Down, down, down, the breeze of my passage plucking at my dress and my hair. Some instinct in my gut keeps me moving; I feel some need to reach the bottom of the staircase, and that farthest tower.
I don’t know how long it takes me, but eventually, as I approach the bottom, the tower attains its full, imposing height, easily five or six hundred feet tall, dotted with windows, which I now can see are not mere tiny slits, but huge breaks in the wall. Not only tall, this tower is wide, extending in a broad curve away from the stairway in both directions, so wide the tower could be an entire castle on its own, never mind the boggling, impossible expanse to my left, the top of which is now far, far over my head, out of sight.
As I reach the bottom of the staircase there is nowhere to go except into the tower in front of me, or back up whence I came. To my left, I can see blocks of limestone twice my height and impossibly huge, and to my right, the steep hillside chasing up to the wall, now a good quarter mile distant, looking tiny and quaint, the guards on it ant-sized.
The stairs end in a broad curving landing made of gold-veined marble tiles. The entryway to the tower is a vaulted arch soaring twenty feet high, with a pair of god-sized doors set in the vault, dark thick ancient wood bound by black iron straps as wide as my waist and thick as my wrist, fastened with rivets the size of my fist. A pair of lion heads with rings in their jaws adorn the center of the doorway, but these gold-sculpted beasts are life-sized, and so artfully fashioned it seems as if they could open their jaws and roar at any moment. The rings here are thicker than my forearm, so heavy I can barely lift one, even with both hands.
There is a shelf in the wall directly to my left, with a sliver of a stairway leading up to it, and standing on the shelf is a guard, huge, imposing, clad head to toe in armor plates scaled like a fish, his helmet crafted to make him appear like a lion, his eyes dark and glittering behind the visor. In his left hand is a shield, the flat bottom resting in front of his foot, rising in a rectangle wider than he is, and then tapering to a wicked point a foot over his head. He could easily hide behind that shield and weather any attack safely, or tilt the top of the shield forward and impale his enemy; it is both a weapon and protection.
In his right hand is a spear. A dozen feet tall, wrist-thick, made of polished black wood, the butt end rests on the ground. The end of the spear is bright polished iron, and the head of the spear is a narrow, viciously sharp, three-foot long arrowhead, the tip so sharply pointed it almost vanishes.
On my right is another shelf in the wall, and another guard, identically armed and armored.
Neither man acknowledges my presence, and neither speaks to challenge me. They could be statues; for all that they show signs of life. Their eyes, though, shift and glitter behind their visors, searching, roving, moving. I know they see me, of that I am certain
There is no doubt that this place—a castle, a fortress—is a place of great danger, yet I feel as if I belong here, as if I am expected. As if I am known.
I approach the huge doors and grasp one of the thick golden rings in both hands and pull hard, expecting the door to resist my efforts. Instead, it swings open easily, as if weightless. It is heavy, though. Impossibly heavy, but swinging on perfectly weighted and balanced hinges.
I walk in, and close the massive door behind me.
I am in an antechamber, a mammoth, empty, echoing room that must occupy the entire footprint of the tower, columns ringing the perimeter and supporting the ceiling overhead, which is dizzyingly high, another vaulted, fluted feat of architecture and engineering, all the vaults and flutes leading toward the center of the ceiling.
Across the flagstones, and through the ring of smooth columns, I can see torches flickering on each one, lighting the open space. On the far wall is another tall, narrow, vaulted archway, with two guards on either side, each attired in the same way as the men outside. They do not register my presence, and they do not bar my way as I move through the arch, which leads to stairs leading to my left, circling the circumference of the outside wall.
I ascend, passing the first set of windows after only a few dozen paces, windows that are as tall as I am and twice as wide, and closed in with thick, wavy glass. Up, and up, and up, the stairs ascend. They are wide and deep, yet shallow, carrying me up so easily that climbing them is almost like walking on flat ground; such is the scope and scale of the tower. When I pass another set of windows, I realize that I’ve climbed what must be a hundred vertical feet.
I come to a landing and a doorway, but the stairs continue to ascend. A compulsion I do not understand carries me upward, past the doorway, and then as I climb another circumnavigation of the tower’s perimeter, another doorway, directly above the last. And then a third doorway. Another, and another.
The higher I go, the harder my heart pounds; yet I know I must continue on. What awaits me, I do not know, but I must go, and I must climb these stairs. I know, deep in my heart, that when I leave these stairs I will meet my fate. I will learn where the purest distillation of truth dwells.
After what seems like hours of ascending stairs, I finally I walk through another doorway.
The room beyond, like the one at the base of the tower, is so huge it defies description. Dizzying, disorienting. A ring of columns ten feet from the door, and then another ring ten feet beyond that, and then a third, each successive set of columns thicker and further apart than the last, until by the fifth ring the columns are too broad for me to wrap my arms even part way around.
The ceiling is relatively low, considering the scope of the room, but as the columns become larger, the ceiling rises higher and then, when the columns stop, the ceiling vanishes entirely, becoming a stained-glass dome of utterly unbelievable scale. A hundred feet across? Two hundred? I don’t know. It’s too far overhead to know. I am faint with disbelief, overwhelmed by the immensity of this room, of this tower.
Directly beneath the center of this dome, an immense, flat-topped pyramid soars toward the roof. Built from blocks of pure white, gold-veined marble twenty feet to a side, the steps of the pyramid ascend on all four sides. A pair of guards stands at the bottom of each side of the structure. At the zenith of the ziggurat is a throne, too high up and too far away to make out any details.
I approach the pyramid, heart hammering. My legs are weak and trembling, not from exertion, but from nerves and fear.
As I stand at the base of the pyramid I am finally addressed by a guard. His voice is a guttural snarl, so deep I feel it in my chest. “He’s expecting you, girl. Go up. Now.”
The stairs up the pyramid are steep, the treads narrow. Moonlight hits the stained glass far, far above, shifting to a hundred different colors, bathing the dais atop with an array of shades of muted blue and red and silver and gold. In the sunlight, this spot must be…incandescent, prismatic. Unbearably bright and beautiful.
At night?
It is simply magical. A place of dreams and ethereal peace. Breathtaking.
When I reach the top I am out of breath, and I now feel more fear than ever before. Why am I afraid? I don’t know why, but I am, and that indefinable fear has me in its grip, choking me, throttling me.
The dais is perhaps thirty paces across in both directions with a simple, comfortable chair in the center, situated beneath a rosette in the glass far overhead. The chair is a throne, but it’s also…just a chair.
The moonlight is bathing the man seated upon the throne as if it’s his own personal exquisite spotlight.
And the man himself…
In this moment, in this light, in this place, he is a god.
Clothed in spotless white—a simple tunic and matching trousers—his feet are bare. Simple clothing, and their very simplicity serve to highlight his raw masculine beauty and power. His hair falls in a thick cascade around his shoulders, held back from his face by a simple iron band.
No gems, no precious metals, only plain iron; the arrogant authority exuding from him is enough to name him King. His face is in repose, waiti
ng, eyes closed, at peace. Across his knees is a naked blade, one hand clutching the hilt, the other resting on the blade with familiar comfort. His shoulders lift and descend in regular, even intervals as he breathes slow and deep, soughing softly.
The sword has a blade that is wider than my palm, over four feet long from tip to hilt. The blade itself seems to glow in the moonlight, the glittering whorls chased in otherworldly designs across the metal. It shines as if diamonds had been crushed and turned to paint. The cross guard is a pair of foot-long wickedly-sharp spikes, the hilt plain black leather bound in silver wire, the weighted pommel as thick as my fist and carved into the same fierce roaring lion as on the doors. Despite the beauty of the blade, however, it is clearly no showpiece, no useless, ceremonial thing. The edge is nicked and pitted, honed so razor-sharp it seems to cut even the shimmering, multi-hued light of the moon. This is a blade that has shed blood, seen war, taken lives, and won a throne.
And the man wielding the blade? For all his beauty, for all his regal grace, he is a wild beast poised upon a throne too small and too flimsy to contain his vigor. He is at rest, but he is coiled like a predator.
Without armor, without helm, without shield or bow or mail, he is yet more deadly than any of the guards I’ve passed on my journey thus far.
When I stand before him, at last, he takes a single deep breath, holds it, and lets it out slowly. His eyes open, molten, vivid, piercing, tumultuous, feral golden brown. A lion’s eyes.
“Kneel, girl.” Two words only, but from those lips, in a hard, arrogant tone which brooks no disobedience, it is a command. The stars themselves would kneel at his feet, should he command it.
I kneel.
I feel his gaze upon me. Assessing. Judging.
“You are a prize, won in battle. Your king gave you to me as a peace offering.” He tone is lofty, disdainful, and my heart squeezes. “I have no need of another wife, nor another soft body to warm my bed. So tell me, lovely little thing—why should I keep you?”
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Copyright © 2016 by Jasinda Wilder and Jade London. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Jasinda Wilder
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The Black Room: Door Four Page 7
