"I just want everybody to be the size of cats."
And now, instead of the usual writing madness, have some different writing madness! ...Good lord, it's been nearly a year since I posted the first chapter of this. >_> Too many stories, I has them.
ANYWAY HAVE A THING.
Title: The Ghost in the Grand Chamber, chapter two
Summary: Jonathan Easter was a mild-mannered government clerk, until he met Essabeth Stone- one of the country's best-known sorcerers. Now he's a mild-mannered clerk who happens to be mixed up with dangerous magic, dangerous women, and a very dangerous government conspiracy.
IN THIS CHAPTER: Magical healing, magical comas, a cat, a second magical improvisation, and a plan.
I remember getting Miss Stone to the infirmary hall at the university, but only vaguely, and nothing of what happened afterwards. I suppose the shock of what had just happened to us was catching up to me. She remained totally unconscious and completely unresponsive- to this day, I couldn’t begin to tell you how I managed to move her. Perhaps I had help, even if I can’t recall it now.
I woke up in the infirmary’s magical ailments ward. Everything was quiet and clean and white around me, and bright in the sunlight streaming in through the high paned windows. So it was morning, then. I had missed at least a day.
The attendant noticed me awake almost immediately and bustled over to unhook the clipboard from the foot of my bed. He made a note of the time, then peered intently at me. “And how are you feeling, Mr. Easter?” he asked.
“Just fine,” I said, quite truthfully. I felt marvelously refreshed, if somewhat hungry. “I could do with something to eat, though, if it isn’t too much trouble.”
“Not at all,” said the attendant, “not at all.” He touched the speaking device clipped to his lapel. “Breakfast, please, Miss Doyle,” he said. Within minutes, a tray materialized in a receptacle at the end of the hall.
I marveled at it. “What an incredible system,” I said. The university living quarters had had nothing of the sort.
“Handy little transport spell,” the attendant replied. “It has its advantages, being right next to the magical research building. Or it used to. Haven’t seen much from them lately. Of course you can’t put anything living through it,” he said, gesturing back at the receptacle, “but for food and supplies it works just fine.”
“Remarkable,” I cut in. “Say, what day is it?” I could tell I had to change the subject quickly, or I might not get another opportunity.
“It’s Thursday. Don’t worry,” the man said, catching on, “you haven’t missed anything important.”
Relieved, I tucked into my breakfast. I was most of the way through it when something else occurred to me. I flagged the attendant back over.
“What exactly… happened to me?” I said.
“Textbook case of magical feedback,” he replied. “Been overexerting yourself?”
I sighed. “Yes, “ I said, “I suppose you could call it that.”
“It’s not strictly our department,” said the attendant, “but we fixed up your leg, too. You sprained your knee. Not much we could do about the eye, though.”
“Eye?” I said, baffled. I raised a hand to my face- my fingers met what felt like a bruise, spreading around my eye and across my cheekbone. Suddenly the rest of the previous day’s memories came back to me.
“Where’s Miss Stone?” I asked.
The attendant went quiet. “Moved to a private room,” he said.
“May I see her?” I don’t know what made me ask it. I had no reason to think it would be allowed. But the attendant surprised me.
“Might as well,” he said, “for all the good it’ll do.”
He brought me my clothes- I had been changed into an infirmary dressing-gown at some point- and pulled a curtain around my bed so I could change. Then he showed me through a plain wooden door at the front end of the hall.
It was quiet and clean and white in there, too. There was one bed, and in it was Miss Stone, tucked in neatly with a clean white sheet. I could see her chest rise and fall, but only barely. Her eyes were closed.
“What’s wrong?” I said, in what was practically a whisper. I didn’t dare speak louder than that. “What’s happened to her?”
“We think it’s a case of modal stasis in a semitransient mental plane,” the attendant said, equally quietly.
I frowned at him rather. “Come again?” I said.
“She’s shut inside her own mind,” the attendant clarified.
“No, that much I understood,” I said. “I meant, how is that possible?”
He raised his eyebrows at me. “You’re not trained in magic, are you?”
“No,” I said, “I’m not.”
“Well, then it’s a bit difficult to explain,” the man said. “Let’s see. Magic users develop a place inside their own minds, where they store most of their inherent power, and which is generally not accessible to anyone else. That’s an oversimplification, but you get the idea?”
“I do,” I said. The prospect was horrifying. I didn’t know Miss Stone’s mind, but I knew enough of my own to know that being trapped inside it would not be pleasant.
I went over to the bed as if in a daze. “Miss Stone?” I said softly. There was no response, not that I had been expecting any. She didn’t even stir. At least, I told myself, at this distance I could see her breathing more clearly. At least she was definitely alive.
For a moment, I had the urge to touch the hand that had been left free of the sheet. I reached out, then reconsidered. Instead I sighed and followed the attendant out of the room again.
Over the course of the next week, I tried to go about my usual business. It ought to have been easy. The duties of my job were considerably more pleasant, now that the haunt had been dispensed with. The healers had done a superb job of mending my knee, and even the bruise around my eye faded quickly and troubled me very little. But I couldn’t shake the image of Miss Stone lying in that infirmary bed. During the second week after the incident, I went back to the infirmary hall several times.
Each time, the attendant on duty let me in to see her, and each time nothing had changed. She lay there, perfectly still, her face pale and her red hair blazing against the white pillow. The only thing that was at all different was that the third time I went back, there was a black-and-white cat curled up at the foot of the bed.
“He won’t stay put anywhere else,” the young woman who was on duty that day told me, while the cat opened one yellow eye to glare at me. “Made a terrible racket in Miss Stone’s quarters, he did, and then he figured out translocation and now we can’t keep him out.”
“I didn’t know cats could translocate,” I said, startled.
“’Course they can,” said the young attendant. “How do you think they get in everywhere?” The cat, meanwhile, yawned and very deliberately went back to sleep.
“He must be very devoted to her,” I said.
The attendant fixed me with a scrutinizing look, which she held for several seconds before she spoke. “Well, I’ll leave you alone,” she said, and glided quietly out of the room.
“Can’t you call in a specialist?” I more or less demanded, near the beginning of the third week. I was, by that point, rapidly losing patience with being told that there was nothing the healers could do.
“We’ve tried,” said the attendant, “believe you me.” He was the same man who had been on duty the day that I had woken up in the infirmary, and, of all the healers, he was the one most willing to discuss Miss Stone’s case with me. “The problem is,” the man continued, “there aren’t many magic practitioners that are on the level we’d need to deal with something like this, and the few that are tell us they’re too busy. The only one I can think of who’d be willing to take the case, and able to handle it, is Miss Stone.”
“Who, for obvious reasons,” I said with a sigh, “can’t do it. Wonderful.”
I mulled that over for the next few days. A thought was growing in my mind, which, for various reasons, I was reluctant to acknowledge. But it was this: it seemed, more and more, that I had been the one to put Miss Stone- however accidentally- into this state. And if that was the case, perhaps I could somehow bring her out of it again. I resolved to go back the next day and try the theory.
“But this is extremely irregular, Mr. Easter,” the attendant protested. “You must understand, we cannot allow anyone but our staff to-”
“Listen,” I said, “has anything you’ve tried worked?”
“Well,” said the attendant, “no. But you’re not trained-”
“Then I can’t make things much worse, can I? In the absolute worst case, nothing will happen. But I have to try. Now let me in.”
There must have been, for once, something commanding in my voice- either that, or the man was tired of arguing with me. He stood aside and let me through the door into Miss Stone’s room.
“And please make sure I’m not disturbed,” I added, before closing it again.
The cat, who had taken up permanent residence at the foot of Miss Stone’s bed, took one look at me and promptly vacated its position. A moment later, two yellow eyes glared at me from under the bed.
“It’s all right, cat,” I told it, and immediately felt quite silly.
There was one chair in the room, just a simple wooden affair- I pulled it over to the bedside and settled myself in it. I had a feeling I was going to want to be sitting down.
This was, if I admitted it to myself, going to be difficult. I was operating on hunches and blind instinct, supplemented with what little of my basic magical instruction I still remembered. Despite what I had said to the attendant, there was a very good chance I could make things worse. And on top of all that, I was coming to realize, I was fairly sure that for what I had in mind to work, I would have to be touching her.
Carefully, and blushing rather, I arranged my hands in the same position they were in when that strange force had seized Miss Stone- one hand on her forehead, the other over her chest. Her skin was worryingly cool to the touch. I tried not to think about that, and landed instead on the fact that the last time this had happened there had been significantly more clothing between us. I tore myself away from that thought as well.
Instead I closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind completely. It was not easy. I don’t know how long I sat there, but after some time I realized I was breathing nearly as slowly as she was. I could feel her heartbeat with the palm of my hand, just as slow and steady. Gathering my will, I whispered, “Essabeth Stone, by the power you command, I call you to come out.”
The reply was faint, and some time in coming. To this day I am not sure whether I heard it with my ears or with my mind, but I know it was Miss Stone’s voice. “I can’t,” her voice said.
“Then,” I said, amazed to hear myself saying it, “I’m coming in.”
Our breath grew louder in the air around me, until it was as deafening as the sea. The patterns of color and light that had been drifting behind my eyelids grew brighter until they merged into a bright white. I exhaled and fell into the color and sound.
The place where I found myself was a sort of heath, with the formless look of a painting before it is finished. The colors were rather like a painting as well, with deep browns and soft blues prevailing. From the grey sky overhead a fine rain fell, and I could see wind making ripples in the blue-tinted grass, but I could feel neither of them- even despite the fact that I had, for some reason, arrived completely naked. In this dreamlike place I seemed to be somewhat less real than my surroundings.
“Hello?” I called, as loudly as I dared. “Miss Stone?” I heard my voice sound, not from me, but from the air all around me. It echoed faintly, off of what I could not tell, until the words were incomprehensible.
There was no reply. The last of the echoes died away.
I looked around, at a loss. The heath, if that was what it was, had no discernible features- here and there in the distance, I could see what might have been standing stones, but none of them yielded me any clue as to what I should be doing.
“Miss Stone!” I called again. “Essabeth Stone, where are you?”
This time, when the echoes faded, there was something off in the distance. It was a point of light, unless it was a single clear note, but I felt rather than saw or heard it. It was her. I knew it was her, with a certainty I had never felt so strongly. Fixing my eyes- and my mind- on the point’s location, I started walking.
It was exceedingly strange, walking with bare feet through grass I couldn’t exactly feel. It got colder, too, as I went on, always following that shining point. And just when I had started to become accustomed to both of those, I reached one of the standing stones and got another shock.
It wasn’t a stone at all. It was a door. It was set in a simple doorframe, nothing ornate or unusual, apart from the fact that it was standing by itself on a wet and windswept heath. I went around the other side of the door to have a look, and discovered that I could walk all the way around it without encountering anything unusual. That made it even stranger. Momentarily overcome with curiosity, I tried the handle.
Behind the door was a room. It looked like a library study room, with architecture that I thought belonged to the university. I shut the door again and looked around the frame- nothing but bare grass.
Shaking my head, I wrote it off as not my business. I wasn’t there to poke around; besides, I had the idea that it would be rude.
I found my point again and kept walking. More doors appeared out of the rain, closer and closer together. They were all different styles, some of them quite fantastical, but I made myself ignore them. The point that was Miss Stone was getting closer.
Gradually, the heath became hills, and the doors thinned out again. By the time I passed what appeared to be the last of them, the hills were high enough that, unreal though I seemed to be, I had to exert serious effort to get up them. Finally I slid down the other side of a particularly steep hill and found myself instead among the dunes of a beach.
It was raining here too, but I couldn’t feel the wet sand any more than I had felt the wet grass. The strange lack of sensation was beginning to wear on my nerves, but the point I was following was just over the next dune, so I pressed on toward it.
I came over the top of the dune and saw grey-blue waves rolling up quietly against the shore, and, sitting in the sand with her toes in the breaking surf, Miss Stone. She was dressed in some sort of white robes, spread out around her- I had assumed that my lack of clothing had been part of the strangeness of this place, but, I realized with dismay, apparently I had been wrong. I looked around quickly, for something to hide behind or cover myself with, but it was too late. She had spotted me.
“Well,” she said, looking up at me with an expression somewhere between appraisal and amusement. “Not the last thing I expected to see in my own mind, but certainly not the first. Hello, Mr. Easter.”
If I could have turned red, in my less-than-physical form, I would have. I tried to cover myself up and bow at the same time, as a result not doing a very good job of either. “Er,” I said, “how do I- that is-”
Miss Stone lifted an eyebrow at me. I got the strong feeling that, internally, she was laughing at my expense. “Just imagine yourself some clothes,” she said. “We’re in a mindscape, you get to construct your own image.”
I cast about for a mental image and wound up in a set of robes something like hers. “Not very creative,” I admitted, “but I’m a little distracted.”
“It’s all right, I forgive you the creativity,” said Miss Stone, still with that eyebrow raised. “I assume it’s your first time.”
“Well, er,” I said, “yes.”
She turned around again, looking back toward the sea. The rain, which continued to miss me completely, had soaked her hair and made her robes cling to her. In this place she was more real than I was.
“So,” she said, “you came to- what, rescue me?”
“To get you out of here,” I replied. “Is that the same thing?”
She actually laughed. “Well spotted,” she said. “I would have gotten myself out sooner or later, but this way it’ll be sooner. Thank you,” she added, after a more-than-slight pause.
“Well, you know,” I said, vaguely.
“The correct answer, Mr. Easter,” she said, and I thought there might have been a hint of amusement in her voice, “would be ‘you’re welcome.’” She stood up, shaking the wet sand off her robes. “But since we’re on the subject, how long have I been here?”
I counted in my head. “Nearly three weeks,” I said.
Both her eyebrows shot up. “Three weeks?”
“Nearly.”
“Ye gods,” she said, “then I may stand corrected. What a disaster. All right, listen to me, this is very important. That spell we found in the grand chamber, the one that put me in here-”
“I thought I put you in here,” I said.
“The difference is academic at this point,” she said, turning a frown on me. “Shut up and listen. That spell is a very powerful and sophisticated control spell, aimed at everyone who works in that chamber.”
It was my turn to raise my eyebrows. “Someone’s trying to control the legislature?”
“Not trying,” Miss Stone corrected me. “Succeeding.”
“But- why? And to do what?”
“That’s what we have to find out.”
“We?” I said. “But I know practically nothing about magic-”
“Then isn’t it lucky for you that’s not what I need you for?” she said. “You know what goes on around Queen’s Court, far better than I do. So you’re going to be my spy.”
“I am?”
“Yes,” she said, poking me in the chest, “you are. Now. I’m telling you this here because it is guaranteed that no one will overhear us. When we get out, you must not mention it, even to me, until I can get wards set up somewhere.”
“May I make a suggestion?” I said.
“You may as well,” said Miss Stone.
“If you’re worried about arousing suspicion,” I said, “pretend to be still recovering.”
“But I’m not,” she said. “As soon as I get back out of here I’ll be fine.”
“That’s why I said pretend,” I said. “If you aren’t fully recovered, it won’t be suspicious if you stay at Queen's Court. Ask to be moved back to your guest chambers while you recover- you can set up wards there and no one will disturb you. And I can get myself assigned to run errands for you. That way we can talk.”
She looked at me for several seconds, with a calculating expression. “That’s quite good,” she said.
“Well, you did make me a spy,” I said.
“The correct answer,” she said, smirking, “would be ‘thank you.’ Now come on, let’s get out of here.”
I opened my mouth to ask how, exactly, we did that, but it was already happening. She took both my hands- around us, the sky, sand, and sea ran into each other like wet watercolors and started to fade. Just before everything returned to white, I realized that at some point the rain had soaked me through.
Chapter Three
ANYWAY HAVE A THING.
Title: The Ghost in the Grand Chamber, chapter two
Summary: Jonathan Easter was a mild-mannered government clerk, until he met Essabeth Stone- one of the country's best-known sorcerers. Now he's a mild-mannered clerk who happens to be mixed up with dangerous magic, dangerous women, and a very dangerous government conspiracy.
IN THIS CHAPTER: Magical healing, magical comas, a cat, a second magical improvisation, and a plan.
I remember getting Miss Stone to the infirmary hall at the university, but only vaguely, and nothing of what happened afterwards. I suppose the shock of what had just happened to us was catching up to me. She remained totally unconscious and completely unresponsive- to this day, I couldn’t begin to tell you how I managed to move her. Perhaps I had help, even if I can’t recall it now.
I woke up in the infirmary’s magical ailments ward. Everything was quiet and clean and white around me, and bright in the sunlight streaming in through the high paned windows. So it was morning, then. I had missed at least a day.
The attendant noticed me awake almost immediately and bustled over to unhook the clipboard from the foot of my bed. He made a note of the time, then peered intently at me. “And how are you feeling, Mr. Easter?” he asked.
“Just fine,” I said, quite truthfully. I felt marvelously refreshed, if somewhat hungry. “I could do with something to eat, though, if it isn’t too much trouble.”
“Not at all,” said the attendant, “not at all.” He touched the speaking device clipped to his lapel. “Breakfast, please, Miss Doyle,” he said. Within minutes, a tray materialized in a receptacle at the end of the hall.
I marveled at it. “What an incredible system,” I said. The university living quarters had had nothing of the sort.
“Handy little transport spell,” the attendant replied. “It has its advantages, being right next to the magical research building. Or it used to. Haven’t seen much from them lately. Of course you can’t put anything living through it,” he said, gesturing back at the receptacle, “but for food and supplies it works just fine.”
“Remarkable,” I cut in. “Say, what day is it?” I could tell I had to change the subject quickly, or I might not get another opportunity.
“It’s Thursday. Don’t worry,” the man said, catching on, “you haven’t missed anything important.”
Relieved, I tucked into my breakfast. I was most of the way through it when something else occurred to me. I flagged the attendant back over.
“What exactly… happened to me?” I said.
“Textbook case of magical feedback,” he replied. “Been overexerting yourself?”
I sighed. “Yes, “ I said, “I suppose you could call it that.”
“It’s not strictly our department,” said the attendant, “but we fixed up your leg, too. You sprained your knee. Not much we could do about the eye, though.”
“Eye?” I said, baffled. I raised a hand to my face- my fingers met what felt like a bruise, spreading around my eye and across my cheekbone. Suddenly the rest of the previous day’s memories came back to me.
“Where’s Miss Stone?” I asked.
The attendant went quiet. “Moved to a private room,” he said.
“May I see her?” I don’t know what made me ask it. I had no reason to think it would be allowed. But the attendant surprised me.
“Might as well,” he said, “for all the good it’ll do.”
He brought me my clothes- I had been changed into an infirmary dressing-gown at some point- and pulled a curtain around my bed so I could change. Then he showed me through a plain wooden door at the front end of the hall.
It was quiet and clean and white in there, too. There was one bed, and in it was Miss Stone, tucked in neatly with a clean white sheet. I could see her chest rise and fall, but only barely. Her eyes were closed.
“What’s wrong?” I said, in what was practically a whisper. I didn’t dare speak louder than that. “What’s happened to her?”
“We think it’s a case of modal stasis in a semitransient mental plane,” the attendant said, equally quietly.
I frowned at him rather. “Come again?” I said.
“She’s shut inside her own mind,” the attendant clarified.
“No, that much I understood,” I said. “I meant, how is that possible?”
He raised his eyebrows at me. “You’re not trained in magic, are you?”
“No,” I said, “I’m not.”
“Well, then it’s a bit difficult to explain,” the man said. “Let’s see. Magic users develop a place inside their own minds, where they store most of their inherent power, and which is generally not accessible to anyone else. That’s an oversimplification, but you get the idea?”
“I do,” I said. The prospect was horrifying. I didn’t know Miss Stone’s mind, but I knew enough of my own to know that being trapped inside it would not be pleasant.
I went over to the bed as if in a daze. “Miss Stone?” I said softly. There was no response, not that I had been expecting any. She didn’t even stir. At least, I told myself, at this distance I could see her breathing more clearly. At least she was definitely alive.
For a moment, I had the urge to touch the hand that had been left free of the sheet. I reached out, then reconsidered. Instead I sighed and followed the attendant out of the room again.
Over the course of the next week, I tried to go about my usual business. It ought to have been easy. The duties of my job were considerably more pleasant, now that the haunt had been dispensed with. The healers had done a superb job of mending my knee, and even the bruise around my eye faded quickly and troubled me very little. But I couldn’t shake the image of Miss Stone lying in that infirmary bed. During the second week after the incident, I went back to the infirmary hall several times.
Each time, the attendant on duty let me in to see her, and each time nothing had changed. She lay there, perfectly still, her face pale and her red hair blazing against the white pillow. The only thing that was at all different was that the third time I went back, there was a black-and-white cat curled up at the foot of the bed.
“He won’t stay put anywhere else,” the young woman who was on duty that day told me, while the cat opened one yellow eye to glare at me. “Made a terrible racket in Miss Stone’s quarters, he did, and then he figured out translocation and now we can’t keep him out.”
“I didn’t know cats could translocate,” I said, startled.
“’Course they can,” said the young attendant. “How do you think they get in everywhere?” The cat, meanwhile, yawned and very deliberately went back to sleep.
“He must be very devoted to her,” I said.
The attendant fixed me with a scrutinizing look, which she held for several seconds before she spoke. “Well, I’ll leave you alone,” she said, and glided quietly out of the room.
“Can’t you call in a specialist?” I more or less demanded, near the beginning of the third week. I was, by that point, rapidly losing patience with being told that there was nothing the healers could do.
“We’ve tried,” said the attendant, “believe you me.” He was the same man who had been on duty the day that I had woken up in the infirmary, and, of all the healers, he was the one most willing to discuss Miss Stone’s case with me. “The problem is,” the man continued, “there aren’t many magic practitioners that are on the level we’d need to deal with something like this, and the few that are tell us they’re too busy. The only one I can think of who’d be willing to take the case, and able to handle it, is Miss Stone.”
“Who, for obvious reasons,” I said with a sigh, “can’t do it. Wonderful.”
I mulled that over for the next few days. A thought was growing in my mind, which, for various reasons, I was reluctant to acknowledge. But it was this: it seemed, more and more, that I had been the one to put Miss Stone- however accidentally- into this state. And if that was the case, perhaps I could somehow bring her out of it again. I resolved to go back the next day and try the theory.
“But this is extremely irregular, Mr. Easter,” the attendant protested. “You must understand, we cannot allow anyone but our staff to-”
“Listen,” I said, “has anything you’ve tried worked?”
“Well,” said the attendant, “no. But you’re not trained-”
“Then I can’t make things much worse, can I? In the absolute worst case, nothing will happen. But I have to try. Now let me in.”
There must have been, for once, something commanding in my voice- either that, or the man was tired of arguing with me. He stood aside and let me through the door into Miss Stone’s room.
“And please make sure I’m not disturbed,” I added, before closing it again.
The cat, who had taken up permanent residence at the foot of Miss Stone’s bed, took one look at me and promptly vacated its position. A moment later, two yellow eyes glared at me from under the bed.
“It’s all right, cat,” I told it, and immediately felt quite silly.
There was one chair in the room, just a simple wooden affair- I pulled it over to the bedside and settled myself in it. I had a feeling I was going to want to be sitting down.
This was, if I admitted it to myself, going to be difficult. I was operating on hunches and blind instinct, supplemented with what little of my basic magical instruction I still remembered. Despite what I had said to the attendant, there was a very good chance I could make things worse. And on top of all that, I was coming to realize, I was fairly sure that for what I had in mind to work, I would have to be touching her.
Carefully, and blushing rather, I arranged my hands in the same position they were in when that strange force had seized Miss Stone- one hand on her forehead, the other over her chest. Her skin was worryingly cool to the touch. I tried not to think about that, and landed instead on the fact that the last time this had happened there had been significantly more clothing between us. I tore myself away from that thought as well.
Instead I closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind completely. It was not easy. I don’t know how long I sat there, but after some time I realized I was breathing nearly as slowly as she was. I could feel her heartbeat with the palm of my hand, just as slow and steady. Gathering my will, I whispered, “Essabeth Stone, by the power you command, I call you to come out.”
The reply was faint, and some time in coming. To this day I am not sure whether I heard it with my ears or with my mind, but I know it was Miss Stone’s voice. “I can’t,” her voice said.
“Then,” I said, amazed to hear myself saying it, “I’m coming in.”
Our breath grew louder in the air around me, until it was as deafening as the sea. The patterns of color and light that had been drifting behind my eyelids grew brighter until they merged into a bright white. I exhaled and fell into the color and sound.
The place where I found myself was a sort of heath, with the formless look of a painting before it is finished. The colors were rather like a painting as well, with deep browns and soft blues prevailing. From the grey sky overhead a fine rain fell, and I could see wind making ripples in the blue-tinted grass, but I could feel neither of them- even despite the fact that I had, for some reason, arrived completely naked. In this dreamlike place I seemed to be somewhat less real than my surroundings.
“Hello?” I called, as loudly as I dared. “Miss Stone?” I heard my voice sound, not from me, but from the air all around me. It echoed faintly, off of what I could not tell, until the words were incomprehensible.
There was no reply. The last of the echoes died away.
I looked around, at a loss. The heath, if that was what it was, had no discernible features- here and there in the distance, I could see what might have been standing stones, but none of them yielded me any clue as to what I should be doing.
“Miss Stone!” I called again. “Essabeth Stone, where are you?”
This time, when the echoes faded, there was something off in the distance. It was a point of light, unless it was a single clear note, but I felt rather than saw or heard it. It was her. I knew it was her, with a certainty I had never felt so strongly. Fixing my eyes- and my mind- on the point’s location, I started walking.
It was exceedingly strange, walking with bare feet through grass I couldn’t exactly feel. It got colder, too, as I went on, always following that shining point. And just when I had started to become accustomed to both of those, I reached one of the standing stones and got another shock.
It wasn’t a stone at all. It was a door. It was set in a simple doorframe, nothing ornate or unusual, apart from the fact that it was standing by itself on a wet and windswept heath. I went around the other side of the door to have a look, and discovered that I could walk all the way around it without encountering anything unusual. That made it even stranger. Momentarily overcome with curiosity, I tried the handle.
Behind the door was a room. It looked like a library study room, with architecture that I thought belonged to the university. I shut the door again and looked around the frame- nothing but bare grass.
Shaking my head, I wrote it off as not my business. I wasn’t there to poke around; besides, I had the idea that it would be rude.
I found my point again and kept walking. More doors appeared out of the rain, closer and closer together. They were all different styles, some of them quite fantastical, but I made myself ignore them. The point that was Miss Stone was getting closer.
Gradually, the heath became hills, and the doors thinned out again. By the time I passed what appeared to be the last of them, the hills were high enough that, unreal though I seemed to be, I had to exert serious effort to get up them. Finally I slid down the other side of a particularly steep hill and found myself instead among the dunes of a beach.
It was raining here too, but I couldn’t feel the wet sand any more than I had felt the wet grass. The strange lack of sensation was beginning to wear on my nerves, but the point I was following was just over the next dune, so I pressed on toward it.
I came over the top of the dune and saw grey-blue waves rolling up quietly against the shore, and, sitting in the sand with her toes in the breaking surf, Miss Stone. She was dressed in some sort of white robes, spread out around her- I had assumed that my lack of clothing had been part of the strangeness of this place, but, I realized with dismay, apparently I had been wrong. I looked around quickly, for something to hide behind or cover myself with, but it was too late. She had spotted me.
“Well,” she said, looking up at me with an expression somewhere between appraisal and amusement. “Not the last thing I expected to see in my own mind, but certainly not the first. Hello, Mr. Easter.”
If I could have turned red, in my less-than-physical form, I would have. I tried to cover myself up and bow at the same time, as a result not doing a very good job of either. “Er,” I said, “how do I- that is-”
Miss Stone lifted an eyebrow at me. I got the strong feeling that, internally, she was laughing at my expense. “Just imagine yourself some clothes,” she said. “We’re in a mindscape, you get to construct your own image.”
I cast about for a mental image and wound up in a set of robes something like hers. “Not very creative,” I admitted, “but I’m a little distracted.”
“It’s all right, I forgive you the creativity,” said Miss Stone, still with that eyebrow raised. “I assume it’s your first time.”
“Well, er,” I said, “yes.”
She turned around again, looking back toward the sea. The rain, which continued to miss me completely, had soaked her hair and made her robes cling to her. In this place she was more real than I was.
“So,” she said, “you came to- what, rescue me?”
“To get you out of here,” I replied. “Is that the same thing?”
She actually laughed. “Well spotted,” she said. “I would have gotten myself out sooner or later, but this way it’ll be sooner. Thank you,” she added, after a more-than-slight pause.
“Well, you know,” I said, vaguely.
“The correct answer, Mr. Easter,” she said, and I thought there might have been a hint of amusement in her voice, “would be ‘you’re welcome.’” She stood up, shaking the wet sand off her robes. “But since we’re on the subject, how long have I been here?”
I counted in my head. “Nearly three weeks,” I said.
Both her eyebrows shot up. “Three weeks?”
“Nearly.”
“Ye gods,” she said, “then I may stand corrected. What a disaster. All right, listen to me, this is very important. That spell we found in the grand chamber, the one that put me in here-”
“I thought I put you in here,” I said.
“The difference is academic at this point,” she said, turning a frown on me. “Shut up and listen. That spell is a very powerful and sophisticated control spell, aimed at everyone who works in that chamber.”
It was my turn to raise my eyebrows. “Someone’s trying to control the legislature?”
“Not trying,” Miss Stone corrected me. “Succeeding.”
“But- why? And to do what?”
“That’s what we have to find out.”
“We?” I said. “But I know practically nothing about magic-”
“Then isn’t it lucky for you that’s not what I need you for?” she said. “You know what goes on around Queen’s Court, far better than I do. So you’re going to be my spy.”
“I am?”
“Yes,” she said, poking me in the chest, “you are. Now. I’m telling you this here because it is guaranteed that no one will overhear us. When we get out, you must not mention it, even to me, until I can get wards set up somewhere.”
“May I make a suggestion?” I said.
“You may as well,” said Miss Stone.
“If you’re worried about arousing suspicion,” I said, “pretend to be still recovering.”
“But I’m not,” she said. “As soon as I get back out of here I’ll be fine.”
“That’s why I said pretend,” I said. “If you aren’t fully recovered, it won’t be suspicious if you stay at Queen's Court. Ask to be moved back to your guest chambers while you recover- you can set up wards there and no one will disturb you. And I can get myself assigned to run errands for you. That way we can talk.”
She looked at me for several seconds, with a calculating expression. “That’s quite good,” she said.
“Well, you did make me a spy,” I said.
“The correct answer,” she said, smirking, “would be ‘thank you.’ Now come on, let’s get out of here.”
I opened my mouth to ask how, exactly, we did that, but it was already happening. She took both my hands- around us, the sky, sand, and sea ran into each other like wet watercolors and started to fade. Just before everything returned to white, I realized that at some point the rain had soaked me through.
Chapter Three