“Yes—no—I know—I didn’t—” Karah stuttered to a confused halt. Nemienne wanted to pinch her. Couldn’t her sister put a reasonable sentence together?
“Well?” said Leilis, sternly.
Nemienne did pinch Karah on the arm, but gently. Karah gave her a flashing look of mingled affection and exasperation, but she also took the time for a deep breath. When she answered Leilis, she spoke steadily, although not actually very sensibly. “I didn’t slip out. I wouldn’t do that, Leilis! I heard music and I woke up in the dark, under the mountains, Nemienne said, and at first I thought I was dreaming, but I wasn’t. Nemienne was there, and we—there was—well, Nemienne brought us out.” She left out the dragon. Nemienne understood: That great carven monster did not lend itself to any kind of casual description.
Karah finished her abbreviated account by giving the fireplace behind them a doubtful look. “I don’t know why we came back through your fireplace.”
“It’s an interesting fireplace,” Nemienne said, realizing this was true. She turned to give it a more careful examination. “It’s deeper than it looks, isn’t it? And that white stone it’s made of, that’s not ordinary quarry stone.” In fact… in fact, Nemienne rather thought that that stone had been carved out of the depths of some deep cavern at the heart of a mountain. The cracks in the hearthstones looked odd, too: strangely precise, almost like—well, like—she could not quite remember what those jagged lines reminded her of. She wanted to crouch down by the hearth and trace those lines, make them familiar to the tips of her fingertips in the hopes that this would shake loose her memory. But Leilis didn’t look like the sort of woman who would be patient with any such examination.
The woman tapped her foot. “The dark under the mountains,” she repeated, her voice edged with sarcasm.
“Yes!” said Karah.
“Yes,” said Nemienne, wondering how anyone could possibly doubt her sister’s obvious sincerity. “Really. Or how do you think we got into your fireplace? Surely people don’t spring out of it every morning.”
To Nemienne’s surprise, Leilis’s mouth crooked at this bit of impudence. “Not every morning,” she admitted. “Bespelled under the mountains by music! I suppose Lily hired a bit of odd spellwork from some dock mage. How very creative of her.”
“Lily?” Nemienne asked.
But Leilis only shook her head, impatient and wary and dismissive all at once. “Never mind. I’ll speak to her. In the meantime…” She looked the girls up and down and then shook her head again. “You,” she said to Karah, “need a bath! You won’t have time for sleep now, not before you’re supposed to be up properly, which only punishes you as you deserve for springing out of my fireplace and frightening me to death. Go tell Rue you are back even before you bathe!”
“Yes, Leilis.” Karah slipped away in immediate obedience.
Nemienne didn’t think Leilis looked much like she had ever been frightened by anything. Despite her youth and her plain room, she was obviously someone important in Cloisonné House. So, although Nemienne wanted to ask again about this Lily who might have bought a spell to throw Karah into the dark, she held her tongue.
“Now, you are no one Lily has ever heard of,” Leilis said to her. “You’re the sister who was apprenticed to Mage Ankennes, of course? Yes. You must have a bath, too, but first I want you to tell me again, in a little more detail, if you please, where and how you found your sister.” She sat down on the bed and looked at Nemienne expectantly.
Since there was nowhere else to sit, Nemienne folded up her legs and sat down on the hearth. She surreptitiously traced a fingertip along one of the cracks that ran through the hearthstones while trying to decide what to tell this woman. The odd resonance the fireplace produced was much stronger along the crack. There was a sort of half-felt draft of cool air through the fissure, as though the great caverns beneath the mountain lay only the width of this stone away… which they did, in a way. Cloisonné House was a house of shadows, no less than Mage Ankennes’s house, Nemienne realized. She wondered who had originally built this house and laid the stones for this fireplace…
Leilis made a small, impatient sound.
Nemienne, recalled to the moment, explained hastily, “Karah said she heard music and found herself in the dark. So did I. I dreamed of piping in the dark and woke up under the mountain. It was… well, it was… I don’t know if a dock mage would know about that place, or how to make a spell that would take you there.” This in fact seemed very unlikely. Nemienne frowned, thinking about it.