Evenmere (The Evenmere Chronicles Book 3)

by Stoddard, James

  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