Chapter 6 - The Descent to the Third Level
The stairs beneath the castle kitchens had not been used since the reign of Darian the First.
The air down here was thick with the smell of wet moss, ancient lime, and something else—something metallic and sharp, like the smell of a blacksmith’s shop after a fire has been quenched with vinegar.
Clara walked first. She didn't carry a torch; the seven diamonds on the Crown of Aurel provided all the light they needed, casting a pale, steady white-gold beam that cut through the rolling clouds of damp subterranean fog like a knife.
Behind her came Captain Hael, his broadsword drawn and resting on his shoulder, followed by twelve picked veterans from the mountain garrison carrying iron-shod pikes and heavy jars of pitch. At the rear walked Master Almon, holding an oil-lamp that flickered yellow in the downdraft.
“It’s colder here,” Almon muttered, his teeth chattering despite the heavy wool cloak he had wrapped around his shrunken shoulders. “Colder than the crypts.”
“It’s not the weather,” Hael said, his eyes scanning the dark, vaulted arches of the stone corridor where the water dripped in slow, heavy plops from the ceiling. “It’s the stone. Look at the walls.”
Clara held the crown higher. The white-gold light washed over the granite blocks on either side of the passage. They weren't grey anymore; they were covered in a thin, shimmering rime of white frost that grew in complex, crystalline patterns resembling the feathers of a dead bird.
“We’re getting close,” she said.
The passage ended at a massive door made of black basalt—a stone so hard that no iron chisel could mark it. Across its center ran seven horizontal bars of star-iron, each one locked into the rock with heavy bolts the size of a man’s thigh.
Six of the bars were dark, grey, and cold.
The seventh—the one in the center—was glowing with a faint, sickly blue light, and where it met the stone, the basalt was cracked into a spiderweb of fine, deep fissures from which thin tendrils of white mist were leaking into the air.
“Garrick didn't just steal the gold,” Clara whispered, her voice echoing hollowly in the vault. “He sold the grease for the central bar. For three years, he let the salt-rot eat the hinges.”
Hael stepped forward, his boots crunching on the frozen rime. He raised his broadsword as if to strike the mist, then let his arm drop, his face hardening into an expression of grim resignation.
“Can it be mended, Majesty?”
Clara didn't answer immediately. She walked right up to the great black door, ignoring the freezing mist that curled around her ankles like sleeping adders. She reached out her bare hand and pressed her palm flat against the glowing blue star-iron of the seventh bar.
Ssssss.
The sound was like water hitting hot iron. A sharp, needle-like pain shot up her arm, but she didn't pull back. Through her skin, she felt the great, cold pulse of something ancient and hungry pressing against the other side of the basalt—something that had waited seven hundred years for the locks to rot.
“It needs more than grease,” Clara said, her voice sounding strange, as if it were coming from a great distance. “It needs the blood of the line.”
Hael stepped to her side, his large, scarred hand hovering near her shoulder. “Majesty—no.”
“The crown chose me, Hael,” she said, turning her head to look at him. Her eyes were no longer grey; they were shining with the same white-gold fire as the seven diamonds on her brow. “Not to sit on a velvet chair in the Hall of the Sun. To hold the door.”
She drew her small dagger from her belt—the same iron blade she had used to cut the mended linens in the royal laundry seven years ago—and drew it quickly across her left palm.
May you like
Bright, red blood welled up, steaming in the freezing air.
Before Hael could stop her, she pressed her bleeding palm directly against the center of the glowing blue bar.
