The Keep

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 29The singing touched him, passed through him, rising and falling to a pulse that he could not hear but which he sensed and which pervaded everything.

A meaning came to him, though he heard no words...

“This is one that hears... (reaches? touches?)... us.”

Somehow it stilled his mind’s screaming denial of what his senses were telling him. Instead, it became a mixture of both curiosity and anger.

He was no longer falling — if he had ever been. He was floating — hovering in the pale blueness, watching the golden lines gently twisting and turning as though caught in a soft breeze that only they could feel. He reached out to touch one as it came nearby, but his hand closed about nothing. Had it moved away from him? Had his hand passed through it? Or was it actually some vast object in the far distance? He could not tell, he realized. Near and far seemed to have no meaning in this place.

“What is happening?” he heard himself asking — demanding. “Who are you? What are you? What are you doing to me?”

The lines danced and jigged in response, as did the singing. He had an impression of incredible fragility; of someone — something — handling a precious object of great value and great delicacy, at once exhilarated and fearful, lest ignorance or awkwardness might allow it to slip away, perhaps even shatter it beyond repair.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said, quite aware of the incongruity of the advice.

“Don’t be afraid.” The message echoed back to him. Laced about it were emotions that for a moment threatened to overwhelm him: he was salvation, he was doom; hope and doubt mingled in equal proportions. Then he was pervaded by a terrible weariness — a battlefield weariness, a deep longing for rest, for peace, for all this to be over. Yet, at the same time there was the knowledge that this could never truly be — the battle must continue — there was no choice — not to fight was to be overwhelmed. The starkness of the certainty chilled him and some part of him started to reach into this knowledge. But even as it did, so the fear, the sense of fragility, returned — a tenuous grip was failing; fingers were slowly losing their purchase on a narrow lip of rock.

“Another. There is another. Do not... let...”

The plea was clear, as was the desperate effort behind it, but after a brief hesitation, the words, if words they were, ended abruptly, as though a door had been slammed shut — or straining fingertips had finally lost their hold.

“Any insights, Surveyor?”

Qualto’s question jolted Josyff as it filled the space left by the sudden departure of...

Of what...?

He was in the Archive again, staring intently at the two books.

“I’m so sorry,” Qualto exclaimed guiltily. “I didn’t realize you were so engrossed.”

Having become almost instinctively used to concealing his feelings under the New Order, Josyff managed to disguise his agitation in a theatrical shrug and a conceding laugh. This also gave him the chance to note his companions and it needed little perceptiveness to see that whatever had just happened to him — and it had felt like many minutes — had apparently passed unnoticed. It must have happened in an instant! Terrible questions that had begun on the previous nights began to reassert themselves, but while he was struggling silently to regain his mental balance he found himself giving voice to the thought that had immediately preceded his disturbing translation.

“They are slightly different.”

He carefully cleared a space on the desk and laid out the books purposefully.

“No great insights though, but see.”

He willed his hand steady as his finger slowly marked out a line on one cover and then its equivalent on the other. Qualto leaned forward, his forehead furrowed with concentration. Badr joined him.

“You’re right,” Qualto said. “It’s not much, but they are different. You’ve keen eyes to spot that. Being a surveyor, I suppose.” Josyff made no answer.

Badr picked up two more books, then a further two and, after a quick but intense inspection, announced, “They’re all different.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Amazing — the changes are quite slight but they seem to progress from volume to volume. Very odd. Very impressive too. I wonder how they did it — these can’t be hand-worked, surely?”

“More likely a fault on the printing machine,” Josyff offered.

Badr looked doubtful, but returned the books to the shelves without pursuing the matter.

Josyff clapped his hands softly. “Anyway, you and I had better get back to work while there’s some of the day left to us. I’m sure Nyk’ll let us know if he wants any more help.” He looked around the room, raised his eyebrows in mock despair and said to Qualto, “We’ll leave you and Esyal to get on with your... reorganizing.”

He did not feel the lightness he affected however, and he threw himself into his work with considerable vigour for the rest of that day. Not only out of a sense of too much time already having been lost, but to prevent the questions that were now clamouring for attention from rising to dominate his thoughts. Concentration on the familiar professional routine, with its constant decision-making, checking, re-checking and meticulous recording of information, kept these largely at bay and helped him to put time between the present and what had happened in the Archive. He sensed a need to reassure himself of the solidity and reality of this place and, more disturbingly, of his own sanity. For that was threatening to become his greatest concern. All the strange things that had happened to him since his arrival at the Keep — the voices, the clock, the gulls, and finally the eerie blue world he had found himself in, seemed to have no rational explanation, other than that his mind was fevered in some way — he was either ill or... slipping into insanity.

Could it be a reaction to the strain of silently struggling to survive under the enigmatic will of the New Order for so long? Or was it due to working high in the mountains, or perhaps nothing more that tiredness due to all the trekking through them he had done recently?

None of these conclusions rang true. Physically, he felt fine — the clear air and silence of the mountains refreshed rather than enervated, despite events. Mentally, he was having no difficulty with his work — indeed, he was pleased with the rapport he had quickly established with Badr.

As for insanity, he consoled himself with the idea that it would be the very last thought to occur to him if his mind was actually failing. And some of the happenings had been witnessed by others: Badr’s experience in the book room the previous evening, the voice calling out during the night, the drawbridge, the rumbling and shaking. The rest could reasonably be attributed to dreams, with the conspicuous exception of the incident in the Archive. That was particularly disturbing. Not least because none of the others present had noticed anything — whatever had happened, had, for them, passed in an instant.

“Do you want to plot this?” Badr asked as they finished a section of work towards the end of the day.

Josyff was stretching and he havered for a moment before deciding. “No, leave it for tomorrow. Come to it fresh. It’s been a... peculiar... day. Not to say a peculiar few days. We’ve done well. It’s a joy to be working with decent equipment at last. We’ll soon get this place sown up and be on our way back to...”

“Civilization?”

“Normality,” Josyff suggested, more diplomatically.

“Always assuming the drawbridge is open,” Badr pointed out.

“Thanks for reminding me,” Josyff said sourly.

Unexpectedly, Badr chuckled. “Maybe we should start working on some way to get out of here.”

“Maybe we should,” Josyff retorted. “And maybe we will.” He closed the lid of one of the instrument boxes and tapped it significantly. “But only when this job’s properly finished.”

“It could prove to be serious,” Badr went on, more anxiously. “Counterbalanced, the whole thing might be light as light, but out of balance it’ll be a devil of a weight. Way beyond us to move. And we are in the middle of nowhere surrounded by sheer cliffs and a very deep moat.”

Josyff was more phlegmatic. “Serious or not, there’s nothing we can do about it at the moment. Let’s wait and see what Nyk has to say. We could be wasting our time just talking about it. He might have sorted it out already — panic over.”

“And if he hasn’t?”

“Tomorrow’s tomorrow.” He lowered his voice. “Besides, I’d be very surprised if someone somewhere wasn’t looking out for the interests of our representative of the Ordrans. I’m sure resources will become available, as required.”

Badr bowed his head in acknowledgement.

A little later, washed and changed, Josyff lowered himself luxuriously into an armchair in his room.

He allowed the questions to return that he had largely kept at bay during the day. They were less insistent. A good day’s work had done much to calm what he now saw as a tension that had been steadily mounting since he arrived. Even while working he had managed to allay most of his concerns, at least for the time being, and now he wilfully brought old problem-solving habits to bear on the incident in the Archive — the only one that was still really unsettling him. Somewhere he sensed that he had the answer to this and that it would doubtless emerge if he gave it the opportunity. All he had to do was allow ideas to wander into his thoughts without comment or analysis. However preposterous or improbable they might be, something would emerge, even if he did not recognize it at the time.

Had it been an hallucination? Something peculiar in the material of the book covers? No. The notion made him smile but he let it run. They had had an odd smell, for sure, but only the smell of old books. Had it been a waking dream? He had heard of such things in people deprived of sleep for long periods, but that was not the case here. Despite the trek through the mountains and the disruption of the previous night, he was far from tired. Had the others noticed him drifting off and simply not spoken out of embarrassment? Unlikely, he decided. Badr and Qualto might possibly have behaved like that, but Esyal wouldn’t, for sure. Apart from the fact that the conversation had continued unbroken, he had been... wherever he had been... for several minutes.

Occasionally his thoughts wandered away from the Keep — to the Valsen and Adroyan’s almost haunted response as they had passed it — to the fortuitous finding of Esyal, who could so easily have died — to Adroyan’s guides who were so anxious to return to the village — to the early winter — to his wife. He did not dwell long on any of them, especially his wife. That he missed her he needed no reminding of, and he knew from experience that fretting to be with her again would not make that moment arrive any sooner. Indeed, in marring his concentration it could delay their reunion even longer.

He leaned forward in the chair and rested his head on his hand thoughtfully.

Well, if there was an answer lurking somewhere in his mind, he certainly couldn’t see it immediately. Not that that really mattered. Just sitting, thinking, would have ‘shaken something loose’, as he liked to say. He had great faith in the ability of his unconscious mind to solve intractable problems — it had done it often enough before, after all. All he could do, for the moment, he had done. He looked down at his hands, almost expecting them to be shaking, facing as he did two equally unsettling options: that his mind was playing tricks on him — the most likely possibility, he thought — or that something real had happened — which was absurd, of course...

Wasn’t it?

But his hands were steady. And his mind was clear. Further, he needed no answers to those questions right now. Do what you’re here to do. Do your job. Concern yourself about the reality or otherwise of what had happened as and when it interfered with that!

At Qualto’s urging, not to say his insistence, mealtimes were specific and unvarying and the group had already developed the habit of eating together. Nyk, Henk and Badr were already in the common room when Josyff entered. They were looking pensive.

“No solution to our problem, I presume,” Josyff said as he sat down.

“No,” Nyk confirmed. “And it’s snowing again.”

For some reason he could not have explained, the remark struck Josyff as funny.

“Never snows but it pours, eh?” His chuckle rolled into a laugh which proved to be infectious. Both Badr and Nyk smiled and Henk almost did. Josyff continued. “All of which prompts the question, what’s holding us here? — the drawbridge, the snow, or our professional obligations?”

“I’ll have another look tomorrow,” Nyk said. “But I doubt I — we,” he nodded an acknowledgement towards Henk, “will find anything. It’s not exactly a complicated piece of equipment. Everything seems to be fine — nothing cracked, displaced, out of level, bent, buckled, twisted...” He splayed his hands then dropped them into his lap. “It’s just... immovable. A complete mystery. It’s almost as though it was being held to the wall by a magnet or some such force — invisible, but real enough.”

“That’s an odd thought.”

“Yes, it is. But I had it all the same.” This time Nyk chuckled.

“You seem easier about it,” Josyff said.

“I am and I’m not,” Nyk replied. “As you just pointed out, drawbridge or no, we’re all stuck here until the snow clears and our jobs are finished, so there’s no immediate urgency and certainly nothing to be gained by worrying. Still... I mightn’t be so ‘easy’ if I’ve not come up with an answer long before then.”

He raised a finger as if to mark a change of direction. “That said, I’m sure it came free for a moment — just before Henk arrived. I’d swear I could hear something happening to it. The place seemed to... quiver... and...” His brow furrowed as he tried to recapture the moment. “The bridge seemed to move when I put my hand on it — as it should. At least, I thought it did. Then it was gone. There was a soft thud... and everything was the same again.”

“Maybe another tremor,” Badr suggested.

“When was it?” Josyff asked, not really knowing why.

Nyk told him. As far as Josyff could judge, the event coincided with his own strange experience in the Archive. “I didn’t notice anything,” he said, to avoid having to say anything else. There was general head-shaking around the table and the entrance of Esyal ended the exchange. She was carrying a battered scroll.