The Master of Heathcrest Hall (65 page)

Except, it did not seem that he was in fact enduring. There was a weakness to his gait, like a limp or shuffle, and an unpleasant odor emanated from him. It was a sickly smell, like that produced by rot or disease. Despite this, she did not shrink away, but rather hurried to meet him on the path.

“Help me, please,” she said. “Mr. Bennick murdered a warden and took my father from the hostel. I think Mr. Bennick is going to bring him here, to retrieve my father’s part of the keystone.”

“No, you are mistaken.” His words were somewhat muffled, for they did not sound in her mind, but rather came through the onyx mask. “Bennick will not bring your father here. Lockwell’s piece of the keystone is not in the house. Rather, it is with him, just as it has always been, and now the two of them are no longer in Invarel. Bennick has taken your father beyond the city walls.”

Ivy’s shock was so great she could hardly breathe. Yet by what means could her father’s piece of the tablet be with him? She could not comprehend how that could be. All the same, there was one thing she did understand.

“We must go after him. Mr. Bennick will murder my father to gain his fragment of the keystone, just as he did Mr. Fintaur and Mr. Larken.”

The mouth of the onyx mask twisted in a smirk. “As I said before, you are clever, but not always so clever as you think. It was not Bennick who took the lives of Fintaur and Larken, and so took their portions of the keystone. No, it was Gambrel.”

Ivy gaped openly. Surely she had misheard him. “Mr. Gambrel? But it cannot have been Mr. Gambrel! We locked the door to Tyberion, and all the gates beyond it were destroyed. He was trapped there forever.”

“Only a very few things are forever,” the masked man said, gazing down at his black gloves. “The gates that were part of the ancient way station on Tyberion were all broken, it is true, but not all of them were entirely destroyed. And there is no man more resourceful than one who is desperate. Gambrel searched among the gates until he found one that yet retained a spark of magick. He reassembled its stones, and mixed his own blood with the dust of that forsaken place for mortar, and etched runes upon it.”

Now he looked up, and his black mask was wrought into a queer expression, like a sort of admiration. “By the time bright threads of magick crackled over the stones, Gambrel was all but
dead. He flung himself through the gate, and so he escaped the prison you made for him. Still, he would have perished then, but he had had the wits to direct the gate to a place where he knew he would find aid—that is, to his estate in the east of Altania. And there he did find one who preserved him.”

A coldness came over Ivy. “Lady Crayford,” she whispered.

The other nodded. “Yes, he went to his wife. And while she should have had the sense to flee at the sight of him, yet some tenderness for him must have remained in her heart. Or perhaps it was simply that she had nothing and no one left to her. Whatever the reason, she summoned doctors, and he was brought from the brink of death, and recovered his health. Then, as her reward, Gambrel murdered her, and the doctors as well. Then he burned the servants in the house, for no one was to know of his return.”

Ivy was trembling now, and an ill feeling writhed within her. So the fire that had consumed the Crayford manor had not been an accident. Instead, Gambrel had set it deliberately. Lady Crayford had attached herself to Gambrel in order to rise higher in society. But in the end, she had been cast down to her death.

“Where is he?” Ivy said when she was at last able to speak. “Where is Mr. Gambrel now?”

“He is here in Invarel. He has been for some time, for he is the magus of the High Order of the Golden Door. He became magus after Lord Mertrand was murdered—an act which Gambrel no doubt played a role in.”

Ivy did not think she could be further astonished, yet she was. “The Golden Door! But they are Lord Valhaine’s own magicians.”

Again a smile twisted the mouth of the mask. “Yes, they are. Or perhaps I should say, he is their Lord Guardian now.”

“But how?” she said, struggling to understand. “Gambrel—that is, Lord Crayford—was implicated in that affair with the archdeacon. Had he not vanished, he would have been arrested.”

“Yes, and he was indeed arrested upon his return to Invarel. Using his connections within the High Order of the Golden Door, Gambrel gained an audience with Lord Valhaine. He turned himself
in to the Gray Conclave, and let himself be put in shackles and taken to a cell beneath the Citadel. Had he been wise, Lord Valhaine would have thrown away the key, or better, walled up the door. But instead, thinking to learn more about the forces that threaten Altania, he went down to the cell on several occasions to speak to Gambrel, and to question him.

“That was a grave error, as it did not take long before Valhaine was seduced and corrupted by Gambrel’s words. First Gambrel revealed to him the full horror of the Ashen, and the destruction they would unleash upon all the world. Then he convinced Valhaine that, if Altania was to ally itself with the Ashen, this nation would be preserved in favor of all others.”

“But that is a lie!” Ivy cried. “The Ashen will destroy everything.”

“Yes, they will,” the masked man said, and then his voice grew low. “They cannot create, they cannot preserve. They can only devour. All the same, they need agents among mankind to help prepare the way for them to enter the world. Just as they will need men to serve them after they come to dominate all things—men who can lead and command the various governments of the world in a manner that suits the purposes of the Ashen. It is the potential of holding such positions of great power that entices men like Gambrel to ally themselves with the Ashen. And it is the knowledge of the destruction that the Ashen will bring, and the desperation to avoid it no matter the cost, that drives men such as Valhaine mad. It convinces them to do anything in order to avert the coming horror—and blinds them to the horrors they end up committing themselves in their efforts to do so.”

These words were fraught with an inevitable and terrible sort of logic, and Ivy could only believe what the masked man spoke was truth. “But why didn’t you tell me all of this sooner?” she said, her voice cracking with despair. “If we had known Mr. Gambrel had returned, my husband could have warned Lord Valhaine not to listen to him.”

“Could he have? That presumes Sir Quent’s ability to persuade
would have exceeded Gambrel’s—a thing which I doubt. But even if that were the case, I could not have told you any sooner, for I did not know the truth myself, not until earlier this very day. Despite what you might think, I am not always able to move freely where I would or choose in what place I will be. It has ever been that I must wait, and seize what opportunities I can. But at last I was able to speak to Lord Davarry, and in questioning him I learned the truth.”

Now the onyx mask twisted into a sardonic expression. “Indeed, it was simple once I finally found myself alone with him, for as it turns out he is not much of a magician. All this while, he has been Gambrel’s puppet, acting as if he led the Magisters and the High Order of the Golden Door while in secret it was Gambrel who worked the strings. It was not easy to get close to Davarry in private, for Gambrel was keeping him close. But this form I am able to don from time to time is one the magicians of the Golden Door have little fear of. And today, Gambrel has been preoccupied by other matters. Thus I was at last able to get to Davarry alone and in secret. I bent his will to mine, and so learned all I have told you now.”

This fascinated Ivy. She had always assumed the man in the mask knew all—that he appeared precisely when he wished and revealed precisely what he wanted, deliberately withholding greater truths from her for some unknown reason. Yet it seemed that was not so, that there was in fact some limitation upon how he could move about and apprehend things. But what was it? What did he mean by the words,
this form I am able to don from time to time
? She wanted to ask more questions.…

Only what did it matter? Lord Valhaine was the most powerful man in Altania—and he was now under the command of Mr. Gambrel.

“There is nothing we can do,” she murmured, a heaviness descending upon her. “It is all hopeless.”

“No,” the other said, and now his mask was formed into a stern expression. “Until the planets all stand in a line in the Grand
Conjunction, and a ceaseless night falls, there is yet hope. But if there is to be any hope at all, then you must leave the city at once.”

“Leave the city? But why?”

“Gambrel knows the truth of your nature, that you are in fact a sibyl, and thus Valhaine knows as well. They will seek to do away with you. They fear all women such as yourself—women with the power to command the Wyrdwood. Just as they feared your husband for his work with the Inquiry to preserve the Old Trees.”

Ivy took a staggering step backward, as if the ground had pitched violently beneath her feet. She felt a sharp pain and then a sudden emptiness, just as she had the night she woke to bloody sheets and the cold knowledge her body no longer harbored a life within it. How she wanted to believe she did not understand the masked man’s words! But instead, a most awful clarity came over her.

“You said they
feared
my husband,” she said, or rather gasped. “Yet what I think you mean is, they fear him no longer.”

He made no reply, but his silence was answer enough. Ivy pressed one hand to her head and another to her heart, as if to somehow dampen the searing lines of pain that passed back and forth rapidly between those two poles. But it was no use.

It is done
, she thought.
It is all at an end, and there is no purpose in anything. I shall fall to the ground and never rise again
.

No, this is all far from done
, the masked man said, and this time his voice sounded in her mind.
If it were truly over, then they would not have taken your husband away, nor would they be coming for you now. Rather, it is precisely because all is so precarious, because everything yet hangs in the balance, that they seek a way to control things
.

A gloved finger touched her chin, tilting it up. The onyx mask was stern, even hard, but she could see a glint through the mask’s eyeholes. The real eyes beyond were blue, she thought, and not without sympathy.

You can yet alter the balance
, he said.
But to do that, you must not allow yourself to be apprehended. You must go immediately. As must I
.

And with a flourish of his tattered cape, he turned and started down the path in his limping gait.

“Wait!” she cried out. “Don’t leave!”

I have already stayed too long
, came his reply.
This form grows weak, and were it to perish, then I would perish with it
.

“But I don’t understand,” she called after him. “Where can I possibly go?”

Listen to your father. He will tell you what to do
.

Then he passed through the iron gate and was gone.

How long Ivy stared after him, she did not know. She could not think, could not move. It was as though, with his departure, she had gone back to lifeless stone like the lions beside the front steps. At last came the sound of the door opening behind her, followed by a voice.

“Lady Quent, there you are! You should come in. You have a visitor waiting for you.”

Terror broke her paralysis. She turned to see Mrs. Seenly in the front doorway. A visitor? Had Valhaine already sent men from the Citadel to take her away and hang her as a witch?

No, given the lack of alarm in Mrs. Seenly’s expression, it could be no such thing. Ivy’s only want was to enter the house, to shut herself in her chamber, and weep. But first she must make this visitor depart. In the most detached manner, as if she were operating a puppet rather than her own body, she directed her limbs to move, to carry her up the steps, through the door, and into the front hall.

A handsome young man in a well-tailored gray coat rose from a bench by a window. He had long brown hair and soft brown eyes.

“Lady Quent, I am glad you are here,” he said, and bowed.

Ivy was too numb, and too astonished, to do anything save to utter the obvious. “Mr. Garritt!”

He took a step toward her, an earnest expression upon his handsome face. “Forgive me for coming unannounced, but there is something important I must tell you—though I think you will not like to hear it.”

Ivy could only stare, wondering what other terrible news was to be revealed to her this day. Between her father and her husband, had she not already been presented with enough?

“It involves your youngest sister,” Mr. Garritt went on rapidly. “Miss Lily, that is. She has gone to one of the theaters at Durrow Street.”

Previously, this revelation would have been serious news indeed, but it seemed of little consequence now. Yet it did serve to pierce the dull haze that shrouded Ivy’s mind. She ached to grieve, but just as when her mother passed, she had to maintain her composure for the sake of Lily and Rose. All that mattered now was to collect her sisters and leave the city.

“Thank you, Mr. Garritt,” she said. “You can be assured that I will admonish Lily for what she has done. It was thoughtless and foolish of her. But for the moment, I must speak with her and Rose about another matter, if you will forgive me.”

He shook his head. “But that’s just it, you
can’t
speak to her. That is, unless you go to the Theater of the Moon on Durrow Street. I tried to convince Lily to return here with me, but she refused. She says she will not leave the theater unless we throw her upon the street, and Madame Richelour—that is the lady who owns the theater—has said she will allow no such thing. It seems she has developed an immediate fondness for your sister.”

Ivy’s mind had suffered too many shocks today; she could scarcely comprehend what she was hearing. And why was it from him that she was hearing it at all?

“But, Mr. Garritt,” she said, “how can you know all this?”

He drew in a breath, as if gathering his resolve. “I know because … it is the fact that I am employed at the very theater I speak of, as an illusionist in their company of players. Lily had gone to the west end of Durrow Street and was showing people
there a drawing of me. I came upon her just as she was approaching the Theater of the Moon, where they would certainly have recognized the drawing she had made. She insisted I take her within, and to remove her from the street I did so. It was my intention after that to accompany her home, but she was adamant that she would not leave.”