The Chosen of the Chamber
Book One in the Girl of the Chamber quartet
CHAPER ONE: EXPLOSION
Cleanna – known as Anna by close friends and boyfriend Logan– walked towards the chapel door, with a heavy stone in her heart. The Midwinter festivals were to begin in less than a month and it was her job to go sweep the chapel that housed the Chamber of the Ordeal.
Anna hated cleaning the chapel. Every time she even thought of her cleaning duties her innards twisted, and her stomach felt as if a small storm was brewing inside. She was never this afraid of the chapel – but more importantly the Chamber that the chapel housed – until a few years earlier. Of course, she had a common fear of the chapel that had killed the handsome lad Joren so many years ago. However, her fear escalated after her first encounter into the chapel three years earlier.
Three years ago she was fifteen and had been working as a maid for almost a year. It was around that time when she had a new overseer. The new overseer was a wretched woman who forced Anna to call her Madame Kresa. Madame Kresa had been in the service of Cleanna's noble family earlier that year. However, after what happened to Cleanna's family, Madame Kresa – as well as all the other maids – lost their jobs. Madame Kresa had to go to begging for a few months, until she had been taken on due to pity. It was only a few months after being taken in that she had been promoted to overseer. She was very bitter towards Anna and gave her the worst possible jobs there were. If it wasn't cleaning the latrines, or scrubbing the kitchen then it was…
…Cleaning the chapel that housed the Chamber of the Ordeal.
She had first went in there three years ago, feeling more agitated at her new assigned duty than fear towards the chamber. But when she had first walked into the chapel, she saw a site that still haunted her dreams. Five dead bodies lay in the wooden pews as if they had been peacefully laid to sleep. But there was nothing peaceful about them.
They looked like nothing more than dried carcasses. They were instantly mummified, with their faces still twisted in agony, and their dry, brittle arms reaching our in front of them as if to ward away an invisible foe.
They were thieves. They had entered the chapel a month earlier thinking that it was the Gods luck beaming down on them – they found a deserted chapel and hallway that was full of Mithros gold. It was just calling out for them to steal it! Little, did they know that there was an unseen and unknown force in the chapel: The Chamber.
Nobody had dared entered the chapel since the last midwinter, in fear of the devious Chamber. They had lain in their death for weeks until Anna had been assigned to the chapel. Not only did squires stay away because they feared the superstitions, but the Chamber had a wrath that not even the greatest mages knew about.
Anna reached the door, as those past memories filtered through her mind. She tried to imagine herself pushing those memories out, and kept telling herself that the Chamber of the Ordeal had never harmed her in the four years of service there. But she suddenly remembered the faces locked in a death scream, their dry skin pressed against the bones, and Anna felt the bile rise in her throat. Anna couldn't control herself and vomited in a small pile next to the chapel door.
Just one more thing I'm going to have to clean up, Anna thought bitterly to herself as she wiped the corners of her mouth with the back of her sleeve.
Anna took some deep breaths and then pushed the door open, causing a cloud of dust to fly into the air. Slits of sunlight filtered into the chapel, illuminating the dust like a million floating dirty candles. She waited until the dust cleared and then looked in the chapel. It was a basic chapel, with two rows of wooden pew facing a large golden disk that was the sun God Mithros.
"Mithros help me through this." Anna prayed and then pulled out her broom and began sweeping. There was a thin layer of dust on the floor, and Anna just wanted to get rid of the dust as fast as possible. The quicker she swept, the faster she was out of the dreaded chapel.
Occasionally she would glimpse the Chamber door out of the corner of her eye and she would shiver in fear. The door was so ordinary, so normal, how could it be so down right evil? Every time she saw the door she would involuntary shiver and then feel the bile rise in her throat again. She had to shake her head to clear it and take deep breaths until she was calm.
She began cleaning until she became closer to the door. She suddenly remembered last year when she had told her boyfriend, Logan, her worries about the Chamber. At first he laughed at her worrying, but when he saw how upset she was, he tried to make it better. He wanted to show her just how harmless the Chamber was, and brought her into the chapel to make her confront her fears. To show her how harmless the door was, he leaned against it and planted his palm right above the doorknob.
That was his mistake.
As Anna had screamed, Logan became stiff, and then he started shaking. His eyes rolled around being his sockets, and Anna tried to get his attention but was too afraid to get any closer. She eventually ran out of the chapel screaming, and had to get a healer to come and help her. By the time they had gotten there Logan was sitting on the floor, his knees hugged to his chest. He was pale and sweaty, and he was ranting about seeing her mutilated corpse, and his father with a knife, and his younger sister drowning as he was chained to the floor, and other horrible things.
That had forced her to become even more fearful of the Chamber. But now she had swept all of the chapel, except for the door to the Chamber and he had nothing left. She took a deep breath to calm her down, and forced herself to go clean.
Do it for your parents and family! She screamed at herself in her mind. Clean to get them out of prison!
As she got closer to the door, she noticed something very unusual. There was a thin layer of dust on the floor, and she could see footsteps in the dust. They were large footsteps, and they were leading directly from the chapel door to the Chamber. There was also another set of identical footsteps leading from the Chamber door to the exit of the chapel. She had not noticed them before because she was sweeping so furiously that she hadn't even looked at what she was sweeping. But now that she saw them she became confused. Whose footsteps were those? And who would voluntarily go into the chapel and into the Chamber?
Those many confused thoughts dashed through her head, until they were gone, when she felt a powerful force in her mind. She felt as if a large, cold hand had grabbed her mind, and she screamed out in pain and surprise. Her eyes clenched, and her hands went to her temple, but the invisible hand continued to squeeze her brain, and it brought Anna down onto her knees.
Anna gasped as she felt the hand tighten, and then begin to pull her forwards. She gasped in pain, and her mind was swimming in a flurry of pain. She didn't realize what she was doing, but unless she went the direction where the hand was pulling her, a searing pain ripped through her mind.
She was slowly crawling on all fours as the invisible hand pulled her forwards, using her brain like a cruel leash. Pain had confused her thought process, and she didn't know what she was doing. All she knew was that she had to move forward.
As pain surged throughout her body she forgot the fear of the Chamber, and forgot the world around her. She just kept slowly crawling forward, her teeth clenched in pain. The invisible hand didn't release her until she felt something cold and hard on her forehead.
It was the Chamber of the Ordeal – and her forehead was pressed right against it.
The hand released Anna and she had only a moment to release a horrible scream, before she felt herself surged forward. She felt as if her whole body was sucked into the small area of stone where her head touched the Chamber door. Everything suddenly went dark, and she felt as if she were lost in her desolate mind, the shadows coming in from all sides.
HELP!
In her mind, Anna screamed in pain as that horrible voice filled her mind. It felt as if a thousand needles had been shoved into her ears, and she longed to close her ears with her fingers and block out the pain. But she couldn't feel her body – she was locked in her mind. The only thing that she felt was the cold section of the Chamber door that was pressed against her forehead. It was every other part of her body had disappeared. Only her mind remained.
HELP ME!
There was that same, Gods-cursed voice! It wasn't really as if words were talking to her, but that was the only way she could describe it. It was that screaming, that sounded so forceful yet so pleading and scared. Anna felt the fear, rather than heard it, in that painful voice and she too began to feel fear. It filled her mind like a rushing flood, and she imagined that her body would probably be shaking. She was touching the door, and she couldn't feel her body! She tried to pull away form the Door's grasp, but it was as if she were glued to the spot.
HELP ME HELP ME HELP ME HELPMEHELPMEHELPME!
The horrible, commanding voice began to scream faster and faster, and Anna suddenly got the impression of a wheel spinning around faster, and faster. That's what that horrible voice sounded like, and as if it would soon spin so fast that it would turn into just babble.
Sight was suddenly given back to Anna in a horrible flood of energy. She felt her eyes wretched open, and a wash of images flooding into her vision. The images were so bright, and so fast, and so cluttered that she felt pain in her mind, while the rest of her body was still unnaturally numb.
Suddenly, one of the blurry images froze. She was looking at the carving of a face in the middle of a door. The face was stone, and smooth, and apparently sexless. The stone began to move, and the mouth opened and let out that horrible screaming that she heard before. It was that sexless stone face that had been screaming for help!
The scene she was watching quickly panned 180 degrees and she found herself looking in the direction of the sexless faces eyes. She was in a small chamber, most likely the Chamber of the Ordeal. Shadows from all corners of the room threatened to collapse upon themselves, and turn the room into nothingness. In the middle of the room, there was a strange contraption floating in the air, as if suspended by and invisible wire.
It was a smooth, semi-transparent disk that looked as smooth as the surface of a pond that had never met a breeze. The clear stone was about a foot and a half wide, but only like half an inch in diameter. And it was in a ring of pure polished bronze. And the disk was spinning. It was spinning so impossibly fast that Anna assumed it must cut the very air itself.
The disk began to spin faster, and faster, and faster, and faster! And then, without warning, it came to a sudden stop. A huge crack abruptly appeared in the surface of the clear glass, and the glass all shattered to the floor.
And Anna suddenly felt herself free.
In one great instant of pain, she felt every sense in her body be brought back to her. She was suddenly flying backwards, a huge chunk of stone propelling her backwards. Everything happened in a blur, and she saw pieces of gray stone – pieces of the Chamber – fly past her. She landed on her back in a fatal fall that knocked the wind out of her, and seemed to break every bone in her body.
But her fall wasn't the end of it. As she hit the ground another huge pieces of stone buffeted into her, sending her sliding across the floor, as more remnants of debris rained upon her face, arms, neck, and body. She felt stones rip through her skin, and pierce her muscles. Horrible screams of pain were released from her throat and she continued to be pushed against the smooth surface until she crashed against the back wall, with a horrible boom. She felt another huge piece of rock hit her leg, and then she felt one more hit her head. It thin and sharp as a sword and it pierced her right in the middle of her forehead, going through bone and pushing it through her brain.
She had one more vision of that stone and sexless face, and then everything went dark.
Authors Note: Thanks for reading! I hope you liked it! I know that it wasn't much but I didn't want to commit myself to a fan fiction until I know that people will like it. So this is kind of a teaser to see what you think. But I'm hoping that it will raise enough questions and intrigue to want you to keep reading. This, like all of Tamora's books, will be a quartet and this is book one which will probably be the shortest out of all four books.
This book deals with the Chamber of the Ordeal and you learn all of its secrets. But this book is also almost a follow up to Protector of the Small considering it deals with the Scanran war and such. This also deals with relationships, and love, and trust, and betrayal, and action – all the good stuff that makes a Pierce-good story.
I really hoped that you liked it and please, please, please review. If I get enough reviews I'll probably update it by next weeks. All reviews are welcome – praise and flames alike. Please review!
