The Throne Room

A short story

Niels could see up there, just ahead, the crumbled remains of the doorway. Or, he could see part of it, given how his three companions pushed in ahead of him, blocking most of his view. How frustrating. If anyone should get to see it first, it should be him. They would never have made it this far, if not for him.

He winced internally, that thought an echo of what his father had told him many times before. You never would have made it this far, if not for me.

Gotthard, the anthropologist, was awkwardly squeezing his massive frame into the crumbling stone doorway, an opening half the size it would have been been a thousand years ago. Beryl, their geologist, had spent many hours of the long journey trying to explain to them the dozens of different theories to account for how an ancient city could have become trapped underneath a mountain range. These theories ranged from everything to a series of bizarre earthquakes to the ancients' own magic, burying themselves alive to prevent others from attaining their power. Beryl, for her part, believed it was the natural defenses of the land to contain something as unnatural as magic. It wasn't far into their journey for it to become evident that Beryl's respect for the movements and systems that governed the world was bordering on a religious-reverence.

Niels, for his part, didn't care. As a linguist, he didn't care at all for how, but why. It was the meaning of things that Niels worried about, not how they arose.

And the meaning of this, of the ancient city of myths and dead religions being real, well it meant only one thing to Niel. It meant that there was power, more than power, hope. And that he would be a part of bringing it to humanity.

Beryl and Mia, the historian, crawled easily through the hole after Gotthard. Niels could hear their gasps and excited mutterings. He had been the last to see everything in this maze of an underground city, fitting that he would be the last to see the temple at the heart of it as well.

He half-ducked, half-crawled through the crumbling doorway as quickly as he could. The others, intoxicated by the view, cluttered the space before the door.

Niels could see hints of glimmering gold, marble, jewels, multicolored refracted light bouncing around the floor and everything around them. But only hints

"Excuse me," he began, pushing at Gotthard's massive back.

"Oh it's incredible!" Mia gushed. "It's too soon to say, really, but I think this proves that the people of Lifton and Ustien share a common cultural ancestry, as much as they would hate to admit it. I mean that looks like a proto-representation of the Liftonian god of the sun, side-by-side with oceanic iconography!"

Berly hummed quietly. "I cannot imagine where this marble is from, or how it was extracted, that it would be so strong.”

"Imagine what it would be like to visit this place." Gotthard gestured around them, his thick fingers glittering with rings. "The power that practitioners must have felt, dare I say, the oppression..."

Niels ground his teeth. Gotthard either didn't notice he was trying to squeeze by or didn't care.

"I would like to see!" Niels elbowed Mia out of the way, bursting out of the small entryway onto an uncomfortably narrow bridge. The bridge spanned across a massive expanse, that must have been nearly a mile deep. The floor of it, from what Niels could tell, was perfectly smooth. It was as if he were standing above a giant bowl. He gasped and leaped backward, bumping into Gotthard, who steadied him.

"We must tread carefully." Gotthard said solemnly. Niels flushed red. He turned his attention back to their surroundings, the beauty of which quickly chased away all his embarrassment.

They were standing before a bridge in a massive cavern. No, Niels thought, cavern was too mean a word for it. There was nothing natural about it. They were inside a giant, hollow sphere. A perfectly straight marble bridge shot out from where they stood, leading to an ornate golden door on the other side. The only thing supporting the bridge were thin marble columns at either side. Columns far too thin to be able to support something of its size.

As for the rest of the sphere, it was filled with ornate marble archways of varying heights, widths, and directions. As Niels turned his head, the spaces between the archways formed intricate geometric patterns, patterns that moved and twisted depending on the angle he looked at it from. These archways were carved with, as Mia had pointed out, various symbols and depictions of animals and plants. He could see how one of them was similar to the Liftonian sun-god, and spotted other things that looked like deities he'd heard of from other lands.

Niels took off his bag and pulled out a small, leather bound book. In it, he had copied everything he could of the ancient's language, of the clues that had led him to believe there was a city in the mountains, of the symbols that he was convinced were a part of the ancient's magic.

"In there," Niels flipped through the book till he found the right page, then pushed up his spectacles. "There is where we should find the source."

"Incredible," Mia breathed. "Any last bets? I think I want to change mine to Beryl's."

"Hmm." Beryl snorted. "Finally agree magic is more likely to be physical than some kind of ancient spirit?"

"Ah, leave her be." Gotthard said. "It's fine if you still believe in spirits, Mia. At this point that guess is as good as Beryl's. I myself still think it is foolish to take bets on what could possibly be the source of magic. I have no doubt that it will be beyond on our comprehension. I wouldn't be surprised if it takes us months of study to even recognize it."

"As I've told you," Niels shut his small book with dramatic finality. "Magic is symbolic. It's meaning itself, and it only stands to reason that as we as humans use symbols to convey mental meaning, magic uses symbols to convey physical meaning. It's a language, one that can be deciphered."

Beryl snorted. "Physical meaning. You academics and your nonsense words. Magic is a force like any other. Physical substances affect other physical substances."

"Might I remind you that you're an academic?" Gotthard raised an eyebrow. "This insistence on reducing human experience to only the physical is exactly why I was reluctant about your inclusion in this expedition. Not that I agree with Niels, of course. I simply think it's arrogant to presume that the magic of old will have any properties we can reduce to mere physical laws."

"All I'm saying is Niels’ theory is nonsense. Nielsense, one could say."

Mia elbowed Beryl. "Be nice to Niels." She said sternly, though a smile flited across her lips. "In a way, none of us would be here if it wasn't for him."

"Well, I would never claim such a thing." Niels turned and looked back down the bridge. "Shall we?" Without waiting for a response, he took a deep breath and began walking across the bridge. It was so narrow that they had to walk single file, which was fine by Niels. He certainly wouldn't turn his nose up at the opportunity to go first.

It took half an hour to walk across the bridge, no doubt in part because Niels was moving very, very carefully. He had no doubt that Mia would have skipped across the damn thing without hesitation, but he'd come too far to die in such a foolish way as slipping over the edge.

The bridge widened slightly as they got closer to the gold door. Niels's heart was racing in his chest. Answers, so close to answers. Soon all thoughts of caution were overpowered by the burning desire to know, and he was running, sprinting, the last yards to the door. He put his hand on the gold handle, shocked to find it warm to the touch, instead of the coolness he would expect from long untouched metal. He didn't wait for the others. He turned it and was both surprised and delighted to find that it was unlocked. He didn't even have to pull it open. As soon as the doorknob was turned the door swung inward invitingly.

Niels stepped inside to find himself in a small, gray room. Green moss flecked the smooth gray walls, cieling, and floors. It was the only living thing they had seen in their entire journey through the miles and miles of underground city. It grew in strange, beautiful patterns, not unlike the patterns formed by the archways outside.

The significance of the moss was lost on Niels. He didn't even notice it. He also didn't notice the unnatural smoothness of the gray walls, the familiar spherical shape of the room, or the strange, sharply sweet smell that permeatted the air.

Niels only saw the throne.

It was the only item in the room. It was, as far as thrones go, rather plain. Since being chosen for this expedition Niels had been taken to meet not only foreign dignitaries, but kings and queens. He'd seen thrones that towered several feet into the air, thrones riddled with jewels, thrones that held the most beautiful, the most frightening, and the most powerful people that he had ever met.

None were like this throne. This throne was the size of an ordinary chair. It's legs and back were a polished bronze, and it's seat held a beautiful dark blue cushion, embroidered with gold thread, which didn't have a single sign of wear. The bronze had some ornamentation, curves and floral shapes, and two teardrop shapes on each side of the back, but it wasn't ostentatious.

Despite its understated appearance, Niels knew it was a throne. The whole room existed around it, catered to it. In fact, the whole city did, he now realized. He knew without a doubt, that this throne was the center of everything.

"Gods above." He heard Mia gasp behind him. "It's beautiful." "This must be it then. Whatever this chair is made of, that's the source." said Beryl. "No, it's the throne. The throne itself." Mia said.

"We musn't jump to conclusions." Gotthard said. His voice, which was normally so peaceful and soothing that Niels found it annoying, shook slightly. "We're so conditioned to kowtow to every sign of authority. Even a supposed one like this throne. It might not even be a throne."

"It's a throne." Niels said. He walked closer to it. The metal gleamed in a way that commanded his whole field of vision.

"You musn't touch it." Niels realized that Beryl had grabbed his arm, was holding him back. "We don't know what it is, or how it will react to us." She pushed him behind her and quickly pulled on leather gloves. "Let me look at it first. It looks like polished bronze, but it could be entirely different. This isn't your wheelhouse, Niels. Look for any signs of writing, any clues as to what this room could be for. Mia, Gotthard, you should too."

It suddenly became all too much for Niels. Beryl had dismissed his opinion at every point, had steered them wrong countless times, because she had refused to listen to him. She hadn't been the one to spend decades of her life trying to prove the existence of an ancient, underground city. She hadn’t been the one to be laughed at time and time again, as he'd submitted proposal after proposal, until he was in too deep to ever be taken seriously in any other area of research. Even his own father had laughed at him. And when Niels had finally convinced him, it suddenly became his father's idea, his father's discovery, as everything else had. It had been a monumental effort to convince the council that he had to go on this expedition. And the others had never known; they didn't know how important this was to him, didn’t know if they didn’t succeed here he might as well not continue living. How could they? He hadn't tried to explain it to them, everything he sacrificed, everything he suffered. There'd been no point.

It was abundantly clear to him now, here, in the light of the throne, that there was nothing but this. Everything he had given up was for this.

Niels wrenched his arm from Beryl's hand and leaped toward the throne. He turned to face his companions as he fell backward into it. And suddenly his eyes were opened. He could see. He had been right.

He could see the structure of the world. The shapes that made up the room, the moss, his companions, he could see them as they were, not as shapes, but as symbols, symbols that not only reflected meaning, but created it. Symbols that could be changed.

He felt that he could hear someone shouting, but even these, the sounds that made words, were symbols. He could understand the symbols that composed the sound, and that understanding so filled his mind and seemed so much more monumental that he could hardly notice the meanings of the words.

Niels could hardly bear it. He felt his mind stretch and twinge, an overworked muscle that wasn't made to see so much. It took all he could muster to grasp meanings of the symbols one at a time, and as his awareness grew to understand the syntax of them, he felt so overwrought that he thought he would die.

But he didn’t die. And then he knew that he could change them. He reached out with his hand, with the arrangement of symbols that was his hand, and touched the symbols that composed Mia. They could be removed, changed, added to. The shouting turned to screaming, and he realized that Mia was gone. Horrified, he tried to write her back, to replicate the symbols he'd seen as best he could. But even with the sight the throne had given him, his mind was only human. He wrote the best approximation of the symbols of Mia that he could.

Shaken, he sat back in the throne and closed his eyes. He needed more time, to study more, to see more, before he could attempt to rewrite the symbols again. And he would learn to rewrite them, not just for himself, not just to prove his worth, but for everyone. No one would have to suffer again, once he learned to write the symbols.

He sat there watching, reading, listening, translating the symbols the throne gave him. Eventually the others were gone, but when they left and where they went Niels couldn't say. Their departure was the last thing he noticed, as he was pulled deeper and deeper into the soul of the throne. He couldn’t quite even be sure of that state of his body, as it was hard to discern from the symbols of the world that flooded his senses. It was troubling, to be sure, but once he knew the language of the symbols, once he fully understood them, he'd be able to fix anything, bring himself back to reality, because reality would be his to write.

Niels was just beginning to understand, just beginning, always just beginning. He could sit here forever, on this throne, in this gray room, until he finally understood.