“Oh, it got everything,” Jonathan said. “Evenmere is
wounded. Everything is wounded.”
Carter sat down and moaned, his back against a wall. “Can
it be repaired?”
“Heaven knows, Master Anderson. Heaven knows. Queen
Moethus has betrayed her stewardship. I watched her; I saw
her pride; I knew she had become arrogant, but she had served
well and I thought it would be all right. I thought it would be
all right. I should have done something.”
“Are you all right?” Carter asked.
Jonathan looked directly at his companion. His eyes were
wild, unfocused. “I am not all right. I will not be all right,
Master Anderson. I may never be right again.”
“There was nothing you could have done. The Poetry Man
deceived her.”
“Storyteller sees to the heart. I should have known. The
wound to the worlds is deep.”
Carter fell silent, unable to even begin to fathom the
ramifications of the loss. Lord Anderson was the Master, the
guardian of reality, and if Existence had changed, it was not
the minstrel’s responsibility, but his own.
Carter raised his head, sensing a familiar presence. He rose
and threw open the far door. Despite his certainty of what he
would find, he was unprepared as Lady Order seized his coat
collar with both hands and lifted him into the air. She held him
suspended, her eyes twin fires, one half of her symmetrical
face marred by a melting disfigurement not unlike the ruined
features of Old Man Chaos.
“Traitor!” She shook him like a dog shakes a rat. “See
what your treaty has done to me! My beautiful face! Why do
you betray me?”
Before Carter could reassert his authority, Storyteller’s
voice boomed out. “Unhand him!”
She turned. Jonathan had risen to his feet. She dropped
Carter, who landed hard, but stayed upright. “You!” she cried.
“Are you against me as well?”
“We have all been injured,” Jonathan said.
“You must do something,” she insisted. “You are the
Master, and you are—”
“Begone, Lady,” Storyteller said. “You don’t do us any
good. Return to your place.”
She fell silent. Without a backward glance, she turned and
walked down the corridor.
Carter watched her go in amazement. “You banished her
with a word. I thought only I could do that.”
“Sometimes the forces of the house listen to me, if I say it
just right.”
“What did she mean? Was she referring to my truce with
Armilus?”
Jonathan blew a ragged breath. “It does nobody any good
to talk about that, Master Anderson.”
Carter continued staring at his companion, until at last
Jonathan raised his hands in a shrug. “You made a truce with
the anarchists. Now, anybody can make a truce with anybody
else and that’s well and good. But not the Master. You aren’t
just a person. You represent . Yes sir, you represent . In a way,
you are Evenmere. In a way. When you, the Guardian of the
Balance, made your agreement with the doctor, it nudged the
universe toward Chaos. Among other things, it caused rifts in
reality that allowed the Poetry Man to reach and influence
Moethus. When she fell, the Balance was tilted even more. It’s
like falling dominoes, Master Anderson, one bit of Chaos
leading to another.”
“Then I’ve committed an act of treason,” Carter said
miserably.
“Now don’t you go listening to Lady Order. She’s not even
alive. We have been struck to the heart today, but it was the
queen who failed, a victim to greed. Moethus held fast for
many generations, but she let a tiny creeping voice enter her,
and over time it filled her with jealousy of the very light that
gave her shadows life. When the Poetry Man came, he flamed
that spite. All things flow from the spirit, Master Anderson.
Governments are made up of their people. So long as they are
men and women of character, the nation stands. The battle was
lost in the queen’s heart; the rest is only the result.”
Carter kept silent.
“You don’t let your face look that way, Master Anderson,”
Storyteller said. “We’ve got no time to be discouraged. You
have made your mistakes, it’s true, but we have a job to do.
We have to find Erin Shoemate, and we have to do it soon.
Our time is short, indeed.”
“But the queen never told us the location of the Eye Gate.”
“No, but we know she told Professor Shoemate, who went
looking for it in the desert of Opo.”
“Opo is a large country, and we don’t know what we’re
looking for.”
Jonathan Bartholomew nodded. “That’s right. That’s right.
I have been through Opo many times, but have never heard of
the Eye Gate. All we can do is search.”
They left the chamber and trudged along a marble corridor.
Lord Anderson glanced down to where his shadow should
have danced before him. Seeing nothing, he wanted to weep.
With Shadow Valley gone, the desert of Opo lay directly to
the southeast. Within an hour’s time, the travelers passed
through a tattered velvet curtain, where the corridor made a
radical change from marble to rococo.
“The Opo begins here,” Jonathan said. “Are you familiar
with it?”
“I’ve skirted its borders before and have studied the
chronicles concerning it. I know it’s deserted because of
tainted water.”
“Once it was a great kingdom,” Storyteller said. “The
people were tall and blond, powerful men and amazon women
who traded throughout the house, taking their fierce boats to
every shore of the Sidereal Sea and far down the Fable River. I
sat many an evening with Prince Tawfaw upon the Grand
Terraces to watch the sunset. When the water was poisoned
years later by the anarchists, thousands died before the cause
was known, including King Aduadel and his court. In later
years, people came to call it the Opo, the way we say the
desert or the wilderness . Only thieves and vagabonds inhabit
it now, thus the expression: as evil as the Opo .”
“The desolation of so large a region must have swung the
Balance far toward Chaos,” Carter said. “The records say the
Master at the time did nothing to correct it, that it corrected
itself. I don’t understand how that is possible. It makes me
question my own efforts to regulate the Balance.”
“I knew that Master,” Jonathan said. “He was very old and
had learned when to act and when to refrain from acting. You
are still young, Master Anderson. There is always more to
learn.”
“I suppose that’s true. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever
understand the High House.”
Storyteller laughed for the first time that day. “Why, no,
Master Anderson, you will not, and that is a fact, no more than
those outside the house really understand their world. It is too
complicated. When you think you have it puzzled out, you see
it from another angle, and there it is, completely different.”
They trudged through the hodge-podge of architectural
styles of the tattered chambers of the Opo, past moth-eaten
draperies, stained carpets, and faded tapestries.
“I sense Chaos here,” Carter said. “Not surprising. It
certainly looks chaotic. I suppose the architecture was
different when it was inhabited.”
“That’s right. It has changed, becoming terrible and wild.”
The gas jets did not function anywhere in that country, and
the travelers went mostly in corridors illuminated by the light
from skylights and narrow windows. The lack of shadows
actually made it easier to see. Fearing his supply of fuel might
fail, Carter used his lantern only when necessary. Jonathan,
who possessed night vision scarcely less keen than a cat’s, was
enormously helpful, leading them through the darkest ways.
They camped that evening in a third-story chamber. Once
it must have been beautiful, with a beamed ceiling, polished
floorboards, and a glistening chandelier, but like the rest of the
Opo, it had fallen into ruin. Mice had gnawed the tablecloths
and furniture legs; water had stained the ceiling; someone had
cut a jagged piece from the carpet.
The house was warming with the spring, but they lit a fire
in the arched fireplace for the comfort of its light. Lacking
firewood, they fed the flames with a broken rosewood side-
table. They opened the high windows on the south wall, and
soon had a soft breeze, scented with honeysuckle, swirling
through the room to ease the odor of decay.
The fire burned sterile, casting no shadows, leaving Carter
with an aching regret at the mystery that had gone out of the
world. He wondered if he would ever sit in happy melancholy
again, or whether all that was bittersweet had departed the
house with the shades. Jonathan was weary and taciturn, and
they ate a cold meal and took to their bedrolls, where Carter
fell into a troubled sleep.
That night, he dreamed of fleeing through Shadow Valley
as it winked out, but in the dream he did not escape, and the
darkness ground him into the floor. Just before he vanished
completely, he found himself falling down a well. The water
loomed before him, but he woke before he struck it, covered in
sweat.
Three times he had the same nightmare, and after the last
one he rose to find the morning sun peeping through the
windows into a stark and shadowless world. To his surprise,
Jonathan was asleep; he had begun to believe the man never
required slumber.
That day the two men journeyed through the ruin of Opo,
past tattered banners hanging in empty halls, broken furniture
in dusty rooms, and rusting iron in moldering wood.
Children’s toys lay shattered on the hearths. The loss of the
shadows, which changed everything in a hundred small ways,
intensified each detail of the desolation.
It was a difficult journey. The loss of the shadows left
Carter uneasy, and worse, he could sense, like a stuttering
nervousness running through his body, other forces further
affecting the Balance. Perhaps Jonathan sensed it as well, for
he walked as one scarcely knowing where he went, eyes
unseeing, sometimes stumbling against a wall or table,
occasionally muttering to himself. They spoke little that day,
and Carter longed to be back in the Inner Chambers,
surrounded by the comfort of his friends.
They stopped for the night in an antechamber beside a long
corridor. Like everything in this part of the house, the room
smelled of mice and mold. The companions ate in silence, and
Lord Anderson threw himself into his bedroll, too drained to
summon the strength to enter the dream dimension, though he
needed to confer with Mr. Hope.
Long past midnight, Lord Anderson was awakened by
Jonathan’s soft calling. He was instantly alert. The fire had
died in the hearth; the room lay dark, and Carter saw his
companion as a darker darkness within it. His hand gripped
Carter’s shoulder.
“Master Anderson, I have received word of a clue that may
help us. I must journey swift as a crow, but will return as soon
as I can.”
“You’re leaving me? What sort of clue? Who brought it to
you?”
“Never mind about that. It will either be useful or not. I
must be off.”
“But where are you going, and how will you find me
again?”
“Two days’ journey, less if all goes well. You search the
Opo as we planned, and I will seek you out.”
The pressure left Lord Anderson’s shoulder. “Jonathan?”
he called, but heard only the sound of receding footfalls.
Carter stood and lit a lantern, bringing its soft light to the
room, but the minstrel had already gone. Lord Anderson
hurried into the long corridor beyond the chamber, only to find
it empty. He stood gaping. The man must have gone at a dead
sprint to disappear so rapidly.
Seeing there was nothing to be done, the Master returned
to the antechamber, where he built up the fire and threw
himself back on his blankets. He fell asleep feeling lonely and
deserted, wondering if there were more to Jonathan’s leaving.
Perhaps he had found Carter’s role in Shadow Valley’s loss
unforgivable.
Even apart from his friend’s sudden disappearance, the
next day’s journey was distressing. In distant parts of the
house, he heard peculiar animal cries, as if fabulous beasts
wandered Evenmere. The eyes of portraits seemed to follow
him. The walls and floorboards creaked incessantly, the whole
house in an agony of travail. Chaos was winning and he did
not know how to stop its advance.
Earlier, he and Jonathan had decided to travel south toward
the ancient Opoian capitol, hoping that whatever they were
seeking might lie there. But as Carter went, he grew
increasingly discouraged by the sheer size of the country and
the hopelessness of his quest. He needed more information.
By noon he was passing through winding corridors angling
gradually downward. These soon led to Beam Forest, a series
of chambers covered with miles of pillars painted the color of
tree bark, supporting a ceiling filled with carved acanthus
leaves dyed pale green, their hue mirrored by green floor tile
on a brown background. Olive lacework descended in fans
from the pillars, giving an illusion of branches. Standing
beside one of the myriad brown-stone archways and looking
across the pillared chambers was like gazing over a forest in
mountain heights, cracks spidering the bricks, spiders spinning
webs between the counterfeit greenery, the splash of water
gurgling through channels along the slopes. Fountains and
sculptures lay scattered among the boles. Skylights, their glass
etched with foliage, spread patchwork squares o
f sunlight on
the floors, and would have cast leaf-shadows had shadows still
existed. Carter, swearing he could almost smell the humus,
half expected the forest to gradually become real.
Incongruities filled Beam Forest, for the people of the
nearby country of Iphris had made it a memorial to those who
had died before their time. Children were frequently
represented, and keepsakes hung from the boles and lined the
archways: beads, silver spoons, thimbles, wooden soldiers,
porcelain dolls, stuffed bears, hair bows, and combs. Tiny
portraits of youngsters gazed across the woodland. Carter
found the pictures of boys the same age as Jason oppressive.
For all its beauty, the silence of Beam Forest was the uneasy
quiet of the graveyard.
He had read of the forest, but had never journeyed there.
Several historic battles had been fought within its boundaries,
and it was reputed to be haunted, a legend reinforced by the
Dowagers of Beam, full-sized portraits, hoary to the point of
hideous caricature, whose frames hung suspended from the
boles. Despite their name, they were not all images of women.
Folklore made various claims about them: that they had sold
their souls for immortality, or were murderers and suicides, or
trolls who had lived in the forest before humankind. They had
been there for hundreds of years, and though they wore normal
Victorian garb, their garments were said to change from
century to century.
Carter encountered the first Dowager after passing through
an archway. It stood less than a foot away, its eyes level with
his own. He gave a shout of surprise, leapt back, and had his
pistol half-drawn before realizing his mistake.
He stared at it, breathing sharply, chuckling nervously at
his error, but beneath that grim gaze he found nothing
amusing. The subject was incredibly lifelike, the portrait of a
woman dressed in gray. She had silver hair, a hawk nose, black
pinpoints for eyes, and black, bushy eyebrows. Her whole face
was a map of wrinkles. Carter stepped back again, unnerved
by the illusion that she was about to move. He found it
incomprehensible that any artist had wished to capture such
repellant features.
“If I stand here long enough,” he murmured at last, “I shall
imagine she has moved. I must go, old girl.” Despite his
attempt at levity, he wished he had never broken the silence.
Evenmere (The Evenmere Chronicles Book 3) Page 30
