The Dark Volume

by Gordon Dahlquist

  Her thoughts were jarred by a sudden shift in the surface of the road. They had reached the cobbled drive leading to the Vandaariff estate. She cleared her throat rather deliberately and was gratified to see Mr. Phelps open one eye in response.

  “Have you ever been to Harschmort House?” she asked.

  He exhaled wearily and shrugged himself to a more respectable posture.

  “I have.”

  “With Deputy Minister Crabbé?”

  “Indeed.”

  “And Roger Bascombe?”

  Phelps glanced at the still-sleeping Soames, and then out the window at the dispiriting landscape.

  “Before the disappearance of the Deputy Minister, there were regular communications between his office, Lord Vandaariff's people, and officials of the Privy Council. It was in no small part owing to Lord Vandaariff that the Duke was able to achieve the control over the Privy Council that he presently enjoys.”

  “I would say the Duke enjoys very little,” said Miss Temple, “these days.”

  “My point,” continued Phelps, “is that since the disappearance of the Deputy Minister, no word has arrived from Lord Vandaariff whatsoever.”

  “Of course there hasn't,” said Miss Temple.

  “It is easily explained by the epidemic at Harschmort House of blood fever—”

  “Blood fever!” She tossed her head at the compartment behind them. “Have you asked her?”

  Phelps licked his lips. “Who?”

  “Who?” She mocked him openly. “Her! Mrs. Marchmoor! Margaret Hooke! Not saying her name will not change the fact of her existence, nor lessen her power.”

  “I cannot say I am… personally… acquainted with the lady.”

  Miss Temple delicately blew her nose into the wadded handkerchief.

  “A pity, for she is perfectly acquainted with you.”

  THE COACH crossed the flagstone plaza to the wide steps. Mr. Phelps jogged Soames awake, and the man was still blinking and unpleasantly smacking his lips as he stepped from the coach. Miss Temple realized she had never seen Robert Vandaariff's mansion during the day. With out the enfolding night, the structure's harsh simplicity was even more oppressive. The building had first been constructed as a coastal fortress, then turned into a prison. Lord Vandaariff had refitted the interiors to his own lavish specifications, but to Miss Temple, isolated between a featureless landscape and the vast—and therefore somehow inherently disapproving—sky, Harschmort seemed a prison once again.

  Phelps followed her from the coach and shut the door. The Duke's footmen carefully extricated the Duke—Soames taking his Grace's elbow—and then, with all the relish they might have shown toward a similarly sized spider, Mrs. Marchmoor. The footmen remained with the coach, heads lowered, as the party made its deliberate way to the stairs: Phelps in the lead, then Soames and the Duke, and last Miss Temple next to the glass woman. Miss Temple sniffed sharply and wiped her nose.

  “You hurt me very much,” she said.

  “You insulted me,” echoed the voice of Mrs. Marchmoor in her head.

  “Resenting a fact does not make it untrue,” replied Miss Temple. “Besides, I thought the Process made that sort of shyness unimportant.”

  “It is not too late for you to discover firsthand,” answered the glass woman. “All the necessary machinery is here. How very smart of you to suggest it.”

  Miss Temple swallowed, her fears augmented by the ruthless grip of the glass woman's hand on her arm. They had reached the stairs, and she was compelled to assist her captor's awkward climb.

  “There are no servants to meet us, your Grace,” Phelps called.

  “Of course there are servants,” croaked the Duke in reply.

  As if he had been pushed, Phelps stumbled to the still-shut double doors. He lifted the enormous metal knocker and brought it down with a crash, the sound echoing across the empty plaza like the bark of an enormous lonely dog. The echoes faded to silence, and Phelps rapped the knocker twice more. He was rewarded by a metal snapping from inside as the lock was turned. One door swung open enough to reveal a man in Harschmort's black livery.

  “The Duke of Stäelmaere,” announced Mr. Phelps. “To see Lord Robert Vandaariff.”

  The man looked up at Phelps, hesitating. “I am sorry to inform you that Lord Vandaariff—”

  He got no further. The servant staggered backwards and Miss Temple heard the awkward clatter of his fall. Phelps pushed the door wide and motioned them in.

  Vandaariff's footman lay inert on the tile, breathing in shallow puffs like an agitated spaniel, but his eyes were vacant and dull. The main foyer of the mansion was empty of any other person. Miss Temple wrinkled her nose, and saw Phelps and Soames doing the same.

  “There has been a fire,” Phelps said.

  Miss Temple turned to Mrs. Marchmoor, but the glass woman was already moving. Miss Temple followed with the others, hoping Mrs. Marchmoor's probing mind might become distracted such that a resourceful person might avail themselves of something like a heavy brass candlestick or a flingable Chinese urn. A sudden snap of pain between Miss Temple's eyes made her stumble. Phelps glanced back at her, his mouth a clenched, disapproving line.

  The stench of smoke was most intolerable at the center of the house, though any actual sign of what had been burned remained hidden. An elderly man in black livery toppled onto the marble floor as his mind fell subject to Mrs. Marchmoor's need. He lay on his back, blood flowing from his ears, and they swept to a winding staircase Miss Temple had taken before—down to an old library where the Comte d'Orkancz had set up a smaller experimental laboratory. The smell of smoke worsened as they traversed the curving corridor to the blackened door. The Comte's laboratory was littered with the charred wreckage of fallen balconies and the bookcases that had propped them up, the walls peeled and streaked with soot, the domed ceiling pitted by flame. The stone worktops were cracked, and seared with brilliant colors where his stores of chemical compounds succumbed to the blaze. Miss Temple stepped gingerly into the room, her feet crunching on cinders, gazing with a grim fascination at the charred feather bed where Lydia Vandaariff had undergone the loathsome ministrations of the Comte d'Orkancz.

  Miss Temple turned to Mrs. Marchmoor. Clearly she had hoped to find the Comte's tools and his supply of refined blue glass, his copious notes and specially designed machines. Had Mrs. Marchmoor left the protection of Stäelmaere House, risked exposure, risked everything, only to find herself outwitted by an adversary she did not know existed?

  But Mrs. Marchmoor was not looking at the wall, or the ruined chemical machinery, or even the bed. As Miss Temple watched, the glass woman carefully advanced into the ruined chamber, stopping only when she stood within a wide circle of smoke-blackened blue glass fragments. Miss Temple covered her mouth with one hand, recalling the first glass woman she had encountered—the Comte's prize… Cardinal Chang's love… the glass woman she had herself destroyed in this very room with Doctor Svenson's pistol. Mrs. Marchmoor turned to Miss Temple, impassive, her unseen feet grinding against the broken remains of Angelique.

  No one spoke as they retraced their steps to the main floor. Directed by two more unfortunate servants, the glass woman stalked slowly across the empty ballroom. The smell of fire grew strong again, and then openly oppressive as they stepped through the French doors into the ornamental garden. As if a massive explosion had taken place (a level of destruction one associated only with newspaper accounts of full-scale battle), the center of the garden had fallen in on itself, collapsing utterly into the massive cathedral chamber beneath it, which now lay open to the air, and in ruins. Here the fire had been far more massive and savage, melting the bright pipes that lined the walls, consuming the roof timbers, toppling the tiers of prison cells into a mangle of misshapen steel. In the center of it all still rose the iron staircase tower, broken and jagged as a black rotting tooth. The platform at its base, where all the Comte's machinery had been installed, where Mrs. Marchmoor had been strapped to a table
—for the last time flesh and blood—lay smothered in debris.

  Mrs. Marchmoor's head whipped to the right, toward the interior of the house, the action so sharp as to dislodge her hood and reveal her shining face. In the doorway to the ballroom stood another figure in a cloak, as dark but much more ragged, tall but bent with fatigue. His red hair was shocked with lifeless white, as if it had been wiped with paste. His skin, deathly pale, was at every margin—the rims of each eye, the discolored flare within each nostril, both livid dripping lips— cast in varying shades of blue, as if he were a monochrome portrait of a frozen corpse. In Francis Xonck's left hand glittered a narrow lancet of blue glass.

  “YOU'VE TRAVELED quite a way, Margaret. How very brave of you.”

  “So you are alive, Francis.”

  The woman's response insinuated itself into Miss Temple's mind, like the sound of a knife being sharpened in another room. Xonck snorted and spat a knot of blue matter on the grass.

  “When did it become Francis? Whatever happened to ‘Mr. Xonck’? Even when I was rogering you sideways at the Old Palace you still kept your sense of respect. I suppose that also explains the pack of spaniels out searching for me.”

  He nodded contemptuously at Phelps and Soames, then passed his gaze more deliberately over the Duke, stiff as statuary, and then Miss Temple. Xonck's voice dropped into a low snarl.

  “If you have her, then you have my book. Will you give it back, Margaret?”

  “I cannot, Francis. I know what it holds.”

  “If I understand things correctly, the contents would be useless to you.”

  “Useless in that I cannot penetrate them directly. But I am determined to influence whoever does.”

  “Influence? I think you mean control.”

  “A great deal has changed.”

  “You are no longer bound by the Process?”

  “The Process opens one's eyes to the truth—you've only yourself to blame.”

  Miss Temple remembered Xonck as a dandy—a rake, a wit—but within that pose he'd been as vicious and deadly as any viper. If Mrs. Marchmoor were not there, the whole of their party would have without question been at his mercy. Xonck took another step and his cloak gaped open to reveal a white shirt horribly stained with dried brown blood… and a spot within that stain boasting a bright blue crust.

  Xonck cocked his head and studied the Duke. “Is he beginning to rot yet? I'm sure the Comte concocted all sorts of preparations to sustain longevity… such a shame he is not here to apply them.”

  “You are as bereft without the Comte as I am,” hissed Mrs. Marchmoor. “Why else are you at Harschmort, if not to find his secrets?”

  “I admit it freely,” replied Xonck, stepping just a bit closer. “A shame what's happened to the place, isn't it?”

  “You claim not to have caused this destruction?”

  “Don't be a fool,” laughed Xonck. “Look into the mind of any servant here and you will see the fire predates my return. What they will not tell you—for none of them know what to look for—is that the Comte's machinery had all been removed beforehand.”

  “Who would have known to do that? Rosamonde—”

  “She could not have returned any earlier than I. Truly, Margaret, who else could it be but you? Everyone else the Comte enlisted to help him is dead.”

  “Where is Robert Vandaariff?” Miss Temple called out. “We did not see him anywhere.”

  Xonck turned to her with a nasty look and in the same moment she felt a prick inside her skull from Mrs. Marchmoor's irritation. She winced but spoke again.

  “I am well aware Lord Vandaariff's mind was emptied, but are the effects of an emptied mind permanent? Could some portion of the man remain? Before you betrayed him, Robert Vandaariff knew as much about your plots as anyone—indeed, he thought he was in command. One is curious, in these intervening days, who was given the task of minding him?”

  Mr. Phelps stepped forward, sparking an immediate response from Xonck, the glass stiletto poised. Phelps raised his own empty hands before him and spoke clearly, despite his obvious fear.

  “It is a simple enough matter for the servants to tell us where their master is, or at least when he left them. If his departure is coincidental with these fires, then the situation is all the clearer. Yes?”

  Xonck nodded and stepped aside. Phelps walked quickly past him and into the house. Miss Temple wondered if he might not take the opportunity to run for his life.

  “Elspeth Poole was to have tended Vandaariff,” said Xonck. “In her absence…”

  He paused, his concentration broken by a spasm of discomfort. Miss Temple clucked her tongue. Xonck met her eyes with an intense distaste.

  “May I ask why this woman is alive?” he snarled.

  “Because I can force her to action, where the two of you cannot. And I don't care if she dies.”

  “Do you care if anyone dies, Margaret?”

  “Do you?”

  “Do not be frightful,” said Xonck with a smile, his broken teeth dark and slick. “My own life I hold extremely dear.” He gestured with the dagger toward the massive reeking pit. “And I think there has been enough wanton destruction for the time being. Who has done this, if not you and if not me? Has your fellow found someone to talk to, Margaret? Eavesdrop in his brain—save us the misery of waiting!”

  Mrs. Marchmoor did not reply, but Miss Temple could see the twitch in her posture. Xonck took another step. Miss Temple glanced over at Mr. Soames, but he remained holding the Duke's arm, as if that simple duty might protect him.

  “He has,” replied Mrs. Marchmoor, and Miss Temple winced to imagine Phelps tottering on his feet as she possessed him, foam on his lips, eyelids batting like the wings of a moth in the dark. Mrs. Marchmoor held up one hand, sorting through the conversation they could not hear.

  “The fires occurred in the night… two days ago. Lord Vandaariff was discovered missing the next morning. At first it was thought he might have set the blazes himself and perished in them—”

  Xonck interrupted her. “Ask about the machinery—there must have been carts to haul it, or a freight launch on the canal.”

  “Yes… the previous day, there were men—”

  “Mrs. Marchmoor!” Miss Temple cried. Francis Xonck had advanced within range of a sudden lunge. The glass woman cocked her head and took a careful step back.

  “What do you play at, Francis? Do you think I won't scruple to seize your mind? Do you think I would not enjoy it all the more? You rogering me? What of me rogering the stuffing from your very soul?”

  “By all means, Margaret—your cause is perfectly just.” Francis Xonck leered at her, his mouth wide and hideous, and opened his arms in invitation. “But I do not think you can. I too have been touched by the glass—and my alchemy has changed…”

  He took another deliberate, challenging step forward. Mrs. Marchmoor raised her arm. Xonck staggered, as if he had been struck by a hammer, and wavered on his feet. But then he rolled his head to the side, easily, as if he were resisting an unwelcome caress, and came on.

  With a flick of the glass woman's arm, Mr. Soames flew forward at Xonck, grappling for the dagger. Mrs. Marchmoor retreated as fast as possible with her slow, careful pace. Miss Temple hesitated—should she fight or run? The unattended Duke sank to the grass like a balloon losing its air. Soames had Xonck's forearm with both hands, but Xonck shifted his weight and slammed the plaster-wrapped fist into Soames' head, knocking him to his knees. Still—perhaps this was the force of Mrs. Marchmoor's control—Soames did not let go. Xonck hammered him again, the impact spattering the cast with blood. Xonck shoved Soames clear.

  “Give me the book, Margaret! Set it down this instant!”

  Mrs. Marchmoor retreated two more steps and the edge of her cloak rippled to reveal the canvas sack she had set down on the grass. She continued backwards and Xonck followed, pausing to snatch up his prize, until they stood face-to-face.

  “Very wise, Margaret. Stay where you are.
You will be mine. You know it—there is no other way. I will keep you here in this garden— what can the rain or fog matter to you?—and if you set foot in the house or attempt to leave, I will smash you piece by piece and keep you alive through all of it!” He waved the book. “Because I will know how, Margaret, and I will know how to remake you, just to destroy you all over again.”

  The pistol shot caught him above the right knee, the spray of blood blowing out onto the grass. Xonck crumpled with a cry of pain, but with a heave of effort he surged up and turned to face Mr. Phelps, who stood with a smoking pistol, a handful of black-coated Harschmort servants behind him.

  “You fool!” cried Xonck. “Any shot that misses me shatters her!”

  With an ungainly leap he took hold of Mrs. Marchmoor and pulled her roughly to him, with a force that Miss Temple was sure must crack the glass woman's arm. But it did not crack, and she stumbled, an unnatural embrace—Xonck's free hand swiftly circling her waist and his heavy cast braced against her neck, as if prepared to snap it clean.

  It seemed as if Mr. Phelps would not stop—that he did not care— and his gaze passed over both the Duke, facedown on the lawn, and the unmoving Mr. Soames. But then Phelps' eyes went dull and he paused. The pistol-point drifted to the side. A stream of blood opened from Phelps' nose and dripped down to stain his starched collar. Mrs. Marchmoor had taken his decision into her own hands.

  Xonck laughed again, harsh as a crow, and then swore as he shifted his weight from his bleeding leg. This caused Mrs. Marchmoor to turn, and their faces came as close as two lovers'.

  Suddenly Xonck's spine stiffened. The canvas sack slipped from his hand.

  In the open space between them Miss Temple saw that Mrs. Marchmoor had plunged her finger into the blue-crusted wound in Xonck's chest, well up to the third knuckle, just as she had inserted it into the book. Xonck arched his back and roared, a bull beneath the axe, but could not tear free.

  Miss Temple dashed forward and snatched up the canvas sack, running away into the ruins of the Harschmort gardens, dodging behind hedges and between lines of gnarled rosebushes, her boots stumbling over sudden bands of cobblestone or crunching gravel. Xonck was screaming behind her… a pistol shot crashed into the air.