Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five (33 page)

The Minister extended his delicate crane of an arm, and all set into motion to follow the path of the palazzo into the gates of the palace garden. The Explorer followed; he would have plenty of time gazing at the sea soon enough, and the eyes of crows were disheartening to him, a bad omen at the beginning of a long journey.

“We have business, before you set off.” The Minister walked first into the garden and past the guards.

The Explorer knew where he was; this was the entrance to a place which was known only to the Queen herself. The legends of the beauty of her personal gardens in her hidden corner of the castle were legend. There was hardly an old woman who would not lie and say that she, at one time or another had been one of the Queen's flower tenders. The blooms of the roses were said to grow larger than the faces of smiling children, and tribes of bees were said to war with one another for the honor of caressing the petals.

The Explorer was uneasy with it all. It seemed a blasphemous act to step so close into the very heart of his royal benefactor.

True uneasiness set in once the crow-guarded gate had been crossed and the Explorer let his eyes wander the garden — or what had at one time surely been one. Nothing grew here, not even weed or wildflower.

The earth to either side of the path looked to have been shoveled out of a pauper's hearth. Dead clumps of ash and soot were barely packed about decayed stalks of grayish twig and vine. Trees were rot and fallen limbs decorated the garden floor. Stone angel statues which had once blessed this place could no longer look upon what had become of it all — their faces had cracked and fallen to join the dead soil at their feet.

The Minister thought nothing of this, and the royal apprentices that followed him held close to one another as they walked through. No one spoke; all were as quiet as if they were watching a wagon filled with the dead glide past. The crows were in the air over this place, and the Explorer saw the great windows which sat high above the garden had all been bricked up.

How could such a place, that had once been so beautiful, now be abandoned so intensely that masons had been dispatched to seal the view of it from within? Was the thought of it more horrible than the
look in her eyes as she slipped into the waves? All the masons in the world would never be able to build a wall vast enough to hide the fear in those eyes, or to make him forget.

The Minister walked straight to the vast door which led into the palace. Two royal guards, on either side of the door, stood motionless with heavy armor and pole-arms in hand. Those apprentices with the Minister all whispered to one another when the Explorer approached. With heads down, they turned to walk past him towards the way they had come. The Minister placed a golden key into the lock of the door.

“Minister, is this not your Queen's private chambers?” The Explorer stood his ground and looked to one of the guards, as if in wonder that he would be allowed to step within. The guard made no movement to stop either of them as the lock clicked. The great door broke from its hold to the frame and began to slowly swing in.

“What we must discuss before your voyage is of the most sensitive of natures, and is kept ever close to Her Highness.” The Minister let the door stop its motion and then moved into the dark room.

The Explorer slowly followed.

There was not a window in the chamber which did not have glass replaced with stone, and heavy red drapes still hung to frame the blinded apertures. A sconce in each corner of the room and a hanging iron candelabra provided adequate light. But as the guards closed the heavy door, the world went from daylight to dusk in an instant.

The Minister walked to a five-sided ornate table, a wood of burnished oranges and reds that the Explorer did not recognize. The Explorer followed to stand across the table from the Minister.

At the Explorer's back was the door from which they had come, and escape back to the world of light. At the Minister's back were four guards, similarly armed and armored as their companions outside. They framed the double doors which held the personal crest of the Queen's family. Beyond those double doors lay her private apartment and bed chambers. Surely few men had ever gotten so close to her — and surely these secrets which the Minister felt so urgent were very delicate if they were guarded along with Her Highness.

The eyes of the Minister held firmly the eyes of the Explorer.

“Are you loyal? Are you pleased with the grace bestowed upon you by our Queen?” The Minster kept his words thick and spoke slowly.

“I could not ask for a more generous benefactor than your Lord and his Queen.”

“Perhaps. Regardless, it is time to expand the known world.” The light fought dark to shadow across the Minister's face.

“Trade, good Minister. We merely mean to find the most efficient way to the Indies. I'm not foolish enough to think that it is any more or any less fantastic than that.”

The Explorer was sure of these things that he said.

“That is where you are incorrect.” The Minister placed his hands upon the table. “It is
so
much more than that.”

The Explorer's eyes followed the arms of the Minister down to the table. It was an odd shape, having five sides, and the Explorer could not say what metaphysical significance this might have had to the Queen.

In his mind, it had always been a suspicious number. Christ, the savior, had received five wounds leading up to his death. Yet the book of Psalms had five parts, and they had provided some comfort to him in the years since the storm. The ancients believed in the five elements: earth, fire, air, water, and ether. Water had ruled the Explorers fate since he was a child, and its ever-presence could not be ignored.

The glyphs carved into each of the five sections of the table did not seem to correspond with the elements; not in any way that seemed reasonable to the Explorer. The symbols were easy enough to ascertain as the Explorer took them in one by one: a flower, the moon, an owl, a broom, and a key.

The Explorer ran his fingertip into the glyph before him, the broom. All the while, the fingers of the Minister took hold of one of the two things which sat atop the table — a large rolled parchment. The bony fingers of the Minister broke the seals and then began the labor of rolling the parchment out to lie flat on the table. The Minister's fingers stopped the unrolling when he reached the edge of the map, and they came to rest by the other article upon the table with five sides — an ornate box of similarly exotic woods.

The Explorer leaned in far; before he even realized he was moving, he was being pulled by wonderment. The parchment was a map, but it was like no map that the Explorer had ever seen before.

Surely, it was no map that any man under heaven had ever seen before.

The Explorer feared touching it with more than his eyes, but he did so, regardless of his fear. He traced the world, the known world — and his fingers stopped upon the land on which he stood, the port city of the Queen. He then began to trace his finger over the ocean, along the route he meant to take to the Indies.

Yet, the Explorer's chosen path did not lead to the Indies at all. It led to lands which should not have existed. Lands of which the Explorer had never dreamed.

“What madness has overtaken this house?”

The Explorer didn't look to the Minister; he could not stop staring at the new world.

“You should never trouble yourself with that question again. More to the point, you should never again speak it into the world where God can hear you question.”

The Explorer traced over mountain ranges and rivers and lakes. The map was marked with cities and tribal lands, there were structures drawn onto the map in the southern lands, great mountains of stone, not forged by God, but by man.

“What is this place, Minister?”

“It is where you venture.”

The Explorer didn't believe the words. “Impossible.”

“You are not the first to take this journey. Nor will you be the last.”

The Explorer reluctantly let his eyes rise from the map, across the darkened room, to the man at the other side of the table. The man who had just told him that his labors, hopes, and dreams for most of his life had already been won by others. The man who was telling him that his life was a lie.

“Then what is all this pomp? This revelry?”

The Explorer cast his hands back towards the doors to the outside world, and the busy city below.

“You are the people's hero. You will tell them of a place that's been kept secret from them. You are merely to open the gate.”

“Who has known of these secrets? Who told them to you and to the Queen?”

The Minister gave the Explorer a moment to find calm.

“Nobles of a different sort. They came to my Queen on your behalf.”

“What do they want of me?” The Explorer couldn't stop looking at the map.

“There are people there. Civilizations undreamt of in our world.”

The Minister pointed to the southern cities surrounding the mountains made by men. “These places have vast stores of knowledge, and it is all they ask of us. The gold and wealth you will attain as Viceroy means nothing to them.”

The Explorer let his fingers again caress the map, and his eyes looked questioningly at the locked ornate box on the Minister's side of the table. How many more secrets could be hidden within?

The crash from beyond the closed doors of the Queen's bed chambers startled the Explorer. Broken glass and a thud — then two more thuds. The Explorer saw palace guards move for the first time that day, as they gripped their pole arms and turned their heads towards the doors which separated this room from the next.

The Minister turned his craned neck towards the noise, and then wrapped his fingers tightly around the box. The guards stepped quickly from their posts on either side of the door and braced themselves to face it.

The doors to the royal chambers of the Queen flew open.

The world within was fully dark, yet there were flashes in the shroud of chaos. The light from the room the Minister and the Explorer stood in tried to spill clarity on the events beyond. Attendants ran about the bed, and one of the guards looked back to the Minister as if begging to be told what to do.

A chambermaid appeared in the light of the doorway. The look of terror on the young girl's face is the only way the Explorer would ever remember her. She had those eyes, those eyes which haunted the Explorer's dreams of the sea.

“She can no longer be contained.” The chambermaid's words were cold and laced with fright; her body trembled with shock. A dark form stayed in shadow behind the horrified girl — the shadow's form definitely feminine, yet in no way regal. The thing of shadow was wild.

The Explorer caught flashes, a dark eye, the gold glint of a disheveled crown, dark and feral hair.

Pale fingers grabbing the chambermaid's leg as the girl screamed for mercy — as if she were being gutted.

The Explorer locked onto the girl's eyes as she was pulled off her feet and she crashed face first onto the floor. The palace guards had their blades pointed towards the darkness, but took no steps to stop the girl from being dragged back into the room as the dark shadow of a woman tugged at her leg. The chambermaid's hands grabbed helplessly for anything, yet there was nothing.

The tears flowed as she was pulled mercilessly back into the darkened chamber of the Queen.

The dark woman of the room locked eyes with the Explorer, who thanked God as he recited the Prayer of the Lord to himself at the spectacle.

Then, he heard the shadow speak.
“There is my hero.”

Doors flew open on either side of the room as more guards flooded in from anti-chambers. The girl's eyes slipped into the sea of darkness and there was one final scream.

The Explorer looked maddeningly into the calm eyes of the Minister, who was now beside him. The man handed the Explorer the map, once again neatly rolled, and the small wooden box.

“Go now.” The Minister was quiet and stern in his words. “To the new world.”

Guards had hold of the doors and were pushing them closed. The blades of swords and pole-arms were being thrust into the bed chamber to try and keep back whatever evil had laid claim to it.

The light hit just right, and the Explorer saw fully for an instant what was within. Her face was still beautiful, but she wore a menacing and hungered glare. Skin so pale, it shown in the candlelight like the snows of the northlands. Her red lips were stained in blood, and the fangs in her mouth could not be captured fully by them, even if a vice were to press at her jaw to close it tight.

The Queen slashed with her fingernails at the flesh she had laid claim to and the Explorer watched the blood spray as she laughed.
“Get my goblet!”

The Explorer's eyes were blinded from the sunlight through most of the garden. This was a thankful blessing, as he ran towards an ocean which did not nearly frighten him as much as it had before.

II.

The Explorer stared into the belly of his ship as the black chest was lowered on ropes into the hold. Whatever was within was heavy; it had taken all day to scavenge the men to rig the ropes and grunt out the song of their labor. Thankfully, it was not heavy enough to sink the ship as the men had warned, and as the Explorer walked the deck and looked down the sides of the vessel, he could not tell any discernible drop.

Thousands were along the banks to wish the voyage well. They sailed far from land before the sounds of the well-wishers' parties and merriment faded from the ears of the Explorer and his crew.

The Explorer did his best to drown it all away. He focused on the lazy call of the sea birds overhead and the waves below.

When night came, the Explorer found himself at the bow, his instruments laid out before him on the deck as he began to check the stars. He had waited later than he normally would, and only allowed the first mate to stand with him as he bent down to unclasp the locks on the wooden box given him by the Minister.