The View From Castle Always

by Melissa McShane

  The shadows shriveled and fled, leaving her shivering with her back to the door and blinking away tears from the brightness. The hard thing was still in her hand, and she squinted at it until her eyes adjusted.

  It was her lamp.

  She fumbled and nearly dropped it in her surprise. There was no doubt it was the same lamp she’d been using all afternoon; there was a dent in the upper casing that she’d wondered at, since the Castle was so meticulous about mending everything in its domain.

  She went to press the button that turned it off, then stopped herself. The shadows might come back. Instead she went into her bedroom and closed the door tight, locked it, then unlocked it. If the shadows were going to attack her again, they might be able to come through the cracks and under the door, and she might need to leave the room in a hurry.

  All the lights were still burning in her room, and she set the lamp on a table near the door, then nearly knocked it over as she realized the lamp was already sitting, cold and dark, on the dresser across the room. She looked from one to the other, then took the burning lamp and set it next to the unlit one. They were identical. She turned the second lamp—the original lamp?—to its maximum brightness. There was not a speck of difference between them.

  She began to shake again, but not from the cold. Too many shocks in too short a time. She gathered up the blanket, wrapped it around herself, and sat on the edge of the bed, her thoughts raging from one strange occurrence to another. Shadows attacking—the lamp—and the lamp again—she looked at her hands, both empty, the key dangling from one wrist. Was it the reason for the mystery?

  She scanned the room, which with all the light from so many different sources was blessedly free of shadows. She’d needed light, and it had appeared. No—she’d needed light, and she’d made light for herself.

  She lay down on her side and burrowed under the sheets, dragging the blanket like a cocoon with her, and stared sightlessly at the far wall. She had never shown the slightest aptitude for magic, or even for music, absolute prerequisite for becoming a kerthor and singing down the trees. But then, if this was magic—and what else could it be?—it was nothing like the magic of her home, where men and women with flute and voice bent the living wood to their will.

  She clenched her hand into a fist and closed her body around it, as if that might seal in any other strange thing it might think to do. There had been the thought of a light, and then there had been the light, and the shadows had fled from it.

  She threw off the bedding and was halfway to the door before she stopped herself. This was definitely something Coren would have mentioned if he had the same ability, if it were something triggered by living in the Castle. She had to tell him…but he was probably in bed by now, and the thought of knocking on his bedroom door made her cheeks burn. Who knew what he might think she was after? This would have to wait until morning.

  She turned the disc on the wall that controlled the bedroom lights and set them at their maximum brightness, then carried the new lamp, her lamp, back to the table by the door. No shadows in her room tonight. She crawled back into bed and dragged the blanket over her eyes and waited for morning to come.

  All night, she dozed, then woke to the reflections of the room in the dark windowpanes, then slept again to dream of spiders with frozen legs and peach-scented sprites wrapping them in their insubstantial bodies. When she finally woke to daylight beyond her window, it took her a moment to realize the light was natural.

  She sat up and looked around. The bedroom lights glowed as brightly as ever. The lamp on the dresser was gone. The lamp on the table by the door, the one she’d made or summoned or imagined, still sat there, burning perhaps a little less brightly, though that could be in contrast with the sunrise. She rolled out of her tangle of sheets and approached the lamp slowly, picked it up and looked at the dent. It seemed far too solid a thing to have been created out of nothing, in response to her need.

  She looked back and saw the Castle had made the bed for her. No, not for her, but to satisfy its need for control. She gripped the lamp’s handle more tightly. The Castle hadn’t taken it away in the night. Hadn’t taken it, or couldn’t take it? The Castle never showed the least bit of concern about the needs of the people trapped inside it, or their comfort, let alone their wishes. If it hadn’t removed the lamp, it was probably because it couldn’t.

  She flexed her free hand. It didn’t look any different in the light of morning than it had in lamplight the previous night. The question is, can I do it again?

  She tried to remember the terror she’d felt and how desperate she had been, closed her eyes and waved her hand. Nothing. She had thought of the lamp—no, more than that, she’d almost felt the lamp in her hand, remembering how it had felt to carry it from room to room and how annoyed she’d been when she knocked her knee against it—

  Her hand again closed on something smooth. This time, she hissed in surprise and dropped the lamp. It rolled a little way from her feet and she stared at it, then prodded it with her toe. It had a dent in the base now from hitting the floor. She looked from the lamp in her hand to the lamp on the floor and tried to calm her rapid breathing. The new lamp shed its light under the bed, dispelling the shadows there—she’d slept all night on that bed and never realized she’d forgotten there was one place that would always be dark.

  She flattened herself on the floor and scanned the space, but nothing moved. She edged backwards, unable to take her eyes off what was left of the darkness, and grabbed the lamp and stumbled to her feet. The two lamps swung by their handles, their beams faded in the morning sunlight.

  She remembered Idantra’s Thing, the bracelet that matched the one she already had. Was it possible the Castle had three identical lamps and she was simply summoning them, one after another? That seemed unlikely, but how much more likely was it that she was creating them out of need or desire? She knew so little about magic; maybe this was perfectly normal, if you could call anything that twisted the basic nature of reality normal. It was past time to talk to Coren. He might know something, or know a book that would tell her what was happening to her.

  She took the lamps with her, shining them behind her down the dark corridor, but nothing moved. Even so, she was running when she reached the stairs and nearly bumped into Coren, laden with the day’s supplies, his sword banging at his hip. “Good morning,” he said. Then he looked concerned. “Did something happen to—”

  “I made this lamp,” she blurted out, holding both of them up. He winced at the brightness, and she lowered them away from his face. “I’m not mad.”

  “Mad was not the word I had in mind,” he said. “Overwhelmed, maybe. I told you, strange things happen in the Castle.”

  “Strange like finding a lamp in my hand where there wasn’t one before?”

  “You weren’t fumbling around in the dark and your hand landed on it?”

  “Coren, something’s happening to me and I need you to take me seriously.”

  He examined her more closely. “I am. You’re whiter than usual and your lips are pale. Are you hungry?”

  “Yes, damn it, but that’s not what I’m talking about!”

  He gave her that direct, considering gaze. “Come on,” he said. “Food first. Then you can tell me about the lamp you made.”

  Ailanthe sat next to the desert window and ate strawberries as if they were shadows she could consume out of existence. A hand reached past her and took the bowl away. “You’ll get sick,” Coren said, and gave her half a loaf of bread. “There’s milk if you want it.” The milk tasted strange, not like the goat’s milk she was accustomed to, but she gulped it down.

  Now that the confusion and fear had passed, she found herself angry. She had done nothing to the Castle but what everyone else for centuries had done—enter the door and take what was freely offered. And now it had apparently decided she was an enemy to be eliminated. The moving mannequins and now tangible shadows—maybe she hadn’t been imagining things when she’d thou
ght the shadows were moving before. Why it wouldn’t just let her go was a mystery, but she no longer cared about solving it. She was going to get out, and if she could destroy some part of the Castle in doing so, she’d enjoy that.

  Coren dragged his seat next to hers and picked up the two lamps, comparing them side by side. “They’re identical,” he said. “Except for this dent.”

  “I made that lamp this morning and I was so surprised it worked I dropped it. The important thing is they’re identical to the lamp I took from a storeroom yesterday while I was searching. Last night—” She paused to order her thoughts. “It felt as if the shadows took form. Something certainly tried to suffocate me outside my room. I needed light, and suddenly that was in my hand.”

  She pointed at the undented lamp. “And this morning I tried to do it again, and there was another lamp. I swear to you I’m not mad and I’m not making this up.”

  She closed her eyes and held out her hand. It was easier this time, as if she’d learned to flex a new muscle. The smooth casing of the lamp filled her palm, and she fumbled it a little before she found the handle. She opened her eyes. Coren was staring at the new lamp in astonishment. He looked down at the ones in his hands, then back at hers.

  “It just appeared,” he said. “Like when the Castle takes something.”

  “Is that what it looks like?”

  “I’ve done everything I could think of to keep it from taking things at midnight.” He set the lamps in his hands down, carefully, and held out his hand for the new one. “No dent.”

  “So it’s like the original.”

  Coren nodded. “And the Castle didn’t take the new one back.”

  “It’s never taken the bag I brought with me. It doesn’t take your sword.”

  “That’s not my sword. I take it from the armory early every morning. If there were one thing I could keep the Castle from reclaiming at night, that would be it.” He put his hands on his knees. “This can’t be magic.”

  “It can’t be anything else.”

  “Then it’s magic like I’ve never read about. And I spent two months reading everything I could find about it.”

  “Tell me about magic, then.”

  “You know more about Lindurian magic than I do, probably. Your kerthors use music to build a framework for magic to cling to, and the shape of the framework tells the magic what to do. Most of the northern countries do it that way. Galendan and Enthalia, definitely.”

  “The kerthors tie their magic to the trees somehow—that’s really as much as I know.”

  “It’s different in the south and east,” Coren said. “In Hespera, we talk to the spirits of those who refuse to pass on and ask them to perform magic for us. They’re more or less made of the same substance, so it’s no harder for them to touch magic than it is for me to take this chair and move it across the room. It’s probably not as reliable as a kerthor’s magic, but anyone can do it if they know the right way to get a spirit’s attention. Most of the southern countries do it this way, though the ways people talk to the spirits vary. Like, in Rius-zara spirit-talking is part of their religion, so their priests are the only ones who are allowed to wield magic.”

  “What else?”

  “There is no else. Those are the only two ways of using magic anyone’s ever recorded.”

  “That doesn’t explain the Castle.”

  “The Castle is made of magic. It acts on itself. Like you or me scratching an itch. You don’t need some outside force to lift your hand for you.” He set the third lamp down next to the first two and aligned them neatly into a row.

  Ailanthe said, “But this had to be magic. I didn’t imagine it.”

  “Maybe the Castle gave them to you.”

  “After trying to kill me? Why would it do that?”

  Coren shrugged. “Who knows? Nothing it does ever makes sense. Or maybe….”

  “Maybe what?”

  “Maybe you made the Castle use its power for you. It’s capable of instantly moving any item to any place it wants. And it’s not impossible that the Castle has a room full of those things somewhere.” He reached out and prodded a lamp on the floor with his toe.

  “Why couldn’t I have used the magic directly? Without music or spirits?”

  Coren shook his head. “That’s not possible.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Yes. It would be like trying…trying to touch time. We experience time passing, but it’s not something we can alter, any more than a fish can make water flow upstream.”

  “But fish can fight the current.”

  “I’m not saying it’s a perfect example.”

  Ailanthe scowled. “So I’m controlling the Castle. Why can’t I make the door open?”

  “I don’t know. Have you tried since last night?”

  Ailanthe gave him one startled look, then bounded out of her seat and ran out the door.

  She flew down all the flights of stairs, arriving at the back door only a little winded, took hold of the latch and willed it to open. Nothing happened.

  She gripped it more firmly and thought. She had pictured the lamp in her hand, had seen it clearly in her mind’s eye. She closed her eyes and imagined her hand on the latch, pictured the motions it would take for the latch to depress and the door to swing open, and pressed again. Still nothing.

  She imagined the Castle as a person, a tall, forbidding man with a face like a hatchet and long, bony fingers holding the latch in place, imagined those bones snapping one by one until his hand dropped away, and leaned on the thumb lever as hard as she could.

  Nothing.

  She sagged against the door, the solid unmoving iron of the latch the only thing keeping her upright. One more possibility gone. She said, without looking up, “It was a nice idea.”

  “It might still be true,” Coren said. “So far all you’ve been able to summon are lamps. Why don’t you try something else?”

  She sighed. “Like what?”

  “Another loaf of bread? I don’t know about you, but this mystery has made me hungry.”

  She glanced up at him. In the few days she’d known him, he’d gone from being withdrawn to being the man she guessed he’d been before coming to Castle Always—not exactly outgoing, but easy to talk to and quick to laugh, and he seemed to enjoy her company. Now there was an unfamiliar light in his eyes, an alert look to his face that made her heart beat faster. She turned her head before he could see her blush.

  “A loaf of bread,” she repeated, and closed her eyes. She pictured a loaf of bread, crunchy-hard and brown, imagined its warm, faintly rough surface against her palm, the yeasty smell of it, and for a moment thought she felt something solid against her fingers, but closed her hand on nothing.

  “Did you see anything?” she asked. Coren shook his head. “I thought I felt something, just for a moment.”

  “There wasn’t even a trace of an image,” Coren said. “I wonder what makes the difference.”

  “Well, I did know that lamp awfully well, after spending half a day clutching it,” she said. “Maybe I need to try with something else I know well.”

  They both looked at the key dangling from her wrist. “I…think that might be a bad idea,” Coren said. “It has its own kind of magic. It might even be what lets you summon things, if it’s connected to the Castle in some way.”

  “But it could prove whether I’m summoning or creating,” Ailanthe pointed out, “because I have trouble believing there’s more than one of these lying around.”

  She closed her eyes and pictured the key, how the silver streaks moved under her hand, and a spike of pain went through her skull and into her spinal column so fast she couldn’t even draw breath to scream. It drove the barely formed image out of her mind and made her knees buckle.

  Dimly, she heard a keening noise coming from what she thought might be her own throat, and felt two hands supporting her, lowering her slowly to lie flat on the floor. Tears leaked from her eyes and slid down her cheeks
into her ears. Now that the initial agony was past, her head ached and she could taste blood from where she’d bitten her tongue. She swallowed, tried not to gag on the copper-salty taste, and forced herself to breathe normally.

  A hand brushed across her temple, wiping away a tear. “Does it help if I support your head?” Coren asked quietly.

  Ailanthe started to nod, realized that was stupid, and said, “Yes,” and he slid his hands under her head and lifted it to rest on his knee. The pain lessened dramatically. “You were right that that was a bad idea,” she whispered.

  “I wish I’d been wrong. That looked agonizing. Are you going to be all right?”

  “I think so.” The pain felt distant now, like the memory of pain, and she opened her eyes and looked at Coren, then had to blink to make his face come into focus. “This is far more powerful than just a key.”

  “If it’s capable of opening all the locks in the Castle, it would have to have something of the Castle’s own magic in it,” Coren said, “and that’s very powerful magic. Do you want to try to stand?”

  This time, she was capable of nodding, and Coren helped her up from the floor, then kept a grip on her elbow just in case. A part of her registered again how good he smelled, but mostly she was preoccupied with not throwing up on herself or on him. “You keep saying the Castle has its own magic,” she said, trying to distract herself, “but that it’s different magic, and I don’t see how that fits with there being only two kinds.”

  “There isn’t a lot written about the Castle,” Coren said. “Mostly theories. One is that a bunch of spirits came together to build themselves a new body using magic, and it took this shape. Another is that the Castle built itself and the quantity of magic that went into doing it made it sentient. And a few people believe it was created by a person who sacrificed his or her body and became the spirit of the Castle. Those are the less crazy theories.”