Lord of Monsters

by John Claude Bemis

  Rion looked to Lazuli questioningly, as if her orders could trump Pinocchio’s. It only tightened the knot of worry in her stomach.

  “Why are we going down there?” she asked Pinocchio.

  “To find the hole,” he said.

  Rion lifted an eyebrow. “But we’re in Grootslang Hole, Your Majesty.”

  “Not that Hole,” Pinocchio said. “The hole. The place where Chief Muckamire said Regolith decended beneath the earth.”

  Rion lifted both eyebrows. “Why are we going there?”

  “To find Regolith, of course.”

  Lazuli’s mouth fell open. She made a sputter before composing her face. But she couldn’t help staring at Pinocchio with wide eyes.

  “Don’t you see?” Pinocchio said. “Chief Muckamire said Regolith guards Abaton’s deepest memories. Maybe there is a way to find out from Regolith directly how to stop these escaping prisoners.”

  “But…” Lazuli made a few halting noises. “Regolith has been sleeping since the earliest days of Abaton.”

  “We’ll just have to wake him, won’t we?”

  “How, exactly?”

  Pinocchio shrugged. “I commanded the Deep One, remember?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Hopefully I’ll be able to command Regolith to wake,” Pinocchio said.

  Rion stared from Pinocchio over to Lazuli, a silent plea on his face for her to please overrule Pinocchio’s idea.

  “Look, who knows if my father and the gnomes will find the answer in their library,” Pinocchio said. “We have to do this.”

  “All right,” she said decisively. “Lead the way, Rion.”

  “But, Your Majesty—” At her glare, Rion gave a sigh and began to descend the steps into the street. “All right. Let’s pay a visit to Regolith.”

  Pinocchio wasn’t entirely certain how this plan was going to work. Could Regolith even talk? The Deep One hadn’t. It had only eaten them. But if the primordial had answers to how they could stop these monsters without him having to draw on the magic of the Pearl, it would all be worth it. Well, not worth being eaten. Hopefully being prester protected him from that possibility.

  Wide stone stairs connected the ringed levels of the city. Rion led them down—past bustling markets and noisy gnome blacksmith shops, past grand mansions inlaid with garish riches, past modest houses carved simply into the stone.

  Hoping the noise of the city covered his words, Pinocchio said quietly to Lazuli, “So were you arguing with Rion back in the palace?”

  “Not arguing, exactly,” she said.

  “What was it about, then?”

  “I don’t want to discuss it,” she said with a frown.

  “Why not?”

  She gave him an exasperated furrow of her brow. “Look, Pinocchio. We are the presters. We need to present ourselves…properly to our subjects. We need to project confidence so they will respect us.”

  “Did you not project confidence to Rion?” he asked, trying to follow what she was saying.

  “I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about you.”

  “What?” He blinked. “I thought we were talking about Rion.”

  “Pinocchio, you need to act more like a proper prester around Rion and the rest of your subjects. You treat everyone like your friend.”

  “Rion is my friend,” Pinocchio said. “He’s great. He taught me this thing with the lasso—”

  “He’s not your friend,” Lazuli said. “He’s one of your knights.”

  “Sop’s one of my knights.”

  She made a grumble. “Sop is different.”

  Pinocchio wasn’t sure why she was so upset with him. He knew he was the prester, but couldn’t a prester be…well, normal in front of his people? “You’re always trying to play this part, Lazuli. The perfect prester. Wearing that perfect expression whenever you’re in front of your people.”

  “I’m not playing a part.”

  “But why can’t you just show them you as yourself?” he asked.

  She stopped. Pinocchio walked a few steps more before he realized it. He turned back to Lazuli. She was glaring at him, but whether she was angry or hurt was hard to tell.

  “I can’t,” she whispered fiercely. “And neither can you. Don’t you realize you can’t show your people your true self either?”

  His heart gave a lurch. She was right. Of course he couldn’t. His people could never know what he’d been, what he was becoming.

  Rion had realized his presters weren’t following him any longer. “Your Majesties?” he called.

  Lazuli raised a finger for him to wait. She looked back at Pinocchio. “We need to be careful. That’s all I’m trying to say. Just because someone is a friend doesn’t mean that they can’t become an enemy. Do you understand?”

  He nodded, although he wasn’t entirely sure he understood. But as he clenched his gloved hands together, he supposed if Rion or any of his people discovered what was happening beneath those gloves, they might not be so friendly any longer.

  They followed the steps down. The noise and crowds thinned until at last they were in the quiet dimness of the city’s lowest street.

  Rion looked around. “Gloomy down here.”

  Pinocchio had to agree. The place was lonesome and cast with deep shadows. Something icy hung in the air. The inner side of the small circular street was bordered by an ancient stone wall, caked in lichen and dust. But on the outer side of the street, where the buildings had been on the upper streets, there were no doors, no signs of habitation—only alcoves set one after the other into the rock. Candles and other offerings had been placed in each.

  As Pinocchio walked, he saw that each alcove had one of four images carved into the worn stone: a toothy mouth, a feather, and something that might have been an egg or a seed, but the vast majority were carvings of a half-closed eye.

  “What are these?” he asked.

  Lazuli pointed to a carving of the mouth with a bowl of water before it. “This one’s a shrine to the Deep One,” she said.

  Pinocchio looked at the next alcoves, comprehension coming over him. “These are for the primordials?”

  But of course they were. The four ancient elemental beings were highly revered in Abaton. Since there were candles in front of the carvings of the seed, Pinocchio supposed the seed must have something to do with the Primordial of Fire. Strings of small flags fluttered in the breeze before the images of the feather. Was the Primordial of Air some sort of bird?

  Lazuli pointed to nuggets of unpolished silver and gold lying before the numerous half-closed eyes. “These are for Regolith. The gnomes revere the Primordial of Earth highest, which is why there are more shrines for him. But all the primordials protect Abaton, so all are honored.”

  “Most cities in Abaton have shrines like these, Your Majesty,” Rion said. “There’s even one, if memory serves, in the far corner of the gardens at the Moonlit Court. Haven’t you seen it?”

  Pinocchio shook his head. He turned to the stone wall that formed the inner circle of the street. The wall was a little taller than he was, too high to see over it from where he stood. “So down there—?”

  His heart thumped madly in his chest. Pinocchio approached the wall and pulled himself to the top. Below lay an enormous black pit.

  Lazuli and Rion leaped on gusts of wind to land on either side of him. They looked down. Pinocchio noticed that Rion pulled back ever so slightly.

  There were no stairs, no ladder, just rough rock leading down into the earth. Lazuli and Rion would have no trouble as sylphs. They could simply walk down the walls. But Pinocchio had guessed he might need another way into the hole.

  “Rion, your rope,” he said, quelling the anxiousness in his voice.

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” Rion said, taking it from his shoulder. “I can secure it up here and help lower you down—”

  “Aren’t you coming?” Pinocchio asked.

  Before Rion could answer, Lazuli said, “No. This place is only for Abaton�
��s presters to enter.”

  “Are you sure, Your Majesty?” Rion asked. “General Mezmer instructed me to watch over you.” Even as he said it, his eyes pinched anxiously, as if his deepest hope was for her to refuse his offer wholeheartedly.

  “I’m sure,” Lazuli said. “We won’t need your protection down there.”

  Pinocchio swallowed hard. Sure, this had been his idea, but he had to trust that Lazuli would’ve told him if it was a huge mistake. What were they going to find down there? What was Regolith anyway? Chief Muckamire had simply said he was a giant. But a giant what?

  Rion threw the coil of rope into the darkness, holding on to the end. He dropped lightly back to the street, securing the rope around his elbow, and took a firm double grip. “I’ve got you, Prester Pinocchio. Whenever you’re ready.”

  Pinocchio grasped the rope with his gloved hands and walked slowly over the edge, leaning out to plant his feet against the stone sides. Lazuli began walking down next to him.

  “Lazuli,” Pinocchio whispered. “At the first sign of danger—”

  “I know,” she said. “We climb back up the wall.”

  They went down. Little by little, Pinocchio eased himself along on the rope. Lazuli’s eyes cast a thin blue light. Pinocchio looked over his shoulder to see what was below, but the illumination from Lazuli’s eyes didn’t reach the bottom.

  “I’ll go ahead,” Lazuli said. “To see how far down it goes.”

  Pinocchio concentrated on the rope, eyes up, since looking down sent his head spinning slightly. Soon he found the knotted end of the rope in his palm.

  “I’m out of rope,” he said, partially to Lazuli, partially to Rion.

  “Not too much farther,” Lazuli called up. “Too far to drop, however. The walls are uneven. You might be able to hold them. Think you can scale down?”

  Pinocchio didn’t like the idea of letting go of the rope, but he shored up his courage and felt around with his fingers until found a sturdy lip of rock. He secured his feet on another outcropping and let go of the rope, starting a tentative descent.

  He took a breath to steady his nerves. One step at a time. Nice and slow.

  “How much farther?” he called.

  “A ways,” Lazuli answered.

  “I thought you said—”

  Pinocchio’s foot slipped off its perch. He smacked against the rock face, holding on only with his gloved fingers. The alchemied wood of his hands was strong. They could hold him. Heart racing, he kicked to find a foothold.

  But before he could, his wooden fingers began to slide in the gloves’ soft interior. He was slipping.

  “I’m going to—”

  And down he fell.

  Pinocchio lay on his back, stunned, his breath knocked from his lungs. Above, the solitary hole of light seemed no bigger than a coin.

  The silhouette of Lazuli’s head eclipsed it. “Are you all right?”

  He touched the ground beside him. It was sand, deep and soft almost like snow.

  “Yeah,” Pinocchio grunted.

  He got to his feet, feeling stiff and struggling to take a full breath. His eyes adjusted to the dimness, and he found it was like being at the bottom of a well, except filled with sand, heaped into a gentle dome toward the middle, with no passage, no door, and definitely no Regolith.

  He furrowed his brow. “There’s nothing down here.”

  Lazuli was casting her luminous gaze around at all the walls like a dim searchlight. “There’s got to be something.”

  Pinocchio pulled off his gloves and stuffed them into his belt. He could make out the end of the rope dangling maybe thirty feet above. This was pointless. Wherever Regolith was—buried deep under the earth, covered, forgotten, unreachable—they weren’t going to find him. And how was he supposed to get out?

  Pinocchio felt around the walls searching for a handhold, but down here, the wall was much smoother, more weathered. He found a grip, but his toes couldn’t find purchase and kept coming loose. Grunting, he tried to pull himself up by his arms. His wooden hands might have been strong enough, but the muscles in his arms weren’t. He’d never get up that way.

  “I’m calling for Rion,” Pinocchio said.

  Rion had said Quila didn’t like enclosed spaces, which was why the griffin had remained up on the ship rather than coming into the city. But she was going to have to now. Someone had to get him out.

  “No, wait,” Lazuli said, feeling around on the walls as if hoping to find a hidden passage. “Regolith has to be here. Call to him.”

  “Are you serious?”

  Lazuli stared at him. She looked serious.

  Pinocchio cupped a hand to his mouth. “Hello! Regolith? Are you home? Your presters need you.” He sighed. “I told you—”

  A sound like a hissing snake rose behind him. Pinocchio spun around. Lazuli leaped over next to him, looking at the floor with alarm. The sand was shifting, spilling away from the dome in the middle of the floor until bare rock was exposed.

  Pinocchio and Lazuli flattened against the wall, staring wide-eyed.

  A crack formed. It ran perfectly straight across the circular floor. Then the two halves of the bare rock floor slid apart, drawing back almost to their feet.

  Beneath the sliding plates of rock was a circle of glossy black stone, surrounded by a ring of white. The rock closed over it again, sealing for only an instant, then opening once more.

  Pinocchio realized what he was seeing and it nearly stopped his heart.

  An eye. An enormous eye. It had blinked.

  The look of alarm dropped away from Lazuli’s face. She gave Pinocchio an enthusiastic nod. They’d found Regolith.

  “You’re…” Pinocchio gasped for breath. “Regolith? You guard Abaton’s memories?”

  The eye blinked. When it had opened again, the black pupil was replaced with an image of swirling green. Something was coming into focus—leaves, a forest…no, a jungle as seen from the sky! It was dizzying. Pinocchio felt like he might fall. He staggered back against the wall.

  The eye was showing him a scene of a man standing in a dense jungle wilderness, peering into a great hole plowed into the earth.

  The man wore snowy robes with a golden crown atop his long silver-white hair. Despite the color of his hair, his face was youthful—strangely so, because it didn’t seem someone so young would have such a look of serene wisdom about him. How could he look both young and old at—?

  Then Pinocchio understood. He’d seen this man before, but not like this. When Pinocchio had seen Prester John, he’d been ancient, bald and heavily wrinkled. He’d been dying in the depths of the Deep One.

  “Father!” Lazuli gasped. “Is that you?”

  But Prester John didn’t seem to hear her, didn’t seem to know she and Pinocchio were even there.

  Lazuli winced as she realized her mistake. Her father was dead after all. “This has to be something that happened long ago,” she whispered.

  In the memory, Prester John opened a hand, holding an orb swirling with light and color. Pinocchio recognized the Ancientmost Pearl, even though he’d never seen it with his own eyes.

  Prester John spoke in a clear, commanding voice, facing the cavernous hole. “And to you, Regolith, I ask that you remain beneath Abaton. Tread no more upon its surface.”

  In his other hand, he held a stone jar, which he tipped over the hole. Silvery sand poured out, an impossible amount given the size of the vessel.

  “Sleep, Regolith. Sleep and guard the memories of Abaton.”

  The great rock lids blinked. When they opened, the image on Regolith’s eye was gone.

  Pinocchio stared at the black pupil ringed with white, hearing his own heavy breaths coming from his lips. He had just commanded the primordial Regolith!

  “You did it!” Lazuli said. “You asked what it guarded, and Regolith showed us, with the memories it’s guarding.”

  Pinocchio felt a thrill of power, warm and tingly, dancing in his chest. But then the prickly feeling
seemed to also be moving down his arms.

  With a start, he pulled up his sleeve. Wood had formed, along his wrists now and down almost to his elbows.

  Panic erupted in Lazuli’s eyes. “I…I didn’t think talking to Regolith would do this!”

  Pinocchio scowled. “I don’t think it’s that. It must be because I woke Regolith. It’s obeying me because of the power of the Ancientmost Pearl.”

  “Then we have to stop!” Lazuli said.

  Pinocchio was tempted to agree before he changed any more. But he had already awakened Regolith and now was his chance to find out why this was happening.

  He looked at his arms, the horror of seeing more wood making him almost sick to his stomach. If Regolith was revolted or angered by what he saw, the eye gave no indication.

  “Why…” Pinocchio swallowed hard. There seemed no reason to keep his secret from the ancient being. “Why is the Pearl turning me back into an automa?”

  Lazuli gripped his arm, looking hesitantly from Pinocchio to Regolith’s enormous eye.

  The eye didn’t blink, didn’t move.

  Pinocchio tried again. “Why is the Pearl turning me into wood?”

  Nothing happened.

  “So he’s ignoring me now?” Pinocchio asked.

  “I think,” Lazuli said slowly, puzzling this out, “if Regolith can only answer by showing memories…well, there aren’t any memories of Abaton that can answer your question?”

  Pinocchio sighed. He tried to think of another way to put it, but found nothing. And he noticed that the wood little by little was continuing to creep up his elbow.

  “We should stop,” Lazuli said urgently.

  Pinocchio shook his head. They had their mission. They needed to know more if they were to stop the monsters from escaping the prison.

  Quickly, before Lazuli could stop him, he said, “The prisoners…the monsters who rebelled against Prester John…we need to know how they’re escaping.”

  The eye blinked. This time the pupil became a leaden gray. As the image came into focus, Pinocchio saw a barren, rocky plain. Prester John, robed now in black but otherwise no different from the other memory, stood before an army of kneeling creatures. Monsters! These were the monsters.