I ran my eyes up and down the great lengths of the drapes before aspiring to touch them, raising my fingers tentatively to the soft texture of one shadowed fold. It was not soft as velvet ought to be, though, I discovered. Rather it chaffed against my fingertips, as if dunked in saltwater and dried with a crust, or left out in the sun for the fibers to fry.
But I only had the vaguest moment to absorb the texture of it before the visions rushed me, clamoring into my mind's eye. I saw a fair young woman standing by the concealed window, swathed in a stunning, sullied pale green and ivory gown. She was glancing over her shoulder into the center of the room, and a ripple ran through the curtains right before the vision grew jerky, and the woman shrieked and disappeared into some hard-to-track black velvet maw.
I recoiled, startled by the vision even though I had expected no less. It was still hard to watch, hard to invite in without being properly affected by it. But I recovered, letting my breath center me, and slowly reached to touch those treacherous curtains again. The velvet feel gave way to a taste – what humans tasted like. I swallowed that sickening impression to delve deeper, letting the visions smooth themselves out into a stream in my mind, rather than the bursts that liked to erupt out of the shadows and bombard me, as if trying to ward me back.
The resulting input told rather the same story as the first vision, but this time I let it play out, absorbing the nature of the incidents.
“What are you looking for?” Tanen's voice filtered into the visions, and I withdrew and turned away from the window.
“Just looking,” I replied vaguely, surveying the rest of the room.
I wandered about the edges, visiting the other windows. Each set of curtains warned of similar temperaments. When victims got too close to the windows, they got swallowed. No one ever saw anything but a ripple, either before or after a strangled yelp or scream, and then someone would be missing from their company.
I drifted into another room from there, quietly exploring the ground level of the mansion. Tanen wandered after me, resigning himself to silent exploration in my wake, not interrupting my obvious muse.
There was a fireplace in the next room, and while my interest was piqued by the strange symbols drawn in the ashes that lay there, what really caught my eye was the hollow that yawned where the back of the fireplace should have been. In all respects, it looked like a hallway.
The young slave woman appeared in the doorway behind us, seeing the direction of my interest.
“Is that–” I began.
“A hallway,” she confirmed.
“Where does it lead...?”
“No one knows. No one goes down that corridor, Monvay. It developed over a period of time; each time a fire was lit, it burned away a little more of the stone in the back, there, leaving more and more of an alcove.”
Intrigued, I stepped forward and crossed the hearth in a semi-crouch, where I could get a better look down the corridor and reach the first of its scorched stones. My fingers brushed through the soot, and I saw what the slave woman said to be true. As the alcove was burned into existence, the smoke of the fires began to get whisked backwards instead of upwards, where the tendrils painstakingly carved the rest of this new brick hallway. It had even designed the charred portraits that hung on the walls of the passage. Wondering what was framed in these portraits, I ducked further into the fireplace, careful not to disrupt the symbols in the ashes, and into the maw of the hallway.
“Vant...” Tanen piped up a little guardedly, but I was already in the passage.
It was carved at an odd angle, slanting off from the fireplace, and I treaded down the first bit of its length wondering where it led. But I had come for the portraits, and I stopped at the first to gaze at the figure hosted there. Some regal whiteskin, clothed in luxury. I moved on to the next, and found myself staring at the face of the young woman I'd seen in my first curtain-vision.
All it took was a touch to tell me: these were portraits of the masters of the house. The Baltanes.
Tanen ducked into the shaft after me, not wanting to see me disappear down some dark, mysterious passage by myself, as it was becoming increasingly clear I was prone to wandering.
“Who are these people?” he asked.
“The Masters,” I replied without looking at him, pattering a little deeper into the passage. He did not ask me how I knew, and I did not think to hide the fact that I did.
"Where are you going, Vant?"
I gave him a look laced with ridicule over my shoulder: Where does it look like?
"This would be why, I'm surmising, you get into frequent trouble," he observed.
"You have no idea what I get into." As I pressed deeper I trailed my fingers against the bricks of the passage. My awareness injected itself into the mortar, running along the cemented lines ahead of my physical progress. Into the shadows ahead my mind's eye raced, breathed in by the cool, lung-like depths of the deviant passage. I gasped slightly in conjunction with the hallway's inhalation, stopping in my tracks as I became blind and my vision-self took over completely. And perhaps I myself was not welcome in those deepest shadows, and it was wise to let my gifted awareness continue on alone.
"Vant?" came Tanen's distant voice. "What is it?" But I was not with him anymore. My eyes shifted back and forth beneath my lids, following the vision current. Only my palm pressing against the wall of the passage kept my body anchored upright, kept me standing without swaying, even as it was what anchored me to the vision as well.
Down the corridor my awareness raced, breezing through the shadows, twisting and turning through the maze-like dimension that the passage was tied to. The breathy shadows propelled it along, until all at once a great obstruction rose up and hit me in the face. I was almost knocked out of the vision, but after a dizzy tremor it steadied, and then my mind's eye was gazing up at the rising facade of a hulking door. I felt as small as a mouse.
But where a mouse might have contrived to slip under the crack of this door, there was no such opportunity here. The door was sealed tight, on all four sides. But there was a keyhole, and it was through this that my awareness aspired to gain entrance. The vision rose from the ground shadows, spilled upward over the slab of the door and crested the bottom contour of that keyhole.
Dim lantern light dawned against my eyes from within, and I peered in on a single, barren room, all done in musty stone. And in the corner – a girl. Huddled in a filthy, tattered little dress, matted hair stuck to her tear- and dirt-streaked face.
Dismay filled me at the sight of her, and then, as she lifted her face and peered through her locks of fair brown hair almost as if she could sense me, I recognized her. She had been pictured in one of the portraits in the hall, along with her mother, Mrs. Baltane. The Mrs. had been one of the ones taken by the mansion curtains, but it seemed little Mia Dane, here, had escaped the same fate as the others. Granted, she was certainly half swallowed, here at the end of this alternate-dimension offshoot of the mansion, but I could feel it in the bones of the place, could sense it in the hope on her raised face: she was waiting to be saved. She was reachable.
I opened my eyes, and my awareness was sucked back from the ledge of the keyhole, back down the twists and turns of the hall to my body. It snapped back in place inside me, and I turned in slight disorientation to Tanen.
"What?" I asked, a little delayed.
A frown creased his face, gauging the nature of my absent behavior. "Are you alright, Vant?"
I swallowed, collecting myself, and went to exit the shaft, where I found the slave woman waiting. Once again Tanen was caught up in the breeze of my impulses, following after me with no better grasp on the situation.
"There's a girl," I said to the slave woman. "At the end of the passage. Mia Dane."
The slave frowned – half suspicious, half intrigued. "You demonstrate an uncanny insight, Rubble Gypsy. No one has told you her name."
"I would hazard that isn't the greater issue, here."
Brooding ov
er my 'uncanny insight' a moment longer, the slave ultimately dismissed it in agreement, and her frown turned to a nod of confirmation. "Mia Dane. The Blatanes' youngest daughter. She wandered into the shaft a number of weeks ago. Never came back out, and no one would go in after her. She was always playing in the ashes, even though Mrs. Baltane told her repeatedly only the slaves were to dirty themselves in the stuff. But she liked playing in it so much; sometimes, we would leave it longer than we should, just so she could play, before cleaning it up."
I considered the fireplace again. "Did she draw these symbols?"
The slave nodded. "Yes. Do they mean something to you?"
I hadn't tested them yet, but now I couldn't resist. Crouching in the ashes, I carefully traced one of the signs drawn there. Then, glimpsing its essence, I turned back to the slave. "Do they not mean anything to you?"
Touched by a frown again, the woman stepped forward to give them a look. A look of surprise dawned on her face. "I had not looked at them since before they were...completed with this intricacy. Once or twice I glanced at her dabbling, but...they were just basic shapes. The first stages... I had no idea she added these lines." Her eyes moved back and forth over the symbols, recognition and intrigue lighting the lines of her face.
"What are they?" Tanen asked.
"They're symbols from the language of the ancient Serbaens," the slave replied, dumbfounded. "Their like is found on the walls of the caves that our ancestors inhabited. What does this mean?" Her eyes turned to me.
"You ought to be able to read them the best of anyone present, my lady," I reminded her.
"But...how did she know them?"
"Perhaps she didn't. But pray tell us what they mean."
"Don't you know?"
"I would like to hear it from you, as one who the language belongs to, if it's all the same to you," I said. "And perhaps my companion would be interested in the translation." In truth, I could only guess what Tanen was making of all this. But it seemed cruel to leave him in the dark completely.
The slave woman straightened from her crouch, and glanced between the symbols from a vaster vantage point. "They say peace, and harmony. This one is the symbol for a messenger." She gestured to one of the signs, and then let her eyes land on the last. "And this one is the sign of the gods."
I stood as well, satisfied. "Sometimes," I said, "our aimlessness is in fact not aimlessness at all. Sometimes it is merely a subtle part of the greater scheme. What may be aimless to us can just as soon be harnessed and channeled by the greater forces of this world."
She accepted this readily enough – and, truly, I was counting on the expectation that she would. It was the kind of language the Serbaens spoke. The kind of thing Letta might say to me.
"Now," I said. "She's waiting at the end of the passage. Go and retrieve her. Once one of you has saved her, she will be indebted and mortally grateful, and redeemed in every respect. Keep her away from the curtains in the beginning, but she will not have to fear them in the future."
I could see it on her face; she wanted to ask me, "how do you know this?", but she refrained. And I was relieved, for what could I say? "I have seen it" did not seem a satisfactory answer.
"Perhaps you will want to tell your fellow housemates that you will be gone," I suggested. "Or if one of them would rather go, of course – one is as good as another. But whoever it is may be gone for a time. In the meantime, if it is permitted, Tanen and I will inspect the upstairs."
"No one goes to the third floor," the slave warned me.
"What's on the third floor?"
"That's where it... That's where it all began. A slave died there. And now a dark presence haunts it."
I took that in, considering the implications, and when I didn't shirk away from the idea, she elaborated;
"You can see it, even from down here. The pall of shadow that gathers in the rafters, and clusters on the top floor, and peers over the balustrade. It has long been the true master of this house, minda. Be warned."
I considered her words fairly and gave a single nod, grateful that she thought to warn me. What she described was well enough as far as interpretations went, but I did not bother to tell her it was not precisely what I expected to find. I lingered in waiting only to see that the extent of the prior issue was heeded, and she inclined her head in assurance.
"I will get Mia Dane," she said, and only then did I beckon Tanen to follow and start out of the room.
As we started toward the stairs, Tanen finally let his better judgment intrude on the unorthodox mission, and he seized my arm, stopping me. Drawing me to a conspiratorial proximity, he murmured his misgivings at last; "You heard what she said, Vant. What are we doing here? What is this?"
"I'm doing exactly what I said I was doing. Investigating. And it's alright, Tanen – trust me. It's not some dark spirit hiding up there."
"How do you know?"
"Look, I only said you could come because Letta insisted I have an escort. You're not here to ask questions."
"An escort to help protect you, if need be," he differentiated. "I would hazard that that role entails I don't just let you go traipsing into the midst of every 'dark presence' that comes our way, spirit or otherwise."
“You're welcome to wait outside, if it bothers you,” I told him.
“And what am I supposed to tell Letta, when you disappear again?”
It seemed being unconscious during the last trip had done nothing to keep him in the dark about it. The others must whisper about me, behind my back. “That there was little point sending an escort to prevent such a thing, should it happen again.”
He stopped me once more, gently, as I made as if to continue, and I spared him one last glance. “What is it you know about everything that the rest of us don't? Because you do, don't you? That's what this is... And if there's something that you know, Avante, I think I speak on most everyone's behalf when I say there are a lot of us who would like to have it out of you.”
I should not have expected any less from him (or anyone), really. He was not stupid. I had shown undeniable signs of an uncanny involvement, lately. For that, I allowed him his moment of demand, my eyes searching his face in a thoughtful manner. But it was neither the place nor the time, so in the end I extracted my arm from his hold.
“You speak fairly,” I acknowledged. “But we're here for a reason, right now. Just let me see to it, so we can be done with it and on our way home.”
He held onto the righteousness of his demand, for a moment, but then I saw it grudgingly dissipate, and he left me to do what I saw needed doing in my strange element. I picked up where I had left off, pushing my skirt aside as I twisted back toward my bearing and moved toward those stairs once again. As I began to climb I tilted my head, eyeing the upper reaches of the place, the nearing darkness. It was the second floor I came to first, of course, which was in all respects reminiscent of the first, but I left it behind without much inquisitive ado and climbed higher toward the more significant darkness that loomed past the top balustrade.
It was a silent, heavy, and brooding presence, hanging like a stagnant cloud of bad weather in the rafters. As I rose to its height, it sank in around me, sealing me into the sinew of its domain. I looked down, and Tanen seemed far, far away looking up. The panes of his eyes were plummeting, distant windows. Sparks of soul that seemed to be falling away even as they were frozen in motion. I swallowed, and looked forward again where I stood on the rotting landing.
It was inevitable that I felt as though I were disturbing some brooding sentience, up there, stirring through its eddying dark thoughts as I moved forward. But it was only the clusters of dust-bunnies that stirred in the shadows, wafting against the edges of their keep.
Cobwebs drifted between the posts of the railing – a railing that I did not touch. It was not what interested me. What did interest me was the stain I could now make out on the ornate carpet before me, a ways down the balcony-landing. I treaded toward it, pausing at its faintly maroo
n edge. It was mostly dust-saturated and dark from age and shadow, now, but there was a tinge I thought I recognized.
A touch would do the trick, where any question remained.
I crouched at its edge, not voraciously keen on sullying my hands with it, but it was so old, by now, and getting hands dirty was just a way of life, anyway. So I reached out and touched it, sifting my fingertips over the starched fibers.
The vision I saw then was a familiar one. Fever dreams like ones I had experienced. Other symptoms that came with that sickness many of us had suffered.
But this soul had not been as lucky as me. This had been one of the first cases, brought fresh from Serbae. Suffered before things – all things – had begun to change in our nation.
A slave had indeed died up here, but it was not a ghost that haunted this level. I lifted my fingers from their contact with the bloodied carpet and looked around, taking in the rest of elements that disgraced this floor. A large painting on the wall next to me was plagued by great downward streaks, much the way a painting might look if left out in the rain before it was allowed to dry, as if the picture was melting right off the canvas. Little more than faded, splotchy greens and blues remained, except for some faint, watermark-like architectural etchings in the background. The golden frame was tarnished and dusty, and all the wallpaper that fanned out from behind it was peeling and sapped of its vibrancy.
My eyes traveled across the floral wasteland to the next painting – this one of a more recognizable ocean scene; a ship rocking on stormy waves. But, as I rose for a closer inspection, I found that the canvas was rotting, and was plagued around the hull of the ship by barnacle-like warts. As for the rest of it, a couple patches near the edges had receded to bare the mottled matte beneath, and spots of mold were creeping in from the frame-shadowed corners.
Next I came to the largest one of all, this one showcasing the elegant likeness of a tree, somewhat close to life-size, as far as paintings went. But all of its leaves were absent from its branches, and they lay in a true life-like heap at my feet, very much outside of the painting. Dead leaves. Shriveled and brown and decaying into dust. Some were strewn across the landing, nearly all the way to the rail.
A Mischief in the Woodwork Page 27