The Seventh Gate

24

The runes outlined an arched entryway, which led—Alfred remembered—to a wide and airy tunnel. And Alfred remembered suddenly, too, the feeling of peace and tranquillity that had enveloped him when he had stepped into that tunnel. He longed for that sensation again, longed for it as a grown man sometimes longs to rest his head on a comforting breast; to feel gentle arms around him; to hear a voice, softly singing, lulling him to sleep with songs of his childhood.

Alfred stood before the archway, watching the sigla flicker and glimmer. To anyone else looking at the runes inscribed on the wall, the sigla would have appeared similar to those running along the base of the wall. Harmless runes, meant to serve as guides. But Alfred could read the subtle differences: a dot placed over a line instead of beneath; a cross instead of a star; a square drawn around a circle. Such differences changed these nines of guiding into runes of warding—the strongest a Sartan could forge. Anyone approaching this arch—

“What the devil are you waiting for?” Hugh the Hand demanded. He glared at Alfred dubiously. “You’re not feeling faint, are you?”

“No, Sir Hugh, but—Wait! Don’t!”

Hugh the Hand brushed past Alfred, headed straight for the arch.

The blue runes changed color, flaring from blue to red. The Hand, somewhat startled, halted, eyed the runes suspiciously.

Nothing happened. Alfred kept silent. The mensch probably wouldn’t have believed him anyway. He was the type who had to find out for himself.

Hugh took a step forward. The sigla smoldered, burst into flame. The archway was surrounded by an arc of fire.

The dog cringed away.

“Damn!” Hugh the Hand muttered, impressed. He backed off precipitously.

The moment he stepped away from the arch, the fire died. The sigla once again gleamed a sullen red, did not change back to blue. The heat of the flames lingered in the hallway.

“We are not meant to pass,” said Alfred quietly.

“I gathered that,” Hugh the Hand growled, rubbing his arms where the flames had singed the thick, dark hair. “How in the name of the ancestors do we get inside?”

“I can break the runes,” Alfred said, but he made no move to do so.

“Dithering?” said Haplo.

“No,” Alfred replied, defensive. “It’s just . . .” He glanced back down the corridor, down the way they’d come.

The blue runes on the wall’s base had faded by now, but at his look, his thought, they began to glow again. They would lead back to the cell, to Haplo.

Alfred looked down at the dog. “I have to know what will happen to you.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“But—”

“Damn it, I don’t know what will happen!” Haplo returned, losing patience. “But I do know what will happen if we fail here. And so do you.”

Alfred said nothing more. He began to dance.

His movements were graceful, slow, solemn. He accompanied himself with a song, his hands weaving the sigla to the melody, his feet marking out the same intricate pattern on the stone floor. The dance, the magic entered him, like intoxicating bubbles in his blood. His body, which oftentimes felt so awkward and clumsy, as if it belonged to someone else and was only on loan to him, was sloughed off, shed like a snake’s skin. The magic was his flesh, his bone, his blood. He was light and air and water. He was happy, content, and unafraid.

The red light of the warding runes flared once, brightly, then faded and died altogether.

Darkness floated down into the corridor. Darkness extinguished Alfred.

The bubbles burst and grew flat, stale. The magic seeped out of him. His old heavy body hung before him, like a massive coat on a hook. He had to struggle into it again, feel its weight drag on his shoulders, try to walk around again in the flesh, which was too cumbersome, which didn’t fit.

Alfred’s feet shuffled to a halt. He sighed once, then said quietly, “We can pass now. The runes will light again once we are through the arch. Perhaps that will stop Lord Xar.”

Haplo grunted, didn’t even bother to respond.

Alfred led the way. Hugh the Hand followed, keeping a wary eye on the runes, obviously expecting them to burst into flame at any moment. The dog, looking bored, trotted along at Hugh’s heels. Jonathon entered last, the lazar’s shuffling steps leaving a path in the dust. Alfred glanced down, was intrigued and somewhat disquieted to see his own footprints, left in the dust from the last time they had passed through the arch. He knew them by their erratic pattern, that wandered aimlessly all over the place.

And Haplo’s footprints—walking in a straight line, with fixed purpose and determination. On leaving that room, his walk had been less certain. His path altered drastically, the course of his life forever changed.

And Jonathon. He had been a living man, the last time they’d come here. Now his corpse—neither living nor dead—walked through the dust, obscuring the path he’d left in life. But the dog’s tracks from that last time were not visible. Even now, it left no trace of its passing. Alfred stared, marveling that he’d never noticed this before.

Or maybe I saw tracks, he thought, smiling wistfully, because I wanted to see them.

He reached down, patted the animal’s smooth head. The dog looked up at him with its liquid, bright eyes. Its mouth opened, parted in what might have been a grin.

“I am real,” it seemed to say. “In fact, maybe I’m the only reality.”

Alfred turned. His feet no longer stumbled. He walked upright and steadily toward the Seventh Gate, known to those who once lived on Abarrach as the Chamber of the Damned.

As it had the last time, the tunnel led them straight to a blank wall made of solid black rock. Two sets of runes marked it. The first set were simple locking sigla, undoubtedly inscribed by Samah himself. The other sigla had been added by those early Sartan living on Abarrach. While attempting to contact their brethren on other worlds, they had accidentally stumbled across the Seventh Gate. Inside, they found peace, self-knowledge, fulfillment—granted to them by a higher power, a power beyond their comprehension and understanding. And so they had marked this chamber sacred, holy.

In this chamber, they had died.

In this chamber, Kleitus had died.

Alfred, recalling that terrible experience, shuddered. His hand had been touching the runes on the wall. Now it dropped, trembling, to his side. He could see with horrible clarity the skeletons lying on the floor. Mass murder. Mass suicide.

Any who bring violence into this chamber will find it visited upon themselves.

So it was written on the walls. Alfred had wondered at the time how and why. Now he thought he understood. Fear—it came down always to fear. Who knew for certain what Samah had feared or why,[7] but he had been afraid, even in this chamber which the Council had endowed with its most powerful magic. It had been meant to destroy the Council’s enemies. It had ended up destroying its creators.

A chill hand touched Alfred’s. He jumped, startled, and found Jonathon standing at his side.

“Do not be afraid of what is within.”

“. . . within . . .” came the sad echo.

“The dead are now, at long last, at rest. No trace remains of their tragic end. I have seen to that myself.”

“. . . myself . . .”

“You have entered here?” Alfred asked, amazed.

“Many times.” And it seemed the lazar smiled, the phantasm lighting the dead, dark eyes. “I enter, I leave. This chamber has been—as much as any place can be—my home. Here I can find ease from the torment of my existence. Here I am given patience to endure, to wait, until the end.”

“The end?” Alfred didn’t quite like the sound of that.

The lazar said nothing; the phantasm slid out of the corpse, fluttered restlessly near the body.

Alfred drew in a shivering breath; what confidence he’d felt was rapidly oozing out of him.

“What happens if we fail?”

Repeating Haplo’s words, Alfred placed his hands on the walls, began to chant the runes. The rock dissolved beneath his fingers. The sigla, glowing blue, framed a doorway that led, not into darkness, as it had the last time they had entered the Chamber, but into light.

The Seventh Gate was a room with seven marble walls, covered by a domed ceiling. A globe suspended from the ceiling cast a soft, white glow. As Jonathon had promised, the dead whose bodies had littered the floor were gone. But the words of warning remained inscribed on the walls: Any who bring violence into this chamber will find it visited upon themselves.

Alfred stepped over the threshold. He felt again that same enveloping, loving warmth he’d experienced the first time he’d walked into this chamber. The feeling of comfort and calm spread like a balm over his troubled soul. He drew near the oblong table, carved of pure white wood—wood that had come from the ancient, sundered world—and regarded it with reverence and sadness.

Jonathon moved over to stand beside the table. If Alfred had been paying attention, he would have noticed a change come over the lazar when it entered this room. The phantasm remained outside the body, no longer writhing, struggling to escape. Its vague, shapeless form coalesced into a shimmering image of the duke as he had been when Alfred first knew him: young, vibrant, joyful. The corpse was, it seemed, the soul’s shadow.

Alfred didn’t notice, however. He stared at the runes carved on the table, stared at them as if hypnotized, unable to look away. He drew nearer, nearer.

Hugh the Hand stood in the doorway, gazing into the chamber with awe, perhaps reluctant—now that the moment was at hand—to cross the threshold.

The dog nudged Hugh, urged him forward, reassuringly wagging its tail.

Hugh’s grim face relaxed. He smiled. “Well, if you say so,” he said to the animal and walked inside. Glancing around, taking in everything, he walked over to the white table and, placing his hands on it, began idly to trace the runes with his fingers.

The dog pattered inside the room . . . and vanished.

The door to the Seventh Gate slid shut.

Alfred didn’t notice Hugh. Alfred didn’t see the dog disappear. He didn’t hear the door close. He was standing at the table. Stretching out his hands, he placed his fingers gently, reverently on the white wood . . .

“We are come today, Brethren,” said Samah from his place at the head of the table, “to sunder the world.”