Mistle Child (Undertaken Trilogy) (12 page)

The path to Arvale lay open.

Both men leaned forward, looking for they knew not what.

“I see only mist. Silas, can you make anything out?”

Silas took a small step forward and said, “A great avenue of trees, the largest I’ve ever seen. Trunks wide as my house. They must be really old. Cedars, I think.”

His great-grandfather stepped up even with Silas, leaned in close, and whispered, “Now hold fast a moment. If it’s like it was for your father, they’ll return the call.”

A horn blasted from somewhere far beyond the trees. Deep and round was its call and the gates shook with the sound of it. Silas and his great-grandfather looked at each other. Here was no shrill, modern trumpet, but a sound instead like some giant-blown saga-horn, calling out its bellowing welcome from the mead hall of an ancient northern legend.

His great-grandfather looked nervous, but he quickly conjured calm back to his face. The corpse put his arms around Silas and held him for many minutes, while that mighty horn sounded again and again, reverberating in both their ears.

Augustus Howesman stepped back, but kept his hands on Silas’s shoulders. “Grandson, I think it’s time you got on your way. That horn sets my teeth on edge, I swear! Silas? Have a care, my boy, and come back to me.”

“I will, sir. I promise.”

And without another word, Silas walked away from his great-grandfather and through the tall gates and into the land beyond. Behind him, the gates shut with a crash. When he turned and looked through the bars, back at where he’d come from, he could no longer see his great-grandfather or any other familiar thing.

T
HERE WAS ONLY T
HE ROAD.

Silas walked and walked, unsure of the time or of how long he’d been traveling. He knew he’d passed through the gates at late morning. Was it dusk now? The sky had grown darker, and the land was now aglow with a golden, lingering light.

The road wound its way through the wood. Great trees formed into lines, flanking the road on both sides, casting wide shadows across the path. So large were these cedars, oaks, ash trees, and birches, that each looked as though it might have been planted on the first morning of the world. Their high limbs formed a canopy over Silas as he walked. When he looked up, stars seemed to descend from among the branches, and the air before him was suddenly alight with small white moths that flittered about the path, but parted like a tattered veil as he approached.

Farther on, the lines of trees became intermixed with slabs of stone, growing up from among the roots and boles. Long slim fingers of rock, crude gravestones, small tombs, carved granite sarcophagi . . . crawling up from the soft soil, crowding out the trees. Worn hexagonal stones paved the road, pushing up through the moss and leaf-mold. The path ascended and went over a small hill. What lay on the other side of the rise stopped Silas in mid-stride.

All along the roadway, a forest of monuments towered before him in mad Piranesian splendor. It was as if all the funeral structures of the world, from the earliest grave mounds to the most elaborate Roman tombs to delicately carved gothic mausoleums, had all been broken apart and erected here to form canyon walls rising above the avenue.

Among the tombs were massive carved busts rendered in marble, jade, jet, chalcedony, and quartz. Many of the faces felt familiar, bore what his mother might have called the “Umber look.” These adorned the tops of decorative columns, plinths, and pediments. Other pedestals bore skulls, some in their natural bleached state, others adorned with precious stones. In front of some of the older-looking tombs stood figures of tall youths in the Attic style, their plaited hair carved close to their heads, eyes blank, arms held straight down at their sides. Near these were tall fluted columns, on top of which perched stylized marble griffins, those ancient composite creatures once known as guardians of gold and the dead.

Higher and higher up the carvings climbed into the air, stacked precipitously like blocks from a titan’s toy box. Near the top were stone rotundas, surrounded by columns, positioned atop one another like layers of a wedding cake. They stood upon a thick marble base holding engraved slabs that might have borne the names of some ancestral Umbers in a far distant land.

Along the strata of awkward terraces, small trees clung to the cracked stone of the monuments, their snaking trunks bending this way and that around the columns, parapets, and elaborate carvings, striving up and up even as their roots pried loose bits of the masonry that supported them. Below those verdant vandals—strewn across the road where they’d fallen from the memorial battlements—were pieces of statues, broken pediments, and cracked chunks of dislodged decorative brick.

Cautiously fascinated, Silas ventured within some of the lower monuments. Many along the roadway, perhaps a reflection of the great Via Appia of ancient Rome, were decorated in the Roman fashion. Inside, Silas saw murals and carved marble portraits configured in various activities—hunting, playing games, drinking. One depicted a family eating before the deceased as the corpse held up a curved cup in a triumphant gesture. The sculptures of his surviving wife and child cast their eyes down upon the somber offering table, less enthusiastic about the funeral feast.

One after another, Silas explored the burial houses and tenements of the dead. Some bore readable inscriptions, brief, runic lines delineating thousands of individual lives. All remembered. All recorded. Yet in none of them did he encounter the dead themselves. Not a resident ghost in a single grave. Where
was
everyone?

As Silas walked toward a row of primitive-looking rock-cut tombs, he heard someone clear his throat.

From a small Etruscan mausoleum just ahead, a little light danced out onto the avenue and a tentative voice spoke.

“Are you Silas Umber, sir?”

“I am,” Silas said hesitantly, peering ahead, trying to see who was speaking.

“Good evening, sir. I am to take you to the house.”

A young man about Silas’s age stepped out from an ornate doorway holding a lantern. He was dressed in a very antique fashion, wearing breeches, a yoke-necked shirt, a vest, and a long wool coat. His long dark hair was tied at the back with a bit of leather cord.

Silas walked forward and then extended his hand. “I am Silas Umber. Pleased to meet you.”

The young man did not reach for Silas’s hand or immediately respond. He stood expectantly as though he was far off and Silas’s words had not yet reached him. But then he smiled suddenly, and replied, “Thank you, sir. I am to bring you to the house and make sure you don’t get lost, sir.”

“There is no need to be so formal. What’s your name?”

“Lawrence, sir. Um. Lawrence.”

“Do you have a last name, ‘Lawrence Sir’?” Silas smiled as he spoke.

“Umber. But you can call me Lars. If you like.”

“Really? Then we are kin, Lars Umber!” Without thinking, Silas took Lars’s hand this time and shook it, then looked at Lars in surprise. There was a feeling, a warmth, to the skin that was in no way preternatural. Silas knew what a ghost felt like, particularly its presence, and Lars was not a ghost. But his clothes were centuries out of fashion, so what was going on? Silas had assumed he was going to a house that would not be occupied by any living relatives. Now he wasn’t at all sure what lay ahead.

Obviously made uncomfortable by Silas’s tightening grip and the odd way he was being looked at, Lars drew back his hand and turned to the path. Lars held up the lantern and put his other hand in his pocket.

“Have a care, Silas. The ground is very uneven here.”

The two young men began making their way forward. The stones of the path were cracked and broken, some of the hexagonal tiles standing up along their fractured edges at all angles. Picking his way along, content to follow but still curious, Silas asked “Lars? How did you come to Arvale? In what year?”

“Not so long ago. I have only served at the house a short time. I came last year. Seventeen fifty-five, that was.”

Silas only nodded. This was mysterious and unfamiliar, but also a little exhilarating. What did it mean? Silas had just become accustomed to thinking of Lichport as both a world in itself and a crossroads. Now, here was another world waiting just on its edges. And behind this one, how many more? And behind those?

Lars was looking at him expectantly again. Silas wanted to ask Lars more about his situation, but he held back. He knew from his work that it was best to let a person, or place, tell its own story in its own time. So although Silas had never met another living person in the shadowlands and wanted to know more about Lars, he decided to wait and watch a little longer. He nodded to Lars again and said nothing about his suspicions.

“And what do you do at Arvale, may I ask?”

“I serve as footman.”

“But you are family. . . .”

“Only a very distant cousin. Besides, this isn’t my place. Not really. I only came here by accident, and the folk of the house took me in, and well, things being as they were, I thought I’d stay on, since there was a job and things were bad at home. Leaving was the best thing.”

“I totally understand,” said Silas. And he did. How many times in the last year had he wanted to hide somewhere? Or run away from his own problems?

The two walked abreast. The high-stacked memorials began to fall away from the roadside, and now, on either side were low round hills, some crowned with circles of stones, or tall single monoliths. Some of the hills were open at their sides like Neolithic tombs, their entrances fitted with limestone or granite slabs that might have at one time been opened or closed to allow the corpses of the dead to complete their journeys by returning to the earthen womb.

The road turned to the left, and Silas and Lars were in the open and could see the towers and high walls of Arvale before them. Silas’s stride slowed. He felt shaky and dizzy as he tried to focus on the house. It was as though someone had spun him around and around in a circle and then stopped him very suddenly. The house was so large, so sprawling, so vast in its dimensions, that Silas’s perception of distance was thrown awry. He had never seen a place like it, more medieval city than house. From every part rose towers, wings, and galleries, hundreds of chimneys, each with its own unique brick pattern. This was no common mansion or castle. Arvale was a world. A place unique and whole unto itself. Silas stared, trying to compass a complete image of the place. He knew that he was standing on the threshold of some estate of the otherworld. Yet here was neither worldly house, nor some mere misthome of trapped spirits. Here, his people had very deliberately built for themselves an ancestral dominion, a home of permanence, a place in which time could not assail them. This thought gave Silas an idea.

“Lars, let me catch my breath for a moment. You go ahead, I’ll be right there.”

“All right, but don’t leave the road,” said Lars, looking a little nervous. “I’ll wait for you at the bottom of the hill. It’s only a short walk to the house from down there. Don’t linger too long.”

There are some houses that are best approached with evening drawing in. They benefit from the long shadows that dusk provides, and are lent an air of ancient, somber resplendence by the way the last light of day lingers upon the stonework. Arvale was one of those houses. The coming darkness only made it look larger, for there was no telling where its high walls ended and its long shadows began.

Silas looked out over the mansions and towers of Arvale. All the time he’d been walking, curiosity grew in his mind. He wanted to use the death watch. There was no particular reason he could think of to do it, but this was a place very different from any other, and he wanted to know what further vistas of hidden perspective the death watch might show him. He took it from his pocket and opened the jaw to reveal the dial. But the hand wasn’t moving. He held it tighter, but felt nothing. Even the skull-shaped case, always so warm in his hand, was cold. The little wound gears and springs of the death watch had stilled, its tiny mechanical heart beat completely stopped.
No time,
Silas thought.
Or a place outside of time.
Closing the death watch and putting it back in his pocket, eager again for the company, Silas continued down the hill where Lars was waiting for him.