The View From Castle Always

by Melissa McShane

  After several minutes of wandering, Ailanthe came to a long, straight hall, maybe thirty feet wide, that was floored in black and red tiles and lined with carnelian pillars larger than Ailanthe could put her arms around. It ended in a set of double doors paneled in wood painted to match the pillars, intricately banded in brass, with hinges shaped like aspen leaves. There was no latch, but the keyhole certainly seemed big enough to admit her key. Ailanthe pushed it into the lock; with a little resistance, it slid right in, and she turned it and heard the rasping clunk of the mechanism engaging.

  The doors moved easily for their size, soundless and smooth. The space beyond, small by comparison to the spacious hall, was unfinished, the raw wood boards of the walls poorly aligned so tiny slits let bright sunlight through. It smelled of dust and peaches. Ailanthe stepped through and the floorboards creaked and shifted under her weight.

  In the center of the room was an equally ill-built staircase spiraling beyond the range of her vision, and Ailanthe hesitated before it. It looked like it might fall apart under her weight, its handrail missing large sections and the nail heads protruding from the steps in places. If the Castle repairs things, she thought, it’s doing a poor job of it here. She put her hand on the rail and her foot on the first step. It was going to be a long climb, but she had to know what lay at the top of it.

  She meant to count the steps, but the first time one of the steps bowed under her weight, she lost track. She gripped the stair rail hard and gasped again when it too swayed. She released it and stood unmoving in the center of the staircase, trying not to do anything that might persuade it to drop her to the landing below, or all the way to its base.

  When she’d regained control of her heart, she moved her foot cautiously to the next step and breathed more easily when it took her weight without complaining. It was unlikely she’d fall to her death, which was a terrifying thought; but if she broke her arm, or her leg, it was just as unlikely the Castle would heal her the way it did Coren’s wall. She moved more cautiously after that, testing the steps as she came to them, so she was at the top before she realized it, her head rising through a round hole in the floor above.

  How the floor of this room could be made of stone when the rest of the tower was wood puzzled her, but its rough, irregular cobs were reassuringly solid, and she sat down with her legs resting on one of the last steps and looked around. The ceiling was a miniature of the vaulted passageway surrounding the Honor Hall. Square windows with black-painted frames lined the walls, providing an unimpeded view of the pale, cloudless blue sky in all directions. Her legs still shaky from the climb, Ailanthe stood and went to look out the nearest window.

  The forests of Lindurien lay spread out beneath her, as far as she could see.

  It was so unexpected her breath caught and her heart pounded once, painfully hard. She threw herself at the window, not thinking about how dangerous that might be, that the window frames might be as rotted and unstable as the stairs, and pressed her face against it as if that might bring her closer to home.

  Home.

  A strong wind gusted across the tops of the trees, making them bend as wildly as if they were kites straining to fly free. Impossible to tell if they were her trees, her home, but at the moment she wanted so desperately to be back she felt she could endure any amount of rejection by the trees if only she could walk beneath them again.

  The glass felt slick under her cheek. She reached up and realized she was crying. It was so close and all she could do was weep like a child and feel sorry for herself. She straightened, wiped her face and smeared the tears off the glass, and made a circuit of the room. She’d never seen Lindurien from this vantage point, but she recognized the heights of Duathenin, where the goats danced on the cliff side, and off to one side lay the blackened place where fire had taken some of the grandfather trees last year, and between those two locations she was able to determine where she was, and where home was.

  Window seats lay at intervals beneath the windows, their dull green cushions rock-hard and dusty, but she knelt on one and stared out in the direction of her home, trying not to cry again. If she could get out of this tower, she could climb down and be back in Lindurien. If she could get out of this tower.

  She could probably break the windows with little effort, but she would need a rope—a long rope—and some idea of what lay beneath her. But it could work. She pressed her hand against the glass, fingers spread, so her palm covered the place where her home might be. She could return. She just had to be smarter than the Castle.

  She cautiously went back down the stairs and retraced her steps. The shadows seemed thicker in contrast to the bright sunlight, and her footsteps, strangely, seemed louder on the carpeted hall than they had on the bare wood of the stairs. She walked faster, feeling uneasy and not sure why. The hall was empty even of sprites.

  Something moved in a doorway as she passed, and she whipped around, her heart pounding. Nothing but shadow. She broke into a run for a few steps before slowing down and laughing at herself. She’d been chased away from the tower by nothing more than an overwrought imagination. How fortunate for her Coren hadn’t witnessed that; she must have looked so foolish.

  Coren wasn’t in his rooms; she found him in the Library, reading in the same deep armchair, his feet resting on a low stool. He raised his head from his book when she entered, waiting for her to speak. There was so much she had to tell him that it all tangled in her head, but what came out was, “Would you like to see Lindurien?”

  “I’ve seen it—but that’s not what you mean, is it?” Coren said, closing his book.

  She held up the key. “This opens the tower. I took a chance—”

  “Show me,” Coren said.

  They ran through the halls, Coren shortening his stride to a jog so Ailanthe could keep up with him, then ascended the rickety stairs more cautiously. Coren knelt on one of the dusty cushions just as Ailanthe had and gazed out over the forest. “Unbelievable,” he said. “I’ve seen it from lower down, but this is…I had no idea the forest was this big.”

  “My home is that way, somewhere,” Ailanthe said, pointing. “If I could get out of this tower—”

  “You’d fall to your death,” Coren pointed out. “How many feet higher than the roof are we? And who knows how much farther it is to the ground from there.”

  “There has to be a way.” She gripped the key tightly, then exclaimed as its teeth bit into her hand. She looked at it more closely. “That’s strange,” she said.

  “What is?”

  She extended the key to him. “It didn’t look like this before. It was thinner, and had three teeth instead of two.”

  “Why did it change?”

  “I don’t know.” She closed her hand around it, more loosely this time, then made for the stairs. Back in the hallway, she trotted along until she reached a door, a white and glossy door with pink flowers painted around the keyhole. She rattled the knob, satisfied herself it was locked, then pressed the key into the keyhole. With hardly any resistance, it went in and turned easily. Ailanthe removed the key and stared at it again. A much thinner shaft, and several small teeth with deep notches.

  “Did you unlock that door?” Coren said, coming up behind her.

  Ailanthe nodded and pushed the door open. The room was empty except for a scattering of dust over the pale wood floor. “I admit it’s’s a little anticlimactic,” she said, “but I think this is the master key to the Castle.”

  Coren held out his hand for it and examined it from all angles. “The Castle never gives out anything but junk,” he said. “Why would it put this in the Honor Hall?”

  “I don’t know,” Ailanthe said, “but I think it’s going to regret it.”

  Ailanthe unlocked the door and pushed it open, its shining lacquered metal surface cold under her palm. That made seven doors of metal, thirteen of unfinished wood, five of woven vines even more solid than the metal, and five of a gray, pitted material that echoed when she rapped on it. T
he Castle apparently could not make up its mind about the uniformity of its construction.

  Three days of searching the top floor, and she and Coren hadn’t found anything useful, like an exit or even a length of rope. Or, rather, they’d found any number of interesting things, like the palm-sized cylinder that emitted a beam of light when you squeezed it, but with the Castle returning everything to its place at midnight, there was nothing worth taking away. This would probably go no faster if Coren were here instead of in the middle of his daily exercise, but at least she would have company.

  This room, like the other three she’d tried today, was a storage room about the size of the bedroom she’d claimed for herself; like the other rooms, it smelled of dust that hadn’t been disturbed in, she guessed, centuries, with an unexpected hint of sweetness from flowers Ailanthe couldn’t see. Furniture like no Lindurian had ever used cluttered every inch of space. What little she could see of the floor was scuffed and worn, gouged in some places from wooden legs being shoved more tightly into the available space.

  She squeezed between an ornately carved armoire and a rosewood table with twelve chairs stacked atop it. Maybe it was pointless to search this room for anything but more furniture, but she couldn’t take the chance that it might not contain the rope she needed.

  To her left, something moved. She jumped, banged her hip against the table, then realized it was her own reflection in a mirror leaning at a sharp angle against the wall. She laughed at herself. All this stillness was making her jittery. She even imagined she’d seen the shadows moving, once or twice, in ways that couldn’t be explained by the flickering, wan light of the decrepit glowing lamps.

  She looked at her reflection. The mirror was cracked at one corner, covered with dust so her image was little more than a silhouette, her pale skin nearly white and her hazel eyes dull hollows. She waved at herself. The shadowy figure waved back at her, and she shivered; it looked like a ghost rather than a reflection.

  She finished digging through the furniture, which was too tightly packed for her to reach the back of the room, and relocked the door. There was no reason to, but she felt, superstitiously, that the Castle would prefer her not to disturb it more than necessary. She tried to summon up outrage that she might give in to anything the Castle wanted, but succeeded only in feeling a mild worry that there was still a possibility it would let her out, if she only behaved herself. She pounded once on the door in irritation, then rubbed away the ache in her fist. She wasn’t going to let a…a thing beat her.

  She stretched, rolled her shoulders, and unlocked the next door. The room was full of trunks and dressers and wardrobes, all overflowing with clothing. There were a few mannequins dressed in Indrijanese caps and floor-length sleeveless tunics in jewel tones like the Library books, open over long-sleeved shirts and wide-legged pants that might be mistaken for skirts. She’d seen the same costumes in the Indrijan room on the first floor. Ailanthe lifted a filmy sleeve and let it fall, drifting, back to where it lay. Maybe there was something useful in one of these trunks. She began hauling clothing out and dumping it on the floor.

  The light in here was dimmer than in the hall outside, the shadows thicker. Ailanthe couldn’t see into the depths of the trunk; she used her hands to feel around inside, verifying there was nothing in it but clothing. She piled everything back into the trunk and moved to a dresser, opening each drawer and throwing its contents on the floor. Still nothing.

  She turned, and once again caught movement out of the corner of her eye. She looked at the mirror and couldn’t see her reflection from where she knelt on the floor. What…? Her eye was drawn toward the mannequin in the far corner, the one wearing the black cap and the red tunic.

  It turned its head toward her, its blind, empty face tilted up as if sniffing the air. Ailanthe backed away until she bumped into the dresser, gaping, ignoring the pain in her hip where the corner of the dresser dug into it. The mannequin lifted its arm and pointed at her. It had no elbow joint, and its long arm rose like the hand of a clock sweeping out the minutes. Then it began to walk, stiff-legged, toward her.

  Ailanthe turned to run and tripped over the open trunk. A jolt of pain went through her wrist as she caught herself on both hands. She scrambled to her feet, slid on a silky dress and went down on her knees. Behind her, footsteps and the occasional knock of cloth-covered wood against wood told her the thing was still advancing.

  She pushed herself to her feet and looked behind her. Another mannequin had come to life and with both arms raised was trying to find a way around the chest of drawers that blocked its path.

  Ailanthe clenched her teeth on a scream and bolted for the door, feeling the faintest tug of wooden fingers on her hair before she threw herself through the doorway and slammed and locked it. She leaned against it, her heart pounding, then shrieked as something struck the door from the other side, hard enough to make it bounce on its hinges. She backed up until she ran into the opposite wall and stared at the door. Something struck it again, not as hard this time, then a third time, and she could barely hear the thump. Then everything was silent.

  Ailanthe realized she was clenching the key so hard the feeling had left her fingers. She opened her hand and let the key dangle from its chain, then massaged her sore wrist. What else might be locked up in these rooms? She looked around at the gathering shadows and told herself she didn’t see them moving. Well, she wasn’t going to give up just because the Castle had some eerie things lurking inside it. It was coincidence that it was time for lunch now.

  Miriethiel was waiting in the kitchen when she arrived, just as he had the last three days. “I wish I knew how you always know when food is on the way,” she said, scratching his throat and feeling the vibration of his purr through her fingertips. He leaned into her petting for a moment, then leaped onto the counter and paced, giving her his silent stare. “And you never meow. All the cats I’ve ever known were vocal about needing things. Maybe, with no other cats around, you’ve forgotten how to talk.”

  She cut up a small chicken breast and tossed a few little cubes his way; he snatched them out of the air and gulped them down almost without chewing. He always behaved as if he were two inches from starvation, though his fur was sleek and his flanks and belly lean but not emaciated. If there were other cats in the Castle, she’d never seen them. She guessed he was five or six years old, certainly not ancient or an adolescent, but it might be possible, given the Castle’s abilities, that he was a good deal older than that. Miriethiel was just another one of the strangenesses of the Castle.

  She swept half the cubes into a bowl and put it on a shelf in the cold room. “You’ll get sick if you eat it all now,” she scolded Miriethiel when he made imploring faces at her and butted his head against the counter. She took a cloth from the narrow, almost-hidden cupboard where they were stored and ran it under the faucet—amazing, all the new words she was learning—then washed off the counter.

  Her own lunch was bread shaped like a ring with a hard, shiny crust, and a pot of blackberry jam that left her fingers sticky. It had turned out Coren didn’t know how to light a fire either, so she only looked longingly at the enormous salmon laid out ready to be filleted and closed the cold room door.

  She sat on the counter and ate her bread and jam and planned her next step. She ought to ask Coren about the mannequins. Surely if he’d seen anything like that, he would have mentioned it; the memory made her shudder, thinking of that light brush against the back of her head. Then she would go back to exploring the rooms. Whatever those things had been, they couldn’t keep her from finding a way home.

  A deep, low tone, almost too low to hear, rang through the still air. It sent vibrations all through Ailanthe’s body and made her teeth buzz enough she clenched her jaw against it and closed her eyes. The sound grew in volume until she felt she was inside a giant bell, the clapper striking its bronze sides once and then hanging motionless. It had to be the Castle bell. A quester had arrived.

  Chapter S
ix

  Ailanthe dropped her half-eaten bread and pot of jam on the floor. The pot shattered, and Ailanthe landed in the spreading puddle when she jumped down. She raced out of the kitchen annex and jumped over Miriethiel, who’d tried to rub up against her legs, bolted down the blue hallway leaving little footprints of jam, and raced across the flagstones surrounding the Honor Hall. If she could get there before the door closed….

  There were so many little rooms between her and the entrance, all of them filled with unnecessary furniture she had to dodge or slide over, and she was panting when she emerged into the entry hall. But it was too late. The door was closed, the hall was dark except for the indirect light from the rooms on both sides, and a woman stood looking at her curiously, as if wondering what madwoman the Castle had produced for her.

  She was very tall, probably six feet or more, and the way she carried her head made her look taller still. She wore the robes of a Rius-zaran nomad, the bright white fabric draped about her body to keep her cool in the hot desert sun, and more cloth was wound above and around her face so only her eyes were revealed. A belt strung with dozens of inch-wide silver rings surrounded her waist, and in her right hand she held a staff as long as she was tall, with a large knot at one end carved to look like something that was indistinct in that dim light. She wore rings on every finger of her left hand, and the edges of a gold bracelet peeped out below that sleeve.

  “I am so glad to see you,” Ailanthe panted. “I need your help. The Castle won’t let me out. Will you open the door for me?” Somewhere in this torrent of words, she realized she was babbling, but she didn’t care. This woman might mean her freedom.

  The woman’s eyes narrowed, and she pulled down the cloth covering her mouth to reveal copper-colored skin and firm lips set in a frown. “I do not understand how it is I speak your language,” she said.

  “The Castle makes everyone speak its language. It’s nothing to worry about. It will pass when you leave. I’m Ailanthe. What’s your name?”