Though she could tell the effort pained Ayward, he pulled his head up and looked her in the eyes.
“I’ve been to see the hole in the Maze. They’ve set up barricades around it, but I went in from the inside to see it.”
“The statues still tell you the way.”
“Of course they do. That’s not the important thing. There were voices, Ayward! Coming up from the hole!”
He kept his head up, his jaw tight with effort as he concentrated on hearing her over the Chair noises. “Voices?” he cried. “Saying what?”
“I don’t know what they were saying. It was too echoey. I couldn’t hear that clearly.”
“How…how big is this hole?” he asked.
“Oh, big. As big as this carpet,” she said, indicating the one his Chair sat upon, two meters by three, perhaps less. “But it’s at the far end of the maze. You can actually look out through the hole in the hedge and see the pasture, all the way down to Fels canyon. I could see water at the bottom of the hole, so I dropped a rock into it and listened for the splash. It’s about as far down as from the top of the museum tower.”
His eyes were suddenly fiery, as though he had a fever, and he stared across her shoulder for what seemed to be a very long time before whispering urgently, his eyes darting to be sure they were unobserved. “Dismé, early in the morning, as early as you can, listen again.”
“And come tell you if I hear anything?”
“Ah…Oh, yes. Come tell me immediately if you hear anything.”
She looked at him worriedly.
“Please,” he stroked her fingers with his one usable hand. “Promise, Dismé. It’s…it’s terribly important to me.”
She discerned a peculiar inflection in his voice, a famished yearning that was abhorrently intimate, like being touched by something voracious and engulfing. She had heard a hint of something similar in Arnole’s voice once in a great while, a longing to be elsewhere…
And Arnole had gone. She remembered everything about it. Only demons could make someone disappear like that. Demons lived underground, the Dicta said so. Now, here was Ayward, speaking in the same way Arnole had sometimes spoken, wanting to know what the underground voices were saying! My fault, Dismé accused herself. My fault. I shouldn’t have told him about them.
“Dismé!” he cried.
She gulped. “If it’s important to you, I’ll do it, Ayward. Early tomorrow morning, I promise.”
“It is important. It could be…terribly important.”
Leaving him, she tried to think of something else that would interest him more. Appallingly, until this hole was mentioned, nothing had interested him at all. This was the first time in ages he’d asked her to do anything for him, and it was such a small thing, taking little if any effort. Probably he was just curious, she told herself. That was natural. She, herself, was curious. She was making too much of the matter. How could it possibly do any harm?
26
another disappearance
Dismé kept watch on the maze all afternoon. Men had arrived who said the maze had been planted over limestone that had been eaten away by seeping water to leave a thin, unsupported shell. The flood had cut through it. The engineers drilled all around the hole, during the afternoon, looking for thicker rock from which they could bridge the gulf. Dismé, hiding nearby, heard Rashel’s voice, the anger barely suppressed.
“Please estimate the cost of your repairs, Engineer. We will decide what to do when we are sure what our options are.”
The engineers did not mention hearing voices, which, Dismé thought, meant the voices were not always there. If she was to be sure of hearing them, she would need to listen at various times of the day and evening, starting tonight. She would have far more privacy when everyone else was asleep.
Once the moon had risen, she went out her window and into the maze, running swiftly, her slippered feet silent on the bark-strewn paths. When she came to the barrier she was shocked into immobility by rumbling male voices she had not expected. Men. From outside or inside, she couldn’t be sure.
In a panic she turned toward the narrow stone-littered gap she had found earlier in the day, flinging herself down and wriggling backwards as the rugged yew trunks tore at her with spiny twigs and serrated bark. She was bloodied but well-hidden beneath the shadowed bulk of the hedge when the men arrived, at the outside barrier.
Covering her face with her hands and peeking between her fingers Dismé made out the furtive, amber glow of a lantern with Rashel’s pale face seeming to float within it. The two men were heavy, bearded, familiar: both Turnaways, members of the Committee on Inexplicable Arts who had visited Rashel at the house in Apocanew on several occasions.
“The engineers tell me they are stretched thin,” said Rashel in an ingratiating voice. “We’re all aware of the manpower shortage, of course. With only a few hundred thousand of us here in Bastion, we aren’t enough to do everything needing doing.”
“Nonetheless, the terms of the agreement are clear, Madam,” one of them muttered, shaking his head so that his loose jowls flapped from side to side. “The Office of Conservation and Restoration, of which you are Conservator, is charged with maintaining the grounds as well as the buildings. The Great Maze is part of the grounds. Additionally, some believe Caigo Faience discovered an arcane significance in the pattern of the maze.”
The other murmured, “May we say, Madam, that until now you have done an exemplary job of maintaining the place, and you have done so at modest cost. We applaud your stewardship, but even though it could be done cheaply, fencing off this section of the maze would not be permissible. Until the maze is formally removed from the Canon, it must be preserved as it is. If Inexplicable Arts is to retain usage of the place, the maze has to be repaired.”
Rashel said firmly, “Since doing so within my budget will require me to let essential employees go, I thought, perhaps, that my cooperation with the Regime had been such that a small, very small exception might be made…”
The two Turnaways shared a look over Rashel’s head, and one remarked in a less agreeable voice, “Your cooperation has been no greater than we expect of every citizen.”
“He is my husband,” she replied slowly, with some dismay. “Some women might not have been so conscientious.”
The other Turnaway laughed shortly. “He is guilty of The Disease. The fact that you denounced him does not demonstrate superior adherence to the Dicta. We expect such action.”
“Besides,” said the first. “We know you are not fond of him. No more than you were of his father, whom you also denounced. There was in both cases, perhaps, a certain element of self-interest? As for service to the Regime, you are being well-paid for that. Few citizens live as well as you are living. And there is the matter of the new discovery. You would not want to miss that opportunity…”
“I have earned my place,” she cried.
“You have earned your place? Ha ha. Well, perhaps in a sense you have. Someone no doubt thinks so.”
Even in the amber glow, Dismé could see the flush of fury on Rashel’s face, the quivering muscles, the clenched hands brought slowly, slowly under command until at last she turned away, making a half bow and uttering a few diplomatic words of apology for her presumptuousness. She led the men back the way they had come, and Dismé remained where she was, waiting for their voices to fade as their words still filled her mind. Rashel had denounced…Rashel had accused…not because they had any disease, but because Rashel wanted them, him…what? Gone? Dead?
Dismé trembled, furious tears sheeting her face, and deep within her, Roarer stirred. She could smell blood. Through the thunder in her ears, she could still hear the murmur of voices, retreating…only to be replaced by another sound, a shrilling insect voice, a mechanical keening that cut through the shrubbery like a blade. Not loud, not threatening, almost ordinary, yet it sent her into panic, her legs frantically pulling her back, toes digging in like mattocks, knees thrusting, hands and arms pushing her
away from that sound through the scratchy bulk of the monstrously thick hedge, squeezing her body into impossible angles among the multiple trunks and rasping twigs, knife-edged stubs of prunedbranches jabbing into her flesh, emerging breathless on the far side, bleeding from a dozen wounds. She was prickled all over with gooseflesh, sweat standing in frigid beads on her face and chest, chilled through by a deep well of horror she had not known was there.
On the far side of the hedge, the shrilling, bubbling, creaking sound continued while she remained frozen, lying with her bleeding face buried in her arms, perfectly still, scarcely breathing. The shrill creaking was replaced by the clunk of moving wood, the scrape of one board on another. Then there was only a long whisper and a cry which might have been animal or bird or even something mechanical shrieking wordlessly to its responding echo.
Dismé rose and crept down the mossy lane, slowly, very slowly. She would not be heard, not be seen, not be perceived, no one could ever know she was here, oh no. No, no, get home, make up a story, make it watertight for no one, no one must ever know she was here.
Something was rising inside her, a pressure that closed her throat and made the hedges around her spin dizzily. She gulped at the bubble, standing quite still as she tried unsuccessfully to swallow it, eyes unfocused, uncertain of what this was, what this feeling could possibly be. And then it burst, engulfing her, overwhelming her, almost lifting her on its wave.
Relief. Solace.
She stood blindly, timelessly adrift in a comfort so profound as to approach ecstacy. The euphoria did not last long. Within moments she sagged to her knees in angry self-accusation. How despicable! How contemptible! To feel joy at such a time and for such a reason!
Or for no reason! She didn’t know what had happened! She was assuming, and her assumptions might well be wrong, might well be none of her business. If she had been less inquisitive, she would not have been here at all. It had nothing to do with her. She should leave it alone! And feel, feel…nothing. Feel nothing at all. Later she would know what was an appropriate feeling. Sadness. Perhaps melancholy. Even grief, but not this outpouring of warm joy…
She ran, as from some barely discernable monster made more terrible by her recognition of it. The maze fled behind her, the museum, the woods, she went up the trellis like a squirrel, crossed the roof, stumbled through her open window and collapsed onto the bed, pulling pillows and blankets toward her, burying herself in them, wrapping herself tightly, quoting silly poems to herself, things she and Arnole had made up to amuse themselves, over and over, a litany of desperation. She didn’t know anything had happened! She had heard noises, that was all! Words jingled in her head, the little tune that carried them repeating and repeating until she was lost in a dizzy buzzing that led into an exhausted sleep.
Despite the self-hatred that had possessed her, when she woke, well before dawn, her first feeling was one of peace and joy. Somewhere in the night she had come upon a gladness. What was it? What had happened? She hunted for it, coming upon it at last like a dead rat on a dinner plate. She couldn’t be joyous, because she didn’t know. She didn’t know anything!
But she had made a promise. No matter what had happened or not happened or might have happened, she still had to keep her promise! Staggering from bed, she confronted a scabbed and battered image still wearing the trousers and torn shirt that had failed to protect her bloodied face or arms. The trousers were old ones of Michael’s. She had rescued them from the rubbish, patched the holes, wore them only in secret, for tree climbing and such. The shirt was an old one of her own, ruined. Chunks of matted hair were hanging loose, gouged out during her struggle.
Flinching, she combed out the loose hair, the twigs, the bits of bark, painfully rebraiding the unruly mop into its usual smooth cap. A washcloth dipped into the pitcher removed the dried blood from neck, forehead, ears, arms, reducing the apparent damage by half though making it appear more recent. She changed the torn shirt for a long-sleeved, high-collared one; the un-Regimic trousers for a skirt, then went out into the predawn darkness, back the way she had come the night before.
The statues guided her from their topiary niches, nodding to the left, pointing to the right, lifting eyes to denote a dead end way, their fingers signaling directions, distances, and meanings, as Caigo Faience had meant them to do. She carried no lantern for the skies were paling and the bulging moon still cast its pale rays into the east-west lanes. When she reached the far south lane, she saw what she had envisioned: the barriers tumbled, the cross pieces pulled aside. She knelt at the hole and peered down. Nothing. Nothing at all.
She wept silently, her face in her hands, then wiped her face on her shirttail and rose. Quietly and carefully, making as little noise as possible, she set the barriers up as they’d been before. This was why Ayward had told her to come early in the morning. He had wanted her to come here to this place, to act in this way, before anyone else saw the barriers had been disturbed. He’d known how she would interpret the fallen barrier. He just hadn’t expected her to be here when he knocked it down.
Clenching her teeth, she knelt again, then lay flat, hanging dizzily over the edge of the hole, looking down past the same rooty mass. The moon above her shoulder shone into the hole, evoking the silver glimmer she had seen before, far down. There was also a sound, not what she’d heard before, something else, low and continuing. She listened intently, trying to make sense of the noise, wondering if water running or the rustling of bats could make that noise, those words…
“Help me, Dis! Oh, God, help me. Please, please, turn it off.”
She shoved herself away from the edge and sat shaking, knees up, arms around them, stomach heaving, trying to disbelieve what she’d heard. Though she put her head between her knees and took deep breaths, the sick feeling would not leave her. She was not mistaken. It had been Ayward’s voice.
It was a long time before she could get to her feet, and then only shakily. Dawn lightened the eastern sky, and as she climbed the trellis, a derisive caw from a crow’s nest in the park suggested an acceptable excuse for her battered appearance. She went along to Aunt Gayla’s room to complain of getting up at dawn to spy on a high nest only to be attacked by the parent birds. Her face was wet with tears and smeared with blood, the tale was false, but the pain was real, as the punishment no doubt would be. Compared to what had happened in the night, punishment was nothing.
Gayla applied ointments and sympathetic words and tush-tushed at her when she broke into renewed weeping. They went down to breakfast together, where Dismé was silent, busy with self-hatred. How could her first reaction have been one of release? What kind of cold, inhuman creature was she?
“Were you hurt somewhere else?” Gayla asked. “You’re crying!”
“It’s nothing, Aunty. Just ashamed of myself for being so clumsy.”
“As well you should be,” said Rashel, furiously, as she entered from the corridor. She glared at Dismé, then leaned forward to slap her sharply across her wounded face. “You’re too old for nonsensical behavior like climbing trees! When are you going to grow up? As if I didn’t have enough to worry about, cutting the staff to come up with the money to repair this damage! Keep out of sight until you’re healed. I don’t want anyone to see you looking like that!”
Dismé swallowed deeply, not sure it was sarcasm.
“I have class today, Rashel.”
“I’ll tell them you won’t be there. You can’t be, looking like a bowl of cat-meat!” She left, slamming the door behind her.
“Now why was she that angry?” wondered Gayla. “Out of all proportion, that one.”
Dismé had no idea. She had never had any idea. Since Rashel obviously hated her, one would think she would relish Dismé being injured—even killed—but Rashel did not want her hurt. Whenever Dismé was in danger of being hurt, Rashel became frightened and more than usually abusive.
Gayla moved from the breakfast table into the kitchen to discuss supper with Molly Uphand. Joan came to
clear, surprised to find Dismé still at the table.
“What’re you waitin’ for, Miss Dismé?” asked Joan. “My, that mama bird did do you damage! Lucky your eyes weren’t hurt!”
“I’m waiting to see Owen,” she replied. “He has a book about frogs he said I could borrow for class.”
“He’s late,” said Joan, amid her clattering.
“Who? Owen?” asked Aunt Gayla. “He’s terribly late. I wonder if something’s wrong…” And she was off to the other wing, to check on Owen. To Gayla, all young men were nephews.
Dismé stayed stubbornly where she was. Shortly, a flurry of shrill screams came from the far end of the house, and both Molly and Joan rushed off toward the noise, joined by Michael, who had just come in the back door. Dismé didn’t move.
Michael was back in a short time, giving her a hard look and reaching for the emergency alarm flags.
“Is someone hurt?” she managed, as he pulled out the flags that meant a medical emergency.
“Owen,” he said. “We think he’s fallen and hit his head.” He hummed through his teeth for a moment. “Ayward is gone.”
“Gone!” she said, astonished at her own surprise. Well, she hadn’t known, not really. It could have been demons, trying to trick her. “How could he go anywhere without Owen?”
“We don’t know. I’ve got to request a medic,” he said, rushing out the back door to comply with the Regime’s dictates about the injured. Injured people had to be seen to right away, so if necessary, they could be bottled in time.
Gritting her teeth, Dismé went along to Ayward’s rooms, where she found Aunt Gayla sitting on the floor, weeping as she cradled Owen’s head, Molly and Joan wailing dirges behind her. Driven by conscience, Dismé knelt to get a good look at Owen. He had a bump on his head, though not a big one; there was no blood and he was breathing very naturally. If he had fallen where he lay, he had possibly hit his head on the shelf above him.