CYRUS MATERIALIZED AT THE SAGGING mouth of a moldering cave, the smell of damp earth and cold air greeting him with the blunt force of a club. He
drew in the heavy, musty scents as he stepped over a shallow pool of water, silt grinding beneath his boots. Ducking under a jut of rock, he was careful to touch nothing as he straightened into an antechamber, his eyes adjusting slowly to the darkness. The humble entrance had opened onto deep rooms of dizzying heights, the discrete spaces divided only by webbed columns of calcite formations. Coins of moonlight dropped through slots in the distant ceilings, casting spectral globes of illumination upon dripping stalactites and a set of crudely formed stairs that ascended, without end, into a smear of black.
Cyrus remained absolutely still.
He was no longer afraid of these visits – not the way he’d once been – but fear was a slippery thing. He’d been surprised in his green life to discover the manifold ways in which a person might experience terror, the creativity with which dread and horror might be provoked in a soul. He’d overcome one nightmare only to discover its child, outrun another only to
encounter its twin. No matter his efforts he could not outsmart that which he could not anticipate, and his only comfort as he stared up at the familiar, sinister staircase was a cold one.
He either did or did not.
He would not live by half measure.
Cyrus had learned this sobering lesson on his first visit to this particular rung of hell. He’d been tender and unseasoned then, so colonized by fear he’d broken into a cold sweat before even entering the abyss. He’d vacillated at the bottom of the towering staircase for nigh on an hour, cowed not only by indecision but by the hostilities of the cave itself. His skin pallid, his limbs occasionally locking in protest, Cyrus had wanted nothing more than to flee this den of horrors; it had been his only clinging thought
as he slowly mounted the steps, each advance more tentative than the last. Always he glanced over his shoulder at possible escape, never committing to his footfalls, and he’d nearly made it to the top when his wavering finally cost him.
Cyrus had fallen from the precipice without mercy, without grace.
It was a fifty-foot drop to his death, and he’d slammed bodily against every jagged lip of stone on the way down, landing with an impact so
severe he broke his back.
The young royal had lain there bleeding on the cold, damp ground, enduring an agony of incalculable depths. He could see that he’d snapped two bones in one leg, that a jut of rib pierced through his shirt. His vision blurred; blood pooled slowly in his open mouth; his chest spasmed with
some unknown damage and still he smiled, for what he felt in that moment was nothing short of joy.
It was over.
He would not have to face this terror, for Death had come. He’d tried to do the right thing, but his efforts had come to naught, and now he could lie here until his blood ran cold and know no guilt. His world would unravel,
countless innocents would die – but he’d be long departed by then, unaccountable for these tragedies.
He’d cried soundlessly, and they were tears of relief.
Cyrus couldn’t have known that Iblees would animate his shattered body with the ease of a puppeteer, articulating his broken limbs in a display of breathtaking cruelty the young man had never even thought to imagine. The devil, Cyrus soon discovered, would not allow his debtors to default on a contract.
Inch by harrowing inch Cyrus was made to ascend the stairs by way of dark magic, his own blood choking in his throat. He was half-blind as his severed bones scraped together, piercing organs and tearing flesh. It was a state of suffering so excruciating he’d lost consciousness over and over, only to wake up each time on the slick ground in a shallow pool of his own gore, and made to climb the stairs again.
That day, Cyrus had learned cowardice was a luxury.
Only the privileged few could afford to run away, to lock their doors and close their eyes to ugliness. The rest lived in homes without doors to lock, looked through eyes without lids to shut. They confronted the dark even as their hearts trembled, as their souls shook – for even strangled by fear, there was no choice but to endure.
No one would be along to slay their demons.
Cyrus had been a sheltered royal the first time he’d stepped foot in this cave, and he’d paid a tall price for the timidity of his heart.
He’d been careful never to make that mistake again.
Now he took a steadying breath and, very carefully, made his first move since arriving in the antechamber. He looked up.
It was like activating an alarm.
A swarm of sound enveloped him as he stared skyward, clocking the
presence of several thousand bats hung like so many pendants from a neck of darkness. Their disembodied eyes watched him closely as they screeched, the eerie cacophony soon overtaken by the harsh, echoing skitter of small, hard legs rushing toward him. Cyrus, who’d experienced this spine-chilling phenomenon many times, knew he was being crowded on
three sides by a clutter of arachnids and was careful to remain calm. A whisper along his spine alerted him to the growing presence of one in particular and, slowly, he turned to face his appraiser.
A spider roughly the size of his face peered at him from its perch in midair, the gleam of a silk thread barely legible in the light. Her long legs writhed not unlike the last, grasping reach of a man in need, several glassy
eyes glinting in his direction as she assessed him. She spoke without precisely meaning to, relating her thoughts in a fractured communication that was never meant to be parsed by humans.
You are? You are?
No danger to you, said Cyrus soundlessly. The spider only stared at him.
He held out his hand, palm down, and, after a brief hesitation, the
massive arachnid lowered herself, then climbed aboard his body with an eager scuttle of legs. She investigated his fingers before climbing up his forearm, pausing at his elbow to consider his face more closely.
You are? Before?
Yes. I’ve come before. You are in no danger from me, I swear it.
In response, the spider scaled the incline of his shoulder, then his neck, the prickle of her hard, lightly-furred pins raising goose bumps along his skin. Cyrus conquered the impulse to recoil from the unnerving sensation,
holding still as she cautiously boarded his cheek, lifting her forelegs slightly to better study his eyes.
It was a torturously long moment before she said –
You are? Sad. Sad. Sad.
Cyrus swallowed. “Yes,” he whispered.
The spider regarded him a moment more before scurrying from whence she came. She stepped off the plank of his arm and into the unknown with a final judgment:
No danger.
The young king shook off a lingering unease as he waited for the path
before him to clear of arachnids. It was always an unsettling business, being psychoanalyzed by spiders. He did not want to ponder that the creature was able to dismiss him with three words of shrewd observation; neither did he did want to wonder how else he might’ve survived these trials had he not trained for so many years as a Diviner. If he’d been unable to communicate with living creatures, if he’d been unable to wield magic to fight for his life.
It bothered him to think of it as anything but coincidence; he didn’t like to imagine he’d been born for this role, brought into the world only to endure this misery.
Fate, he thought bitterly, was only romantic when one was destined to be the hero.
Once his safe passage had been granted, Cyrus did not tarry; he thundered up the steep incline of the endless staircase, taking the steps two at a time. He was eager to be done with this hateful, infinite night. He reasoned that the sooner this fresh hell commenced, the sooner it might end – and before long, his destination came into view.
Towering above him was a colossal black archway suspended in midair, the structure as tall as a castle and half as wide. At the base of the ornate passageway spilled forth a herd of ominous gray clouds, within which
Cyrus could make out only the spark of a familiar orange light. He headed toward this thick haze, pounding up the last few steps before launching himself, like a bird, into the rift.
