Evenmere (The Evenmere Chronicles Book 3)

by Stoddard, James

“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.