The Keep

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 36As he had announced, Josyff went straight from his evening meal to the room off the Great Hall that he and Badr had commandeered as an office, to plot some of the day’s work. It went well, though there was a small closing error at the end which left him puzzled.

Sort it out tomorrow, he concluded after a brief consideration. The scheme was young yet and the routine duplication and cross-checking inherent in the work would root out any discrepancies soon enough. He was almost jaunty as he walked into the book room.

To his surprise, both Esyal and Adroyan were there and it took no great sensitivity to detect the uneasiness hovering in their silence.

He broke it with a brisk greeting and a question to Esyal.

“Is this the full story?” he asked, indicating the scrolls.

Esyal gave him a strange look as though she wanted to ask him something in return, but was too unsure about how it might be received. “I don’t know. The writing’s very odd — what I’ve read of it. A mixture of technical bits and pieces about what they were building, a diary of some kind, and what seem to be bits of... myth... legend. And there’s a lot of it.”

Josyff chuckled. “Well, you’ve plenty of time.” Esyal’s eye narrowed but before she could reply, Josyff pointed again to the scrolls. “What about the pictures, then? Do they show who was hurt — what happened afterwards — did they get the drawbridge open?”

“Have you plotted today’s work?”

It was Adroyan, though he did not look up from the scrolls as he spoke.

“Yes, sir,” Josyff replied. He was about to expand on the progress he and Badr might well make from now on, but experience told him to stay silent. People like Adroyan had a gift for latching on to the least remark and using it like a weapon. Stick to the truth and say as little as possible was the axiom that had helped Josyff keep his position throughout the coming of the New Order. To be either ingratiating or rebellious was to court disaster just as effectively as incompetence. Quiet conformity seemed to be the way. Obedience?

He waited.

“I will look at it,” Adroyan said.

Josyff swore inwardly. He needed no urging to get this job done as soon as possible. He wanted to be away from the place and back with his wife and he neither needed nor wanted an interfering superior breathing down his neck incessantly, expecting him to work twenty four hours a day.

“As you wish, sir,” he replied. “Though there’s not much to see at the moment — just a start on some baselines. Unspectacular but very important. We’re using a room off the Great Hall.” He extended an arm towards the door by way of invitation. Adroyan straightened.

“Oh, the Keep’ll keep.” It was Esyal. “It’s been here long enough and it’ll be here tomorrow, measured or not. Let’s sort out these scrolls — see if we can find out what happened — and when.” She spoke directly to Adroyan. “It could be important if you want to use this place. A permanently wedged open front door isn’t particularly desirable, I imagine.”

Josyff remained silent, his eyes moving between his two companions. Esyal continued to surprise him. Whoever, whatever, she had been before she lost her memory, no residual respect for the Ordrans — or even caution — seemed to have been left with her. He felt a frisson of both alarm and dark amusement as he waited for Adroyan to reply.

Just as Adroyan was about to speak, Esyal added, “It’d be out of place, wouldn’t it? A kind of... distortion.” She did not know where the word had come from, it just felt appropriate.

Adroyan faltered, either disturbed by the word or simply because he was unused to such freely given comments. Josyff remained stonily silent — if Adroyan were to respond badly to this small onslaught, it would be he, the nearest available underling, who would doubtless bear the brunt of it.

But no reproach came. Adroyan cleared his throat softly and said: “You are satisfied with the work you have done? The equipment is good?”

“Yes, I am, and yes, it is, sir,” Josyff replied, again wilfully avoiding any amplification.

Esyal stepped forward quickly and knelt down at the end of the last scroll. The small flurry of movement precluded any continuation of Josyff’s interrogation.

“Look at these,” she said. She was peering intently at a series of pictures running down the scroll. Josyff joined her.

“Same artist as the first ones,” he said after a brief inspection. “What’s so special?”

“I don’t know,” Esyal replied. “Just...”

Her voice tailed off and she stood up and began prowling the narrow avenues between the scrolls.

“There’s the collapse, here — lots of people milling about. Then nothing much seems to happen after that. All these pictures just show what seems to be general tidying up. There doesn’t seem to be any further attempt to open the drawbridge. And the number of people gets smaller and smaller. At the end, there are just two. One leaning on part of the wreckage, the other standing by this abutment.”

“It’s a woman, too,” Josyff said. “And the drawbridge is still shut. Strange they didn’t record the whole incident. Presumably they got the drawbridge moving again — or it started working of its own accord, like now. Maybe there are more scrolls.”

“None like this,” Esyal said. “And there doesn’t seem to be any way to date it, so I won’t even know where to look when I get started properly — assuming most of the other documents are dated, that is. They are supposed to be a record of events.”

“And the lord was slain.”

Adroyan’s voice was flat and indifferent, as though he was talking to himself, but both Josyff and Esyal looked at him sharply.

Josyff was the first to recover. “Lord...?” he queried uncertainly, caught by the coincidence of the word with his dream. Esyal, similarly disturbed, watched him narrowly but said nothing.

Adroyan, crouching, ran his finger along a line of the text. Josyff and Esyal read it over his shoulder.

Compelled, for reasons she could not begin to explain, but with what she hoped was a casual tone, Esyal voiced the question she had clung to in her dream.

“We worked out last night that there were four people under that wreckage, but, as I recall, they all seemed to be wearing some kind of livery — like workers, or servants. None of them looked like this lot over here — the dignitaries.”

She pointed to a group of figures in one of the earlier pictures, and invested the word “dignitaries” with the same mild contempt she had used the previous evening.

“It probably doesn’t mean anything,” Josyff said after an awkward silence. “We might have counted wrong — or maybe the artist wasn’t as meticulous as we give him credit for.” Even as he spoke, he recalled the lord’s voice whispering urgently to him.

“Draw this as it is, measurer. As it is. As accurately as you know. On your life, make no error, miss no detail.”

The lord, to whom he had given the identity of Adroyan. Nothing unusual in that, of course. Adroyan was a figure of authority over him — an unwanted figure — who would necessarily loom high in his thoughts. But...

“Then again,” he managed. “I don’t know... perhaps it wasn’t considered respectful to make images of your...”

“Master.” Esyal’s completion of his sentence carried the same contempt as before.

“You do not believe in showing respect to those given authority over you?”

It was Adroyan.

Esyal felt the searching challenge in the remark and knew she should best avoid it. But in spite of herself, she engaged.

“Who gives anyone the authority to give someone authority over me?”

Adroyan’s expression was unreadable.

“Such permission is not needed,” he said. “It is the way of things. Some — a few — lead — have authority. The rest follow — they accept that authority.”

Rage filled Esyal but she managed to avoid further entanglement. “Well, as I said, I’m not interested in politics. It’s not only boring, it’s complicated.” A flick of her hands affected a dismissal of the subject. She addressed Josyff: “Anyway, why would it be disrespectful to draw your boss?”

Josyff floundered. In his mind it was Adroyan who was under the wreckage — drawn in to end the dispute between two of the workers — dominating the scene, all eyes turned towards him, long black cloak — habit? — billowing softly behind him. He saw again the measurer’s hand, beginning to move, just as the structure collapsed and he had been hurled from the dream. Yet there was no figure so dressed in any of the pictures.

He shrugged. “Different times, different ideas. Some people think that making an image of someone is to gain power over them. Or perhaps the artist never got chance to draw the man — perhaps this... lord... only dropped by briefly to see how things were going before the measurer...” He corrected himself hastily, “the artist... had chance to draw him.”

“Still,” Esyal said. “It’s odd that something as serious as this lord being killed isn’t even referred to in these pictures.”

“I agree, but... oh!”

The exclamation was due to Adroyan passing roughly between them making them both step back in surprise. By the time they had recovered, he was striding purposefully towards the door, seemingly oblivious to the small stir he had just caused.

Josyff saw the portent of an acid comment in Esyal’s expression and quickly raised a hand to signal her to silence; he had caught a glance of a darkly angry face as Adroyan had passed. He lowered his hand only when Adroyan had left and, almost in spite of himself, voiced his immediate concerns.

“Esyal, I know it’s none of my business, but you really should be more... circumspect. Don’t risk provoking people like Adroyan. I don’t know who he is, I’ve never met him before, or even heard of him, but I do know the authority he has here is from the highest office in the Government. People like that are best avoided if possible, and treated very warily if it’s not — very warily. Certainly don’t let our peculiar circumstances here lure you into a false sense of familiarity.”

Esyal looked set to be defiant, but Josyff did not give her chance to speak. “I said it was none of my business, but just think for a moment. It doesn’t seem to be bothering you, but you don’t even know who or what you are — or what relatives and friends you have. It’ll cost you nothing to be a little careful. Antagonizing someone like Adroyan is... risky, not to say downright dangerous. You mightn’t mind what happens to you but there could be serious consequences for other people as well.”

Esyal pouted briefly then nodded. “Yes,” she conceded, reluctantly. “I suppose you’re right. I’ll try to remember to think before I speak.” To deflect the conversation away from her feigned memory loss, she affected a lighter tone. “But whatever I am, I don’t think I’ve much to do with people like him. Or even like you. I’ll be a nonentity somewhere — doing something innocuous — one of those who accept authority.” Josyff gave her a cautionary look as the defiance returned briefly to the surface again in this last remark. She dispelled it with an airy gesture. “Still, he didn’t have to barge between us like that — not even an ‘excuse me’.”

“No. But he did. And we both survived the ordeal, didn’t we?”

But he won’t, Esyal thought viciously. Just as soon as I’ve decided how to deal with him. And our “peculiar” circumstances will be ideal for that.

“I wonder what made him scuttle off like that,” she said, as much out of genuine curiosity as to keep the thought from her face.

“He was reading this, I think.”

Josyff was crouching at the end of one of the scrolls. Esyal joined him.

“This writing’s very small.” She removed the books restraining the corners of the scroll and brought it close to her face. “And it’s a different hand.”

She read. And thus was the evil from those beyond — the many-faced — defeated. The danger had been terrible but at the very point of their victory the Way was sealed against them by the death of their own creature, the one risen from nowhere, the one called the lord. There is a dark justice in that — a balancing. She paused and read on in silence for a moment, then frowned.

“What’s the matter?” Josyff asked.

“The last part’s awful.”

She was obviously distressed. Josyff took the scroll from her gently. The writing had become weak and unsteady.

I am failing now — as are the others. We will not escape. The changes have stopped — presumably the great danger is passed. But still they are holding the gate closed — I do not think they understand what they are doing to us — time, death, seem to have little meaning to them — they are deeply strange. Certainly I do not understand them or their conflict — or how it has spilled down into our world. There is no more water now — it will not be long. To those who find us — be warned — be warned. The like of the lord — channels for great evil — must surely be drawn here again, now that those beyond know of us — and can reach us. We are pawns. The Keep will ever be a danger — its Heart must be destroyed. I have tried to find it but it eludes me — perhaps it has gone again — folded away — I am too wea... The script tailed off into an illegible scrawl.

“You’re right, it is awful,” Josyff said after a long silence. “Trapped here — dying of thirst — all those people.” He shuddered involuntarily. For a moment he felt as though the entire Keep were closing about him, gripping him, holding him, binding him to its service. “Thank God Nyk’s got the drawbridge wedged open,” he muttered, making a note at the same time to check on the work. The final feeble writing at the end of the scroll disturbed him beyond his natural feelings for the suffering of the author — beyond the simple human touch across the ages.