“So what do we do now?” a few of the girls asked.
“We wait for twilight.”
And wait they did. Percy rubbed down the horse, and fed it some grain, while they made another fire, at the edge of the clearing, watching the rolling snow hillocks and the border of trees. Everyone took turns to deal with nature’s business around the edges of the shrubbery lining the path behind them. And then they returned for the boiling tea.
Just before dusk came, there was a precursor of it in the air, a sensation of repose, a solemnity, as the sky went from pale grey to slate, and then to a flowering of darkness.
The pale vista of snow and spare clumps of brush before them began to
transform
.
First, there was a thickening of the air. The shadows seemed to rush toward it, plucked from the fabric of the sky and the forest like wisps of smoke.
The ice mirage rippled, and the walls took shape, growing heavenward before them, swept upright like grand sentinels to blend with the sky.
And in a few heartbeats, the walls were
solid
, obscuring the forest behind them.
Tangible, massive slabs of granite formed the structure of the Keep. It rose hundreds of feet up, with distant towers and battlements, as grand as the Imperial Palace of the Emperor himself.
“Lordy, Lord!” Marie and Jenna and a few of the other girls exclaimed, the ones who had never seen a large city structure before. . . .
And then, as true twilight came down, turning the world deep blue, there appeared a shape of a grand gate in the walls, like a maw of pure darkness.
Percy watched it all, and not until that last instant did it sink in—
this was it
.
Time to face Death
.
She took a few shallow breaths, forgetting the outer cold and the frigid air, because of the block of ice that was now formed in her gut.
Fear is a cold bastard. The only way to overcome it is to act—to take the first step and just move forward.
And the only way to overcome cold was to burn.
Percy thought of things that were warm, hot, scalding—hearth fires, piles of blankets, boiling water, the sun in midsummer. But the cold inside her was insidious permafrost, and she was still trembling. . . .
And then she thought of things that would turn
her
to fire—injustice, her Gran lying on her deathbed back home, taking each agonizing last breath unto eternity, her mother’s weary accusing, judging, condemning eyes, and her father’s gentle pity. And she thought of her two sisters, of all of them, running out of bread at last and contorting in hunger, and she thought of the animals being slaughtered and not dying—
And Percy
burned
.
There was no cold frigid enough now to keep her afraid and hesitant.
“I am going in,” she said simply, while everyone else around her paused in indecision, seeing the dark wonder take shape before their eyes.
“We are all going in
. . .” said the Infanta. And with the help of Vlau Fiomarre, she got up from her place in the cart, and she took a few steps in the virgin snow, like a clockwork doll.
With a grunt of pain, the black knight was up on his feet also, without anyone’s help, and with his hands still tied.
Percy threw him a glance of momentary concern, but he shook his head at her, and said, “I am coming with you.”
“Those of us who go inside may all be dead shortly.”
He smirked, and for the first time Percy saw his face in a halfway smile. “I highly doubt I am a Cobweb Bride,” he retorted. “And as for dying shortly or lately—we will all meet that fate eventually, if the world is set aright.”
Percy took a few steps toward him, and she reached for the rope on his wrists. “I trust you then, Sir Knight.” And his bonds were cut with a single flick of her small sharp knife.
Percy walked then, before all of them, her feet crunching in the snow, to approach the dark looming gate of Death’s Keep.
But behind her she heard the frightened young voice that tore at her heart.
. . .
“Percy
. . . Percy!” Jenna started to sniffle. “I am afraid, Percy! Oh, I don’t want to go in there!”
“Then don’t, child,” said Flor kindly. “You know you can just stay out here and watch Emilie and Betsy? No one says you have to go in there! Stay.
. . .”
But for the first time in days, it seemed, Emilie spoke up, barely breathing, through a fit of coughing. “I am
. . . coming too . . . please—” Her voice sounded feeble from the cart.
And then Jenna wept outright. “But I’m afraid to stay out here alone!”
Percy turned and then came back around and took her hand. “You’re not alone. Come, Jen, we’ll go in together, all of us, even Emilie, even great knights and ladies!”
And holding the small mitten-wrapped hand in her own broad one, Percy and Jenna walked forward into the darkness.
U
p close, the gate of black smoke was not solid, but a curtain of vapor, or fine mist. Perfectly opaque, the mist stood before them like a waking dream.
Percy reached out with her fingers and she touched it, and it came apart at her touch, with a buttery softness of flannel and cotton, a welcoming sensation.
Enter me
, the mist seemed to say.
Percy closed her eyes, and still holding Jenna, they plunged forward into the mist.
There was a strange peculiar tingle along each point of her skin that lasted a heartbeat, and then Percy sensed they were on the
other side
, and she opened her eyes.
Jenna gasped.
They were indoors. Around them, loomed a great hall of perfectly dull grey stone. Tall gothic arches and columns punctuated its length unto the horizon on both sides, and the niches held fading, dissolving darkness.
There was no visible end to this hall.
If you looked farther out, in search of a wall, the darkness seemed to rush in, and created a fadeout at the horizon.
And if you looked up, there was only night, and then, a strange illusion of starry sky. Except, this sky was so unreal, that it recalled to Percy the sensation of closing one’s eyes and pressing on the eyelids to “see stars.”
Meanwhile, the rest of their group passed through the veil of mist and appeared one by one in the hall behind them. Since there was no real frame of reference, nothing resembling a gate of any sort here, it looked as if they were simply materializing out of the air.
“Percy
. . .” whispered Jenna. “Oh! Where’s the gate? I don’t see how we came in! How do we get back?”
“Hush, Jen
. . .” Percy squeezed her hand.
“I don’t think we’re getting back
. . .” whispered Flor, looking around them in resigned caution.
“
One
of us is not getting back,” Lizabette said sharply, while shivering in her coat. “For my own part, I certainly hope it is not me, and thus expect to be out of this dismal hell at some point, having done my part for this whole Cobweb Bride business.”
The knight stood looking around, meanwhile, and there was an interesting expression on his face that Percy had not seen before—a kind of soft curiosity and wonder.
Vlau Fiomarre was helping the Infanta remain upright, and here in this otherworldly
indoors
, she had thrown back the hood of her burgundy cloak, and her soft, ashen, colorless hair came undone and swept around her shoulders in delicate wisps.
Gloria and Marie, both helping Emilie stand, were all shivering together silently.
“What next?” said one of them.
Percy toed the floor, seeing only ordinary slabs of granite stone underneath. Except for the stone floor, the hall was bare otherwise. It was also lacking snow or dust, or even air drafts of any kind. There was no living movement, only a kind of lukewarm serenity.
. . .
“Is anyone cold?” Percy asked. “Because I no longer feel it. It is not winter here—wherever
here
is.”
Several people shrugged negatively.
“Should we start walking?”
“Where to?”
“Anywhere,” said the Infanta. And then she started moving forward.
Percy watched her
shadow
follow—and Vlau also, her second loyal shadow.
They all advanced a few steps, and it seemed the few columns they kept their eyes on as markers,
moved
along with them, so that despite “walking,” they had not in fact moved at all.
Percy, who had been instead watching the slabs of granite beneath their feet, noticed that the slabs were identical, down to the imperfections and cracks in the granite.
. . . Every step she took, brought her to the next slab in an optical treadmill, without actually moving her anywhere.
“Stop!” said Percy.
And everyone came to a nervous halt.
“We are not moving anywhere,” she observed.
“Indeed, I noticed.” The black knight glanced at her scornfully. “But this is curiously refreshing exercise, if you’ve been lying around all day in a
cart
.”
“What this is, is an unholy nightmare,” muttered Lizabette.
“The kind one has after eating too much lard an’ spiced beans—” Niosta added, with a nervous giggle.
It occurred to Percy that this hall had not heard the sound of an ordinary human giggle in, possibly, an eternity.
. . .
“What if one of us walks in one direction, and another walks in the opposite?”
“A clever idea, Gloria.” Percy let go of Jenna’s hand and pointed Gloria in the other direction, and the two of them started to pace apart.
That seemed to work, and they had moved away from each other by at least fifty feet along the hall, at which point Jenna exclaimed, “Oh no, you are both fading! Stop! Come back, please!”
Percy looked behind her, and their figures all seemed to be
semi-translucent
. But as she and Gloria returned to their original spot, they again became fully corporeal from the perspective of the others.
“What do we do now?”
“Time to end this exercise in futility,” the Infanta said. And then she drew in breath and called out in her ringing mechanical voice: “Death! I am here, and I am yours if you will have me! Show yourself!”
Her voice echoed, then faded in the silence.
And then, from a great distance of miles—or possibly, years—came a reply.
“Come to me
. . .”
said a masculine, cold, human voice.
And in the next instant, a wind came rushing through the hall.
T
hey followed the sound of the voice, and moved in the wind’s wake, seeing funnels of dust rising along the dull slabs of granite . . . dust that had not been there an instant before. . . .
And this time, as they walked, their movement was real along the length of the hall of dreams, and they could measure progress and see the changing of shadows in each niche.
. . . Along the lower arches there were now low-hanging cobwebs, their strange silvery white lace decorating the curves of ancient ashen stone.
The cobwebs grew thicker, like garlands, and the stone itself took on a brighter hue.
. . . Everywhere, Percy noticed, it was now rich with a new pallor, and what had once seemed granite now better resembled bone. . . .
A hall of bones and cobwebs.
There was no longer mistaking it; they were not in a dream place but inside a monumental
tomb
.
Death’s sepulcher was the grandest, most magnificent grave, with columns of bone rising to fade into a ceiling of pale white cobwebs, an upside-down sea.
. . .
“Ugh! There had better not be spiders!” Flor shivered.
“Where do you think cobwebs come from, fool?” hissed Lizabette. “Of course there are spiders—probably thousands and thousands of them! Probably hiding all over that nasty ceiling, ready to drop on our heads!”
Flor squealed in terror—possibly with more terror than at the prospect of meeting Death.
“Hush!” Gloria said. “I hate spiders too, but I kind of don’t think there are any
here.
. . . I think, here the spiders are all long dead. . . .”
“Well then, a small blessing,” Flor said sharply. But she still cringed and tried not to look up.
Percy meanwhile, was walking closely near the Infanta, and she noticed how her death-shadow seemed to solidify with each step, while the hall gradually transformed all around them into what it was now, a graveyard of cobwebs and bones.
Up ahead, the general whiteness seemed to congeal, and it was now taking on a particular physical shape.
Between two grand columns of bone, twice as thick as the rest, upraised on a dais, stood a pale grandiose throne.
It was ivory; softly matte and exquisite, carved with intricate designs. And it bore two sharp spires rising from the high back, while the seat was smooth and flat, unadorned with any carving.
“Lordy, Lord!” whispered Marie, clutching her trembling hands together. “What manner of enormous giant king must sit here. . . .”
They approached, and now they could see cobwebs spun all about the skeletal throne like fine lace, with strings of infinite symmetry, casting concentric garlands between the spires of the back, and then rising up into the ceiling.
. . .
The throne was empty.
They stopped before it, just when the cobwebs had become too thick, and to approach any closer would have meant touching them, sweeping apart their dream lace. . . .
“Where are you, O Death?” Claere Liguon said.
Percy watched her shadow.
And then, she blinked, and glanced at the throne, and it was now
occupied
.
Or had it always been thus? Was it merely a matter of clearing one’s eyes to see Death on his Throne?
Death was a man in black, clad in a doublet and hose, with a starched wide collar of lace. He reposed on the throne, leaning to one side in a weary manner, one petrified arm lying on the armrest of curving bone, the other propped underneath a gaunt bearded chin trimmed in the pointed manner of a grim Spaniard. His black hair was short-trimmed, and over the left shoulder, pinned with a dull brooch of faded silver, poured a black ermine cape.
Death’s face was indescribable.
It was simply
not there—
a blank spot, a shadow within shadows. . . .
Percy stared at him, stunned, a cold sensation returning to fill her gut with an endless dark weight of visceral fear.
“Where are you, O Death?” repeated the Infanta.
And it was then that Percy realized that no one else but herself could see him.
“He is here . . .” she said, softly.
Everyone looked at her. Even Death on his throne, seemed to move a finger—or maybe a single inhuman breath moved the hairs of his beard.
“What do you mean?” Flor and Gloria were staring at her.
“What do you see?” the Infanta asked, turning to Percy.
“I see him,” Percy said, taking a few steps and drawing nearer the throne. “He sits there. . . .”
“Oh! Is he
. . . a grinning skull?” Flor asked.
“No, a man.”
“And why is it that
you
can see him and none of us can?”
“That, I do not know.”
“It does not matter,” the Infanta said, turning upon her the gaze of her great, smoke-shadowed,
desperate
eyes. “Ask him, on our behalf. Speak to him!
Please!
”
“I am certain he can hear us just fine,” Percy said softly. “If Your Imperial Highness would speak, and if
he
would answer, I will relay his words. . . . So far, however, he is silent.”
“Ask him,” said the black knight suddenly, “if a dead man has the right to command the living.”
In that moment, Death’s hand, white and gaunt like ivory, moved on the armrest. And with one finger he
beckoned
Percy to him.
Oh dear God in Heaven, no.
. . .
Percy took one step forward, and now she was faced with breaching the web barrier, thin threads of silver, spun in delicate garlands, cast before her like fine cobweb rain.
. . .
She moved a breath forward, and
they
, the infinite cobwebs, were upon her, as she felt their stifling deathly silk upon her face. Every hair along her skin stood up in strange soft revulsion, a serene wordless horror.
With an involuntary shudder, she stepped yet again, feeling them brush against her skin and hair and lips.
. . .
And again.
. . .
And then she was moving them apart with her fingers, and she was before the dais of the throne.
Death sat before her.
Even this close, his face was still a hollow shadow, while the other details of his human shape were visible with intricate clarity. She could see the fancy stitches of the black velvet fabric of his doublet, the exquisite pattern of the collar lace, the lines of his hands, and the polished sharp claws of his fingernails.
“Take my hand,”
Death said.
And she reached forward and touched her hand to the ivory shape with finger claws.
. . .
In the moment of contact, she felt a cessation of breath, and a bolt of darkness suppressed her vision.
And then everything returned, and she could see and hear, and breathe.
And she still held Death’s cool hand. Rather, it was perfectly neutral against her palm, neither cold nor warm, so that it seemed to exist in a shadow-place that had no concept of temperature.