Castle Spellbound c-7

by John Dechancie

  They had encountered anomalies on the lower levels: comedians spouting routines to anyone who'd listen, Oriental jugglers, and so forth; but the apparitions had petered out at about the sixtieth floor.

  At last they came to the highest landing and a stout oak door set into the curving wall. Dalton opened it and went through, Thaxton following. They came out into brisk open air and a maze of high, windswept parapets.

  "Good Lord."

  There was a lot to see. First, the castle itself. They found themselves on a walkway running along the keep's battlements. The castle keep was eye-defying in its complexity, bristling with hundreds of towers. Below lay a maze of walls enclosing more walls, marking off wards and barbicans and a thousand different cloisters and courtyards. Parapets capped the walls and ramparts. Enclosing the keep itself was a concentric network of curtain-walls and bastions, each higher and more formidable than the last, until the outside wall was almost as high as the keep itself. Castle Perilous was an impregnable fortress, vast and enigmatic.

  All that was left bare of the citadel on which the castle stood was a narrow ledge of rock surrounding everything. A thousand feet below that ledge lay the barren Plains of Baranthe, a snow-capped mountain range rising on its western extremity.

  Gathered in all at once, it was a breathtaking view. But there was more to see.

  Gossamer displays of light emanated from the keep and the entire castle. Some contained vague images: faces, human figures, various forms of animals and objects. Like auroras, these phenomena flickered and fluttered. Diaphanous birdlike images arose and flapped their way skyward before disappearing. Nothing was sharply defined; all possessed a ghostly quality.

  Hovering above all this was a vague shape, gradually taking form, seeming to preside over everything. It might have been a face.

  "What the devil's all this?" Thaxton wanted to know.

  "Anybody's guess," Dalton said, looking up. "What do you make of that up there?"

  Thaxton looked at it. "Looks like a bloke in a turban."

  "Strange. Seems to be smiling at us. Unnerving." "Yes. Uh, perhaps we should…"

  "Definitely has something to do with what's going on in the castle," Dalton ventured.

  "But what, I don't know."

  "Neither do I. Well, shall we be off, then?"

  "Let's see what this is all about," Dalton said, venturing farther along the walkway.

  "Uh… well, if you insist."

  They walked cautiously, keeping to the middle of the walkway, Thaxton casting periodic nervous glances downward. The way was not nearly wide enough, as far as he was concerned.

  "What the devil could it be?" Dalton said, eyes still on the gathering image above.

  "Looks like a genie out of a bloody lamp."

  "It does at that," Dalton said, stopping. "But more sinister."

  "Quite. Well, the genie's loose. Let's report to Tyrene."

  "It seems to be still in the process of forming. We should observe it a little."

  "Yes, I suppose we should. Just a bit longer."

  "Nervous?"

  Thaxton feigned surprise.

  "Who, me, old man? Of course not. It does pay to be cautious, though."

  "You're right. I don't like the looks of this. Don't like it at all."

  "Yes, it does give one pause. Wish it wouldn't gawk at us like that, with that bloody insipid grin."

  "Looks like it's smirking, sort of," Dalton said.

  The face was a trifle more distinct now. It kept moving slightly from side to side, and continued to go in and out of focus. It looked like an image projected on a cloud of smoke. It was definitely grinning. The grin was impish, sly, and-this was quite discernible-a bit evil.

  "Perhaps we should try to communicate with it," Dalton said.

  "Eh? Whatever for?" "Find out what it wants."

  "Well, we know that. It wants the bloody castle. Doesn't everybody?"

  Dalton cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled, "You up there? Can you hear? Can you understand?"

  A sudden wind rose on the parapet. Thaxton shivered.

  "Did it speak?" Dalton asked.

  Thaxton said, "Pardon?"

  "Did you hear it say something?"

  "No, sorry."

  Dalton again raised his hands to his mouth. "I say, can you hear us, whoever you are?"

  Quite distinctly, came a voice from above. No need to shout. It was a pleasant, melodious voice, with perhaps a trace of an accent.

  "Who are you?"

  Laughter came from the image.

  Then this, merrily: Wouldn't you like to know?

  Dalton looked back at his partner with sardonically raised eyebrows, then turned to face the apparition. "What's your game? What do you want?"

  "A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread-"

  "Good God, it's quoting poetry at us," Thaxton said.

  "Look here," Dalton said to the thing. "We'd like to know what you're up to. You seem to be succeeding in whatever you want to accomplish. Why don't you tell us what it is?"

  "The Moving Finger writes; and having writ,

  Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit

  Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

  Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it."

  "Well, that's helpful, I must say," Thaxton sneered.

  Dalton said, "Sounds like it's warning us."

  "See here," Thaxton said with a finger raised. "Threats won't get you anywhere."

  Again, soft laughter.

  "Bet it thinks it's holding all the cards," Dalton ventured.

  "And maybe it is."

  "Well, we're not going to get anywhere with the bloody thing, whatever it is, so we'd best-"

  Dalton shouted to the skies once more: "Look here, you'd better be aware that the master of this castle is a very powerful magician. He won't take kindly to any mischief."

  The laughter rose in pitch.

  Thaxton cast a look behind and was dismayed. A lion, its mane shaggy and full, had just walked out of the door to the tower and was proceeding up the walkway with great interest.

  Thaxton tapped his friend on the shoulder. "I say, old man…"

  "Did you understand what I said?" Dalton continued yelling on high, his attention on the image. "His name is Incarnadine. I don't know if that name means anything to you particularly, but he's quite well-known as one of the most powerful-"

  "I say, Dalton, old fellow."

  "— magicians in a whole passel of worlds, so you'd best give all this business some thought before you proceed with whatever it is you're up to."

  "Dalton, please, give a look behind!"

  "Huh? I…" Dalton turned. "Holy smoke." They ran.

  The walkway made an L at the next turret and proceeded right along the battlement. The lion began loping after them, its interest piqued, but not sufficiently to induce it to give full chase. Thaxton pulled slightly ahead of Dalton, threw a wild look behind and increased his lead.

  They made the circuit of a turret atop a tower that stood at an oblique-angled corner of the keep. Above, the disembodied face observed their progress with some glee. Impish laughter sounded above the rising wind.

  They ran along neatly laid flagstones, past the crenelated battlements and rows of loopholes. The sun was low, throwing long shadows across the courts. The wind began to buffet them. And all around them, spectral apparitions flapped and flew, leaped and cavorted. An auroral prominence arched high into the air and dissipated, to be followed by another, not quite so spectacular but still impressive. Faint shafts of light swung like spotlight beams, crisscrossing in Hollywood-premiere flamboyance. Pink elephants and chartreuse zebras gamboled atop the revetments.

  Another turret lay ahead, this one a bartizan hanging precariously far out over the wall. Thaxton ran by it but skidded to a stop on the walkway beyond.

  Another lion was coming at them, from the other direction.

  Dalton dashed into the turret and climbed u
p on the battlement.

  "Thaxton, old boy! Up here. It's our only chance!" Thaxton backed into the turret, eyeing with dismay the flanking approach of the two beasts, who had slowed their gait to a stealthy walk. He stopped and glanced behind. "What the devil are you doing up there?"

  Dalton said, "If they come any closer, we've got to lower ourselves over the side and hang on till they lose interest and go away."

  "Good God, have you taken leave of your senses?"

  "Maybe we won't have to. They may let us alone if we don't move."

  The lions seemed determined to make a meal of it. Both had a lean and hungry look.

  Thaxton said, "Oh, bloody hell."

  He jumped up into the notch-crenel-adjoining the one Dalton stood on. He looked down.

  "WHOOOAAAA!"

  Dalton reached and grabbed him before he toppled over into empty space.

  "Don't look!" Dalton commanded.

  "Bloody blue blazes, how can you not look?"

  "Turn around and get down on your haunches!"

  Trembling and white as a ghost, Thaxton did as instructed.

  "W-what now?" he wanted to know.

  "We watch and see what they do."

  The animals kept advancing, looking very confident that they had their prey cornered. These were not a pair of toothless old pussycats escaped from a circus; they looked quite as wild and ferocious as lions come.

  "I think we had better do the hanging bit," Dalton decided.

  "Can't we do something else?"

  "Not unless you want to jump."

  "I'm almost persuaded that would be the better course."

  "Might be. But I'm for trying the other thing first."

  Thaxton stiffened up a bit. "Right you are, old man. You first."

  Dalton got one leg over the edge; then, grasping the inner edge of the crenel with both hands, he lowered the other leg and eased himself down.

  More slowly, and with some difficulty, Thaxton did the same.

  The wind gusted and tore at them. Their legs dangled over the plains.

  "Oh, dear," was all Thaxton could say. His face was the color of bean curd.

  Dalton's face was a grayish-green. "I'm afraid…" He lurched and struggled for a better handhold, his shoes scraping against the stone. "Afraid I'm losing my grip here."

  Dalton's hands slipped from the inner edge of the wall. He dropped but caught himself, finding a tenuous purchase on the outer edge.

  "Christ!"

  Thaxton yelled, "Hang on, old boy, hang on!"

  "I really think…"

  "Here, grab onto me!"

  "I'm going to fall…"

  With great horror, Thaxton watched as his friend lost his handhold and dropped, uttering not a sound, to his certain death.

  Thaxton hung there in space, the wind howling around him. Better if Dalton had screamed, he thought. All the more dreadful like that, plummeting in utter silence. Dreadful.

  LABORATORY

  Jeremy stood peering at the dial of a curious device that resembled a grandfather clock, but was not a clock. It was a delicate instrument, sensitive to the ebb and flow of magic in and about the castle.

  He observed the displacement of the single hand and the numeral it pointed to, then made a notation on a pad. He stepped to the next machine and did the same.

  Melanie watched over his shoulder.

  "These machines can tell you if something is going on?" she asked. She hadn't spent much time in the lab since coming to the castle.

  "Something is going on, all right," Jeremy replied. "The question is, what is it and where is it?"

  "Will those gizmos tell you that, too?"

  "If I can triangulate, yeah."

  "Oh."

  All this didn't make much sense to Melanie. The room they were in looked like a science lab, not a place of magic. Correction: it resembled a science fiction lab, worthy of a chiller flick. Right out of Frankenstein.

  Jeremy stepped to the next machine. All these unusual sensing instruments were similar, but the faces differed. Some had single hands, some had two or three, and a few had several rotating dials and gauges. All looked antique and brought to mind something one might have discovered in the study of a medieval alchemist. But no alchemist or magician had ever owned these odd contraptions. None but Incarnadine, that is.

  Melanie took a self-guided tour of the lab, noting the many strange items in it, then returned. She sat at the work station of the castle's mainframe "computer." They called it a computer, but it looked like a collection of old juke boxes lost in an array of more Frankenstein stuff. She sat back and watched Jeremy busy himself about the banks of gauges and verniers.

  Presently he came to the work station, sat down in front of a modern-looking terminal, and began typing quickly and dexterously.

  "You know a lot about computers?"

  "Hm? Uh, yeah, I guess. You?"

  "Not much," Melanie said. "I use one, but mainly for word processing… Oh, sorry. You're busy."

  "Nab, just doing some data entry. Be done in a sec." Melanie watched him. He looked young, barely out of his teens. Was he out of his teens? She didn't know. He was reputed to be something of a wizard at computers. A "hacker." And she gathered, from what people had casually mentioned about Jeremy, that at one point he'd been in trouble for meddling in things he shouldn't have meddled in. But she knew nothing definite. At any rate, Jeremy was certainly a wizard in his own right, and held the post of Chief of Data Processing here in the castle.

  Melanie swiveled her chair around and stared off into space, thinking.

  She was brought out of her reverie by the sound of a door opening in the back of the lab. Two odd men came through. The tall one was Luster Gooch. Dolbert, very short and potbellied, was Luster's brother. Both wore tattered, greasestained dungarees and equally shabby baseball caps. They came over to the work station.

  Luster touched the bill of his cap. "Howdy, Miss Melanie."

  Dolbert chittered, grinning bashfully.

  "Hi, Luster. What have you guys been doing?"

  "Oh, still tryin' to fix up that there space ship, or time machine, or whatever the heck ya call it."

  "The Sidewise Voyager? I think it's an interdimensional spacetime ship. That's what everybody calls it."

  "Wull, whachamacallit, we're still tryin' to fix the sucker. Every time someone brings it back from joy-ridin' it needs tinkerin' with agin."

  "Any luck?"

  "Oh, ah expect we'll get her workin' shortly."

  "Great. Might come in handy with all this ruckus that's going on."

  "All what ruckus, ma'am?"

  Melanie was surprised. "You guys haven't noticed anything strange around the castle?"

  Luster looked at Dolbert, who shrugged.

  "Why no, ma'am," Luster said. "We been cooped up in the gravin' dock all day. Whut's goin' on?"

  Just then the lab door burst open and a sword-wielding man in strange armor ran in. He was followed by another man in similar attire. The first man turned to meet the second's charge. Swords clashed.

  Stunned, Melanie, Luster, and Dolbert watched. Jeremy kept typing.

  Another pair of gladiators spilled into the room. There was much clanging about of steel.

  "Should have locked that damn door," Jeremy muttered. Two women came in. At least Melanie thought they were women. They were slightly smaller than the male gladiators, but well-muscled and very tough-looking. Both were wearing leather halters and briefs with steel greaves and brassards. They fought just as savagely as the men.

  "Oh, my," Melanie said.

  "Wull, don't that beat all," Luster said.

  "Got it!"

  Jeremy looked up from the terminal.

  "What is it, Jeremy?"

  "I've located the source of the disturbance. It's somewhere way down in the lower levels of the keep, near the King's Tower. It's probably in the cellar."

  "Great. At least we know now. And when Incarnadine gets back…"

 
More combatants invaded the room, and the lab turned into a battleground.

  "We'd better get the heck out of here," Jeremy said. He, Melanie, Luster, and Dolbert all retreated through the back door. Jeremy slammed the door shut and turned the huge key in its lock, then pocketed it.

  "That ought to hold 'em. We'd better get those-"

  As he pointed to the room's other entrance, the two huge freight doors swung open and the gladiatorial melee spilled in.

  "Into the Voyager!" Jeremy yelled.

  The craft, sitting out in the middle of the spacious chamber, was bell-shaped, silvery, and rather small for four people, but it did accommodate a crew of that number. The nonhuman race that had built the craft were of considerably smaller dimensions.

  Jeremy was the last one in. He wriggled through the tiny access hole and closed the circular hatch after him.

  It was cramped inside. "Excuse me, ma'am."

  "Oh, that's all right."

  "I think iffen you'd set right down here-"

  "No, wait, let me get over here, then-"

  Jeremy said, "Pardon me." Then he said, "Ouch, darn it."

  Dolbert chortled.

  "Dolbert's shore sorry he stepped on yore toe, there, Jeremy."

  "Uh, that's okay. Just sit. Yeah, there."

  All four settled into the uncomfortably small seats, the Gooch brothers in back, Jeremy and Melanie up front. The compartment was dim, the only light coming from glowing indicators on the instrument panel.

  "Whew," Luster breathed.

  "Yeah, really," Jeremy seconded.

  "Well," Melanie said.

  Jeremy slumped back. "Well, hell."

  "Doesn't this thing have a window?" Melanie asked.

  "Yeah, but it's polarized to opacity now. You want to see out?" Jeremy reached for a switch.

  "No! They might see us."

  "I can make it one-way."

  "Forget it. I don't want to see what's going on out there." Melanie took a long, heaving breath. "What do we do now?"

  "Good question," Jeremy said. "We're kinda stuck."

  "We wait here till the ruckus is over, I guess," Melanie said with a shrug.

  "When's that gonna be, though?"

  "Jeremy, your guess is as good as mine."

  Looking at the control panel, Jeremy scratched his head. "Luster?"