himself of his strange vision.
“But what does it mean?” a gray-haired gentleman
demanded.
“What is that which troubles you most?” the poet asked.
“What is your pain? What deadly stains give your eyes their
shadowed, hollow look? Unless you say, it can never be
expunged.”
“I am … a writer,” a portly woman said. “There were
always days when the muse would not come, but never like
this. The words are … gone. I can’t even remember how to
fashion them! I read my past writings and they seem works of
genius compared to the drivel I pen now.”
“I was—am—a poet,” a slender, dark-haired man said.
“My volumes have been printed in Aylyrium and Ooz, and
sold through fifty countries. But now I am dust dry.”
A balding man, near tears, drew a flute from a case at his
feet. It glistened dully in the candlelight. “I have entertained
thousands,” he said. “I have been numbered with the great. I
play now and the notes sound shrill. At first I thought it was
my ears, until I saw the faces of my audience. I have heard the
same in players less-skilled than I. The music is leaving
Evenmere.”
“My eyes cannot see the colors of the palette,” an artist
said.
A man in drab brown stood. “I am unlike any of these. I
am a scientist. I don’t know what I am doing here, but my
experiments have begun to fail, and I don’t know why.”
“Our first scientist,” the Poetry Man said. “Yet others will
follow, brought by the hollow tune of despair. First the tears of
the artists, then of the artisans.”
“What can be done?” someone asked.
“I know where your art has gone; I know where your talent
lies,” the poet said. “Would you dare to seek it out? You must
pay a price to find the flames of your delight. Many men have
sought it; braver souls than yours have tried. There they met
the angels’ laughter or the devil’s deadly eyes. What say you?
It may be more than you can bear.”
“I cannot continue like this,” the spectacled man said. “To
live without heart …” He waved his hands helplessly in the
air.
“Whatever bargain you propose,” the portly woman said,
“I will pay the price if I can.”
“The price you pay is but your own,” the poet said. “I am
only a herald, sent to show you the fount of Creativity, for I
have stood in the light and would share the flame. Are we
agreed? If any fear, let him depart, the door I now disclose is
not for the faint of heart.”
As one, the desperate company agreed.
“Then behold,” the Poetry Man turned his palms upward.
“The silver door.”
Light fountained coin-shiny from his hands. Carter stepped
back from the spy-hole, dazzled by its purity. By the time he
recovered enough to look again, a silver portal had risen
before the poet, a door adorned only by the magnificent light
streaming from behind it.
The Poetry Man strode to the door, turned the knob, and
flung the portal wide.
The light was nearly unbearable; heavenly, beautiful,
beckoning. Carter gave a cry of surprise, an exclamation
echoed by everyone around the table, who clambered to their
feet.
“Come,” the poet said. “Come and greet Divine
Inspiration.”
The company asked no questions, but one by one, like
moths to fire, shuffled toward the door.
Carter grasped the pommel of his sword until it bit against
his flesh. He was neither artist nor poet, yet he too yearned to
enter that portal, and for a long second stood paralyzed by his
yearning.
Yet he was still the Master, and had faced the Poetry Men’s
temptation before. “No,” he whispered, denying his own
impulses. Then, realizing the true peril, he shouted through the
wall, “No, wait!”
There was no immediate exit from the secret passage into
the room. He sprinted down the corridor, consulting his maps
for another way out, which he found in the hall outside the
drawing room. Slipping from behind a portrait, he hurried to
the door of the chamber. It was locked. He destroyed the
mechanism with a single blow of his Lightning Sword,
shattering wood and iron.
Silver light bathed the entire room. The last member of the
party was stepping over the threshold, while the Poetry Man
stood alongside, gesturing with a half-bow and a wave of his
left hand.
“Stop!” Carter cried, but if the final victim heard, he did
not respond as he slipped through the opening.
“Lord Anderson, a pleasant surprise,” the poet said. “Have
your eyes seen? Have you come to partake? I have been sent
to make Master and servant obsolete, the fleet passing of
history. The day of the house is done. Come and be as one
with us.”
The door beckoned, and Carter realized he could not resist
its temptation long. The Poetry Man, face hidden by the mist,
gestured toward the portal.
“Do not tarry, my friend. It will not remain open forever.”
Carter fought the urge to enter the long silver corridor; he
could see the party just ahead, all argent, making its way
toward the source of the light. His right foot moved forward,
unbidden. In another moment, he would cross the threshold.
Before the last traces of sanity could leave him, he reached
deep within himself and saw, far in the darkness, the Word
Which Gives Strength. It rose through the blackness; he felt its
burning flames, and spoke it in a rush.
Sedhattee !
The room shook so violently the poet had to grip the
doorway to keep his balance.
Power rushed through Carter. The appeal of the door
diminished to bearable levels. He turned toward the Poetry
Man, who retreated.
“My puissance is exhausted with the summoning of the
door,” the poet said. “I bow before the power of your Words.
Yet, will you deny the spark that binds Existence? Do not, I
say! Adore our good gift. Enter and embrace it! Only then will
you see the strength of heaven’s generosity.”
But Carter moved rapidly toward his adversary, sword
ready. “Release them.”
“They are not mine to release or summon back. To retrieve
them, you must go where they have gone.”
Carter stepped closer, but the poet danced away and fled
toward the door. Unable to reach his foe, Lord Anderson drew
his pistol and fired, but the man ducked and the bullet missed
his head by a fraction, chipping wood from the door frame.
The poet vanished through the doorway.
Carter wanted to give chase, but he had to help the others.
After momentary hesitation, he took a deep breath and crossed
over the silver threshold.
All was argent within; the light permeated everything.
Carter seemed to be standing within a boundless void, even the
floor beneath him undetectable
. The company was far ahead,
making its way uncertainly through the brilliance.
He dashed after, thankful for the Word Which Gives
Strength. But not even the Word could still his terror of what
he might discover in this place. Whatever lay before him, its
very presence, seen in its full majesty, would surely destroy
him.
He reached the thin, spectacled man at the end of the line.
Grasping him by the shoulder, he cried in a loud voice, made
louder by the silence. “You must come back! You have been
deceived. There is only death here.”
The others turned and stared at him, silver as ghosts, and
might have been specters for all they heeded him.
“You are wrong,” the spectacled man said, brushing his
hand aside. “It is life.”
Carter watched helplessly as they continued on. Another
portal gaped ahead, the source of the silver flame. Lord
Anderson summoned the Word of Hope and spoke it into the
silver void. If the silver room were an illusion, the Word
would banish it.
Rahmurrim !
The whole world seemed to shake; the Word echoed as if
across vast distances, and everyone except Carter tumbled to
the ground. But when at last the reverberations died, the void
remained unchanged, and the members of the company save
one rose again and continued toward the portal.
The man who remained stood up and stumbled toward
Carter. It was the scientist.
“What am I doing?” he asked. “I don’t belong here!
Please! I can’t face what’s in there!” He pointed toward the
second portal through which the others were now passing,
shouting in joy at what they saw.
Carter grimaced. This was no illusion. Rather, he waded in
pools of reality far beyond anything he had ever experienced
before. Despair swept over him. He could do no more for the
others. He dared not enter the final doorway.
Grasping the scientist’s shoulder, Lord Anderson led him
back toward the entrance. Before they had gone a dozen paces,
they heard the cries of joy behind them change slowly into
choked, pathetic screams, going higher and higher until they
ended with a whining cry.
“Don’t look back!” Carter ordered. Together, they pulled
one another to the doorway and stepped over the threshold into
the drawing room, where they tumbled to the floor, their
strength gone.
The silver light grew even brighter, forcing them to shield
their eyes, as if every vestige of grandeur were pouring out of
the doorway. The brilliance continued to grow, until Carter
could see it from behind his eyelids.
He had to shut the door before the light consumed both of
them. Rising, blind, he stumbled to the portal and tried to seize
the knob, but each time it slipped, insubstantial, from his
grasp.
Carter stepped back, knowing what he had to do, hoping
he had the will to accomplish it. He struggled to bring the
Word Which Seals to his mind. It rose gradually, reluctantly,
but at last came tearing from his throat.
Nargoth !
The luminance vanished, and with it the door. Carter
toppled to the floor, panting for breath.
The scientist crawled over to him, then glancing up, cried,
“Deliver us!”
Carter looked around. At their places at the table, as if they
had never left, sat the members of the company, their skin the
color of milk, eyes wide, mouths open in soundless screams,
every one of them dead.
Maneuvers
Doctor Benjamin Armilus whistled snatches of song from
The Green Kingdom Suite as he made his way up the Long
Stair, which he had been ascending for three hours through a
gloom lit by sporadic lamps.
“I never mind a good climb,” he said to the ebony beast at
his heels. He had accustomed himself to its molten eyes and
shifting form, but as a gentleman, found its pungent odor
offensive. He had hoped Lord Anderson had destroyed it, but
had discovered the creature standing beside his bed when he
awoke from the dream dimension. Swallowing his
disappointment, he had thereafter begun treating it as a
favored pet.
“A wonderful avocation, climbing,” he continued.
Notwithstanding his bulk, the doctor was not fat. A proponent
of Physical Culture, he trained daily, and his immensity
disguised solid muscle. “Man against architecture. Splendid
for the thighs.” He whistled again.
He seldom traveled alone, yet this particular mission
required a certain amount of privacy. His adherents, especially
those who might not approve of his plan, did not need to know
everything. Besides, the beast made his followers nervous; it
tended to drool on them while they slept, like a chef
anticipating a bite of soufflé.
The Long Stair led ever upward, its distant lamps like
stars. Despite his aching legs, he did not pause to rest. He
prided himself on his ability to prevail against long odds, to
strive until the victory was won. By sheer willpower, he had
never been sick a day of his life, and had overcome his
opponents, both inside and outside the Society, by his own
dogged persistence.
He glanced at the beast and murmured, “No pun intended.”
Currently he was in high spirits, having finally returned to
power after the years of exile resulting from his opposition to
his predecessor’s unimaginative and dangerous plans. One did
not change the world overnight. His goals were more realistic.
He intended to place an anarchist in the position of Master of
Evenmere. Once that was done, other objectives could be met:
the members of the Circle of Servants replaced, the ruling
class expunged; the house could be fine-tuned. Of course,
there were difficulties to be addressed—much had been
written in The Book of Lore about the High House choosing its
Masters—but he was confident he could work out the details.
Nighthammer was the one who had brought the doctor the
first hint concerning the existence of the book, during the time
when Armilus had been dean of the College of Poets. The
blind poet, bearing information learned from Chant, had
carried a scroll obtained in the marketplace at Breen, a tome
written in the poetic forms common in ancient Histia. His
curiosity piqued, Armilus had enlisted the aid of Erin
Shoemate, lead professor of Poets’ College. Although he knew
a smattering of Histian, she had provided a proper translation,
revealing the tale of twin volumes, The Book of Lore and The
Book of Verse , the first a book of knowledge and power, the
second a volume giving an understanding of poetry. The
doctor had naturally been drawn to The Book of Lore .
Working with Professor Shoemate, he had sought, off and on
for the last five years, to find a way to break the seal on the
chamber where the book was hidden. To that end, he had
pieced together the crumbling parts of a cuneiform
tablet from
Moomuth Kethorvian, killed an aging professor at Nianar for a
bit of yellowed foolscap, and stood one entire night listening
to the echoes of velvet bats flitting across the galleries in
Reddington Valley, until a single word came echoing across
the canyons, sixty seconds before the first light of dawn.
He tightened his lips into a thin line. He had been making
good progress. What he had failed to realize was that Erin
Shoemate had been equally obsessed with locating The Book
of Verse . Obviously, she had succeeded.
The doctor had never wanted to involve Lord Anderson in
the acquisition of The Book of Lore , but the coming of the
poets had forced his hand. Unfortunately, the volume had not
been straight-forward. More of a puzzle, really. Armilus had
pored over it, seeking to wrest its secrets. Lesser men would
have found it a hopeless task, yet in a matter of days he had
determined the proper course.
He didn’t understand everything, of course. There were
still mysteries. He glanced at the ring on his right hand, a band
gray as iron, with a black, oval stone at its center. It had come
from a pouch sewn into the inside cover of the book.
Following the volume’s instructions, he had put it on. Since
the ebony beast had appeared soon after, he suspected the two
were related, a theory he wanted very much to test. He would
have already done so except that the ring had melded itself
into his skin and could no longer be removed.
He studied it a time, this bit of magic, and shook his head.
According to his personal theory, Evenmere had been built
ages before by an ancient, advanced civilization, and the
seemingly mystical elements of the High House were merely
remnants of their superior science, a conclusion he had
reached after more than twenty years of first following and
ultimately abandoning Ludwig Tieck’s Theory of Ordered
Construction through Random Mechanics . He had
determined, despite the author’s creditable mathematics, that
the prerequisite “electromagnetic medium” could not have
assembled the house by driving nails into boards. Besides, no
one could quite get past the question of the stone gargoyles.
Every force, Armilus believed, whether used by the Master
or the anarchists, arose from the same source. The
unbelievable energies displayed by the Poetry Men were
surely but another more potent and dangerous branch.
Evenmere (The Evenmere Chronicles Book 3) Page 14
