The Harrowing of Doom, page 4
part #1 of Marvel Untold Series
“Where does this lead?”
“Nowhere. There’s no alley below. It’s just a space. The two houses aren’t perfectly adjoined.”
“You’ve checked?”
“We sent lights down. There’s nothing.”
Verlak thought for a moment. “No,” she decided. “There’s something. If it doesn’t look like something Fortunov could use, then what it looks like is misleading. Let’s go.”
Back at street level, she rounded up officers with flashlights and had them open up the nearest sewer access, half a block down from where the two houses joined.
“Oh no,” said Genschow.
“Oh yes,” Verlak told him.
“How did he do it?”
“Let’s find out.”
They climbed down into the sewer. Beneath low, curved ceilings of damp brickwork, there was a narrow walkway next to the canal of foul water. Verlak took one of the flashlights and led the way, breathing through her mouth. After a short distance, she turned down a narrow tunnel. The walkway was slippery, barely more than a ledge, and she had to walk carefully. She aimed the light up at the ceiling. Now that she knew she was looking for a shaft, she found the access point almost immediately.
“Do you see?” she asked Genschow. “You can just make out where they cut.” Faint lines ran across the brickwork, easy to miss but telltale in their regularity. They formed a rectangle the same size and shape as the gap at the chimney base. “Get someone up there,” Verlak said. “There will be some kind of trap door mechanism. They had that shaft prepared for their escape. They probably had a rope to get down, though that will be gone now.”
“This won’t be the only hatch like this, will it?” Genschow asked, sounding dismayed.
“No, it won’t be, and that means a search.” She knew what she was demanding. Hundreds of miles of sewer and abandoned mining tunnels honeycombed the foundations of Doomstadt. Even with drones, it would be a massive, perhaps impossible, task to find every escape route Fortunov and his rebels had created. But each one that was blocked would reduce his freedom of movement by that much, and bring her closer to putting a bullet between his traitor eyes. She lived for the moment she would perform that service for her king.
They left the sewers, and Genschow relayed Verlak’s commands, setting the tunnel search in motion. Verlak and the sergeant made their way back to the rectory. Two guards were posted by the outside door, the block was cordoned off.
“Has the priest been questioned?” Verlak asked.
“No, captain. We waited for you, given that Fortunov was involved.”
“Good. Maintain the same practice here. Anything that has anything to do with Father Grigori Zargo is to be reported directly to me.”
She looked up at the broken window.
“Sloppy work,” said Genschow. “Fortunov wouldn’t have had to run if he’d been a bit more careful.”
“Indeed,” Verlak said dryly. “Unlike him to be so clumsy, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“So unlike him as to be improbable.”
“You think the broken window wasn’t an accident?”
“I’m sure it wasn’t.”
“Why would Fortunov want to alert us?” Genschow asked, confused.
“It wasn’t Fortunov or his man who broke the window.” She crunched broken glass beneath her heel. “This was a cry for help.”
The guards had let Zargo get dressed, though they had not allowed him to leave the bedroom. His cassock made him feel a bit more like himself, even a little bit less helpless, and he could use every comforting illusion he could find. He sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for the interrogation to come, thinking about how he would keep his balance on the tightrope.
Nothing to do except try. I can’t dismount. They won’t let me.
His wait ended when Kariana Verlak entered the room and shut the door behind her. Zargo had never spoken to the captain of the Castle Guard. He had seen her from a distance, and that was how any sane person preferred to keep Verlak. Having to speak to her was never a sign that things were going well for you. Things aren’t going well for me, are they?
He wasn’t sure who unnerved him more, Verlak or Fortunov.
She stood before Zargo, eyeing him closely before speaking. She had a patrician bearing in her uniform’s dark greatcoat with her hawk-like features and ramrod posture. Her parents had been peasants, though. There was no trace of the old aristocratic families of Latveria in her bloodline, and her ferocity in the defense of Doom’s order was the stuff of fearful awe.
She will know everything about me. She will know things about me that even I don’t know.
The only way to take another step on the tightrope was to be utterly honest.
“So you had a visit from Rudolfo Fortunov,” Verlak said.
Zargo nodded. “Aided by Emil Seefeld.”
“I see.”
Her tone was expressionless, and Zargo couldn’t tell if it was news to her or not that Seefeld was a rebel.
“They came to ask why our lord visited me last evening,” Zargo continued.
“What did you tell them?”
“The same as I am telling you: everything I know.” Which, I hope, is so little that it won’t matter.
“A risky strategy, Father,” said Verlak.
“What else is there for me to do? If I had lied to Fortunov, he would have had Seefeld kill me. If I lie to you, my prospects won’t be any better.”
“On that last point, we agree.”
“You should know something else. Fortunov expects me to keep talking.”
“The solution to this situation, then, would be for you not to learn anything that would be of interest to him,” said Verlak. “Is that right?”
“The thought had occurred to me,” Zargo said, wondering if he could dare allow himself to hope she and Doom would think the same.
Verlak’s thin smile dispelled the hope. “The lord of Latveria has chosen you,” she said. “Your only course of action is to carry out the work he has commanded of you. It’s really that simple.”
The news that he was not about to be shot was not as comforting as he might have thought.
“And when Fortunov comes again?” Zargo asked.
“You’re that confident he will?”
“I mean no offense, captain, but aren’t you?” He broke out in a sweat as he asked the question. He was giving offense even if he didn’t mean it. He was implying that Verlak would not catch Fortunov. He was gambling on the idea that she was as honest with herself as he was being with her.
Verlak said nothing for a long moment. Then she turned to the door. “Get up,” she snapped. “You’re coming with me.”
The tightrope had trembled. But Zargo hadn’t fallen. He could take another step.
Chapter 4
The tower rising from the center of Castle Doom was so broad it appeared squat to the eye, even though it was one of the tallest of the castle’s structures. It had the ribbed metal dome of an observatory, though its peak was a wide, level platform. The roof and walls were a black deeper than interstellar. They absorbed light and reflected none. The tower brooded over its secrets and waited to unleash its power.
Inside, the upper third was a single, cavernous laboratory. The curved walls were built up in inverted terraces, each level of stonework looming out a bit further over the one below. Multi-jointed and multi-tooled servo-arms extended from rails fixed to each terrace. They could reach any part of the lab at the command of their master. Ringed by walls of layered obsidian and titanium, a circular pool, shimmering silver, dominated the central floor space. Doom walked around the pool, and the servo-arms adjusted their positions in reaction to the movements of his fingers. He created a column of empty space above the pool, reaching all the way up to the center of the dome. Around the base of the tower’s vault, another massive set of retracted servo-arms held the great mirror and lens of the observatory’s telescope next to the walls.
Doom finished his inspection. The lab was ready. Its potential was unlimited and purified of all traces of previous work. The empty space above the ring seemed to hum with latent creation. It was a void that would be filled. It was where the Harrower would come to be.
The single door to the lab was heavy with an inner layer of lead shielding. Its bronze surface was engraved with a pentagram enclosed by a magic circle. Symbols of both protection and invocation ran between the circle’s double lines. The moment Doom was satisfied with the positions of the servo-arms, the door opened. An old man entered. His hair and beard were white, though his posture was unbowed by age. He was Doom’s advisor, the man who had raised him from his orphaned childhood, and the only human being on Earth that Doom trusted implicitly.
“Boris,” said Doom. “If I have not praised your timing recently, then I have been remiss.”
“It is simply my duty to you, your Excellency,” Boris said, sounding pleased.
“Is she here?” Doom asked.
“Yes. Maria von Helm waits in the great hall.”
“Good.”
“Shall I have her shown to her quarters?”
“No. Bring her here. Our work must begin at once.”
“As you wish.” He hesitated.
“What is it, Boris?”
“She has asked about the archives.”
“Then she is not wasting time,” Doom said, satisfied. “I will take her there myself.”
“How much liberty is she to be allowed there?” Boris asked.
“She is to have complete freedom there and elsewhere in the castle. She is not to be hampered in any way, and she is to have full cooperation. If she needs something, then she is to have it. Am I clear?”
“You are, your Excellency.”
Behind his mask, Doom’s lips pulled back in a tight grin. “You look concerned, old friend.”
“Vassily Dubrov will take it hard if she has a free hand in the archives.”
“That is none of my concern.”
Boris tried again. “Dubrov is a proud man.”
“Then that is a flaw to be corrected, as it should have been by now. I do not understand how he has not learned humility after so many years, but if he must be educated now, then so be it. The archives are not his fiefdom.”
“Of course not,” said Boris.
“And that is not an illusion he will be permitted to have,” Doom added.
“Understood.” Boris looked as if he might say more, but knew better. Instead, he changed the subject. “What of the priest?” he asked. “Captain Verlak has him under guard.”
“Did she take him to a cell?”
“No, to one of the Chambers of Contemplation.”
For Doom, the spare, unadorned rooms high in the towers were places of quiet, where he could be free of distraction as he looked out over the vistas of Doomstadt and the landscape beyond. For others, placed there with the doors locked, they were places where waiting turned contemplation into terror and anticipation into dread.
“Leave him to his thoughts for now,” Doom said. “That will make him more pliable. Let us go and greet Helm.”
Is this what you want?
Maria von Helm had begun asking herself the question even before she had agreed to work with Doom. It came to her partway through their conversation on Mount Sivàr, insistent and disturbing as a haunting. Some part of her had already known she would say yes, and that part writhed with uncertainty. The question had swirled through her dreams and her waking hours ever since. It was more strident, almost desperate, now that she was in Castle Doom.
The scale of the palace was enormous. She was in the center of a hall hundreds of feet long and thirty feet high. Stained glass windows mounted just below the arched ceiling let in daylight filtered through shades of red and green. Suits of armor lined the walls at regular intervals, guarding the shelves of leather-clad volumes on recessed bookcases. Above the shelves were paintings of Latverian landscapes. The hall was firm in what it valued, and what it valued was Latveria, knowledge and power.
She could not remember when she had last been in so huge an interior. On Mount Sivàr, she had either been outside, uncontained by walls, or inside her cave. She could touch its ceiling by reaching up. Its chambers were cramped, but they had felt less like a prison than the castle. Here, she was painfully conscious of being inside the embodiment of Doom’s will.
The spider had invited her into his web. She had come voluntarily.
Is this what you want?
Yes. I think so. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.
Will the spider ever let us go?
If what I do with him succeeds, it won’t matter if he lets us go or not. She would be free of her greater prison, the one whose cell door had slammed closed on her the night Cynthia had died. Her true jailer was on the other side of death’s veil. If she could be free of that terror, then what happened to her on this side of the veil was irrelevant.
Yes, this was what she wanted. If she could free Cynthia, she could free herself.
The question refused to be satisfied.
Very well. She would have to live with it.
Doom appeared at the far end of the hall and strode toward her. She walked to meet him halfway. If they were to be partners in the endeavor, she would act like one. This is your web, but I am no fly.
“I am glad you have come,” Doom said. He gestured for her to walk with him, and they headed back down the hall. “The work ahead of us will be long. We should begin at once.”
He led her down other long, majestic corridors, through an iron door, and then up a long, stone, spiral staircase.
“Have you thought about where we should begin?” Helm asked as they climbed the steps.
“On separate paths,” said Doom.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I will show you.”
They reached the top of the stairs, and another massive door admitted them to the laboratory. The center of the web, Helm thought. The network of servo-arms poised above her looked ready to seize anything the spider wanted. Banks of computers and tanks of chemicals lined the periphery of the chamber, but Helm was surprised by how much empty space there was.
“The raw material for the Harrower has yet to be gathered,” Doom said, guessing her thoughts. “This, though, is where it will be constructed, and where it will do its work.”
They stopped at the edge of the silver pool. At first Helm thought she was looking at mercury, then she wasn’t sure. “What is that liquid?” she asked.
“Nanobots,” said Doom. “The configurations possible here are infinite, and the response immediate.” The moment he finished speaking, the surface formed into an interlocked pattern of occult symbols, and became solid. What had resembled mercury now looked like steel.
“How many times have you used this material like this?” Helm asked, concerned.
“Many times.”
“Then the charge it carries is…”
“Enormous. Yes. And it is under my control.”
“I don’t see how you can be so sure.”
“Yet I am, because it is mine. So is this.” He pointed up.
The dome of the ceiling hummed, and ribbed sections pulled back, opening up a space wide enough for the 300-inch lens and mirror. The servo-arms moved them into alignment with each other. Initially they were a foot apart, both at the threshold of the aperture. More nanobots streamed out of the walls and formed the body of the telescope. It extended quickly, the lens carried further and further out of the dome of the observatory. Some of the body came down into the lab, but not so far that it intruded on the central column of empty space going from the pool to the level center of the dome.
When the telescope was complete, the silver pool shifted again. It turned into a picture of the clouds and sky above Doomstadt. The resolution was so complete, the picture reproduced in such depth, that vertigo assailed Helm. She almost toppled into the sky beneath her.
She gasped. “You project the forces of the stars onto this material,” Helm said, awed.
“As above, so below,” said Doom. “Before we are done, as below, so above. This is merely our starting point, though.” He waved a hand, and the telescope disassembled itself, the roof closed, and the pool became silver again. “The saying has become a commonplace that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. But that is merely an expression of perspective. What we will do operates at the true point of indiscernibility, where the most advanced technology and the most advanced magic become one.”
“Technology is not something I know anything about,” Helm said.
“No, your studies have been purely hermetic. I do know a lot about the intersection that we will use, but not everything. These are the two paths we will begin on, then. I have shown you this laboratory so you are aware of where our goals will converge. Do not concern yourself about it otherwise. I will focus my research here. You will follow the dictates of your own expertise and go as far as you can toward our objective. When we encounter the walls to our progress, and we will, that is when we shall pool our resources. We will go further, faster, if your explorations are not hampered by mine. Is that agreeable?”
“It is, if you mean what you say. I will not have you looking over my shoulder, then?”
Doom shook his head. “Your views are not mine. That is crucial. That is why you’re here.”
Helm looked at the pool of silver nanobots. She thought again about the scale of what they were setting out to do. What Doom had shown her here made her uneasy, and they would be tampering with energies far greater and more terrible before long. This was simply the doorway to a mad dream.
Is this what you want?
Yes. Oh yes, it is.
The exhilaration of the possible was already overcoming her reservations.
