I don’t know why entering into a room I couldn’t see because of light was scarier than entering into a room I couldn’t see because of darkness. Maybe how weird it was? Probably.
I took a step into the room and didn’t die. I took another step, a smaller one, because now the idea of a table at shin height had set itself up in my head. I started sliding my feet forward. I heard the door close behind me, but I ignored it and continued. I kept going, and after what felt like miles, my foot reached the far wall. I was obscurely disappointed that I hadn’t cleverly detected any shin-level furniture.
I ran my hands over the wall, looking for a door. I had about concluded that either there wasn’t one or it was on another wall, when I found it. Then it was a matter of feeling for the knob, turning it, pushing—And I could see again.
“That was almost too easy, Boss.”
“Loiosh, never ever say that again.”
“Right. Sorry.”
There was a small, oval area. There was a white marble table with a sculpture sitting on it, and a corridor leading off to the left, and a curved stairway heading up with a round mirror placed so that I could see the top stair.
“Ah ha,” I said.
“Ah ha?”
“Ah ha.”
“So, you know where we are?”
“I think so. I think at the top of that stairway is the chamber where Zhayin does his sorcery.”
“Oh. Then why aren’t we going the other direction?”
I went straight across, no hesitations, and climbed the stairway.
It curved around to the left until I was pointing back the way I’d come, which, given the nature of this obnoxious structure, could mean I was anywhere pointing in any direction. I kept reminding myself of that in hopes of easing the shock the next time something bizarre happened. My boots made more of a scuffing than a tapping sound, for whatever reason.
There was a door at the top, opening outward. I put my hand on the knob, tried it, and it turned.
It was only a place set aside by a sorcerer to perform necromantic experiments in a building that didn’t make sense but clearly crossed over from world to world and had managed to trap Devera here. What danger could there possibly be?
“Boss—”
I pulled the door open.
8. Withering Depths
The room was pretty big, about a third of the size of the ballroom. The floor was black and there were designs painted in silver all over it: circles with lines connecting them and a few odd shapes here and there. There were lamps hanging from hooks on the walls, but they weren’t lit. The ceiling was high and had a very large window in it—maybe the biggest window I’d ever seen. The sky was orange-red, as it was supposed to be, so I could assume it really was the sky, and I wasn’t looking at some other world or something.
I took a step into the room. There were tables of varying heights scattered about. One full-size freestanding mirror leaned against the back wall; a second hung from the ceiling in the near corner. I took another step, avoiding a head-size circle on the floor because, well, I don’t know. Would you have stepped in it?
I approached the nearest table, which seemed surprisingly cheap and rickety and had paint spatters on it. It held, scattered about haphazardly, a couple of books, a steel rod, a jar of something yellow, two polished rocks and three unpolished ones, and a small clear globe with a greenish tint.
There was also dust. A thick layer of dust over everything. I mean, thick.
I looked back at the floor, and, yes, I could see my footprints in it.
No one had been in this room for years.
Well, okay then. I put that in storage with everything else I knew. I recalled Harro’s story, and thought about the beast, and decided I really did not want to be messing around in here. I wondered what the books were, but, no, I wasn’t even going to pick them up to find out. Then I tried to remember how much dust I’d seen in the other rooms as I went by, but couldn’t remember. Maybe that meant there hadn’t been much. I’m pretty sure if I’d tracked footprints in the dust I’d have noticed. I made a mental note to watch for dust from now on.
At the far end of the room on the right-hand wall was another door, and across from it one of those four-legged ladders servants use for lighting lamps that are placed too high to do any good. I stood for a while, looking at all the juicy objects, each one with its own story and its own uses, and maybe, if I’d been smart enough, its own piece of the puzzle. I wanted to pick things up; I was afraid to pick things up. I looked up at the window over my head. Loiosh helpfully remained silent. No, I mean it: it was helpful.
I cursed and, without giving myself time for second thoughts, picked up the steel rod from the table. It didn’t blow up, or shoot lightning bolts, or do anything else embarrassing. But it felt funny; its weight was oddly distributed. I turned it slowly in my hand. There was liquid inside it, flowing as I moved it, which is something I’d run into before, though I couldn’t remember the details. I set it back down and picked up one of the polished rocks, studied it, didn’t learn anything, put it down.
One of the books was called Creating Nexus Points, the other was An Inquiry into World Drift. I was pretty sure I could read them both and know as much as I knew now. I opened them, and they were both marked on the inside cover with a seal and the name Zhayin. Also, they were both very dusty.
I looked around the room again and shrugged. It was full of stuff, and no doubt full of information, but there was nothing I was capable of learning here. I went over to the ladder, looked up, and there was a sky-door. I climbed up, pushed the door open, and saw the sky. Then I went up the rest of the way and stepped out onto the roof.
I hadn’t expected it to feel that good to be out in the open again. The air felt moist, like it should after a rainstorm, and there may even have been a bit of drizzle left. I didn’t care. I took a look around and saw, yeah, you guessed it, mirrors built into the stone itself, facing inward, one on each side, each of them a little shorter than me, and a little wider. I walked all around the top of the manor. There were walls, and the great sweeping arches as I’d seen before I entered the place, but at the low points I could easily look over them. I enjoyed the view of the ocean-sea on one side, and of flatlands on another, and a jungle on yet another, and the sight of the road back home.
“You could jump down, Boss, and we could leave.”
“Jump down, maybe. Probably even survive. But how am I going to leave with two broken ankles? I’ve heard about broken ankles. People tell me they aren’t all that pleasant. Besides, you know we aren’t going anywhere until we’ve solved Devera’s problem.”
He sighed into my mind.
Just for the sake of completeness, though, I walked up right to the edge and climbed onto the wall at a low point. Or, rather, I tried to—without any sensation of movement, I suddenly found myself back near the door I’d climbed up from. Huh. I tried it with the other walls, and the same thing happened.
“See, Loiosh? Even if I wanted to—”