Glass Books of the Dream Eaters mtccads-1

by Gordon Dahlquist

  It was only a moment before he found the clue he sought. The present house was a ring of buildings around an open center occupied by a substantial formal garden in the French geometrical style. In the prison map, this center was dominated by a circular structure that—Chang’s mind raced to take it in—descended many floors, a panopticon of prison cells arranged around a central observation tower, all of it sunk under the earth. He looked again at the map of Vandaariff’s Harschmort…there was no visible trace of it at all. Chang knew in an instant that it was still there, underground. He thought of the Institute chamber, the mass of pipes running down the walls to the table where Angelique had lain. The prison panopticon could be easily re-made for the same purpose. There could be nothing like it at Tarr Manor—the expense would be well beyond the income of such a middling estate. He left the maps where they were and strode back to the stacks with the lantern. For all he knew Celeste was in that table’s embrace at Harschmort even then.

  By the time he descended into Stropping it was after midnight. If anything, the spectacle of the place was even more infernal than he remembered (for Chang disliked leaving the city and so the station was invariably colored by annoyance and resentment)—the shrieking whistles, the fountains of steam, the glowering angels to either side of the awful clock, and below them all a desperate handful of driven souls, even at this hour, isolated under the vast iron canopy. Chang raced toward the large board that detailed the trains and their platforms and destinations, forcing his eyes to focus as he ran. He was half-way across the floor when the blurred letters congealed into a shape he could read—platform 12, leaving at 12:23 for Orange Canal. The ticket counter was closed—he would pay the conductor—and he dashed for the platform. The train was there, steam rising from the stack of its red engine.

  As he came nearer he noted with a stab of wariness a line of finely dressed figures—men and women—boarding at the rear car. He slowed to a walk. Could it be another ball? After midnight? They would not be arriving at Harschmort until nearly two o’clock in the morning. He loitered until the last of the line had boarded—he recognized none of them—and approached the rear carriage himself, unseen. Perhaps twenty people had entered. He looked up at the clock—it was 12:18—and allowed another minute for them to clear the rear car before he climbed the steps and entered. The conductor was not there. Had he escorted the others forward? Chang took a few steps farther in and looked around. No one was in the rear-most compartments. He turned back to the door and froze. Advancing toward the train across the marble floor of Stropping Station was the unmistakable form of Mrs. Marchmoor, in a dress of dramatic black and yellow, and marching behind her a group of some fifteen red-coated Dragoons, their officer at her side. Chang spun on his heels and dashed forward into the car.

  The compartments were empty. At the far end of the corridor Chang pulled open the door and closed it behind him, moving steadily ahead. This car seemed to be empty as well. It wasn’t surprising for so late an hour, especially since the people boarding seemed to make up a single large party. They would undoubtedly be seated together—and Chang had little doubt that Mrs. Marchmoor would be joining them, once she had established to her satisfaction he was not to be found. He reached the end of the second car and plunged on into the third. He looked back with a start, for through the glass doors and down the length of two corridors, he could see the reddish shapes of the Dragoons. They were aboard. Chang broke into a run. These compartments were equally empty—he was barely bothering to look into them as he passed. He reached the end of the third car and stopped dead. This door was different. It opened onto a small open platform with a handrail of chain on either side. Beyond it, just a short step away, was another car, different from the others, painted black with gold fittings, with a forbidding doorway of black-painted steel. Chang reached out for the handle. The door was locked. He turned to see red coats at the far end of the corridor. He was trapped.

  With a lurch the train began to move. Chang looked to his right and saw the ground of the station drop away. Without another thought he vaulted the chain and landed heavily in a crouch on the gravel; the wind was knocked from his lungs with a wickedly sharp wrench. He forced himself up. The train was still picking up speed. He stumbled after it, driving his body to move, fighting the sensation that he had just inhaled a box full of needles. He broke into a tormented run, legs pumping, catching up to the platform where he had jumped and then racing to reach the front of the black car. Ahead the track disappeared into a tunnel. He looked up at the black car’s windows, dark, covered by curtains—or was it paint? Or steel? His lungs were in agony. He could see the gap at the front of the car, but even if he reached it, had he the strength to pull himself up? The vision of dropping under the train’s wheels flashed hideously into his mind—legs sheared off in an instant, the gouts of blood, his last glimpse of life the filthy soot-covered slag of a Stropping railway track. He pushed himself harder. The whistle sounded. They were nearing the tunnel. With a surge of relief he saw a ladder bolted to the far end of the car. Chang leapt for it and caught hold, legs swinging near the rails, and clawed his way madly up hand over hand—somehow not dropping his stick—until he could hook a knee into the lowest rung. He panted desperately, his lungs and throat on fire. The train swept into the tunnel and he was swallowed by the dark.

  Chang held on for his life, working both legs through the rungs to take the burden from his arms. His chest heaved. He hawked and spat repeatedly into the darkness, away from the train, the taste of blood in his mouth. His head was swimming and he felt dangerously close to a faint. He tightened his grip on the iron rungs and took deep, agonizing breaths. With a sickening thought he realized that if anyone had seen him, he was utterly unable to defend himself. He cursed Rosamonde and her blue powder. His lungs were being ground up like sausage-meat. He spat again and squeezed his eyes shut against the pain.

  He waited until the end of the tunnel, which was at least fifteen minutes. No one emerged from the car. The train raced through the city to the northeast, past desolate yards and crumbling brick houses, to the wood and tar-paper hovels that lined the tracks at the city’s edge. The hidden moon still gave Chang enough light to see another platform with a chain rail connecting the black car to the next, which had no door at all, only another ladder rising to its upper edge. With a slowness that revealed how spent he had become, he understood. This was the coal wagon, and ahead of it the engine. He worked his legs free and, wedging his foot tightly, reached across the empty space toward the coal wagon’s ladder. His arm was perhaps three inches short. If he threw himself, he was almost sure to make it, and it was another sign of his fatigue that he even thought twice. But he couldn’t stay where he was, and he trusted himself to leap over the chain rail even less. He stretched out his arm and one leg, glancing once at the gravel track rattling past beneath him, the rail ties a flickering blur. He turned his gaze solely to the ladder, took a breath and jumped…and landed perfectly, his heart pounding. He looked over at the metal door from this better angle. It seemed exactly like its counterpart on the opposite side: heavy, steel, windowless—as welcoming as the front of any bank safe. Chang turned his gaze to the top of the ladder and began to climb.

  The coal wagon had been recently filled, so the drop from the top of the ladder into the bed of coal was perhaps two feet—just enough to conceal Chang from anyone on the platform between cars. More than this, the level of coal was higher in the center, where it had been poured into the wagon, creating a hillock between Chang and the engineers and stokers on the other side. He lay on his back, looking up into the midnight fog as the train raced through it, the sound of the wheels and the steam loud in his ears, but so constant as to become soothing. He rolled over and spat onto the wall of the wagon. From the taste in his mouth there was no question, this was blood. He felt a thin primal vibration of fear running up his spine, recalling the terrible year when he’d first felt the crop across his eyes—damned to a poorhouse sickroom, and lucky to
survive the fever, his every thought trapped in the fearful space between the person he remembered himself being and the person he was terrified to become—weak, dependent, contemptible. If anything, once he’d left the sickroom and attempted to reclaim his life, the reality had been worse than his fear—after the first day he had abandoned everything for a new existence fueled by bitterness and rage and the desperation of the destitute. As for the young nobleman who had struck him…Chang hadn’t known who he was at the time—the blow had come in the common room of a university drinking hall in the midst of a larger, tangled disagreement between gangs of students—and still didn’t. The glimpse had been very, very brief—a sharp jaw, a rictus of vicious glee, mad green eyes. For all he knew—or hoped—the man had succumbed to syphilis years ago…he had left that kind of impression.

  In the coal wagon however, it was all starting again. If his lungs were ruined, then so was his livelihood. He could wheeze through his work at the Library, but actually settling the business—which he both enjoyed and found a source of self-defining pride—would be beyond him. He thought of his impromptu adventures over the past days and knew that he never would have escaped the soldier in his room—or from the Institute, or the Major, or Xonck, or survived Rosamonde…none of them with his body in such a state. He had re-made himself by an assertion of will, learning to survive, learning his business (when and who and to what degree to trust, when and how and who to kill or merely thrash) and most importantly where to safely locate, in a life of apportioned areas—work and peace, action and oblivion—some semblance of human contact. Whether it was chatting about horses with Nicholas the barman between drinks at the Raton Marine, or allowing himself the painful leisure to approach Angelique (the clacking rush of the train brought to mind her native tongue—he’d said that someone speaking Chinese sounded like an articulate cat, and she’d smiled, because he knew she liked cats), the space for all of these interactions depended on his place in the world, on his ability to take care of himself. What if this was gone? He shut his eyes, and exhaled. He thought of dying in his sleep, choking on the blood in his chest and being found whenever the stokers reached this far into the coal for fuel. When would that be—days? His body would go to a pauper’s grave, or simply into the river. His mind drifted to Doctor Svenson, and he saw him stumbling away from pursuit—limping, as Chang realized dimly the Doctor had done throughout their time together, though he had not mentioned it—out of shells, dropping the pistol…he would die. Chang would die. The stability of Chang’s thoughts drifted, and without him noticing, as if in a dream, his sympathy for the Doctor’s plight caused his gaze to transpose itself into the struggle—he saw his own hands throw down the pistol and fumble for and draw apart his stick (somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered that the Doctor would have such a weapon) and flail at the many men who followed him through the fog (or was it falling snow—he must have lost his glasses)—sabers everywhere, surrounded by soldiers in black and in red…swinging helplessly, his weapons knocked away…the blades flashing toward him like starving bright fish darting up from the depths of the sea, their hideous punctures in his chest—or was he merely breathing?—and then behind him, from far away yet insistently in his ear, the whispered voice of a woman, her moist, warm breath. Angelique? No…it was Rosamonde. She was telling him that he was dead. Of course he was…there was no other explanation.

  When Chang opened his eyes the train was no longer moving. He could hear the desultory hiss of the engine in repose, like a muttering, tamed dragon, but nothing else. He sat up, blinking, and dug out a handkerchief to wipe his face. His breath was easier, but there was a dark crust at each corner of his mouth and around both nostrils. It did not exactly look like dried blood—he couldn’t be certain in the dark—but rather like blood that had been crystallized, as if seeped into sugar, or ground glass. He peered over the lip of the coal wagon. The train was at a station. He could see no one on the platform. The black car was still closed—or re-closed, he had no idea if it had been vacated or not. The station house itself was dark. As the train did not seem about to move on, he reasoned they had to be at the end of the line, at Orange Canal. Chang laboriously swung his leg over the side of the wagon and climbed down, tucking the stick under his arm. His joints were stiff, and he looked up at the sky, trying to judge by the moon how long he’d been asleep. Two hours? Four? He dropped onto the gravel and brushed himself off as best he could—he knew the back of his coat was blackened with coal dust. There would be no chance to brazen his way past servants looking like this, but it made no difference. The situation was beyond disguise.

  As so often happens, the return trip to Harschmort seemed much shorter than his flight away from it. Small landmarks—a dune, a break in the road, the stump of a tree—appeared one after the other with almost dutiful dispatch, and it was a very brief half an hour before Chang found himself standing on a hillock of knee-high grass, gazing across a flat fennish pasture at the brightly lit, forbidding walls of Robert Vandaariff’s mansion. As he advanced he weighed different avenues of approach, based on the parts of the house he knew. The gardens in the rear were bordered by a number of glass doors which would offer easy entry, but the garden was above the hidden chamber—the inverse tower—and might be closely watched. The front of the house was sure to be well-occupied, and the main wings only had windows high off the ground, as per the original prison. This left the side wing, where he’d smashed through a lower window to escape, which also seemed to be where much of the secret activity had been found before—Trapping’s body, at any rate. Should he try there? He had to assume Mrs. Marchmoor had warned them of his possible arrival, despite not finding him on the train. They would expect him, to be sure.

  The fog broke apart at a rise in the wind, laying the ground before him more open to the moonlight. Chang stopped, a pricking of suspicion at the back of his neck. He was mid-way across the pasture, and could suddenly see that in front of him the grass had been flattened in narrow trails. People had been here recently. He stepped slowly forward, his eyes noting where these trails might cross his path. He stopped again and sank to one knee. He extended his stick ahead of him and pushed aside the grass. Just visible in the sandy dirt was a length of iron chain. Chang dug the stick under it and lifted, pulling the chain free of the sand. It was only two feet long, with one end bolted to a metal spike driven deep into the earth. The other end, he noted with a weary kind of dread, was attached to a metal bear trap—or in this case, man trap, the vicious circle of iron teeth stretched apart and ready to shatter his leg. He looked up at the house, then behind him. He had no idea where else they had placed these—he didn’t even know if this was their beginning or his progress so far just luck. The road was well away—and getting to it didn’t offer any safer route than going forward. He would have to take a chance.

  Not wanting it broken, he wormed the tip of his stick under the rim of the trap’s teeth and edged it within reach of the small sensitive plate. He rapped with the tip on the plate and the trap went off with vicious speed, snapping savagely through the air. Even though he expected it, Chang was still startled and chilled—the trap’s action was just shockingly brutal. He screamed, cupping his hand around his mouth to propel the sound toward the house. He screamed again, desperately, pleadingly, allowing it to trail off in a moan. Chang smiled. He felt better for the release of tension, like an engine venting built-up steam. He waited. He screamed a third time, still more abjectly, and was rewarded by a new chink of light in the nearest wall, an opened doorway and then an exiting line of men carrying torches. Keeping low, Chang scuttled back whence he had come, aiming for a part of the pasture where the grass was high. He threw himself down and waited for his breath to settle. He could hear the men, and very slowly raised his head enough to watch them approach. There were four men, each with a torch. With a sudden thought he pulled off his glasses, not wanting the lenses to reflect the torchlight. The men came nearer, and he noted with satisfaction the very deliberate path
they walked, one after another, marking it clearly in the grass. They reached the sprung trap, perhaps twenty yards from where he watched, and it quite visibly dawned on them that they saw no writhing man in the grass, nor heard any further screaming. They looked around with suspicion.

  Chang smiled again. The coal dust absorbed the light and made him nearly invisible. The men were speaking low to each other. He couldn’t hear them. It didn’t matter. Three were Dragoons, in brass helmets that caught the torchlight, but the one in front was from the household, his head bare, his coat flapping about his knees. The soldiers had torches in one hand and sabers in the other. The man held a torch and a carbine. He planted the torch in the sandy ground and inspected the trap, looking for blood. The man stood up, collected his torch, and quite deliberately scanned the pasture around him. Chang slowly lowered himself—there was no point botching it now—and waited, following the man’s thoughts as clearly as if he saw into his mind. The man knew he was being watched, but had no idea from where. Chang was abstractly sympathetic, but whoever’s idea the traps actually were, this was obviously the man who had set them. While Chang was a killer, he did not admire those whose traffic was agony. He made a point of fixing the man’s face—a wide jaw with grizzled side whiskers and a balding pate—in his mind. Perhaps they would meet indoors.