The House of Power

  Briney could take no more of this man insulting Maude and pointed a finger in Horace’s face.

  “Your Lord Phineus asked Mr. Ratikan to harvest the orange dust and to test it on us in the water, which he did. We were lucky enough to find it before it could be used against us, but I have no doubt Lord Phineus planned to poison the whole lot of us. It is you who tried to poison us. We have only tried to protect ourselves all along.”

  Horace didn’t exactly know how to respond. If what Briney said were true, everything was altered. He had never been told of such a plan. None of them had. Could Lord Phineus be so cruel?

  Maude got her wind back. “Why have you always been so stingy with the water? From what I can see of the Highlands, you’ve had all you could use for far too long.”

  This was a point Horace had trouble disputing even in the quiet of his own mind. He’d known for a long time that the Highlands enjoyed more water. Seeing the dryness in Tabletop first-hand had made him realize how truly miserly Lord Phineus had been.

  “The water is one of the reasons I’ve come,” said Horace, feeling as though he might have arrived at a point on which they could agree. “Lord Phineus has shut himself in the House of Power with his closest allies. He has plenty of food, for much of it is stored there. And he controls the flow of water from a secret place known only to him.”

  Horace looked across the table and couldn’t tell if Briney and Maude understood what he’d meant, so he repeated himself.

  “He’s locked the gate to the House of Power and he controls the only source of water from within,” Horace said again. “It would seem that Lord Phineus has turned against not only Tabletop, but the Highlands as well.”

  “How can he shut himself away like that?” asked Briney. “It’s not possible.”

  “You are wrong,” answered Horace. “The wall around his fortress is very high and well protected by his most dedicated guards.”

  “Who knows of this place where the water comes from?” asked Maude.

  “Only one—Lord Phineus. Once there were three, or so I’ve overheard from my post in the House of Power. Sir Philip—who passed in battle at the Village of Sheep today—and Sir William, who was lost a while back in an unfortunate accident. There is one other, Sir Emerik, who seems to have been left out of the loop, I imagine because he couldn’t be trusted, though he wields considerable power.”

  “Then we must get to Lord Phineus!” yelled Maude. “We must go to the House of Power and force him to make the water begin flowing again. And then we must kill them both—him and this Sir Emerik.”

  “That, I’m afraid, will be more difficult than you imagine,” said Horace. He rubbed his hands together, trying to decide how he should tell them.

  “I and those five men I brought with me are the only fighting men I know of who will help us. We will meet with resistance not only from the House of Power, but from a great many more men who don’t want anyone from Tabletop in the Highlands. Just because they can’t get into the House of Power doesn’t mean they will tolerate your entering into the Highlands.”

  “Can’t you talk to them? Convince them we only want the same thing they do?” asked Briney.

  “Do you want the same thing?” asked Horace. “Can you say you only want water? Can you say you do not also want to live in the Highlands as we do? And will you still give us food when you’re no longer forced to do so?”

  “He has a point,” said Maude. “I see it in the faces of almost everyone in the village. They want to go in. They don’t want to be ruled any longer.”

  The door to the inn flew open, and light poured into the room.

  “Briney? Maude?” It was Charles and Wallace from the other villages. They were both breathing heavily, as though they’d tried to run the entire distance between villages.

  “We’re here, Charles,” said Briney from the dark corner of the room. “What’s happened?”

  Charles had to catch his breath before he could speak. His voice was a thin, raspy whisper, and it was difficult to hear what he was trying to say. They pulled him and Wallace over to the table and set them down on a bench.

  “What is it, Charles?” asked Briney. Horace looked on with a mixture of concern and bewilderment.

  “Isabel,” murmured Charles. “She talked to a boy from the Highlands, a boy who knew Edgar from the grove. She made him tell her something before he escaped to his home. It’s happening again, only much worse this time!”

  Charles swallowed, wishing for a cup of water, but there was none to be had in the inn.

  “What’s happening? What do you mean?” asked Maude.

  Charles was so agitated by the news he hadn’t thought to use some discretion. But Wallace had been looking at Horace, half hidden in the shadows, since the moment he entered the inn.

  “Who is this man?” Wallace asked before Charles could go on.

  They all looked at one another, unsure of how to proceed, and then the ground began to move beneath them.

  Samuel and Isabel were hiding in the deepest part of the grove, sitting among the leaves and branches of a third-year tree.

  “The grove’s being neglected,” she said. “And there’s no water in the pool.”

  Samuel touched one of the wilting leaves.

  “Lord Phineus has turned off the water,” said Samuel.

  “I didn’t know he could do that.” Isabel was beginning to think Lord Phineus held even more power than she’d been led to believe.

  Samuel wasn’t sure if he should tell Isabel all that he knew. Growing up in the House of Power with a father who was part of the ruling class had exposed him to much more information than anyone realized. He had always been a secretive boy, especially once he had only his mother to trust. The thought of her in the House of Power alone, and his selfish act of leaving her, made him hope he could trust Isabel with one of the most important secrets of Atherton.

  “The way to control the water is hidden beneath the House of Power,” said Samuel. “It is known by only two.”

  “Who are the two?”

  Samuel kicked at the dirt, trying to form the words.

  “There used to be three men who knew how to control the water: Lord Phineus, Sir Philip, and my father. My father would never show it to me, but it didn’t matter.”

  “Why didn’t it matter?” She felt as though she were slowly pulling the story out of Samuel’s mouth on a string, bit by bit.

  “I know every nook and cranny of the House of Power. Nobody ever watched me.”

  He looked at Isabel until she caught his eye.

  “Besides Lord Phineus, I’m the only other person who knows where the source of water resides. It’s not an easy place to find, and it’s a scary place to go, but I know the way.”

  He paused and shook his head in frustration.

  “What?” asked Isabel.

  “To get to the water would require us to first get inside the House of Power.”

  “That shouldn’t be hard,” said Isabel. “We can tell my father and he’ll go there with a lot of men. Lord Phineus will have to listen to him.”

  Samuel almost smiled wryly at Isabel’s simple view of the challenge ahead. Of course, she had never encountered a fortress before, or any security more formidable than the guards who had strolled near Tabletop’s waterfalls and streams.

  “I don’t think it will be that easy,” said Samuel. “There is only one gate, and it’s heavily guarded. It’s surrounded by a wall that only Edgar could climb. It’s flat and smooth as water. If Lord Phineus doesn’t want people inside, he can easily keep them out. But there is one place we might get in….”

  Isabel waited, letting the words rest in the air, and then she pulled on the string once more.

  “Where is the place?”

  Samuel feared for his mother. The longer he sat in the tree the more he felt that he needed to return to her and make sure she was safe.

  “Isabel, if we’re to do this, we must go alone.”

  I
sabel began to protest, though she was secretly excited about the idea of entering the Highlands with someone who knew the way, free of her mother’s will. She imagined the adoration from the other children in the grove when the water would flow thick through the trees again and they would find out that it was Isabel who had made it happen.

  “We’re little, Isabel. We can hide more easily, especially once we’re inside the House of Power. I know many places where we can remain concealed, but they are small places. And there is a more sensible reason we must go alone as well.”

  “Why?” asked Isabel, though she was already touching her bag of black figs, wondering if she had enough of them for a perilous journey.

  “The hidden way into the House of Power is only big enough for us. An adult won’t fit.”

  And so it was decided that the two of them would go alone when night fell on the grove. Isabel would spend the late afternoon gathering food, water if she could find it, and the very best black figs. She had an extra bag in her room filled with figs dipped in orange dust, which she would also bring.

  As they plotted their journey, the feeling of the ground falling from under them came again, and the haunting groans from far away rippled through the air. It went on so long that finally Isabel rushed off to make her preparations with the tremors still afoot.

  After she was gone Samuel reflected upon some of the details he’d left out of his story, and he felt badly for not telling Isabel everything. But if he had, she might not have agreed to come, and he needed her skills with a sling to make the journey and reunite with his mother.

  There were two things he did not tell her in the tree. The first was how deep underground the source of water was and how perilous the way to it would be. But that wasn’t the most troubling part. He also hadn’t told her that even if they did find their way inside the House of Power and to the deep underground passage, it wouldn’t matter. For at the end there was a door that required a key only Lord Phineus possessed.

  CHAPTER

  31

  THE SPIRIT OF A BOY REMAINS

  “What do you think, Wallace?” asked Charles. “Shall we trust him or not?”

  Charles had finished telling Briney and Maude about the descent of Tabletop and the horrifying creatures they could expect to find in the Flatlands. The group of them had sent Horace outside to wait, and now they had to decide if he should be told.

  “Threats mounting on all sides,” Wallace muttered. “This changing world is a curse.”

  Wallace was a thinker and a waiter, less prone to action than the rest. And yet his quiet, philosophical way had a calming effect on people, as if they were his sheep and he were only trying to herd them in the right direction.

  “We don’t know what’s coming,” he continued. “The danger from the Flatlands is a mystery, but it sounds to me as though it threatens everyone.” He looked at the others and saw that they didn’t understand what he was driving at.

  “It would be unwise to wage war on two fronts if there is a chance we could wage one, together, against the greater foe.”

  There was a silence at the inn as each of them pondered the risks.

  “Could this boy from the Highlands have lied to Isabel, to scare her? Could Lord Phineus have sent him?”

  “She’s not easily tricked,” said Charles. “She came to me not with a rumor or a possible lie, but with the truth. She was convinced the boy came to warn us.”

  “And yet even the boy could be deceived, couldn’t he?” asked Briney. “This page from the secret book—it might be filled with lies.”

  They all listened to the deep moan of Tabletop slowly moving down. Eyebrows raised and chins nodded around the table as they silently agreed that some predictions from the page were already coming to pass. It would be foolish to expect a peaceful meeting with the Flatlands.

  “We trust this man at our own peril,” said Maude. She remained unconvinced. Horace, the secret book, and the boy could easily be part of an intricate deception by Lord Phineus. And yet, she grasped the wisdom Wallace had shared. How could they fight two enemies at once when they’d only just begun to understand how to fight at all? They were doomed to fail in both endeavors.

  “Who wants to bring Horace in and tell him what we know?” asked Charles. “Show of hands.”

  Wallace raised his hand almost before the words were said. Of them all, he was most certain they were on a precarious path. He had tasted battle and even victory, but in the hours that had passed after the fight, he had felt a terrible unease and a growing belief that in the end they would fail. Ongoing war was no place for a peaceful people, and it did not suit him.

  Charles was next to vote in favor. Then Briney looked at Maude as if to say he would not raise his hand if she did not want him to. His heart was torn between his devotion to her and his hope to work with the Highlands instead of against them. He was very pleased when Maude sighed deeply and raised her hand.

  “Wallace, you do the talking,” said Maude. She was determined to force some part of her will on this table full of men. “The men he leads fought in your village and lost friends to its clubs, and the trust must come between the two of you if I am to be convinced.”

  Once Horace had settled back onto the bench where he had been seated before, he looked nervously at the faces before him, wondering why no one spoke. Wallace relished the silence in the room, but it clearly made Horace uncomfortable.

  “Tabletop feels like it’s moving,” remarked Horace, as if to break the ice. “I wonder what it means.”

  Still not a word from the group at the table. Horace was not a rash person prone to babble in order to fill an empty space, and said no more. Charles nudged Wallace on the shoulder, thinking maybe the man had nodded off to sleep, but Wallace was not sleeping. He was waiting for the right words to come to him, something very few people are apt to do in times of tension.

  Wallace looked intently at the man before him. The heavy jowls told him Horace had eaten too much for too long. In his eyes he felt the man’s exhaustion and worry, the worry of a father.

  “You have a wife and children,” said Wallace, breaking the silence. “I have only my sheep, but they mean as much to me as anything I’ve ever known.”

  Another silence ensued in which Horace thought of the sheep his five men had probably trampled over with their horses. My child is safe, for the moment, but some in this man’s care have perished before their time.

  “Your men fought well,” said Wallace, folding his hands on the table.

  “From the looks of things, so did you,” said Horace, thinking of the many fallen men from the Highlands.

  “No, that’s actually not true. I don’t know how to fight well. We don’t know how to fight well.” Wallace glanced at his friends. “We were very lucky. Briney has told us you have your doubts about Lord Phineus. We haven’t any doubts at all. History tells us he will use his power to control us, but we have some hope that your visit is a sign that not all in the Highlands feel as he does.”

  “Your hopes are well founded,” said Horace. “I don’t claim that everyone in the Highlands feels as I do, but there are some. How many, I can’t say.”

  “We have a new enemy, one that might bring our two peoples together.”

  Horace was baffled by the comment. “You mean Lord Phineus?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid he is only part of our problem, the rest of which I should like to ask Charles to explain to you.”

  Charles was about to begin when Wallace touched him on the arm, prompting him to wait a moment more.

  “Horace, I’m sorry for the loss of your friends in my village. I would have wished for another outcome.”

  Horace felt the sincerity of the words. He wanted to tell Wallace he too was sorry for a great many things, but he seemed unable to get started. Wallace nodded, seeming to understand what the man felt without hearing the words.

  It took only a few minutes for Charles to tell Horace everything he knew from Isabel and her myst
erious visitor about the fearsome creatures in Tabletop. In the telling, Horace began to realize that it might be Samuel who’d come to the grove with the news. The thought of it was worrisome, for he had some paternal feelings toward the boy. But Horace was a man of action and wasted no time shifting his thoughts to the peril at hand, as if he were trained for just such an encounter.

  “We should send someone to the edge as quickly as we can. We need to know how close we are to the bottom. Soon enough these creatures, whatever they are, will be close enough to see. We must know our enemy.”

  “I’ll go,” said Maude. “And I’ll bring Morris and Amanda with me. The three of us can be back here before dark with news.”

  She didn’t wait for an answer from the rest, and Briney knew his place was at the inn, overseeing the village. He was glad she’d thought of bringing someone with her. For the time being he wanted her as far away from the Highlands as possible, at least until Tabletop had descended closer to the Flatlands.

  After Maude left the inn, Horace was the first to speak.

  “She’s a strong one,” he commented.

  “You have no idea,” said Briney. The four men smiled and together began discussing how they would begin to prepare for a day when Atherton would be flat. It was a short conversation, for their mouths were growing parched and sticky, and they began to realize they would have to conserve their energy.

  Horace rose to go, and the rest of the men followed him out. They stood at the front of the inn.

  “I will leave a man in the woods, just there,” said Horace, pointing to where his men were awaiting his return. “When Maude returns with news, you must go to him. He will find me. If we’ve come near the bottom and there is a threat as the boy said, I’ll go directly to the House of Power and try to convince Lord Phineus we must fight them together.”