There is no sound but the endless laughter and the tiny, delicate sound of something hitting the throne room floor. Asterion does not look to see that it is bones, and seeds, and other deep-buried things from the litter of the forest floor, from the bosom of the earth.
Neither does he look at Thana (or her creature, sharp-toothed beside her) to wonder if they are still hungry for his flesh, still hateful of his words.
He and the unicorn both keep their silence, and so there is only the sound of their feet on the floor - as Thana charges the throne (as Asterion might have known she would, as unicorns must always do) and he circles wide, back to a black-tapestried wall. Then the laughter turns to rage, a wrathful scream that makes his ears ring and ring. Then the god-king seizes a scepter ten feet tall and wings it toward the unicorn with a cry like a crumbling bridge, and Asterion reaches down into his magic to see if a monster can drown.
The waiting feels like eons. There’s a roar in the bay stallion’s head, a roar that echoes through the hall; around them things are shaking, dust drifts like mist down the walls, through the winding hallways. Somewhere, metal clangs like the gnashing of teeth; perhaps there is an army, as well as a king - perhaps the city does not sleep at all, but only waits.
But perhaps it will wait too long. For the sea is coming now, answering Asterion’s call, and the water beneath the bridge begins to churn, and roar, and flood. Within the castle (below the castle), water bubbles up, bursting through pipes and pathways, trembling, running, roaring through the halls like blood through veins, racing to the heart.
the way upward and the way downward
is one and the same.
is one and the same.
