The Chronicles of Riddick - Alan Dean Foster [40]
The sculptures that decorated its high walls, many commissioned by the great Kryll himself, were designed to make an indelible impression on all who looked upon them. Like the vast open space in which they were set, they were intended to impress upon visitors the inevitability of the final passage. Within its tomblike aura, dozens of the penitent and the hopeful trod the nearest thing to the Threshold the mind and skills of man could create. The overall result was to humble, to shrink, to reduce in stature any who passed through.
Riddick strode along coolly, taking it all in, his face betraying no clue to what he might be feeling. Flanked by Dame Vaako, the Purifier, and others, he followed the Lord Marshal without comment. The place was an absolute and unapologetic celebration of death, an embracing of biological termination that was almost loving. To almost anyone else, the sheer scale of it was nothing less than mind-boggling.
Riddick’s mind was not easily boggled.
Dame Vaako had acted as guide and interpreter ever since they had entered the ship. A fusion of fiery pepper and thick honey, her voice tended to stir more than academic curiosity in anyone it favored. With Riddick, however, only the words themselves penetrated.
She gestured at the imposing surroundings as they advanced deeper into Necropolis. “Six regimes of Necromongers have called this home.” She pointed to a row of imposing statuary. “Past Lord Marshals. All of them have crossed the Threshold. As will all those who believe, eventually. Magnificent, isn’t it?”
“Kinda dark, even for me,” Riddick replied, taking it all in. “I mighta gone a different way.”
“True of us all,” observed the Purifier candidly. “One’s fate cannot be predicted at birth. Only time, circumstance, and study can properly prepare one for a life. We never know until then which way we will be asked to choose. All too often, no choice is given, and that way is forced upon us.”
Continuing on, they passed beneath a suspension bridge of living figures. Clamped into coffinlike assemblies of wires and tubes and instrumentation, their expressions ran the gamut from the tormented to the beatific. At a glance from Riddick, the Purifier explained.
“Converts. Some have difficulty adapting to what they have chosen. Here they learn how one pain can lessen another.”
“Yeah,” Riddick murmured. “This place is a real cradle of education.”
They continued on, until a side passage emptied into a circular grotto that was as austere as the previous portion of Necropolis had been adorned with the lavishly macabre. It struck Riddick immediately that he had been allowed to take the lead and that no one had followed him in. He turned a slow circle. Dame Vaako stood in the portal through which he had entered. There was no sign of the others.
Too focused on the extraordinary to notice the ordinary, he chided himself, waiting for whatever might come. What came first was the voice of Dame Vaako, her tone as serpentine as her shape. It was unbending, but tinged with sympathy. Sympathy for what? he found himself wondering. What did he need her sympathy for? He had a feeling he was about to find out.
“Relax,” she advised him. “Don’t try to fight it. The more you resist them, the greater the potential damage will be.”
“Them?” he thought to himself. “Who the hell is ‘them’?”
He looked around sharply. Those were his words, his thoughts. But they had sounded aloud in the grotto, echoed by voices as wraithlike as they were distinctive. There was no one else in the chamber but him. Nothing else but floor, ceiling, and walls.