He drew his pistol and kept it close, though he could not see a proper target. The last of the furniture monsters gave a final, perishing cry; the cacophony died; the room fell silent. Carter glanced around, wary, expecting the tigers to turn on him next. He found his companion sitting on the floor a few feet away, dazed, and he was just edging toward the man as another of the side doors flew wide, and Jorkens and Enoch burst in, followed by the entire company.
“Beware!” Carter cried. “Go back!”
But Enoch grinned broadly and hurried over. “Are you injured? You look unharmed.”
The great cats, more than a dozen in number, sat staring at the men, and the men stood staring back. Then the largest of the tigers, a tremendous creature with a long scar down his left side and two white spots upon his breast, raised his head and roared, shaking the room with the sound. Carter quailed and raised his pistol, but Enoch restrained his hand.
In answer to the tiger’s roar, Jorkens lifted his head and gave a howl of his own, like a wolf, then laughing, approached the great beast, holding his arms bent at the elbow, palms upturned. The tiger placed his massive paws upon the man’s hands, claws sheathed.
“Mewodin, you old rascal!” Jorkens cried. “As usual, you’re right on time.”
“I cannot take credit,” the tiger spoke in a voice between a growl and a purr. “We were summoned by a Word of Power. I heard it in my den; we came swiftly. Has Master Anderson returned?”
Enoch led Carter to the great cat. “Not the father, but the son,” he said. “Mewodin, this is Carter Anderson. Mewodin is lord of the Tigers of Naleewuath.”
The tiger looked at Carter with wise jade eyes, and gave a bow of the neck. “I am honored, young master. But if you are going to shoot me aim for the chest.”
Carter looked down and saw he still held his pistol in both hands. He put it quickly away. “S … sorry. Pleased to meet … I mean …” Exasperation took him. “Don’t we hunt the Tigers of Naleewuath?”
A shocked silence followed. Jorkens turned pale and several of the men stood open-mouthed. Then Enoch began a soft, deep laugh from behind closed lips that grew until he held his sides to contain it. Mewodin watched a moment, turning his head from side to side as if to comprehend, and then a low, rumbling laughter erupted from him as well. Then everyone began to laugh, while Carter’s face reddened to crimson.
“Where in all the White Circle did you get such a notion?” Enoch asked.
“But … but, my father,” Carter said. “He said he went to hunt the Tigers of Naleewuath.”
The laughter gradually subsided. “No, young Master,” Enoch said. “He went to hunt in the land of the Tigers of Naleewuath. Did he never tell you? The tigers help us hunt the gnawlings, the chameleon beasts you saw here. When their numbers grow too large, even the tigers must have help. They are natural enemies, and when the gnawlings are not surprised as they were tonight, they can even slay the great cats.”
Carter looked at Mewodin. “I must apologize,” he said. “I didn’t know. I have been … away from the house a long time.”
“We are all kittens at times,” Mewodin said, his green eyes unreadable. “But the night is not yet old, and men prefer to sleep in darkness. Let us return to our places. Tomorrow we will speak.”
Carter gave a slight bow and the cats slipped from the drawing room in a long, sleek line.
* * *
They awoke the next morning before sunrise, and Carter soon found himself, sleepy-eyed, standing with several of the men around the hearth, warming his hands and sipping hot tea. Enoch departed after breakfast to wind his clocks, leaving Carter in Jorkens’s keeping. Still embarrassed by his behavior from the previous night, he determined to keep silent and learn the ways of the hunt. Duncan, the man who had originally requested Carter’s aid, soon arrived with a handful of men, this time dressed not in gentleman’s garb, but farmer’s breeches, looking much more comfortable because of it.
“Thank you for coming, my lord, you and your men,” Duncan said. “Last night a full-grown steer was killed. The gnawlings grow too bold.”
From Duncan’s maps Carter saw that Naleewuath was not all house, as he had begun to believe, for Evenmere opened out onto wide terraces beyond which lay fields and hill country. He learned that most of the people lived in the house itself, much as men dwell in towns, though there were always a few who built their homes upon the hillsides. Still, they would not hunt the gnawlings in the open; the creatures’ dens lay in that part of the house called the Low Cellars. It would be close work.
The tigers appeared, thirty-eight in all, and Carter thought them thirty-eight works of art, beautiful, noble, posed like velvet statues, sitting on their haunches, lying down to lick their paws, stretching their tawny shoulders, yawning like cubs—the younger ones pouncing on one another, the older ones king-eyed, seeing everything, scenting the air with a delicate lift of their noses, rumbling their excitement for the love of the hunt. In changeling form the gnawlings were shells of wood and cloth, but in their true shapes they were meat and bone—most excellent fare for a tiger. The gnawlings had not always dwelled in Naleewuath, but had been introduced by the anarchists, who had given them their chameleon abilities. But the tigers had taken what was evil and made a meal of it, which had only strengthened their treaty with the folk of Naleewuath, for they not only kept the gnawling numbers down, but had more to eat and were less likely to snatch a sheep or cow.
Two days earlier, the tigers had driven any stray gnawlings down from the hills into a part of the house called the Puzzle Chambers, a vast array of small rooms, with doors all interconnected, forming a maze. The hunters would begin there, driving the gnawlings through the rooms, down into their dens in the Low Cellars.
The company made its way down a lengthy corridor, where the walls and the forest became even more indistinguishable.
“Are all the countries of the White Circle like this?” Carter asked Jorkens. “The outdoors and indoors all intermingled?”
“No, sir. Naleewuath is somewhat unique. It is the tigers that bring the magic, they say. And that is all any man knows of it.”
At last they came to a large chamber with booths set up in long aisles. There congregated the short, stout peoples of Naleewuath, the women in long robes, their heads covered, with gold rouge upon their eyebrows and dark sienna on their pouting lips, the men in breeches and woolen shirts—their passions close to their faces—all scowls and loud laughter, bawling voices and bursts of song, selling eggs, tomatoes, bread and fish, goats and beans, leather and iron. They displayed brilliant quilts made on tall looms, silver rings shaped like frogs, beetles with agate and malachite for eyes, and clever wooden toys.
“It looks like a market,” Carter said.
“That it is, sir,” Duncan said. “Naleewuath is a little country. We are not soldiers and the Farmers’ Association is the closest thing we have to lords. This is where we bring our goods, and we sell little to anyone but ourselves, except for jade and copper to Indrin and Nianar. Beyond the booths, we can show you the Terraces, if you like.”
“Very much.”
They passed between the rows of stalls, through another corridor into a narrow room opening onto a balcony. Carter stepped through the double doors, unprepared for what lay beyond. Beneath was spread a fair green country, all long, terraced hills. The sky looked very blue after his long stay indoors, and he blinked against the rising sun. He stood midway on a high wall, gray and cracked with age, with other balconies both above and below him, and the whole countryside stretched before his face. Oaken stairs led down from each of the balconies into that fair land. Of one thing he was certain—this country was nothing like that surrounding the main portion of the house.
“It’s beautiful,” he said.
“Yes,” Duncan said. “Almost a paradise, if not for the gnawlings.”
Eventually, they returned back to the house, with its leaf walls and trees, and sultry sunlight dimly permeating the mist, yet Car
ter now knew there could not be skylights above them, because of the upper stories, so he thought it must indeed be enchantment as Jorkens had said. The trees grew thicker as they passed through large chambers more like forests than halls, but after a while the rooms became smaller again, and the light less diffused, leaving shadows everywhere. Patches of gray plaster ceiling became visible, and they walked in a wildwood twilight, all ginger and dry leaves, with hulking furniture scattered against the walls.
“How can you tell a gnawling from an ordinary hassock?” Carter asked.
“It is in the way they don’t move,” Jorkens said. Seeing Carter’s look, he said, “No, sir, I do not jest. Regular furniture merely sits, but gnawlings have a way of sitting still, a sort of quivering. You will learn to recognize it.”
The Puzzle Chambers were all their name implied, hundreds of interlocking rooms, never more than fifteen by twenty, with a door on every wall. A long, narrow corridor bordered the rooms, and the men and tigers drifted down it and waited before dozens of doors, the tigers roaring, the men’s feet tramping on the floorboards.
“The gnawlings are within,” Jorkens said. “As we hunt them we will drive them toward the Low Cellars. They’ve no other way into the house, except through these rooms, and we won’t let any slip past. The men are ready.”
Mewodin came bounding up. “The Tigers of Naleewuath are ready. We begin at your command.” His eyes gleamed with an excitement Carter found disquieting.
Carter brought his pistol up and clasped his spear. He felt a momentary dread in his stomach, but said, “Let the hunt begin.”
Jorkens made a gesture, the men opened the doors all along the corridor, and the tigers sprang into the lead. Carter and Jorkens, preceded by Mewodin, entered their first room, while the men poured in behind them. The chamber was dim and Carter squinted at the furniture, looking for any sign of the “quivering” Jorkens had mentioned, but he saw nothing.
He now realized why so many men were needed, as they divided into three groups, each opening one of the three remaining doors out of the room. Carter stayed with Jorkens and Mewodin’s party as they exited into a chamber quite similar to the first, and equally unoccupied. In such a way, the men splintered off, until Carter found himself alone with his two companions and Duncan, but to right and left he heard the opening and closing of doors, so that he knew all the parties now moved straight ahead, assured of comrades on either side.
The next hour was a tense affair, Jorkens opening the doors ever so slightly, and Mewodin sniffing through the crack before bursting into the room, claws unsheathed. Yet, they saw no gnawlings, and Carter began to think they had all escaped.
But finally, as Jorkens eased yet another door, Mewodin gave a low growl; Duncan hissed through his breath and clutched his pike. The tiger sprang into the room, slamming the door against the wall with his weight, and Jorkens followed after, pike and pistol ready. As Carter entered, he heard a low squealing and saw Mewodin pursuing a small scurrying thing, little larger than a dog, that bore a resemblance to a night stand. It scrambled up a bookcase like a monkey while Mewodin pounced furiously after, stretching on his back legs to reach it. He missed the creature’s mahogany tail by a fraction. The prey lurched to the top of the bookcase, leapt to the doorknob, opened it with a swinging motion, and slid inside. The tiger followed, as men shouted in the next room.
Carter was about to follow, when he glanced back and saw a flowery fainting couch trembling as if in an earthquake. He gave a shout to Duncan, who stood between him and it, and the man turned just in time to meet the monster’s assault, as it transformed into a tawny, pouncing beast. Duncan blocked its iron claws from his throat with his pike, but was thrown against the wall by the force of its charge.
Without breaking its stride, the beast bore down on Carter. Barely, he brought his own pike into line, as the gnawling leapt half the length of the room. Its green-gold head filled his sight: long ripping fangs, slavering mouth, blood-red eyes. He was driven off his feet as it impaled itself upon the pike right up to the guards. It bit at him, inches from his face, even as it died on the edge. Its gore spilled down his legs; its claws vainly batted the air; its last breath, the stench of rage, blew into his nostrils, making him gag. He kept the beast from him with all his strength, until it was finally still. Jorkens helped him rise.
“Are you hurt, lord?”
He stood stiffly, inspecting himself. “Bruised only, I think. Where’s Duncan?”
The farmer rose, grimacing in pain. “It … knocked the breath from me,” he said. Then recovering a little, he looked gratefully at Carter. “You saved my life.”
Mewodin bounded back into the room, proudly shaking the dead monkey-thing between his teeth, but he dropped it when he saw the slain gnawling sprawled upon the pike, all flower-scaled like an alligator.
“A great feat, young master,” the tiger said in admiration. “This one will make a good rug for your drawing room.”
* * *
All day they hunted the gnawlings through the Puzzle Chambers, and often the dealings were close, though never so near as that first encounter. Mewodin dealt mostly with the larger beasts and Carter quickly learned that the pistol, which he had considered his first defense, was not so at all; the quarters were too close, and he feared shooting either his fellows or the tigers. Though they slew several gnawlings that day, they met none as large as the alligator-thing, though other members of the party did.
After several hours, they entered a final door opening onto a landing, with a long stair leading downward to the Low Cellars. They descended, following steps that twisted and turned. It was an evil path, all dark wood and carved gargoyles, marred by slime and the bones of the gnawlings’ victims, which were mostly animal, though some looked dreadfully human. Carter was reminded of his descent to the Room of Horrors.
At last they came to a red painted door, eight feet tall and nearly as wide, with a red eye carved at its center.
At Jorkens’s order, the men distributed torches.
“The rest of the beasts have fled down here,” Jorkens said. “This will be harder labor, and less certain, for it is a lightless place. We must fan out in a straight line across the room, and drive our prey toward the far walls. The tigers will go in front. Pistols are useless so put them away. Keep your pikes before you.”
“Are you ready, my lord?” Jorkens asked.
Carter clutched his pike. “I am.”
Jorkens grasped the knob and tried to turn it. His face went pale. “The door is locked, sir,” he said, looking at it in bewilderment.
“You must use the Master Keys,” Duncan said.
Carter’s face reddened. “I do not have them. They were lost, several years ago.”
Duncan grimaced. “I had heard stories, but I didn’t know they were true. Only the Master Keys can lock or unlock these doors. Then the anarchists have them?”
“They do,” Carter said.
“Then they are learning to master them,” Mewodin said. “It must be a hard thing for them, for the keys would not easily bend to the will of such men. The gnawlings are safe from us then, and can strike when they wish.”
“Can’t we force the lock?” Carter asked.
Jorkens looked at him, obviously astonished. “You must recall, sir, no force on earth can budge a door secured by the Master Keys.”
“What will become of Naleewuath?” Duncan asked, his face white.
“What will become of all the High House?” the tiger said. “Is anything safe from the anarchists now, young master?”
“I don’t know,” Carter said. “But I intend to find out.”
* * *
It took two restless, dispirited days for Jorkens to lead the company back through the winding passages out of Naleewuath into the Long Corridor, through the Gray Edge to the Green Door into the Inner Chambers. As he looked upon the stains on his cloak and boots, Carter knew he had walked in the footsteps of his father, who had often come home looking the same. But
Lord Anderson had always had an air of triumph about him, where Carter knew only defeat.
Both Chant and Enoch were upon their rounds, but Mr. Hope met Carter in the dining room, and together they dined on roast fowl, butter and bread, strawberries and potatoes, all tasting like dry dust in Carter’s mouth. When he was done telling of the hunt, he said, “Will I never cease paying for the one crime of an errant child? When I took the keys I meant no harm, yet it was an arrogance far beyond my years.”
“No,” Hope said. “It was only a childish act, such as all of us have done in our boyhood. It’s true the consequences are greater, but you had no way of knowing that. If I may say so, the fault lies with your guardians, even your father himself. To forbid a boy entrance through a particular door is to guarantee he will seek it.”
“I have to find the Master Keys, you know,” Carter said. “I need them, along with the Lightning Sword and the Tawny Mantle if I am to fulfill the office of Steward. There is no other way.”
“I thought as much myself, though how you will obtain them, I don’t know. But I have spent my time trying to rally help. You recall my mentioning a White Circle? Chant knew a little about the matter, and with his help I sent out messengers seeking to speak with the representatives from the surrounding kingdoms. I hope that was all right; I felt a need for haste. From what you tell me of Naleewuath I must assume all these countries border the house. Of course, that is impossible by natural laws; it is as if a whole other world opens out from the Green Door.”
“It does, from what I’ve seen.”
“Then perhaps our allies can help us, both in protecting ourselves and in finding the keys.”
Carter sighed. “I don’t know. Father must have commanded every resource at his disposal in his search, and he found nothing. Still, you’ve done good work. Ten years have passed; perhaps we will succeed where he failed.”
The High House Page 9
