“I was finishing my shift when you arrived,” he answered. “There’ll be another guard down there by now.” His manner rapidly shifted back to how it had been when I first spoke to him. All trace of the distance I had felt from him as he recited those oddly familiar words was gone.
“Then perhaps you can help me,” I said, unsure exactly where my words were leading me, but desperate to have him leave.
His face lit up. “Certainly,” he said. “What can I do?”
“You see this bluish dust in the ash?”
He stooped over and nodded thoughtfully. “What is it?” he asked.
“Well that’s what I need to find out,” I said, straightening up and trying to sound professional. “It may just be a little calcined sulfur such as is commonly discharged when the err. . celedine fibers are exposed to intense heat in the presence of anthracite, belomnites and, you know, cellulites. It could also, however, indicate the build-up of vitrilic carbon mandible particles.”
“Is that bad?” said the soldier, reading my expression.
“Let’s just say that if I’m right-and I hope to God that I’m not-the next spark kindled in this room could create an explosion which would leave nothing of this building but a dirty great crater in the ground.”
His jaw dropped. I went on. “I need you to go outside and find me a cup full of bird droppings. Preferably from er. . a kind of hawk. Female. It has to be female. Put male droppings in there and the alcolyde mercurials will spontaneously combust, and then we’ll be in real trouble. But you must walk very carefully. If you create a spark with your armor against the stone walls, we’ve had it.”
“I’ll get right on it,” he breathed, and began to tiptoe out.
“And don’t tell anyone!” I added hastily. “I mean, we don’t want a, you know, panic on our hands.”
He left me, creeping with arms spread for balance and uneasy glances back at the mound of ash which I was poking thoughtfully. Imagine, I mused as he left, how much easier life would be if all the people I met could be relied upon to be as dim as the worthy trooper who has just left me. Alas, such special gullibility is all too rare, and the world is a correspondingly tougher place for the rest of us.
I was so wrapped up in these considerations that I almost forgot to capitalize on the opportunity that that special gullibility had won me. I sprang up, dusted off my hands, and tried the door. It opened onto the gallery that skirted the great dome, and there was no sign of life that I could see or hear. I trotted hurriedly down the corridor to the great doors with their brass panels, lifting my skirts as I ran. When I got to them I found myself again aware of the dull hum which seemed to come from inside. As I stood there listening, my gaze fell upon the metal relief work which covered the doors. Before, I had noticed the images of the library with its great dome, but I hadn’t considered the details. I leaned closer to consider the figures depicted in the panels, noting that the builders were small and squat. I was just thinking about how odd this was and leaning on the door in a pensive kind of way when I recoiled suddenly. It was as warm as before, and pulsed with energy.
This was no fire. I guess I had always known that, but it struck me like a crossbow bolt through the forehead that I had been lied to on all sides. It also meant that there was something behind this door which I was not supposed to see, something which perhaps explained the strange secrecy which hung over this building. Without thinking further, I took the great brass ring in my right hand and twisted it sharply. The door clicked and yielded. The door opened. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw next.
The room inside was vast, and both walls and floor were stone. It could have been magnificent, and probably was, once. Now it was a scene of devastation and chaos. Much of the stonework was shattered and all the huge, carved images which stood like columns supporting the roof were disfigured so extensively that it was impossible to discern if they had been men or beasts. The intricately worked wooden paneling, which seemed to have borne remarkable pictures in marquetry, had been hacked to splinters. Only fragments of the beautiful wooden inlay could still be made out where the vandalism (for such it seemed) was limited to severe scoring and the crude strokes of a paintbrush dipped in scarlet. The same savage desecration was everywhere. The immense paintings which hung from the ceiling buttresses were slashed to stained tatters, the bookcases had been emptied and their contents violently shredded, and the statues which stood on either side of the great throne at the far end of the hall had been beheaded and daubed with crimson paint. There was, and had been, no fire. There was no smoke staining, no ash, no charred timber. The ruin before me was man-made and it had been effected with what I can only describe as hatred: a hatred so profound that it had unleashed a fury beyond words, beyond reason. Furthermore, it had not happened recently.
On everything, from the brutalized statues to the torn pages of the books which littered the floor like a confetti carpet, was a gray furring: dust. It looked as if the room had not been disturbed for years, decades even.
But it was not uninhabited. In a stone chair at the far end of the chamber, overlooking this ruined wasteland and flanked by crippled statuary, sat a man. He was robed and hooded in purest white and his hands were lost in the sleeves. He was motionless, though he was turned toward me, and, though I could not see his face under his pale and heavy cowl, I felt his eyes upon me.
He did not move. I, seemingly paralyzed, was unable even to speak. The pulsing throb which I had felt through the door seemed to be all around me, not pushing me out of the room, but swirling at me from all sides. It was as if I was at the center of an eyeball whose iris had contracted tightly about me. And then, as if the room had suddenly dwindled, the walls rushing in until the entire chamber was only a few feet square, I stood at the man’s feet and he was gazing down at me from his throne. My mind emptied. Then he spoke-or, rather, I heard a word in my head. The voice was cold and unfamiliar. It said one thing only, and it was not a question, comment, or exclamation. Rather it was the tone of someone acknowledging my presence-someone who had expected, even sent for, me.
“Outsider.”
My eyes were fixed on the dark hollow within the hood, the space where the man’s face should have been, and I could not tear them away. But however hard I stared I could not guess what that face would be like if I had the strength to reach up and tug the cowl back. Pale and old beyond reckoning, I knew, though where this idea came from, I could not say.
I felt cold, pinned like a bug under a lens, and then I had the strangest and most uncomfortable sensation of being read like a book, the pages of my life torn open and riffled as if he could see into me, into my past, into my mind and heart. I felt exposed, naked. I fought to close myself to him, but couldn’t. He had me in some sort of inverse vice that forced me apart, separated my very thoughts and feelings.
It was horrible.
I knew I couldn’t stop it, but somehow I lighted on another possibility, something that might distract or unsettle him. He had called me Outsider. Through the confusion and fear I managed to shape a defiance that was also a kind of question.
“As prophesied,” I thought.
Then, as my eyes burned futilely into his, I became aware that the charge in the air, the energy that rushed about me like liquid, had acquired a color. It was now visible as a grayish smoke tinged with violet. As it surged and darted I saw, from the corner of my eye, that it was lit by flickers of blue-white lightning ripping through sullen clouds. I tried to look away from the seated figure, but my eyes would not leave his hooded visage. The air grew heavier and darker until the flashes of light burned themselves into my vision for seconds after they had passed. As the light faded, I felt the hatred which had ravaged the room and the coldness of the mind which had gripped mine and I was overcome with fear. In desperation, I tried to shut my eyes, but they stood open as if their lids were pinned back. They burned. The black hollow of the man’s head filled my vision, but around me the room was growing still darker. Th
ere was another flash of light, more brilliant than the rest, and it forked right through my head. I cried out with a defiance born of fear and again tried to shut my eyes. It was like closing vast, iron-bound doors, and required all my strength. For a moment, my eyelids were immobile and staring, dry, smoldering so badly that I thought they would clot over with blood; then they were moving. I drew them down as if I was winching some great weight over a pulley. When they were no more than cracks through which I could see the seated figure, he shifted.
And in that second I heard a voice. It was not the voice of the hooded figure who had gripped my mind, but a voice from long ago echoing down a tunnel of memory, a voice which seemed vaguely familiar but unplaceable. The voice faded in and out, each word almost just out of the reach of hearing, resonating like a bell struck years before but somehow still ringing.
“Outsiders will come to Phasdreille,” said the voice in my head. “A small group of men and women from beyond your maps. They will alter the course of the war and of your world. They will bring change.”
If there was more, the being in the library shut it out, as if slamming a door. I felt his uncertainty and anger at the memory of the words. Then there was darkness, a subsiding of the fear and panic and a stilling of the air. I waited, and when I opened my eyes again, I was where I had been when I walked in. The room was huge again, and the figure robed in white was a good hundred yards away from me. I knew instinctively that my window for escape would be narrow, so I turned hurriedly, yanking at the handle of the great brass door. His eyes burned into me and I felt the air thickening again as he strove to hold me, but I was already out and running as fast as my dress would let me.
I had good cause to run. Not only could I still feel him watching me, I felt sure that some strange alarm had been triggered and the guards would be after me. I glanced wildly around at the library’s passages and doors, unsure of whether to bolt from the building or find somewhere to hide.
The decision was made for me. In the hall which lay directly at the foot of the stairs that led up to the dome gallery, doors boomed and a dozen soldiers in white and armed with shortswords and silver helmets burst in. They moved with the resolve of men pursuing a bear that has eaten their wives. An officer shouted and pointed, and a pair of the library’s own guards joined them, their voices raised and sharp.
“The Outsider is disguised as a court lady,” said one. “He’s upstairs.”
The company divided, drew their swords, and moved toward the double staircases, their faces strangely grim. They apparently thought me dangerous, and that would make them lethal. I moved quickly out of the gallery and toward the door from which I had once seen Aliana emerge. I had reason to doubt that she could be trusted, but given the choice between doubt and the certainty that those soldiers would kill me on the spot, I’ll take doubt any day. Call me an optimist. I tried the handle without knocking and burst in, tearing the wig and spectacles off as I did so.
She was standing inside, clad as before in a long, pale smock, open at the throat.
“They’re after me!” I spluttered.
“Will?” she said, peering at me.
“Yes. They’re after me.”
“Who?” she asked, stepping toward me, her brow clouding with concern.
“Soldiers,” I said. “I don’t know why. But I think they plan to kill me.”
“Stay here,” she said. I just stood there. A wave of fear had hit me as I remembered the looks on their faces. I was damp with sweat.
She grasped my shoulders and looked into my face.
“Will?” she asked, her face earnest, almost pleading. “Are you listening?”
“Yes,” I managed.
“I said, stay here. I can get you out, Will. Just give me a moment.”
“Right,” I answered, and began to pace beside her desk below the window.
She left the room, closing the door behind her. I sat and listened to the sound of my fractured breathing and my thumping heart. Outside, it was quiet. That unnerved me. Before, there had been booted military feet drumming on the steps and the polished stone floors. Now there was nothing.
What is she doing?
I got up and stepped closer to the door and heard, or thought I heard, stealthy movement behind it. I backed toward the window and I thought about what she had said. She had called me Will. Not Mr. Hawthorne, not William, Will.
Suddenly we were friends?
Opening the window, I peered out down forty feet of sheer stone to a flagged courtyard below. No chance.
Though small, the chamber was thoroughly furnished and the walls were lined with books: destined for the fire, no doubt. There was a miniature furnace with a narrow pipe chimney. Beside it at floor level was a hatch, about three feet square, with a heavy winch mechanism and a braking lever set in the wall above it. I pulled at the hatch door and it moved upward, sliding in a pair of grooves. The floor inside was a square wooden panel suspended by chain at its corners. Dropping to a crouch, I climbed awkwardly inside, feeling the base shift and swing alarmingly. Then I reached one arm back into the room, groped for the winch handle, and pulled the lever downward.
Several things happened simultaneously. The panel beneath me dropped as my weight sent it tearing down a dark shaft, almost severing my hand in the hatchway as it fell. At the same moment, I heard the chamber door crash open as the soldiers entered. As I plummeted downward, the thought of hitting the bottom suddenly seemed at least as bad as whatever the troopers up there had intended to do with their swords. The chain rattled through its pulleys and all light but the receding square opening into Aliana’s room dwindled to nothing as I hurtled noisily down.
Then there were faces peering down from that square, leaning down into the shaft. I saw the shadows of gloved hands grabbing at the chains, trying to stop my descent. Their efforts were in vain, though they slowed my fall slightly. This, ironically, made my impact with the ground less jarring. I crumpled and rolled, too delighted to be on solid ground to be too concerned with the inevitable bruising that the fall would leave me with.
I was getting to my feet in what seemed like another storage room piled high with books destined for censorship or destruction when Aliana’s voice, distant and echoing like the ghosts in old plays, pinned me to the spot. She was leaning into the shaft and her voice was cool, gloating, so that I almost didn’t recognize it. “You didn’t really think I’d help you, did you, Outsider?” she whispered. I paused, astonished and touched with dread. It was as if a veil had been plucked from her face and I was seeing her as she really was for the first time.
“I should have known,” I shouted back. “Never trust a book burner.”
“You are as stupid as the goblins,” she added. “You can’t possibly get out of here, you know. A gross and degenerate creature like you, evade us?”
There was a hint of bitter amusement there; I could hear it. She started to say something else about how I was going to get the death I deserved, her voice never losing that calm, insinuating tone with which she had begun, but I wasn’t listening. I stuck my head back into the shaft and turned to shout something up at her, and found that the crossbow, though awkward in the confined space, was already aimed. I saw the light on her face and in her hair, but I never saw her eyes until I sensed the crossbow bolt speeding at my face.
I cried out, I think, and pulled back just in time to feel a rush of air and see three inches of steel-tipped quarrel slam into the splintering wooden platform. She began to talk again, but I knew she was just stalling till the soldiers got down to me. I didn’t stick around to listen.
I was in a stone room piled with boxes of books. There was a single wooden door, and through this was a corridor which joined up with the passage I had used to enter the building from the side. I ran out into the cold sunshine, unlacing my bodice and stepping out of the dress as I did so, knowing that they were mere yards behind me. I let the dress lie where it fell.
My course of action was clear: I had to p
ut Phasdreille behind me. Nevertheless, I had returned to the palace, intending to stay just long enough to get my belongings and think for a moment. It wasn’t a great idea, I suppose, but I didn’t know where else to go, and I suspected the city gates were already held against me. I was in the palace for no more than two minutes, but it was long enough for Garnet to find me. Perhaps that was what I’d gone back for.
“What did you do?” he demanded, storming in without knocking.
“Last night?” I asked, alarmed by the look on his face.
“No,” he said. “Since then. Something worse.”
“Nothing!” I said.
“Don’t lie to me, Will,” he shouted suddenly. “You did something. The entire garrison is looking for you. I do not think. .”
He paused as if uncertain what to say, but then I realized he was uncertain what to think.
“You don’t think what?” I pressed him.
“I don’t think you will talk your way out of this.”
There was none of his usual righteous glee in the statement. There was, if anything, a glimmer of anxiety, even fear. Garnet knew I was capable of all kinds of appalling actions in word and deed, and he would happily watch me flogged with something spiky if it taught me the error of my ways and, more importantly, proved the rightness of his. But this was different. His face was paler than ever and his eyes were downcast. There was a studied blankness to his features and a rigidity to his posture that suggested a tremendous effort of will. He was being strong, and while this usually came naturally to him, the effort was nearly killing him. And as I thought this, it came to me. “They’re coming to kill me, aren’t they?” I mouthed.
He look at the floor and said nothing.
“Aren’t they?” I demanded.
He looked up very slowly and there was doubt in his eyes. “They are coming to apprehend you for trial,” he began, but his voice failed him and he paused. His eyes met mine and the doubt was gone as he answered me without knowing how he could be so sure: “I think so,” he said. “Yes.”
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