Castle for Rent

by John Dechancie

  “Then do, and be my guest. When you are here, use the Universal Projector to call him and sound him out. Tell me what you think. I need a second opinion, a second reading, if you will.”

  “Very well. I hope I can remember the spell that works that old contraption of Dad’s. I haven’t used it in years.”

  “Go to the library and look it up. Osmirik, the new librarian, will help you.”

  “It will be good to be back at Perilous again. I could use a change of scene.” Deems scratched his black beard. “But won’t Trent instantly suspect you put me up to it? I mean, calling him out of the blue, after so many years?”

  “He may. I think he most probably will think I put you up to it. In fact, you can tell him I did. I want everything to be aboveboard, for now.”

  “As you wish. Do you suspect everyone? Dorcas as well?”

  “Hardly Dorcas.”

  “Well, that more or less leaves Ferne, Trent, and me — and you say I’m out of the running.”

  “Ferne and Trent. Yes. They might be in it together. I find that not improbable. They always got along well together. In fact, Trent was the only one of us who was at all close to Ferne.”

  “It would seem a simple case, then, with only three possible solutions. It’s either Ferne alone, or Trent alone, or both together.”

  “Or someone else entirely.”

  Deems scowled. “Who?”

  “An outside force or agent of some sort.”

  Deems pursed his lips and looked pensive. “Hm. I suppose it’s possible. Castle Perilous has never lacked for enemies.”

  “True.”

  “But see here. What’s the game? What does this unknown conspirator mean to accomplish by opening up dangerous aspects and letting the boogeymen out?”

  “The unknown may have struck some bargain with these boogeymen. They invade me castle in return for spoils he has promised.”

  “Which he can’t deliver, unless he knows something I don’t,” Deems said sourly. “Out of 144,000 worlds, there isn’t a single damn one that has any easy money in it. And I include the one you’re in at the moment.”

  Incarnadine gave a chuckle. “Don’t you remember all the time we spent panning for gold in Hyperborea, back when we were kids?”

  “With not a penny to show for it.”

  “Now, I remember making enough to buy a very small sailboat,” Incarnadine said. “A ten-foot sloop, as I recall. I think me thing may still be lying in a dusty corner of the castle somewhere. I used to take it out on Lake Asmodeus, in the Helvian aspect. I also have a memory of you buying yourself a silver-handled Almedian scimitar with the paydirt you gleaned.”

  Deems grunted. “I don’t remember. It was a long time ago.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Tell me this, Inky. What could Trent have been doing, isolated in a blind universe all those years?” Deems’ brow furrowed. “The thought occurs to me that you are now isolated in a blind universe. How the devil are you going to get back from there?”

  “I’m going to do my damnedest to summon the gateway from this side and set up a more or less permanent link to Perilous. From a Manhattan apartment.”

  “Wasn’t that where it was originally?”

  “Yes. The site was not this specific apartment, but you remember the general location correctly. As to your first question about Trent — he says he hasn’t, but I suspect he has been developing new magic on this side. He may have a way of summoning the gateway, using it, then letting it wander free again until he needs it. He may have had access to Castle Perilous all these years.”

  “Why has he waited all this time to make his move?”

  “He may have been aiding Melydia. I rather doubt that, as Melydia was a major-league sorcerer herself, but she may have needed help at the interuniverse level.”

  “That is an interesting surmise.”

  “A wild guess. Perhaps Trent is patient. Or perhaps he’s just recently perfected his techniques.”

  Deems folded his arms and looked dubious. “You really don’t have much to go on, do you?”

  “Frankly, no. That’s why I was hoping you would help. When you return from Perilous, I want you to give me a rundown on what’s happening there in my absence. Ask Tyrone, the captain of the Guard, to give you a report. Tell him I sent you.”

  “If he believes me.” Deems squinted one eye.

  “He will. Before I left I told him to expect you.”

  “I was going to ask why you can’t call Tyrone yourself, but now I see you simply want to verify my trip to Perilous.” Deems’ eyes twinkled. “You’ve been planning moves in advance.”

  “As necessary in life as in chess.”

  “Inky, I’ll always defer to your chessmanship. How you outmaneuvered Melydia — that horror of a woman! — I’ll never know.”

  “Luck played its part — along with clean living, proper outlook, eating three squares a day, and so forth.”

  Chuckling, Deems said, “And regular exercise — no doubt.”

  “When can you leave for Perilous?”

  Deems shrugged. “Today, if you wish. I have nothing pressing.”

  “Good. Call me again in, say, two days.”

  “Very well. Anything else?”

  “Not at the moment. Good seeing you again, brother.”

  “Same here, old boy. But if you don’t mind —” Deems stood and reached out both arms toward the screen. The image jerked and the angle of view shifted until Deems’ face was in close-up. “I’m going to forgo the refined pleasures of having a mirror by the bed. I don’t really care to be surprised in quite that way again. There are plenty of other looking-glasses about the palace.”

  “My apologies.”

  “So, if it’s all the same to you —”

  Deems carried the mirror through high mullioned doors and into open air. “Goodbye, Incarnadine.” Deems held the mirror out at arm’s length, then let it drop.

  The mirror turned slowly as it fell. The twisting perspective showed Deems standing on a balustrade high on the outside wall of the palace. He was looking down, smiling and waving. His image quickly shrank, sliding off to one side as the mirror turned to face the uprising ground. Briefly a tilted vista of the green and beautiful Albion countryside revealed itself until the screen of the CRT went black.

  Keep — Queen’s Dining Hall

  Sheila took another sip of coffee. She felt a little better now. There were people here who seemed to be in the same boat she was in — lost and stranded in a crazy place without knowing how or why. It felt good to talk to them and find out more about what the heck was going on here. None of what she was hearing made any sense, but at least everyone seemed to acknowledge that it didn’t make any sense. She could deal with that. Not with everything not making sense, but with the fact that no one seemed concerned that it didn’t.

  Yes, she felt a little better, now that she had some proper clothes to wear. She had declined the usual quasi-medieval costume that everyone here pranced around in, opting instead for jeans, a blouse, and a good pair of running shoes. She’d been told that it was wise to be quick on your feet in Castle Perilous. She was determined to be as quick as possible.

  The dining hall was almost full. Apparently it was a holiday in this world, and the castle servants (it was sometimes hard to tell the servants from the Guests, except that the servants had a sort of English accent) had set a festive table laden with dish after colorful and elaborate dish.

  Everybody was digging in, so Sheila did, too.

  “Anybody know what the occasion is?” Gene asked.

  “Something akin to our winter solstice, I think,” M. DuQuesne said.

  “I guess most worlds have solstices and equinoxes and all that stuff,” Gene said.

  “My world doesn’t,” the creature called Snowclaw growled. (It seemed to growl all the time.) “Course, I wouldn’t know what an eekinocks was if it came up and kicked me in the butt.”

  Sheila couldn’t get over ho
w she could understand everything the white-furred, white-clawed creature said. In fact, it sounded a little like Uncle Walt, Mom’s brother. Uncle Walt growled a lot, too.

  Despite her fear, she found the creature to be very friendly. She just couldn’t bring herself to look into its fierce yellow eyes.

  She helped herself to a slice of roast suckling pig, then spooned out samples of a few of the side dishes. Everything had been delicious so far.

  “Snowclaw, your world has to have an equinox,” Gene insisted.

  “How do you know?” Snowclaw scoffed. “You’ve never been there.”

  “Does it have a sun?”

  “Well, of course.”

  “Then it has equinoxes and solstices. What I’m talking about is … well, really it’s the relationship of a sun to a planet that revolves about it. You see, when a planet’s axis of rotation is tilted somewhat to the plane of its orbit, what happens is that —”

  “What’s a planet?”

  “Uh, a planet. It’s a world. You know, a big spherical lump of dirt that spins around.”

  “Spins around what?”

  “Turns. Rotates.”

  “Where?”

  Gene blinked. “What do you mean, ‘Where’? Out in space, of course. Look, when a planet spins on its axis, it —”

  “What’s space?”

  Gene took a long drink from his beer stein. “Forget it.”

  “Anything you say, pal,” Snowclaw said amiably.

  M. DuQuesne said, “Snowclaw, does your world have a warm season and a cold season?”

  “Sure does.”

  “Is the sun a little lower in the sky in the cold season?”

  “It’s a lot lower.”

  “Then, when the sun is at its lowest point during the cold season, and the days are very short, that’s the winter solstice. When it’s at its highest point in the sky during the warm season, and the days are long, that’s the summer solstice. The equinoxes are in between, in spring and autumn, when night and day are about equally long.”

  “Oh. Well, sure, everybody knows that! Thanks.”

  Everyone looked at Gene. He shrugged. “Okay, so I’m not Isaac Asimov.”

  A man called Thaxton said, “Who’s for tennis today?”

  Another, older man who called himself Cleve Dalton said, “Thax old boy, you ask that every damn day, and I can’t recall that anyone’s ever taken you up on it. Where the devil are the courts, anyway?”

  “Well, they’re through an aspect just a little down the hall to the right. I suspect they’re not really tennis courts per se. I mean, there are nets and such, but they actually seem to be —”

  There came shouts from out in the hallway, and the sound of running feet. A man, one of the servants, came running through the main entrance looking frightened to death. He ran past the table and shouted, “They’re coming! Run for your lives!” He sprinted to the kitchen entrance, threw the door open, and dashed through.

  Everyone froze for a moment. Then Gene said, “It’s gotta be the Bluefaces.”

  As if to corroborate his remark, three Bluefaces stormed through the main entrance with drawn swords.

  “Stay where you are!” the middle one commanded. “You are now under authority of His Imperial Domination, High Proconsul of Greater Borjakshann, and you are subject to his every whim, wish, and caprice!”

  “Hey, Blueface!”

  Somewhat nonplussed, the creature raked an eye up and down the table until it found the speaker.

  “Who dares defy authority of Proconsul?”

  Snowclaw rose to his full height. “Me, that’s who,” he said.

  The creature looked a trifle uncertain. “Any resistance will be dealt with harshly!”

  “Yeah? What are you gonna do, bleed on me?”

  The Blueface grinned with a satisfied malevolence. “For that bit of insolence, you will be put to death immediately!”

  With a blood-congealing howl, Snowclaw sprang into a blur of motion. In one clean jump from a standstill, he was up on the table and running, huge clawed feet picking their way through the soup tureens and serving plates of prime rib, executing a neat end run around the carved ice centerpiece. At some point he became airborne, taloned toes leading, the claws of his hands swiping at the air, mouth wide and bristling with wickedly sharp teeth, gleaming incisors almost big enough to be tusks. A fire of diabolical ferocity burned in his alien yellow eyes.

  The Blueface barely had time to point its sword in the proper direction. To no avail. The splayed foot of Snowclaw’s long right leg, which had extended slightly, hit the invader squarely in the breastplate. The sword went flying, and the creature went down, Snowclaw crashing on top of it.

  Gene had delayed only an instant. He was up and charging by the time Snowclaw had made his leap.

  “Everybody out through the kitchen!” he yelled.

  Four more blue-skinned soldiers stormed through the door, and a few of the other males and one woman jumped up and ran to meet them, swords drawn.

  Sheila just sat there, a morsel of beef Stroganoff still poised on the end of her fork, her mouth hanging open.

  Ohmygawd. What the hell is happening now?

  Someone grabbed her arm. It was Linda Barclay.

  “Sheila! Run!”

  Sheila got up and joined the clot of people that had jammed up at the kitchen door. She looked back over her shoulder to see Gene Ferraro crossing swords with one of the creatures, while the big white beast karate-fought with another. The Blueface who had done all the talking was sprawled on the floor with purple gunk running out of its mouth. Sheila suddenly got very sick, and very afraid.

  Gene swung his weapon and lopped off the sword-arm of his opponent. Sheila saw the severed blue member splat to the floor. She thought she would throw up then and there, but when Gene’s next stroke clove the creature’s skull in two, spraying purple liquid all over the place, she was too shocked to react. Meanwhile, Snowclaw had lifted his adversary over his head; he threw the creature against the stone wall. The Blueface hit with a bone-pulping thud, hung against the wall for an impossible instant, then clattered to the floor.

  Gene ran for the door. “Come on, Snowy, there’s too many of them!”

  Snowclaw batted at one of the new intruders and sent the creature flying, but when he saw more reinforcements streaming through the main entrance, he broke for the back door.

  Sheila had been watching all this, half hypnotized by the savagery of it, half paralyzed with fear. Linda yanked her back through the door as Gene came charging through.

  Linda, Sheila, Gene, and Snowclaw raced through the cluttered, now deserted kitchen and banged out through the opposite door. They were followed by three survivors of the group who had joined the fight. The woman was not with them.

  Once outside the kitchen, they pushed a huge sideboard against the door to block it. Immediately grunts and crashing sounds issued from the other side.

  “They killed Morgana,” one of the men told Gene. “She chopped up one of them before getting it from behind.”

  “I saw,” Gene said. “We’d better split up.”

  The other nodded. “My favorite aspect is down this way.”

  “Maybe not such a good idea,” Gene said. “Better to get off into the remote parts of the castle. Of course, that’s just a guess. You make your own decision.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Same to you.” Gene turned to Linda. “You and Sheila coming with us?”

  “Of course. Gene, you were marvelous. I can’t believe how good a swordfighter you are. Maybe you really are Cyrano de Bergerac.”

  “No, I just have a nose for trouble.”

  Sheila hoped he was Cyrano, Duke Wayne, and Sylvester Stallone all rolled into one.

  164 East 64th Street

  He sat hunched over, his forehead in one palm, elbow on the desk, peering down at a sheet of paper that crawled with arcane mathematical symbols. A high pile of crumpled sheets lay to his right. Stacks of books
lay about the desk, interspersed with pencils and other writing implements, three or four different types of electronic calculator, several empty aluminum soda cans, and a cup and saucer holding the dregs of two-day-old coffee.

  He threw down his pencil, a weary scowl on his face. “Dung of a thousand kine!”

  There was not much enthusiasm in the curse. “Shit,” he added, with not much more.

  He exhaled and peered into the coffee cup. He yecched silently, got up, and carried it into the kitchen, where he set about inducing Mr. Coffee to do its job. He spooned grounds into a fresh paper filter and slid me little drawer holding the filter into the machine, then poured cold water into the top of the device.

  In the living room, the computer beeped a warning. He rushed directly to it and sat at the terminal.

  He typed, NATURE OF EMERGENCY?

  The disk drive rumbled. Then the screen displayed: DANGER.

  RANGE AND DIRECTION? he queried.

  NEARBY AND CLOSING FROM WEST.

  GROUND OR AIRBORNE?

  GROUND.

  NATURE OR EMBODIMENT OF DANGER?

  UNABLE TO DETERMINE.

  “That’s a fine how-do-you-do,” he muttered. CAN PINPOINT PROXIMITY?

  NEAR was all it answered.

  “Damn program is full of bugs! Full of them!”

  He halted waving his arms and considered his outburst. “I’m losing it. I’ll have to pull myself together.”

  His eyes closed and his shoulders relaxed. He remained motionless for several minutes.

  Presently the intercom buzzed. He opened his eyes, took a deep breath, and got up.

  “Yes?”

  “Mr. Carney?” It was the doorman.

  “Yes.”

  “Express package for you. Should I send the guy up?”

  “Just take delivery. I’ll be down for it later.”

  “He says you gotta sign for it.”

  He considered the matter. The package would doubtless be the books he had ordered from a small specialty bookstore in San Francisco, whose owner had promised to get them out on the next plane yesterday afternoon. He was not yet acquainted enough with the minutiae of this world to judge the degree of risk.