Chapter Eleven #2
Instinctively, I opened my eyes, surveying my surroundings.
The area of Fortblanche I was in now seemed older than the rest of it, the halls draftier and less adorned.
Specifically, the room I was currently standing in looked to be a spinning room, closed up for the night.
I knew the majority of Weaver lines spun their magesilk on their own properties, though I’d never witnessed such a space up close before.
Around me, a half dozen or so spinning wheels were positioned around the room, still and dormant now without artisans to operate them.
The walls were studded with wooden pegs at about head-height, designed, I assumed, to display the wheels’ finished product: magesilk, freshly spun and ripe for the wielding. Yet, where was it?
Without thinking, I crossed to the wheel nearest me, nudging its top spoke with the tip of my finger.
The instrument creaked to life, rolling a few inches forward on its axis before idly coming to a stop again.
At its movement, a powdery substance shuddered from the wood, clinging to my finger when I lifted it away. Dust?
I let my hand drop to my side. So long as silkwitch hair was harvested while its bearer retained her magic, it could be preserved for years, even after its original owner had aged out of her gift.
I was aware that Bastian’s wife had died of illness years ago, her magic having left her long before that, but still—had the Weaver King’s famous stores truly run so low?
It would explain, at least partially, the pageantry around the remaining unwed Alaire’s—Noé’s—marriage.
Part of why the marriage edicts were so beneficial to all parties: the more silkwitches wed to Weaver sons, the more of our hair to spin on their wheels, and the more money to be made.
Absentmindedly, I cast my gaze farther along the wall, examining the even procession of pegs hammered into the stone.
In the filmy moonlight, it was easy to imagine them full.
I pictured it: sheaves of magesilk draped over them like newly harvested wheat, as smooth as silk and as luminous as a whetted blade.
With the amount of raw silkwitch hair needed to produce the material, even a few strands would amount to a fortune.
I shook my head. I had come here for a secret, not to scrutinize the Weaver King’s magesilk reserves. In truth, whether the Alaire stockpile was low or not, it mattered little; with Noé preparing to marry, the family’s future was as good as assured.
Soon, a new girl would come along and fill their stores back up.
Turning, I focused back on the task at hand—identifying the source of the strange, formless door I’d noticed—but no matter where I looked, I found nothing.
Around me, the room watched on, shadowed and silent save for the howl of the wind against the single lancet window, the silver glaze of the moon.
Then: My gaze snagged on a drooping tapestry along the back wall, half slid off its rod, its once-vibrant stitching frayed and dull.
It was too dark to make out whatever faded scene the art depicted, but as I watched, the bottom corner of the tapestry shifted, lifting from the floor as if pushed by a slight breeze.
Except, the window was shut. There was no breeze—at least not here.
Apprehensive, I threaded my way between the rows of spinning wheels and crossed to the tapestry, taking one edge of it in hand.
A gust of cool air kissed my knuckles where I held the fabric, like the breath of a creature hidden just out of sight—waiting for me to pull the heavy cloth back farther and set it free.
I gave a harsh tug. The tapestry slipped off its rod, collapsing on the ground with a thump like the fall of a body.
In the place where it had hung was the missing door.
Unlike the rest of its kin standing throughout the house, this door was carved not of wood but of stone, the same rough granite blocks that made up most of Fortblanche.
It sank into the wall surrounding it, lacking a clear doorframe or knob, camouflaged completely except for its left edge, which was cracked open.
A thin stream of wind escaped the shadowed gap, carrying with it a stale, earthen scent: wet stone and stagnant water, a bite of dried salt.
Past it, I could make out only darkness, hanging as thick as the velvet drape over the door.
My flesh grew clammy as I peered into the gloom.
What kind of space lay behind this doorway?
Why had its entrance been disguised under a tapestry, hidden in the dank recesses of Fortblanche like an unpleasant memory, shoved to the back of one’s head to decay?
Why was it open?
Intrigued, I took a step forward, pushing the door farther inward.
In the limited moonlight filtering in from the window behind me, I could make out the start of a staircase past the threshold, carved from solid rock just as the door was and extending into the gloom.
Beyond the fourth or fifth step, darkness yawned.
The murk was so dense it was almost tangible, as if I could reach out and cup it in my palm.
I lingered at the entrance for another second, locked in an internal debate. Then, almost without my conscious decision, I was moving, the dark parting around me, wrapping me in its folds like a cloak.
I felt, more than saw, the steep drop of the first stair beneath me.
Extending a hand to the side, I fumbled in the blackness until my fingertips met a wall—mossy, slick with moisture—and balanced myself against it, easing into the dimness step by careful step.
The passageway was narrow, the temperature plunging the farther down I went.
Darkness lapped against my skin and poked curious fingers into my ears and nose, slippery and inquisitive, as if it had not been disturbed for some time.
Without my sight to ground me, time seemed to bend, unfurling lethargically like a dog arching its back.
I did not know if I’d been walking for an hour or barely a quarter of one before I reached the bottom of the underground staircase.
Eventually, though, the floor leveled out, flattening to a pathway for me to follow.
I hadn’t brought a lamp with me when departing my room, and I regretted my decision now; ahead, the gloom was so complete, it appeared dimensionless, as flat as a wall.
I walked onward, flinching as, only a short while later, a globe of pale light flickered suddenly into being ahead of me.
I tensed until I realized that it was an old Woven lamp affixed to the wall overhead, its glass filmy with dirt, its self-lighting enchantment still sparking feebly away inside.
It must have been magicked to respond to my approaching presence, activating only when a figure drew near, like a servant leaping to attention. Clever.
In the wan pool of illumination it cast, I could see, for the first time, a bit of my surroundings.
I was standing just past the threshold of an open archway at least twice my height, which fed out into what looked to be an atrium of some kind.
A stone cavern, its soaring ceiling vanishing into the darkness high above.
Set into its crumbling walls, seven more archways were spaced at even intervals around the room, leading to what looked like seven additional passageways.
More tunnels? I couldn’t see where they led; the Woven lamps positioned above each passage, similar to the one shining down on me, were dim without a nearby presence to trigger their enchantment.
Compared to the overt grandeur of Fortblanche’s terraces and ballrooms, the atrium’s design was spare, bordering on primitive—yet even so, there was no denying that the space had been shaped by human hands.
Had I found my way into an ancient section of the dwelling, long since buried over like a skeleton in a tomb?
I couldn’t claim to be an expert on Alaire history, but I did know Fortblanche was an old house; perhaps this underground realm was a casualty of Noé’s ancestors’ redecorating efforts, just another artifact lost in the turning of the generations.
I rubbed at my arms as a draft blew past me from the center of the atrium, then froze.
A foot or so ahead of me, a strip of ivory was fluttering on the ground—like a pale moth struck down and thrashing on the gray stone.
My vision focused; I leaned over, un-snagging the object from where it had caught on the granite.
It was a scrap of lace, worn and scratchy against my fingers. I traced its scalloped edges thoughtfully, frowning. The fabric, while torn, was clean and un-yellowed, as if it had been freshly ripped from whatever garment it’d originally been attached to.
Closing my fist around the scrap of cloth, I thought back to the door I’d passed through back in the workroom: open, like a hand beckoning me in. Was it possible that I wasn’t the first maiden to venture into these tunnels tonight?
Clack. A noise like the skip of a pebble echoed through the atrium, catching my attention. My head snapped forward, my gaze traveling instinctively to the open archway directly across from me, where I half expected the form of another silkwitch to be staring back at me through the murk.
But the space beneath the opposite arch was empty, the Woven lamp unlit, its glass the foggy, dead white of an old man’s eye.