She took hold of the wheel and tried to turn it. It was terribly heavy, and she only managed to shift it a little. Struggling, she dragged it another fraction. Unable to hold her breath any longer, she breathed in with a loud gasp.
Nothing happened. The witch’s dust must have settled. She put both hands on one side of the wheel and, bracing herself, tugged down as hard as she could. The wheel shifted another fraction, then it simply wouldn’t turn anymore.
She heard a sound behind her and was aghast to find the two blackshirts beginning to stir. She tugged frantically at the wheel. In seconds they would be properly awake!
The wheel would not move.
One of the men sat up. He groaned and climbed groggily to his feet, his back turned to her. Rage didn’t know what to do. To throw more dust, she would have to get closer, and maybe there was too little left to affect the men. If it didn’t work, she would be trapped in the room.
Part of her wanted to run, but she set her teeth together and pulled violently at the wheel. It still wouldn’t budge. The second man woke and saw immediately what she was about. “Stop her,” he cried in a slurred voice.
The other guard turned unsteadily, but at the same moment a tall man with a bloodied face stepped through the door holding a boot. Rage gaped at him in astonishment.
“Don’t think you can trick us,” the nearest blackshirt sneered at Rage, then his face changed comically as the newcomer hit him on the head with the boot and he slipped back to the floor. The man did the same thing to the second blackshirt before turning to Rage. “That should keep them quiet for a bit. How did you open my cell?”
Wordlessly, Rage pointed at the wheel. The man took two steps across and turned it the rest of the way with a great heave. “Come on. It won’t be long before more blackshirts come.”
They dashed out into the hallway to see the fairies limping fearfully out of their cell. Clearly their wings were too weak to use. “Come, little ones,” the man said gently, and scooped all three into his arms. Further down the hall, Billy and Elle emerged, and Rage waved them to come.
When he had ascertained that there were no other prisoners, the man bade them follow him and ran lightly down the hall. He descended the stairs two at a time, the fairies clinging to his shoulders and gazing at his face in awe.
Rage followed with Elle and Billy close behind her.
At the bottom, the man opened the door and peered out. “No one. Come on.”
They followed him outside, and then they all heard the sound of boots coming along the cobbles.
“This way!” Rage cried, and ran along the street to the ruined building. She meant to lead them through it to the lane, but as soon as they were inside the deserted shell, the man caught her arm and shook his head. He squatted down and held his finger to his lips. After a slight hesitation, Rage and the others did the same. They heard the boots come closer, the sound of the door being opened. Then more steps and a clank as the door shut.
The man rose. “There is a back way out of this?”
“There is a hole and it opens to another lane, but I don’t know where that leads,” Rage said.
As they climbed through the rubble, Rage thought of Mr. Walker and hoped that he had gone back to the river. There was nothing she could do to help him now.
When they were clear of the ruin, the man took the lead again and began to walk very quickly, urging the fairies to climb inside his voluminous jacket. It was all Rage could do to keep up with him. When she began to lag, Billy and Elle each took one of her hands and pulled her along.
The man did not stop until they had left the region of canals and entered the drier territory of Newfork. They came to a sliver of space left between two small buildings. A real tree grew there, though it was gray and sickly-looking. The man stopped under its branches and turned to Rage. “I don’t know what you are doing in Fork or how you came to be in that prison, yet I thank you, girl, for setting me and these little ones free.”
“I heard one of the blackshirts say that you are a keeper. Is it true?” Rage asked.
“I was a keeper,” the man said. “Now you might say that the witch women and I have interests in common.” He glanced around. “I would like to repay your help, but I have no means, and right now I must get these three and myself across the river before the blackshirts raise the alarm. I would advise you to come with us, for my escape is likely to cause a furor.”
“We can’t!” Billy cried. “My mother is here in Fork.”
“And Goaty and Mr. Walker,” Elle said.
A bell began to toll loudly.
The man looked at Rage with regret. “I’m afraid it’s too dangerous for any of us to stay out in the open like this. You must go your own way now, or come with me and cross the river.”
Rage shook her head. “I can’t. We must find our friends.”
The man nodded. “Well then, I wish you luck. Maybe we’ll meet again someday.”
He turned, but Rage caught his arm. “Wait. One of our friends is a true animal. She was hurt, and the blackshirts took her to the conservatorium. Do you know where that is?”
The man looked horrified. “She was taken there? That means she is to be killed and stuffed!”
“No!” Billy screamed. He rushed at the man and shook him. “She’s my mother! They can’t. They mustn’t!”
The man looked at him in pity and wonder. “I don’t know how a beast can be your mother, but if you would save her, lad, if she is not already dead, you must go there as fast as you can.”
“Where?” Billy demanded, tears streaming down his face.
“The conservatorium is behind the Willow Seat Tower. You will know it when you see it. It is like no other place.” He would have said more, but Billy had already dashed away. Rage and Elle ran after him.
“Good luck….” The man’s voice faded behind them.
Billy ran wildly ahead. All too soon the Willow Seat Tower loomed before them like an accusing finger. Elle growled under her breath at it, and Rage caught hold of Billy before he could rush off again. “We have to go carefully now! We can’t help Bear if we’re caught.”
He gasped, and she saw the effort it cost to calm himself. “All right,” he said in a strangled voice.
“That man said the conservatorium was behind the Willow Seat Tower. Let’s try walking around it, but let me go first. There is a spell on me that will stop anyone noticing me as long as I see them first and stand very still.” Rage hoped it was still working.
They made a wide circle around the tower. Rage felt as if there were eyes peering from the windows. Surely those within must have heard the alarm bell. But there was no sign of any activity, and somehow this was more troubling than if the place had been swarming with blackshirts.
They did a second circuit and still could not see a building that announced itself as the conservatorium. Rage stood still and craned her neck, trying to look past the tower, but this was curiously hard to do. It was as if the building insisted on being looked at. She persevered and, for a moment, caught sight of something looming dark and huge behind it.
Her breath caught in her throat, and whatever she had seen dissolved into the general darkness. Elle began to growl loudly. Rage again looked past the tower, and this time she clearly saw a huge, squat black dome. It was so big that it was impossible they could have missed seeing it, and yet none of them had seen it until now. They walked slowly toward it but found themselves lost in a twisting maze of streets that wound and coiled around its base.
Rage went on picturing the dome, even when it vanished from sight. Before long it was visible again and closer than ever. Then the streets began to narrow dramatically. When they finally reached a street that ran to the base of the dome, it was no more than a sliver of an alleyway.
Elle made a little whining sound. “What is it?”
“The conservatorium,” Rage answered. She knew Elle had been asking her more than that. But she did not know what to say. The dome was only a buildin
g, but she sensed it was also the sick, pulsing heart of all the darkness that inhabited the city. Every instinct bade her flee from it as fast as she could.
Rage noticed uneasily that the distorted architecture she had noticed earlier in buildings around the Willow Seat Tower was far worse here. A dozen different styles of buildings were jumbled together. Minarets and spires and chimney stacks and crenellated openings warred with one another for space. But nothing made sense. Stairs led nowhere; balconies were without guard rails or were fixed upside down onto walls. Windows opened onto walls or doors or other windows. Crooked, half-completed walls listed drunkenly, and paths led to nothing. Things were half completed or finished with impossible and lunatic detail. It was as if a strange frenzy had filled the mind of its designer.
Yet the grotesquerie of the streets, however horrible, did not arouse in Rage the same dread as the black dome.
They stopped and looked at one another.
“Mama is inside that place. I have to go in,” Billy said determinedly.
“We will all go in,” Elle announced, and Rage was never more glad of her indomitable courage than at that moment.
They walked side by side to begin with, but soon there was room only for two, then one—the alley had reduced itself to no more than a crack. The conservatorium still looked as distant as when they had first seen it.
Rage swung around. The alley behind them appeared wide and inviting. “This is some sort of trick,” she said. She felt the crack begin to close on them.
“I can’t fit!” Billy shouted.
“We must go back and try another way,” Elle said.
Rage shook her head. “No. That’s what it wants us to do. There is no other way, and if we try again I think it will find a way to stop us getting even this close.”
“But we can’t go forward,” Elle protested. Then she said in a strange, rigid voice, “I’m trapped! I can’t move!”
Inside Rage, the voice of fear urged her to save herself, but she ignored it. No matter how malicious it seemed, the city was made of responsive magic. Even the dome. That meant it could respond to them as well as to the keepers.
It came to her what they must do. “We have to imagine the street opening up and letting us through.”
“I don’t know how to imagine things,” Billy said in a strained voice.
“Just make a picture in your mind of the city letting you through. Imagine the crack opening up,” Rage called.
“I…I can’t!” he cried. “My mind is not big enough for that yet.”
“Animals can’t imagine things,” Elle said in a muffled voice.
“I will do it,” Rage said. She concentrated on imagining the city Ania had described: Fork as it had been when the wizard created it, with a wide, graceful street leading up to the dome.
The crack began to close around Rage’s shoulders. She could feel the hateful black pressure of the dome as it resisted her vision. The keepers’ influence was too deep, too strong. Elle and Billy said nothing, and Rage dared not think of what was happening to them. She had to make the city listen!
I am Rage Winnoway whose name is also Courage! she cried out in her mind. She let her imagination run wild, picturing towers of glass wound with threads of silver and gold and studded with pink pearls; wide, straight streets where there were trees and flowers; graceful rooms filled with air and light and butterflies; a city where antelopes and winged lions wandered freely in and out of buildings filled with human laughter, where bridges sang.
A groaning, as much the sound of crumbling stone as a howl of inhuman anguish, filled Rage’s head. She felt the agony of the city so keenly that she had to stop herself from screaming. But she did not stop visualizing the city as it had been, as it could be, as it should be. The city was not evil. It was like someone who had been forced into a bent and crippled position for so long and knew of no other way to be. She offered her vision of the city to free it, and despite the brutal pressure on her arms and shoulders, the imagining became easier. Rage went on dreaming of Fork as it could be, mixing up Mam’s carless city with the things Ania had said and with her own ideas. Despite her fear for Elle and Billy, a kind of elation filled her, for surely imagining so hard and so brightly was a kind of magic, too.
There was a loud crack, then the walls on either side of them crumbled and collapsed softly and silently into powdery rubble. Before them, the alleyway was wide and perfectly straight.
“Look!” Elle gasped, and they stared in amazement as blooms as red as blood burst through the piles of shattered stone.
There was no time to wonder at them. Billy scrambled over the debris and was approaching the dome. Rage followed. The door to the black tower was a great heavy slab of what looked like marble. Billy reached for the lever, and the door sprang open at his touch. Behind it was a set of steps going up into darkness. Billy and Elle staggered back, gagging and coughing.
“Whatever is it?” Rage asked.
“Can’t you smell?” Elle sounded appalled.
“Something rotten,” Billy gasped.
Rage shook her head and entered. As in the blackshirt tower, there was no access to the bottom part of the dome. The steps led to an enormous room that occupied an entire level of the conservatorium. Windows in every wall looked out over Fork. The room was empty and deathly quiet, with wide pillars stretching up to the ceiling. Something about the room, about the muted light, was familiar to Rage. She racked her brain until it came to her.
It reminded her of the Museum of Natural History.
Billy walked to the nearest pillar, and Rage tried to reach him. But she was too late. He gave an anguished cry and started back in horror. Rage was close enough now to see that there was a glassed-in box set into the pillar. A group of tiny, squirrel-like animals, all stuffed, stared blindly and pitifully out into the darkness.
“Mama!” Billy cried, falling to his knees.
Rage thought she heard something. “Wait here with Billy,” she whispered to Elle, and crept across the room with a thudding sense of fear. She heard a man’s voice, muffled as if through a thick wall.
“Are you sure we should not reconsider?”
Rage could not see any doors, but she heard footsteps. She crept around the pillars, searching until she found a stairwell. The voices grew louder. The speakers were coming up the stairs!
Rage darted behind the nearest pillar just as an old man emerged from the stairwell. He wore a white tunic edged in gold, like the man who had alighted from the litter at the door to the Willow Seat Tower. Maybe this was the High Keeper himself. Studying the man’s cold, haughty expression, his small, pouting mouth and glittering black eyes, she could easily imagine him demanding that a man or woman or child be tied to a raft and sent to a horrible death.
The keeper turned and spoke down the stairs: “I see no need to reconsider my decision, Hermani.” He had a beautiful, deep voice that compelled attention.
Another old man emerged from the stairwell, carrying a jar in which something dark floated. He wore a plain white tunic. “High One, it is just that we do not know what the beast is yet. That is why I—”
High One! Niadne had referred to the High Keeper of Fork as the High One.
“It is a form of dog.”
Rage’s heart jumped into her throat. Surely they meant Bear.
“High One, there are aspects of the form that do not seem to fit into our list of canine characteristics. If this is a new species and we conserve it—”
“What is it that you want, Hermani?”
The other man hung his head. “To tell you the truth, High One, I don’t like to conserve things that might be saved. The creature is old but—”
“The longer she lives, the more trouble we will have in conserving her well. The coat will dull and become threadbare. The claws will blunt and perhaps fall out, not to mention the teeth. If it is a new species, there is all the more reason to conserve it at its peak. You saw the pelt. It is already considerably scarred.”
<
br /> “Someone has ill-treated the poor beast.”
“Witch women,” the High Keeper hissed, eyes black and small with hate. “The blackshirts that brought it in said it was with two wild things. I will interrogate them myself.”
Rage shuddered at the thought of Elle and Billy in the clutches of the High Keeper.
“High One, the witch women would not ill-treat a true beast any more than they would harm one of their wild things. And why would they send it here, in any case?”
“I don’t like to hear you talking this way, Hermani,” the High Keeper said icily. “You should know by now that the witch women are capable of anything. They are a constant danger to the wizard’s Order, and our only hope that he will return to us lies in obedience to his will.”
“If he does not return soon, there will be no one to admire our obedience, High One.” He waved his arm. “All will be lost when the river reclaims Valley. Surely anything would be better than that. Perhaps if we approached the witch Mother—”
“Silence!” the High Keeper roared, and Hermani shrank from the fury contorting his master’s face. But the High Keeper smiled now, the change of expression so complete as to be terrifying.
He is quite mad, Rage thought.
“Do not concern yourself with the river, Hermani,” the High Keeper said pleasantly. “Once Wildwood is emptied of blasphemy and witches…”
It seemed to Rage that Hermani forced himself to speak, though his voice quivered. “High One, forgive me, but in the last seven days the waters have risen rapidly. Some of the deeper blackshirt tunnels have become saturated and are in danger of collapsing. Even tonight there was a report that a tunnel running to the ferry pier had collapsed. Yet there is no magic in Wildwood for the witch folk to draw on. It cannot be their fault. Something else must be—”
“Enough,” the High Keeper thundered. “I am disappointed in you. Let us proceed with this conservation. I am weary. Another five minutes and the beast will no longer be alive for you to—”
Night Gate Page 15
