The High House (10 page)

Carter smiled, buoyed by the Windkeep’s words. “It’s true. I have certainly always longed to see Naleewuath.”

They passed down the gray passage until noon, when they stopped to eat lunch beside one of the brick fireplaces scattered along the corridor, this one having a stone bench beside it. Carter and Enoch sat together, while the other men rested on the floor, their backs against the wall, eating bread and cheese. The walls were not so gray now; little patches of color appeared in the paper, which had tiny, light orange zinnias upon it, and the carpet was almost peach. After a short rest, they continued throughout the afternoon, until Carter’s feet ached from walking. All the color had returned to the passage by the time they came to wide double doors, opening onto a large chamber. A portly man and two stout lads, all dressed in green, bowed as they entered. The man said, “Welcome to Halfway Hall. Ansbok at your service, sir. There are rooms to the sides to refresh yourselves. Dinner will be ready in one hour.”

“They knew we were coming?” Carter asked.

“We sent word,” Enoch replied. “These halls are spread throughout the Long Corridor, for the benefit of travelers.”

“Like inns,” Carter said.

“Yes, but tonight, this will be reserved solely for us.”

A great fire burned in the hearth, sending goblin shadows large as horses prancing across a room lacking windows for their escape. Plaster gargoyles and gryphons peered down from the rafters of the high-beamed ceiling. A table sprawled like a dragon the length of the room, ending at the mouth of the fireplace, which was carved like a bear’s head. The oak floors were pocked by dancers’ heels; the air smelled of oil, deep and thick, and women’s curls on winter nights. It was a dark hall, warm and comfortable as house shoes.

Carter retired to his room, made elegant with heavy oak furniture and a canopied bed with more gryphons carved into the posts, their claws outstretched. He found hot water for washing in a basin, steaming water for bathing in a tub, and a change of clothing lying across the bed, including a pair of gray boots, silken soft on the inside, scarcely heavy, but of stout leather without. He bathed and changed, finding the boots so perfect a fit he wondered if someone had measured his foot while he slept.

One of the lads called him to supper shortly thereafter, and led him back into the main hall, to a chair set at the center of the table, made more ornate than any of the others. Ansbok bustled about, talking to the lads in a soft, firm voice: “Young Swelter, bring venison for the Master. Yanuk, fetch more bread. Nothing must be cold.”

With Enoch, Jorkens, and the others around him, Carter ate a happy feast beneath the gryphons’ wings. In his soft, rumbling manner, Enoch told tales from long ago, some he had known, and some he had lived. Carter had heard many of them before, while walking with the Windkeep as a boy. Hearing them again, in his friend’s rich accent, he saw the wind in tall fields of wheat, the sunshine on antediluvian plains, the heavy timelessness of water and stone, and recognized what he had overlooked as a child: the utter antiquity of Enoch’s tales, the names of Akad and Sumer, Elam and Nod, as if the man truly came from a time when Nimrod the Hunter was young, and Baal Puissant was worshiped in the High Places.

When dinner was done, they sat around the fire, but not too long, for all were weary. Enoch blew smoke from a red pipe, carved slender and small, and the scent of tobacco, fragrant as Eden, filled the hall. For the first time in a long while, Carter felt a great contentment. After basking in it a time, he stood and stretched, thinking he must either go to bed or sleep in the chair.

“Will we see Naleewuath tomorrow?” he asked. “And the tigers?”

“Naleewuath? Yes,” Enoch replied. “We will reach its borders by evening. The tigers? Not till the following morning. We have been on the Gray Edge today, no one’s kingdom at all. Tomorrow we will pass through little Indrin. The hunt, it worries you?”

“A bit.”

Enoch’s eyes grew grim. “When the beasts come at you, their roars freezing your bones, you must act all by instinct, to fire or stab. Don’t let the terror seize you. There is only a moment, for your very life.”

“I will try to remember,” Carter said. But that night, though he knew the next days might be treacherous, he went quickly to sleep, content to be on his way.

* * *

The following day’s journey was much like the last. They met a few other travelers passing down the Long Corridor, dark men in dark robes carrying ebony staffs; and once, a fat ancient pulling a little cart, who offered to sell them jewelry from Westwing and scarves from Kimmunkissee.

After a time, the passage gradually widened. The zinnias on the wallpaper slowly changed to deep green leaves and the carpet darkened from peach to dusk gold, with patterns like autumn leaves scattered across it. The light lessened until they proceeded through a half twilight. In the dimness, Carter’s eyes betrayed him, so that the leaf patterns on the floor and wall appeared real, as if the branches of trees extended into the passage.

To his wonder, he gradually became aware of the noise of the crackling of crushed leaves beneath his boots, and he bent down to retrieve a golden maple leaf, its capillaries brown, its edges crumbling. Branches descended from the ceiling ahead of them, which lay once more in shrouds of mist. Water dripped from above and light fell in square patches, as if from unseen skylights. He touched the branches on the wall, then turned to grin at Enoch.

“Yes,” Enoch said. “The border of Naleewuath.”

“How is it possible?”

“You want to know how, you should have asked Brittle. Perhaps he didn’t even know. Much is possible within the High House; it opens into worlds, and parts of worlds creep into it. I am just the keeper of the clocks.”

They reached a fork in the corridor and passed to the right between a pair of tall arches adorned with life-size statues of tigers on either side, and snails drifting between the green ivy growing at their base. The tigers’ teeth and claws glittered in the twilight, and Carter suppressed a slight shudder. Beyond the arch was a rectangular room, with two doors on each of its three walls. A willow grew in its center; thin slits of sunlight fell between the branches.

“Here we camp,” Enoch said. “All of Naleewuath is like this, small rooms, close for fighting. We could go farther, but we are less likely to meet the beasts here.”

They cast their blankets beneath the willow and made a fire in the small hearth. From the packs, Jorkens produced enough food for a banquet: slices of beef, green vegetables, even warm tea. They ate on the ground, their blankets spread beneath them.

“We certainly dine well,” Carter said. “It’s nearly a picnic.”

“Such is the way in the house,” Enoch said. “But once we reach the beasts, that will be no picnic. No picnic at all.”

They spent the evening inspecting their guns and gear, and talking, as men are wont to do when they have too much time. At last, the sunlight haze dimmed above the trees; the lamps were extinguished; the fire popped its final rounds and dwindled to a soft glow. A chill came upon the air, and the company cast their blankets around them and fell into slumber, leaving one to watch.

Carter dreamed uneasy dreams, of falling leaves and gray halls, and giant voices calling down from a limitless ceiling, so that he thought himself in the library again, pursued by goblins and tigers, and someone calling his name. He woke with a start and found himself lying on his back, looking up at the willow’s branches, like clawed hands reaching over him. He sat up and glanced about, but all remained quiet save for the sounds of the men’s breathing; the sentry sat hunched in his cloak against the tree, looking half-asleep himself. Yet far in the distance, Carter thought he heard the dream voice still calling his name, just at the edge of hearing, intermixed with the sounds of distant waterfalls. He rose and walked to the doors, thinking it came from the middle one on the east wall. He opened it softly and slipped inside.

A narrow corridor awaited him, all ivy along the rose walls, with wooden floors and a single gaslight at a distant door. As he took his first step, he was startled by the sentry’s touch on his arm.

“Your pardon, sir,” the man said. “It’s best not to walk Naleewuath alone at night.”

“Do you hear a voice?”

The man listened carefully. “I’ve heard nothing during my watch. If you want, I’ll wake some of the others and we can have a look.”

“No, let them rest. I’d like to walk at least to that next door.”

The man looked uneasily back at his comrades. “Then I’ll accompany you, sir. We should only be a minute.”

The light flickered and the boards creaked as they passed down the hall to the door, which proved to be farther away than it looked. The voice sounded louder to Carter now.

I will not play the fool
, he thought to himself.
We are still within shouting distance of our camp and if there is danger beyond the door we can retreat.

He gripped the knob firmly and gave it a turn. As if he had pulled a lever, the floor suddenly dropped from beneath them, plunging them into blackness. They managed no cry, for they landed immediately, with their breath knocked from them. Even then they did not come to rest but found themselves entangled together, rolling down a steep chute. Carter struggled, but could not reach the sides to slow their descent.

They slid into an area lit by lamps, and struck the bottom with a crash. Both men rose slowly, battered and breathless.

“Are you injured?” Carter asked.

“I don’t believe so,” the man said. “You?”

“Bruised, but unbroken.” Carter looked around at what appeared to be a drawing room, with a heavy wooden mantel, long bookcases, and the largest sofa he had ever seen, stretching half the length of the room, all mottled green, like a reptile, with massive clawed feet. The other furniture was just as large: an armoire ten feet tall and nearly as wide, with wooden pegs like bulldog’s teeth; a French buffet, ponderous and square, yet petitely legged as a great spider; a lamp with a shade like a Mexican hat and a base round as a Buddha. Despite his fall, he was immediately struck by the incongruity of the ghastly furnishings, for none went together, nor were they all meant for a drawing room.

The other man gripped Carter’s arm. “I don’t like the looks of this. Best we climb back up.”

The armoire, standing to their left, made a sudden, swift movement. Carter did not see it change, for it happened too quickly, but it transformed into a lumbering beast, its arms large as wooden posts. The sentry pulled his pistol, but the monster knocked it from his grasp, and him to the ground, as it pushed itself between the men and the chute. A blockish head had formed from the center of the armoire doors, and it looked more animal than wood now, with glinting yellow eyes above a square snout, huge, flapping ears, shoulders no longer square but just as massive, its clawed feet true claws. Carter reached for his own pistol, but a hand like a wrapping tendril trapped his arms against his sides. He turned to see the couch transforming, its figure a rapid blur as it rounded to serpentine slender. Hundreds of arms, writhing like snakes, and dozens of eagle-claw legs, sharp-tipped, shining like adamantine, bulged from its frame. When done, it had grown a blunt nose, thick, grinding teeth, and a snake’s tongue, flicking like fire in the light. The tendrils held both men in a heavy grip.

The French buffet came skittering beside them, wholly spiderish, with dark fur, long quivering fangs, and multiple eyes. The lamp strode forward on two rounded legs, its shade a horned crown, its porcelain skin pearl beneath the lights, its eyes and grinning mouth the color of blood.

“Has ’em,” the couch hissed, tongue gliding in and out. “He the one?”

The lamp reached to touch Carter’s face with hands pudgy as blubber. “It is, Taka. The Master’s son. Hold very tight.”

The serpent squeezed Carter’s breath from him. “Do we eats?” it asked.

“Foolish to eat!” the armoire boomed, sniffing the other man with its long nose. “You know bargain. Bobby wants ’em.”

“Bobby no friend of ours,” the spider-buffet said, its voice feminine, liquid haunting. “Let me wrap ’em.”

“No wrapping,” the lamp insisted. “With this one gone and Bobby’s help, we own all of Naleewuath.”

Other smaller beasts crept around the men’s feet, umbrella holders and ottomans like dachshunds. A thing resembling a huge tomato worm, two feet long, slid around Carter’s shoe, leaving green slime across the carpet.

Far away, a door slammed.

“Hear it?” Taka, the couch, hissed. “The Bobby, he comes. Wish I could eats ’em.”

Carter closed his eyes, trying to shake off his panic. The Bobby would arrive in moments to kill or imprison them. Cold sweat ran down his back as he thought of the Room of Horrors. He could not reach his weapons; the tendril arms wrapped him like rope.

He recalled the two Words of Power he had learned from the Book of Forgotten Things. He had not understood their meaning as he read them, but now one came to his mind, burning brightly upon the page, lit with a flame that did not consume, and he knew it as the Word Which Brings Aid. He had only to speak it.

He opened his mouth, but no sound came. He coughed, tried again, and failed. It was not that he could not speak; it was the Word itself that denied being spoken—it was too powerful, too full of meaning; it would not pass the lips. He saw the truth of the old expression that words were power, and the right words, used at their proper time, were potent indeed.

A door opened at the far end of the drawing room, the Bobby silhouetted against the light from beyond, his rounded helmet a bullet upon his head.

Carter closed his eyes, knowing instinctively that once he was in his enemy’s hands, all ability to use the Word would be lost. He searched within himself for the strength of will to speak, the will his father had surely possessed. He wished someone had taught him, even as he knew it was not a thing that could be taught, but must be found. He brought the Word burning to the forefront of his mind, held it there a moment, then opened his mouth, willing it forth with all his heart.