He hadn’t expected that. The beast had not seen him, he was certain, but it was now quite definite that he would not be leaving this cottage for at least a few hours. If the dragon noticed him he might never leave it alive at all. Worried and distracted, he started back for his chair and tripped over the rolled-up tapestry.
He caught himself before he fell, then turned and looked at his prize.
Was there, he asked himself, a chance that he could carry out the task he had originally signed up for, and somehow kill the dragon? Might there be some way he could use the tapestry’s magic — if it had any?
Well, he told himself, he obviously wouldn’t be doing anything else for awhile, so he might as well look the thing over. He glanced up at the cottage wall and found a likely spot.
The place had not been designed for tapestries, of course, but with a little effort he managed to wedge the tapestry rod diagonally across one corner, supported on one end by a step-back in the chimney and on the other by a gap betwixt a rafter and the wooden plate that topped the stone wall and anchored the tie-beams.
Once he was satisfied that it was securely in place he began unfurling the tapestry; the rod was wedged too tightly to turn freely, so instead he was forced to drag the fabric up over the top time after time, and let it drop back behind.
Finally it hung down freely, brightly lit by the rays of the setting sun pouring in through one of the western windows, and Tobas looked at it with renewed interest — the scene it depicted was so very weird! That ghastly lighting, the strange rocks, the empty areas beyond the castle — whoever had designed it had quite an imagination, Tobas thought, even without considering the castle itself, with its bizarre architecture and hideous carvings.
He reached out to brush the cloth smooth, and to his astonishment saw his hand go right through, into the picture. The baleful red-purple seemed to leap up around him.
The magic was obviously working; he knew that instantly. This was no oracle or conjuring device, but a magical portal.
He pulled his hand back, shaken, but then realized with a shock that red-purple light still colored his fingertips.
A hot wind blew across his face from somewhere, hot and dry and like nothing that he had felt in the hills of Dwomor; when he raised his eyes to the castle he saw an indisputably solid and three-dimensional castle, not a mere picture.
He knew then that, without meaning to, he had stepped through the tapestry.
But by all the gods, to where?
He had not realized when he reached out his hand that he might be doing something dangerous, but he cursed himself now for not seeing the obvious perils of touching the picture; he had had no idea what lay beyond. Perhaps the wizard had created the tapestry as somewhere to send his enemies, or somewhere to keep demons and monsters.
Well, maybe, even now, it was not too late. He had not taken a single step inside, but only put his hand through; surely that couldn’t hurt. He could simply turn around and step back out. The moment he saw that he was, beyond question, inside the scene in the tapestry, actually standing on that barren stony pathway, he lost his nerve. He gave up any thought he might have had of exploring further and stepped back, expecting to find himself back in the abandoned cottage.
Nothing happened; he was still standing on the narrow path across the rocks. He turned around, looking for the little cottage in the hills of Dwomor, but it was gone. All that he could see behind him was empty space.
He turned in a full circle, slowly, taking in his surroundings.
The only things in sight were the castle, the luridly-colored void, and the path on which he stood; the path started out of nothing just a few feet from where he had entered and led nowhere but up to the castle. The rocks that supported both path and castle ended a yard or so out in every direction.
He got down on his belly and crawled to the nearest edge; leaning out cautiously he peered over, expecting to see something, a valley of some sort, far below.
He saw nothing at all, nothing but infinite empty space lit an eerie red. The rocks supporting the path were themselves hanging unsupported in mid-air. As far as he could discern they extended down about six feet and across about eight feet in all.
Looking over toward that ornate and frightening castle he saw more of the same; the rocks on which it stood were not parts of a mountaintop, but of a boulder, perhaps fifty or sixty yards in diameter, hanging in nothingness. Nor were they simply flying; below them were no distant fields or forests, nor even clouds — not even stars — but only endless emptiness. A wave of vertigo overcame him, and he closed his eyes.
Hot, dry wind, curiously odorless, ruffled his hair as he lay there, his eyes held tightly shut.
This place, he realized as he lay motionless, was not a part of the World he knew at all; that much was quite obvious. He inched himself back onto the path and got slowly to his feet, trying to suppress his trembling.
Quite plainly, he had only one place to go, and there could be no point in putting off going there. He walked slowly and cautiously toward the castle, taking it one small step at a time.
The rope bridge across the chasm, the chasm that was actually ten feet of nothing at all, was the worst part, but he managed it, and stood at last on the lower lip of that fanged, grinning mouth that served the castle as a gate.
He was utterly terrified.
He peered in; torches blazed on either side of the gateway, which led to a huge pair of iron-bound wooden doors. He forced himself to step forward.
The doors were closed; he reached for the huge iron rings that would haul them open, then drew his hands back. He was trembling too hard to grip anything. He gritted his teeth and put his hands down at his sides, forcing them to stop shaking.
When he was as calm as he thought he was going to get, he reached out again and tugged at the iron rings.
Nothing happened; the doors were locked from inside. At first a wave of relief swept over him, but that was quickly followed by renewed terror; whatever might lurk within this grotesque structure, it could not possibly be worse than being trapped outside it forever, with nowhere to go, no food, no water, nothing but a few feet of bare rock. He dropped the rings with a loud double clunk and began hammering on the doors with his fists.
When his initial panic had spent itself his hands dropped, and he turned around, looking out at the void and trying to think what he could do next.
A voice came from inside the castle, an uncertain, female voice, asking, in a very strange and old-fashioned accent, “Derry? Is that you? Where have you been?”
Tobas froze for a minute; he had not really expected an answer, certainly not an ordinary human voice mistaking him for someone else.
At last, however, he gathered his wits sufficiently to reply, “It’s not Derry; it’s me, Tobas.”
“Who?” The voice was almost plaintive.
“Let me in, and I’ll explain.” He had no intention of giving up anything that might get him inside, away from all that empty nothingness, out of the ghastly colored light and the dessicating wind.
Tobas could almost hear the hesitation on the other side; although the pause could not actually have been more than five or ten seconds, it seemed like an eternity before the woman said, “Well, I suppose it’ll be all right. You feel harmless enough.” Almost immediately, Tobas heard a heavy bar being drawn back. Then a chain fell, a lock scraped, and finally the heavy doors swung outward, revealing a broad, torchlit hallway. Another, equally massive pair of doors, some ten feet in, stood open; beyond that lay some thirty feet of passageway, the walls broken by side-passages, and then yet another set of doors, this pair closed. The corridor was completely unfurnished save for elaborate wrought-iron brackets on the walls, holding torches, but demonic faces were carved in the stone at each corner of the ceiling, leering down at him.
Standing in the middle of the hallway was a lovely young woman, tall, slender, and dark-skinned, clad in an elegant crimson gown, her waist-length black hair spilling down
across her shoulders. She watched Tobas warily.
“Hello,” he said, trying desperately to look harmless, “I’m Tobas of Telven, a wizard, of sorts.”
“I am called Karanissa of the Mountains; I’m a witch. Did Derry — I mean, Derithon — send you?”
“No, he didn’t. Ah ... if you’ll let me come in for a moment, I’ll try to explain.”
Karanissa hesitated; Tobas’ stomach unexpectedly emitted a loud growl, and he added, “And could you spare anything to eat?”
The self-proclaimed witch smiled, then nodded. “This way.”
She led him down a side-corridor and through a small open door into the first place he’d seen on this side of the tapestry that seemed fit for humans rather than demons, a quiet, windowless, torchlit little chamber carpeted with furs, with banners on the walls, and furnished with several folding wooden chairs with fabric seats. Karanissa took one chair and motioned for Tobas to take another. When he had settled warily, she clapped her hands.
The air stirred, and Tobas shifted uneasily in his seat.
“Bring us food and drink,” Karanissa ordered, though Tobas saw no one else in the room. “Is there anything in particular you’d like?” she asked him.
“No,” he said. “Whatever is convenient. I’m hungry enough to eat almost anything.”
“Some sharp cheese, then, and the new bread, and the best red wine we have left — oh, and apples.”
The air stirred again, then stilled.
“Go on,” Karanissa said, her attention fully on Tobas now.
“Ah...” he said. “I don’t know where to begin.”
“Start with how you got here,” she suggested.
“Through a tapestry,” Tobas said. “I just tried to smooth it out, but I must have taken a step in, and I couldn’t find my way back.”
“I know that story well enough! Derry left me here while he went to check on something, and I haven’t been able to get out since.”
Tobas’ spirits, which had begun to rise, quickly sank once more; did that mean he, too, was stranded here indefinitely?
Perhaps not; the mysterious Derry, or Derithon, had gotten out. “If you don’t mind my asking, who is this Derithon?”
“You don’t know?” The witch’s startlement seemed quite genuine, and not just a sort of boast. “You never heard of the wizard Derithon the Mage?”
“I’m afraid not,” Tobas admitted.
“Well, this is his castle — he conjured it himself. And he made the tapestry I came here through, which I would assume is the one you came through, as well. Unless something terrible has happened, it should be hanging in a private room of his other castle, which was flying over the mountains of central Ethshar last I knew. That was some time ago, though.”
A strange realization dawned on Tobas as the witch said this; for an instant he refused to believe it, but by the time she had finished speaking he was almost sure of it. He had assumed that she and Derithon were adventurers who had somehow stumbled upon — or rather, through — the tapestry, but now he thought otherwise. An adventurer would not consider either castle his own.
And the flying castle had been fallen and empty for centuries.
“Lady Karanissa, excuse me, but how long have you been here?” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t know!” she replied, annoyed. “Ages, it seems — it can’t really be as long as it’s felt like, locked up here all alone, and there aren’t any days or nights here, so I just don’t know. Why? Do you know how long it’s been?”
“You said that when you came here, Derithon’s other castle was still flying?”
“Yes, of course!” Tobas had startled her again. “You mean it isn’t any more?”
“No, no, it isn’t, and it hasn’t been for a long time — and I’m afraid that Derithon was killed when it fell. At least, I think he must have been; my companion and I found a body near the tapestry that must have been his.”
“Derry’s dead?” She stared at him, open-mouthed with shock.
“I think so; I can’t be sure it was he.” Tobas was apologetic.
“What did he look like, this dead person? No, don’t tell me. You said that the castle hadn’t flown in a long time? How long, then — months? Years?”
“Years, at least.”
“Gods, how long have I been here? What’s the date?”
“It’s the ... let me see ... the fourteenth of Harvest, or maybe the fifteenth by now; I don’t know how long I’ve been here.”
“What year, you idiot?” Karanissa shouted.
“Fifty-two twenty-one, by Ethsharitic reckoning.”
She stared at him, dumbfounded, then demanded, “Is this a joke? Are you playing some sort of trick on me? Is Derry in on this?”
Taken aback, Tobas said, “No, of course not!”
“It was the twenty-seventh of Leafcolor, in the Year of Human Speech Four Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty-Two, when Derry and I came in here for a private evening together! Are you trying to tell me I’ve been sitting here waiting for that damn wizard to come back for four hundred and fifty-nine years?” With her final words she rose from her chair, shouting directly into Tobas’ face.
Tobas simply stared back, unable to think of any reply.
After a moment the witch sank back into her chair and stared at the ceiling for a long, slow breath. “Derithon of Helde,” she announced, shaking a fist at the air, “if you weren’t already dead, I’d kill you myself for getting me into this!”
Chapter Twenty
As the two sat glaring at each other a tray appeared through one of the doorways, wafted into the room as if it weighed nothing and were merely drifting on the wind, like a falling leaf in the autumn. Karanissa, thus distracted from her fury, plucked it out of the air and offered it to Tobas.
It held exactly the food and drink she had requested, and after a brief hesitation Tobas helped himself generously; he was just as hungry in this eerie other-worldly castle as he had been back in the mountains of Dwomor.
The wine was not good at all, very acid and laced with gritty sediment, but after four hundred years that was to be expected. Tobas was too polite — and too unsure of his situation — to complain to his hostess. The bread and apples were fresh and tasty, however, and the cheese only slightly overripe.
When both had eaten their fill and calmed down somewhat, it was decided that Karanissa would first tell her story all the way through, and Tobas would then tell his, rather than both of them asking questions back and forth and confusing matters.
Karanissa maintained that her tale was very short and simple. Not long after she had completed her apprenticeship and been drafted into the army as a military witch, she had met Derithon, then two or three hundred years old and semi-retired from his duties, but still on call for special missions and still training up new combat wizards. They had, as she put it, become very good friends, but had not considered marriage because of the two-century difference in their ages, the gross disparity in their ranks — Derithon a reserve general, she a mere lieutenant — and the usual difficulties attendant upon marriages between magicians of different schools.
Tobas was not aware of any such difficulties, but said nothing.
The two of them had had good times together, Karanissa went on, and Derithon had had her transferred from her reconaissance post to “special duties” under his own command. He had even put a spell of eternal youth on her.
Startled, Tobas interrupted at that point. “Are you serious?” he said.
“About what?” she asked, startled.
“That eternal youth spell. Do you mean that spells like that really exist?”
“Certainly they do! How did you expect me to believe that I’ve been here four hundred years if you didn’t know about youth spells?”
“I don’t know; I thought that maybe time was different here. I was always told that eternal youth spells were just pretty stories for children.”
“No, they’re real, all right, and so far as I kn
ow there isn’t any difference between time here and anywhere else. Youth spells are a military secret, but I thought just about everyone knew about them all the same. Haven’t you ever met any powerful wizards who look like they’ve just finished their apprenticeships? It always seemed to me that the military can’t be very serious about keeping these things secret when they let people like that wander around openly.”
Tobas began to explain that he had never had anything to do with the military or any wizards except Roggit, but decided that could wait. The witch was telling her story. He would hear her out first, and then worry about details. “All right,” he said, “he put an eternal youth spell on you. Then what?” He wondered for a moment why, if eternal youth spells really did exist, wizards ever allowed themselves to grow old and die, as Roggit had. He immediately realized the answer, though; not all wizards knew the spells. As he had learned himself, wizards did not share spells. Besides, the secret might well have become lost entirely by the time the Great War was over, as the methods for making flying castles had.
Karanissa shifted on her chair, brushed back her hair, and went on with her tale.
She and Derithon had become very close, and finally, one day, after swearing her to secrecy, he had brought her through the tapestry to this castle, his very special, very private retreat of long standing that no one else knew about, where they could be alone together without worrying about gossiping servants or troublesome officers. These were his most prized personal possessions, the tapestry and its castle, and she had felt honored when he chose to share them with her, as he never had with anyone else.
She was a witch, and she knew that he was speaking the truth when he told her that and not just giving her a line. Either that, or he had some spell she had never heard of that let him lie so well even a witch couldn’t detect it.
They had come here three or four times for brief visits, when time permitted, and each time, when they felt they ought to, they had then stepped back through the other tapestry to Derithon’s other castle, the flying one in the ordinary World.
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