddled together for protection against the beating rain. Malcolm called to Christof, but he just stood there, his face turned up into the falling rain, laughing.

“Christof,” said the King, “that’s enough. Christof!”

Reluctantly, Christof stopped the rain. The last few heavy drops fell out of nowhere, into the great pool of water spreading across the marble floor, and then that too disappeared. The others swore and muttered quietly, as the water that had soaked their clothes disappeared as well. Christof turned his head slowly, this way and that. He could feel the presence of water, moving deep below, in underground streams and caverns, far and far below Castle Midnight. He finally looked back at his father, as he realised Malcolm had stepped forward again to address the King.

“If the Blood Magic has returned to the Redhart Royal line,” Malcolm said steadily, “does this mean Catherine has it now as well? Will it help keep her safe? Or make her a more valuable treasure to our enemies?”

“All the more reason to get her safely home again,” said the King. “Before they find a way to make her use that power on their behalf. But first things first. Steward, go get my son Prince Cameron. Bring him home again.”

“What?” said Christof. “Father, no! You don’t need him anymore! You have me, and my power. Between us, you and I, we command fire and water!”

“You need more than fire and water to win a war,” said the King. “You need an army, and a general to command it. We need Cameron’s experience in winning battles. You’re not a soldier, Christof.”

“I was enough of a soldier to fight and bleed in your border war!” said Christof.

“Yes, you were,” said the King. “But that was then, and this is now. You made a fine soldier then, boy. Sometimes I think I don’t say that enough. But it takes more than that to lead an army to victory.” He looked at Malcolm. “Go find General Staker, my Champion. Tell him to assemble an army for my son Cameron to lead.”

“So,” said Christof, “he’s only the Broken Man when he’s not needed?”

“Don’t push your luck, boy,” said the King. “There’s a lot to be done. We have to invade the Forest, get my daughter back safely, and place the whole Forest Land under our control. As it always should have been. We shall be one Kingdom again, under one King and one Royal line.” He sat quietly for a while, looking at something that only he could see, and smiling; and then suddenly he seemed to remember that the others were still there. He gestured dismissively at them all. “Go. Busy yourselves. I have plans to make.”

There was something in his voice that none of them wanted to argue with. The four men bowed, turned, and left the Court. And they all felt a sudden surge of relief when the Court doors slammed shut behind them, cutting them off from a King they’d only thought they knew.

•   •   •

O
utside, in the corridor, Prince Christof was the first to get his voice back and address the others. “Come to my rooms. We can talk . . . privately there.”

Malcolm Barrett and Gregory Pool nodded immediately, but the Steward shook his head reluctantly. “The King’s orders to me were very clear. I have to go fetch Prince Cameron home. If he’ll come . . .”

“Oh, dear Cameron will come running home to Daddy, like the good little puppy dog he is,” said Christof. “He talks the talk well enough, but he always did so love to feel needed.”

The Steward ostentatiously gave all his attention to the Prime Minister. “I’m going to need your brother’s help in this. Where might I find him, do you think?”

“Since he wasn’t with the King, I’d try his personal quarters,” said Gregory. “No doubt just sitting there, waiting to be called on . . . And you can tell him from me, Steward, that I shall be having words with him. Soon.”

The Steward nodded and hurried away. Christof led the other two off to his private rooms. None of them talked along the way, as they passed through corridors crowded with ghosts and marvels, and more wonders than any sane man could be comfortable with. The three men stuck close together, and none of them had anything to say to the many people who called out to them, for help or advice—because none of them knew what to say, for the best. When they finally reached the security, if not safety, of the Prince’s chambers, Christof flung the door open . . . and was more than a little surprised to find things not at all as he’d left them. Even after all the Unreal manifestations he’d encountered along the way, it had somehow never even occurred to him that where he lived might be affected too. The many exotic plants and flowers that he’d cultivated so carefully, that had given his rooms so much character, had been replaced by strange new growths that towered over him, banging their misshapen heads against the ceiling, nodding and hissing at him. Some of them actually giggled at the look on his face. Christof called to his guards, who were watching from a safe distance.

“I want every single plant and growing thing ripped out of my rooms. Use swords and axes, use poison and magic; burn it all back to the stone walls if that’s what it takes. I don’t care. I want my rooms stripped clean, till there isn’t a single living organism anywhere.”

The guards nodded quickly and hurried off to find useful things. Gregory Pool produced his silver box of cocaine and took a good hard sniff. He did offer the box around, but Malcolm and Christof politely declined. Gregory just shrugged and put the box away. He was past caring what other people thought of his small but necessary vices. In the end, the three men just stood together out in the corridor and talked quietly while the guards did battle inside the Prince’s rooms. The corridor was relatively empty, and unbothered by the Unreal as yet, and there they stood as good a chance as anywhere of being unobserved.

“Has the King lost his mind?” said Gregory. “Has he gone the same way as Rufus, only more suddenly? We can’t go to war! It isn’t a war we can win. We don’t have the money to fund a full campaign! That’s why he and I worked so hard to negotiate that damned Peace in the first place!”

“Well, we’ll have to win it now, won’t we?” said Malcolm. “And then loot the Forest Land afterwards to pay for it.”

“I still want to know why my brother wasn’t at Court,” said Gregory. “What did he do? What awful magic did he find, to make the King so powerful? To bring back the Unreal?”

“More likely,” murmured Christof, “what did my father do to gain such power, that Van Fleet couldn’t bring himself to be a part of? What power source is there that my father has found access to that could bring back both the Unreal and the Blood Magic after so many years?”

“Would Van Fleet know?” said Malcolm.

“Of course he knows,” said Gregory. “That’s why he’s hiding, sulking in his room. I’ll get it out of him.”

“I’d wait, just a bit,” said Christof. “The King has made it very clear the Steward has first call on your brother’s attention. To bring dear Cameron home again. I can’t believe my father is so ready to summon him back after he went to such lengths to banish the Broken Man before the whole Court.”

“Whatever else you can say about him, no one doubts your brother was the greatest warrior this land has ever known,” said Malcolm. “Never once defeated in battle, either as a soldier or a general. Never lost a campaign, out on the border. The Forest only started giving us a hard time after your father banished Cameron.”

“War,” Gregory said bitterly. “After everything we did, it’s to be war after all. Blood and slaughter, towns and cities burning the night, both our Lands reduced to savagery. Enjoy this last night of civilisation, my friends; we shall not see its like again in our time. Now, I must go to Parliament and carry out my King’s orders . . . to bang the drum for war.”

“Are you going to have trouble raising support for the King’s plans?” said Malcolm.

“I hate to admit it,” said the Prime Minister, “but war is what most of them wanted all along. They never liked the compromises the King and I persuaded them to make in return for a chance at Peace. I’ll probably have trouble making myself heard over the massed cheering.”

He shook his head sadly, and walked away, a large man who didn’t look nearly as big as he had before. Christof and Malcolm watched him go, and then looked at each other.

“I would invite you in for a drink,” said Christof, “but I’m afraid my place is a bit of a mess at the moment . . .”

“Hate to think what my room looks like,” said Malcolm. “Though I doubt I’ll get to see it for a while. I have the King’s business to be about. Find General Staker, help him raise the army and prepare it for battle . . . I can’t believe this has all happened so quickly, Chris. Everything we fought for, everything we sacrificed so much for, all thrown away in a moment. And then Catherine, saying she didn’t love me anymore and that she wanted to stay in the Forest Land. With him . . . Do you really think they’ve got her under some kind of control?”

“I don’t know,” said Christof. “It didn’t sound like her, but . . . who knows why a woman does anything?”

“Do you think I’ve lost her, Chris?” Malcolm said urgently.

“If she really does mean what she says . . . then yes, Malcolm. However the war goes, whether she comes home willingly or unwillingly, it’s over between you. You have to come to terms with that. You do know . . . you’re not alone. You still have your friends. You still have me . . .”

But Malcolm was already turning away, not listening, unable to concentrate on anything but his own misery. He gestured briefly, meaninglessly, to Christof and walked away. Christof stood where he was and watched Malcolm until the Champion was completely out of sight.