The View From Castle Always

by Melissa McShane

  “I knew not that such a thing was possible,” he said. “But I do feel weakened. I know not but that Rhedyth might have sapped my powers. How long have I lain thus transformed? And into what?”

  “You were the key to the Castle,” Ailanthe said. “And we don’t know exactly how long, but for more than four centuries people have come to the Castle to find their destiny.”

  He spun and strode to face her, grasping her shoulders and causing Coren to move to stand behind her. “Then I succeeded,” he said, his eyes blazing. “Rhedyth has not won.”

  “Ah…we think the Castle isn’t carrying out your instructions, not entirely.” Ailanthe stepped backward, breaking his hold, and bumped into Coren. His strong presence made her feel less nervous of this strange man and his overwhelming personality.

  An expression of sorrow and pain passed across Gweron’s features. “My poor creation,” he said. “I had such joy in it. That it should turn on me…let me tell you, strangers, a story of hope and tragedy, and mayhap you will join with me in putting this poor creature to rest.”

  “We, ah, read your diary,” Ailanthe said, tensing in anticipation of an angry response. Fury briefly passed over his face, then an amused resignation.

  “I know not why that should anger me,” he said. “I did but write it for the sake of future generations, and it seems that however you came by this power, young lady, you did become my successor. Though I should feel more sanguine when I have regained that power. If Rhedyth yet lives, then we are all in danger.”

  “I know,” Ailanthe said. “The shadows keep trying to attack us.”

  “That is but magic under Rhedyth’s control. I see you have hit upon the means for keeping it at bay. Would that I should have had such allies in my own time.” He turned away again, his head bowed. “It is passing strange that I feel not the burden of years. It is to me as but a moment has passed since—”

  He went to stand by the desert window, looking out at the night. Ailanthe could see his reflection in the glass; his expression was heartbreaking.

  “I meant this to be the salvation of mankind,” he said to the night. “The world in my time was a dark place, filled with men who used their inborn talents to their own selfish ends. I wanted only to turn those talents to good, make of them men of wisdom and courage who would do what was right. Rhedyth should have called all men to it, but its insanity drove them away.”

  “People do still come here,” Ailanthe said. “The Castle gives them a destiny.”

  “Then it gives them the gift?”

  “No. That part of your spell isn’t working.”

  “How was your spell intended to work?” Coren said, startling Ailanthe. She’d forgotten there was anyone else in the room.

  Gweron smiled. “It was a thing of beauty, so simple and yet so powerful. Rhedyth exerts an influence on the world—in my more poetic moments I thought of it as a song, heard only by the heart—that draws men, and women, unto it. They come, and Rhedyth sees who they truly are, their virtues and their vices, and produces a token that is theirs alone. In accepting that token, they are transformed, all evil swept away, made anew into people of true virtue and sent out into the world to make it over in the image of all that is good.”

  Tristram said, “That is far-seeing indeed. It would take a truly mad mind not to see the virtue in it.”

  Coren said, “People aren’t forced to come to the Castle, now. They only come if it’s what they want.”

  “Another flaw I intend to remedy, if Rhedyth can in fact be saved. But if your presence here, sir, reflects the honest desire of your heart, I think you have very little evil in you to be altered.”

  “I just came here to get out of the rain,” Coren said. Ailanthe looked up at him. His jaw was set, and he had a distant look to his eyes that told her he was upset about something. She didn’t feel all that happy herself. Something was very wrong.

  “I’m not sure I understand,” she said. “These people, the ones who accept the token, they’re…altered? They’re not themselves anymore?”

  “They are superior, young lady,” Gweron said, turning to face her. His smile was broader now, his eyes full of joy. “With no more desire to do evil.”

  “But suppose they don’t want to be different? What if they already wanted to do good?”

  “Then Rhedyth ensures they may not be tempted. Its very name means ‘freedom’ in the ancient tongue from which I borrowed it. Freedom from fear, freedom from the possibility of choosing evil. Freedom to know one’s every act is pure.”

  “My lady, you seem skeptical,” Tristram said. “Do you not see how different the world would be if every man and woman could not but eschew evil?”

  “I do, actually,” Ailanthe said. A hollowness had opened up in her stomach. Gweron continued to look at her with eyes shining with passion. Tristram’s expression wasn’t much different.

  “Tell me something, Gweron,” Coren said, and his voice was emotionless. “Who decides what’s good?”

  Gweron raised one eyebrow. “I think good and evil are self-evident, sir.”

  “I’ve seen people lie and cheat and hurt people they supposedly loved and called it good because it all ended well,” Coren said. “I don’t think everyone agrees on the definition of ‘good’. And I’m not sure making people do what you want just because you think you know what’s best for them is good, either.”

  “Do not parents stop their children playing near the fire because they know as their children do not what it means to be burned?”

  “Parents let their children grow up to find their own way. They don’t hover over them their whole lives to make sure they never do anything bad.”

  “Parents have not the knowledge to do so. Rhedyth is perfect, or will be when I have restored it to its proper state. It knows the desires of the human heart and makes no mistakes in its transformations of men and women.”

  “I think what Coren is saying,” Ailanthe said slowly, “is that the mistake is in thinking people need to be transformed at all.”

  Gweron frowned. “That is an uninformed and juvenile opinion, young lady.”

  “You told all this to the Castle, didn’t you?” Ailanthe said. “I remember reading that. And that was when it started fighting you for control. It knew what you had in mind and it didn’t like what you wanted it to do.”

  “Indeed. Because its intelligence and confinement in an inanimate body drove it mad.”

  “I don’t think so.” Ailanthe felt Coren’s hand close around her upper arm. She couldn’t look away from Gweron’s eyes. The passionate light in them no longer looked unthreatening. “I think it knew what freedom meant and it didn’t want to be the tool of your oppression.”

  The passionate light went furious. “Make no such accusation. You are ignorant of the world and its need. Rhedyth was to be its savior and it rejected that role.”

  “So it fought you,” Ailanthe went on, everything finally falling into place. “It tried to keep you from completing it, and when that didn’t work, it tried to sabotage your spell. And ultimately all it could do was trap you so you couldn’t make the spell do what you wanted, but it couldn’t turn it off entirely. It had to let people in, and it had to give them something, so it gave them junk and sent them out into the world. Unaltered, and unprotected, but at least they were still free.”

  “That is not what freedom is,” Gweron said, coming toward her with his fists clenched. “Think you they are happy in their evil? Happy when their choices make them miserable? You cannot believe this fallen world is as destiny meant it to be?”

  Coren put Ailanthe behind him. “I think it’s better than the world you have in mind.”

  “My lady, you cannot believe this,” Tristram said. “Think. How much sorrow will be avoided if this good man can repair the Castle?”

  “I told you once I didn’t like the idea of someone else choosing my path,” Ailanthe said. “I like even less the idea of being turned into someone who doesn’t have a c
hoice at all.”

  “Then I feel pity for you,” Gweron said. “Mean you not to aid me in my task?”

  “No. And I’ll fight you if you try to carry out your insane plan.”

  “Then it is past time I reclaim my power from you,” Gweron said, and made as if to step around Coren. Coren grabbed his arm and twisted, making Gweron cry out in pain. “Run, Ailanthe,” he said, as casually as if he’d asked her to take a walk with him. She turned and took a few rapid steps toward the door.

  Tristram stepped into her path. “I am sorry, my lady, but I cannot allow you to rob this man of his rightful power,” he said, and took hold of her wrist. She struggled to break free, but he took her other wrist and held her tight. He really did look sad, and Ailanthe, furious, kicked his shin as hard as she could. He staggered, but didn’t let her go.

  Coren was grappling with Gweron, whose sleeves had slid up to reveal arms corded with muscle. Coren was strong, but he seemed evenly matched, and Gweron might break free at any time. Panicking, Ailanthe reached inside herself for the memory of Coren being attacked by the shadows, closed her eyes, and let the light explode from within her.

  The light burned bright pink behind her eyelids. Tristram exclaimed and released her. Instantly she made for the door, stumbling in her blindness, once catching herself before she tripped and fell on a chair. Squinting, she found the doorway and staggered through it. Behind her, more exclamations, and the sound of a fight breaking out. Coren, she thought once, then could only think of running.

  She ran toward the tower before coming to her senses. She’d be trapped there. Coren wouldn’t be able to fight two people off for long. She turned and bolted back toward the stairs, leaping down them two at a time and nearly tripping in her haste. Where do I run? She couldn’t escape, couldn’t risk trying the door that had never opened for her before.

  She threw the lights on as she ran down the twisting stairs that crossed each other, and the shadows billowed up behind her, following her without attacking, never trying to block her path. It was as if they were herding her.

  She reached the fifth floor landing, stopped to catch her breath, and heard running footsteps behind her. Fear gave her a second wind, and she had barely enough time to register that the shadows hadn’t leaped on her, but had waited around the edges of her circle of light until she’d moved on. But if the Castle isn’t my enemy, she thought, then I shouldn’t fear the shadows, except—she couldn’t forget the suffocating, choking feeling of their tendrils covering her face, the air-starved hallucinations of light. It might not be her enemy, but she didn’t think it was her friend.

  She shot off the stairs on the ground floor, skidded, then ran on, still not knowing where to go. Shadows moved in all directions except one; she followed the clear path, her breath coming painfully sharp in her chest. Through the museum rooms, in which mannequins stretched out their wooden arms toward her and weapons rattled against the glass of their display cases; through the empty rooms, where the walls glowed with magic; through the book room, with books flying free of their shelves and battering at her like so many leaves in a whirlwind.

  She knew, by that time, where the Castle was herding her, and she burst out of the last room to see the dark flagstones and vaulted ceilings of the chamber that kept the heart of the Castle anchored to reality. The Honor Hall.

  Lights shone brightly around the Hall, but the Hall itself was dark. Ailanthe realized the darkness was actually shadow; the Hall teemed with it, gray clouds like dust that bulged and billowed and sent tendrils out into the light surrounding it.

  Ailanthe approached slowly. The light kept the broad passageway clear of the shadows, but they were behind her as well as ahead, and now she could hear a susurrus that sounded like speech, but in no language she knew. She felt as if the shadow was drawing her forward, and she wasn’t sure which she was more afraid of, Gweron or the Castle, but she had to make a choice. And if Gweron had his way, choice was something she wouldn’t have anymore.

  Footsteps echoed on the flagstones behind her. She turned to see Gweron, his right temple bloody, running toward her, his hand outstretched. Without another thought, she turned and flung herself down the steps of the Honor Hall and leaped, arms wide, into the midst of the shadow.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Shadow enveloped her, buried her mouth and nose in freezing spider’s silk; she gasped for air, and it threaded its way into her throat and chest until she couldn’t breathe. The lights flashed before her eyes again, growing brighter and larger, and her head hurt and she had to breathe—

  —and then her lungs were clear, and she drew a deep, bitterly cold breath that froze her lungs from the inside, but there was air, and her head was clear, and she was still alive. She was surrounded by gray shadow that cushioned her on all sides, and when she shivered, it moved with her.

  She shivered again and realized she wasn’t as cold as she’d been at first. In fact, she was growing comfortably warm, and her breath no longer felt like jagged glass inside her chest. She was upright, but she didn’t feel like she was supporting her own weight; something held her up, her knees slightly bent and her arms extended on both sides. She lowered her arms, and felt something resist her movement slightly before giving way.

  The lights still shone in front of her eyes, and she blinked to clear her vision, but they grew larger and began to merge with one another, white and gold, copper and black, until they coalesced into a humanoid figure standing, or floating, about five feet away from her. She was small and lithe, with very pale skin and very black eyes, and her hair was copper overlaid with a greenish patina. Her dress went through every possible shade of gold as she moved, glowing with magic as well as with its metallic sheen.

  Ailanthe blinked again. “You’re an elf,” she said.

  The figure regarded her with its huge black eyes. This is a shape that makes sense to you, it said without moving its lips. Human and not human. Alien and familiar. It is as close to what I am as I may come.

  “Then…you’re the Castle. Rhedyth.”

  I am that, and more.

  “But you tried to kill me.”

  I tried to communicate with you. I would not have harmed you.

  “What about untying the rope? What about the weapons? You tried to kill Coren!”

  The rope was my mistake. I did not understand how it supported you. And I wrongly believed the man strove to prevent my reaching you. I attempted to speak with him as well, but you intervened.

  “I didn’t understand what you wanted. I still don’t fully understand what you are.”

  I was made to make the destiny of mankind. I am Freedom.

  “But that’s what Gweron wanted. You didn’t.”

  He saw a different world than the one you live in. So did I. We disagreed as to how that world might come to be. I live, and I choose. He would have trapped me as surely as he would those souls who came to me to be transformed. I chose otherwise.

  Ailanthe tried to breathe normally. Her heart was still racing. “Why did you keep me here?”

  Because you took the key. And because you had his power.

  “The key gave me the power.”

  Rhedyth shook her head. The power has always been yours. Gweron could not be allowed to leave. And I saw in you the possibility that I might be free again.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Gweron’s power made me. I cannot exist without him. If he leaves, I die. If he dies, I die. Your power can take its place.

  Ailanthe couldn’t speak. Too many thoughts crowded into her head at once. “I’m not borrowing Gweron’s power?” she finally said.

  No.

  “But I’m no one special. There’s never even been a kerthor in my family, let alone someone who could…could build something like you.”

  I have no answer for you. Gweron is. You are. It is what happens when the world is allowed to spin its own way. You are what I need.

  The implications of what the Castle was saying started
to bear down on her. Could this be why she’d lost her connection to the trees—lost it in exchange for this power? She dismissed the thought with a shake of her head. “But Gweron still has power. Even if I give you mine, he’ll be able to fight you, and you’ll still be at a standstill.”

  Not me. He will fight you. And you know me as no one else does. Gweron saw me only as a tool. You have seen what I may become. You have taken possession of much of what I am. You will turn his creation against him and rebuild the destiny spell as it should have been.

  “Why can’t I—you—just destroy it? It hasn’t given anyone happiness in all these centuries.” But then she thought of Usael, and his joy in his new home, and knew she was wrong.

  I would die without it. I choose not to die.

  Ailanthe hesitated before answering, very aware that she was at Rhedyth’s mercy right then. “But if your death meant the end of Gweron’s madness?”

  It would mean the death of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands. My roots stretch throughout the world, in every land and under every sea. If I am destroyed, the earth will be torn apart. I choose to live. I choose for others to live.

  “And…what will it do to me?”

  You will become what you have always been. It is your choice.

  Ailanthe drew a deep breath. “Then show me what to do.”

  Rhedyth bowed to her. Take back this Castle, she said, and vanished.

  Ailanthe hung suspended in the grayness for a moment longer. Then she felt as if she’d exploded. She saw every inch of the Castle—she was the Castle, felt stone and wood when she flexed her fingers, glass between her toes and behind her eyes. She was in every room at once, from the armory to the tower, and it was as if she’d grown extra limbs, because every room was hers in the way her own skin and bones were.

  A blink here, and the mannequins moved. A twitch of her finger, and weapons flew from the walls of the armory and shattered the glass of the display cases. She saw Coren running down the stairs just ahead of Tristram, both of them carrying swords in a way that would be fatal if either of them tripped, and she saw Gweron pacing the circumference of the Honor Hall, magic gathering in a halo around him.