House of Shadows

by Rachel Neumeier

  “Well, then—”

  “Yes,” said Nemienne. “Shh.” She looked at the cats, who both sat at the extreme edge of the black pool with their tails wrapped around their feet and gazed back at her with pale light glimmering in their unreadable green eyes. We’ve brought you here, their eyes seemed to say. Now it’s up to you to understand what this place is, and why you needed to see it. And if Nemienne had no ideas about that, well, she should learn to think like a cat, she supposed.

  In fact, though she had no idea why Enkea should have brought them to this place and had never felt farther from the ordinary places of home and hearth, Nemienne was somehow becoming increasingly confident that she could indeed find a path for Karah and herself from this uncanny cavern to that ordinary world. She almost thought she knew how to do that right now. The other time she had been trapped in the dark, she had drawn herself back into the world by remembering ordinary light. Now, in this place where nothing was ordinary, she shut her eyes in favor of the more familiar darkness behind her own eyelids, and searched within that personal darkness for some place more recognizable than the dragon’s cavern. The sound of water droplets falling from the dragon’s wing intruded, each musical plink echoing across the next until the reverberations of sound crept into her bones. That reverberation was almost familiar, but not quite.

  Beside her, Karah murmured, “Nemienne, what are you thinking? You’re frowning.”

  “Am I?” Nemienne whispered. It still seemed to her—she couldn’t quite decide why—that it would be rude or imprudent, even dangerous, to speak aloud in this place. “Karah, does this cavern remind you of somewhere else?”

  “Remind me—” Her sister’s answering whisper seemed incredulous. “No! What place could possibly be like this?”

  “Not like. Just… you know… not similar, but in sympathy?” Nemienne didn’t know how to express what she meant, and stopped. Without opening her eyes, she turned toward her sister. There was a faint greenish light that trailed out behind Karah and wavered away into the dark. It did not precisely illuminate a path, but perhaps, Nemienne thought, the echo of a path. She stepped sideways through the dark after that rippling light, drawing her sister after her into the echo of some other place, she did not know quite where… Karah made a surprised sound, but let herself be tugged along.

  Nemienne’s foot came jarringly down on a surface that was not the stone of the cavern floor. She found gritty, dusty stone under her palm, in a tight-cramped space that pressed her down to her hands and knees. She would have lost her grip on Karah’s hand, except that her sister also clung tightly. The air in this place was nothing like the chill damp air of the dragon’s cavern. This place, whatever it was, smelled of ash and unfamiliar musky incense and, most strangely, flowers. Nemienne coughed. Ash rose around her, chokingly. She coughed again and couldn’t stop.

  Then a voice exclaimed, and a strong, slim hand closed around hers, and Nemienne was dragged forward, hard. She crawled into a strange room. There was something strange about that grip as well, but Nemienne did not have time to consider what this oddness might be before she was released again. She was coughing, and her eyes were tearing, but there was suddenly space and air and light. Karah crowded forward after her, also coughing, their hands still linked. Nemienne, frightened despite herself, was glad her sister was with her in this… Where were they?

  “What is this?” exclaimed the voice, and Nemienne blinked her sight clear and found herself on her knees, on the wide hearth of a great fireplace, in an unfamiliar chamber. She was facing a stern-faced young woman about Ananda’s age.

  The room was a bedchamber, plain but painstakingly neat. The bed was narrow; in fact, the chamber itself was narrow and small. The coverlet on the bed, a good heavy one, was a rich blue, but dyed unevenly so that the blue was streaked all down one side. There was a slim vase on a small table at the foot of the bed, which held in this season only a few plumes of dried grass. There was no ornament in the room but this single vase.

  A single long window was placed high on one side, beneath a slanting ceiling. Morning light came in through the window, rose and gold. It was later than Nemienne had thought—breakfast time, at least. Her heart sank. Mage Ankennes would certainly realize she had gone before she could get back. She didn’t exactly think he would be angry, but she also didn’t look forward to explaining that she had got herself lost beneath the mountain again. Well, at least this time she could say truthfully that she hadn’t deliberately gone through any doors into the dark.

  Nemienne hoped Karah wasn’t in trouble. The young woman who had helped her clamber out of the fireplace looked angry. She was as austere as the room. She wore a plain overrobe of slate gray over an underrobe of a yellow so pale it was almost cream. Her hair, quite straight, had been put back into a severe knot at the back of her long neck. The comb that held the knot in place was not much of an adornment; it was a simple dark brown that almost vanished against the color of the hair itself. The woman’s eyes were a dark storm gray, their expression reserved. Her strong mouth was set in an unamused line.

  Then it relaxed in astonishment. “Karah?” the woman said.

  Karah said, in a voice only a little choked with ash and bewilderment, “Leilis? But—” and stopped again.

  Nemienne said, “Oh, is this Cloisonné House, then?” That explained the scents of incense and flowers. The ash was self-explanatory. She began to make movements toward getting up off her knees, though she felt oddly insecure in her balance. Perhaps being dragged forcibly from a hidden cavern and back into the ordinary world of men through a fireplace was inherently unsettling. Why a fireplace, anyway? Though at that the taste of ashes in her mouth was a little like the taste of shadows and limestone…

  Leilis did not offer a hand up. Instead, the young woman stood with her arms crossed over her chest and looked, to Nemienne, to be growing ever more severe. She said to Karah, “Rue told me you’d vanished again. This time I was half minded not to help her look for you—I thought Lily had lured you out again, and was once not enough? But I did. Only this time, neither of us could find you. Did you slip out to find your sister? You never should, not without permission; you may be new to the flower life, but you should know that.”

  “Yes—no—I know—I didn’t—” Karah stuttered to a confused halt. Nemienne wanted to pinch her. Couldn’t her sister put a reasonable sentence together?

  “Well?” said Leilis, sternly.

  Nemienne did pinch Karah on the arm, but gently. Karah gave her a flashing look of mingled affection and exasperation, but she also took the time for a deep breath. When she answered Leilis, she spoke steadily, although not actually very sensibly. “I didn’t slip out. I wouldn’t do that, Leilis! I heard music and I woke up in the dark, under the mountains, Nemienne said, and at first I thought I was dreaming, but I wasn’t. Nemienne was there, and we—there was—well, Nemienne brought us out.” She left out the dragon. Nemienne understood: That great carven monster did not lend itself to any kind of casual description.

  Karah finished her abbreviated account by giving the fireplace behind them a doubtful look. “I don’t know why we came back through your fireplace.”

  “It’s an interesting fireplace,” Nemienne said, realizing this was true. She turned to give it a more careful examination. “It’s deeper than it looks, isn’t it? And that white stone it’s made of, that’s not ordinary quarry stone.” In fact… in fact, Nemienne rather thought that that stone had been carved out of the depths of some deep cavern at the heart of a mountain. The cracks in the hearthstones looked odd, too: strangely precise, almost like—well, like—she could not quite remember what those jagged lines reminded her of. She wanted to crouch down by the hearth and trace those lines, make them familiar to the tips of her fingertips in the hopes that this would shake loose her memory. But Leilis didn’t look like the sort of woman who would be patient with any such examination.

  The woman tapped her foot. “The dark under the mountains,”
she repeated, her voice edged with sarcasm.

  “Yes!” said Karah.

  “Yes,” said Nemienne, wondering how anyone could possibly doubt her sister’s obvious sincerity. “Really. Or how do you think we got into your fireplace? Surely people don’t spring out of it every morning.”

  To Nemienne’s surprise, Leilis’s mouth crooked at this bit of impudence. “Not every morning,” she admitted. “Bespelled under the mountains by music! I suppose Lily hired a bit of odd spellwork from some dock mage. How very creative of her.”

  “Lily?” Nemienne asked.

  But Leilis only shook her head, impatient and wary and dismissive all at once. “Never mind. I’ll speak to her. In the meantime…” She looked the girls up and down and then shook her head again. “You,” she said to Karah, “need a bath! You won’t have time for sleep now, not before you’re supposed to be up properly, which only punishes you as you deserve for springing out of my fireplace and frightening me to death. Go tell Rue you are back even before you bathe!”

  “Yes, Leilis.” Karah slipped away in immediate obedience.

  Nemienne didn’t think Leilis looked much like she had ever been frightened by anything. Despite her youth and her plain room, she was obviously someone important in Cloisonné House. So, although Nemienne wanted to ask again about this Lily who might have bought a spell to throw Karah into the dark, she held her tongue.

  “Now, you are no one Lily has ever heard of,” Leilis said to her. “You’re the sister who was apprenticed to Mage Ankennes, of course? Yes. You must have a bath, too, but first I want you to tell me again, in a little more detail, if you please, where and how you found your sister.” She sat down on the bed and looked at Nemienne expectantly.

  Since there was nowhere else to sit, Nemienne folded up her legs and sat down on the hearth. She surreptitiously traced a fingertip along one of the cracks that ran through the hearthstones while trying to decide what to tell this woman. The odd resonance the fireplace produced was much stronger along the crack. There was a sort of half-felt draft of cool air through the fissure, as though the great caverns beneath the mountain lay only the width of this stone away… which they did, in a way. Cloisonné House was a house of shadows, no less than Mage Ankennes’s house, Nemienne realized. She wondered who had originally built this house and laid the stones for this fireplace…

  Leilis made a small, impatient sound.

  Nemienne, recalled to the moment, explained hastily, “Karah said she heard music and found herself in the dark. So did I. I dreamed of piping in the dark and woke up under the mountain. It was… well, it was… I don’t know if a dock mage would know about that place, or how to make a spell that would take you there.” This in fact seemed very unlikely. Nemienne frowned, thinking about it.

  Leilis frowned at her. “Piping. Not just music, but specifically piping.”

  “… yes?”

  The woman stood up. “Come along,” she said. She led Nemienne out of the room and strode purposively down the gallery, so that Nemienne had to hurry to keep up with her. Leilis led the way along the gallery—all the doors were shut, the women of Cloisonné House evidently all still asleep—and down a flight of stairs to a second, shorter gallery. She strode along this hall to the room on the far end, and here she tapped gently and entered without waiting for an answer.

  The room was another bedchamber, this one twice as large and far more handsomely appointed than Leilis’s. Two small tables, each with its own dainty little chair set before it, held respectively brushes and combs and pins in neat racks, or little pottery bowls filled with ointments and waxes. A well-used kinsana was set against the far wall, a flute and three sets of hand pipes occupied an ornate stand next to the kinsana, and a scroll filled with musical notation had been pinned open on a stand of its own. The bed was set so that its occupant could catch the breeze from the room’s one window, though this was shuttered now against the morning’s chill. A pallet was lying across the room from the bed. The pallet was occupied only by Karah’s silver kitten, which had evidently made its own way back from the deep places beneath the mountain and was now curled up asleep on the pillow. Karah herself, Nemienne supposed, must already have gone on to her bath.

  But another woman was sitting on the bed. Like Leilis, this woman was fully dressed, which Nemienne had begun to guess from the quiet of the House might not be customary at this time of day. Past the first bloom of youth, and with the narrow features and reddish-black hair of a Samenian, this woman looked more interesting than beautiful. Right now her expression combined weariness and exasperation and relief all at once.

  The woman—she must be Rue—looked up as Leilis entered and gave a little nod. “So you found our little strayed bird—again. Honestly, Leilis, what are we going to do?” Then she saw Nemienne and stopped abruptly.

  Leilis gave a little brusque wave of her hand toward Nemienne. “Karah’s sister. She’s the one who found her.” Leilis stepped aside and impatiently gestured Nemienne forward. “You surely know that your sister has charmed Prince Tepres? Your sister must have said so?”

  Karah somehow hadn’t thought to mention this. Nemienne knew she must look shocked, but she couldn’t help it.

  Disregarding Nemienne’s amazement, Leilis was going on, “He gave her a set of twin pipes. Where did she keep them, Rue? Oh, under her pillow? Ah, the romance of the young!” From her tone, she might have been a grandmother rather than maybe in her mid-twenties. But Leilis did just seem older, somehow. She said, crossing the room to Karah’s pallet, “Well, let’s have a look, then.” The kitten twitched an ear as Leilis lifted the pillow, cracked open one eye, hissed halfheartedly at the intrusion, and went back to sleep.

  There was indeed a set of twin pipes under Karah’s pillow, a set carved of ivory and bound with gold. Clearly the set had once been very beautiful. Even now an echo of that beauty remained. But the ivory was cracked and yellowed, and the gold blackened and twisted. The pipes looked like they had been thrown into a fire and left there to smolder. Rue, eyes widening in surprise and dismay, silently took them from Leilis, holding them cupped in her hands as though the pipes were some small injured creature.

  “Well,” said Leilis to Nemienne, “now I believe you did hear piping.” She took the pipes gently back from Rue and turned them over curiously.

  “Prince Tepres… the prince himself gave these to her? And she sleeps with them under her pillow?” Nemienne remembered Karah blushing when she thought of the man who had given her the kitten. Is he wonderful? Nemienne had asked. And her sister had said, Maybe he is. Karah was in love with Prince Tepres.

  Nemienne shook her head in amazement. She reached to take the pipes from Leilis, half expecting the ruined pipes to leap with fire and life in her hands—either because they’d clearly been bespelled or because they’d been a royal gift, she did not quite know which. But they lay quiescent in her hand. But the brush of Leilis’s hand against hers was another thing, and not so quiet. Nemienne pulled back and gave Leilis a wide, surprised stare.

  Leilis took no notice of Nemienne’s reaction. She said, still focused on the pipes, “I much doubt the Dragon’s heir knew what he gave her. He knew only that she would be pleased to have them as a gift. He saw as much when he received them himself, a few days past, at that foreign lord’s engagement…” Her voice trailed off, and then firmed: “At that engagement, where the foreign lord gave these pipes from his own hand to Prince Tepres.”

  CHAPTER 11

  The pipes Taudde had made were finally brought to life a few days after the keiso engagement, very early in the morning, before the sky had yet begun to lighten toward dawn. Taudde, lying sleepless in his bed, had been listening to the rhythm of the waves that sometimes seemed to permeate Lonne in the long hours that preceded the dawn. He could not quite tell whether he actually heard the music of the sea—his townhouse, set well back from the shore, should have been too far from the sea to hear its voice. But if the music of the sea did reach him even here
, the voice of the pipes drowned it.

  He had been waiting for the sound of that music—dreading it, but fearing even more that he would never hear it. But Miennes must have decided at last that the time had come to destroy the Dragon’s heir.

  The inexpert playing set Taudde’s teeth on edge, but he was so glad to have the waiting resolved that he welcomed even that. He lay awake and motionless while the delicate web of sound drew tight and then faded slowly, drawing its victims, he knew, along the path that led from the world of ephemeral life into the country of eternal death.

  Only when the music had entirely passed beyond hearing did he rise. He went to the window of his room, putting back the shutters so he could gaze out at the chill night. The streetlamps below glowed like pale sea jewels, drowning the light of the stars and the early dawn. In the mountainous heights of Kalches, the stars would be brilliant. On crisp, cold nights, they would seem so close one might reach out and brush them from the sky. Tonight, both Kalches and the stars seemed very far away.

  With the fading of the piping came, perhaps, other possibilities. The time for timidity was surely past. Taudde went to his writing desk. There he took out the note Miennes had so recently written to invite him to that fraught dinner. He studied the graceful, slanting letters. Then he sat down and penned a letter of his own in that same graceful hand, with ink the azure of the sunlit sea, on the finest pale-cream parchment. If I am dead, know that it was sorcery struck the blow, he wrote. But it was not a Kalchesene made this spell: There is treachery ’twixt mountain and sea. Look to the mages of Lonne for this crafting; one of them has betrayed the Dragon and made it seem as though I were false myself. Would Miennes have used that phrase? Taudde decided that he would, and continued. Look to the prince; if I am dead, he must be the next target of Lirionne’s enemy. If you read this, let my death prove my faithfulness and warn of betrayal from one who has been trusted. When Taudde wrote the name Ankennes, he wrote it in blood-red ink. And when he signed Miennes’s name, he signed it in gold ink and with a practiced flourish so like the original that he hoped Miennes himself would have been unable to tell it from his own true signature.