The High House (12 page)

“How can you tell a gnawling from an ordinary hassock?” Carter asked.

“It is in the way they don’t move,” Jorkens said. Seeing Carter’s look, he said, “No, sir, I do not jest. Regular furniture merely sits, but gnawlings have a way of sitting still, a sort of quivering. You will learn to recognize it.”

The Puzzle Chambers were all their name implied, hundreds of interlocking rooms, never more than fifteen by twenty, with a door on every wall. A long, narrow corridor bordered the rooms, and the men and tigers drifted down it and waited before dozens of doors, the tigers roaring, the men’s feet tramping on the floorboards.

“The gnawlings are within,” Jorkens said. “As we hunt them we will drive them toward the Low Cellars. They’ve no other way into the house, except through these rooms, and we won’t let any slip past. The men are ready.”

Mewodin came bounding up. “The Tigers of Naleewuath are ready. We begin at your command.” His eyes gleamed with an excitement Carter found disquieting.

Carter brought his pistol up and clasped his spear. He felt a momentary dread in his stomach, but said, “Let the hunt begin.”

Jorkens made a gesture, the men opened the doors all along the corridor, and the tigers sprang into the lead. Carter and Jorkens, preceded by Mewodin, entered their first room, while the men poured in behind them. The chamber was dim and Carter squinted at the furniture, looking for any sign of the “quivering” Jorkens had mentioned, but he saw nothing.

He now realized why so many men were needed, as they divided into three groups, each opening one of the three remaining doors out of the room. Carter stayed with Jorkens and Mewodin’s party as they exited into a chamber quite similar to the first, and equally unoccupied. In such a way, the men splintered off, until Carter found himself alone with his two companions and Duncan, but to right and left he heard the opening and closing of doors, so that he knew all the parties now moved straight ahead, assured of comrades on either side.

The next hour was a tense affair, Jorkens opening the doors ever so slightly, and Mewodin sniffing through the crack before bursting into the room, claws unsheathed. Yet, they saw no gnawlings, and Carter began to think they had all escaped.

But finally, as Jorkens eased yet another door, Mewodin gave a low growl; Duncan hissed through his breath and clutched his pike. The tiger sprang into the room, slamming the door against the wall with his weight, and Jorkens followed after, pike and pistol ready. As Carter entered, he heard a low squealing and saw Mewodin pursuing a small scurrying thing, little larger than a dog, that bore a resemblance to a night stand. It scrambled up a bookcase like a monkey while Mewodin pounced furiously after, stretching on his back legs to reach it. He missed the creature’s mahogany tail by a fraction. The prey lurched to the top of the bookcase, leapt to the doorknob, opened it with a swinging motion, and slid inside. The tiger followed, as men shouted in the next room.

Carter was about to follow, when he glanced back and saw a flowery fainting couch trembling as if in an earthquake. He gave a shout to Duncan, who stood between him and it, and the man turned just in time to meet the monster’s assault, as it transformed into a tawny, pouncing beast. Duncan blocked its iron claws from his throat with his pike, but was thrown against the wall by the force of its charge.

Without breaking its stride, the beast bore down on Carter. Barely, he brought his own pike into line, as the gnawling leapt half the length of the room. Its green-gold head filled his sight: long ripping fangs, slavering mouth, blood-red eyes. He was driven off his feet as it impaled itself upon the pike right up to the guards. It bit at him, inches from his face, even as it died on the edge. Its gore spilled down his legs; its claws vainly batted the air; its last breath, the stench of rage, blew into his nostrils, making him gag. He kept the beast from him with all his strength, until it was finally still. Jorkens helped him rise.

“Are you hurt, lord?”

He stood stiffly, inspecting himself. “Bruised only, I think. Where’s Duncan?”

The farmer rose, grimacing in pain. “It … knocked the breath from me,” he said. Then recovering a little, he looked gratefully at Carter. “You saved my life.”

Mewodin bounded back into the room, proudly shaking the dead monkey-thing between his teeth, but he dropped it when he saw the slain gnawling sprawled upon the pike, all flower-scaled like an alligator.

“A great feat, young master,” the tiger said in admiration. “This one will make a good rug for your drawing room.”

* * *

All day they hunted the gnawlings through the Puzzle Chambers, and often the dealings were close, though never so near as that first encounter. Mewodin dealt mostly with the larger beasts and Carter quickly learned that the pistol, which he had considered his first defense, was not so at all; the quarters were too close, and he feared shooting either his fellows or the tigers. Though they slew several gnawlings that day, they met none as large as the alligator-thing, though other members of the party did.

After several hours, they entered a final door opening onto a landing, with a long stair leading downward to the Low Cellars. They descended, following steps that twisted and turned. It was an evil path, all dark wood and carved gargoyles, marred by slime and the bones of the gnawlings’ victims, which were mostly animal, though some looked dreadfully human. Carter was reminded of his descent to the Room of Horrors.

At last they came to a red painted door, eight feet tall and nearly as wide, with a red eye carved at its center.

At Jorkens’s order, the men distributed torches.

“The rest of the beasts have fled down here,” Jorkens said. “This will be harder labor, and less certain, for it is a lightless place. We must fan out in a straight line across the room, and drive our prey toward the far walls. The tigers will go in front. Pistols are useless so put them away. Keep your pikes before you.”

“Are you ready, my lord?” Jorkens asked.

Carter clutched his pike. “I am.”

Jorkens grasped the knob and tried to turn it. His face went pale. “The door is locked, sir,” he said, looking at it in bewilderment.

“You must use the Master Keys,” Duncan said.

Carter’s face reddened. “I do not have them. They were lost, several years ago.”

Duncan grimaced. “I had heard stories, but I didn’t know they were true. Only the Master Keys can lock or unlock these doors. Then the anarchists have them?”

“They do,” Carter said.

“Then they are learning to master them,” Mewodin said. “It must be a hard thing for them, for the keys would not easily bend to the will of such men. The gnawlings are safe from us then, and can strike when they wish.”

“Can’t we force the lock?” Carter asked.

Jorkens looked at him, obviously astonished. “You must recall, sir, no force on earth can budge a door secured by the Master Keys.”

“What will become of Naleewuath?” Duncan asked, his face white.

“What will become of all the High House?” the tiger said. “Is anything safe from the anarchists now, young master?”

“I don’t know,” Carter said. “But I intend to find out.”

* * *

It took two restless, dispirited days for Jorkens to lead the company back through the winding passages out of Naleewuath into the Long Corridor, through the Gray Edge to the Green Door into the Inner Chambers. As he looked upon the stains on his cloak and boots, Carter knew he had walked in the footsteps of his father, who had often come home looking the same. But Lord Anderson had always had an air of triumph about him, where Carter knew only defeat.

Both Chant and Enoch were upon their rounds, but Mr. Hope met Carter in the dining room, and together they dined on roast fowl, butter and bread, strawberries and potatoes, all tasting like dry dust in Carter’s mouth. When he was done telling of the hunt, he said, “Will I never cease paying for the one crime of an errant child? When I took the keys I meant no harm, yet it was an arrogance far beyond my years.”

“No,” Hope said. “It was only a childish act, such as all of us have done in our boyhood. It’s true the consequences are greater, but you had no way of knowing that. If I may say so, the fault lies with your guardians, even your father himself. To forbid a boy entrance through a particular door is to guarantee he will seek it.”

“I have to find the Master Keys, you know,” Carter said. “I need them, along with the Lightning Sword and the Tawny Mantle if I am to fulfill the office of Steward. There is no other way.”

“I thought as much myself, though how you will obtain them, I don’t know. But I have spent my time trying to rally help. You recall my mentioning a White Circle? Chant knew a little about the matter, and with his help I sent out messengers seeking to speak with the representatives from the surrounding kingdoms. I hope that was all right; I felt a need for haste. From what you tell me of Naleewuath I must assume all these countries border the house. Of course, that is impossible by natural laws; it is as if a whole other world opens out from the Green Door.”

“It does, from what I’ve seen.”

“Then perhaps our allies can help us, both in protecting ourselves and in finding the keys.”

Carter sighed. “I don’t know. Father must have commanded every resource at his disposal in his search, and he found nothing. Still, you’ve done good work. Ten years have passed; perhaps we will succeed where he failed.”

Carter retired to bed early that night, worn thin with worry and labor, and fell immediately into a restless sleep filled with gnawlings and tigers. He woke early and came downstairs to find the servants looking very grave. Mr. Hope met him at the bottom of the steps.

“Is something wrong?” Carter asked.

“It’s the Green Door,” Hope said grimly. “It’s been locked from the outside. The anarchists are gaining more power over the keys.”

Beseiged

Enoch came weeping down the stair, great racking sobs that shook the banisters and resounded all the way into the breakfast nook, where Carter, Hope, and Chant, still morose at the locking of the Green Door, ate a meal of despair around the claw-footed table, in the form of marmalade, toast, and scrambled eggs. Outside the picture window, the wind buffeted the Corsican pines; the rain fell in heaps; the morning lay twilight. Carter and Mr. Hope stood, but Chant sat, head down, staring at his food.

Enoch burst into the room, rending his garment in grief, his face suffused in pain. Before anyone could speak he flung himself into one of the chairs, threw one hand over his eyes, and pounded his fist against the swarthy table. “They have us now!” he cried. “We are doomed, and the whole house with us!”

“What is it?” Carter asked.

Enoch looked beneath his hand into the Steward’s face, his brown eyes bleak. “They have locked the door to the Towers.”

Chant sagged in his chair and slowly traced his finger along the carvings of gulls embellished into the table.

“What does it mean?” Carter asked.

“Everything! Unless I can wind the clocks in the Towers they will run down. All of them!”

“Can’t they be rewound?” Hope asked.

“It is as we told you,” Chant said softly, “though you scarcely believed. The house is the mechanism that propels the universe, the clocks, like the lamps I light, one of its components. If the Towers’ clocks are not wound their portion of Creation will fall to Entropy. Imagine hundreds of stars winking out in the night sky.
But now the whole Round Table is dissolved, Which was an image of the mighty world.”

Enoch buried his head upon the table and moaned.

“This morning when I went outside to extinguish the lamps, I found the Bobby waiting at every lamppost, and his minions with him,” Chant continued. “They have surrounded the house, and learned enough of the Master Keys to lock many of the important portals. We are besieged.”

“What can we do?” Carter asked.

“Who but Brittle might have known?” Enoch murmured. “How could we learn his duties, when we were kept so busy with our own?”

“If I might,” Hope said, retaking his seat and spearing his eggs, “I couldn’t begin to take Brittle’s place, but I have been reading, especially the
History of the High House
, and I have found references to the Seven Words of Power. You said you had learned two of them, the Word Which Brings Aid and the Word of Hope, but there is also a Word of Secret Ways, which
opens doors not always seen.
If we need to reach the Towers, perhaps the Word could reveal a passage.”

“It is a chance!” Enoch said, brightening.

“It would be worth a try,” Carter said. “But the last time I opened the Book of Forgotten Things I got a taste of the Room of Horrors. I dread doing so again.”

“But someone must,” Enoch said. “If not you, who?”

Carter sighed. “A good point, I suppose. If that’s the case, I would rather go at once and be done with it, but only if one of you will accompany me.”

“Enoch and I will both go,” Chant said. “The Bobby attacked from the library before; it may not be safe.”

“I will remain and continue my reading,” Hope said. “Perhaps I can find something useful.”

“Reading, or eating?” Carter asked, managing a slight smile. “But at least you have an appetite.”

“Actually, I’ll try to do both,” Hope said, buttering a scrap of toast. “Armies and attorneys march—and research—on their stomachs.”

They proceeded down the transverse corridor to the library doors. As they entered, Carter momentarily thought he heard soft voices echoing among the shelves, but the sound receded so quickly he dismissed it as mere fancy. The room appeared as unchanged as ever, like a desolate valley or forgotten corner of the world lost in slumber. Clouds streamed beyond the tall windows, and dreary, diffused light crept through the glass. Thunder rattled in the distance as they crossed to the study door.

“Does the sun ever shine here anymore?” Carter asked.

“I do not think it will,” Chant said. “Not until the Bobby is sent on his way. He is Stormbringer, Disrupter of the Old Ways; the tempest fits his mood.
The ancient one lives in the east in the Wood of Iron and there gives birth to Fenrir’s brood, one of them all, especially, in form of a troll will seize the sun.”