Chapter Eleven

As it happened, the golems were looking for us. When we were spotted, three of them deputized themselves as our escort. They zipped across the orange-gold earth, forming up behind Bolton in a wedge. I hadn't progressed nearly far enough in my lessons to be able to ask them any questions, so we had to accept this company all the way to the fence in silence. The old stallion didn't appreciate it any more than I did.

"Clay pots," he said, “belong in the mud heap."

We were separated at the gate, and Bolton was led sulkily toward the barn, muttering curses as he went. I smiled at his irascibility, but lost my good humor as soon as I saw that the two remaining constructs intended to lead me to the house in much the same manner as the horse. They looked at me no differently than they looked at the gate or the grass; as an object relevant or irrelevant to their task. I didn't experience the same anxiety around them as I had with white-eye before he attacked me, but I still didn't like them. If they were necessary for some sorcerous project, fine, but I was never going to find them charming.

I was brought silently and unhappily to the entrance of Milton's house, ready to berate the first human I saw for sending these ugly robots to fetch me like a runaway animal. When Timothy flung open the door, he was so obviously agitated that I lost my nerve.

"Inside, quickly!" He turned sideways to make room for me.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"Trouble. Where have you been?" He took my arm pulling me down the hall rather than waiting for me to follow.

"I told you I was going to see Bolton."

"Yes, but you went further afield with him than you ever have before."

We turned a corner, traversing a floor occupied by unwieldy shapes obscured by tarps. Timothy kicked aside a rug in a small side chamber to reveal a trap door.

"You've been watching me!?"

He let go of my arm to run his finger along the seams of the trap door. There was no latch or ring that I could see, but his fingers soon slipped into an otherwise apparently solid plank of varnished wood, which he raised to unveil a square of darkness and the ladder it swallowed.

"Of course we watch," he said softly, not at all perturbed by my accusing tone. "There are too many perils of which you know nothing."

He appraised me, the color in his face belying the softness of his tone as he asked, "If you saw anything on this land you knew did not belong, would you tell me?"

"Timothy, I haven't…"

"Would you tell me?"

"I would." The lie slipped out of its own accord. He nodded ticking off a point.

"Climb down, you'll be able to see by the time your feet touch the floor. Turn around and go through the screen, then wait for me to come. Do not try to come back up until Milton or I return to get you. It's warded down there and you will be safe."

I shook my head. "What's going on?"

He stood, and his face was grim. "Someone is almost here who cannot be allowed to suspect you are with us. Please, go."

I complied, though the darkness around the ladder made me uneasy. It was impenetrable to the eye, thicker and more viscous than a mere absence of light, and my skin prickled as the lower half of my body was engulfed. I wouldn't have gone at all if not for what I had glimpsed in the blue glaze of Timothy’s stare. Behind his agitation was a core of fear I had never seen in him before. What made sorcerers afraid?

As soon as my eye dipped below the level of that strange layer of blackness, I could see the rest of the shaft clearly. It was only a few more rungs down, opening on a short passage. Glancing back up, I saw the darkness was still intact, like an intangible film stretched over the opening of the trap door. I heard but could not watch as Timothy shut off my exit. The ladder was gleaming stainless steel. The passage was something cut and pasted out of an office building; pale, paneled walls, dark carpet, and fluorescent bulbs encased behind cloudy glass in a tiled ceiling. A few paces ahead was a sliding screen door, patterned with silhouettes of many complicated scenes.

I drew it open and came into a wide, bright showroom. At least that was my first impression. I doubt it was like any other in the world. The floor was white marble, veined with gold like sunlight that had flowed to liquid and then froze. A dozen pedestals of the same stone rose seamlessly from the floor, as if they had been cultivated rather than carved. Some were empty, but most displayed a single item, each floating motionless in the air above its pedestal. Along the stark white walls hung eight empty frames plus one filled with a pressed robe of brown traced with silver.

Three rows of ceiling lights shone brilliantly, casting no shadows.

I approached the first pillar. It rose to my chest and above it floated a staff, straight up and taller than myself. It was a deep ocher wood as thick as my wrist, carved with swirling patterns like galactic clusters. The ceiling was only about eight or nine feet high, so the staff, suspended a foot above the pedestal, should have run right into it. But somehow there was plenty of room. Beyond this, there was a ring, a mask, and a book clasped by a leather belt; none of them gaudy or ornate, but each with a gravity of its own. I walked among them and felt a tugging at my spirit, like the pull of churning waters.

The pillars were arranged in two parallel rows. At the end of the left hand row was a burgundy flask attached to a chain of white squares. I had seen it once before. Milton had worn it in the garden, and it drew me more strongly than any other piece. When I was close enough to reach it, I raised my hand only to discover an invisible barrier exactly flush with the marble pedestal. The barrier was perfectly smooth, almost slippery, frictionless, and seemingly harder than the stone below it.

From the flask radiated a feeling, an awareness. It seemed to be examining me as surely as I was it. I pulled my hand back, fingers tingling at the tips, and forced myself to draw away from this last display. Even with my back to it, I felt the pressure of eyes brushing down my spine.

Aside from these displays, the room was featureless and cold. And I was stuck here for an indeterminate amount of time. Someone was coming; someone was in the house that they wanted to keep me a secret from. My first thought was Li, since he was the only person I knew with an unwarranted interest in me, but that was ridiculous. After all, I had just come from a meeting with him, and what would be the point of his sneaking around in the dead of night when he could have made an appointment? Whoever it was, they had known about him in advance.

What the hell was all this sudden attention? What did I matter to these people? I was nobody. The daughter of a brother of a sorcerer was hardly the equivalent of a seventh son of a seventh son. I couldn't even do anything.

I went to the robe hanging in its frame. It was the only part of the collection not steeped in ominous, scary auras. It actually seemed kind of sad, like a lost child. The material had sheen like silk, all in earth tones. Thin, almost single fiber lines of silver traced outlines of cliffs and rolling hills all down the right side. A starburst pattern was woven into the left breast. I knew it was a sigil only because I couldn't focus on it. I had to guess its shape by viewing it from my peripherals, bit by bit.

It meant something, but not to me.

Inspecting the robe absorbed me for a while. It was elegant and finely made. It might have been a kimono, though I'm not certain where the border between robe and kimono lies. I guess it comes down to origins.

Finally, I was reduced to running my hand along the wall in boredom, most of my mental effort allocated to ignoring the flask, its burgundy liquid, and its bone white chain. When my fingers slipped into the wall, I snatched them back as if I had been bitten.

The square was innocent enough. The space where my hand had been, looked identical to every other segment of the wall. I tried to find the spot again, carefully feeling inch by inch until, just as before, my fingers slipped into what should have been solid material. I thought of the similar mechanism that had hidden the trap door and tracing the inside of the small, secret space, I discovered a latch.

Click.

The wall opened at the barest pressure from me, revealing a narrow hall the seemed to have no source of illumination aside from what spilled in from the showroom behind me. From what I could see it was featureless, but there was something odd about the floor, and the hall shot straight ahead as far as the light allowed me to discern. Well, Timothy had said not to come back up …

I left the door open behind me, careful to check that it would not close of its own accord the moment I stepped over the threshold. I had my hand ready to catch it if it had, but my worry was unfounded. Just because it was the dramatic assumption didn't mean it had to happen, but I was very nearly disappointed.

I went into the dark, propelled by a fatalistic curiosity. I had to remind myself that I was living out a fantasy script, not horror, so I wasn't making a terrible mistake by wandering alone away from the light. It wasn't long before I realized what was strange about the floor. It was transparent. Below was a series of rooms, unlighted, so I couldn't make them out at first, stretched like the cars on a train. There is the diner, there is a sleeper, there’s one not so dim… It was the kitchen, my concourse, the same where I so often ate every meal and visited with Timothy. I was above it, but I had climbed down to get here. This far into things, I didn't have an excuse to be surprised.

I had a flash of anxiety that I might be seen, striding above the scenes as I was, but it passed. I had never noticed anything odd about the kitchen ceiling; obviously, it was enchanted to work like a one-way mirror. That didn’t explain why all the rooms were arranged in a series for me, but I decided it wouldn't do any good trying to puzzle that one out.

Magic.

A glance behind me assured that my exit was still open and bright, so I set out ahead in search of the gathering where I was not allowed. I would see whoever wasn't meant to see me, if there even was anyone. Maybe that was why Timothy put me down (up?) here in the first place.

It's not too difficult to search a house, even one as multitudinous and inconsistent as Milton's, when it's all laid out for you on a track. I spotted the dining room well ahead of actually arriving over it. Their meeting was almost as well illuminated as the show room.

One figure sat at either end of a rectangular table. Milton, solid and tawny as a mountain lion, folded his hands in front of him on the maple table. The other was veiled, a small, straight-backed woman who was plainly unintimidated by the sorcerer. Her dress was black; she looked ready for a funeral. I couldn't see any part of her face, but she had lustrous, raven-wing hair that fell all the way to her lower back.

It was even longer than my mother's.

Timothy stood to the side, arms crossed over his chest, looking like a referee between them. If I crouched down, putting my ear to the transparency, I could just make out their voices.

"I know what the stakes are. You have made your point." That was Milton.

"I am not patient by nature. I have learned to be, year after year, but it does not suit me." The woman's voice was barely more than a murmur. Strangely, the material pressed against my ear grew warmer she spoke. "The very idea that you have lost track of my key, of the prize I labored so long over, is scarcely imaginable. It is impossible. If I did not know you so well, I might think you lied to me. I might think you intended to use the child for your own purposes. You are not that foolish, are you?"

"I have proven my loyalty to you time and again."

"You have proven nothing but your own ambition and cunning in allying yourself with me. Loyalty is not in the sorcerer’s parlance. I know what binds you, and your worth. If you would serve me better in death, you will meet it."

Wow. That was villainous.

"I understand. I will find her."

"And the rest?"

Milton nodded and then gestured to Timothy. "Bring her the tax." Timothy went to the door glancing up once as he did. His eyes passed over me in a casual sweep. Why would you look at the ceiling if you didn't know someone was there?

Not waiting to hear whatever else they might have to say, I ran back to the secret door, out into the trophy room. My most prominent thought was "Crap. Crap. Crap!"

It took far too long to locate the hidden handle and get the door closed. When it was done, I sat in the corner farthest from the hidden mechanism I could get to. It was painfully apparent who the “child” was. But what was I a ‘key’ to--a plan, a gate? The world of the unknown, already vast, was flexing its muscles and sneering at me.

Sorcerers always lie.

Why did my voices have to be right?

Okay. Slow down. Piece by piece, what do we actually know?

Milton had taken me in when I was alone. Timothy was teaching me magic. Bolton hates them both, but it could be only bad feelings left over from the death of his mare. A very scary, stereotypically evil, but still scary woman is after me. She thinks I'm the key to something. The sorcerers were keeping her from finding me. They were protecting me.

Except a mysterious boy named Li had predicted this exact scenario and attributed them with much less noble motivation. What could I be any use for, if someone wanted to use me?

In conclusion, I was confused.

I needed more information. I would listen extremely carefully to what Timothy volunteered when he came back. As soon as I had the opportunity, I would go behind him and meet whoever I was supposed to find in the garden, assuming that wasn't some kind of complicated trick. It didn't seem like one. Do they ever?

I needed to learn and I needed to learn quickly. I was suddenly part of a much larger story. There were more people in it than the three living on this ranch and for some reason lots of them thought I was important.

In hindsight, assuming my life conforms to the plot of a fantasy novel, it really was about time for the main conflict to reveal itself. Past time.

The screen to the showroom slid open. “Abigail?"

It was Milton's voice, deep as a chasm.

Double crap.

‎