Castle Perilous

by John Dechancie

  “Okay — whoops!” Something pulled Gene’s feet out from under him and began dragging him away. Jacoby struggled to his feet.

  “Gimmie the sword!” Gene yelled, but Jacoby turned and ran.

  Gene grabbed the ropy tentacles that had entwined themselves about his ankles. He tugged, and they tugged back.

  “You’ll do, two-legged cutie! Thought you were smart!”

  “All I need in my life is a gay bougainvillaea, or whatever you are.”

  “I’ll eat you slowly, feet first, and no anesthetic! I can be cruel!”

  “I’m not into … domination,” Gene grunted, straining against the plant’s incredibly strong pull. The tree stump was very near. Gene watched in fascination as the bark split down the middle and became rubbery, expanding to form a huge pulsating cavity lined with rows of wicked spikes. If the situation hadn’t been so absurd, he would have been afraid.

  Suddenly Snowclaw was above him, savagely chopping at the stump. The horrid mouth closed up. After an agonized scream the voice wailed, “All right, all right! I’ll let you go! Please don’t hurt me!”

  The vines retracted and Gene got to his feet. Snowclaw gave the thing one more hack, opening up a diagonal gash that immediately began to bleed bright pink sap.

  “Owwwwww! I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it!”

  Gene retrieved his sword, and he and Snowclaw struggled back to Linda, who was having her own problems. Vines had also snared her; however, these were thin stringy ones covered with tiny thorns that had gotten hopelessly snagged in the material of her outfit.

  It took some time to chop her out. Finally they did. Holding Linda between them, they bulled their way back through the pie-shaped slice of jungle.

  Jacoby had collapsed in one of two stuffed chairs beside the fireplace, fanning himself with a hand. He was breathing hard and wheezing.

  “Asthma, you know,” he said. “I nearly passed out. I …” He straightened up. “Frightfully sorry I couldn’t help.”

  “Yeah,” Gene said ironically, sucking on a bleeding finger.

  “Oh, my God, this place is going to drive me crazy,” Linda said, collapsing into the other chair. She looked herself over. “Look at these scratches all over my arms!”

  Jacoby said, “I think it was Nietzsche who said something to the effect that the person who grows bored with his life should risk it. He must have had this place in mind.”

  “It’s certainly not boring!” Linda laughed. “How I wish it were.”

  “Come now, it’s not all that bad.”

  “You like it here?”

  “Oh, immensely! I wouldn’t live anywhere else — though I must admit that recently things have been getting a bit more dicey. Has something to do with the siege, I should think.”

  “Any late word on what the situation is?” Gene asked.

  “There are reports that the invaders have entered the keep. I haven’t heard anything beyond that. It’s sometimes difficult to get reliable information. We’ve not seen any of them in the Guest area, but it’s only a matter of time, I suppose.” Jacoby seemed suddenly to have recovered. He got up and went to Linda, took her hand. “Are you sure you’re quite all right, my dear?”

  “Sure, they’re just scratches. How about you?”

  “Capital.”

  “What happened, by the way?”

  “Oh, it was nothing, just my own pigheadedness, I’m afraid. I was sitting here dozing when that business materialized. I ignored it, but then I wanted to get to the loo, and the damn thing just wouldn’t go away, so I thought I’d risk crossing to the other side. Damned if it didn’t trap me.”

  “It’s a funny portal, two-sided like that,” Linda said.

  “I’ve seen its like before,” Jacoby said. “Sort of like a wedge of space instead of a flat plane. Comes in crosswise, I suspect. Of course, I don’t actually know —”

  With a quiet pop, the jungle disappeared. Nothing remained on the bare stone floor but scattered dirt and a few odd leaves.

  “So much for that,” Jacoby said. “Linda, my dear, I shall be forever in your debt.”

  “Me? Those guys got you out.”

  “Yes, of course.” Jacoby glanced at Gene. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t mench.”

  “You’re a woman of great courage, my dear.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “You give yourself so little credit. Have you had lunch?”

  “Well, it was sort of interrupted.”

  “The dining room’s just down the hall.”

  Gene stamped his foot. “All we did was wander in a big circle. Damn!”

  “I’d be delighted if you’d join me,” Jacoby said.

  “Well, sure,” Linda said. “What do you say, guys?”

  Gene shrugged.

  “C’mon, Snowclaw,” Linda said, hooking her arm in his. “I’ll rustle up some ribs for you.”

  “Y’know, there’s this other dish I like,” Snowclaw told her. “It’s made out of rendered blubber flavored with a little fish oil, and then you take some fish meal, see, and you mush it all up …”

  Gene watched the three of them cross the room. He sighed, slid his sword into its scabbard. “Yeah,” he said sardonically. He moped after them.

  With some puzzlement he suddenly remembered what Jacoby had screamed.

  I can’t control it ….

  Keep — Lower Levels

  Osmirik squinted, peering through the darkness ahead.

  “Another blind passage, my lady. I think.”

  A soldier held a lantern high, and light fell on the stone wall that formed the corridor’s dead end. He approached it and ran his hands along the dark stone, searching for any hidden seams or openings. He looked back at Osmirik and shook his head.

  Osmirik nodded gravely. He turned and said, “Yes, another one.”

  Melydia emerged slowly from the shadows behind him. “No matter. We draw ever closer.” She halted.

  She stood holding the L-shaped ends of two long metal rods. The rods were parallel, pointing straight ahead. She turned her body to the left. The rods moved with her at first, then resisted, rotating in her loose grip back to their former positions. She turned the other way, and again the rods swung to the front.

  “The force that attracts them grows stronger,” she said.

  “Aye, but is the source accessible? Mayn’t it be underground?”

  “I doubt it. The Spell Stone is part of the castle.”

  “A foundation block, perhaps?”

  “Perhaps. But we will be able to see it.”

  “Her ladyship is so sure.”

  “Yes. I have labored years, and have rung the changes on every conceivable variation. I am sure.” She lowered the rods. “Let us go back to the last turning and start again. I felt the proper direction was to the left, but overrode my better judgment.”

  “As Her Ladyship pleases.”

  The military escort led them back. There were nine left out of the original eleven. One man had wandered blithely into an attractive aspect and had fallen into a hidden pitfall. The portal had closed before anyone could get to him. Another had died fighting a venomous python that had dropped from a chandelier in a dining hall.

  Back at the branching of the corridors, they trooped down the left leg of the Y, Vorn’s soldiers leading, Osmirik and a servant with another lantern behind them. Melydia, flanked by two armed guards, followed with arms outstretched, the instruments in her hands attuned to mysterious, unseen forces. Bringing up the rear were three more servants bearing parcels.

  But that passage, too, led to a dead end.

  Osmirik sighed. “Ever closer, yet never there.”

  By lantern light Melydia’s face was limned in shades and shadows. “We shall not fail.” She handed the rods to a young servant, then looked around. “No torches in this passage, nor in the other one. I did not notice it till now — why, I knoweth not. In truth, we’ve not seen one since we left the dining hall.”

&nbs
p; “Absolutely correct, my lady,” Osmirik said. “I did remark on it, but did not think the fact significant.”

  “The last dead end we encountered — was it also unlighted?”

  Osmirik reflected, then said, “No, my lady.”

  Melydia frowned. “Hellish place. Neither rhyme nor reason to it.”

  “Aye.”

  “But it will not stand beyond tomorrow.”

  “Will things go that quickly, my lady?”

  “Yes, if we find the Stone soon.”

  Osmirik was silent.

  “And we will,” she added.

  They walked back along the passageway.

  “I must charge the rods again,” she said.

  “They grow weak?”

  “Not yet so weak as to be useless, but soon.”

  “The recharging spell will take time.”

  “You needn’t remind me,” she snapped.

  “I merely wish to —”

  “I know what is your wish, and I know what you are about. You have had ample warning, Osmirik.”

  “I have. I grow weary of it.”

  “You are impertinent?”

  “Your pardon, my lady.”

  Osmirik thought, Could she know?

  He said, “Her Ladyship must know that I seek only knowledge, and that my scholarly interest in these proceedings is keen enough.”

  “You show great interest in scholarly minutiae, yet ultimate knowledge seems to hold no attraction for you.”

  “I beg your leave to differ, my lady. It does.”

  “So? Do you realize the magnitude of the advance represented solely in the spell that charges the rods?”

  “I do, my lady. If you recall, I rendered some preliminary incantations from the ancient Tryphosite.”

  “So you did, and so acrawl with scholar’s glosses were they that I could barely read them.”

  “Merely a desire to be thorough, my lady. There were many questionable passages.”

  “No doubt.”

  “I do understand that the spell taps some fundamental force.”

  “Aye,” Melydia said. “Likely the fundamental force of the universe itself.”

  “Natural philosophers have long speculated that the universe is reducible to only a very few forces. Do you think there is but one?”

  “I am not a natural philosopher, scribe. I seek only practical knowledge. But, yes, I think there is but one, and the Spell Stone is its focal point. He who controls the Stone controls all.”

  But you do not seek to control the Stone, Osmirik thought. You seek only to undo the control of another. That way lies madness, and perhaps death for us all.

  His thoughts were interrupted by exclamations among the guards ahead.

  “What is it?” Osmirik called, but then he saw. They had not yet arrived at the branching, but here was another corridor leading off to the right, this one lined with jewel-torches. It had not been there before.

  “We’re in luck, my lady,” he said.

  “Send two soldiers down there and see if it leads anywhere.” She turned to the young servant, a boy of about fourteen. “Give me the rods.”

  The lad fumbled in a leather pouch, handed one rod over, then searched the pouch again. “Your Ladyship, they were both in here.…” He rummaged frantically.

  “How is it possible? I just now gave them to you.”

  “Your Ladyship, I —”

  She struck him across the face. “Little fool!”

  “I did not hear it drop, my lady,” Osmirik said. “I fancy we all would have heard it on this hard stone.”

  She shook the boy. “Then where is it?”

  “Your ladyship, I don’t know!”

  “I will go back and look, my lady,” Osmirik said, taking a lantern from another servant.

  Osmirik had searched back almost to the dead end when Melydia called him. Echoing down the corridor, her voice was indistinct, and he stopped to listen.

  “Osmirik! Come! The little fool had it dangling from the strap on the pouch, Goddess knoweth how.”

  Osmirik walked back. By the time he got there, Melydia and the rest were already a good way down the newfound corridor. He took one step to follow and almost broke his nose.

  The opening had closed in an instant. Aghast, he stood within kissing distance of a featureless stone wall.

  Keep — Middle Levels

  “I thought you were an old hand around here,” Gene complained. They hadn’t been able to find the dining room, or anything else.

  Jacoby was either nonchalant or was putting up a good front. “I’m experienced enough not to be concerned when this happens now and again. Don’t worry, my dear boy. They say if you just keep walking, eventually you’ll find the Guest’s living area. It occupies a central position in the keep, and all paths somehow lead to it.”

  “Yeah, but we wandered for days before we gravitated back there,” Gene said.

  Abruptly annoyed, Jacoby stopped and looked around. “I could swear I walked just a short way down the corridor from the dining hall. We must have made our mistake coming out of that sitting room. It must have been left instead of right.”

  “Our mistake?”

  “Sorry, mine.”

  Linda said, “Gene, I don’t see how you can blame Mr. Jacoby for getting lost when we’ve —”

  “Okay, okay,” Gene said curtly. “But we’re still in dangerous country — and he doesn’t have a weapon.”

  “Don’t worry about me, young man. I can take care of myself.” Jacoby sniffed the air. “You can usually smell the dining room. I don’t. My only regret is that I’m getting hungrier by the minute.”

  “That’s no problem,” Linda said. “Want me to conjure up something?”

  “Conjure …?” He smiled. “Of course. Your materialization talents. Coming along nicely, are they?”

  “Take a look.” Linda folded her arms and twitched her nose.

  It was the buffet table again, this time complete with champagne fountain. “I thought it was Terri’s wedding reception,” she said.

  Jacoby was impressed. “Remarkable. Large-scale materialization.” He moved to the table and spooned goose-liver paté onto a club cracker. He took a bite. “Splendid.”

  Gene sat down on a carved stone bench and looked disgusted.

  “Aren’t you eating?” Linda asked him.

  “Lost my appetite.”

  Jacoby helped himself to everything in sight and sat down heavily next to Gene. He held the overburdened paper plate in a way that made it appear to be resting flat atop his immense potbelly. Gene snorted and got up. Jacoby eyed him, toadlike, munching a leg of fried chicken.

  Gene walked over to Snowclaw, who was scooping gobs of sticky green porridge from a cast-iron pot and shoveling the stuff into his mouth.

  “Want a taste?” he asked Gene, offering a handful.

  “Uh, no thanks. Looks good, though.”

  “Come on, you wouldn’t touch this stuff with a harpoon. I was just kidding.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s the matter, chum? You look a little depressed.”

  “I guess I am. Looks like we’ll never make it out of here.”

  Snowclaw shrugged. “Those’re the breaks. Can’t say it isn’t interesting here, though. Lots of adventure.”

  “No complaint on that score.”

  “Too damn warm, though. Look at me. I’m shedding already.” He ran his clean hand up and down his arm and came away with loose fur. “See?”

  “You got humans where you come from?”

  Snowclaw reflected. “Now, I’ve heard stories of creatures more or less like you. But the way I hear it, they’re hairy and they live in trees. Kinda nasty too. Why?”

  “Well, if you were unfortunate enough to share your world with the hairless variety, they’d probably hunt you for your fur. That’s high-price material you got there. Finer than sable.”

  “Huh,” Snowclaw said. “You don’t say.”

  Gene scowled.
“Boy, I’m in a lousy mood.”

  “Cheer up,” Linda told him through a mouthful of tuna salad.

  “Yeah, Gene,” Snowclaw said. “We’ll get out of here somehow. You shouldn’t give up.”

  “You’re right. I’m letting things get to me.” He turned and cocked an eye at Jacoby. “And people,” he added.

  Happily stuffing himself with fettuccini Alfredo, Jacoby appeared not to have heard.

  “Now, Gene, don’t be unkind. Mr. Jacoby —”

  “Jesus,” Gene said.

  Linda did a take. “Huh?” Then she turned to see what Gene and Snowclaw were staring at. When she found it, she dropped her paper plate.

  They were all gawking in Jacoby’s direction. He stared back quizzically. “I say, is there something —”

  He turned his head and saw the human hand growing out of the wall beside him. He lurched to his feet, the contents of the plate splatting on the hard stone floor. “What the devil?”

  The hand grew an arm, then a shoulder. Then a head came popping through the wall. It was a dark-bearded man with dark eyes and a wary expression. He looked, edged back when he saw Snowclaw, then recognized Jacoby.

  “Your pardon, sir. I did not mean to intrude.”

  Jacoby exhaled windily. “You gave us a devil of a fright, but no matter.”

  Kwip stepped out from the wall. “An eternity of pardon.”

  “It’s nothing. I see you’ve found your talent.”

  “Aye, I’m damned to ghost through walls like the dead. But damn me twice if spirits can get hungry.…” His gaze locked on the buffet table.

  “Some angel food cake?” Gene offered.

  Keep — Deep Levels

  The soldiers were tired, the servants exhausted. Melydia had called for a rest here in the dank lower regions of the castle. She was far from hungry, but knew she needed sustenance, so she took two biscuits and a flagon of water, found a niche with a seat-high ledge, sat down and ate. As she did, her eyes searched the shadows around her. Shapes swam within them, shapes she knew were side-effects of her spell-enhanced strength and endurance. But they were emblematic of the many minds and spirits whose presence she sensed. The castle swarmed with them, their many emanations echoing within her head. She could make little sense of it all — occasionally a voice or a thought would enter her mind unbidden, then just as quickly leave. Most of the time what she heard was nothing but faint background noise, which she could ignore. But as she neared the Spell Stone, the din grew increasingly loud.