The Raven’s Knot. Robin Jarvis

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СКАЧАТЬ turning it in the lock, she hesitated.

      ‘Now,’ she uttered gravely, ‘you will learn the secret which my sisters and I have kept and guarded these countless years, the same burdensome years that robbed us of our youth and which harvested their wits.

      ‘No one except we three have ever set foot beyond this entrance. Prepare yourself, Edith, once you have beheld this wonder there can be no returning. No mortal may gaze upon the secret of the Fates. Your destiny will be bound unto it forever.’

      Without taking her silvery blue eyes from the doorway, the girl said simply, ‘Open it.’ Then she held her breath as Miss Ursula grasped the handle and pushed.

      There came a rasping crunch of rusted iron as slowly, inch by inch, the ancient door swung inwards.

      At once the stale air grew more pungent, yet Edie revelled in it. Holding the lamp aloft, Miss Ursula ducked beneath the low archway.

      The darkness beyond dispersed before the gentle flame, revealing a narrow stone passageway which was just tall enough to allow the elderly woman to stand.

      ‘Have a care, Edith,’ Miss Ursula warned. She lowered her hand so that the light illuminated the ground and showed it to be the topmost step of a steep flight which plunged down into a consumate blackness.

      ‘This stair is treacherous,’ she continued, her voice echoing faintly as she began to descend. ‘The unnumbered footfalls of my sisters and I have rendered each step murderously smooth. In places they are worn completely and have become a slippery, polished slope.’

      Down the plummeting tunnel Miss Ursula went, the cheering flame of the lamp bobbing before her and, keeping her cautious eyes trained upon the floor, Edie Dorkins followed closely behind.

      Deep into the earth the stairway delved, twisting a spiralling path beneath the foundations of The Wyrd Museum. Occasionally, the stonework was punctuated by large slabs of granite.

      At one point a length of copper pipe, encrusted with verdigris, projected across the tunnel and Miss Ursula was compelled to stoop beneath it.

      ‘So do the roots of the modern world reach down to the past,’ she remarked. ‘Yet, since the well was drained, no water flows from the drinking-fountain above.’

      Pressing ever downwards, she did not utter another sound until she paused unexpectedly – causing Edie to bump into her.

      ‘At this place the outside presses its very closest to that which we keep hidden,’ she said, bringing the lamp close to the wall until the young girl could see that large cracks had appeared in the stones.

      ‘A few feet beyond this spot lies one of their tunnels. A brash and noisome worm-boring, a filthy conduit to ferry people from one place to another like so many cattle. Perilously near did their excavations come to finding us. Now, when the carriages hurtle through that blind, squalid hole, this stairway shakes as though Woden himself had returned with his armies to do battle one last time.’

      Miss Ursula’s voice choked a little when she said this. Edie looked up at her in surprise but the elderly woman recovered quickly.

      ‘It is most inconvenient,’ her normal clipped tones added. ‘Thus far they have not discovered us, yet a day may come perhaps when these steps are finally unearthed by their over-zealous probing. What hope then for the unhappy world? If man were to know of the terrors which wait to seize control of his domain he would undoubtedly destroy it himself in his madness. That is what we must save them from, Edith. They must never know of us and our guardianship.’

      Her doom-laden words hung on the cold air as she turned to proceed.

      ‘Still,’ she commented dryly, ‘at least at this hour of the night there are no engines to rumble by and impede our progress.’

      Further down they travelled, until Edie lost all sense of time and could not begin to measure the distance they had come. Eventually the motion of her descent, joined with the dancing flame, caused her to imagine that she was following a glimmering ember down the throat of a gigantic, slumbering dragon. Down towards its belly she was marching, to bake and broil in the scarlet heats of its rib-encased furnace. A delighted grin split the fey girl’s face.

      ‘Pay extra heed here,’ Miss Ursula cautioned abruptly, her voice cutting through the child’s imaginings. ‘The steps are about to end.’

      As she spoke, the echo altered dramatically, soaring high into a much greater space and Edie found herself standing at the foot of the immense stairway by the mouth of a large, vaulted chamber carved out of solid rock.

      Miss Ursula strode inside and Edie saw that the curved walls of the cave were decorated with primitive paintings of figures and animals.

      ‘Stay by my side, Edith,’ Miss Ursula told her. ‘This is but the first in a series of chambers and catacombs, do not let your inquisitiveness permit you to stray. It might take days before you were found.’

      Edie toyed with the exciting notion of wandering around in the complete subterranean darkness but was too anxious to see where she was being led to contemplate the idea for long.

      Into a second cavern they went and again the echoes altered, for here great drapes of black cloth hung from the ceiling, soaking up the sound of their footsteps.

      ‘Gold and silver were those tapestries once,’ Miss Ursula commented, not bothering to glance at them. ‘Very grand we were back then. Several of the chambers were completely gilded from top to bottom, there were shimmering pathways of precious stones and crystal fountains used to fill the air with a sweet tinkling music. There was even a garden down here lit with diamond lanterns and replete with fragrant flowers and fruit trees, in which tame birds sang for our delight.’

      The elderly woman pursed her lips contemptuously as she proceeded to guide Edie through the maze of tunnels and caves.

      ‘However,’ she resumed, ‘the passage of time eventually stripped the pleasure of those decorous diversions from our eyes. Weary of them at last, we allowed the hangings to rot with mould, the jewels we gave back to the earth and the garden was neglected until the bird song ceased. For us there was only one great treasure and we ministered to it daily. Now, Edith, we are here at last.’

      They had come to a large gateway which was wrought and hammered from some tarnished yellow metal. Raised in relief across its surface was the stylised image of a great tree nourished by three long roots and Miss Ursula bowed her head respectfully as she reached out her hand to touch it with her fingertips.

      ‘Behind this barrier is a most hallowed thing,’ she murmured with reverence. ‘Throughout the lonely ages my sisters and I have served it with consummate devotion and now you too shall share the burden. Behold, Edith – the Chamber of Nirinel.’

      Swiftly and in silence, the gate opened and suddenly the darkness was banished. A golden, crackling light blazed before them and Edie screwed up her face to shield her eyes from the unexpected, dazzling glare.

      Through the entrance Miss Ursula strode, her figure dissolving into the blinding glow until finally the child’s sight adjusted. She stared at the spectacle before her in disbelief and wonder.

      The Chamber of Nirinel was far greater than any of the caves they had passed through. Immense СКАЧАТЬ