The High House (11 page)

“
Elahkammor!
”

It boomed, low and powerful, granting his voice a vitality it did not normally possess. The monsters gasped and hissed and cringed at it. The tendrils constricted around him until he could not breathe.

“Not say it!” the serpent cried. “Not say Terrible Word, or I eat ’em.”

Carter looked around. The last echoes of the Word had dissipated, yet nothing had changed. He did not know what he had expected, the death of his enemies perhaps, the appearance of the angel on the stained glass, sword in hand. The Bobby strode chuckling across the room.

“We have ’em for you,” the lamp said, teeth bared in a dog’s grin. “Bargain finished.”

“It is indeed,” the Bobby said, standing before Carter, his faceless face more horrible than ever, his mouth visible only when he spoke. “Why were you fool enough to return? We will have more fun. Unpleasant fun. I will send you back to the Room of Horrors.”

Carter said nothing.

“Yes, the Room of Horrors again. I see the fear of it in your eyes. There is a way out, of course. You could swear fealty to the Society of Anarchists, change sides, become one of us. We have great power. Under my tutelage, you could rule the High House in a new way. Nothing would exceed your grasp. You could wield the Power your ancestors never dared use, remake Evenmere in your own image, do great good. Don’t look so surprised. You must listen to me. We are involved in a war against powers and complexities you cannot understand. Good, Evil, Chaos, Order, Entropy, these are only words. You think us faceless bombers, madmen bent upon destruction. There is more. The anarchists wish to tear down, it’s true, but only to rebuild, to create a better house. Has it never occurred to you that all the universe is wrong? Haven’t you felt it? The world is full of pain, sorrow, injustice. Children go hungry; the poor remain poor while well-meaning governments stand helpless, their leaders corrupted by the love of power and material gain, controlled and coerced by those seeking the acquisition of wealth through hypocrisy, cunning, or brute force. If things were better managed, such indecencies would never occur. We seek not simply to annihilate, but to escape from the bondage of time itself, to give mankind the chance to control its own destiny. Imagine, a world where the ravages of the years caused no harm, where corruption befell no one, where death was abolished, where no accident ever harmed man or beast. A world of flowing rivers, endless summers, never the dropping of a single leaf. Where greed would not win the day, and capricious fate have no hold. A planned world, wholly devised, patterned for the good of all. A universe without ugliness, where all were truly equal not just in vain prattle, but in every way—equal in love, temperament, beauty, intelligence. This house holds the power to arrange it so. We will have to destroy much, rebuild from the ground up, but when we are done, time and space will do our bidding. We are called anarchists, and rightly so, for we rage against the injustice of the universe, against God Himself, if you will, and this reality where so many have suffered so long. You could aid us. Join our cause! Fight no more for the balance, the status quo; be bold, innovative, seek a new thing. Those who are rebels today can become the Founding Fathers of a new age, the patriots of eternal justice. Will you be one of us? Against us, you have only the Room of Horrors; with us you have ultimate authority. Make the pledge and I will set you free.”

“Don’t listen to him, my lord,” the other man said.

“Silence!” the Bobby hissed, thrusting his blank face before the man’s eyes. The soldier quailed, and the Bobby turned back to Carter. “This has nothing to do with your servants. I offer you only one chance. Otherwise, we travel back down the Dark Stair. And there is no one to rescue you now.”

For a moment, and only a moment, Carter was almost persuaded by the Bobby’s idealistic fervor, for he had indeed thought the anarchists mindless zealots, intent on destruction for its own sake. In that instant, they seemed the most humane of men, holding a way of escape against the dread of the Room of Horrors, which filled Carter so that he would have promised anything to escape the rising nightmares, the images he had fought to forget, the memories he had forced to retreat, the visions long locked in the deepest vaults of his mind. Almost, they overwhelmed him, made the Bobby’s words reasonable. But in the midst of his despair, his utter capitulation, he recalled the sight of his father, standing at the shattered door, holding the Lightning Sword aloft, calling his name.

“You are wrong,” he said softly, though his voice trembled. “You cannot do evil in the name of good and expect it to stand. I will defy you.”

Before the Bobby could reply, a door sprang open to the left and there were instantly tigers.

They slid into the room in one continuous string, tall, sleek beasts, orange and white striped, whiskered and long-fanged, green-eyed like jade, ferocious and wise. Power rippled across their shoulders, down their lean frames, through their supple flanks. Like kings of the earth they came, all lightning war, dancing claws, darkling rage. One pounced on a yelping footstool, splitting it like a tomato. Another leapt across to the armoire, ripping it from throat to shoulder. The spider-buffet skittered up the wall and out the back door, followed quickly by the porcelain lamp.

Carter was flung across the room and slammed against the far wall. By the time he could sit up, the room was a fury of animals. Taka was centipede-sliding out the far door, while tigers tore at his back. Two of the great cats rolled over the carpet, wrestling with a love seat. The Bobby had somehow vanished completely. Those pieces of furniture unable to escape were caught in a rapid slaughter. One of the cats pounced on a nightstand sliding by Carter’s feet, forcing him to hug the wall to avoid the tumbling teeth and claws.

He drew his pistol and kept it close, though he could not see a proper target. The last of the furniture monsters gave a final, perishing cry; the cacophony died; the room fell silent. Carter glanced around, wary, expecting the tigers to turn on him next. He found his companion sitting on the floor a few feet away, dazed, and he was just edging toward the man as another of the side doors flew wide, and Jorkens and Enoch burst in, followed by the entire company.

“Beware!” Carter cried. “Go back!”

But Enoch grinned broadly and hurried over. “Are you injured? You look unharmed.”

The great cats, more than a dozen in number, sat staring at the men, and the men stood staring back. Then the largest of the tigers, a tremendous creature with a long scar down his left side and two white spots upon his breast, raised his head and roared, shaking the room with the sound. Carter quailed and raised his pistol, but Enoch restrained his hand.

In answer to the tiger’s roar, Jorkens lifted his head and gave a howl of his own, like a wolf, then laughing, approached the great beast, holding his arms bent at the elbow, palms upturned. The tiger placed his massive paws upon the man’s hands, claws sheathed.

“Mewodin, you old rascal!” Jorkens cried. “As usual, you’re right on time.”

“I cannot take credit,” the tiger spoke in a voice between a growl and a purr. “We were summoned by a Word of Power. I heard it in my den; we came swiftly. Has Master Anderson returned?”

Enoch led Carter to the great cat. “Not the father, but the son,” he said. “Mewodin, this is Carter Anderson. Mewodin is lord of the Tigers of Naleewuath.”

The tiger looked at Carter with wise jade eyes, and gave a bow of the neck. “I am honored, young master. But if you are going to shoot me aim for the chest.”

Carter looked down and saw he still held his pistol in both hands. He put it quickly away. “S … sorry. Pleased to meet … I mean …” Exasperation took him. “Don’t we hunt the Tigers of Naleewuath?”

A shocked silence followed. Jorkens turned pale and several of the men stood open-mouthed. Then Enoch began a soft, deep laugh from behind closed lips that grew until he held his sides to contain it. Mewodin watched a moment, turning his head from side to side as if to comprehend, and then a low, rumbling laughter erupted from him as well. Then everyone began to laugh, while Carter’s face reddened to crimson.

“Where in all the White Circle did you get such a notion?” Enoch asked.

“But … but, my father,” Carter said. “He said he went to hunt the Tigers of Naleewuath.”

The laughter gradually subsided. “No, young Master,” Enoch said. “He went to hunt in the land of the Tigers of Naleewuath. Did he never tell you? The tigers help us hunt the gnawlings, the chameleon beasts you saw here. When their numbers grow too large, even the tigers must have help. They are natural enemies, and when the gnawlings are not surprised as they were tonight, they can even slay the great cats.”

Carter looked at Mewodin. “I must apologize,” he said. “I didn’t know. I have been … away from the house a long time.”

“We are all kittens at times,” Mewodin said, his green eyes unreadable. “But the night is not yet old, and men prefer to sleep in darkness. Let us return to our places. Tomorrow we will speak.”

Carter gave a slight bow and the cats slipped from the drawing room in a long, sleek line.

* * *

They awoke the next morning before sunrise, and Carter soon found himself, sleepy-eyed, standing with several of the men around the hearth, warming his hands and sipping hot tea. Enoch departed after breakfast to wind his clocks, leaving Carter in Jorkens’s keeping. Still embarrassed by his behavior from the previous night, he determined to keep silent and learn the ways of the hunt. Duncan, the man who had originally requested Carter’s aid, soon arrived with a handful of men, this time dressed not in gentleman’s garb, but farmer’s breeches, looking much more comfortable because of it.

“Thank you for coming, my lord, you and your men,” Duncan said. “Last night a full-grown steer was killed. The gnawlings grow too bold.”

From Duncan’s maps Carter saw that Naleewuath was not all house, as he had begun to believe, for Evenmere opened out onto wide terraces beyond which lay fields and hill country. He learned that most of the people lived in the house itself, much as men dwell in towns, though there were always a few who built their homes upon the hillsides. Still, they would not hunt the gnawlings in the open; the creatures’ dens lay in that part of the house called the Low Cellars. It would be close work.

The tigers appeared, thirty-eight in all, and Carter thought them thirty-eight works of art, beautiful, noble, posed like velvet statues, sitting on their haunches, lying down to lick their paws, stretching their tawny shoulders, yawning like cubs—the younger ones pouncing on one another, the older ones king-eyed, seeing everything, scenting the air with a delicate lift of their noses, rumbling their excitement for the love of the hunt. In changeling form the gnawlings were shells of wood and cloth, but in their true shapes they were meat and bone—most excellent fare for a tiger. The gnawlings had not always dwelled in Naleewuath, but had been introduced by the anarchists, who had given them their chameleon abilities. But the tigers had taken what was evil and made a meal of it, which had only strengthened their treaty with the folk of Naleewuath, for they not only kept the gnawling numbers down, but had more to eat and were less likely to snatch a sheep or cow.

Two days earlier, the tigers had driven any stray gnawlings down from the hills into a part of the house called the Puzzle Chambers, a vast array of small rooms, with doors all interconnected, forming a maze. The hunters would begin there, driving the gnawlings through the rooms, down into their dens in the Low Cellars.

The company made its way down a lengthy corridor, where the walls and the forest became even more indistinguishable.

“Are all the countries of the White Circle like this?” Carter asked Jorkens. “The outdoors and indoors all intermingled?”

“No, sir. Naleewuath is somewhat unique. It is the tigers that bring the magic, they say. And that is all any man knows of it.”

At last they came to a large chamber with booths set up in long aisles. There congregated the short, stout peoples of Naleewuath, the women in long robes, their heads covered, with gold rouge upon their eyebrows and dark sienna on their pouting lips, the men in breeches and woolen shirts—their passions close to their faces—all scowls and loud laughter, bawling voices and bursts of song, selling eggs, tomatoes, bread and fish, goats and beans, leather and iron. They displayed brilliant quilts made on tall looms, silver rings shaped like frogs, beetles with agate and malachite for eyes, and clever wooden toys.

“It looks like a market,” Carter said.

“That it is, sir,” Duncan said. “Naleewuath is a little country. We are not soldiers and the Farmers’ Association is the closest thing we have to lords. This is where we bring our goods, and we sell little to anyone but ourselves, except for jade and copper to Indrin and Nianar. Beyond the booths, we can show you the Terraces, if you like.”

“Very much.”

They passed between the rows of stalls, through another corridor into a narrow room opening onto a balcony. Carter stepped through the double doors, unprepared for what lay beyond. Beneath was spread a fair green country, all long, terraced hills. The sky looked very blue after his long stay indoors, and he blinked against the rising sun. He stood midway on a high wall, gray and cracked with age, with other balconies both above and below him, and the whole countryside stretched before his face. Oaken stairs led down from each of the balconies into that fair land. Of one thing he was certain—this country was nothing like that surrounding the main portion of the house.

“It’s beautiful,” he said.

“Yes,” Duncan said. “Almost a paradise, if not for the gnawlings.”

Eventually, they returned back to the house, with its leaf walls and trees, and sultry sunlight dimly permeating the mist, yet Carter now knew there could not be skylights above them, because of the upper stories, so he thought it must indeed be enchantment as Jorkens had said. The trees grew thicker as they passed through large chambers more like forests than halls, but after a while the rooms became smaller again, and the light less diffused, leaving shadows everywhere. Patches of gray plaster ceiling became visible, and they walked in a wildwood twilight, all ginger and dry leaves, with hulking furniture scattered against the walls.