The corridor beyond this door was steeper, and more sharply curved, and the right side opened onto a vast, yawning circular chasm that seemed to rise and fall forever at the centre of the tower (or at this part of the tower at least, Coraline had learned that things like geometry and physics didn't mean diddly in the Outer Realms).
She gripped the thin iron handrail as she walked steadily upwards, Azad and Abdul studiously ignoring each other in her wake. The stone underfoot was wet and rough, giving her swampers a good purchase as she hauled herself onwards. Each footstep echoed in the vast emptiness, which was only lit by Coraline's flashlight and the torches borne by Azad and Abdul.
"Who did you say the next person was, Azad?" she asked after five minutes of clambering over rough stone.
"A woman of the tribes that came from Asia, long after I was gone from the world," he answered.
"The Mongols," clarified Abdul, "I've only been able to glean small amounts of information from the world, but they left an impression. They swept like a tide across Eurasia like a punishment from Allah, into the Chin realms and into the Russias, into Hungary and Persia. And into the caliphate."
"The woman must have acquired the Necronomicon there," followed up Azad. "I spoke little with her when she came through, but I imagine she must have looted it. Her kind conquered and plundered blindly, she might not have even known how important it was."
"You give her too little credit," said Abdul firmly. "I spoke with her, and she knew exactly what she was doing. The kind of Genghis lacked for subtlety, but not for courage."
As the two fell back to arguing, Coraline decided to speak to the woman alone, and make her own impressions. They eventually neared the exit, a hewn stone door set into a protrusion from the winding stair. She grasped the handle and pulled it open.
It wasn't sunlight and serenity that greeted her this time, but a vast and chilling emptiness. Endless green and yellow grass extended in all directions to all horizons, stopped only by impossibly small and distant mountains. Wind howled across cold blue skies and sent clouds adrift. Thirty feet before her, a round yurt was the only distinctive feature in this barren lands.
As they edged their way to the small felt structure, a woman poked her head out from it and, upon sighting them, walked out the door frame and towards them.
She was of average height and size and wore fur and felt robes, with black hair tied into a long queue set with small jewels behind her head. She had dark golden skin and dark eyes that scrutinised Coraline as she drew closer.
"My greetings to you," she said (why the Necronomicon chose Iowan as a transliterated accent was a mystery that Coraline would have to solve in her own time.) "You are a fellow seeker for the truths of the Necronomicon, yes?"
"Yes. I'm Coraline Jones."
"I am Bolormaa, of the tribe of Khatagin and of the people of the Khanate. And I wish you better luck in your quest than I had. Or the men behind you, for that matter," she said, waving at Azad and Abdul, both of whom were standing at a distance from Coraline and Bolormaa. "I met them. I thought the warrior had given up hope?"
"He's got it again."
"Truly? You convinced him?" Bolormaa looked Coraline up and down. "You are young. Young indeed to do something as dangerous as this. How did you happen upon the book?"
"I..." Coraline hesitated. "It's a very long story, but lets just say I was introduced to the book by a friend. How did you find it?"
"Another long story. But one that I am in the mood to tell." Her eyes lit up. "When my people swept through the Arabic lands, when Genghis was still alive and leading us to glory, I was married to a cavalry archer captain in a tumen of the army. We moved together as part of the horde down through Persia and Arabia, and I raised our children as he fought the empire's enemies. He was a good husband as husbands go. He respected me, he loved our children, he fought well in his battles."
"And on one day, when he returned from the sacking of a city of the Arabs, he returned bearing gifts from his share of the plunder. A fine sword for himself, beads and gold toys for our son and daughter, and a jewelled necklace for me. And the book. He could not read, but he did know that words and the books that contained them were revered and highly valued by others. And so, knowing that I could read a Turkic language and without taking a look at it himself, he gave it to me, thinking that I might gain some pleasure from it."
"The language on the cover, which was unfamiliar to me, shifted to become written Mongolian, and I knew then that this was no normal tome. I began reading a portion that night, and my misgivings were confirmed and greatly increased by that little amount. The things it spoke of were too terrifying to be considered, but carried an undeniable truth to them that struck a dread into my heart. If such monsters, such unnatural abominations, could exist under the sun's light, what safety was there for my nation? For my tribe? For my family? And I swore that night to destroy the gods."
"I ventured into its pages, and went through what you are doing at this moment. I met these two Arabs as I went in, ignored their warnings, so focused was my fury, and confronted the heart of the Necronomicon. It took less than four minutes to break me, and once it had finished inflicting pain after pain on me, it left me here in the heart of the steppes."
"What do the steppes mean to you?"
"They mean desolation," spat Bolormaa. "They mean the land which I despised as I grew up, and the land for which I married a soldier to get away from. I wanted to see the other lands and peoples the world held, for I had no love for my home, which in turn had no love for me. My old tribe had..." Her face set here. "Let us talk no more of this. But the result is now that I have nothing left to me but the empty steppes. Unless ..." And here her eyes brightened, "Unless you desire my aid and company?"
"I do," said Coraline. "And listen. All these places you wanted to see, all these different lands and cities and wonders … they're all under threat. The Outer Gods … they're waging war on life itself. They're marching across the world and killing anyone in their path. If I don't succeed, then that's it for humanity. We're gone. So any help you can give, I'll gladly take."
"Then know this, Coraline," said Bolormaa, her eyes blazing as she drew herself up to her full height, "Whatever weapons you bear with you shall be of no importance at the end. Your sword will be useless. Your fists will be useless. Whatever weaponry you bring will be useless. Your will alone will save you and the world, for you will have to match it against the Necronomicon and it will be a terrible battle. Hone your mind as we walk, and compose yourself for what will come, for that alone will be your ally. And now ..." She turned and pointed at the shimmering outline of a door. "Let us go."
Coraline's hand closed around an invisible handle, and pulled the door open, revealing more stairs.
"By the way," said Bolormaa, falling into step beside Coraline as the four moved onwards, "How did your hair become blue?"
"My hair … ? Oh. It's dyed. You know, give it a new colour. I just chose blue because I thought it would look good."
"I approve," said Bolormaa firmly. "Blue is a holy colour to the sky father. We shall need his favour."
The new stairs were steeper, and darker, and had no handrail at the side to protect the incautious from a sudden plummet. Winds howled in the dark as the group progressed, giving each other support.
It was a longer journey as well, and dragged on for what seemed like hours.
"You'd think the Necronomicon would think to install a handrail after the first hundred years," Coraline quipped thirty minutes in.
"It isn't a patch on the Caliph's palaces, I'll say that much," said Azad dryly, heaving himself over a heavy stone ledge and helping Coraline up over the same, his scabbard scraping against the stone.
"I never thought I'd become nostalgic for wide-open grasslands," said Bolormaa, nearly slipping on a damp patch of moss, "But these stairs are achieving the impossible. We should congratulate them."
"Allah be merciful," spluttered Abdul, pulling himself over a high step with some difficulty, "But are we complaining about the stairs on our way to confront an ancient and unstoppable evil? I just want clarity on this, are we in fact doing that?"
"In our defence," called Coraline, some dozen steps ahead, "They're really bad stairs."
The door this time was a welcome relief.
They stumbled through it, and the scenery this time was decidedly different.
They were within a corridor of a castle, the walls made from a cosy brown stone with torches blazing in brackets along the wall. These, along with a vertical gash to the outside at the end of the corridor, provided all the light. At the end of the corridor, two wooden doors studded with iron nails faced one another, with a fainting moaning coming from the one on the left. Under the arrow-slit, a man kneeled.
He rose as Coraline came through, and turned and faced her down behind the slits of a greathelm. He wore plate armour, the steel shining in the soft light. His torso and upper legs were covered by a white mantle bearing a black cross, and his hands rested on the pommel of a forty-inch longsword, its tip resting on the stone floor. Metal wings, coloured black and gold, protruded from the sides of his helm.
"Another poor soul comes to test their mettle against the Necronomicon," he said in a deep, slow, sorrowful voice, given a metallic timbre by the helm. "I pray for your good fortune in this endeavour. But I pray equally that you will turn back while you still have the chance. This is a foe beyond your deepest nightmares that you choose to face."
"I've heard that before, but it hasn't sunk in yet," said Coraline with a touch of impatience. "I'm Coraline Jones. Azad told me that a knight had taken on the Necronomicon. I take it you're him?" Behind her, the others squeezed their way through the door and into the corridor.
"Azad? Oh, the Moslem. You are correct, in that I was a knight. I am Konstantin von Eisenstein, a former knight-commander in the Teutonic Order. Have you heard of us? I imagine that much has happened between your days and mine."
"Er," said Coraline. She had heard of the Templars, and that they were one of the orders of knights involved in the Crusades, and there might have been Hospitallers in the mix as well, but she hadn't heard of the Teutonics.
"We were one of the crusading orders in the Holy Lands, set up to safeguard the passage of pilgrims to the holy places. We were an order based in the lands of the Holy Roman Empire. When the last crusade failed in 1291, and we crusaders lost the city of Acre..."
"Good," snapped Azad, kicking a piece of moss off his boot. "It was never yours in the first place."
"None of you heathens have any claim to any portion of God's kingdom-on-earth," spat the knight, his voice rising and eyes flaring behind the helmet. "It was our duty to purge you from the Holy Lands."
"Your duty? Your duty to slaughter civilians and kill the faithful, your duty to desecrate all that was sacred, your duty to attack the innocent? You massacred the people of Jerusalem and Antioch on the dictation of a madman in Rome."
"It was the Moslems who attacked the Byzantines first," retorted Konstantin. "And it was the Byzantine emperor who pleaded for our help while you ravaged his lands and butchered his army at Manzikert. It was you ..."
"For god's sake, some perspective here would help!" yelled Coraline suddenly, cutting across the argument like a knife. "All this is centuries dead and buried. It shouldn't have to matter now, least of all when all our lives hang in the balance. I don't care what you two fought for or what you did or how you justified yourself or anything! The only thing that matters now, the only thing, is fighting the Necronomicon. Can't you work together on that at least?"
The fires from the torches churned and spat at the air as the crusader and mujihad stared each other down, their eyes not moving, their hands on their sword handles. Then they stepped back, Azad releasing his sword and Konstantin relaxing.
"We shall resume our discussion at a later date," Azad said without as much rancour.
"I shall look forward to it," said Konstantin. "Now, where was I in my tale?"
"You'd lost Acre," said Coraline.
"After that defeat, our order's holdings were in the German lands, including the subdued Prussian states. And we soon set our sights on a new people deserving of a crusade. The pagans in the east of Europe and around the Baltic, who spurned the path of the cross and invited God's scourge. I was young at the time we went to war against the pagans in the east, and I rose to the rank of knight-commander. We waged a bloody and brutal campaign through the Baltic's forests and towns, and we crossed swords with the Lithuanians and the Magyars and the Rus and a thousand other godless peoples."
"We even found the leavings of the Mongols when they had sent their hordes through the regions, and even a few shattered remnants of their people. As I and my unit purged many of these remnants and other heretics we encountered, I began to notice signs of a whole network of different cults of heathens working to repulse us from these anarchic lands. Their attacks were organised, they worked together, we encountered and killed messengers going between the different factions."
"During the winter of 1338, my force sacked a small fort that we believed served as the hub for the heretic resistance. We attacked during a snowfall, under cover of darkness, and I led my guard into the central keep after cutting our way through the sparse resistance. I cleaved their leader in two after a fierce battle in his hall, and I permitted my men and hired mercenaries to help themselves to the valuables in the fort. One of the crossbowman retrieved a old book from the desecrated chapel, intending to sell it to one of the priests amongst our entourage."
"As we camped for the night amongst the ruins of the fort, we were beset by a mighty force of heretics that emerged like a legion of ghosts from the blizzard. They were not only men, but also seemed to hold demons amongst their ranks, terrible winged beasts and great tangles of flesh and tentacles. They outnumbered us three-to-one, and we had to fight like demons ourselves to have any hope of victory. At the end of that long, cold, bloody night, I was the only one left standing, surrounded by the corpses of my soldiers and knights and priests, as well as the corpses of cultists and demons. I sighted the book looted by the crossbowman next to his sundered body, and as my gaze drifted across it, the lettering on the cover unnaturally shifted to form Necronomicon. I became certain then that it was an unholy book, one revered by the devil's minions, and I suspected that it could secrets on the cults that I could use against them and the monsters they had brought with them. My will was strong, my faith was pure, my sword was sharp. What had I to fear?" Konstantin laughed a bitter laugh. "And you know the rest, I fancy."
Coraline looked around the castle corridor. "Is this the fort where you fought?"
Konstantin's face darkened behind the helmet. "No, it is … something else altogether. I … I was not a perfect knight. We are not permitted to take a spouse, but there was a woman I loved, and who loved me in return. We married in secret, and I arranged for her to have a good posting at Koenigsberg, and I visited her as often as I could. I even considered renouncing my knightly vows for her, when she told she was pregnant with our child. But during the birth … something went wrong, and though I raced to the birthing chamber as fast as I could, I could not enter for fear of revealing myself as the father and disgracing us both. And I did nothing but stand outside as she screamed for ten hours straight, crying out for myself or God to come to her. And at the end, I buried her and our stillborn child with my bare hands in the castle's orchards. The next month, I assumed control of a force of knights and mercenaries and never looked back. And now the Necronomicon has seen fit to place me outside that chamber for all eternity, forever and always hearing my wife and child die. And I shall have its blood for this." Konstantin's hands locked tight around his blade on that last pronouncement, and his eyes became cold lights behind the helmet's slits.
Never, thought Coraline, had she seen such fury in a pair of eyes.
"If you wish me for your crusade, Coraline Jones, then I shall march with you to the gates of Hell and back. I will punish the Necronomicon for daring to exist in our world, for it exceeds the devil in its evil."
"I hear you," said Coraline softly. "Don't worry. I don't intend to go easy on it."
"Then let us depart through this door," said Konstantin, rapping the door on the corridor's right, "And leave this place behind."
The five walked through into what could only be called a staircase by the most generous of definitions. It was a series of wooden planks set into a rising spiral, with at least a foot's distance of empty space between each damp plank. Rough holes in the wall served as handholds.
Bolormaa took the lead, moving quickly and nimbly up the planks, with Abdul close on her tail. Coraline followed cautiously, keeping a firm grip on the wall and moving slowly and deliberately onwards and willing herself to not look down no matter what. Azad was behind her, his chainmail restricting him and making his progress hard. Konstantin lurched at the back, the planks creaking in as alarming a fashion as possible under his plate armour. The small field of vision provided by his helmet didn't help him either.
The only thing that could be said in the staircase's favour was that it was relatively short, with the exit rising into view after a mere twenty minutes of struggling and slipping and assorted terrors in the dark.
The latest room fitted all the classical definitions of hell apart from the absence of brimstone or cackling imps. The sky was filled with black smoke and angry red clouds that warped and merged together in the atmosphere. Blackened, smoking ruins jutted from the ground, with corpses in varying states of defiled-ness scattered everywhere, lying on the ground and impaled on scorched posts. Flies buzzed and fires roared across the tortured city in all directions.
In the middle of a desolate street, a man and a woman huddled together on a bare patch of ground, and at first didn't hear the group emerging from the door in the wall of a shattered house. They heard the various exclamations and shouts of disgust and fear however, and turned to face the group. The man was tall and wore clerical robes, and wore a gray turban over his dark hair. His face had the distinctive nose and jaw of the Alhazreds, though his eyes were a light shade of blue. The woman by his side wore a green hijab and a darker green dress and blouse. She was smaller than her husband, and her eyes were a deep shade of brown.
"Good day to you," said the man, extending a hand as Coraline drew close. "I am Hasan ibn Mahraz Alhazred, an iman and scholar of the Outer Realms."
"I am Faiza bint Sara Alhazred," said the woman. "May we safely assume that you too have come intending to destroy the Outer Gods?"
"You assume correctly," said Coraline, taking the hand offered. "I'm Coraline Jones. Er, this might sound like a strange question in any other circumstances, but what period in history are you from?"
Hasan and Faiza exchanged a look. "We wish to avoid confusion since we don't know whether we use the same calendar as you," said Faiza after a moment. "Am I correct in assuming you are American?"
"Correct."
"Then at the time we started reading the Necronomicon, a man called Carter was the president of your country. Does he sound familiar to you?"
"Carter!" exclaimed Coraline. "Then you're only about thirty years distant from my time! Are you Miss Alhazred's … sorry, are you Abra's mother and father?"
"You know her?" said Faiza with surprise. "Is she well?"
"She's well. She's part of an organisation that fights the Outer Realms."
"That's our daughter," said Faiza with approval.
"Truth be told," sighed Hasan, "We'd sooner that didn't happen, considering why we read the Necronomicon in the first place. We hoped she wouldn't have to grow up in a world where such monstrosities existed, much less have to fight them."
"We'd met each other through the Outer Realms," said Faiza. "I'd studied them since my teens, and hunted them since my university days, and I met the Alhazreds when I followed up a lead in Saudi Arabia. Hasan's family had long been cursed and preyed upon for the deeds of its ancestor..."
"Once again, I'm very sorry about that," said Abdul. "But I genuinely didn't know that would occur down the generations."
"Give your worthless apology to my brother-in-law," snapped Faiza, "Except that you can't, because a damn shoggoth snatched him off the street and … "
"Peace, Faiza," murmured Hasan, winding his hand around hers. "We met and married because of mutual interests regarding the Outer Realms, and we planned to meet up with a group we heard was forming in America. But our research progressed to the point where we managed to pinpoint the location of the true Necronomicon. We found it in an old abbey in Lithuania, paid the abbot a healthy amount for it, and spirited it back to Arabia, using whatever sorcery we had to mask its presence."
"Our original plan was to link up with the Americans and share it with them," said Faiza, "I was pregnant at the time, so our plan was to leave our child with Hasan's parents and then go to America. But when the girl was born..."
"We re-evaluated our plan, and forgot to be foes of the Outer Realms in our haste to be parents," said Hasan ruefully. "When I first saw Abra in her mother's arms, well … I felt equal parts joy and anger. Joy that we had brought something so beautiful into the world. And anger that the creatures of the Outer Realms dared to share that same world. We decided there that if we gleaned the knowledge to destroy the gods then, we could create a world in which our daughter, and all the daughters of the world for that matter, could live at peace. And we believed that, with our experience and knowledge, we could beat the Necronomicon on its own ground."
"We left Abra with Hasan's parents while we prepared to begin reading. They knew the perils, and begged us to reconsider, but we were determined. And we paid the price for our arrogance," said Faiza.
"The Necronomicon placed us here, presenting us with our ultimate horror. Failure." said Hasan. "A world ripped apart by the Outer Gods. A dead world, in which all our work and all the development of civilisation and humanity and life itself came to naught. A nightmare not just for us, but for all."
Coraline looked around at the burning buildings. She alone knew how close that nightmare was to fruition.
"That's what's going on right now," she said. "Earth is under attack right now, and I'm trying to stop them before this nightmare becomes a waking reality."
"Then what are you talking with us for?" whispered Faiza in rapt horror. "Quickly, you must press onwards. We are the last victims. Between here and its heart, there is nothing but whatever servants the Necronomicon has gathered to itself. The door is over here," she said, ushering them over to a door that had once done sterling duty as the portal for a small neighbourhood greengrocers.
"And so the Necronomicon's history in full is known to you," commented Abdul to Coraline as they stepped over broken glass and scattered limbs. "It was written by me and gained the power and malevolence of an Outer God. It remained in Arabia for centuries until the Mongol invasion shepherded it north to the Baltic realms. It corrupted many there, hung around for further centuries until taken briefly back to Arabia, and then transported to America, where it claimed you. It claimed myself, my son, one of a race of warriors, a knight-at-arms, and two dedicated hunters of the Outer Realms. An impressive track record."
"For a given value of "impressive"," said Coraline, unsure where Abdul was going with this.
"My point is," said Abdul, gesturing at the ruins around them, "Are you still determined to go on, knowing what it does? What it will do to you, given the chance, and what it has done to others? In spite of its power, are you still resolved to do this?"
"I'm not a quitter," said Coraline. "Heck, now that I know the sort of thing it does, I'm more determined to stop it than ever. I don't know if I'll win or not, but if I don't try, who else will?"
"Nobody, I imagine," said Abdul with a smile. "You still do not fail to impress me, Coraline. When did you first encounter the Outer Realms, if I may ask?"
"A Beldam tried to steal my soul and kidnapped my parents," said Coraline, drawing upon the memories that now seemed so distant. "I took my parents back, kicked it in the face, and me and my friend dropped its hand down a well."
Abdul decided that, all things considered, further commentary would be redundant.
Hasan opened the last door.