On the side facing the city, they found many more signs, not all familiar to McCray or anyone else, but near the center were a series of color-coded vertical bars. “Ah, our transport system,” the captain noted. “The only trouble is, we don’t know where they go.”
“Down, certainly,” Krisha commented. “This is the highest level you can use to get to the pyramid.”
“Yes, but how far, and where?” Jimmy wondered.
“The only logical thing to do is to all push the same one and find out where we wind up,” Chin replied. “The only question is, which one?”
McCray shrugged. “If they’re consistent, I’d try the one on the far left.”
Gun Roh Chin seemed stunned. “I never thought of that,” he said, amazed.
“Let me go first,” Jimmy told them. “You follow. If there’s anything nasty down there, I should be already there to warn you about it. Of course, we could just as easily wind up in the equivalent of the boiler room, in which case no harm’s done. I can’t see them putting a stop there, though, that the general public, as it were, could use.” He took a short breath. “Well, here goes.” He reached out and pressed the bar, which had a deep violet color.
A sudden design encircled him, the same color as the bar, coming from a point within the street itself, and he vanished. A moment later, so did the symbol.
They all gaped at where he’d stood. “Astonishing,” said Tobrush.
Kalia walked over, slapped the left vertical bar, and the same thing happened.
“I saw it that time,” the captain commented. “A pentagram. So McCray was right on that one, anyway.”
Modra walked up, pushed the bar, and in a moment, vanished as well.
The odd thing was that there was no sensation at all. She’d half expected something like the great void, with consciousness rushing through the blackness, but there was nothing. One moment she was standing there, outside, the next she was standing—where?
It was rather dark, and the chill was enough to raise gooseflesh on her.
“Modra—here!” Jimmy McCray called. She turned and saw the previous two standing about four meters away, and walked toward them. As soon as she did so, Josef appeared, the pentagram glowing with exceptional brightness in the gloom.
Modra barely had adjusted to the gloom when she saw the violet symbol come up again, and, suddenly, Tobrush was rolling out and over toward them. Even in the darkness, she was sure he’d not faded in any more than he’d faded out; it was more like flipping a light switch.
Kalia came next, then Manya, and, finally, Gun Roh Chin, who looked both bemused and fascinated. He went over to them and asked, “Anything here? I gather we’re well below street level.”
McCray scratched his growing beard and said, “Well, it’s just a wild guess, so maybe Kalia won’t believe it, but I think that might be the grand entrance over there.”
He pointed, and Chin saw a large, five-sided indentation in the base of the pyramid. It was framed by ornate designs glowing in gold, and was about as conspicuous in this place as a spaceship would have been.
Jimmy McCray walked over to it, then stopped. “Uh-oh. The question is, do we want to go inside or not?”
They crowded around him and saw what he was talking about. It wasn’t easily seen at an angle, but, standing right in front of the entryway, it floated there like some ghostly magic .trick by an unknown magician, large enough that you couldn’t walk around it.
It was what Jimmy McCray had called the Seal of Solomon; basically a six-pointed star with the points of the star circled. The upper triangle of the star was in gold, the lower half of rust red, while the circle was a pale blue in color. “I assume that the significance of the colors is lost on no one here,” McCray commented.
It wasn’t, not even on Kalia, who’d embarked on this with her Mycohlian associates in environment suits of a rust-red color, the color of Mycohl, which contrasted sharply with the blue color of the Exchange teams’ suits and the dull gold of the Mizlaplanians.
“I believe that confirms at least one theory beyond coincidence,” the captain commented, sounding a bit smug.
Kalia shrugged. “So? You goin’ in or what?”
“The point, I think, is that the symbol might be all that’s imprisoning the princes,” Josef explained patiently. “Just by going in, we might free them.”
“I doubt if liberating them is that easily done,” McCray assured him. “I do think, though, that this one’s a symbol they can’t pass for some reason. It alone might be sufficient to keep any uncaught and unimprisoned demons out and possibly off the controls, if they’re in there. The question is whether we want to break it.”
“Well, we can search all the buildings until we drop or – we can see what the main place is,” Kalia argued.
Jimmy sighed. “All right, then.” He stepped up to it and pushed against it. It was as solid as a rock. He stepped back, let one of the others do it, and they had the same results.
“It appears,” said Jimmy McCray, “that Quintara aren’t the only ones it’ll keep out.”
Gun Roh Chin thought a moment. “Are we all agreed that we want to go in? Yes? Well, then, if the girl there will trust an old and befuddled freighter captain’s hunches just once, and come up and put her hand anywhere on the red part of the design—yes, that’s it. And you, McCray—on the blue. Now me, breaking the yellow, so!”
The seal split into its colored parts and seemed to swing away into the darkness.
“Their old enemies weren’t stupid, and the demon princes lied,” the captain commented with some satisfaction in his voice. “No one of us can free them. It takes a unanimous vote of the official warders.”
Jimmy McCray stepped into the blackness, which now gave way as if nothing but a dark opening, and the others quickly followed. They found themselves in a dark, narrow passage that went on for some distance, creating a real sense of claustrophobia, but it opened suddenly into an enormous hall that flared into sudden illumination as they entered, startling them. Somewhere in the distance they could hear some sort of blowers kicking on.
The sight itself was stunning. A broad floor of the now-familiar material, but set in pentagonal tiles, went for perhaps thirty meters forward and at least that much on both sides. In the center, however, lay an enormous rectangular block colored obsidian black, rising a good five meters off the floor; atop it sat a frighteningly lifelike statue of some marble-like rock, scaled to the block, rising up into the pyramid. The exquisitely carved body, wearing some sort of marble robe, seemed like a Terran’s body, right down to the hands and feet, sitting there in the lotus position. The head, however, resembled that of a male goat, with great curved horns, a snout, and even a goatee, although the face had a stem expression and its eyes seemed filled with intelligence.
On either side of the huge idol were braziers of some coppery material, and, carved into the block on both sides, there were steps leading up to it, and, right in front, a flat, very low table of the same marble-like rock as the statue. It was an awesome, almost breathtaking sight.
“What the hell is that?’ Modra asked, gaping.
“The supreme idol,” Jimmy McCray responded, his throat dry. “A representation of Satan, his full beauty masked by the goat’s head, one of his symbols.”
“Satan?” Krisha repeated, puzzled.
“The Fallen One. The founder and ruler of Hell. The demon-emperor himself. That would make the four princes imprisoned here Lucifuge, Leviathan, Sataniacha, and Ash-tore th. I wonder where the other sixty-six are?”
“Sixty-six?”
He nodded. “There were seventy princes who rebelled under Satan Mekratrig, whom you see represented here. These four were considered so dangerous, so treacherous, and so powerful that even their master did not trust them. They and their legions, fifty million apiece, were to be freed only before the final battle, to slay a third of mankind.”
“It’s a big universe,” Gun Roh Chin commented dryly. “Even seventy would stretch them pretty thin, I’d think.”
Modra tapped her partner on the shoulder. “Jimmee, look at the walls, now!” she whispered through clenched teeth.
He looked away from the idol at the left wall. Standing there now, dressed in the royal purple robes, was an enormous demon, the largest they’d seen by far, with long, sharp horns and burning red eyes. He turned and looked right, and there stood another, identical in size but not really the same in appearance, although he knew he’d have to compare them point by point to tell them apart. Turning around in the direction from which they’d come, he saw yet another over the door. The fourth wall of the squared pyramid, beyond the huge idol, now had yet another illuminated there.
The images were so real that they froze for a moment, until it was clear that none of the four was moving. Only then did Jimmy realize the truth.
“They’re inside the walls,” he said at last, his voice curiously weak and high-pitched. “They’re embedded in the walls!”
<Welcome!> boomed an incredibly powerful voice in their minds.
<Welcome!> said another, and another, and another.
Molly looked puzzled. “Somebody just say somethin’?”
<You appear uncomfortable,> the first voice said sympathetically.
<There is no reason for discomfort here,> said the second demon.
< You -sample the power that, is within you now but you are ignorant of all that it can do,> said the third.
<Let us show you what you can do,> said the fourth.
<You are chilled,> the first one noted. <Look at the braziers and command warmth. You need only concentrate>
They all hesitated a moment, and men Kalia looked at the brazier to the left of the idol and concentrated, concentrated hard, picturing a warm fire.
There was a surge of energy from below that they all felt, and suddenly the brazier burst into flame inside its bowl. Delighted, she started at the other one and, now confident, did the same. A second great flame flared into life.
Modra frowned. “Now, did they do that, or did she?”
“She did,” Jimmy McCray assured her. “I could feel the link, being over here next to her.”
<It will warm now, > the first one assured them, and they could already feel a slight rise in temperature, although the smoke was being drawn upward.
<You are thirsty, > the second one noted. <Use the tiles. Command the symbol in your mind using the template. When you can see it, then use your memories, your imaginations, to visualize what you wish.>
Josef frowned. Use the tiles? Command the—”Oh, the pentagram,” he said aloud. He walked a few paces away from them, centered his concentration on a tile, and imagined the star shape was there. It wasn’t that hard to do, but he was startled when the actual star seemed to appear within the tile and the borders thicken; so startled, in fact,
that it almost faded back out. He got it back, and imagined what he’d dreamed of for many, many days.
The area inside the pentagram seemed to shimmer and then darken, and, slowly, something took shape, something the rest also saw. It solidified, became a golden pitcher. He was afraid for a moment to stop concentrating on it, fearing it would vanish like the star, but he finally realized that he had to do something and, with a sigh, let go. The star and border faded, but the pitcher remained.
Curious, yet amazed and not a little suspicious, he stooped down, then reached out to touch the pitcher as if it were a burning hot coal or a fierce animal ready to bite.
It felt solid, like a pitcher should, and very cold. He picked it up and almost dropped it. It was full of something, some liquid. He smelled it, smiled, then took it in both hands and drank from it, not very elegantly, as they all watched, wide-eyed.
After a while, he stopped, put down the pitcher, then belched, the noise echoing inside the hallow walls of the pyramid. He didn’t excuse himself. “Wine!” he told them. “Wine as good as I remember it in the vineyards of the hive master of my old Lord! Better!”
Jimmy McCray wished for a wee bit of good whiskey, maybe a Jeroboam or two, but he decided reluctantly that he might well survive a bit better if he stuck to something that would allow him to keep his wits about him. Following Josef’s lead, he tried the same kind of concentration, and in fairly short order was looking at a tankard of dark stout. After sampling it, he brought forth some beer and handed it to Molly, who thought the whole thing was really neat.
That set Kalia, Tobrush, and Modra off. It was interesting to see the Julki materialize what looked like a modernistic trough, then stick its tiny snout into a sweet-smelling yellowish liquid, not just because the others didn’t know much about his race but also because it had required two adjacent tiles to do it and it had worked just as well. Soon Modra had her own tankard. Jimmy went over to her and frowned. “Fruit juice?”
“Yeah, I know, but it wouldn’t take too much beer or ale to make me drunk enough I’d do anything they asked just for a laugh.”
Kalia appeared to have the same idea; she materialized a clear decanter filled with some pulpy yellow-white drink.
Modra was, however, feeling suddenly alive again, and she smiled broadly and looked over at the Mizlaplanians, all three of whom were simply standing there, looking very stern and uncomfortable.
“We take nothing from demons,” Manya said firmly.