5
In the House, away from my enemy, I find solace for a time. Grief, loss, pain melt away. I wonder if they cannot exist inside these walls.
The weight of my spear in the holster beneath my arm is back, heavy against my side. Like V’lane, Darroc has some way of taking it from me, but when we are apart he returns it. Perhaps so I can defend myself. I can’t imagine needing to in a place such as this.
There has never been and will never be another place in any realm, in any dimension, that holds me in such thrall as the White Mansion. Not even the bookstore competes for dominance in my soul.
The House is mesmerizing. If, deep down inside where I feel psychotic, I am angered by this, I’m too lulled by whatever drug it feeds me to focus on it for long.
I wander the rose-floored corridor, absorbing it in a dreamy daze. Windows line the right side of the hall, and, beyond the crystal-edged panes, dawn blushes over gardens filled with pink roses, wreathed heads nodding sleepily in the gentle morning breeze.
The rooms that open off this corridor are decorated in hues of morning sky. The colors of the hall, the day beyond, and the rooms complement one another perfectly, as if, from every angle, this wing was designed as an outfit, flawlessly accessorized, to be donned depending on the mood.
When the rose floor ends and a sudden turn in the corridor sets me on a lavender path, violet dusk clings to the windows. Nocturnal creatures frolic in a forest glade beneath a moon rimmed with brilliant cerulean. The rooms in this corridor are furnished in shades of twilight.
Yellow and reflective floors open onto sunny days and sunnier rooms.
Bronze corridors have no windows, only tall arched doors that lead into enormous, high-ceilinged, kingly rooms—some for dining, some filled with books and comfortable chairs, others for dancing, and still more for what I think are forms of entertainment I don’t understand. I imagine I hear echoes of laughter. Lit by candles, the rooms off bronze corridors are masculine and smell of spice. I find the scent intoxicating, disturbing.
I walk and walk, looking into this room and that, delighted by the things I find, the things I recognize. In this place, every hour of day and night is always available.
I have been here many times before.
There’s the piano I played.
Here is the sunroom where I sat and read.
There’s the kitchen where I ate truffles smothered in cream and filled with delicate fruits that don’t exist in our world.
Here, a flute lies on a table, beside an open book, next to a teapot decorated with a pattern as familiar to me as the back of my own hand.
There’s the rooftop garden, high atop a turret where I’ve gazed through a telescope at an azure sea.
Here, a library of endless rows of books, where I’ve passed time uncounted.
Each room is a study in beauty, each item in it adorned with intricate detail, as if its creator had infinity in which to work.
I wonder how long the concubine was here. I wonder how much of this house is her creation.
I taste forever in this place, but, unlike in the Hall of All Days, forever here is exquisite, gentle. The House promises a blissful eternity. It does not terrify or cow. The House is time as it was meant to be: endless, serene.
Here—a room of thousands of gowns! I dash through row after row, my arms spread wide, my hands fanning the fabulous fabrics. I love these gowns!
I pluck one from its hanger and spin around, dancing with it. Faint strains of music drift upon the air and I lose track of time.
Here’s a curio cabinet housing items I cannot name but nonetheless recognize. I pocket a few of the smaller trinkets. I open a music box and listen to a song that makes me feel I am drifting in space, enormous and free, more right in my skin than I’ve ever been, poised on the brink of all possibles. I forget everything for a time, lost in joy that is larger than the mansion itself.
In room after room, I find something familiar, something that makes me happy.
I see the first of many beds. As in my dreams, there are so many that I lose count after a time.
I wander sumptuous room after room, see bed after bed. Some of the rooms have nothing but beds.
I begin to feel … uneasy. I don’t like looking at these beds.
The beds disturb me.
I turn my head away, because they make me feel things I don’t want to feel.
Need. Desire. Alone.
Empty beds.
Don’t want to be alone anymore. So tired of being alone. Tired of waiting.
After a time, I stop looking in the rooms.
I was wrong when I thought it might not be possible to feel negative things inside the White Mansion.
Grief wells up inside me.
I’ve lived so long. Lost so many things.
I force myself to focus. I remind myself that I’m supposed to be looking for something. A mirror.
I love that mirror.
I shake my head. No, I don’t. I just need it. I don’t have any emotions about it!
It brings me such pleasure! It brings us together.
White marble, Darroc said. I need to find white-marble floors. Not crimson, not bronze, not pink, and especially not black.
I envision the mirror as he described it: ten feet tall, five feet wide.
Gilt-framed, like the ones at 1247 LaRuhe.