And then he saw it with a shock, rising out of darkness in the thin moonlight.
‘Hold formation and stay close,’ said the captain, halting for a moment as they crested a grassy slope. ‘We’re taking him across.’ She urged her horse forward.
The gate, Justice had said.
A broken arch, standing alone on the ruined moor – it was a gate to nowhere, lit by the moon. It stood out starkly against the sky. A few tumbled stones might have formed part of a long-ago wall, but had long since fallen into the water.
Will’s skin prickled with the strangest sense of recognition as the line of white-clad Stewards rode towards it through the dark. He felt like he knew it – like he had been here before – but how could he?
‘What is this place?’ he said.
‘This is the Hall of the Stewards,’ said the captain, but there was no Hall, just a lone arch on the vast, empty marsh. It made him shiver that they were riding towards a Hall that didn’t exist, or that had long since crumbled to ruins, with only a single archway left.
Something had stood here once, long ago—
Before he was ready, the captain was driving her horse forward. At the head of the column, she was the first to pass through the arch, and to Will’s utter shock, she didn’t emerge on the other side. Instead, she vanished.
‘What’s happening?’ Will’s heart was pounding at the impossibility of what he had just seen. A pair of Stewards disappeared through the arch, and the column was still moving forward. Will was seized by the dizzy feeling that there was something important through that arch that was just out of his reach. Another pair of Stewards vanished, and Will was certain that he could hear the sound of hooves striking stone, echoing as if from a tunnel or chamber. But how could that be when there wasn’t any chamber, just the grass and mud and wide-open sky?
Wait, he wanted to say, but in the next moment, he was riding under the arch himself.
He felt a lurch, and a momentary prick of panic when he didn’t come out onto the marsh on the other side – instead he found himself riding under fragments of ancient stone and giant pieces of masonry. Disembodied, they scattered the earth and filled him with awe.
And then he looked up, and caught his breath at what he saw.
An ancient citadel, gleaming with a thousand lights. It was monumental and very old, like the huge pieces of stone around him. Ancient battlements stood high, a second arch over an immense gateway, and behind that soaring towers. Parts of it were a ruin, but that only increased its strange, aching beauty. It was like glimpsing a wonder that had passed from the world and that – once this citadel was gone – would be lost forever.
The feeling that he knew this place swept over him again, though he had never seen it before. The Hall of the Stewards … The words rang like a bell that made something in him tremble.
‘No outsider has ever passed through our gates,’ he heard a Steward say behind him, jolting him out of his reverie. ‘I hope the captain knows what she’s doing, bringing you here.’
He looked back and saw the others riding in single file. Behind them he could still see the marsh on the other side of the arch, covered in grasses. He blinked, the ordinary patch of marsh at odds with the extraordinary sight in front of him.
Is this what Justice meant? An ancient world that was destroyed, except for remnants …
High above the citadel, a giant flame burned like a shining beacon that defied the night. It was set atop the walls, lighting the gates and showing off the splendour of the citadel. And if the walls were old, the flame was new, leaping like young gold. The bright star holds, thought Will, and the trembling sensation grew stronger.
‘Open the gates!’ came the call, and on the walls above, two Stewards on either side of the gate began pulling the chain rope – not with a crank or a lever, but with their own unnatural strength – and the huge portcullis began to rise.
Passing through the gates, Will felt dwarfed by the size and wonder of the place. He saw a vast courtyard of ancient stonework, four enormous columns each broken at the top, reaching up into the empty sky. The great staircase leading to the first of the buildings was intact, stone steps rising from the courtyard to a set of immense doors. It must have been a place of great wonder at its height, and even now it was still beautiful, as the bones of a ruined cathedral are beautiful, conjuring its past in elegant remnants of stone.
And then he became aware of the stares, the shocked reactions as the Stewards on the walls saw him. Whole groups of Stewards in the courtyard stopped and stared. In their old-fashioned white livery, the Stewards suited this ancient place as monks suited a monastery. Will felt like an intrusion in his muddy clothes, an ordinary boy on a black horse. Every eye was on him.