Evenmere (The Evenmere Chronicles Book 3)

by Stoddard, James

the floor. Rising, she examined the bookcase and discovered a

  hidden latch and hinges. Impulsive by nature, she took a lit

  lamp from a table, and holding it aloft, stepped into the

  benighted passage.

  The walls were of cedar, and their fragrance filled the air.

  She stood at the top of a stair leading down into darkness.

  Without hesitation, she descended the wooden steps, which

  creaked beneath her weight. She, who had traveled so many

  such passages, did not think of danger or entrapment, but went

  like a hound enthralled in the hunt, her eyes shining with the

  prospect of adventure.

  The stair quickly ended, opening onto a passageway

  blocked at one end by a wall. She glanced back only once at

  the rectangle of light from the library before proceeding down

  the hall. The passage took several turns, and intersected

  another hallway with a large plumbing pipe running along the

  ceiling. She hesitated, uncertain which direction to go, before

  choosing the left.

  After journeying another hundred yards and encountering

  two more intersections, she decided to turn back. Such a

  labyrinth should be reported to the officials; if they did not

  already know of it, it represented a weakness in the palace

  defenses.

  Walking back, she was surprised to discover that the

  original intersection was much closer than she remembered.

  Having a keen sense of distances, she took the turn to the right

  with slight perplexity. It seemed incorrect. Had there been four

  intersections instead of three? She shook her head, certain

  there were not. Nonetheless, she backtracked to the last

  junction and looked to the right.

  The continuation of the plumbing pipe in that direction

  told her she had not come that way, so she must have been

  correct the first time. She undertook her previous course again,

  but with the nagging feeling she was traveling wrong. Yet

  when the passage took several turns, as it had done on the way

  there, she grew more assured.

  As she continued, she became aware of a slight sloping of

  the hallway, taking her gradually deeper. Odd she hadn’t

  noticed it before. She bit her lower lip and hurried along.

  When a half-hour passed without her reaching the stair, she

  halted. Still, thinking she must have miscalculated the time

  spent, she went twenty minutes more before admitting she had

  missed the way.

  There was nothing to do for it but turn around. She passed

  once more through the series of turnings, but when she

  reached a straight way again, she found the floor sloping

  again, as if she were traveling the same direction as before.

  Worse, her sense of direction, which was quite good, told her

  she was doing so.

  Two hours later, lost in Evenmere in a manner she had

  never been before, she paused, remembering Carter’s stories of

  traveling through the dream dimension. Was she in a dream?

  Did she only think she had awakened in the little library? She

  shuffled her feet. Everything felt quite real, but it was said the

  land of slumber was not as an ordinary dream.

  If she were dreaming, or even if she weren’t, was she

  being directed somewhere? If so, by whom and for what

  purpose?

  “The only way to find out,” she whispered, as she used to

  whisper to herself during her imprisonment, “is to go and see.”

  As if in answer, the glow of a single gas-jet rose fifty yards

  down the corridor. She blew out her own light to save its oil

  and set out with purpose.

  Three days later, hungry, foot-sore, her only sustenance

  water found in underground taps, she came to a blank wall lit

  by another lamp. In her stupor, she nearly walked right into it,

  then stood dumbly staring, as if trying to decide from whence

  it came.

  Rousing herself from her lethargy, she pulled a lever on the

  wall. A panel rolled back. She stepped into the library in the

  Inner Chambers.

  A figure, sitting in a chair among the stacks, glanced up

  and gave a gasp. It was Sarah.

  “Lizbeth, where in all of Evenmere did you come from?”

  “Is it real, or is it a dream?” Lizbeth asked, stumbling into

  her sister’s arms.

  When Carter awoke in the drawing room, he found the fire

  stoked and Jonathan sitting in a chair, eyes half-closed as if

  having never slept. Lord Anderson did not disturb the

  minstrel’s contemplations, but lay looking from behind his

  eyelashes at the wall covered with paintings and portraits,

  thinking he might manage another hour’s slumber before they

  had to leave. He soon gave this up, however. Hope’s warning

  had left him too anxious to sleep.

  The travelers set off after breakfast. Throughout the

  morning they toiled up the Heights, over scarlet stairs and

  along sloping corridors lined with amber tiles. Around noon

  they reached level ground and a pair of double doors manned

  by a gray-haired gentleman in a gray kilt, with an enormous

  black felt cap descending down his back like a shawl. A dove

  was painted on his forehead; an emerald hung at his throat.

  “Welcome to Loft, good sirs,” he said, in a clipped accent.

  “Please state the nature of your business and your intended

  length of stay.”

  “I am Carter Anderson, Master of Evenmere, and this is

  the bard, Storyteller. We intend to pass beyond Loft into

  Shadow Valley.”

  The man raised his eyebrows. “It seems the stuff of

  legends has appeared at my door. Very nice, but not very

  scientific. Do you have a real reason for entering Loft?”

  “The reasons are as I stated,” Carter said. “I realize Loft is

  not part of the White Circle—”

  “Nor ever shall be,” the man replied. “This poppycock

  about the Master controlling the mechanisms that run the

  universe! Sheer nonsense. As bad as the anarchists. The

  problem is the initial hypothesis, that the house was originally

  built by anyone. How droll! How unimaginative.”

  “And was it not?” Carter asked.

  “Current theory demonstrates that Evenmere arose from

  cross-circular magnetic vortices—patterns created from

  sequenced non-patterns.”

  Jonathan glanced around the hall. “To me, a doorknob

  looks like someone made it.”

  “Only because we are within the environment where a

  doorknob is recognized as a doorknob. You see, because we

  are within the house, it seems wholly natural to us, as if it were

  planned, but actually it is a chaotic event—a happenstance

  occurrence. Thus, anything done by the Master or anyone else

  in Evenmere could not possibly affect the physical universe

  outside the house. The mathematical equations show it quite

  clearly.”

  “You seem over-qualified to be a doorman,” Carter said.

  “Actually, I am a professor at the Loftian Physical

  Sciences Institute. However, in Loft, we subscribe to the belief

  that all are truly equal, and for one month of the year
every

  citizen toils at a task of which he is unfamiliar.”

  “I think you make a passable gatekeeper,” Jonathan said,

  “but what of the man who took your place?”

  “He is a cabinet-maker by profession. I must admit his

  lectures concerning the nature of the universe are weighted

  toward the shaping of wood and the chemical properties of

  certain glues, yet this too can be invaluable to the student and

  proves the importance of educational variety.”

  “Although this is vastly instructional, we need to press

  on,” Carter said. “May we pass?”

  “As soon as you state your true reason for entering Loft

  and the length of your stay. I have a form to fill out.”

  “We are bakers wishing to see the Great Kitchens of Loft,”

  Carter replied. “We should be here less than a week.”

  “Is that the truth?” the man asked.

  “As surely as you are a doorkeeper.”

  The professor furrowed his brow, but scribbled the

  information down on a piece of paper and unlocked the double

  doors.

  “You know,” the professor said, as if reluctant to see them

  depart, “we live in exciting times. At the rate scientific thought

  is progressing, within the next twenty years we should reach a

  full understanding of the entire cosmos.”

  “I can scarcely wait,” Carter said.

  As the professor shut the door behind him, Jonathan said,

  “Aristotle of Chalcidice said the same thing.”

  “You knew Aristotle?”

  “He found his way into the house one day. He had some

  good ideas, but was humbled in a debate with Usandra of

  Querny, a woman with a honey tongue and brilliant mind.

  Some good came of it. He studied under her for two years and

  was less prideful when he took her teachings back to Greece.”

  The companions traveled that day through pleasant

  corridors paneled in golden oak and blue floral carpet. Like

  High Gable, much of Loft lay in the upper reaches of the

  house, above a maze of twisting passages named the Lower

  Bogs. In summer, the Loftians opened the hall transoms and

  outside windows, allowing cool breezes to waft through the

  corridors. Its people were easygoing and unsuspicious.

  Travelers filled the passages, and for a time the companions

  fell in with a boisterous troupe of musicians journeying to a

  concert at Geist Hall, who sang and played flutes and stringed

  bayayals as they went. Being still in the mountains, Carter and

  Storyteller passed over sky bridges connecting portions of the

  house, paneled corridors with great oval windows looking

  miles down on deep valleys with cottages scattered along their

  slopes and goats and sheep roaming the mountainsides.

  The Loftians were enormously fond of every kind of

  headgear, and besides the cowl worn by the doorman, adorned

  themselves with spiraling caps, towering turbans, splayed pith-

  helmets, and drooping wide-brimmed hats that hid the

  wearers’ faces, so they looked like strolling frowns. The hats

  were dyed brilliant colors, and it was like walking through a

  fair. Golden paneling shone beneath the light of chandeliers;

  the sweet outdoor scent filled the halls. Loft seemed a place

  where people could sit and read and think and talk and concoct

  whatever ridiculous thoughts they wished, and believe them

  unopposed all their lives. It was, in short, leaning toward

  decadence, and rumors had reached the Inner Chambers that

  its treasuries were destitute.

  Despite the urgency of his mission, Carter, having seldom

  been this far east, took some pleasure in the journey. Before

  learning of the Poetry men, it had been his original plan to

  bring Jason and Sarah to an inn beside the Sidereal Sea, where

  water spouts formed in rainbow hues.

  Four days they traveled through Loft. From the day

  Jossing was attacked, Carter had not been near an entrance to

  the attic, but toward evening they approached one, and he

  informed Jonathan he would take the opportunity to see if

  Jormungand could tell him Professor Shoemate’s location.

  “Dare you trust that old dragon?” Storyteller asked.

  “I not only don’t trust him,” Carter said, “I dread facing

  him. It’s always dangerous. But he is required to answer any

  three questions the Master asks, and I must make the try.”

  But when they reached the place where the stair was

  supposed to be, it was not there, and when Carter rechecked

  his inner maps, it was as though it had never been. Neither did

  he sense secret passages anywhere in the vicinity.

  “Impossible!” Carter said. “I mentally traced my way here

  two nights ago.”

  “Perhaps you were mistaken.”

  Carter shook his head. “No, this is the spot. Evenmere has

  changed, but I sense no chaotic force at work. This wasn’t

  caused by the poets.”

  There was nothing to do but go on, but later that night,

  remembering Mr. Hope’s warning, Carter worried that the lost

  passage was some ramification of his pact with Armilus, and

  decided to seek the attic through the world of dream. He had

  never attempted to do so before. Would Jormungand have

  more power over him within the dream dimension? It seemed

  unlikely, and yet …

  Not a little uneasy, he lay down and spoke the Word Which

  Masters Dreams. Immediately he found himself walking down

  the passage to the attic. This time, the stair he had sought was

  there. He ascended the creaking steps, which ended at a door.

  Opening it, he was met by an impenetrable mist. He lit his

  lantern, but its light illuminated nothing; even the floorboards

  were invisible, as if the attic did not exist in the dream world.

  He dared not walk into the fog, lest he lose his way and

  perhaps never awaken; so he stood and called Jormungand’s

  name. No echoes returned; no answer came. The eerie

  loneliness of the place chilled him. When he could bear it no

  more, he returned to the waking world, thoughtful and uneasy,

  wondering if something had happened to the reptile, some new

  danger of which he was unaware.

  They departed Loft the next day, past another doorkeeper

  who usually worked as a dentist. As he and Jonathan strode

  away, Lord Anderson could not help but wonder who was

  handling the man’s patients.

  The golden hallways of Loft gave way to gray stone. There

  were no more windows, and the sparse gas-jets cast long

  shadows, leaving the ceilings and corners lost in a gloom astir

  with vague movements, as if darker forms brooded within

  them. Lord Anderson’s eyes darted from side to side in vain

  attempts to catch sight of them; he kept expecting something

  to step out of the murk. A shiver ran up the small of his back.

  “No need to be anxious,” Jonathan said, the whites of his

  eyes scarcely visible in the dimness. “They are only shadows

  leaving Shadow Valley. They pass down this corridor, little

  patches of darkness tickling the walls as they go out into the


  world. There, they will be a child’s shadow dancing on the

  lawn, the darting shadow of a bird in flight, or the cool shade

  of trees on hot summer days.”

  Carter gave an uneasy laugh. “One would think shadows

  but an absence of light.”

  “That’s right. That’s right. And they are also fragments of

  darkness escaping Shadow Valley. It is a wonderful world,

  Master Anderson.”

  “Frankly, it doesn’t always seem so cheery. I’ve been

  thinking darker thoughts. Is it coincidental that the poets

  attacked both the Palace of the Decemvirs and the Tower of

  Astronomy, the first two destinations of Professor Shoemate’s

  quest?”

  Jonathan frowned. “I hadn’t considered it. Why would

  they do so?”

  “Perhaps to obscure her trail and prevent anyone from

  following her. If that’s true, we can expect them to appear here

  too.”

  “Dark thoughts indeed, Master Anderson, but worth

  considering. Best we hurry along.”

  Within the hour the travelers reached the entrance to

  Shadow Valley, an enormous, vaulted door cast in solid onyx.

  Members of the White Circle Guard, sent by Marshall Inkling,

  kept a wary vigil. Out of the keyhole, shadows slithered one

  by one, assuming various shapes as they dropped to the floor

  and made their way along the dark corridor. In the gloom they

  resembled serpents.

  After speaking to the soldiers a moment, Carter drew his

  Master Keys. According to Mr. Hope’s research, there were

  only two keys to Shadow Valley, one owned by the Master, the

  other by the Queen of Shadow Hall. No one else ever went

  there, or ever wanted to.

  He waited until another shadow slithered out the keyhole

  before inserting a gray skeleton key. The mechanism turned

  with a loud echoing clang. He withdrew the key and stood

  back.

  The door slowly creaked open, as if pushed by a strong

  wind. Around its edges hordes of shadows streamed out,

  scampering happy as rabbits into the halls of Evenmere. As the

  door drew wide, the tide of onrushing shades diminished to a

  trickle, and the travelers could see deep darkness within, with

  dim lights like distant constellations, whose soft glow revealed

  high ebony halls of wood and stone set in vast reaches both

  above and below the door. Only the pattering of the fleeing

  shadows broke the silence.