Evenmere (The Evenmere Chronicles Book 3)

by Stoddard, James

  scorched papers. He lifted the topmost page, lecture notes

  written in a small, neat script on the use of iambic pentameter

  in medieval Corovia.

  A hand touched his arm.

  He leapt back with a shout. In the previously empty chair

  sat a woman. A strangled gasp escaped his throat.

  “Hello, Carter.”

  His breath hissed between his teeth. Without replying, he

  lifted his sword to see her clearly. A tremor of shock ran

  through his frame. His whole body turned frigid.

  “Come and give your mother a kiss,” she said sweetly.

  “What are you doing in the dark?”

  “I have waited here so I could warn you,” she said. “Come

  to me, child. Surely you remember me?”

  “I remember,” Carter said. She had died when he was five.

  He could scarcely breathe.

  “Then let me hold you in my arms. It has been so long. So

  many years. Haven’t you wanted it?”

  “The dead do not arise until the appointed time.”

  “My love demanded that I do so.”

  She was exactly as he remembered, the slender dark

  beauty, the soft voice and warm expression. “What do you

  want to warn me about?”

  She glanced around the assembly hall as if her eyes could

  penetrate the darkness. “The Poetry Men have tapped into the

  power of Chaos. They will destroy the foundation of the house

  by attacking those in charge of the Balance, the members of

  the Servants’ Circle. You must stop them or beauty will vanish

  from the universe. No more the numbered sequence, no more

  the rising and setting of the sun. No more the passing of the

  minutes and hours, the footprints of time. You must prevent it.

  But first, come into my arms, and I will hold you and tell you

  how precious and perfect you are, and love you with a

  mother’s everlasting love.” She raised her arms, beckoning.

  When he mastered himself enough to speak, Carter’s

  words were ashes in his mouth. He had known, of course, it

  was not really her … “Such talk gives you away, Lady Order.”

  The woman slowly lowered her hands to her side. “A

  shame. Yet it changes nothing. I can be your mother. Serve

  me. Embrace me. I can give you back your childhood. The

  innocence. The love. Is that not what mortals long for?”

  “If I do as you say, what a prize you would possess! What

  a ruin you would make of the house with me to drive Chaos

  back.”

  “You have been unkind to me!” she cried, her lips pouting.

  “You misuse me, letting these Poetry Men wield the essence of

  Chaos. They are making him too strong!”

  “Then tell me how to stop them.”

  Order shook his mother’s head, the soft curls rustling in

  the silence. “They must be stopped.”

  “How are Doctor Armilus and Professor Shoemate

  involved?”

  “I do not know them. They have not touched me.”

  Carter bowed his head, gathering his strength. “Very well.

  Depart from this place.”

  “I have been drawn here, given physical form by the Chaos

  within these walls.”

  “And the Master bids you leave. I will set right the

  Balance so neither you nor Chaos hold the upper hand.” Lord

  Anderson’s voice rose to sudden fury. “Go! I command it!”

  The woman vanished. Carter raked in his breath, his eyes

  swarming with tears. “Cruel, cruel Order,” he murmured.

  “Such guileless deceit. How little you understand us.” Despite

  her seeming intelligence, she was not alive in the strictest

  sense, but a Force with a single nature.

  He walked to the center of the assembly hall, and there,

  where the fields of Chaos were strongest, spoke in a loud

  voice. “Old Man Chaos, you have dared too much! The Master

  of Evenmere orders you to release these chambers!”

  A deep, booming rose from the four walls, like distant

  drums. The assembly hall shook, nearly tossing Carter off his

  feet. An amorphous figure took form, gray and misshapen, its

  shoulders humped and uneven, one arm shorter than the other,

  its long, ash-gray face liquid as melting candle wax. The

  slogging form of Chaos.

  “The red rose in the blue-stained glass!” it shouted, eyes

  glistening. “The agents of entropy! Wild wolves in the garden.

  Darkness and darkness and bitter longing! Get back! Come

  forth! The world-tree enters!”

  As quickly as it appeared, Chaos sank away, vanishing into

  the shadows; but even as it went, Carter encountered

  resistance, as if another will opposed his own.

  He suddenly found himself in a different place, hurled

  there with breathtaking rapidity. He stood in a circular

  chamber within a tall, crimson tower. A long window revealed

  rows of battlements beneath a violet sky peppered with blue,

  unwinking stars. A lamp burned on an ebony desk at the other

  side of the room, where sat a woman in an upholstered chair.

  Though Carter judged her to be somewhat younger than he,

  her hair was silver. She had deep, brooding eyes. Infinite

  sorrow consumed her features as she sat reading lines of

  poetry.

  She looked up, placidly meeting Carter’s gaze. Without a

  hint of surprise, she asked, “Are you a Seeker?”

  “Who are you?”

  But she only sighed and returned to her book. “Come and

  see.”

  Going to the desk, Carter looked over the woman’s

  shoulder. With a shock he discovered that the lines throbbed

  with an energy as strong as that of the Words of Power;

  scanning them shook him to the core. He tore his eyes away

  only with great difficulty.

  “How can you read that so calmly?” he asked.

  She glanced up again. “How can I stop?”

  Carter abruptly found himself back in the chamber at the

  College of Poets. Only a few seconds had passed since he

  banished Chaos, for the room still shuddered from the effects

  of the creature’s departure. Gradually, the supernatural chill

  vanished from the air. The Lightning Sword dimmed. Carter

  drew a lantern and flint from his pack as the last rays of the

  sword died. The lamp flamed high, a sign that the Balance had

  been restored to the rooms.

  Shuddering, he stumbled from the chamber and back down

  the stair. The exit door was locked, and so greatly was he

  shaken by what he had seen, it took an effort not to use his

  sword to shatter the mechanism. Instead, he drew a deep

  breath, sheathed his blade, and rapped harshly. The officer

  opened the door at once.

  “Did you find anything, sir?”

  “Enough,” Carter said. “You won’t have any more

  problems with these rooms.”

  The man raised his eyebrows. “Very good, sir. I will report

  it to the chancellor. Are you well, sir? You look deathly pale.”

  But Carter waved the man away and went to sit on a bench

  beneath the rotunda. Worse even than the shock of seeing his

  dead mother apparently returned to life, he had never

  experienced anything like the vision of t
he woman in the

  tower. It had been somewhat like entering the dream

  dimension, yet different as well, somehow more real . He

  could not be certain, but he suspected his physical body had

  actually been transported there. It was as if power were being

  siphoned into Chaos; and when he touched that power, it put

  him in contact with its source. That dreadful book. It had

  contained fundamental energy much like that of the

  Cornerstone of Evenmere. It could create and destroy; it might

  even be able to change reality. What was he up against?

  Who was the woman, and what was she doing with the

  book? Was she somehow the root of the Poetry Men’s might?

  He had to find out. He had been able to restore the College of

  Poets from its chaotic state with a word, for it had contained

  but a fragment of that power, but he doubted even he could

  oppose it directly.

  He pulled the diary from his breast pocket, reminded of the

  question Chancellor Tremolo had asked as he and Jonathan

  were leaving.

  What of Professor Shoemate? Carter thought, running his

  hand over his mouth and staring down at the diary. What

  indeed of Professor Shoemate?

  The Library

  Upon leaving the College of Poets, Carter returned to his

  room to read the professor’s journal. The first few pages were

  irretrievably scorched, while the surviving leaves were written

  in what he assumed to be a foreign language. This led him to

  the Linguistics Department, where he spent two hours being

  passed from professor to professor. Textbooks were consulted,

  theories propounded, and heads thoughtfully scratched, as the

  experts eliminated, one by one, various tongues from Thedrian

  to Old Iphrisian.

  Finally, a short, curly-headed philologist named Reuel

  appeared from the depths of the building, took one glance at

  the writing, and in a clipped voice declared, “It’s not a

  language, but a letter-for-letter substitution. You just have to

  puzzle it through.” He promptly hobbled away, leaving the

  other professors nodding their heads and saying it was

  perfectly obvious. They soon created Carter a key.

  Over lunch at the university commons, he set to work

  translating the diary. Judging by her rapid scrawl, Erin

  Shoemate had learned the system well enough to write it

  fluently. Clearly, she was an intelligent woman. By mid-

  afternoon, he had finished his translation.

  With several of the pages ruined by fire, it was difficult to

  follow some of the professor’s often-esoteric references. She

  wrote of old legends and pseudo-scientific literature—the tales

  of Lost Atlantis, the Centric Theories of Bromsky, even

  quoting Anton Trombone’s peculiar, phantasmagorical epic,

  Beyond Yonder , tying them together with a book she seemed

  to have stumbled on, a “great key” she believed would lead

  her into “True Poetry.”

  The next section of her journal was ruined, and when it

  resumed, she was preparing to seek “the portal of the book.”

  The top half of the next page was scorched beyond recovery,

  but the remaining section stated she would “go first to the

  Palace of the Decemvirs in Jossing, and then to the Tower of

  Astronomy.”

  Lord Anderson closed the diary. Had Erin Shoemate found

  what she was seeking?

  A quick visit to the chancellor’s office soon answered the

  question. An old photograph of the professors of the College

  of Poetry revealed a younger version of the woman Carter had

  seen in his vision, standing in the second row beside Benjamin

  Armilus.

  He grimaced thoughtfully. The fact that the doctor and

  Professor Shoemate had worked together could not be a

  coincidence. What was the connection?

  As the afternoon waned, he made his way through the

  paneled corridors to the university library entrance, a lobby

  with tessellated tile, Ionian pillars tipped in silver, and a three-

  story marble statue of King Mosiva, the builder of the first

  library in Evenmere, enrobed and bearing a heavy scroll. His

  hair flowed backward from his face; his serene eyes looked

  down.

  Carter sat on a bench and studied his inner maps, bringing

  to mind the passages surrounding the library, learning the way

  by heart. The complex represented a fascinating challenge, a

  building in a perpetual state of growth, having expanded over

  the centuries to seventy separate chambers on ten floors,

  connected by a series of seemingly endless warrens. The

  interior was wooden stairs, dark oak beams, and high

  chandeliers. After an hour of study, Carter rose and made his

  way past the doorman along the smooth marble tunnel leading

  to the Stacks.

  A few students milled around the front desk, but Lord

  Anderson soon left them behind. He journeyed between

  narrow aisles beneath cloistered ceilings of arched stone, his

  boot-steps heavy on the wooden boards, the musty scent of the

  volumes hanging in the air. The gas jets hissed in the silence;

  moths fluttered around the flames; the corners lay hidden in

  shadow.

  As in the College of Poets, he sensed chaotic influences as

  he ascended to the upper stories, and he wondered if he would

  see Lady Order again. He passed along gloomy stairs, making

  his way to the drawing room on the eighth floor.

  Within a narrow corridor decorated with hanging

  tapestries, he spoke the Word of Secret Ways. The room

  trembled and a blue square of light appeared around a tapestry

  depicting eagles in flight. Moving the fabric aside, Carter

  searched until he discovered a slender button embedded in the

  flowering ornamentation on the wainscot border, which caused

  a section of the wall to open inward. He drew his lamp from

  his pack, lit it, and slipped inside.

  Cobwebs thick as string covered the corridor. Carter drew

  his sword and raised his lamp high, searching for spiders large

  enough to spin such strands. Seeing none, he cut through the

  webs, which shriveled beneath the power of his blade. Turning

  sideways to avoid the filaments, he followed the thin passage

  until it ended at an intersecting corridor. He veered to the right,

  following his inner maps, and soon came to a spy-hole.

  Pressing one eye to it, he discovered a room lit with candles.

  By his pocket watch, the time was twenty past seven.

  According to the chancellor’s secretary, the poetry meetings

  normally had been held at eight, so he sat cross-legged on the

  floor to see if anything would occur.

  He hated waiting like this. He had spent far too many

  hours of his life doing so. He particularly hated waiting for

  something dreadful to happen. The minutes dragged until

  nearly quarter till, when a soft rustling sounded in the room

  beyond.

  Rising, he saw through the spy-hole a young, wire-haired

  man, presumably a student, setting out pads and pencils.

  Eschewing the use of the gas-jets, the man lit additi
onal

  candles. He moved carelessly about the room, apparently

  unconcerned that the meeting was neither scheduled nor

  sanctioned by the university.

  One by one, other men and women of various ages drifted

  into the room, until about twenty of them stood awkwardly

  around the table. Though they appeared to be strangers, they

  did not attempt introductions. Several were clearly agitated.

  Sweat beaded their brows; they kept clasping and unclasping

  their fists. One muttered over and over, “I just hope it helps.”

  “Are you certain he’s coming?” a thin woman, who could

  not stop wringing her hands, asked the wire-haired man.

  “I am certain,” the man replied, “or, if not he, some other

  representative. He has never broken his word. I would swear

  to that.”

  “It’s probably poppycock,” a middle-aged fellow with

  spectacles growled, wiping his brow with a handkerchief.

  “You will see it isn’t,” Wire-hair replied. “If you will take

  a seat, I will serve some tea.”

  The group complied. With beverages before them, they fell

  silent, staring into their cups.

  When Carter’s watch showed precisely eight o’clock,

  footsteps sounded in the outer corridor, and a Poetry Man

  dressed in a green robe appeared. A mist rose from his collar,

  obscuring his head, so only patches of his face could be

  glimpsed through the haze. One woman gave a shriek at his

  bizarre appearance, and the rest eyed each other, as if to see

  who would bolt first.

  “Good evening,” the poet said. Carter could not tell, either

  by his looks or his voice, if this was the same one who had

  tried to kill him. He noticed a chameleon, green as the poet’s

  robe and tiny enough to be mistaken for a brooch, clinging to

  the man’s left breast. “I will begin by asking you how you

  knew of tonight’s gathering.”

  The group again exchanged hesitant glances.

  “Let us not be stilled by fear,” the Poetry Man said. “There

  are bridges to be crossed. Out with it, have your say, if you

  would find what you have lost.”

  “I …” one man stammered. “A voice in the wind told me

  of the meeting.”

  A sigh of relief circled the table. A woman spoke, “A bird

  in the Commons sang it to me.”

  “It was the rustling of a cottonwood,” a man said.

  So it went, one after the other, each glad to unburden