“To what do I owe this honor?”
“Well, I missed you, Flora.”
I had missed him, too, but I hate soppiness, so I said, all business-brisk: “So you should have.”
Udo rolled his eyes and sat down on the bench next to me. “I can’t stay out late tonight. Mam and the Daddies are going to the opera, and somehow I got stuck with squirt-wrangling. And I got six pages of cyclotomy to do for turn-in tomorrow. You’ll be so lucky when you have Valefor doing your homework, Flora. Gunn-Britt was doing all my math, but she just raised her prices out of spite over the nose thing, and now I can’t afford her. Do you think Valefor would do my homework, too? I guess you could just order him to—”
“I don’t have a lot of time, either. I have to meet Mamma at the Presidio for dinner. She’s finally back from Angeles.”
“You are so lucky, Flora, that Buck is gone all the time. I wish los padres would go and take all those nasty kiddies with them. How bliss it would be to have no one to look after but blissful me.”
“And Poppy, and the horses, and the dogs, and the chores—”
“The Warlord freed all the slaves but you, Flora.”
“Don’t I know it. Come on. We’re burning daylight.”
CRACKPOT WAS AS I had left it some hours earlier, with no sign of either Poppy or Valefor. A few stray smashing sounds drifted down from the Eyrie, but we pretended not to notice. Let Mamma deal with Poppy when she got home later; let him be her job, not mine. Or better yet, let him be Valefor’s job.
The Elevator was waiting, grille ajar. I jumped in so quickly that it rocked back and forth slightly, squeaking at my weight. Udo followed and pulled the grille shut behind him.
“Take us to the Bibliotheca,” I demanded, but the Elevator did not move. “Come on, chop-chop. Take me to Valefor in the Bibliotheca.”
The Elevator remained stubbornly stationary, even when I stamped my foot.
“Maybe you should press a button?” Udo suggested. “I never did before, but maybe so.”
Together we peered at the buttons, which were less than helpful, listing:
THE POOL BOUDOIR
THE HAMMOCK LOUNGEE
THE CELLAR OF SWEETNESS AND LIGHT
THEL’S RAPTUROUS SUNROOM
LIBROS
“This House is bigger than I thought,” Udo said, and before I could stop him, he reached out and punched the LIBROS button.
The Elevator jolted a bit, dropping a few inches. I grabbed at Udo, and Udo grabbed at me, and we both fell against the wall.
“Udo! Who knows where we’ll end up now!” I found my footing and stood up.
“It said books and a library has books, don’t it?”
The Elevator recovered and began to slide downward. “I thought you said the Bibliotheca was up,” Udo said. “It was, blast it all.” I pushed all the buttons, some of them twice, but the Elevator just kept dropping, slowly picking up speed as it went. “But maybe this book place is entirely different.”
“Hit the STOP button,” Udo said helpfully.
“There is no STOP button.” I pressed all the other buttons again, and then, for good measure, thumped on the panel.
“That red one—” Udo leaned in front of me. “There—”
“That doesn’t say anything about stopping—don’t—Udo—”
He pressed the button. The Elevator stopped abruptly, sending Udo careening into me and down to the floor, where his elbow crushed my liver painfully.
“Get off me—” I pushed him off and stood up, holding my hand against my side.
“See—I told you!” Udo looked pleased with himself.
“Ayah so, but now we are stuck between floors.”
With a horrible groan that set my teeth to grinding, the Elevator bounced once, upward. Udo staggered against me again, almost pushing me off balance. The light went out. The Elevator shrieked like a baby.
And then it dropped like a stone.
Downward we plummeted, in pitch darkness. The roar of rushing air filled my ears to near bursting, or maybe that was just the pressure of our fall. Dimly, behind the rush, I could hear howling—maybe it was Udo, or maybe it was me. It was so dark that I couldn’t tell if my mouth was open or not. I was pressed into the floor, feeling the Elevator shudder and leap beneath my hands and knees, my head swimming with nausea. I closed my eyes tightly against the darkness, and so dark was it that even the sparks of light you normally see when you squinch your eyes up were extinguished.
After a while, maybe it was forever even, it seemed like we were not moving at all, that we were suspended in a black void, and it was the Void itself that was moving, rushing by us in a howl. Perhaps this is what the Abyss is like, I thought, the impenetrable blackness, the scream of air; perhaps it was not the air screaming, but—The Elevator hit hard and bounced upward, and so did I, catching my tongue painfully between my teeth. Something knobbed into my side, bright and hard. I jerked away and whacked my noggin into a stony object, which complained, “Owwww, that was my chin.”
I opened my eyes. Gray light hazed in through the Elevator’s open door. Udo sat on his heels, rubbing his chin with one hand and patting his hat with the other. The foot-long hat pin had kept it on his head, but now it was quite cockeyed. My head felt as though a hundred million goldfish were flapping their fins inside my skull. I tried to stand, but my knees wobbled me back down again. The grille stood open, so I did the easy thing and crawled out of the Elevator, into the huge expanse of the Bibliotheca.
TEN
Nausea. Discussion. Tea. Sigils.
THE FLOOR BOBBED and jumped with imaginary motion, and the mocha in my tum was threatening to abandon ship. Every time I raised my head, the Bibliotheca swirled into a blur of steel gray, and closing my eyes was worse: Then the darkness itself whirled and lurched. If I stared directly at one fixed point, my head started to slow down, but the second I moved my eyes, everything began to spin again.
Udo moaned, “Are you okay, Flora?”
I tried to look back to the Elevator without actually turning my head to look back at the Elevator, and I realized that Udo had crawled up next to me. I risked a glance and saw that his face was almost as green as his hat.
“I’m going to urp,” Udo complained.
“Don’t do it on me—”
“Floooooooooora!”
“Valefor?” I risked another turn of the head and saw that the Bibliotheca was shrouded in gloom. Today the light filtering through the windows was weak and gray, and rain skimmed the outside of the glass. It hadn’t been raining earlier.
“Floooooooooooora!”
“Valefor—where are you?”
This time the only response was a wracking cough. I pushed up off the floor and stood, staggering over to the nearest table, to grab for balance. The floor tipped up and then down again, and for a moment my mocha was poised to spew. But then I got enough balance back to stand straighter and to see Valefor wavering, as thin and pale gray as newsprint. He looked terrible, much worse even than when I had first seen him. His hair stuck out like thistledown and his eyes gleamed wetly white.
“I am receding again, Flora,” he moaned, and held his hands out to me. The floor swayed, but I lurched over to him, my own hands outstretched, and breathed so deeply that my chest grew tight with exertion. A cold misty feeling flowed over me, and Val’s cold tenuous grip fastened upon me.
Val’s lips were so faint that I could barely feel them press against mine. I breathed deeply out until my lungs felt sucked and empty, then inhaled again until they felt like balloons. It wasn’t until my second exhalation that he began to solidify. First he felt wiry and thin like sinew, then tough and hard like bone, and then, finally, like solid flesh, warm beneath the grip of my hands.
I let go and pressed my hand on my chest, trying to hold my bouncy heart in, and gasped deeply. My insides felt as though my blood had been replaced with swirly giddy light, rushing golden through my veins. The dizziness was gone.
V
alefor said happily, “Well, I feel much better! That was some good stuff, Flora. You are so full of lovely nice stuff: anger, guilt, sorrow. Yum!” He smacked his lavender lips and did a little dance.
“What was that with the Elevator, Valefor? It almost dropped us straight into the Abyss.”
“That Elevator may go many places, Flora Segunda, but the Abyss is not one of them. I am sorry about the Elevator, but really you must take your complaints to darling Buck, for she is the one who has unstabilized me—Hey! Nice hat!”
This last was directed not at me, who was not wearing a hat, but at Udo, who was still sitting by the Elevator, looking slightly green. At the compliment, he grinned weakly and staggered to his feet, then made the courtesy that signifies Graciously Submitting before an Equal, which involved a bow so low that I was surprised his nose didn’t touch the ground. Udo, like his hero the Dainty Pirate, is a fine one for manners.
“Thank you, sieur denizen.”
“I love the bird wing, so beautifully cruel, and your kilt, what a divine shade of green. I do adore green, the color of jade and jaguar blood.” To me: “He could teach you a few things about dressing, Flora Segunda. He’s got style and flash.”
Now Udo was grinning and I could practically hear the sound of his head inflating. “You do me a great honor with your compliments, sieur.”
“Your manners are very nice, too,” Valefor answered. “Much better than Flora’s, here, who has forgotten to introduce us.”
“You have not given me a chance, Val, for heaven’s sake. Udo Moxley Landaðon ov Sorrel, Valefor, denizen—
“Valefor Fyrdraaca ov Fyrdraaca,” Valefor interrupted, returning Udo’s courtesy with Deference to an Equal, an even deeper bow. “I have the right to the name as much as you do, Flora Segunda, maybe more. I am very pleased to meet someone with such exquisite taste, Sieur Landaðon, and glad to see that Flora has some friends with style. Surprised, but well-pleased. Tell me, sieur—where are hems these days? Are they ankle or knee—I am so out of touch, and Flora is useless.”
“Knee for day, and calf for night,” said Udo, “unless you are super-ultra-formal, when they—”
I interrupted. “Do you want to discuss fashion, Valefor, or your restoration? We don’t have time to do both. Udo has to get to babysitting, and Mamma is coming home tonight.”
“Restoration, then fashion,” Valefor pronounced. “I shall have an entire new wardrobe, then, of shimmering samite! How bliss to get out of this rag!”
So we sat down in front of the fireplace to discuss. Valefor ignited a warming coldfire glow on the hearth and produced a lovely little snack with tiny sandwies, double bergamot tea, and lime meltaways.
“So, according to The Eschata, to create a servitor—,” I said. I had read the chapter on denizens in The Eschatanomicon three times, but sometimes it is good to think out loud.
“I’m a denizen!” Val protested.
“A denizen is a kind of servitor, Valefor. You know that. A servitor is a magickal entity created for a general purpose. A denizen is a servitor attached to a particular place. A domicilic denizen is attached to a House.”
Val said snobbily, “Still, a denizen is better than a plain old servitor—”
“That’s true. A denizen can act completely independently as long as its actions are in accordance with the parameters laid down by the adept—”
“Who was?” Udo asked.
I was annoyed at being interrupted. “Who was what?”
“Who created you, Valefor? Was it Buck?”
Valefor answered, quite loftily, “Of course it wasn’t Buck. She is only fifty-two years old. I out-age her by far. I was created by Azucar Fyrdraaca—”
“Which in Val's case,” I said loudly, to get them back on track, “the parameters laid down by the adept were to take care of the House of Fyrdraaca. And these parameters were laid into the fetish that is Valefor’s center. This fetish is the source of all Valefor’s power, and now he’s been disconnected from it, and that’s why he is reduced and weakened.”
“What’s a fetish?” asked Udo. “Are you going to share those lime meltaways, Flora?”
I passed him the platter. “Every servitor has a physical item that binds it and links it to the physical world—” “So it’s kinda the physical representation of Val?” Udo interrupted.
“Ayah.”
“Then shouldn’t Valefor’s fetish be Crackpot Hall?” “No, the House is too big. No adept could charge something as large as an entire house. No one has that powerful a Will—”
“Azucar Fyrdraaca—,” began Valefor, but Udo cut him off.
“So what’s your fetish, Valefor?”
Valefor looked a bit embarrassed and mumbled something unintelligible.
I said, “What? I can’t hear you.”
“I have forgotten,” Val admitted sheepishly.
Udo snorted. “You have forgotten? How can you forget something like that? That’s pretty lame, Valefor. It’s like forgetting your own name.”
Valefor said plaintively, “I am insignificant and reduced, and I have been drained. There is so much about myself that I no longer know; why do you think it is taking me so long to write my memoirs? Buck has cut me off from much of myself, and, of course, my fetish, for with it, I should be whole and in command.”
“So what do we do if we don’t know what your fetish is?” Udo asked. “We can’t reconnect you to it if we don’t know what it is.”
Val said eagerly, “You could kill Buck and let her heir take her place as the new Head of the House. Idden and I always got along quite well, I am sure she would restore me—oh ayah, it was just an idea. You don’t have to get all stuffy about it, Flora. Remember, there will be Fyrdraacas in this House long after you are gone.”
“I will not kill Mamma,” I said, adding maliciously, as payback for such an awful suggestion, “I guess, then, you are out of luck.”
Val turned the piteous all the way up to high and wrung his narrow hands together. “You don’t know how it is, Flora. To be all alone in this empty room, to hear voices from so far away, lovely voices, and to know that they cannot hear you. To sit alone, with all these books telling the stories of other lives, not your own. And to feel yourself growing weaker and weaker every day, whilst your walls crumble and your family falls into ruin. And there is nothing you can do, alone, outcast, adrift, lost.” “There’s got to be something that we can do, Flora,” Udo said. “It sucks to be in lockdown; boy, don’t I know it. I’m with Valefor on this, all the way. Wasn’t Nini Mo’s motto ‘Free the Oppressed’?”
“Thank you, Sieur Landaðon,” Val sobbed. “You are so very kind.”
“Quit crying, Val,” I said. “We will find your fetish.”
The sobbing stopped, and the tears on Valefor’s pale cheeks were gone. “How?”
“We will use the Discernment Sigil.”
ELEVEN
Discernment Sigil. Smoke. Searching. A Tea Caddy.
RANGERS, OF COURSE, are always looking for things—information, people, clues—and so The Eschatanomicon was full of sigils that find things. There was the Acquisition Sigil to find something you need but don’t have; the Retrieval Sigil to find things you had but then lost. The Recovery Sigil, which seemed to be exactly like the Retrieval Sigil, only you had to have lost by your own fault the things you were looking for. The Discovery Sigil to find things that you didn’t even know that you needed, and the Recollection Sigil to help you remember what you had forgotten. And the Revelation Sigil for things that were in front of your eyes but you were looking right through.
Some of these sigils were quite complicated. The Recollection Sigil was the obvious choice, but it called for several arcane ingredients (attar of crimson corn, starfish eyes, and a bowline knot), required that the adept prepare by drinking nothing but fizzy lemonade for three days before, and ended with the adept setting herself on fire. The Revelation Sigil would have also probably worked, but it called for six adepts and copious bloodl
etting. The Recovery Sigil required actions too disgusting to even contemplate.
But the Discernment Sigil, which helped you recognize what you were looking for when you saw it, seemed to fit the bill perfectly. It was short and sweet, required only two magickal Gestures, neither of which called for headstands or extra fingers, and it used only one very short and easy-to-pronounce Gramatica Word. No setting on fire and no bloodletting. It was not so much different from the Ignite Sigil, which I had done many times before. I was confident I could handle it.
“You will do it right, Flora Segunda, won’t you?” Valefor said, worriedly. “If you do it wrong, your head could explode.”
“If your head explodes, I am not cleaning it up,” Udo said. He had grabbed The Eschata and was now flipping through it. “What about the Recovery Sigil; it looks like fun—”
“I’ve decided, Udo!”
“Who am I? Boy Hansgen?” Udo protested. “Who dropped and made you the boss?”
Boy Hansgen was Nini Mo’s sidekick. When she died, he took over the Ranger Corps, and fought hard against the Birdies during the War. Afterward, when Rangers were outlawed and the Corps disbanded, he disappeared and hasn’t been heard from since. He was a good ranger, but no Nini Mo.
“You are not nearly tall enough to be Boy Hansgen,” I said. “Give me the book back, Udo. My head will not explode, I promise you. I know what I am doing.”
Udo tossed the book to me, grinning at my awkward catch. “You are lucky I am so easy, Flora. If Valefor is the one who is supposed to be recognizing the fetish when he sees it, shouldn’t he be the one who does the sigil?”
“He can’t. His only purpose is to act in regards to the House. He can’t act in any other capacity So I will charge the Word, activate it, and then pass it on to him, so that he’ll feel its effects. Then he should know the fetish when he sees it. I would have rather done the Recollection Sigil, but this is the best we can manage.”
Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog (Magic Carpet Books) Page 7