The Black Palace Page 9

  He seemed uncertain but curious, and he held out his hand for it.

  Hava knew that she should have been scared to walk close enough to him to hand it over, but she did.

  He took it. He turned it around, and over, looking closely at every edge of it. He hummed to himself. Then he lit up the screen, and began tapping and sliding his fingers, and it must have been responding to him, for he tapped faster and faster. He angled it toward the tower of golden coils on his alchemical table and kept tapping and said with joy, “It is a marvel indeed. Look! Already it speaks with false stars in the heavens, yet it has a language of numerals so simple that an Assyrian child could lord his will over it.” He kept working on the screen with such intensity that he might never be made to look away again.

  Hava stepped back to look over the curious little lead box in her hand. Carved on all sides of it were letters of her own alphabet, like the writing in Ziggurat’s House of Limestone. Hava had a good enough ear for spoken languages, a skill she had been forced to develop on the streets when she was begging and stealing from the diverse people who moved through Tel Aviv—she wished that she had encountered more English, but only the distant rich spoke that. Yet she had come into literacy late, and she was still only developing, so she had difficulty reading these letters on the box. She had been able to recognize certain basic words in writing holistically when she had come across them in the House of Limestone, such as death—met—which had been written on the bottles of poison she sometimes fetched, and the word lie—kazab—and truth—amet—and life—hava—her own name. And she knew a few letters—aleph, beth, gimel—but not all of them. On this lead box, she was certain of the prominent first letter on each side, shin, and a later letter, aleph, but she did not know the others, and she did not know the words.

  “What is that you have found?” he asked. He looked up from his screen. From where he sat, he could glimpse the box she held.

  “I am not sure,” she said. She tried to open it, but it would not give. A seam clearly indicated a lid, so Hava pulled only the very end of Nachash’s tail into a blade, letting the rest of him remain coiled around her arm, and she wedged the edge into the box. The lead seemed to score easily as she worked the blade into the seam, and finally she managed to pry the lid up, feeling as if it had been a vacuum.

  Inside the box, swaddled in cotton, lay an adorable little worm. He was fat and sleepy. He reminded Hava of pictures of caterpillars. She spoke softly to him in her own language and asked him how he was, and with infinite gentleness she used the pad of her finger to stroke his back. He seemed to arch like a pet and fall back into slumber.

  “He is a worm,” she said.

  “A worm?” the warrior said. “A worm? You, a strange-eyed little conqueror, have come into my chambers, on this night of all nights, the syzygy of Apsinthos, and you bring this of all things?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I think he is sleepy.”

  “And the box? What is written on the box?”

  Hava would have been ashamed to admit that she could not fully read the words, but she decided not to focus on her shame because she found the little fellow too cute to care. She said, “I cannot read. It is made of lead.” She held it higher so that he could see it better.

  “Oh, but I can read it. It is a name I have not read in a long time. And is there cotton in it? Does the worm rest on a bed of cotton?” He was getting louder and more excited now. Though he kept close hold of his tablet, he was rising in his seat, and color was coming to the ashen skin of his face.

  “Yes,” Hava said. “Do you know him?”

  “O how I know of it! Yes, little conqueror. I know what it is you hold, though I could never guess how it came into your hands. O how the stars play! This will be a night of wonders.”

  “Why do you say such things?”

  “Because that, of all things in this world, can break the bonds that Gróa has set on me.”

  But he was just an innocent little worm. She said, “Did you not say it would take someone older than she to do something like that?”

  “It is older, though it is only a fragment. It might be eldest of all living things left in the world. You hold a forgotten thing of great power in your hands.”

  “How could this little fellow free you?” She held the worm close to her face. She loved him.

  “It was once the cherished tool of the fifth greatest architect, whose name was Solomon. From what I have read, it can split a boulder in half at will. It can break open a mountain if so commanded. Maybe it can even break the globe itself.”

  She stroked him again. “No. He is too little.”

  “Little conqueror, what have I been teaching you about greatness from small things?”

  The man had regained her attention by that. He had in fact been teaching her, she now realized. He deserved her respect, though not necessarily her trust. She said, “If I chose to have him free you, how would it work?”

  “I suppose that you would place it on my band, and you would command it to do its breaking.”

  “Would it hurt him?”

  “It would hurt me. If it could break this band, I am sure it would crack my skull in half. But, alas, I cannot die, not like that at least.”

  “But would you still feel pain?”

  “It would crack my skull in half. Yes, little conqueror, that would be pain.”

  She considered her position for a moment. She had the power to free an ancient warrior from his prison. It was an opportunity for advantage, but it could turn out to be its own punishment. She said, “What would you do if I chose not to free you?”

  He said, “I might leap out of this seat and try to take it from you. If I succeeded, I might exact revenge by torturing you with as many of my devices as your body could withstand. But though I am persistent and patient, at my age I am not swift. And you sound as though you are wily, full of action and quickness. I anticipate that you might flee this chamber before I could get my great hands on you, and I might remain imprisoned here. In that case, I would return to this marvelous tablet that you have given me and seek a way to pay you for it nonetheless. Though I have been a conqueror, I have never been a thief. And now, it would seem, the stars will not require me to be so tonight. I venture to predict that you will choose to free me of your own will.”

  She almost asked him to swear an oath, but it felt too close to something a witch might do. Besides, what she really wanted to know was what he would do of his own free will. So she said, “And if you were free, would you pursue and kill the Witchfinders for me as you swore in your oath for Seph?”

  He said, “I did not swear an oath to hunt anyone for her, nor did I swear any other oath, for time, which moves so quickly, can now and then get away from me, and circumstance can make any man an oath-breaker. But for my payment, yes, I would hunt them. If you want to know whether they will die, whoever they are, I can assure you they will, one day. If you want to know whether they would die by my hand, I do not know, for destiny will decide between the hunter and his prey, and there are many paths here for them to evade me. And if they choose not to flee but instead to fight, then they will with all certainty be broken by my hand, for I cannot tire, for I need never stop. But I can tell you this, little one: if you were to free me, I would take great joy in hunting them for you.”

  “And if I freed you, would you harm me?” She was nervous in asking him this, for she feared that he would tell the truth, as he seemed only to do, and that he might share the horrid details.

  He said, “In the youth of my lifetime, I would have ravished you to your very death, even if you were generous enough to free me. In the elder days of my lifetime, I would have tortured you for nine months, even if you were generous enough to free me. But I am ages and ages past my lifetime. As I sit now, if you willingly freed me, I would probably let you go free as well, if for nothing else than to see what you might wreak in the world, little conqueror, for you are a strange thing to me, something new. Though I speak of t
hat old worm, I have greatly tired of old things, and age has made me endlessly curious of what is new.”

  She had no idea whether he was speaking the truth, nor did she know how probable his choice to let her go free would turn out to be, so she made the decision that he was telling the truth, and that he would let her go. These two decisions felt to her as bold as any action she had ever taken. She had one final question for him. “Will you show me the way out of this place?”

  “There are many paths out of here, which may take you far and wide. You are in the Black Palace, a web of a thousand different places in the world, and now, in these halls, you are under the mountain Lysa Hora. This old prison is but a neglected nook, much as the Black Palace itself is neglected in these years of the waning of the witches, as if it seems to slumber. As I have seemed to slumber. And yet do I feel an awakening on the way.”

  Hava said, “Then listen to me, old warrior. I will break the bond that holds you here. I will set you loose.”

  He nodded as if it were a speech he had heard before. “And before you do, I must agree to your demands.”

  “No. I make no demands of you,” she said. “You already know what you need to know if you wish to help me. But once I give you your freedom, you may do with it what you feel you are destined to do. I will not strike a deal with you. I am not a witch. I am only a girl.”

  He seemed surprised, or impressed. But he said, “Then let me tell you this. You should know that Gróa will not be pleased with the one who sets me free from the punishment she has set by her own hand. I trust that you can guess the peril of such a warning. As great as I am, greatest among men, she ripped my soul from out my body, and she hid it in an egg, which she fed to an asp, which she fed to an ibis, which her goat devoured, as he has devoured other such things that she has fed him. The pain of that, little one, O the pain of that is unlike anything in this world that I have ever discovered. But the worst pain still is that I have thus been her thrall, at her command, and can never die. And if you freed me, she might devise even worse for you.”

  “I do not know your Gróa,” she said. “I have not heard her name before I have heard you speak it this night, as I do not know many things in the world yet, but if she stands in my way, she will rue the day that she first heard my name.”

  “And what is that name?” he said, delighted with her response.

  “Hava.”

  “Ah, what a name you bear! Well met, Hava the younger. It is time you know that you speak with Ashurbanipal, the Deathless One, he who was at a time King of Assyria, he who was at a time the sole apprentice to Hermes Trismegistus himself, he who twice spoke with Enoch as he sat beyond the wheels of the world, he who was at a time the greatest of the alchemists and men of learning. And I knew that I was right about you, little conqueror. Now come to me and break this bond, and we shall find out what the stars have in store for us.”

  And so Hava did.

  Chapter 7

  They moved through the corridors toward the origin of that massive sound, which could not have been mistaken for anything they had ever known before. Sledge seemed slower, but that did not hinder their cautious approach. And although Jan, behind them, concentrated on mapping their progress on his arm, DiFranco and Sledge kept their weapons up, ready to shoot at anything they encountered, yet it was light from an open door that DiFranco noticed first, so she stopped and lifted her fist. Sledge and Jan stopped too. Then she opened her fingers, giving them the sign for medusa formation: fan out, no noise, lights off, slow steps. They did so, pressing themselves against the walls and sliding forward. She heard voices as they neared, though she could not make out how many or what they said. One was definitely male. Maybe another could be a young lady’s, the maidservant they hoped to find.

  They hunkered close to the open door, which gave plenty of ambient light, but they made sure not to silhouette any part of themselves in its frame. She hadn’t looked in yet, but DiFranco presumed it was an enclosed space like the priestess’s cell had been, so she produced a tear-gas grenade. She showed it to Sledge.

  He nodded. And he produced a fragmentation grenade.

  No, she shook her head at him. She didn’t want the room blown up, or the maidservant killed if she were in there, or the witch’s hand and ring destroyed if those were in there too. She just wanted whoever it was to flee out through the door unprepared, easier to subdue.

  Sledge nodded again at his grenade and smiled.

  She shook her head no again.

  He shrugged and put it away.

  DiFranco moved all the way to the edge. She twisted the pin out of the tear-gas grenade but kept the lip secure. She listened for a moment longer, trying to get a clearer idea of the voices, which she did not. So then she let it loose and lobbed the grenade into the room.

  It popped and hissed. The voice—a single male voice for certain this time—became distinct and urgent, but she did not recognize the words. She hoped he would come running out, disoriented even if he weren’t human, so she could trip the sonofabitch, so Sledge could take care of him on the ground, so she could be free to capture that maidservant for a second time.

  She waited for all this to play out, and smoke soon issued forth from the room in great gray and orange bellows, catching much of its light. She listened for coughs and running feet. She heard none. No one came out.

  The smoke thinned during their wait, and they heard no more from inside. DiFranco didn’t want to, but it was wise to wait just a little longer.

  “Fuck it,” Sledge said, and he went forward into the room.

  He would need her back-up, so she signaled for Jan to stay put, and she zipped her under-jacket high over her mouth and nose, and she followed Sledge inside. She took cover behind an oversized ossuary and scanned the room as best she could through the haze. This cell was larger than the priestess’s, but even still, the tear-gas was dissipating surprisingly quickly. There had to be a draft somewhere.

  Sledge had left his cover, moving without caution to the center of the room. “They’re gone,” he said.

  DiFranco went to join him. He was right; they were alone in there. “So where’d they go?” she said. She looked across the room for a clue but was taken aback by the sight of huge and horrid suits of armor against the far wall, four of them. It was not clear whether they were torture devices or experiments, loaded as they were with pistons and tubes, but each iron torso was forged as a different face—ox, lion, eagle, and man—the four faces of the kherubim. They stood as if empty, as if waiting.

  “Looks like they went that way.” Sledge pointed to an iron maiden nearly hiding in the corner. Its front shell was open. Instead of a tiny space covered in spikes, it was long and dark, an escape route.

  “I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy,” DiFranco said. “Come on. Let’s go after them.”

  But they were stopped, because Jan yelled, “My bag!”

  He ran in the room, over to a spot DiFranco hadn’t yet noticed, and sure enough there was his valise on the floor. The witch’s hand lay beside it as well, ring on the finger and all.

  “That’s it,” DiFranco said. She hurried over there and recovered it off the floor. Then, holding that severed hand and seeing the ring, she felt a little relief. “We’ve got it,” she said, mostly to herself. “We’ve got it.” This was the first bit of good luck they’d had so far. They wouldn’t even need to go chasing the maidservant, having to squeeze through the passageway of a torture device. They could let her go, with whatever man she had found to kidnap her. They would get to walk right back to the flooded cavern and work on reopening the doorway.

  Sledge had clearly let himself ease down too, knowing that they had recovered the hand and that they would get to abandon the chase, for he played with a glaive in a rack of tritons and spears and polearms with only one empty slot in the collection, and he said, “This guy had lots of toys. Must be a scary bastard.”

  DiFranco figured they should instead worry about the full alchem
ical lab, aeolipile and all, and what creation might be floating in the vessel that was covered from sight by an embroidered cloth.

  Jan sifted through the contents of his valise. And Sledge called for DiFranco to come see something, so she went to him.

  He lifted a shield from the floor and looked through the round display of sigils cut out of it. It was a stencil, designed to create a circle of warding—or of containment. It had been used, for the design remained on the floor in silver dust at the foot of a black throne, next to an aimless pile of chain. Although the silver dust was scattered a little by recent steps, the symbol looked like something familiar out of the classic occult texts, probably from The Key of Solomon.

  DiFranco was more curious about the throne than Sledge was. He was testing the weight of another old shield, round and Viking-styled, as if to take it for himself, uninterested in anything else at the moment.

  But the throne was split by a strange fissure. DiFranco looked closer at it, a wide seat of volcanic glass stone and sharp geometry, a thing of the underworld. Blood was sprayed across its back, and the fissure still wisped with heat. DiFranco reached into the gap and a quick burn made her hand jerk back. Whatever had recently cracked that thick slab of rock would have taken far more than her tear-gas grenade, along with everything else they were armed with. It would have taken something as massive as the sound they had heard.

  “It’s not here. They took it.” Jan sounded distraught. He sat on the floor, still with his valise.

  DiFranco held up the witch’s hand for him to see, again, and said, “What’s the problem?”