The High House (16 page)

“You speak your father’s nonsense,” Murmur said. “It is the idealism of youth, which he never outgrew. You must learn to be practical.”

Duskin shook his head. “Mother, I must learn to follow my own way. Perhaps Father was idealistic, but he was brave and kind as well.”

“You were only six when he vanished; you do not remember him clearly.”

“I do! There was strength about him, whatever his faults. Let me be an adult!”

Murmur’s voice hardened. “Very well, if you wish to be an adult, then let us speak of adult matters. The anarchists could never enter the library on their own, not even with the keys, unless they were invited.”

Even through the spy-hole, Carter saw his half brother’s eyes widen. “Mother, you cannot mean …”

“They will be the force which makes you Master. Do you think we can simply stand around and wait for Carter to relinquish his title?”

“What have you done?” Duskin was on his feet. “The anarchists, invited here? How can we control them? How could you do this to the house?”

Murmur rose to meet him. “How could I not? You must become the lord of the manor. When I married your father, I was a princess of Meszria; I came here thinking to live in a world of high politics, of great riches. But he would not rule that way, speaking always of what the house wanted, what the house needed, as if it were a living thing. Power must be used; there are many kingdoms beyond the White Circle owing no allegiance to us; treaties must be made, kingdoms must be broken if they will not deal with us. We are close for the first time; the anarchists can help our cause.”

“Say no more!” Duskin cried, tears in his eyes. “I won’t hear it! Are we traitors to all I’ve ever known? Did Brittle die on my account?”

“Brittle was an old fool, and there are always casualties. But I did not know he would be harmed.”

“Brittle was my friend! I won’t hear it!”

Duskin lurched outside Carter’s view, and a moment later a door slammed shut. Lady Murmur looked down at the carpet a moment, frowning, then sat back in the chair to study her eyebrows.

Carter withdrew from the spy-hole. He motioned to his friend and they moved farther down the passage, out of earshot.

“I heard it all,” the lawyer whispered. “We have found our betrayer.”

“Let us see what lies beyond,” Carter said.

The passage continued to curve, and the men looked into many rooms, so that Carter realized they were making a slow circle all along the second floor, past the Rose, Lilac, Marigold, and Daffodil bedrooms, the drawing room, boudoir, day nursery, night nursery, sick room, into the women’s servants’ quarters, around past the workroom and the schoolroom. At last they reached a narrow stair, which he knew must be built opposite the wall running beside the main staircase. Tattered brown carpet covered the steps, less for decoration, he thought, than to muffle the footsteps of any going that way. Through a spy-hole he discovered he could indeed see the ebony banister and the green carpet of the main stairway.

As they descended the stair, the ceiling, constructed of cedar planks, sloped so as to remain slightly above their heads, making it seem they walked down a long tunnel. The sweet cedar scent buoyed their spirits, and they quickly reached a landing, with a portal leading to their right, while the stair continued downward into darkness. Carter’s lamp revealed a long passage, much like the first, which he felt must allow viewing of the ground floor. He decided to follow it at once, and to return after to explore the lower regions.

Once within the passage, he saw another corridor intersecting from the south, so that he suspected the course made a complete circle around the entire floor. This was later confirmed, as they passed the rooms in a slow circle, beginning with the main stair, then proceeding to the gentlemen’s room and the picture gallery, where hung the portraits of all the Masters of the High House in neat, orderly lines; through the spy-hole Carter saw his great-grandfather, Ethan Anderson, in his white navy uniform and gray moustache. Beyond the picture gallery they passed the morning room, the drawing room, then east beside the transverse corridor, gentlemen’s stair, the entrance hall, the dining room, the butler’s bedroom and pantry, north along the housekeeper’s corridor and room, east beside the scullery, kitchen court, and kitchen, back south along the servants’ hall, then west beside the men’s corridor, the footman’s room, and the gun room. There were other rooms as well, but these lacked spy-holes.

“The library should be next,” Hope said. “Is it safe to go there, do you think?”

“It’s the reason I came this way. Captain Glis has barred the doors, but I want to get a glimpse.”

They had gone quietly before, but now went with even greater caution; the floor was bare wood and creaked at every step. At this side of the house the ceiling opened above them to ten feet, and they could hear the rain against the eaves, so that they knew they were under the lower roofs to the south. It made it more difficult to hear, but the soft beating muffled their footfalls as well.

Behind the first spy-hole lay the foyer area just inside the library entrance. Beneath the light of a lantern stood two men with cruel eyes and hawk noses, dressed in gray mail and heavy, black boots. One carried a truncheon in his left hand, the other was casually desecrating a dolomite column with a long, glistening knife. From his viewpoint, Carter saw that none of the anarchists were near the hallway doors.

Carter led farther down the passage, to the next observation point, where he found himself looking across the bookshelves. A dim candle burned upon a small table, and three more of the anarchists sat there, eating from oily leather bags and spilling wine across a pair of books stacked on the table. Carter could just see their faces within the circle of light.

“How did they manage it?” one asked, in a worried voice.

“They have an amplitude of armaments,” another said, a portly, bearded man, with close-set eyes like a boar.

“But the whole company disintegrated in a twinkling, and not a book destroyed,” the first said. “It could easily have been us. I don’t like it. I will not be fodder, not even for the Bobby.”

“I wouldn’t let him hear you say it,” the third man said. “At any rate, consider the remuneration when the house is ours. Not just monetary rewards, although those will be ample; we will be the harbingers of the New Order. It will be glorious. Those that are dead will have no share, leaving more for us.”

“If we live to see it,” the frightened man said.

“Hush, he comes,” the portly man said.

The Bobby entered Carter’s view, his face devoid of ears, nose, or mouth, but possessing large, dark eyes under heavy brows.

“We have discovered a way into the basement,” he said, though no lips moved. “I want two of you to come with me. We have a task there.”

“Are two enough?” the frightened man asked.

“There is little danger. We simply have to open a door. We can’t reach the Entropy Door in the attic; the dinosaur guards it too well, but this one has no watchmen at all. Come quickly.”

Two of the men followed the Bobby away into darkness, while their timid comrade remained at the table, drinking his wine.

“We have to follow,” Carter whispered. “Down the stair.”

They hurried along the passage, and turned a corner, only to discover that the way opened into a small room, with a metal canister lying upon the floor.

“Is this familiar?” Carter asked, halting to inspect the chamber.

The lawyer looked around. “Perhaps. I’m not certain.”

“Do you remember, in our dream, when Brittle was murdered? The Thin Man brought us into a room behind one of the bookcases.”

“You’re right! Could this be the same?”

Carter bent down and examined the canister. What do you make of this?”

“It looks like the materials to construct a bomb. Here is a timer. I’ve seen such in the courtroom, though none quite like this. It isn’t armed; I’m certain of that.”

“Could one like it have caused the explosion in the library? If so, who set it? The Thin Man?”

“If he did, it raises many questions. He threatened to oppose you before, if you remained in the house. Why would he help us? And if not him, then who?”

“We will leave it for now; the matter of the basement is more urgent.”

They hurried on, up a rickety flight of stair, the way they had gone in their dream, but this time, instead of leading to Carter’s bedroom, it wound back to the wooden stairs where the men had begun, completing the circle of the ground floor.

The thunder, which had been a soft rumbling above their heads, died away into silence as they descended into what could only be the basement. The musty odor of damp stone and earth rose to meet them; the walls and ceiling gave way to mortar and brick. Beetles and slugs patrolled along the granite steps. Carter pushed through the cobwebs and warily studied the holes in the brick, gaping like vipers’ dens. The close proximity of the walls, which had been tolerable before, seemed to enfold him, as if the weight of the whole house lay upon his breast, and he suddenly found he could hardly breathe.

“Are you all right?” Hope asked softly.

Carter gasped for air and fought the sweeping panic. He nodded and went on, not certain if he was “all right” at all, trying not to consider how much the walls resembled the sides of a well, and he descending to its bottom.

A pinpoint light, shining like a tiny star, marked another spy-hole. Carter looked in, expecting to find nothing, and at first all appeared indistinct, but when his eyes adjusted, he found the Bobby already arrived, accompanied by his two servants, standing before a gray door beside a dusty stair, beneath a sallow light. In his hand, he held the Master Keys. Had there been a way, Carter would have smashed through the wall, attacked the monster, and seized the bronze ring, but he could do nothing except watch.

The Bobby brushed the dust off the front of the door, exposing cryptic runes carved across its face. With a soft, ugly chuckle, he said, “This is the one, the Door of Endless Dark. None have opened it before. We will see if I have the strength.”

He searched the ring and selected an ebony key, one Carter remembered well, for its head was carved into the shape of a skull, with hollow, foreboding eyes; as a child he had found it both exciting and disturbing. The Bobby seemed to grapple with it as he dragged it to the lock, as if it resisted him with human strength. Clutching it with both hands, groaning from his efforts, he twisted the handle with his thumb, and the lock opened with a loud click.

“All together,” he rasped. “We must pull it wide.”

All three anarchists grasped the heavy knob. Their first pull opened it the tiniest of cracks. A single sliver of blackness slowly oozed out from between door and frame. The room was dim, filled with shadows, but this substance was not the absence of light, rather the presence of Dark itself, the emptiness before the making of the worlds and the weaving of the first suns, a Dark of the abandoned soul, and of despair. Already it covered the door frame, and as if in doing so, caused it to cease to exist.

“Make haste,” the Bobby commanded. “Open it wide!”

Carter suddenly knew it was imperative the door be opened no farther. “Scream,” he hissed to Hope. “Wail like a banshee at the top of your lungs. At the count of three.”

Together, the two men bellowed, and then ceased abruptly at Carter’s command. In answer, one of the anarchists turned and fired a pistol, even as Carter pushed Hope down. The bullet struck the stone, but did not penetrate, and Carter raised his own firearm to the spy-hole, which was only large enough to fit the barrel. He pulled the trigger, hoping it would not backfire. Looking quickly, he saw the portly anarchist clutching his shoulder—a fortuitous strike from an unaimed gun.

“Away!” the Bobby cried. “They have found us. Away!” He bolted up the stair, leaving the other man to help his wounded comrade.

“We must return to my room,” Carter said. “We have to reach the basement and shut that door.”

They made a furious dash back up the steps, and by the time they reached Carter’s bedroom, both men were panting, but they continued into the corridor and down the stair, calling for Captain Glis.

It took time to locate the captain, and even longer to make their way into the kitchen and through the narrow door leading to the basement. With Glis and Enoch in the lead, and a dozen men behind, they rushed down the stair. The light had gone out, but they carried several lamps. Halfway down, Glis abruptly halted, and all strained to see.

The Dark had risen halfway up the stair, covering the floor with a vast nothingness that did not reflect the lamplight, like a starless night sky. Carter reached down and dropped a coin into it, where it sank without a splash, as if passing out of existence.

“We can’t cross to reach the Darkness Door, and the liquid is rising,”Glis said.

“Will the door above contain it?” Hope asked.

“The High House is unlike any other, so perhaps it will,” Enoch said. “Or maybe the Dark will squeeze out between the cracks into other parts of the house. Brittle once told me the basement goes under everything, even Naleewuath and distant Capaz.”

“The Bobby spoke of another door, in the attic, that he called the Entropy Door,” Carter said.

“I’ve heard of it,” Enoch said. “This must surely be the Door of Endless Dark. The Entropy Door allows the heat of the universe to escape; the Dark Door lets the Darkness enter. Either will bring the house to ruin, and Creation with it. It’s said that someday both doors will be opened wide, and then all will end.”

“I will seal the basement and place guards beside it,” Glis said. “Is the Entropy Door safe?”

“From what the Bobby said, it has its own guardian, one they will not easily pass,” Carter said.

“We best retreat. It continues to rise,” Glis said.

They returned to the kitchen, where the captain shut and bolted the door. “It’s the best we can do,” he said.

For an hour they kept watch, and when it seemed the Dark could not pass the door, Carter glanced at his pocket watch and found it was quarter past two. “Captain, I am bone-weary, though I slept half the day away. If you promise to keep me notified, I want to turn in. Mr. Hope, would you see I am awakened early tomorrow? We have to deal with a traitor.”