“I’ve seen temples, but I’ve never heard of anything like this,” Kreewhite answered. He began to move slowly, taking his time to approach the stairway that led up into an unknown dark space behind the columns. He stopped when they were just inches from the steps, then twisted his body so that Marco could easily slip off.
With a grunt Marco splashed off his friend and sat down on a submerged step at the bottom of the open staircase. He carefully rose to a standing position, then stretched his muscles, raising his hands high overhead as he gave a great sigh of relief at the feel of standing on solid ground for the first time since he had been taken captive from the Lion City. Even though his muscles and injuries ached from the activity, he maintained his embrace of freedom for several seconds, then looked around.
The underground temple appeared spotlessly clean. There were no stains or marks on the steps, no signs that the divine space had ever been used or even touched by human hands. Marco looked up into the darkness that enveloped the upper reaches of the staircase, which rose out of sight on its way to some unknown destination above.
Marco lowered his arms, then held the sword cautious before him as he looked upward before he began to limp upward.
“Where are you going?” Kreewhite asked.
“Not far,” Marco assured the merboy sincerely. “I just want to see what is around here.”
“I can’t come up there to help you,” Kreewhite warned. “Be careful.”
“I know,” Marco answered as he continued to climb, belatedly remembering that in fact his friend did not have legs.
There was no evidence of any danger or potential harm, but each step nonetheless felt tentative, as though he were entering a space of great danger. He reached the landing at the level where the stairs passed between the columns, and stopped to look at the balcony-like corridor that curved away to both the right and the left, running in a circle around the interior of the chamber just behind the columns.
After a moment’s hesitation he began to shuffle off to the right, and took five minutes to slowly circumnavigate the full distance around the chamber, coming back to the stairs without discovering anything on note.
“I’m not going to climb up the stairs any further,” he announced.
“Are you ready to leave?” Kreewhite asked.
“Maybe we could just spend the night here,” Marco suggested, not sure why the words blurted out of his mouth.
“Well, it is sheltered and seems safe, and you would be able to sleep on land,” Kreewhite agreed. “We could go out in the morning in the daylight and see our way around the island to find some place you can do land-things if you want to, before we go on.”
“Where will we go on to?” Marco asked as he sat down on a step.
“To my homeland, I hope,” Kreewhite said in a tone that was both hopeful and wistful. “If I can find it.”
“Will I be able to get back to my home from there?” Marco probed.
“I’ll do everything I can to make sure you do,” Kreewhite pledged, as Marco stretched out on the stone floor. The surface felt cold against his bare skin, but he felt great relief as he lay down.
“I’m going to go back out into the sea and try to find some clues about where we are,” the merboy told Marco just as he closed his eyes.
“Will you be able to see anything in the dark?” Marco asked.
“It’s not a matter of seeing. It’s feeling and tasting the water,” Kreewhite answered, and his voice sounded further away. “I’ll see you in the morning Marco,” he said, and then there was a rippling sound, and Marco knew that his friend was gone, swimming freely without his passenger, probably enjoying the unfettered progress he could make.
The stone he was resting on gave a slight quiver, an unexpected tremor that surprised Marco into opening his eyes.
The room had grown dimmer, and he noted that half the gas flames overhead had disappeared.
There was another tremor, and then the sound of crashing rocks, and more of the flames were extinguished, leaving little illumination in the watery chamber at all.
Marco felt afraid.
He sat up on the stony floor and looked around. The chamber had a very faint vibration, one that he could feel as much as hear. As he sat, looking up at the single remaining flame that appeared as a bright blue star overhead, the vibration seemed to change timbre, becoming less of a feeling, and more of a sound. It seemed to rise in pitch, and he listened in astonishment as the sound grew slightly louder, more audible, and slowly transformed into a voice, maintaining a single clear note that seemed to be sung, and hung in the air of the dome.
“Marco,” the note stopped, the voice no longer sang, and suddenly the voice, a powerful, compelling voice, whispered his name.
“Marco,” it repeated. “Are you the champion?”
“Kreewhite?” Marco called in panic. “Kreewhite, are you still here?”
There was silence.
“Stand up if you are my champion,” the voice spoke.
Marco rolled and crouched in a kneeling position momentarily, then looked all around, trying to penetrate the gloom to find the person who was speaking. There was no visible evidence of anyone, and he decided to stand.
“I am not your champion,” he called out in a quavering voice. “I do not know who you are. What do you want? Who are you?”
“Come to me,” the voice, now sounding feminine, whispered in the still air. “Climb the stairs and come up to me. Let me look at you more closely.”
The word ‘look’ made Marco belatedly realize that he stood naked as he conversed with an unseen female, and he blushed as he began to squirm.
“Climb the stairs, Marco,” the voice spoke more firmly, the request becoming a command, and Marco responded by starting to limp up the stairs.
The stairwell was dark, and as Marco began to climb, the last of the flames in the ceiling of the dome fizzled out, leaving total darkness all around the frightened boy. He hesitated, then raised his foot carefully, and resumed climbing the dark steps, feeling each step carefully as he moved further away from the watery chamber he had entered through.
After several minutes of climbing, he reached a flat spot, and cautiously stepped forward until his toes reached a solid wall before him. He used his rusty sword to tap the barrier, and moved to his left along the wall, around a corner, and found that there was a dim glow ahead and above him, as another flight of stairs rose from the landing he was on. The source of the glow was distant and indistinct, but in the light he could at least see the outline of the rising stairwell ahead of him. With a sigh, he began climbing again.
Many minutes later he came to another landing, another empty, sterile hole squared out of the stone interior of the island. The source of the light was there, a thin rectangle of light that outlined a door immediately before him.
“Open the door, and enter,” the voice returned, and startled him with its unexpected command.
Marco flinched forward, and the door gently wafted open from the slight contact his right fingertips made. Inside was a long, narrow room. The ceiling glowed with a bluish light, while the walls glowed with red.
The floor, however, was just as unusual. It appeared to be a pit of quicksand, quivering of its own volition with constant small bubbles rising and bursting on the surface, as rings of ripples spread.
“What do I do?” Marco asked as he stood in the threshold.
“Walk through the room, and leave through the door at the far end,” the voice commanded.
“Can I?” Marco started to ask. “Is it safe?”
“Do you trust me? If so, walk through the room to the door at the far end,” the voice answered.
I can’t trust you; I don’t know you, Marco thought to himself. But he had climbed the stairs already at the command of the mysterious voice, and something made him believe he could trust it; there was no note of treachery or deceit that his ears could detect.
He stepped forward, and his foot landed on a step below
the surface of the slushy liquid, warm and clinging, rising up to his knee. He dropped down as he moved his injured leg to the next step, and as his foot left the dry floor behind, there was a buzzing current that seemed to run through him, and the lit walls flashed an intense burst of energy that made him close his eyes.
As he closed his eyes he lost his balance, and he fell forward into the pit, his arms wind-milling wildly. He felt the sword in his hand slice down into the water, striking the surface and cutting through it, careening off at an angle in response to the resistance of the heavy froth into which both the sword and Marco were collapsing.
The surface of the material closed over Marco’s head, and he dropped down until his chest struck a firm, unrelenting floor to the pit. He coughed in the watery mixture as he pressed and kicked himself back upward. His eyes were still closed as he felt his face pass through the strata of the contents of the pit – liquid at the bottom, gritty solids floating above, and a light, foamy top layer – before he returned to air and stood erect, coughing to clear his lungs. The contents of the long, trench-like pit came up to his shoulder pits, and he lifted his arms, including the sword that he still clutched, upward above his head and outward; it had a strong taste and odor of minerals.
He lowered his free hand and wiped his eyes clear, then opened them, and saw that the lights of the walls and ceiling had returned, and the long room remained disturbing in appearance as a result of the interplay of the two colors. He stretched a foot out in front of himself to test the unseen floor of the pit, then stepped forward, and cautiously began to progress. He lowered both arms, and then swung his arms as part of his natural stride while he moved down the length of the pit towards the door that was his goal.
“What is this stuff?” he muttered as he moved.
“It is the bath of Ascelepius,” the voice answered.
Informed but unenlightened, Marco reached the end of the pit, and stepped up the steep pair of steps that let him exit the moisture within. The contents of the pit drained smoothly off his bare skin, leaving him feeling dry, as though he hadn’t been drenched. He reached forward for the door, one hand holding the sword, the other ready to press against the surface of the metal portal, when he realized to his astonishment that both hands were healthy and whole.
He stopped and inventoried his whole body in a momentary self-examination, and realized that he felt no pain, that there were no injuries, and that all signs of the attack by the sorcerer on the pier in the Lion City were erased. He felt whole and healthy; if anything, he felt even stronger than he thought he had been before.
The movement of the sword caught his eye, as it flickered about while he flexed his arms, and he stared at the transformation. The blade was beautifully reflective, shinier than anything he had ever seen before. The corrosion and dull appearance it had possessed when he had grabbed it off the deck of the Corsair’s ship were gone.
“Thank you,” Marco looked up and spoke to the voice. “This is impossible, and wonderful. Thank you for your healing power. I cannot tell you how wonderful this is!”
There was no answer, though Marco stood in hushed silence, waiting for the voice. At length he reached forward again and pressed the door open then walked through, limp-free and comfortable.
“I have healed you so that you may be my champion,” the voice said as Marco crossed the threshold to the next chamber.
“What champion do you need?” Marco asked. “There must be someone better than me. I’m just a boy, almost,” he explained.
There was no answer once again, only silence. Marco’s attention strayed from waiting for the voice to looking around him.
The voice spoke no more, though he waited. In the dim light that filtered into the room where he stood, he saw that he was in a small room, with rough, uncut rocky faces on all sides. There was no ceiling to the room – the room ascended upward into an uncapped darkness above.
Among the protruding and receding rocks on the walls, Marco saw something like a means of passage. It was as steep as a step ladder, and it meandered back and forth for as long as it was in sight. There was no other direction in which he could advance.
“Am I supposed to climb up there? What’s up there?” Marco asked the empty dimness around him, but he received no answer.
He stood in confusion, considering whether to return the way he had come, or to move on. He felt his stomach growl, and realized that he was extremely hungry. There was no food behind him he knew, so he decided to start to climb, and to hope that either he would find an exit, or that the voice would guide him to an exit.
He wanted food, and he wanted to see Kreewhite, he realized, as he placed his free hand in a crevice and began to pull himself up. He held onto the sword with one hand, while his bare feet groped among the crannies of the stone, seeking shelves and openings into which he could step. He shifted the sword from hand to hand as he climbed, depending upon whether one hand or the other was growing tired, or whether he had to switch direction and free a particular hand to allow him to reach his next gripping point.
The chimney-like cave never grew completely dark, even as he moved upward and away from his starting point. He could see well enough to see where to place his hand’s next move, but the points below him and the points above him quickly disappeared into vague nothingness.
After what seemed like a full day of climbing, he stopped to rest at a spot where the direction of his climb switched, and a small open space became an opportunity to sit and pause. Marco wondered what had happened to Kreewhite. He hoped the merboy was out in the open sea, free and swimming through the waters. He wondered if he would be able to find an exit from the caves and find a way to return to the shore line of the island, where he might be able to rendezvous with Kreewhite, so that they could resume their journey together.
He casually wondered what was happening in Algornia’s shop, and whether he was missed by his master, but then the thought left his mind as he looked upward at the darkness, and began climbing again. His newly healed muscles, as strong and marvelous as they felt in their miraculous recovery from the crippling attacks he had suffered at the hands of the Corsairs, began to send signals of fatigue and pain as he continued to climb, telling him that his long ascent was overcoming their capacity to continue.
And then, just as he planned to stop and rest again, possibly even sleep, he found himself reaching the summit of his journey. The shaft he had climbed reached and opened in the center of a large, flat-floored cavern, and he crawled out onto it, then stood up and walked away from the edge of the opening.
The room was just as dark as the shaft had been, with only the faintest of light coming from some indistinct source. There was no sound of any type, other than the faint echoes of his own movements. He held his sword down and used it as a cane, helping him to assure that the floor in the dark chamber was whole as he cautiously shuffled forward.
After just a few minutes of movement, he reached a wall. As he ran his hand across the stone it felt smooth, the evident handiwork of men, and he took hope that perhaps he would meet someone, anyone who could release him into the open world, and hopefully give him a meal and some clothes. He walked along the wall, one hand holding the sword down to assure that the floor ran on, while the fingers on the other hand ran along the wall to keep it in constant contact, for Marco was sure that in that manner he would come to a door that would be his exit from the underground chamber.
Within a few steps he abruptly stopped, as he fingers ran across a wide seam in the stony wall, and the new section of wall seemed to give slightly. Marco pressed harder against the wall, and he felt elation as the section of stone rocked back and forth. He lifted the hand that held the sword, then pressed both hands against the edge of the wall, and braced his bare feet on the floor as he gave a mighty shove than made the wall fly open under the force of his effort, and he stumbled through the opening into a new room.
He could see inside the new room. He stood still when he stopped his moment
um, and looked up. There was light. There was a high arched dome overhead, and an opening in the very center of the ceiling, through which he could see a small portion of a field of stars twinkling with luminous intensity, and then to his surprise he saw a flash of light as a shooting star sailed across his narrow field of vision.
On the wall opposite from him was a relatively blinding circle of light, the place where a shaft of moonlight landed on a pale white wall after entering through the opening above. Except for a floor that was solid, not liquid, the room he was in was a copy of the temple he had been in below, at sea level with Kreewhite. The ceiling was domed, there was a circle of columns inside the walls, and everything was a creamy, pale white color. The moonlight reflected off the far wall and illuminated the room with a brightness that was disconcerting after Kestrel’s long confinement in the caverns beneath the ground. There was an altar, a slab of raised stone, sitting two steps above the floor, in the center of the temple, and there was nothing else but him. The altar held a silver platter, and upon the platter was a single apple. Without hesitation, Marco grabbed the apple and devoured the fruit to the point of nibbling relentlessly around the core to consume every obtainable bit of edible flesh.
After he finished the apple, Marco turned and looked around the room, and realized that the stone panel he had pressed open had swung closed behind him. It was, in fact, indistinguishable from the adjoining panels, and as he pressed against the various parts of the wall that he felt must be the doorway, none of them moved in the slightest degree. He gave a great sigh and slumped down to the floor, knowing that in one sense he had simply traded one place of confinement for another.
With a view of open sky though, and more importantly, with evidence of human activity as evidenced by the presence of the apple, Marco felt better about his new location, and the prospects for achieving release. He closed his eyes, and fell soundly asleep, exhausted physically and mentally by the long, strange journey that had brought him to the temple.
Chapter 10 – Porenn
The Gorgon's Blood Solution Page 9
