The Seventh Gate

23

The fire dragon carried them as near the city of Necropolis as she could, swimming into the very bay in which the Patryns had been hiding their ship. The dragon kept close to shore, avoiding the massive whirlpool rotating slowly in the center of the bay. Alfred glanced once at the whirlpool, at the molten rock sluggishly spiraling downward, at the steam and smoke lazily coiling up from the gaping maw in the center. He hastily averted his gaze.

“I always knew there was something strange about that dog,” remarked Hugh the Hand.

Alfred smiled tremulously; then the smile faded. There was one other problem he had to resolve. One for which he had to take responsibility.

“Sir Hugh,” Alfred began hesitantly, “did you understand . . . any of what you heard?”

Hugh the Hand eyed him shrewdly, shrugged. “Doesn’t seem to me it much matters whether I understand or not, does it?”

“No,” Alfred answered in some confusion. “I guess it doesn’t.” He cleared his throat. “We’re ... um ... going to a place known as the Seventh Gate. Here, I think ... I believe ... I may be wrong, but—”

“That’s where I’ll die?” Hugh asked bluntly.

Alfred gulped, licked dry lips. His face burned, and not from the heat of the Fire Sea. “If that is truly what you want . . .”

“I do,” Hugh the Hand said firmly. “I’m not supposed to be here. I’m a ghost. Things happen and I can’t feel them anymore.”

“I don’t understand.” Alfred was puzzled. “It wasn’t that way at the beginning. When I”—he swallowed, but he had to take responsibility—“when I first brought you back.”

“Perhaps I can explain,” Jonathon offered. “When Hugh came back to the realm of the living, he left that of the dead far behind. He clung to life, to the people in his life. Thus he remained closely bound to the living. But one by one, he has severed those ties. He has come to realize that he has nothing more to give them. They have nothing to give him. He had everything. And now he can only mourn its loss.”

“. . . loss . . .” sighed the echo.

“But there was a woman who loved him,” Alfred said in a low voice. “She loves him still.”

“Her love is only a very small fraction of the love he found. Mortal love is our introduction to the immortal.”

Alfred was chagrined, aggrieved.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Brother,” Jonathon said. The phantasm entered the body, gleamed in the dead eyes. “You used the necromancy out of compassion, not for gain or hatred or vengeance. Those among the living who have encountered this man have learned from him—some to their despair and fear. But he has given others hope.”

Alfred sighed, nodded. He still didn’t understand, not completely, but he thought he might perhaps forgive himself.

“Good luck in your endeavors,” said the dragon, when she deposited them on the jagged-toothed shore surrounding the Firepool. “And if you are responsible for ridding the world of those who have ravaged it, you have my gratitude.”

They meant well, Alfred said to himself. That seemed the saddest indictment of all.

Samah meant well. The Sartan all meant well. Undoubtedly Ramu meant well. Maybe even, in his own way, Xar meant well.

They simply lacked imagination.

Though the dragon had taken them as near as she could, the journey from the bay to Necropolis was still a long one, particularly on foot. Particularly on Alfred’s feet. He had no sooner stumbled onto shore when he nearly fell into a bubbling pool of boiling-hot mud. Hugh the Hand dragged him back from the edge.

“Use your magic,” Haplo suggested wryly, “or you’ll never make it to the Chamber of the Damned alive.”

Alfred considered this suggestion, hesitated. “I can’t take us inside the Chamber itself.”

“Why not? All you have to do is visualize it in your mind. You’ve been there before.” Haplo sounded irritated.

“Yes, but the warding runes would prevent us from entering. They would block my magic. Besides”—Alfred sighed—“I can’t see it all that clearly. I believe I must have blotted it out of my memory. It was a horrifying experience.”

“In some ways,” Haplo said, thoughtful. “Not in others.

“Yes, you are right about that.”

Though neither would admit it at the time, their experience in the Chamber of the Damned had brought the two enemies closer together, had proved to them that they were not as different as each had believed.

“I remember one part,” Alfred said softly. “I remember the part where we entered the minds and bodies of those who lived—and died—in that Chamber centuries ago . . .”

... A sense of regret and sadness filled Alfred. And though painful to lim, the feelings of sorrow and unhappiness were better—far better—than not feeling anything, the emptiness he’d experienced before joining this brotherhood. Then he had been a husk, a shell containing nothing. The dead—dreadful creations of those who were beginning to dabble in necromancy—had more life than he. Alfred sighed deeply, lifted his head. A glance around the table revealed feelings similar to his softening the faces of the men and women gathered together in this sacred chamber.

His sadness, his regret wasn’t bitter. Bitterness comes to those who have brought tragedy on themselves through their own misdeeds. But unless they changed, Alfred foresaw a time for his people when bitter sorrow must encompass them all. The madness must be halted. He sighed again. Just moments before, he had been radiant with joy; peace hid spread like a balm over the boiling magma sea of lis doubts and fears. But that heady sense of exaltation could not last in this world. He must return to face its problems and perils and, thus, the sadness, the regret.

A hand reached on, clasped his. The hand’s grip was firm, the skin smooth and unwrinkled, a contrast to Alfred’s aged, parchment-paper skin, his weakened grasp.

“Hope, Brother,” said the young man quietly. “We must have hope.”

Alfred turned to look at the young man seated beside him. The Sartan’s face was handsome, strong, resolute—fine steel emerging from a forging fire. No doubts marred its shining surface; its blade was honed to a sharp, cutting edge. The young man looked familiar to Alfred. He could almost put a name to him, but not quite.

Now he could. The man had been Haplo.

Alfred smiled. “I remember the feeling of elation, of knowing that I wasn’t alone in the universe, that a higher power was watching over me, caring for me and about me. I remember that, for the first time in my life, I wasn’t afraid.”

He paused, shook his head. “But that’s all I do remember.”

“Very well,” Haplo said, resigned. “You can’t take us to the Chamber. Where can you take us? How close can we come?”

“Your dungeon cell?” Alfred suggested in a low, subdued voice.

Haplo was silent. Then, “If that’s the best you can do, do it,” he muttered.

Alfred invoked the possibility that they were there and not here and, quite suddenly, they were there.

“Ancestors protect me,” Hugh the Hand murmured.

They stood in the cell. A sigil, formed by Alfred, glowed with a soft white radiance above Haplo’s body. The Patryn lay cold and seemingly lifeless on the stone bed.

“He’s dead!” Hugh cast a dark and suspicious glance at the dog. “Then whose voice am I hearing?”

Alfred was about to launch into an explanation—all about the dog and Haplo’s soul—when the dog sank its teeth into Alfred’s velvet breeches and began tugging him toward the cell door.

A thought occurred to Alfred. “Haplo. What . . . what will happen to you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Haplo said shortly. “Get moving. We don’t have much time. If Xar should find us—”

Alfred gasped. “But you said Lord Xar went to the Labyrinth!”

“I said maybe,” Haplo retorted grimly. “Stop wasting time.”

Alfred wavered. “The dog can’t enter Death’s Gate. Maybe it can’t enter the Seventh Gate, either. Not without you. Jonathon, do you know? What will happen?”

The lazar shrugged. “Haplo is not dead. He lives, though only barely. My care is for those who have passed beyond.”

“. . . beyond . . .”

“You don’t have any choice, Alfred,” Haplo said impatiently. “Get on with it!”

The dog growled.

Alfred sighed. He had a choice. There was always a choice. And he always seemed to make the wrong one. He peered down the hallway that traveled into impenetrable night. The white sigil he had lit above Haplo’s body faded; its light died. They stood blind in the darkness.

Alfred thought back a long, long time, to when he had first met Haplo on Arianus. He remembered the night he’d cast the magical sleep on Haplo, had lifted the bandages that hid his hands, had discovered the sigla tattooed on the flesh. Alfred recalled his despair, his stark terror, his bewilderment.

The ancient enemy has returned! What do I do?

And in the end, he’d done very little, it seemed. Nothing calamitous or catastrophic. He had followed the precepts of his heart, had acted for what he believed to be the best. Was there a higher power guiding his way?

Alfred looked down at the dog, crowding against his leg. At that moment, he thought he understood.

He began to sing the runes softly, in a nasal tone that echoed eerily in the tunnel.

Blue sigla flared to life on the base of the wall at his feet. The darkness was banished.

“What’s that?” Hugh the Hand had been standing near the wall. At the flare of magic, he jumped away from it.

“The runes,” said Alfred. “They will lead us to what is known on this world as the Chamber of the Damned.”

“Sounds appropriate,” Hugh the Hand said dryly.

The last time Alfred had made this journey, he’d been running in fear for his life. He thought he’d forgotten the way, but now that the runes were flickering—lighting the darkness—he began to recognize his surroundings.

The corridor sloped downward, as if it were leading them to the very core of the world. Obviously ancient, but in good repair, the tunnel—unlike most of the catacombs in this unstable world—was smooth and wide. It had been intended to accommodate vast numbers of people. Alfred had thought this odd the last time he’d walked this path. But then, he hadn’t known where the corridor led.

Now he knew and now he understood. The Seventh Gate. The place from which the Sartan had worked the magic that had sundered a world.

“Do you have any idea how the magic worked?” Haplo asked. He spoke in a hushed, subdued voice, though only inner ears could hear him.

“Orlah told me,” Alfred replied, pausing occasionally in his explanation to softly chant the runes. “After they made the decision to sunder the world, Samah and the Council members brought together all the Sartan population and those of the mensch they deemed worthy. They transported these fortunate few to a place which was probably similar to the time well we saw used in Abri—a well in which there exists the possibility that no possibilities exist. Here the people would be safe until the Sartan could transport them to the new worlds.

“The most talented of the Sartan came together with Samah inside a chamber he termed the Seventh Gate. Aware that the casting of such powerful magic, which would break apart one world and forge new ones, would drain the strongest magic-user, Samah and the Council endowed the chamber itself with a great deal of their power. It would operate rather like one of the Kicksey-winsey machines Limbeck calls a ‘gen’rator.’

“The Seventh Gate stored up the magical power left there in reserve. The Sartan called on it when their own magic waned and diminished. The danger was, of course, that once the power was transferred to the Seventh Gate, the magic would always remain inside. Only by destroying the Seventh Gate could Samah destroy the magic. He should have done so, of course, but he was afraid.”

“Of what?” Haplo demanded.

Alfred hesitated. “Upon first entering the Seventh Gate, after they had endowed it with power, the Council members encountered something they hadn’t expected.”

“A power greater than their own.”

“Yes. I’m not sure how or why; Orlah couldn’t tell me much. The experience was an awful one for the Sartan. Rather like what we experienced when we entered. But whereas ours was comforting and uplifting, theirs was terrible. Samah was made aware of the enormity of his actions, of the horrendous consequences of what he planned. He was given to know that he had—in essence—overstepped his bounds. But he was also made aware that he had the free will to continue, if he chose.

“Appalled by what they had seen and heard, the Council members began to doubt themselves. This led to violent arguments. But their fear of their enemy—the Patryns—was great. The memory of the experience in the Chamber faded. The Patryn threat was very real. Led by Samah, the Council voted to proceed with the Sundering. Those Sartan who opposed them were cast, along with the Patryns, into the Labyrinth.”

Alfred shook his head. “Fear—our downfall. Even after he had successfully sundered a world and built four new ones, after he had locked his enemies into prison, Samah was still afraid. He feared what he had discovered inside the Seventh Gate, but he also feared he might have need of the Seventh Gate again and so, instead of destroying it, he sent it away.”

“I was with Samah when he died,” Jonathon said. “He told Lord Xar he did not know where the Seventh Gate was.”

“Probably not,” Alfred conceded. “But Samah could have found it easily enough. He had my description to go on—I told him all about the Chamber of the Damned.”

“My people found it,” Jonathon said. “We recognized its power, but we had forgotten how to use it.”

“. . . use it . . .” repeated the echo.

“Something for which we should be grateful. Can you imagine what would have happened had Kleitus discovered how to use the true power of the Seventh Gate?” Alfred shuddered.

“What I find interesting is that through all the magical upheaval and turmoil, those we derisively refer to as ‘the mensch’ prevailed. The humans and elves and dwarves have had their problems, but they have—by and large—managed to thrive and prosper. What you call the Wave has kept them afloat.”

“Let’s hope they continue,” Haplo said. “This next Wave—should it crash down on top of them—might be the end.”

They continued traversing the corridors, traveling always downward. Alfred sang the runes softly, beneath his breath. The sigla on the wall burned brightly, led them on.

The tunnel narrowed. They were forced to walk in single file, Alfred leading the way, followed by Jonathon. The dog and Hugh the Hand brought up the rear.

Either the air was thinner down here—something Alfred didn’t remember from last time—or his nervousness was robbing him of breath. The rune-song seemed to cling to his raw throat; he had difficulty forcing it out. He was afraid and at the same time excited, quivering, filled with a nervous anticipation.

Not that the sigla seemed to need his song now anyway. They flashed into light almost joyfully, moving far more rapidly than he and the others could keep up.

Alfred eventually ceased singing, saved his breath for what was coming.

Perhaps you’re worrying about nothing. It could all be so easy, so simple, he told himself. A touch of magic and the Seventh Gate is destroyed, Death’s Gate is shut forever . . . The dog barked, suddenly, loudly.

The unexpected sound, echoing in the tunnel, nearly caused Alfred’s heart to stop. As it was, it gave a great lurch, ending up in his throat, momentarily blocking his windpipe.

“What?” Alfred choked, coughed.

“Hsst! Quiet! Stop a moment,” ordered Hugh the Hand.

All of them halted. The blue of the sigla reflected in their eyes—the living and the dead.

“The dog heard something. And so did I,” Hugh the Hand continued grimly. “Someone’s following along behind us.”

Alfred’s heart slid from his throat right out of his body.

Lord Xar.

“Go on,” said Haplo. “We’ve come too far to stop now. Go on.”

“No need,” said Alfred faintly, almost without a voice.

The sigla left the base of the wall, traveled upward to form an arch of glowing blue light. Blue light that changed to glaring, ominous red at his approach.

“We are here. The Seventh Gate.”