The View From Castle Always

by Melissa McShane

  It was a beautiful view. The roofs of the Castle were as varied as its rooms, tiled in crimson and gray and a blue stone that sparkled when the sun struck it. A storm was coming, she realized, and thought about urging Coren to lower her faster, but decided not to distract him. Far across the roofs, she saw the shining skylight of the Library, reflecting the sun, and she decided she would have to find a way across the roofs to look down through it at the shelves and the trees.

  She came to an abrupt halt, the rope cutting into her waist. She looked up. She hadn’t gotten very far, maybe fifteen feet. Coren was still looking down at her. “Why did you stop?” he shouted.

  “I thought you stopped,” she called back. He shook his head.

  She yanked on the rope, thinking she might free it from whatever it was caught on, then realized it was probably caught on Coren. Suddenly she dropped, and for a few sickening moments she saw herself broken and bleeding on the Castle roof, then the rope caught and knocked the breath out of her. She clutched the rope in both hands and hugged it to her body. “What was that?” she screamed.

  “I don’t know! The rope flew away from me.” It was hard to hear him over the wind, but Coren’s voice sounded tight, as if he were exerting himself against a great weight. “It’s trying to do it again,” he said, confirming her suspicion.

  “Can you let it out at all?” she shouted.

  “I’m afraid it’s going to—wait, it stopped pulling.”

  Ailanthe felt a tug as he began to haul her up. “Don’t pull me back!”

  “I’m not! The rope’s doing it!”

  Ailanthe pulled hard on the rope again, but she kept ascending. “No!” she shouted. “Push it down!”

  “I can’t! It’s winding itself back around me!”

  Ailanthe kicked again to keep herself away from the tower, and felt the tugging grow stronger, as if the rope was pulling her up faster. But a glance around showed her she was still ascending at the same speed. Something slid around her waist. She looked down, trying to focus on her body instead of the nightmarish drop, and saw the knot untying itself, the rope sliding free from her waist.

  She clutched the rope with one hand and grabbed at its slithering end with the other. It slipped free of her grasp and unwound itself, inch by rapid inch, and she dropped farther as its support disappeared. She held on with both hands and felt it slide away from her fingers.

  “Coren, pull!” she shrieked, trying to find purchase on the smooth stones with her toes and pulling herself up, hand over hand, the rope continuing to retract itself through the tower window. She climbed frantically, her arms aching, her palms burning from the strange fibers sliding across them, then made the mistake of looking down. Not only was the world swinging wildly beneath her, the end of the rope was coming at her fast.

  She screamed and willed her burning muscles to move faster, and then the frayed end of the rope slipped through her fingers—

  —and a hand closed around her wrist, stopping her fall and jerking her shoulder painfully. “Don’t move,” Coren said in that same tight voice, and Ailanthe felt herself drawn slowly upward until she could grab the edge of the window and, kicking and scrambling, tumble through it. She landed on her face on one of the cushions and coughed at the cloud of dust she raised.

  Eyes streaming, she looked across at Coren, who sat on the floor, breathing heavily. The rope was gone. “What was that you said about how secure your knots were?” he said.

  “It untied itself,” Ailanthe said, her voice shaking. She looked at her palms, which were red with rope burns, and saw her hands were shaking too. “It was so…”

  “Terrifying?”

  “Deliberate.” The way the rope had moved, the knot sliding apart so smoothly, made Ailanthe think of invisible hands methodically unweaving her work and pulling the rope away from her. She rolled off the cushion to sit near Coren, hugged her knees, and tried to control her trembling. This had not been some kind of mindless response. The Castle had reached out and deliberately kept her from leaving—had nearly killed her in doing so. “Thank you,” she said.

  “I couldn’t just let you fall,” Coren replied. He rotated his arm and rubbed his shoulder, then hissed with pain. “We’re both going to be sore for a while,” he said, displaying his palms, which were marked with the same pattern of raw skin where the rope had burned his hands as well. Without thinking, Ailanthe gently touched his palm, then quickly removed her hand. “Sorry,” she said.

  “That’s all right. It doesn’t hurt much,” he said, closing his fist and standing to take a few steps away from her. “I don’t think we should try that again.”

  “Agreed.” Ailanthe stood and looked out the window, not at the forest but across the roofs of the Castle. “At least not until we find a lower window.”

  Chapter Nine

  One more, I think. Ailanthe stared at the round, orangey-peach cushion and remembered the faint roughness of its nap, then reached out with her left hand to catch the new pillow before it struck the floor. She arranged it next to the other three, then settled into the window seat and leaned her cheek against the glass. It was raining in Lindurien today, a fine mist that chilled the glass so Ailanthe’s breath made patches of fog that faded almost instantly.

  She’d been practicing her strange ability for over two weeks and it had only just occurred to her if she made her own cushions, the Castle wouldn’t be able to haul them out of the tower every night. She dragged the old rock-hard cushion toward herself with her toe, reached down to pick it up, then concentrated briefly to make it vanish. She wasn’t entirely sure where the cushions went when she sent them away, but it was easier than letting things pile up, and if it inconvenienced the Castle, so much the better.

  She’d tried making her own rope, thinking at least it would belong to her and the Castle would not be able to play tricks with it. She’d only been able to create, or summon, six- or seven-foot lengths at a time, but to someone who’d been tying knots since she was barely able to walk, that was nothing. It took a week, but finally she and Coren stood at the tower window, Ailanthe lowered herself down the rope—and she hadn’t descended ten feet when she felt a jerk like her stomach being yanked sideways, and she was standing next to an astonished Coren in the tower room. It took fifteen more attempts before Ailanthe could accept failure, and two days before she could bear to go back to the tower and look out over her forest home.

  The smell of peaches barely preceded the soft brush of a sprite against her hand. Ailanthe saw them much more often these days, flickering past at the limit of her vision. If she didn’t try to focus on them, she could see their edges were iridescent like broken rainbows. She twitched her hand and the sprite went through it, then floated away. Sometimes they massed in groups of seven or eight and followed her through the halls for a few dozen steps, swooping around her head until she felt choked by the cloying aroma of overripe peaches. Ailanthe had come to think of them as good luck, something the Castle didn’t control.

  The sprite flowed through the window she’d tried to make her escape through and fluttered off across the lowering gray sky. Ailanthe looked at the still-splintered lower latch, its brass gleaming where Coren had hacked through the wood. Why the Castle hadn’t repaired it, she had no idea. Possibly it was still taunting her with an escape she had no way of using. Or perhaps that tingle she’d felt meant she’d used her magic on the latch, taking it out of the Castle’s control. Either way, she still never opened the window.

  She picked up her book and settled in to read. It was a guilty pleasure, reading the white-bound hero books, since Coren had strongly suggested it was a bad idea, and that was why she brought them up to the tower, away from his scrutiny. But the books of the still-living heroes glimmered with the same iridescence the sprites did, and she kept her reading limited to those. The idea of the horrible endings many of these heroes came to left her feeling sick. She hadn’t sought out Idantra’s book either.

  This one was the story of a Rius-za
ran named Usael whom the Castle had sent to Lindurien, which was Ailanthe’s main reason for reading it. He’d come to the Castle some four months before Ailanthe had and was now traveling from mother tree to mother tree, trying to find someone who would teach him to be a kerthor. Ailanthe was a little embarrassed at how her people were so suspicious of Usael, who was never anything but respectful and who, she thought, might make a good kerthor. His story had the added benefit of teaching her things about Lindurian magic that weren’t in the books in the Library, though nothing that applied to her peculiar situation.

  Miriethiel leaped onto Ailanthe’s lap, butting his head against the book for attention. Ailanthe scratched his head with one hand and held the book with the other. She was almost at the end of what the Library currently knew about Usael. Whatever magic scribed the actions of the questers into the books didn’t do it continuously, as if someone were perched on their shoulders, watching every detail. Ailanthe would put the book back on the shelf, and in a day, or a week, there would be more of the story. It was a pity the magic didn’t have some way to signal that there was new material.

  Ailanthe turned the page. Usael was approaching a new settlement, hailing one of the sentries, now he was giving his name and the sentry—

  It was Gilraen. Gilraen, her sister’s betrothed, maybe her husband by now.

  Usael had stumbled on her own home.

  Ailanthe fumbled the book. She grabbed it with both hands and just read that line, unable to move on from Stranger, I am Gilraen, what brings you here? Then she shook her head as if she were coming up from a deep dive in the pool. There had to be other Lindurian men named Gilraen.

  She scanned down the rest of the page, oh, there was Banazir and Morwenna and—it was everyone, it was her home, and she turned the page and nearly screamed when she found it blank. She slammed the book shut and clutched it to her chest. Could this be the Castle’s new way to torture her? No, she couldn’t believe it could determine which of the hero books she would pick up; it was just coincidence, horrible or beautiful coincidence, she couldn’t decide.

  She opened the book, hoping madly that the story might have continued in those few moments, but of course the page remained blank. She closed it again and stared at its unmarked white cover, glittering with rainbow specks. Home. She’d almost let herself forget, between her fears of being attacked again and her need to understand the mystery of the magic she’d developed, or had taken hold of her.

  She looked out the window again, in the direction of her home. It was too far for her to identify which of the vast spreading canopies was her mother tree, but Usael was there, right now, probably trying to convince Banazir to teach him to be a kerthor. Banazir was young for her responsibilities; maybe she’d be more flexible than the other men and women Usael had met.

  The deep tone of the Castle bell startled her out of her reverie. Ailanthe sat up and swung her legs to one side, tipping Miriethiel to the floor, then hesitated. There was probably no point in asking this person to open the door for her, but suppose her magic had tipped the balance? Suppose her magic combined with the quester’s destiny would allow her to make the door open? She left the book on the window seat and hurried down the stairs.

  The quester had passed through the front door and the entry hall by the time Ailanthe reached the first floor. She searched the nearer rooms and concluded he’d already been through the Honor Hall as well. Decisive, this one. She took the long route through the museum rooms, her heart sinking as she passed from room to room without seeing anyone. It was unlikely this quester could help her, and it had been stupid for her to let that slim possibility raise her hopes.

  Then she saw him, leaning over to look at something in a display case in the Enthalian room. He was short, with stringy blond hair, and was dressed in poorly-cut leathers and boots that were little more than animal skins laced with thongs over his feet and shins. He raised his hand, which held a thick, knobbly stick about three feet long, and prepared to smash the glass. “No!” Ailanthe exclaimed, then, with less vehemence, “It won’t do any good. The Castle won’t let you keep anything but the Thing you took from the Honor Hall.”

  The man had leaped backward at her first words, turning quickly to face her and dropping into a defensive crouch. Fear became confusion as he realized he was hearing her in the Castle’s language. “I can show you the way out, if you like, and maybe you can help me,” Ailanthe continued.

  Confusion gave way to anger. “Ruwari!” he shouted. “You will not work your magic on me!” Raising his stick again, he ran at her, shouting incoherently.

  Ailanthe screamed, turned and fled. She had just enough distance on the crazed man to slam the door shut in his face and keep going. Behind her, she heard the man or his stick thump into the solid oak of the door, then his shouts became louder as he tore it open and came after her.

  She dashed through the maze of rooms leading to the Honor Hall, frantically trying to think of a way to escape. He sounded furious enough to care more about attacking her then taking the exit, so leading him to the kitchen annex was pointless. She made a sharp right turn and bolted up the stairs, her breathing already coming too rapidly, and paused on the third floor landing, listening.

  For a long, long moment, she heard nothing but her own breathing and the rapid beating of her heart. Then, far too close, the man shouted that strange word again, and heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs below. Ailanthe turned and ran again. Weeks of treading these stairs daily combined with gut-clenching fear made her fleet-footed, and she reached the Library floor landing thinking Coren, where is Coren? when a large hand grabbed her ankle and she went down, hard.

  Dizzy, she rolled onto her back and screamed again, kicking the man with her free foot and catching his knee hard enough he missed smashing his stick against her head. She struck out again, but he dodged, and raised his stick for another blow. Ailanthe rolled to one side and shouted Coren’s name, then kicked at the hand gripping her ankle. He let go, but the blow from his stick grazed her temple, making tiny lights flash before her eyes.

  I am not going to die here, she told herself, and a shape rose up in her mind moments before her hands closed on something long and dark. She brought the thing up two-handed in front of her and blocked the man’s next blow, then shoved hard, pushing him backward.

  The landing was too narrow for her to do anything but keep pushing, so she rocked forward, came to her feet, and when he raised his stick to strike again, caught him in the stomach and knocked him backward. He fell, rolled down the stairs and landed head-first against the wall of the next landing down.

  “Ailanthe!” Coren ran around the corner. “I—who is that?” He took her by the shoulders and put her behind him, taking a defensive stance.

  “A quester,” Ailanthe said, still breathing somewhat heavily. “He was trying to kill me. I think he thought I was a monster.” She looked at the object in her hands. It was a staff made of wood so dark it was nearly black, shod at both ends with silver woven into intricate caps.

  Coren looked down at the quester. “That’s an Agranite,” he said. “They believe they die when they walk into the Castle and that their destiny lies in the afterlife. They’re dangerous, Ailanthe. Why did you approach him?”

  “I didn’t know what he was. I was hoping maybe my new abilities would…never mind.”

  Coren went down the landing and checked the man’s pulse. “He’s not dead. Let’s put him in the Vestibule and lock the inner door. Eventually he’ll decide to leave.”

  With the man dangling over Coren’s shoulder and Ailanthe still clutching the staff, they proceeded down the stairs to the kitchen annex. As they passed the fifth floor landing, Coren chuckled. “Is there something funny about this?” Ailanthe asked.

  “It reminds me of the time I had to carry Senon—my younger brother—home from the harvest ball at the Catalins’ home,” he said, then laughed again. “This was…eight years ago, I think, and he and this other man, Matias, were courtin
g the same woman. They were young and stupid and of course they decided they should have a drinking contest to see which of them would dance with her first.”

  “Didn’t she get a choice in the matter?”

  “Of course she did. Young and stupid, remember? Well, Senon was marginally less stupid than Matias, so he cheated, pretended to be drinking more than he was. Only Matias was cheating too. So Matias drank his weight in beer—and put some kind of sedative in Senon’s. We couldn’t get either of them to wake up, so Matias’s father hauled him away and I carried Senon across three fields. Probably should have found a wagon, but I’d had a little too much to drink myself and it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  Ailanthe snorted. “So they both lost.”

  “Sort of. Eldora married my brother anyway. They were expecting their first child when I left.”

  “Oh,” Ailanthe said, then couldn’t think of anything else to say. Her heart ached for him, for how much he’d left behind. At least she’d known, when she set out, that she might not see her family again for years.

  “I hadn’t thought of that night in years,” Coren said, his voice sounding distant. “I wonder if they’ve had more children by now. I wonder—” He went silent. Ailanthe didn’t feel so amused anymore.

  They arrived at the Vestibule, where Ailanthe locked the door on the Agranite, then retreated to the hallway. Coren leaned against the wall, looking at the inner door for a long time, then said, “You should stay away from the questers.”

  Ailanthe bristled. “They can’t all be murderous.”

  “Two in a row, Ailanthe—what are you going to do if one of them catches you alone where I can’t hear you?”

  “I defended myself perfectly well just now.”