Beside her, Will had turned white as a sheet.
‘But Ghast did not honour his bargain with me,’ said Razzio. ‘I sent my writings to the mountain, where I understood he was testing them. This was not my concern. But he did not respect them. He hired editors. They changed my stories. The jewels I had cut were hammered and smashed. The fine details of my brushwork were scrubbed down and washed away. In that rank and rat-infested rubbish tip he calls the Bindery, these editors dragged thick pens across my genius – for money! And to crown his betrayal, having sold my life’s work to hucksters for nothing but dirty coin, Ghast, a clerk – that squat dwarf with more warts than words – presumed to launch his barge for Bithynia.’
Razzio was now standing before the table, his hands splayed on its surface in a way that, given the purple bruise seeping up towards his wrist, made Kay wince.
‘For Bithynia. Ghast will not be king in Bithynia. I will not see the mysteries of my art cut into scraps and greased for loose change by a pack of scavenging jackals. This is a war, and I will win it.’
Kay glanced at the twenty-four wraiths that surrounded them. They seemed suddenly menacing, too close, their eyes too blank, the hands at their sides too strong. Beyond them the other causes stood equally immobile and expectant, all eyes – hundreds of eyes – turned towards Razzio. Everyone in the garden except for the three of them – Will, Phantastes and Kay herself – appeared to be ready for something.
‘What will you do?’ Kay asked.
‘I will leave the House of the Two Modes for the mountain,’ said Razzio. He said it directly to her. ‘Ontos, Oidos and all the causes will go with me. We will occupy the mountain, possess it and fortify it. I do not doubt that the left-wraiths will swarm to us. And when the right-wraiths see that I oppose Ghast, well, they will choose any alternative to his ignorant brutality.’
Kay’s mind stuttered and whirled.
Ell. Dad. Home.
‘You were supposed to help me,’ she said. ‘I came here so that you could help me.’
‘But this was never your story,’ Razzio told her. ‘It is my story. Overnight I issued my instructions. In a few hours the causes will ready a hundred balloons, and we will launch from the garden at dawn tomorrow. You are welcome to return to the mountain with us,’ he said to Will and Phantastes.
He looked at Kay. His eyes bored into her heart. ‘You are not.’
Will stood up. ‘Razzio –’
He hardly needed to make a gesture. Four of the causes stepped forward, two taking up places on either side of Will, and two on either side of Phantastes. Kay sprang out of her chair like a startled cat, expecting to feel hands around her arms, her shoulders, expecting to be lifted or bound. But no one touched her.
‘As I say, the First Wraith and the last of the imaginers are both welcome to return with us to the mountain,’ said Razzio. ‘So welcome that I think I must insist.’
Kay ran. Folding her body low, she threw herself like a rock between the legs of the causes that blocked her way, spinning through their arms, then tearing past the scattered clumps of wraiths who seemed – but too late, arm after arm – to think they should stop her. She ran for the doors, for any door, any way of slipping into the place of pure knowing. Dodging benches, shrubs and water, half flying across the cobbles and the grass, and at last sprinting round the piles of sailcloth and instruments that Razzio’s minions had begun to pile by the garden walls, she flew at the nearest of the great glass doors. She turned the handle, with a huge heave forced it open, and crushed herself through the tiny gap. From room to room she sprinted, through door after door, her only thought to lay down as much distance and confusion behind her as she possibly could.
You lied to me. You all lied to me. All of you.
The great empty rooms through which she ran seemed to hold the sound of her cries long after she was gone.
The Tomb
Kay had come to rest on a little bed in a garret room, squeezed in under the eaves in a tight wedge where the bed’s end met the sloping ceiling. Here she crouched, listening – listening for the sound of a footfall, for the sound of voices, for the sound of any human noise. She longed to be rescued, but felt sure that she would either cower or run if she heard someone coming. Outside, the sky had slid from grey midday into a long and increasingly murky afternoon, and from her corner she now sensed with anxiety the onset of night.
How will I find my way back in the dark?
She thought of the narrow, circular stairwell up which she had raced, taking two stone steps at a time until her thighs burned with the effort. She hadn’t seen any lights on the stairs, nor did there appear to be a switch or a bulb anywhere in this room. On one side a dormer window looked out across the green lawns by which they had approached the day before; standing opposite, another dormer window surveyed the garden below. Kay had resisted the urge to look out of this window.
Back to what?
She watched the vague light drift, wondering which of the wraiths called this shabby, dim room home. Apart from the single bed that stood in its corner, all it contained was a long, low table at its very centre on which were laid seventeen large, sharp, fixed-blade knives and a long coil of heavy pitched rope.
From her pocket Kay retrieved the little red book, and read again and again the passage written in her father’s hand. She felt she was looking for something, but she wasn’t sure what.
When at last she heard footsteps approaching up the stairs several doors down the corridor, she wasn’t sure what her nerves were telling her. Maybe it was Will or Phantastes – the tread was light but careful, as of someone looking about him. But maybe it was one of the causes, sent to comb the place of pure knowing until they found and retrieved her. Kay thought about hiding under the bed. With a knife. She pictured herself running.
Instead, she sat up. Oidos stopped at the door, looking at her. Gaunt but strong, her regal figure seemed to occupy the whole frame.
‘You have met Katalepsis, I think,’ she said. ‘Strange that, of all the rooms, you should choose hers. And this is only hers. No other wraith or phantasm comes here.’
‘One of the knives is missing,’ said Kay, pointing to the table where there was a gap.
‘Yes,’ said Oidos. ‘I noticed it was gone almost at once, last time she was here. That was several years ago. I suppose she wanted me to be prepared. Perhaps she wanted to apologize. As I told you yesterday, Rex’s death was only the distant thunder made by a stroke long past.’
Kay pulled up her knees and put her arms around them.
‘Ask me for the answer you most desire,’ said Oidos. ‘I will tell you.’
‘You told me,’ said Kay, ‘that I, too, had a room in the place of pure knowing. Take me there.’
‘Yes, child, I will. I cannot promise that you will like what you find. Follow me.’
Oidos moved with deliberate evenness across the room and out through the far door. Kay waited and waited, listening to her tread pass on and almost out of hearing before she leaped to the floor, jammed the red book back in her pocket and sprinted after her. From room to room she raced, and round one of the corners. Oidos was waiting at the stairwell door.
‘We haven’t got much time before the light fails completely,’ said the old wraith. ‘My footing is not what it was. You go first.’
Kay stepped before Oidos into the stairwell and started down. Much of the descent they took in complete darkness; only occasionally did an open door throw a luminous square of light upon the grey stone slabs. Down the centre of the circular staircase a vertical column of stone dropped; the steps followed round in a tight ring, the walls seeming to close ever nearer upon them as they went deeper and deeper into the building. Kay thought she counted three floors, but still they climbed down. The air began to feel wet upon her skin, and the darkness hung impenetrable between her hands and face.
‘You noticed yesterday,’ said Oidos from above her as they trudged slowly down, ‘that something was missing from Rex’s room, didn’t yo
u?’
Kay said that she had.
‘Sometimes,’ said Oidos, ‘I move things in the place of pure knowing. I have my reasons. It is here, child. There is a sill and a door. Turn to the right and you will find an iron ring.’
Kay felt for the huge iron ring – as wide and heavy as a shackle. She grasped it in both hands and turned it, and the solid door creaked off its latch. Oidos leaned over her and pushed it open with a strong arm, her foot braced on the step behind. The air beyond was as cold as earth, and smelled musty.
‘Sometimes I move things. And sometimes, very occasionally, I find it necessary to forget things. There should be a lantern on the other side of the room, child.’
Kay had stepped down off the stone sill into the dark room. She had no idea how large it was, but she could sense the ceiling low above her, and the sound of Oidos’ voice seemed to hit near walls, and be absorbed by them. She felt before her face for a table, for a lantern.
What am I, then? What does my room contain? It contains a lantern.
‘This is where I bring things that I want to forget,’ said Oidos. Kay spun round so fast that she lost her balance. She was falling as she heard the door move. ‘I am sorry, child, but now I must forget you.’
The heavy door swung on its hinges, and its latch dropped into place. Kay was on the earthen floor. She could feel dirt under her fingers.
There is no room for me after all.
She knew there was no point in crawling to the door. There would be no handle on this side. She crawled over anyway, and ran her hands up and down the broad oak. There was no handle on this side.
Down on her knees again, Kay turned so that her back was against the door. In the utter darkness she pushed off on to her hands and knees and crawled slowly across the floor.
She said there was a lantern. Let there be a lantern.
After a few minutes of tentative shifting on the damp, gritty surface of the floor, she crushed the tips of her fingers against a stone wall. It had texture, ridges running across it, up it, in arcs and lines. As her hands explored its carved patterns, she tried – and failed – to visualize it. Slowly she rose to her feet, terrified that she might hit something with her head, all the time following the wall with her hands, sweeping them in ever greater circles, taking in the rich pattern and flow of the worked stone.
And then her hands hit a ledge. On the ledge was a lantern. Beside it lay a box of matches.
On her third attempt Kay struck a match. It lasted long enough for her to see the wick of the oil lamp inside a glass dome. In the darkness she removed the glass and set it down. She struggled with the matches, managed to light another, and somehow fumbled the lantern alight. She found that it stood in a little niche carved into the rock wall. She lifted the lantern by its handle and turned round.
She was not in a room at all. Before her, about three metres away, was the oak door through which she had come. It had been shut firmly behind her, and now made a perfect seal with the stone. There was no handle on the inside – not even a keyhole. Kay knew it was pointless to worry at it, pointless to pound on it, pointless to think any further about it. Oidos had forgotten her. She turned to the left.
Before her, as far as her eye could see, stretched a narrow passage. It seemed to slope slightly downwards, but otherwise ran perfectly straight. The walls that bounded it to either side had been roughly carved with geometrical patterns, much like those she had seen the day before on the walls of the place of pure knowing. These carvings started just above the floor and reached well over Kay’s head; above them, the passage arched roughly, little more than a hewn tunnel. For the moment Kay avoided thinking about the carvings; first she wanted to know where the passage led. The blood was pounding in her temples and neck. She held the lantern before her face and began to walk.
After about twenty paces she noticed a little recessed alcove on the right. It had been roughly bricked up, using pale, heavy square stones and thick globs of mortar. Kay pushed at the bricks, but they were firm. She kept walking. She passed four more alcoves of the same kind, two to either side, all four bricked up in the same way. Now she could see an end to the passage ahead, where a simple, roughly chiselled wall, all grey stone and dirt, faced her. It was slick with moisture, and as she approached it she began to smell soft earth, the stench of decay. She almost turned back.
Now what?
But as she got closer, she found that the wall was not the tunnel’s end but a corner; turning left, she found the ruins of another doorway, this one framed all in stone; hanging to one side on rusted iron hinges, rotten hunks of wood were all that was left of the once-thick door. As Kay picked her way through the gap, something about the smell of the rot touched her with fear, and in the close quiet of the tunnel she suddenly had the sensation that she wasn’t alone. Spinning round, she knocked the lantern against the door frame, cracking the glass. The flame sputtered, but kept burning. Kay called out, throwing her voice beyond the near glow of the light, back round the corner, hoping to hear … what?
Hoping to hear wraiths scraping their knees on roof tiles.
She took a deep breath. Bringing the lantern close to her chest this time, feeling its heat warm and comfortable on her shirt, she turned back to the only way forward.
No sooner had she done so than she gasped in shock. Her stomach rose into her mouth, and she nearly dropped the lantern. This passage, like the other, was marked at intervals with bricked-up alcoves. But around them both walls, all of white marble almost from floor to ceiling, had been deeply carved in exact relief with incredible intricacy – and the scenes were so lifelike in their animated, flowing shapes that she thought the forms, like straining gargoyles, might rip shrieking out of their stillness into live motion. On one side – the left – human figures processed down the passage, leading animals and, further on, other people bound in chains towards a distant altar. Kay paced down the straight passage, taking it all in, holding the lamp high to catch the full sweep of it: the gravity and seriousness of the cloaked figures, and the terror and anger of the captives and beasts; the columns of people, the swaying trees, the distant hills; and everywhere she looked, no children, no laughter, no lovers, no sign of speech. Notwithstanding the hard, dull grain of the stone, when you looked closely at any one of the shackled faces, you could see the passion cut with minute detail, as if the walls were not walls but the shrunken and petrified remains of a real procession, of real priests and their sacrificial victims. At the end of the passage the carved scenes culminated in a massive altar, stone within stone, supporting the weight of a grim-faced, limb-stiff victim lying sprawled across its surface, awaiting the knife. But then Kay saw something else, as if the stone image before her had flickered, or her eyes had changed depth – and suddenly it was not a victim splayed on an altar but Ontos lolling on his dais, so lifelike that she half expected the form to turn and stare at her; and below him the altar itself, the dais, began to turn and whorl so that it lifted off its base like a great stone flower, and in the unsteady lamplight seemed almost to rise continuously before her eyes.
With a sick heave of her gut Kay thought of the hours she had spent on that platform the night before. I lay on that altar. I am going to die here. I am going to die. She reeled, feeling sick, with Phantastes’ sceptical warning pounding in her ears – An open hand can be trusted. But his eyes were saying, Don’t trust them, Kay; Kay, don’t give your heart to a closed fist. As her head swam, she found herself leaning against the rock at the far end of the passage, breathing hard. Beads of sweat stood out on her forehead, and her body hung from her hands where they gripped the stone. Why? Why of all the places in the world am I here? Her mind staggered across the events of the last few days – the balloon, the Quarries, Alexandria, Pylos, Rome – with all the faces and questions, the anger of Ghast, Flip’s gentle steel, Will and his childlike, open-handed yearning, the library, the tree of Byblos, Rex’s blood silent on stone. And never, no matter where they went, no matter what they did,
no matter whom they met, they were never one step closer to Ell, or their father, never one step closer to their mother’s lonely tears. This has all been for nothing. This has all been for nothing. Nothing at all.
She stared down between her hands. With a start she realized that she had set the lantern on the floor and was leaning on an altar, a real altar, her hands upon the place of sacrifice, dyed with the blood of how many victims she could not imagine. She would have torn her hands away in revulsion had she not been paralysed, turned to very stone herself. Her heart began to spasm, chiselling in her chest with heavy, blunt force.
How many victims – how many times – and I am the last – and this is my tomb –
Like the crack that breaks the dam, that little word released a torrent of recognitions. For suddenly Kay saw that this passage was a tomb, and an ancient one, built to the same pattern as the passage tombs to which their father had dragged them, all over Ireland, a few summers before. Low-ceilinged, long, carved – and at what must be the western end, the altar. Mum. What nightmare is this? She swayed there, shaking for a long while, squeezing her eyes shut against the tears. At her feet the discarded lamp sputtered again, but again did not quite go out.
When at last she opened her dark eyes, she was almost surprised to find everything still the same. The passage narrowed towards the western end, closing round the back of the altar, and as her vision cleared she found she was barely inches from the north wall – this one immediately different from the one along which she had earlier crawled in fear. The first thing she noticed was that here the lines were softer, and not so acutely chiselled into the stone. As her head cleared, she stepped back, picked up the lamp and began to take in this other scene. The figures it showed were all leaving the temple now, the empty altar behind them free of blood, the heavy cloaks and shackles thrown away somewhere out of sight. With every pace back towards the door, the faces cheered and grew merrier: first the brows lifted and the cheeks bulged and dimpled, then the ears lay back and the corners of the mouths turned up, then the eyes seemed to sparkle and the nostrils flared above rows of gappy white teeth – teeth that caught sparks of mica in the stone and seemed in the lamplight to flash with joy. Hands were joined and raised in the air, arms clapped backs, and one group even formed a ring, circling feverishly as they dunked one of their number with jocund mercilessness in a vat of half-pressed grapes. With a start Kay recognized the long hair and elegant, boned knuckles that gripped the edge of the vat as those of Oidos.
Twelve Nights Page 24