ICO: Castle in the Mist

by Miyuki Miyabe

  Ico had seen these same trees near Toksa Village. They kept their leaves even in winter and sprouted new green buds in spring. They were highly sensitive to changes in the wind and given to rustling, so much so that they often alerted hunters to the whereabouts of prey or gave early warning of approaching danger.

  Ico stopped beneath the trees, feeling the sun on his skin. For a moment, he felt like he was back home. Whoever had planted these trees here must have loved the forest—something told him it wasn’t the queen. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, when he noticed the sound of running water.

  Yorda was standing behind him a distance away. Ico ran quickly down the corridor. It extended straight for a while, then turned sharply to the right.

  He ran down to the end, finding a clearing with a large pool of water in it, like a cistern. A rusted pipe ran left to right across the wall on the other side of the cistern at about Ico’s height. From there, a thinner pipe extended straight down into the water. It was another dead end. But Ico could hear water flowing beneath his feet. He went to the edge of the cistern and leaned over, looking down to see that part of the underwater wall on the near side had a grate set into the stone, its bottom half submerged in the water. The water was flowing through the grate, back toward the corner Ico had just turned.

  The cistern looked deep. Before he could change his mind, Ico jumped straight out, away from the edge, landing in the cool water with a little splash.

  His feet couldn’t reach the bottom, so he treaded water, scooping up some onto his face to wash off the dirt and sweat. It felt incredibly refreshing.

  Unfortunately, the grate on the near wall was strong, and no matter how much he kicked or pulled at it, bracing his feet on the edge for support, it wouldn’t budge. He looked around for a lever or some other device that might open the grate, but there was nothing.

  When he looked through the bars, the water on the other side was dim, but he could see patches of light falling on square pedestals that protruded from the water at regular intervals.

  He wasn’t sure why there would be a room as part of an underground waterway, but the light he saw had to be coming from some sort of ventilation shaft—possibly big enough for him to get through. If the water was flowing through the grate, then it must be going down somewhere ahead, which meant that the underground room might be a way down to the lower levels of the castle.

  Now we’re getting somewhere!

  Climbing up the pipe on the far side of the water, Ico made his way back to the top of the cistern. Heading back down the way he had come, he found, just as he had expected, several square openings hidden in the tall tufts of grass. The openings ran in a line down the corridor. Each was covered with a thin grate, but he was able to pry one free with a little work from his fingers.

  Crouching by the hole he called out to Yorda, who came running from around the corner.

  “I’m going down—you wait here,” he told her, then he slid down through the hole so fast he didn’t see Yorda waving her hands, trying to stop him.

  Ico landed back in water, but at least here it was much shallower than out in the cistern. It only came up to around his knees. The air smelled of mold, and the walls were damp.

  He quickly found one of the square pedestals and climbed up onto it—and immediately fell into the past.

  [2]

  FOR A MOMENT, Ico didn’t realize he was seeing another vision. He blinked and saw people—many people—crowding around him in the dimly lit underground waterway.

  What made it so different from his previous visions was that, this time, Ico wasn’t just an observer—he was part of the scene. Right next to him, a skinny boy raised one bony arm, trying to touch Ico’s Mark with trembling fingers.

  “Wh-who are you?” Ico asked, and the boy disappeared, only to reappear an instant later a short distance away, standing alone up to his knees in the water. He looked cold.

  Ico turned his attention back to the other people. There were men, women, young and old, about thirty in all, he guessed. They all looked terribly cold and exhausted, their backs bent with despair. Their pale faces, drained of life, hovered eerily in the light that spilled down through the opening above Ico’s head.

  “What are you doing down here?” he asked, turning around. No one replied. “What’s going on? Is there a way out of this place?”

  In silence, a few of the people broke away from the crowd and began walking slowly down the waterway, making dull, metallic noises with each step.

  Beside him, a boy lent his hand to a slender girl to help her step up onto one of the pedestals. Ico gaped at her legs, so skinny they looked like skin stretched over bone. Wooden manacles went around both of her ankles, the heavy chain connecting them coiled at her feet like a snake.

  “This is a prison,” Ico breathed. “Who put you in here?” he asked the crowd.

  He felt someone tapping him on his shoulder from behind—a vision of the past, actually touching him.

  Ico whirled around and saw a stocky man standing on the pedestal behind him. He looked like a soldier, possibly a guard. Though he wore no sword or chain-mail vest, the shoulder of his tunic was woven with some kind of emblem, and he wore a metal helmet with a short visor over his eyes.

  He held his right hand over his right eye, peering out at Ico with the left. His eye was clouded, like a deep pool, far underground where the light does not reach.

  “Who are you?”

  The soldier shook his head, and Ico heard a voice in his mind.

  What happened when the enchantment was broken? the voice asked.

  Eyes opening wider, Ico took a step back into the water with a splash.

  We were prisoners here, but the enchantment was our protection. What happened when it broke?

  “How should I know?” Ico said with a shake of his head. While the voice had been talking in his mind, the others gathered in the underground prison had formed a circle around him and the soldier.

  Madness took us all. People trying to run, others trying to stop them. Fear and a mindless rage gripped the castle.

  Ico stood gripping the Mark on his chest and listened to the soldier’s story. “I thought someone had invaded, or the queen had put everyone to death—but no, you were killing one another.”

  The soldier, a former member of the castle patrol, looked down at the water running past his legs, his right hand still firmly over his eye.

  There were arrests, executions, massacres, and melees. Who caused this madness? Who broke the enchantment?

  Ico remembered the bridge across the grand hall in the castle where he had seen the hanged people. Was that one of the executions the soldier spoke of? Had the people of the castle gone to war against each other?

  It had to be the queen’s plan. This was her doing.

  It explained why the armies of Zagrenda-Sol had found no one upon their invasion of the castle. Everyone was already dead—executed or simply killed in open combat.

  “Was there no one who resisted, no one who kept their sanity?”

  The guard slowly shook his helmeted head.

  “And you? Who put you in here? Did they survive?”

  The soldier lifted his face and finally removed his hand, showing Ico the empty socket from which his eye had been gouged out.

  Everyone died.

  The words rang in Ico’s mind. When they had faded, Ico was alone again. Nothing remained to indicate what he had seen, save that his shoulder was cold and slightly damp where the soldier had touched him.

  For a while Ico just stood there, unable to move. His limbs felt heavy, while sadness and anger whirled inside him. He gripped his Mark so tightly he thought the fabric might rip, and when at last he released his hand and looked back up, he felt tears forming in the corners of his eyes. Ico blinked and wiped them away. Now is no time for crying.

  If this place had been a prison, there would be no exit, which meant no way down toward the ground floor of the castle. He jumped and managed to climb b
ack up through the ventilation shaft where he had first entered, back out onto the surface. The sun beat down on him, warming his waterlogged skin. Ico stood, letting the life flow back into his limbs, before calling out for Yorda.

  She had gone quite a distance. He had to backtrack a significant way, stopping to call out every few paces. When at last he found Yorda, the sight of her slender frame sent a stab of pain through Ico’s chest as he remembered the girl he had seen in the water.

  He reached his hand out to her.

  “Did you know there was a prison down there?”

  Yorda took his hand, flinching at the question.

  “I saw it. The ghost told me that when the enchantment over the castle was broken, they started killing each other. No one survived.” He wasn’t trying to blame Yorda, but he couldn’t help the sharpness in his voice. “I saw a vision back in the tower after I lowered your cage. It was an old man, a scholar, wearing a long robe. He was angry about something—that must’ve been from after the enchantment was broken, otherwise how would he have gotten into the tower?”

  Yorda nodded quietly.

  “Was that Master Suhal?”

  Yorda nodded again. Her eyes were dry, but the pale glow that seemed to emanate from inside her had dimmed. Maybe, Ico thought, when Yorda is weak, the power of the Book of Light within her grows weaker too.

  “So when the enchantment was broken,” Ico said, “Master Suhal learned what the queen had been up to in the Tower of Winds. That’s why he was angry. It was probably the first time he learned the true cause of the king’s death. Or maybe, it was less like learning and more like remembering.

  “But what I don’t get,” Ico continued, “is why Master Suhal was still sane. Why didn’t he go crazy like everyone else in the castle? What happened to him when everyone was killing each other?”

  Even as his lips asked the question, the answer rose in Ico’s heart. Master Suhal had been killed in the ensuing chaos. No matter how rational he might have remained, a single old man would not have been able to stand up to a garrison full of bloodthirsty soldiers.

  “What was it the queen said—something about the Dark God feeding off people’s greed and malice?” Ico looked up at Yorda. “I bet the queen works the same way. That’s why when you got hold of the Book of Light, she had to release everyone under her enchantment. She made them kill each other to increase her power!” The more Ico thought about it, the more it made sense. “She used up the sacrifices she had been saving for the Dark God’s revival—she consumed them herself.”

  And then the queen had fled from the searching eyes of Zagrenda-Sol, hiding somewhere in the castle.

  The mystery was what had happened next. If the queen had gone into hiding, how did the Castle in the Mist become what it was today? Something even more terrible must have happened to place the queen back on her throne as master of the castle, in a position where she could demand the Holy Zagrenda-Sol Empire to provide her with new sacrifices from Ozuma’s descendants.

  Yorda knew what had happened, as did the shades in the tower.

  Only Ico was still in the dark.

  Back in the outside corridor, Ico found a way to climb up to a higher level and spent the next several minutes helping Yorda up. They were inside again. He knew he was back in the castle proper, yet this place was completely unfamiliar to him. He found he preferred the outside corridor. Even if he knew it was a dead end, being out in the sun was better than wandering through these labyrinthine passages. They walked along, stone walls on either side, passing through several rooms where the air hung chilly and still. Despite his best intentions, Ico discovered that they were going up again. Every room seemed to have a rise in it up to a higher platform, and all the stairs went up. They were getting ever farther away from the underground pier.

  Every time they came to a terrace, he made a point of stopping to look at the view and take in a deep breath—but he was still no clearer as to where in the castle he was. Everywhere he looked seemed unfamiliar.

  He continued on. Fatigue had begun to gnaw at him, and then he came to a large window and spotted one of the giant celestial spheres that stood beside the main gate. He could only see the very top of its orb from where he stood, but still his heart leapt.

  The sun was already beginning to slant in the sky, by which Ico could tell that the sphere he was looking at was the one on the eastern side of the gate.

  Images from half-remembered visions flooded Ico’s mind.

  “Yorda!” he called out. The girl was several paces away, having stayed behind when he ran up to the window. “If we can make it over there, we’ll reach the Eastern Arena—the celestial sphere’s right next to it!” Ico stopped. Why was the celestial sphere important again?

  Another image flitted through his consciousness: curved dishes rotating, the brilliant sun, and a great groaning of wood and stone.

  Of course! Ico clapped his hands with excitement. When the light from the mirror-dishes hits the spheres on the east and west sides, the gates open!

  Pleased at even this hint of progress, and that his many visions of the castle seemed to be making more sense to him now, Ico grabbed Yorda’s hand and resumed walking briskly, checking out every window they passed to make sure he was still heading toward the eastern sphere.

  Soon, more of the sphere came into view—then they hit another dead end.

  It was a terrace, wide and grassy, that extended from the side of the castle with no corridors or stairs, save some leading up to what looked like a viewing platform on the right-hand side. Ico’s attention, however, was entirely captured by a separate building standing at the edge of the terrace, facing away from them.

  It was a windmill. Ico had heard of these being used near the capital. Mechanically, they were similar to the waterwheel that ran on the river outside Toksa Village. The water, or in this case, the wind, turned a shaft that was used to do something else, like rotate a grindstone to grind wheat. He couldn’t imagine what this mill was used for. Its position high up in the corner of the castle, far from a granary or field, did not seem like an ideal placement. He went up to the edge of the terrace and looked down, seeing the tops of trees far below. Behind him, the Castle in the Mist rose, its walls stretching even higher than the top of the windmill.

  Though the white sails on the mill were tattered and dirty, they still rotated, creaking gently in the wind.

  “I wonder if we can go any higher here?”

  Ico turned to Yorda just in time to see a person standing directly behind her topple from the edge of the terrace and plummet to the ground below.

  [3]

  ICO YELPED, CAUSING Yorda to jump back in alarm. She landed with one heel hanging over the edge of the terrace. Ico grabbed her arm at the last moment, pulling her back to safety. “Someone just fell! Right there, behind you!”

  He had seen it happen with his own eyes. Another vision?

  Ico stepped carefully to the edge of the terrace, looking down over the precipice to the treetops far below. He could see no bodies lying on the canopy, no obvious places where branches had broken. No bodies lay sprawled out across the small patches of grass he could see between the boughs.

  Though he had only caught a glimpse, he got that the fallen person was a woman. Chewing his lip, Ico walked the same path he had seen the vision walk, trying to figure out what she might have been doing. The long hem of her robes had dragged on the grass behind her as she walked, and her black hair had been tied up into a bun on her head.

  “A handmaiden…maybe?”

  Yorda had been following Ico with her eyes, but when she heard him say that word, her expression changed.

  “Do you know who it was?” he asked. Yorda looked away in silence. Her eyes were dark, the way they had been ever since Ico learned about her name, her parentage, and her past.

  “Well,” Ico said as he paced, “maybe she threw herself from the wall when the castle descended into chaos. It would fit with everything else that was going on.” He l
ooked up at Yorda for some acknowledgment, but she did not appear to be listening.

  Ico left Yorda with instructions not to get too close to the edge of the terrace and began climbing the foundation at the base of the windmill. The stones were worn and cracked, so it was easy for him to find handholds. While he toiled, climbing, the windmill blades creaked merrily on above him.

  When he had reached the top of the foundation, he picked his moment and jumped onto one of the spinning blades. The sail flapped, snapping in the wind as the blades turned to carry Ico all the way to the top. He held on tight and enjoyed the view.

  From here, he could see the eastern celestial sphere as well as a view of the winding path along the top of the castle wall he would have to take to get there. To the left of the sphere was a separate structure connected to the wall, which his borrowed memories indicated was the Eastern Arena. Beyond the wall stretched the blue sea. He jumped off the blade onto one of the roofs of the castle. Up here, the stones were even more weathered, with large cracks and tufts of weeds growing up from the gaps.

  He looked out toward the arena. Something like a giant circular window dominated one of its walls. The window was closed with gray shutters made of the same material as the walls around them, but when he squinted his eyes, he could make out a thin line running down the middle where the shutters opened. He could draw a line between the circular window and the celestial sphere that led directly to the main gates. If he could open up the window on this side and the west and get the light through there to the spheres on either side of the gates, the gates would open.

  He would start with the east, then would just have to run through the castle to the opposite side. Ico checked the route several times to make sure he wouldn’t forget. It would take a while, but actually knowing where he was going was a huge boost to his morale.

  He walked along the wall from the place where the windmill had brought him and found an idol gate—a pair of squat statues—waiting at the end of the passage to block his path.