The Queen's Necklace
Page 26
“If you are feeling better now, we will proceed.” He did not wait for Lili to answer; linked as they were, he knew as well as she did that the effects of whatever drug or poison had been in the cup were under control.
As Lili and her escort moved down the corridor, the sound and scent of running water increased. A moment later, their footsteps rang hollow over wooden planks; she realized they were crossing a bridge over the underground river.
When they stopped on the other side, he spoke in her ear. “We are now entering the innermost regions of the Temple of Mysteries. From this point on, there is no turning back. I urge you, Lilliana, to follow my directions exactly.” He spoke roughly, hoarsely. Nor did Lili fail to notice how he had abandoned the polite “Mrs. Blackheart” for her given name.
She thought that he must be trying to frighten her, that it was another test. She forced herself to answer confidently. “I have followed your instructions so far, sir. I am happy to continue doing so.”
“That is just as well,” he said, leading her forward again. “For I tell you now that your very life depends on it.”
23
It seemed to Lili that she must have been walking for many miles. Thanks to the draught she had swallowed, the exalting warmth running through her veins, she was far from weary, but the time she had spent under the ground seemed to stretch back days, weeks, even years, into some immeasurable past.
“Here I take leave of you,” said her escort, coming to a halt. “But I will tell you what you must do and you must listen very carefully. A wrong step or a wrong turn could be fatal. Twelve steps from the place where we stand, this corridor opens on another. You will take the right-hand turning and proceed for thirty paces more. At that time you will find yourself at the junction of two corridors. Turn to your left and walk for one hundred and thirteen paces, counting the numbers backward. Can you tell these instructions back to me?”
“I believe I can,” said Lili, and repeated them as she remembered them.
“Very good,” said her invisible guide. “When you have done all this, you will find yourself facing a door. Knock three times on that door and wait for an answer.”
Suddenly, his hand was no longer there; Lili could hear his rapid footsteps moving away. She felt oddly bereft, though she had known him such a very short time. She wondered who he was, if they would ever meet again.
Lili turned her thoughts back to the task at hand. She must remember the numbers: 12, 30, 113. Was there some sort of significance? No, she must not think about that, she must concentrate on what she must do, mind her steps very carefully, as she had been warned that a false one might prove fatal.
She took twelve slow, measured paces, turned to her right, and began to count again. After another thirty steps, a draft of cold air indicated she had reached the cross corridor. Turning away from the draft, she started to count backward, starting at one hundred and thirteen.
As she moved slowly forward, a great wind came sweeping down the dark passage, nearly knocking her off her feet. The wind became a tempest, shrieking and tearing at her clothes, swirling around her on all sides, until she felt that she stood at the heart of a hurricane. It became more and more difficult for Lili to concentrate, harder and harder not to lose count. But she was determined. The Centrifugal Wind continued to roar in her ears, to buffet her on all sides.
“Three, two, one,” she shouted above the blast. There was a sudden silence; the tempest died away. Lili realized that she was drenched in cold sweat and her hands were trembling.
Reaching out with her left hand, she felt the grain of a rough wooden panel. Raising her fist, she rapped three times. There was no answer at first, except that a dim light began to grow in the inky blackness behind her, as if someone slowly uncovered a dark lantern.
Obediently, she turned, gave a gasp of surprise. She was not in an underground tunnel, but in a vast cavern. Two short steps from the place where she stood there was a wide chasm, a deep cleft in the floor of the cave, cutting straight across the path she had just travelled.
And the depths were unfathomable. Had she fallen, she might well be falling still.
I should have fallen, thought Lili. It would have been impossible for her to step across so great a distance. But how on earth had she managed to reach this place without walking on—nothing? The question was still burning in her brain when’ the light went suddenly out, leaving Lili once more in impenetrable darkness.
The disembodied voice spoke again.
Lili reached out with both hands, searching for a knob or a handle. When she found neither, she pushed on the wooden panel, first lightly, then with all her strength. The door would not budge.
“I wait because the door will not open.”
“I—but how am I to do that?” Lili was willing, but uncertain how to proceed.
“Yes, I see.” And it was true. Though later Lili would search her mind in vain for the means to accomplish this, for now the way seemed perfectly clear. Squaring her shoulders and stepping confidently forward, she moved right through the oak panel and into the chamber beyond.
She stood inside a great eight-sided tomb. In niches all around the vault there were iron torches, each one producing a blue flame, each one filling the air with a thick, faintly sweet odor. Was it naphtha? Lili wondered. The walls were covered with inscriptions, and a long line of empty marble catafalques stretched before her—empty, that is, except for one, where a body lay on the white marble slab draped in a veil of thin yellow silk. With a deep sense of dread weighting her footsteps, Lili moved in that direction.
With trembling hands, she raised the veil, half expecting to see her own face. It was not her own face, it was Wilrowan’s: cold, still, and pale. She let out a cry of pure horror, and shrank back, covering her eyes with her hands.
But it is only a wax effigy—it must be. Again Lili forced herself to look. The face changed—it melted and reformed itself in another likeness: Llli’s father. Then, in swift succession, it became Allora—Sir Bastian—Dionee—Lib’s cousin Nick.
Was this a vision, a premonition? Were all these people soon to die? No, it can’t be, something inside her insisted stubbornly. But it may be a sign for me to interpret. What does it mean?
“I must let the past bury the past. I must be prepared to enter into a new life.”
Taken for a moment by surprise, Lili hesitated. Then she remembered the lessons that Allora had taught her. “Through Spirit, Matter, Motion, and Rest.”
“Past, Present, and Future,” Lili recited. “But there is a fourth mystery that will only be revealed in the Final Days.”
Lili began to feel more confident. “The body is made of four elements: Spirit, Flesh, Bone, and Humor. The soul is made up of three: Passion, Desire, and Reason.”
There were more questions, growing more and more difficult, until at last, after a long pause:
blaze of yellow firelight.
There must be some mistake, thought Lili, as she stumbled through the gap in the wall and into the brilliant chamber beyond. It was an ordinary room, lit by dozens of candles—at least, it seemed like an ordinary room, until one remembered that it was not located in an ordinary house upon the earth, but was situated hundreds of feet under the ground. There were several chairs and tables, a sofa upholstered in crimson velvet, a painted screen. Occupying that room, gathered in sociable-looking groups by the sofa and the fireplace, were a number of perfectly ordinary-looking people.
Lili blinked. It was like blundering into some formal gathering without an invitation. It was like—it was very like a dinner party, or some equally mundane occasion.
Whatever the occasion, it seemed that Lili was the guest of honor. Her Aunt Allora detached herself from one of the groups, and everyone else turned in Lili’s direction with smiles and greetings. “You have done well to come so far,” said Allora, standing on tiptoe to brush a kiss on Lili’s cheek. “You have passed through even greater dangers than you know, and the best part is yet before you.
“But in the meantime,” she added, “allow me to present—” and Allora went on to name a great many names. Feeling very much as though she had wandered into some bizarre dream, Lili caught only a few. “—Sir Bastian, you already know. But you will be pleased to be made acquainted, I know—with Miss Chloe Hunt, Mr. Horace Powers-Payne—and especially Sir Frederic Tregaron-Marlowe.”
Sir Frederic was a stern, stout, professorial old gentleman, who bowed coldly. “Doubtless, Mrs. Blackheart, you have many questions, but the time for you to ask or for us to answer them is not yet. Doubtless, too, you are famished, and that will be attended to shortly. For now, we congratulate you on your courage.”
There was a flutter of excitement among the younger women. Moving across the room, Sir Frederic lifted a purple velvet drapery along one wall, revealing an open door on the other side. “I will leave you, now, in the hands of these young ladies. Under Miss Hunt’s direction, they will prepare you for the ceremony. We will meet again presently.” He stepped through the door, and Allora and all of the men followed him out of the room.
The young women swarmed around Lili, exclaiming how tired she looked, offering to help her to bathe, to dress before the ceremony. But how very odd—they are treating me just like a bride, she thought, remembering a young cousin’s wedding two years before.
Still feeling dazed, she yielded to their ministrations. Chatting among themselves, they removed her cloak, her muff, and her shoes. Miss Chloe Hunt was the one who unhooked her gown. Someone moved the painted screen and a large marble bathtub was waiting on the other side. Lili blushed at the thought of bathing before so many people, but the young ladies were determined. Before she knew it, they had stripped off her clothes, were ruthlessly pulling the hairpins out of her hair—then she was dressed in a coarse linen bathing gown, and seated in the water.
The water was tepid, but rose petals floated on the surface, and someone handed her an enormous wedge of rose-scented soap. Lili would have been glad to sit and soak after she bathed, but the others were already urging her out of the water, admonishing her to make haste, make haste—
She climbed out of the tub, dried herself under the gown with a thick white towel. She had little time to inspect the fresh garments she was expected to put on, because her attendants were already hurrying her into them.
But when they had finished dressing her, Miss Hunt took Lili by the hand, leading her over to a long mirror. Lili stared into the glass, pleased and amazed at her own reflection. How nice I look. If Wilrowan could see me—
The dress was made of ivory silk, very old and fragile, embroidered all over with silver threads; it fit so well that it might have been made for her. The full skirt divided in front to show a petticoat made of creamy brocade, and there were puffed sleeves ending just above the elbow in ruffles of antique lace. No corset had been provided, but the low-cut bodice was heavily boned and it laced in front with silver ribbons.
“Now you must eat and drink to give yourself strength,” said a thin blonde girl. She brought Lili a six-sided brass plate filled with tiny cakes, and a golden goblet on a short stem set with rough emeralds.
Lili took one of the cakes, ate a few bites, then realized she was not really hungry. Yet she forced herself to eat the rest. Her hands were beginning to shake with exhaustion, and she could only hope the cakes, and whatever the cup contained, would provide the strength she needed. She raised the goblet and tasted the contents.
It was not the same potion as before, but it was equally efficacious. The blood raced in her veins. Lili felt light-headed and yet strangely alert at the same time.
As the goblet was carried away, Miss Hunt stepped forward and draped a gauzy veil over Lili’s head and shoulders. “I am to remind you that it is necessary to give oneself entirely to the mysteries; it is an act of surrender, like the act of love.
“But I need not explain that to you,” she added with an arch smile. “You are a married woman and must know what I mean.”
But I don’t know, thought Lili. As one in a dream, she moved past the purple drapery, through the open door, and up a long, white, circular staircase, like the inside of a nautilus shell. For all the nights she and Wilrowan had spent together, Lili had never once lost herself in the act or in him. She had always been too self-conscious, too guarded, and whenever she seemed in danger of feeling too much, she had panicked and drawn back.
At the top of the stairs there was a long gallery paved in a dark marble glowing with mysterious patterns. “Surrender”—the word echoed at the back of her mind as Lili moved down the gallery. Was that what had been missing all of these years? Was it her failure to give herself up, to exist entirely in the moment and in the experience, was that the reason she always felt dissatisfied after—why Will looked elsewhere for his amusement? Yet if she had ever gone to him with her heart pounding as it was now, with the drugged wine singing in her veins, it might have been very different.
By now, she was nearing a pair of immense bronze doors: doors etched in silver with numbers, symbols, and ancient pictographs. At her approach, the doors swung slowly open.
When she entered the vaulted chamber on the other side, there was a faint sounding of hidden trumpets and brassy cymbals. A crowd of well-dressed people had assembled within, forming an aisle down the center of the room. As Lili drew near, Sir Bastian stepped away from the rest and made her a very pretty bow.
“My child, I have the honor to act in place of your father.” He had obviously dressed with special care: his long white hair was brushed back from his forehead, and he wore a scarlet coat, very full about the skirts, with bunches of black ribbon on the shoulders. Taking her arm, he led her gently down the aisle. “This is a great occasion, and one on which all of your friends must share in your happiness.”
It was beginning to feel more and more like it was a wedding. Except that no one, least of all Lili herself, had been happy on her real wedding day. She blushed as she had not blushed on that other occasion—although, mindful of the solemnity of this one, she tried not to smile.
On a stepped black marble dais before an altar of glass stood a tall, broad-shouldered man in purple robes and a mask like the head of a great golden falcon, awaiting the “bride” and her “father.”
“Who presents this woman in the Temple of the Mysteries?” he intoned, in a deep, sonorous voice.
“I do,” said Sir Bastian, stopping before the first step. “And for these reasons: That she has proved herself to be a woman of the highest character and remarkable talents. That she has made a conscientious study of the healing and the magical arts. That she has allowed herself to be unmade and reborn in the dark womb of the world, swallowed deadly poison without being harmed by it, successfully passed the tests of air and solid matter, and been renewed by water.”
“Then approach, Lilliana, and kneel before the altar.”
With Sir Bastian’s guidance, Lili climbed to the second step and sank slowly to her knees. This done, the old gentleman released her arm and moved away.
“Lilliana Brakeburn-Blackheart, I ask you for the last time,” said the man in the falcon mask. “And I charge you to examine your conscience thoroughly before you answer. Do you come here solely of your own will, under no constraint, under no persuasion? Do you make your vows and join this ancient brotherhood with a full and grateful and joyous heart?”
After a brief pause, Lili replied. “Sir, I do.”
A bright column of fire sprang up on the altar. “Do you dare stand the test of fire? Will you place your hand unprotected in the flame?”
“I will.” Steeling herself, Lili stretched out one hand to the spot where the fire seemed to burn the hottest. There was no pain, no sensation at all. And when, after another moment, she withdrew her hand, there was no redness or other mark of the flame to be seen on her skin.
The tall man seemed to smile behind his mask. “You have a powerful will. Now, Lilliana, you must speak the words after me, exactly as I say them to you.”
With his next words, his voice seemed to grow physically bigger as it grew louder, to expand until it filled the whole room like a palpable presence: “I am the Bride of the Universe, the Handmaiden of Nature, and Sister of the Four Elements.”
“I am the Bride of the Universe,” Lili echoed softly, “the Handmaiden of Nature, and Sister of the Four Elements.”
“I am the earth, I am a star, I am a spirit. I partake of the nature of all things, for I am one with the World’s Soul.”
“I am the earth, I am a star, I am a spirit. I partake of the nature of all things, for I am one with the World’s Soul.”