Finally, unable to go a step farther, she collapsed against a wall, gasping for breath.
With a jolt, she realized the strange, unseen presence she had sensed earlier was still with them.
What was it?
Seeking comfort, she reached for Kyle’s hand, then cried out in horror.
He was gone.
She called his name over and over, but there was no answer.
Turning her face to the wall, she began to sob.
19
SULEIMAN’S FORGE
“Guptas! Where are we?”
The demon shook his head. “I’m not certain.”
“What do you mean? This is your home!”
“Of course. But there are miles and miles of corridors and tunnels beneath the castle. Unless you have some kind of landmark, or have been following a pattern, when you get to the lower levels there is no way to tell one place from another.”
She looked at him suspiciously. “Did you go get us lost on purpose?”
An evil smile crept over the demon’s face. “Free me and I’ll take you back to the others.”
“I can command you to take me back!”
“It won’t do you any good,” he said sadly. “I don’t know the way.”
She looked confused. “Then why did you just say you could do it?”
He shrugged. “It was worth a try.”
“Trying to trick me like that won’t do much to prove you’re trustworthy!” she said angrily.
“What difference does it make now?” he shouted back. “Why should I be trustworthy when you’re going to destroy me?”
“It was what you wanted,” said Marilyn, feeling guilty.
“I would have preferred freedom.”
“I would have preferred never knowing you. I guess we can’t have everything.” She turned in a circle, then muttered, “What do I do now?”
“I don’t know.”
“I was talking to myself!”
The demon made a face and disappeared.
“Guptas! Get back out here!”
He reappeared, looking sullen. Better watch it, Sparks, she thought to herself. When you’re trapped in the bottom of an ancient castle with a demon, you don’t want to make an enemy out of him. Better to have a friend.
Which raised a question:
“You tried to save me from that creature,” she said. “Why?”
Guptas turned away from her. “I like you.”
She began to laugh. “You want to know something weird? I’m starting to like you, too.”
The corridors seemed to wind endlessly through the dark. Unlike the upper floors, there were no glowing stones here to light the way. The only illumination came from some small magic Guptas worked in order to keep Marilyn from total panic, causing himself to glow enough that he could light the way for them.
The sense of some presence hovering near them remained strong within her.
Marilyn wondered where the others were. Was Kyle lost, too—without even a demon to guide him?
“What was that thing that tried to kill us?” she asked once as they wandered along a particularly winding corridor.
Guptas shrugged. “A mistake of some kind. The Suleimans used to experiment with magic quite a bit. They made a lot of wonderful things, and many others better left unthought of. That thing was undoubtedly some wizard’s work that escaped and was lurking here in the tunnels years before my father sealed the castle. Some of those things exist only to eat. They just sleep until something edible shows up. They can last for centuries that way.” He thought for a moment, then added, “Or it might have been a punishment of some kind.”
“A punishment for us?”
“No. For whoever that used to be.”
Marilyn shuddered, and decided not to ask for details.
They had passed through several more tunnels when Guptas gave a cry of triumph. He had led them into a chamber where several passages came together. The floor of the chamber was carved with various symbols, and Guptas had knelt to examine them.
“I’ve got it!” he said triumphantly. “I can get us to the forge!”
“That’s good,” said Marilyn in a small voice. She was bone weary. Her shoulder ached where Brick had scratched it, and the places where the monster’s tentacles had seared her skin were blistered and throbbing with pain.
Even with all that, she could have gone on. But the final horror had just sunk in: When they reached the forge, she would have to destroy Guptas. And once she had done that (if she could do it), she would be all alone, in the bowels of the castle, in the final darkness.
Unless by some miracle the others could find her, she and Guptas would die together.
The first thing they noticed was the smell. It reminded Marilyn of the air after a thunderstorm. Guptas said it was the smell of power.
Then they heard the dull roar of it. Soon the corridor was no longer cool, the stones Marilyn lay her hand against no longer moist.
Ahead they could see a flicker of light.
“Come on!” cried Guptas. “This is it!”
He raced along the corridor, almost scampering in his glee.
“Wait!” called Marilyn, who was far too tired for scampering.
Guptas turned and waited, shifting impatiently from one foot to the other.
“I don’t understand,” said Marilyn. “Why are you in such a hurry to get here?”
“This was my father’s special place.”
The demon’s smile faded, yet his face looked serene. “This is where he came to work—and to be alone. But sometimes he brought me with him.” Guptas was looking in her direction, but she could tell he was lost in his memories, seeing a better time. “Those were the best days for me. When we were in court, or with other people, I was his shame, his embarrassment. He only kept me at his side then for two reasons.”
Guptas fell silent.
“What were the reasons?” asked Marilyn gently.
“One was his sense of responsibility. The fact that I existed appalled him. But he would not deny it, nor hide from it. He accepted the burden of his mistake.”
“And the other?”
Guptas sighed. “I was a warning against pride. By keeping me at his side, he was faced every moment with the fact of his own imperfection.
“But down here it was different. In the court, in the castle, people tolerated me, grudgingly, as the king’s offspring, whatever I was. They tolerated me because they had to. But my demon blood disgusted them, and I knew that.
“My father would never show that he cared for me in front of them. But when he brought me down here, when he came to work, then he would talk to me like a son, telling me things I needed to know, and things that he thought.” Guptas turned away. “He treated me as if I were … human.”
To her astonishment, Marilyn realized that Guptas’s shoulders were shaking, as if he was weeping. She felt an urge to reach out to the demon, hold him for just a moment and tell him it was all right.
But she knew that if she tried, her arms would pass right through him.
He turned and walked toward the light.
A moment later, when they entered the forging area, they both cried out in astonishment.
“So, this was how it ended,” murmured Guptas.
Marilyn wondered vaguely what he meant, but was too caught up in examining the room to ask.
The place was huge. Not as big as the Hall of the Kings, of course, but larger than any other room of her experience.
In the center was a pit of fire, surrounded by a stone rim a little higher than her waist. It was at least twenty feet across, filled with dancing flames of all colors. They seemed to operate on a cycle, flickering softly about three feet higher than the rim for a few moments, then roaring some twenty feet into the air, casting out a surge of heat and light that reached the farthest corners of the chamber.
Stone tables as tall as her head were arranged around the forge, littered with tools and scraps of metal. Other tools dan
gled from the ceiling, far beyond her reach, but just right, she assumed, for a Suleiman.
She found something attractive, almost seductive, about the flames. She felt an urge to run to them, thrust her hands among them, even fling herself into the pit. She shook herself and forced her eyes away from the forge.
She cried out in horror. A demon was about to attack her! Almost instantly she realized what it really was, and felt silly. The ebb and surge of the flames was casting strange shadows around the chamber. What she had seen, feared, was merely a statue—cleverly wrought, but a statue nonetheless—of a demon on the attack. Its face was contorted with rage. It held a deadly looking ax above its head, ready to strike. The flicker of the flames almost made it seem alive.
She crossed tentatively to it and reached out her hand.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” asked Guptas. She jumped, and drew her hand back.
“You scared me.” She turned to him. Looking past him, she noticed that the room was filled with the statues. “These are fantastic. Did your father make them?”
“You might say that.”
“What do you mean?”
“They aren’t statues, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
An explanation began to nag at Marilyn’s brain, but she fought to ignore it.
“What are they?” she asked warily, hoping the idea she was not able to press back was wrong.
“Demons,” replied Guptas. “My other people.” He looked around. “This is where my father fought his last battle. It makes sense. He could have lured them to the forge—for there were things they wanted from him that he kept here. Then when he got them here, he used his power to turn them into stone.” Guptas stroked the stone demon with his claws. “It’s not an easy spell. I imagine doing this roomful almost killed him.”
His voice held a strange tone that made Marilyn uneasy. She began to edge away from him.
“It’s an odd spell,” he continued. His voice was crafty now, and his tail was twitching nervously. “Father told me about it once.” “Guptas?”
“Difficult to cast, but not hard to break.” The demon turned to her. His eyes glittering with evil, he asked, “How would you like to meet my family?”
20
NOW LET DESTRUCTION REIGN
Marilyn felt her insides lurch. “You wouldn’t,” she whispered in horror.
Guptas caressed the stone demon with his claws. He had a faraway look in his eyes. “Why not?”
“Because you’re not that way.”
He crossed to another statue. The light still cast by his body caused the hideous features to spring out of the darkness. They made Marilyn shudder.
Guptas seemed to consider her statement for a moment. “I think maybe I am that way,” he said at last.
“But they were wicked!”
“I am, too.”
“No! I don’t believe that.”
He pounced on the statement. “Then why won’t you free me from the amulet?”
She felt as if she had been struck dumb. She could think of no reasonable answer for his question.
“I don’t know,” she said at last. “Maybe it’s because you scare me.”
A momentary look of sorrow crossed his face. “I scare everyone,” he said. “So I must be wicked.”
“No! No, you can’t say that. People just aren’t … aren’t used to something like you. They’re afraid of what they don’t know.”
Guptas looked at her. The flicker in his eyes seemed to match the flames in Suleiman’s forge, as if they were somehow connected. “I’m afraid, Marilyn. It’s been ten thousand years. And now you’re going to destroy me. Do you think I’m not afraid? Do you think I don’t wonder what will happen next? My father had a soul. My mother didn’t. What about me? What will happen to me when you throw that amulet into the forge? Will I be gone forever? Will I meet my father again?” He looked at her with haunted, burning eyes. “Or will I roast in some forgotten hell?”
He reached out for her. “Can you tell me, Marilyn? Can you tell me what happens next?”
The amulet seemed to be burning in her hand. She glanced at it. The red stone in its center was flickering in unison with Suleiman’s forge, with Guptas’s eyes.
She shook her head. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t know anything anymore.”
Guptas sighed. In the silence that followed, Marilyn again sensed that other presence, watching, waiting. The rhythmic flare of the forge spread eerie colors and dancing shadows through the room, smearing the floor, the walls, the frozen demons with shades of fire and darkness.
She felt as though she were being crushed, as if the great mountain they had wound their way into was slowly grinding her to dust.
Something warm and soft rubbed against her leg, and she leaped to her feet, screaming.
It was Brick.
Kyle came racing into the room. “Thank goodness we found you! I thought you were gone for good!”
Zenobia and Eldred Cooley shimmered into sight behind him.
“How did you get here?” asked Marilyn.
“We found Kyle wandering in the tunnels just beyond where you fell,” said Zenobia. “Then Brick brought us here. As Eldred told you, a cat can sense demons.”
Marilyn was in Kyle’s arms, leaning against his chest, feeling safe for the first time since they tumbled through the floor. “I thought I had lost you,” he whispered. “I was terrified.”
The peaceful moment ended abruptly.
“What is that creature doing here?” demanded Cooley. “Why haven’t you destroyed him yet? Are you insane?”
“I don’t—”
Those words were all she could get out. Guptas was on his feet, roaring with anger.
“That’s enough! You’re right, Eldred Cooley. Never trust a demon! I’ll be what you want! I’ll prove you’re right! But you and your people will be the ones to pay. Because my family and I will pursue you, even beyond the grave. We’ll terrorize the living, and we’ll haunt the dead. And it will be on your head, Cooley. You are the one who drove me to this.”
“Your family!” Cooley laughed. The laugh died on his lips as he looked around the room and realized what the shapes scattered across the floor really were.
Guptas had leaped to the edge of the forge. Standing on the stone rim, he raised his arms and began to speak. The flames shot up behind him, stretching to twice the height they had reached before, responding to the power and the magic now unleashed.
Light the color of blood filled the room. The statues sprang out in hideous detail—dozens of raging creatures, intent on death and destruction.
“Karra Nakken Re-Suleiman Karras!” roared Guptas.
The flames surged behind him. He threw back his head and roared with laughter, raising his great claws to the ceiling. “KARRA NAKKEN RE-SULEIMAN KARRAS!”
“Stop him!” cried Cooley. “Stop him! If he frees them now, they could destroy the world!”
“Marilyn!” cried Kyle, shaking her. “Marilyn, use the amulet!”
Marilyn shook her head as if she were coming out of a daze. The amulet was pulsing in her hand, throbbing with power. She held it up; light and fire seemed to drip along her forearm.
“Guptas!” she cried. “By this amulet, I command you to stop!”
The last words were buried by a sound like stone grinding on stone, and her heart sank.
She was too late.
Turning in the direction of the sound, she saw that the demon nearest them was changing. Cracks ran over its surface. A reddish tint began to replace the gray of stone.
Slowly it began to twist its head in their direction. More cracks appeared, then vanished as stone turned to flesh. Most horrible of all, the dead stone eyes glazed over, seemed to shatter like breaking glass, then blazed into life—flickering with the fire of the forge, the fire of the amulet.
The sound of stone on stone was repeated all around them. A guttural murmur of some ancient, forbidden language finding tongue again began
to fill the hall.
“Look out!” cried Zenobia as the demon nearest them lunged forward, slashing at them with its ax.
Kyle and Marilyn leaped away, but not fast enough. The blade slashed across the side of her leg, laying it open to the bone, then sank into the floor behind her. As she screamed in pain and shock, the creature struggled to free its weapon so it could strike again.
An angry screech sliced the air behind her. She knew that sound. It was Brick!
She turned in time to see the cat plucked from the floor by one of the demons. Writhing in its grasp, Brick lashed out with one claw and tore open the creature’s eye. It split with a hissing sound and liquid fire began to pour down the demon’s cheek. Furious, it threw Brick aside. The cat struck the wall and slid to the floor, senseless.
Then Marilyn could see no more, because Kyle flung her to the floor, too. Holding her tight against him, he rolled under the biggest of the stone tables.
They were barely beneath it when a curved blade slashed against the top, cutting right into the stone. Suddenly an evil face appeared below the edge of the table. A wicked smile split its hideous features.
Another appeared beside it, and then another.
Kyle and Marilyn huddled together and pulled back from the edge. They heard a hissing behind them. Turning, she saw two more of the creatures peering in at them from that side.
“Put your back to mine!” said Kyle. “Get as close to me as you can.”
Another face appeared at the end of the table, and a scaly hand reached in for them.
A demon grabbed her arm from the other side. She smashed its hand with the amulet. The demon let go, screaming in agony. Her scream mingled with his, seeming to fill the room.
Marilyn continued screaming. This was no mirage, like Guptas. These creatures were real, and out for blood.
The sound of Kyle crying out behind her brought her to her senses. Turning, she saw that one of the demons had grabbed his ankle and was pulling him from under the table. Marilyn wrapped her arms around him and found herself engaged in a desperate tug-of-war.
A pair of scaly hands wrapped about her leg and began dragging her in the opposite direction. Another pair grabbed her other leg. Her grip on Kyle was slipping. He was screaming now, too, as a dozen evil faces glared in at them, fire in their eyes, steaming saliva dripping from their hungry mouths.
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