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pressed forward. Gawaine fought at Jordan's left, his axe glowing bright as the sun. Taggert fought at his
right, her balefire sword spitting and crackling as it hewed through flesh and bone alike. Behind them,
Cord threw away his mace, and it vanished in mid-air. He pulled out of nowhere a huge and terrible war
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hammer, and swung it double-handed. The solid steel head alone had to weigh at least twenty pounds,
and it was set on the end of five feet of polished oak. An ordinary man couldn't even have hefted it, but
Cord swung the hammer as though it was all but weightless. He was no more Real than the creatures he
fought, but still his face twisted with loathing at the sight of what faced him. He might have been born of
the darkness, but his heart and his loyalties lay with the light. And above them all, the Monk rotated
slowly on the disturbed air, and madness surged through him into the world.
Things that looked horribly like men crawled up out of the cracks in the floor. Something huge and dark
scuttled lightly down the wall and dropped on to a guard, crushing him to the floor. Gossamer strands of
pink and purple drifted on the air and wrapped themselves around the fighters, tightening inexorably into
glistening cocoons that devoured their contents. One whole wall became a vast inhuman face. A dozen
men looked into its great golden eyes and went insane from what they saw there. And still Jordan and his
people struggled ever closer to the throne.
Sir Gawaine fought tirelessly, his axe falling and rising with grim efficiency. He gave no thought to
anything save the struggle, and blood ran down his face like tears. With Emma's death all his emotions
had run out of him, save for a simple cold need for revenge. Nothing else mattered. Nothing mattered but
killing the monstrous things that were responsible for all the evil in Castle Midnight. His axe rose and fell,
rose and fell, and the creatures of the Unreal fell back before him. Gawaine cut them down and moved
on to the next, feeling nothing, nothing at all.
Taggert fought at Prince Viktor's side, and smiled savagely as her balefire sword sliced through every
monstrosity that walked or crawled or flew within her reach. Nothing got past her to strike at Viktor,
though many tried, and a slow steady pride burned within her. Even in the midst of blood and carnage
she still had time to find a small smile at how fast her feelings towards Viktor had changed. He'd not been
a bad sort before his exile, just weak and easily led by the wrong people. She hadn't cared much about
him then, one way or the other. But the man who'd emerged from the chaos of King Malcolm's death had
been a much finer sort. A true Prince of the Blood, worthy to be King. And a man Kate Taggert was
growing increasingly fond of. She smiled again, and then put the thought firmly out of her mind. She'd
think about that later. Assuming there was a later. She fought on, sweat running down her face, and
soaking her chest and sides as a grinding fatigue grew slowly inside her. The balefire was a constant drain
on her strength, but she didn't dare give it up for an ordinary sword. It was the only advantage she had.
She just hoped her magic would last long enough for Viktor to reach the Stone. If it didn't, then perhaps
everything they'd been through had been for nothing, after all. Taggert cut viciously about her with her
shimmering sword. She wasn't unhappy. She was doing what she'd been trained to do, in a cause she
believed in, for someone she cared for. There were worse ways to die.
Cord swung his war hammer with murderous ease, and the Unreal fought each other for the privilege of
dragging him down. Cord stood his ground and let them come to him. He felt no anger towards them.
They were his brothers, in a way, born like him of random chaos and Unreality, without mother or father,
sprung adult and fully formed into a world that was forever alien to them. Cord looked like a man and felt
like a man, but he had never made the mistake of believing himself to be a man. He was a whim made
flesh and blood, a possibility given form and motion, nothing more. He was Unreal. And a traitor to his
own kind, perhaps. But still he fought on, guarding the back of a man he'd come to admire, and a woman
he might have loved, if he'd been Real. Roderik cut and thrust with his sword, and wondered how
everything could have gone so horribly wrong. His plan had seemed so perfect in the beginning, so simple
and straight-forward. Everyone had said so. But first the little things had got out of control, and then the
bigger things, until finally he had come to realise that he was only a part in someone else's plan. A bitter
resignation was all that kept him going now; that, and a burning hatred for the vile creatures that swarmed
around him. Whatever he might have been and done, the Castle was his home, and always had been, and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]