Forest Kingdom Trilogy 2 - Blood and Honor

almost as though bowing to Jordan, and then he fell on his side and lay still. Jordan pulled his sword free, and spurned the body with his foot. There was an impressed murmur from the guards, and Jordan nodded to them tiredly. With a bit of luck, they'd all been too far away to see exactly how he beat Lewis. They probably assumed he'd beaten the Prince by sheer strength of will, or something. He rooted among the bodies of the fallen guards till he found the royal seal, and slipped the ring back on his finger.
    'Pardon me, your highness,' said the Steward quietly, 'but I think you ought to take a look at this.'
    Jordan moved over to where she was kneeling beside Ironheart's headless body. She showed him the head she'd found inside the featureless helm, and Jordan's stomach heaved. The head looked as though it had been dead for some time. Half the face was already eaten away by decay. Taggert dropped the thing with a grimace, and wiped her fingers thoroughly on her robes.
    'I doubt we'll ever know the answer,' she said neutrally. 'Lewis might have told us, but he's dead.'
    'There's still the Monk,' said Jordan, helping her to her feet. 'Yes,' said Taggert. 'There's always the Monk.' Jordan looked around him, and saw Gawaine was still kneeling beside the body of his dead wife.
    He walked over to the knight, and stood awkwardly beside him. 'I'm sorry,' he said finally. 'I thought I could save her. I did try, Gawaine.'
    'It's my own fault,' said Gawaine. 'I shouldn't have left her alone for so long. She was always easily led.'
    He got clumsily to his feet. 'Let's go, Viktor. You have a throne waiting for you.' 'Do you think I care about that now?'
    'Yes!' said Gawaine. 'You have to! Because if you don't, Emma and everyone who's followed you will have died for nothing! Now go in there and take the throne, Viktor. It's waiting for you.'
    'Yes,' said Jordan. 'I suppose it is. There isn't anyone left to stand between me and it any longer.'
    From inside the Hall came an explosion of light and sound, culminating in harsh, echoing laughter.
    Taggert looked at Jordan.
    'The gateway, Viktor. We forgot about the bloody gateway.' She stepped forward and threw open the double doors. Jordan stepped in beside her, and his stomach lurched sickly as he saw the new gateway.
    Midway between the doors and the throne, the Monk hung unsupported on the air. His robe was flung open, revealing a surging mass of light and colour. There was no trace of a body within the robe, or that there ever had been one. The Monk had become a living gateway, through which the Unreal could enter the Real world. Creatures out of a nightmare dripped in a steady stream from inside the Monk's robe, like maggots from a rotting carcase. They fell to crawl and slide and scuttle across the floor, and there were always more close behind. A gusting wind blew from the gateway, hot and prickly and rank with burning ammonia. And above it all, the Monk's laughter rang on and on without ever a pause for breath.
    Jordan stared in horror at the Unreal that had already taken root in the Great Hall. Horrid creatures scuttled up and down the walls, and clung upside down to the ceiling, feeding delicately on tiny morsels of fresh meat. Blood dripped from the ceiling in a steady stream. The floor was cracked and broken, and jets of flame shot up into the Hall. The throne sat intact upon its dais, untouched by all the madness, but a barrier of seething thorns had grown up around the dais, sealing it off. Jordan looked helplessly at Taggert.
    'I can't do anything to stop this madness until I can get to the Stone, and I'd need an army at my back just to reach the damned throne. What am I going to do, Kate?'
    'Only one thing we can do, Viktor,' said the Steward evenly. 'We'll have to destroy the gateway. You did it once before.'
    'That was different,' said Jordan. 'This time the gateway's aware and intelligent. And Unreal. The Monk's got to be Unreal.'
    'Right. I always thought he was, but I wasn't even allowed to run tests on him as long as he was under Lewis's protection. We've got to stop him, Viktor. If the balance here shifts too far, Castle Midnight will become one huge gateway through which the Unreal can run loose in the world.'
    Jordan swallowed hard, and wished there was somewhere he could run to and still be safe. But as long as the gateway was open, nowhere would ever really be safe. He looked quickly around him. Roderik and the guards stood clustered at the main doors,