Amongst the smell of old death and strange,
alkaline magic the Trumpeter observed ripples growing upon the pool of electric
blue. Some frantic, primitive portion of
his brain froze him more solidly than Winter cold ever would, and even the
Mouth of Nysul seemed to hold its breath in anticipation of this new arrival.
What
emerged from the waters was huge and muscular, a beast of fantastic
proportions. Huge forepaws drew the hulk
from the pool dripping, claws of black diamond tearing into the centuries-old
stone like flesh. The beast’s chest and
shoulders were swollen large, though the back paws and torso were equally
menacing and built, leading to a tail tipped with a vicious club. Yet it was the head which made the Trumpeter
almost cry out from the depths of primal fear.
Massive jaws overwhelmed by an insane splay of fangs, dark as starless
night, distracting from yellow eyes of pristine intelligence.
To
call the thing a cat anymore was a difficulty, a half-truth. This was a monster feline of a whole new
order, one of magic, crowned by a device of platinum and opal, the Regalom swimming
in the light of that eldritch pool.
Truth,
that this thing really was High Queen Hope, now trembled through the man, gone
half mad by the notion that such a beast could become something more terrible
than it was already. She must’ve been
talking to herself.
The
Queen rippled her royal purple flesh and considered her surroundings, the
wealth of bones, the ruinous walls and the cloud of magic. Breath like bellows grumbled out from her
frame and that inquisitive nose of hers twitched its whiskers.
Only
so much time before he was discovered, thought the small man hiding amongst the
bones. Instinctively he had crept
amongst the hoard when the rippling began.
Even now he didn’t curse his curiosity for getting him into this deadly
mess, only wishing he had the Fencer there to prove louder and more violent
than any monstrosity.
Inevitably
the creature would find his hiding spot.
Though he first hoped that the stench of magic would cover his trail he
knew there was no such luck in life.
Instead he pondered the events which had brought him this far, like a
rare vintage.
They
were on a mission for the Queen, after all, and though she seemed to not have
the patience for hard work, even from others, she had no reason to think that
her words had lost weight. That there
was a range to her edicts was unknown to her, as it also had been to Glor, and
maybe all who wore the crown. They
didn’t understand the range of words, the only limiter to the Regalom’s powers.
“My
Queen!” he declared and standing up in a tumble of bones.
The
creature bristled. Its jaw opened,
revealing a huge asp tongue of vivid green.
Upon its head six eyes watched with keen interest.
“Hello,
failure of a subject,” replied the genteel voice of the snake.
All
rested upon words now, the Trumpeter knew this.
If he were to allow her to ask him a question, to demand anything, to
engage in any shade of command or fraction of request would invoke the powers
of the ruling crown and then the man would be lost, his brain fallen under the
heel of that dictator.
“The
thing you seek is close,” he began, fighting with his inner muse to keep his
words clear and concise, to not leave a single leak in each sentence which he
sent adrift into the dark waters of the beast’s mind. “By thing I mean the home of the great treasure,
objects of power akin to your item of station.
There are swords of legend, and gowns of spun dream, royal jewels which
grant wisdom, and relics of holy mages gone to ash and bones for your
pleasure.”
He
took a breath and the snake head looked about, as if searching for second
opinion.
“The
Fencer,” spouted the lost magician, his brain full of uncried tears and
trembles. “Dead at the hands of a
ghostly trap. His sword swallowed up by
a bottomless fissure. With sufficient
men we may salvage the device.”
Oh
how it hurt him to play this game. The
words were everything, each bought only a second of life, while one dropped
note would mean death, or worse, servitude.
Sweat mingled with irradiated condensate and poured down his neck but he
dared not produce a handkerchief, it might be a sign of weakness.
“This
is the Grand Vault,” noted the High Queen as she stalked about, senses ablaze,
in search of every atom of power.
“It
is,” he began, his heart bursting at her words, “but it is also more. Old magics have infused the stones here and
it grows like a wild root beneath the ice, reaching down into the Lattice for
sustenance. Engorged, it grows mad and
dangerous in the halls. Abominations are
plentiful and stones themselves are flesh.”
High
Queen Hope prowled from one end of the room to the other, glancing up at times
to the glowing cloud above in that jealous way cats have. She investigated the chute which brought the
musician in and sniffed through the old bones.
This led up the tall slope of the far wall where the gaping fissure of
the Mouth leered at them with its stalactite teeth.
“The
Mouth of Nysul, my Queen,” said the Trumpeter with well-intoned reverence. He felt he was becoming better at this
game. Yes, he could see how it was like
music. Perhaps he could shout through
his Trumpet to better effect.
“It
is a puzzling strange thing that we have noticed with you,” said the beast as
she sized up the gaping maw above. “It
is customary that our royal person speaks first and the subject responds upon
command. We aren’t acquainted with the
protocol of a subordinate preceding us in discourse.”
The
Trumpeter heated the air around him like a sun.
If he was lucky he would pass out before the question fell, but then
again he wasn’t sure that unconsciousness was any defense against the Regalom’s
command. Any moment she would ask and he
would be lost, they all would fall under her carnivore rule.
A
gust of cool air brushed up against the man, swimming through his sweaty coarse
wools, and face and long, tangled blond hair.
It wasn’t a breeze from some surface opening but sprang instead from a
deeper source. The Mouth of Nysul
inhaled while the same breath caught in the Trumpeter’s throat, too frightened
to breathe.
They passed on in strangeness. The treasure horde led to a hall with many
doors, each leading to many thrones, each different. One was a u-shaped seat without back, carved
from ivory, set with skins. Another was
stone, the same as the chamber, its back stretching up to the ceiling. Still more were cut from gems or primitive
flint, well-framed and etched by artisan hands, or crudely gnawed from the rock
and set with spirals and eyes. Each
empty, each useless and the Fencer grew angry at these secret daydreams of the
long dead.
Then
the ruins began.
The
walls gave way from common rooms and empty treasure to huge vaults of night and
twilight and gleaming stars, jewels of the long dead. In these huge spaces they wandered like dolls
set loose in a cathedral. Often they
felt lost in the dark and a bluish fog drank up their feet and shrouded the
ground.
Pressing
on a huge place loomed. It was a palace,
broken and half-made, with arcades along its tens of stories like the mouths of
some protoplasmic beast. Ghostlights
blinked like eyes, revealing the inhabitants.
People
watched from that granite hulk, their eyes in shadow, their bodies broken like
their dwelling. Parts of them, swaths of
porcelain flesh, seemed corrupted and eaten away, frothing through the air in
still, liquid expression. It was as if
their bodies were fluid and some kind of unwholesome breath had ripped them
apart with bubbles from within. They
were more like paintings then beings, those inhabitants, expressionistic and
unreal and though the Fencer hesitated his companions pressed him on through
the lowlands towards a darkness they hoped had more promise.
Other
structures waited. Each more
fantastical, without reason or utility, the things castles may dream of if
possessed by demons. The next was all
spires and garrets, cone-topped, windows full of more sad eyes and strange
spirits. A series of domes followed, and
then a jumble of towers linked by high skywalks and glass facades.
Here
the Fencer stopped. Turning, Jaal of
Night, their guide and potential traitor, hissed at the man to continue.
“We’ve
no time for ghosts,” he urged. “They’ll
do us no good but death.”
“Perhaps
it is clarity of a rested mind but I wonder at that,” said the Fencer, watching
the ghosts watch them, the living. “The
dead are from the past and it is the past’s mystery which enthralls us. Might they have knowledge of the
Regalom? Of High King Nysul and his mad
dreams in which we wander as victims?”
“They
might also feast upon our souls or drag us down into the Lattice,” reasoned the
masked man. He had taken up his guise as
soon as the first ghostly lights spilled through the abyss.
Hnah
had nothing to add to the conversation.
She seemed bored and listless, always one eye on the Fencer for fear of
losing him. So when he marched off
towards the next palace, a fine manor set with marble lions, she followed after
as if connected.
Despite
Jaal’s protests the swordsman marched up the steps and reached for the door,
which opened before his hand. Inside
cold light danced amongst a hall set with banners to long-dead lords and
through the lady.
She
wore a formal gown which clung to her lithe shape before spilling to the floor
in a train of moonlight, but though her face was fair and her eyes stirring,
she was broken past this mask. Her back
was torn apart, trailing off into the air in what they now saw were little
clusters, or filaments of some unfinished shaping.
“Sawar,”
she rasped, huge eyes taken up with emotion.
“You’ve come back.”
“None
of us are that,” frowned the Fencer, thinking this ghost to be mad. Yet there was no cold fear of the dead which
he felt would come with speaking to such a spirit. Instead he felt completely out of place, an
invader.
“The
lemur-things are up again,” she continued, stepping aside as if to usher the
strangers in. “My mother takes to the
warpath tomorrow. It will only rile them
and the Cleft will fall into their bloody paws.
Speak some reason she will hear.”
The
phantom admitted her guests and continued her plaintive speech. The door shut out cold Winter and inside the
warm drama of war and politics glowed amongst the ghostlights. The three still stood outside, in the vaulted
dark.
“These
are no ghosts,” decided the Fencer. He
was in a fume now. Such false places
these mages made, all show and theatre, no truth.
“All
the better,” declared Jaal happily. “But
if not ghosts, then what?”
“Memories,”
began the southern swordsman, “or fantasies.”
“As
if there was a difference,” Jaal said.
“No!” The Fencer’s voice, rarely raised, echoed
through the garden of palaces, coming back huge and hollow. “There must be a difference between the two,
a hard line which can be cut, like meat from bone.”
“Sawar
is true,” noted Hnah. “That was the last
High King’s name, Sawar Nysul, though in his royal personage he was one with
the name of his dynasty, his being the same as the land and palaces to which he
laid claim.”
Sobered,
the actor realized that there was more to this and took off his mask.
“Perhaps
the old king lives on in some fashion here,” he pondered unhappily. “The last thing we need is more nobles.”
A
paused silence descended, nothing but a faint draft reminding of sound. This place was a horde of all things, of gold
and gems, of memories and dreams, of shapes from the past and impossible places
set as gardens, all according to the will of something long sealed, gone bad
like wine left open.
Hnah
craned her neck into the darkness, pale radiance raced down her metal
veins. She looked all around,
hunting.
“This
way,” she said and turned back to the Fencer who was intent on scowling at the
dark. “There is greater dark over
there.”
The
princess pointed out into the void, the portion of this endless room which had
no glow of palace or ghost. They had
avoided it so far, thinking it lost and empty.
“Emptiness
won’t do us any good,” began the Fencer but he was cut off by Jaal.
“No,
I see her reasoning. The light shines
from these castles but in the dark we might find the way out.”
With
a shrug the Fencer hopped down the steps to prove them wrong. He had nothing better to do than think, which
would gain him nothing in present circumstances. He had a hungry girl after him and a
revolutionary with a face of lies. He
hoped for fiends and trouble and violence to make some honesty out of this
world of illusions.
Instead
he found an oblique opening at what he realized was a jagged column supporting
the room. Leading down at an angle
entrance to the ramp showed slick and reflective in the golden light of the
fantastical scarab which still clung to the swordsman’s tunic. Here the air became warm and the Fencer drew
his weapon.
“A
lucky guess,” he hissed but the girl took no pride in her find. All her being was tilted forward, leading
on.
The
ramp led down and down. Being some ten
meters across it felt more like a huge, slanted room cut by diamond through
sheer rock. The walls were all polished,
showing veins of vivid minerals which gleamed with faint lights of their
own.
“I
guess we are past the mask now,” grinned Jaal.
His voice lost all his usual inflection as he spoke. These were simple words.
The
Fencer nodded with guarded approval.
“Those
first halls teemed with gaudy treasures and hideous monstrosities, but since
the vault door we seem to be in a more intimate realm. There are memories for show, and seats of
power, and now we descend towards great secrets, the true vault.”
Hnah
kept quiet, as she did so often after her escape from the great cat’s claws. That a resulting change had come over the
girl was certain, like a calming blanket it covered her haughty nature. And now she stopped.
The
two men watched as she swayed on her feet.
Perhaps it was exhaustion or a gust of some noxious and unseen gas. She found the wall and leaned heavily upon
it. When Jaal went to steady her she
slapped him away with a reflex which was as much class-based as it was
automatic.
“Don’t
ever touch me with those filthy hands,” she murmured and looked up and
around. She saw the masked man as if for
the first time and scrambled away.
Hnah
vanished down the darkened slope, the last sight being her metallic veins
gleaming in the scarab’s light. Then a noise
came from the dark below, the gust of words too large for their ears.
