The Keep

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 33Amid the noise and commotion, a voice was whispering urgently, very close to his ear.

“Draw this as it is, measurer. As it is. As accurately as you know. On your life, make no error, miss no detail. This will need great study. We must prevail.”

The voice was insistent and Josyff knew he must obey its commands without question. It was also familiar...

“I shall, lord,” he said, to his unseen overseer.

A hand was laid briefly on his shoulder, at once encouraging and intimidating.

Immediately in front of him, stretched on a specially built frame, was a scroll, across which a hand — thinner, longer and more delicate than his own, yet his for all that — was moving. It held a fine charcoal and was drawing faint lines with great sureness and speed. Later, he would ink these in more firmly and he sensed his mind registering this and many other things, locking them firmly into his memory for later recall. He must not be distracted by the turmoil and confusion now filling the courtyard; he must capture the essence of what was happening. Not that he understood what was happening — no one did — not even the lord it seemed, though the very thought, near-heretical, made him uneasy. Yet for the lord to address him as directly as he had just done indicated a quite untypical emotion in him, even though his stern and cold exterior seemed to be unaffected.

As well as he could, he set the idea aside. It was not for the likes of him to ponder the ways of the lord. He was here to serve. He would do as he had been ordered. Somewhere in his drawings perhaps the lord might find what he was looking for.

Raised voices lifted his attention from the scroll to the scene in front of him. The general clamour faded abruptly and the sounds of a quarrel reached him: this was not the way, this was dangerous, unstable, it would collapse, people would be hurt, more time should be taken, more thought given. The plaint was over-topped by a younger, more strident voice, full of anger and impatience. He recognized both voices. Aggravated by what had happened, long-held tensions, inevitable in an isolated community like this, had risen to a peak and were now fracturing into outright enmity.

He paused, his hand hovering unsteadily above the scroll and, as if emulating him, the whole courtyard became still. All were watching, frozen in their tasks, awaiting the outcome of this confrontation.

Then the lord was striding towards the two men. He did not appear to be hurrying, but his normal leisurely gait seemed now unnervingly urgent. The quarrel stopped and the measurer saw the two angry faces turning and facing their master, approaching like a black wind. The older man was leaning back, his face taut, almost wincing in anticipation of a blow. The younger, wide-eyed and reckless, was about to compound his folly by speaking to the lord before he was spoken to.

“Get on with your tasks.”

The lord’s voice hissed across the courtyard before he reached the two protagonists and before such an outrage could occur. The measurer’s hand started to move again, and the watching crowd was moving again as though there had been no interruption. Only the two men remained motionless, and only the lord and the measurer were watching them. All other eyes were wilfully turned away.

Then another sound filled the courtyard. It needed no great wisdom to identify it as being bad. A loud, jagged creaking, rising in pitch and intensity, brought the hubbub to a halt once again, but only briefly. Josyff felt the measurer’s terror and he had a fleeting impression of ropes snapping and whistling lethally free, of equipment being dropped, and of people scattering to the extremities of the courtyard as the elaborate structure they had built around the drawbridge became grotesquely fluid and mobile. Like a wounded creature making a last effort to avoid its death, the framework seemed to rear up and then hover interminably on a point of balance.

Josyff felt himself hurtling backwards, the scene in front of him shrinking rapidly as it descended into chaos and horror. As it shrank, so the noise of the collapse and the screaming of the crowd became attenuated: first a nerve-jarring grinding and then a shrieking like fingernails down glass, increasing in pitch until it was barely audible. Then there was blackness.

Josyff sat up sharply, wide awake and trembling. The high distant sound was all about him but it was carried away by the fleeing darkness as the bedroom light clicked softly into life.

So vivid had been the vision of the courtyard and his role as measurer that it took him a few moments to recollect where he was. When he did so he lay back with an unexpected sense of relief.

Well, there was no doubt about that, he thought. That was a dream, not some inexplicable happening like hearing voices, or tumbling into the clock. The memory drew his eyes to the offending timepiece. It was the middle of the night — a long way to dawn and the next day’s work. The clock’s innards clucked dyspeptically as if replying to an unasked question. It must have just struck the hour, he decided. That would account for the dying reverberations hanging about him were he woke.

He chuckled. Maybe he was getting used to the place, maybe having Adroyan about — a watching official — made the job feel more like his everyday routine. Or maybe it was just that he and Badr had managed to do a decent amount of work — had made a start at reducing this place to numbers — to lines on paper.

The lights dimmed and went out and his thoughts turned back to his dream. Obviously the source of the images in it had come from Esyal’s scroll. And it would have taken little imagination to re-enact the crash portrayed there. He realized now, too, that though he had not seen his face, the “lord” who so dominated the scene had been Adroyan.

Still, it had been extraordinarily intense and compelling. When he had finished work tomorrow, he must have another look at the scroll — study the text — find out what it had all been about. It could well be that this dream had given him insights into the event that he was as yet unaware of. It was an article of faith with him that the deeper reaches of his mind would often solve problems while he was sleeping that his conscious mind was struggling desperately with. And perhaps Esyal might have found some more scrolls continuing the tale.

His thoughts were drifting as sleep began to return. Esyal — odd girl... What had she been doing in the mountains, so far away from anywhere? And why was she so unconcerned about her loss of memory — surely a terrifying experience? And Henk. What was troubling him? It seemed unlikely that after years of working here he’d suddenly develop such an aversion to the place — and when escape was impossible. Then again, perhaps it was precisely that that had done it. Being trapped here had brought some old problem to a head. Josyff yawned noisily. Anyway, it didn’t matter. The man might be a bit morose, but he was helpful enough — and he lit a good fire. Josyff smiled into his pillow.

Then, without any seeming intermission, he was back in the courtyard looking at the wreckage of the collapsed framework, though he was seeing it this time not through the eyes of the measurer, but as himself. Noise and uproar reigned, but there was also something oddly different about the scene.

Dust, he noted, irrelevantly. It was summer — and the courtyard was hard-packed earth...

He looked down. No — it was paved — hard smooth stone slabs. No lawns here.

But that wasn’t the difference...

“This is a very vivid dream.”

He turned. The speaker was Esyal. She was staring at him, but speaking to herself, her eyes wide with surprise. He returned her gaze. Someone bumped into her, knocking her away from him and out of his immediate view.

“The lord, the lord!”

The cry, uttered by many voices, rose to dominate the scene, and, as if touched by an overseeing will, the milling spectators began to converge on the tangle of ropes and timbers that was the remains of the framework.

Josyff moved with them, partly because he had little choice in the press, but also because he knew people were trapped under the wreckage. Quite possibly they might be dead, but equally, they might only be injured and the need for rescue was urgent. He found himself struggling with others to move a large baulk of timber. There was no order to what was happening around him, just frantic people dragging out timbers and ropes. Part of him knew that this was dangerous foolishness — that it might do more harm than good — but he was too taken up by the mood of the crowd to heed it.

And then, with terrible clarity, he could sense the pinioned helplessness of those who were trapped. Held motionless and impotent by restraints beyond their strength.

“Listen!”

The word seemed to form in Josyff’s mind rather than be spoken within his hearing. It was hedged about by tenuous, elusive meanings — some commonplace — bewilderment, disbelief — others alien and disturbing — beyond anything that he had words to describe. But the command was not addressed to him! He was an inadvertent eavesdropper.

“He... (it, they?)... are there. They exist. They can hear us.”

Images of a shared territory, distant and tenuous, of dubious reality, perhaps even mythical, flitted through Josyff’s mind.

“There lies the Destroyer. We must be freed.”

Though doubt and uncertainty permeated the words, Josyff sensed dispute, debate.

“It is the only way.”

Josyff could feel the rough texture of the timber hard against his face as he braced his shoulder underneath it and began to push. He felt others around him striving to the same end, but then the niggling doubts about the wisdom of what he was doing found voice.

“No! This is wrong,” he shouted across the courtyard.

The clock clucked again as he found himself sitting upright and staring at it, wide awake. He swore. Was he not going to have one undisturbed night in this place? The clock began its chimes for the hour by way of reply. Josyff gave it an arch look.

“Enough is enough. No more scroll, courtyard, dreams, voices — anything — nothing! Just sleep. Sleep! I’ve work to do here,” he growled as he turned over, closed his eyes and pulled the blankets up so that they almost covered him entirely. “Work to do. Work to do. Just sleep. Just...” His voice became an incoherent mumble as the light clicked out.

When he woke again, it was to the knowledge that his last injunction had been observed. Bright snowlight lit his room and the clock was striking a comfortable hour. Better still, he felt refreshed and relaxed. Today he and Badr could really get this job under way. Whatever the drawbridge did, whatever Adroyan did, whatever mysteries hung about Esyal... anything short of a real earthquake — he was not going to be deflected.

And so it proved. Although Adroyan was late and silently aloof, breakfast was quiet and companionable. Nyk chatted earnestly, as much to himself as anyone else, about how he was going to strengthen the props that were holding the drawbridge open, making points with significant gestures and jabs with his cutlery and co-opting a hunched Henk who, along with the others, grunted appropriately. And, with a token offer of help should it be needed, Josyff and Badr left to continue their own work.

“Esyal was a bit... quiet this morning,” Badr remarked. “Kept giving you strange looks.”

“Can’t say I noticed,” Josyff lied. “Maybe her loss of memory is starting to take its toll.”

“Could be, I suppose,” Badr said. “She did seem to be remarkably unconcerned about it, I thought. Then again, there’s a lot been going on these past days — kept her occupied.”

“Anyway, she’s Qualto’s problem for the day,” Josyff went on. “Sorting out his old documents. Let’s just be thankful she didn’t attach herself to us by way of wanting to be helpful.”

And so the day passed — free from inexplicable happenings of any kind — routine, insofar as such a word could be applied to so convoluted a building as the Keep. Apart from a single casual sighting of Qualto, they saw no one until Henk appeared to advise them that their meal was ready.

“Excellent timing,” Josyff announced, clapping his hands loudly and rubbing them together. “We’d just decided to finish for the day.”

Henk nodded and sniffed.

The meal was a little more lively than breakfast. Nyk recounted his work on the drawbridge. “Any earthquake strong enough to close it now will have to bring the walls down,” he concluded.

“What if we want to close it for some reason?” Badr asked, wilfully provocative.

Nyk gave him a long look to test the remark for humour.

“It won’t be a problem,” he declared firmly, though with some knowing irony and without elaborating.

“How are you getting on with the Archives?” Josyff asked Esyal, who, as at breakfast, was quite preoccupied. “Found any more scrolls?”

“Yes,” Esyal replied after a brief hesitation and with a tense smile. “Three. I’ve spread them out in the book room if you want to look at them.”

“Splendid,” Josyff said enthusiastically. “I’ll have a look right after...” He caught a subtle shift in Adroyan’s posture. “A little later on, maybe. I’d like to make a start plotting the work we’ve done today and planning out what we can do tomorrow.”

Esyal did not reply. She had other things on her mind. She wanted to look at the scrolls again; then there was the killing of Adroyan.