At the far end of the room, a beam of moonlight was filtering down from the ceiling, and it struck a stone plinth, as if what lay there was precious and rare.
Will could read the words:
The horn all seek and never find.
On the plinth lay a lacquered wooden box open to show the white horn of an animal he knew only from myth. It was longer than both his arms outstretched, a pearlescent spiral that whorled from a thicker base to a sharp pointed tip. Unlike the other artefacts in the room, it shone, like a spear of light. Clean and untarnished by dust or time, it was like a bolt to the heart.
‘A unicorn,’ said Violet in a soft, awed voice, and he remembered that she was a Lion.
She was reaching out.
‘It looks like humans sawed it off …’ Her fingers touched the wide base of the horn that was smooth and then spiked and jagged, as though it had been partway sawn and then snapped off.
Like a tree stump, Will thought, and a vision overwhelmed him, a battlefield charge of white horses like a crashing wave, some of them bearing armoured riders with flashing swords, others with their long horns lowered like deadly spears. They were charging into an oncoming rush of black shadows, and Will’s heart was pounding knowing they wouldn’t survive but were charging anyway, impossibly brave. There was an answer here, as somewhere in the distance he heard Violet say, ‘Will.’
He looked up, but not at her. At a black archway cut into the stone of the wall. There was another room.
He took his torch and walked towards it, drawn as if by a force. He could hear Violet behind him, saying, ‘Will? Where are you going?’ He ignored her. There were steps leading downward to a room that was smaller than the others, and pitch-black.
It wasn’t an ordinary darkness; it was tangible and surrounding, eerily darkening the torch rather than being lit by it. Violet raced down the stairs after him, then stopped short at the bottom, as if the thick, stifling dark repelled her.
There was something else here.
That’s what the Steward had said on the ship, moments before the Corrupted Blade had cracked open its container. This felt the same, but thickly worse, as if whatever was here was darker and more dangerous than the black flame of the Blade could ever be. But he was drawn to it too, as if he sensed a presence that called to him. He took another step forward.
Will could feel what repulsed Violet, a roiling wrongness. Yet he couldn’t stop. His heart was pounding. Every answer sought seemed to lie in the promise of what hung in the air before him.
It wasn’t the Blade. It was something else.
It looked simple at first. A piece of black rock. As if suspended, it hung right in the centre of the chamber, rotating slowly. He raised the torch to look at it, but the light had no effect.
It was so black that it seemed to suck all the light out of the room. An endless void, a terrible hole that wanted to consume everything in the world. It called to him as a chasm calls to one who might throw himself over, bringing him right to its edge and whispering to him to jump.
He wanted to touch it. He reached out his hand, and as his fingertips brushed its surface he felt a terrible stab of cold. He gasped as the shock of it went through him. He saw a vision of the four empty thrones of the Hall, but there were four resplendent figures sitting in them, great kings in bright, shining robes. But as he watched, three started to change, their faces sloughing off, their bones turning transparent, until they were horrific shadow versions of themselves. And then he saw a figure rising above them all, with a pale crown and eyes of black flame—
‘Stop!’
He gasped as a hard grip on his arm wrenched him back, and he found himself staring instead at the face of the Elder Steward, her eyes flashing and stern. Her hands were on his shoulders, holding him back. ‘You must never touch it. That stone is death.’ Her voice was as unrelenting as her eyes, an expression he had never seen her wear before. ‘Even the briefest touch will kill.’
He blinked, and looked around the chamber. He felt like he had been snapped out of a dream, or a spell. The Elder Steward had come in behind them, sweeping past Violet, who was looking on from the stairs with concern.
‘Kill?’ he said dazedly. The Elder Steward’s hands on his shoulders made him feel warmer. Her presence had the opposite effect of the stone. She seemed to emanate a reassuring warmth, like the fire of a welcoming hearth. Near her the torchlight was brighter.
He looked back at the suspended stone. He could have sworn that he had touched it … hadn’t he? He could still feel the chill of its cold, see those figures transforming in their thrones. Had he imagined it? He had an overwhelming urge to place his palm against the stone to make sure.