And they were filled with water. At least, Willow assumed it was water-it was hard to tell in the dim light. Whatever it was, it was liquid, a little murky from the packed soil channels through which it ran. For it was not still; somehow, it was moving.
Willow turned, and Valerian anticipated her question.
“There’s a small device at the far end, pushing it around. It is powered by the cells, just like the lights.”
But that posed another question.
“What… is this?” was the best way she could put it.
“I haven’t the slightest idea. I rather fear it means my friend has gone mad.”
Willow saw one more thing.
On the far wall, across the other side of the watery maze, was a blank space, not hidden by electrical paraphernalia.
Some words had been painted hastily on it with a thick brush. Willow recognized them as more Latin. “What does that say?”
“The ramblings of a madman,” said Valerian sadly. “ ‘The miller sees not all the water that goes by his mill.’ ”
Valerian stood staring at the nonsense on the floor and on the wall in front of them, and would say no more.
Willow sat down and put her head in her hands. She had been carried into something she did not understand. It was easy to be swept along by Valerian when he was strong, but now he was weak and broken. He needed Willow, but she had no strength left. It was she who needed someone to guide her, and her only friend was running about the City miles away, on another crazy errand for his master.
They sat in the gloom of the cellar until finally the clocks in the house began to chime midnight.
As the chimes died away one by one, Willow looked up at Valerian, who shook his head slowly.
“December twenty-eight is done,” he said.
December 29
1
They sat in the Tower, drinking tea and brandy, chewing on stale bread. All three were lost in their own thoughts, and the mood was grim.
It had been about two o’clock in the morning when Valerian and Willow got home. Boy, who had been back for hours, practically throttled Willow when he saw her. Hugging her hard, he hadn’t let go of her until she’d made a small squeaking sound.
“How touching.” Valerian had said.
He looked terrible, and as far as Boy could tell, nothing had been done to his arm.
“Wasn’t Kepler there?” Boy had asked.
Neither Willow nor Valerian replied, and that was answer enough.
“Did you succeed, Boy?” Valerian replied.
Boy’s face fell. He stared at the floor.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“What?” spluttered Valerian.
“I couldn’t even get past the door.”
“And you told them my name?” Valerian thundered.
“I said, I couldn’t even get past the woman at the door.”
“Damnation!” shouted Valerian, and strode away across the room, kicking over a pile of books, heedless of his damaged arm. He stood with his back to them, his shoulders rising and falling, staring at the floor. Finally he turned round, but he was no longer angry.
“Well, it was Childermass,” he said.
They looked at him blankly.
“The unluckiest day of the year.”
They thought about the graveyard, and the burial, and Valerian’s arm and their fruitless trips across the City, and despite themselves, they all smiled.
“Fetch us food and drink,” Valerian had said, and Boy had found what he could, and taken it up to the other two in the Tower room.
When he got there he found Valerian and Willow standing by the table, above which was suspended the camera obscura.
“Come and look at this,” whispered Willow.
Valerian turned to him. “Haven’t you seen this before?”
“No,” he said. “You’ve never shown me what it does.”
“Come and see,” Valerian said.
There were two parts to it. On the floor of the room stood a round table with a clear white circle set in its surface. Above it hung some large pieces of equipment, made up of wooden boxes and tubes of brass.
On the white surface of the table was an image of the City immediately outside the house. It was as if viewed from the very summit of the Tower, but slightly distorted; lines that should have been straight, like the sides of buildings, were gently curved, warped by the seeing-eye of the camera. But nevertheless it was an extraordinary image of the world outside, viewed from within.
And it was a moving image.
Boy watched, his mouth open, as they saw lights flickering in windows along the street, and smoke whispering out of chimneys and up into the night sky.
There was a long wooden lever that seemed to control the camera, and as Valerian moved it, the picture swung so that a different view from the roof of the house was shown on the tabletop. They watched tiny figures scurry across the white circle like ants.
“It’s so…,” said Boy.
“Isn’t it,” said Valerian, nearly smiling. “Unfortunately, despite its beauty, it illustrates the precarious nature of my current predicament.”
“What?” asked Boy, not really listening. He gazed at the moving picture in front of him, trying hard to tell himself it was real, that it truly was what was happening that very moment down in the streets beneath the Tower. As Boy watched the ant-people hurry along, he felt a sense of power.
“I had it built to see danger,” Valerian said. “I keep watch here, night after night.”
Boy looked up. Valerian’s fear was there between them, almost tangible.
“What for?” asked Boy. “What are you watching for?”
Valerian’s voice was clear and calm and full of the promise of death.
“The end,” he said. “Him. It. Kepler said I was stupid to have this built. That it would do me no good even if I did see something coming for me. Maybe he was right, but at least this way I might get a little warning.”
Willow and Boy moved closer together and stared at Valerian, who turned his gaze back to the table. He moved the handle this way and that with his good arm, until he had scanned right around the Yellow House, checking all the streets and alleys.
Finally he pulled his eyes away.
“Did you find some food, Boy?” he asked.
They sat down to eat and the camera kept playing its dim but very real image of the outside world into the inner space of the Tower.
Valerian ate just a few mouthfuls and then fell silent, brooding in his great leather chair.
Boy looked at his master.
“You must eat,” said Willow, following Boy’s gaze.
So should we, thought Boy. Valerian said nothing.
“How’s your arm?” asked Boy. Then, getting no answer, “You didn’t tell me. What happened? Where’s Dr. Kepler?”
When Valerian still showed no sign of talking, Boy looked at Willow.
“Willow,” he said, “where is Kepler?”
“I-he-” began Willow, glancing at Valerian. “It seems-”
“It seems!” cried Valerian. “It appears! No! It is the case that Kepler has disappeared, and from the peculiar rantings in his cellar I think he has probably gone mad. My arm grows more painful, and I am running out of these.”
He waved a nearly empty vial at them.
“And then?” he barked, leaping to his feet. “And then? Who knows! By the new year I shall be pieces of flesh strewn around this room!”
He stopped, aware that he was shouting. Boy and Willow stared at him, clinging to each other.
Boy felt panic slip up his back and squeeze his throat. He wanted to be sick.
But Valerian had regained his composure and sat back down, as if resolved to his fate.