The Master of Heathcrest Hall

by Galen Beckett

  “Soldiers?” Mr. Garritt said, hurrying toward the two of them. “But what do you think they want?”

  Ivy turned to regard him. Again she was resolved they would have no secrets between them, not now when they were all in peril.

  “They seek to arrest me on account of being a witch—a sibyl of the Wyrdwood.”

  Mr. Garritt’s mouth opened as his handsome face was wrought in an expression of astonishment. Only then he gave a slight nod, as if he had come to an understanding of something.

  “Dercy was right,” he murmured. “That’s why I saw it around you. Why I can see it around you now—a green light.”

  “You can see a light around Ivy?” spoke a voice from the staircase. “But I can see a light around her, too!”

  They all turned in renewed surprise. It was Rose who had spoken. She stood upon one of the lower steps, clad in her favorite pink gown, smiling down at Mr. Garritt.

  Rose descended the last steps. “The light is green,” she said, coming toward them. “But there is a dapple of gold to it as well, like leaves in the sun. I can see it even now. Can you?”

  Mr. Garritt turned his soft brown gaze toward Ivy, then he nodded. “Yes, I can. It’s very bright.”

  “You have a light, too, Mr. Garritt,” Rose went on excitedly. “It’s green also, but there’s a bit of purple to it, like the air in the garden just as twilight begins to gather. And there’s a light around Mr. Rafferdy as well. It’s blue just like our father’s light always was, but brighter, and there’s a tinge of—”

  “Rose,” Ivy said sternly, interrupting her sister. “You must go upstairs. Now. It is very important.”

  Rose blinked and took a step backward, but she did not return to the stairs.

  Mr. Rafferdy hurried back from the window he had been looking out. “They are outside the gate,” he called back. “And I saw some of them moving along the line of the fence.”

  “What do we do?” Mr. Garritt replied.

  Mr. Rafferdy shook his head. “I don’t know. I imagine they are going all around the house. They’ll be watching every egress. There is no way to escape them now.”

  “But there is a way,” Rose said suddenly.

  All of them gazed at her in renewed astonishment.

  “That’s why I came downstairs,” Rose went on earnestly. “Father wanted me to tell you something, Ivy.”

  “Your father?” Mr. Rafferdy said. “But how—?”

  Ivy stepped toward her sister. “You were talking to him again, weren’t you, Rose?”

  Her sister nodded solemnly.

  “What did he want you to tell me?”

  “He said that we have to go to Heathcrest Hall, that there’s something you have to do there. And he said that it’s very important that we leave at once by the very quickest way. Do you know what he meant?”

  A cool shiver of realization passed through Ivy. Yes, she did know. Listen to your father, the man in the mask had said. He will tell you what to do.

  And so he had.

  “Rose is right,” Ivy said quickly. “There is one other way we can leave here.”

  Mr. Garritt looked at her with puzzlement, but she saw a light of understanding glimmer in Mr. Rafferdy’s eyes.

  “Rose,” Ivy said, looking at her sister, “go up to our rooms and fetch two capes—the ones we take with us on jaunts in the country. Get the capes, and then meet us in the gallery on the second floor, by the door with all the carved leaves upon it.”

  Rose’s face had gone very white; she did not move.

  “You must hurry, Rose,” Ivy said, gently but with a firmness in her voice. “We are depending upon you.”

  Rose nodded, then turned and dashed back up the stairs.

  “I know what you intend,” Mr. Rafferdy said. “But what of your other sister? What of Lily? You know we cannot follow you that way to bring her to you.”

  Ivy suffered a pain deep in her breast. First her father, then Mr. Quent, and now Lily—one by one, she had been forced to abandon thoughts of helping each of them that day. Who else would she be made to abandon?

  Not Rose. She would not relinquish Rose.

  Ivy turned to face Mr. Garritt. “You must take care of Lily for me, Mr. Garritt. You must see that she remains safe at your theater. Tell no one who she really is. It is dreadful of me to ask it of you, yet all the same I must.” She gripped his hand in her own. “Please, will you do this for me?”

  His face was blank for a moment. What thoughts must be racing through his mind! But then he placed his other hand upon hers.

  “I will keep her safe,” he said solemnly. “I swear it.”

  Ivy felt her fear recede a fraction. To think that Lily was to be staying in a theater full of illusionists was now a matter to inspire relief! Yet all could be altered in a moment, and she knew Mr. Garritt would see to Lily’s well-being—if anyone in the city could be well, with Huntley Morden marching toward Invarel.

  “Thank you, Mr. Garritt,” she breathed.

  Mr. Rafferdy shut the door and locked it. “The soldiers are starting through the gate. What do we do?”

  The three of them came together in the hall for a hurried congress.

  “We must get upstairs without being seen,” Ivy said. “Only there is something I need from the library first.”

  “Go retrieve this thing you need,” Mr. Garritt said. “I can make certain they do not see us.”

  “How?” Mr. Rafferdy said, frowning.

  Now the hint of a smile curved upon Mr. Garritt’s lips. “They will see something entirely else, instead.”

  Ivy did not wait to find out what Mr. Garritt intended. She had to trust him, for they had but moments left. Lifting the hem of her gown, she raced across the front hall and entered the library. At once she went to the writing table, unlocked the drawer, and took out the Wyrdwood box. Even as she did, the old rosewood clock on the mantel let out a low chime.

  She glanced at the clock. The day had been so hot and stifling that she had assumed it would be long. But on the right face of the clock, the gold disk was now nearly half-covered by the black. The umbral would fall soon.

  Good. The trees were always more wakeful at night.

  Holding the Wyrdwood box tight, Ivy returned to the front hall. She saw Mr. Garritt and Mr. Rafferdy standing within the curve formed by one half of the double staircase, behind a pair of chairs arranged opposite a long sofa. She hurried to join them.

  As she did, there came a furious pounding upon the front door.

  “Lie down here,” Mr. Garritt said, taking her arm and guiding her to the sofa. “At all cost, you must not move.”

  Ivy did as he directed, laying her length upon the sofa. Then she opened her mouth to ask Mr. Garritt what he meant. Only at the moment, two things occurred.

  The first thing was that the front door was suddenly flung open. A maid who had just entered the front hall in answer to the knocking gave a scream, then turned and fled as a half-dozen men in blue coats streamed into the house. They wore grim expressions upon their faces and sabers at their hips.

  The second thing was that Mr. Rafferdy and Mr. Garritt no longer stood behind the chairs. Rather, in Mr. Rafferdy’s place, was a tall grandfather clock of brown wood. Beneath its face was suspended a pendulum with an ivory weight that looked very like the head of Mr. Rafferdy’s cane. Near the clock, instead of Mr. Garritt, there now posed a marble statue of some classical Tharosian hero or poet, clad not in a gray coat, but rather gray folds of stone. What was more, the air around them had thickened, darkening and obscuring the scene like a thick coat of varnish upon a painting.

  One of the soldiers barked some order, and the men began to fan out through the length of the front hall. Some ducked into other rooms—the library, the parlor—then appeared again in the hall.

  “She must be on one of the other floors,” one of the soldiers said.

  And the men moved toward the staircases.

  A terror came over Ivy, for several of the so
ldiers were going to pass directly by the three of them. Her urge was to rise and flee. Instead she remembered Mr. Garritt’s order, and she held her breath as she laid upon the sofa. Her only motion was to flick her gaze downward. What she saw was not the green fabric of her gown against the cushions, but rather a series of pillows and drapes that she knew were not really there. One of the pillows toward her feet was embroidered with the pink face of a cherub. She could only imagine her face had been made to appear its twin.

  To Ivy’s astonishment, the soldiers passed by the three of them without so much as a glance. Only then her surprise transmuted into a horror as the soldiers reached the foot of the stairs. Ivy had told Rose to go to the gallery on the second floor, to wait by the leaf-carved door. She would be standing in plain sight.

  The soldiers started up the stairs.

  Ivy nearly leaped up off the sofa, consumed with some half-mad thought to surrender herself to the soldiers so they would leave Rose alone. Only before she could do such a foolish thing, one of the men gave a shout.

  “Look, out there!”

  So startled was she that Ivy momentarily forgot Mr. Garritt’s rule and lifted her head to look. Only it did not matter, for by then all the soldiers were running across the hall toward their companion who had called out. He pointed to one of the windows. Beyond the glass, Ivy saw something move: a lithe shadow. The dark figure flitted past the glass, too quickly to be seen clearly, then disappeared from view.

  “She’s gone to the garden!” one of the men exclaimed, and at once the soldiers ran to the door and exited.

  The moment they were gone, the Tharosian statue sprang to life and went to Ivy. Only it was no longer a statue at all, but Mr. Garritt.

  “That was a most excellent trick, Garritt,” Mr. Rafferdy said, grinning as he lowered his cane and turned it upright. “But I fear it won’t fool them for long.”

  “No, it won’t,” Mr. Garritt said, and he reached down a hand to help Ivy to her feet.

  “How did you do that?” she breathed, all else forgotten in a moment of wonder.

  He smiled a little. “It was a phantasm. But contrary to what Rafferdy here said, it was anything but excellently done. Rather it was hasty, and we lacked proper costumes, which was why we had to stay very still. Even so, if the men had looked directly at us for more than a few moments, they would have seen it.”

  “Only they didn’t.”

  He nodded. “An eye will tend to behold what its owner expects to see. The soldiers would not presume anyone to have remained in the front hall when they barged in. So I allowed their eyes to glimpse the very things they anticipated instead—a room empty of all but furniture—and they accepted this sight willingly.”

  “I suppose they might have expected to see their quarry flee into the garden as well,” Mr. Rafferdy said. “And so you created the phantasm outside the window.”

  Now Mr. Garritt frowned. “Perhaps they did expect such a thing. The soldiers certainly needed little convincing to go in pursuit of it. But it is not possible to create two illusions at such a distance from one another, or at least not for me. Perhaps some illusionists could do so, but I cannot.”

  “What are you saying?” Mr. Rafferdy said, scowling himself.

  “I mean that I did not conjure the figure outside the window. Whatever the men saw beyond the glass, it was really there.”

  “But then who was it?”

  Perhaps it had been the man in the black mask. Though even as Ivy thought this, she recalled that the shadow had not been nearly so tall as he. Then again, he could conjure illusions himself, though they were not entirely the same sort as Mr. Garritt’s.

  There was no time to consider it further. Whatever the figure outside the window had been, the soldiers would soon return to the house when they realized Ivy was not in the garden.

  “We must hurry,” Ivy said, starting up the stairs. “Rose will be waiting for us.”

  The two men followed after her.

  Ivy expected to hear shouts and the sound of booted feet at any moment, but the only noises were those which their own feet made upon the stairs. Quickly they reached the top, then passed through an arch into the long space of the gallery. Rose stood at the far end, beside the door Arantus, a bundle of cloaks in her arms.

  “What is it, Ivy?” Rose said as they reached her. Her eyes were wide. “I heard men shouting below.”

  “They were soldiers,” Ivy said.

  Rose hugged the cloaks tight to her. “You mean rebel soldiers?”

  Ivy shook her head. “No, not rebels, but all the same we must not be seen by them.”

  “They are bad soldiers, then. Like the ones who took Mr. Quent.”

  “I do not think those men were truly bad, Rose. They were only doing as they were commanded by their officers, as are these men. Even so, we must leave here at once.”

  “Leave? To go to Heathcrest Hall, you mean?”

  “Yes, just as Father said.”

  Rose gasped. “Oh, but I’ve always wanted to see Heathcrest, ever since reading your letters, Ivy. Are Mr. Rafferdy and Mr. Garritt coming with us?”

  “No, Rose, they are not.”

  She bit her lip, looking crestfallen for a moment, but then she brightened. “But Mr. Quent will be coming, won’t he? It’s his house, so I am sure he will be joining you and Lily and me there.”

  Ivy drew a breath, knowing she did not have time to fully explain everything to her sister, and not certain she could do so even if she had hours rather than moments. “You will learn more when we arrive there, Rose. But Lily won’t be coming with us. She is going to be staying in the city with Mr. Garritt for the time being.”

  Now Rose’s look of wonder was replaced by one of confusion. “I don’t understand. Why isn’t Lily coming with us?”

  Ivy sighed. “I am sorry, dearest. I know this is all very sudden, but there isn’t time to explain right now. We must go at once. Nor are we going to Heathcrest by any usual means. What you are to see may frighten you, but I promise you that all will be well. I’ll need you to be brave, though. And to shut your eyes when I tell you to, and not open them. Can you do that?”

  Rose’s eyes were very large at the moment, but she nodded.

  “Have the soldiers returned yet?” Mr. Garritt said.

  Mr. Rafferdy took a few steps toward the stairs and shook his head. “I don’t hear them.”

  That struck Ivy as odd. It seemed to her the soldiers should have discovered she was not in the garden by now and returned to the house to look for her. Well, in any case, she would not delay. She lifted the box of Wyrdwood and touched its lid. The tendrils of wood, frozen and lifeless a moment ago, now untwined themselves from one another.

  Ivy heard all three of the others draw in a breath.

  “Oh!” Rose exclaimed. “It’s the box made from the Old Trees.”

  Ivy looked up at her, startled. “How do you know that?”

  “Father told me about it. Just like he told me about the doors here in the gallery, and how they open to other places.”

  Mr. Garritt was gazing at Rose with a puzzled expression, but Mr. Rafferdy nodded. “So Mr. Lockwell really is still here,” he said, his voice low with wonder. “Or some part of him, at least.”

  Yes, her father was still here. And because of him, and because of Rose, there was yet hope. Ivy opened the lid of the box and took out the wooden key that was shaped like a leaf. She approached the door Arantus and searched for the place where there was a slight gap in the pattern of carved leaves.

  There it was, near the center of the door. Ivy set the wooden leaf into the gap. It fit into place with a satisfying click. Ivy gripped the doorknob and took in a breath.

  Then she opened the door.

  A puff of air blew outward: cold, dry, and faintly metallic. It was old, this air—more ancient than any contained in a clay jar, still sealed with wax, that had been disinterred from a Tharosian ruin. All the same, it did no harm to them as they breathed it in. As Ivy
had discovered previously, there was some manner of protection around the way station: a magick that protected it from the frigid aether that filled the void between the planets.

  “By all the saints,” Mr. Garritt said behind her, his voice somewhat faint, “what in Eternum is this place?”

  “It is indeed celestial in nature,” Ivy said, “but it is nothing to do with Eternum.” She moved closer to the door. Beyond was the same featureless plain of gray-green dust she recalled. Stars blazed in the firmament, and a great lavender orb, skirted by a circle of sharp-edged rings, dominated a full quadrant of the black sky. “The planet you see above is Dalatair, and we are gazing at the surface of one of its moons, Arantus. Those heaps of stones you can spy in the distance are gates—doorways that open to other places. Places here in Altania.”

  “But that’s impossible!”

  “No, Garritt,” Mr. Rafferdy said, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “It is magick.”

  Rose tightened her grip on the cloaks and lifted herself up onto her toes. “You did it, Ivy! You did magick after all, just like you tried to do that day in the parlor on Whitward Street.”

  Despite all that had happened, and all that must yet occur, Ivy could not help smiling a little at that memory, which now seemed so long ago. How silly she had been to think she could work magick. She knew now that she never would. But she had her own abilities.

  “No, Rose, I did not make this. I only unlocked it. The door was created by a magician long ago, the one who built this house.”

  Mr. Rafferdy took Ivy’s arm and drew her aside. “Are you certain about this?” he said, his voice low so Rose could not hear. “What if you become lost?”

  “We won’t,” Ivy said. “When I was here before, I looked through many of the gates. Some of them still open into stands of Wyrdwood, and there was one that I am sure is the very grove near Heathcrest.”

  There was worry in his brown eyes, and his expression was grim, but he nodded. “All the same, you must be careful. Even if it is no issue to find the gate you seek, what lies beyond it I cannot say.”