House of Shadows (18 page)

“He’d be angry with you?” Enelle asked doubtfully, clearly wondering again, or still, whether the mage was really the best teacher and master for her sister.

“Oh, no. I mean, I don’t think he’d be angry if I came back in daylight, after breakfast—but why risk his displeasure when I didn’t have his leave to come here? Besides, it’s embarrassing to have… gotten lost. I think I should go back right away.”

“Oh,” said Jehenne, looking downcast.

“Perhaps that would be best,” Enelle said reluctantly, undoubtedly thinking of the extra nine hundred hard cash that depended on Mage Ankennes not being displeased. “If you truly think so, Nemienne. I’ll send down for the carriage.” She looked sternly at the little girls. “Time for bed! Liaska, Jehenne, it’s rather late for you, isn’t it? Don’t fuss! I’m sure Nemienne will come visit soon. During the day, even. And she’ll write you a letter tomorrow and tell you all about the mage’s house and about reading languages without having to learn them first, won’t you, Nemienne?”

She gave Nemienne a look on this last, and Nemienne promised meekly. “I meant to write… I was waiting for more to happen.”

“Well, I’m sure enough has happened now.”

Nemienne had to agree with this, and did, as gracefully as possible. “
You
are all well?” she asked Enelle, very specifically, as they left the littler girls and walked from the gallery toward the front of the house.

Her older sister gave her a tense smile. “Oh, yes. Ananda will be married next week—we will send an invitation to Mage Ankennes, of course. Jehenne did a wonderful job on the invitations; no scribe in Lonne has a nicer hand. Even the announcement has helped, and we’ll do much better after the marriage has actually taken place. Petris seems quite sensible.” Meaning he still intended to let Enelle run the stone yard.

Nemienne nodded. “Have you heard from Karah? She wrote me about becoming a keiso.”

Enelle managed an almost natural smile. “Two years early, we are told. Yes.
She
writes.”

“I’ll write! I’ll write! Anyway, I told you that woman, Narienneh, would be too clever to let Karah be unhappy,” Nemienne said, allowing a little smugness into her tone to cheer her sister. “I told
you everyone would love her and she would be happy. And there she is, made keiso two years early!”

“And happy, I hope. Well, she has a gift for happiness… I wish she would come visit! Though not
precisely
as you have done.”

Nemienne laughed and peered out the door to where the carriage already waited, with Tebbe standing at the horse’s head with the reins in his hand. “Tell Ananda I am sorry to have missed her. And Petris, if you think it wise.”

“Neither of them is able to keep a thought in mind for more than a moment.” Enelle was amused and exasperated at the same time. “Ananda has the attention span of a butterfly, and Petris trips over his own feet and can hardly speak to her without stuttering. It’s sweet, really, except it
is
hard to persuade them to settle down when I need them to go over contracts. Well. I’ll tell them you stopped by. They will think nothing of your visiting at night for a scant hour.” She embraced Nemienne. “Write and tell me you are well.”

Nemienne promised, and drew herself away into a night that was no more than normally dark. She had never, she reflected, appreciated the streetlamps properly. She appreciated them now. Nodding to Tebbe, she jumped up into the small carriage and dropped onto the bench with a sigh of mingled relief and sadness.

What she had not expected was that, arriving in the middle of the night at Mage Ankennes’s house, she would not be able to open the door.

Nemienne leaped down from the carriage, ran up the walk, jumped up the stairs onto the porch, and waved to Tebbe, who nodded and turned the horses back the way they’d come. Nemienne stood watching him out of sight, then turned and stroked the cat statue outside the front door. But the door did not click open. Nonplussed, she stepped back and regarded the mage’s house. It had an unaccommodating look to it tonight. Its rough stones and blind windows could not be said to look friendly. But she’d thought she had reached an understanding with this house, because it seldom hid important rooms from her, and usually when she meant to go to, say, the smaller library, she got there without too much trouble.

Mage Ankennes would, of course, return eventually. Nemienne had not expected to hide this evening’s adventure from him, but she had also expected to tell him about it in a civilized manner. In the morning, for example, over sweet cakes and tea. She had not expected and did not want to meet her master on the porch of his house because she couldn’t get a stubborn
door
to cooperate.

The door itself yielded nothing to Nemienne’s exploratory touch. Certainly it did not simply swing open as she set her hand on it. She had not really expected that it would, but this was still disappointing. She sat down on the house’s top step—she could feel the cold of the stone even through the heavy robe Enelle had lent her—and studied the door. It looked heavier and more unyielding than ever.

Nemienne sent her thoughts into it, as Mage Ankennes had begun to teach her. She meant to coax the tumblers to drop in its lock, but she discovered that she couldn’t find the lock at all. Her mind was caught instead in the grain of the wood, so that she wandered in ragged circles that led one into another but never resolved. Baffled, she drew herself out again into the ordinary night.

Perhaps mages did not trouble with ordinary locks. Perhaps they spelled their doors shut and the keyholes were only meant to puzzle thieves ignorant enough to try to rob them. Perhaps all their doors were made to confuse apprentice mages, if the apprentices were foolish enough to get locked outside in the middle of the night.

It was growing colder, too, and Nemienne shivered despite the warmth of her robes. She supposed that, if the night continued as it had begun, she would manage a little too successfully to summon fire and set the house aflame. If it would burn. Probably only the neighbors’ houses would burn. That would… probably not be the best thing for Mage Ankennes to find when he got home.

But it
was
cold. And Tebbe was long gone with the carriage. It would be extremely embarrassing if she were forced to find a conveyance to take her home again simply to avoid freezing because she couldn’t get the mage’s door opened.

Nemienne was fairly certain she had at least learned to tell the
difference between fire and light. Taking the precaution of settling down in the middle of the bare stone of the porch, she thought about light. Warm light. Indeed, warmth alone would be fine. Better, even. Less, well, eye-catching. Not the warmth of a fire, no. The warmth of stone that had been lying under a blazing sun all during a long summer afternoon, say, and was now giving back the sun’s heat into the night. That kind of gentle warmth from the stone would be very welcome. She laid a hand on the stone beside her.

It was warm to the touch.

This was the only thing that saved her from dying of embarrassment when Mage Ankennes found her waiting on his porch when he arrived home at dawn.

Nemienne was sitting on the warm stone in the center of the mage’s porch, her arms wrapped around her drawn-up knees. She had continued to try, from time to time, to open the door. It had resisted all her attempts, though she thought some of them had been rather clever. She had even tried to
make
keys that would fit the lock on the door. She had made one out of moonlight and, when that one had melted away when she tried to turn it in the lock, another out of a chip of white stone from the walkway. That one had seemed to fit. It had even turned. But it hadn’t opened the door.

At least the warm stone was sort of comfortable to sit on. Though not really for an
entire
night. She was so stiff Mage Ankennes had to give her a hand up, which, looking bemused, he did.

Then he opened the door with a look. It simply clicked and swung inward, just as though it had not spent recalcitrant hours refusing to open for Nemienne.

She followed Mage Ankennes into the entry and stopped, startled. The hall, which had always been dim, was filled with light. There were windows all down its length, some with the pearly dawn light coming through them and others blazing with brilliant sunlight. Silver moonlight pooled on the floor by the nearest, and through it Nemienne could see the full moon riding high among the mountain peaks.

Among the windows were three doors. The first was of beech wood, carved with an intricate border of interlocking beech leaves all around its edges. The second, carved of what she thought was red cedar, had fantastic animals twining together in sharply jagged patterns that linked each of its panels to the next. The third door was absolutely plain, made of some ink-dark wood she did not recognize, with no carving at all.

“Ah,” said the mage, looking at her face. “How many doors do you see in this hall?”

“Three,” said Nemienne, hoping this was good and that the appearance of the doors would make up for her stupidity in getting locked out. She described each one in turn when he prompted her. The mage looked pleased when she described the beech door, interested when she described the cedar door with the carved animals, and a bit startled when she described the black door.

“You won’t want to open that one just yet,” he said, and waved her ahead of him toward the kitchen. Every window they passed looked out onto the mountain heights. Through one, dark with night, she glimpsed distant lights and wondered whether she might be looking down on Lonne. If that was Lonne, it was very far away. She touched the glass of the windowpane. It was very cold.

“Come along!” Mage Ankennes called, and Nemienne jumped and hurried to follow him, tearing herself away from the windows.

The mage made breakfast for them both while she told him about her night. The kitchen, at least, was unchanged. Nemienne found this reassuring. She sat near the iron stove, for once enjoying its furnace heat. Even her toes and the tips of her ears felt like they were finally getting warm. She could feel every tight muscle unknotting while the reassuring heat wrapped around her. She did miss Enkea. She’d half expected to find the slim little cat sleeping peacefully in the chair near the stove, but there was no sign of her this morning.

The mage did not interrupt her on that first recounting, but then he made her go back over everything again once she was finished.

“The door was standing open?” he asked, handing her a plate of
rice porridge and eggs scrambled with tiny shrimp. “And Enkea went through it before you?”

Nemienne nodded to both questions.

“You should never have gone into the darkness—”

Nemienne, who agreed completely, apologized.

“No, indeed,” the mage assured her. “You should have been safe following Enkea. One does wonder what the creature was about.” His expression became speculative, contemplating the absent cat. “And, of course, you
were
safe,” he added. “If uncomfortable. I would have found you, eventually. But you did well to find your own way through the darkness and back into the ordinary night.” He paused, contemplating Nemienne. “You do show interesting sparks of unusual talent. I believe Narienneh did well, sending you to me. You will clearly make a mage.”

Startled and very pleased, Nemienne stared back at the mage. She found herself smiling suddenly. “Even though I couldn’t open the door?”

“Child!
I
locked the door.”

“Oh!” Nemienne was embarrassed. “Of course.” Though she
did
wonder whom the mage might have locked his door against, and whether mages usually guarded themselves so carefully from other mages. She was too tired to think about it, though. She was surprised by a yawn, and put a hand hastily over her mouth.

“You are very tired,” Mage Ankennes said, amused. “So am I, as my night was also eventful, in its way. Finish your breakfast. Have a bath and a little nap. Come find me when you have rested and had a look through the beech door and the door with the carved animals. Not the other, just yet. Yes?”

“Yes!” Nemienne said, and flushed at the eagerness in her voice, but the amusement in the mage’s face only deepened. He left her in the warmth and she heard his heavy tread going… she listened carefully… up the stairs, toward his workroom. Or perhaps whatever else might be upstairs for him. She wondered whether the upper hall had also sprouted wonderful new doors for her during that long night.

Nemienne wanted very badly to go peek through the doors right away, but she
was
very tired. After having to be rescued from the porch like a stray kitten, she thought she had better be dutiful. So, a bath and a nap. Nemienne yawned her way from the kitchen to her small room and slept for five hours.

When Nemienne at last opened it, the beech door opened into a forest of leaves. Nemienne blinked. The smooth gray boles of trees crowded into her sight; the pale jade green of leaves fluttered overhead. Roots tangled beneath a carpet of golden leaves from past autumns. Here and there outcrops of white stone shoved up from the black earth. A thin silvery stream meandered gently across the wood, from an unknown source to an unguessable destination, and a warm breeze, smelling of green growth and damp earth, made its tentative way through the trees.

Charmed beyond words, Nemienne almost stepped into the wood and went looking for the source of the little stream. Only the memory of the last door she’d stepped through and immediately lost kept her from this adventure. She did not want Mage Ankennes to be forced to rescue her from an enchanted beech wood in some unknown country of dark earth and gentle streams.