Lacuna - N.R. Walker Page 0,95

wishful thinking. But they never saw another living creature along the way. Were they all in the grand hall, waiting? Was this an ambush?

“I feel as though we’re walking into a trap,” Crow mumbled as they approached the huge wooden doors to the grand hall. “When these doors open, be prepared for anything.”

As the huge doors opened at their arrival, the four kings stood back and allowed guards of all four colours to take the lead. They advanced into the large room and Crow waited for the sound of a strike . . .

But it never came.

A white guard reappeared at the door and shrugged. “It’s empty, sires.”

Empty?

Crow and Tancho looked at each other, confused, before they walked into the middle of the very empty and quiet grand hall. It looked just as it did their first night here: pristine, huge, the tiled floor gleaming, and the dome light above shining a golden spotlight onto the compass tiled into the floor.

“She was supposed to be here,” Crow said. “The compass, the glass dome above it to show the eclipse . . .”

“If they’re not here . . . ,” Tancho said.

“Down in the old hall,” Samiel said quickly. “The ancient compass.”

“Where Adelais and the others are,” Crow said, his nostrils flaring with his temper. “If they’ve lied to us . . .”

Tancho ordered the soldiers to about-face and run back to the underground. Now they were at the rear of the legions and Crow was pissed. Kings should be at the front, the spear’s tip. Leaders should lead. “Dammit.”

“Should we smash the compass anyway?” Elmwood asked, swinging his axe in a circle as if it weighed nothing. “They can’t let in more of those hideous pig-Ascii if we break the door.”

Crow shrugged. “It certainly can’t hurt.”

Elmwood grinned and swung his axe high above his head, bringing it down to the tiles with a jarring crash. The blade cleaved into the stone, directly at the heart of the compass, the sound echoed, resonated in the huge room, but then the sound became something else.

The ringing became laughter and Maghdlm appeared in a circle of sparks as though she’d made a doorway just for her . . .

The small old woman stepped out of it, her cloak pulled up, her smile sinister. She wasn’t injured or frail. She was pure evil. “I don’t need the compass now,” she said, lifting her arms up toward the glass dome. “Now I can command the doors as I wish, with thanks to you, Corvus and Pisces.”

Tancho flung his arm out, sending a small blade whistling through the air so fast. But Maghdlm simply disappeared out another door and appeared in another just a few metres away.

The blade clanged and skittered across the floor, and Maghdlm smiled. “The lacuna is mine to command.”

“The lacuna?” Crow asked.

“The space between is no space at all,” she replied. “Once you know how to use it. Space and time mean nothing when you can step between them. And this? Was never what it seemed.” She waved her hand and the room around them shimmered, blinking in and out before it changed. Gone was the pristine grand hall, its gleaming white tiles and perfect columns, and they now found themselves surrounded by old grey stone, dark and drab. And not only that . . . Maghdlm’s human form was gone now too.

Her size didn’t change at all, but her skin was now a mottled blue, her nose a muzzle of hog-like teeth. She wasn’t Maghdlm, she wasn’t a frail healer or a grand elder.

She was Ascii.

“What do you want?” Tancho asked her.

“What is rightfully mine,” she sneered. “What should have been mine a thousand years ago.”

“Death?” Karasu asked. “Because we can give you that.”

Maghdlm hissed, an ugly snout of tusks and tongue. “The last Golden Eclipse, a thousand human years ago, was fought in the Great War. The doorways were closed, but I still remained. Left behind, I summoned the power of alchemy and the stars, putting a glamour over Aequi Kentron, the largest doorway. I made the Consul, I made your kingdoms what they are today. I spent my time in the catacombs below, building our new cities. Allowing you on the surface to grow and breed, a rich feast for my kind. For this day. The day of the Ascii has come.”

“The only thing that comes for your kind is death,” Tancho spat.

“How many men do you have left?” Maghdlm asked, her voice as cold as her eyes. “Because