Ch. 161 The Room Without Windows

Chapter 161: The Room Without Windows

By morning, I remembered the rest of the story about the tent.

Caroline had fallen asleep inside it.

I had eaten the food.

Evelyn listened while fastening her cloak.

“Did she find out?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“She charged me admission again.”

My wife smiled.

Then she looked at me more carefully.

“Did you sleep?”

“For a while.”

“So did I.”

Outside, Tessa was examining the sky.

Inside, Eleanor had begun an argument with the kettle.

For a few minutes, the mountain seemed like somewhere people might simply wake up.

Aurelia sat beside the hearth with the recovered strip in her lap.

She had unwrapped it again.

“What was her name?” I asked.

“Thesra.”

The others grew quiet.

“She could help someone sleep through pain without dulling the mind when they woke. I used to send people to her houses when healing would take a long time.”

“Did you know her well?”

“I thought so.”

She turned the metal over.

The little sign beneath the arch and star caught the firelight.

“Once, she sat with me after I had lost someone.”

I did not ask whom.

Aurelia wrapped the strip.

“That was before the convocation.”

“Could someone have used her mark?” Evelyn asked.

“Yes.”

Aurelia looked up.

“I would like that to be the answer. We should remember that I would like it.”

My wife nodded.

Eliza drew Tessa’s map closer.

“Then today we look. We stay on the approach we cleared. We keep a way out.”

“And we leave while we can still see our feet,” Tessa added from the doorway.

“What does the sky say?” I asked.

“Nothing pleasant about tomorrow.”

She took her gloves from beside the hearth.

“But we have this morning.”

The cut in the boundary remained open.

Eleanor found the empty groove beneath a little drift and checked that nothing had shifted into it.

No voice called when I stepped past.

I waited anyway.

Evelyn stood beside me.

Aurelia reached gently toward the stones.

“It is still trying to gather here,” she said. “It cannot cross the break.”

“Can it mend itself?” Eliza asked.

“I haven’t felt it try.”

Eleanor covered the exposed ends with separate pieces of dry cloth and marked the stone.

Then Tessa led us up the last stretch of road.

The gallery looked larger from beneath it.

Three pillars stood.

The leaning fourth held nothing I trusted.

Eleanor guided us along the outer edge, away from the fallen roof. We passed a hearth open to the sky and a long trough full of snow.

Aurelia stopped beside the trough.

“There used to be a bench.”

“For travellers?”

“Yes. You could sit in the sun while your bedding aired.”

She looked through the broken wall.

“The sleeping rooms should be there.”

There was no warmth in the ruin.

No familiar smell.

Only wet stone, old timber, and the spring running somewhere behind the house.

I found that almost merciful.

We entered through a gap where a wall had fallen.

Eleanor went first.

Then Eliza.

The room beyond had lost its roof, but a narrow passage remained intact along the uphill side.

Small chambers opened from it.

Each had space for a bed.

Each had a window.

Their doors were gone.

Evelyn crouched beside a low shelf.

A comb lay there, half buried in dust and blown leaves.

One tooth had broken.

She left it where it was.

“People lived here,” she said.

I looked at the little shelf.

I had been thinking of the house as something built to hurt Aurelia.

The comb made that harder.

The passage ended at a wall.

Eleanor tapped it.

Then crouched.

Then tapped again.

“This is later.”

“How much later?” I asked.

“I can tell you they blocked an opening. I can’t tell you whose grandfather was alive when they did it.”

Aurelia moved beside her.

Her hand stopped short of the stone.

I felt it then.

A slow pull beneath my ribs.

Evelyn caught my wrist.

“Back.”

We stepped away together.

Aurelia remained still.

Her expression had emptied.

“Aurelia,” I said.

She blinked.

Then turned toward me.

“It knows I’m here.”

We withdrew to the room with the open roof.

Eliza counted us.

Not ostentatiously.

I saw her eyes move from face to face.

Aurelia sat on a fallen beam.

“What did it do?” Evelyn asked.

“For a moment, I couldn’t remember why I had come.”

“Did you hear him?”

“No.”

That frightened me more than another voice would have.

Aurelia rubbed her palms together.

“I wanted to sit down. Let someone else decide what happened next.”

I looked toward the passage.

There was nothing to argue with.

No lie spoken aloud.

Only a wish that might easily have seemed her own.

Evelyn took out the page on which she had written our plan that morning.

She placed it in Aurelia’s hands.

Our teacher read it.

Then smiled faintly.

“Your handwriting has become very firm.”

“I’ve been watching Mary.”

“What do you want to do?” I asked.

Aurelia looked at me.

Not quickly.

She took time to find her answer.

“See what is behind the wall.”

“And if that changes?”

“I will tell you.”

Evelyn left the page with her.

We approached again with a shield laid close against the blocked opening.

This time, I knew what to feel for.

The disturbance gathered along the stone.

My working bowed slightly toward it.

I held the shape.

Evelyn traced the edge with her own power, looking for where it entered.

“There.”

A thin metal wire disappeared between two blocks.

Eleanor examined it without touching.

“It’s been threaded through the old hinge hole.”

“Can we open the wall around it?” I asked.

She looked upward.

“The arch is still carrying the weight. If we support the loose facing, yes.”

We began with one stone.

I held the upper blocks steady while Eleanor loosened the lower joint.

It was slow work.

Mortar came away in flakes.

One of the guards carried the removed pieces into the open room.

Tessa watched the light.

Melody stayed beside Aurelia and spoke whenever our teacher grew quiet.

She talked about the hut.

The kettle.

The amount of onion remaining in our supplies.

Ordinary things.

Once, Aurelia interrupted her.

“You dislike onion?”

“Only when it becomes the entire meal.”

“I thought the broth was quite good.”

“Then you may have mine tonight.”

Aurelia laughed.

The pull against my shield weakened.

Only a little.

Enough for me to notice.

Beyond the wall was a door.

A real one.

Its wood was dark and swollen.

The hinges faced us.

So did the iron bolt.

Eleanor stopped brushing mortar from the latch.

For a moment, we all looked at it.

“They closed it from this side,” Evelyn said.

“Yes.”

I reached toward the bolt.

My wife caught my sleeve.

“The wire.”

I had forgotten it.

It ran over the iron and vanished through the frame.

I withdrew my hand.

Aurelia stepped closer.

“Show me.”

The wire carried very little power.

What disturbed me was where that power came from.

Aurelia touched the air above it.

Gold gathered around her fingers.

The wire answered.

Her breath caught.

“It’s mine.”

I looked at her.

“They used your power?”

“They are still using it.”

The line brightened again.

I felt her presence pull toward the door.

Evelyn and I strengthened our invitation together.

Aurelia steadied.

Then took her hand away.

“How?” I asked.

She looked at the bolt.

“I think we need to open it to find out.”

We did not cut the wire.

Evelyn held its course away from the iron while I kept the shield between us and the door.

Eleanor lifted the bolt.

It made a dry, reluctant sound.

Nothing struck.

Nothing spoke.

She pulled.

The door moved less than an inch before catching against the floor.

I helped her lift it clear.

Cold air entered the passage from the room beyond.

No windows.

No hearth.

A narrow stone couch stood against the far wall.

Above it, metal pins had been driven into the masonry.

Gold ran between them.

There was someone on the couch.

For a moment, I thought it was Aurelia.

Not a likeness of her as she sat beside our children.

This woman lay curled on her side with one hand beneath her cheek.

Her gown had no weight.

Her hair moved although the air was still.

Then I looked beside me.

Aurelia stared at the couch.

Her face was white.

Evelyn took her hand.

“What is it?”

Our teacher tried to answer.

The figure on the couch opened its eyes.

I stepped forward before I understood why.

Evelyn pulled me back.

At the same moment, Aurelia staggered.

Melody caught her.

The figure sat up.

Its face changed.

Caroline looked at me from the stone couch.

Tired.

Cold.

Waiting.

I closed my eyes.

That did not remove the sense of her.

“Uriah.”

Evelyn’s voice.

Close.

I held on to that.

“The doorway,” she said. “We’re leaving the doorway.”

I moved with her.

We stopped in the open room.

Snow drifted through the missing roof.

One flake landed on the back of my hand and melted.

I watched it until I could look up.

Aurelia sat with Melody beside her.

She was breathing too quickly.

Evelyn crouched before her.

“Tell me where you are.”

“The wayhouse.”

“Who is with you?”

She named us.

Slowly at first.

Then more easily.

Eliza stood at the passage entrance.

Eleanor had left the door open.

The bolt hung loose on its frame.

“It isn’t a person,” Aurelia said at last.

I sat on the stone opposite her.

“Then what did we see?”

“Something made to receive what it draws out of me.”

She looked toward the passage.

“My attention. My strength. Whenever I turn toward the dream, it takes a little more.”

“And gives you something worth turning toward,” Evelyn said.

Aurelia nodded.

“After the other restraints broke, I could rest more easily. Reach farther. But this has still been taking what I give it.”

I thought of her asleep in her new room.

Of the light beneath her door.

“Even at Greykeep?”

“Yes.”

I looked at the passage again.

The distance suddenly seemed very small.

Eleanor knelt beside the drawing Evelyn had begun.

“There were five sets of pins.”

Aurelia looked up.

“What?”

“Above the couch. Five. Four looked dark.”

I remembered the wall.

Barely.

Mostly, I remembered my sister.

Evelyn drew five little groups above the couch.

“One for each restraint?”

“Possibly,” Aurelia said.

“And only one still working.”

Our teacher rose.

I stood with her.

She shook her head.

“I am not going back in yet.”

She looked at Eleanor.

“Can you describe the rest?”

Eleanor could.

She had seen a shallow channel beneath the couch and the wire descending along the doorpost to meet it.

She had also seen a round metal plate set into the floor.

Not beneath the couch.

Beside the door.

“Three handles,” she said. “One broken. Marks around the edge.”

“Letters?” Evelyn asked.

“Not any I read.”

My wife turned to me.

“We need a drawing.”

I nodded.

Then looked at Eliza.

She considered the passage.

“One look. From outside. Then down the mountain.”

Tessa had come to stand behind her.

“Agreed.”

Evelyn made the drawing.

I held the shield beside her.

Aurelia stayed in the open room, talking with Melody.

Eleanor kept one hand on my shoulder.

The couch remained occupied.

I watched the floor.

The metal plate.

The three handles.

Once, a familiar foot touched the stone beside the couch.

I said so.

Eleanor’s grip tightened.

“Floor, Uriah.”

I looked at the broken handle.

Counted the marks around it.

Evelyn’s pencil moved.

Then she closed the book.

“Done.”

We backed away.

We left the inner door open.

Eleanor secured it against falling shut.

The blocked passage could no longer conceal the room.

That did not end the working.

But whoever had last left it there had intended no one to look.

We had looked.

Now we knew what to bring back.

At the gallery, Aurelia stopped and read Evelyn’s drawing.

Her finger moved around the symbols beside the plate.

“These describe the sleeper’s return.”

“Can you read all of them?” I asked.

“Most.”

Her finger stopped beside the broken handle.

“This one means to restore what the house has received.”

We did not attempt it that afternoon.

Tessa had begun watching the ridge more often than us.

The clouds were lowering.

We descended while we still had daylight, taking the drawings and the piece of wire recovered from the boundary.

At the hut, Eliza arranged for us to leave for Northwatch in the morning.

Nobody objected.

Eleanor had a list of tools she needed.

Evelyn had questions about the channel.

Aurelia had sat down with the drawing before her cloak was dry.

I put a cup beside her.

She looked up.

“I can read this.”

“I know.”

“No, Uriah. I mean I remember how a sleeping house was meant to release someone.”

Her hand rested over the little circle on the page.

“Thesra showed me once.”

That night, I finished telling Evelyn about the tent.

She listened until I reached the part where Caroline had tried to charge our mother admission.

“What happened?”

“Mother wanted her blankets back.”

“Did she get them?”

“Eventually.”

Beside the hearth, Aurelia made a small sound.

I looked over.

She had been listening.

“My son once tried to declare the orchard a separate kingdom.”

Evelyn smiled.

“Did you permit it?”

“Until he demanded tribute from the gardener.”

“What did the gardener do?” I asked.

“Gave him a basket and told him kings could help pick apples.”

Aurelia laughed.

The drawing lay folded beside her cup.

For a little while, she left it there.