Twist it, Ishbel! the rat said, scrambling for purchase on her shoulder.
“Oh, be quiet,” Ishbel muttered, and jerked her ankle free of the One’s grip.
The One regained his balance and reached once more for Ishbel, still scrambling to get to her feet, but as he did so the stairs under his feet warped and curled, and he was no longer there.
What happened? said the rat.
“I unwound the staircase from beneath his feet,” Ishbel said. “Now he’s above us.”
Then she was on her feet and hurrying down the stairs, trying to get to the front door before the crowd outside set fire to the house.
Her terror had abated somewhat, but it was still there. The month she had spent among the rotting corpses of her family when she was eight had left an indelible scar on Ishbel’s psyche. To merely recall the memory was unbearably painful.
To find herself back in the house, even knowing it was a construct of the One’s power, was almost too much for her, even as an adult.
She wished Maximilian were here.
The crowd outside had quietened and that caused Ishbel more concern than had they been vociferous.
What were they doing?
She could hear the One pounding down the stairs, but she was almost at the front door, and if she could open that and escape the house, then Ishbel knew she’d be back in DarkGlass Mountain, at the place within its structure where that single key foundation stone lay .
Ishbel reached the foot of the stairs and dashed across the foyer toward the door.
But just as she reached it, the door exploded in flames, and Ishbel reeled back, crying out in horror as the heat scorched her face and hair and clothing.
She realised her dress was afire in several spots and she beat at the flames, terrified, unable to reason her way out of it, sure that, this time, she was going to burn to death within the charnel house of her father’s abode.
Then, before she could successfully beat out her flaming skirts, the walls burst into fire.
Chapter 23
The Brunelle House, Margalit, and Darkglass Mountain
Ishbel could not think. She was caught, back in her parents’ house, but this time she was caught in the hell she had always feared — the crowd outside had set fire to the house, and she was trapped.
No one can save you now, Ishbel, the One said in her mind.
She was going to burn, this time.
All your family are dead. All the servants rot. No one can save you now, Ishbel.
Ishbel was crying, her hands beating futilely at the flames on her skirts, beating out one fire only to find that another had sprung up in a different place. There was no time to think. She could feel the rat scrambling about on her shoulders, whispering away in her mind, but Ishbel was so terrified that she paid it no attention.
What use courage now, when she was going to die? Ishbel had always feared death by burning . . . it had been her lifelong worst nightmare, and that terror now so overwhelmed her that she was incapable of thinking —
Gods, even the stone flagging was now alight!
Courage! the rat screamed in her mind.
It is pointless, Ishbel responded. Look, my hands are blackened now. I will burn, and you with me.
She could not speak, for the air was now so overheated it had burned her throat and lungs.
Her legs were now enveloped in pain as her skirts roared into full flame, and Ishbel held out her arms, knowing that in another moment she would be a pillar of fire.
Courage, the rat whispered, and Ishbel thought she would take a bit of that courage, just so that she would die more easily. She calmed her mind and shut out the sound of the One’s laughter —
There is no one left here for you, the One said. No member of your family left alive to aid you. Die, Ishbel. Die.
No member of her family left to aid her? The words tumbled about in Ishbel’s now calmer mind. She could feel her flesh burning, smell its stink, but she put the agony to one side and thought about it.
No family left alive?
“Yes,” Ishbel managed to croak out of her burning throat, the sound only a harsh cackle to anyone who might have been standing close. “Yes, there is.”
And then, taking all the courage the rat had to offer, Ishbel said, “Druse? Druse? Come aid me, Druse. Please.”
Druse, Tirzah’s father, still trapped within the pyramid. Her ancestor. Her family.
“Ishbel, my dear,” Druse said, throwing a blanket about her and smothering the flames. “I didn’t think you would ever call.”
“Druse .” Ishbel said, startled to find that her voice sounded normal, and then blinking in surprise as Druse lifted away the blanket to discover that her flesh and clothes were unmarked.
All the agony had vanished.
“It was but a ruse, Ishbel,” Druse said, smiling at her. “Now, do what you must to tear this horror down and free all of us who remain trapped within its vileness.”
He nodded at the door and Ishbel saw that it was unmarked.
And that the key sat in the lock, as her mother had always left it.
So that we might escape the faster, my dear, her mother had always said, if there were a fire.
Ishbel squeezed Druse’s hand, then she stepped toward the door.
High above, she heard the One shout.
Ishbel turned the key, and opened the door.
She found herself deep within DarkGlass Mountain once again.
Maximilian paced back and forth on the banks of the glass river, staring at the pyramid. He was desperately worried. Ishbel had been inside the pyramid for hours, hours. What was she doing? The One had vanished inside, and the pyramid had suddenly quietened. The lights had died, the pyramid had sunk back into darkness. Maximilian could see it now only as a great triangular blackness rearing into the night sky, blotting out the stars.
What should he do? Go after her? What was happening?
“Ishbel?” he said.
Ishbel heard him, but could not respond. She could only hope that Maximilian would stay where he was. To try and enter DarkGlass Mountain now would be death for him.
She stood deep within the glass and stone pyramid. In actuality she knew she would be standing within solid rock, but wrapped in power as she was, it appeared to Ishbel as if she stood in a chamber composed of black glass. The chamber was filled with floor-to-ceiling columns which shifted constantly. These columns were so crowded together and moved so abruptly that Ishbel found herself constantly having to move to avoid being crushed.
It was if she were inside a gigantic puzzle.
Every now and then Ishbel caught sight of the stone she was after — the foundation stone of the pyramid, and the stone which, if broken, would begin the unwinding of the mathematical formula that had constructed the pyramid.
With the unwinding of that formula, so would the pyramid itself unwind and be destroyed into dust.
The stone sat about twenty paces away, its location revealed every so often by the movement of the black columns. Unlike the rest of the chamber, this stone looked very ordinary . . . just plain sandstone, marked here and there with the chisels of the slave stonemasons, and speckled with their blood.
Courage in the dance, Ishbel, the rat whispered, and Ishbel almost jumped, for she had forgotten its presence. Courage in the dance.
The One was here, too. Ishbel saw him from the corner of her eye moving to her right some distance away, hiding among the columns.
Then again, closer now.
Ishbel began to slip in and out of the columns, using her power and intuition to understand which way they might shift at any given moment. Now and again they brushed at her skin, and Ishbel felt them rasp away the very top layer of her flesh whenever they touched her.
If she emerged out of this, then she would emerge scraped and bloodied.
Ishbel tried to move closer to the foundation stone, but, oh, it was so difficult. The columns themselves shifted so that she was constantly cut off, while the One seemed to glide among them as if they were his friends.
As likely they were.
Ishbel kept moving, one eye on the One, one on the stone.
The One was silent now, his eyes keen on Ishbel, moving as smoothly as she.
Ishbel slipped behind one pillar, then another. She felt as if she were a thread in a weaver’s loom, being twisted this way and that, never proceeding forward, only ever sideways.
She moved again, ignoring the sudden scrape of pain along her left arm where a column had caught her.