The door melted from in front of her. Maddie stepped through the opening; it felt like walking through mist. Solid walls of looming gray stone surrounded her. She couldn’t see the bars or hear the prisoners’ wails. She couldn’t hear anything, not even the popping flames of a torch, and felt more alone than she had since her parents died.
“Well, this is a sticky pickle you’ve got yourself into.” She wrung her hands and considered her next move. Fact was, she didn’t know what to do next.
Light flowed from a narrow tunnel ahead. Behind her was nothing but wall, the mist-like opening and the solid wooden door both gone. She gulped and followed the tunnel. Stark stone towered over her, around her, cold and dry. The light was steady, not flickering, as if it were magic, not flame.
At the tunnel’s end, she entered a hollow room. Maddie lowered her chin and gnawed her lip, too terrified to breathe. What was she supposed to do now? She’d touched the door as Serena had demanded. Surely that wasn’t all of it. She couldn’t just be expected to walk around this room for eternity.
She swallowed. Could she?
She turned in a circle, stopped at the halfway point, and stared. The tunnel had vanished, just like the door and mist-like opening. Where they’d been stood a platform. A lone chair resided in the middle of the raised dais, statues on each step. Otherwise the room was empty. Steady light kept the soaring room bright, although it didn’t seem to have a source. It just was.
She studied the chair without approaching it. Was she supposed to sit in it? Was that how she released the prisoners? Or had she already released them?
What had happened outside the tower when she’d entered? Did Serena continue to squeeze the life from Chase? Did Gregory fear for his own existence? Did Dougal feel remorse over allowing her to go inside?
What was she going to do?
She backed up, leaned against the wall, and slid to the floor. Cradling her head in her hands, she tried to make sense out of what she saw and what had happened.
“Why put a seat in the room if it wasn’t meant to be sat on?”
Shoring up her resolve and sucking in a deep breath, she stood on wobbly legs and strode forward. Questions kept bobbing to her mind’s surface. If she sat in the chair, would the whole world perish? What would happen to her? What would happen if she didn’t?
That was the only question she thought she knew the answer to — Chase would die.
Three steps led up to the wooden seat. Three times bigger than any chair she had ever seen, it had massive armrests and a width made for three giants. Not a chair; a throne.
On the ends of each step poised gray stone statues. On the first step was a statue of a lion and another of an eagle. The rest of the stairs held statues of gryphons in various stages. One looked like a man with the lower half of a lion. Another was a man’s legs with the upper half of an eagle. On and on it went, gryphon and man in interchangeable forms.
Maddie placed her foot on the first step and a red light glowed behind and above her. She stepped on the second step and the light glowed yellow. Would green be next?
She would have laughed at the craziness of the notion if she hadn’t been so terrified of taking that last step. But she had to find out. She drew in a ragged breath and lifted her foot one more time. As her foot descended, a green glow bathed the room. Warning bells and alarms went off with a sound like an air raid siren. She covered her ears and fell into the chair.