“I have no need to read,” said the wihht. It shuffled a step closer. “No need for books. No need. But sustenance I do need. That, I do need.”
“On my word and in my time, you will be given it,” said Nio coldly.
The wihht subsided into its habitual stillness. Nio eyed the creature and considered. According to the seven strictures of the spoken word, there were ways to test the truth of speech, particularly if one possessed some material of whoever spoke. And he possessed the best of materials—blood—his own blood had been provided to the wihht.
But I’m missing something here.
He gnawed his lip in distracted thought and then he blinked. Perhaps it was due to being so tired—the broken sleep certainly was taking its toll—but it looked as if the wihht was a little closer to him now. It hadn’t taken a step, but it definitely looked closer. Or maybe the cellar seemed somehow smaller than before, the walls crowding in and the ceiling lowering, pressing down. The wihht stood as silent and as immobile as ever. It wasn’t even looking at him. It was staring down at the floor. He hadn’t noticed before, but it seemed as if the creature’s arms were slightly too long for its body. They hung down at its sides. The thing’s fingers twitched slightly.
Nio turned and hastily made his way back up the stairs. The little globe of fire drifted behind him. When he reached the top step, he looked back down but there was nothing to see. The wihht had vanished, and there was only shadow thickening to darkness. He locked the door and then placed such a binding spell on it that sweat sprang from his forehead. A great weariness took hold of him.
He stood for a moment, irresolute, but then he went upstairs to the library. It was his favorite room in the house and it afforded him more rest than his bed. He sat down in a chair. His head ached terribly.
Perhaps I should not have created the wihht.
What use would a wihht have with a book? The boy could have stolen the book when he stole the box, except he didn’t. Whoever knew about the box might have known about the book as well. I wonder what old Eald Gelaeran would say if he knew I was shaping wihhts? It was his fault in the first place—that book he kept on his desk, the book of Willan Run. Too many ideas. Stone and shadow, but I still don’t know who wrote the damn thing. Are the anbeorun gods, overseeing the affairs of men as a master puppeteer oversees the strings of his little creatures, or are they men such as myself and, as such, capable of death? The wihht. Fynden Fram was wrong in what he wrote. If he was wrong then who is to say that the little book I found in Lascol is wrong as well? Which words are true and which are false?
The library was lit by a lamp on a table beside Nio’s chair. It cast a muted glow around his feet and pooled on the carpet. The warmth of it was comforting. But in the rest of the library, high up in the arches of the ceiling, within the nooks of the shelves and in the corners of the room, shadows grew as the night deepened outside. In particular, the shadows seemed oddly heavy in the alcove on the opposite side of the room. Nio found his eyes returning again and again to that spot. An old painting hung there on the wall. It was of the wizard Scuadimnes, the former senior archivist at the university and advisor to Dol Cynehad, the last king of Hearne. The painting always made him uneasy. The wizard’s piercing green eyes always seemed on the verge of blinking to life.
Nio had found the painting the first month the scholars had begun digging in the university ruins. It had been locked away in a vault buried under rubble and bound with such a subtle ward that the vault was all but invisible to the casual eye. Severan had frowned when Nio had uncovered the painting.
“There’s a knowing look to him,” he said, shaking his head. “I’d be happier burning the thing. Who can tell what happier fate Tormay would’ve found if he’d never lived?”
“Perhaps,” returned Nio, not wanting his find disparaged. “Though I think fate might very well be inexorable. It doesn’t alter for the likes of us. If so, then what Scuadimnes did won’t matter. The end of the game will always be the same.”
“Then we might as well all go home and be done with it. Curse this painting of yours, Nio,” the other had said. “And curse its subject. Scuadimnes destroyed this university and the monarchy of Hearne, not to mention utterly disgracing wizardry. No small feat for one man.”
“But he possessed more knowledge than any other wizard who has lived, save, perhaps, Staer Gemyndes. And knowledge is merely knowledge, whether it be used for good or for ill.”
Severan scowled and did not answer. The painting had gone home with Nio, even though, if he had been forced to be honest, he would have admitted his unease as well. The face was too alive. Light slid greasily over the oil paint and seemed to lend warmth to the flesh. The eyes gleamed. But Nio had hung it in the library. After all, Scuadimnes had been the greatest archivist the university had ever known, despite his treachery.
Something stirred in the shadows in the alcove. The darkness within the alcove was impenetrable, but Nio had the oddest sensation that, if he could see through that dark, he would find the eyes of the painting fixed on him. He shook his head and yawned.
I’ll find that boy and I’ll wring his neck.
What was in the box?
I wish I could remember her face. She was always smiling.
Nio fell asleep in his chair and dreamed.
There was darkness all around him. The library was gone. He stood up and the chair vanished. He could not see much of anything, but there was an airy noise of wind rushing by him that hinted at a great depth and space. As he stood there, the darkness began to relent, though he could detect no light. The gloom resolved into planes and lines. Before him was a stone wall. It was almost close enough to touch.
The stone of the wall was black and polished to such an impossible degree that it seemed to possess depth just as the darkness of the night sky possesses an almost limitless depth. Nio looked up and saw that the wall rose far above him. It grew into battlements. It mounted up into spires and towers that stood on each others’ stone shoulders, higher and higher until they could no longer be seen. The darkness and enormity of the thing seemed vaster than the night itself.
Something drew his eyes back down to the wall directly before him. What had once been unbroken stone now revealed a small, dark opening. The darkness of the hole pulled at his sight, so that he was unable to look away. The shadows around it seemed to bend and slip into the hole. He knew with a sudden, terrible certainty that the hole in the wall reached for a tremendous distance. The wind hushed and the cold deepened. The hole dragged at him. At the far end of it, something stirred. And then whispered.
Nio.
He could not answer.
Thou art welcome in this the third hour.
He could feel the blood in his veins thicken and slow. His heart labored. It seemed as if he had somehow moved closer to the hole. He stared into its darkness.
Once upon a time, there was a jewel that fell from the heights. Its light quenched and it shattered into five shards. The shards fell still, tumbling through a night so long that it hath yet to find its end and they to find their rest.
The hole sighed. There was something of regret in the tone, as if remembering things gone by and long irretrievable. And there was hunger in the sound as well.
“Where is this place?” asked Nio hoarsely.
Here, there are no such things as where. There is only here. All things drift into this night. All dreams wander to these walls. Thy own dreams brought thee here.
“Is this the house of dreams?”
He could not tear his gaze from the black hole cut in the stone wall. Somehow, he knew that the depth of it was so great that, if he fell through, he would fall forever. Tumbling like the five shards in their endless night.
Aye, said the voice.
Aye. Thou hast found the house of dreams. My house of dreams.
Somewhere far away, stars strayed from their paths into unknown ways. Light slowed and dimmed until it was no longer light, but a cold, pallid thing, no longe
r able to burst forth on its joyous, eternal race across the boundless reaches of space. The light fell, chill and heavy with the sudden awareness of self.
I would have thee accomplish a thing for me.
And he could only say yes.
“Yes. Yes, of course.”
Come closer, Nio, for I would speak with thee.
The night pressed against him and he drifted toward the hole. Closer he came, until the thing was a great, yawning gulf without edge or boundary. It was a glooming abyss and, in its impossible black depths, the quiet voice whispered again.
Come closer.
He came closer.
I would have thee accomplish a thing for me.
The voice whispered and whispered until he knew all that it wanted him to do. A small part of him thought to question the thing—some tiny spark still kindled by memories, perhaps, of the stone tower far up on the Thule coast, the grasses that waved on the moors there, and the forgotten face of a girl—but the shadows strangled him into silence with their weight as they rushed past into the abyss.
In return, said the voice, I will give thee a gift.
A light winked into being in the darkness before him. It was no stronger than the weakest candle flame, but such was the blackness around it that the light seemed oddly bright. It approached him, steadily growing in size, until there, hanging before him in the mouth of the hole, was a shard of stone, about the length of his finger. The thing was sharp-edged and gleamed with cold light.
Take it.
He could not have stopped himself at that point for anything in the world, for the sight of that light filled him with such a hunger that he had to possess the thing, to grasp the stone in his hand and know it was his.
Take it.
He reached out and took the stone. It burned in his palm with a flare of agony and he closed his fingers around it. Even the pain was beautiful. It bloomed between his fingers like a flower that sought some strange, dark sun. He opened his hand and the stone was gone.
The stone is within thee.
“What is it?” he said.
It is the fifth name of darkness. It is my gift to thee. Use it well, or it shall be taken from thee.
Nio woke. He was still sitting in the chair in the library. The night peered in through the windows. His head ached, but on his lips trembled a strange word he had never heard or known before.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
SWALLOWFOOT
Levoreth sat up with a gasp.
The room was silent, which made the beating of her heart hammer that much louder. The vase on the nightstand was filled with flower buds. She reached out. The furled petals were cool to the touch. Her heart slowed. She shrugged a shawl around her shoulders and went to the window. The moon was high. Below, in the city, down past the dark roofs of Highneck Rise, she could see lights in the streets—slow rivers of luminance flowing at a human pace. It was not late.
She lit a candle and then splashed water on her face from a bowl on the dresser. The water trickled through her fingers. It glistened in the candlelight and dripped down like tears.
“Is it the same for you, oh my sister and brother?” she said wearily. “Does the Dark haunt your dreams? There’s no rest for me anymore. Perhaps it’s a just reward, for I’ve slept long enough and woke to Tormay in such a sad state. There’s blood on our hands now, not just poor brother wind, but all this land, I fear. There’s no time left for sleep, for the Dark is in my dreams.”
The candle flame did not flicker. The light reflected off the surface of the water in the bowl. All around, though, was darkness.
“Maybe we’ll have our rest, someday, but not now. Are you awake, like me? I saw the face of our brother wind in my dream, and he was soaring through the heights. It seemed as if he turned his face and smiled as if he were a child, as he was when the world was still young. But then the darkness took him, like a wave mounting up across the sky. It blotted out the sky and I do not know where he has gone.”
Her voice faltered into silence and there was no response.
“I don’t know where any of you are gone,” Levoreth said. “But he is gone and I do not think he will return.”
The darkness chuckled from somewhere behind her. She stiffened for an instant and then turned. The bedroom was filled with shadows and, outside through the window, clouds had hidden the moon.
“You have no part here,” she said. “This is an old house. An ancient house that has faithfully served Tormay all these long years. I set my hand upon the cornerstone when it was laid. You have no part here.”
Thy hand upon the cornerstone. What do I care for such things? Even thy accursed blood cannot keep me out if the minds of men bid me welcome of their own accord. The darkness chuckled again. And they have bid me welcome.
“Then I shall hunt them down,” she said, her voice hardening. “I shall hunt them down and spill their blood onto my earth until, blood for blood, the evil is gone and you are banished back to your sleep in Daghoron.”
Fret not, little Mistress. Thou hast discourse with my dreams, for I sleep still. It is only my servants that trouble thee and thine. I have set them marching, one puppet stumbling along from one side, another from another. If all do well, then I am glad. But if only one does well, then still am I glad. If they destroy and devour each other, then what do I care? My dreams are warmed and I shall find others. Mayhap one such shall make thy acquaintance.
“I pray the day be soon,” she said viciously.
For thy tender sake, I think not, said the voice.
The wood under her feet creaked and lent her the memory of forests and deep woods, strong roots reaching down into the depths to find their strength. The stone walls on all sides groaned and gave her the memory of the mountains towering up into the sky, a ponderous weight redolent with centuries of wisdom and patience. The buds in the vase by her bed broke into bloom and filled the room with their sweet scent.
“I do not fear the servants of the Dark.”
Perhaps the voice would have said more, but Levoreth flung out her arms and, hands shaking, traced the ancient names of stone and wood and earth in the air. They hung there shining and then faded into the walls and floor and ceiling. The room was silent. She sank onto the bed. Her hands stopped shaking after a moment.
“Well, that’s that,” she said dully. “No use crying now. A hundred years too late, probably. No choice now but to see it out, even if everything falls to ruin.”
She wiped her eyes and washed her face one more time. She hurriedly dressed and then left her room. The hallway was quiet and dark. She paused outside her uncle and aunt’s room and listened. From within, there came the faint sound of slow, even breathing. She sketched a sign on the door and watched the letters disappear into the wood.
Her awareness drifted five floors down into the depths of the castle, beneath cobwebs and shadows and dusty memories. She sensed the old cornerstone embedded in the bedrock of the cliff. Her name was inscribed upon it, and she could feel the love marked in every character, drawn by her fingertip and still stained dark with her blood.
But there’s always another way to open a door, isn’t there?
The moon sailed high in the sky. A glitter of stars was thrown across the darkness like splintered light scattered by some ancient hand. She could smell the sea. Glass and copper lamps set on iron poles spilled radiance in pools across the cobbled ground. Three young Vomarone nobles staggered up the steps past her, ale fumes eddying in their wake. Someone said, “Good evening, milady,” but she did not stop to smile or see.
How I wish for my wolves.
The castle gates loomed before her. A troop of mounted soldiers clattered past, and as the minds of the horses hurried by, they caught at hers in a swell of wonder and questions and delight. She heard one neigh and the voice of its rider murmuring to the horse, and then the whole troop vanished into the night and down the avenue stretching into the darkness and winding through the trees and stately stone houses of Highneck R
ise.
Horses.
She paused and considered. A soldier at the gate came to attention. Moonlight spilled across his helm, across his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose. Shadow welled up in his eyes. It seemed as if he only had a skull instead of a face. Not enough flesh these days.
“Milady,” said the skull respectfully.
Levoreth frowned at him, distracted and not even hearing him. The Guardsman reddened and tried to look somewhere else.
Horses.
Horses and wolves.
She turned and strode away.
The stables were on the north side of the castle, past a rambling garden filled with grape arbors and edged with grass. Several mice peeped at her from under the leaves of a bush. Their black eyes shone with starlight and awe.
Mistress of Mistresses.
“Beware the Dark, little ones,” she said.
They blinked at her, too scared to say anything further.
“Tell your cousins, the vole and the shrew, the rat and the rabbit, the mole and squirrel, that the Dark has come to this city. Beware.”
The mice chittered their assent and scampered into the bushes.
She inhaled the warm scent of horse, of oats and hay and contentment. Light shone from the stable windows. The stable was fashioned of oak and stone and was finer than most of the houses in Hearne. The regent loved horses. Levoreth smiled. Botrell was a fool on the best of days, but he loved horses. Inside, a lantern hanging from a hook illuminated straw and wood and the rows of polished leather tack gleaming on the wall. Up and down the corridor, horses poked their heads out of their stalls and stared at her in wonder.
Mistress of Mistresses.
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