“You heard that, I suppose. Is the place falling apart or what?”
The princess didn't answer. She turned quickly and raced down the corridor, past fallen stones, past ancient brick and timbered walls. Shafts of errant candlelight from royal bedrooms, ballrooms, kitchens and halls pierced the holes and cracks in the walls.
Once, Letitia heard peals of laughter. Once, she heard a woman cry.
No wonder the princess is jaded beyond her years, Letitia thought. As a child, she must have seen everything from here.
“They're coming, Letitia. I don't care what m'lady says, we've got Badgies on our tail.”
“I know. Even I can hear that. Wait,” Letitia said, hurrying to catch up with DeFloraine-Marie. “They're there, and they're not far behind us, all right?”
The princess showed Letitia a gentle, lofty smile. “We don't have to do a thing. We're there.”
“What? I don't see a thing, we're where?”
“The peephole's gone, but I'm quite sure. I told you I remember anything I really want to. Obern Oberbyght's chambers are right here. Behind this wall.”
Letitia stared. “You think Finn's over there? Behind this? What are we supposed to do now? Isn't there any way in?”
“It's a wall, Mycer. What did you expect, a door with a nice shiny knob?”
As the princess spoke, another tremor shook the passageway. A fine veil of ancient mortar fell between Letitia and DeFloraine-Marie.
“I hate this, I really do.” The princess wiped a dainty hand across her face.
“Whatever's doing that, it's getting louder. I hope we're not buried in here. Julia, Finn's over there. We've got to get through.”
“Excellent idea,” Julia said, waddling over splinters, stones and fallen bricks. “That sound, by the way, is from that Millennial Bell, the thing that wakes the royals from their naps. It sounds quite different up here than it does down below, but it's the very same. I'm sure Her Ladyship will be glad to explain.”
“There's nothing to tell. Your creature's right, it's a bell.”
The princess seemed uneasy. Her lovely lips twitched, and she stared at the ceiling above.
“Look. I got you here, all right? Don't complain to me, that's all I can do. You'll have to think of something yourself.”
“You might help. I don't intend to stand here if my Finn's over there.”
Brushing dust from her eyes, Letitia turned and picked at the debris. She found a large brick, frowned at it and tossed it away. Finally, she lifted a broken plank, a thick piece of wood nearly two feet long.
“It's not much, but it's better than nothing at all. Please stand back, lady, I don't have a lot of room.”
“You're out of your mind. These walls are rotten to the core. You'll bring the whole thing down!”
“Good. That's what I had in mind.”
Letitia took a breath and rammed the timber heartily against the wall. Dust rained from the ceiling. Chunks of mortar clattered to the floor.
The princess moaned and rolled her eyes.
“The odds are good she's right,” Julia said. “You're likely to bring the place down. Still, our chances are somewhat better if you try. The Badgies I mentioned, the ones that aren't there? They are in this very passageway, as I mentioned before. My guess is they are somewhat less than eight minutes away.”
“That's impossible, you little horror. I told you no one knows about this place but me.”
“You're certain of that? No one at all.”
“My cousins are dead, and there's no one else who could possibly… know.”
DeFloraine-Marie bit her lip and frowned. “I suppose there might be. I did-meet someone here once. In this passageway, I mean. Not exactly here
“Oh, dear. I guess I forgot about that.”
“And who would that be?” Letitia asked.
“Maddigern. But there's really no concern. He wouldn't hurt me…”
FIFTY-THREE
Finn ran. Stumbled, fell to his knees on imaginary ground. Got up and ran again. It seemed like a foolish, useless gesture, but the only thing to do.
Where do you go when you run from an illusion, flee from a spell?
“Anywhere,” Finn answered himself. “Anywhere's better than nowhere at all.”
The spidery hand thundered again, pounding, crushing, grinding time to dust. The great machine clattered, ticked, hummed in the eternal sky. The horizon vanished in a blur. No way out, then, nowhere to go.
Nowhere, Finn told himself, but the worst, most horrid place he could conjure in his mind. The place where he would surely shudder into soup, porridge, mush with an odorous smell.
He ran, then, with all the speed he could muster when one is running nowhere at all, ran, and found the crawly-hole and slid under the rim of the Millennial Bell — promptly turned inside out, then outside in. Went to his knees. Retched. Tried to stand, fell down again.
“It's awfully hard coming out of those things. Jerks you around, makes you terribly sick. I see I don't have to tell you that.”
Everything was back, everything was real. The seer's cluttered chamber, the sizable sorcerer himself.
Finn stood. Shaky, dizzy and distressed, yet determined to face the magician standing up.
“What's this, then, another sly trick? A sudden show of mercy? Couldn't you stand the thought of doing me in yourself?”
“Oh, please.” The seer chuckled and shook his head. “Wherever did you get such a notion as that? If I wanted to do you in as you so crudely put it, there are easier ways than working up a spell. Which takes a lot out of you, in case you didn't know. I put you there to keep you out of mischief. I had a great many things to do…“
The seer was interrupted by a rumble, a toll, a deep resonation that shook the chamber's walls.
“… and not a lot of time, as I suppose you can tell. Though time, really, is not the proper word here. An interval, a gap, a spatial degree. At any rate, we don't want to be here when that thing hits the mark-my word, what's that?”
Oberbyght paused, frowning at the far wall. One of the immense, overstuffed shelves of papers and scrolls had begun to shudder, tremble and shift, as if it were trying to toss off its burdens and set itself free.
“Secondary shake, I suppose. Never seen it do that before.”
“What do you mean, not much time? That bell's going to-strike, whatever it does, am I right? And you don't want to be here. But that thing isn't really here at all.”
“Quite right. Good thinking, my boy.” Oberbyght nodded in approval, then took it all back. “That's what you fellows who aren't in the business fail to understand. You want your little love spells, and other greedy needs, but you don't want the scary magic stuff to show.”
“I'm not sure what you're trying to say. But then I never am.”
“Simply that the real and the unreal are one and the same. You think the lining of your jacket is the inside, and the fuzzy part's out. In truth, there isn't any outside or in. There's only a coat, you see.
“When a baker makes bread, you say, ‘there's a bit of dough,’ you don't say ‘there's a loaf.’ Tomorrow, though, that's what it is, and it's flour and such before that, and before that it's in a field. Truly, it's all the same.”
Finn gave the seer a wary look. “A sleeve and a jacket and a button are the dough of the tweed, and when they come together, you have a fine loaf… “
“Coat.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“That damnable racket. I do believe that shelf is coming apart.”
“I wish you wouldn't do that again. It always hurts my head.”
“You're not in the trade. I wouldn't expect you to understand. The point is, you can hear the sound, can you not? You can feel the tremble and the quake. That's the part that leaks through, a little spot where everything's real and everything's not. Like a rip in your jacket, you see. It's neither inside nor out…”
“Fine. Whatever you like. Now, Oberbyght, if you're finished fooling with spells and coats, I'd like to get out of here. I intend to free Letitia and Julia if I have to stomp every Badgie in the palace into dust. This nasty business of yours has cost me precious time. If those two are harmed in any way… “