The wait in the dark grew eternal. Carter could not say how long they actually delayed, for he could not discern his pocket watch, but Enoch seemed to know the exact time, as if winding so many clocks had made him a living timepiece. At first Carter was anxious, but the monotony of staring into blackness soon made him sleepy. He was nearly dozing when Enoch touched his knee to signal their departure, and he struggled from his stupor, reminding himself of their danger.
At Enoch’s insistence, Carter went first, and he knew it was because the old servant wanted to place himself between the guns of the anarchists and his master. He slid his hands over the knob and tested it. At first he thought it would prove resistant, for it did not turn easily, but as he gradually increased the pressure the striker slid soundlessly away. As he opened the door, it gave the barest creak. He stood frozen, listening for a hundred heartbeats, yet the passage lay silent.
He stepped out onto the soft carpet. Gratitude swept through him that he would not have to cross bare, cracking floorboards. It was dark with the complete darkness he had feared as a child, that he feared still, and for an instant he wondered if he had the courage to go on, for he wanted to turn and flee back into the room until the anarchists departed. He could see absolutely nothing. He drew a deep breath, knowing himself a coward, and began inching his way down the hall. Enoch followed, guided by clasping Carter’s shoulder.
Almost at once, Carter brushed against a picture. He rushed to steady it with his hand, lest it fall from the wall. It struck the plaster with a light tap; he stood holding it for the space of a minute, knowing the anarchists would hear and investigate. When they did not, he gradually released it, and continued his trek, his mouth dry, his heart beating hard within him.
He was terrified that the Bobby would come at him from the darkness, and he clutched his gun in one hand and doubled his other fist into a knot. At first it was hard to make himself stir; he trembled and could not move his feet; then as they drew farther from their enemies, it was difficult to go slow, for he wanted to run. He caught himself walking too fast, making too much noise, and restrained himself only with an effort. His mind raced. What if there were other anarchists down the corridor? When would they be able to relight their lamps?
After what seemed like hours, the wall to his right ended. He felt around, trying to ascertain if this was truly the turning of the corner. He stopped and listened again, praying they were not about to walk into their enemies, as they took the passage to the right.
Step by step they made their way through the darkness, not knowing what was before them, feeling their way again along the right-hand wall. Spots of color faded into Carter’s view, illusions from the lack of light. Finally, when they had gone twice the distance they thought necessary, Enoch knelt with flint and rags and lit the lamp. But as he stood to his feet, a voice called out, “Stop right there!”
Glancing back, Carter dimly saw the shadow of a man at the corner they had passed; they had slipped by him without knowing.
A bullet struck to Enoch’s left, and they bolted down the corridor. If the corner had not been near, they would have certainly died, but they ducked behind it and sped down another, shorter passage, Enoch’s lamp, half-mantled, stretching their frenzied shadows long across the walls. At any moment Carter expected to feel lead burning through his back. He doubled his efforts and reached the goal before Enoch, and so turned and fired twice to keep the anarchists at bay until his friend was safe.
He had been on the track team at Bracton College, and had tried to stay in condition since then, but the run left him breathless; he had been a distance man and no sprinter. Enoch fared a little worse, but there was no time to pause. The next corridor ran into the endless dark, and might be forty yards or four hundred.
To their good fortune a way opened to the left almost immediately. As they took it, Enoch gasped, “I know where we are. We’re almost there.”
This corridor branched in three directions, and they ran back to the right, then left again, where they came to a circular room, the intersection of eight separate corridors. In the red glow of the lamp, Enoch grinned. “We’ve reached the Winelderwist. Come with me.”
The passage they took lasted less than a hundred steps, before angling to the right; Carter rejoiced that their light could no longer be seen from the circular hall. Still, they did not relent until they took three more turnings, when they slowed to a walk. Gasping, red-faced, they looked at one another and softly laughed.
“I thought my galloping days were over,” Enoch said. “Necessity gives wings to old bones.”
“Will they be able to trace our steps?”
“There were ten separate branchings we could have taken. Of those, four are unlikely, if they are familiar enough to know it, for they lead away from the Towers, not toward them. If there were six men and each took one corridor, we could indeed be followed. But just ahead is our salvation, if only no more guards await us.”
“Do you think it likely?”
“Not much. The Winelderwist has too many branchings for the anarchists to guard them all. But we must be wary.”
They came to three doors and a spiral staircase at the end of the passage. Enoch took the door to the right, which opened onto a long, wooden stair leading downward, with a landing and a doorway every dozen steps. He led through the door on the third landing, down a narrow passage with doors on either side. Halfway down that hall, he took another door, which led down another stair, carved all in wood, with the heads of eagles chiseled on the posts.
“If I wasn’t before, I am wholly lost now,” Carter said.
“Fortunately, I am not. This will lead us past the Room of Statues, once I find two more portals.”
At the bottom of the stair were four doors. Enoch tried them all and found the first one locked, the second only a closet, the third a stair scarcely two-feet wide, leading upward by rickety steps, and the fourth a straight passage. He chose the third, and they plunged into a country of spiderwebs and creaking boards, railings of rough wood, the smell of mold in thick air, and no walls at either side, so that Carter’s childhood fancy of Enoch ascending a stair between the stars seemed true. The floor was soon lost to their lamplight, save for rugged support posts rising from the darkness, and the ceiling remained indiscernible. The echoes of their footsteps fluttered around them, indicating that they climbed above a great chamber; cool air wafted across their brows. Their whispers skittered all about the room, returning to them as soft sibilance.
They came to a landing, with a rusted metal door intruding out of the void, supported by a tunnel of brick. Enoch stood before it a time, hand to chin.
“Should we open it?” Carter finally asked.
“Some doors in Evenmere are best untried,” Enoch replied. “I don’t think this is the one, nor the next.”
They continued upward. It was a long while before they passed the next door, which appeared identical to the first, and even longer before they reached the third. Enoch wiped its surface with his sleeve and uncovered four marks scratched into the metal.
“Is this it? Yes!”
It was a massive door, and they struggled together to lift the heavy latch and strained to pull it open. At last, it budged with a loud groan, its hinges shrieking, and the entire chamber roared back, reverberate, like Jormungand in his attic. Once loosened, it moved freely. Within, the passage was red brick on all four sides, and tall enough for a man. They closed the door after them, its echoes muffled behind the massive plate.
“This leads to the Room of Statues,” Enoch said. “We will be safe here.”
The passage ended soon enough, and they stood within another cavernous space. At Enoch’s suggestion, they lit Carter’s lamp for additional light. As the flame sprang upward, Carter gave a start and fumbled for his pistol, for a massive face loomed out of the ebony. Enoch restrained him, and he soon realized it was the statue of a warrior, helmeted and plumed in the Roman manner, cast of black marble, armored, his sword flung outward in a gesture of vengeance.
“There are many of them,” Enoch said. “The chamber is filled, though most aren’t so tall. There are windows at the end of the room, but night has fallen. I believe I can lead us through.”
The next hours were those Carter remembered best, of all that journey to the Towers, for there was a sepulchral quality in seeing the statues rise into the circle of their lamps, faces noble, foolish, cunning, or beautiful. They were carved mostly from white stone, unlike the dark warrior, and none were as tall as he. Carter found himself giving them names as he went, so that they became the Magician, the Juggler, the Princess, the Piper, the Magistrate, the Counselor, the Beggar, and the Thief. The Lamplighter even resembled Chant a little, and the Unicorn was cut from a rare stone sparkling blue fire. Enoch used the statues to mark his way, and he turned left beside the Merchant and right beside the Gatekeeper.
They had neither eaten nor rested for many hours, and the oppressive night left them bone-weary, but need spurred them on to the Towers, lest all the ways become guarded. They halted only long enough to eat a cold meal of dried fruit and strips of meat, with lukewarm water from a flask.
At last they reached a doorway leading through a narrow corridor, with faded flowered wallpaper and wooden floors. They ascended several slender stairs, like ants climbing out of their den, and emerged onto a flagstone courtyard, built upon the highest roofs. Moonlight pierced the storm clouds, casting a pallid light across the expanse. A light mist was falling, so that a halo crept around their lanterns. Carter breathed the cool air; its sharpness drove away the torpid half sleep that had enveloped him as they walked the ragged ways. They stood at the lowest of several levels of the courtyard, each of which ran into the base of four towers, built like a candelabra, with a single supporting column. Stone trusses led up to the outermost towers, and walkways intersected the others, so there was clearly more than one entrance.
Enoch hastily doused both lamps to avoid detection. “They won’t expect us from this direction. Rather they think we will arrive from below the central tower, up a long stair. But all ways may be guarded.”
An overhang provided concealing shadows, and they made their way cautiously around the courtyard’s edge, pausing often to watch for the anarchists. They were halfway around when a bullet ricocheted off the brick beside them. Carter searched the skyline until he spied a figure, half-silhouetted in the moonlight, standing on the second-floor landing. He fired his pistol; dust rose up from the stones where it struck, and the man vanished behind the masonry.
The two companions bolted as gunshots erupted from two separate directions. They raced between stone columns, remaining always in the shadows. The moon shone onto the base of the Towers, with a wide, open stretch surrounding it. For a moment they stood wavering, unwilling to leave their shelter. But both knew they could not remain long; the men above would soon outmaneuver them. In wordless agreement, Enoch clapped Carter on the back and they sped toward the door at the bottom of the Towers, their guns blazing.
Despite his fear, a strange euphoria passed over Carter; as bullets bounced all around his main emotion was excitement, as if he were living the fictional adventures of some American cowboy. None of it seemed real, and he suddenly knew they would reach the Towers unscathed, heroes passing through a hail of lead. A wild, exultant cry sprang from his lips. The door was almost within reach.
Just then, a cloaked figure, which in the dimness had appeared as a pile of rags, half raised himself from before the door. Orange fire erupted from his revolver. Carter cried out involuntarily as burning pain seared his left leg. He and Enoch fired as one, dropping the assailant to the flagstones.
The door was smooth metal, without a handle, its seams bare outlines, but Enoch spoke a word, and it sprang open. A shot whizzed by Carter’s neck as they plunged into the darkness. Enoch pulled the door shut with a solid clang.
“Are you hurt?” the Hebrew asked.
“It’s my leg,” Carter said.
He heard the striking of flint, and a narrow flame appeared. “I’m getting a bit faint, old friend.”
Enoch lit the lamp and Carter saw blood running down his own arm. His head felt moist, sticky, and when he touched his hand to his temple, he found blood on his fingers as well. The world did a slow circle; his legs would no longer support him, and then Carter fell into darkness.
The Clock Tower
Carter woke to the smell of warm blankets and diffused illumination through a clear skylight that cast a dull white square on the patchwork quilt of his bed. He roused in a gradual way, as if parting layer after layer of translucent curtains. His first realization was that one of his toes was sticking out of the blankets, though he did nothing to cover it. He wondered where he was, decided it did not matter since he was safe, and drifted back into slumber.
He woke more fully sometime later, to the sounds of Enoch puttering around the room, brewing hot tea on a decrepit stove. Carter sat up on one elbow.
“Hello, is it morning?”
Enoch smiled, but his eyes showed he had not slept. “Closer to afternoon. How many fingers do you see?” He held up his hand.
“Four. Why are you testing me?”
“A bullet grazed your skull. I was hoping you hadn’t lost any brains.”
“Too deeply embedded for that,” he muttered, feeling his own face. There was a bandage above his left ear and a tender lump at the back of his head. “I was shot in the leg, too, wasn’t I?”
“I tended it. You won’t use it for a time, but it will heal. Is it a miracle we survived? More than a miracle. I should have planned better.”
“There probably wasn’t a better plan. We knew the Towers would be watched. We are there, aren’t we?”
“In the highest, the Tower of the Eternity Clock.”
Carter glanced around and discovered a clock face, tall as a man, in the wall behind him, beside the head of the bed. “Does it run? I don’t hear it ticking.”