The High House (21 page)

“It does run. It even ticks, but so slow you could stay a hundred days and not hear it. It is called the Eternity Clock, either because it displays the pulse of Eternity or because it shows how long until midnight, when Time itself ends. I don’t know which.”

“I hope it isn’t the latter,” Carter said, for the clock read 11:50. “How long to make a minute?”

“Three seconds have passed during all the years I have served the High House. I brought you to this room because nothing can harm you here; even sound can’t cross the threshold from outside. Also, wounds heal faster beneath the clock. No one knows why. Your leg requires recuperation.”

Carter nodded, not yet ready to face a paradox. He glanced around the chamber, made homey by an odd assortment of furniture. There was even a linen tablecloth on the short table.

“Did you bring all this?” he asked with a wave of his hand.

“A little at a time. After winding the clocks I usually stay the night. No one else ever comes here; probably only I know the word to open the doors. Would you like some hot tea? Something to eat? You should eat. I have soup and bread.”

“Yes, please, I am hungry.”

Carter ate the soup and bread across from the pleasant crackling of the fireplace. His leg ached where it was bandaged above the knee. He found himself ravenous, and when he was done, the torpor had lifted from his brain. “Now that we are in, we will have to find a way out again,” he said.

“Yes. They will try to detain us, for there are other clocks to wind in the house. And in thirty days I must return here again.”

“We barely made the journey this time. Glis will retake the path to the Towers as soon as he receives reinforcements from the White Circle, but we don’t know how long that will be. Perhaps I could use the Word of Secret Ways to find a new exit, if there is one. Otherwise, we will have to wait for him to catch up with us.”

“He’s a good man. If he says it, he will do it.”

“Yes, but I intend to do more, myself. I can’t simply return to the Inner Chambers, not without my father’s things. Do you believe Jormungand spoke true? Is my father in Arkalen?”

Enoch looked unusually bleak. “Do not hope too much. Ten years gone! What but death could keep him so long? Yet, it is uncertain; he might be imprisoned, or ensorcelled. Perhaps his memory has been stolen from him. As for his sword and his mantle, they surely still exist; they were cast of sterner stuff.”

“Would you counsel me to go, Enoch? Should I leave the house when it needs me most?”

“On its face, it seems foolish. But the thing most foolish is often wisest. No one can see everything. If your heart says go, then go. Perhaps you are led to do so.”

“Yet, if I am wrong …”

“Then you are wrong, as your father was wrong more than once. But think it through! Your position is grave. The whole house depends on your decision.”

“Yes. I learned how tragic consequences could be the day I took the Master Keys. I want no more mistakes.”

“That was a hard lesson, not yet paid. But looking back in remorse, blaming yourself—senseless! Have you learned that as well?”

“I’ve tried. But it’s hard to get it under the skin.”

* * *

Carter’s wounds did not heal quickly and he remained always anxious. Enoch kept busy cleaning the mechanism of the Eternity Clock, oiling its gears with precise care, but Carter could not help with that. He found a copy of MacDonald’s
Phantastes
and spent a few happy hours, but it was soon done and there were no other books. The tower above the clock room had seven windows, and he spent many hours sitting in a gray, stiff-backed chair watching the anarchists skulk in the courtyards below, beneath the stormy sky. As the days wore on, he began to wonder if his old friend was deceiving him about the recuperative powers of sleeping in the chamber of the Eternity Clock, lest he become too impatient of his recovery.

He learned the truth one night when he could not sleep. A long stair swept down from the clock room to the lower levels, and since his leg was already much improved, he decided to exercise it upon the steps in the hopes of growing drowsy. No sooner did he cross the threshold when he heard a rapping on the door situated on the landing immediately below the chamber, a door leading outside the Towers. He descended the steps slowly because of his injury and peered through the spy-hole, where he saw a ruined face, ash-gray beneath the candle the figure held, suffused with an anger made horrid by the liquid quality of the whole visage, that changed like dripping wax even as Carter looked. Without opening the door, he called out, “Who are you? What do you want?”

The voice, too, had a quality of insubstantiality. “Let me in, let me in! The Dogs of Doom! The Open Mouth, the Clinging Face! I must come in!”

Except for the stranger’s bizarre appearance, the urgency of the request would have sent Carter’s hands speeding to the lock. “Why do you want entrance?”

“Don’t you know? The Red Rose in the Blue Stained Glass! I’ve seen the Ancient Sea, the Sea No Man Can Sail. I was there with him. I saw him!”

Carter’s heart beat faster. “With who?”

“Your father! Lord Anderson! I sailed with him. I’ve been Over the World’s Edge. I can tell all!”

It was more than Carter could bear. He unlocked the door quickly, but it opened less than six inches before a weight slammed against it, and a grotesque claw slipped through the aperture, black and slimy, like lizard leather. Even as it reached into the room, it reshaped itself, its palm becoming a face, with black eyes fixing a predator’s gaze on Carter, and a thin mouth with spiked teeth. It seemed to enlarge itself, almost as if it sprang at him by growing, the mouth expanding, the fingers extending like tentacles, seeking to grasp and draw him into its maw.

He would surely have died because of its swiftness, had an axe blade not severed the hand at the wrist. The monster howled and withdrew; the amputated member scampered back through the crack in the door like a spider, and Carter and Enoch put their weight against the door, slamming and locking it.

The Windkeep dropped the gory axe to the ground.

“What was it?” Carter asked.

“I should have told you. Why didn’t I tell you? I didn’t want you to worry. It has knocked every night for the last week; you didn’t hear it in the clock room, which exists in another time. It is a servant of Chaos, sent by the Bobby.”

Together, they climbed back up the stair. Carter threw himself on the edge of his bed. “What did it want? Why would it aid the anarchists?”

“Are Chaos and Order living creatures? No. Forces of nature. The Master of the High House must maintain a balance between them, lest all be overcome by Entropy. Like any force, they can be harnessed, and the anarchists have no scruples against doing so. Once inside it could have killed us both.”

Carter sighed. “You saved my life, and I am grateful, but you mustn’t keep things from me. You can’t protect me that way.”

“Are you right? You are right. I am sorry. You still seem young to an old man. Once I dangled you on my knee. But that’s the past. I should remember. I will remember.”

* * *

Thereafter, when Carter crept from bed each night, he heard the voice of Chaos and the hammering at the door. Sometimes it spoke in Enoch’s voice, and sometimes in Chant’s; once it used the warm timbre of his father, bringing tears to his eyes, sending him fleeing back to his room. He never stayed to listen long, for it had a wheedling quality, an air of shared secrets, which he thought dangerous to heed.

As he became stronger, he wandered among the four towers, but there was little to see. Most of the rooms were empty, as if they had been sacked, and the remaining furniture was ruined by water and age. Plaster had fallen from the ceiling in parts.

Several days passed before he felt strong enough to use the Word of Secret Ways. It strained him more than he expected, and when he was done, he crawled back into bed and slept a day and a night. When he finally awoke, he found six separate exits scattered about the Towers. He decided to try each in turn.

Enoch accompanied him on his first journey, out a sliding panel into a series of chambers that promised excitement, but proved unrewarding; they were empty, arranged in a square block, all connected by halls, with no other exit from them. It was a place to hide, but nothing more.

The second way led by ladder down a trapdoor into a lower chamber secured by a smooth, white marble door. Carter looked through its spy-hole and saw it opened directly onto the courtyard guarded by the anarchists. Likewise, the third way was but a secret compartment, but the fourth and fifth opened to long halls and dim passageways that Enoch was certain would lead them from their enemies. Since an escort would lessen their danger, and because Carter was not fully recovered, the men agreed to wait five days more for Captain Glis to arrive before setting out alone.

For Carter, the sixth secret way seemed the most interesting. Hidden behind a false bookcase in the chamber above the clock room, it opened upon an attic space, with dust on the wooden floors and the wall studs bared. It had a deserted feel, so he little feared meeting the anarchists, and he resolved to exercise along its paths. To one who had spent his childhood alone, poking amidst the nooks of desolate spaces, it held a warmth and wonder unknown to those who find no joy in solitary things. There were narrow, gabled windows to admit the dim sunlight, with borders painted faded green, and worn carpets scattered upon the floor, with yellow tulips stitched in rows. There were many doors, set in disarray, scattered at random against corners and outcroppings.

He returned the afternoon following its discovery, determined to reach its end if it did not go too far. Because Enoch was anticipating the arrival of Glis, he came alone. Rain fell on the windows, the continuance of the endless storm, but the air was warm, and he felt a cheerfulness he had not known for some time. He did not understand the feeling, except it was good to walk again, and to see the anarchists could not control everything, even if it were only this empty attic.

He traveled much of the afternoon, testing doors and poking into open spaces, seeing no one but often finding signs of humanity: children’s toys, discarded jackets, a glove or a gnarled walking stick. Despite the solitude, he felt no unease, and he examined the discarded articles as if they were treasures, musing over the children who must have made war with the carved cannons, and the grandfathers who had steadied themselves on the broken canes.

After several hours, a weariness overcame him, a reminder he was not yet as hardy as he wished. He sought a resting place, and soon found a rounded room jutting into the attic, whose door had fallen from its hinges long before, with four grimy windowpanes looking out into the gray sky. Within lay a cot, dusty, but otherwise sturdy. Carter lay down to rest his leg. The attic was still, the gray illumination comfortable. He closed his eyes, intending only a moment, and drifted into thick slumber.

Whether hours or seconds passed, he did not know, but he abruptly sat up, a premonition of danger upon him. The room had another window, besides the one facing outdoors, that looked into the attic, its casement shuttered, its panes shattered. He crept to it, moved the shutters enough to see, and beheld the face of the creature who had sought entrance into the Clock Tower, the thing he had come to call Old Man Chaos. Seen in full light, it was even more horrible, its body all gray, misshapen like a clay doll, its shoulders humped and uneven, one thin arm longer than the other; it walked with a limp. The melting-candle look of its face made it too long; blue and black circles inhabited the hollows of its gray eyes. The hand Enoch had severed was restored. It muttered incoherently and moved without purpose, like a lost ghost.

As it approached Carter’s hiding place, it stopped, seeming to stare right into his eyes, and the wild glance made the Steward’s heart recoil within him; it was all he could do to keep from shrinking back. The creature sniffed the air, like a hunting dog.

Then the abominable head turned away and Carter withdrew into the deepest shadows of the small room, though he doubted it was dim enough to conceal him. A coatrack draped with mildewed garments stood against one corner; he slipped behind it and pressed himself against the wall.

Between the tattered folds of the clothing he saw the Old Man thrust its inhuman head into the room, still sniffing, grinning the crooked snarl of a rabid wolf. Carter’s terror of the monster went beyond physical appearance, for it was surrounded by a palpable aura that spoke of endless space and swirling gases, of forces and energies beyond control and infinities beyond comprehension. Its face was that of the Void, and Carter pressed himself harder against the wall.

Suddenly he found himself swinging away from the coatrack, performing a gentle circle that he could not control. He saw the side of the wall, then rotated into darkness. After a breathless moment, he realized that it was the corner of the room itself which had turned; he had been leaning against a secret panel, built to revolve floor and corner alike, so that he now stood on the opposite side, removed from the other room, facing darkness. He stepped forward cautiously, then turned back to discover the familiar blue glow indicating a secret way—apparently he had missed seeing it on the other side because of his haste. He also noticed a spy-hole, which he used to look into the room he had just left, where he saw Chaos still grinning. The creature came right up to the coatrack, brushed it aside, and seemed to stare straight into Carter’s eyes. But to his great relief, it turned away, apparently having detected nothing, and departed the room.

He turned to examine his surroundings, and as his eyes adjusted, found it not as pitch as he had first thought. He was in a long corridor, with a soft light providing bare illumination from around a corner. He crept to it, peered out, and was surprised to find four long windows, each with a window seat before it, and a little girl sitting at one of them, softly weeping.

“Hello,” he said quietly, trying not to frighten her. She looked up from beneath black curls, her eyes large and blue. She appeared to be about eight. She did not try to run, but sat up expectantly, saying, in a voice like rung crystal: “Please, sir, my mother told me not to go far, but I was chasing Campaspe, and got lost.”