The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake [382]
In their different ways the other two lamps, with their globe of sullen crimson and iceberg green, made within the orbits of their influence, arenas no less theatrical. The glazed and circular windows, dark as jet, were yet not featureless. Across the blind blackness of those flanking eyes the strands of rain which appeared not to move but to be stretched across the inky portholes like harp strings – these strands, these strings of water burned blue, beyond the glass, burned crimson, burned green, for the lamplight stained them. And in the stain was something serpentine – something poisonous, exotic, feverish and merciless; the colours were the colours of the sea-snake, and beyond the windows on either hand, was the long-drawn hiss of the reptilian rain.
And while Steerpike sped along this covered-way, the shadow that he cast changed colour. Sometimes it was before him as though eager to arrive at some rendezvous before the body of its caster; and sometimes it followed him, sliding at his heels, dogging him, changing its dark colour as it flowed.
With the isthmus behind him, and a continent of stone once more about him, a continent into whose fastnesses he moved the deeper with every step and with every breath he took, Steerpike banished from his mind every thought of the Twins and of their behaviour. His mind had been largely taken up with conjecture as to the cause of their insurrection, and with tentative plans for their disposal.
But there were matters more pressing and one matter in particular. With enviable ease he emptied his mind of their ladyships and filled it with Barquentine.
His shadow moved upon his right hand. It was climbing a staircase. It crossed a landing. It descended three steps. It followed for a short while at its maker’s heels and then overtook him. It was at his elbow when it suddenly deepened its tone and grew up the side of the wall until the shadow-head twelve feet above the ground, pursued its lofty way, the profile undulating from time to time, when it was forced to float across the murky webs that choked the junction of wall and ceiling.
And then the giant shade began to shrivel, and as it descended it moved a little forward of its caster, until finally it was a thick and stunted thing – a malformation, intangible, terrible, that led the way towards those rooms where its immediate journey could, for a little while, be ended.
THIRTY-NINE
Barquentine in his room sat with his withered leg drawn up to his chin. His hair, dirty as a fly-blown web, hung about his face, dry and lifeless. His skin, equally filthy, with its silted fissures, its cheese-like cracks and discolorations, was dry also – an arid terrain, dead it seemed, and waterless as the moon, and yet, at its centre those malignant lakes, his vile and brimming eyes.
Outside the broken window at the far end of the room lay stretched the stagnant waters of the moat.
He had been sitting there, his only leg drawn up to his face, his crutch leaning against the back of his chair, his hands clasped about his knee, a hank of his beard between his teeth – he had been sitting there, for over an hour. On the table before him at least a dozen books lay spread; books of ritual and precedence, books of cross-reference, ciphers and secret papers. But his eyes were not on them. No less ruthless for being out of focus and gleaming wetly in their dry sockets, they could not see that a shadow had entered the room – that intangible as air, yet graphic to a degree, it had reared itself against high tiers of books – books of all shapes and in every stage of dilapidation, that glimmered in the bad light save where this shadow lay athwart them, black as a shade from hell.
And while he sat there, what was he thinking of,