

ODD'S DOOR

BY

W.S. LACEY

SMASHWORDS EDITION

COPYRIGHT 2013 W.S. LACEY

Chapter One 3

Chapter Two 18

Chapter Three 24

Chapter Four 36

Chapter Five 43

Chapter Six 54

Chapter Seven 62

Chapter Eight 68

Chapter Nine 74

Chapter Ten 86

Chapter Eleven 95

Chapter Twelve 102

Chapter Thirteen 106

Chapter Fourteen 112

Chapter Fifteen 124

Chapter Sixteen 136

Chapter Seventeen 140

Chapter Eighteen 149

Chapter Nineteen 168

Chapter Twenty 181

Chapter Twenty-One 190

Epilogue 196

# Chapter One

Lewis Spender sat upright in the passenger seat and allowed his nerves to work on him. Beside him, Roger F. North hunched forward and narrowed his eyes as if the change in posture would somehow enable him to see through the driving rain that swept across the road. As they drove on in silence, gusts of wind sent sheets of rain slanting down in a regular, torrential cascade. Of the world around them, they could only see dark grey trees whipping around indistinctly in the teeth of the storm. Spender looked out his window with the private and well-contained enthusiasm that comes of being in a car travelling through horrendous weather. (This is not to be confused with the cozy and content feeling associated with lying in a warm bed while a storm rages outside. It is even quite unique from the nervous, giddy excitement that accompanies the shutting of all the windows in the house just minutes before the heavens issue forth an awe-inspiring summer storm. Although these are marvelous and noteworthy sensations, they are not what Lewis Spender felt as he watched the rain coursing in fat rivulets down the windows, casting long weak shadows on the inside of the car that shifted and undulated in the pale watery light.)

Without removing his gaze from the road or relaxing his grip on the steering wheel, North spoke for the first time in nearly an hour.

"He's mad, you know." Spender looked over in mild surprise.

"What?" The car sped on past a grove of trees, their pale leaves shivering and blowing away in the wind.

"At least I think there's a good chance he might be mad. The last two places we stopped for directions, did you see the way they looked at us? They sent us on with an amount of bewildered pity that I'm not sure I'm comfortable with. It would have been one thing if they hadn't known who he was but they acted like he was infamous."

"North, you're not afraid of him?"

"I'm not afraid," he said, "I'm not. There's just a good possibility that he's mad. It's something we should consider." A cliff had reared up on the right side of the road and towered over them as the road began a gradual but pronounced incline. As the car climbed, the storm became more intense. The wind howled down along the cliff face and nudged the car as if contemplating hurling it off the road and down into a rocky ravine.

Fortunately, the wind did no such thing and they drove on, passing a black gnarled tree that clung grimly to the sheer rock face and weathered the wind and rain with a certain sullen defiance. In front of them, a long circuitous fork of lightning flickered and branched in the sky, its purple-white light flooding the road, the cliff, and the stubborn tree. A moment later, a long and magnificent peal of thunder roared and rolled along the cliff and gave the car a shiver.

"I've just remembered," said North, "I forgot my umbrella."

Of course, Spender was just as anxious as North, if not more so. When the cliff they had been accompanying ended and the road took a sudden turn to the right, he felt his anxiety lurch from a passive sort of worrying to the short-breathed variety immediately preceding either a schoolyard fight or a public address. As the cliff fell back, an exceedingly tall and forbidding house reared suddenly into view, its narrow gables stabbing up at the dark sky in a humorless manner. The trees that surrounded the house and the road had bare, black, crooked branches and bore a strong familial resemblance to the stubborn tree they had seen not too long ago. Another fork of lightning split the sky and Spender and North shared a look of trepidation.

They went at a crawl through a wide wrought iron gate and came, at last, to an entrance paved with flagstones. Leaving their car, they ran up the stone steps and pressed the bell by the great black door. The rain at this point was coming down so fiercely that their dash did nothing to prevent their being completely soaked. Spender had remembered his umbrella and so was spared the worst of it, though the wind was sending icy buckets of rain flying sideways in such a manner as no umbrella could completely overcome. North had had no choice but to brave a good drenching.

The door opened to reveal a small, stooped man with wispy colorless hair. He greeted them in a whisper and, without noticing, Spender and North began to whisper as well.

"We're here to speak with Mr. Webley; we called earlier," North said.

"Ah, Messrs. Spender and North, you are expected." The man hobbled to one side and gestured in a less than expansive way for them to enter. The hall they entered was high ceilinged, severe, and would have looked down on frivolity if front halls could do such a thing. A chandelier provided a subdued light that faded into gloom as it reached feebly into the corners of the hall. As Spender gazed at the altogether very imposing staircase that swept down on both ends, the man closed the door behind them with some effort. North had just reached out to touch the nose of a somber and jowly bust when an imperious voice shattered the silence.

"Imbecile!" A man whose appearance was very much in keeping with the storm and the house had materialized at the top of the stairs. He looked pointedly at North, "Refrain from dripping water on the parquet!" Spender and North both started, either due to Mr. Webley's appearance or to the particularly well timed and dramatic crack of thunder that heralded it. North attempted an 'I beg your pardon' but was cut off.

"Speak up, you," Mr. Webley said. "Why are you whispering; are you simple?" He descended the stairs and looked critically at Spender. "Your colleague seems to be a simpleton." Spender murmured an abstract kind of apology and looked at North with a (by now familiar) look of bewildered pity. North was by no means a fool but, under the circumstances, they felt ill equipped to argue the point. As such, for the duration of their interview with Mr. Webley, North was treated as an idiot. (This put him out for quite some time. Anyone who has ever been suddenly and forcefully misunderstood can understand the amount of indignation he felt all that day and the next morning as well.)

Mr. Webley turned and directed his rather intimidating attention elsewhere. "Shapwick, show these young men upstairs." He went half way up the staircase and stopped with his hand on the banister. "And send Mrs. Minting along, will you."

#

Spender and North sat in front of an admittedly impressive fireplace, faced by Mr. Webley who, instead of sitting, stood with his hand on the tall straight back of his chair in a proprietary manner.

"Would you like Turkish coffee?" he asked.

"I would, sir," North said.

"Well we haven't got any," Mr. Webley said frostily. "Mrs. Minting, will you bring two cups of tea? Two lumps each, I think." Mrs. Minting, a conscientious and relatively unremarkable woman who will not appear again, drifted away, presumably to the kitchen. When Spender and North had their tea, Mr. Webley sat and steepled his fingers in exactly the way a person like Mr. Webley would. "I understand that you wish to visit the asylum," he said.

"Yes sir," Spender said, "as an important histor-" Mr. Webley cut him off.

"I am aware of the significance of the institution. It is due in large part to its storied history that it has not been razed to the ground. After its dissolution by my father, it was to be developed," this he said with a certain amount of distaste, "but due to an outcry by a dedicated few, I thought better of it and have retained the property to this day. The asylum at Quartersoake remains privately owned, as it has been for generations." Spender made a dogged attempt to reenter the conversation.

"My colleague and I would like the opportunity to-"

"I rarely allow anyone to visit the asylum due to the sensational nature of a series of events that unfolded late in my father's tenure there. I will have no thrill seekers." He narrowed his eyes at Spender and North.

"Our interests are purely academic, sir," North said.

"Quiet, you!" In the ensuing silence, Mr. Webley looked fiercely at them. After a short while, he folded his hands and put his chin down on his chest. What he said next had a practiced, well-worn sound, as if he had said it many times before or perhaps had spent long hours thinking about what he would say.

"Ten years before the war, a man with modest success as a playwright and great notoriety as an occultist was admitted to the asylum due to a number of unhealthy predilections." Spender and North, both having heard something of this (though they had only gotten scraps and distortions and had neither of them found a source half as good as Mr. Webley), were sorely tempted to interject but, knowing what they did of Mr. Webley, wisely maintained their silence.

"While at the asylum, Adelard Odd was given a great amount of freedom. This proved disastrous. Before an ignominious death brought on by pneumonia, he caused two disappearances and one death, all from the confines of his cell. They entered his room and never came out. Shortly thereafter, the asylum was closed for unrelated reasons. The public believed otherwise and the passage of time has done nothing to dull the rumors that surround the place and the man."

As you may have already guessed, this scandal was the sole reason for Spender and North's interest in the asylum (their carefully worded and painstakingly dry letter of inquiry to the contrary). It took considerable self control for them to only express as much interest as was polite.

Mr. Webley stood and faced the fireplace. Just as Spender had begun to wonder if he had forgotten that they were there, he spoke again.

"Tomorrow at eleven o' clock, you will meet a Mr. Harris in Quartersoake. He will accompany you to the asylum and will give you instructions regarding your conduct. He has been given care of the property and is responsible for its upkeep; as such, you will heed him as you would me. Shapwick," he said in a conversational tone, "escort them to the door." Shapwick, who was suddenly and disconcertingly right beside them (Both Spender and North would have been prepared to swear that he had not been in the room a moment ago and it was, truth be told, a very large room with very little to hide behind), nodded deferentially.

"Thank you, sir, for seeing us," Spender said. Mr. Webley looked at him oddly for a moment.

"Eleven o' clock sharp. Good day gentlemen," he said.

The night that had fallen during their interview was wild and black, filled with the howling wind and lashing, frigid rain. As North wrapped his overcoat around himself and turned up the collar, he did so with the bleak resignation that attends long trips home through bad weather at a late hour. (A feeling not unlike that experienced when waking up very early in the morning with the knowledge that a return to bed can not be effected for a long, long time.) Beside him, Lewis Spender was conscious only of a keen and unmitigated anticipation.

#

Quartersoake was tucked away in the back corner of a sleepy countryside. It was the sort of town that had little to offer to outsiders; not by any fault of its inhabitants, who were mild and retiring, if extremely elusive, but for the sole reason that there was very little in it.

They met Mr. Harris in front of the church, which was the only real landmark in the town. He sat, feet dangling, on the low churchyard wall with his hands in his pockets and his eyes squinted against a stiff breeze. He wore a brown coat and muffler and, as he alit from the wall to greet them, he pushed a pair of atrociously scratched and dusty spectacles higher on his nose.

"Hello," he said, "I'm to take you to the asylum. Arthur Harris."

"Roger North."

"Lewis Spender." They shook hands and promptly shoved them back into the depths of their pockets.

"The asylum is several miles from Quartersoake proper," Mr. Harris said. "I'll take you there."

It was a blustery day and the winding road out of the town was a sodden mess, covered with expansive mud puddles that reflected the white-grey wash of a sky that seemed one gigantic cloud.

"It makes good sense to have an asylum secluded in such a way, I suppose," Mr. Harris said. "I can't imagine many people wanting lunatics for neighbors, not that you can avoid that under normal circumstances anyway. I once lived beside a man who would carefully and deliberately water his front step with a watering can every day of the winter. For the longest time I thought he was stark raving mad. I came to find out he just hated visitors." Mr. Harris paused and chewed his lip pensively. "It's also well situated for the peace and quiet a disturbed mind craves. That's very often all a lunatic needs, you know; a good lie down and some hushed tones. At any rate, it's as quiet as the grave there."

"Do you live on the grounds?" North asked.

"Oh good Lord, no," said Mr. Harris. "It's creepy as all get out. I have the hardest time even getting someone to come out and fix the place up and no one will so much as set foot in the Broken Wing."

"The broken wing?"

"But that's what brings you here, isn't it?" Mr. Harris looked over confidentially.

A long row of cypress trees lined the roadside, swaying and susurrating in the wind. The asylum sprawled just beyond. Even at a distance it looked utterly deserted. Its shadowy, recessed windows and dark, lichen stained stone walls listed slightly above a wide circular drive, in the middle of which was a large fountain filled with dry leaves. Spender thought that it did not appear to be "creepy" so much as sad and derelict.

Mr. Harris drove them through the gate and they debarked, again braving the blustery morning that sent chilly drafts up their trouser legs. He stopped them just outside the entrance.

"Right; before you go in, these are Mr. Webley's rules and stipulations: you aren't to take anything out or leave anything there. If you see or hear anything out of the ordinary, you are to leave immediately. You are not to go into the Broken Wing. You are forbidden from entering Adelard Odd's room in the Broken Wing and, above all, you are not to touch or in any way interact with Odd's Door. Upon completion of your tour, Mr. Webley desires you to return to him for an interview." Mr. Harris looked skyward. "I do believe that's everything. Do you have any questions?"

"What's the broken wing?" Spender said.

"And why the particular emphasis on Odd's door?" North said. Mr. Harris stopped short and looked at them as quizzically as one can.

"You don't know?" He turned away. "They don't know." He turned back. "What do you know?"

"Very little," North said. "We know that Adelard Odd managed to murder three people in his cell and that two of them were never found."

"And Mr. Webley told you that, did he?"

"Yes."

"That's not the half of it. I mean to say, that really isn't true at all. The actual circumstances were substantially more..." He trailed off. "You'd better come with me."

They followed Mr. Harris back down the drive to the gate. There was a small, vine covered, crumbling gatehouse at the bottom of the drive and it was to this that he led them. After trying several keys with no luck, he tested the doorknob and found that it had already been unlocked. Sheepishly, he let them in and began clearing great stacks of yellowed paper from a table. The room was incredibly cluttered and was lit by a single shaft of light that struggled through the begrimed window and was filled with shining dust motes that swirled as the still air of the gate house was stirred by their arrival. Mr. Harris drew chairs from the corner and swiped at the seats with his handkerchief.

"I suppose it shouldn't come as a surprise that you don't know; so few do. I believe Mr. Webley himself is ignorant of the facts. As you may know, it was Mr. Webley's father that ran the asylum when Adelard Odd was committed. Webley the elder made the bad mistake of not taking Odd seriously. I wouldn't say that he necessarily humored him, humor not being in the Webleys' repertoire, but he did allow him books, projects, and callers. He even let him have some of his own furniture brought in to spruce the place up a bit.

"The whole time, Odd seemed content to take short walks and do a bit of writing in his room. He kept to himself for the most part and, to all outward appearances, was the picture of sanity. The first sign that they had horribly misjudged him came when a Dr. Fitzroy searched his room and read what he had been writing."

"What happened?" North asked.

"He went blind. It was very terrible and one would think that it would have served as a warning, but no one could force themselves to make the connection. To accuse someone, even Adelard Odd, of striking a man blind, would seem unforgivably backwards. They were medical men and wouldn't be caught dead entertaining a superstitious or unscientific thought. Not so with the orderlies. They stopped cleaning his room and wouldn't even look directly at him. That may have been the greatest mistake of all." The gatehouse groaned and settled.

"One day, Dr. Webley entered Odd's room with the intention of speaking to him. Odd wasn't there and, in the middle of what had previously been a blank wall, was a door. He immediately called in several of the orderlies and, as they hadn't entered the room for some time, no one could really say how long the door had been there or how it had gotten there."

"Did they open it?"

"I believe they did, yes. The wall it was on was directly adjacent the cell of a man named Wood, who sometimes thought himself invisible and sometimes couldn't recognize his own face in a mirror. At any rate, the door didn't lead anywhere; it opened to a wall covered in what could only be described as hieroglyphics. They shut the door in a hurry, remembering, I imagine, what had happened to Dr. Fitzroy and went off in search of Adelard Odd at once.

"Whether by sheer bad luck or poor timing, or because Odd had masterminded the whole thing, Webley and his men found themselves always a step behind him. After nearly an hour of searching, they were hot on his trail when they came to the main entrance." Mr. Harris pointed out the gatehouse window. "There, they were told that he had received a visitor and they at once made a mad dash back to his room. After the fact, they recorded feeling a vague and unjustified dread. Odd was, after all, not known to be violent and had never attempted to escape. The only thing out of the ordinary was the inexplicable door.

"When they came to his room they found it shut and somehow barricaded. They could hear Odd and his visitor inside and soon put their shoulders to the door. Odd's voice rose and fell in a constant, unintelligible stream as they battered it down. Just as the door splintered and gave way, those present were aware of a sudden strangeness; there was a nearly imperceptible stir in the air and at least two doctors later remarked that they had heard a low rushing sound.

"They found him standing in the middle of the room, holding a small red book in his hand. They quickly subdued him and, after he had been dragged away, began to search for his caller. The search was short and fruitless. Dr. Webley was obligated to call the police and, not long after, the asylum was the focus of the 'scandal of the vanished woman'."

"Adelard Odd's visitor was a woman?" Spender asked.

"Yes, the only trace they ever found of her was a shoe in Odd's room. He was interrogated vigorously as to her whereabouts and the circumstances of her disappearance but kept his silence. It seemed that he would carry his secrets to the grave and it was to be a short journey, at that. He fell ill and wasted away at an astonishing rate, dying in agony at the stroke of midnight one night, with only a nurse and an armed guard there to hear his last words."

"What did he say?" asked North.

"Well, I said that they were there to hear his last words, not that they actually did. The nurse had just stepped out of the room, you see, and the guard had fallen asleep. He called out and woke the guard who attempted to aid him in his final throes. His death would have seemed to have been the end of it, had it not been for Dr. List.

"In the months following Odd's death, a fair number of the doctors gave their notices for various reasons. As the asylum's staff dwindled, Dr. Webley found it necessary to find replacements. I believe that he was on the verge of accepting Dr. List sight unseen when he invited him to the asylum for a meeting. There are many people who fear disreputability more than death and I would not hesitate to number the late Dr. Webley among them; still, the captain will go down with his ship and he no doubt believed that he could still scrub clean the asylum's escutcheon.

"The day of his arrival, before Dr. Webley ever set eyes on him, List wandered off through the grounds. An orderly saw him enter Odd's room and rushed to intercept him, to no avail. Dr. List vanished as if he had never existed and with him vanished any hope of the asylum being able to continue. After all, no one wants to work in a place where walking through the wrong door is liable to cause them to be wiped off the face of the earth.

"In the absence of Adelard Odd, Dr. Webley was certain that it was that door in his room that was responsible. Even as his patients were shipped elsewhere and the last of his staff regretfully tendered their resignations, he hired men to remove the door and, if necessary, the entire room to excise the curse that had taken up residence there." Mr. Harris stood and went to the window. "Do you see how one wing of the asylum seems to be sinking slightly?" The asylum sprawled out on either side of the main entrance and Spender and North could see that one side was markedly lower, lending to the overall impression of dilapidation. "If you look closely, you might see a large crack running from the foundations all the way to the roof."

"How did it happen?" North said.

"One of the men on the crew that Dr. Webley hired put a pry bar behind the frame of Odd's Door. He died violently and the entire building shuddered before splitting apart. That was the end; Dr. Webley left the next day, locking the gates behind him.

"The asylum remained undisturbed for ages. I do believe that, when Mr. Webley provided me with this situation, I was the first living soul to set foot on the grounds in nearly seventeen years." Mr. Harris smoothed out the front of his trousers and sighed heavily. "I suppose you understand now, how important it is to stay well away from that door. I'll take you up to the entrance. When you've finished, you can find me here at the gate house."

"You're not coming with us?"

"I'd get in the way of your finding of facts, color your perceptions, and, as I mentioned before, it really is incredibly creepy. I'll take it on good faith that you won't sneak into the Broken Wing to have a look at Odd's room." Here Mr. Harris looked at them with such a conspiratorial air that he was nearly winking. This would have been rather insulting had it not been for the fact that Spender and North were planning to do just that.

The wind had dropped off and the walk back up to the asylum entrance was almost pleasant. As Mr. Harris left them at the doors, North thought that he saw a suspicion of sunlight warming and piercing the cloudy sky.

"In we go," Spender said.

"No turning back," North said. With a soft and despairing creak, the door gave way and Spender and North entered the asylum.

# Chapter Two

The outdoors had begun to encroach on the front hall. A few dry leaves were scattered about the floor and a pronounced draftiness suggested that, somewhere, a window or skylight had been broken. They heard the flutter of beating wings and, looking up, saw a sparrow perch just below the weathered cornice.

As they walked down the corridor, listening to the asylum's sighs and grumblings as it shifted on its foundations, North reflected that he had never seen a place quite like it. Anyone who has explored an abandoned house will know the strange feeling he was struck with. It was, he thought, like being in a shrine or a monument, like walking through a bodiless mausoleum. The first cell they came to had a bed frame, a wardrobe, and a small desk with a chair beside it. They went in after a moment's hesitation and Spender opened the wardrobe. Inside, there was a single black coat and a large pile of mothballs, all covered with a fine layer of dust.

"Someone's left their coat in here," he said.

"After twenty years, I don't think they'll be missing it," North said. "Look, there's something in this desk." The top drawer of the desk did have a folded piece of paper in it. North opened it and read

"Dear Madame, I have been told that the Mr. Unwin with whom I have passed many pleasant evenings does not exist. After reflecting on this for some time from the vantage point of my cloistered life here, I have come to the conclusion that it would be wise to acquiesce. I feel that Mr. Unwin will forgive my ill-mannered denial of his existence, if only because doing so will result in my freedom. I have always found Mr. Unwin to be exceedingly understanding in such matters.

"If you will be so kind as to write a short note to him explaining my situation, I would be very grateful. Please place the note in an empty milk bottle and leave it in the pantry. It will be sure to reach him there. With Humility, Your Nephew, Charles."

"How very extraordinary," Spender said.

After returning the letter to the desk, they returned to the corridor where they continued on, made a left, and went up two flights of stairs. Presently, North stopped short.

"That's probably safe to cross." They had come to the crack. Years of rain and snow had faded and weathered the floor and walls around it, and the sun, which had finally broken through, filtered down into the corridor. Cautiously, they approached it and, looking up, were able to see a tiny patch of sky.

"Probably," Spender said. One ungainly large stride brought them over the crack and there, hanging slightly ajar, was the door to Odd's room. Its panels were a mass of craquelure and, as Spender tentatively pushed it, he was surprised that it swung open silently.

Odd's room was bare. A single window looked out on the asylum's front drive and let the sunlight fall over the windowsill and across the floor. Spender and North noticed that the room was almost unnaturally hushed and still. The Door stood in the middle of the right hand wall, seeming very sinister despite its ordinary, even mundane, appearance. North was aware of a feeling of dreadful anticipation that grew stronger and stronger until Spender stepped forward and the floorboards creaked underfoot.

"Two people, North," Spender said. "How do you think he did it?" North followed him, staying slightly behind and looking back to the corridor. "I wonder if it's locked." As if in a reverie, Spender reached forward and turned the knob. North averted his eyes, only looking up when he was sure that Spender had not been stricken blind or worse.

"It's empty;" he said, "that Harris said there was a wall covered in symbols." Spender let out his breath.

"Well, that's that. I suppose this is Wood's room." They went through the door, which North thought was not really sinister after all, and poked around in Wood's room, finding, among other things, a hat rack with a pair of galoshes hanging from it and a framed mirror with a plaque reading 'Eustace Wood, his reflection'. All the tension and mystery had gone so, with relief and disappointment, they went out into the corridor, down the stairs, and back through the front hall.

The wind had stopped and the sun must have come out in full force, as the hall was flooded with light. They went out, squinting, into an unexpectedly warm day, thinking that the fine weather might have drawn Mr. Harris out of the gatehouse. They looked, but could not see Mr. Harris; in fact, they couldn't see the gatehouse. The leaf filled fountain was gone, replaced by sparse dry grass. Both Spender and North stopped short, as does someone who suddenly realizes that he must have made a wrong turn. North bemusedly turned in a circle.

"What is this?" The gate, the wall, and the cypress trees were gone, replaced by a wide expanse of hard packed dust or sand with small, intermittent patches of parched long grass and weeds. The sun blazed high in a cloudless sky. Spender felt a jump in his stomach and he looked back to make sure the asylum hadn't disappeared as well.

"How did he ever?" he trailed off.

"One wonders," North said very quietly.

"There seems to be a crest over there," Spender said, pointing, "let's go take a look around."

As they made their way to the small hill, North lost his shoe. It was not that it fell off so much as North's foot kept moving and the shoe stayed where it was, allowing his foot to pass right through it. Spender stopped and looked back. At that moment, North's watch fell through the bottom of his pocket and lay glinting on the dust. As North looked up in dumb confusion, he suddenly began to sink into the earth, almost as if his body and the ground had suddenly ceased to interact with each other. He had time to say "Oh!" before he sank completely out of view.

Spender ran to the spot and kicked at the ground, which, he would later admit, was a bit silly and futile. "North!" he shouted, "Roger!" For a time, he paced back and forth, occasionally waving his arms and yelling. He started back for the asylum, stopped, and sat down on the ground. He had gotten dust in his eye and the whole situation was ludicrously strange and frustrating. After feeling helpless for a good long while, Spender stood and dusted off his trousers. After picking up North's shoes, watch, and pocket oddments, he straightened up, picked a direction, and began walking away from the asylum.

#

He had never before seen such a vast and featureless wasteland. After walking for a good part of the day, the asylum had diminished to a speck. In all other directions, the horizon was a distant hazy line broken only by a shimmering mirage. With his jacket over his shoulder, Spender kicked a stone along and wondered. How had Adelard Odd done this and why? Did the others who vanished suffer the same fate as North? What had happened to North? Spender imagined a horrible death, crushed and smothered under tons of dark, airless dirt.

He sent the stone skittering along the ground and decided that it would be better to think of other things, things like cold lemon squash and a comfortable chair. The sun beat down on his shoulders as it moved with obdurate slowness from its zenith.

#

The sun, which had sunk to the horizon and gleamed orange-red through the dust laden air, was shining directly in Spender's eyes such that he wished he had decided to go in the other direction. The air had grown cool and he had put on his jacket, thinking that perhaps he would lie down and sleep for a while. One place, he reasoned, was as good as another here and he didn't much like the idea of trying to rest in the heat of the day. On the other hand, he hadn't seen a sign of life or water all day. He decided at last that he would keep going, in the hopes that he would be able to make his way out of the interminable wasteland before he died of thirst.

Just as the last flash of sunlight dipped below the horizon, Spender stopped abruptly. He felt that there was something large directly behind him. He slowly turned and found that a large leafless tree had materialized at his heels. Although this was, by his count, the third impossible thing he had seen that day, it did not fail to unnerve him. Turning back around, he almost ran into another tree which had appeared, like the first one, out of nothingness. Spender heard a whispering of a noise and saw a dark flicker out of the corner of his eye. With witting apprehension, he looked around and saw a great many trees where none had been a moment before. He became aware that he was standing in deep shade.

A lightness in the sky where the sun had set was Spender's only point of reference and it was with great difficulty that he made it out through the mass of bare branches that were silhouetted against the dusk. Even the ground seemed different, though it was still strangely bare of brush or grass. He now found himself in the depths of a boundless weird wood.

#  Chapter Three

Spender had been picking through the wood, which was not untowardly dense, when he found himself standing on a path. In spite of its improbably geometrical zigzags, he discovered that it went in roughly the same direction he had been going. He had most likely been walking parallel to it for some time, he thought, if it had not just popped out of the æther as the forest had. Although it was much easier going, an eerie feeling that crawled up the back of his neck made him go back into the trees.

At once, he heard something that sounded like a rock hitting a tree trunk. It was the first sound he had heard in the wood and he stopped, listening intently. He went on and had not gone more than ten paces when he heard branches snapping off the trees. Something, very large by the sound of it, was coming his way. His heart in his mouth, Spender darted to the biggest nearby tree and pressed up against it. In a moment, a great monstrous Thing came thumping through the trees, snuffling and searching as its giant flanks brushed against the tree trunks. Spender held his breath and listened, wide eyed. A creature that prowled through a sudden forest at night and seemed to be hunting him was not the sort of creature he wanted to be found by. Looking down, he realized that he was still carrying North's shoes. When the snuffling head seemed to swing one way, he threw one of the shoes the other as hard as he dared. It landed high in a tree some way off in a clamor of breaking twigs. The Thing wheeled around and crashed off, leaving Spender to creep away while breathing as quietly as he could.

#

Throughout the long night the Thing dogged his trail. Spender heard it lumbering along, sometimes to his left, sometimes to his right and sometimes, frighteningly, seeming to be ahead of him. He no longer moved in a straight line or stayed in one place; instead he dashed from tree to tree. Branches hung like pale specters in the air and, on those occasions that he paused to look around and steel his nerve, the whole forest seemed to be floating in the black night.

Twice more the Thing came awfully close. Each time he drew it off, once with North's other shoe and once with his own watch. He considered getting on the path and trying to run but thought better of it. The Thing was horrifically fast for its size and he still did not dare contemplate what would happen if it caught him. As Spender staggered, exhausted, through the wood, he thought that he could see the night sky fading to a light grey. As the trees were tinged with the first hint of dawn, he realized that he could no longer hear the Thing and had not for some time. He looked at North's watch, but it had stopped. Glancing around, he carefully and stiffly sat down and leaned against a tree.

He did not know that he had fallen asleep until he was woken up by toppling over. Pebbles and stones were casting long thin shadows in the light of the morning sun; with the break of day, the weird wood had vanished as quickly as it had appeared. With weary disgust, Spender took off his jacket and, balling it up, made a serviceable pillow. After pausing for a moment of quiet desperation, Spender turned his back to the sun and sleep overcame him.

#

He awoke in the heat of the day, hungry and with a tortuous thirst. After walking for a while, he tried sucking on several pebbles (thinking fleetingly of Demosthenes) but found that he was still thirsty, only now with a gritty mouth. On top of that, he was full of aches and pains, as anyone who has ever slept on the bare ground might have guessed. Still, the adventure and novelty of walking through such a barren and desolate place was not lost on him. It was far better, he reflected, than being torn to bits and eaten by a Thing or dropping down into the earth. It was, perhaps, even better than contending with Mr. Webley. He briefly wondered how Mr. Harris had got on before returning to his ever present thoughts of shade and a cold drink.

#

Spender had whistled a few dozen of his favorite tunes before his mouth became too dry, at which point he embarked on an attempt to remember, in chronological order, every embarrassing thing he had ever done. It did not make for a particularly pleasant time and he fervently wished that he had brought something to do. It was late in the day when his shoelace broke, his shoes not being well suited for two days' hard hiking. He was hunkered over his shoe tying a knot when a shadow fell across him. He looked up.

"Oh no, not again." A tree towered over him and, just past it, two more had appeared at the very moment of sundown. He looked into the distance and noticed that the first trees had again started coming up near him. It was, in more ways than one, a very unnatural forest.

He did not hesitate for an instant but began moving towards the sunset, half loping in his hurry and keeping his eyes ahead. He could hear sudden bursts of moving air as, all around him, trees came into existence. He looked back over his shoulder, which turned out to be a bad mistake as he nearly ran into a tree; the whole forest had sprung up the instant he glanced away. With a sick, fearful resignation, Spender again saw the twisting path and heard the heavy ponderous shuffling of the Thing as it sought him.

As he was harried and pursued that second night, he was tempted, several times, to risk being found and caught just to get a glimpse of the Thing that stalked him. All he could tell from the sound of it was that it seemed to go on all fours and that it was much, much larger than the largest bear he had ever heard of.

Once that night it very nearly caught him and he was forced to slowly inch round a tree as it circled around. Why it had not yet tracked him down he did not know; he had begun to despair at the possibility that he would make it out alive. By the time dawn had begun to wash the sky in pale light, he had thrown away everything except his own shoes and North's watch. He was quite certain that it could very well be the last day of his life.

#

Spender put his jacket over his head and slept through the heat of the third day. His eyes burned and his tongue would no longer wet his lips. He was too tired to be afraid, too tired to think. He drifted into consciousness out of a deep black oblivion and sat up, closing his eyes and breathing in the cool of the evening.

He staggered to his feet, leaning against a tree that had not been there before. He was miserable and weak but he resolved to face his fate. He was not sure that meeting the Thing would be much worse than succumbing under the hot sun.

#

The Thing seemed more cunning than ever and there was hardly a time when he could not hear it just behind him, swinging its head and moving through the trees. Spender tripped over something and quailed as the Thing gave a loud guttural snort. It stayed perfectly still as it waited for him to move and make a noise. He looked down and saw that he had tripped over a shoe.

With dull incomprehension he looked around and saw, scattered through the wood in a wide swath, shoes and sandals and crude metal bands. Giddy hope welled up in him and he quickly tossed the shoe as far as he could. The Thing didn't charge off as it had before and, after a moment of willing himself forward, he broke out in a run. The Thing bayed and leapt after him with such ferocity that it sounded as if it had uprooted several trees.

He was exhausted, hungry, and thirsty and running soon became excruciatingly painful. His breath was ragged and he had an unforgiving stitch in his side but the Thing was right at his heels, plowing into trees and chuffing menacingly. Through a haze, Spender heard a series of thumps and cracks as the trees around him began to disappear. He dared to look back and saw, for a brief instant, a gigantic furry creature the size of a rhinoceros with wide flung scuttling legs like a crab, a long protuberant snout that ended in a circle of gnashing teeth, and no discernible eyes. He gasped, ran straight into a tall rocky outcrop, and was sent sprawling. The beast thundered towards him, howling in a low, stentorian fashion. As he scrambled in the dirt and cringed, the howl was cut off. He looked up, face streaked in dirt and bleeding from the nose.

The Thing and the forest were gone and the sun was creeping into the sky. He rolled over onto his back and cackled the way one would if one were alone in the wilderness and had just escaped being eaten by something that had no right to exist. His surprise was profound when a young woman's face appeared over the top of the rock.

"Thu a dèanamh dè tha," she said. Spender was completely unmanned.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Wyt ti'n dod." She was pale, with dark eyes and flyaway black hair.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand you. Do you have any water? Water." He stood up and did a passable pantomime of pouring a drink into a glass. She looked at him for a moment before sliding down off the rock and thrusting a leather skin into his hands.

As he drank (a moment so glorious that the memory of it would stay with him for a long time), she rattled off a long string of incomprehensible language and waited expectantly.

"I really don't know. I wish I did." He smiled foolishly at her and she pointed back the way he came.

"Aghlich," she said emphatically.

"Yes, yes." He nodded. "Listen, could you take me to other people? Where you live? Food?" He rubbed his stomach and pointed to his mouth. Without a word, she turned and strode off. Spender hastened after her.

As they walked through a rough hilly country covered in grim shrubs and bare weathered rock, Spender looked sidelong at his companion. She would periodically chat in an amiable tone to which he would respond by shrugging or nodding as seemed fit. What he found odd (though most oddities had lost their relative significance in this bizarre place) was that she appeared to be wearing rough sackcloth cinched at the waist with a bit of old rope.

They passed several far flung cottages at which Spender rejoiced though the girl hardly gave them a second look. They had come to a rolling scrubby plain dotted with low stone fences.

"Oh look, sheep!" Spender said. The girl furrowed her brow and nodded slowly at him. "I mean, I've seen sheep before; it's just that they're something- normal." He gave up and put his hands in his pockets.

By midmorning, they had come to a cluster of two and three storey buildings. Washing hung on lines over the street and dark haired women and children pointed and shouted at them as they walked. Spender was growing more and more unsure as they filed through narrow alleyways and down uneven stone steps. The girl turned and beckoned him forward and, with some trepidation, he followed her into a wide square.

The square was surrounded by columned buildings and filled with stalls and flocks of arguing people. Spender was left to goggle as the girl went to a large central fountain and unconcernedly began flicking water onto her arms and legs. He wandered to the foot of a wide flight of stairs and looked across the square. Gradually, the busy racket of the marketplace died down as, one by one, groups of people stopped to stare at him. They huddled and murmured, pointing behind him. A bearded man in a red robe, a stole, and a black pointed cap pattered down the stairs and flung drops of what seemed to be oil at him.

"Who are you?" the old man asked. "Why did you bring her back?"

"You speak English!" Spender's enthusiasm was immediate. The old man looked taken aback. He inspected Spender and tucked his hands in his sleeves.

"What do you mean?"

"The English language, you speak it." The old man smiled sagely.

"I speak the language of the King." The girl had wandered over and stood beside Spender, glaring at the old man. "From where do you travel, heathen clod?"

"I beg your pardon?" The old man continued to smile and Spender decided that he was probably senile. "I came through a door," he gestured vaguely behind himself, "beyond the desert." A rumble spread through the crowd that had gathered. The old man leaned towards him.

"And the forest?"

"-Is only there at night. It has a big nasty Thing prowling around in it." Another rumble as the crowd conferred with itself. Spender heard them repeating "Aghlich". The girl stepped forward, gesticulating and stomping at the hem of the old man's robes. "She brought me here," Spender said somewhat lamely. "Could I possibly have something to eat?"

The old man looked to the top of the stairs and accosted a younger man (who had white robes and a much less impressive beard).

"You there, have the eunuchs prepare a table." He declined his head graciously at Spender. "If you will follow me, clod."

#

At a long table in front of a dais, Spender enjoyed a prodigious meal. There was fresh warm bread with a tough, floury crust and large hunks of smooth, pale cheese. He had a sizzling bit of what he was gravely told was bear meat and something else that he was told, even more gravely, that he would enjoy more if he did not know what it was. He tried to drink something that tasted like it could clean paintbrushes and was nearly sick. The old man, who had been standing beside the dais, took a chair beside him.

"I am High Priest Gladbiscuit." Spender choked and the high priest frowned. "This," he waved at an earnest young man with a tonsure, "is Simon the Chronicler." He looked with distaste at the girl, who was standing beside the chronicler. "You have already met Branwen." She sneered at him and said something that made the chronicler chuckle.

"She seems to know you," Spender said, trying not to smile.

"She was meant for the Aghlich," Gladbiscuit said. "As the repository for the sins of the people, she was to be cast into the wilderness. In devouring her, The Aghlich would devour our iniquities."

"I see." Spender was a bit shocked but tried to be diplomatic. "She's some sort of vestal virgin?" Simon the Chronicler snorted.

"Mostly because she bit the High Priest."

"Simon!" Gladbiscuit glowered. "Chroniclers are to be rarely seen and never heard." Simon ducked his head, looking chastened. Spender's face suddenly fell.

"High priest, sir, I lost my friend in the wilderness."

"Taken by the Aghlich, no doubt."

"He was swallowed up by the earth." The high priest pulled at his beard.

"The King, in his wisdom and glory, enchanted the wilderness to guard a great treasure. Many have tried to traverse it and failed." Spender remembered the scattered shoes and sandals.

"So, if I wanted to know what had become of him, I would speak to the king?" Gladbiscuit cocked his head and regarded him for a long moment. As he was about to answer, a white robed man (who Spender assumed was a not-quite-as-high priest) rushed into the chamber and whispered in his ear.

"I must beg your leave, clod." He rose and strode away, his priestling trailing in his wake. When he had gone, Branwen folded her arms and said something to the chronicler, nodding at Spender.

"She says that she waited three days on the rock while you kept The Aghlich busy." Simon said.

"You can understand her?"

"For the most part. She speaks a language that we had ages ago. I've read it here and there but I don't see how anyone could have taught it to her. It's a dead tongue." Spender poked at a dish with a flaky crust, a layer of whipped egg and cream, and what he thought might be blueberries.

"Were you really going to send her out to be eaten?"

"Yes, we were. It's actually problematic that she's come back. See, part of the ritual is that everyone goes and tells their sins to the she-goat. We don't think Branwen understands the King's but if she did-" He looked over at Branwen, who smiled innocently.

"Did you call her a she-goat?"

"We used to use a she-goat for the ritual. When we switched to young women the name just stuck."

"Why on earth would you start sacrificing young women?"

"I'm Simon the Chronicler, not Simon the Theologian. If you want to know why we started sending our high spirited or ambitious girls to the Aghlich, you'll just have to ask the High Priest. Here he is now." Gladbiscuit sailed through the door, flinging droplets of oil ahead of him.

"There was a small business requiring my-" The door burst open behind him and a scrawny wizened man wearing nothing but two turtle shells ran in. Branwen tittered and the chronicler began furiously scribbling on a piece of parchment that he had produced from his sleeve. The priestling, who had dashed in after the man, withered under Gladbiscuit's gaze. "Excrescence! What are you doing?"

"Forgive me, your Grace. He confused the eunuchs terribly." Meanwhile, the holy man (for that was what he was) had knelt beside Spender's chair, his turtle shells swaying precariously.

"He has returned to us! King Balth, who went beyond the wilderness to sleep, who vowed to return to raise his people up, comes now in our darkest hour." He patted Spender's knee. Spender, caught with a bit of galette on his lip, did not feel very kingly. "He will raise up his ancient armies and march on our oppressors. He will bring glory and riches. He will cry tears of solid gold!" The holy man clasped his hands together and looked at Spender like a proud mother. Spender swiped at his face with a napkin. Branwen tugged on the chronicler's sleeve. He translated her absentmindedly as he wrote.

"She says that she doesn't know what the holy man is excited about. The man she found in the wilderness is like an overgrown child. He didn't even know what sheep were." He squinted up at Spender. "Is this true? Do you not know what sheep are?"

"No! I mean, yes, I know what sheep are." A gleam had come into Gladbiscuit's eye.

"Of course the poor misguided girl would make that mistake. This is clearly the only explanation. King Balth himself said that he came from beyond the wilderness and tamed the Aghlich with a word. You have done well, holy man. Gaspar," he looked at the priestling beatifically, "have the eunuchs prepare a bed for King Balth." After tearfully making obeisances to Spender, the holy man sat at the table and quaffed the turpentine. Simon the Chronicler mumbled as he wrote.

"And Balth the Mighty, having been long gone from the world, found the sight of sheep strange to his eyes."

#  Chapter Four

Gaspar had escorted Spender through a verdant courtyard and up a flight of stairs to his room, where he showed him a bell rope and enthused about the high priest, Spender, and life in general. After he had left, Spender pulled aside the grossly luxurious drapes and found that the window had bars on it. He sat on the bed and picked at the tassels on his pillow.

"These are exciting times, King Balth." Spender started and, looking out the window, saw Simon the Chronicler's face.

"How did you get up there?"

"I had to climb a quince tree and, from there, it's a short leap onto this trellis." He looked down. "Well worth the effort, as I see it. This isn't the first time High Priest Gladbiscuit has locked an interesting guest up here."

"'Guest' here having the meaning 'prisoner'," Spender said ruefully.

"Don't worry, your unconquerable majesty; as the high priest sees it, if you are Balth, you will raise your deathless armies and march on the King. If you aren't Balth, he can sacrifice you as an unrepentant fraud. He does well because he has a way of dealing with someone as strange and unexpected as you, and we" he flung his arm out and teetered on the trellis "get several feast days."

"But I'm not King Balth, I'm Lewis Spender." He was getting very worried with all the talk of sacrifice.

"As you say." Simon said carelessly, picking leaves off the vines and dropping them.

"Why would the high priest want me to make war on the king anyway? He said he was wise and glorious." Simon held on to the bars.

"You really don't know about the King, do you? I suppose you'll find out as long as you're not dead in two days. I've got to go; there'll be a eunuch around to check on you in a moment." And with that, the chronicler slipped out of view. Spender jabbed experimentally at his pillow and leaned back with a sigh. The door opened and a bulky, soft spoken man with small feet stepped into the room.

"Are you quite comfortable, your majesty?"

"I'm really not- Yes, thank you." The eunuch bowed and backed out of the room. A breeze that smelled faintly of honeysuckle billowed the draperies, bringing with it the sound of distant bells. Spender sank further into the bed and dozed off, lulled by the muffled din of far off celebration.

#

The next day, Spender sat with Gladbiscuit and the Lord Mayor of the city, while Simon the Chronicler skulked by the door. The lord mayor was a round, tired man who told Spender that he would find a nice cape for him to wear on his campaign. For the most part, he seemed content to close his eyes and sit in deep thought as the high priest spoke.

"Tomorrow," Gladbiscuit said, "we will begin the conjuration ceremony in which you will play a crucial role. From sun up, we will begin sacrificing goats and flinging their blood around the altar."

"I'm sorry but I'm not clear on why you do that; sacrifice the goats, I mean." The high priest looked annoyed.

"We sacrifice them as an expression of humility and devotion to the all-knowing Gods."

"But if they're all knowing then wouldn't they know about your devotion? One would think that the Gods would be happy with just a willingness to sacrifice goats."

"If your eunuchs only display a willingness to bring you your meals, do you think that it would be a proper substitute for actually eating?"

"I don't have eunuchs- Look, I need to eat. Are you saying the Gods need goat blood?"

"Yes," Gladbiscuit snapped, "now may we please move on? In the evening, when the setting sun hits the black plinth, we will sacrifice our best goat and you will speak the incantation."

"And that's all?"

"Ideally there will be a hail of fire and destruction, your armies will march out of the underworld, and you will bring lasting power and prosperity to Tyre."

"This city is called Tyre?" Spender asked.

"Formerly Ytref, which was formerly called Balth." Simon the Chronicler said.

"Be quiet!" Gladbiscuit hissed.

"I had been meaning to ask you, high priest, sir, why everyone is so keen on my smiting the King?" Spender asked. "I was under the impression that he was noble and just." Gladbiscuit sat ramrod straight with a sour expression on his face. The Lord Mayor looked with intense interest at a spot on the wall.

"You will need to rest in preparation for your part in the ceremony. Gaspar will escort you to the altar when it is time. Good day, majesty." Simon the Chronicler opened the door and two doughy eunuchs softly ushered Spender out. He was confused as ever and felt that the audience had not gone at all well.

Later, the chronicler made another appearance at Spender's window.

"I don't think the high priest has ever wanted to poison someone so badly. I hope for your sake that something happens tomorrow, the holy man has been telling people that your insides are made of gold. If you aren't marching to the sea by breakfast, they might try opening you up." He had a moment of introspection. "Very literal minded, most Tyrians are."

That night, Spender had unsettling dreams about doors and goats and dark places. He dreamt that the high priest was leading him to an altar that turned into a door. As he was about to open the door, he began to sink into the earth. There was a loud bang and he started awake. Gaspar flew into the room.

"I've brought your garments, Balth the stern and warlike," he said, brandishing a pile of robes flung over his arm.

"Is it time already?" Spender asked.

"Goodness no, we're going to process through the city."

#

Spender found himself in a eunuch-drawn carriage travelling through the streets of Tyre. Great masses of shouting Tyrians milled around and began following the carriage in a giant confused flock. By and by, they moved out of the city and along a path that circled a hill several times before coming to the peak. Spender could see, from a distance, a magnificent towering henge at the top of the hill. All around its outer edge were the lights of countless torches and the white robes of priestlings as they flitted about.

There are times when one has woken late in the day, had a bit to eat, and gone for a walk only to find that the day has quite gotten away and is nearly over. Spender felt this now as they crept up the hill. He tapped his foot uncontrollably and, feeling his heart hammering away, wondered if this was how the goats felt. The carriage lurched to a stop and the crowd parted before them.

High Priest Gladbiscuit stood at the base of a raised altar in the middle of the stone circle. He had his sleeves pushed up and the white robes of his retinue were spattered with blood. Spender heard a goat mutter.

"People of Tyre," Gladbiscuit shouted, "behold your King!" The crowd cheered and pressed forward. In the short lull, a voice from the back said, "I hear he's got golden entrails". Gladbiscuit ignored the voice and seemed, in the heat of the moment, to have forgotten that he expected Spender to be revealed as a fraud. He looked around with fervor. "The sun sets on the Black Plinth. Bring the goat, bring the book."

"Bring the goat, bring the book," his assembled priestlings chanted quietly. Gaspar grabbed Spender's elbow and pulled him forward. As a fidgeting white kid was carried to the altar, Gladbiscuit shoved an open leather tome into his hands. Spender skimmed the page and flipped the book over. He was so puzzled and intrigued that he missed the outburst of scrabbling and bleating.

"The Grimoire of Balth;" Spender said, "where did you get this?" He looked up. "What have you done? The goat!" Gladbiscuit was holding a bloodstained dagger and looked not a little crazed.

"Open the book, read the incantation!" Spender fumbled the book open.

"I can't pronounce this; I don't even know what it means."

"Read it!" Gladbiscuit was nearly frothing at the mouth. Spender looked at the dripping dagger and decided not to raise any more objections. As he went to the altar, the priests began a sort of humming dirge. His hands were shaking and he gripped the book as tightly as he could.

"Adonay, Adiram, Dalmay." Spender's voice echoed off the stones of the henge and was magnified, deepened. The crowd had fallen deathly silent. "Berald, Beroald, Balbin." A gust of wind kicked up and the torches guttered. From where Spender was standing, the sun seemed to be sitting directly on the black plinth. "Gab, Gabor, Agaba." Dark clouds scudded across the sky and covered the sun, plunging the henge into a dim cold twilight. The priests had stopped their dirge. Spender licked his lips. "Alim, Agla, Schadai." The wind stopped and every torch simultaneously went out. There was a pressing, terrible silence. He read the final line. "Dis manibus sacrum, ego te provoco ex umbra in solem. Flectere si nequeo superos, Achaeronta movebo." In the utter stillness that followed, Spender hardly dared to breathe. Soon the silence's spell would be broken and he would join the body of the white goat on the altar. The white goat- the white goat was smoking.

With a deafening roar, the altar exploded in a pillar of flame that rose into the heavens. As people fled and screamed, a whirlwind ripped through the henge, scouring the dirt and grass and howling through the stones. As the priests tumbled down the hill, a terrible figure appeared in the middle of the pillar of flame. It spread its arms and gave voice to an unearthly sound. As suddenly as it appeared, the flame was gone, trailing into the sky and leaving the smoking unholy figure standing on the wreckage of the altar. Spender looked up, his face scorched and eyes watering. He coughed and smiled weakly.

"I still have your watch."

#  Chapter Five

North had dropped through the earth for what seemed like ages, falling through a soft smooth blackness that felt, as he explained to Spender, like "swimming through warm dry water, if that makes any sense". After a while, he began to make out a hazy orange glow far below. The mindless terror of falling had dissipated and, as the glow approached, North only desperately hoped that he wasn't about to die. Presently, he passed through a sort of shadow and, at that moment, a wide vista opened beneath his feet.

Gigantic step pyramids and ziggurats rose above an expanse of fiery red rock that heaved and fell in steep crags and ravines. Groves of stalagmites stabbed up into the air and massive piles of boulders and crushed rock littered the ground. North fell slowly, as if in a dream, to the pinnacle of one of the tallest pyramids and stumbled. As he gained his feet, he looked down upon a hellish landscape. Tall gaunt things with hollow black eyes and jaws tied up with cloth stood atop cliffs and tiers. Their skin was like pale clay and each one carried a whip or a flail. Filing through ravines and rocks, a long line of pitiful, hunched figures struggled under stones and chains. From his vantage point, North could see great hordes of humanity streaming towards a single point, a monumental unfinished pyramid, all overseen by the creatures above.

He had been looking far afield and did not notice that one such creature was just below him. It turned and, with a cavernous moan, drew back its arm. North turned and leapt down to the other side of the pyramid just as the tip of the creature's whip caught his shoulder. The pain was, North said "absolutely unbearable, the worst thing I've ever felt; it was as if someone had lit a knife on fire and stuck it right in my back". (North showed Spender the scar from the whip, which was, truth be told, an impressive one.) North tumbled down several steps, caught himself, and dashed off, displaying a nimbleness and dexterity born of fear. He rounded a cairn and just managed to dodge another creature, coming so close that he saw, in the depths of its empty eye sockets, two gold coins. He brushed past its grasping arms with their pale dead skin and put on a burst of speed. He wasn't quite fast enough and the creature sent its flail across the middle of his back. (North's clothes hung in tatters as he sat with Spender in front of the blackened remains of the altar. His back in particular looked much the worse for wear.) North yelped and vaulted over a pile of rubble before darting through a stand of stalagmites.

As he hid and crept through the shadows, North unknowingly went deeper into the center of the subterranean polis. The soaring monuments were clustered closer together and the stone had darkened to a rusted red. North had fewer encounters with the gray awful creatures as he traveled down the dim byways and avenues that led, as strands in a web, to a single nexus. As he told Spender, "There was no sense of the passage of time there. A blackness stretched across above the entire city, like a vaulted ceiling so high that no light could touch it."

Battered and footsore, North came to the center of the nightmare, a faded primeval pyramid, the scale of which defied reason. Its worn steps mounted up to dizzying heights and its summit was lost in the void above. Directly in front of North, set in the face of the pyramid, was a yawning entrance. He stopped, weighing the dangers of going down a pitch black passage in a place that crawled with ghastly beings capable of flaying one's flesh from one's bones. As if summoned by his thoughts, three of the creatures converged on him, howling and straining at the cloth that tied their jaws shut. They looked, North thought, terribly hungry. With the way back blocked off and the creatures closing more rapidly than he would have liked, North ran into the passage without further hesitation. He had to go along carefully at first and he was relieved that there were no signs of pursuit by the ghouls.

There are times when, being in a darkened room, one's eyes adjust and, gradually, shapes emerge from the gloom. This was not such a time. As he walked, North put his hand directly in front of his face and stared hard but the darkness was as impenetrable as if he were blind. It was perhaps due to his blindness that he continually stepped awkwardly. Strangely, he couldn't tell if he was going uphill or down. His footing was unsure and he was becoming disoriented such that, when he brushed up against the passage wall, he kept it at his fingertips as he walked.

Eventually, his curiosity about his direction of travel became too much for him and he lay flat on his back. He closed his eyes (though there was really no point) and, after some concentration, decided that it felt like he was going downhill, or possibly up. He wondered if it was possible to move up in a downward direction.

North awoke in a panic, the darkness around him so thick that it felt tangible, smothering. He realized that he had fallen asleep and slowly got up, careful not to turn around. He felt woozy and strange in the head, as one often does after sleeping flat on one's back without a pillow. After walking in the darkness for a great while, his eyes began to bloom splotches of blue and purple. He continued with these colors swimming in front of him for some time and, when he saw a faint golden light, thought that it was an artefact of his mind.

As he walked, the light grew stronger and brighter until, at last, North was able to walk steadily and see the passage walls. He was surrounded by smooth sandstone with rows upon rows of barely legible characters carved into the surface. At once, he came out onto a landing. Far, far above him, a shaft of light shone in through a gap in the rock and lit the chamber. It reminded North of nothing so much as a well, albeit a well big enough to drop a house down with a narrow stone staircase winding down its wall. He looked over the edge and couldn't quite see the bottom, so he went to the entrance of the passage and managed to knock a chunk out of the corner. Armed with his piece of sandstone, he dropped it over the edge and began to hum "Forty-seven ginger-headed sailors". By the time he got to "Red-head Tom", he heard the stone clatter on the ground below.

There was nowhere else to go and he liked the way the chamber echoed so, as he descended the stair, he kept humming. He went around and around and- the tune died in his throat. He raced down the last stairs and stood at the bottom of the well.

What had North standing, transfixed, in a pool of light in the center of the floor, was the wall. It was covered in fantastic figures and symbols that were cut deep into the stone and were very well defined in spite of their apparent age. Humans with animal features knelt and walked beneath a row of circles and the coils of a serpent surrounded them all. Below them, a leviathan swam through stone waves. In mountains on either side of the fish were the faces of two bearded men, one with a tree sprouting from his mouth and the other issuing a waterfall in the same manner.

In the very center, above the leviathan, was an eye with rays emanating from it in all directions. It was the deepest, clearest carving and, although it was not the largest image, it drew North's attention. He went close and saw that the pupil of the eye was a hole in the wall. It was just at his level and so very interesting that, almost without thinking about it, he walked right up to the wall and looked in.

For an instant, he saw the scaly head of a snake, its eyes flashing. It jerked forward in a blur and he cried out as it bit him in the eye. He staggered back with his hand to his face and blood dripping down onto his shirt. North stood in the middle of the floor, his heart racing. He began to feel lightheaded and black waves swept across the corner of his good eye. He stumbled, breathing heavily through his nose. His eye throbbed and he began to feel as if he were floating in the ocean. Roger North dropped to the floor and lay on his back, insensate.

#

At first he saw only lights, bright floating lights that shone like tiny suns and waxed and waned in the darkness. Gradually, thin auroras drifted over them like misty veils. The auroras began to twist and curl like drops of dye in a glass of water and he could see faint shadows drifting through them. The shadows grew deeper and stronger and the auroras gradually dissipated. He could see strange and wondrous things, people and places all moving and shifting into each other. He saw a lovely girl with her hair under a scarf. She smiled at him and melted away like smoke. He saw an old man sitting on the floor in front of a cruel young man. They blurred and sank and he saw a- surely it was a woman. It was beautiful but so very cold, with ancient malice in its eyes; it was like a million year old snake. He was frightened and the woman blew away.

The shades came faster and faster, few familiar, all whirling and running and mixing into each other. He saw himself and Spender and a beggar. He saw snow and sand and deep dark water. He saw a quiet, tree lined road at night with rows of tidy sleeping houses on both sides. Soon, it was going too fast for him to see and the shapes became little more than unfocused shadows gliding through auroras that undulated like long trailing pieces of silk. Eventually, there were only lights, bobbing and pulsing, bright as tiny suns.

#

North drifted in the lights for what seemed like years. He forgot about the door, the creatures, and the snake and simply was. Gradually, the lights dissolved and he regained consciousness, lying on his back at the bottom of the well. He gingerly prodded at the swollen side of his face. It was very tender and felt bruised. With great care, he cracked open his eye, gasped, and shut it again quickly, heedless of the burning pain that it caused. He clumsily rolled over and got to his knees. His head was pounding and he stopped for a moment. Looking down at his bloody shredded shirt, he put his hand on his knee and stood up. He swayed on his feet like a drunkard and again felt his eye with his fingertips. He opened it again and flinched but did not close it. Instead, he gazed around in wonder.

#

"What did you see?" Spender asked him as they sat in the moonlit henge.

"It's difficult to explain. I saw- or rather I see- Was, Are, Will, and Maybe. I see things that happened in the past all the time; sometimes I see things that might have happened but didn't. I see loads of things that will happen and some things that would happen in the future but don't for some reason or another. I see things that might be happening now if only the past or the future were different. I can see hidden things especially clearly, I think because the people who hide them pay so much attention to them. The question really is; what can't I see?" The stars had come out, myriad points of light strewn across the velvet sky. As Spender looked at them, he was momentarily disturbed that he could not find a single familiar constellation. North continued.

"There are things I don't see; more like, there are things that I see but don't grasp or remember. Things can get lost in the flood and, if I don't concentrate, it can get very overwhelming."

"Is that why you wear that cloth?" Spender asked. Since his spectacular appearance on the altar, North had had a rag tied around his head like an eye patch.

"It doesn't block things out very much but it helps, almost like holding something up very close to your face. If you focus on it, everything past it in your field of vision gets blurry. When I first put it on, I thought that I had made a mistake. I saw everything about the cloth including all the things it might have been and where it will end up. Eventually, I got used to it and learned to block it out. It is just a bit of fabric after all, not like a person."

"Can I see it? Your eye, I mean."

"Alright." North untied the rag and looked at Spender. His entire eye was a luminous silver with a subtle luster like a clouded moon. He suddenly looked away and began tying the rag back on. "It's become very ill mannered for me to look at anybody for too long." Spender, a bit awestruck, just nodded.

#

It took time for North to get accustomed to his eye; so great was the deluge of visions that it was almost more than his mind could bear. Even in this deep and lonely place, the centuries, all possible incarnations of them, stretched on in both directions. It was his view of things gone and things yet to come that allowed him to make a discovery. The floor of the well was tiled in concentric circles and, as he looked at it, he saw that others who had come before had stood on two particular tiles and, beyond that, that he would stand on those tiles in the future. They were not particularly close together and it took an unusual stance to get to them both. (It was not the kind of thing that someone might find accidentally.)

The tiles sank beneath his feet and, with a shudder, the whole floor began to sink. North watched the foot of the stairs climb out of reach and wished that his forethought matched his newfound foresight. The floor rumbled to a stop, revealing a small doorway directly below the decorated wall. Apparently, North would go through it in the future; indeed, a whole crowd would at some point. (His eye was still new to him and, at times, it was hard to tell if something was happening in the distant future or the very near future. For example, he wasn't sure if he saw himself going into the room in the next minute, some time much later, or both.) He reasoned that, if he was going through the doorway at some later date, going through the first time hadn't killed him. With that decided, he went in.

There was a short, low tunnel and, as he walked down it, the floor rose back up behind him, trapping him there. He came out the end into a lofty chamber and there got a lump in his throat as he considered that what he saw of himself might have been a 'maybe future' and that his 'actually future' was about to come to an end. On one end of the chamber, going from wall to wall and almost the whole way to the ceiling, was a sphinx. This in and of itself was not frightening. It was a different matter when its massive stone head dropped to look at him in a passive, detached way and he saw, very vividly, that nearly everyone else who had entered had died messily.

It had the face and neck of a woman and the body of a lion, its huge paws draped over a pedestal made of the same dark polished stone as its body. Its eyes were dispassionate, blank. North faltered and backed up.

"Oh! I'll just go back the way I came." He bumped into the wall behind him. "I can't go back, can I?" The sphinx stirred ever so slightly and spoke.

"If you wish to pass, you must first answer three questions."

"Three? I thought it was one riddle." The sphinx waited. "Different sphinx, different rules I suppose. What happens if I'm wrong?"

"You will die."

"That's the same, then. I don't get any choice in the matter?" The sphinx was silent. The chamber had the still feeling of a church or a grand old library. "I'm ready." The sphinx fixed its pupil-less eyes on him.

"Who are you?"

"I'm not sure I follow. There are quite a few ways one could answer that question and I really don't want to die." Although the sphinx remained stony faced, something in its posture told North that it had not been hewn and animated to go around being fair to people. "I suppose my name would do," North said hesitantly.

"Well?"

"My name is Roger North."

He waited tensely as the seconds dragged by.

"Second, why do you seek the heart of the world?"

"I beg your pardon?" The sphinx looked severe.

"Why do you seek entry?"

"I don't, I just fell here and I'm trying to get out."

"Don't be smart or I'll eat you," it said. "Where did you come from?"

"I came through a door and fell through the earth. I'm from- well- a place where things are normal." North felt the inadequacy of his explanation and was gratified to see that he would not be killed for it just yet. The sphinx rumbled.

"Normally," it said, "I kill people on the second question. Occasionally they'll have some noble purpose and they get killed on the third question. I've spent æons thinking of things to ask for the third question and most of them, I'll have you know, are devilishly difficult." North waited nervously. "Of course, your complete lack of intent makes things a bit difficult and, seeing as you came through the Door, I'm supposed to let you in now.

"Know this," the sphinx said, "even the ones who answered three questions and went through were subsumed by the heart of the world- utterly destroyed. If you didn't come through the Door, you'll die just like the rest." North was overawed.

"What is it? The heart of the world, I mean." The sphinx said nothing but leaned forward and opened its mouth. "Hold on!" North protested. The sphinx's mouth gaped wider and wider as its jaw dropped improbably low. When its mouth was wide enough for a man to stand upright inside, it stopped.

North felt silly and also relieved. With a last nervous look at the sphinx, he clambered up and walked through its mouth. He was so fascinated by what he saw ahead that he stopped paying attention to anything else. As such, it came as a surprise when the sphinx shut its jaws behind him.

"I really wish that would stop happening," he said.

#

North stood on a precipice looking out into a cosmos, a starry firmament of infinite scope. Lights flickered and flashed in the bodies of far off nebulae like lightning hidden in the depths of mountainous thunderheads. The ghosts of distant novae crossed unthinkable gulfs, blooming, shining intensely, and fading away before his eyes, far removed from the stellar deaths that created them. As North stood, an insignificant speck in the midst of this, he found himself wishing that he had brought his umbrella. He sat on the ledge and dangled his feet, feeling giddy every time he looked down- or up, or any direction for that matter. The view he had would have looked much the same to someone who didn't have his marvelous eye; what had been and what would be were the same, stretching on beyond even his sight.

To pass the time, he leaned back and tried to find shapes in the brilliant clouds of dust and gas. He had found a harp and a man o' war when he saw something that looked like a person, uncannily so. He tilted his head a bit and squinted. The next thing he knew, he was immersed in roaring flame, flying through the air in a turbulent wind that battered him and stole his breath.

#  Chapter Six

The next morning, Spender and North sat in the middle of the henge and planned.

"We can't very well go back," Spender said. "Even if neither of us dropped through the earth, I don't like our chances against the Thing." Some Tyrian had dropped a bundle of food and they laid it out between them and made a respectable picnic. North tore a hunk of bread in half and looked at it critically.

"What do you think?"

"It's probably safe to eat. I'd imagine it was meant to be some kind of offering."

"I meant about what we should do."

"Oh. The high priest said that the king had enchanted the desert and that he had some treasure out there. Apparently he's the ruler of all this," he waved his hand around vaguely, "but no one seems to want to talk about him. They say that he's great, noble, and needs to be conquered and overthrown."

"That's a bit thick," North said. "I suppose this king is the man to find, then." Simon the Chronicler, who had crept back in the middle of the night, was perched on a toppled monolith. He had been avidly listening to Spender and North (who were unsure whether it was best to greet him or politely ignore him) and jotting notes onto a scrap of paper. When North said that the king was 'the man to find', he wrote very fast indeed with his tongue sticking out slightly. Looking up, he called out.

"You're going to see the king?"

"Yes," Spender said. The chronicler had scrambled down and stood by the altar, looking pleased.

"I would be careful if I were you," he said. "The King isn't the same as you or I. Not only that, he has luck on his side." He waited and looked exasperated after a moment, as if he had made a joke that they hadn't understood. "The King has surrounded himself with the Felicitous Guard. They are the absolute luckiest men there are. Things just work out for them, sometimes in the most far fetched ways imaginable. Anyone who takes up arms against them, anyone who tries to attack the King, meets with uncommon bad luck. I don't think they've ever been bested." Spender and North blinked. Simon continued.

"You may ask how the Felicitous Guard exists; I'll tell you. The King went all over and grabbed everybody old enough to walk, whether they liked it or not, and started weeding out all but the most fortunate. He had all these tests that had nothing to do with skill or strength or anything like that. First, he took them all to a grove of trees where he blindfolded them and made them run at full tilt the whole way through. Those that didn't get knocked silly by trees made it through to the next test.

"You don't often hear about the later tests, mostly because they were absurdly dangerous and those who failed didn't leave with a few bruises or half the number of eyes they started with." He cleared his throat and looked at North. "Sorry."

"Suppose we were determined to see the king anyway; which way would we go?" Spender asked. Simon, who had sat down across from them and helped himself to the bread, brushed off a few crumbs and began counting the stones in the henge. He stopped with his finger pointing away from the city.

"That way," he said. "There's a road at the bottom of the hill. If you follow it the whole way, you'll reach the sea where, if you're lucky, you'll catch the boat. They'll take you to the King. I still wouldn't recommend it."

"Why, exactly?" North asked. Spender had the distinct impression that he was looking past the frayed rag over his eye and deep into Simon the Chronicler's life. The chronicler may have felt something of this as he got to his feet and began walking back towards the monolith.

"He might very well kill you," he said. "Goodbye King Balth; your deathless army is a bit smaller than expected but it will have to do. Follow the road." And with that, he slipped behind the monolith and was gone. They waited to see if he would return. After a moment, North broke the silence.

"What a strange person."

#

It was a splendid day they found themselves in as they traipsed along the road. Birds were singing and the air was fresh and wonderful in a way that only seems to happen on days when one has no obligations. As they walked, Spender told North about the sometimes woods and the Thing and the peculiar people of Tyre. As one might expect, North already knew a good deal about what had happened.

"And she didn't speak a word of English?"

"She didn't. The chronicler was the only one who could understand her. It was strange, no one thought that there was anything wrong with sacrificing her."

"This is not," North said, "an altogether tame and pleasant place." They walked through a moment of disquiet and came to a field of tall rippling grass. The path ended quite suddenly at the edge of the field and they stopped short. Spender roamed back and forth in a lost and undecided manner. Behind lay the path, lined with milkweed and clusters of Queen Anne's lace that nodded their heads in the breeze; ahead, a sea of burnished grass that rose and fell as wave after wave swept across its gold tipped surface.

"Terrific," he said, "the path's gone." North plucked a blade of grass and stripped it into pieces. He looked back down the path.

"I don't think we should turn back. Nothing for it but to press on." They started into the field, waist deep in grass, and soon found themselves adrift. Before long, the grass was up to their shoulders and they could hear rustling and scurrying off to one side. North had several unpleasant thoughts about snakes and Spender had one or two about going in circles and never getting out of the tall grass. The grass rose over their heads and, for a while, they pushed blindly through the dry whispering thicket. Finally, North pulled his rag up and had a look around.

"There's the sea!" he said cheerfully.

"Where?" Without further warning, they pushed through the last of the grass and tumbled down a steep sandy embankment.

"Here it is," North said, shaking the sand out of his clothes. A pale sliver of beach dotted with bleached stones and shells clung to the base of the high crumbling dunes and seemed in danger of being claimed by the tide. The sea surged and fell back, its waters gleaming wetly like mountains of knapped flint. On a far off spit of land, a crooked pier meandered out to the side of a ship. Even at a distance, they could see that it had its bowsprit on the wrong end. They went off down the beach, each privately thinking that a backwards bowsprit was not so very strange, all things considered, and each grateful that things had, for the moment, begun to go as expected. They passed a neat pile of baggage on the shore and, upon traversing the pier (which swayed in an alarming fashion), were hallooed from the ship.

#

The Captain was a friendly and pleasant man, despite being very fatuous, and agreed to take them as close to the King as possible.

"I'm afraid I can't take you any further than the shore," he said, "because, contrary to its appearance, the ship doesn't do at all well on land. That was a hard learned lesson, make no mistake. I talked to another captain once who said who said that there was a trick involving portage-"

"Pottage?" An old man sat by the rail, his beard down to his knees.

"Portage!" the Captain bellowed good-naturedly at him.

"Let me get my bowl." The old man rummaged around fruitlessly.

"I'm afraid we won't be of much help to you," Spender said. "We don't know how to sail."

"Oh don't worry," the Captain smiled sunnily, "neither do we. The Navigator knows enough to get by. He's standing up there in the whatsit." They went to the helm and the Captain conferred with the Navigator, a tired grey man in his shirtsleeves. The Captain patted his shoulder after a minute and returned to Spender and North. "He tells me that we cast off some time ago and are going at a great clip in an unknown direction." They looked back and saw that the land had receded, the misplaced bowsprit pointing to the ship's wake.

"Did you say an unknown direction?" North asked.

"I told him that if he continued to be such an exceptionally good navigator, I would be sure to buy him some maps and charts. They really do like that sort of thing, you know. I'll take you to meet the others." The 'others' were two men sitting around an overturned barrel. One (who the Captain could not properly introduce because he had forgotten his own name) sat with flushed cheeks, ensconced in a heavy woolen overcoat, and mournfully asked them if they had seen his baggage. The other was introduced to them as Mr. Half Past. "I'm afraid he only speaks in inanities now," the Captain said.

"I beg your pardon?" North said.

"One day he began making substantially less sense. It came of being jostled or mauled or something like that. There's nothing to be done about it but he bears it admirably."

"Pennies and never do," Mr. Half Past said.

"Very much so," said the Captain.

#

After sundown Spender and North sat by the mizzenmast, watched by an enormous owl that sat amidships. The Captain had told them not to mind it but its great yellow eyes were very difficult to ignore. (There are enormous owls and then there are enormous owls. This one was as tall as Spender and had eyes like unblinking dinner plates.)

"Do you know," North said suddenly, "I borrowed Babbage's tennis racket before we left. I hope he's not too much put out."

"William or Lawrence?"

"Lawrence."

"I don't think he will be. You couldn't have known." Just then, Half Past and Nameless hove into view.

"Hullo," Nameless said, "we're just taking a turn about the decks. Very nice evening." Spender and North hastened to agree. "The Captain says you're going to see the King."

"Bears' eggs and those are better off caged, yes?" Mr. Half Past said.

"I heard he lives in an impenetrable fortress- or was it a magic tent?"

"Candle ends," Half Past said in a helpful manner.

"I saw the King once," Nameless said.

"Did you?" Spender said.

"A picture of him anyway. I saw it mostly side on. The frame was very nice." He glanced over at the owl and dropped his voice. "Do be careful of the King; I wouldn't seek him out for anything." The moon had risen and spilled its ghostly light out over the water. The ship's timbers groaned and Mr. Half Past fiddled with his watch chain.

"What brings you onboard the ship?" North asked.

"Half Past and I are going hunting."

"Hunting for what?"

"I shouldn't like to say." Nameless and Half Past nodded, said their 'good evenings' and went forward, leaving Spender and North to sit on the darkened aft decks and listen to the unquiet waters. The owl ruffled its feathers and fixed them with an even look. Spender frowned.

"Did he say bears' eggs?"

"Yes he did."

#  Chapter Seven

The next day, just after breakfast, Spender was leaning against the rail when he saw a massive shadow on the water. He thought, at first, that it was a cloud but the sky was clear and aggressively blue. Just then, a great gray flank humped out of the sea, water streaming down its sides. As Spender's jaw dropped ever so slightly it submerged, sending spray onto the deck and his trousers. He ran to the helm, slipping as he went, and communicated his excitement and dismay to the Navigator.

"What is it?"

"Sea monster," the Navigator said matter-of-factly.

"What should we do?"

"Nothing we can do. Sea monster does what it will."

"Could we drive it off somehow- discourage it?"

"Sea monster does what it will." The gray appendage heaved out of the water and thumped down. The ship yawed wildly and the Navigator sniffed. North staggered out onto the deck.

"What is that thing?"

"Sea monster," the Navigator said patiently.

"It's gigantic!" Spender climbed up the rigging a ways and watched as the shadow (larger by far than he had originally thought) passed under the ship. He shouted down to the Navigator.

"What will we do if it attacks?"

"Drown, most likely," the Navigator called back. North had gone to the side and was looking over, his rag hung around his neck.

"It's going to be alright," he said, "it's going to move on." He turned out to be right, of course. After a few more splashes, the sea monster's shadow faded away, leaving the ship bobbing like a toy boat in a bath. The Captain and Nameless were both ill and asked to be let off the ship. (They were told to have a lie down until they reached port.)

After the Navigator made sure the Captain was well tucked in, he carried on as helmsman. Spender stood by and watched the storm clouds on the horizon.

"They'll not cross our path," the Navigator said. "The storm is moving alongside us." Spender 'Aha'd' appropriately and made to rejoin North back aft. "Captain says you're looking to see the King." Spender caught up short.

"We are."

"Anyone else would tell you not to do it; I don't think it matters." The Navigator sniffed. "If I know anything about the King, he's already looking for you."

#

That evening, the Navigator spent the better part of an hour peering through his telescope at a small black speck on the horizon. It had grown a little larger when a bank of fog swept over the ship and immersed them in a thick white gloom. They all gathered on the deck, sitting in the glow of an oil lamp that was in danger of being overwhelmed by the cold damp mist. The old man, who the Captain had never bothered to introduce, began a story.

"There once was a girl," he said, "don't ask me her name because I forget. There was a girl and she was very lovely."

"They do tend towards that in stories," Nameless said knowingly. "You rarely hear about a plain girl."

"Don't interrupt." The old man gave Nameless his best approximation of a withering look. "There was a girl and she had seven sisters- well, three at least- and they all lived with their mother and father in a house in the country."

"Was it a big house?" The Captain asked.

"A what?"

"A big house."

"Oh yes. As I was saying, she was the eldest and very lovely. When a very rich man who lived nearby announced that he was having a party, the girl was-"

"What was his name?" Nameless asked.

"I don't know. Kindly shut up."

"Tinder-follow-the-way," Mr. Half Past offered.

"No, it wasn't that. Anyway, she had gone to the party and- and- oh blast, I've forgotten."

No amount of prodding could get the old man to recall the story (he had known precious little of it in the first place and what he knew was not particularly concrete) and he maintained, with an air of finality, that Nameless had ruined the story and, by association, "everything". He would not be cheered until the Captain brought around fish soup (fish being the defining feature of their repast on the ship), at which point he sang a shanty; he remembered less than half of the words but compensated by singing them twice.

At length it grew quite gloomy and, as the owl had come out and was sitting forlornly by the main mast, they judged that it was nightfall. The ship was still plodding through a kind of dark woolly nothingness when they all, with the exception of the Navigator, turned in for the night.

#

Spender and North awoke unpleasantly. It was a condition that had reoccurred with regularity since they had entered through the Door and it seemed unlikely to change. What had woken them was a thunderous crash followed by a pattering noise and plenty of panicked shouting. The Captain ran into their bunk room, his wig missing and his coat misbuttoned, and shouted 'help, help- the ship is lost' before thrashing his way back out. As Spender and North tumbled after him, another crash brought a downpour of splintered wood and debris onto their heads. With the ship shivering beneath their feet, they hastened up to the deck.

The Navigator was waving a cutlass and yelling impotently at a bristling galleon that had come alongside them and was engaged in blowing the ship to smithereens with cannonade. Even as the other ship fired on them, the Captain was forced to admit (and this he shouted) that it was very well turned out and altogether quite impressive. The galleon let loose another volley and the main mast groaned and toppled like a felled tree (the misguided bowsprit had fallen off a short time before). As the attackers blasted the remaining rigging to shreds, the Captain and Navigator dove behind the fallen mast. Spender and North followed suit.

"Who are they?" Spender, out of necessity, had to raise his voice quite a bit.

"The King's men!" The Navigator said.

"Do you have a cannon to return fire?" North shouted.

"I was going to get a cannon or two but I bought a harpsichord instead!" The Captain said tearfully. "It was a very nice one though!"

"What do they want?" Spender cringed as grapeshot minced the wood above them.

"They want you!" The Navigator said. In the momentary lull that followed, the Captain and the Navigator looked at each other. The unspoken debate as to whether they should surrender Spender and North by heaving them over the side was made moot by a devastating broadside that caught them just at the water line. With more rapidity than any one of them could have guessed, the ship capsized and sank beneath the waves.

#

It was as Spender was drowning, one hand twisted up in the collar of North's jacket and one hand clawing desperately at the turbulent water, that he came to a crucial point. Far below, in the depths, it looked for a moment as if there was a sunlit hillside. He squinted, his eyes blurred and stinging and thought that it was an illusion- perhaps light playing along a submerged reef. North sank, insensate, in his grip and he found himself being dragged deeper. If he strove, he could just make it to the surface and catch hold of a floating bit of wreckage, he thought. And what then?

With North's life very much in his hands he dove down, kicking strenuously. His breath gave out and a flood of air bubbled up and streamed away. As a thrumming noise filled his ears and blackness crept in at the edges of his vision, Spender fleetingly thought that he had made a bad mistake. His regret was overwhelmed by fierce, unequaled terror. Moments before his imminent and horrid death, the water inexplicably ceased to be.

Spender and North fell through a heavy smirr, through the flowering branches of a white tree, and to the ground in an ungainly heap. Such was North's luck that, in addition to giving him very sore ribs, the impact of the fall expelled a good deal of sea water and would have revived him had he not cracked his head upon the ground. Spender breathed with unparalleled gratitude and looked down the hill, whereupon he crawled over to North.

"North- North, wake up. There are people with spears and they look very intolerant."

#  Chapter Eight

Spender had brought North around and leaned him against the tree when the soldiers made the top of the hill and began shouting at them. North, who had lost his rag in the sea, squinted up at them and held his side. Suddenly, Spender perked up and listened intently.

"I think they're speaking Greek; I might be able to muddle through this." A squat and officious man had jostled his way to the fore and was making jabbing motions with his finger while nearly frothing at the mouth. The soldiers, who were all very tall and angry and wore tunics made out of a ghastly paisley material, continued shouting at the official as well as at Spender and North. Spender edged back from the more emphatic spears. "What should I say?"

North laughed shortly before wincing and holding his side.

"This is good. You should get their attention first."

"Empros!" Spender shouted. The soldiers fell silent and looked at him as if he were an unexpected interloper who had suddenly shouted something nonsensical (which was fitting because that is more or less what he was)."Now what?" North pointed at the official.

"Tell them that he's a bad egg, that he stole from them."

"Ehm... Kakos avgo." Spender felt that his Greek left something to be desired and, further, that the idiom might not have translated at all well. "Klebo chrysou dikos sas." North had taken a twig and hastily drawn on the ground a rough sketch of a building with an arcade and a domed roof. The soldiers gathered around and elbowed each other with dawning comprehension.

"Tell them to think back to the last feast day."

"Pera glenti thymoumai." The official, who had gone very silent, began hurling what was presumably invective at Spender and North. The soldiers looked at one another for the briefest moment before turning and falling on him like a pack of wolves. Spender thought to opt for the better part of valor and, easing North to his feet, began to pick his way downhill. "Did you know that they were going to do that?" he asked.

"It seemed likely. He was going to cause us no end of trouble, most of which ended with our being put to death."

"You saw all that?"

"I've been seeing a whole flurry of- frankly- highly dramatic and violent episodes, all of them very hard to block out. It's given me a ripping good headache."

The sky above them, if it could be called that, rippled and swam with eddies and currents, the whole of it shot through with diffused sunlight. Spender thought that it was a very beautiful way for a sky to be and was sorry to have his attention taken away by the reappearance of the soldiers, who were tall as ever and only fractionally less angry. They made it clear that they wished Spender and North to accompany them.

They walked, in the midst of a loose-knit, rowdy phalanx, along a sandy and somewhat ill defined road. On either side of the road lay tangles of white and leafless shrubbery that looked like nothing so much as spindly, bleached coral decked with small-petaled blooms. It was North, naturally, who saw the tower first. He politely waited to marvel at it until Spender could see it as well, at which point they were both unstintingly impressed. The tower was also white and it rose, with a kind of grace that is not often seen in architecture, all the way to the sea-sky where its spire pierced the water and continued on. Their escort led them past the tower and past the domed edifice North had drawn to a long low building composed mostly of Doric columns and more martial-looking men in paisley. At that point, the soldiers surrounding them quieted down a bit and tightened their ranks to a semblance of organization. After that, Spender couldn't see much of anything apart from shoulders and elbows. He knew only that they were now marching on a glossy stone floor. The soldiers turned two corners, parted, and retreated to the edges of the hall, leaving Spender and North in audience with their leader.

She looked very tired, with dark circles under her eyes, and she sat on a broad stone chair with her chin in her hand. The tallest soldier had gone to her side and spoken to her quietly. She ran her hands through her hair in a harried manner.

"Hesper tells me that his men have just killed our adviser. He seems to be under the impression that you are all-knowing beings that fell from the skies," she said, pausing as if waiting for them to provide some confirmation or denial. "Of course, he wouldn't know the truth of the matter. The Tartessians don't keep written records and, while you may not be the first castaways to come here, you are certainly the first this generation." (The Tartessians were also quite unique in that they had next to no oral tradition. They only had one story that was passed down through the ages and it was very sad. Consequently, it was rarely told and only taught in a spirit of grim obligation much akin to that felt when visiting a least favorite relative. This contributed to their being a very forgetful people.)

"You're all Tartessians, which makes this-" Spender trailed off encouragingly.

"Tartessus," she said perfunctorily, "and I'm not a Tartessian; not really, anyway. My grandfather was shipwrecked and came here half drowned. He had a bad time of it until he figured out a way to lure down several dolphins; the people had a great feast and things got quite out of control. When the commotion died down, my grandfather found that he had been made king. Years later, when my father was born, he taught him the King's speech and also how to read and write. Our bloodline has been in power ever since and, with luck, will be for generations to come." She idly traced a spiral shell that was imbedded in the arm of her seat.

"Not to say that this is a paradise by any means. Do you know how they settle disputes here?" She looked up at them suddenly. "Of course you don't, you've only just arrived. They take each other's hands as if they're shaking, tie them together, and both commence to beat the other with their remaining limbs. The first to die loses his point of honor. Absolutely ridiculous- I've tried to get them to stop, told them all sorts of things; I said it angers the Gods- but these things die hard. It happens almost every day, just you watch." The queen became seemingly lost in her thoughts as she looked at her fingernails. Spender made a false start.

"Your Majesty-"

"Oh, Drusilla will do- or ma'am."

"Ma'am, what's going to happen to us?"

"I would say that that is up to you. If you have designs on the throne, I'm afraid I'm going to have you killed." Spender looked surprised and North continued to look ill. Drusilla continued. "You could instead stay here at court; I'm down an adviser now and I could use someone to talk to. They don't have much to offer in the way of intelligent conversation." She looked pointedly at her guards, who had begun to bicker and push at each other. "Your third option," Drusilla said, "is to leave- or try to, anyway."

"How on earth could we do that?" Spender asked.

"When my grandfather tumbled into Tartessus, he wasn't alone. The other man took one look at the natives and spent the next year looking for a way to get out. Most days he would go out to the edge of the land where the dome of the sky comes down like a wall and, occasionally, he would make forays out into the water as far as his breath would take him. Around the same time my grandfather was being made ruler, he found a way to escape."

"But no one ever heard from him again." North spoke for the first time, still looking a bit green. "He could have died as he rode up." The queen looked startled and then rubbed her eyes.

"That's true but it's the only way. Otherwise, you'll be stuck here for the rest of your life- and I can only imagine that this place is much less enjoyable when you are not the queen."

The monarch of Tartessus, being satisfied with the audience, sent them away, flanked by two of the least surly guards (one would give the other a hearty whack on the head and run away, laughing, as the first gave chase). They were given clothes that were, unsurprisingly, paisley, and taken to an emphatically guarded room with couches and beds and small tables. North had just sat down when he was presented with a new eye patch, courtesy of the queen.

After they had dressed and eaten three, possibly four, different types of fish, Spender and North sat by a large window looking out at the sea-sky.

"What exactly did you mean 'died as he rode up'?" Spender asked. North sank a bit deeper into an overstuffed cushion with a pained expression on his face.

"You've been to museums, seen fossils and the like." Spender nodded. "Do you remember those things called trilobites; plated things wallowing in some chunk of rock?"

"I think I do."

"It's like one of those on a much larger scale. There were two of them, once, but the other man- swam into one."

"I don't quite follow," Spender said.

"Nor do I. I think we're going tomorrow, though, so we won't have to puzzle long."

"Do you think," Spender said, "they'll let us go out?"

They did. Spender and North walked, followed by their guards, away from the outskirts of Tartessus and through a singular landscape. The pale rock rose and dove in dizzying ravines and delicate natural bridges. There was not a sign of life anywhere and they felt that they were walking through an unnatural and alien place. When they had gotten out of sight of the city, they saw a caped man, a statue, standing in a heroic pose with his foot on a prone man's head. A plaque at its base was inscribed "In memory of our father, ruler of Tartessus. He took a dim view of carousing outside his window."

They walked on for some time and the sea-sky had darkened to a deep murky blue by the time they returned to their gilded cage. North had worn his new patch since he had gotten it and, consequently, felt much better. When Spender asked him what was going to happen to them the next day, he told him that he didn't know with something approaching jubilance.

#  Chapter Nine

After a breakfast of yet more fish and some cleverly done up seaweed, Spender and North were met by the same man who had apprehended them on their arrival. The Captain of the Guard hurried them along like a regimental mother and soon had them trotting out past the proud profile of Drusilla's late father and into the seabed. He seemed very excited and often looked over at them with a kind of reverence, more likely than not because the Tartessians had great respect for acts of suicidal daring. At length, they reached the edge of the land and the sea-sky arced down like an iridescent curtain. The Captain of the Guard turned, faced them rather formally, and handed them two leathery sacks and a piece of paper. The latter was a note from Drusilla.

"If you look out into the water, you should see a kind of high ridge;" it said, "just beyond that, you'll find what the natives of Tartessus call Petrastakos. There were two of them once, but the other one left with my grandfather's fellow traveler. Fill those wine skins with air and keep them with you; you'll get farther that way- also, you'll want to put some rocks in your pockets before you start.

"There were only a few men who actually saw what happened that day, so it's not exactly clear what he did. I believe you're to catch hold of its leg or something; that should be enough to startle it. At any rate, those who did see it talked about it for the rest of their lives, which is as close as you get to eternal fame and glory here. It seems foolhardy, but it would be best if you successfully departed or never returned. I've decided that you make me very nervous.

"Good luck to you. Don't come back. H.E.H. Drusilla, Regina Maritima." Below this was a confused mess of tridents and scaly fish-like creatures that they took to be her heraldry. A gaggle of awful-looking tunics had gathered behind them and watched with great interest. Spender thought, but was not sure, that he had seen bets being placed among them. The Captain of the Guard clapped them on the back with an air of finality and Spender wondered just what was meant by "never return". North had fixed his gaze on the ridge- possibly through the ridge- and shuffled about getting stones to put in his pocket.

"No choice, really," he said under his breath to no one in particular, "no choice at all." Spender followed his lead and, several minutes later, they were standing with stone laden pockets in front of the water. The Tartessians were having a charged conversation behind them. North glanced back at them and began breathing rapidly to make the most of the air.

"Are you ready?" he said.

"I have no idea," Spender said.

"Just remember, it's like a trilobite, only bigger- much, much bigger."

They entered the water and half swam, half bounded towards the edge of the escarpment. They exhausted their breath at roughly the same time and emptied their air bags. Spender reflected that the other man must have been incredibly confident or incredibly desperate; in one or two fathoms, they wouldn't be able to turn back. If Drusilla had intended to kill them, it was surely a very roundabout way of doing it. North struck out, leading the way around the dim bulk of the land. As Spender followed, he saw the thing called Petrastakos and suddenly remembered what a trilobite was.

A brobdingnagian creature lay in repose on the sea floor, its armor plates encrusted with the accumulated algae of æons. With its great ridged carapace and wide curved cephalon, it looked like some ancient and terrible god of beetles. Spender backpedaled quite involuntarily for a moment and North silently urged him on, bubbles trickling up into his hair. They approached the Petrastakos, discarding stones from their pockets as they went, and swam under the shadow of its legs. As they did so, Spender inadvertently kicked one of the legs. It gave a violent tremor from end to end, sand falling from it and drifting down like dust, and neatly dispelled his suspicion that it wasn't alive. He looked at North, who looked almost comically dour, just as the monstruous arthropod closed up around them.

The creature had rolled up like a gigantic woodlouse and, as far as they could tell, was shooting up through the water with absolutely flabbergasting buoyancy. For several unpleasant moments, everything was a confused jumble of water and large twitching limbs and then, with a rush and burst of water, the conglobated thing surfaced and unfurled. Spender and North coughed and sputtered as they watched Petrastakos swim away, a curl of water spilling away from its sides like the wake of a ship.

"I can't," North wheezed as he kicked at the water, "believe" splash, "that worked!" He laughed in a high pitched breathless way that worried Spender a bit.

"What are we going to do now?" Spender asked. The sea rolled away from them in every direction and they dipped and rode on the crests of the waves. "It would be a shame to go to all that effort to escape only to drown once we're exhausted." They were in the trough of a wave and the deep blue waters rose on either side of them like canyon walls.

"Yes, we're by no means out of the woods. Spender?"

"Yes?"

"I should tell you that there is a distinct possibility that we're going to be captured."

"When?"

"Now."

A swell lifted them up and the galleon that had sunk them loomed over their heads. Spender was agog.

"How did they find us? It's been two days; we're miles away!" A number of black capped heads peered over the side at them.

"They'd have to be extraordinarily lucky."

#

In truth, the King's men had begun hunting them shortly after Spender first made his appearance in Tyre. They had been hot on the trail and only the extreme circuitousness of their route had prevented their being captured sooner. (Whether accidentally or out of sheer perversity, the Chronicler had pointed them in quite the wrong direction.) They had a very cold reception from the galleon's captain, during which interview he asked their names. This was the first time anyone had bothered to do so since they came through the Door and they could not help but think that it seemed a bit sinister. They were tipped none too gently into a brig in the lower parts of the ship and left to their own devices. Spender sat on a bunk and gloomily nudged a set of fetters with his foot.

"No one ever seems particularly happy to see us."

"It would seem that the King has been very eager to make our acquaintance." North slid down the wall and settled into a well executed slouch.

"North, do you know what's going to happen? Could you look- really look?"

"Alright," North said after a moment. He pushed his eye patch back on his head, his eye shining in the dim cell. "It shouldn't take..." he trailed off and seemed to sink into a reverie, saying 'Interesting' once or twice in a low, abstracted way. Just then, the door sprang open and two men bundled in.

"Here you," said the one with impressive moustaches, "it was the King's instruction that you wear this." He tossed a polished, filigreed eye patch to North. As he put it on, it cinched tight and made a locking noise that he didn't much care for.

"We understand that you have uncommonly good sight;" said the one with no moustaches at all, "it's a good thing, our coming in here just now, or you might have seen or done something untoward. Very lucky."

"Yes, lucky." They leered at Spender and North. "We would conduct ourselves very correctly, if we were you. Even the most uncanny eye is a poor match for such unrivaled serendipity."

"So just watch it," the moustache-less man said pointedly before slamming the door. Spender and North sat, considerably nettled, for some time.

"They did pick the absolute worst time to rush in" North said, "it usually takes me a while to sort out everything and get it in its proper place. Luckily, I don't think this new patch works at all like they intended. In fact, I can see better than ever." He adjusted the eye patch minutely. "Yes, it's pretty clear. Either we're going to die, or the King is... or not." He looked crestfallen. "I think it does work. I see altogether too well now; I can see so many Possiblies that I can't pick out the Most Likely Wills." He cringed.

"This is awful, I think I'm going to be sick." Although the Felicitous Guard certainly lived up to their name, they were not very clever. They had left the eye patch that North had gotten from Tartessus and he soon slipped it underneath the other. This alleviated things considerably and allowed him to reflect on his poor opinion of the King.

#

They sat in the bowels of the ship they knew not how long, the ship's timbers sighing and shifting and a swinging lantern casting light and shadow first on one wall, then the other. They were fed regularly and found the food strange in that it was decidedly not. There were cress sandwiches, something in aspic (which Spender had always abhorred), and an indifferent curry, among other things. After a half dozen such unlikely meals, they were unceremoniously clapped in irons and brought above-decks. The captain was standing resplendent in brass buttons, epaulets, and a plumed cocked hat.

"We've entered the harbor," he said. "Some distance up this canal, you'll be sent off the ship pending your trial before the King."

"Trial?" Spender exclaimed.

"Surely, as leaders of an organized insurrection, you didn't expect his Majesty to congratulate you?" The ship glided through the narrow walls of the canal, along which were lined the silent grey people of the capital city. Dark clouds massed above them and lent to the atmosphere of foreboding. As they sailed, the land rose up around the canal and, for a time, they navigated between the high walls, with only a patch of sullen sky above them. The canal became narrower and, just when it seemed that the ship would become wedged between the walls, they made fast.

There was no dock proper, only a small stone landing with narrow stairs set into the wall that led up and out. Spender and North were made to walk a plank off the ship, where they were received by a retinue of Felicitous Guards. They were prodded up the precarious stair and, having reached the top, got their first glimpse of the King's palace.

It was not, as Nameless had said, a fortress or a magic tent; it was not even a palace, strictly speaking. It was an estate and highly incongruous in that it would not have looked at all out of place at the edge of a park. It had a circular drive, narrow gables, and what looked like stables off to one side. Spender and North had a moment to look inquisitively at one another before they were taken and hauled down the wide gravel drive. It seemed at first that they were being taken to the stables but, just beyond, the ground fell away and they saw a dark granite edifice.

"The dungeons," the Captain said somewhat unnecessarily.

#

They were handed over to gaolers and put 'at the bottom'. Their cell was large, deeply gloomy, and unforgivingly spartan such that they found themselves nostalgic for the ship's brig. North hammered on the door and shouted through the barred window.

"I'm beginning to seriously doubt your king's legitimacy!" After listening in vain for a while, he returned and sat by Spender. "Between us, we've been starved, lashed, chased, bitten, imprisoned, nearly drowned, and imprisoned again. I don't know how much more I can tolerate." Spender made a sound of commiseration. At length he spoke.

"What do you think happened to the people who disappeared, the ones who first went through the Door?"

"I don't know," North said. "I suppose that's something to ask the king."

#

North was in his rooms. It was one of the first truly pleasant days of the year and his windows were open to the smell of damp earth and growing things. It was such a fine day and he had so little to do that he was considering a walk down to the river. Before he could get his jacket and hat, however, he heard a knock at the door.

"Spender! Good to see you, do come in." Spender availed himself of North's hospitality and, while they were in his rooms, they talked of nothing in the companionable way one does when with a particularly good friend. In the fullest, best part of the afternoon, as the traces of spring made their way through the open window, they decided to both of them go to the river.

They walked through the dappled light and shade beneath newly green trees and, skirting deep, fertile patches of mud that would have proved highly diverting in their youth, ambled along the riverbank, watching the ducks that launched into the placid waters and paddled about with a proprietary air. Spender idly tossed a few pebbles into the water.

"There's a society;" he said, "they meet under Finch, and they're about a sort of rational inquiry into the inexplicable."

"What, like a Ghost Club; do they go around holding séances and writing letters to those Cottingley girls?"

"Nothing like that. They're supposed to be impartial and skeptical and all that. To get in, though, you need to go and investigate something unusual or supernatural. Most of the old, well known places have been taken by now, but I think I found something very much out of the ordinary. It's a sanitarium, I believe." They had come to the bridge and dawdled as they crossed.

A punt was making its way lazily downstream; the gentle ripples from its passage spread to the edges of the water and, encountering stones and trailing branches, started back on themselves, forming drifting matrices of intersecting concentric circles.

"I wondered if you shouldn't like to join me?" Spender said.

#

The things that one can do when locked in a dank cell with nothing in one's pockets are few indeed. The walls were chilly and damp so Spender and North whiled away the dragging hours by sitting back to back, trying to remember the name of the boy who had been caught keeping a family of mice when they were at school.

"Remember he had one in his pocket and, later, they found the rest of them?" North said.

"What was his name; was it Gorringe?"

"No, Gorringe fell into a ditch or a well or something and got pneumonia."

"Was it Woolley?" But they weren't ever to recall whether or not it was Woolley because a voice drifted up from the dark recesses of the cell.

"Feeling the tedium? You shouldn't be here for too long. Unless I'm mistaken, this is where people await summary execution." A battered and disheveled figure issued from out the gloom and approached them.

"Why do you say that?" Spender asked.

"Because I'm to be hanged tomorrow," he said, drawing closer. Though they had not known that he was there, his presence was made unremarkable by this last.

"Hanged?" Spender and North repeated at roughly the same time.

"I should have expected as much," the man said, hunkering beside them.

"What did you do?" North asked.

"My name is Dogwood," the man said abruptly, "I'm a Poet." He sat and watched them. They started and North murmured 'Oh, very good'. "I composed a poem about the King and it seems that he didn't like it. It went:

Our King is awful rubbish

And he's quite the awful dunce

He's boorish and offensive

And he hasn't bathed in months

"Of course, I was in my cups when I penned it. My verse is usually better than that." A heavy tread stopped outside the door and a guard shouted in.

"Quiet in there! This is a prison, not a lovely garden party!" Dogwood howled derisively back.

"What; are you going to hang me?" The guard stomped away, muttering darkly about 'prisoners these days having no respect'. Dogwood fastidiously brushed the dirt off of a bit of floor and sat with them. "Would you like to hear some of my poetry, my real poetry, that is?" They did and he began reciting, his voice eddying and lilting in the darkness. Spender and North both thought that it was good poetry, though very strange. Later, they would be obliged to admit that they couldn't remember what it was about nor could they recall a single line. He went on and the low hum of his cant enveloped them and lulled them. It is no easy thing to fall into so much as an uneasy doze whilst propped up against another person, but they found that they had slept under Dogwood's spell for, the next thing they knew, a trio of guards had burst in and shackled them once more. As they were dragged from the cell, Dogwood called after them.

"Give that miserable tyrant my regards!"

Spender and North were marched up into the sunlight (this being a very generous description of the leaden, ugly cast of the clouds) and past the stables to a side door of the manor house. As they climbed a staircase and passed through a wide windowed corridor, Spender and North were once again aware of a strangeness. But for the sound of an old woman assiduously scrubbing the floor, they walked in silence. This feeling of unease, of something being very wrong at the periphery of their consciousness intensified as they were led into an antechamber. They waited. The stillness of the room seemed to grow. Spender was feeling that he couldn't bear another minute when the doors before them swung open from within and they entered.

The King's court had once been a ballroom. There were now two rows of pillars leading to the end of the room where were massed a catafalque, a simple door, and a jumble of vaguely esoteric articles, the nature or purpose of which were not clear. Central to all this was the Seat of the King. The guards took Spender and North by their arms and brought them before a low dais where, on a winged armchair, sat Adelard Odd.

#  Chapter Ten

He wore a dark jacket and waistcoat of a cut much like that worn in the nineties and, under his chin, he had tied a white stock. To say that Odd had the look of a mad composer would not be far from the mark. His hair swept wildly back from his temples and he had a way of looking out from under his eyebrows with black, inscrutable eyes. The guards held Spender and North quite unnecessarily as they stood rooted to the spot. Odd sat stiffly in the chair and seemed to grip the arms. When he spoke, it was Spender he addressed.

"Mr. Spender," he said, "Have you come all this way, after so many years, with vengeance on your mind?"

#

Lewis had a horse. It was a good horse and he liked it very much, even if its face scared him after dark. Mama would cover its head at night and then it was all right. The next day he could uncover it and ride it back and forth, back and forth as much as he pleased and, really, it was not so bad at all when it was light. Lewis loved his Mama- he was supposed to say 'Mother' but she didn't mind; she sometimes read to him and was never cross. Papa, who was called Father, was only sometimes cross, and even then not terribly.

One day, he lost Fosie and decided to go downstairs to see if Mama or Papa had seen him. He slid down one step at a time, looking through the spindles the whole way. When he got to the bottom he sat there. The curtains were drawn and that was strange. It was dark inside but opening the curtains wouldn't make it much brighter because it was a dreary, dreary, dreary day. The door at the end of the hall was open and the light came out of it onto the floor and the wall.

Gran'pa, who was supposed to be Grandfather, was sitting in a chair- he had a beard where he hadn't one before. It looked as if he was crying the way Lewis did when he fell at the Park. He knew he mustn't cry, though, and he worried that Gran'pa would get scolded. He was going to hide upstairs when Gran'pa called him. There were pieces of paper on the table and the floor and Gran'pa had one as well. He stood by Gran'pa's knee and Gran'pa pulled him in with one arm and held him very tight. He told Lewis that a wicked man- an evil man- had made off with something.

Papa came in and Gran'pa sent Lewis to him. Papa didn't look at him and Lewis was scared. Papa said that Mama had gone on an outing. He said she would be gone awhile. 'Where did she go?' Lewis wanted to know. Papa had to go.

There was Nan and she was all right. She brought him his egg and took him to the Park and for the longest time Lewis didn't understand. One night he woke up and was terribly thirsty. He called and called for Mama but she didn't come. Finally, Nan came but Lewis didn't want her. Nan told him that Mother had gone out and couldn't bring him water. Then he did understand and he cried and cried.

#

Things were never quite the same for Lewis Spender. His father never spoke of it again until many years later, when he was about to die. Spender stood by the bed as his father creased and fretted at the top of his bed linens with a palsied hand.

"It's a damnable thing," he said, "to lose so much. I had hoped to live longer, to see a little more; you've really only begun." His mind seemed to wander and his fingers continued their unceasing movement. "Had I known, when she left, I should have stopped her, Lewis." Spender realized, with a bit of a wrench, that he was talking about his mother. "We had both known him; I met him first, I think; but that was long before, when he was thought to be harmless. I still can't imagine why she went to him."

"Who was he?" His father looked into his eyes.

"His name was Odd."

They spoke of other things that day, but Spender never remembered them. When the time came, he mourned his father and, while he mourned, he began his search.

#

Spender shook off his guard and leapt at Odd. Just before he reached him, he stumbled on something unseen. He caught himself and had half risen when a very strange thing happened. He at once felt like he was being dragged down by weights and, though he managed to gain his feet, he could do no more than stand in front of Odd in a stupor, a feeling like scalding water streaming from his scalp to his soles. His thoughts became muddled and he tried to sort out what exactly was going on. He had, against his will, raised impossibly up on his toes and Odd, taking him by the sleeve, pulled him carelessly across the room as one would draw forth a chair.

"I used her to make all of this," he said. "You really have no idea. Every cloud and cliff, all that crawls or swims; it was all created using her." He spoke in a low monotone, his quiet and uninflected voice boring into Spender's mind and ringing in his ears. He brought Spender to the catafalque and lifted him onto it effortlessly. Spender had a vague feeling that he had been tied down. He dimly saw that his feet pointed towards the simple door which was hanging open, revealing a wall covered in hieroglyphics. He struggled to remember the significance of this but a fog enshrouded his brain and he could only look up at Odd, who loomed murkily somewhere above him. Odd's voice was muffled and far-off.

"I've often wondered if it was possible to go deeper still. It can't be done with the effusions; they have only fragments of a soul." He leaned over Spender's body, his jacket brushing against Spender's arm, unbuttoned his shirt, and laid his chest bare. Odd had a knife, a small one, really, and he placed the cold point of it above Spender's heart. Spender thought he smelt faintly of sandalwood. Odd had put the palm of his hand on the small flat pommel of the knife and it had begun to sink into Spender's chest when he was interrupted by North.

"You're Adelard Odd, is that right?"

North had gotten the worst of a scuffle with the guards and he hung between them, bloodied and missing his eye patch. "Mr. Odd, sir," he said with absurd formality in light of the situation, "I don't believe you're going to have quite enough time to finish." A cavernous boom sounded from without the chamber. Odd straightened. "In a moment, those doors will come down and-" The doors behind them were wrenched from their hinges and fell before a seething mob. They flooded past North and the guards like an incoming tide and made for their king.

#

Spender and North were unaware that, from the time they set off from Tyre, they had set in motion events that had gained a certain momentum. The people of the city and, indeed, the people of every city in that strange place, nursed a hatred for the King. He was immensely powerful, though, utterly unforgiving, and surrounded by his Felicitous Guard. Nothing short of a violent general revolt could have any hope of deposing him. And so it was that a slightly daft holy man, a confused and blameless Spender, and a fiery conjuration formed the needed catalyst.

Gladbiscuit, who burned still with a fanatical fervor, saw a change in the people in the days following Balth's departure. Simon the Chronicler succumbed to the temptation to exaggerate and it was not very long before news of Balth's war on the King spread. The high priest, for his part, set to work fomenting a revolution. In an unprecedented show of unity, the peoples of several cities began stealing away to watch the battle and possibly do some looting.

They went by land and most reached the King's city the next day, where they milled about and made up outrageous rumors about the approaching army. With the full focus of the King's men on finding Spender and North (Spender particularly so), the rumblings went unnoticed. On the day that the galleon sailed up the canal, a small group of brash young men decided to storm the "castle". Around that nucleus formed a vast number of deeply discontented people.

It is now important to point out that, unbeknownst to everyone (including Odd), the Felicitous Guard operated by a sort of corollary to Occam's Razor. They could have had the singular good luck required to overcome a surprise attack by overwhelming numbers or, with considerably less luck, they could have been elsewhere. It was less of a stretch to be lucky enough to miss the thing entirely so, at the crucial moment, nearly every guard was Doing Something Else while Odd's subjects found themselves unopposed.

#

North and the guards were thrown to the floor in the rush. A score of attackers collapsed as they advanced and several burst into flame. Odd made a short and futile retreat before he was pulled down. As Spender lay in his bonds, he saw that the ceiling above him had taken on a pleasing rosy glow. It was growing quite warm and he suspected that the room was on fire. He wished that he felt more strongly about this, but really couldn't be bothered and, as he was feeling terribly drowsy, he began to doze off. Flames poured up the walls and pooled on the ceiling and the sounds of general tumult grew louder.

He came to his senses in the grass some distance from the manor house. It was blazing fiercely and a pillar of black smoke had risen and been caught by the wind. North was sitting beside him and, a short distance away, a small knot of sooty men stood shouting and jabbing their fingers at each other. North noticed Spender and leant him a hand as he sat up.

"I'm glad you're all right. Odd's dead, or he will be soon." Two of the sooty men looked them over and went back to shouting.

"Do you know what they're talking about?"

"Unless I'm much mistaken, they're deciding whether or not to execute us."

"Execute us! Why?"

"I imagine they have a general inclination towards killing right now. Also, they're pretty certain that you're not Balth." Beyond the edge of Odd's estate, just past the last of the town's scattered outliers, a gentle, windswept hill rose above the horizon such that the distant figures on it stood out against the sky. A crowd had massed at the top of the hill and was engaged in raising something up above their heads. Spender couldn't quite make it out.

"What are they doing?"

"They're crucifying him." North said quietly.

In the end, the sooty men gave them a choice. Spender and North could go back through the impassable desert and the Sometimes Wood, never to return, or they could wait while they made two more crosses. That the desert was considered impassable was considered irrelevant and in the end Spender and North found themselves in a kind of brougham pulled, to Spender's relief, by a perfectly normal horse. There was enough room to put one's feet up and this they did, each acutely appreciative that they had thus far made it through the day alive. The carriage rumbled down the abysmally rough road, rocking back and forth as it went. Spender fretted at a frayed bit on his sleeve.

"North, I must apologize. When we went to Quartersoake, I had no idea that the Door- What I mean to say is, I had only wanted to know what happened to my mother. I suppose I've been dishonest."

"I can hardly blame you, can I?" North said. "I don't believe that either of us took the Door very seriously. As for your motives, it's going to sound strange but I'm not nearly as surprised as you might imagine. Ever since this," he pointed to his eye "I've seen a lot more of the nature of things. I wasn't sure at first and I still can't put my finger on it, but a great deal of the people and things in this place have a feel to them. In a way, they bear a likeness to you. When I was in that well at the bottom of the earth, I saw strange things. I saw Odd, though I didn't know it was him at the time, and I saw a woman who looked a bit like you; she was pale and had dark hair. It's only just now made sense, what I saw." The carriage rolled on for a stretch. "I never knew about your mother; you never mentioned her in school." Spender looked out the quarter light.

"Most of my life I didn't know why she had died, what had happened. I used to harbor the hope that she wasn't dead, that some day she would come back. Then I did find out what had happened. She had been spirited away and- and I began to wonder if maybe she hadn't died after all. I wanted, at any rate, to see the place where she last was." Spender did not say that he had asked North along because he liked his company and thought that he would make it an altogether friendlier sort of day and, really, he didn't have to.

The estate had burned in the morning and, to North's great disgust, they reached the edge of the wilderness late that afternoon.

"I wish I had been paying better attention," he said, a bit piqued, "we could have walked there in a day." The revolutionaries let them off a slight distance from the swathe of shoes and effects and drove away without a shred of sentimental feeling. Spender and North stood at the edge of the barren land. It was still and silent but for the sound of the wind and the calls of crows.

"You don't think that you'll fall through again?" Spender asked.

"No," North said, "I don't know why; perhaps it's because Odd is dead." Nevertheless, he stepped gingerly past the line of demarcation and tested the ground with one foot. Spender joined him and they began walking, a pair of crows hopping in front of them before flying away in an ungainly burst of wings. The heat of the desert had gone completely and the sun, which they thought should be setting in a few hours, was lost in gray obscurity. Those last in their long line of captors had had the decency to send them on with provisions and they each had a sandwich as they walked.

"Do you think," North said without preamble, "that we ought to be more bothered? More than we are, I mean."

"I should think so;" Spender said, "ought to be completely unhinged."

"Hello, that Chronicler is coming this way." North had turned suddenly to look behind. Spender could just see a distant figure wavering towards them. Not wanting to stop, they slowed to an amble. When the Chronicler neared them, they waited expectantly. Just as he got into hailing distance, he shouted something quite urgently.

"What?" Spender shouted.

"Oh, look out," North said. There was a peculiar sort of lurch, as if the earth had slipped off an end table, and Spender and North spilled headlong into the dust.

#  Chapter Eleven

Only there was no dust; what's more, there was very little light. They found themselves sitting in the middle of a quiet street in the very early morning. It was a tree lined and sedate kind of street flanked by rows of slumberous houses with darkened windows. Spender made some inquisitive noises.

"We're back," North said. They were hardly inclined to knock on a door, so they walked down the middle of the street beneath the deep shade of the overhanging boughs.

Very often, when people go to extraordinary places in extraordinary ways and have extraordinary things happen to them, they find that things have gone pleasantly and reassuringly back to normal upon their return. Not so with North, who still had an eye that saw all sorts of things in a confused jumble. He remarked on this to Spender.

"And you can still see the 'yet to come'?"

"I can. For instance, we'll come to a park soon and loaf about there for a while. Later, we're going to be stopped by a policeman." Spender did not know what to say and laughed shortly. At length, they did happen upon a park and cut across it, kicking through the dew as they did. One or two windows had lit up and there was a general sort of stirring and whispering in the world by the time they had reached the other side of the park.

"I expect you're right about that policeman; here comes one now." The officer, having seen a pair of begrimed and strangely dressed men, each looking the very picture of a particularly shiftless vagrant, felt compelled to have a word.

"Good morning, gentlemen," he said mildly.

"Oh, hello!" Spender tried to look winning. His clothes, which had been given to him on the fighting ship, were covered in ash, blackened by smoke, and missing a great deal of buttons. North's differed only in that his were also bloody.

"Out for a walk, are we?"

"Costume party;" North invented wildly, "great to-do; fresh air; curative." He pulled at his sleeves and rather ineffectually tried to flatten his hair.

"A party you say, sir? That's very fine. Where was it, sir?"

"Oh, a good friend's- roughly- over- excuse me, but what town is this?" The policeman, having mentally assigned them as privileged sodden wastrels, took on a patronizing air.

"You're in the suburb of Barleystowe, sir." North looked around and further mussed his hair.

"But that's miles and miles away. How did we ever..." They thanked the policeman for no particular reason, disengaged as smoothly as possible under the circumstances, and set to finding a cab, which was no mean feat considering their appearance.

#

They went first to the asylum, still in their faintly disgraceful get up, in order to see about North's father's car. What they found was unexpected.

"My God, it's mostly gone," Spender said. It had, in fact, become a half-asylum. One wing and the central façade of the building had been completely demolished, though it seemed that the destruction stopped at the point where the crack had been and where Odd's room presumably still stood.

"The car's gone, too," North said grimly. "I've already got to explain a gammy eye; I don't want to tell my father I've lost the Humber as well."

"There's nothing for it" Spender said. "We'll have to find Mr. Harris."

Their cab had gone and, by the time they reached Quartersoake on foot, the shops had opened. After inquiring around, they were able to find out where Mr. Harris had his eggs delivered and were soon at his door. He answered their knock in a dressing gown, with glasses askew.

"I haven't any idea who took your- Oh. Oh my goodness, it's you." He fumbled with his sash. "I thought you were- I went after you when you didn't return. You weren't anywhere to be found, though."

"Do you know where North's car is?"

"It's all right, he has it," North said. Mr. Harris, who was nearly frantic, was not in a state of mind to find North's knowledge remarkable.

"Yes, it's quite safe. I had no idea what to do with it; would have reflected poorly..." He drew his robe around him tightly and looked up and down the street. "Do come in, won't you?"

Mr. Harris put the kettle on and grabbed armfuls of paper off his table, piling them haphazardly on a writing desk in the corner.

"Awfully sorry," he said, "there's a woman who comes round twice a week but it tends to get a little out of hand in the interim." When Spender and North were seated, he rattled cups around and embarked on a hunt for the sugar. At last, he turned around and leaned back against the icebox. "So, whatever happened?"

"I don't think you'd believe us," Spender said.

"I think I would."

"There is an entire world on the other side of that Door and, until very recently, Adelard Odd lived there as king." Mr. Harris looked blankly at them.

"It was an awful prank," North said quickly. "There was a bet on that we wouldn't do it. We had coin of the realm and our honor at stake."

"Of course, of course." Mr. Harris grinned foolishly. "I never really believed that there was anything to that door; no rational person would. Imagine my surprise when you two failed to turn up."

"What did Mr. Webley say when you told him?" Spender asked.

"Ah; actually, it wouldn't have done wonders for my employment were he to find out that I let you wander off into an eldritch oblivion." He became conveniently distracted and cleaned his spectacles with the corner of his dressing gown. "I told him that you took your tour of the place, disparaged it thoroughly, and made off with some things that you found lying around." North looked askance at him. "I suppose the great offense he took at that was partially responsible for his deciding to tear the place down, trust fund be damned. I took it pretty hard, I can tell you, seeing my employment being dynamited. Still, I'm staying on until they finish the job and they've only got as far as the center part of the building."

"We were just there," Spender said, "and it looked as if they went all the way to Odd's room."

"Oh they couldn't have," Mr. Harris said. "They got leery about the job and decided to renegotiate with Webley's lawyers. Perhaps it collapsed; the old place was never in the best of shape and being demolished may have weakened it." He cocked his head and seemed to have a moment of inspiration before turning and finding the sugar in the icebox. He put it on the table with a why-did-I-put-that-there sort of murmur. "The thing is; everything, the upkeep, my salary, was paid by an anonymous benefactor. Mr. Webley only likes to act as if he maintains it." The kettle quavered for a moment before going into hysterics and Mr. Harris hastened to tend to it.

"Who would want to preserve the asylum, though," Spender asked, "and to what end?" Mr. Harris, who was setting out the rest of the tea things in a hospitable and highly disorganized fashion, did not hear him. In the face of a hot cup of tea and Mr. Harris's affability, Spender's question was soon forgotten and, by the time he and North were on the drive back to Spender's home, any thoughts not involving a good scrub and a soft bed had completely gone from his mind.

#

After that coveted sleep and a large and lazy breakfast, Spender and North set about the somewhat laborious task of telling North's family that they had gone off on a whim and had been riding when a branch intruded itself into North's holiday plans. North's parents, who hadn't noticed that they were ever gone, took it well enough; his father, being an avid outdoorsman, asked them where they rode. This provoked a spate of mumbling tending towards 'up north'. Fortunately, North's father drew his own conclusions with which he was very well satisfied.

North's aunts were another matter entirely. His Most Important Aunt even went so far as to stand before them in her sitting room and deliver and impassioned sermon on 'The Importance of Taking Care', which ended with an account of the boy down the road who fell into a horse pond and didn't drown "though he easily might have". Spender and North bore this with visibly meek and contrite spirits. The Aunt was pleased that they seemed to take her instruction to heart and decided on the spot to send them to the seaside.

The seaside town was very pleasant. Spender and North were introduced to a pair of sisters to whom they said clever things and who told them clever things in return. (One was Margaret and the other was Charlotte; both were kind and accomplished, though Charlotte was quite forward.) Most days, from midmorning on, Spender and North would sit on the veranda and do nothing in particular as the gulls wheeled and the breezes blew and groups of children screamed and ran about with buckets and spades. It was gloriously normal and, at times, Spender and North wondered if perhaps they hadn't dreamt it all. Of course, North could always uncover his eye and see some of the small children come back as old people to stand looking at a beach that was substantially different; things of that nature reminded him that some of it, at any rate, had been very real.

One day, they noticed that their days of leisure had all but passed and that they would soon have to go back to school. Reluctantly, they had one last luncheon with the sisters, packed their bags, and took their leave. On the train, Spender worked out a note to North's aunt that he considered a masterpiece of civility and gratitude. They parted ways at the station with a 'see you next month' and North went to stay with his parents until the beginning of term.

And so, for some time, nothing particularly interesting happened. As North sat down to family dinners and Spender loafed around in a bored manner, neither were the least bit aware of the awful, bizarre, and terribly exciting events that would befall them in very short order.

#  Chapter Twelve

Tyre was burning, its ashes falling like snow from a red, hellish sky. From what North could see, everything around Tyre was also on fire, twisting and blackening in the flames. He was standing in a high place, watching the destruction of the city. Then, in the sudden and inexplicable way that one often finds in dreams, he was in a room.

"Oh, hello." Simon the Chronicler was there, working at a desk and seemingly oblivious to the danger. "I was hoping you'd show up."

"The city is burning" North said urgently.

"Yes, I know. Nearly everyone else is dead, which is why I'm glad to see you. I hadn't anyone to read my manuscript to."

"I beg your pardon?"

"It's nice to have an outside opinion. I'm too close to the subject, what with my impending death, and I don't trust myself not to overwrite the thing."

"Wouldn't you rather try to escape instead?"

"Oh no. Now listen; we haven't much time." The Chronicler pushed his chair back and flattened his papers. "And the King came forth out of the tomb and was made whole. And the hill of the tomb crumbled and the King issued from within and fire goeth before him.

"In his left hand is death and in his right hand life. All is scattered before him and perisheth. No succor will he give nor respite, for it is not meet that the child should strike the father nor the people strike their god. From out the tomb came he and the sea did burn and the birds of the air and the beasts of the land did burn and the people, in their iniquity, were as chaff in the wind." He let the paper roll up and stretched. "There's more before that, of course. I'm almost done; I only have to add another bit about the land and sea and sky being wreathed in flame and something about him remaking the earth. What do you think?"

"My God- that's terrible!"

"I thought some of it was quite good, especially the 'succor nor respite' part."

"Is it true, though?" The Chronicler had gone to the window and was looking at the city.

"It turns out that the King is more than a king. He's the creator and arbiter of us all. I'm beginning to think that killing him was a mistake." Outside, a tower collapsed and sent up a plume of sparks. The Chronicler went back to his desk. "The floor's getting hot, isn't it?"

"Is there anything we can do?" North asked.

"I don't think so. You could, perhaps. I believe you're from another place entirely." There was an unpleasant groaning and cracking sound and dust sifted down from the ceiling. The Chronicler rolled his manuscript neatly and put it in the desk. "I don't think I'll be able to finish this after all. Do you know, I've been wondering if this all mightn't have happened before. I think history could be whatever the King likes. Maybe he dies and remakes the world more to his liking every time." It was getting unbearably hot. The glass in the window cracked.

"It's a little different this time, perhaps. I don't know that you two were ever here before."

Then the door was open- or gone- North wasn't sure which. Adelard Odd stood in the flames. He looked abstracted, deep in thought, and he didn't seem to notice North at first. Part of the ceiling caved in and at last he looked in North's direction.

"I made a mistake, Mr. North. I don't know what it was, but I can't let you back in." The rest of the ceiling collapsed.

#

North awoke in a cold sweat. He lay tangled in his bedclothes, staring up at the windowpane pattern that was cast in light and shadow above his bed. He felt something warm running past his ear and on to the pillow. He touched his face, looked at his hand, and found that that his nose was bleeding.

In the months since Spender and North had gone to the seaside, a chill had entered the air and the sun had become more and more reluctant to make a showing before eight o' clock or after four. As a hatted and bundled North walked through the almost holy silence of a cold night, one of the first snows of the year began tumbling down in lonely, erratic flakes. He was not unappreciative and relished, in a secret and reserved way, the icy touches that lighted on his face.

#

"Was it a dream?" Spender sat, disheveled and not a little bleary, as North hung his muffler on the back of his chair and gingerly dabbed at his nose.

"I don't know. It was unlike any dream I've ever had. Things were clear; they made sense; at least, as much sense as that place ever made. I felt pain." North looked out the window. "What are you going to do?" Spender frowned thoughtfully.

"I suppose a lot of people don't have mothers. Some died in awful ways; it's not uncommon. But this was my mother. I think I have to go back, just to find out for sure."

"Shall we wait until the end of term?"

"North, you really don't have to come with me. It's-"

"Yes, I know. I've somehow become involved with the place. It's stayed with me and now I've had this dream, if you can call it that. Besides," he smiled a bit, "I think you could do with some company."

#  Chapter Thirteen

It was a party of some sort, afterwards neither could remember where exactly it had been or what it was for, but both could agree that it had been outside and that strings of lanterns hung above, running from the trees to pavilion and back again. It was held at the house of someone far wealthier than they, which wealth Spender ogled appreciatively and Fletcher regarded with annoyance.

"Look at it all," he said in a low voice.

"You're only jealous," Spender said. "If you were oofy, you'd want to be great friends."

"Do you know something?" Fletcher said. "You're right."

It was a wonderful evening, though they hardly knew anyone there. Mrs. Sutley-Howe, who they did know, introduced them to several people, most of whom talked to them indifferently for a while and drifted away. When the moon peered through the tangled tree branches above them and the dark grass beyond the revel had become heavy with dew, Fletcher caught Spender by the arm.

"I think we should go, don't you?"

"We may as well." Just then, Mrs. Sutley-Howe navigated towards them, bringing in her wake a young, dark haired girl.

"Mr. Spender, Mr. Fletcher; may I introduce Miss Cecilly Fitzmorris. Miss Fitzmorris; Mr. Arthur Spender and Mr. Alard Fletcher." They pleasure-to-meet-you'd and how-do-you-do'd and Mrs. Sutley-Howe floated away in search of more people to introduce. Miss Fitzmorris looked at them as Spender tried valiantly to think of something witty to say.

"Mr. Fletcher," she said, "am I very much mistaken, or were you just now planning to escape this party?" Fletcher's eyebrows climbed a bit.

"I was. Mr. Spender and I were thinking of going to a café or chop-house. Once there, I intend to say rude things about most of the people we met here tonight."

"Might I come with you?" Fletcher and Spender shared a moment of surprise.

"Please do," Spender said without quite knowing what he was saying, "we should enjoy your company."

"We'll make it a café, then" Fletcher said.

If the beginning of the evening had been good, the rest of the night was better. Spender found witty things to say and, as he had predicted, Fletcher said cutting things about several of the guests. At one point, Spender looked at Cecilly and saw that a strand of her hair had come loose and was curled against her neck. She was saying something to Fletcher- arguing about something, he thought- her eyes full of light and spots of color high on her cheeks.

"Won't there be a scandal if you're missed at the party?" He said suddenly. "Your parents may object."

"I live with my aunts, neither of whom will notice my absence."

"Why is that?" Spender asked.

"Because you will be taking me back, Mr. Spender."

"It is getting late," Fletcher said, drawing his watch, "we'd better go." With some regret, they left and returned Miss Fitzmorris to a party filled with wilted flowers, sore feet, and crumpled napkins beside empty glasses. They left her, each weary but exhilarated, and set out for their own rooms. Spender's was first and they stopped at the door.

"Well," Fletcher said, "goodnight."

"Yes," Spender said, "goodnight." They did not look at each other for long. Spender went to his rooms to pace back and forth and Fletcher went on foot, his hands deep in his pockets, staring fiercely at the pavement in front of him.

#

The first note read

Mr. and Mrs. Sidney G. Fitzmorris

request the honor of

Mr. Alard Fletcher's

presence at the marriage of their daughter

Cecilly Ann

with

Mr. Arthur Spender

on Friday, the 21st of June

at four o'clock

St. Thomas's Church

Fletcher read the second note again.

"Dear Alard, I tried to call on you the other day but you weren't in. I would very much like to see you. Arthur asked after you and said that he hoped you would be able to make it to the wedding. Please do come, Alard; it would make me very happy. Yours, Cecilly."

He tore both notes to pieces, threw them to the floor and stalked out his door, hat in hand.

#

As they knew, to an extent, what would happen to them this time, Spender and North were able to better plan their absence. North told his family that he was going to do something like skiing or alpinism (he wasn't very consistent) and that he should be back well in time for Christmas. Spender, unfortunately, didn't have to tell anyone much of anything, but he hardly noticed in the midst of the preparations. On the day before their departure, his floor was covered with provisions and Potentially Useful Things.

"This is a good idea," North said, picking up a small hatchet, "we may need something like this."

"I believe I got two of everything," Spender said. "There's rope and there are matches and flint and tinder in case the matches don't work; there are two knives- one for each of us- and I got hardtack, though I wasn't sure exactly what it was. It seems to be like bread, only it's rubbish."

"D'you think we'll need a tent?" North toyed with his hatchet, which he had grown quite fond of.

"I did think about that. It was never particularly cold, so I thought we could make do with blankets- to save space, you know."

The next day found them making the long drive to Quartersoake through a chill, barren morning. The fields they passed were heaved and humped with frost and covered with a thin blanket of snow through which bits of stubble poked in clumps and files. The puddles that perpetually dotted the road to the asylum were thinly iced over and collapsed into a muddy slurry as they drove through them. Spender and North, who were expecting to see a half-asylum, were again surprised.

"Apparently, Mr. Webley and the workers came to some sort of agreement," North said. The other half of the asylum had been torn down, all the way to Odd's room, so that the only part of the building left standing was a lone precarious tower made up of the walls below Odd's Door, with the Door itself at the top. It looked as if the slightest wind might knock it over and Spender sat for a moment, not quite knowing what to do. North looked resolute. "It seems that we'll have to do a bit of climbing."

"Do you think we should still go on?" Spender asked.

"We've come this far, haven't we?"

They found a sheltered spot for the Humber and walked through what had become a field to stand at the foot of the tower.

"If you could give me a leg up, I can pull you up to the first storey and we'll go on from there" North said. The rope had immediately come in handy and, as they climbed the second and third stories, Spender privately congratulated himself on his provisioning.

"Do you think it will still work?" he said, suddenly worried. They had reached Odd's Door and were standing on the narrow ledge that had once been the floor.

"I expect it will. I wonder if the rest of the asylum is there on the other side, or if we'll have to climb back down." Spender carefully opened the Door out towards them.

"I don't see anything," he said, "do you-" a gust of wind issued from the other side of the Door and, as Spender and North leaned into it to avoid being knocked off of the tower, it abruptly subsided. With a short yell of consternation, they both tumbled through the doorway and plunged

#  Chapter Fourteen

only a short distance before landing on and sinking into a deep snowdrift. Spender floundered to his feet. Snow had gone down his collar and inside his boot; this preoccupied him to the extent that it was several minutes before he realized he had lost his pack in the fall. North had struggled out of the snow and was digging around.

"Mine's gone as well," he said. Spender began searching through the snow.

"They can't have gone so far." North pulled off his eye patch and beat it against his pant leg to get the snow off it. As he did so, he looked around.

"They have; gone, that is. I don't know how but they aren't anywhere." Spender was understandably crestfallen to hear this and drew his coat around him in a mildly dejected manner. "This is curious, isn't it?" North said. Beyond the remnant of the asylum, a deep forest of evergreens ringed them in, all laden and clad in white. Whereas the world they had left was in the grips of weather that was indifferent at best, this was a deep, prolonged, serious snow. It was the kind that precluded "Just going round the corner to get some things" or "I'll just be a bit late today". It was, in short, the kind of snow that keeps one at home and secretly delights one with thoughts of an icy cataclysm in which no one ever telephones or comes around soliciting.

"We can't very well stay here," Spender said.

"Well," North looked first one way and then the other, "which way did you go last time?"

"Last time I just picked a direction at random. I think I went in a straight-rightish line from the entrance. North, we won't last a day in this cold without the proper supplies; we'll just have to go back and come again when we're better prepared."

"All right." North looked up at the Door. "It may be easier said than done. Let's give it a go, though." He was right. Without the rope and hampered by the deep drifts of snow all around, they had some difficulty in beginning their climb. Spender was giving North footing on his shoulder and trying to brace himself when he heard a long, drawn out sound drifting through the trees. His skin prickled and his mouth suddenly felt very dry. He had heard that same sound just before running out of the Sometimes woods and into the outskirts of Tyre.

"North, North," he said quietly and urgently, "get down, quickly. We have to go." North climbed down and looked curiously at him.

"Go where?"

"That way. Now." Spender led the way away from the tower as the cry of Aghlich again sounded behind them.

"What was that?" North asked as they plunged ahead, skirting around trees and stumps.

"It was the Thing;" Spender said in the same low voice, "it's coming this way." North, who had heard Spender's account of the Thing and had seen Spender seeing it (after a fashion), knew the danger.

"I thought it was supposed to only come out at night?"

"So are the trees." North dared a look back and saw some distance straight through the trees. What he saw made him stumble and Spender reached back to catch him by the sleeve. As they ran, they could hear the Thing gaining on them, its great snout snorting and billowing.

They were just running past an uprooted tree when North saw a hollow in the ground left by the roots, which hung over it like a curtain and, covered with snow as they were, made the hole nearly invisible. With a 'Come on!', he pulled Spender with him and they tumbled into the hole. Moments later, the Thing blundered by them in a blur of size and ferocity. North motioned for Spender to stay still and they both laid flat and listened. They could hear the Thing lose its momentum and swing around. It had lost them, perhaps because of the snow, and was moving in circles to try to pick up the trail again. As the sounds of its movements faded, Spender and North cautiously pushed out of the hollow. Spender looked around.

"Do you remember what time it was when we got here?"

"Half past- hello, my watch has stopped- half past nine. Why do you ask?"

"Why is it getting dark already?" A pall had indeed fallen over the forest and North looked up wonderingly.

"I don't think it's nightfall; I expect it's a storm coming." The sky was a heavy flat grey that seemed pregnant with snowfall. "We should get back before it starts." Even as they turned back and began to retrace their steps to the tower, large white flakes began to fall lazily through the air.

"We can't be far now," Spender said, looking down at their tracks, which were quickly being obscured.

"We aren't." North had stuffed his patch into his coat pocket and was navigating them through the trees. (The trees, had circumstances changed at some point, would have been in slightly different places. These hypothetical trees were in a constant state of flickering movement to North's eye and, as a result, he was able to fix on the tower which, though distant, could be clearly seen with only the occasional disquieting blink of nonexistence.)

The gently falling flakes began to come en masse in a white, soft flurry that Spender and North would have found quite beautiful were they not preoccupied with their fell pursuer. They came to a wide circular clearing and North stopped.

"Spender, can you see the Door?" Spender squinted through the snow, which was coming down so thickly that he could barely see the far side of the clearing.

"No, I can't."

"Neither can I" North said grimly.

"Surely it's just a little farther on."

"This is where it's supposed to be. It was here a moment ago." The Door had gone, much like their packs, for no apparent reason. North brushed snow from his shoulders and looked lost. "I'm sorry," he said, "I'm just at a bit of a loss right now."

"Well," Spender said, "the Thing is back there, so I vote that we go in the opposite direction. At least we won't go hungry; I've just found a bit of hardtack in my pocket."

#

As their watches had stopped, Spender and North had lost track of time, though, if the gathering darkness was any indication, the sun was setting behind its grey shroud. They did know that the early breakfast they had had at Spender's was long ago and they were obliged to divide the hardtack between them.

"I'm afraid we aren't keeping a very straight course," North said. "I don't have anything to navigate- what's that?" He slipped in the snow, regained his footing in an instant, and began pulling at Spender.

"I don't-" As Spender spoke, a hulking, furry form came out from behind a tree. Spender's heart leapt into his throat as it loped directly towards them. In a moment, it hallooed them and, to their immense relief, resolved itself into a man with an overcoat and beard all rimed with snow and ice.

"Bad night," the man said. "No good staying out in it. Follow me." They trudged through the deepening snow for the better part of a mile before they reached an open space much larger than their clearing. In the middle was a small cabin that was almost buried in a deep snowdrift. A blizzard had begun in earnest and Spender and North were grateful when the man led them inside.

"Thank you," Spender said. North, who had hurriedly put his eye patch on when he had seen their host in the woods, stood just behind Spender and said something suitably grateful-sounding. The man regarded them both with what might have been a smile.

"You'll want to get those boots off. Put your feet up by the fender." He nodded over at the hearth, which blazed invitingly.

"I'm Lewis Spender and this is Roger North; pleased to meet you."

"I'm the Trapper," the man said. "I'll have some stew on in a minute. Have a seat." As they sat in the warm dark fastness of the Trapper's cabin, they felt the cold leach out of them and life return to their fingers and toes. North also felt a growing unease.

The Trapper went into a back room and returned with a cast iron pot that he hung over the fire on a blackened hook.

"What kind of stew is that?" Spender asked. The Trapper only laughed and crouched in front of the fireplace to prod at the cinders. While his back was turned, North furtively lifted his eye patch and looked round the room. With a peculiar look on his face, he put the patch back over his eye just before the Trapper turned around, smoke billowing behind him.

"I'll be getting firewood. Won't be long now." The Trapper slung on his fur-covered coat and went out the door. North grabbed his boots and began lacing them up at speed.

"Spender, we have to leave."

"What do you mean?"

"We have to hurry. I've just had a look around. He's got a lot of bones in the walls and under the floor. The skulls are all-" The door banged open and an eddy of snow skittered across the threshold as the Trapper strode back in with an armful of split wood. North quickly crossed his booted feet and stuck them back under his stool. The Trapper dropped his load and, taking a ladle from its place on the mantle, stirred the contents of his cook pot. Without knowing why, Spender looked up and saw for the first time a dozen or more pairs of shoes all hanging from the rafters. He felt a prickling sensation at the back of his neck. The Trapper looked at them.

"I'll be right back. Sit tight." As soon as the Trapper went into the other room, Spender pulled on his boots.

"Go on ahead," North whispered to him, "I'm going to shut him in that room to give us time."

Outside, the snow fell in a nearly impenetrable flurry. Throughout the clearing, the blue shadowed snow rose and fell over hidden stumps and holes. Spender took the briefest moment to brace himself against the cold before striking out for the black tree line. When he had made it half way to the trees he looked back at the Trapper's cabin, the view of which was already being diffused by the snow into a soft haze. As he watched, light from the open door spilled across the snow and North darted out, his eye glinting in the dark. North sprinted across the snow, yelling. His voice was carried by the wind and Spender could hear, "Run!" Spender turned and staggered towards the edge of the clearing. North scrambled after him with considerable agility.

From inside the cabin there issued a muffled bellow and the Trapper exploded out into the snow. Neither Spender nor North had ever seen a bear charging through snow; if they had, they would have been struck by the similarity such a thing bore to the Trapper's advance. North had caught up by the time they reached the woods. His breath streamed out in the dark and, as they plunged into the trees, he gasped, "Run!"

Spender ran. It was all he could do to keep up with North who, it turned out (and as we already know from his subterranean adventure), was astonishingly fast. They threaded through the evergreens, dodging snow clad branches with the Trapper behind them all the way. Very gradually, the Trapper began to lose ground and fell back. Spender, for whom every breath was an agony, felt that it came not a moment too soon. They slowed to walking which somehow made the going a little harder. The snow had stopped falling and the ragged edges of the clouds had drifted away from the moon, revealing its pale gibbous form, which shone in the startlingly clear and sharp way that the moon does on very cold nights.

The Trapper burst out of cover just to their left and lunged at them. Spender and North fled in terror with the Trapper at their heels. That he had managed, in complete silence, to catch them up and outflank them without North seeing him was enough to give them pause. Spender doggedly stayed just behind North, all the while thinking, "It's toying with us". They were both of them reasonably sure that the Trapper was not human. These thoughts did nothing to make them less anxious when it suddenly cut off its pursuit. They stopped and Spender looked back with the air of a nervous animal.

"Can you see it?" he said.

"No," North said, "but that doesn't necessarily mean that he isn't there. It seems like something's blinkered me. It feels like there is something very-"

"Malevolent," Spender said. A branch snapped and they both started violently.

"Come on."

#

They had been going in silence for a while so that Spender nearly bolted when North spoke.

"Are there still trees for you?"

"What?" Spender said, sounding a bit querulous (and pardonably so).

"Are we walking through pines and whatnot?"

"Yes, I think so."

"The trees are going, for me."

"What's there instead?"

"I don't know exactly what to call it. A thicket, I suppose." And as he said it, it was. Spender could never say how things happened on the wrong side of the Door, but happen they did. They were in the midst of a dense thicket made up of dry brown stalks that stuck up through the snow in the inconvenient way that weeds do when the snow has done a poor job of covering them.

"I really wish things would stop being so strange," North said. They pushed through the thicket, which seemed to go on and on, far beyond what one would expect of a normal thicket. After they had pushed and trampled and pushed some more, they broke out into a bare spot in the middle of the Impossibly Wide Thicket and there saw the strangest thing yet.

It looked something like a horse and was made of closely woven twigs that stuck out in places. It was not, in fact, particularly well made and had an awkward, stiff-legged appearance.

"Hello," it said, "who goes there?"

"It talks," Spender said unintentionally.

"Of course I do. I wouldn't be of much use otherwise."

"I'm sorry," North said, "but what are you?"

"I'm the Wicker Moose," the Wicker Moose said.

"What are you doing in the middle of this thicket?"

"I'm guarding the hole." The Wicker Moose nodded towards a dark hole in the snow.

"Whatever for?"

"I don't know. I know I was made to guard it and prevent anyone from going down it."

"You were made to protect that hole in the ground?"

"Recently. I'm quite a young Wicker Moose."

"Who made you?" The Moose thought for a moment and looked as solemn as anything made of wicker can.

"The God." North looked at Spender meaningfully.

"I see. How do you keep people from going down the hole?"

"I tell them that it's a bottomless hole from which they will never escape. It is nothing but eternal darkness and falling. As far as I know, that's exactly what it is. Truth be told, I haven't had to guard it from anyone yet."

"Please excuse us," North said. They removed themselves a ways and spoke in low tones.

"It was Odd, I think. It's his hole," North said.

"I thought so, too. D'you suppose it's a trap?"

"If it is, it's a very peculiar sort of trap."

"Should we chance it?"

"It's either that or continue wandering until something pounces on us. The Trapper could be anywhere."

"Right."

"I say," the Wicker Moose called out, "what are you two talking about?"

Spender and North walked back to the Wicker Moose.

"We're going down that hole," North said firmly. "Don't try to stop us." The Moose hobbled towards them.

"It's a bottomless hole from which you will never escape. There's nothing there but eternal darkness and falling," it said, sounding quite alarmed.

"We'll take our chances," Spender said.

"No!" It rushed at North. The Wicker Moose collided, bounced off ineffectually (being made of wicker), and tipped over into the snow where it lay with its legs sticking out at odd angles. Spender and North looked at each other.

"Should we help him up?" Spender said.

"If you do I'll trample you to bits," the Moose said.

"That's not very sporting," North said. "Let's go."

"Don't say I didn't warn you!" the Moose bawled after them.

The hole certainly looked bottomless. As they peered down, a bit of the edge crumbled away and fell. Spender backed away.

"I don't think it's bottomless," North said. "There's something down there."

"What does it look like?"

"I can't say, exactly. Whatever it is, I think it's something unpleasant." North looked back. "I'll go first."

"Wait a-" but it was too late. North disappeared into the hole and Spender had no choice but to follow.

#  Chapter Fifteen

As they fell, it occurred to North that they could very well end up in the same place he had ended up after slipping through the earth. He found himself wishing that he had thought of this before jumping gallantly down a strange hole and he attempted to twist around in midair and warn Spender. There was an awful lot of wind, though, and Spender couldn't make out very much.

Long before they reached bottom, North could see that his idea was both true and not true. He could see better in the Down Below, almost as if a visor had lifted, and the land beneath was revealed to him in its entirety. The ziggurats and pyramids of before were still there, but missing were the laborers and their terrible overseers. The hellish glow had become a pale cold light that made even the rough stones look somehow antiseptic. Their momentum was almost imperceptibly arrested and Spender shouted something as the dead city came into his view.

They dropped onto the side of a pyramid and North caught hold of Spender's coat, saving him from a nasty fall. Spender 'thank you'd' as one does and made sure of his footing.

"Is this the same place?" he asked.

"It is and it isn't," North said. "It's a good deal safer than it was last time, but we're no closer to getting back home." They each thought of their own warm beds and something better to eat than hardtack.

"Well," Spender said, "what should we do?"

"We'll go that way," North said, pointing towards the vast vague shadow of the great pyramid. They descended with care and began to navigate towards the squares and avenues of the innermost part of the city.

"It's not so very bad to look at," Spender said at one point.

"I suppose it isn't," North said. They walked on. "Spender, if we find Odd- what then?" Spender set his jaw.

"I don't think that I have much of a choice. We know how he would receive us and there is the matter-" North thought he heard Spender say, "of my mother" but he couldn't be sure.

At the foot of the central pyramid were the remnants of what seemed to be an encampment. Pieces of tents and odd utensils were left lying alongside the ashes of dead campfires. North picked up a red waistcoat that was in need of a mend. He flipped it around and held it at arm's length.

"Some of Odd's soldiers wore these, remember?"

"What are they doing down here?"

"Couldn't say. I think they're ahead of us, in the dark passage."

"That's the way you went before?"

"It is. Spender, I don't want to mislead you. I haven't any idea of what I'm doing."

"You have some idea and we can't very well sit still and wait for something to happen to us. Maybe Odd will be in there and we can meet him on more equal terms than last time." North thought of his vision and the strange distracted man that stood unharmed in an inferno. He thought that they weren't at all likely to get equal terms, but didn't say so.

"You're right. There's no way back so we might as well press forward as best we can."

They walked down the passage, shoulder to shoulder. It was much less daunting the second time around, North thought, and more companionable. Unlike Spender, he could see how far they had to go in the darkness and almost wished that he couldn't. After they had both gotten used to walking in the dark and Spender had overcome the nagging sensation that he was about to walk into something, they set a good pace and were able to reminisce about the seaside and Margaret and Charlotte.

"It was when we were at the Bastables," North said. "The girls were holding a coin in one hand and I had to guess which one- you know the game. Naturally I was getting it every time. Then, young Bastable came over- Phillip, I think it was- and said, 'It's a simple trick really. You hold the hand with the coin up to your head and he can tell because the blood's gone out of it.'

"It was nothing of the sort, so I invited him to try his luck and got five in a row. Then he tried cheating and, after I turned back around, I said, 'You look guilty, Bastable, like you've just put it in your back pocket'."

"What did he say?" Spender asked.

"He didn't say a thing. He just gave the coin to Charlotte and spent the next half hour trying to find the reflective surface that I saw him in."

"Have you ever used it to win at cards or something like that?"

"Lord, no."

Whether it was the dark or the realization that they had woken up ages ago, Spender and North had become rather tired. After trying to push on a little while longer, they gave in and were soon sleeping on the stone floor of the passage.

#

If you have ever been awakened by hunger, you know that it is a very disagreeable thing. Spender and North were woken up in just such a way and, as a result, were put in very low spirits. They continued on, in a bad mood, for the last leg of the journey and came out, blinking, into the light.

"Look!" North said. Sabers and feathered shakos and antiquated muskets were littered around the rim of the well and voices echoed up from below. Lying down flat and crawling to the edge, they looked over.

There was a fire lit at the bottom of the well and by its light they could see a band of soldiers. They sat or knelt on the ground, with bayonets fixed and pointed towards the doorway.

"I won't," they faintly heard one say, "you can't make me."

"I can and I will. Go in there!"

"Won't."

"When the General gets here, he won't think highly of your insubordination."

"Don't care. Won't go."

"I'll shoot you."

"I'm not going." There was a long silence. Spender and North descended part way and looked down at the soldiers.

"Excuse me," North shouted. The men jumped and looked up. "We'd like to come down."

"Who are you?" The officer in charge looked up at them, his feather swaying slightly.

"Oh, no one in particular. We'd just like to go in that chamber."

"If you come down here I'll bloody well shoot you." A second officer leaned over and whispered in his ear. "Actually," the first officer called up, "that will be fine. Go in and see what's happened to the others."

By this time, they had gotten to a ladder that was propped against the bottom of the steps. The soldiers were all crowded back by the far wall and looked warily at the doorway. Spender looked above and saw the great carved stone wall with the eye at its center. North ducked his head and looked into the gloom beyond the doorway.

"Are you afraid of what's in there?" he asked the officer.

"Never mind. Go in there-" the second officer whispered again, "yes, go in or we'll shoot you." Wanting to placate the officers as quickly as possible, Spender and North hurried through the door and came vis-à-vis with the sphinx.

Spender, being somewhat ill prepared for the reality of a monstrous stone chimæra, slipped in a pool of blood and thought fleetingly of taking his chances at being shot. North, who was slightly less unmanned, had the presence of mind to see that something not at all pleasant had happened to the other soldiers. Little remained of them aside from mangled weapons and gouts and splashes of blood on the dusty floor. The only noticeably ill effect the sphinx had suffered was a light scratch on the surface of its right forearm.

"Deeply incompetent," it grumbled. "Refused to guess at the questions and tried to just charge in. They had no sense of the decorum this place demands. I have sat," the sphinx swept a screwed up saber from the front of her blood stained pedestal, "on this spot since the very moment the eternal and mutable chaos was given form. The chaos, from whence all things come and to which all things return, stands directly behind me and I am its guardian.

"And these men," the sphinx picked a bit of red fabric- possibly breeches- from its teeth, "charge in, waving their weapons, saying things like, "Give it up, you" and "We'll haul you out piece by piece". I've responded properly and I think that's cooled their desire to storm the gate."

"Why are you guarding it?" The sphinx kneaded its paws on the stairs leading up to the base.

"It's pure being, Mr. Spender. It existed before someone began using pieces of it and it will exist long after its prison decays."

"Why is it imprisoned; what exactly is it?" Spender asked. North, who had meant to interject, was thinking of the strange and beautiful cosmos that awaited them. The sphinx glanced dispassionately at the doorway where a small contingent of soldiers huddled together and seemed to be trying to go back the way they came.

"If you wish to pass, you must first answer three questions," it said in a way familiar to North.

"The General will be here soon," one of the soldiers called out, "then you'll be sorry." The sphinx sneered, insofar as it is possible for a stone sphinx to sneer, and looked down at Spender and North.

"I think you two had better go in," it said. "It's safer and it's where you're meant to go."

The sphinx's jaw dropped open and there was a scuffling sound as all the soldiers fought to be the first one out of the chamber. Though Spender had known what to expect, he had to admit that it was highly unnerving.

"Meant to go?" he whispered. North shrugged and the first officer's voice echoed from outside 'Let's try shooting it again'. They climbed up and hastily ducked through the sphinx's mouth. As its jaws shut behind them and they were swallowed up in darkness, Spender realized that the sphinx had neglected to answer his question.

#

The sphinx was very old, of course, and it may be reassuring to know that it used the word 'chaos' in a different way than you or I might today. The sphinx's chaos was very much like Ovid's idea of chaos. Ovid was an old Greek type who thought that, before things were all divided up and set in their proper place, there was a great jumble of nothing-in-particular out of which everything was made. Whereas today we might think of chaos as the cat jumping up on the table during breakfast and our father slipping in the spilt milk, Ovid and the sphinx meant something rather more grand and unfathomable.

Spender and North stood on the precipice at the edge of this grand and unfathomable space and waited.

"It's very pretty," Spender said after a while, "but what are we supposed to do now?"

"Well," North said, "last time I just sort of sat there."

The nebulae drifted.

Stars waxed and waned.

It was really quite peaceful.

"What does that remind you of?" North said, pointing to one of the brilliant clouds of dust and gas.

"Map of Africa, maybe?" Spender said.

"Oh, that's good. I thought it looked like a face. See, there's the nose-"

"I see what you mean. What about that one?"

"A walrus."

"Definitely a walrus."

"What about that one?" North said.

"It looks like a woman."

"Yes, I thought so." North cocked his head ever so slightly. "Remarkably like a woman. Look, it even looks like it's walking."

"Yes-" Spender trailed off. The cloud that looked like a woman seemed to walk towards them, looking more like a woman and less like a cloud all the while until, much to their astonishment, a woman was standing in the void before them.

"Hello," she said.

"H-hello," Spender said. She was short- very short- and appeared to be wearing a dress made out of the stuff from which she had materialized; it shone and shifted around her in an insubstantial manner. Her appearance was so unexpected and dazzling that Spender and North could think of little to say and only waited for her to say something that would doubtless be profound, interesting, and capable of sorting out everything.

"Excuse me," North said at last, "what exactly are you standing on?"

"Nothing-" the woman said, "the stuff of creation you might call it. It's not nearly as precarious as it looks; please come out." North looked at Spender in a should-we-trust-this-small-and-iridescent-woman sort of way and Spender, who felt strangely happy and confident, stepped off the edge.

He felt his feet buoyed up by some invisible force and stood, or rather drifted, between North and the woman. North followed and found that everything was all right after all. The three of them floated away from the precipice and were soon in a haze of multi-hued light.

"Are you-" Spender began to ask.

"Yes?" the woman said.

"Are you somehow my mother?"

"Goodness no; I don't look much like her at any rate, do I?" The woman paused. "And in a way, I could be. I'm as much your mother as your dreams are you, do you understand? This," she gestured at the cosmos, "is what remains of your mother and I'm a physical manifestation of it all."

"You're a manifestation?" North said.

"Yes. You needed someone to speak with you and this is much friendlier than talking to a vague collection of æther. Please have a seat." Miss Manifest had conjured up a table and chairs that nebulously shifted and sent out wisps of mist. "You've come at the perfect time."

"What do you mean?" Spender said.

"Breakfast. Strawberries and clotted cream?" It definitely occurred to both Spender and North that the strawberries may not have been, in point of fact, real. They certainly came from nowhere and were produced by a woman who likened herself to a dream. Nevertheless, they were large and perfect and wonderfully fresh (not to mention the clotted cream, a thing which North in particular was very fond of); also, it had been ages since they had had anything better than hardtack and they were awfully hungry.

After three bowls each of the best strawberries and clotted cream they had ever had (real or not), Spender and North leaned back in their chairs and lounged contentedly.

"What's that sound?" Spender said lazily. The sound, like distant thunder, came again.

"It's that abominable man, I'm afraid," Miss M. said. "We haven't much time." She pushed aside her picked over bowl of strawberries and looked grave. "Adelard Odd murdered your mother, Lewis, and used the undying part of her to create everything here. His intention is to stay here forever, and to bend things to his will." Rumbling crashes echoed through the haze in a muffled way and North wondered how the sphinx was faring.

"That is why he wants to enter here," Miss M. continued. "His power is nearly absolute; this is the only place left unconquered."

"What would happen," Spender said, "if we were here when he got in?"

"As I said, his power is nearly absolute." They fell silent and the booming sounds reverberated around them.

"To be perfectly honest," Spender said, "I don't understand most of this- any of this- and I desperately want to before my impending death."

"Ease your mind, Lewis. You aren't going to die today as far as I know."

"I'm not?"

"When you came through the Door, was there wind?"

"What?" Spender was perplexed to the point of being aghast.

"Was it a windy day?"

"Yes," North said distantly.

"I thought as much. Before you go-"

"Go?" said Spender.

"Yes, go- you must know what to do. Adelard Odd didn't pop into existence one day, he was made. Find one of his makers. I'm afraid that this is the last time I'll be seeing you." She placed a small hand on Spender's. "Goodbye." Everything assumed a severe tilt and they felt a familiar slipping, falling sensation. The muffled crashing turned to an earsplitting crack and, suddenly, it was very cold and wet.

#  Chapter Sixteen

Spender blundered out of the stream, breaking the thin film of ice as he went. North was already on the bank, wringing water out of his jacket.

"We're back?" Spender asked, shivering.

"Yes, and we'd better get inside somewhere; your hair's already frozen to your head." They began walking fast to keep warm and soon pushed through a scant hedge and onto a road.

"After all we've been through, we can't possibly freeze to death here," Spender said.

"I don't think we will," North said. "There's a milk man coming this way and Quartersoake is only three miles away."

"How can you possibly see all that?"

"Well, there is the sign there," North said, pointing to a post at the side of the road on which was written 'Quartersoake 3, Finchmere 10'.

"Oh," Spender said, feeling silly.

They hailed the milkman when he came into view and he reined in. As they clambered up into the back of his cart, he expressed his astonishment at finding "two young fellows out here and soaking wet as well."

"We were bird watching," North said promptly, "and the riverbank we were on collapsed." The milkman said something about being able to watch birds perfectly well from a kitchen window and Spender marveled at the facility with which North could fabricate lies.

In addition to his cream and milk and eggs, Mr. Harris also had brought to his door a pair of shivering, miserable young men whose clothes crackled when they walked. Spender was about to knock when the door opened and Mr. Harris, still in a dressing gown, recoiled.

"Oh!" He looked closely at them, as if to assure himself that they were real. "My apologies; I wasn't expecting anyone to be on my doorstep. I beg your pardon, are you covered in ice?"

"Y-yes," Spender said. "May we come in?"

Mr. Harris said, "Of course; you can't go around covered in ice in this kind of weather," and led the way into his kitchen.

"Let's break those clothes off of you," Mr. Harris said. "You know, you could warn one before dropping by. I don't understand why it is that you always come round in the morning."

"We don't really understand it either," North said. Mr. Harris, who was arranging articles of clothing in advantageous positions around a warm stove, looked at them suspiciously.

"You know, I think that this might have something to do with that Door. However," he adjusted his glasses, "I can't really incorporate such a thing into my view of reality so I'm going to go on believing that it isn't real."

"Can't incorporate-" Spender repeated wonderingly.

"I'd probably go mad if I had to face an idea like that. Wouldn't do at all." Mr. Harris whistled cheerily for a moment and broke off suddenly. "I say, we're of a size, more or less. Let's see if we can't find something upstairs for you."

It was clear to Spender and North that Mr. Harris favored tweed. They sat, like brown and slightly rumpled brethren, around Mr. Harris's table and had coffee, bacon, and a scramble. After they had finished and thanked him for his hospitality, Spender was struck with a thought.

"You seem to know more about Adelard Odd than most."

"I flatter myself that I do," Mr. Harris said.

"Do you know where he came from, who made him what he was?"

"Made him? I suppose that's one way of putting it. What I know is that, before he developed a disturbing habit of doing unpleasant supernatural things, he was a playwright named Alard Fletcher. Then he met Dr. Holroyd."

"Dr. Holroyd?"

"A debauched, disgraced doctor who dabbled in some pretty perverse things- secret societies and black arts, the whole mess."

"Is he still alive?" North said.

"As far as I know. He fled the country ahead of charges of gross indecency and obscenity. He only just avoided arrest."

"Do you know where he went?"

"Tunisia, as I heard it. He went incognito but did a really poor job of it."

#

After Mr. Harris had kindly dropped them off at the Humber, they sat with North behind the wheel and looked at the barren field that had once been an asylum. The wind had pushed over the precarious tower and Odd's Door now lay on the ground amidst the rubble.

"That must have been the jolt that sent us back," North said.

"Yes." Spender was pensive. "North, how am I going to get to Tunisia to see this Holroyd?"

"I thought we might travel by ship."

"Do you really mean to continue on?"

"I do." Though he didn't say so, Spender was grateful and happy in the way one is when one's very good friend is particularly kind and reassuring. They drove in silence.

"What do you think would happen if the Door was completely destroyed; would things go on there with no way of getting in or out?"

"I don't know. If anyone does, I bet it's Dr. Holroyd."

"He doesn't sound particularly safe."

"I don't think any associate of Adelard Odd would be. We'll just have to be careful."

#  Chapter Seventeen

"I cordially hate him," Tom said.

"Whyever do you hate him?" the Very Pretty Girl asked.

"I only dislike him for his money and good looks," he said, "and that makes me feel guilty for being so petty. It's the guilt that makes him absolutely unbearable."

"You hate him because he makes you feel guilty for hating him?" Tom and the Very Pretty Girl paused as a few members of the audience tittered politely.

"He really should know better."

In the wings, Fletcher stood with his arms crossed and a look of dissatisfaction on his face. The director, one Mr. Dodd, stood beside him watching the actors banter.

"Everything all right, Mr. Fletcher?" he said.

"Do you know why people have come to this theater, Mr. Dodd?"

"To see the play, of course."

"No, they've come to see each other; to see and be seen, more accurately. This play is nothing but a suitable pretense for carrying out social intrigues." Mr. Dodd said nothing to this and looked uncomfortable because, if he were to be completely honest, he agreed. "They call my work 'inconsequential'," Fletcher continued, "and the worst of it is that they're right."

"Critics," Mr. Dodd said sagely, "will criticize, Mr. Fletcher. It's best not to let them bother you."

"It's a strange thing for a writer of comedies," Fletcher said, still watching the stage, "but I absolutely hate being laughed at."

Late that night, Fletcher returned to his rooms. He lived in a neighborhood full of artists and people who spent much of their days contradicting each other and writing pamphlets. Because of this, there were voices and the smell of cigarette smoke spilling out of the dimly lit courtyard that lay just below his window (even though it was late enough that more stolid and less idealistic people were long in bed). Fletcher did not, as a rule, bandy words with the artists and pamphleteers, nor did he involve himself in their search for beauty and truth. He did, however, keep appalling hours and depleted bottles of green stuff that he secreted in his writing desk. These practices, frowned upon as they might be in more a more respected quarter, were taken as a matter of course among the bohemian element and so he found himself more or less at home.

He tried to sleep and, when that proved impossible, to write. He found himself pacing his room and thinking about a girl that he had met at a party once- the way her hair fell just so, the shape of her ears, and the delicacy of her collarbone. With a paroxysm of self loathing, he found his green bottle and several sugar cubes and diverted himself in this way for some time.

It was when he had gone through his sugar cubes and water and was feeling rather swimmy in the head that he noted the silence outside his window. He tried looking at the time but the clock was behaving strangely and he made the decision to find the window and get some air. He leaned out and watched as the stars reeled about in the sky when he felt something drawing his gaze down.

In the courtyard below, a shadowy figure was seated alone. It looked up at him and helloed and he waved down. Whether it was something about the shadowy man or the peculiar way Fletcher felt, he at once decided to go down and be sociable.

At length he got down the stairs and into the courtyard where he painstakingly approached the man, who was seated at a small wrought iron table just beside the brick wall of the building.

"Hello," Fletcher said as he sat down.

"Hello again," the man said.

"Fletcher, Alard."

"Holroyd- just Holroyd." He had been tamping a pipe with his thumb and he now struck a match, the flare of which illuminated his face. Fletcher saw that he was middle aged with pale blue eyes and had two Heidelberg scars on his temple and jaw. Holroyd puffed at his pipe, drawing the flame down into the bowl and bringing a red glow to the tobacco. "Up late, yes?"

"I write plays," Fletcher said. He thought he sounded foolish but was in no state to sound otherwise.

"Now why do you do that?" Holroyd said gently.

"I like making things happen," Fletcher said. "I think things up and people do them." This was surprising because, normally, he hadn't really thought of it in this way.

"You're a creator of worlds, you might say."

"I suppose so." There was a sort of flower that crept up the wall and it was particularly fragrant that night. The moon also seemed quite friendly and deserving of a bit of poetry or something and Fletcher was lost for a short time in contemplation of these. When he came to himself, he was holding a card and the shadowy Dr. Holroyd was rising. "Are you going, then?" Fletcher said. "Good evening to you, sir."

"Good evening to you, Mr. Fletcher. I look forward to seeing you when you visit." Although he didn't recollect any promise to visit, he was sure that he must have said something. Some elusive thought, a vague memory nagged at him as he climbed the stairs to his rooms. He fell onto the bed fully clothed and slept; and as he slept, he dreamed.

#

He had once gone to the park with Cecilly Fitzmorris and, in a fit of high spirits, had stolen a kiss whilst in a secluded spot. She had turned red and stopped him from stealing another. The next week he had heard of her engagement to Arthur Spender. From that time he had tried to vilify her in his own mind. At times he fancied that he had quite succeeded but there were always the dreams. At first, they were incessant and even though they eventually came with less regularity, they never stopped entirely. Often, they were shades of that day in the park, with cool and green and the voltaic thrill of her lips. Sometimes he dreamt that she was his and sometimes he dreamt of losing her and the bitter disappointment that followed.

That night he dreamt that he was in a garden. She was there as well and it was not so unlike that park. It was lush and beautiful and he could feel the thrum of her life as she walked beside him. He turned to her but she had gone from his side and was standing on a side path that he hadn't noticed before. She was with Spender. Treacherous; both of them treacherous. He had a knife and he leapt at Spender and stabbed him. Spender fell and Cecilly threw herself over his body. Fletcher felt a horrible rage and he reached out to her.

He awoke, tumbled out of bed, and was sick. As he cooled his cheek on the windowpane, he saw that he had left Holroyd's card on the sill. He gingerly picked up the card and turned it over. There was writing on the back in a minute and slightly slovenly scrawl.

"When respite is needed from the backs of theaters and the barbs of newspapermen:" An address in the country followed. Still feeling strange and shaky from his nightmare, he crossed unsteadily to his desk and tucked the card away among his papers.

Fletcher couldn't remember ever having had a dream of that sort before and stayed up most of the night nursing a headache. It was not until dawn had begun to creep across the sky that he nodded off in an armchair.

#

Over the next month, Fletcher labored ineffectively over a play that expressed the choler he had inexplicably begun feeling. In it, plenty of tragic things piled one on another and nearly everyone died by the end. Under some circumstances, this is not necessarily a bad thing as far as plays go, but even Fletcher admitted that his latest work had few redeeming qualities. When he had finally dragged the ungainly thing to its conclusion, he was almost entirely out of money and no theater manager would touch the script. A Mr. Clemens, owner of the Hephaestion, had looked at him gravely over his cluttered deal table.

"Parts of this are frankly appalling," he said. "People don't want to see a man blinding himself out of remorse any more."

"I know it's not particularly good."

"Can't you write more about humorous misunderstandings and things like that?"

"I can; I will."

Fletcher now stood at his own window and counted his money. What he had in his pocket (and that was all he had) would not get him through the week. He paced around the room, sat at his desk, and pushed some papers around. Quite suddenly, he came across Dr. Holroyd's card. "When respite is needed..."

#

The sea voyage had been stultifyingly uneventful. The moment Spender and North debarked, they were swarmed by half a dozen Tunisians, who laid hands on their luggage, carried it about twenty feet, and began demanding six rials with outstretched hands. When Spender claimed that they didn't have anything that they could give them, the ersatz porters began to look mutinous and they were obliged to flee to the Hôtel de France. The cabman took five rials and the bellboy another two.

"They certainly aren't very oblique," Spender said once they had gotten to their room.

"I suppose the heat makes them awfully direct," North said. "I think that if I spent a week here I'd begin telling people what I thought of them on a regular basis." It was hot; so hot that they spent the day in the room where they slouched listlessly on a pair of couches and watched the ceiling fan as it rotated lazily. Even after the sun set, the air was warm and close and smothering. In such weather one's shirt sticks to one in an aggravating fashion and it was somewhat reluctantly that Spender and North roused themselves and went downstairs.

The concierge was a Frenchman and the first truly pleasant person that they had met since they arrived.

"If there is anything you need, gentlemen," he said, "please do not hesitate to ask. If it is appropriate, may I inquire what brings you to Tunisie?"

"We're looking for an Englishman, a doctor."

"His name is Holroyd," North said.

"I'm afraid that I am not familiar with anyone of that name. I understand that the police keep a list of all known expatriates; perhaps there will be an officer who will be able to oblige you."

They thanked the concierge and, for four rials, were driven through the narrow streets of the city to the police station. They were received by one Inspector Duchamp, who had impeccable side whiskers and very proper moustaches. He listened, or seemed to, at least, as Spender and North spoke. When they had finished, he rose without answering and left the room.

"Did he understand us?" Spender said.

"I don't-" The door opened and the inspector returned to his chair.

"It is as I suspected;" he said, "there is no Dr. Holroyd in Tunis. Of the expatriates we have knowledge of, only two are doctors. One is Dr. Hollis. He is quite young and lives with his wife not far from the embassy. The other is Dr. List."

"Did you say List?" North said quickly.

"Yes, he is an old man with the-" the inspector motioned at his own face, "the scars. He lives alone in les taudis; I would not recommend going there at this hour."

"It's somewhat urgent," North said.

"Very well. There is a man who can take you to him. Please follow me." He led them through a hallway and out into the balmy night. They had come out by an arch just behind the police station and lingering under it was a man in white cotton duck and a chechia. "This is Syed; he will guide you."

#

Neither Spender nor North knew what a taudis was, but it seemed to them that, whatever it was, it was in a distinctly seedy part of the city. Syed took them in a cab and then on foot through increasingly strait alleys where there were furtive movements in dark doorways and they remembered all the absurdly xenophobic things their fellow passengers had said on the voyage over. According to one of their more opinionated countrymen, Tunisia was home to death, disease, and a particularly shiftless type of native. They had not for a moment believed this, but a long hot day and the bleeding of their money had left a marked impression on them that the aspect of the neighborhood did little to ameliorate.

"Are we nearly there?" Spender said. Syed forged on without a word. North, who had been hanging back ever so slightly, caught up and spoke in Spender's ear.

"Spender, I think we're going to narrowly avoid being robbed." Syed stopped and said something in rapid Arabic.

"Is the doctor nearby?" Spender asked. Syed held out his hand. After a moment's grappling with the lack of a common language, North gave him several rials. Syed nodded and kept nodding until he had eight rials in hand, at which point he turned and slipped away.

"What should we do?" Spender said. North looked around wildly.

"Yell something."

"Dr. List! We apologize for the late hour! Might we have a moment of your time?" Spender's voice bounced down the alley.

"Well you've scared the thieves away." Lights flickered in several windows and someone shouted something irate and unintelligible.

"Dr. List!"

"By all means, come in before someone fetches the gendarmerie." A door had opened and a slightly shoddy figure in a dressing gown and slippers stood at the threshold, silhouetted by yellow light.

#  Chapter Eighteen

The doctor's house was small and weirdly opulent. Red and gold damask paper covered the walls of his sitting room and the floor was hidden beneath a profusion of orientalist rugs. A censer depended from the ceiling and emitted both a tendril of grey wispy smoke and the overpowering smell of incense. The doctor, it seemed, was fond of comfort as there were a great number of pillows, too many to anyone with a sense of propriety, strewn on every chair and divan. The room was, at first glance, all arabesques and tassels, cushions and vapor.

The doctor shuffled across the room and sank onto his divan, beside which was a strategically placed hookah.

"Do you appreciate the aesthetic?" he said.

"Oh-yes-very-nice," North and Spender said in unison.

"I'm sure you'll enjoy it more if you take off your shoes and recline somewhere." The doctor bubbled contentedly while they made themselves sufficiently bohemian. "Are you familiar with the hookah?"

"No, sir, not really," Spender said. The doctor uncoiled the tubing that hung like a black and quiescent snake around the body of the hookah and proffered it to them.

"It's highly medicinal; good for the lungs." Spender took it hesitantly.

"Sir, are you Dr. List?"

"Sit there, please. Yes, just there." The doctor looked at them with pale blue eyes. "Far more interesting than who I am is the question of who you are. What could bring two young men such as yourselves to a back street in Tunis at this late hour? You're not with the police are you?"

"No, sir; not at all. We've come looking for someone," Spender said.

"For Dr. List?" the doctor said.

"Have you ever been to the asylum at Quartersoake?" North said impulsively. The doctor looked blandly surprised.

"I admit that I had hoped to tempt someone here with my name but I must honestly say that you are not they."

"What do you mean?" Spender said.

"I think you had better tell me who you are. What are your names?" He continued looking directly at them with his vaguely unsettling eyes.

"Lewis Spender."

"North, Roger F."

"A pleasure to make your acquaintance. Mr. Spender, yes? I have heard the name before-" the doctor smiled. "Oh yes. I think I know who you are and I can only imagine what has brought you here."

"We're looking for a Dr. Holroyd," Spender said.

"Regarding what?"

"A Door and the man who made it."

"A Door you say?" The doctor, who had been feigning indifference, dropped his pretenses for a moment and a slightly avaricious look came into his eye. "Tell me something; did you go in?" A clock on the wall ticked off the seconds and fragrant smoke curled up to the ceiling.

"Yes." The doctor, who seemed to have been holding his breath, leaned forward on the divan.

"And was it wonderful?"

"Excuse me, doctor," North said, "do you know Adelard Odd?" The doctor, who had been looking intently at Spender, glanced over at North and his eye patch.

"Know him? I should say I do- or did. I am, as you were already aware, Dr. Holroyd. I live under the name of List, partly to avoid the indignity of extradition should any of my past misdeeds come to light and partly as a message should anyone come inquiring in this part of the world. You see, List was a name that I and several of my acquaintances used when use of our own would have been- how to put it- imprudent. It was when I heard of the disappearance of Dr. List at Quartersoake that my suspicions were all but confirmed."

"I beg your pardon?" Spender said.

"I was still traveling when news caught up to me about the girl. I heard that he had been taken and wondered if he had had time to complete- but then she was gone so he must have. I thought it all too piquant that, at the moment of his escape, he was seized. Shortly after that, he died, or seemed to, and it seemed a shameful waste. The amount of time and effort it must have taken him to get everything just so in there must have been astronomical- if you've never made one, I can assure you it is no easy thing, even in the best of circumstances." Spender and North listened with little comprehension to Holroyd's recollection.

"Then, when I heard that Dr. List had gone through and disappeared, I knew that he, that Odd, had played his game well. I had watched him grow in his abilities for some time and this, I saw, was his master stroke. I could have had him dug up, but I knew what would be found- or rather, what wouldn't. The physician who attended him on his deathbed had vanished. It was really quite impressive."

"What do you mean 'if you've never made one'?" Spender said.

"Of course you've never made one; very few people ever have. And none have ever made one like he did. Do you know how very special your mother was?" Spender flinched and looked pained.

"We'd like to know more about Odd," North said.

"To what end, Mr. North?" Dr. Holroyd laid back and occupied himself with his hookah.

"In order to destroy him," Spender said, rather more fiercely than he intended. Dr. Holroyd showed no surprise.

"I'm sure I can tell you more about Adelard Odd than anyone living. It is, however, quite late and I need time to collect my thoughts. I should like to begin tomorrow."

"Do you know how we might get back to our hotel?" Spender said.

"I wouldn't hear of it. I'll send a boy over in the morning to get your things and bring them here. Until then, I think I have enough to keep you relatively comfortable for the night."

"We wouldn't want to trouble-"

"Of course you wouldn't; and I wouldn't dream of sending you back to the Hôtel de France." Looking around the exotically furnished room and at the doctor himself, Spender was struck by the feeling that something sinister dwelt beneath the surface of this placid old man. He would have very much liked to get away, but the doctor was perhaps the best chance at learning about a man whose past was obscure at best.

"Thank you," he said lamely.

Later that night, as Spender lay sleepless on a divan and stared at the ceiling, he wondered how one created a Door. He wondered, further, if Dr. Holroyd had ever 'made one', as he had put it. When sleep finally did come, it was filled with uneasy dreams.

#

The next day, the doctor chatted at them over melon and eggcup and asked them about their studies and families and favorite places until he had put them more or less at ease. After their luggage arrived, he appeared in a rumpled linen suit and fedora and demanded that they accompany him to the souk. The souk, as it turned out, was a rowdy and vibrant sort of open air market that in every way lived up to Spender's and North's expectations of what an exotic market should be. Shouting men aggressively attempted to sell them trinkets and rugs and spices and Spender would have had his pocket picked had not North seen the whole thing well ahead of time. Dr. Holroyd seemed to take special note of this and could be seen on occasion stealing looks at North and his eye patch with no little interest.

That evening, Dr. Holroyd took them to his rooftop. The other rooftops lay before them all in a jumble, some with laundry drying on lines. As the sky darkened, a voice could be faintly heard calling out a sort of song.

"What is that?" Spender said.

"It's a call to prayer;" the doctor said, "there's a mosque not far away." They listened to the song as it rose, fell, and lilted to its close. Holroyd knocked and refilled his pipe. "I really am a wicked old man," he said, "as you'll see sooner or later. I was once a wicked young man and, before that, a wicked boy. It comes of being perverse and of doing as I like no matter the cost. As I sit here in my dotage, living out my last years in comfort, I am possessed of an urge to reach back into the past and deal a blow to someone I once knew. Being wicked, I shall.

"I came across it in Cairo. This was in the eighties, mind, before all the Egyptologists had trampled in and sucked the place dry. In those days, they sold priceless relics and worthless trinkets side by side on the street. It was not uncommon to buy some filthy little reliquary and find that the dirt hid solid gold. The Egyptians often had no idea of the value of the things they were selling and objects of uncommon value could be got for next to nothing. As you may imagine, I bought all I could and planned to smuggle it all home.

"Summer in Egypt is beastly. I was walking through the streets like one of the damned, looking for a place to begin drinking, when I saw her underneath an awning. She was old and several children were slumped all around her on little stools. She was fanning herself and leaning her head back against the doorway she sat in front of; before her were her wares, set out on a cloth on the ground. I very nearly passed by, but my avarice got the better of me and I decided to have a look.

"The woman looked at me through mostly closed eyes as I perused the collection of jars and papyri that she hoped to sell. Most of it was exceedingly common and I had just begun to go when she reached out to me.

'Wait', she said, and drew a small basket out from under her stool. 'Sir will appreciate', she said. She handed me a roll of vellum and I opened it. As a matter of fact, sir did appreciate. It was a long scroll consisting of hieroglyphs and what looked like Phoenician in two columns side by side. What was remarkable about it was that it was illuminated, with gold leaf and intricate designs in the margins.

"It occurred to me, as it may have to you, that something so unusual was likely to be a fake. Still, I thought to pass it off myself and turn a profit.

'Where did you find this?' I asked.

'I don't know,' she said.

'You don't know?' I said.

'My son is a farmer, he found it in a jar,' she said. I thought it useless to try to pry more, so I paid a pittance for the thing and went on my way. I didn't take another good look at it until I had been home some months and was trying to sell some of my Egyptian spoils to pay off staggering gambling debts. I thought to myself that it would help if I knew exactly what I had got a hold of before I tried selling it. Since I was unwilling to show it to anyone else, I settled in to do the laborious translation myself. As I struggled through a load of dusty old books and took the occasional hieroglyph to an old school friend, it became clear to me that I had stumbled on a very peculiar document.

"It was over three thousand years old and was itself a copy of a much older stone fragment. It described a practice of the ancient Canaanites that would come to be seen as a terrible heresy by their Hebrew descendants. I found it all terribly uninteresting until I got to the map. Someone had added it at a later date and had written something that translated loosely as 'Enter through Mot's Door/ Made of the second son/ By the first wife'. My first thought was treasure and I promptly made a copy of the map to take to the school friend.

"His name was Abney; he was very bookish, you know. I'm afraid I stole from him on occasion when we were in school and used him as a scapegoat at least once. He was very good natured, though, and we got on remarkably well. He was very excited by the map for reasons quite different from my own, and begged to see the original. I decided then to bring him into my scheme, whatever that turned out to be.

"Abney was able to identify a city at the edge of the map as modern day Urfa. He spent weeks poring over the manuscript and at last produced a translation that showed the inadequacy of my own. We decided, at length, to go to Turkey and use the map to locate this door- Abney, for the archaeological find, and I for the purpose of looting whatever tomb or temple we might come across. It was around this time that I made Odd's acquaintance. He was still going by Fletcher then, it being long before our black magic days."

"What was it that brought you together?" Spender asked.

"I think I saw something in him that others didn't. I saw his plays and thought that there was a latent- well I'm not sure what exactly it was, but I found it very interesting. It was not my original intent to include him in the hunt because that would have meant splitting the treasure into thirds. While he was staying with me, though, I took a great liking to him and, bit by bit, eased him into the idea of going with us.

"Urfa is a beautiful city. We three spent a week there and hired a man called Armağan to act as porter and guide. The next day, we left the city and headed south and east. After some searching, Abney and Armağan found the Door. Unaware of what we had found, we went in."

"What did you find?" North asked.

"A garden; fruit trees, small ponds, and animals that knew no fear. We hadn't gone far when we met her."

"Who was she?"

"I can't name her. Abney knew about her, he had read about her in an old Semitic work. She gave us the 'treasure', if you can call it that. It was not without a price, though. When we left, we left without Armağan and, really, we were glad to be alive. We carried the treasure in a glass phial and Abney hastened to write down what she had said. I am sorry," Holroyd said, "if I seem cryptic. The symbols are not to be taken lightly; in the wrong conditions, even seeing them can rob you of your sight."

"What," said Spender, "are the right conditions?"

"They have to be inscribed in a door. It is important, when keeping them elsewhere, to only write fragments of the full text. We memorized the symbols by rote, Odd and I did." Night had fallen and the sky above them was dusted with countless stars. "In the phial was-" Holroyd paused, "the stuff of creation. A single drop could create a Door. Odd and I were enthralled, fascinated. It was only a matter of time before we tried to make one ourselves. There was only one thing holding us back."

"What was it?"

"To make a Door, there must be a death."

#

"But we'd need to kill someone," Abney said. "It's impossible."

"Not necessarily." Dr. Holroyd sat with his feet up. "We could find someone who was about to die and simply wait."

"It doesn't work like that. You know as well as I that it needs to be a murder." Abney pushed his glasses up his nose. "Look," he said earnestly, "just give it to me; I'll throw it away for you."

"Abney, this may be the most valuable substance in creation and you want me to give you my share? You've got yours to do with as you like." A look of concern crossed Holroyd's face. "You didn't throw it out, did you?"

"Not yet. Just give me your word that you won't use it."

"Have you asked Fletcher for his, yet?"

"I haven't. I was about to-"

"About to what?" Fletcher entered the room carrying a clinking paper bag and several parcels.

"Abney wants us to give him our shares so he can throw them out." Fletcher turned.

"Why?"

"We can't very well use it," Abney said pleadingly.

"Abney," Fletcher set his load on a side table and looked grave, "this the single most important thing that will ever happen to any of us. All that we thought we knew has been overturned by this- this miraculous thing. I understand how you feel; I was terrified in the garden. We can't just go back to living dull and uninspired lives."

"Perhaps I should just get rid of mine."

"Don't-" Holroyd and Fletcher spoke out at the same time. Holroyd continued. "Don't do something that you'll later regret. There's no harm to keeping it with you, yes?"

"I just don't know. I can't forget Armağan, the guide."

"That wasn't our doing," Fletcher said. What he did not say was that neither could he forget the animal fear in the man's eyes or his fading cries as they hurried back to the Door.

"Let's not dwell on it at present." Holroyd broke into his thoughts. "Let us break bread in a festive mood, if only for the sake of observance." Abney seemed placated for the moment and Fletcher took up his bag and withdrew to the kitchen where, with the skill of an experienced bachelor, he began chopping and heating and taking things out of tins. Outside, snow fell thick and heavy and church bells pealed as pedestrians hurried home with flushed cheeks and calls of "Happy Christmas".

#

Young Cole was a busker and sometime mountebank who was distinguished from his father, Old Cole, by the fact that he was not buried in a churchyard. He had thought that, upon his father's death, he would become Just Cole, but tradition and force of habit decreed otherwise. He had worked his own street corner with fiddle and hat for the past month and only now had been shifted out by carolers. Busking, he found, was a good business during yuletide and he didn't at all blame the bourgeoisie for wanting to make a go of it. The carolers would probably pass on the odd coin they got to the unenterprising poor. This, Young Cole thought, was a bit of a waste of a corner.

He now walked along a side street, his hands plunged deep into his threadbare overcoat and his whiskered face protruding from an equally threadbare muffler. His flask was empty and he could feel the cold like a dull ache. As he stamped his feet and drew his shoulders up, he heard a call from a doorway. He had seen the man on the street before; he was quite recognizable due to the two thin scars that lay on his jaw and temple.

"Hello," the man said, "happy Christmas."

"And you; God bless you sir."

"Oh, I doubt that. Come and we'll drink to our good health."

#

Young Cole found that he had somehow gotten his arm caught in something. His other arm, too, was caught, and he tried to make sense of his surroundings. He was laying on his back, looking up at a dimly lit ceiling. Although he couldn't put his finger on it, he felt that he was outside the city. Perhaps it was because it was very still and no sounds came from beyond the walls of the room in which he found himself. He struggled weakly and realized that he was bound- moreover, that he was on top of a table of some sort.

"Hello?"

"Good evening." Cole strained to look at the speaker, who was somewhere behind him. The man with the mensur marks bustled around the side of the table. "So sorry to have kept you so long. Your family must be terribly anxious."

"No sir. Haven't got one." Cole felt all swimmy and was glad to be lying down for the moment.

"No aging parents upon whom you dote?"

"None living."

"Well at least there's that; should please Abney to some extent."

"Who is-" Cole felt terribly slow, as if there was something very important going on and he was supposed to pay attention. "Who is Abney?"

"Abney is a man who will pity your monstruous fate."

"How does he know me?"

"He doesn't; he knows me, though, and that's enough."

"A monstruous fate..." Young Cole pondered through this for a moment. He looked up. "Please let me go." The man pulled on the edge of the table, wheeled it across the room, and brought it to a stop in front of a large grey door.

"I'd let you pray first but I don't know if that will affect things. So sorry."

#

Fletcher and Abney were having eggs, bacon, and marmaladed toast and wondering where Holroyd had gone when the man himself swept in and made for the kettle.

"Where have you been?" Abney said. "Care for a piece of toast?"

"Thank you, no. I've just been to my home in the country and, just as soon as you've finished with that, you're coming back with me."

"Whyever for?"

"I don't think I'll spoil it. Believe me when I say it's not to be missed."

They made the 9.15 train and arrived at Crumline, the town closest Holroyd's home, where Mrs. Worthy's son was waiting for them (Mrs. Worthy being the woman who kept house and was so incredibly incurious that she was quite indispensible to the dissipated doctor). Abney continued in his attempts to get Holroyd to give some hint, but Holroyd remained cheerfully uncommunicative. They rode down an avenue flanked by beeches and down the drive, pulling up in front of the main doors.

"Come along," Holroyd said, heading off through the grass.

"We're not going in?" Abney said.

"What I'm going to show you isn't in the house." An earlier Holroyd that had come and gone before the doctor's time had kept a model farm as a hobby and the small building that had once been a dairy stood well behind the hothouse that was attached to the kitchens. It was to this defunct dairy that Holroyd brought his guests and, unlocking the rusted padlock, ushered them into the cool interior. "This," Holroyd said, crossing to a large grey door, "is what I brought you to see."

At first, neither Abney nor Fletcher understood what Holroyd had done. When it became clear, Abney was noticeably distraught.

"You took an innocent life!"

"I made far more of him than he ever would have made of himself."

"Why did you do this?"

"Have you gone in?" Fletcher said quietly.

"Not yet," Holroyd said. "I thought the both of you might want to go along."

"I won't do it," Abney said. "This is a sick perversion."

"Do as you like, Abney." The doctor went to a stall and fetched a walking stick. "Lest you forget, you translated the manuscript and went on the expedition. You left the guide to save your own life. You are quite inextricably a part of this." Abney turned away and stood still for a moment before stiffly walking out of the dairy and back to the house. Holroyd looked at Fletcher. "Are you ready?" Fletcher shivered as Holroyd opened the door and stepped through. He followed and looked around the darkened stalls.

"Is that it?" Holroyd chewed his lip.

"I must have done something wrong. This is no good. I don't know how many tramps I can get a hold of before someone notices."

"Does it feel warmer to you?" With a short laugh, Holroyd ran out the door. Fletcher hastened after him and stopped short. The snow was gone and so, for that matter, was the house. In their place was a country road bordered by a hedge, all beneath an ostentatiously perfect summer sky.

"Do you know," Holroyd said, "I think I did it right after all."

"What's that?"

"It appears to be a bicycle." Riding the bicycle was a large man in a striped shirt and straw boater. As he came closer, they saw that he appeared to be-

"Dripping!"

"What?" Holroyd said.

"He's dripping; his nose and the handlebars."

"How ghastly." The man seemed to be melting as he went and, by the time he had drawn near, he and his bicycle had become distinctly wobbly and runny. At last, with a kind of viscous splatter, he dissolved completely into a puddle. Fletcher and Holroyd approached cautiously. "He's turned into icing." Holroyd said, obviously concerned.

"With nonpareils."

"I must say, this is not what I was expecting." They skirted around the icing and walked up the road. "I have a feeling that vast amounts of wealth and power are to be had with this but I'm not sure how to go about it."

"Look!" They had come back to the dairy. "I don't understand," Fletcher said, "it was a perfectly straight road."

"Was it? Let's try again." They set off in the same direction and soon found themselves at the dairy a second time. "Well," Holroyd said, "through the hedge we go." They struggled through the hedge, which was very thick, and fell through on the other side. Fletcher picked bits of hedge off of himself and dusted off his trousers.

"I wonder if we should go back and prepare for this a bit." Before them was a gentle incline covered with conifers.

"Let's explore just a little further," Holroyd said. They walked over a soft carpet of needles. "I've never been very fond of pines. I have always thought that too many in one place was in bad taste."

"Did you hear something?"

"Sorry?"

"A coughing sound, I thought."

"Ah, probably something to do with that." There was something looking at them from behind a tree. It was a sizeable something, as somethings go, standing about eight feet high. It was covered in fur and had two spiraling horns like a ram. Seeing that it had been noticed, it came out into the open and stood in the way someone does when they aren't sure what to do. It is likely that it would have put its hands in its pockets but, as it was a horned beast, it hadn't any.

"Is it going to charge?"

"I'll ask," Holroyd said. "You there, what are you doing?"

"Hiding," the beast said. Fletcher, who had been unnerved by the beast's appearance, was put further off balance by hearing it speak. Holroyd, on the other hand, had been inexplicably certain that it would answer him.

"What are you?" he said.

"I'm a Fear of Dark Cellars," it said.

"Why were you hiding?"

"Since I'm newly made, I didn't know whether you needed hiding from." Holroyd got quite stern as he felt that the beast was being roundabout.

"Newly made?"

"Just a while ago we weren't anything. Then you gave us all thingness." The Fear of Dark Cellars dug at the ground with its hoof. "I don't much like clomping around in these woods." Fletcher, who had been observing with interest, spoke to Holroyd in a low, counseling way.

"I don't wonder if you had something to do with those nonpareils," he said. "Try wishing him away." Holroyd nodded and looked at the Fear of Dark Cellars, who looked for all the world like a naughty child (albeit one that was eight feet tall, horned, and hairy).

"Beast, I'm going to banish you to the immaterial slurry of strangeness from whence you came."

"Oh, thank you," it said and promptly vanished. Holroyd and Fletcher looked at each other with a dawning comprehension that, had he seen it, would have filled Abney with dread.

#  Chapter Nineteen

"From then on we discovered more about the nature of the other places by trial and error." The third night had found them again on the rooftop. Dr. Holroyd knocked out his pipe and began to carefully refill it. "The maker of the Door has incredible power on the other side. It's a bit like working on a canvas- one already populated with the aspects of the life we took to make it. We called them effusions. They were different in every one."

"You did this more than once?" Spender felt a bit ill.

"I suppose you saw magic done there." Holroyd ignored him. "I would imagine it involved flames and magic words and a smattering of Latin, did it not?"

"That's right," North said.

"Odd was always fond of things like that. Really, you could have read the newspaper as long as you had good strong intent."

"Dr. Holroyd," Spender said, "what are the Doors?" The doctor was silent for a moment as the slightly sweet smell of his tobacco floated across the rooftop.

"It is an enlightened age we find ourselves in," he said at last, "and it's a bit gauche to let slip words like 'soul' but I've never found a better way to describe it. Making a Door takes the undying part of a person and hurls it into the beyond- gives it extension. It creates a world from a single soul."

"And what happens to the person- the person who-" Spender stammered.

"They are consumed entirely. I can't even imagine that it's a particularly restful afterlife, having someone manipulating your very being and living in your consciousness."

"Is there any way to stop it, to undo it?"

"I'm coming to that in time. Before that, we discovered that some places had considerable limitations. One was very small, one had a nasty habit of fracturing into islands in a black sea of God-knows-what. If you took someone that had a horrid, diseased soul, you might imagine the types of things that you would find. Gigantic wasps..." Dr. Holroyd seemed lost in a disturbing memory.

"Limitations. It became Odd's obsession, finding a perfect subject. People began to notice, of course. He was careful enough to avoid outright accusations or imprisonment but people knew. The year after we went through my Door, he more or less vanished from society. It was the last time he was known as Fletcher.

"That would have been the end of it as far as Abney or I were concerned, had he not run out."

"Run out?" North said.

"The stuff of creation; it's the key to making a Door. He needed more and it drove him back to us."

"Why didn't he try to go back to the place it had come from?" Spender said.

"He almost certainly did. I can only imagine his frustration at finding it had gone. At any rate, I heard of his return when Abney came to me. Apparently, Odd had come for his phial and Abney's conscience wouldn't permit him to relinquish it. Abney begged me to help him, to hide him."

"What did you do?"

"I hid him in the best place I could think of."

"The Door."

#

Holroyd realized that he must have dozed off. The steady patter of rainfall on the study window and- there seemed to be someone in the room.

"No tea, thank you," he said.

"Holroyd." It was Odd, as he had begun to style himself. Holroyd retrieved his book from the floor where it had slipped.

"Alard- or Adelard, rather. Sit down; you don't look at all well." Odd indeed looked haggard and grimly driven in a way that reminded Holroyd of a hopeless dipsomaniac. "I must be honest, I find the new name a bit theatrical."

"I had no use for my beginnings. You know what they say about familiarity and contempt. What do you suppose is bred by unheimlichkeit?"

"Fear."

"Precisely."

"Trying to get away from Fletcher, then?"

"I'd kill him, if I could."

"It looks like you nearly have. Have a seat before you fall."

"Have you guessed why I'm here?" Holroyd looked blandly inquisitive. "I know Abney came to you. I need your phial and his."

"What on earth makes you think that I still have mine?"

"I know." It seemed to take Odd considerable effort to cross the room and kick over the chair that Holroyd was sitting in. Holroyd rolled and tried to reach a cane that was propped up by the mantle. Odd kicked him in the side and again in the head. "Where is it?" He knelt over Holroyd and drew a small knife out of his coat pocket. "Tell me." Holroyd put up his hands to fend him off and felt excruciating pain as Odd stabbed him through the hand. "Where is it?" The knife slashed through Holroyd's arm several times, leaving his dressing gown hanging in darkly soaked ribbons. As warm blood drizzled down on his face, Odd placed a knee on his chest and a stickily wet blade at his throat.

"Wait," Holroyd gasped. "On the mantle; small box on the left; the key's in my pocket."

Odd plucked the key from his pocket and rose, breathing heavily. When he had taken the phial and thrown the box on the floor, he turned to Holroyd who was on his knees, clutching his wounded hand to his chest.

"Where is Abney?" There was a pounding in Holroyd's ears and he felt faint. Something in his side felt distinctly broken.

"He's gone through the Door. He'll be ready for you there. It's like a great maze now, a Gordian Knot of a place. You may never find him."

#

Holroyd rubbed the back of his hand thoughtfully. North remembered the vision he had had at the bottom of the well.

"That was how I discovered that a Door could be unmade. I don't know where he learned it; I suppose it's possible that he later visited the Garden unbeknownst to the rest of us- before it was moved, that is."

"Moved?" Spender said.

"When I had staunched the blood and gotten a gun, I went to the dairy to see what I might find. What I found was the Door destroyed and Abney lying dead. Up until that point, we had believed that, once made, a Door was indestructible. Trying to damage one led to, well, a gruesome death. As a result, the Doors we made remained standing where we left them. Odd undoubtedly created a proliferation of them in his search for the perfect world.

"It was clear that, rather than going in after Abney, Odd had simply destroyed the Door and taken the phial. The only clues to how he had done it were charred fragments of writing on the pieces of doorframe that were lying about. It later occurred to me that he needed my phial in order to do whatever he did."

"What happened then?" North said.

"It was only a matter of time before he went too far. He was arrested under deep suspicion of murder; several murders, actually. While imprisoned, he impressed no one with his sanity. They found him to be a lunatic and sent him to Quartersoake. I visited him just before I fled the country."

#

It was an uncommonly fine day that found Holroyd driving down the row of cypresses and into the wide circular drive in front of the asylum. It was clear and mild and had a way of buoying one's spirits such that the orderly took him through the courtyard despite it being not particularly necessary.

"The patients enjoy working in the garden." The orderly was young and very clean. He showed Holroyd around in a manner that could only be described as optimistic. "The lupins are very nice this year."

"Are they?" Holroyd said absently. "Tell me, does Mr. Odd work in the garden?"

"Not that I know of. He paints, though. It's said to be very calming."

"Do the other patients-" Holroyd pulled a petal from an azalea as they passed and rubbed it between his fingers, "do they like him?" The orderly looked completely baffled.

"If they didn't it would be no reflection on him, sir. A number of the patients here have no idea what they like."

"Beyond gardens."

"Yes, there's that."

The orderly left him at the door to Odd's room and dutifully slipped away. Holroyd knocked and entered, feeling as he did that there was something strange about the place. The air was quieter, charged somehow. Odd was sitting on the bed and writing in a small red book. This he tucked away and half rose to greet the doctor.

"It's a pleasant enough view you have here," Holroyd said, looking around the room with a critical eye. There were watercolors on the walls, not quite bad but almost carelessly done. They looked to Holroyd like a diversion in more than one sense. Odd sat on the bed with his hands folded in his lap.

"It is."

"Are you well?"

"You mean, am I mad? I often wonder. No more so, perhaps, than you."

"That's hardly reassuring." Holroyd smiled while scrutinizing Odd for some sign, some hint of what existed below the surface.

"You may have thought me mad when I attacked you," Odd said. "I wasn't, though. I was determined, desperate even. I have been so close for so long to finding what I've been searching for. This world has been colossally disappointing; most days it's all I can do to overcome my disgust and keep on living here."

"They tell me you're doing well."

"Listen," Odd began to whisper, "I've found what I was looking for. The person affects the place. Know one and you know what the other will be like. That was our problem, we didn't know them well enough. It has to be a special person- that was the original intent. It was to be someone set apart as the seed of- of whatever they are. I've found the perfect person." Someone, a doctor or orderly, passed by in the corridor outside and Odd fell silent, looking at the floor and blinking rapidly.

"And yet you're in here," Holroyd said. "Fortune really is cruel." Odd went to the window and looked out. "Do you still have the phials?"

"I wasn't allowed to keep my personal effects," Odd said. "I wouldn't be at all surprised if they had been poured out a long time ago."

A short time later, Holroyd left Odd and walked back through the courtyard. A patient, an old man, was sitting on a stone bench beneath a tree. He beckoned to Holroyd and leaned towards him conspiratorially.

"There are nasty things that run about in the dark all around the world. You need to get through life without them noticing you. Do you know how to do it?"

"No; how?"

"Don't step on the cracks. It's like stepping on a harp string. They can hear it and they come running."

"Hello there Mr. Aintree, are you bothering our guest?" The eager and correct sunbeam of an orderly had returned, leading an even older man who shuffled to the bench and fairly collapsed onto it.

"Telling him things he needs to be privy to," Mr. Aintree said. As Holroyd left the courtyard, he could faintly hear Mr. Aintree telling the man beside him about the nasty things that run about in the dark.

"Are Mr. Odd's personal effects available?" he asked as they neared the front hall. "He had hoped that I would be able to take them with me."

"Oh, we don't keep patients' personal effects. If Mr. Odd was typical, he came with little more than the clothes he wore."

"I would never accuse Adelard Odd of being typical."

#

Dr. Holroyd had gone out and left Spender and North to their own devices. They both sat, deflated by the heat, in the small kitchen at the back of the house.

"Do you think we can trust him?" Spender said.

"I don't see him killing us in our sleep, if that's what you mean."

"Do you think he'll be able to help us?"

"I do." North moved his glass several times, looking at the rings it left on the tabletop. "Something somewhat disturbing has happened. For the longest time, I've been able to see into multiple futures, almost without limit. Ever since we arrived here, that's changed. I can see up to a point but, after that, it's like I come to a blank wall."

"What do you think it means?"

"I think it means I'm going to die."

"When?"

"The day after next."

Holroyd came back late in the day, laden with brown parcels and bags.

"There's a woman coming with lamb and fish and couscous and God knows what else. We're going to break bread and make merry tonight."

"What are we celebrating?" Spender said.

"You'll be leaving tomorrow and I intend to send you off as hospitably as I know how."

"Leaving? Where are we going?"

"We'll leave that until after dinner. Until then, I think it's time for some indolence; I've been far too active today."

After they had eaten and sat about in a postprandial stupor, Holroyd took them to the rooftop and sat with them for the last time. The sun had already gone down and the heat of the day had subsided to a degree. Holroyd prepared his pipe in silence and sat for a while in the darkness as Spender and North waited expectantly.

"I told you before that Odd was most likely frustrated in his attempts to find the Door we had gone through in Turkey. He was unsuccessful because I had the Door moved at no small expense. A team excavated around it and shipped it out of the country. I didn't dare keep it at my country home; Odd would have found it easily. Instead, I had it taken to a relatively inhospitable island riddled with caves and cliffs."

"Where exactly did you take it?" Spender said.

"Northeast of this city is Cape Bon. Several miles from the coast there, in the Gulf of Tunisia, is a small island called Zembra. On the northern end of the island is a cave that contains the Door to the garden."

"You hid it here?"

"When the time came to avoid arrest, I chose to come here in order to be close to the Door. There may come a time when I find it necessary to go there."

"Why would you need to go to the Door?" North said.

"Fear," Holroyd said. "I've had a suspicion since the early days of experimentation with the Doors. Tell me, when you saw Odd did he appear to be a man of fifty?"

"No," North said, "he seemed younger."

"I thought as much. The maker of a Door cannot die in the world he created. Though I had never stayed on the strange side of a Door for long enough, I always wondered if the maker would age. That, Mr. North, would be the thing that could drive me back to the Garden. I fear death like nothing else." Holroyd worked vigorously at his pipe until the depths of the bowl lit with bright embers and curling wisps of tobacco.

" In order to unmake Odd's Door, you'll have to go to Zembra and speak to the- the person you find in the Garden. You will learn what you need and you will most likely receive that essence of existence- if you live. Be forewarned, it will come at a steep price. What price vengeance?" He looked at Spender with detached amusement.

"Thank you, doctor, for all your help," Spender said.

"As I said before, I am a wicked man and, though Odd may never realize it, it pleases me to know that I am his undoing. I've hired a boat that will take you to the island. After that, you may strike out with my best wishes."

"When a Door is destroyed," Spender said, "what happens to the person that was used to make it?"

"They move on to heaven, they go to oblivion, cease to exist; I don't know. I'm not a philosopher, Mr. Spender. Whatever happens, it will be a more natural fate than the one they face in the weird otherness created by a Door."

As they left the rooftop, Dr. Holroyd stopped North and spoke to him at length. Spender waited on the stair and, when North joined him, did his best to not look too curious.

"What did he say?"

"Oh, he just said to be careful on the island."

#

The morning had not defied convention and had started out unpleasantly warm with every indication that it would only get hotter. Holroyd was gone and had left a note wishing them good luck and telling them where they could find the man with the boat. As it turned out, it took a man with a cart to get to the man with the boat and, by eleven o' clock, they were out of the city and riding along the coast.

The boatman was uncommunicative and struck out for the island as soon as they were on board. A warm wind whipped across the water, scouring it into multifold ripples and ridges that lapped against the boat and sent up spray. Dark clouds had gathered in the north and Spender and North watched these with an unaccountable melancholia.

They could make out Zembra at some distance as an uneven rocky mass that rose up to a considerable height above the sea. As they drew nearer, they could make out cliffs and sea birds wheeling and crying in the wind. Spender looked over at North and thought he looked unwell.

"Alright, North?" North nodded and kept his white-knuckled grip on the rail.

#  Chapter Twenty

Some nights, Holroyd dreamt that he never left. He would wander through dense growth, pushing aside fern fronds and ducking under wild grape vines. All around was the overpowering scent of growth and life. The loud steady hum of insects could be heard throughout. In these dreams, Holroyd would cross a stream or a stagnant pool of water and come out into a clearing. As always, she waited for him, terrifying and unhuman.

"Why did they leave me?" he would ask. When she spoke to him, as she invariably did, her words were unintelligible. Still, he imagined that she spoke to him of the price of her blood.

Once, before he died, Abney had been drunk and had told Holroyd his theory of the woman in the garden. She was ancient, he said, and had dwelt in the Garden since the beginning. As one of the first things created, the power to create worlds ran in her veins.

"Everyone, everything else from that time is gone now," Abney had said. "As for all of us, there have been so many 'begat' here and there that it's all been diluted away; but her," he had tapped his wrist, "a drop of her blood is genesis."

"The genesis of what?" Holroyd had asked.

"Well you know that already."

#

They had gotten out of the boat some distance from the shore and stood with the water up to their chests and their packs held overhead. The boatman had said "Tomorrow," and had gone back out to sea, leaving them looking at the beach and the hilly inland.

On dry land, North set down his pack and withdrew a small bundle of paper.

"What's that?" Spender asked.

"It's a map of the island with the location of the Door marked on it," North said. "Holroyd gave it to me yesterday."

"That's incredible; why didn't you mention it before?"

"It must have slipped my mind." North looked away, out to sea, and shouldered his pack. Spender had the feeling that North was hiding something but could not for the life of him imagine what or why. "This way," North said. "It won't take us long; the island's actually quite small."

It was difficult ground to cover in some places and, when they had reached the northern end of the island, it took them the better part of a half hour to realize that the spot they were looking for was at the base of the cliff on which they stood. The descent was a winding, slightly treacherous affair that Spender regretfully noted would become a winding, slightly treacherous ascent on the return trip.

In a recess of the cliff wall was the mouth of Holroyd's cave. North set down his pack again and folded the map before tucking it inside.

"When Holroyd spoke to me last night, he didn't really tell me to be careful- well, he did but he said a good deal more."

"What did he say?"

"He told me that if we intended to get what we came for, only one of us could go in."

"Why?"

"If we both go through the Door, only one of us will come out. He said something about a price- said that going alone was our only chance."

"Why did he tell you all this?"

"I think it's because I'm the one who is meant to go," North said.

"I won't let you," Spender said suddenly, "it's not worth it. We'll just camp out here on the island tonight and begin the trip home tomorrow."

"I have to risk it, Spender."

"You don't, though. You don't have to do anything. We can just leave and go on living." Spender, without realizing it, had begun shouting. North, on the other hand, had become strangely calm.

"I don't know if I've ever told you this, but I can't stand too much strangeness. I like it when things behave as they ought and you can go about making reasonable assumptions about the world. Ever since we've gone through that damned Door, things have been far too strange. I can't wake up in the morning without remembering that the normalcy of life has been ruined by a lunatic with a silly fake name.

"That's why I have to do it. I want to be able to walk through a nice, normal door without wondering if something ridiculous and magical is about to happen." Roger F. North, it was clear, was fed up.

"And it's worth possibly dying for?"

"Yes," North said firmly.

"And you know that things will get stranger before they get better?"

"Darkest before the dawn and all that," North said, starting into the cave.

"You're sure I can't convince you to give it a miss?" Spender called after him.

"Quite sure." And then, echoing from inside the cave, "If I'm not back by tomorrow evening, leave without me."

"I'll do no such thing," shouted Spender. "I won't," he said to himself.

Inside the cave, the sound of Spender's voice died away along with the wind and waves, leaving North in silence. Though he had outwardly seemed brave and resolute, he had been subject to a rising sense of terror that had begun two days before. The futures that he could see had simplified and coalesced into a single image- a Door. It had loomed before him and he could not see past it. Now, it had come to loom in the present. It was fashioned entirely out of stone with animals and figures carved in relief on its posts and lintel. North stood before it, unwilling to go further and incapable of doing otherwise.

It had been easier to make light of Odd and the Doors when he had been with Spender in the sunlight. Now it all seemed not at all silly and very frightening indeed. After what seemed like ages, North reached out and pulled the Door open with some effort. The smell of growing plants washed over him accompanied by the tinny hum of insects.

Spender threw stones into the water for a while, had dinner on the beach, and walked around looking at the cliffs appreciatively. When that had lost its lustre, he ventured into the cave to look at the Door. While in close proximity to it, he was struck with a feeling not unlike that experienced when walking through a graveyard. To go through it, he imagined, must be as daunting as entering a crypt. He hoped that North would return soon, lest he, Spender, should have to find out exactly what it was like on the other side.

An unsettling thought occurred to him. Perhaps it was this Door that had made Dr. Holroyd do terrible things, had made Odd what he was. Perhaps the garden had some evil influence that corrupted all who set foot in it. What would he do if North came back wrong, somehow? Spender left the cave as quickly as dignity would permit and went back to patrolling the small stretch of rocks and sand that skirted the cliff.

#

Spender realized that he had fallen asleep. The incoming tide was silvery in the dark and a half moon shone through the ragged edge of a cloud. He had heard a grinding rasp from inside the cave; it could only be North. A silhouette came out of the darkness and Spender rose to meet it.

North approached him, looking disheveled and exalted.

"I did it and it was glorious. I told you I hated strangeness, I was wrong." Spender looked at him closely and thought that his visible eye looked, for lack of a better word, crazed. "We can use this to destroy the Door and then," he grabbed Spender's arm, "and then, we can make our own Doors."

"What?"

"It'll be the easiest thing. I learned how to do it in there."

"But people will die," Spender protested.

"Will they? I suppose they will." North released him.

"What was in there? How did you get the whatever-it-is?"

"I made a deal with her," North said. "That reminds me, we have to go back. I want to show her to you."

"Holroyd said that if we both go-"

"Come with me. I told her all about you. I made a deal, you know." Something was terribly, terribly wrong. North had begun to drag him back towards the cave. "I really am a wicked young man, you know."

Spender awoke and lay as if paralysed. It had been a dream. The sky was grey and streaked with light in the east and color had begun to come back into the water. Spender sat up. Where, then, was North? He started for the cave and nearly tripped over a bundle that had been left on the sand. The bundle moved and made an exhausted sort of sound.

"North! When did you get back?"

"Not long ago. I didn't want to disturb you."

"Are you quite all right?" Spender asked. North groaned.

"No, I don't believe I am. I really thought I was going to die. And the strangeness..."

"North?"

"I got it, though. A single drop." He held up a glass phial with what looked like a miniscule drop of water at the bottom. "It should be enough. There's a parchment as well; all one does is carve the symbols onto the door frame." North rolled over and sat up, allowing Spender to get a good look at him for the first time.

"What happened to your eye?" North's eyes were identically brown and tired-looking.

"There was a price to pay and, as I didn't have anyone with me, she took my eye. Not the whole thing, obviously, just the part that was special. I'm lucky to have made it out alive, I think."

They breakfasted with an audience of seagulls, flinging morsels into their midst. Afterwards, they climbed the trail up the cliff and stood at the top, looking down.

"I'd like to come back some day," North said, "and dynamite that cave."

"Will you miss- what I mean to say is, do you mind the loss of your eye?"

"Actually, I couldn't be happier."

#

Cecilly loved Arthur very much. He was kind and good to talk to and had given her Lewis. Nevertheless, it had caused a stir of excitement when the letter from Fletcher arrived. She had heard, in a vague and peripheral way, of the scandals he had gone through, of his change of name, and of his committal; all these things only served to heighten the sense of mystery and romantic intrigue that surrounded the letter. Perhaps she had become slightly bored with planning meals and playing bridge. Perhaps she wondered at times what adventures she would have had had things gone differently. She did remember fondly the dark haired, earnest boy who had kissed her in the park years ago.

Whatever the reason, Cecilly Spender did not tell her husband about the letter. Instead, she sat down to dinner in a lovely state of suspense and wondering. After dinner, when Nanny had taken Lewis to be tubbed and pyjama'd and Arthur had gone to smoke and fall asleep with the paper, she took out the letter and read it eagerly.

"Dearest Cecilly,

It has been some time now since I have known freedom. Quite often, my thoughts turn to the past and to you. My greatest regret is that I never told you properly how very fond of you I am. I am now, as ever, quite alone in the world; otherwise I would never burden you with a letter. At times, loneliness can compel one to boldness.

I heard of the happy occasion of your son's birth nearly three years ago and never had the opportunity to send my congratulations. I am glad that you have the blessings of family and happiness in your life.

Cecilly, I would very much like to see you. My days have become empty and I have been in poor health of late. I feel that the kindness of a friend would give me solace. I consider you my dearest friend and would like nothing more than to be in your company.

Ever Yours,

Alard"

#  Chapter Twenty-One

Spender and North had returned home two days before Lent term. They had stayed the night in Spender's rooms and left early the next morning for Quartersoake. Spender sat upright in the passenger seat while, beside him, North drove and stared into the middle distance.

"I wonder why she went to him," Spender said.

"Why she-"

"My mother; why she visited Odd."

"Well, as Holroyd told it, they were acquainted once. He had to know her well enough if he thought that she would be," North searched for a moment, "ideal." Spender considered this.

"She must have known what he had become; she visited him in an asylum."

"Well, we can ask Odd about it when we destroy the Door." They had passed through Quartersoake and turned onto the road leading to the asylum. "I've been meaning to ask you, what is it you intend to do when we have him standing in front of us?"

"I don't know, really; something violent. We'll be on even terms."

"I expect he'll still be quite dangerous," North said.

"Ideally we should have arranged to have a policeman there to arrest him the moment he tumbles out. There are problems with that, though."

"Yes, I can only imagine how that would have gone. 'Excuse me, could you help us collar a thought-to-be-dead magician upon his reentry into the world?'"

As the Humber rumbled over the frost-bound road, Spender and North lapsed into silence, each thinking privately about the prospect of facing a murderer who would, in all likelihood, be utterly unhinged and desperate to escape.

"Perhaps we should have brought something to tie him up with," Spender said. "Do you have a weapon, something we could use to subdue him?" North hm'd.

"I've got the starting handle; that might do." Spender's nervous anticipation had made him sick to his stomach and he tried, unsuccessfully, to think of anything other than what they had set out to do. North glanced over. "We're going to destroy that Door and take Odd to the police. I'm not quite sure how, but we'll do it. What's more, we'll find out what really happened that day."

Outside, the row of cypresses stood in a frozen, rigid line. Further down the road lay the burial place of the ruined asylum.

#

As the orderly led Cecilly Spender down the corridor, she thought that she could faintly hear the first Gnossienne coming from a distant room.

"Do you hear music?" she said.

"One of the patients keeps a Zonophone in his room," the orderly said. "It has a wonderful sedative effect. Dr. Webley's treatments are very innovative, some of them. Mr. Odd's room is just there." The orderly advanced and rapped on the door. "Mr. Odd? You have a guest."

The door opened and the man who greeted Cecilly was very much Adelard Odd and not at all Alard Fletcher, though she could not know it. The orderly tried not to be conspicuous as he avoided looking at him.

"Thank you, Cavendish. Dear Cecilly, I'm so glad you came. Would you like to go into the courtyard?" She followed him, looking at him all the way. He seemed- she could not pin it down at first- febrile; there was something about his hair and the slight glassiness of his eyes.

"The garden is much nicer in the summer," he said. "The flowers are all withering and the trees are nearly bare."

"It's still very beautiful," Cecilly said.

"I painted it in July when everything was in full bloom; would you like to see?"

"Yes, I would." Odd led her back to his room, shutting the door behind them. Cecilly noticed that there were wood shavings and a sprinkling of plaster dust on the floor.

"Sit here, please." Odd placed a chair by the bed. Cecilly sat and looked at several of the hanging paintings.

"They're lovely," she said, "which one-"

"I know about you," Odd said suddenly.

"I'm sorry?"

"There's more to you than is readily apparent. You're more than hats and cucumber sandwiches. You know fear and exaltation and doubt and love with an intensity that no one, not even your imbecile husband, suspects. Why you ever chose such mediocrity-" Cecilly tried to rise from her chair but Odd pushed her back down. "I loved you in your complexity. You are like- like a labyrinth."

"A what?" Cecilly was near tears and frightened half out of her wits.

"Shut up!" Odd said savagely. "I wish it weren't so, but there it is. I will never find someone with the same quality of spirit. I have no choice."

"Please, Alard." Cecilly scrambled up and the chair fell onto its back. Odd grabbed her roughly by the wrist and pulled her to the Door. There was a pounding at the other door and raised voices outside. Cecilly stumbled and lost her shoe. "Please."

Odd opened the Door and pushed her against the wall that filled the frame. Cecilly sobbed as he drew a small knife. Lewis would miss her terribly.

#

The Door laid face up in a barren field. Spender and North stood over it for a moment before hunkering down. North had a penknife and laboriously carved the symbols from the parchment onto the doorframe. Spender held the phial up to the light and looked at the drop at the bottom.

"What do we do with this?"

"I have an inkwell in that bag. We're to mix it into the ink and fill the carvings with it."

"Then what?"

"Then whatever is going to happen should happen."

#

Odd locked the Door just as the door to the outside splintered and gave way. The men who rushed in did not see the faint light flickering around the jamb. There was a low rushing sound and Odd flung himself at them.

"Don't try to go in- blindness and death- don't touch me!" He was borne down under their combined weight and writhed on the floor, screaming incoherently.

#

"Is that it?" Spender said. They stood and looked down at the Door.

"I think I did everything right. I don't understand." Nothing happened at first and then, with startling rapidity, a large crack ran up the Door. More cracks branched out from the first and the Door seemed to warp and shudder. Spender and North stepped back and the Door virtually exploded, showering debris over the field.

Odd had appeared, standing where the Door had been. He looked at them, pale and perplexed, and swayed on his feet. There was no wind, no birdsong, no sound at all in the stillness of that moment. Then, Odd collapsed. Spender and North knelt over his body.

"He's dead." North said. The two looked at each other, rose to their feet, and walked out of the field.

#

There was a weeping willow in the park that Lewis liked. Mama took him there and read to him and let him throw pebbles into the water. He couldn't when the ducks were around because that was bad. Nan wasn't there but that was all right because he liked Mama so much.

After the park, they went home and had dinner. He didn't like it and Mama didn't make him eat it, which was nice. He got to have biscuits from the kitchen after. When it was time to go to bed, Nan still wasn't there and Mama sang to him. He was tired and Mama said "Good night" and he said, "I love you", which was nice because it was true.

# Epilogue

At first glance, the morning post seemed quite unexceptional. There were two letters for Charlotte and a post card for Prue- sent, North assumed, by her aunt. These he put on the hall table and was on the verge of going to see about some toast when he noticed the envelope. It was large, battered, and heavily franked. It looked to him as if it had been sent from somewhere in France and had taken quite the circuitous route. He turned it over in his hands, slightly perplexed, and wandered into the dining room.

"What have you got there, darling?" Charlotte brought him his toast on a plate and judiciously scraped at it with a knife.

"A letter, I think," he said. As Charlotte sat, he absentmindedly ate and opened the envelope.

"Dear Mr. North,

I trust this finds you well. After hearing from the boatman that both you and Mr. Spender left Zembra alive, I assumed that, if Mr. Spender entered the Door alone as I suggested, he at least escaped with his life if not the thing you sought. Some time later, I received word that no door of any description was to be found at the site of the Quartersoake asylum. Unless I am very much mistaken, I take it that you were successful in your efforts.

Odd died on the instant, didn't he? I thought he would. It took years for me to find out that Abney had died at the moment Odd unmade the Door- not after. I wonder if Odd knew that it would kill him. I don't think that he ever dreamed that he would suffer the same fate at the hands of two schoolboys.

Since you are reading this letter, it means that my executors have sent it; and if they have sent it, it means that I am dead. This fact has some bearing on the matter though it is ultimately incidental. I have not written to ask for forgiveness, nor have I written to gloat. Instead, I have written to inform you of an important bequest.

Shortly after you receive this letter, a package will arrive by post- a small red book. I think that you will find it instructive. When you reach the entry telling you to skip two pages forward, I suggest that you do so, lest you forever lose the chance to disregard what you see.

I never told you that I only ever made three Doors; yet I know so much about them. Odd was lost to the world for years, yet I know where he went and what he did. When you visited me in my home in Tunis, I gave you all you needed. I kept something for myself, though.

Shortly after Odd's first death, I was able to send someone both trusted and incurious into the asylum's records. There, tucked away in an unmarked box, was the small red book. In it, I was delighted to find detailed observations of the worlds beyond the Doors, pieces of the text needed to make a Door and, best of all, the locations of all the Doors Odd made. Believe me when I tell you that the list is extensive.

The book is of no use to me where I have gone. I leave it to you as a memento. Though he is dead and his final Door gone, there remains something of him in this, Odd's Diary.

Yours,

Dr. Holroyd"

North's toast clattered on the plate. Charlotte looked up.

"What is it?" There was a knock at the door.

###

