Carter always described it as clearly visible.”
The three of them walked down the transverse corridor and
climbed the stairs to the second floor, Lizbeth seeking any hint
of a glow as they worked their way through the bedrooms. In
Carter and Sarah’s room, she spied a blue line surrounding the
fireplace, but that was the passage to Jormungand’s attic. Two
other secret doors were found upstairs, but in both cases, Mr.
Hope knew where they led.
As the threesome moved downstairs, Lizbeth paused.
“Perhaps we’re going about this wrong. I have an intuition that
we should be looking for a way down . Where are the lowest
rooms?”
“They would be part of the heating system,” Mr. Hope
said. “Most of it is underground, though there are several
outbuildings.” He snapped his fingers. “There is a small room.
I’ve never been myself, but I believe it is off the kitchen
court.”
They hurried through the dining room and servery, into the
men’s corridor, surprising a hall boy resting against one wall,
who scrambled to his feet as they passed. Turning into the
housekeeper’s corridor, they entered the kitchen court. They
had to ask a scullery maid the location of the room, and she
brought them to a narrow door leading to an equally narrow
stair with another exit at its bottom.
“With all the endless passages of Evenmere, we really
should occasionally look in our own kitchen,” Sarah said.
“Who knows what we might find?”
Mr. Hope led through the door at the bottom of the stair
into a red-brick chamber filled with an elongated boiler. A
single wall-jet provided a dim light.
“Not much here,” he said.
Lizbeth stepped around the side of the boiler and halted. A
dim blue glow emanated from one section of the wall. She
pointed out its location and the three crowded around it. Sarah
knelt and felt along the clay wall. Under the pressure of her
hand, one brick tilted sideways, activating a mechanism that
pushed a portion of the wall aside, revealing a dark, stooping
passage. Just inside, a heavy, black spider hung in her web,
opening and closing her mandibles.
“This is the one,” Lizbeth said. “At least, it feels right.”
Mr. Hope grimaced. “It may have stood unused for
centuries.”
Sarah stared into the narrow way. “We must organize a
reconnaissance party to find out where it leads.”
“We haven’t anyone to organize,” the butler said. “None of
the servants will enter there. Jessep and the stable hands might
have been willing, but they remained with the rest of the
house. I shouldn’t care to go myself, though I will, rather than
be named a coward.”
“But you can’t,” Sarah said. “You serve best by study. We
can’t afford to lose you. I shall be the one to make the
journey.”
“Certainly not by yourself,” Mr. Hope said. “Carter would
never forgive me.”
Lizbeth laughed, causing her companions to turn.
“What’s amusing, dear?” Sarah asked.
“The two of you. The answer is right before your eyes. I
fear neither darkness nor narrow passages, for I lived in them
many years, and the Master of the house must often travel
alone.”
“Lizbeth! You presume too much.”
“I presume nothing. The house has given me a Word of
Power, which it reserves for its Masters.”
“But the house has only one Master,” Sarah protested.
“Carter—”
Lizbeth laid her hands on her sister’s arms. “Don’t you
presume too much. Carter is fine, I’m sure. This isn’t the
choosing of a new heir, but the appointing of a task.”
“Someone must accompany you.”
“They would only get in my way.”
“Child—”
“I haven’t been a child for many years. In fact, I had to
grow up rather quickly.”
Sarah looked helplessly at Mr. Hope, who rubbed his
palms nervously.
“There is a logic to Evenmere,” he said, “though we may
not always understand it. Some are appointed. This may be
Lizbeth’s time.”
Tears welled in Sarah’s eyes. “I will never forgive myself
if anything happens to you.”
“It isn’t my fondest wish, either,” Lizbeth said, trying to
look somber, but scarcely able to contain her excitement.
Despite the danger, it promised a grand adventure, as when she
used to escape into her fancies during her imprisonment. “I’m
going to change into riding pants. A dress will be too
cumbersome.”
A lantern was brought, a pack prepared. When everything
was ready and Lizbeth returned, Mr. Hope handed her a pistol.
“Do you know how to use this?”
“Duskin taught me. I’m actually a fair shot.”
“Runs in the family,” Sarah said. “You will be careful, and
if you find nothing, you must promise to immediately return.”
“I promise,” Lizbeth said, hugging her.
Sarah returned her hug fiercely. “Duskin would be beside
himself if he knew I was letting you go. Men are like that, you
know.”
“We won’t tell him, then.”
They parted. Lizbeth threw the pack over her back, held
the lantern before her, and stepped into the passage. It smelled
of dust and age. The walls were unfinished; the bare boards
showed skeletal. Beyond the boundary of her lantern’s light,
the passage stretched into darkness.
When she had gone less than twenty paces, she heard
Sarah burst into tears, and for the first time the reality of her
situation struck her. She had seldom heard her sister cry.
Upon awakening, Carter was herded for four hours, the
walls moving to block his every attempt to escape. Hallways
closed behind him; doors disappeared. His only choice was to
move forward or remain where he was. As he journeyed up
and down stairs, along deserted corridors, through empty
chambers—driven ever farther from where the ancient palace
lay—his anxiety grew.
He turned a corner and found himself at a dead-end.
Looking back, he saw the far end of the passage behind him
blocked. He was trapped.
A deep rumbling came from the depths of the house. He
clutched the hilt of his sword. A vast tearing noise arose,
shaking the corridor. The wall before him parted, extending
the halls to either side. Within moments, a finished opening
stood where none had been before, framing a descending flight
of stair.
He studied the portal. If this were a trap, it was an
elaborate one. There was no help for it. He gave an
involuntary shiver and started his descent.
The stair stretched into the distance, going ever downward
without a landing to break the monotony. Gas jets lit his way,
his footfalls and the sputtering flames the only sound.
After three hours, he reached a metal door at the bottom.
Consulting his maps,
he realized he had been led back to his
original destination, descending in a straight line that had
brought him hundreds of feet below the ancient palace.
“Perhaps I’m being helped, after all,” he said, his
excitement rising.
Drawing his Lightning Sword, he grasped the knob and
opened the door. Complete darkness met him. He lit his
lantern and raised it high, trying in vain to see beyond the
doorway. He summoned his maps, but nothing about this area
came to mind, as if he were no longer in Evenmere.
After a slight hesitation, he stepped over the threshold. A
loud boom sounded and his light went out. Even his sword
refused to shine. Startled, he stepped back through the portal.
His blade glowed once more.
He took a deep breath, drawing up his courage. Waiting
outside the doorway was useless, and the longer he hesitated,
the more frightened he would become. He entered again and
stood listening in the blackness. The sound of running water
grew gradually louder, until he felt its cold grip splashing
around his feet. He reached from side to side, trying to
discover his surroundings. When he lifted his arms, he
encountered a jagged ceiling six inches above his head. He
shuddered, seized by his old childhood fears of darkness,
drowning, and closed places.
A dim glow rose a few yards away. He moved toward it,
then froze in horror. The light emanated from the face of a
figure dressed in the uniform of an English bobby. The face,
lacking eyes, ears, or mouth, was completely blank.
He gave a shout of terror, every part of him screaming to
flee back through the portal. Something made him stand his
ground, however, something he could not have identified in
that terrible moment, the same anger and determination that
had made him face his fear by stepping into dark rooms as a
child. Bellowing his horror and anger, he drew his pistol and
fired.
Lizbeth followed the passage for more than a mile before
she realized it had for some time been gradually sloping
downward. The hollow echoes of her footsteps on the bare
boards did not frighten her; it was as if she had stepped back in
time to walk once more the empty halls of her captivity. At
first she felt quite at home with the cobwebs and dust, the
solitude and silence; but as time passed, she grew morose at
how much of her life had been wasted, how much of human
companionship she had missed during the long years of her
imprisonment.
She tried to imagine what kind of person she would be if
she had spent her whole childhood at Innman Tor. Spoiled, she
supposed. Less shy, more comfortable around people. Not so
much a dreamer.
But then , she thought, I wouldn’t be me. Perhaps Duskin
wouldn’t love me. Perhaps I would be married to a railroad
engineer at the Tor. We would have seven children, and I
would dream my whole life of visiting far countries. I would
never see the Inner Chambers—no that’s not true, because
Carter would have taken me—but I would never know the
politics of the house or the comings and goings of the White
Circle Guard. We would entertain my husband’s rough friends,
and sometimes he would drink too much and beat me, so the
end of my life would be as its real beginning, for I would be a
captive in a house with only my tormentor and my dreams of a
better life. And perhaps there would be but one book there and
it would be Wuthering Heights.
Lizbeth spoke aloud. “I took hold of Linton’s hands, and
tried to pull him away, but he shrieked so shockingly that I
dared not proceed .” She shuddered and halted. “I mustn’t do
this. I mustn’t talk to myself and quote from that dreadful,
wonderful volume. I mustn’t live there.”
The oppressive darkness, the shining sanctuary of the
circle of her lamplight, suddenly frightened her, as if she really
had returned to the past. Tears filled her eyes; she stood
paralyzed, expecting to hear the voices of her captors.
I am in Evenmere , she thought, forcing herself not to
speak aloud. I am in Evenmere and the past is dead. I am on a
mission and must be brave. I will not quote The Book; I am not
Catherine Linton; she is a fiction while I am real. I am really
real .
Crying softly, she hurried down the hall.
How long she walked that passage, she did not know.
Certainly, more than an hour. She wished she had brought a
pocket-watch. The corridor began curving downward in a
spiral so steep she had to brace her hands against the walls to
keep from tumbling. She recalled the poetry of Earnest
Mithell: Dark circles going down and down, With ever-
darkness looking on, And in the eerie wastes I find, The
blackest fears of inner mind.
“Cheery thought, that,” she murmured, before realizing
this was the first poetry she had been able to recall in days.
Chant had said the Poetry Men were draining rhyme away, but
down here it was hers again. She wondered exactly where she
was. In sudden delight, she recited:
A little frock
A little coat,
A summer’s day
A little boat,
A tiny ship
A slender sea,
And all the dreams
I meant to be
This was Mithell too, but in his younger, lighter days. As
she ran through the lines, delighting in their cadence, she
realized a tiny bit of herself had been stolen when verse was
taken from the world, a part she, who wasn’t a poet, had not
missed until now. It was both a small theft and an atrocity, like
filching a dozen shafts of sunlight from the world, leaving a
score of dust motes unilluminated. It was nothing and it was
everything.
She halted, struck by an epiphany. “It’s greed. They speak
of high ideals and noble purpose, but it’s wanting too much
and spoiling it for everyone. They have to be stopped.”
She continued her descent, filled with new determination,
and came at last to the bottom, where stood an arched stone
portal. Despite the lack of wind, Lizbeth’s lantern went out as
she stepped through the doorway, plunging her into utter
darkness. She turned to feel behind her. The archway lay open
at her back, but she refused to retreat. She tried to relight her
lantern, but the matches failed to ignite.
It never hurts to grope , she thought. I have played games
in the dark before.
Her hands extended, she stepped forward and immediately
met an obstruction. Drawing back, she reached again,
experimentally tapping the object, which gave off a hollow
metal sound. At first she thought it a wall, but as she worked
her way along its surface, she found it was a metal barrel. A
foul odor exuded from it.
She turned, suddenly aware of a glow to her left. A light
had arisen, illuminating little more than the ground, which was
deeply rutted as if by broad
wagon-wheels.
“Did you really think you could escape?” a man called out
of the gloom.
She gasped, truly afraid for the first time, for she
recognized the voice as one she had hoped never to hear again.
She could make out a wooden structure—the corner of a
fence line. The glow emanated from behind it. A figure
stepped out of a gate and stood silhouetted by the light.
“I have come to take you back,” her former captor said.
“You will be returned to your prison where you belong.”
“No,” Lizbeth whispered, so overwhelmed by fear she
could not even scream. She felt a child again, small and
helpless, wanting only to flee back to the arched doorway,
back down the corridors to the Inner Chambers.
He stepped toward her, hands outstretched.
If Sarah and William Hope had not entrusted this mission
to her, she would have run. She could fail herself, but she
could never bear to fail them. She dropped her lantern and
drew the pistol. Holding it with both hands, she aimed and
fired.
In the silence, it went off like a cannon, the recoil sending
her arms up, making her involuntarily close her eyes. When
she opened them again her tormentor was gone, and a steady
light, emanating from around a corner, bathed the area. She
blinked in surprise and turned a circle, seeking her adversary,
thinking she must have missed, but he was nowhere to be seen.
Glancing up, she discovered stars. Despite having been
deep underground, she was now outside. No moon hung in the
sky, but there was a vague illumination overhead. She was
standing in an alley with wooden fences on both sides, the tops
of trees visible beyond them, and grass growing everywhere
except in the wagon-ruts. To her left lay darkness. She started
toward the light.
Past the fence corner, the alley stretched long before her.
The illumination came from a tall lamppost. She stood
breathing heavily within the comforting circle of light,
recovering from her shock. The man who had imprisoned her
was long dead. That could only have been a phantom.
Something was different about this alley, and it took her a
short while to realize what it was. There were shadows again.
She waved her hand and watched her shade do the same. She
laughed, and the laugh gave her the courage to go on.
Barrels filled with garbage stood against the fence on
Evenmere (The Evenmere Chronicles Book 3) Page 35
