Gansey had been given enough time in seven years to contemplate every possible option for the king behind this door. He had read the accounts of Glendower’s life enough to know that Glendower could be either a hero or a villain depending on where you regarded him from. He had pulled Glendower’s daughter from her tomb and found that it had driven her mad. He had read legends that promised favours and legends that promised death. Some stories had Glendower alone; some stories had him surrounded by dozens of sleeping knights who woke with him.
Some stories – their story – had a demon in them.
“You can wait outside if you’re worried, Cheng,” Ronan said, but his bravado was thin as a spiderweb, and Henry brushed it away as easily as one.
Gansey said, “I can’t guarantee anything about what’s on the other side of this. We’re all in agreement that the favour is to kill the demon, right?”
They were.
Gansey pressed his hands to the death-cold stone. It shifted easily beneath the weight of him, some clever mechanism allowing the heavy stone to turn. Or perhaps no mechanism at all, Gansey thought. Perhaps some dreamstuff, some fanciful creation that didn’t have to follow the rules of physics.
The torch illuminated the interior of the tomb.
Gansey stepped inside.
The walls of Gwenllian’s tomb had been richly painted, birds upon birds chasing more birds, in reds and blues unfaded by light. Armour and swords hung on the walls, waiting for the sleeper to be woken. The coffin had been elevated and covered with an intricately carved lid featuring an effigy of Glendower. The entire tomb had been befitting royalty.
This tomb, on the other hand, was simply a room.
The ceiling was low and hewn into the rock: Gansey had to duck his head a little; Ronan had to duck his head a lot. The walls were bare rock. The torch beam found a broad, dark bowl sitting on the floor; there was a darker circle in the bottom of it. Gansey knew enough by now to recognize a scrying bowl. Blue swept the torch further. A square slab sat in the middle of the room; a knight in armour lay on top of it, uncovered and unburied. There was a sword by his left hand, a cup by his right.
It was Glendower.
Gansey had seen this moment.
Time slid more generously around him. He could feel it eddying around his ankles, weighting his legs. There was no noise. There was nothing to make noise, except for the five watchful teens in the room.
He did not feel particularly real.
“Gansey,” whispered Adam. The room swallowed the sound.
Blue’s torch pointed past the armoured figure to the floor beyond. It was a second body. They all exchanged a dark look before beginning to creep slowly towards it. Gansey was hyper-aware of the dry scrape of his footsteps, and as one, they all paused and looked back at the tomb door. In a normal world, it would be a simple thing to talk themselves out of the fear of the door slamming shut. But they hadn’t lived in a normal world for a long time.
Blue continued to illuminate the body with the torch. It was boots and bones and some sort of disintegrating garment of indeterminate colour. It was sprawled partially against the wall, skull propped up as if gazing at its own feet.
What am I doing? Gansey thought.
“Did they die trying to do what we’re doing?” Adam asked.
“Only if waking kings was a historical pastime,” Henry replied, “because this guy was packing some medieval heat.”
Gansey and Ronan knelt beside the bones. The body was wearing a sword. Well, wearing was a poor verb. The rib cage was wearing the sword, which had been stabbed through it, the tip of it jammed evocatively into a shoulder blade.
“Correct to Glendower’s period,” Gansey said, mostly to make himself feel more himself.
There was a heavy silence. Everyone was regarding Gansey. He felt as if he were about to give a speech to a crowd.
“OK,” he said, “I’m doing it.”
“Do it fast,” Blue suggested. “I’m incredibly creeped out.”
This was the moment, then. Gansey drew close to Glendower’s body in its suit of armour.
His hands hovered just over the helmet. His heart was racing so hard that he couldn’t catch a breath.
Gansey closed his eyes.
I am ready.
He gently freed the leather chin strap from the cool metal, and then he carefully pulled the helmet free.
Adam inhaled.
Gansey didn’t. He didn’t breathe at all. He just stood, frozen, his hands gripped around his king’s helmet. He told himself to breathe in, and he did. He told himself to breathe out, and he did. He didn’t move, though, and he didn’t speak.
Glendower was dead.
Bones.
Dust.
“Is that – is that what he’s supposed to look like?” Henry asked.
Gansey did not reply.
It was not what Glendower was supposed to look like, and yet it did not feel untrue. Everything that day had felt lived before, dreamt, redone. How many times had Gansey feared that he would find Glendower, only to discover him dead? The only thing was that Gansey had always feared that he would find Glendower just a little too late. Minutes, days, months after death. But this man had been dead for centuries. The helmet and skull were only metal and bone. The gambeson beneath the plate mail was threads and dust.
“Are we …” Adam started and then stopped, uncertain. He put his hand on the wall of the tomb.
Gansey covered his mouth with his hand; he felt his breath would blast the remainder of Glendower away. The others still stood in shocked assembly. None of them had words. It had been longer for him, but they had been just as hopeful.
“Are we supposed to wake his bones?” Blue asked. “Like the skeletons in the cave of bones?”