only those directly involved in running the house.”
“I think everything is part of it. Some cogs are just less noticeable.” He shook his head as if to clear it.
“What should we do?” Lizbeth asked.
Carter glanced at the heavens. “I’ve seen that color of sky
before, when I was thrown into the dream dimension. The
tower holding Professor Shoemate is up there somewhere. We
have to find her.”
“There are towers everywhere,” Lizbeth said. “How will
we know the right one?”
“Not everywhere. Most are in the upper reaches, as one
would expect. So first, we ascend.”
They crossed the metal deck, their boots clattering on the
steel. A black stream ran through a channel at the base of the
mechanism.
“The River of Entropy,” Carter said. “This must be where
it begins. It appears to circle the entire Machine. We must
avoid touching its waters at the risk of dissolution.”
They found a yellow bridge and crossed over. The din of
the animals, the bursts of steam, the flashes of light each time
the great clock appeared, affected Lizbeth’s equilibrium,
forcing her to shield her eyes. They traversed the base of the
structure and reached a metal stair. Deep Machine was even
stranger up close, and Lizbeth stopped to study its variegated
sides, a combination of rock, steel, vegetation, and what
appeared and felt like flesh.
“It’s alive!” she gasped. “When you look at it, you see
farther and farther down—there are minuscule plants and
animals—there’s a whole city here! Oh, Carter, the entire
world literally lies before us.”
“All the worlds, more likely.”
“What if we brush against it?” Lizbeth asked, “or stub our
toe? We could wipe out whole countries.”
His eyes widened, but he gave no reply.
Lizbeth examined the stair. “This is safe enough, I think.
The walkways were meant to be used, but we might cause
dreadful damage if we leave them.”
They began their ascent, the metal steps plinking beneath
their footfalls. The stair angled along, winding across the face
of the vast heap. If it had seemed huge before they were on it,
it now appeared monumental; Lizbeth felt like an ant climbing
a mountain. Regardless how high they went, they seemed no
closer to the heights.
What felt like hours passed, and Lizbeth’s knees and
calves began to ache. They stopped twice to eat and rest, then
pressed on until they were stumbling as they went.
“We can’t reach the summit in a single go,” Carter finally
admitted. “We have to get some sleep.”
“Sleep where?” Lizbeth asked, bleakly surveying their
surroundings. “There’s nowhere but the stair. We daren’t rest
among the crags.”
“The stair it is, then. I’ll take the first watch.”
The steps were narrow and uncomfortable and Lizbeth
tried sprawling across them, a less than ladylike position. Her
left hip immediately hurt. She shifted, found a better attitude,
and closed her eyes. Two minutes later her right shoulder was
aching. At last, she sat up and leaned back. The steps pinched
her spine, but it was tolerable, and she gradually drifted off.
After ten minutes she woke, needing to shift again.
I have slept in bare rooms on dusty boards, she told
herself. I can sleep here. But I was younger then, and more
supple.
She got little more than a nap, and at last, when she could
no longer abide the discomfort, she sat up and took her turn at
watch. To her irritation, Lord Anderson pulled himself into a
fetal position, and was instantly unconscious.
The man could sleep in a glass jar. Is that a trait the
Master learns in his travels? She studied his face in repose.
Were his features more lined than when she first met him as a
little girl? She supposed so, though she could not recall. He
was the uncle she never really had, and a wave of love rushed
over her. How happy she had been when he and Sarah had
courted. How little she had known of his true work. She
wondered if either of them would survive this journey, or if
they did, whether they would be able to find their way home.
It’s always that, isn’t it? Always trying to get home. To get
back. To where, I wonder?
But her thoughts were wandering; she was growing silly. If
not for her throbbing legs, she would have stood. She removed
her boots and massaged her calves.
Odd where one finds oneself. The Astronomy Tower, the
Inner Chambers, the Deep Machine that runs the universe.
Carter has even been to the world outside Evenmere. I should
like to go there sometime and see what it’s like. It must be truly
fantastic.
When Carter woke, he and Lizbeth ate dried bread and
drier meat from their supplies, washed down with a few gulps
of water, before continuing on their way.
“Since we have been here, I’ve lost all sense of the
Balance,” Carter said.
“Isn’t it present here? The Machine looks like a
combination of both Order and Chaos.”
“It’s not the same as in Evenmere, more like something
beyond them. I feel as if I’ve lost my compass on a dark
night.”
As they approached the heights, they spied tiny yellow
lizards scurrying among the bizarre topography, fleeing at the
travelers’ approach. Distant bird cries pierced the air, though
the birds themselves remained hidden. As they made their way
around the upper curvature, the angle of the steps leveled off.
So enormous was Deep Machine, they appeared to be walking
across a broken plain toward a distant horizon. The blue stars
shone down from the violet sky, leaving the ether in a
perpetual twilight. The magnitude of the Machine made
Lizbeth despair of ever finding their goal.
As if in answer, Carter pointed toward a distant, crimson
tower. “That one is the same color as the one in my vision.”
The stair ended at an earthen path bordered in sunflowers.
Tiny cities nestled in the petals, untroubled by the bees and
butterflies feasting on the nectar. Lizbeth wondered what it
must be like to shelter beneath a butterfly’s wings. Or did the
people in the cities even know?
They traveled the path for several hours, and then the
tower was abruptly before them, red stone against the uncanny
sky. Beside the door, at the base of the edifice, stood a sentry
dark as shadow, dressed in chain mail, wearing a helmet that
revealed cold blue eyes and a deep-red mouth. He stirred at
their approach, shifting his heavy axe from hand to hand.
“Stand and be identified. What is your business here?
What do you want?”
“Is Professor Erin Shoemate in this tower?” Carter
demanded.
The knight glanced up at the edifice. “The professor is
here. Three questions you must answer before you may pass.”
“I expected something a little less ru
dimentary.” Carter
fingered his Lightning Sword.
The sentry smirked. “That’s because you’re from Down
Below. Everyone here knows the more complex things
become, the simpler they are.”
Unable to make anything of the knight’s statement, Lizbeth
turned to Carter. By his expression, she guessed he was
calculating whether it was better to force his way into the
tower, or to attempt to answer the questions. Given the level of
power displayed by the poets, he was probably reluctant to
match his might against the denizens of this plane of reality.
He withdrew his hand from his sword, and she knew he had
made his decision.
She turned back to the sentry. “What are the questions?”
The knight held the axe against his chest and recited:
A man is left, a man is right,
One man stands frightened in the night
One man stands scheming in the day
Which man will soon be swept away?
Lord Anderson glanced down. “Can you repeat that?”
“It isn’t usually done.”
“But it’s not against the rules?”
“I suppose not.” The sentry gave the riddle again.
“The fact is,” Carter said, “my Lamp-lighter is much better
at this sort of thing.”
“Then you will not enter.”
Lizbeth noticed Carter’s hand gradually moving back
toward his blade. She clasped it, stopping its motion.
“The man who is left,” Lizbeth said, “suggests not merely
solitude, but because of the tradition associating the left hand
with wrongdoing, and the use of scheming of the third line,
indicates a criminal—even a murderer, perhaps. It follows that
the man who is right is an innocent falsely accused by the
schemer, waiting through the night for his execution.”
“But what is the answer to the question?”
Lizbeth paused. “The answer is that this is an unjust world,
and unless someone intervenes, the innocent man will soon be
swept away.”
“Ha!” the sentry cried. “Well spoken! The idealist would
have said justice always triumphs. The second question: What
is the land beyond the Rainbow Sea?”
Lord Anderson gave an involuntary grimace. “How can
anyone know that?”
“Is that your reply? I ask no question that cannot be
answered.”
“No.” Carter stepped back. “I need to think.”
“You have mentioned the Rainbow Sea,” Lizbeth said,
“but I know only what you have told me.”
Carter’s face was hard as stone. “And I know too much of
it.” He drew Lizbeth back a few paces and said in a whisper,
“If this sentry is an agent of the poets, can I assume the answer
must be one that would agree with their viewpoint?”
“It seems logical.”
Carter paced back and forth in silence, biting his lip. At
last, the knight said, “Your time is up. Either answer or return
the way you came.”
“Beyond the Rainbow Sea is the land my father could not
find.”
“Lyrical, Lord Anderson!” the sentry said, “and thus,
correct! The final question: what am I?”
“That is easy,” Lord Anderson stepped forward. “You are a
Poetry Man.”
The sentry laughed.
The action that followed occurred almost too quickly for
Lizbeth to see. With one smooth motion, the sentinel swung
his axe toward Carter’s head. Simultaneously, Lord Anderson
drew his Lightning Sword, which in this level of Existence had
not the appearance of steel, but of lightning itself. Lizbeth had
seldom seen Carter in his role as warrior, and the speed of his
response astonished her. Thunder boomed as his blade left the
scabbard, accompanied by an electric crackle. The weapons
met in mid-air and the whole landscape seemed to rock.
Lizbeth was lifted from her feet and thrown to the ground.
Half-blinded, half-deafened, she raised her head and
looked around. Carter lay sprawled on his back, hands and
legs thrown wide, the hilt of his sword still in his hand, its
blade broken into three pieces. The Poetry Man was gone,
save for a charred scar against the tower wall.
On hands and knees, Lizbeth crawled to Carter, calling his
name. She touched his face; his eyes fluttered open.
“Am I dead?” he asked.
Tears of relief sprang to her eyes. “Can you sit up?”
With her help, he raised himself. He looked at his right
hand, as if surprised to see it intact. His eyes swept over the
fragments of his blade.
“He broke my sword!”
“It’s all right, so long as you’re alive.”
But the look of horror in his eyes said otherwise. “I didn’t
think anything could do that.”
“Can it be mended?”
“I don’t know. I—I don’t know how.”
Lizbeth cautiously picked up one of the shards, which was
surprisingly cool. She gathered the three pieces and put them
in her pack, then gave Carter some water. Under her
ministrations, he gradually recovered, though he kept staring
at the useless hilt. Gently, she pried it from his hand and put it
with the rest.
“It was my father’s before me,” he said. “How can we face
whatever is up there without it?”
“Your father owned it for a time, but it is not your father,
and it isn’t you. It is a piece of metal. We will face whatever
we face together.”
She rose and extended her hands. His eyes focused. He
gave her a nod and a shadow of a smile. “Storyteller was right
about you.”
She flushed at his praise. Together, they opened the tower
door and climbed the spiraling steps, their way lit by flaming
wall sconces. As they ascended, Carter’s eyes took on their old
determination; he raised himself to his full height.
The rough-hewn stones were cracked and crumbling. The
air smelled dank. They wound their way upward, expecting to
encounter an enemy at every step. The torches, trailing above
the travelers like distant stars, were too dim to illuminate much
beyond a few feet, leaving the heights lost in darkness.
Lizbeth glanced at the floor and noticed what appeared to
be a curved piece of wood against the wall. When it moved,
she realized it was a gray serpent, four feet long, its red tongue
forking in and out.
“I miss my sword already,” Carter said.
Through the gloom they passed, the only sound their
footsteps on the stair. At last they reached a narrow door.
Lizbeth looked down at the torches far below. They had
climbed higher than she supposed.
Carter put his hand to the knob. It turned easily, opening
onto a circular chamber filled with bric-a-brac, a fainting
couch, and a writing desk where a woman sat reading from a
book. At the noise of their entrance, she turned and gave them
the barest look before returning to the text.
“Professor Erin Shoemate?” Carter asked.
She glanced at them again, her brow furrowed. Her h
air
was the purest silver Lizbeth had ever seen, like that of the
ladies in fairy tales. Her eyes were the palest blue, her skin the
lightest white. She looked immeasurably sad.
“You have come back,” she murmured, returning her gaze
to the book. “I thought you a vision.”
“I often feared you were one as well,” Lord Anderson said.
“Do you know where you are?”
“In Hades, or someplace akin to it. Are you one of my
captors?”
“Your rescuers, assuming you wish to be rescued.”
“Why would I not? But I cannot go. There is a poem here
I’m trying to comprehend.” She pointed to the book. “Just
when I think I know its meaning, it slips away. Perhaps you
can read it and help me.”
“I will not, for it is a snare.”
“But it is so beautiful. It burns like fire and ice.”
“It is burning up the whole world.” Carter approached the
book. Without looking at the words, he sought to close it,
while the professor craned her neck to read around his arms.
The volume resisted his strength. He applied more pressure,
his face set with the effort, but could not budge it.
Abandoning his attempt, he took the professor’s arm. “You
must come away.”
“If I leave the book, I will surely die.”
“You will not die. You will return to living.”
Her voice rose in panic. “I shall! They have told me, and it
is true. Please don’t force me. The words are too strong.”
Carter glanced at Lizbeth. “I can try the Word Which
Brings Hope, but I doubt it will work. The spell of the book is
more than an illusion.”
“Wait,” Lizbeth said, turning to her pack. “Perhaps one
book can substitute for another.”
She withdrew Wuthering Heights , opened it, and laid it
over the professor’s volume. Lizbeth stood to Shoemate’s
right, Carter to her left, watching her reaction. At first, the
woman continued reading as if nothing had changed.
Gradually, her brow unfurrowed and her eyes cleared. She
stared up at Lizbeth with the same intensity she had given the
poetry.
“This book—I can read it here ,” she touched the pages,
“and I can read it when I look at you. It’s inside you. Every
word. You’ve got it inside.”
“I do,” Lizbeth said, “but it isn’t me, really.”
“You’re right!” Erin cried, as if in epiphany. “This is …
these are … only words! This is … I remember this! It is a
Evenmere (The Evenmere Chronicles Book 3) Page 38