And when all was said and done, he couldn’t let Gawaine down. He was hard-pressed to come up with one good reason why not, but somehow he just couldn’t stomach the thought. He sniffed disgustedly. A few days as a prince, and already he was acting like a hero. A hero … maybe he was sickening for something.
He watched Roderik sway back and forth before Bloody Bones. His movements were growing slower and more awkward as his tiredness caught up with him. The skeleton was just playing with him now, and they both knew it. Jordan decided he daren’t wait any longer. If Gawaine wasn’t in place by now, he’d just have to take his chances. Roderik had already run out of luck. Jordan shouted an insult at Bloody Bones to draw the thing’s attention, and drew back his hand to throw the smoke bomb. His heart lurched as the skeleton slapped Roderik aside with a single blow, and headed straight for him with outstretched hands. Jordan took one look at the huge skull with its bloody grin, and threw the smoke bomb onto the ground between him and the advancing skeleton. A dark oily smoke boiled up from the heather, quickly spreading to form an impenetrable foul-smelling cloud. The skeleton swayed to a halt, and batted at the smoke with his blood-dripping hands. Jordan decided that if the skeleton even looked like taking another step toward him, he was going to turn and run like crazy until his lungs gave out. And then from out of the smoke there came the flat chopping sound of steel slicing through bone, and Bloody Bones screamed and fell helplessly forward.
The ground shook as his great weight hit the earth. The remnants of Roderik’s winds rose for a moment, partially dispersing the smoke, and Jordan swallowed hard as he saw the skeleton had fallen so that its huge grinning skull was now only a few feet away from him. The skeleton already had his hands under him, and was levering himself up out of the heather. Jordan started forward, sword held out before him, not sure what he was going to do, but determined to do something. The skeleton had made him afraid, and it seemed to Jordan that this had been happening to him too often just lately. He’d had a bellyful of being frightened, and just this once he was going to do something about it. Maybe he could whittle the bloody thing to pieces. And then the smoke cleared some more, and Jordan grinned fiercely as he saw the jagged stump that ended Bloody Bones’s right leg just below the knee. Gawaine loomed out of the smoke, brandishing his glowing ax.
“Get the head!” he roared at Jordan. “Hold it still while I go for the neck! And watch out for the teeth!”
Jordan sheathed his sword and leapt forward to grab the huge skull with both arms, hugging it to his chest. The grinning jaws snapped viciously, grating on his chin mail vest. Blood poured down Jordan’s chest and stomach, none of it his. The stench was almost overpowering. What the hell am I doing? he thought crazily. I could get killed doing this. Stupid bloody hero … The skeleton reared upward, lifting his head clear of the heather, and dragging Jordan off the ground and up into the air. Jordan hung on tenaciously, and the great head began to sag under his weight. And then Gawaine was there at his side, and the glowing ax swept down. It sheared clean through the neck bone, and Jordan fell back into the heather, still clutching the huge skull to his chest. He lay on his back, gasping for breath, and watched dazedly as the headless skeleton took two uncertain steps and then collapsed to lie still among the heather. He realized he was still holding the skull, and threw it away from him with a sudden feeling of revulsion. It rolled to a halt, and then rocked back and forth for a while, grinning at nothing.
Jordan watched it until he was sure it was no longer bleeding, and then he rose painfully to his feet. His chain mail was slick with the skeleton’s blood, and he made a few halfhearted attempts to brush it away with his sleeves before giving it up as a bad job. He grinned stupidly at Gawaine, feeling light-headed and rather shaky about the legs. He was alive. He was alive! He took one deep breath after another, savoring them. Gawaine moved cautiously forward to stare down at the grinning skull. He stirred it with his boot, and the lower jawbone fell away from the skull. Gawaine looked at Jordan, and nodded curtly.
“That was well-done, actor. For a moment there, I thought you might just turn and run.”
“Never crossed my mind,” said Jordan blandly. “After you’ve faced Hillsdown audiences seven days a week and twice on Saturdays, there isn’t much in this world that can frighten you.”
Roderik came over to join them, limping slightly but otherwise apparently unharmed.
“Are you badly hurt?” he asked Gawaine. “That was a nasty blow you took.”
Gawaine smiled and shook his head. “Just a few cuts and bruises. I’ve been hurt worse in training sessions.”
“I’m fine, too,” said Jordan. “Just in case you were worried.”
Roderik looked at him calmly. “I was never worried about you for a moment, Jordan. Actors always land on their feet. Did either of you see what happened to Robert?”
“There can’t be much doubt,” said Gawaine, sheathing his ax. “That creature must have thrown him a good thirty feet. Probably broke every bone in his body.”
“Not quite,” said Argent. “It just feels that way.”
They all looked around to see Argent making his way through the heather toward them. He paused beside the headless skeleton, and kicked it once. Roderik moved quickly over to offer him a supporting arm, but Argent just smiled and waved it away.
“I’m all right, Rod. I was lucky; the heather broke my fall. I got the wind knocked out of me, and I’m carrying some bruises I’ll be feeling for a while, but on the whole, I seem to have come out of it pretty much intact.”
Roderik laughed, and shook his head. “I should have known you were too devious to die that easily, old friend. You know, it’s a pity we can’t tell anyone about this. Destroying Bloody Bones would make us all heroes: maybe even legends. They’d write ballads about us.”
Jordan frowned. The thought had occurred to him. “Why can’t we tell anyone?”
“Because officially Your Highness has never left Castle Midnight, and neither have we,” said Gawaine.
“Oh. Yes.” Jordan sniffed, and looked unhappily at the heap of blood-spattered bones lying among the heather. “What are we going to do with the body?”
“We’ll drop it back in the barrow, and seal it up again as best we can,” said Roderik. “Only I think we’ll take the skull with us until we find a nice deep river, and then we’ll get rid of it there. Just to be on the safe side.”
“Never mind, lad,” said Gawaine to Jordan. “Maybe you could write it up as a play.”
“Nobody would ever believe it,” said Argent.
“When I’m on stage, people believe whatever I want them to,” said Jordan, grinning. “Isn’t that why you chose me?”
Prince Lewis scowled at the silent scene before him. He couldn’t tell what they were saying, but it was obvious they were congratulating themselves on their victory. Viktor had done surprisingly well. All the intelligence reports on him suggested he’d grown harder and tougher during his years in exile, but even so … And that smoke had been a new trick. Viktor must have been working on his magic, refining it. Lewis turned his back on the vision, and it faded away.
“I apologize for my failure, Your Highness,” said the Monk, in his cold, distant voice.
“I don’t want apologies, I want results!” Lewis glared at the Monk. “And what the hell did you think you were doing, raising Bloody Bones? If you hadn’t been able to put him back in his grave, he’d have been a bigger menace to us than Viktor ever could be!”
“It was a calculated risk,” said the Monk. “There was never any danger to us. I was in control of the situation.”
“Sure you were,” said Lewis. “That’s why Bloody Bones is now nothing more than a pile of old bones, and our enemies are still on their way here.”
“Gawaine’s ax was an unknown factor,” said the Monk calmly. “I can only deal with known factors.”
Lewis glared at him, and then shook his head slowly. “All right; what else can you do to stop them from getting
here?”
“Not a great deal, Your Highness. My magic has its limits. I’ll need to rest for a while before I can use my power again.”
“But they’ll be here in a matter of days! And you saw how good they were. That bloody Gawaine and his ax … and Viktor and his fire magic …”
“You do have other allies, Your Highness,” said the Monk. “Allies you can call on when Prince Viktor and his party arrive at Castle Midnight. There is, for example, Ironheart.”
Lewis looked at the tall suit of armor standing in one corner of his room. “Yes,” he said finally. “There’s always him.”
CHAPTER 3
* * *
Real and Unreal
Jordan got his first sight of Castle Midnight on the evening of the fifth day after leaving Bannerwick. His whole body ached after so long in the saddle, but even so his first glimpse of the castle was enough to drive the pain right out of his mind. The great brooding shape of Brimstone Hill could be seen for miles away, the castle squatting at its top like a skull on a burial mound. Jordan studied it obsessively through the darkening twilight. Open fields lay stretched out around the hill, neat and even within their low stone boundary walls. The single straight road that led to the castle was wide, even, and well maintained. All in all, everything seemed pleasant, ordinary, and civilized, and yet Jordan felt increasingly uneasy. It was the castle, of course; as out of place in the peaceful countryside as a toad in a rose garden. It stood stark and forbidding against the blood-streaked evening sky, and unhealthy lights burned in its narrow windows like so many watching eyes.
Not for the first time, Jordan got the feeling that he was well out of his depth and sinking fast. He was an actor, not a double, and what little experience he’d had with Court intrigues had left him with a steadfast determination to avoid them like the plague whenever humanly possible. He had little talent for treachery and double-dealing, and trying to keep track of who was really working for who gave him a headache. He wasn’t even particularly happy about working as a double. Roderik and Argent had been very thorough in filling him in on the background details, and Gawaine had grudingly offered a few anecdotes that helped to reveal the prince’s character, but when all was said and done, Jordan was an actor and used to a script, stage, and props. He could ad-lib when he had to, as could any actor worth his salt, but if truth be told, Jordan hadn’t varied his act much in almost four years. He hadn’t needed to. Now he had to take on a new character, in a strange setting, with no script and an audience who would probably have him executed if he didn’t do an extremely convincing job.
Fifty thousand ducats didn’t seem nearly as much as it once had.
Brimstone Hill drew steadily nearer as Count Roderik led his party along the deserted road. Both he and Argent had become grim and silent, and the suppressed tension in their body language hadn’t done a thing for Jordan’s nerves. He steered his horse in beside Sir Gawaine’s. The knight nodded to him absently, but said nothing, his gaze fixed on Castle Midnight.
“Glad to be home again, Gawaine?” said Jordan finally.
“The castle isn’t my home, Your Highness; it’s just a place where I happen to be living. But yes, I am glad to be back. We’ll all be safer once we’re inside the castle walls. Not that our enemies will give up on us, but their attacks will have to be more subtle, and therefore less effective.”
“Speaking of my two brothers,” said Jordan, “just how are we going to get into the castle without being spotted by their agents? As far as everyone else is concerned, we’re not supposed to have left the castle.”
“It’s all been arranged, Your Highness. The head of castle security is one of us. A group of men who looked sufficiently like us from a distance set out for a little hunting earlier today. They’ll disappear into the countryside, and we take their place. Simple, but effective.”
“Wait a minute. How did they know we’d be here today? Any number of things could have happened to hold us up.”
“Count Roderik and the head of security have an understanding,” said Gawaine. “Don’t ask me to explain. It’s to do with sorcery, and I’ve never had much interest in that.”
Jordan decided to let that pass without comment. “Any last words of advice, Gawaine? Once we’ve ridden through the main gates, I’m on.”
“You’re doing fine, Your Highness. Just remember that you are a prince of the Realm, and act accordingly. Treat everyone like dirt, expect the best of everything and look scandalized if you don’t get it. When in doubt, be offensive and obnoxious. Everyone will expect you to be in a foul temper after an unsuccessful day’s hunting, so they’ll all make allowances. Lots of them.”
“I am not playing a villain, I am not playing a villain …”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing.”
Jordan’s stomach churned with first-night nerves as the horses toiled steadily up Brimstone Hill toward the castle. He didn’t even have the usual comfort of being able to lose himself in running through his lines. In the end he fell back on his last resort, and ran through a series of breathing exercises while concentrating very hard on the surrounding scenery. The hill itself looked surprisingly ordinary, being nothing more than a huge grass-covered mound. For a moment it reminded him uncomfortably of Bloody Bones’s barrow, but he refused to let his mind dwell on that. He looked up at the castle, and his mouth went dry. The stark black walls towered above him, bare and unadorned. Guards watched silently from the battlements, but no flags or pennants flew from the narrow towers. There was something subtly disquieting about the shape of the castle, a sense of wrongness in its angles and dimensions that grated on Jordan’s nerves, made even more nightmarish by its very elusiveness. His horse tossed her head uneasily, and Jordan realized he was holding the reins so tightly that his hands were aching. He looked away from the castle, and made himself concentrate on the breathing exercises. Slowly, he began to relax a little. He was the Great Jordan, and this was just another acting engagement. He could do it. He just didn’t want to. All too soon the party reached the main gates, and the horses waited impatiently as the huge iron portcullis inched into the air amid a squealing of chains and counter-weights. Finally it was up, and Roderik urged his horse forward. Jordan swallowed hard, and followed him.
The courtyard was brightly lit with flaring torches, and grooms and servants came hurrying forward to help the party dismount. Jordan started to swing down out of his saddle, and then quickly settled back again as he saw the others hadn’t moved yet. He waited patiently while the servants produced wooden blocks and placed them beside the four horses. Gawaine swung out of his saddle and stepped down onto the block, and then onto the courtyard cobbles. Jordan raised a mental eyebrow, and then followed suit. A dismounting block; he’d fallen into the lap of luxury here. He stretched slowly, glad to be out of the saddle at last. He hadn’t done so much riding in years, and now he knew why. He massaged his tired back with both hands, and wished he felt unself-conscious enough to do the same to his aching thighs. He sighed heavily, and looked around him. His gaze fell on the dismounting block, and he frowned slightly. The others should have warned him about that. Ignorance of such everyday details was just the kind of thing that could show up an impostor. Of course, the others hadn’t warned him simply because it was so much a part of their lives that they took it for granted. Jordan scowled unhappily. What else was there he hadn’t been told about?
The grooms took the horses away, and the servants closed in around the newcomers, proffering damp towels with which to clean the dust of travel from their face and hands. Jordan used his gratefully, and when he was finished, he looked around for the servant who’d given it to him. The man had already vanished back into the bustling crowd of servants. Without hesitating, Jordan screwed the towel into a ball and tossed it over his shoulder without bothering to check if there was anybody there to catch it. I’m a prince, damn it. Princes don’t care. They don’t have to.
He glanced unobtrusively around th
e courtyard, getting the feel of the place. There were far more torches and lanterns than he’d have thought necessary, but the courtyard was still a cheerless place, even with all the light. There were too many shadows, and the black stone gave the courtyard a brooding, claustrophobic atmosphere. The cobbled yard seemed to swallow up every sound, producing an eerie, dreamlike hush. This isn’t home, Gawaine had said. It’s just a place where I happen to be living. A door opened to Jordan’s right, and he looked around quickly as a middle-aged, plainly clad man entered the courtyard, flanked by two armed guards. Jordan’s hand started to move toward his sword belt, and he stopped it with an effort. He couldn’t afford to be seen looking worried. He held his head arrogantly high, and waited for them to come to him.
The new arrival was slightly below average height, with a solid stocky frame and heavily muscled arms. At first glance, his face seemed open and even amiable, but the green eyes were wary and watchful, and did nothing to mirror his professionally vague smile. His hair was a vivid red, brushed back from a sharp widow’s peak, and Jordan realized with something like shock that this obviously hard, competent man dyed his hair. He made a mental note to remember that; it might be important to understanding the man. He came to a halt just before Jordan, and bowed formally. The two guards nodded stiffly.
“Welcome home, Your Highness,” said the man graciously. “I trust you had an enjoyable day’s hunting.”
“Bloody awful,” said Jordan shortly. “Didn’t see a damn thing worth chasing.” Who the hell is this? Somebody better give me a clue quickly, before I say the wrong thing.
“How are things at Court, Brion?” said Roderik, moving forward to stand beside Jordan. “Anything important happened since we left this morning?”
“Not so far, my lord. Now if Your Highness will permit, I would like to accompany you to your chambers. There are security matters I need to discuss with you in private.”