House of Shadows (19 page)

Nemienne closed the door gently, half expecting it to vanish softly back into the paneling of the hall. But the smooth gray door simply shut with a gentle
click
. She almost thought she saw its carved leaves flutter in an unseen breeze. But when she touched one, it was only quiet wood under her fingers.

Nemienne was almost reluctant to go down the hall to the next door, feeling that whatever that door opened onto must surely be less amazing than the beech wood. And that, well, if it opened to reveal something disturbing or ugly, it would somehow soil the memory of the leaves and the woodland breeze. But at the same time she was very curious.

The carved animals contained within the sharp, jagged patterns on the second door were not ordinary creatures, she saw upon closer inspection. There were slender, elongated creatures a little like deer, only with longer legs and necks and a far greater
delicacy of bone than ordinary deer, and with smooth straight horns instead of antlers. The jagged patterns surrounding them suggested cliffs, as though they leaped from ledge to ledge across the stark landscape of a mountain. Scattered among the deer were animals like dogs, longer legged and more graceful than ordinary dogs, but Nemienne could not tell whether they hunted the deer or not. On the uppermost panels there were birds like eagles, only everything about them was sharp edged, as though their feathers had been made out of slivers of glass and the edges of knives.

The eyes of the carved animals were set with jewels: agate and lapis and amethyst. Traceries of alabaster and mother-of-pearl and abalone shell had been inlaid here and there, along the elegant arched neck of an animal or weaving through the feathers of a bird. The light glittering from this inlay suggested movement, giving Nemienne the impression that in a moment the carved creatures might leap away or turn to look at her.

Nemienne opened this door cautiously. She did not know what she expected, only something exotic and amazing. What she found was a music room. As this did not seem as fraught with possibility as the beech wood—indeed, it seemed a little disappointing—Nemienne stepped through the doorway. An ornate floor harp stood in the center of the room. A dragon was carved all down its face—not the more familiar sea dragon, but a serpentine creature with a long elegant head. Its talons were of opal, its throat and spine edged with mother-of-pearl. Delicate antennae tipped with lapis nodded above its eyes, which were as dark as the winter sky. Above the dragon were set three beads, one above the next: a bead of smoky glass, a bead of hematite, and a silvery pearl. Nemienne at once thought of the book by Kelle Iasodde, of his discussion of the ephemeral versus the eternal. She resolved to search for what meaning the pearl might have when balanced against glass and iron.

Symbolic meaning aside, she could not begin to imagine what such an elaborate harp must have cost. She touched a harp string, but gently, not sounding the note.

Besides the harp, there were three sets of pipes and a plain flute of bone or ivory on a stand. A more complicated flute, made of rosewood, with stops and a mouthpiece of brass and thin adjustable reeds in its throat, rested on a stand of its own. A scroll was clipped open beside it to show a strange spidery musical notation. An ekonne horn carved of black wood occupied another stand, and an unstrung kinsana stood in a corner, its strings coiled neatly on a shelf beside it.

With a last glance at the dragon carved on the harp, Nemienne left the room. She closed the door gently behind her and stood for a moment, studying it. On impulse she opened it a second time and looked in, but the music room was still there. She could hardly believe it was just an ordinary music room, but what else could it be? Did Mage Ankennes come here to play these instruments? Nemienne had never heard music in this house, but if he didn’t play, why have a music room at all? She shut the door again, questions unanswered, and went thoughtfully toward the mage’s workroom.

She could not help but glance sidelong at the plain black door when she passed it, but she didn’t touch it. She felt somehow that if she so much as brushed it, it might open, and she found she was afraid of it. It might be on the main floor of the house, but it
looked
like the sort of door that would open on infinite depths of darkness. She went past it hastily and up the stairs.

The mage was indeed in his workroom, doing something mysterious with an unidentifiable object of spun glass and copper. Nemienne perched on a tall stool on the other side of the table and watched him.

The mage glanced up, but did not speak. He was measuring a glittery white powder into a glass bowl held aloft by a ring of copper. Mage Ankennes made a fire burn in the air below the ring with a gesture. Then, apparently satisfied, he grunted and flung himself into a chair that whisked over to catch his weight.

“Well?” the mage asked her.

Nemienne told him about the music room first, at his prompting
describing each instrument she’d found in it. “Are they magical?” she asked. “The harp
looks
like it ought to be magical.”

The mage half smiled. “It might be. It’s meant to be. I didn’t make it, though I had it made by Erhlianne craftsmasters. That harp isn’t really a thing of magecraft at all, but meant for a different kind of magic altogether, more akin to the sorcery of Kalches. Did you try to play it?”

Nemienne shook her head, hoping she hadn’t been expected to. Probably sending her to that room had been one of the mage’s subtle tests, but whether she’d done well or badly by not trying to play the instruments she’d found there, she had no idea. Watching the mage’s face gave her no clues.

“I’ll show you a book that describes dragon magic and bardic sorcery,” he told her. “You’ll find it on the table of your room. Kelle Iasodde wrote this one also. He wrote it several hundred years ago, so you may find the style difficult. Also, not everyone can perceive the words he set down in this book. You may be able to read it; if you can, I’ll ask you to tell me something useful about that harp in… shall we say, a month or so. Now, the beech door?”

The book sounded fascinating. Nemienne wanted to go look at it right away, make sure she was one of the people who could see the writing in it. She was sure she would be, only not
really
sure. She wanted to go find out. She wondered if the spell that let you read a language you had never learned would work on language you simply found difficult…

“The beech door?” the mage prompted patiently.

“Oh—” She described the beech wood. Mage Ankennes leaned his chin on his palm and made little
hmm
noises to show he was listening, but she couldn’t tell what he thought.

“It isn’t
really
a wood?” Nemienne asked him after a moment, when he didn’t seem inclined to speak. “If you go through that door?”

The mage smiled. “Oh, yes. It really is. That’s part of the enchanted forest of Enescedd. Enescedd possesses a strange sort of magic, different from any other I’ve encountered and less, hmm,
tractable, than one might expect. Men there don’t, mmm,
employ
magic in any sort of craft. The magic is simply
there
. You come upon it unexpectedly, at the oddest times and places, and it seldom takes any form you would expect…” The mage rubbed his chin, studying Nemienne. “You didn’t go through that door. Did you want to?”

“Yes,” Nemienne admitted, wondering whether that was good or bad.

“Yes,” murmured the mage. “Hmm. Probably it would be better if you resisted the urge for the next little while, eh? Even if Enkea should go through the door ahead of you, yes? It’s easy to lose yourself in that wood, and not entirely safe. Although I would find you eventually.”

Nemienne nodded, relieved that she had resisted the impulse to step into the wood. “If that door leads to Enescedd, does that mean there are other doors in the hall that lead to Miskiannes? Or even…” She hesitated and then completed the sentence: “Even Kalches?” She wasn’t sure she even
wanted
a door to Kalches sharing this house with her, fascinating as the idea might be. Maybe that was why Mage Ankennes had a music room and had ordered the harp made—because he needed to be ready for Kalchesene magic? As soon as this occurred to her, it seemed not only plausible but likely.

Mage Ankennes paused, lifting an inscrutable eyebrow at her. “Perhaps,” he said maddeningly.

“Is Enkea here?” Nemienne asked, changing the subject.

“No,” said the mage, sounding doubtful. “I think not. She is sometimes a difficult creature to keep in one’s eye. I am, in truth, a touch surprised at her. But she is an unpredictable creature.”

“Do you… know why she wanted me to go through that other door? Last night?”

Mage Ankennes regarded Nemienne dispassionately. Instead of answering her question, he said, “I will be going out again, not tonight, but tomorrow evening. There will be a gathering at Cloisonné House.”

“Oh?” Nemienne couldn’t quite decide whether she would like to see Karah in her new role as a keiso, or whether that would be too strange.

“Your presence at a keiso banquet would not be quite suitable, apprentice.” The mage sounded mildly regretful. “Besides, you haven’t been invited. However, it’s not likely your sister will be attending the banquet either. Deisa sometimes do, but she’s very new to the flower life. However—”

“Oh,” Nemienne said, a little startled he didn’t know about Karah, though there was no reason he should. “Karah’s already a keiso—she was made keiso early. So maybe she will be there, do you think?”

Mage Ankennes paused. One eyebrow lifted, giving his heavy features a look both quizzical and sardonic. “Was she? Well—she might, then, I suppose.
However
—” and here he lifted a hand sternly, preventing a second interruption “—I am afraid your presence at the banquet would still not be suitable. You will have to visit your sister later, and not, hmm, during the candlelight hours, eh?”

Nemienne, disappointed but not surprised, nodded.

“So I’ll leave you here. Do please remain in the, hmm, I was going to say more ordinary, but let me say, instead, more
traveled
parts of the house. However swift your sister’s rise in her new world,
you
are still a very new apprentice. There are much more uncomfortable places to end up than my front porch. Understood?”

Nemienne was sure there were. Lost in an enchanted forest in some far distant country probably didn’t begin to cover the possibilities. She was surprised at the pang of regret she felt at the injunction not to explore, stronger even than the regret at the missed banquet, but she suppressed it firmly and nodded.

“Now,” Mage Ankennes said, picking a candle out of the clutter on the table without looking and reaching across the expanse of the table to set it in front of Nemienne. “Melt it, if you please,” he told her. “Without lighting it.”

CHAPTER 8

T
audde liked Cloisonné House immediately. It was a large, formal building of pale gold brick and weathered white limestone. Ivy crept up the brick to meet vines that dangled from long balconies, dotted with delicate pink flowers. Surely the flowers would not last through the coming winter, but they had not yet been withered by the chill in the air.

Girls came out to hold the carriage horse while Taudde stepped down onto a clean walkway of crushed limestone. He turned to face Cloisonné House, and paused. He still liked its graceful proportions. But even so, somehow the long shadow the house cast in the late sun seemed darker than it should. Or fell, perhaps, at an odd slant. Or into a place that wasn’t quite the same evening in which he stood… He shook his head slightly, not sure what he was perceiving.

One of the girls, not more than seven or eight years of age, ran ahead of Taudde to open the door for him. The other girl, a little older, jumped lightly up onto the driver’s bench beside Benne to show him where to take the carriage.

Taudde laid a hand momentarily on the door as he passed through it. The wood was smooth and unexceptional, yet he felt a faint echo behind that ordinary surface, as though his hand might have passed through the door by some measureless fraction to touch something else entirely. Something old beyond age. He lifted his hand, disturbed, and glanced at the girl, who seemed perfectly
ordinary. She bowed him into the House. Taudde wondered what the building might have been before it had become a keiso establishment.

“It was a noble’s house, before the Laodd was built,” the girl explained when he asked her. “That was ever so long ago!” When she saw he was genuinely interested, she went on, “It was Mage Lord Meredde Rette Danoros Uruddun who built this house. He built lots of houses, all over Lonne, but this was his best. They say he had island blood, but they don’t mean Samenne when they say that! They mean Anaddon. The invisible island, you know, the island in the west, beyond the sunset. It’s a way,” the girl confided, “of saying he was a kind of mage without just saying so, because when Lord Meredde built Cloisonné House, mages weren’t really respectable the way they are now.”