The House of Night and Chain

by David Annandale

  He shut down the cutter. ‘Ready?’ he asked. Before I could answer, he kicked the window. The central portion fell into the room beyond with a crash that seemed loud enough to be heard across Valgaast.

  ‘They won’t have heard down below,’ Tervine said. ‘Not with all the noise they’re making.’

  The chamber we entered was a circular study. There was a bronze desk placed before each of the windows, giving a choice of commanding views. In the centre of the room was a throne on a mechanised dais. The walls between the windows were taken up by shelves crammed with scrolled parchments and leather-bound volumes.

  Now that we were inside, I became aware of the smell of the place. The stench was old and fresh, engrained into the walls and floor, and clearly constantly renewed. It was the smell of sweat, of sex, and of pain. Blood, ancient and new, was present too. It was the stench of decadence. I grimaced in disgust that it should be so strong here, in a chamber clearly meant for observation. And then I wondered what terrible forms observation could take.

  From far, far below, the cries of the Montfor entertainment rose in sordid echoes up the tower’s stairs.

  ‘I should send the Inquisition here,’ I muttered.

  ‘It would do no good,’ said Tervine. ‘You’re not the first to have thought of that. It’s what I said. The Montfors know what they’re doing.’

  ‘But such excesses…’

  He shook his head. ‘No. That’s not the impression I got from the people I spoke to, the ones who were paid to take part. It’s not excess. It’s a kind of discipline.’ Tervine sounded revolted and impressed at the same time. Then he produced a lumen torch and shone the beam around, being careful not to flash it past the windows. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘The search is up to you, lord-governor.’

  I grunted. I moved around the dark chamber slowly. There were documents scattered on the desks, but a quick glance showed that though they might be suggestive of malfeasance in the right context, they were not useful enough to justify the risks we were taking. Nor did what I saw on the shelves look promising. My goal was nebulous and frustrating. ‘I don’t think what I seek will be left out in the open, even in here,’ I said at last. I glanced at the small door in the west wall of the study. Through it we could descend to the rest of the house. And a search so large it was doomed to failure.

  Tervine was examining the controls on the arms of the throne. ‘Rotate left and right, yes, yes,’ he muttered. ‘But what about these? What are they for?’ He was focused on two small switches under the arms of the throne. He toggled them in turn, then at the same time. After a minute of experimentation, he triggered the correct combination. With the grinding of metal against stone, the throne’s dais rose, becoming an iron column five feet across. A narrow doorway in its side opened onto a cramped flight of stairs that led down into a vault under the study.

  Tervine handed me the torch. ‘I think whatever you’ll find down there would not be healthy for me to know about. But if you see something an ordinary thief could use…’

  ‘I’ll make sure to take it,’ I promised.

  I descended into the gloom. The ceiling was so low I had to crouch. I was surrounded by oaken cabinets. I pulled drawers open at random. Some of the documents inside looked very old, as old as the records I had seen in the Administratum Palace. Others were more recent. All of them were written in cypher. I cursed.

  I opened the drawers faster, flipping through the documents I found. All handwritten, at different times by different people, all with meanings hidden from me. The only things that were not indecipherable were, at first glance, useless to me as well. They were copies of council records. They covered a wide variety of subjects, none of them sinister by themselves. It was only after I had seen what must have been a dozen of them that a pattern began to emerge. All of these documents concerned actions taken or edicts issued by the governing Strock. I saw names I had never known, references to ancestors completely forgotten by history.

  Forgotten by everyone except the Montfors. Only our enemies appeared to have taken the proper care to preserve our history.

  I moved deeper into the vault, and behind the last of the cabinets I found a long plasteel chest with a heavy padlock. I shuffled back to the stairs, got Tervine to pass down his plasma cutter, then returned to the chest. The searing glare of the cutter ­dazzled me, but I made short work of the lock. I waited until I could see properly by the light of the torch, then opened the chest.

  There was a portrait inside. Very old. The name engraved on the bottom of the frame was Devris Strock.

  He wore rich robes of blue and violet, green and red. They were not the vestments of a planetary governor. At first I assumed the portrait had been done before his ascension. Then I saw that he held the rod of office in one hand and a sword in the other, as if announcing what was, or would soon be, his.

  There was no doubt this was a Strock. The sharp, slightly elongated nose. The narrow eyes. The high, rather heavy forehead. The family characteristics were strong, recognisable over the span of centuries. There was an arrogance in his gaze that I did not like, a defiance and hunger that were not, I fervently wished to believe, the dominant traits of our house.

  And all of this was nothing. It was not the expression in the portrait that hit me with the force of a physical blow and had me staggering back, yet at the same time held my gaze with an unbreakable lock.

  Runes surrounded Devris. They crawled up and down the periphery of the painting. They writhed and tangled with each other like serpents and insects, though they were infinitely fouler. I did not know what any of them meant. They were monstrous, though, unholy. They were mere shapes, and they were abominations. Such contortions of lines could not exist. And here they were, a heresy so monstrous it exceeded my sense of what was possible in all the possibilities and permutations of degradation. They attacked my gaze with their angles. Their illusion of movement sank claws into my soul. I was endangering myself just by looking at them. Ignorance could not protect me for long.

  The worst and largest of the runes was an eight-pointed star. In the simplicity of its shape, by comparison to the rest of the terrors, it was familiar in some hideous fashion. Though I had never seen it before, it seemed to whisper to me, as if it could conjure unspeakable thoughts, urges and desires from the deepest well of my psyche. It knew me better than I knew myself. It would show me such wonders, if only I gave myself to it.

  Horror was my salvation. It made me cling to my faith with a death grip.

  The star took up most of the width of the portrait. It was in the background, behind Devris, though the circle that surrounded the arms of the star appeared to embrace him at the waist.

  Ancient as the painting was, the eight-pointed star glistened. If I touched it, I would be tainted.

  With a groan of effort, I tore my gaze from the painting and slammed the lid of the chest down. I sank down against a cabinet, gasping for air. The words Eliana had written swirled through my mind like acid, like cancer.

  The pact.

  The pact.

  The pact.

  There were things here that I did not understand, and I must never do so. There were others, less dangerous but agonisingly painful, that I had to confront.

  Tervine was wrong. There had been at least one robbery at Malveil. There was no question in my mind that this was a portrait Devris had commissioned. The creation radiated pride of the worst kind. And at some point, the Montfors had acquired it.

  Why haven’t they used it?

  The potential for blackmail was enormous. I shuddered at the thought of what would happen if that portrait of blasphemy fell into the hands of the Inquisition. Would all the virtue and piety and duty that had been the hallmarks of the House of Strock since Devris matter in the least?

  Maybe they would.

  Maybe the unswerving faith of my family had been an unconscious effort to aton
e for a crime we could not remember but from which we continued to benefit.

  A pact. I saw what Eliana had deduced. I understood her agony that continued past death. Devris had entered into a pact with powers I could not comprehend, though I could see they were beyond unholy. He had been given the impossible riches beneath Malveil, and through them the governorship of the planet.

  What did he give in return?

  His allegiance, to judge from the portrait. But what did his allegiance mean? What was the cost?

  No direct heirs. Let’s start there.

  Terror for my children threatened to choke me. Was that part of Eliana’s pain too? It wasn’t just peace that I had to try to grant her. She needed salvation. We all did. We needed to be rescued from what Devris had done.

  I did not know how to save us. Perhaps Eliana did. She kept pointing the way for me as best she could.

  Together, we could save our family.

  I clung to that hope. It was a thin one, and fragile. It was also enough to give me the strength to struggle back to my feet.

  I stared at the chest. I dreaded opening it, but I could not leave that painting intact. It was more than the danger it represented in Veth Montfor’s hands. It was an unclean thing. It could not be permitted to exist.

  I braced myself, then moved to the chest. It seemed to radiate cold now. It was a monstrous thing itself, corrupted by the evil it held. In a rush, before I could hesitate, I flung the lid back, ignited the plasma cutter and trained its beam on the painting.

  The beam shut off. I tried to restart the burn. Nothing. The cutting tool was dead.

  I brought the lid of the chest crashing down before the painting seized my gaze and started gnawing into my soul again. I rushed back to the stairs, banging into cabinets. The vault was closing in on me. The spider at its centre wanted to haul me back.

  I lunged up the stairs, back into the study. The degraded stench of the house seemed almost banal now compared to what I had seen.

  ‘Was there anything…’ Tervine began. Then he saw my face. ‘We should go,’ he said.

  We fled.

  The vertiginous descent from the tower was as nothing. I had just fallen infinitely further.

  Chapter 15

  I will never leave this house again.

  This is not a determination. It is a fact. This is my prison. Malveil sent me out one last time. Now it will keep me.

  Earlier, I tried to leave again. I did not want to go. Though the house wishes me ill, the thought of leaving was intolerable. Because of that, I knew I had to try. My terror of the outside world might not be mine. I don’t know how many of my thoughts are my own, and which belong to the house.

  Even this journal. No matter how much I whisper to myself, I find other words here that I do not remember writing. There is so little that is mine any more.

  I was in the librarium. I was sitting down, looking out of the window. I was as comfortable as a prisoner can be. But I resent this prison. So I vowed to shake the bars and try to leave of my own volition, not the house’s.

  I reached the front door. I called for Karoff. He did not appear. I looked into the dining hall, searching for one of the serfs. I could hear them in the house. I wanted someone with me. I hoped that might give me the strength to go outside.

  I could not find them. Their distant voices were lies. I do not believe the serfs are really here. I think they have abandoned me too. They are just pretending they have not.

  I am alone. I think, in truth, I always have been.

  I opened the door. I stood on the threshold. I could go no further. I tried to lift my foot, to take a single step. I could not. It was as if adamantine shackles held me where I was.

  It was windy. The dead trees near the house looked like they were nodding. They were mocking me.

  There were figures in the trees, and partway down the hill. They were indistinct. The ones in the trees were not moving. They were half hidden behind the trunks. They were staring at me. They were grey, and they were hollow. Their eyes were dark, but if I had been close enough to look into them, I would have gazed into empty skulls. They were shells, here but not here, a walking lie, just like the serfs.

  Or perhaps not. Perhaps they were more real. Perhaps they were the truth. The serfs only wanted me to think they were there.

  The figures on the road to the house were harder to make out. They moved back and forth, back and forth, purposeless. They were trapped, like me.

  The wind grew stronger. I wanted to go back inside. The house had won. I surrendered. I did not wish to see these figures any longer.

  Malveil would not let me go. It was teaching me a lesson. I had to be punished for my wilfulness. As the wind howled, I was terrified that it would develop a voice. I needed to shut the door against the wind before it began to speak.

  I couldn’t cover my ears. I couldn’t close my eyes.

  There was movement at the edge of my vision. I stared straight ahead. I must not turn my head and look. I must not see.

  The wind found its voice. It came from under the ground. It came from the open mouths of the mining tunnels. They were the throats of something vast.

  I heard the first notes of a terrible choir.

  I screamed. I screamed to drown out those voices. I failed, but Malveil must have been satisfied with my terror. It released me, and at last I could shut my eyes, and I could move. I rushed inside and slammed the door.

  I trembled in the entrance hall for a time. The voices scratched at the door. When I moved into the dining hall, they followed, hurling themselves at the windows. The panes rattled, and the choir sang just at the edge of my hearing. If anyone else had been with me, they would only have heard the keening of the wind.

  But there was no one else. There never has been.

  I wandered through the house, purposeless as the figures on the hill. When I heard the voices of the empty shells pretending to be serfs, I hurried in another direction. I was done with illusions, and I was frightened.

  I moved through the rooms of debris. After all the work that had been done, none of the heaps looked any smaller than when I first arrived.

  Of course they aren’t. All is pretence.

  There was something different, though. Now, when I paused near a pile, I easily found records and journals left by the previous inhabitants. I am a prisoner, just as they were. There will be no secrets for me any longer.

  No. That is not true. There will always be secrets in Malveil. No matter how many revelations there are, no matter how much I learn to my cost, there will always be more. I am reading the journals and the letters and the desperate scrawlings that I have found. I am no longer making a history of the family. I am living its curse. But I read, because what else can I do?

  One of the secrets is a figure who sets the building on fire. Generation after generation of Strock lords see this figure, sometimes male, sometimes female. The fire that it sets is always an illusion. It vanishes with the arsonist. The governors feel mocked by it, though they can never see its face. They always pursue it and it always escapes. So that is a secret. If any of them have discovered who the figure is, they have not set it down in writing, or at least not in the bounty of dark writings Malveil has exposed me to.

  Enough of these histories of terror. Enough of Malveil’s torment. I must cut the strings on which I dangle. Enough of everything. I see what I must do to force a crisis. I will wait until the pretence of the serfs ends, and then I will act.

  I failed.

  And now I have seen the arsonist too.

  I have seen more than that. I have seen worse than that.

  I started to discard my past days ago. Now it is time to finish the task. I understand it better now. The past is foul. It is dangerous to anything I might still hold dear. I must bury it. I must add my small efforts to stamping down upon it.

&nb
sp; The burying can never stop. What rises does not rest. Its hunger is eternal.

  Before dawn, I answered the call to the Old Tower. I have resisted as long as I could. Until recently, I did not know I was resisting. Unconscious fear kept me away. I have gone though. I descended.

  I have learned something new. It is possible to have a renewed purpose and know the greatest despair.

  I have learned too much.

  I have seen.

  I know, Maeson. I saw and I know.

  This should be your burden. I cannot carry it any longer.

  From a great distance, I watched myself go through the motions of the day. My body attended council. My spirit was far away, trapped in the vault in Silling’s spire. My mind roved back and forth between them, agonising over the implications of what I had seen and what might happen now. How long would it be before Veth Montfor discovered the broken window, and from there the broken padlock on the chest? She would guess that my agents or I had been there. She would know I knew what she had.

  She’ll have to act soon. I would have to, in her position.

  Act how?

  That was the only reason I was able to pay any attention at all to the council session. I managed to avoid staring directly at Montfor. I did what I could to observe her actions, and her allies’ too. I tried to divine what they meant. I was looking for auguries that would tell me when the storm would break, and how.

  I was no wiser at the end of the session than I had been at the start. There were manoeuvres to delay the production reports. That side of the war seemed a mere distraction now. If Montfor destroyed me, the campaign against corruption would end. I had no faith that Zander would continue my fight, or that Katrin would urge him to. The promises we had made to each other felt empty. I kept having to suppress doubts that I had been speaking then to my actual children.

  I was sure Montfor saw our overt struggle in the same way. If she was fighting to preserve her empire of crime, it was for the larger end of destroying the Strocks.