Ruler of the Realm

Ninety-seven

Torches flared in wall sconces as Blue set a hesitant foot on the top step. She stopped for the barest second. This wasn’t any technology she knew. The torches didn’t seem to be spell-driven. They were lit by some sort of mechanical device that produced a spark. Yet this area of the castle had been locked up for centuries. How could any mechanical device still work after so much time? How could any torch still burn in this dampness?

She pushed the questions from her mind and concentrated on keeping her footing. The stone steps were worn and slippery. How things happened didn’t matter. The important thing was that they did. She was here now and she was happy.

The spiral staircase was so narrow she twice smelt her hair singe in the torch flames, but she reached the bottom at last. She was in a tiny vestibule, facing a single door flanked by painted statues of fanged guardians, their colours faded with age. The door itself was crudely made from planks of some black wood, but beaded here and there with slivers of obsidian. There was no handle and she could not see a lock.

She reached out to push the door and metal claws sprang out at once to grip her hand. Blue froze, her heart pounding suddenly, and forced herself not to panic. If she had jerked back her hand, the claws would have ripped the flesh from her bones. As it was, one of them had pierced the skin so there was a welling of a single drop of blood. She looked at it, fascinated.

Something else emerged from the door, not a mechanical device this time, but a sinuous ribbon that had a strangely organic look to it. It slid across the surface of her hand and licked the blood like a tongue. Blue waited, suddenly aware of what was happening. Apparently the sample proved satisfactory, for the claws suddenly withdrew and the entire doorway shattered, collapsing in dusty shards at her feet. She stepped across them daintily.

She was standing in an immense black lacquer box, its polished surfaces reflecting a small flame that erupted from a stone dish in the centre of the floor. The effect was oppressive, but this was obviously no more than an antechamber to some other room. Blue hurried across it towards an open archway, then hesitated at some inner prompting. There was an unlit lantern of archaic design on the floor beside the stone dish. The archway was dark – it seemed to absorb what little light there was – and she would need some illumination if she was to go through. It was ridiculous to imagine the lantern could be fuelled and functional after all these years, but she picked it up anyway.

It took her several minutes to discover how the lantern worked, but she finally managed to light it from the open flame. She walked towards the archway, holding it aloft.

The room was like nothing she’d ever seen before. It was like stepping out beneath the night sky, but a night sky peppered with alien stars. A lazy inlaid river, sparkling in the lamplight, crawled across the mosaic floor. There were living creatures on its banks, insectile and carapaced, but something told her they were harmless so long as she left them undisturbed.

Blue stepped on to the river itself, convinced it represented a safe pathway. Three paces further on, her lantern flared and she saw the godform.

The figure was so foreign to anything she’d known that her every instinct was to throw herself cringing on the floor. Its blood-red lacquer representation arched across the star-ways above her, sickeningly naked and deformed. Its outstretched arms defined the archway through which she’d entered. Its sturdy legs outlined an open doorway ahead. But it was the face that appalled her. It leered down obscenely from the gloom above her head, an open maw that seemed designed to swallow her alive.

Blue tore her eyes away and concentrated on her breathing. She had to remember why she was here. If this was a test, then she must pass it. What she had to do was far more important than some stupid relief carving of an archaic god, however much ancient power it radiated.

After a while she grew calm enough to walk through the doorway between the godform’s straddled legs.

The third and final chamber was the strangest of them all. Its proportions were colossal, as if it had been constructed to accommodate a giant. Walls and ceiling were completely lined with plates of brass, green with age now, but still reflecting the light from her lamp. Inlaid in the polished granite floor was a brazen circle, inscribed with an enormous pentagram of brass. In the exact centre of the figure rose a double cube altar carved from porphyry. On the altar lay an open, ancient book.

Blue’s eyes glazed as she walked forward.

She crossed into the circle and at once the entire chamber emitted a high-pitched whine which rose to a brief crescendo, then dropped to a background hum. She set her lantern on the ground and began to move towards the altar. She had the look of a sleepwalker, but she was smiling.

The altar dwarfed her. She had to stand on tiptoe to reach the book, but that, while large, was at least of manageable proportions. She pulled it down, taking care not to lose the place where it had opened. The pages were crafted from the skin of some unfamiliar animal and smelled of grave dust and dank earth. The binding was of heavily tooled leather.

For the barest moment she experienced a pang of panic. The book was handwritten in an ornate and unfamiliar script, delicately illuminated around the edges with scenes and creatures so alien they almost twisted the mind. How could she read from this? There was nothing about it that she understood.

But then, as if the book had a life of its own, the words began to rearrange themselves subtly. Nothing really changed character, but now, with an effort, she found a degree of comprehension:

Micma Goho Mad Zir Comselha Zien Biah Os Londoh Norz Chis Othil Gigipah Vnd-L Chis ta Pu-Im Q Mospleh Teloch…

The words were in a language so archaic she could not even guess its roots. It bore no resemblance to anything she had ever known, yet somehow the meaning resonated in her mind:

Behold, saith your God, I am a circle on Whose Hands stand Twelve Kingdoms. Six are the Seats of Living Breath. The rest are as Sharp Sickles or the Horns of Death…

Carrying the open book carefully in both hands, Blue took a step backwards, then another. In a moment she was standing just outside the brazen circle with its inlaid pentagram and altar. Her chest felt tight, but she ignored it. She took a deep breath. Although she had never heard the words spoken before, Blue commenced to intone the evocation on the page before her:

‘ Micma Goho Mad Zir Comselha Zien Biah Os Londoh Norz…’

The flame of her lantern flickered wildly and the background hum rose noticeably in pitch and volume.

‘ Chis Othil Gigipah Vnd-L Chis ta Pu-Im…’

In a moment the brazen pentagram began to glow.