Lamplighter

by D M Cornish

  “How does the rippling in the tubs happen?” Rossamünd asked at last.

  Numps stood, leaned into the vat, shone the light within and said, “By the flippers flapping, of course.”

  Rossamünd looked again and saw flat paddles waving slowly in the depths like the swimming feet of an idling duck. Numps took him farther into the undercroft, threading past many more baths than Rossamünd had first reckoned. In the midst of it all Numps halted and pointed with open palm and a self-satisfied expression to a large brassbound wooden contraption. It was a pull-box, a small kind of gastrine about the size of a limber. From its flywheel a series of wheels and belts drove all the modulating paddles that set the tub water to gentle motion, squeaking occasionally in their lazy to and fro. Rossamünd could see the convoluted connection of the belts all about the roof of the undercroft, one reaching down to the paddles of each vat.

  “I feed it and muck it—and the bloom too, and keep it all running myself. No one else will.” Numps closed his eyes like a fellow foundling reciting verse in one of Master Pin-sum’s lessons at the foundlingery. “Sometimes I put a little of one of my friends into a great-lantern that’s to go back out to the road, and these live and live and live much longer than the poor things they grow otherwise.”

  In anyone else, this claim would be discounted as pure boast, but not with Numps; not with such obvious proofs of his skill before them.

  Rossamünd was powerfully impressed. “What do you feed the pull-box?”

  “The cuttings and prunings and dead bits from the bloom,” Numps returned matter-of-factly, though a self-satisfied grin ticked at the unscarred corner of his mouth.

  “What do you do with the pull-muck?”

  Grin growing, clearly proud of himself, the glimner answered, “Feed it to the bloom. They reckon it’s the tastiest stuff they ever have tasted.They feed the pull, the pull feeds them—on and on and on and on.”

  “Why aren’t these used in all the lamps all the time?”

  “Oh, they have their own blooms up there,” Numps replied, “in tubs not so old and leaky nor hard to get to. I always have to plug the cracks and gaps in this soggy wood.” He patted the side of a bath tenderly. “Besides, the master-clerker and all his clerker-chums wouldn’t like a thing like this. It’s him who says where the bloom comes from nowadays.”

  Rossamünd stood and watched the entire mechanism in silent admiration, just listening to the deep soothe of the trickling, rippling waters. “You’d have to be the best seltzerman ever there was, Mister Numps!” he whispered.

  “Ahh, not poor limpling-headed Numps,” the glimner said bashfully, then grinned.

  They sat then, side by side in the soporific warmth, the glimner and the prentice, Numps humming, Rossamünd wishing heartily that he could come here again. Safe and warm and brimming with peace, it was simply the best place in the whole Half-Continent. In the soft darkness of the old forgotten bloom baths, Rossamünd slept.

  15

  THE WAY LEAST WENT

  moss-light also known as a limnulin or limulight; this is a small, pocketable device, a simple biologue consisting of a lidded box holding a clump of naturally phosphorescent mosslike lichens (either funkelmoos or micareen), set on a thick bed of nutrient to keep it alive. This nutrient bed can be reinvigorated with drops of liquid similar to seltzer. The light provided by a limnulin is not bright, but can give you enough to see your way right on a dark night, and is diffuse enough not to attract immediate attention.

  WITH a panicked, convulsing suck of breath, Rossamünd awoke. He sat up in disoriented fright, looking every way with hasty, sightless alarm as the swilling of water trickled all about.Then easy realization brought peace: he was still in the undercroft, with the bloom baths.

  Numps stirred more peaceably, saying sleepily, “Oh, oh, wake up, sleepyheads, no time for dozing.”

  “What’s the o’clock?” Rossamünd asked loudly, still a little mizzled.

  Numps scratched his head. “Uh, sorry, Mister Rossamünd, I’m a glimner, not a night-clerk.”

  Rossamünd got to his feet. “It feels late,” he said, and ran up the steps to observe the sky through the grate. With profound consternation he discovered that the clear black dome of night hung above. He could not quite believe it. His heart skipping several beats, he opened the grate and clambered up to the square to get a better view. Maudlin green was riding high in the dark. It was desperately, impossibly late. Douse-lanterns had come and was long gone and all prentices should be in their cells asleep. No one was permitted to roam the grounds at night, especially not some lowly lantern-stick. A quick trot to the jakes across the hall was all a prentice was allowed during the night-watches.To be at large now was the worst breach, punishable by an afternoon in the pillory by the Feuterer’s Cottage.

  Rossamünd leaped back down the steps, three at a time, utterly flustered, dreading the worst punishments. “I’m late. I’m locked out. Frogs and toads, Mister Numps! How am I to get back into my cell?”

  Numps was still sitting as the prentice had left him.

  “I have to go right now, Mister Numps.” Rossamünd’s voice quavered with anxiety. “It’s past douse-lanterns . . . Oh, I’m in so much trouble . . .”

  “Oh—oh—um, oh dear—there’s better ways home again.” Numps nodded. “Numps’ hiding-hole goes more places than just here.” With that he stood and jogged off through the baths.

  Rossamünd followed.

  Through the convoluted clearances between the battery of baths they hastened. In the farthest corner of the undercroft was a hole in the wall, round like a drain. Upon a hook at the apex of the drain’s arch hung a bright-limn with the healthiest looking bloom Rossamünd had ever seen glowing bright in its near-clear seltzer. Beyond the throw of clean light the cavity of the drain was exquisitely black and blank and mysterious. Numps took the bright-limn off its stay and, with a solemn nod to Rossamünd and a soft “shh,” entered the round gap.

  Close behind, the prentice saw that they were in a tunnel, most probably an ancient sewer pipe. On left and right down the length of the tunnel they passed the small dark mouths of lesser pipes beady with reflecting retinas and echoing with light patters and rodent squeaks. The gray-mousers that haunted the manse could grow happily fat down here.

  In this moldy, claustrophobic place Rossamünd’s sense of distance began to distort, and with it time. To him it felt that they had walked far enough to be somewhere out on the Harrowmath. Several times the tunnel kinked and branched till Rossamünd was disoriented and very glad that the glimner knew the way. Numps finally took a right turn and they began to descend. The new way was of greater diameter than the previous drain and took them down so sharply that Rossamünd was made to lean backward with the effort of climbing, scrabbling at the slimy bricks to prevent a slip.

  Lifting the bright-limn high, Numps paused when the tunnel became level again. “We are right under the manse-house,” the glimner said, looking up and ducking his head.

  Looking to the immuring bricks just above, Rossamünd shrank a little at the thought of the great press of masonry, the tons of stone and hundreds of sleeping lighters and staff all on top of him. It was so deep not even the vermin ventured here.

  Shouldn’t we be going up? Rossamünd fretted.

  Numps continued forward, and there, by an intersecting pipe, was a small door of corroding iron a few feet above the floor, reached by three large steps. He grinned at Rossamünd, his geniality made ghastly by the play of seltzer light on his scars. Rossamünd smiled back, alive to the immense trust the glimner was showing him, the secrets the man was revealing.

  “Through here now, and up, up, up,” Numps said softly. He produced a key pulled from somewhere on his person, unlocked the rusty door and shone the seltzer light through. Beyond was the landing of a tight stairway of near-failing timbers, rising into shadows of architectural gloom.

  Another furtigrade!

  Unlike the one reached through the kitchens, this was
not lit at all.

  How often does he come here? Rossamünd’s whole sense of Winstermill shifted with the thought of the glimner wandering about beneath them as they labored, ate, even slept.

  Numps stood by the door, waiting.

  “Mister Numps?”

  “I don’t like to go up to the manse.” The glimner’s face was drawn and gray, his eyes animated with deep troubles. “I won’t go any farther—oh dear no; I don’t like it in the manse . . . never have.”

  “Can I find my own way from here?” Rossamünd asked.

  The glimner clucked his tongue. “Mister Rossamünd can indeed go himself.”

  “What more is ahead?” the prentice asked.

  Numps looked to the furtigrade distractedly. “Oh—oh, more tunnels, more stairs: just go up—up—up—up—do not stop at any doors until the very top and turn the bolt and slide the door, down the passage and through the hole and you shall come out on to the lectury floor.”

  A start of panic knotted in Rossamünd’s innards. “Are you sure?” he pressed.

  Numps nodded emphatically. The glimner had led him a long and twisted way but now he must go ahead alone—to a place that might not lead anywhere. I could be lost or found out late!—between the stone and the sty, as Fransitart would say. I found my way to Winstermill and I can do this too.

  Stepping onto the tiny landing, Rossamünd looked up. He could see only a few flights above, beyond which darkness brooded. He listened: he could hear nothing but his own workings beating, lub-dub lub-dub.

  “You must go gently-gently,” said the glimner. “Some others are up here too, all a-wandering. I hear them sometimes down here but they don’t hear me. Oh no.” He took something from his satchel and pressed it into Rossamünd’s hands. “Here, Mister Rossamünd, take this; it’s too dark up there.” It was a small pewter box, like those in which pediteers carried their playing cards, but this had a thick leather strap attached and felt almost empty. The prentice did not know what to say.

  “It’s a moss-light,” Numps explained. “Push—push at the top.”

  Rossamünd did as instructed.The top panel proved to be a lid that, when slid up, exposed a diffuse blue-green glow within.With a closer look he found the box was hollow with a glass top, and stuffed with a bizarre kind of plant, its tiny leaves radiant with that odd, natural effulgence like bloom.

  “So you will find the way.” Numps blessed Rossamünd with his crooked smile once more.

  “Oh, thank you, Mister Numps.” Rossamünd felt a small relief: at least he would see his way—even if he was not certain where that way would lead him.

  “Go, go.” Numps bobbed his head bashfully. “Up up to the top, slide the door, through the hole and off to bed just like me. Bye, bye . . .” Mumbling, he shuffled back along the reverse of his path.

  By the eerie nimbus-light of Numps’ gift, Rossamünd began to climb the furtigrade. It was steep, of course, and so very cramped he was obliged to climb slowly. Heeding the warning that the glimner had given of others above, he worked hard to make his footfalls light and prevent the flimsy stair from creaking. Three flights and still the furtigrade went on. At the fourth the looming shadows resolved themselves into a doorway, but the stair went on. No stopping at any doors, Mister Numps said. Rossamünd continued to climb. His ascent was soon foiled, however. Not more than another two flights higher he discovered to his great dismay that a part of the stair had collapsed, making a wreck of gray splinters that made the furtigrade impassable. He could go no farther. What now? His mind’s cogs raced. I’ll try the door I saw below.

  Rossamünd crept down to this door, the glow of the moss-light muffled against his chest, and listened: nothing but drips and the rush of his heart. He dared a little more light and peered gingerly beyond the doorway. The floor of the space was a mirror of the ceiling, a broad shallow drain that formed a vaulted junction with three other tunnels. Forward or back he was lost, he figured, but back meant certain discovery and the pillory while forward at least held a chance of undetected return. So forward it is . . .

  He had heard somewhere—probably from Master Fransitart—that when caught in a maze you should always go left and eventually you would win free. Taking a deep breath he went left. If this did not work he would simply return and choose again.

  Rossamünd followed the leftward tunnel and it took him farther and farther from the junction, finally terminating in eight steps that led up to a brick wall. A dead end! But there, hammered into the mildewed bricks with corroded pegs of iron, was a crude ladder. Hanging the moss-light by its strap about his neck, the prentice scuttered up and pulled himself through into a deep tight valley in the masonry that smelled of century-settled dust and stillness. Brittle twig-weeds sprouted from any suggestion of a crack between floor and wall. How they managed to live at all down in this subterranean night he did not know.

  Leftward was blocked by a wall, and so Rossamünd went right. In the meager moss-light, he thought he could discern what looked like the blank sockets of windows high in the walls above. Soon this architectural chasm ended bluntly in a redbrick barrier fronted by yet another furtigrade going up and going down. Up was closer to Winstermill, he reasoned, so he began to wearily climb again.

  The night was never going to end!

  I should never have come this way. I should have knocked on the Sally door . . . or even the front door.

  Becoming used to this creeping dark, he took the ascent a little more confidently, but the stair sooned reached its end. At its summit he was confronted with a wall into which was sunk an oblong trap-hole, about his height and nearly an arm’s-length deep. It was blocked by a stained panel of dark rusted iron fixed with a corroded handle and barely held shut by a sliding bar of wood and iron. Rossamünd tried it in hope, and the flaking metal resisted at first but then slid back with a loud crack. Maybe this is the door Numps was thinking of . . . He tugged, and the door did not shift. He shoved with hearty frustration, and in a small burst of rusting dust from its age-blackened hinges the portal bulged inward—just a little. Through this crack was a glimpse into blackness, and from it exhaled the foul odor of decay, so much like that far worse hint he had once detected in the hold of the Hogshead. In the bowels of the cromster it had been heavily masked with swine’s lard, but here it was full and oppressively potent, smothering him in its dread stink.

  A rever-man! he intuited, stepping away from the door. Down here? But how? He could not believe it.

  There was a sound, some nondescript evidence of motion; a step, a shuffle—Rossamünd could not tell, but he knew something moved behind that stubborn-hinged door.

  I must try another way! He reached for the handle of the panel to shut it.

  Some misshapen thing lurched at the space from the black within. Pallid hands, blotched and scabbed, gripped door and post and wrenched powerfully. Metal groaned, wood buckled and the door-gap widened. A pale head thrust through, craning and twisting right, then left, its spasmodic breath coming in a quivering wheeze. Its toothy, lipless mouth seeped saliva, at which it sucked almost as often as it breathed. The abominable creature twisted about and fixed its callous attention on him, pinning him with its morbid fascination.With a white flash of dread he realized this was a gudgeon. Here truly was a rever-man—uncaged, unfettered, dreadfully free.

  Rossamünd bit back a scream. His innards churned. His thoughts wailed. A rever-man! A rever-man here in Winstermill!

  For a breath Rossamünd’s mind was overthrown as he tottered back, struggling to fathom what he saw.Yet with the cold, radiating dread that cried Run! Run! in a tiny, terrified voice within came a wholly unexpected rage. Faced now with a rever-man, a blasphemously made-thing, uncaged and visible, Rossamünd’s terror did not overcome him. His hand went instinctively to his salumanticum and found the Frazzard’s powder.

  The gudgeon shifted its grasp. Tiny little piggy eyes regarded him coldly—soulless, dead—as slowly, inexorably the panel-door was forced open. Large, furry, inhuman
ears swiveled and twitched at either side of its long and bulging skull. Swathes of filthy bandages and even a rope were wrapped about its trunk, keeping its heaving chest and stitch-grafted abdomen together. What struck Rossamünd most was the utter absence of any threwd about the thing. A threwdless monster: how could you ever tell it was coming? Indeed, it was devoid of even a flicker of real vitality: a man-made thing, a dead thing.Yet its full and putrid reek, unmasked by swine’s lard, was potent. The gudgeon opened its slavering mouth and a long tongue like a lizard’s lolled obscenely, flicking in the dusty air. Even as Rossamünd stumbled backward onto the furtigrade and down the way he had come, the abomination stared with hungry curiosity as the crack between door and wall grew ineluctably wider.

  “Hmm,” it seethed, licking at the gap between it and the prentice, “yooouuu mmmake mmeee huuunnngreee . . .”

  With one powerful spring, the made-monster flung itself through the gap, viper-quick, at Rossamünd, slamming into the balustrade as it made pursuit.

  Tripping, nearly falling, Rossamünd blundered down the stair. The gudgeon staggered and turned with a dry, rattling hiss. On the lower landing Rossamünd twisted and flung the potive at it as it pounced at him from on high. His aim was as true at a natural throw as it was off with a firelock. The Frazzard’s powder burst against the creature’s neck and shoulder with a flash of bluish sparks and a series of tight detonations that sounded like the popping of corks.

  “Aaiieeee!” The creature hit the wooden steps with a crash and tumbled into Rossamünd as it fell. A thousand stars erupting across his senses, the prentice was crushed over and over between wooden step and rever-man. Together they toppled a whole other flight, then another, striking the banister rail on the lower landing hard, causing it to crack dangerously.

  The gudgeon was on him in an instant, pressing him down, its whelming stench all about him, teeth snapping clack! clack! seeking to nip at exposed flesh: fingers, knees, cheeks. In white, blind terror Rossamünd heaved the abominable creature off and shoved it—almost threw it though it was twice his size—across the tiny landing. Free of its imprisoning bulk, he sprang up the stairs he had just descended so painfully, pointlessly crying, “Help! Help!”