Elsewhere and otherwhiles…

A year passed.

Then two, since Nimblethorne’s reticent departure.

Pyna slipped down, down into doldrums of despond. 

Mostly melancholy, and somewhat mad.

She would arise, as was her custom, with the twin moons. 

When the ink of dusk had washed the wending precincts of the Opal Quarter she drifted, a voiceless wraith - her flesh and finery, now dusty as the long extinguished candlesticks, and unswept corridors - into the stretching oblong gallery.

Here she would sit, through the long, lightless night. 

Mind and mien unmoving. Thoughts as still and marmoreal as her alabaster skin.

Inert, a listless puppet, Pyna would gaze up at Nimblethorne’s innumerable glass plates, wrought of incongruous shapes, and the blotty, stolen sun-stuff painted across each, mirrored face.

Even the silver-lit solarium, and its mirror-pool had gone to seed. Its once gleaming surface, now an unwholesome algal green.

There was but one task to which Pyna remained faithful.

With the approach of dawn, before she crawled back into her secret alcove, and sank into a disquietingly dreamless sleep, she would attend the fruit and herb gardens.

Something stubborn in her pensiveness, refused to allow them to wither.

Pruning and watering.

So, even though glooming and unkempt. Sepulchral and brooding.

Nimblethorne’s high manor remained pungent. Redolent as any cosseted orangery.  

Upon those inescapable occasions, when her thirst threatened to grow monstrously beyond her grasp. 

She would sojourn out into the Opal Quarter’s most raucous, and uncared-for nooks and alleyways. 

A milky and barefoot apparition, threadbare and dusty. Who left the husks of the murderous, penurious, beggarly, sickly, hapless, foolish, and lonely in her wake.

To sip, was now a moment wasted…

She was neither cruel, nor altogether kind in pursuit of her supper. 

Merely pragmatic.

In order that she might retire swiftly again, and soon to her listless picture-gazing. 

Within the soothing stygian of her ill-kept, oblong gallery.

 

~ ~

 

It was perhaps five bells before dawn.

The young Aukrin moved surreptitiously, between the lantern-shadows which cavorted along the edge of Mechit’s Court. 

Although upon this starkly early hour, the peculiar court appeared to be unpeopled, and even pleasantly peaceful.

He had been provided by his patron, with an odd key, and the most singular of instruction, from which he was not to swerve a hairsbreadth, for fear of unfolding calamity… 

Bearing the appellation of an ancient Lord of the Underhallows. 

The court through which the young Aukrin stole, was thought to be one of the most venerable plazas within the Opal Quarter, if not the Great City itself. 

Some of its stones were murmured to be remnants of the very First Foundations.

It had outlived conflagrations, blood, riot, the rare earthquake, and numerous architectural dark ages and revivals. 

Its granite and muted basalt worn and pitted by footfalls unaccounted, and the little worming streams that trickled perpetually down the abutting Stair of Morow. 

Which clomb the court’s northward bending concavity, to where the public gardens that spread below the Spire of Clioh, could be seen looming.  

Young Aukrin, his native furtiveness bolstered by an Adumbral Cant. 

Slipped assiduously between the dapple of mellow link-light and darkness, that piled thickly beneath the poplars. Those which beetled over the high, northern wall. Marching like ragged, unkempt pillars against the cloudy night sky.

Peppered here and there beneath the hanging poplar-branches. There were small, semi-private circular cloisters with low, brick walls. 

Most with nothing more than a single bench. These were oft the place for whispers, and assignations.

Fourth, upon the right hand. From the stairs…

Young Aukrin ducked into the mossy cloister and below its low wall. 

The single bench within, striated with lichen and the wetness from a passing cloud-burst.

He recalled his patron’s ruminations.

Of all my miscreants, you are by every measure the slipperiest. And small…

He ran his fingers along a stony seam, searching…

As he was told. Ah!

And young. With a pretty boy-face. Moreover, you have fine manners.

Which as you will come to see, is paramount…

Mind your manners, Aukrin.

With one finger of his left hand pressed into the grainy crease. He fished out a diminutive two-prong key with his right, from within an inner-fold of his belt. 

It was weirdly warm, and discomfitingly fleshy between his fingers, as though it were a scantle of freshly butchered meat-wrapped bone.

Gently, he slipped the key into its stony crease and twisted until the surface beneath his hands seemed to sigh and slip.

Weavecraft…

Do not neglect to shut the way behind you, Aukrin.

Then, a thousand paces to the South and up, up. You’ll be needing a frost-light.

The stone face beneath the bench sank swiftly, like a jaw suddenly gone slack. 

Young Aukrin pulled away from the arenose sigh that arose from the dusky orifice.

Abruptly confronted by a host of still shapeless misgivings, he drew in a steadying breath, and shimmied through the lightless mouth of the very constricted aperture. 

Then dropped down the length of his own body, into a disconcertingly narrow room. 

Swiftly, he unfolded his frost-light from a kerchief, before reaching up to push the queerly weightless stone back into its concealing configuration.

The pitchy shadows fled before the cold illumination that raced from his open palm.

Young Aukrin paused to find himself at the terminus of a metallic and arterial chamber.

Russet strings of foul mildew bloomed sinuously along the rusty plating from both the low, rounded ceiling above, and from beneath his boot-heels.

The parched air was edged with a dry and ferrous pungency. And putrid with a sweet moulder.

Swallowing bile, he crouched and began a southward progress along the confining metal track. 

Do not stray from the straightest way, Aukrin. Doors that are shut must remain so.

There are woefully, unwholesome spaces below…

Two hundred paces deep, and his frost-light’s gelid luminance, danced upon the edge of what seemed the opening of a cross-chamber some paces ahead, upon his right hand.

Young Aukrin, mouse-footed and fleet, approached with a fearful wariness the worn, and rounded lip of the inset door-frame, his heart a leaden hammer against his breast.

He found the way barred by beams of thick and flaking, darkly stained metal. Which ran both vertical and horizontal, across a brooding and black space.

He moved with alacrity past the opening. 

Therein, somewhere without the aureole of his cold radiance, followed a papery rustle, and something ragged and roping that moved out the corner of his eye.

He dared not peer sidelong, into that atrous void beyond, as he sped hastily past. 

His skin cold and breath thick with a terror that now threatened at the periphery, to rise to a screeching and helpless pitch.

Five hundred, then eight hundred paces he assiduously counted. 

At least a half-bell had passed.

He encountered numerous other doors in his progress. Their forms and styles varied, and incongruous. 

Sealed in their dilapidation. 

Young Aukrin shuddered as he passed each one by.

There will be a steep stair at your thousandth footfall, provided you have counted proper.

This you will climb. Two hundred stairs. Into a secret closet. Press upon the mid-panel. It is well oiled. It will open with utmost silence. The silence matters little though. Your presence will already have been remarked upon.

Mind your manners Aukrin. And remember well what I have said.

Young Aukrin arrived as foretold, at the foot of the stair. 

He took a deep and steadying breath, and began his ascent.

They were worn to a slippery smoothness. 

At first stony, then gradually into layers of ancient masonry.

Another half-bell brought young Aukrin to the stairs-end, upon a narrow landing. 

Licking dry lips, he sought the mid-panel upon the rough, blackwood wall. Following a few exploratory presses, the narrow, closet-door swung open without a murmur.

He thought to draw his short-blade, but felt it unwise as he gazed into the caliginous corridor beyond.

Lightless and profoundly still, the dust upon the otherwise sumptuous-seeming rugs was years deep, and undisturbed by his estimation.

Who could dwell in this place? He thought. 

His patron was mistaken…

Abandoned. Ghostly…

His frost-light fell upon ranks of thickly woven curtains of black cloth, under a discolouration of patchy web and rotting dust.

Which moved with a ghastly-seeming life all their own, in the mild breeze from numerous windows, open to the cloudy but supernal night sky. 

The twin moons peeking. One refulgent silver, and one cinnamon eye.

But it was the sweetness of mingled herbs, and the stink of bitter alchemy that most disturbed his composure.

A redolence, a pungency that filled the wide corridor as thickly as the fine grit beneath his feet.

Curtains, cloth, hangings. 

An abundance of arras, mosaics and tapestries. 

Depicting histories and fantastical scenes, filled, even glutted the chambers.

Heaps of books, and alchemical instrumentation. Piled together with cold lanterns and dead candle-sticks.

But it was the nooks, with their small herb gardens and corners, with their diminutive orangeries, that all appeared to be carefully, even gently attended. 

He moved, mouse-quiet, under a shroud of unquiet silence, for nearly another bell, from chamber to hall to room. 

His lonely frost-light illuminated all manner of nameless horror and marvel both, in his meandering. 

He even passed what he thought to be a solarium, with a neglected and mucky pool.

Young Aukrin was dismayed. 

There could not be anyone here, he thought. Not now. 

Only dust and adumbration.

And yet, the gardens…

Soon, he came upon a broad arch that opened into what appeared to be a stretching, and oblong gallery.

He shone his frost-light across the walls and peered up at the odd and perplexing, mirror-painted blobs. 

Then caught his breath.

As his cold light fell upon a large, ghastly-wan doll bedecked in richly crimson cloth, that had been propped upon a low settee.

Arms hanging lifeless and legs outstretched.

A moppet with its strings cut.

Young Aukrin squinted, studying the toy within the far aureole of cold illumination. 

The shadows shifted, an eerie pattern against its porcelain skin.

Until its face slowly turned, with a rubious, and poison-sweet, bent-bow grin. 

Eyes of glistering cracked glass, that fixed upon him.

Young Aukrin failed to breathe, as cold dread drove him stumbling back beyond the arch, and out of sight of the terrible toy.

He made to flee into the engirding dark, but then it was simply, soundlessly there.

Within a handsbreadth, nose to nose.

Hello…

Its voice, sweet and spare.

Now, young Aukrin gasped. 

And his frost-light slipped from unfeeling fingers.  

Oh,

Now

This is

Perilous

He caught a glimpse of something glistering, and dreadfully edged held loosely in its little-fingered grasp.

How

Pretty

You

Are 

It mocked, presence both indefinably repulsive, and yet woefully alluring.

Tweaking its bloodless little button nose.

Perhaps he

Has a

Tongue

“Y…

Your… Ladyship?”

And there is

His

Breath and

Most

Courteous

Your

Ladyship.

A terrible, wonderful wry little smile.

Yes

Tell

Father I will

Find him in the

Cellar

He knows

This

Place

 

Now young

Aukrin I 

Think

I will find

My broom and

Dust

I will

I think

But what

Of you?

 

To do

With

You…

Young Aukrin swallowed, his limbs heavy as clods.

“Wh-

What do you mean?

Your ladyship…”

I think

Perhaps just

A little

Sip…

Young Aukrin suddenly felt as though he had been wrapped in swathes of suffocating cloth. 

His thoughts, gone slippery, and muddy both.

He felt her small fingers press against his cheek.

Like marble made supple, and so cold…

“N…

No…”

Shhh…

 

~ ~

 

Young Aukrin awoke to the warble of birdsong. 

Under the dappled dawn-shadow of a spreading poplar. 

The warming sun, sweet upon his still cotton-heavy limbs where he laid, upon a bench in the midst of Mechit’s Court.