Like a pair of exhaling lungs, the walls retracted to their original positions as rapidly as they had collided, and we lay dumbstruck on our backs.
"How is your good feeling now?" Kat asked me, flipping impressively to his feet.
I stood the old-fashioned way, beating the dirt from my clothes. Strangely, instinct told me to disregard the incident — This was the way!
"There's an angel urging me in," I said, sure of myself. "And in is where I'm going!"
Again, I lined both feet and ten toes before the marble, and an intrigued Kat watched me take the first steps inside. The crunch of my foot seemed to vibrate the whole corridor, and the confidence suddenly corroded inside me. I held my stance for over a minute in one position; trying not to breathe, not to let these walls smell my fear or feel my weight. Moving inch by meticulous inch, I heard every beat of my racing heart. The air frolicked with particles, irritating the eyes and sitting like an itch at the end of my nose; but still I moved forward, pausing now as I reached the circular seal of gold.
"Why do you stop?" Kat whispered, his vigilant question echoing into the corridor. "Tell me why Fox?"
I was too absorbed in the seal to answer. It was a work of art, a masterpiece like those by the old masters. I almost couldn't bear to tread my dirty boots over it.
"Go on…" pressed Kat, engrossed. "Almost."
I did go on. I stepped on the seal and there was an instant reaction to my intimately placed foot. A gust came from the layer of fumes ahead, blowing back my hair and removing all the sitting dust on my nose. I froze like a plank, feeling wet beads glisten down my chin and any other place sweat could drip. Thoroughly shaken, I exhaled a moment later; and with Kat's badgering in the background, I painstakingly progressed over the seal.
My head ballooned with confidence when I passed, and did not leave me when I ventured through the bubbling folds.
"Fox?" hissed Kat, seeing nothing of me. "Are you there?"
Suddenly, a torch burst into life, illuminating orange light all over the corridor. I stood at the far end of the hallway, facing Kat with the lamp burning on a wall behind.
"I didn't light it!" I said. "It wasn't me!"
Turning to face that torch, this mountain puzzle now revealed one of her secrets. At the end of my toes was an abyss; like a starless space. It was impossible to guess how deep, but there was a possible route down.
"I see steps Kat! Hundreds and hundreds of steps!"
Old but sturdy looking, these steps twirled downward into the mouth of that dark grave.
"Come on Kat! It's safe!"
The suspicious samurai grumbled, but moved in all the same. Like mine, his movement over the seal had no effect on the walls. I reached my hand out for him when, for no apparent reason, Kat stopped dead on the balls of his feet. "What's wrong?" I asked, confused.
Statuesque, Kat was listening. He could hear it and I could too — a familiar sound building, incoming — the chirp, chirp, chirping of another curious mountain bird. Eyes bulging, I pointed out the incoming bird behind Kat, lowering and buzzing wings into the hallway. My lips parted, but before my tongue could utter a warning, the marble walls trapped shut.
SMASH!
The energy of smashing rock blew out the lamp light and flung me backward down the spiralling steps. I plummeted, down and around in the dark forever, feeling my body become a peace of limp, battered meat until…
CRACK!
All was still. I had reached the bottom of this trench, and my world slowly stopped revolving.
Crumpled and half conscious; an excruciating ache burned all over and my vision was filled with a formless yellow light. When surrendering myself to unconsciousness, I experienced a sharp pain at my throat to keep me alert — a cold and prodding pressure. I had stabbed myself with my own dagger, I presumed, or broken my damn neck.
Placing a nervous hand to my throat, I found no dagger blade or protruding bone; there was however, the blunt tip of a spear. My eyes focused enough to see a towering man aiming the weapon at me. He had the craggy face of old age and a fuzzy brown beard with pieces of food caught inside it.
"Hells bells and buckets of blood!" he bellowed, like a mad man. "Who dares enter my home? Answer before I stick you good!"
Food fell from his beard and onto my face, and my prolonged silence provoked the man into poking me further with the spear. "Answer boy! Answer before you lose your heart and anything else that pleases me!"
"Newton…" I murmured. "He sent…"
"Blast!" stormed the stranger, slapping a clenched fist into his palm "That senile, bed pissing scientist! Who the hell does he think he is?"
His spear was removed from my neck leaving a sore indent. I tried to sit up but my mulched body flopped back to the stone.
"Dare you bleed on my floor?" the man cried, theatrically. "How absolutely, bloody dare you lose your fluids on my flooring!"
This person then bent for a better look at me, and I him. He was shabby and unkempt, a dirty bear of a man.
"Look at you," he tittered, "all broken up. Well? What's your bloody name then? Tell me! I'll try and look interested."
"Fo…Fox."
"Fox?" he said, face screwing up. "Vermin! I hate it!"
Groggily, I mumbled something back and the stout man sighed. "My name is Bludgeon… and I don't give a monkeys if you hate my name. Got it? Do — " He paused, catching a whiff of something he did not like.
"Is that… shit drying on your boots? Is this how you grace my kingdom? With shit caked over your legs? Is this how your kind show respect?”
I was lost for words, but the tall man, scratching the nits from his greasy beard, was not. "By the look of you it appears you're staying… for now at least. Just don't you touch any bloody thing… Come along!"
Vision growing misty, I could still make out the man trotting away on four legs — horse legs. He was the half man, half horse from the seal upstairs: Bludgeon — a Centaur — a King — the one I had come to see.
9. The Trials of King Bludgeon
Those first days in the mountain I never once saw the centaur. I did pass out at the foot of those spiralling stairs, waking here — a cramped room with no natural light. What light there was came from a torch dancing color off the walls. My bed was a thin cloth over stone, and my only exit was a locked, and sturdy wooden door with not a peep or creep heard behind it. This was my cave — my cell.
I watched that bronze doorknob for what felt like an age. Waiting and waiting for it to turn — to open — but it never did. Somehow, I had the craziest idea, a profound sense that I was not to open the door, but to wait for it to be opened. All would be lost if I turned that door handle, a rule so vague in its creation, yet so clear in my mind. Do not open the door! Do not open the door!
At one point, I shivered on that meagre bed for twenty straight hours, weak from blood-loss, hunger and thirst; assaulted by violent visions and screams dipping in and out of the room and my imagination. At times these visions became all too real, living apparitions sharing space with me. I heard Kathy calling for her dad, saw her hand reach down from a realm far from mine. Missy also came and went, her cartoon face unwholesomely smirking whilst reminding me of some of the more pathetic details of my life — the people I'd lied to and hurt; how many porno magazines I'd jerked off too.
At one stage, I fought back the old wizard Scarfell as he pressed his foot into my chest. It may have been a hallucination — it was — but the illusion was still real enough to make me pass out. Kat was here too, his decimated body crumbling to pieces in the corner. There, he would meditate for hours under a pool of his own curdled blood, face skinless, exposed brain and two bulbous, unblinking eyes.