The Master Of Misrule Part 23

Cat's mind swarmed with the visions from the High Priest's mirrors, of blue fire and whirling cards, yet they seemed curiously flat and far away. Even the image of Bel slumped on the floor seemed barely real to her. I'm so tired, she thought. I can't think or do anything, not anymore.

Dumbly, because there was nothing else to do, she began to work her way across the square. Alec Crawley was close on her heels, the gun pressed hard in her back. They went behind the wheel and through the broken door of Temple House before she was ready for it, or anything.

The wreckage left by Misrule's revels had been cleared from the hall, and the black-and-white marble was as smooth and polished as it had ever been. Knight and queen faced each other from their separate squares.

"Now," said Alec, "you will give me my p-prize."

As Flora held the thread in her unwilling hands, the breeze cascaded through the sun-drenched trees, so that their glade became a prism of leaf-light. Her sister was bathed in its rainbows.

"Follow the thread. Please, Flora. It's my only chance."

"Where will it take me?"

"I don't know. But we are near its end."

And so Flora followed the line of red silk along the wall, through blossom and birdsong, dewy ferns and lacy petals, until she came to a weather-beaten door. Grace walked with her.

Flora pushed the door open, and found herself in a marble hallway.

Blaine was lost in the mists again. The Arcanum was reaching out for him: its air in his lungs, its haze in his eyes. The sharp edges of the playing card dug into his hand. It would lead him to his quarry, he was sure of it. And although he was hunting a different man than before, as the damp fog-shapes coiled and billowed, it seemed this was what he had been doing, always. Chasing phantoms through mist.

And then the mist cleared, and he found himself at the north corner of Mercury Square.

Blaine shouldered his way through the crowd, ignoring the indignant protests of those around him. Just as he reached the other side of the garden, the fairground music crackled into static. It returned at an ear-popping pitch of competing melodies that were both jarring and piercingly sweet. At the same moment, the rim of the Ferris wheel burst into flame. The crowd gave a collective jump.

He pressed on through the confusion, and into Temple House.

Blaine saw Cat and the Knight of Wands face to face in front of him. He saw Toby at the foot of the stairs. He saw Flora emerge from the door to their right. He saw a dazzle of blue sparks, and Misrule appear in the center of the hall.

The Master of Misrule's face was joyous and welcoming. His motley robes shook and s.h.i.+mmered as he clapped his hands in delight.

"Ah, my angels! I knew you'd bring them to me."

They moved together, instinctively, even Alec Crawley. All were dazed and bewildered, as unprepared for their sudden reunion as for the intervention of Misrule. Before anyone could react further, Misrule snapped his fingers. At once, the four playing cards released themselves from clothes and hands, and flew through the air to their new master: Temperance, Love, Fame and the Devil.

"I don't understand," Toby croaked. "Does this mean you-you wanted us to get Eternity all along?"

Misrule smiled radiantly. "The Game is already mine; I have no need for the Great Triumph. When you summoned the angels, you brought them out of the Arcanum. Yet you failed to finish your moves, and failed to release them into the world. And since they are still part of my Game, I shall take their powers for myself. Behold-" He ripped all four cards in half.

The glory of the Lord went up from the cherub, and stood over the threshold of the house; and the house was filled with the cloud, and the court was full of the brightness of the Lord's glory.

Cloud billowed, light blazed, as the noise of beating wings and rus.h.i.+ng wind roared through Temple House. Kings, queens and knight reeled from the onslaught.

Misrule, meanwhile, stood tall and proud. In a commanding movement, he brought the thumb and forefinger of his left hand together, holding them up to make a circle in the air. The writhing, rus.h.i.+ng, feathery cloud was sucked into it, like thread being pulled through the eye of a needle. There was a sound like the clash of cymbals and the crack of rocks as the s.p.a.ce ringed by Misrule's thumb and finger glimmered and solidified.

Now he was holding a silver coin. He tossed it into the air, where it hung, suspended, and did not fall. As the coin began to spin, sparks shot out of the Ferris wheel's spokes. Misrule himself grew taller, brighter, more terrifying than before. Blue fire glittered in his eyes, flashed at his fingertips.

For I will fill mine hand with coals of fire from between the cherubim, and scatter them over the city.

He lifted up his arms, and the wheel outside rose at his bidding, until it hung high above the square, huge and whirling and burning bright, like the eye of G.o.d.

Beneath it, the unwary crowd oohed and aahed as if at any normal fireworks display.

The Master of Misrule laughed to hear them. "They cannot yet see all the wonders I have worked, but they will not be in ignorance for long...."

He turned from the doorway to look at the four kings and queens. The coin still hung in the air above his head, tumbling over and over yet never falling. Laughing heads and serpents' tails flashed in and out of view.

Misrule put his excitement aside; he was as solemn and peaceful as when they had first met. "You have had a fine run, but the Wheel has turned and your hand is played out. Will you renounce your mastery?"

The four of them had faced loss and defeat before, but this was different. This was everyone's defeat: a whole world's worth of it. Yet the disaster was too huge and too sudden to comprehend. Misrule's triumph had not shaken them out of their individual crises. All Flora could think of was Grace, Cat of Bel, Blaine of men with knives and guns.

Only Toby kept his focus. His hand grasped the card he had kept back for a final gamble, the moment of last resort.

"You should be so lucky," he said to Misrule. "Hold on to me," he told the others. Then he took out the Triumph of Time.

The triumph that Mia and so many others had struggled to win was one of the most potent, and unpredictable, cards in the deck. Toby had once been in its move, and barely escaped with his life. Now he was going to play it the same way he and Flora had played the Seven of Cups, by bringing its powers out of its own move and into Temple House.

He tore the card across. There was the sound of chiming clocks, breaking gla.s.s, and running sand. And everything revolved backward.

MERCURY SQUARE WAS SILENT and empty, the rustling shadows behind the garden rails illuminated only by the glow of the streetlamps. Wind gusted, driving sleet into Cat's face, and she looked down at the damp pavement, imagining her old self s.h.i.+vering on the corner. She had returned to the first night she had come to Temple House.

Cat had no idea where the Triumph of Time had taken Blaine, Flora and Toby. She was not, however, alone.

"I d-don't understand." Alec Crawley was swaying on his feet. His voice was unsteady, too. "Who-? What-?"

Cat briefly closed her eyes. It wasn't over, not yet. She supposed she should feel relieved.

"Toby tried to turn back the clock," she said at last. "At least, I think that's what he meant to do. To go back in time so everything could be put right ... Only it didn't quite work out. We've gone back in time, but not real time in the real world. Instead, we've gone back in time in the Arcanum."

"How do you know? How do you know this isn't real?"

Cat looked at her parents' murderer, sweating and twitching at her elbow, and realized she was no longer afraid of him. The golden curtain hung across the entrance to Temple House, just as it had on her first visit, though there was no concierge waiting to take her invitation, and no sounds of revelry behind the stiff brocade.

"This is only a dim copy of the night I joined the Game. If we'd really gone back in time," she said flatly, "there'd be a party under way inside, with the High Priest guarding the entrance, and the old kings and queens calling the shots." And Cat could make a different choice: not to give her invitation to the old man, not to enter the Arcanum-above all, not to release the Hanged Man. But she knew it was too late for that.

She drew back the curtain. The other end of the building was a near mirror image of their own. It was the same composition of black-and-white marble, golden drapes, open door. The doorway opposite, however, framed a different view of Mercury Square, lit by the flame of a blue wheel and seething with people. In the center of the doorway, a silver coin danced in the air. Heads. Tails. Heads. Tails ...

"There," said Cat. "That's the real and present world, on the other side of the coin."

"What's happening t-to it?"

"Misrule's moving his own mad version of the Game across the thresholds, and soon everyone will be a player. They won't have any choice. They'll all be enslaved to his Lottery."

Alec wiped his damp forehead. "Very well, so maybe we're not in the p-past. Maybe we're in something better. Maybe this is an alternative present-one we can make our own."

An alternate reality ... another chance ... If she turned and walked away, could she go back to some Arcanum equivalent of Greg's flat and find Bel and her old life, just as it had always been? And if she stayed in it long enough, would she be able to forget there had ever been anything else? "Same world, different view" was how Toby had once described the Arcanum to her. But that wasn't quite right. One view was smoke and mirrors. The mirrors might be real mirrors, the smoke real smoke, but what you saw in them was still illusion.

The graveyard smell intensified as Alec sidled closer. "You're still a queen, aren't you? You have the Game's powers. You have your t-triumphs. And you can put them to good use, whether we're in the Arcanum or a p-parallel universe or h.e.l.l itself. Together we can-"

Cat thrust her last card into his hand. "Here's Justice, like you wanted. Do your worst with it."

"Where are you g-going?"

"Back to reality-back to the present. If I hurry, there's still time."

"For what?"

"To find Bel, and make things right. To ask her to forgive me."

"Forgive you?" Alec laughed shrilly. "She b-betrayed you just like she did me. You don't owe her anything."

"Fool." The scent of her angel's lilies had returned, blowing away the graveyard stench, the taste of bitterness. "I wanted justice, but not at any price. Yes, you murdered my parents; yes, Bel lied. But what does that matter now? Life as we know it is ending."

"You can't s-save the world," he said, clutching at her arm, a whine in his voice. "You can't stop Misrule. But here you're a queen. You can r-rule this place. We both can."

Cat barely heard him. She was thinking of how she had looked at Bel that last time, so hard and so cold, when she said she had no certainties, nothing, because Bel had taken all of them away.

But of course Cat had certainties. She had twelve years' worth of them. Twelve years of a love that was lived in but not looked at, because it was so solid, so all-encompa.s.sing, that whatever happened outside of it couldn't touch the sureness of what was within. There was no alternative to that truth.

"I'm sorry," she whispered to Bel. Card or no card, she finally understood what her angel needed, if it was to be released. Temperance weighed and measured, but in search of balance, not judgment. The words came to her like those from a remembered dream: Yet I shall temper justice with mercy....

She stepped into the house.

"Wait. Come b-back."

Cat walked past the curtain, her eyes fixed on the dancing coin. It was the emblem of Misrule's power, she was sure of it. His power, and that of the angels still imprisoned in his Game.

She walked back to her own time, back toward Bel, and forgiveness. She walked into the perfume of lilies and the sound of running water, the rush of wings.

"I'm w-warning you-"

But Alec's warning came too late. The first of the cherubim was released.

The first evening Blaine came to Temple House was three days after he had arrived in London. At that point, he was sleeping on the floor of a friend's brother's flat. He wasn't a good houseguest: brooding and jittery, ready to snap at the slightest thing. The brother's girlfriend didn't like him being there; she kept looking at his bandaged arm and pursing her lips. He could see he'd have to move on. That afternoon, he had phoned Helen and, for once, she'd actually come to the phone, her voice quavering with hope. "h.e.l.lo?" she said. "h.e.l.lo? Is that you?"

He had put the phone down before Helen could name whom she was hoping for. It would be Arthur, not him; that was for sure. For the rest of the afternoon, he trudged relentlessly through the streets, gripping the card in his pocket. n.o.body he asked had ever heard of a Mercury Square. Yet he found it in the end.

Or it found him, he thought, looking at how the tree branches blurred into the bronze dusk, just as they had on his first visit. Somehow, the Triumph of Time's chiming clocks and running sand had taken him back to the start. The start of everything. This time, though, he must call his mother. Tell her that there was danger ahead, that bad things were happening, that he would look after her- He must tell her he was coming.

Then he heard a gunshot from within the house.

The bullet grazed Cat's arm; she felt the sting and shock of it, and the warmth of blood. Alec's eyes bulged and his arm shook as he waved the gun. "No!" he cried. "You can't go. You have to give me your t-triumphs-"

Cat didn't even look at him. She was gazing at Misrule's coin, whose spinning had begun to slow, to grow heavy and languid.

But when Blaine burst through the golden curtain, he only had eyes for the Knight of Wands, and the jagged black shadow beneath him.

Blaine slammed into Alec Crawley's back.

They both went skidding across the floor, snarling and grappling. The gun fell, too, and was scrabbled for by Alec and s.n.a.t.c.hed away by Blaine. He drove his fist into the man's face and a flash of joy sparked through him. As the Knight of Wands flailed and writhed beneath him, Blaine gripped him by his hair and smashed his head against the floor.

"Don't you dare hurt her," he shouted. "Don't you dare. You're dead. You should be a ghost-just like the other monster I've been chasing. All this time-this useless time!"

He wanted to bury his fists and knees into every soft part of the man's body, grinding him into bone dust, blood paste.

Something plucked at his s.h.i.+rt. He twitched his shoulders impatiently. Then he heard his name.

"It's all right, Blaine," said Cat. "You've saved me. You've won."

She was standing there, drained but resolute, clutching her bloodied arm.

Blaine's own arm ached. The Knight of Wands stirred and groaned as the shadow pooled around him, thick as oil. Blaine felt soiled by it. All that anger and hate, all that fear ... Blaine took the gun from the waistband of his jeans and got to his feet. He motioned Alec to get up as well, his breath rasping harshly.

"I should have stayed, I know that now. I should have seen it through. When I abandoned my mother, I let Arthur win. I abandoned myself, too. I gave up everything. I let the Game take me over. I let it trick me and-"

A sob forced its way out of his throat. He shuddered all over. But when he was able to speak again, his voice was calm.

"Arthur White was a bad man, and you're far worse. In fact, you belong to h.e.l.l itself. But I'm no killer. Here."

He pa.s.sed the gun to Cat.

"Blaine ... no. This isn't what I-" She paused. "We might not have our cards, but I think we're in your move now. So whatever happens next, it's got to be your call." Cat had come to realize that whatever strange angels or demons needed to be released, they were as much a part of her, Blaine's, Flora's and Toby's personal history as the Arcanum's. To win these last moves, and unleash the powers the cards represented, would depend on the choices they made for their lives outside the Game.

"I understand." He glanced at Misrule's slow-turning coin. "It's all right. Just keep the gun pointed at his head and make sure he doesn't pull any tricks."

Cat stood between Alec Crawley and the curtain to the false past. Blaine stood before the doorway to the true present.

"Here's your choice," he announced. Blaine pointed to where the burning wheel whirled in the sky. Fireworks were flying from its spokes in a rainbow explosion of wands, cups, swords and pentacles as the reckless crowd cheered below.

"Either you're going to go out into our city and face what's coming, along with the rest of humanity, or you can take your chance in the Arcanum, starting with a card from my deck."

"You're d-dealing me a new move?"

"It'll be a lucky dip. I have seven cards from my Suit of Wands and two triumphs for you to pick from. Here's the threshold."

He rolled his die along the checkered floor. The print of a silver wheel appeared on a black square.

Alec Crawley looked at Cat, and the curtain behind her. Her face was white, her arm b.l.o.o.d.y, but her aim was steady.

"I have a t-triumph of my own now. Justice."

Blaine shrugged. "You think Justice will count for anything in Misrule's world? Then stay here to find out."

"All right." Alec Crawley licked his cracked lips. "All right." He touched the blood on his face and laughed a little. "I'll hazard another card."

The King of Wands held out his deck. The ill.u.s.trated sides were blank. Cards dealt by Game Masters to players always were, until they were taken into the Arcanum. The knight fumbled through them with shaking hands. Even so, his eyes gleamed with excitement at the moment of choice. He was a gambler, after all.

Alec Crawley bent to the threshold's sign, and traced the pattern of its wheel. A coin appeared in his palm. He fingered it, and the card, with a final hesitancy. He grinned crookedly at Cat. "Time to t-take what's due to me."