Nothing. I was a little disappointed, but mostly relieved.
Well, since nothing bad was going to happen if I studied it, I studied it. As I said before, I like looking at fountains. Did I mention I’ve always wanted one? Yeah, I think I did. I wished I understood the mechanism more. I’d thought fountains were always sorcerous, but Kragar, who like me picked up odd bits of knowledge, had explained that the usual methods had something to do with the weight of the water forcing it up when stored in a reservoir somewhere, or else they built the fountain on top of an underground spring—
Wait.
An underground spring.
Dark Water. Water that had never seen the light of day. That metal rod I’d picked up, that’s why it was familiar: a rod filled with Dark Water was used to control the undead, which, of course, was a branch of—
Necromancy.
Okay, then.
How the fountain and the water and the mirrors and necromancy all connected with this place, I had no idea; but there was certainly a connection, and that was a lot more than I’d had an hour ago. I took a slow walk around the fountain, looking at the base. Obviously, the water I was looking at didn’t qualify as never having seen the light of day; but what if there was a spring beneath it?
“What are you looking for, Boss?”
“Really? Nothing. I’m mostly just thinking.”
“That would explain the—”
“Shut up.”
I stopped and closed my eyes and tried to reconstruct the entire path I’d gone through, to hold it in my head. It made no sense when seen as a building, so I tried to figure out if it somehow made sense as a series of connections—that is, if the flow of room to room made sense. No, it was even worse that way.
It made no sense as a building, it made no sense as a set of randomly connected points.
It was a platform, of course. No doubt that would make perfect sense of everything, if only I understood what it meant.
There were benches around the fountain, just like in the Halls. I sat down on one and leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees. Loiosh and Rocza shifted; Rocza hissed.
Okay, think of it as a platform. Imagine everywhere I’d been like an unrolled parchment. Maybe it crossed through time, or worlds, or some other crap I didn’t understand. Even so, imagine it like that. I hadn’t been in every room. But I’d seen what I needed to. This spot, here, was the middle. I could feel it. This was the middle, and that spot at the end of the cave was one end, and the other was—right. The front door, of course. The mysteriously locked front door.
It was all closed, that was the thing. From the now, to the past, to the Halls of Judgment, I had never left the “platform.” There was no way out. But if that was true, how had I ever gotten into the Verra-be-damned place?
That was easy: Devera. That’s why Zhayin had been so surprised to see me: he had thought no one could enter. And then, when I could enter, he couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t leave the same way.
Why had Devera been able to lead me through the door, but was unable to get herself out again? That was the key to the whole thing. And whatever the answer was, it had something to do with time, and the Halls of Judgment, and the nature of this strange manor. If I could go into the past, before the manor was built, I’d probably be able to learn something, but that was imposs—
Wait, was it?
Maybe I was looking at this wrong. Maybe it wasn’t about deciding where to build it, but deciding where to put it. What if Zhayin—no, Tethia, or maybe both of them—had built it wherever they happened to be when they started construction? Like, you couldn’t start something from scratch and already be living in it, so maybe you build it right near where you’re living at the time? If that was true, there was still a connection to the then of having built the place, along with the where of its construction.
Housetown. Someone—Zhayin? one of the servants?—had mentioned a place called Housetown.
Well, good. All I needed was to find out where Housetown was. Then I’d leave the manor, get over to Housetown, see what I could learn. Maybe I’d discover what I needed to know in order to be able to leave the manor.
What was it that Tethia had said? When I designed this platform …
There had to be a way from here to there; from this “platform,” to where—and when—it was made. Another anchor. I looked around. A courtyard with a fountain that exactly matched one in the Halls of Judgment: good place for a mystical, necromantic anchor, don’t you think? I looked carefully around the area, looking for something that could be a door to elsewhere, or elsewhen. Nothing. I went back in my mind over all the rooms I’d been in, to try to figure out where it was likely to be. The room of mirrors? The room of light? A false back to the cave?
I was so sure it would be here, though—in this courtyard. The correspondence just felt right. This had to be one of the transition points. The front door, the gateway to the Halls, and here. But how—
If Rocza had been upset when I sat down, she was furious when I stood up, or, rather, when I suddenly found myself on my feet, staring at the fountain.
Sometimes the answer is right in front of you. Dark Water. If it had been a jhereg, it would’ve bit me.
I jumped up onto the rim of the fountain, then down into the main basin, which looked all of eight inches deep. I fell a lot more than eight inches; more like three feet, and only my highly trained, cat-like reflexes kept me from twisting an ankle. Or luck, whichever. Three feet of water, yet I was only wet to just above my ankles.
I was out in the open. That’s the first thing you always pick up on, you know. Even before you’re aware of any particular features, like trees, or furniture, you know if you’re inside or outside. That’s why teleporting into caverns is so disorienting, although on that occasion I was too busy bleeding and coughing and passing out to fully experience the disorientation. But this time, I was outdoors. It was a little warm and very humid. There were a lot of tall but spindly trees towering over me, tall grasses in spots alternating with mossy stones. There were rolling hills about me, and the sky looked like it had before: some Enclouding, but not as much as in my day.
I’d come through, and gotten to where I thought I was going to go, and nothing was about to kill me. Loiosh and Rocza landed on my shoulders, and Loiosh was too amazed to tell me how stupid that had been.
I found a few rocks and sticks and stacked them up in case I needed to, you know, get back or something. When I was certain I remembered exactly which rock was in front of me, which tree to my left, and which blotchy stone I was standing on, I took a step forward.
The ground rose to my right, so I went that way, and in a few steps I saw the top of a building popping up over the trees. It was sprawling, not very tall, and if it had ever been walled, the wall had gone. It didn’t look like it had been built with defense in mind. If this was what they’d been calling a castle, they had a pretty loose definition of the term.
I moved closer, taking my time, trying to commit my position to memory with each step in case the manor snapped me back. Whenever I was, the “castle” was active: there was a bored-looking guard at a door, an equally bored-looking guard walking from the back toward the front, and two more strolling around on the roof pretending to be observant. I got as close as I could without stepping into the open. I wasn’t interested in a confrontation.