Castle Dreams c-6

by John Dechancie

  The scent of incense drifted to her. The place smelled like a church. Soft music was playing, emanating from an unseen speaker, she presumed. It sounded like strings, but she couldn’t identify the kind of music it was, much less the selection.

  She settled back in her seat and sighed. The place had no pews, just like the great medieval cathedrals. Chairs — quite comfortable ones — had been set up, and for them she was grateful.

  No, actually the chapel didn’t seem so much like a church after all. It was too much like the rest of the castle, and the castle was unlike anything on Earth. She wondered if Incarnadine had been a religious man. Did he believe in his family’s traditional religion? Were there gods, real gods, in this universe? Everything else of a supernatural bent existed in this universe, and she decided that mere gods shouldn’t be an exception.

  She thought about her own views on religion. They didn’t amount to much. She held very few firm convictions about anything important: religion, politics, philosophy. This lack had always bothered her.

  She simply wasn’t any kind of super-intellectual. Never had been. Gene — now there was a smart kid.

  Too smart, sometimes. He was always thinking, furiously thinking, wheels turning, scheming.

  Gene. Where the heck was he, anyway? A few servants had fanned out to look for him, but he was nowhere to be found. Off in some wild aspect, probably, having fun. Well, he was in for quite a shock when he came back. Incarnadine would be in his tomb by then.

  The funeral was tomorrow. They’d moved it up. Incarnadine was supposed to have lain in state for a week or more, but somebody had second thoughts and rescheduled the service for tomorrow morning. Why, she didn’t know.

  She grew aware that other people had come into the chapel. She looked back to see Dalton, Thaxton, Deena Williams, and Melanie McDaniel heading her way, all wearing black armbands.

  Linda was wearing a mourning outfit that she had whipped up. Black tights, a nice doublet with black sequins, black boots.

  Dalton took the seat to her left, Melanie opposite.

  “How are you holding up?” Dalton whispered.

  “Fine.”

  Melanie asked, “Have you been eating?”

  “Not really.”

  “You should.”

  “I know. I just don’t have any appetite.”

  “You’re taking this the hardest of all of us,” Dalton said.

  Linda heaved a sigh. “He just seemed to hold this whole world together. Without him, it’s all like a crazy dream.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “It’s always seemed like a dream to me,” Melanie said.

  “But even here,” Dalton said, “death is a fact of life.”

  “Yeah, it’s so inevitable.”

  Thaxton leaned over to say, “I’m told the funeral will be quite a big do.”

  “Should be a real pageant,” Dalton speculated.

  “I hate funerals,” Deena Williams said.

  “Who likes them?” Melanie asked.

  “I get all depressed.”

  “Wonder why.”

  “And I never liked church either.”

  “Well …”

  “There’s going to be an orchestra, I hear,” Dalton said, craning his neck. “Back there in the choir loft, I guess. Mozart, Beethoven, and a bunch of stuff from other worlds by composers I’ve never heard of.”

  “He liked music,” Linda commented.

  “He was a singular man,” Dalton said. “With all his powers, his gifts, it’s hard to believe he was only human. There was something of the demigod about him.”

  “I never thought of him as godlike,” Linda said. “He was human to me.”

  “Well, you’re a great magician. You and he had something in common. You both could handle the castle’s magic.”

  “I’m hardly in his league.”

  “Maybe not, but you’re up there.”

  They all sat silently for a moment, listening to the strangely lilting strings.

  “I can’t figure out whether that music is tonal or atonal,” Dalton said.

  “Damned lugubrious,” Thaxton opined.

  “It’s positively funereal.”

  Thaxton eyed him. “That’s one,” he said menacingly.

  “Shhhh!”

  The two former golfers looked back at Deena.

  “Y’all ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

  “You always get me into trouble,” Dalton whispered.

  Chastened, they sobered up and were silent.

  Presently Linda rose.

  “You’re right, I should eat something. I think I’m actually hungry now.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Melanie said.

  “If you want. After, I’m going to rest up for the funeral. It’s going to be a strain.”

  “You better believe it. This place will be packed.”

  “Yeah. On second thought, I’m just going to have supper served in my room. I’m tired. Gonna sack out till tomorrow. See you guys later.”

  They all nodded. Linda began the long walk to the door, her boots clacking against hard flagstone.

  “Family been here?” Dalton asked Melanie.

  “Yeah, they were here earlier. I went up to pay my condolences. Are you going to?”

  “Never met them. Kind of awkward, but I should, I suppose.”

  “Well, of course you should, old man,” Thaxton said. “Only proper.”

  “Yes. I will. This is all so damned bloody awful. What will we do without him?”

  “At least we know Trent is a good guy,” Melanie said.

  The erstwhile duffers exchanged looks.

  Dalton said, “He’s not Incarnadine.”

  Twenty

  Shaft

  “Here it is!”

  Gene had hoped that mining engineers so bent on safety would have thought of providing escape shafts in case of accident. Shafts that went all the way to the surface. They had indeed provided them.

  He pushed against the panic-bar and the heavy blastproof door gave. He stepped halfway in and confronted a small landing which abutted a spiral stairway constructed of unpainted metal. The shaft was lit with tiny blue lights glowing dimly.

  “This is convenient.”

  Sativa poked her head in and looked up and down the shaft.

  “We’re near the bottom level. It’s a long way up.”

  They entered the shaft. Gene closed the door quietly. They then began a cautious climb up the spiral.

  “I don’t like the idea of being trapped between levels,” he said in low tones.

  “It’s a chance we must take. Do you think it goes all the way to the surface?”

  “Stands to reason. Opens out onto the slope of the hill, probably.”

  “Damn it,” she said. “This is no good.”

  “Why?”

  “They’d be fools not to cover all the safety exits.”

  He stopped. “Right. Should have thought of that.” He thought a moment. “We could try to shoot our way out.”

  She shook her head. “You’d be killed. Let’s explore the next level down. There is one entrance they might not cover.”

  “Which is?”

  “The tunnel leading out to the plain.”

  “The one they use as a loading dock? We don’t know if it really exists.”

  “It must. It’s the only way to get anything big into the mine.”

  “But why wouldn’t they be guarding that, too?”

  “Because it’s a hidden entrance and the inner door is probably huge and impregnable. But we can blast through it from this side.”

  “With the nukes? Jeez. Okay, I’m game. But which level?”

  “We’ll have to try them all. But my instincts say down.”

  “Right.”

  They reversed direction, increasing their pace a bit, trying to keep the stairway from vibrating with their footsteps. The walls of the shaft were of striated rock, smoothly bored. Gene wondered what high-tech marvel h
ad sliced through solid rock like so much cheese. Lasers, probably, but maybe something better. Particle beams. Gamma-wave lasers?

  Another landing below. Gene descended the last few steps and approached the door cautiously. He put his ear to it.

  Sativa stood behind him and waited.

  He took his time. At last he straightened up and looked at her.

  “I’m going to risk a peek.”

  He grasped the handle, pressed the thumb tab, and pulled. He eased the door out of its jamb until a crack of darkness appeared. A draught of cooler air flowed to his face.

  He listened. Then he widened the crack a hair and peeked.

  The tunnel was empty except for more crates of armaments. He heard nothing. After waiting at least a quarter-minute, he opened the door and stepped out. He raised his weapon.

  “Are you sure you can use that thing?” she asked.

  “Are you sure you’re a good teacher? I pushed all the right buttons.”

  “But the safety’s on.”

  He glanced down. “Oh.” He flipped the tiny lever the other way. “Thanks.”

  “Think nothing of it. Which way, do you think?”

  “My sense of direction is fairly good. I’d say the other side of the mountain is to the left.”

  “Check.”

  Gene shut the door carefully, and darkness, except for Saliva’s greenish glow, returned.

  She touched something on her suit and the light cut out. They stood in complete darkness for a time, listening.

  Silence.

  Before long the strips along the front of her suit began glowing again.

  “There is a proper light on this thing,” she said. “But I’ve been reluctant to use it.”

  An intense beam shot from the region of her right shoulder and made a tight circle on the wall. She fiddled with a control until the circle widened.

  “Little photon-shooter. I shouldn’t be doing this, though.” She shut it off. “Their sensors can pick up the tiniest bit of trace radiation.”

  The intensity had hurt Gene’s eyes, and now the light’s absence blinded him. But his heightened sensitivity returned quickly and soon he was navigating quite well by the weak halo of the strips.

  More war materiel. These crates were bigger and there seemed to be more of them.

  They walked on, carefully checking all directions at each intersection. Gene imagined himself having a sixth sense, sending out feelers into the darkness. It wasn’t magic — he hadn’t a magic spell for that — but he hoped there were enough remnants of the facilitation spell to give his imaginings some force. Nothing tickled his feelers yet, but he was getting a tingly feeling from them.

  He stopped.

  “Did you hear something?” He looked back.

  “Um, no. Did you?”

  “I thought.”

  They waited briefly, ears cocked.

  “Must have kicked a pebble or something,” he said.

  They moved on.

  Saliva pulled him close and whispered, “We’d better keep our voices down.”

  “Right, sorry.”

  Their footsteps were oddly muffled in the silence. Porous rock absorbing sound? Perhaps it was the kind of absolute silence that is overwhelmed by the body’s own interior noise: heartbeat, the rush of blood, the creak of bone. The same way that the mine’s utter darkness revealed spectral shapes and flashes — the random, stray firing of light-receptor cells in the retina.

  It was not long before they heard a rumbling sound nearby, as of huge doors rolling back.

  Sativa grabbed his arm and squeezed.

  They retreated from the sound of the freight elevator, retracing their steps. They reached the door of the escape shaft. Gene opened it.

  There came sounds of voices below. From high above, the unmistakable vibrating thud of heavy boots on the stairs.

  “We’re stuck, unless we find another shaft,” he said. “Looks like we’re going to be making that desperate last stand you mentioned.”

  They ran off into the darkness, made a few turns, and raced down a tunnel.

  Another dead end. They skidded to a stop.

  “You can give yourself up,” Sativa said.

  “So they can thank me and then kill me?”

  “There’s the chance they’d let you go.”

  “Back to my magic kingdom? Yeah, they’d believe that, all right.”

  “If it’s real,” she said, “you could prove it.”

  “I don’t want them in my world. Besides, it doesn’t work like that. I could show them the portal, and they might not even be able to perceive it, let alone go through it. That’s the way it works. That’s what keeps my world safe from wholesale invasion. Most of the time, anyway. We do get retail now and then.”

  “In any event, it doesn’t matter.” She let out a breath. “I might as well tell you. I’ve been dropping nuclear grenades, a few dozen of them.”

  “Oh? Charming. Time-fused, I suppose, to go off … When, exactly?”

  She checked a digital readout on the left sleeve of the suit.

  “We have very little time.”

  Twenty-one

  Alecto Wharf

  She was a little schooner, two-masted, patched sails and all, bulky and awkward as the worst of them. She didn’t sail well to windward, he was told. Best to wait for a beam or following wind; but the wind didn’t ordinarily oblige in the environs of Port of Dreams. He wouldn’t wait, being too eager to get under way. He’d take her out on the tide.

  The sky was dark, as it always was. But in the “morning hours” there was sometimes a sense that the dark roof had lifted. This was such a morning. The first morning of his eternity.

  He stood astride the foredeck. He was the skipper. He even had a crew, four deckhands to pull the jib sheets and lash the boom and do the complete nautical thing.

  “Do the complete nautical thing,” he commanded.

  “Aye, aye, sir.” The one in front saluted with two fingers and turned to the crew.

  “You heard ’im!”

  They fanned out to do their various appointed tasks. They busied themselves with jib tack, mainsail lashing, shrouds and gaff jaws; with jib hanks and jib halyard and mainsail halyard; with burgee, peak, sail battens and pockets; with leech boom mainsheet and lifting rudder; tiller, extension, fairlead, and jib sheets; daggerboard, thwart, gooseneck, and tack; kicking strap, luff, mooring cleats, and pushpit.

  “Bend on the sails!”

  “Clip jib hanks on the forestay!”

  “Attach the halyards!”

  “Hoist the mainsail!”

  “Tighten the boom vang!”

  “The boomerang?”

  “No, you pinhead. The boom vang!”

  “Oh.”

  He watched appreciatively. They were a good crew. They were his, crew. They were charging him a mint.

  But they were worth it (they had told him). Boom vangs aside, they knew their mooring cleats from their cockpits, their foresail winches from their backstays, their steering compasses from their halyard winch and cleats. And, boy, did they know from tack downhaul, kicking strap, mainsheet, clew outhaul, topping lift, boom, tack, reefing points, leech, spreader, foresail hanks, shrouds, inner forestay, stanchion, toe rail, and fin keel![22] These guys, like, knew all that stuff.…

  A wind was rising, and the rivers flowed.…

  (There was more than one river emptying into the Bay of Desires; in fact, the Bay was the confluence of no less than six rivers, making it the biggest fresh-water estuary in the afterworld. Rather, in this particular afterworld.)

  The waters of the bay churned and boiled. The land fell away behind them. The roof of the sky lifted to a milky crepuscular darkness. Choppy waves thumped against the hull, and freshwater spray blessed their faces. They sailed on a close reach to the wind.

  “We’re under way, sir!”

  “I noticed. Course, due west. Into the sun. Which there isn’t.”

  “I noticed, sir.”

>   “I’ll brook no impertinence!”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “Or it’s the crow’s nest for you, swab.”

  “Sir, we have no crow’s nest. This is a yacht, more or less.”

  “Well, see that you keep a respectful tongue in your head, or I’ll clap you in irons and throw you in the brig.”

  “We have no brig, sir.”

  “Oh, shut up. Get below and brew me some coffee.”

  The shipyards boasted all manner of sailing craft. Many were of ancient design. There were barks and barges, galleys and longboats; but he had preferred a classic vessel from the zenith of the epoch of sail — humble as she was an example.

  “Gods! I need a name for this ship.”

  He’d quite forgotten.

  “The Perilous will be her name,” he announced to the crew.

  He had no idea why he’d chosen it.

  “Good name, sir. Uh … though not exactly felicitous. Sailors are a suspicious lot. Could be trouble with the crew.”

  “Screw ’em if they can’t take a joke.”

  “Aye, sir. Sir, did you get up on the wrong side of the hammock this morning?”

  “Something’s wrong with this whole deal. It’s wearing thin.”

  “What’s wearing thin, sir?”

  “This afterlife. It’s silly. For another thing, I don’t belong here.”

  “You don’t, sir? Where do you belong?”

  “In another universe. This one … well, it —”

  “It sucks, sir. Yes, many of the departed say that.”

  “You agree?”

  “Well, sir, it’s just a job to me. I’m not mortal, so I really don’t know what death is. I should think it’d be a bit of nasty business, sir. Not pleasant, I assume.”

  “It could suck a bowling ball through fifty feet of garden hose.”

  “Striking image, sir.”

  “Thank you. But something tells me that I just don’t belong in this cosmos. Something’s wrong. Something’s out of whack.”

  “Couldn’t help you, sir.”

  “No, I guess you couldn’t. Where’s that coffee, by the way?”