“It won’t have to,” Ivy said. She grasped Mr. Rafferdy’s hand and pulled him toward the house. “Come on!”
The two ran across the yard. Mr. Bennick did not call out, though they felt his eyes on them as they went. They halted before the heavy wooden door of the house. Ivy glanced at the stone lions to either side, almost hoping she would see them yawn and stretch. However, they were motionless stone. Whoever the man in the mask was, he was not here.
Ivy took out the key and fitted it in the lock. For one awful moment she feared it would not turn. However, it did so easily. There was a grinding noise. She laid a hand on the door.
“Go on,” Mr. Rafferdy said.
Ivy realized she had been standing there, as motionless as the lions. She drew in a breath, then pushed on the door. It swung open with a whisper, like an echo of an ancient word murmured in a forgotten tongue. Beyond was a gray dimness.
“Do not gaze into the eye,” a voice called out.
Ivy glanced back over her shoulder. Mr. Bennick still stood at the gate, watching them from the other side of the bars.
“No matter what you do, no matter what you think you see, you must not look into it.” Then he retreated from the gate and was gone from sight.
Ivy shivered, then stepped over the threshold. Mr. Rafferdy followed after. They turned to shut the door, and Ivy used the key to lock it again.
“Something happened when you did that.” He laid a hand on the door. “I heard it, like the sound of another door closing. Did you hear it?”
Ivy withdrew the heavy key, weighing it in her hand. “No, but I think it’s the binding on the door. When I locked it again, the enchantment must have been restored.”
“Yes, it’s as if there’s a sheet of glass over the door. Only…” He ran a hand over the wood. “There are cracks in it. I can feel them.”
Despite her fear, she could not help but marvel at him. “What you did out there—your cane, the way it shone.”
He grimaced. “It was nothing. You heard him—they’ll break it soon enough. I can only suppose they’ll break through this as well now.” He looked at her. “The binding’s not strong anymore, not after you used the key. If they’re really coming as he said, then it won’t take them long to gain entry.”
“Then we’d better hurry.”
Ivy left the door and moved through the dimness of the entry hall. Sheet-draped furniture stood all around like ghosts. The house was silent except for their own footfalls.
“How long has it—” Mr. Rafferdy winced as his voice echoed; he lowered it to just above a whisper. “How long has it been since you’ve been here?”
“A long time. I was only four or five when we moved to Whitward Street.” She reached the foot of the stairs. The knobs atop the newel posts were carved to look like shut eyes, just as she remembered. She touched one, then put a foot on the first step.
“Where are you going?”
She looked back at him. “Upstairs. He said in his letter the door was in the room behind his study.”
He swallowed. “Right, then.”
Ivy turned to start up the steps—and gasped. The eyes atop the newel posts were no longer shut. Now they were open and staring, their pupils slits rather than circles.
“One gets the feeling we’re being watched,” Mr. Rafferdy said.
Ivy steadied herself. What reason did she have to fear an enchantment that her father had surely known of—had perhaps created himself? No, she was not the intruder here. She made herself continue up the steps, and Mr. Rafferdy came after. The eyes seemed to follow them as they went.
Ivy did not stop at the second landing, instead leading the way to the uppermost floor. While before her memories of the house on Durrow Street had been dim and murky, now that she was here it was as if a black veil had been lifted. She went directly to the end of the upstairs corridor. They came to a thick door into which was carved a single eye. As she touched the doorknob, the eye opened like those atop the newel posts below.
Mr. Rafferdy gave a nervous cough. “So much for nipping in unseen.”
“I think this house sees everything we do,” she said.
The door was locked, so she took out the iron key. It turned easily in the lock, and the door swung open. As it did, she braced herself for the wailing of some magickal alarm.
There was only silence. Ivy gathered her courage, then entered the room she had never set foot in before and into which she had seen just once all those years ago. The eye in the door blinked as they passed, and a shower of dust fell from its lid.
The room was very dark. Creeping slowly, not sure what she would run into, Ivy moved to the window and drew the curtains, letting in the light of the swift-passing afternoon through the dusty glass.
“There’s nothing here,” Mr. Rafferdy said.
Ivy turned around. In her mind she could still picture the crowded, cluttered room she had glimpsed through the crack in the door as a girl—a chamber full of mysterious trunks and unknown artifacts draped in black velvet. However, the room she saw now was utterly bare, save for the cobwebs that hung from the ceiling like gray moss. She had known the magick cabinet would be gone, but where were all his other things?
Somewhere safe, of course, somewhere hidden. She paced the perimeter of the room.
Mr. Rafferdy frowned at her. “What are you doing?”
“My father said it was in the chamber behind his study.”
“But there aren’t any doors in here—only the one window.”
He was right. Ivy left the room, stepping back into the corridor. However, her examinations only confirmed what she already knew. The study was at the very end of the corridor; the only way to reach something behind it was to go through it. She returned to the study. There had to be a way.
“Mr. Rafferdy, would you lend me your cane, please?”
He gave her a puzzled look, then shrugged and did as she asked. She took the cane and, walking around the edges of the room, rapped the handle against the wall every few inches. Each time the cane made a solid thump—until she reached the center of the wall opposite the door. Here, when she tapped the cane, it made an echoing noise.
He gave her a startled look. “Well done, Mrs. Quent. Yet may I ask how we are to get in if there isn’t a door?”
“There must be a way to open it,” Ivy said, running her hands over the wall, feeling for a latch or crevice. Except that was foolish; she needed to think like a magician. She stepped back.
“Mr. Rafferdy, can you…?” She handed him the cane.
He gripped the silver handle. “I suppose it can’t hurt. That is, unless I misspeak the spell. In which case I imagine it might hurt quite a bit. You see, Mr. Bennick told me of an apprentice who once muddled an enchantment so badly he turned himself inside—”
“Mr. Rafferdy,” she said gently. “The spell.”
“Right.” He gripped his cane and pointed it at the wall. “Though you may want to step back just in case.”
He drew a breath, then uttered the same words of magick he had when he bound the front gate shut; however, this time he spoke the words in the reverse order. As before, tendrils of blue light coiled up and down the length of the cane. Ivy had the uncomfortable sense that the air in the room rippled like dark water or, rather, that the very space the room occupied was folding in upon itself, as if it were a picture drawn on paper.
The strange sensation ceased. Mr. Rafferdy lowered his cane. “That didn’t seem to do anything at all. Perhaps if I speak the spell again—”
Ivy laid a hand against the wall and pushed. There was a click, then a section of the wall swung inward.
“Or not,” Mr. Rafferdy said, and cleared his throat.
Ivy stepped through the opening. The chamber beyond was not large. One could have lived in the house for years and never known it was there, tucked behind the other room. There was no window, but daylight spilled in through the study.
A heap draped in heavy black cloth stood in the cent
er of the room. Here were his precious objects, she supposed—at least those Mrs. Lockwell had not disposed of. However, marvelous as the things beneath the cloth might be, it was to the walls that Ivy’s attention went.
“Repeating oneself is the sign of a dull wit,” Mr. Rafferdy said. “Yet I must confess again that I don’t see a door.”
Neither did she. All the walls in the chamber were blank wood. “It has to be here,” she said. “Mr. Rafferdy, may I have your cane again?”
Ivy took the cane and went around the room, tapping against the walls, searching for another door. However, each time the cane struck, it made a solid noise. After going around the room twice without finding anything, she handed the cane back to Mr. Rafferdy.
A thudding sound echoed up from below. They exchanged a startled look, then went back into the study. Mr. Rafferdy looked out the window.
“It appears our guests have arrived for the party,” he said.
Ivy joined him at the window. The study was in one of the wings of the house, and from this vantage she could look down into the yard. A chill gripped her. A pair of figures in black cloaks and black hoods stood in front of the house. As she watched, another figure, also clad in black, descended the front step, then two more moved up the path to join the others.
The five black forms arranged themselves in a half circle before the front steps of the house. It was faint, but Ivy could just hear a low chanting. As one, the figures raised their left arms, pointing.
Again a thudding sound echoed up from below, louder this time.
“They’re trying to open the door,” Mr. Rafferdy said.
Ivy could not take her eyes from the figures below. Blue light flickered around their outstretched hands.
She looked at Mr. Rafferdy. “How long do you think it will hold?”
“I have absolutely no idea.”
She wrested herself from the window. “Come on, then.”
“Where are we going?”
“To find the door. It has to be somewhere else in the house. Maybe it was moved after he wrote the letter, like the magick cabinet.”
“How can you move a door? Take it out of the wall and put it in another? Or do you move the entire wall along with it?”
The idea did seem absurd, but Ivy didn’t know what else to think. “It is a thing of magick,” she said.
“I suppose it’s possible,” Mr. Rafferdy said, though a bit dubiously. “But if so, perhaps it’s not in the house at all.”
She nodded toward the window. “If that was the case, then they wouldn’t be here.”
“Good point.” He gripped his cane. “Lead on, then.”
They began their search on the uppermost floor, moving from room to room, opening every door great or small. Some led to side chambers, others to closets or cabinets. They rapped on the walls and peered behind pictures and faded tapestries, making sure they missed nothing. As they went, the air in the house dimmed. Outside the windows, clouds gathered in the sky. At last their search brought them back into the upstairs corridor.
“There’s nothing up here,” Mr. Rafferdy said. “I’m sure we tried every door, and none of them opened onto anything remotely unusual or magickal, unless you count the stork’s nest in the one bedroom.”
Again a blow struck the front door of the house, rattling the air.
“Down,” Ivy said. “We must go down.”
They searched the second floor, going from room to room, past empty shelves and furniture draped in shrouds, making sure no door, no matter how small or inconsequential, escaped their attention. Then they went to the first floor, and even down to the basement, but to no avail. There was nothing about any door that might have suggested it was the one, the place where they should work the enchantment.
Mr. Rafferdy brushed cobwebs from his coat as they returned to the first floor, to the foot of the staircase. “I’m beginning to think it would be easier to just speak the spell at every door in the house.”
“No, there are dozens of them—you would be exhausted before you could finish. Besides, there isn’t time.”
As if to punctuate this, another thud came from behind them. They turned, gazing down the entry hall in time to see the front door of the house shudder in its frame. Lines of blue light, sharp as knives, stabbed through the cracks all around the door. Then the light faded. As it did, the muffled sound of chanting seeped through the door.
“It has to be here,” Ivy said. “We must have missed it somehow.”
She started up the stairs, running up the steps back to the third floor, Mr. Rafferdy following. Again she moved through all the rooms, running her hands over every wall.
It was no use; they discovered nothing they had not already seen. They came to the top of the stairs again and Ivy started to descend, only then she halted. The will to keep searching drained from her. What hope was there? They had already looked at everything down there.
Sighing, Ivy sat down on the top step. From below came another crash, along with the whine of metal.
“The hinges are breaking,” Mr. Rafferdy said. “It won’t be long now.”
Ivy could only nod. She was beyond words. Her father had been wrong to trust her; she had failed to solve his puzzle in the end.
Mr. Rafferdy sat down on the step beside her. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. As he did, a spot of gold appeared on the shoulder of his coat. One last ray of light must have filtered in from somewhere to fall upon him.
Ivy frowned. “But that can’t be.”
“What can’t be?”
“That,” she said, pointing to the dot of red-gold light on his coat.
“The sun must be setting.”
“I’m sure it is, but the last time I looked out a window, a storm was coming. The sky has covered with clouds.”
“Perhaps it’s cleared off.”
Ivy held out her hand, catching the spot of light upon it. “No, I don’t think so.” She stood, turning around. The ray of light was coming from somewhere down the upstairs corridor.
She moved slowly, careful to keep the beam of light upon her hand as she went, following it down the corridor, through the open door of the study. Dust floated on the gray air, and she could see the thin shaft of red-gold light. Hand outstretched, she followed the light across the study, past the secret door Mr. Rafferdy had opened, into the small chamber beyond.
Ivy drew close to the center of the room, the spot of light still upon her palm. It emanated from a small hole in the cloth draping the heap of objects there. Or was it a stack of boxes and chests after all? The chamber was dim now—sunlight no longer beamed in from the study—but as she examined the cloth, she realized what it concealed was rounded, not flat like the top of a crate or an old cabinet.
“Where is the light coming from?” Mr. Rafferdy said.
Ivy gripped a fold of the black cloth and tugged. It fell to the floor with a hiss, and red-gold light flooded the chamber.
It was a perfect sphere of crystal, a thing so large she could not have encircled it using both arms. The crystal orb was suspended within a frame of intricately braided wood that in turn rested upon a wooden stand fashioned of thick, ornately carved columns. The red light emanated from within the sphere, welling out, suffusing the air of the room with crimson.
“It looks rather like an eye,” Mr. Rafferdy said behind her, his voice oddly distant-sounding.
He was right. The braided wood wove together, forming a lid from beneath which the orb peered past them with its red gaze. All this time they had been looking for the wrong thing. The door her father had written about in his letter was not some ordinary portal set into a wall. It was this. And in a way it made sense. Were not eyes often described as doorways to the soul?
Fascinated, Ivy peered closer. It seemed there were things within the orb, though it was difficult to see through the haze of ruddy light. She could make out only indistinct shapes. However, she had the impression of a flat, dark landscape receding into a vast distance. Just
above the line of the horizon hung a great, livid ball like some impossibly bloated sun.
Ivy leaned closer yet, and a queer feeling came over her: a sensation that the land she saw was not flat at all. Instead, it surged and writhed, like the surface of a furious black sea. Only the sea was not made up of drops of water but of individual motes of darkness, each one moving and struggling, trying to climb its way over the others. Above, dark shapes flitted and lurched across the face of the alien sun.
“No, don’t look,” Mr. Rafferdy said, pulling her back. “I know he’s with them, but I think Mr. Bennick’s right about this. I don’t think it’s a good idea to look through that thing.”
Ivy held a hand to her temples. Her head throbbed, and she felt ill. A cold sweat had broken out on her skin.
He regarded her with a worried look. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine.” However, even as she said this, a moment of dizziness came over her. She reached for the wooden stand that held the orb and its frame, gripping it for support.
The crimson light turned green. At once her headache vanished, as did her fear, her weariness. She felt refreshed, as if she had just drunk a cup of cool water. With a gasp she let go of the wooden stand. The air in the room went red again.
“What is it, Mrs. Quent?” His worried expression had been replaced by curiosity. “Something happened just now, didn’t it?”
Ivy shook her head. How could she explain it? It seemed impossible, yet there was no mistaking it—the stand that supported the artifact was fashioned from boughs taken from the Wyrdwood. So was the frame that held the crystal sphere. It was no longer alive, but she had felt the echo of life in it, just as she had in Mr. Samonds’s bentwood chair. But why would such unusual wood have been used to hold the orb? Surely any sort of lumber would have supported its weight.
The Magicians and Mrs. Quent Page 62