The View From Castle Always

by Melissa McShane

  The gray shadows disappeared, and she felt herself lowered to the shining floor of the Honor Hall, and saw Gweron through her own eyes as well as those million extra eyes the Castle gave her.

  Gweron raised his hand, around which gathered a nimbus of light. “Give back my power,” he said.

  “It seems it wasn’t yours in the first place,” Ailanthe said. She felt the Castle surrounding her like armor. “And neither is Rhedyth.”

  He swung his arm, and Ailanthe staggered. He had so much more experience with this magic—but then, she had a Castle on her side. She reached with one of her many hands and took hold of the flagstone he stood on, and lifted, knocking him off his feet. He caught himself with that golden nimbus and leaped backward. “Trickery,” he said.

  “Power,” she said, and ruffled the floor like a wave of rock, and this time Gweron did fall. She felt him land, and then she lost control of some of her limbs as he snatched them away from her. She fought him, lost more limbs, regained some, and then the weapons were there raining down upon him, and he lost his concentration.

  Ailanthe backed up until she stood at the center of the Honor Hall; she knew where it was as surely as she knew the position of her own hand. Gweron swept his arm in front of him, and the weapons clattered with metallic rings and wooden thuds onto the flagstones. He came toward her, arm still outstretched.

  “We need not fight,” he said. “I have never known anyone like me before. Join with me, and we will make of this sorry world a new one. I swear it.”

  “You’d have to transform me to get me to go along with that plan.”

  “A small price for both of us to pay, methinks. You would be happy! Is that not what everyone dreams of?”

  She remembered how it had felt when Coren kissed her, that first time, how it had swept away all the misery of thinking he would never care for her and been all the sweeter for it, and said, “Not at that price.”

  Gweron snarled at her, and she cried out as half her immaterial body vanished, snatched away by his will. The floor of the Honor Hall buckled, and she had to support herself with her extra hands or be knocked down. She struck back, and saw him stagger before he launched another attack. Despair crept over her. They were too evenly matched. They would exchange blows until one of them tired, and Gweron, with his greater experience, would probably come out on top.

  At the edge of her awareness, she saw Coren stagger into the passage, followed closely by Tristram. He turned and brought his sword up barely in time to block Tristram’s swing. He looked tired, but worse, Ailanthe could see immediately he was no match for Tristram’s swordsmanship. He was going to be killed, and she couldn’t do anything about it. To her surprise, instead of sorrow, she felt fury. He’d never done anything to the Castle or to Gweron and he was only in this fight because of her. If anyone in this mess deserved to survive, it was Coren.

  She let that fury carry her through Gweron’s next attack and past his defenses. She remembered how it had felt to take control of the Castle, piece by piece, and flexing muscles she’d never guessed she had, she took hold of everything in Gweron’s power and wrenched it out of his grasp. With her physical eyes, she saw him clutch at his heart, swaying, and in his moment of distraction she bore down on him with all the might of the Castle behind her. He screamed and fell to his knees.

  Coren and Tristram stopped in their fight to look in Gweron’s direction, both startled by the agony in the man’s voice. But Tristram recovered first, and brought his sword up in a wide arc aimed at Coren’s head. “No!” Ailanthe shouted, and her immaterial hands picked Tristram up and flung him far across the room. Gweron rose to his feet and suddenly the power of the Castle turned into a stony weight that crushed Ailanthe into the ground.

  She heard Coren shout from very far away, and she cast about for something, anything, she could use. The key, she thought, irrationally, and remembered the Castle couldn’t kill Gweron, only transform him. She looked up to see him standing over her, could see her reflection in his eye like a mad glassy orb, and that triggered another memory. She reached out, whether physically or not, she couldn’t tell, and took hold of Gweron himself, and twisted.

  Gweron vanished. Something went tink on the flagstones. It was a glass ball filled with water in which floated a red rose, half-open and frozen in its state of perfection. She had a moment to register what had happened, and then Gweron’s power slammed into her.

  He hadn’t been using his full power before, she realized, and now he was angry and terrified, and she couldn’t hold him for very long. She saw Coren running toward her, his outline rimmed with black as she began to lose consciousness, and she shouted, “Smash it!” as loudly as she could, which wasn’t very loudly at all. Coren gave her one horrified glance, raised his sword, and brought it down on the glass ball.

  Everything went white. Ailanthe’s head cleared, her breathing returned to normal, and then the white faded to gray and she was within the heart of Rhedyth again. The elf looked at her silently. Around them, the gray mist shuddered, shaking Ailanthe as if the world itself were moving.

  The magic is gone, Rhedyth said. You must replace it or we will all die.

  “Then take it! Take my magic. It’s not like I’ll miss it.”

  Rhedyth shook her head. The shadows shuddered again, harder this time. I cannot take what is not yours to give. You are the magic. You must take Gweron’s place within these walls.

  “I don’t understand,” Ailanthe said, but it was a lie. She understood too well. “If I do this…I’ll never leave here again, will I.”

  You will be the Castle. The Castle cannot leave itself.

  “But I just want to go home.”

  If you leave, there will be no home to go to.

  Fear and anger and sorrow overwhelmed her so much she couldn’t even cry. Never to see home again. Never even to let the trees reject her. “What do I do?” she said.

  You have already done it, Rhedyth said, and Ailanthe screamed as the full power of the Castle filled her. She was the Castle again, but now it was becoming her as well, its magic transforming both of them until she couldn’t tell whether she was flesh or stone. She saw everywhere at once, every place the Castle had put down roots, every time in which the Castle existed, saw Gweron laying the first two stones and, in the far distant future, the Castle ablaze with magical fire.

  She screamed with all her voices until one of them went hoarse and then silent, and she followed that voice back to herself and found her body suspended in the gray shadows, exhausted and weeping with pain. “Is that all?” she rasped, then laughed painfully at how nonchalant her words sounded, when what she meant was Please, no more.

  It is enough. Look now, and see what you have become.

  Ailanthe looked, blinked, and looked again. She still had her physical body, and it still moved when she willed it to, but overlaid on that were those million eyes and thousands upon thousands of hands, fingers, legs, and ears. She turned her head and saw dozens of rooms pass before her eyes; blinked again, and hundreds of windows showed her glimpses of the lands they looked out on. She blinked a final time, and those senses retreated to hover just past the limits of her perception, and she knew she could call them up again whenever she wanted. It was…extraordinary. Terrifying, and beautiful.

  I am strong. You are strong. We are strong together. But there is rot at our heart.

  “The destiny spell. Can I unmake it?”

  It is our heart. To unmake it would be to destroy us, with all that entails.

  “Then what can we do?”

  Rewrite it. Turn it into what it should have been. Gweron wanted a world full of unthinking goodness. We will make it a world full of heroes. Men and women who come here seeking guidance and leave with new purpose, having chosen their destiny.

  “I don’t know how to do that. I’ve never been good at knowing what was best for people.”

  I know their hearts. You know their destinies. You need only think.

  “But d
estinies—” She went silent. If you thought of destiny as something you couldn’t escape, she knew nothing of that. But if you thought of destiny in terms of the things every person ultimately wanted…there weren’t very many of those. “Love,” she said. “Fame. Power. Adventure. Knowledge, maybe.” She thought of Coren. “And some people just want to go home.”

  Then we shall offer them these things. They will choose, and in choosing let their choice transform them as they will, not as we think they should be.

  “What if they don’t? I mean, what if they use our guidance selfishly, or for evil?”

  That is how Gweron thought. It is the risk we take for the sake of those who choose good over evil.

  Ailanthe licked her lips, which had gone very dry. “I don’t know how to do it, though.”

  I will show you. And then we will show the world.

  Ailanthe was suddenly the Castle again, but looking deep inward, into a place where the Honor Hall seemed somehow inverted, insides surrounding the yellow stone walls. At the center of this not-place lay a tangle of magic, a loose skein of yellow string that threaded through the walls in a pattern Ailanthe almost recognized. What makes up the spell is right, Rhedyth said. It is the pattern that is wrong. See, touch, taste. Know the pattern, and you will know how it should change.

  The idea of tasting the yellow-white magic appalled Ailanthe, but she took Rhedyth to mean she should embrace the pattern with all of her senses, so she did so, following the strands—or was there only one strand?—to their ends and back again, taking them into herself until she could feel the strands threaded through her new body, their slippery-smooth texture like oiled metal.

  Gradually, she came to see how the pattern wove together. It really was simple, she thought, teasing one of the strands into a new configuration. Gweron had gotten most of it right; he’d just been wrong about all the important things.

  As she wove, she thought of her sister at her loom, and her heart sank. She would never see her sister again except through Usael’s eyes. She’d never find out which city it was that lay beyond the desert.

  The weaving trembled, and she took control of herself. She’d made her choice, and it was the right one, so there was no sense getting weepy about it. She wondered what Coren would think about her never being able to leave. She could probably open a door for him near his home, so he could visit his family whenever he liked, and she was rather fond of the window room. It wasn’t going to be so bad.

  “I think it’s done,” she finally said, “but I’m not sure.”

  We will know when the first hero comes, Rhedyth said, but I think it is sound.

  “Can I return to my body now?”

  You are the Castle. The Castle is you. It is as much your body as your physical self.

  “Yes, but I don’t want to be the Castle all the time.” That would certainly put Coren off.

  You may take either form whenever each is needed. Rhedyth bowed to her again. And…I thank you.

  Ailanthe didn’t know how to bow in her current state. She also didn’t know how to turn back into what she thought of as herself, whatever Rhedyth might say. She searched down all her many arms and eyes until she found a throat that was still scratchy and raw, and settled into the body surrounding it—and fell to the floor of the Honor Hall before she could get her unfamiliar legs underneath her.

  “Ow,” she said, standing unsteadily, then looked around. She heard no sounds of battle or shouting. “Coren?” she called out, carefully climbing the stairs. She hoped she wouldn’t need to become the Castle very often, or, if she did, that she’d learn to handle the transition more gracefully. “Coren?”

  A pile of glass shards, a puddle and a wilting rose were all that was left of Gweron. Coren wasn’t there. She didn’t see Tristram either. She went toward the grand staircase, calling both their names, but no one responded. She reached out and took hold of the Castle, not letting it overcome her, but seeing through its stones into every room and out every window. She found Miriethiel, sunning himself on a windowsill in the Eshkian museum room, but no one else.

  She was the only human being in the Castle.

  “Rhedyth,” she called out, “where are Coren and Tristram?” No answer. “Rhedyth!” She raced back to the Honor Hall, reflecting that she’d need to learn to talk to Rhedyth from wherever she happened to be. She hopped down the stairs and let herself be filled with the sense of place she now identified with the Castle’s heart. “Where are they?”

  I gave them their heart’s desires.

  Ailanthe felt the blood drain from her face. “What do you mean? Where’s Coren?”

  I do not know names. The tall one wished for glory in battle, so I sent him to Agranar, where he will kill or be killed as may be. The other wanted to go home, and that is where he went.

  “You sent him back to Hespera?”

  It was his heart’s desire. He never belonged here. And he killed Gweron. A fitting reward for him, I think.

  Ailanthe sat down on the steps and hugged her knees. “It couldn’t have been.” He said he loved me.

  Rhedyth didn’t need her to speak to know her thoughts. You were not uppermost in his thoughts, she said.

  Ailanthe felt as if Rhedyth had slapped her. “No?”

  I gave him what he truly wanted. It is what I was made to do. He chose.

  “And he didn’t choose me,” Ailanthe whispered. It shouldn’t have been a surprise. He’d been saying it all along. Even their first night together—he’d said he’d even put up with that horrible woman, Dey-whatever it was, if he could only be home again. He might have loved her, but he loved Hespera more. He’d made his choice, and so had she. And now she was going to be alone here forever.

  Stupid, she told herself, he’d only known you a few weeks, and you were the first woman he’d seen in six years, however he might say that wasn’t the reason. He probably even thought it was true.

  She rose, dashing tears from her eyes, and without thinking about it made her mind stretch toward the bedroom she’d slept in her first night in the Castle, and let it draw her body along after it. Then she was in the room, and she turned off the lights with a thought and collapsed onto the bed, and fell into unconsciousness or sleep.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Ailanthe didn’t actually need the Castle bell to know when someone was approaching Rhedyth, but she didn’t like having to maintain the low-level connection to the Castle that would require. It had been five weeks, but she still hated it for sending Coren away, hated Coren for wanting to leave, hated herself for wishing she could have made him stay—but that was against everything she and Rhedyth had chosen, so mostly she just hated herself.

  She had five minutes after the bell rang before the front door opened. One of her first actions had been to put a thumb plate and latch on the inside. You couldn’t exactly be a beacon of free choice while you were locking people in.

  I’ll let this one wander a bit, meet him at the Honor Hall, she thought, summoning a silk gown from the crowded dressing room behind what Rhedyth had told her was the theater. Then Rhedyth had had to explain what theater was. Ailanthe wondered if she could somehow contact a troupe of players, get them to put on a show for one person.

  The gown buttoned up the back, not a problem when you had a thousand invisible hands, not to mention several hundred sprites. Giving them commands had turned out to be pathetically easy, and Ailanthe still groaned when she thought of how she hadn’t figured it out on her own. She turned one of the windows mirrored and examined her reflection. She looked serene. It was a hard-won expression as well as a lie. She combed her hair, which still had a tendency to frizz out around her face even if she was a part-time Castle, and decided to walk down the stairs instead of whisking herself there.

  Three sprites came to join her as she descended. They were still oblivious to everything around them unless she commanded them, but they seemed drawn to her with a sort of magnetic pull. She guessed it was because they recognized Gweron�
��s power, or the power they had in common. They weren’t very good company.

  Miriethiel, on the other hand, always appeared when she called, and she suspected he had some link to Rhedyth that let him slip between walls the way she did. He slept on her bed and tucked himself under her chin when she cried at night.

  After the first week, in which two heroes had come and gone, she’d considered altering the rooms’ arrangement to give visitors a straighter path to the Honor Hall, but Rhedyth had gone paler than usual when she suggested it, and Ailanthe had given up the idea. She felt her front door open and close, and diverted part of her attention to observing the…it was a man, someone from Galendan, which still made her cringe.

  She never looked at Tristram’s book, didn’t even know if he was still alive, but she hoped he was getting plenty of beatings in Agranar, anything to make him see the world more clearly. And because he’d tried to kill Coren, but she didn’t think of Coren much at all these days. Nights were a different story.

  The Galendishman was taking the long route through the mauve and violet sitting room, the Cabinet, and the Indrijanese museum room. Ailanthe crossed the flagstones and went to stand at the exact center of the Honor Hall. Being there felt strange, like having a weight above her navel both pulling her down and lifting her up simultaneously. She was at the center of her center, and she tried not to resent it.

  Soon the Galendishman came into view. Fortunately for her peace of mind, he looked nothing like Tristram, being rather stout and with brown hair cut unattractively short. He was about halfway across the flagstones, his footsteps echoing off the vaulted ceiling, when he saw her, and his mouth dropped open. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Ailanthe. Why don’t you come down here, and we can talk.”

  “You are the spirit of the Castle,” he said, almost inaudibly—or would have been if Ailanthe hadn’t had all those extra ears.