Castle

by Garth Nix

  He managed to get his belt around the ladder. Then a final cautious thought made him slip the chain with the Sunstone over his head. For an instant it seemed certain he would drop it, before his shadowguard helped his trembling hand push it into the secret pocket inside his sleeve.

  Then he passed out, only his broad Selski-hide belt looped through the ladder preventing him from falling.

  Milla lasted a little longer. She made it to a landing thirty stretches above, but that was all. Collapsing onto it, she only just managed to draw her knife to face death armed before she passed out as well.

  The shadowguard made sure Tal's belt was secure, then tried to climb farther up the ladder. But as it passed the landing where Milla lay, it grew thinner and more transparent. A few stretches farther, it was no more than a dark outline, without substance. Reluctantly, it drew back, till it once again seemed like Tal's natural shadow.

  Nothing could help Tal now.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  "Kill them."

  Tal heard the words as if they came from a long way off, carried on the wind. Somewhere, someone was talking about killing someone. Someone else was saying, "No. We don't know who they are."

  "One looks like a Chosen. I say kill him at least."

  "What's the point of dragging them up here, if we just kill them anyway? They haven't got Sunstones, they've both got normal shadows, and look at their clothes. They must be from somewhere else. Maybe they can help us."

  The one who wanted to kill whoever it was laughed a bitter, mocking laugh.

  "Help us do what? Hide in these tunnels better? Live more miserably than we do now?"

  Tal managed to get one eye open a fraction and saw that the people talking were standing quite close to him. There were three of them. Two boys who couldn't be much older than he was, and another taller one who looked a bit older. He hadn't spoken.

  The two younger ones carried short, broad-bladed spears. They were all wearing dirty rags that Tal thought might once have been white Underfolk robes. The older one had a cap with a long black feather in it.

  There was an oil lamp sitting on the floor behind the three boys. Its light cast long shadows from all three. Natural shadows.

  They were

  Underfolk. Tal tried to order them to help him, but nothing came out. The effort needed to keep even one eyelid half open was immense.

  "Kill them," said the first, blond boy.

  "Talk to them," said the second boy.

  Who were they talking about? Tal wanted to turn his head to see, but his neck wouldn't move, either. Maybe it was all a dream.

  Both turned to the boy with the feather in his cap. Obviously he had to make the decision.

  "Neither. We take them up to the top of the service levels and leave them there. They'll come round in an hour or so."

  "Oh, Crow," complained the blond boy. "What'll that do?"

  So the older boy with the feather was called Crow, thought Tal muzzily. The black feather had to be from a crow, then. But the only crows in the Castle were pets of very high Chosen. There was an old legend that when the last crow left the Castle, it would mean the end of the Chosen, and the seven Towers would fall.

  "Unless I'm wrong, taking them up will deliver a problem to the Chosen," said Crow. "Gill, go and get Clovil and Ferek. We'll have to carry them."

  Tal watched Gill, the second speaker, walk out of his field of vision. Gill was a girl's name, which was odd. Unless Gill was a girl. She might be, Tal thought, watching her disappear. His one half-open eye closed, and could not be reopened.

  Things got even more dreamlike then. He felt himself floating up from the floor as weird noises echoed all around him. Possibly they were meant to be words, but Tal couldn't get a grip on them. They kept changing shape and slipping away. Words that some unconscious part of his brain knew were "up" and "heavy" and "you carry him, then" became "snurp" and "preefy" and "loll garly slimwen."

  Nothing made sense. It was too hard. Tal fell back into total unconsciousness.

  When he awoke the second time, he had a moment's perfect recall of his first waking. Then it was gone, replaced by a blinding headache that stabbed him right between the eyes.

  He groaned and sat up, cradling his head in his hands. Then he remembered that he was tied to a ladder in the heating tunnels.

  Tal snatched his hands away from his eyes and looked around.

  He wasn't hanging off a ladder. He was lying on the floor of a hallway lit by a small Sunstone in the ceiling. There was another Sunstone about ten stretches on, and another ten stretches beyond that. They were plain, white Sunstones of very little power.

  Something made a noise. Tal whipped around, and wished he hadn't as his headache struck even more savagely.

  The noise was from Milla. She was sitting cross-legged behind him, slowly breathing in and out with great control. She had taken off her face mask and her skin had a nasty greenish tinge.

  Tal pressed his thumbs into his temples and muttered, "What happened?"

  Milla let out her breath very, very slowly.

  "Bad air. Some people found us and carried us here. There was some talk of killing, but they didn't really want to. Lucky your shadow behaved itself. I think they would have killed you if it hadn't."

  "Oh," said Tal, a vague memory coming back. "I thought that was a dream. Were you awake, then?"

  Milla looked embarrassed. She started to take in a breath as if to ignore the question, then let it out suddenly and said, "I only recovered enough to hear. I couldn't move. You should take deep, slow breaths. It will clear the bad air out of your blood."

  Tal nodded but didn't change his breathing. Those people had to be renegade Underfolk. And they'd talked about his Sunstone!

  His hand flew to his neck. The chain with the old and the new Sunstone wasn't there! He had a moment of panic, before his shadowguard plucked at his sleeve, reminding him that the chain was in the secret pocket. He pulled it out and dropped it over his head with a sigh of relief.

  "Thirteen sleeps, then it's mine," Milla said, watching him check the Sunstone. "We've just had one sleep."

  Tal scowled at her. Slowly, he got up and walked a little way along the corridor. Every step sent stabs of pain through his head.

  "Are we in your Castle now?" asked Milla. She pointed at the ceiling. "There are many Sunstones. Perhaps I should dig one out."

  "They're too small," said Tal wearily. "They only last a few months before they have to be replaced. You can't do anything with them, either. They just give light."

  Milla shrugged. "Light is a lot, in the dark."

  Tal sighed. From the low level of light and the whitewashed walls of the corridor, they seemed to be on one of the Underfolk levels. There were lots of Underfolk levels, where the servants lived and worked and farmed. But Tal didn't think of these levels as part of the real

  Castle.

  When they left these levels, they would be entering the Castle proper. Tal was suddenly struck by the realization that he had actually gotten back. He'd never thought beyond that, and now he didn't know what to do. What could he do?

  He couldn't just go home, because his enemies would find him. He couldn't go to any public places dressed the way he was. There'd be a panic, or a lot of trouble at the least.

  And that was just Tal. He hadn't properly thought about bringing Milla into the Castle at all. He knew she was an Icecarl and what that meant. No one else would. There was no knowing how the Chosen would react. As far as they were concerned no one lived outside the Castle. No one could live outside the Castle. They would think she was some kind of creature that had crossed from Aenir without becoming a shadow. A free spirit. An uncontrolled spirit.

  That would be about the most frightening thing a Chosen could imagine. There would be white-hot rays of light and destruction, with Chosen blasting them on first sight. That's what Tal would have done if he'd encountered Milla in the Castle, he knew. If she wasn't a Chosen and wasn't an Unde
rfolk, she had to be a monster. Why would any other Chosen think differently?

  "Are we in your Castle now?" asked Milla again. She looked around at the bare, smooth walls. There were no trophies, no horned Merwin skulls or Selski flipper-toe bones, or the captured weapons of enemies. "It's not very impressive. Your guards should have found us by now, instead of those Outcasts."

  "Those what?" asked Tal. He hadn't been listening.

  He was consumed by a new fear. What if he had done the absolutely wrong thing in bringing Milla to the Castle?

  "Outcasts," said Milla. "That's what the people who brought us here were, weren't they? People without a clan, who follow the ship and live on scraps and scrapings?"

  Tal stared at Milla. He'd never seen her so talkative before. Maybe it was something to do with the bad air. Or perhaps she was simply relieved they'd made it through the searing heat of the tunnels.

  "I don't know who they were," he replied. "Underfolk. Servants. But I think ones who have escaped. They must live somewhere down here."

  "Servants who cannot choose to leave?" asked Milla as she got up and flexed her arms. "You mean thralls. Some clans have them, though the Crones do not like it. The Far Raiders will not trade with thrall-takers."

  "What's a thrall?" asked Tal. He hadn't heard the word before.

  "Servants who cannot leave," said Milla. Seeing that Tal still didn't understand, she added, "People who can be bought and sold."

  "Oh," said Tal. "Well, the Underfolk are different. Most of them are born to be servants… or they ended up as Underfolk for… good reasons. And they don't get bought and sold. Just reassigned."

  "A thrall by any other name still stinks the ship," said Milla.

  She emphasized this with a shrug and did two cartwheels along the corridor, to loosen up her muscles. Tal groaned and hit his head even more forcefully. Out of the corner of his eye he saw his shadowguard copy his action, until Milla noticed. Then it slid back to become a natural shadow once more.

  Tal watched it go. It was only then he realized that he wasn't as pleased to be back as he should be. He should be kissing the floor and laughing with joy. After all, he'd survived a fall of thousands of stretches from the Red Tower. He'd lived through an encounter with Icecarls. He'd crossed the Living Sea. He'd helped kill a Merwin. He'd seen the Ruin Ship, climbed the Mountain of Light, and made it through the heatway tunnels.

  But he didn't feel joyful. He felt tired, as if all this was only the beginning. He'd always thought that he'd go straight to his family's rooms when he returned, and see his mother. But that wasn't possible.

  The trouble was, he didn't know what to do instead.

  Milla cartwheeled back, reminding him that he'd brought the particular problem she represented on himself.

  "What now?" asked Milla. "Do we go and meet your clan Crone?"

  "Um," said Tal, brightening as an idea suddenly came to him. "Not exactly but close to it!"

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  "We're going to see a wise man," explained Tal, as they crept along the corridor that led to a stair up to the first Red level. "My great-uncle Ebbitt. He will help us work out what to do next."

  And, Tal thought, he'll know what to do about Milla. Perhaps she could hide out while Tal found her a Sunstone.

  Milla nodded, silent once again. Tal noted that her hand was on her sword, and her eyes constantly in movement, searching for enemies.

  "He has a Spiritshadow," Tal added. "All the Chosen do. But they won't do anything unless they are ordered to."

  "These Spiritshadows are like your little shadow, but bigger?" asked Milla.

  "They're not always bigger," said Tal. "But stronger and more dangerous. They can't change shape like a shadowguard, but they can stretch and twist the shape they've got."

  Milla thought about this for a while. A few steps farther on she asked, "What happens to a Spiritshadow when its master is killed?"

  Tal shook his head.

  "The Spiritshadow fades with them"

  He broke off, reminded of his mother. She had to still be alive.

  "Perhaps we will find out," said Milla.

  Tal stopped and turned to look Milla in the eye.

  "Milla, you can't fight in the Castle!" he warned her. "We have to be careful as it is. No one has ever come in from outside before. If you attack someone, it will just make everything worse."

  "I only fight if I am attacked," said Milla. "But you are afraid of something. Why should you be afraid in your own ship… your own home?"

  "I'm not afraid!" Tal snapped. "It's complicated. There are some Chosen who don't like my family, and there are some other things happening that I don't understand. I'm just being cautious."

  "You know very little," said Milla. "I do not think your Chosen teach their children well. We would not let anyone off the ship who was so ignorant of the Ice."

  Tal started to reply, but he was too furious to get any words out. He took a long, slow breath, and finally managed to say, "It is very complicated, because it has to do with people, not animals or, or… the weather!

  You don't have the education to understand. So just follow me and be quiet!"

  "I know how to be quiet," agreed Milla. "I can be much quieter than you."

  "Good," snapped Tal. "Start now!"

  They didn't meet anyone on the stairs or in the corridor that led to Ebbitt's rather strange quarters. This was not surprising, since Ebbitt had chosen to live in the least-used part of the lowest Red level. Apart from him, everyone here was a Dimmer -the lowest possible rank in Chosen society and was desperate to rise.

  As they left the stairs, Milla noticed the faint red tinge to the Sunstones in the corridor and the faded red stripes that adorned the ceiling, and asked about them. Tal found himself giving a garbled explanation about the different Orders and levels, which Milla reduced down to the rather simplistic "Many clans live in your Castle."

  This whispered conversation lasted until they came to the beginning of the corridor that Ebbitt used as one big room. As usual, the entrance was blocked with a jumble of furniture and odds and ends. Strangely, there was no sign of the wardrobe that Tal had used before as a gate. In fact, there was no obvious way to get through the tangle of upended tables, stacked chairs, spiked hat stands, cabinets, carpets, marble sculptures, and wallhangings.

  "Great-uncle Ebbitt is a bit…" Tal said, eyeing the pile that reached nearly to the ceiling. "Well, he's not exactly normal."

  Milla nodded, then suddenly stepped back, her hand on the hilt of her Merwin-horn sword.

  Tal couldn't see what Milla had reacted to, until she pointed to a large blue cushion at the base of the piled furniture. It was slowly moving outward, almost without a sound. Then it fell over, revealing a narrow triangular gap where two chairs had been leaning back-to-back. "Why couldn't you just have a door?" Tal asked, addressing the narrow tunnel through the furniture barrier. He got down on his knees and peered in. There was no sign of Ebbitt, but the falling cushion was clearly the old man's idea of a welcome.

  "Come on," Tal said to Milla, stretching out so he could slide through the gap. "It might look like it's going to fall down, but Ebbitt's an expert at this sort of thing."

  "There is wisdom behind all this rubbish?" asked Milla, but she knelt down, ready to follow Tal.

  The barrier of piled-up bits and pieces went much farther than Tal had expected. He had to wriggle through several turns before he finally emerged into a relatively clear area. Once again, everything had changed. There was no sign of Ebbitt's faded throne. But Ebbitt was there, dressed in an Underfolk robe of white and a jacket in the Indigo color forbidden to him since his decline to the Red.

  He was lying on a long, heavily cushioned lounge, with a sleep blindfold wrapped around his eyes. His Spiritshadow, a great maned cat, was sitting at his feet, watching Tal emerge.

  "Go away," said Ebbitt, waving a languid hand. "I have a headache."

  "So do I," Tal replied. "I need your hel
p, Uncle Ebbitt. It's very important."

  "So important that you haven't been to see me in two weeks?" Ebbitt asked, without moving.

  "I don't believe this!" Tal shouted. "I haven't been to see you because I FELL OFF THE RED TOWER!"

  His shout made Ebbitt wince, but it had a more dramatic effect on Ebbitt's Spiritshadow. It leaped to its feet and stood poised to spring.

  Then Tal realized it wasn't his shout the Spiritshadow was reacting to. Milla had just climbed out of the gap in the barrier.

  "Don't do anything!" Tal ordered, though he wasn't sure whether he was talking to Milla or the Spiritshadow.

  "What is going on?" Ebbitt asked testily. He tore off his blindfold and sat up, blinking. When he saw Milla, who had drawn her sword despite Tal's instruction, he raised his hand, the Sunstone ring on his finger swirling with sudden light.

  "Don't!" Tal exclaimed again. "Don't anyone do anything."

  "Who… or what… is that?" asked Ebbitt as he slowly got to his feet. He didn't lower his hand.

  Tal saw that Milla had put her face mask back on and her hood up. The amber lenses shone horribly in the Sunstone light, and the mouth-hole was horribly dark. She did look like a monster.

  "Please take off your mask, Milla," he sighed. "No one is going to attack you, right, Uncle?"

  "If you say so," said Ebbitt, who seemed slightly relieved to hear the word mask, and even more so when Milla slowly removed it. "But again I ask, who are you? You have a natural shadow, but you do not look like any Underfolk I have ever seen."

  "I am Milla of the Far Raiders. Daughter of Ylse, daughter of Emor, daughter of Rohen, daughter of Clyo, in the line of Danir since the Ruin of the Ship."

  Ebbitt sat back down.

  "She's from outside," said Tal. "They call themselves Icecarls."

  Ebbitt didn't say anything. His Spiritshadow turned to look at him, then lumbered over to touch his face with one shadowy paw.

  "Uncle Ebbitt?" Tal said, suddenly anxious.

  The Spiritshadow pushed hard at Ebbitt's chest, and the old man let out a sudden, wheezing cough.