The Shadow at the Gate (62 page)

“Tell him to show us the stairs before I wring your neck,” said Ronan.

“The stairs!” said Lano.

“Right this way,” said the scrawny ghost. “You won’t mind if I accompany you, will you? Of course not. Despite your youth, I think you'll prove a splendid conversationalist.”

The scrawny ghost led them through the gloomy darkness of the attic. Neither the that ghost nor Jute’s ghost ever stopped talking. Behind them trailed a whole crowd of decidedly grumpy ghosts—grumpy, of course, because it had not been any of them who had had the good fortune to coax a response out of one of the living. Their guide stopped beside a pile of moldy fur skins.

“What a stench,” said Jute.

“Otter pelts,” said his ghost, and he launched into a discourse on the differences between the ocean otter and its smaller cousin, the freshwater otter.

“Here it is,” said the scrawny ghost. And there it was. A trapdoor set into the planks. It was so covered with dust that they certainly would not have found it on their own. Ronan wrenched the door up to reveal stairs vanishing down into the darkness.

“Jute and I’ll go first,” said the hawk. “Hurry. We’ve wasted too much time.”

“All right then. Liven it up.”

But even as Ronan spoke, something changed in the air in the attic. There was a chill to it that had not been there before. The meager light dimmed until it was nearly gone. The shadows deepened. Even the crowd of watching ghosts seemed somehow changed. Their forms thickened and there was menace in their stares.

“Not all of us thought so poorly of the Dark,” said someone in the crowd.

“Aye,” said another. “The Dark wouldn’t have chained us to this place. It would’ve let us go free. It would’ve wanted us to be free.”

The chill deepened. The trapdoor felt impossibly heavy in Ronan’s grip. Somewhere far off in the attic, there came the sound of footsteps and creaking planks.

“Jute!” said the hawk.

Jute dove down the stairs with the hawk clinging to his shoulder. Behind him, he could hear Lano stumbling along. Even their two ghosts had fallen silent, though he could see them by the strange pale light that they shed. Part of his mind realized, in a pleased fashion, that this was why the attic was lit. It was the ghosts. The rest of Jute’s mind, however, gibbered in frantic panic. The wihht! The trapdoor closed softly overhead and Ronan hurried after them on silent feet.

“It doesn’t matter how quiet you are,” said the hawk. “The wihht doesn’t need to hear to follow our path.”

“Then run!” said Ronan.

And run, they did. Clattering and jumping down the stairs. Strands of cobwebs broke across their faces. The stairs were dusty and dark and so cramped that they had to proceed in single file.

“What’s following us?” gasped Lano.

“A wihht,” said Jute.

“What’s that?”

“What sort of question is that?” said the scrawny ghost. “Why, if you were my student, you’d be writing out twenty pages—best handwriting—on wihhts. I’m shocked. Shocked at such ignorance!”

“If you’re so clever,” said Lano, “then why don’t you tell me what a wihht is.”

“Very well,” said the ghost. “There’ll be a test on this later. Pay attention and don’t shirk your note-taking.”

“Tell your ghost to be quiet!” said the hawk.

They clattered down stairs that, judging from the dust and the sheets of cobwebs that hung spun from wall to wall, had not been used for years. Jute caught a glimpse of something scuttling away into the shadows. It looked uncomfortably fat and furry with many horrid legs scrabbling about (many more legs than a spider). What did such things trap and eat, so far up here in the dark? Surely there were no flies buzzing about there.

The scrawny ghost paid no attention to the hawk and launched into a lecture on wihhts. “There’s a lot written about ‘em that’s pure rubbish,” it said. “Especially the more modern writers. Rubbish. Not worth the paper they’re written on. Some claim you can create wihhts out of neutral material, but there are two problems with that. First off, there’s no such thing as neutral material. Everything has a bent this way or that, see? Second, the sort of savage twisting and reshaping required to create a wihht automatically precludes anything good coming of the thing. It naturally will adhere to the Dark.”

They had descended at least four flights, if not more. The stairs turned and wound around themselves at sharp angles. There was not any particular method to the turns. Sometimes, they came after only five steps, or twelve, or even as many as twenty-one. Jute’s lungs burned and he had a painful stitch in his side.

“How many stories in all,” said Ronan, “including the attic, are in this place?”

“Oh, thirteen,” said Lano. “I think.”

“Fifteen,” said Jute’s ghost. “One of the strictures of teaching is that boys know nothing. As expected, this boy knows nothing. In my days as a professor here, it wasn’t uncommon to have boys in class that knew even less than nothing.”

“Seventeen,” said the other ghost.

“Quiet,” said the hawk. “Be quiet all of you, for one moment!”

They stopped and turned to look up the stairs. Jute could not hear anything and he could tell from the frown on Ronan’s face that he heard nothing as well.

“He’s on the stairs,” said the hawk. “And he isn’t alone. I don’t think this Stone Tower will be a safe place from now on, for I fear he’s freed some of the ghosts, just as they wished. Those who would be naturally inclined to the Dark. We must hurry now.”

“As I was saying,” said Lano’s ghost, “before I was rudely interrupted, wihhts are always created with a binding of the Dark. That is, the Dark in some form (whether it be a strand of shadow or death or nightmare, or something of that kind) is woven together with some sort of natural material. Earth, wood, stone, flesh (dead flesh works best if it’s fresh), various plants, water. Water, however, is a chancy material for wihhts. It has to be dark water. That is, water that’s spent a great deal of time below ground.”

“Oh, be quiet,” said the other ghost.

Lano’s ghost, startled at this betrayal, subsided into a mumbling grumble as he trailed behind them down the stairs. They came then to the bottom of the stairs. It was a wide landing stacked with wooden chests and old furniture. They had to clear their way to a door at the far end.

“Servants’ quarters through there,” said Lano. “I think.” He darted an apprehensive glance at his ghost, but it was sulking and not paying attention.

It was the servants’ quarters. There was a smell of laundry and fresh bread in the air. They passed startled looking faces in a drawing room of sorts—some resting over their tea, some gossiping quietly in their corners. The hallway was narrow and shabby, but it was swept clean and well lit.

“Not done in my day,” said Jute’s ghost primly. “We didn’t mix with the servants.”

“This will help us,” said the hawk.

“What do you mean?” said Ronan.

“More lives.” The hawk glanced at an old lady who curtseyed as they passed her. “More lives around us will obscure the trail for the wihht. Rather like footprints from many people walking down the same path. It’ll have to stop and determine which belong to us. Which footprints belong to Jute.”

They rounded a corner into a wider hallway. Windows opened out to the west and they saw sunlight and the shining water down in the bay. There were many boys here.

“Hey, Lano’s with the wind lord!” someone yelled.

“It’s the wind lord!”

Other boys took up the shout, and soon the hallway was filled with boys smiling and cheering and trying to catch Jute’s eye. It was embarrassing, and Jute was not sure what to make of it.

“One side!” bellowed Ronan. “Let us through!”

The boys surged along with them. Lano smiled and nodded grandly at acquaintances.

“To the stairs!” called Lano.

“What’s the occasion?” yelled a boy, sticking his head out of a door, a book in one hand and a quill in the other.

“The wind lord’s going to call up the wind and we’re going to see some real spells. None of this boring old reading.”

“What about the professors? We’ll catch it—”

“Boo on the professors!

“And boo on schoolwork!”

“To the stairs!”

The boys cheered, for they were glad of any excuse to abandon their studies. There were several dozen of them. They were on the stairs now and there were furious shouts from two old men stationed there. Jute caught a glimpse of angry eyes with something dark and deadly sliding behind them. Something that knew him. But then the face was gone, pushed away by the crowd of boys hurrying down the steps around him.

“The wihht has help within these walls,” said the hawk in Jute’s ear. “It is well, I think, that these lads are bent on an impromptu holiday. Once we’re under the sky, we’ll be safer. And there’re several hours between now and sundown.”

The entire procession came to the bottom of the stairs and into the entrance hall. Oddly enough, not a single professor was in sight. This did not seem to give any of boys cause for concern. They threw open the front doors and poured out into the courtyard, talking and laughing. A breeze blew through the eucalyptus trees, carrying leaves and the scent of the sea and the trees with it. It eddied through the courtyard and spun the boys surging around Jute and Ronan so that the boys, too, seemed like leaves to Jute.

Aye,
said the hawk inside his mind.
You begin to see the way you are meant to see. They are indeed like leaves, and just as quickly will they fall to the ground.

What do you mean?
said Jute, not understanding the bird, but understanding the touch of the wind on his skin and in his hair. He wanted the sky.
How can they be like leaves?

“We must get away from this place,” said Ronan. “But how? There are no horses, and it looks like quite a climb to the top of the valley.”

“If I might suggest something.”

It was the scruffy ghost, the one that had attached itself to Lano. In the bright sunshine, it wavered in and out of sight as if the light was too much for the definition of its form.

“Speak on,” said the hawk, addressing the ghost. “Speak on, but quickly.”

“Thank you for looking at me,” said the ghost, somewhat abashed. “I remember you, master hawk. Somewhere in my memories. When I was alive and young, and you were already old. Now I’m dead but you still live.”

“We all have our appointed time to die,” said the hawk. “But what would you say?”

“I think,” said the ghost, “that I have a memory. I think I once read that wihhts fear the sea.”

“If that’s true, then we’re in luck,” said Ronan. “Look, there’re several small boats at anchor in the bay.”

“Thank you, ghost,” said the hawk. “Though you’re dead, you might’ve saved many lives today if your words are true.”

“Don’t mention it,” said the ghost, looking embarrassed.

They were under the shadows of the eucalyptus lane now. Leaves and the hard pods of the trees crunched underfoot. The boys ran with them, but more quietly now, for Lano must have whispered what he knew to his friends. Many a backward glance was given as they hurried along, back at the bright, sunlight-splashed clearing at the foot of the cliff and the blank windows carved into the rocks.

“A mouse!” someone called, and a small boy pounced. He crowed triumphantly and stuck the mouse in his pocket.

“And there’s another,” said someone else, but then an older boy frowned and said, “Hush now.” They all felt it, and they bunched uncomfortably near Ronan and Jute.

“Never mind,” said the hawk to Ronan’s glance. “As long as they don’t slow us. It’s better for them all to be out of that place.”

“Look!” said someone.

Everyone looked back down the lane to see a strange darkness come flowing out of the open doors of the Stone Tower. It had no form. It was like a fog that grew and drifted across the ground. They all stared, fascinated and horrified, even the hawk. The fog wavered, as if in indecision, and then it thickened until, out of it, strode the figure of a man formed out of darkness. Behind him, other shapes flickered: Shadows cast by no bodies, sliding across the stones and the hardened earth of the clearing, heading straight for the lane and all those who stood entranced watching. A hissing snarl filled the air.

“Run!” screamed someone.

“Excellent advice,” said the hawk. “You did say there were boats down in the bay, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Ronan.

Lano overheard this and promptly shouted out that everyone should run for the bay and the boats there. This did not result in any modification in what was happening, as everyone was running pell-mell already down the lane between the eucalyptus trees, which headed toward the bay itself. Beyond the trees and over a grassy meadow, Jute could see the tops of several masts swaying back and forth. A rickety looking fence made of split rails stood at the edge of the meadow. Over this they scrambled and then fled across the meadow. The grass underfoot gave way to sandy earth and then the pebbled strand that lay before the lazy waves. Four boats bobbed at anchor some distance out from the shore. A skiff was drawn up high on the beach. A mob of boys fell on the skiff and wrestled it into the water. Fists flew as they all sought to scramble in. The skiff sank lower and lower as more boys clambered aboard. There was a sense of hysteria in the air.