Mad House

by Ellis Knox

  I gestured at the doors, though I knew to the ogre they looked only like bronze doors. I wondered how he would feel once we stepped inside of them.

  A thunder-clap struck, impossibly loud. I knew at once it was more than natural, that the wizard storm was in full flood. The ground under my feet shuddered and a crack showed on the far wall.

  We looked at each other. We both knew there was little time. John Golly stepped aside and made an “after you” gesture. I could see the anxiety in his eyes. I knew I looked much the same because I could feel my heart trying to climb out of my throat.

  I stepped close to the doors. My wings fluttered out, tentatively at first. I felt the magical forces in the doors most directly. As a discordant harmonic came the howling storm, muted by the basalt but clawing inside through the crack. More distant still, a kind of pulsing from behind the bronze doors, which I could only guess was the Library itself. Why a library should pulse was beyond me, but this was the House and I was willing to accept most anything.

  I spread my wings further, and all the impulses strengthened. I had to focus my mind, to filter out the extraneous noise. I motioned John Golly to stand closer. When I made an opening, he needed to be near.

  “When I make an entry, you’ll see it. You’ll see the doors as they are now, but you’ll also see an opening. When you do, step forward. Don’t hesitate or I may lose you. Do you understand?”

  Silence.

  “I can’t hear you nod, John Golly.”

  “Huh. Huh.” That slow laugh. “I understand, Quinn-the-Sprite.”

  I kept my eyes on the door, took a breath, and opened all my wings.

  It was like a band striking up a hundred tunes at once. It was the flash of a thousand lightning bolts. It was the sudden reek of a city, a massive wave crashing down upon me.

  I stepped through the opening, and all became still.

  “This feels strange, comrade. Does that mean it worked?”

  I smiled to hear-feel that deep voice rumble near by. I wished at that moment we had served together as comrades-in-the-tunnel. He was one I would choose to have at my side.

  I was inside the panels, all of them at once. The man with the knife and his victim, the lone woman, the goblin, the crowds. They all thronged around me, pawing at me like beggars in a marketplace.

  I looked around for the lock, but I was surrounded and couldn’t see. The voices of the figures shrieked at me, tearing through my mind and body like a great wind, nearly sweeping away my sanity. For a time, all I could do was hold on, to keep my feet and contend with the forces roiling all around. Gradually I managed to create a tiny island to which I could cling. I reached behind, feeling for John Golly. He was right there.

  I began to see fragments of magic I could understand, and these I could manage. My tiny island grew. The reek of a troll ward, the green-grey of an elf lock, the sharp grating sound of some human’s alarm spell, the streams began to separate in my hands, the waves began to recede, the crashing faded into distant booms. My eyes saw through the madness to the lock itself, the steel and brass fitted into the Library doors.

  The mechanism was heartbreakingly beautiful. It was centuries old, with a cascade of pins and gears that ought to have been on a table somewhere for all to admire. Each fitted three or four directions into others; each required a step back for every two steps forward; the whole, I saw at once, so constructed as to reset to the beginning at the first mistake. With the crowd still raging around me, I could afford no mistakes. I glanced to the side and saw a volcanic abyss just beyond my feet. I glanced up and it was as if the entire universe was plunging downward at me. Thereafter, I didn’t glance much.

  My hands were steady, though. I tuned my ears to hear only what they needed to hear, my eyes to see only within the lock. The rest of the world receded. How long I worked I could not say; time itself seemed to ebb and flow. The lock spoke to me in whispers; I seduced it with caresses.

  The last pin snicked into place.

  “Now, John Golly,” I cried. I felt, within my body and all my senses, a massive force pressing into the bronze, as if I myself were being pushed open. There was no pain, but a feeling of alarm passed through me. I fought to let it by. I stepped forward and I was in the Library.

  The door gave way with a crash. The panels shattered into hundreds of fragments, flying across the interior room.

  In the next moment, I was being battered. We had opened the Library and its power now flowed outward. But at the same time, the Library was now open to the storm, whose full fury crashed down. It knocked me sideways, then forward. Great fists of magic pounded the walls and floor; the room spun; I spun. Books whirled into the air and I had a single, clear image of a heart being torn out of an open breast.

  Seas of violet and charcoal surged around me, now distant, now at my feet, now crashing over me. Gales of wind swooped down, wide streamers of mud-brown or rotted green, flowing in every direction. I fought vertigo, as one instant I floated high above and the next instant I was buried deep beneath. I was a sparrow in a storm, a plaything of alien gods, a soul lost in Hell. I fought back, flailing like a man falling from a cliff.

  I crashed into a set of shelves and bounced. Something cracked me in the head hard enough that all I heard for a moment was a bright ringing. I blinked, looked around, and saw John Golly picking himself up off the floor. He saw me.

  “Are you hurt, brother?”

  “No,” I lied, getting to my feet. I was hurt, but not bad enough to comment. I touched my head then examined my fingers. No blood. At my feet was a broken panel; the face of the screaming man looked up at me, his mouth frozen. I stared at this a moment, then another thunderclap startled me into action.

  John Golly motioned and started forward. The chamber in which we stood was being pummeled by winds, on the back of which rode a terrible magical energy. It raged through the room. Flames danced along the shelves, consuming scrolls, even as tiny whirlwinds tore apart books and miniature downpours soaked parchments. At the same time, magical books seemed to call the storm’s energy to themselves, transforming even as they flew about the room. Normally, spells need a mage to voice them, but this place was far from normal. The storm was beginning to rouse the magic contained in the Library, which held a thousand years’ worth of the stuff.

  I hurried after John Golly, afraid that if I lost sight of him, I might not ever find him again. He strode between shelves, writing tables, and enormous walls of books, until he reached a pair of stone staircases, one going up, the other going down.

  He went down.

  The magical lighting was still working here, and it was needed, because we were descending a stone well. The steps were hewn from the island itself—black stone, the middle of each step worn smooth by centuries of feet. We went down one level after another. The sound of the storm grew fainter, but I still felt the magical tides swirling above, as if the sea itself had swept over the island. Sooner or later, those forces would come down after us.

  So I had to ask.

  “Where are we going? And what will we do there? Some secret tunnel to the mainland?” I admit that last question was mere wishing.

  “I do not know what we will do, but we go to the bottom level.”

  “Of course we do,” I muttered.

  We spiraled down the well, moving as quickly as we dared. One stumble and we would pitch out into the void.

  Every twenty or so stairs was a landing and a door going off to the side. Torches flickered into life as we passed. I caught glimpses of chambers receding into shadow, one filled with books, another with flasks and alembics, another with huge parchments hung like curtains.

  “How are we supposed to find a thing when we don’t know what it is?”

  “By looking.” John Golly seemed surprised at my stupidity. “It is downstairs.”

  “How far downstairs?”

  “At the bottom.”

  Of course.

  “And how far is that?”

  “I do n
ot know. I have never been. It was not permitted.”

  Deep breath.

  “We’d best hurry, Quinn-the-Sprite. The storm will follow us.”

  We went on. And on. I lost count of the levels. The side halls with their dusty shelves became mere rooms, then hardly more than alcoves holding a few parchments. The lights gave out, and John Golly had to tear one from the wall to carry with us. Even the steps grew rough, scarcely trodden. The place smelled musty, damp, and I realized we must now be well below the surface of the sea.

  I could still sense the storm above. The sensation of being buried—beneath stone, beneath water, beneath magic—was strong. The thought made my stomach roll over. I pushed the thought away, lest real panic set in.

  And then, there were no more stairs.

  We stepped into a room that was little more than a cell, only a few ogre paces across. The walls were the same rough, black basalt as the stairs, but on the floor was a smooth circle. I bent closer.

  “Bring the light down here,” I said.

  The circle was smooth and black, like glass, about three feet across with letters running around the edge. The lettering was a dark gold. In the center of the circle was a handle, also of black glass.

  I looked up at the ogre.

  “Ungor?”

  He shrugged.

  I looked again at the inscription. I recognized the lettering, though I had never seen it outside a single elvish book back in my home country. The letters flowed in delicate undulations, the words run together, highly abbreviated, readable only to fae folk, and to few enough of them. But I could read them, and I knew their nature. I should have known from that word John Golly had not understood. Ungkar, in the original.

  Anchor. The word was Atlantean. So was the writing on the glass circle.

  Atlantis sank centuries ago, everyone knows this. But there have always been stories—that its inhabitants sank with it and survived and became the merfolk. That it went over the Ocean, washed up against some unknown continent. Even that it did not sink but rather flew up into the sky and lives among the stars.

  And one story, common among the fae—that Atlantis sank in a great catastrophe, that the inhabitants, some of them, escaped in ships to arrive in Europa, to become known as the fae folk. The pixies have a legend that bits of Atlantis broke away, lost at sea, but who believes a pixie?

  I supposed I did now. I was standing on a piece of Atlantis itself.

  I studied it. What was it locking? My heart raced a little at the thought of what treasures might be on the other side of that glass disk. What could possibly be on the other side, and why was the House somehow constrained by it? I let my restless mind puzzle at this for three long moments, but I was too exhausted to think more. Open it first. Think later.

  At the center of the circle was a handle, set into the glass. To take hold of it I would have to stand on the circle itself, so I looked up at John Golly and gestured to it.

  “Might as well start with the obvious,” I said. “See if you can pull it open.”

  John Golly stood at the edge of the disk, bent down, and placed one paw on the handle—it was too small for both his hands.

  He pulled, but it did not budge. He pulled again.

  Nothing.

  “Try twisting it,” I said, even as he did so.

  The handle twisted as smoothly as if it were freshly greased. It rotated a full turn and came away in his hand, and the whole room shuddered, then lurched, throwing John Golly against the wall and knocking me on my back. The torch went out and the room filled with darkness. Deep booms sounded irregularly, as of a thunderstorm beneath the sea.

  I wasn’t hurt. I stood. Some sort of strange vertigo overcame me, as if the floor tilted, or I was suspended on a giant swing. I held my hands out, edged my way by quarter-steps until I touched a wall. With my back against the stone I should have felt better, but the wall itself was vibrating.

  Solid rock should not vibrate.

  “Are you all right, John Golly?” I said. My voice sounded muffled, as if in a coffin.

  “I am unhurt,” the ogre said. His big voice seemed to move the walls back a little.

  “I don’t know what just happened, but I’d be glad to think upstairs is a better idea than staying here.”

  “Agreed,” he said.

  I edged along the wall until I found the doorway, then the stairs. I had John Golly go first, as I did not want him to stumble over me in the dark.

  We climbed slowly, all too aware of the increasing height as we went. We were climbing in a spiral around the edge of a deep well, with only a sheer drop on the inside, and we couldn’t see. So I stayed to the outside, with one hand on the wall. The blackness was disorienting; my hand on the wall was the only sure thing. Each stair felt uneven; the stone itself felt untrustworthy. I kept thinking of floors that were not floors, of walls that shifted. In that black pit, disaster seemed not only possible but imminent.

  The landings were worse. The stairs would end. I felt forward with my foot looking for the next stair. I had to edge further and still further, expecting at any moment to feel air beneath it. Then my hand would encounter emptiness—the opening to whatever chamber lay at that level—and I had several endless seconds of traversing empty space in a void, until my hand at last touched another wall.

  Near the bottom, we talked each other through this, using our voices to guide one another as well as to keep up our spirits as best we could. John Golly said the House was raving like a lunatic, and this seemed to worry him more than the drop to oblivion that awaited a foot or two to our left. By the middle levels, the noise of the storm increased and it became impossible to have a conversation. All we could do was to shout a word or two. We soon gave that up as well. With all the magical energy raging around us, we could not trust even our own voices.

  Eventually, we began to see light, first as a mere point, growing slowly larger. It was a nimbus that hung above like some bizarre noonday sun, but no sun was ever this color. It pulsed, changing in size, intensity and coloration. Reaching down from it came long smoke-like tendrils that twisted and glowed. They seemed to grope blindly, and when they encountered a doorway they curled inside, seeking inward to whatever mystical forces lay there. Some burned incandescent at what they found, while others went dark and vanished.

  We watched this, horrified, wondering how we were to get past such monstrosities, then John Golly spoke quietly.

  “I think, comrade, we might rest here for a little while.”

  I actually sighed out loud in relief.

  “Yes,” I said, “or maybe even go down a level.”

  There was enough light for me to see him nod. We watched the progress of the tendrils and listened to the storm shriek.

  At some point, listening to the island growl, I fell into an uneasy sleep. I had quick, vivid dreams that gradually eased, but I remember only one. In it I was rocking gently. I was in a boat. Although I hated boats, this one brought me to a safe harbor, where I listened to the wild storms abate, saw the clouds disperse, and at length perceived a velvet sky full of stars pulled over me like a blanket.

  I awoke to full light of day and I was outside. The sky was cloudless overhead, though cloud castles sat on the horizon all around, massive and white. The island itself was littered with debris—bits of door, chunks of stone, furniture, cloth, glass, all in clumps and piles as if some peevish giant had kicked the whole thing over. Stumps of buildings remained here and there, most of stone. The ones made of basalt seemed to have weathered the storm better, but nothing was unscathed.

  “I’m so sorry, John Golly,” I said.

  “Why?” He sounded genuinely surprised.

  “The House. It’s destroyed.”

  He chuckled.

  “The House is not destroyed. It is healed.”

  I looked more closely, but all I could see was ruination.

  “It doesn’t look all that healed to me, comrade.”

  “Oh that,” he said, waving a dism
issive hand at the jumble, “that was never the House. That is, I mean, the House was never merely that. I did explain.”

  He did, but I wasn’t about to admit I didn’t understand the explanation.

  “Sure. But, well, all this destroyed.” I gestured at the same jumble.

  He didn’t speak for a moment. I looked up at him and he was frowning with concentration. At least, I think it was a frown. His eyebrows were at the same level.

  “When I shave my beard,” he said slowly, “am I not still Gian Galeazzo?”

  “Of course.” I frowned in my turn. The ogre was working some sophistry or other.

  “When you trim your fingernails, are you any less Quinn-the-Sprite?”

  “I don’t trim my fingernails,” I said equably, “I sharpen them.”

  “My apologies. Your fingernails even so are lessened in the sharpening, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yet, you are no less yourself.”

  “Is it too much to hope we are coming to some sort of point, comrade?”

  “No, it is not too much to hope. A point is a small thing for which to hope, I think.”

  I consciously refrained from sighing. Also from shouting.

  “These buildings were like dirt under your nails, like debris in my beard. Most lessened the House rather than increased it. Most were encrusted with spells that only confused the House. The House is still the House with them gone. Perhaps it is more.”

  “More than itself?”

  “In a way, yes. The House has always been more than a house, more than a hundred houses. More, indeed, than the entire Chapterhouse. This is a new thing, I have just learned. The House has always been also the island itself.”

  I couldn’t find a way to reply to that. Every witticism faltered. Every question died in my mouth. My brain could only toss the thing around aimlessly. An island was also a house which was also a living being? The question flopped around in my mind like a fish out of water.

  “You see,” John Golly continued, as if I did see, “the island itself is magical, a magic deeper and more ancient than the Chapterhouse. When the Chapterhouse began to be more spell than reality, the island responded in ways I cannot even begin to describe. In fact, I’m not sure that’s even correct. Perhaps the Chapterhouse and the island grew together like siblings. However that might have been, they are a single entity now—Chapterhouse and island. Togther, the House, connected through the Library.