The Crystal Key

Chapter 6-2

Kinland swallowed, still staring at Beroald’s glass, where a single dark drop clung to its lip.

Beroald rose. “Again, my regrets our arrangement did not work out. Now I must pay my respects to my other guests. Someone will lead you from here to…” He paused, then shrugged. “…to where you need to go.” Turning his back on Kinland, Beroald joined a nearby table where he began talking with a thin woman wearing a bare-shouldered gown and a gazelle-head mask.

Kinland fought back his resentment at this abrupt dismissal. Not even a handshake. He had become something to cast off, forgotten. A hand fell on his shoulder, and he jumped.

A footman in a bear mask towered over him. The man was a head taller than Kinland, broad and muscular. “Sir,” the man rumbled in a bass voice, “please follow me.”

Kinland rose on shaking legs, numbed still by the growing realization of what he had lost. “Yes, yes. You will lead me from this place.”

From behind the mask, the man stared at Kinland for a breath, then strode towards the tunnel opening from which the musicians had emerged. With one last look at Beroald’s empty glass, Kinland followed, avoiding even a glance at the dead creature on the dais.

The torch-lit tunnel twisted and snaked, branching again and again. The giant footman never hesitated, selecting their route at each branch without a pause. Still brooding over his failure, Kinland followed unthinking, just wanting to be away from here and home again.

The footman stopped. Ahead, this tunnel branch ended at a dark wooden door, reinforced with horizontal metal bands and barred with a heavy beam. A black iron handle sat above a large keyhole. With obvious effort, the footman lifted the beam from its slots and set it against the wall. Removing a ring of keys from his belt, the man selected one, inserted it and twisted, unlocking the door with a loud click that echoed in the tunnel.

Unlocking, too, something in Kinland’s memories. He now recalled coming to the strange banquet hall, both tonight and on his prior visit, via the red-carpeted staircase.

So why was he leaving by this route tonight?

He was about to ask that when his silent guide yanked the door open. In the dim shadows beyond, Kinland glimpsed figures turning toward him.

“Wait, why are we—?”

He never finished the question. Seizing him by the front of his shirt with one huge hand, the footman flung him into the chamber. Kinland screamed in pure terror, a scream cut off by his impact with the stone floor. The door slammed shut again.

Panicked, he scrambled to his feet. Throwing himself at the door, he pounded on it with both fists. “Wait! Let me out! Don’t leave me here. I want to go home.”

On the other side of the door, a key turned in the lock and something heavy thudded. The beam being reset in place, he realized. Footsteps receded into the distance.

“Mr. Kinland?” came a woman’s voice from behind him. “Is that you?”

He spun around, his eyes adjusting to the dimmer light. A single torch burnt in a sconce beside the door. He stood in a round domed chamber, rough-hewn from the black rock, about ten paces across.

And filled with at least two dozen people. Surprise jolted him as he scanned their frightened faces. He knew them.

He’d hired these men and women to search the warehouse floors in the Dream Rider tower. They crowded toward him, all talking at once, firing confused and fearful questions at him.

A rusty metallic clanking silenced them all. Kinland turned toward the sound as did his new companions. It came, he realized, from a tunnel opening he could now see at the opposite end of the chamber. A barred metal gate blocked the opening—a gate now slowly rising.

The gate stopped. The tunnel stood unblocked.

Kinland relaxed, gasping out an audible sigh of relief. His terror had been unfounded. Now he could leave. Go home and…

Another sound cut off his thought. A sound he’d heard before, earlier this evening.

The sound of something large with many legs skittering over a stone floor. Skittering closer.

After we tie up a few loose ends…

After we tie up a few loose ends…Beroald’s words.

A shape moved in the tunnel mouth. As screams rose around him, Lawrence Kinland realized he wasn’t going home.

IN THE GREAT banquet hall, Beroald sat again at his table nearest the ceremonial dais. The diners had departed, each now on their return journey to their respective homes around the world. Throughout the room, masked servants scurried, resetting tables. Tables that would sit empty and waiting until the next feast.

A feast that would be a repeat of tonight’s. As tonight’s had been a repeat of the one before, and the one before that. As each feast had been for centuries.

And would be for centuries to come, he supposed, as he considered the dark film coating his now empty glass. So long as there were those who could hear the Song and follow it here. So long as the Escarabajos de la Sangre Negra—the Scarabs of the Black Blood—answered the call of the Song. And so long as the Dancer danced.

Escarabajos de la Sangre NegraSighing, he rose. He could delay no longer. Time to report to the Chambelán.

ChambelánHe left the banquet hall by the same torch-lit tunnel Lawrence Kinland had taken earlier. But at the first junction, he took a different turn, one sloping upward. After several minutes and a maze of tunnels, he reached the foot of an unlit stone stairway spiraling still higher. Taking a burning torch from a wall sconce, he began to climb.

His reluctance for these nightly meetings stemmed from two emotions. One was pride. The other fear.

Pride because, until recently, he had been the Chambelán.

heFear because of the new Chambelán. Of the strange power his successor wielded. A power that, coupled with the black blood, made it unlikely that La Cámara de la Puerta Roja—The Chamber of the Red Door—would see a new Chambelán for many, many years.

La Cámara de la Puerta RojaThe stairway ahead showed a growing brightness, and moments later he reached the first window in the tower, circular and carved through the black stone. Winded from his climb despite his recent beverage, he paused and gazed out.

Pale moonlight lit gently rolling farmland and countryside, much like the England of his youth. An England that, like his youth, lay in a dim and distant past.

“No land so far away as yesterday,” he whispered.

A sudden homesickness seized him. Even with his ingestion of the blood tonight, he felt old, older than his many years. He felt tired, used up. He caught himself. Stop it. You can’t show weakness. Not here. There is no path but the one before you.

Stop it. You can’t show weakness. Not here. There is no path but the one before you.He resumed his climb. He passed another window, through which he glimpsed a barren and snow-covered plain. The next showed a spired cityscape, neon-bright and smog-choked. He kept climbing.

More windows. A dark jungle. A rocky valley cradling a twisting river. A rolling, storm-tossed sea.

The windows ended. His torch once again provided his only light. Another minute of climbing brought him to a wooden door set into the surrounding stone of the tower. Reaching for its black iron handle, he stopped. He sighed. Old habits die hard.

Old habits die hard.He chewed on his resentment then swallowed it. The door held a knocker, also of black iron and shaped like a scarab. He lifted it, surprised as always by how warm it was. He let it drop. The sound echoed in the stairway. But no answer came.

You heard me, damn you, he thought. You’re making me wait. Reminding me of my new place in La Cámara. As if he could ever forget. He knocked again.

You heard me, damn youYou’re making me wait. Reminding me of my new place in La CámaraThis time, a reply followed. “Enter, Beroald.”

Pushing open the door, he stepped into the room that sat atop the Black Tower. The tower room was a rough oval, thirty paces by twenty, divided into two sections. At this end lay the living quarters of the Chambelán—quarters that had once been his. A four-poster bed. Comfortable high-backed chairs. A mahogany desk. An eclectic library of leather-bound books filling rich oak bookcases along the walls. Thick, hand-woven rugs on the stone floor.

The only illumination came from oil lamps on tables and torches lining the walls. For all our power, he thought, we still huddle around fires in caves. During his long term as Chambelán, he had tried to introduce technology here. It never worked. Different laws governed this place.

For all our powerwe still huddle around fires in cavesA circular pool dominated the far half of the tower room, sitting off to the left. The liquid in the pool was a black that reflected no light and, when disturbed, moved in sluggish waves as if thicker than mere water. The pool sat in a recession in the stone less than a meter deep. Yet much taller objects, such as an upright human body struggling against its bonds, would disappear entirely beneath its dull surface when immersed in it.

Around the dark pool knelt the seven Watchers. Motionless and silent as always.

Each was female, each with identical garb. The green scaled skin of some huge serpent, sewn into leggings, covered them from the hips down. Jackets, golden yellow, made from the furred pelt of a great cat, concealed their torsos and arms. Their hands sat unseen inside clawed paws. They wore masks resembling the head of a vulture-like bird, with black feathered wings sweeping back from the temples. The masks hid every feature of their faces.

Hid their eyes, too, for which Beroald was grateful.

The women knelt at seven of the eight points of the compass. One position remained vacant. Still missing the last.

Still missing the lastBeyond the black pool and silent Watchers squatted the Obsidian Throne, carved from the very stone of the Black Tower. It was a simple design—high and straight-backed with rounded arms and rounded crown. And, he remembered, damned uncomfortable.

In it, sat the Chambelán. The new leader of La Cámara de la Puerta Roja sat upright, concealed in a red robe—full-armed, ankle-length, and hooded. Behind the throne, deep shadows hid the far reaches of the room.

La Cámara de la Puerta RojaBeroald walked past the pool to stand before the robed figure. He dropped to one knee. “I live only to serve La Cámara,” he said as per custom.

“You honor La Cámara with your service,” came the formal reply. The Chambelán’s voice rang, as always, with musical tones of the Song, as if a hidden celestial choir echoed each word. “Report, Beroald.”

Rising, Beroald let out the breath he’d been holding. Considering recent events, he had feared the Chambelán might refuse his continued service—the equivalent of a death sentence.

He hesitated, trying not to glance at the pool. “We have disposed of Lawrence Kinland and his people. He represents no further danger.”

“Beyond the danger to which he and your little plan already exposed us, you mean?”

Pride brought a retort to his lips, but he bit it back. “As you say, Chambelán. I can, if you wish, recruit another contact within the White Tower.”

“No. You’ve done enough damage. I will send my own agent.”

Here was a development. What agents did the Chambelán have access to?

“However,” the hooded figure continued, “a task remains for you tonight.”

“I live only to serve,” Beroald repeated, an unease tickling between his shoulder blades.

Turning, the Chambelán called to the murky shadows behind the throne. “Come!”

Two figures appeared. The first was a uniformed footman carrying a waist-high brazier filled with glowing coals. Two short pokers with grips shaped like scarabs sat thrust into the embers.

Behind the footman strode a woman dressed the same as the seven who knelt by the pool. Beroald raised one bushy white eyebrow to the Chambelán.

The hooded head nodded. “Yes, the circle of Watchers is now complete. Or will be once you perform your task.”

The footman set the brazier down before him. Beroald considered it. “Two pokers?”

The Chambelán shrugged. “No need to wait as it reheats. An improvement I’d hoped you’d appreciate.”

Beroald bowed his head. “Your thoughtfulness knows no bounds.”

The woman knelt facing him. Raising her cat-pawed hands, she removed her mask and tilted her head up, eyes open but unfocused. Olive-brown skin. Long shining black hair.

And a face so young, he thought. Barely more than a child.

And a face so youngBarely more than a child“You hesitate, old man?”

“No, my Chambelán,” Beroald replied. Grasping the handle of the nearest poker, he pulled it from the coals. Its tip glowed white hot. The woman remained kneeling motionless before him, her eyes unblinking.

Holding the poker before the woman’s face, he lowered its glowing tip toward her right eye. He always started with the right.

Later that night, as he lay in bed, the woman’s screams still ringing in his head, he clung to the small pride that his hand had never trembled.