Chapter 7 - The Seal of Aurel
The scream that came from behind the basalt door was not human.
It was a sound like the grinding of two tectonic plates, a low, subterranean roar that shook the very foundations of Aethelgard and sent showers of frozen dust down from the vaulted ceiling of the vault.
The blue light on the seventh bar flared into a blinding, electric glare.
Clara didn't flinch. She leaned her weight against the stone, her hand locked to the iron, her blood freezing into silver crystals as it mixed with the star-iron of the seal.
“Close,” a voice whispered in her mind—not the ancient voices of the queens this time, but her own voice, speaking from a place beyond time. “Close the gate.”
“Hael!” she shouted over the roar. “The pitch! Pour it on the hinges!”
The captain didn't hesitate. He grabbed one of the heavy iron jars from a soldier behind him, heaved it over his shoulder, and flung its contents across the glowing blue crack in the basalt.
The black pitch hit the ice with a hiss of white smoke. As it caught the strange, cold fire from Clara’s hand, it didn't burn with yellow flame—it turned into a hard, obsidian-like shell that sealed the fissures in the rock within three heartbeats.
The blue light began to fade.
The roar from behind the door dropped from a thunderous vibration to a low, sullen growl, and then—slowly, inexorably—died away into the absolute silence of the mountain roots.
Clara took her hand off the bar.
Her palm was marked with a permanent, silver-white star where the metal had fused with her skin, but the bleeding had stopped instantly. She swayed slightly on her feet, the weight of the Crown of Aurel suddenly feeling heavier than the mountain itself.
Hael caught her by the elbow, steadying her against his leather jerkin.
“Majesty?”
“It’s held,” she whispered, her breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps. She looked down at the black basalt door. The seventh bar was no longer blue; it was dark and cold, matching the other six. “For another hundred years. Maybe more.”
Master Almon hobbled forward, his oil-lamp shaking in his hand, his old eyes wide with awe as he looked from Clara’s bloody palm to the sealed door.
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“The chronicles were true,” the old archivist whispered, crossing himself with a trembling hand. “The blood of the first king is the only lock that cannot be broken by gold.”
“The gold was Garrick’s mistake,” Clara said, turning her back on the vault and beginning the long, slow climb back toward the light. “Our mistake was forgetting that a throne isn't a seat. It’s a watch-tower.”
