The View From Castle Always

by Melissa McShane

  “We must be like bits of sand in an oyster to it,” Coren said, not opening his eyes. “Though I doubt it’s trying to turn us into pearls.”

  “Unless that is in fact what it does to its questers, good sir,” Tristram said. “Give them a destiny and send them out into the world to make them greater than they were.”

  Ailanthe closed the book on the lens. “We’re almost to the place where I stopped reading. It’s…it’s not good, what comes next. Even not knowing the end, I can tell you that.”

  “Please, my lady, continue,” Tristram said. “I find myself anxious on our friend Gweron’s behalf.”

  Coren opened his eyes and looked at her. “Does it say how to free you?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Then definitely keep reading.”

  Ailanthe opened the book and took a moment to find her place. The symbols quivered as if they didn’t want to be read, but the lens fixed them in place. Did they know what had happened to their master?

  “I think this part is important. ‘I stood in the Honor Hall and marveled anew at its creation. That my dream is so close to being realized—a dream of a world in which men and women become better than they are, in which they spread out across the lands to make the world a better place. I seek not for the glory, merely to be the creator of that which makes my dream possible. I sat on the empty floor and spoke to Rhedyth, feeling at once embarrassed and exhilarated at doing so. I told it of my plans and of its role in them, and—dare I write it?—praised it for its help and its desire to join with me in this dream. Did I write, once, that I thought to have no other companion than the cat (who continues silent on the matter of his name)? Now I realize I could have no better companion than this, my life’s work.’ He sounds so…joyful, there.

  “Anyway, the construction goes on for a while. But then the Castle starts to…to fight him, I suppose. Stops adding rooms and starts actively trying to keep him from completing it. He says he has to fight it for control over every scrap of carpet he adds. Also, the Castle tried that trick with the weapons on him.”

  “But why? That is to say, my lady, why would the Castle turn on its master?”

  “Here’s what Gweron wrote about that. ‘I have spent many hours trying to determine why Rhedyth became aware and then turned on me. It is obvious now that Rhedyth has far more intelligence than I initially believed. If I am correct, and its awareness and growing sapience are the result of a vast quantity of magic imbuing a single—I suppose “entity” is the best word, though it chills me to think it—then it is not beyond possibility that an increasing amount of magic, combined with what I previously learned about the impossibility of creating an intelligent object, means that Rhedyth is insane, and in its insanity is striking out against me. What I fear most is that Rhedyth will attempt to warp the destiny spell at its core, and that I simply cannot allow.’ He tried to dismantle the Castle, but it fought back—obviously it was successful, or we wouldn’t be here. And that’s as far as I got.”

  “So we’re not just irritants inside an intelligent building, we’re irritants inside an insane intelligent building,” Coren said.

  “It’s no wonder its attacks are unpredictable,” Ailanthe said. “And that it allows us to do some things and resists others.”

  “But this is terrible news, my lady. This implies that your captivity here follows no law of magic or reason, and that your freedom may not be obtained but by the whim of the Castle.”

  “Stop making assumptions, Galendishman.”

  “No, he’s right, Coren, and I thought of that while I was reading,” Ailanthe said. “It doesn’t seem like there’s anything to be gained by worrying about that possibility. I’m going to read the rest aloud, if you don’t mind.” She rubbed her eyes and began.

  “‘Library as expected. Summoned a few books as a test and found myself opposed. Rhedyth gains in strength, though only within itself—it still lacks the power to prevent me building more. It has not yet touched the destiny spell. Hope this is because it does not know what it is.

  “‘Construction on final floor almost complete. Tried to summon food and discovered Rhedyth’s control over its contents stronger than I can break. Forced to descend to the kitchens and collect supplies. The shadows move. The sprites seem unaffected by our battle, and at least I can take heart that Rhedyth bears them no malice, my poor stupid creatures.

  “‘I maintain control over my study and it is a haven to me. Construction on tower begun. I weep to think of how shoddy it is compared to the beauty—and Rhedyth, despite its insanity, is still beautiful—of the rest of my construction. Tomorrow I will link Rhedyth to the geographical points prepared months ago; this may distract it enough that I can finish the tower and complete the spell.

  “‘It is a measure of how much has gone wrong that I leaped and pranced in excitement when the geographical linkage worked smoothly. I feel as though I am myself losing my mental faculties. The shadows definitely move, most likely an overflow of magic. I cannot imagine what horrors Rhedyth might visit upon me were I to allow them to surround me. I carry many magical lights with me when I am forced to leave the study.

  “‘Rhedyth spoke to me this morning. I did not understand its speech and did not want to.

  “‘The tower’s construction proceeds slowly. Rhedyth fights me for every inch. I refuse to give in. I have put too much of my own power into its building for it to kill me without destroying itself, yet I believe it may have other ways of neutralizing me. Would that I could return in time to tell my brash, impetuous younger self to find some other way of bettering the world!

  “‘The tower is complete. I cannot activate the destiny spell from my study, and therefore am forced to leave this place of security. I shall place safeguards upon the most important of my magical creations, lock this book away, and make my way to where I hope I may break Rhedyth’s control. Should this be my final entry, and I still hold hope that it will not, then, future reader, flee this place.’”

  By the time she reached the end, Ailanthe’s throat was dry, not from speaking, but from a tight horrified numbness that threatened to envelop her. She closed the book and laid the lens atop its cover, holding both in place because Miriethiel still occupied her lap. He was sleeping lightly, one white-tipped ear flicking whenever she moved.

  She looked around the room at the few dark corners remaining, which seemed free of moving shadows, or an overflow of magic as Gweron called them. She’d almost been swallowed by them. She wanted to be sick, but swallowed hard and breathed slowly until the incipient panic subsided.

  “It could not kill him,” Tristram said.

  “Yes, but it doesn’t have any reason not to kill us,” Coren said. “And I wonder why it hasn’t. Damn it, I lived here for six years without seeing anything stranger than things disappearing after midnight. Then—” He closed his mouth abruptly and turned to stare out at the moonlit waves.

  “Then I came,” Ailanthe continued for him, “and everything changed.”

  “This isn’t your fault,” he said.

  “Isn’t it? All right, not ‘fault’ exactly, but my presence certainly seems to have triggered something. I’m the one it keeps attacking.”

  “Except for the weapons. Ailanthe—”

  “I believe you have both failed to grasp the most important lesson of this diary,” Tristram said. He stopped pacing and came to stand in front of Ailanthe. “You, my lady, most assuredly have power like that of Gweron.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Coren said, “That’s a big step, Galendishman.”

  “It is not, good sir, and I ask that you not look such daggers in my direction. The Castle is alive. It reacts to your presence, my lady, with the same antagonism it showed its creator, having paid no heed to this Hesperan for many years. You have already proven you are capable of magic like unto Gweron’s, if not to the same extent. I believe it does not strain credulity too much to assert that you are like Gweron and the Castle therefore sees
you as a threat similar to the one he posed.”

  “Damn it—”

  “I think he’s right, Coren,” Ailanthe said. She stood, dumping Miriethiel off her lap, and laid book and lens on her vacated seat before she realized she didn’t know why she’d risen. She felt a sudden, irrational anger, and pictured the Library, swept up an entire shelf of books and summoned them into the Atelier. They hung in the air for half a breath before thundering down around her, spines and covers striking the wooden floor in a series of sharp thumps.

  Coren and Tristram stepped back a few paces from the curved line of fallen books that followed the contours of the shelf they’d been sitting on. Ailanthe released fists she hadn’t realized she’d clenched and said, “The Castle isn’t going to clean those up, is it?”

  Coren and Tristram remained silent. Ailanthe turned away from them both and went to look out over the desert. The moon was setting in the distance and flung long shadows across the sands, shadows thankfully free of moving magic.

  “I wonder where it comes from,” she said, tracing the line of the nearest dune on the glass with a fingertip. “This magic. I really was the least magical person you could imagine, back home. It must be the key that changed me. It’s been waiting, lying around in the Castle for centuries, and I was just the lucky person who picked it up.”

  “Ailanthe,” Coren began.

  “I want to see if Gweron left any other diaries behind,” she went on, ignoring him. “You know. ‘Dear Diary, I woke up this morning and I could bend reality to my will. Eggs on toast for breakfast.’ Something like that. He must have felt so lonely, if he was the only one like him.”

  Coren put his hand on her shoulder. “You’re still you,” he said.

  She wrenched away from him. “And the Castle won’t let me out. It doesn’t need my magic like it did Gweron’s. Don’t think I don’t realize this is a death sentence.”

  “My lady, do not think such things,” Tristram said.

  She turned on him in a fury. “And what exactly am I supposed to think, Tristram? That I can somehow make the Castle believe I’m not a threat to it, and it will just open the door and wave goodbye as I trot happily away? That I can find a way to defeat an insane Castle that even its builder, who by the way had far more experience and control than I ever will over his magic, couldn’t keep from overwhelming him? Tell me what to think, Tristram!”

  He didn’t flinch. “Think instead that you have been gradually driving it back, my lady. You may not have Gweron’s skill, but you have his power, and you are not yet dead.”

  “The important word being ‘yet’.”

  “Ailanthe,” Coren said. He held the book and the lens in his hands and was reading something. “I think this is important.”

  “Why? Did you miraculously find something I missed?”

  “Stop feeling sorry for yourself for two seconds and listen,” he snapped. “Gweron wrote that the Castle couldn’t kill him without destroying itself. Obviously it hasn’t been destroyed. That means Gweron is still here. Somewhere in the Castle.”

  “Impossible,” Tristram said. “I grant you there are rooms we have not yet fully plumbed, but you, good sir, cannot have lived here for so long without seeing there is none other here but you and the beast.”

  “He’s got to be,” Coren insisted. “If the Castle needed his magic so much, he couldn’t have left without destroying it either. I bet the Castle locked him away somewhere. Or turned him into something. He said he didn’t know how long his life might be, and Miriethiel has lasted all these centuries; there’s no reason Gweron might not have done the same.” He closed the book. “Gweron’s still alive. If we can find him, maybe the two of you together will be enough to stop the Castle forever.”

  “Yet does it not seem that it is executing Gweron’s destiny spell?” Tristram said. “Men come, they take something, they leave by the way the Castle selects.” He pulled out his mirror from his pocket. “My mirror allows me to leave the Castle, does it not? And through the door I saw a wondrous land of lush green growing things and the sounds of a million birds. Had I not realized my destiny lay here, I should assuredly have believed it lay through that magical door.”

  He bowed to Ailanthe with a brilliant smile. She was tempted to kiss Coren right then, wipe that smile off Tristram’s face, but she remembered that she was mad at Coren, and anyway he was on the other side of the room.

  “The Things aren’t magical,” she said. “Except for the key, which seems to be what turned me into…anyway, it sounds as if Gweron intended the Castle to produce magical items for its questers, but the Castle is just hauling out whatever junk it can find. It’s like it knows what Gweron’s spell is, but doesn’t really understand it.”

  “So Gweron was partly successful in activating his destiny spell,” Coren said, “and then the Castle did something to him that kept him alive but unable to act.”

  “I think it’s stupid to think he’s been turned into something,” Ailanthe said.

  “It would be easier than trying to keep him fed all these centuries,” Coren said irritably.

  “Either way, we don’t know where he is,” Ailanthe said. Something slunk across the dunes, far below. Shadowy hunter—she shuddered at the thought.

  “But we shall know, my lady,” Tristram said. He came to her side and took her hand. “We now know for what we search, and we shall find him. I will not give up, my lady.” He kissed her hand. Across the room, Coren flung the book onto a chair so hard it bounced and hit the floor with a crack. Ailanthe withdrew her hand as gracefully as possible and smiled at Tristram.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I feel better knowing I have the two of you willing to help me. And you’re right, this narrows our search. I think I will put these books back and then go to bed, if you’ll excuse me.”

  She turned her back on Tristram and started picking up books, standing them on end as if putting them back on their shelf. Behind her, Tristram left the room, and a moment later so did Coren. She blinked away tears. She’d thought he’d at least help her put them in order in preparation for sending them back. They’d both spoken so harshly to each other—she shouldn’t have let her despair spill over like that, but it was so hard not to think of the shadows and how the Castle could afford to wait forever to seize her. Eventually she’d run out of luck, and then….

  She wiped her eyes and steadied a pair of books. She was too tired to send them all back at once, and she wasn’t entirely sure where she’d taken them from in the first place. She concentrated on a group of ten and felt them reappear on their shelf. At least she’d gotten one thing right tonight.

  When the last book had disappeared, she continued to kneel on the floor, tracing the delicate grain of its boards with her fingers. Gweron was right; the Castle was beautiful. How proud he must have been, those first days, seeing it all come together. And how devastated at the end, when it all threatened to fall apart, maybe literally. Unfortunate for everyone that it hadn’t.

  “I think you can hear me,” she said quietly. “I don’t know why you did what you did, trying to undo everything Gweron did, trying to unmake yourself, and I don’t care. You’re evil, and if you try to take me I will tear you apart.”

  Far in the corners, the shadows bulged. Ailanthe stared them down. There was too much light between them for the shadows to cross, but they strained at the boundaries that hemmed them in, reaching for her. But Ailanthe was tired of being afraid.

  She stood and walked toward them, keeping a safe distance, and said, “You’ve had so many opportunities to swallow me, I wonder that you haven’t tried more often. Are you weak, Castle, after all these years? Am I a threat to you? I didn’t want to be. I just wanted to be able to go home. You know, if you’d just opened the door I would have passed through and you’d never have had to fight me. But then, you’re insane, so logic isn’t something you’d be familiar with.”

  She shook her head, slowly. “I’m going to bed now. Looks like I’ll be sleeping
alone, too. And in the morning I’m going to start looking for Gweron, and I’m not going to stop until I’ve found him or I’m dead. And I don’t intend to die.”

  She heard footsteps, and then Coren came through the door. The shadows’ attention shifted in a heartbeat. He had enough time to open his mouth to say something, and they were on him, enveloping him like a cloud of gray dust.

  “Coren!” she screamed, and ran toward him, terror making her forget her own safety. She needed more light, but the Castle fought her when she tried summoning her lamps, blocked her path when she tried creating them, and in desperation she went to her knees—

  —and made light.

  It was like being at the heart of a cold, bright sun. She covered her eyes with her arms and could still see light burning red through her eyelids. Blood pounded in her ears like a drum with an erratic beat, thrum-thrum, thrum-thrum, and she felt her breath coming fast and sharp in her chest. The light pressed down on her, but softly, like a cool blanket, and she lowered her arms to find it fading, the chairs and tables and easel and painting sharply outlined in its radiance.

  Coren sprawled a few feet away, his hands over his face. The room was free from shadow, even the ordinary ones. The light had swept away the leftover smells from dinner, leaving a cool freshness like after spring rain.

  She stood, unsteadily, and Coren lowered his hands and looked up at her. The awe in his face made her cringe. “I don’t know how I did that,” she said.

  “I don’t care. That was like—I thought I was dead,” he said, standing and brushing himself off, and looked surprised when there was nothing to brush. “Thank you.”

  “I suppose we’re even now,” she said. She moved to pass him, anything not to see him looking at her as if she were a stranger. He reached out and took hold of her hand.

  “I don’t think we’re supposed to keep score,” he said. “I’m sorry I was so harsh with you.”

  “You were right. I was feeling sorry for myself. And I said some rude things to you, too.”