Chapter 62
Hoku raised his eyes from the flyleaf.
Lunhard sat near one corner of the desk, one leg crossed over the other, absorbed in thought.
"…Lunhard?"
Lunhard straightened and retracted his hand from the page. "Mm?"
"Is this supposed to happen?"
"It is." Lunhard said, "Why not lift it and have a look?"
'—?'
Hoku swiftly turned his palm over to inspect it, but there was no trace of ink. When he glanced back at the page, the symbol had vanished as well.
Lunhard began undoing the clasp at his cuff. It fell between them with a clink as he folded back the loosened linen and withdrew a compact copper-coloured box from his sleeve.
Rosettes and scrollwork ornamented the lid and sides, with minute markings threaded through the intervening spaces. A stout chain had been wound twice around the box and drawn across the lock.
Lunhard fitted the little key into the lock. One turn slackened the chain into his palm, and the lid yielded beneath his thumb.
Something dark slipped across his fingers, brushed the rim, and vanished inside.
After a moment, Lunhard withdrew a flat, round medallion, its surface mottled with verdigris and rimmed in muted gold. He closed the lid, wound the chain twice around the box, and fastened it across the lock.
Lunhard placed the medallion in Hoku's free hand.
'This…'
Hoku lowered his chin toward his collar.
Li had once found a similar medallion inside the statue and given it to him. That one had borne Lunhard's name. Not long afterward, the peculiar garden around him had vanished, leaving nothing but the illusory darkness.
Just off-centre, Hoku's name was incised in a line of minute characters.
"How am I meant to use them?"
Lunhard touched two fingers to his brow. "Perhaps I should have explained this before you began. They are only the means, I'm afraid. When this basilite was formed, each person involved left a vestige within it, and the ritual still depends upon the affinity those remnants preserve. Restore the symbols to their proper order, and they can perform the part for which they were left."
Hoku listened without interrupting.
"Since you had no part in its formation, the medium had to be an instrument already attuned to your essence, so that the divination cast through it would take on the same affinity and become bound to you in turn."
Hoku's brow twitched.
'…But the compass is bound to my essence as well, isn't it? Then why couldn't it have been the medium? Why did I have to cast a divination first? Unless the compass and the divination it produced were treated as separate things… But even then, why had the fob been necessary? The compass did not require the fob to cast according to the circumstances, and the divination would still have fallen to me. So all the fob had done was allow me to choose.'
Hoku went over the sequence once more, but it led him no further.
Lunhard waited until his expression settled, then inclined his head.
"Place the medallion at the centre. I'll keep the card level."
Hoku laid it upon The Inverted Threshold as Lunhard leaned over and supported his hand from below.
'His skin is almost as cold as brass left out overnight.'
The instant the medallion touched the card, its sudden weight forced both their hands lower.
At first, Hoku thought a glint had swept across the illustration.
Then a painted fingertip curled, followed almost at once by the rest.
One slender joint after another emerged from the black surface with a dry, minute rasp. Even outside the illustration, the bones were no broader than the lines that had depicted them.
The unnatural cold of Lunhard's skin was already receding as the four hands arched inward.
Hoku's arm started back when their pointed fingers touched above the medallion, and the small bones closed around the rim.
From between the bones, a dark vapour seeped into the minute characters, blackening Hoku's name upon the mottled green.
Fine gold dust sifted from the medallion and vanished into the darkness.
The mottled green turned translucent where it bordered the gold band. From there, layer after layer dissolved into the illustration, taking the skeletal hands with it.
As the last trace disappeared, the bones settled into painted lines and the gold circle contracted to the size of a ten-pence coin.
Black motes spread over The Inverted Threshold from every side until neither illustration nor card remained. A dark disk hung where it had been, a finger's breadth above Hoku's hand.
Several seconds passed before dull red emerged through the black, followed by bronze and the dense yellow of old gold. The final dark patch dissolved, and the disk dropped against the base of his fingers.
'Is this… a coin?'
Lunhard left the desk and approached the mural without haste. "Is there anything on its other side?"
Hoku rolled the disk over with his thumb. It was heavier than its size suggested and ice-cold against his skin.
The face now uppermost bore a long, curved relief coiling toward a shallow hollow, its crest worn almost silver while the surrounding metal remained a deep antique gold.
"Is this meant for the mural?"
Lunhard stopped before the largest translucent star.
Hoku followed him through the uneven candlelight. Encircled by the mural's symbols, the star held a shallow recess in which he rested the coin.
The nearest flame streamed toward the coin.
A heavy force swept through the chamber, passing through Hoku without stirring the air. Every flame guttered low; most went out, leaving only a few alight among the shelves.
Hoku retrieved the candelabrum and moved briskly from bracket to bracket, securing the remaining candles in its trays. Their light fell upon bare stone where the mural had been.
The polished floor split with a succession of hard cracks. Fractures branched across the chamber, heaving broad slabs upward while others subsided into the packed soil, which spilled through the gaps and over Hoku's boots.
Through the din of breaking stone, a low grinding rolled along the long wall opposite the door.
Hoku whirled around with the candelabrum as one of the tall shelving bays shuddered in its recess. A seam opened above the cornice and ran down the narrow stiles on either side. The whole case tipped outward from the wall.
Along the upper tiers, several spines slid past the shelf, then the entire row spilled down.
Hoku stepped clear as the books struck the soil, several falling open and stirring the dust.
A row of iron braces sprang from the recess beneath the emptied bay and locked into place in an orderly sequence of clicks. The shelving settled across the braces at a steep incline.
The bay above it lurched out of its moulding.
Clunk! Clunk!
Its books poured out before the case swung down to meet the first, iron tongues shooting from either side into sockets hidden within the stone. A third followed farther up, then a fourth.
Hoku watched the final bay descend and join the others.
Together, the inclined bays formed the upper flight of a crooked stair descending into the opening they had left in the wall. A draught rose from below with the mineral smell of stone.
'I may have to stop assuming walls are only walls in this place.'
Hoku set the candelabrum upon the first tread and eased a boot onto the shelf. The wood creaked beneath his weight, but the braces did not move. He took up the light and stepped down.
Lunhard followed several paces behind. Hoku stepped from the final wooden tread onto a narrow flight hewn through the wall. With only the next few treads lit, he kept his other hand against the masonry.
His boot slipped into a hollow in the tread below. His ankle twisted, and his shoulder struck the opposite wall.
Firelight swept across three narrow gouges beneath his palm. Their broken margins jutted toward the stair.
Lunhard halted several steps above him.
'The stone seems to have broken outward. Whatever made these must have torn through from the other side.'
Below them, a single furrow had been raked down the wall, following the stair's curve and nearly matching the span of the three marks Hoku had found in the hall.
He cast the light back along the stair. Darkness concealed most of Lunhard, leaving a trace of red along one shoulder and a gleam near his collar.
"What left these?"
Lunhard descended several steps. Candlelight passed over one cheekbone, the line of his jaw, and the hollow beneath his eye. Hoku could make nothing of his expression before his face returned to shadow.
"You have seen traces like these before, haven't you?"
'I never told him about the marks in the hall…'
The flames narrowed to blue points as Lunhard passed him. Two vanished, leaving the last to reveal him several steps below. Darkness closed over the stair before he disappeared along its gradual curve.
Hoku descended after him at once.
BANG!
A tremor coursed through the ground beneath him, then a second jarred the stair from below and loosened grit from the wall.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Three more resounded in rapid succession.
Hoku vigorously quickened his pace.
The stair curved on through the wall until a seam of light came into view along one jamb and beneath the lintel.
Under the continued pounding, the seam widened, and the door bowed farther toward the stair.
At the foot of the stair, an iron ring hung low on the door in place of a handle. Hoku hooked his fingers through it.
The door lurched toward him again, knocking the ring against his knuckles. Hoku hauled backward before it could swing back.
The door dragged inward across the floor with a groan. Light spread over the threshold as a cold gust swept through the opening.
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There is a common error concerning the doors of Way. Because you choose to open one, you may suppose that the same choice extends to whatever lies beyond it. But, above, it does not.
Your intention is sufficient to bear you across the threshold; beyond that, however, it has no part in giving form to the space on the other side.
A familiar door may, for this reason, open upon an unfamiliar world without having led you astray. Both its continuance and its character proceed from another life.
You enter it, therefore, as that life has rendered it, not as you had supposed it would be.
As above, so below: the room is thought before it is discovered.
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