Part 8 (1/2)
”Do you reckon Flora and Blaine will be at each other's throats by now?” Toby speculated. ”It'd be funny if they both turn up with matching black eyes.”
”No it wouldn't. And anyway, those two get on OK.”
”They're still a bit p.r.i.c.kly, though. You know what I think it is? Unresolved s.e.xual tension. After all, opposites are supposed to attract. First they bicker, then they kiss....”
Cat gave his ankle a swift kick.
”Ow! What was that for?”
”To shut you up. Look, they're coming.”
Flora was back to her usual immaculate self. Blaine looked better, too, less tired, and with some color in his face. What's more, his layers of shabby sweats.h.i.+rts had been replaced by a fleece jacket and blue polo s.h.i.+rt. Cat found herself disliking the change of clothes intensely.
There was no more opportunity for talk, for as soon as the other two reached the steps, the door to Temple House opened and the High Priest was glowering down at them from the entrance. He offered neither greeting nor comment, and turned to march across the hall and up the stairs without checking that he was followed.
The battered shutters in the ballroom had been flung open, letting a flood of morning light into the room. It gave a diamond brightness to the heaps of gla.s.s on the floor, as well as starkly exposing the pockmarked plaster on the walls. Of the mirrors that had once lined them, only one panel of gla.s.s still hung, though damaged, in the middle of the wall at the end of the room. As the High Priest advanced toward it, the chancers realized the panel must belong to the door that led to the crypt. Beforehand, the entrance had been concealed almost seamlessly within the mirrors.
Their guide took out a bunch of keys. One of them was small and silver, with an oval-or rather, a zero-forming the gripping end. ”Oh,” Flora exclaimed. ”That's the same as the key we found.”
”I am the guardian of doors,” he replied stiffly. ”It follows that I am the master of keys also.”
”That's good for you, but I'm not going through any strange doors till I know what they lead to,” said Blaine. As the gla.s.s panel sprang open, he looked down the narrow flight of steps with suspicion. He had not been with the other three when they had discovered the hidden staircase to the crypt and found the Hanged Man suspended in his prison of tree and stone.
The High Priest shrugged dismissively. ”You do not know what you seek, either. I am here to show you the paths you might take, but the choice is yours.” And he turned his back on them and began the descent.
Toby promptly followed him. After a brief hesitation, Flora went, too, then Blaine. Cat was last.
The stairs were steep and went on for a long time, down the height of the house, past its foundations and deep into the earth below. The five of them proceeded through what felt like miles of cramped darkness, until finally the blackness began to fade and gave way to a lamplit room.
Toby and Flora were some way ahead of Cat and Blaine, and reached the bottom of the stairs while the other two were half a flight or so behind. The stairs turned in at a right angle for the final descent, and so Cat was still in darkness when she heard Toby exclaim in anger and alarm. Flora's voice was also raised in protest.
When Cat stumbled into the room, she, too, cried out. She was face to face with the King of Swords, playing cards with the three other Game Masters.
”It's all right,” Flora told her. ”They're not-awake. They can't ...”
In fact, it was apparent that they couldn't do anything. The kings and queens were as pale and motionless as waxworks, seated around a circular table of green baize, each with their right hand resting on a card. The left hand was upturned, with what looked like a spherical die lying on the palm. The cards were blank and their eyes were open in wide, unblinking stares.
The rest of the room had suffered none of the damage wreaked on the house above. The black-and-white floor and paneled walls were polished smooth; the golden curtain that hung in the arch was neither torn nor stained. The only flaw in the place was a picture whose gilt frame enclosed a canvas so grimy with age it was impossible to discern the image. But that had been the case the first time they saw it.
Cat's eyes kept darting back to the macabre tableau in the center. ”What's happened to them? I thought Misrule had banished them from the Game.”
”So he did,” the High Priest replied sternly from across the room. ”The four men and women you see before you are only the shadows of the rulers you deposed, and their livings selves endure in torment.”
He drew closer to the table. ”Tell me ... do you know how a knight may become a king?”
”I do,” said Toby promptly. ”The knight has to win every triumph in the deck, but not use them. Move after move, round after round, risking everything again and again. The Game Master he wins the most cards from is the king or queen he kicks out.”
The High Priest nodded. ”In such an event, the defeated ruler is forever expelled from the Game, though they will spend the rest of their life trying to return to it. But that is not the punishment Misrule imposed.
”The Game Masters you overthrew have been returned to their past rounds within the Arcanum. Under Misrule's sentence of exile, they are doomed to eternally repeat every card they were ever dealt in the Game. This time, however, no matter how cleverly or courageously they play, each move will end in defeat. They must suffer the pains of that failure-imprisonment, transformation, torment-before moving to the next card, and the next failure, endlessly.”
He rapped the screen of a little portable TV that they had not noticed before, set in the corner of the room. Shapes and movement began to swim out of the static. Blurred forms fleeing some unseen terror, or else fighting some unknown enemy ... mouths opening ... eyes widening ... arms flailing ...
As the chancers watched, they realized that the figures on the screen were the same as those around the table. The Game Masters had used a range of modern technology to monitor play in the Arcanum, peering into computer monitors and TV screens as if they were crystal b.a.l.l.s. Now it was their turn to be spied upon.
Flora looked back to the immobile cardplayers. They were not as frozen as they first appeared, for the hands resting on the cards would occasionally twitch, jaws clench and shoulders quake. She knew all too well how a player in the Game could be trapped both in and outside the Arcanum. At this very moment her sister's body lay immobile in a hospital bed while her living spirit waited for rescue in the Eight of Swords. But Flora didn't want to equate her sister's fate with that of the kings and queens.
She moved as far away from the table as she possibly could. ”Very well,” she said to the High Priest. ”Why have you brought us down here?”
The old man raised his brows. ”So that you can restore the rule of the courts, of course. Just as only a fool could release Misrule, it will take a king-or queen-to bind him.”
Everyone began to talk at once, in a babble of protest and confusion. Blaine spoke the loudest. ”No way. There's no way in h.e.l.l we're letting those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds back in. No.”
”Absolutely not,” Flora agreed. ”It's only been three days since they were thrown out of power. My sis- Well, there are people who get trapped in the Arcanum for years, sometimes forever.”
”Time pa.s.ses differently in the Arcanum,” the High Priest answered. ”Be a.s.sured that their present suffering feels as boundless as their reign over the courts once did. These four cannot win again.”
”I don't understand. If the kings and queens can't be brought back-”
”Then we must find new ones.” The old man's cloudy eyes regarded them steadily. ”If each of you were to take a card from under their hands, play its move and win, then the outcast kings and queens would return to their past lives ... and you would become the new Game Masters.”
There was an incredulous pause.
”You mean,” breathed Toby, looking at the rigid gathering around the table, ”I could be the next King of Pentacles? Or Swords, or-?”
”A king of sorts. You would have no players to command, prizes to award or forfeits to impose. Misrule saw to that when he overturned the rule of the courts. Meanwhile, he has his own pack of tricks to play with.
”But you would inherit the cards of the Game Masters' decks. Though you may neither give nor claim them as prizes, the cards can be used in your search of the Arcanum, to deal your own round and plot your moves.”
”And what would we be searching for?” Blaine asked.
”The greatest triumph of them all. It is the prize above all other prizes, and so only a king or queen, a player above all players, may win it.
”Behold-”
The High Priest slowly raised his arms. As he did so, the blackened canvas on the wall began to lighten, revealing new shapes and colors.
The chancers recognized it at once. A dancer encircled by a serpent hovered over the earth, in the Triumph of Eternity. Its image glowed with eerie beauty, more detailed than the picture on the knights' cards of invitation they'd seen. The four faces within the wheels at each corner were clear and bright: a lion, an eagle, a bull and a man.
”Why isn't this painting upstairs, with the other pictures in the gallery?” Flora asked.
”Because Eternity has never been won. There are as many ways to win it as there are moves in the Game, yet the conditions change with each turn of the Wheel.”
Even as they watched, the artwork began to fade, dissolving into murk and grime.
”The nature of its supremacy is this,” the High Priest continued. ”Whoever holds Eternity has dominion over all other triumphs-yes, even Fortune, and most certainly the Hanged Man. Eternity is the Great Triumph, and what the Game Masters have been searching for throughout the long history of our Game.
”Each of you must play the part of the outcast kings and queens, to win where they fail, and become Game Masters in their place. Only then will the Great Triumph be within your grasp, and only then will you be able to defeat Misrule.”
”But if none of the other kings and queens ever got close to finding Eternity, what hope do we have?” said Cat, trying not to sound too obviously dismayed. ”You said yourself we'd be Game Masters without any of the real powers or perks.”