Rings of Sorcery and Desire - Prologue & Chapter 1

PROLOGUE 

   The day she found the green door was worth all the weeks she spent hacking at vines with a machete, shoulders aching, fingers blistered. Her body was riddled with excitement, soaked in sweat. This was it. She just knew. She stroked the door’s green surface. Discovering it was worth a thousand mosquito and bug bites. She left Ohio for the jungles of the Amazon as an archeology grad student–and look. At last. I found it! She could have kissed the door. Instead she lovingly began brushing away the dirt and pebbles. The site was part of an archeological dig, uncovering ancient earthworks from a large-ish mound in the jungle. The work was overwhelming, impossible. The first damp log she sat upon was covered with a bright yellow-green fungus that promptly ate through the seat of her pants. 
   After three months she was tired of her graduate director, tired of digging, tired of wondering when for god’s sake they’d ever find anything interesting. As the most inexperienced member of the team, she was banished to the back of the mound where she was directed to uncover a rectangular anomaly the Lidar indicated under vines and dirt. Was it a ceremonial platform for the unnamed people of this area? She was to dig and find out–though it was clear that no one thought it would be anything as interesting as an altar. After a day of digging she found out that it wasn’t an altar. It was a green door. 
   Technically, the day she found the door was not a work day, but her graduate director was off at a bar almost one hundred miles away. There was no cell service either–no way to contact him until he returned the next day. 
She should stop. Stop and then wait to show him and the rest of the team. A picture formed: all of them working together on the door with brushes, until she was crowded out and left doing her usual job: hauling dirt away from the hole to sift through the dust for anything they missed. 
So she didn’t stop. Her excitement mingled with guilt. When it was completely uncovered, then she’d go and tell everyone. That’s what she’d do. Then it was uncovered, and still she didn’t go grab everyone. She forgot about the bugs that stung and bit at her, she forgot that she was watering the earth with a stream of constant sweat. It had levers. There was some kind of dial too. Like a bank vault. How bizarre! 
   The door was made from some kind of oxidized metal, but it wasn’t copper. The dial in the center held various symbols around it. This discovery was going to launch her career! What did those symbols mean? It could take decades to figure that bit out. There was a handle too. Could you pull the handle up? The bigger levers, closer to the dial also were etched with tiny symbols. None of it—other than the oxidation giving it the green patina–seemed to be decayed or rusted. Did the levers work? Oh, but she shouldn’t touch them, she could break them. Break them? They were metal. Still. 
   Resting her palm on the door, she brushed away the last bits of dirt embedded around three big levers, revealing at least seven different grooves that they could be notched into. Almost like a gear shift on a tractor or a sports car.  They didn’t look modern, these knobs and levers, but they bore absolutely no resemblance to anything ever found in this area. 
   She worked at a furious pace. She was careful, and her brush was very soft. Leaning down into the hole, with her weight all on one palm, resting upon the door, she peered at tiny symbols. What language were those symbols? It was just so crazy to find metal here. There was just one thing she was curious to see. Just one final thing and then, yes, she absolutely was going to call the other grad students who hadn’t gone to the bar with their professor. 
What would happen if she lined up the dial with one of the symbols around it—this symbol here, for instance, that looked like a feather, then flipped one of the levers that had a matching feather symbol? Would it unlock the door?What was on the other side? 
   Driven by curiosity, she did it. Resting one hand on the door, she put down her brush, set the dial to the feather, and then pushed the lever with the matching feather symbol into its top groove. She heard something click. Then another click. Then another. Before she could even come out of her frenzy of excitement and sit up, the central dial suddenly began to spin. The door dropped open beneath her into blackness. Leaning over it as she was, with all her weight forward, she fell right through it. 
   Flailing. She was flailing, and hit the stones so hard she was stunned, dizzy. Something about the stones struck her with dread. First of all, they shouldn’t be there. Also, a tall woman in long robes with symbols down the front stood there. This woman was startled as well. She realized that this woman must have been standing in front of the door, must have opened it, actually, as she was falling through. Her sense of the absurdity righted itself and she began to laugh. How comical she must have looked, her arms and legs flailing, as she scared this poor woman in the dirty gray sorceress’s robe witless. The woman clutched at her heart with one hand, her body plastered to the wall, her other hand holding up a large lantern. Oh, it was too much. 
   Who had the woman been expecting? It certainly wasn’t a sweaty, dirty, archeology student flailing all her limbs before smacking straight into the castle’s stone floor. 
   She knew somehow right then and there that she was not in her old world. There was no local stone in that part of the Amazon. And it wasn’t cold. This place was very chilly. Her lizard brain registered these things in an instant. Aside from shock and hilarity, she was relieved and awed. Relieved, because finally, finally, after searching her whole life, she’d wound up here–and found what she’d been seeking all along: magic!

Chapter 1 - Got One

A few years later…
   Prin stole into the sorceress’s lair. It had been two springs since she fell through the green door. The time was one rushed blur. After she first saw Hulgetta’s face and burst out laughing, the sorceress dragged by her hair into a room and locked her in. That wasn’t great, but she was released pretty quickly, and by that point she was as excited as a puppy being brought home for the first time. What was this place? She was so curious during the time she had to spend, sweeping, dusting, and chopping wood. It was hard work but she was always observing and learning the language. Once she had earned respect for her hard work and also a sliver of trust from Hulgetta, she was repaid by being allowed to watch the sorceress over her fire and by candlelight, as the sorceress attempted different spells, ranging from simple to intricate. 
From that point on, she was completely hooked. She learned one of the magic languages, she studied the rudiments of sorcery presented in a thick, fat, black sorcery primer–one of the few magic books Hulgetta owned that sat on her two meager book shelves in her study. Today, though–today she reached a whole other level.
“I got one.” 
   Hulgetta continued reading a spell book and ignored her. 
   “Oh! Sorry.” As an apprentice, she’d learned the hard way not to interrupt the sorceress while she was reading. Finally the grumpy woman turned the page and looked up.
   “Found one,” Prin said.
   “And still you live?”
   Prin bit her lower lip, her sense of triumph rapidly trickling down into doubt mixed with quite a bit of irritation and outrage. And still she lived? Yes, as it happened, she did still live. Oh, and without any words of warning from her mistress. Hulgetta was a bad boss. Prin knew the classic signs of being gaslit, made to feel easily replaceable, stupid, etc. It was a constant chore to have to remind herself that she was smart, she was capable, and she had a right as an apprentice to know what was what. Still, she knew Hulgetta’s methods were working. Slowly, slowly, she was becoming less confident each day. More nervous, more unsure of herself than when she’d arrived. 
   In fact, it had been a very dangerous day’s work for her. She would have appreciated a heads-up before she was given her new assignment. Instead, she’d been given a list of coordinates that morning. She was to use the coordinates on the green door and bring back whomever or whatever she found on the other side. So for much of the day she’d been peeking through the green door into some quite nasty places. Underneath her plucky exterior she’d been afraid—very, very afraid. Not only of the subjects on the other side of the door but also because by mid-morning she hadn’t brought anyone back. Wart had told her what happened to the apprentices who disappointed Hulgetta. They just weren’t there the next day. Well, that wasn’t going to be her fate.
   She put up her chin. Rule number one: don’t disappoint a sorceress. Rule number two: never let the sorceress see you sweat.
   “Well, do you want him or not? The door will be closing soon,” she said briskly.
   The mighty sorceress and dread cranky-pants Hulgetta sat hunched over her awful book, as always. No, she did not care if her apprentice was eaten by some wooly ice monster or ravaged by a green smoke demon.
   Finally, the sorceress finished the passage she was reading. She put the book down and stood in all her majestic frumpiness. 
    “Show me,” she commanded.
   Prin tossed her long braids behind her shoulders and turned back into the alcove. At the end of the alcove the door was open, but the other side was mostly covered by some kind of tapestry. Prin checked the central dial on the door one more time. In looks it was a cross between a bank vault and a roulette wheel. If it began to spin while they were on the other side, the door would shut, and then they’d be stuck there for good. She flipped the tab shaped lever on the edge of the door that Hulgetta had shown her. It was a lock. It acted as a sort of delay, keeping the door on that location and in the open position—for a while at least. Then Prin slipped through the magic green door into another place entirely. 
   Hulgetta followed her more slowly, her tall bulk hesitating while Prin slowly pulled back the tapestry that hung to about knee height. 
   “Where?” Hulgetta mouthed. The room was warmer than Hulgetta’s lair and a delicious smell of melted beeswax candles and scented geraniums hung in the air.
   Prin nodded to the other side of the room. “Over there,” she whispered softly. “At the other end. Reading. Hasn’t noticed so far.” The pale yellow stone of the room was curved, the ceiling tall. Sunlight soaked through tiny glass diamond shaped panes onto the stones making the room glow in the late afternoon light.
   “Shhh.” Hulgetta barely looked before she ducked under the tapestry and backed away. “Drop him,” came her faint command.
   Prin followed her boss back under the tapestry. “Yes, mistress. You mean…um…the sleep spell?”
   “Of course.” Hulgetta looked at her like she suddenly smelled shit.
   “Right now?” Prin whispered, barely speaking.
   The sorceress rolled her eyes. 
   “Okay, okay,” Prin said softly, wiping her hands on her hand-me-down sorceress robes. She hadn’t used the spell on a human yet. Here we go. First spell ever. She ducked back under the tapestry and into the sunny room. She pulled herself up to her full height, which wasn’t much, but it was the spirit of the thing that counted. 
   She focused on the tall, lithe figure reading from an enormous fat book sitting on its own special stand near the windows. The light pooled over the wine colored doublet across his shoulders and set his dark auburn hair ablaze. There was nothing more threatening about him than the aristocratic chill he threw into the room. She stumbled over her words slightly as she started reciting the sleep spell, her voice reaching out towards him. 
   “Mohell a’hylisse eterra oheh ama uhherta,” she whispered softly.
   He looked up suddenly, aware of her presence. She sped up the rest of the words of the spell, even as a buzzing feeling began to build up all around her. 
   A buzzing zap went out from him and struck her full on, but she kept going, saying the words. Her jaws were numb and her hands, feet and face tickled. The zap made her feel like a slot machine that had hit the jackpot. All parts of her were just buzzing, particularly down low. It left her head tingling as it traveled down her scalp and neck again and into her chest. A strange sensation. Strong, so strong but not…not exactly painful. The odd buzzing reached all the way down to her feet, and she shivered hard as her eyes locked with his. 
   Keep going. Keep going. She recited the spell to the very end. She’d practiced the words for so long she could have said them in her sleep.     
   She finished it and waited. The two of them stared at each other and his mouth opened.