Asterion had to leave this world to find out what true horrors were. Until then, his had all been of the heart — men and kings without virtue, and his own watercolor love. Even the gods here dealt in tame, childish things, politics and grudges; even the deaths they caused lacked imagination.
Oh, but there are horrors here. And although every distant toll of sound, every heavy footfall, echoes wrong, wrong, wrong, there is something within him that whispers that if this is not right, at least it is true.
He might have questioned that voice, if the island in this iteration were only stars, or glass, or darkness. But this time it is chaotic, overstimulating, a carnival maze of surrealities. It began before the awful ribcage of the bridge; a hornets-buzz in the back of his head, the sensation across his skin of insects’ feet. At the gateway to that empty kingdom, Asterion does not pause to explore; he walks deeper, to the heart, as if drawn on a wire. Like Thana he does not turn aside, and his eye is not drawn by rooms that glitter like stars and beckon like women.
From somewhere there are screams, and laughter, and the sound of a hundred feet dancing (but no music), and it is as incomprehensible and unworrisome as the language in dreams. Everywhere is the mockery of splendor: ornate archways with ripped veils spilling like intestines, the same greedy red. A tiled ceiling shadowed with mold. Cracks in the walls that spiderweb like broken mirrors. Past them all the once-king walks, and though his eyes are wild-eyed and his nostrils wide his steps do not falter or slow.
He enters the throne room at the same time Thana does, from an opposite hall like a yawning mouth. Within it is black with shadow and red with firelight, the not-sun far away, and the castle itself seems to be beating like a heart (perhaps it is only the echo of their steps, dying away). And there, oh there, is the king of this place - the god of it - his chest tightens at the sight of that smooth cold face, the gnarled crown. And Asterion, too, gnashes his teeth, and feels his magic rise up in him like a mighty wave (and something else, too, hungrier and darker, something like and not-like that creature on the throne).
Only then does his gaze find Thana, but there is only time for his heart to flinch before the thing that sits on the throne makes a choking, awful noise, a grinding, gurgling voice that does not seem come at all from its mouth, but deeper within, someplace invisible. And perhaps the sound is only in Asterion’s mind (perhaps all those others were, too, and would it be better that way?) for he realizes, with a sickened glance up, that the king, the god, the beast is laughing.
It is laughing at them.
the way upward and the way downward
is one and the same.
is one and the same.
