Oscar and the Magi: The Black Chamber
The Knight Errant never saw it coming. Oscar barely saw it himself, it all happened so quickly. The Yeoman opened the door for them and was about to announce them to whoever was inside when Ridley pushed past him and crossed the tiny room to where the guard sat in his green coat. He barely had to try and stand up before Ridley reached down and placed her hand on his forehead.
The guard slumped back down, his eyes rolling up into his head. Ridley hauled him up and tried to arrange him so he’d stay in his chair. The Yeoman stayed in the doorway, staring at her. Oscar squeezed past into the room, the little black cat padding after him. Ridley turned and winked.
“I couldn’t be bothered arguing with another one…” She nodded over Oscar’s head to the Yeoman, “Don’t worry - I’ll see to it from here - you can get off.” The Yeoman looked as if he felt he ought to say something, but instead he just shook his head and closed the door behind him.
“Ridley,” said Maggs in a chiding voice, “I know you’re enjoying all this running around, but I don’t think there’s…”
“Maggs, Maggs,” Ridley held up a bunch of keys and jangled them softly, “Never mind that. Are you ready?”
She turned to face the other door in the room. It looked no different to the door they had come in through, but even Oscar could tell there was something strange about it. Perhaps some magic was beginning to rub off on him, or perhaps the effect of the Black Chamber was so strong that anyone might have noticed it. It was an odd feeling, not of wrongness but rather, of rightness, that the door was just a door, nothing more than a few bits of wood, that there was nothing special about it at all.
Now that Oscar thought about it there was, in a way, something special about all doors: doors led somewhere, or were the way out of somewhere else. They let things in or kept things out, they hid secrets and stood open in welcome, but this door did none of these things. This was just some planks covering a hole in a wall that was just a pile of stones. There was nothing interesting about it. There was no magic in it at all.
“Ugh,” Ridley shivered, “It’s horrible, isn’t it? Well, now, let’s see shall we?” She squared her shoulders and walked towards the door, the keys jangling gently in her hand. She examined the lock and picked a key that looked about the right size. It fitted. She turned it and Oscar heard the lock clunk over. She put her hand on the door and took a deep breath.
“Well, here goes nothing,” she said and pushed the door open.
It was walking through the doorway that was the odd thing, because there was nothing odd about it, it was just a doorway and you walked through, except… except that it was like running out of a warm house, through a storm, into a warm car. There was a brief cold moment of solid reality, of being nothing more than a person, a walking lump of flesh and blood, and then you were through again, in the still silence of the Black Chamber.
Oscar wasn’t sure what he had expected, but it wasn’t dark and dank and cold and terrible. It was a corridor just like the ones they had walked down to get here, with wooden floorboards underfoot and stone walls, nothing remarkable or particularly horrible.
There was perhaps something, if he thought about it, a peculiarly dead silence, an isolation from all outside sounds and reality, just the feeling of the three of them standing alone in a corridor with no sense of any outside world.
“Gives me the creeps,” said Ridley, “So what do we think?”
To the left the corridor turned a corner and disappeared into the darkness, while to the right it ended in a perfectly ordinary door that didn’t look like any kind of prison that Oscar could think of.
“I can’t hear anything,” said Maggs, cocking her head, “I don’t think there’s anyone else in here…”
“All the same,” said Ridley, “I don’t want to spend any longer in here than I have to… Maggs and Oscar, you try down here, I’ll…”she stopped suddenly and gave a strange, strangled cough.
“Stop there…” said a voice from behind them.
There was something silvery sticking out of Ridley’s coat, glinting in the lamplight: a piece of jewellery? Oscar hadn’t seen that before. Then it was getting inexplicably smaller, and then it had gone and, with another bubbling cough Ridley dropped to her knees.
“The robes… no interference,” said the voice, “I had to.”
And something behind them, by the entrance, moved, the shadows bunching and changing shape and suddenly Oscar understood, because there was the Erl King in the Black Chamber with them, holding a sword stiffly out in front of him while Ridley knelt on the floor, clutching at her chest, blood on her hands.
“Ridley!” Maggs rushed forward to grab hold of her. Without the Erl King’s usual terrifying aura, evidently dampened by the Chamber, there was nothing to stop Oscar running at the dark figure and beating at it with his fists.
“You… you…” he couldn’t think of a word strong enough. The Erl King picked him up by his collar and threw him to the floor, then he pushed Maggs aside, pulling up Ridley roughly, so that she groaned.
“Don’t!” Maggs grabbed at him, “What are you doing?”
“I had to…” the voice sounded odd: hollow and distant, distorted, lost, “Follow me.” And he stalked away down the corridor, Ridley slung over one arm.
Maggs helped Oscar to his feet and they stumbled after him, following him round a corner, to a small room dominated by a great, solid wooden door. The Erl King paused for a moment and then gave it a kick that shivered it against the frame. Another kick and the door sprang open and they passed through into the shadows beyond.