Lamplighter

by D M Cornish

  “Ahhh! Yoouuu liiittle beeeast!” he heard it hiss behind him.The rever-man was fumbling about on hands and knees, its piggy little eyes burned out by the Frazzardian chemistry. The distinct peppery-salty smell of the spent potive spiced the close fug of the furtigrade. “I caaan stiiill heeeaaaarrrr yoouuu . . .”

  The gudgeon shuffled toward Rossamünd and he turned to face it, scuttering up each step upon his bottom.

  It made a strange cackling. “I could eeeat yoouurrr kiiind aaall the looong looong daayyy!” It sprang catlike at what it believed to be Rossamünd’s position, and struck the banister three steps below the prentice with enough force to smash the rails to flinders, which toppled down into the darkness. Nothing could stop the gudgeon. It bounced off the ruined wood, its arm a spasming dead weight, the left shoulder dislocated and deformed by the blow—the vile creature so utterly ravening it was destroying itself to get to him. It pounced again.

  Rossamünd kicked out with all the might his horror could muster—and missed. The unhallowed thing gripped his flailing leg and bit at his shin, a bite meant to tear away muscle. Its crooked teeth met proofed galliskins, cruelly pinching flesh against bone but failing to penetrate. Once again Rossamünd had been saved by the wonders of gauld. With a yelp, he lashed with his free leg, striking the putrid thing upon its face. The gudgeon must not have been well knit, for its jaw gave way with sickening ease under his boot-heel; teeth sprayed and clattered about the stair. The cobbled-together thing gurgled and shrieked and sought to grasp Rossamünd in a death grip. Kicking again, the prentice got his footing and bounded up the stairs.

  Below, the gudgeon was hissing and sucking through its mangled mouth, struggling once again up the furtigrade seeking nothing but gory murder, utterly heedless of its broken parts.

  THE GUDGEON

  Rossamünd extracted another salpert of Frazzard’s powder. Oh, for something more deadly! Yet he did not dare use the loomblaze for fear it would cause the dry, dusty furtigrade to take fire, and start an unstoppable conflagration right within the foundations of the manse. He threw the potive hard on the step before the gudgeon, seeking to make a brief barrier, to give the abomination second thoughts.The potive popped and crackled as it erupted and sprayed the gudgeon again. With its cries of rage oddly flat and muffled in the squeeze of the dusty furtigrade, Rossamünd dashed up the stairs, pain jarring up his bitten shin.

  The foul thing was staggering up after him—he could see it through the frame and rails—eyes fizzing, weeping gore, utterly ruined by two doses of Frazzard’s powder, jaw a crooked mass, mouth dribbling unstoppably. There was something almost pathetic about this abominable creature with its terrible injuries, yet it did not heed its damage. With long, clumsy reaches of its arms, the gudgeon slapped its hands on a higher step, felt the way and pulled itself up, gaining pace. There was no escaping the thing. Rossamünd could only try to flee up the furtigrade and out into the unknown cavities of the vault above.

  “Help!” he cried, a small pathetic sound in this claustrophobic fastness.

  The gudgeon slunk around the landing below, starting up the very stair he was upon. It jabbered at him incomprehensibly, trying to form vile taunts with its broken, dribbling maw.

  “Help!” Rossamünd bellowed again. He knew it was hopeless, but sanguine hope kept him crying.

  He set his feet on the creaking boards of the tiny landing by the wrenched door, giving himself a little space to fight from, and seized a caste of loomblaze from his salumanticum. He had to risk it or perish. Rossamünd watched the ill-gotten thing climb, and waited. Waited till it was close enough.

  “Whhyyy-bbll-ssooo-blbb-ssstiiilll-blbl, littbblle-bblmooorsel-bbl,” the horror drooled and, despite blindness, gathered itself to pounce.

  With a tenorlike wail, Rossamünd leaped down the stairs and grappled the foul creature once more, hitting the banister rail as they collided, wrenching it with an ominous crack. The gudgeon tried to pound at him, but Rossamünd was in close, too close for its swings to be effective. It thumped at his shoulders, pushing him down beneath its wrath. He gagged and spat bile.Yet as it smothered him, the prentice gripped the gudgeon about its festering neck and shoved the caste of loomblaze down into the foul, broken mouth, right into its crop.The gudgeon tried to chew off his hand, its broken jaw doing little more than a gory flapping. It wrapped its tongue about Rossamünd’s wrist and with groping, gripping hands sought to gouge at the prentice’s face. Straining and twisting his head, Rossamünd wrenched himself loose and away, bringing his arm back sharply to chop at the creature’s throat, where the frangible vial had lodged. At the second blow the gudgeon gave a convulsing, gargling shriek: a half-human, piglike squeal. Yellow-green gouts of light flared from its mouth and nostrils as the loomblaze erupted within its neck. It writhed and arched its back, still screaming as Rossamünd kicked it away and fumbled for safety on higher steps. He watched in horror as the burning rever-man toppled against the already weakened rail. It gave way and the beast plummeted through the thin gap about which the furtigrade wound, shattering the rail below; falling, colliding and falling again a score of times more than Rossamünd could follow, before abruptly halting, a small bright fire in the darkest depths below.

  Laboring for breath, shin a torture, his mind’s eye revisiting the horror over and over in a giddy spin, Rossamünd pulled himself away from the edge of the gap. He shook himself, stood, and on wobbling legs went as fast as he could down the furtigrade, terrified that some other revenant-beast might be waiting for him above. Far down the dangerously shuddering stair, deeper still, he could see the dying flicker of the loomblaze burning.The frame of the furtigrade began to crack and sag, the age-rotten wood not able to support such rough use. Back at the walled valley he leaped from the tottering stair and ran, legs still shaky, back the way he had come, finding the original four-way vault. Going left again he pushed on, listening always for sounds of pursuit, another caste of loomblaze ever ready in his grasp. So intent was he on knowing if he was followed he took little notice of the perpendicular twists and the turns, choosing left when he could, going either up or down with an instinct born of desperation. If he hit a dead end he would simply turn about and take the next left, eyes wide as wide could be, ears pricked for any wheezing shuffling of a gudgeon in pursuit.

  Driven by the nauseating urgency to be free of this crowding, dusty labyrinth, Rossamünd pushed on through more and more cramped passages and buried, forgotten rooms. Stumbling dizzily several times, he had no notion of how long or how far he had come, but at some point the way became straighter and the architecture familiar. At the top of a solid flight of stone steps he stopped in front of a door with a very ordinary-looking handle in it, just like those on the doors of the manse. Excited, he tugged. The door resisted at first, but after a determined pull it opened with a clatter. The relief was powerful, hysterical. Rossamünd sprang out, all sense of decorum abandoned. “Raise the alarm!” he hollered. “A rever-man! A rever-man!”

  And there, on the other side, he found himself staring directly at the shocked face of the Master-of-Clerks.

  16

  THE LAMPLIGHTER-MARSHAL

  telltale(s) falseman retained by one of office or status to inform their employers of the veracity of others’ statements or actions, to signal if fellow interlocuters are lying or dissembling or masking the truth in any other way. If they could afford to, most people of any prominence would employ telltales, but there simply are not enough falsemen to fill so many vacancies. This means that a leer can earn a truly handsome living as a telltale. Then there are those honorable few who do it simply because it is their job and responsibility. Despite this rarity, many of the prominent work hard to nullify the advantage a telltale will give, either by employing their own falseman, or having a palliatrix (a highly trained liar—even rarer than a falseman) attend in their stead.

  ROSSAMÜND did not much like the Master-of-Clerks, but right then the officious fellow was an astoundingly welcome sight.<
br />
  “Blight your eyes, boy!” the clerk-master almost shrieked, pale and breathing hard from the fright. “You were nigh on the end of me! Where have you come from? How did you get here? Where did you get that running gash upon your crown?”

  “A rever-man below us, sir! A rever-man in the tunnels underneath!”

  “A ‘rever-man’? What do you mean?” the clerk-master snapped, recovering his composure and sitting again on his seat at the long table that dominated the room.The man was without his gorgeous wig, looking slightly ridiculous, his head bound with cloth and showing tufts of cropped wiry hair.

  Rossamünd could not believe the man did not know what a rever-man was. “A revenant, sir! A gudgeon!”

  “Nonsense, child! Utter fiddle-faddle!” The Master-of-Clerks flicked his hand in angry dismissal.

  Laudibus Pile appeared as if from nowhere. “What is the trouble, sir?” he purred with his oily voice, his disturbing eyes narrow and calculating as he saw Rossamünd standing where he should never have been.

  Looking about in a daze, Rossamünd began to realize he was actually in the Master-of-Clerks’ private file. He had been here just once before. “Mister Pile!” he effused, unaware that he had just cut across his superior. “I fought a rever-man down in the tunnels of old Winstreslewe!”

  “The boy has a wound to the head. He is delirious! He forgets himself! Send for Surgeon Swill,” Podious Whympre seemed to demand of the air itself.

  Rossamünd felt at his head. His hat was gone, lost somewhere in the horrid under-dark. His hand came away bloody. “I am not delirious.” He frowned at the red. “I fought a gudgeon!” He could not understand the resistance, the lack of action.

  “I do not know what you are jabbering about, child, but I would recommend you lower your volume and mend your manner,” the Master-of-Clerks ordered with a dangerous look. “You are in thick enough without adding insubordination to your troubles!”

  Feeling equal parts perplexity and fright, Rossamünd obeyed.

  All the while Pile had been shrewdly examining the young prentice. He now bent to murmur into the Master-of-Clerks’ ear.

  Exposed, the prentice held the leer’s gaze regardless. He had no lies to hide.

  “I see,” said Whympre at the leer’s secret words. “Well, young prentice, show us this—this rever-man.” He spoke the word as if it were a vulgar thing. “Take us to where you think you found such an unlikely creature.”

  Rossamünd turned to go back down. He did not want to return to the benighted maze beneath but was eager to prove what he had been through. It was then he realized he did not know how to return to the scene of violence, so keen had he been on getting out. Some of his lefts had become rights in the end, and there was no telling precisely which and when. He hesitated.

  Surgeon Swill arrived in the enormous room and all notions of going below were subordinated as, with an intently professional expression, he examined Rossamünd’s hurts. “This is a nasty blow,” he declared after a silent observation of the young prentice’s head. “The boy must surely be in a daze. How did you get the wound? Knock your cranium on a doorpost or the like, yes?”

  “No, sir, the basket did this to me!” he said, watching nervously as the surgeon reached into a sinister-looking case.

  “He persists with this daft notion of a monster in the cellars,” the Master-of-Clerks said with strange, affected sympathy. “Poor, foolish child.”

  “Indeed. Clearly dazed,” Swill insisted, producing a bandage. “Such an injury can make one believe he sees all kinds of phantasms. Bed rest and a callic draught are the best for you, young lantern-stick. Let this be a lesson to you not to be dashing about after douse-lanterns!”

  Callic draughts were for drowsing the mentally infirm—Rossamünd knew his potives too well. He did not want an addled, forgetful sleep. He wanted to tell the horrible news that the unthinkable had happened: that a monster had been found inside Winstermill. As he submitted to the bandage being wrapped about his crown, Rossamünd was keenly aware of the unsympathetic gazes upon him. “I have to tell the Lamplighter-Marshal!” he insisted.

  “And so you shall,” said Whympre, “and illuminate him and me both as to your illegal surveyings and nocturnal invasions. I warn you though, child, your chatter about buried bogles will not wash with him either. The only event for which we have proof unavoidable is your trespass in my rooms.”

  “Mister Sebastipole will confirm I tell the truth, sir,” Rossamünd said obstinately with an angry glance at Pile.

  The falseman gave Rossamünd a cold, almost venomous look.

  The Master-of-Clerks and the falseman and the surgeon exchanged the merest hint of a pointed glance.

  Whympre declared firmly, “Well then, it’s off to the Marshal we go, prentice. He will not be pleased, for he is always busy with his papers. Batterstyx!” he called to the air. “Batterstyx! My perruque!” An aged private man appeared from some other door bearing the clerk-master’s lustrous black wig. Once it was fitted to the great man’s satisfaction, the Master-of-Clerks strode forth. “Come along!”

  Rossamünd was marched through the perpendicular geometry of the manse. Accompanied by the three men, he was taken from the far back corner to somewhere near the front, where the Lamplighter-Marshal’s duty room was found. Pile knocked for them and they waited.

  Presently this port sprang open and Inkwill emerged, looking overworked. “Master-of-Clerks,” the registry clerk said, managing a wry smile. “What troublesome punctilio troubles you now, sir?”

  Whympre sniffed as if to indicate Inkwill was beneath his notice. “We have a disturbing breach of security to relay to the Marshal. Go tell this to him.”

  Why not just tell him of the rever-man? Rossamünd thought angrily. He knew there were forms to follow, but in a circumstance such as this, surely they could be put aside?

  “Aye, sir.” The registry clerk nodded, his eyes going a little wide at the bandage about Rossamünd’s head.

  The door closed, there was a wait; it opened again and Inkwill reappeared to gesture the four through.The anteclave was empty of its usual crowd of the Marshal’s secretaries and assisting clerks, yet many piles of paper remained. Even to Rossamünd—for whom these countless documents had no relevance—such a mass of paper gave the room a feeling of nagging, insurmountable and never-ending labor. Inkwill guided him through the thin lane between desks.

  “Stay here, prentice,” the Master-of-Clerks ordered.

  Rossamünd obeyed, his head starting to throb uncomfortably, while Whympre, Swill and Pile went on into the Lamplighter-Marshal’s duty room.Very quickly Inkwill was back, dashing through the anteclave without a word.

  More waiting, and the throb in Rossamünd’s pate grew into an ache.

  Inkwill returned now with Sebastipole in tow, the leer giving Rossamünd one look and saying, “That is a fine bump you have got yourself, my boy. Follow me, if you will,” before going directly in to the Marshal.

  In the shadow of Sebastipole, the young prentice inched his way into the very soul of Winstermill’s existence, hands habitually gripped before him at a now absent thrice-high. To Rossamünd’s left, the Master-of-Clerks had stationed himself on a richly cushioned tandem chair. Swill was on his right, poised stiffly on the edge of a hall chair, alert, waiting. On the clerk-master’s left stood Laudibus Pile, leaning against a false architrave, head down. But right before him, behind a desk piled with documents, sat the Lamplighter-Marshal, the eighth Earl of the Baton Imperial of Fayelillian. He appeared drawn, and sharply aware of the entire substance of his manifold burdens, and was staring keenly at Rossamünd. “Good evening, Prentice-Lighter Bookchild,” he said, his warm voice crackling slightly with weariness. The Marshal’s quick gaze, penetrating and wily, seemed to sum up Rossamünd, standing as stiff as an Old Gate Pensioner, in one acute look. He cleared his throat and gestured to the hall chair. “Please, take your ease.” Despite dark sags of sleeplessness, the man’s amiable, fatherly appearance r
emained. Indeed, with his sweeping white mustachios, a noble lift to his chin and a white-blond forelock curling almost boyishly upon his brow, the effect this close was magnified.

  Sebastipole stood at the corner of the massive table while Inkwill showed Rossamünd to his seat, positioned squarely before the great man.

  “I am told by the clerk-master,” the Marshal continued, “that ye believe yerself to have fought with a homunculid in the ancient tunnels below us. Is this so, prentice?”

  “Aye, sir.” Rossamünd swallowed hard. He was about to let the whole tale burble out, when, with a cold stab in his innards, he realized he might betray Numps by telling of the undercroft. With a flicker of a look to the two leers, Rossamünd faltered and went silent.

  With this, Laudibus Pile raised his face and, with a dark glance at Sebastipole, fixed Rossamünd with his own see-all stare. It was profoundly daunting to have a twin of falsemen’s eyes—red orb, blue iris—staring cannily from left and right. Rossamünd shifted on the hard seat in his discomfort.

  THE LAMPLIGHTER-MARSHAL

  “Are ye well, son? I hope that wound does not overly trouble ye,” the Lamplighter-Marshal said, nodding to the thick bandage about the prentice’s head.

  “A little, sir.”

  “I did my best to mend him, Lamplighter-Marshal,” Swill put in. “It is a nasty cut underneath all that cloth and I am sure, however it was sustained, it is enough to knock the sense out of the boy.”

  “So ye said before, surgeon,” the Marshal said gravely. “Tell me, Rossamünd, do ye feel knocked about in yer intellectuals?”