Sanford opened his eyes. He got to his feet. If something was possible, Sanford could do it, couldn’t he? He’d even been known to do impossible things, after all. Was that hubris again? Well, what of it? He’d already hit rock bottom, quite literally. Pride goeth before the fall, yes, but now that he’d fallen, what harm could pride do him? Or not even pride. Call it… clear-eyed self-regard. Sanford had recently come up hard against the limits of his capabilities, and now he had to admit that he had limitations. But that didn’t mean he lacked all resources. Just because he couldn’t do everything didn’t mean he couldn’t do anything.

  It was best to keep moving, anyway, and trying, even if he ended in failure, doomed to wander this bleak place forever. The alternative, after all, was to sit down and become a ruin himself. His despair sang a siren song tempting him toward that option… but there was more than despair within him. There was fury, too, and spite, and resentment, or at least their smoldering embers, and he could feed those, turn them into roaring flames, and let those ill feelings heat the engine of his revenge. Yes! It was something to do, anyway; trying was something to do.

  Sanford spat on Tillinghast’s sigil, and then followed the wall, trailing his hand against the stone as he went, leaving a line of wiped-away dust, until he reached an opening big enough to step through, and did.

  Beyond the wall, there was a lake, deep and dark and vast, so large it might almost have been an inland sea.

  But Sanford knew it was a lake, and not a sea, because, with his mind lit by anger, he could suddenly see the title of that book in his library, written in silver on black:

  The Doom That Came to Sarnath

  Yes! The book was a slim monograph, describing a vision experienced by some lunatic or sage (or both). It told of a great city built on the shores of an immense lake, with walls of chiseled marble that stood four-hundred-and-fifty feet high, with streets of onyx and granite, filled with temples and gardens, and palaces dotted with ornamental ponds. But that city was built upon a crime, for the earliest denizens had slaughtered the peaceful, intelligent inhuman creatures who lived in the lake, in order to claim the land as their own. After a thousand years of prosperity, a terrible mist rose from the lake, and the city was destroyed utterly in a night, and none of its denizens ever seen again. When he read that book, Sanford had thought it nothing more than another “lost city of Atlantis” variation.

  But he was here. This was ruined Sarnath. Except… that couldn’t be, could it? According to the text, travelers from nearby lands who’d tried to visit the city reported that nothing of it remained, not even a single stone. Where the city had stood, there was only a vast marsh, populated by water lizards. There was no rubble, no ruin, and no sign of the city that had been. Then was this… the place where the ruins had gone? But where could that be?

  Some creature scurried past on the edge of the lake – like a rat, but the size of a cat, and when it looked at him, it had a mass of feelers on its face, a bit like a star-nosed mole, but these were wriggling, and far more numerous. The thing looked at him with at least as much intelligence as a cat possessed, but something about its gaze was considerably more malign, which was saying something. It scurried away, and that’s when the penny dropped for Sanford.

  He’d read about those creatures, too. He couldn’t remember what they were called, but they’d infested an enchanted wood before being driven away by the populace of a nearby city in the Dreamlands, and apparently some of them had ended up here, on the shores of this vile lake. This wasn’t Sarnath, or at least, not exactly. This was the dream of Sarnath – the half-remembered specter of the fallen city.

  Sanford was in the Dreamlands.

  He’d read extensively about this world, or collection of worlds. It was supposed to be unimaginably vast, and wondrous, full of strange and dangerous cities, and wise and generous denizens, and vice versa. The Dreamlands were in a space beyond space, in a time beyond time. Visitors had returned with tales of the city of Ulthar, where cats were sacred; the tourmaline spires of Celephaïs; the yellow wooded slopes of Mount Aran; the icy heights of Kadath; the insidious depths of the Underworld…

  Sanford had even tried to reach the Dreamlands, in his lucid dreaming sessions, as some were reputed to do, but he’d never found a portal. He didn’t have the knack. Some people could visit this realm naturally, especially as children, just as some people possessed the natural ability to see the unseen, or glimpse the future, but Sanford did not have their gifts. There were relics that could let you visit this place in your sleep – he’d spent many years tracking rumors of one in particular, a silver key, and had become so enamored of the legend that he’d even named his personal boat the Silver Key. He’d never found the key, though, or successfully found entry to the Dreamlands, though he’d spoken to people who claimed they’d been.

  Now he was here, which might have been thrilling, under other circumstances, except that he’d wanted to come here in his sleep, sending his mind and soul to explore, while his body was safe in bed! Tillinghast had contrived to send him here in his physical body, which was infinitely more dangerous.

  Sanford knew where he was now, though. The nature of the Dreamlands was elusive, the magic wild and unpredictable, but there were connections between this world and his own, and if he could find one, he could return, and take his revenge on Tillinghast for trying to strand him here. Time was said to move differently here, that you could spend weeks or months exploring the Dreamlands, and wake to find only a night had passed on Earth. But there were other stories, of people who spent a single night here, and woke to find they’d been asleep on a hillside for a hundred years, and that the world had moved on. Who knew how time worked when he was here in his physical form?

  “Nothing to be done about that,” he told the air. “I can’t worry about things I can’t control. I must focus on those things I can.”

  He walked along the edge of the lake, looking for some sign of anything, really, and finally saw a distant golden sparkle, in the sky. Were there cities in the clouds here, or was it a temple on a mountaintop? Either way, it was a destination, and he sorely needed one of those.

  Sanford squelched along the muddy shore, wishing he’d worn boots today instead of his loafers. If he could sail across the lake he could reach the golden city, or whatever it was, faster, but his Silver Key was in its boathouse back in Arkham, and there were no helpful ferrymen in the vicinity. He’d have to circumnavigate the bleak body of water, then.

  Something stirred in the water, and he paused, watching. What sort of things would swim in the dream of a lake? Probably nothing pleasant.

  That thought was confirmed when a figure rose from the lapping waves and stepped onto the shore. It was humanoid, but with something of the fish about it – like a Deep One, but with a different shape to its frilled head, and a different slouch to its body. The creature was translucent, as if made of icy fog, the edges of its form seeming to swirl, as if it could barely hold onto its consistency.

  “Hello,” Sanford said, just in case it could speak. He’d interacted with strange entities before but usually on his own terms with the creatures confined to a summoning circle. To encounter one in the wild was more disconcerting, but he resolved to show no fear.

  Others rose from the waves, too, and joined the first, standing as if in a choir. They were more toadlike or lizardlike than fishlike, now that he had more of them to observe. Drat it all, hadn’t the book talked about these creatures, too? The… denizens of Ib, was it? These were the semiaquatic beings who’d been exterminated by the founders of doomed Sarnath – or they once had been. Their ghosts had risen after a thousand years and laid waste to Sarnath, killing or spiriting away all its people… and now they were looking at him.

  “I’m not from Sarnath,” Sanford called. Was there a language barrier in the Dreamlands? “I’m just passing through. Do you happen to know of a way back to Earth?” They stared at him, faces expressionless, not that he could have reliably read the expressions of the ghosts of a horrible species of toad-monsters anyway. “Failing that, do you know what that golden thing is, over there?” They turned their heads to follow his pointing hand, which gave him a moment’s hope, but then they turned their faces back to him, without answering. “Well, then, sorry to have troubled you. I’ll just be moving on.”

  The Beings of Ib stepped closer, their spectral feet not quite touching the mud. They were murmuring, now, and though he couldn’t make out the words, he was nearly certain they were angry murmurs. He was not defenseless; he did have weapons on his person. The eel pin on his tie would make short work of this lot… but he could only use that once, and was this threat serious enough? Moreover, these creatures were spectral, which meant the eel might not even faze them.

  One of them came closer and spoke, slowly, in words that Sanford could understand. “Tilling… ghast… sends… his… regards…”

  This was a welcoming party from his enemy, then. It was almost flattering, wasn’t it? Tillinghast wasn’t comfortable merely exiling Sanford. He had to exile him and then kill him. Well, the shopkeeper had a better chance at assassinating him here, that was for sure. It would be difficult in the extreme to kill Sanford in Arkham, the seat of his power, surrounded by a thousand safeguards he’d redoubled after his close call with the Cult of Asterias. He smiled a little at the thought of Tillinghast encountering some of those safeguards soon when he tried to take over the Lodge. Various grim precautions had activated automatically the moment Sanford left the boundaries of Arkham.

  Pleasant daydreams had to be put aside for unpleasant realities. “Tilling… what? I’m afraid I don’t know the fellow. You’ve confused me with someone else. No harm done. I’ll go my way, and you’ll go yours.”

  The denizens of Ib extended their dripping hands, and some of them held blades. The blades were translucent, too, just like their wielders, but he had no doubt they were sharp enough to cut him anyway.

  Sanford didn’t want to turn and run – nothing made a monster chase you more than running from it – but sometimes your choices were limited, and you did what you must. He spun and tore off through the Dreamlands, away from the lake, and into the dark emptiness beyond.

  The things chasing him howled the name of his enemy as they came.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Retainers Assemble

  “You told me about a magic mirror that reveals truth?” Gloria said. “We can use that to navigate this maze he’s made, can’t we?” She glared at the white plaster wall of a dead-end corridor on the first level of the basement.

  “The mirror is probably behind this wall somewhere,” Altman said. “I certainly don’t know where.”

  Gloria paced back and forth. “Axes and sledgehammers, then. The rest of the basements must still exist back there. Let’s just smash our way through.”

  “It’s not like Sanford sent a carpenter to build this wall,” Ruby said. “He did something magical to rearrange the layout. Smash through the wall, and you could end up breaking through into a tunnel full of ghouls, or, I don’t know, a void. I really wouldn’t recommend it.”

  “Did you say ghouls?” Gloria shook her head, seemingly more amused than distressed. “This job gets stranger and stranger.”

  Ruby was amazed at the woman’s equanimity, but could see why Tillinghast depended on her. Still, Ruby wondered how unflappable Gloria would be down in the tunnels beneath the hill, with pale arms reaching out from the darkness. Maybe she’d have the chance to find out. She didn’t relish the idea.

  Gloria crossed her arms. “Listen, you two. This is simply unacceptable. We need to get into the basements – the deep basements. My employer does not like failure. Surely someone besides Sanford is capable of figuring out how to defeat this magic?”

  “The warden, probably.” Ruby didn’t particularly want to help, not after Tillinghast’s threats, but she’d hitched herself to the vile man’s wagon, and she supposed she’d better start pulling. “She has a deep connection to the Lodge, the grounds, and the building, and if anyone can navigate her way through whatever trick Sanford pulled, it would be her.”

  “Then let’s summon her,” Gloria said. “Isn’t she always lurking about?”

  “Sanford caught her… or, her doppelganger, I suppose… in the city,” Altman said. “He found out she was working with you, and stole her necklace, and locked her up in a cell.” He rapped his knuckles against the wall. “Somewhere on the other side of this. So, it’s the same problem with the mirror.”

  “The Scholar might know something,” Ruby said. “But she’s back there, too.”

  Gloria closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths, then smiled. “I am here in a supervisory capacity. You two are the ditch-diggers and water-haulers. I have identified the problem. You two will solve that problem. Or should I interrupt Mr Tillinghast and tell him to come here personally?”

  Ruby thought of an eternity in null-time and said, “No, no, we’ll figure it out.”

  Gloria clapped her hands. “Wonderful. Don’t take too long. I wonder if there are any little cakes in the kitchen?” She wandered off.

  Ruby and Altman leaned against the wall, side by side. I guess you take whatever allies you can get, she thought.

  “Well?” he said. “Any ideas?”

  “No useful ones. The best idea I’ve had all day is putting my feet in a tub of hot water with Epsom salt. It’s after midnight, and I’ve done a lot of walking, and the dogs are barking–” She snapped her mouth shut, stared at Altman, and then laughed aloud. “The dogs!” She rushed away from him, through the short corridors and up toward the surface.

  “What about the dogs?” Altman called, pursuing her.

  He caught up with her outside, where Ruby was standing on the path, calling, “Here, boy! Or girl. Or… here, hound!” She whistled sharply and slapped her hands on her thighs.

  “They’re not really dogs, exactly, I don’t think,” Altman began, but Ruby shushed him, and whistled again.

  The grasses parted, and a single black hound slouched toward them, and looked at Ruby, head cocked sideways. “The warden sees what you see, doesn’t she?” Ruby said.

  The dog did nothing to confirm or deny that assertion.

  Ruby sighed. “Warden, look. If you can hear me. Sanford is out. It’s a new era. Tillinghast is taking over. Altman and I… we’re on his payroll, too, just like you, and probably for similar reasons.” Greed, resentment, fear… there were lots of reasons. “But Sanford did something before Tillinghast booted him out of the Lodge. He changed the whole layout in the basements, and now it’s just hallways that don’t go anywhere, and we can’t reach the deeper levels at all. You’re down there somewhere, but we can’t find you. If we could find you, then we could let you out, and Tillinghast would be happy, and maybe then we could get some actual sleep. I don’t know if you sleep, but I sure do.”

  The hound trotted past her toward the Lodge, and in through the front door, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world, though Ruby had never seen the dogs beyond the threshold. She whooped and chased after the dog. Altman followed after her, shaking his head and muttering.

  “The dog is probably just going to the kitchen to beg for scraps,” Altman said.

  “Have a little faith,” Ruby said. “You’re talking about woman’s best friend there. Or at least the warden’s best friend.”

  They followed the dog into the dining room, where Gloria was nibbling at a piece of cake while a tired-looking Initiate stood awkwardly at her shoulder, holding a coffee pot by the handle. “Nice doggie!” Gloria said. “What a good puppy. I see what you’re thinking, Ruby. Good idea. Let me know if it works.”

  “How do you know it wasn’t my idea?” Altman grumbled.

  “Women’s intuition,” Gloria said, and gave Ruby a wink.

  The hound led them through the old servants’ quarters, to a pantry that hid an entrance to the basements. It trotted down the stairs, and they followed. “Just like hunting boar, probably, huh, Altman?” Ruby said.

  “Boar wasn’t a thing I hunted,” he said. “Following a dog seems like a good way to find a rotting animal carcass, and not much else. Except a lady dog in heat, maybe.”

  “There’s some bloodhound in this breed. I can see it.” Ruby followed the dog as it went down one hall, to a dead end… and then backtracked to go down another hall… and then returned to the first one… and then backtracked to go down a different hall.

  “This is pointless,” Altman said. “This animal is stupider than those mice that run mazes. We’re going to the same places over and over again!”

  The hound did, indeed, lead them back to the first hall, for their third visit, but this time, instead of a blank white wall, there was a blank white wall with a door in the middle of it. Ruby almost reached down to pat the dog on the head, but settled for saying, “Good girl!” She turned to Altman. “Do you see? It’s a trick with space. You have to follow a certain path in a certain way, and then the opening appears! I knew Sanford wouldn’t seal things up forever with no way in. He likes all the little treasures he has stashed away too much.” She opened the door, which led to another corridor, and this one had familiar scuff marks on the walls. “Did Sanford lock up the warden in the same cell where he locked me up that time?”

  “How should I know where he locked you up?” Altman said. “Before my time.”

  “I bet he did. It’s his favorite, because it’s the smallest, and there’s blood on the wall, and it smells of rat shit.” She went down the hall, first following the placidly walking dog, then surging ahead as she neared her destination.

  Ruby looked through the grate near the top of the cell door and grinned. Sarah Van Shaw was there, staring at her, standing perfectly upright. “Hello, warden. How’d you like to get out of there?”

  “No one has ever cared much what I like,” she said. “But I’d rather be elsewhere, yes. You two are in league with Tillinghast, then?”