I girded myself and leaned out again, further this time. I spotted a ledge around four feet below the window. Not particularly wide. Maybe twelve or fourteen inches. It ran all the way to the corner and disappeared around the side of the castle.
I’d seen those old films. Buster Keaton. The Bourne films. Hell, even more recently Tom Cruise had performed a spectacular getaway in one of the Mission Impossible films.
What if I could channel my inner Tom Cruise? He’d made it look easy.
Without taking time to think it through, I clambered onto the window ledge, severely hampered by my long skirt. The world seemed to tilt on its axis. You’re not afraid of heights, I told myself. This is nothing.
I could climb out and down onto the ledge, then ease myself around the corner. Maybe get in through a different window. Or perhaps climb up to the roof. Or maybe there would be a fire escape? Yes!
A medieval fire escape? What was I thinking?
And what? I’d just leave a severely injured Silvan behind me. Leave him to fend for himself? How long would he survive the next beating? Especially once the vampires noticed my disappearance. They would throw the book at him. They’d begin by eliciting information about my whereabouts. Demand answers. Take them by force.
I climbed down from the ledge. Silvan gazed up at me from his spot on the bed, although how much he could actually see through his swollen eyelids I wasn’t entirely sure. Looking at his battered face made me want to weep again. Differing emotions battled for dominance inside me.
I looked from him to the locked door. I couldn’t leave him here alone. He deserved better that that.
“What time is it?” I asked.
Archibald consulted his pocket fob, and that action momentarily reminded me of Mr Wylie and his Gimcrack. How I wished I had a Gimcrack to hand right now. “It’s 10.36,” he told me.
No time to lose. Prince Grigor wanted to start his hellish ceremony at midnight. That meant Nadia and the guards would come for us within an hour or so. Scouting around I found my robes. They’d been kicked under the bed among my other belongings. I yanked at my dress, tearing it from my body and quickly pulled my robes on, then located my cloak. Silvan, still wearing his shadow guard black tunic and trousers, had no cloak. It would be cold outside. I threw mine over him.
“Do you have your wand?” I asked him as I carefully pocketed mine.
He shook his head. “They took it from me.” That stood to reason. Neither Silvan nor I necessarily needed a wand but using one directed intent beautifully, thereby increasing a spell’s power and efficacy. “It doesn’t matter,” I reassured him and helped him to stand.
“Madam,” Archibald started. “I really don’t think this is a good idea.”
“So you’ve said. Unfortunately it’s the only idea,” I reminded him. “Now Colonel Peters, I don’t expect your help, but I would be obliged to you if you never let on—”
“You can’t think of leaving me here?” The Colonel ejected in dismay.
I stared him. “What do you mean? Are you saying you want to come with us?”
“I’d rather not remain another minute with these monsters.” He glided over to the window. “I’ve done my time at Castle Iadului.”
I shooed him out the way as I guided Silvan across to the chair. “Of course you can come. But don’t get your hopes up. We may be joining you in the after world sooner rather than later. I wouldn’t get too comfortable with the notion we’ll be free of this place any time in the immediate future.”
“There’s nothing like putting a positive spin on things, is there Alfhild?” Silvan mumbled, and I did a double take. For a minute there, he’d sounded for all the world like my great-grandmother.
“Listen to me, Silvan.” I waved my hand close to his swollen eyes and he flinched. Good. He had some vision. “I don’t know whether this will work or not. It’s not the most sensible thing I’ve ever done but I need you to do everything I say. And I mean follow every single instruction I give you. Immediately and without question.” For once his face remained serious and he didn’t try to tease me or lighten the mood.
“This is the only way?” he asked.
I kept a tight lid on my own fear. “Yes,” I replied; my voice deadly serious. “You’re going to have to trust me.” I turned around so my back was towards him, then reached behind for his hands, placing them on my hips. “Follow me,” I told him.
“To the ends of the earth,” he replied.
What a sight we’d have made, if anyone could have actually seen us. Fortunately I couldn’t envision that being a problem as we headed outside onto the ledge, to cling on for dear life, on a dark and cold Autumn night. This side of the castle wasn’t overlooked so you’d have needed to be on the ground in the forest with a strong pair of binoculars and known to look for us in order to see us. And even then we’d have looked like ants on a wall probably.
Throwing my leg out and over the sill was the hardest part.
No. That’s a lie.
It was the first of the hard parts. Each action, each movement I took, every decision I made, was as excruciating as the last.
The wind snapped at the skirts of my robes as I gingerly turned myself about on the window ledge, but I quickly worked out that the prevailing wind was coming at us. This was fortunate as it served to push me back against the wall. I felt reassured having Silvan’s hands on me, although I was sure there was no way he’d be able to hold onto me if I should happen to slip, given the state of his broken fingers. He released me, and with my heart hammering like a drill in my chest, I let myself drop down to the ledge. When first one foot and then the next found purchase I allowed myself a relieved, although shaky, breath.
I inched along the ledge to make room for Silvan. “Okay,” I told him. “It’s fine. Climb on to the window ledge and turn yourself about. You need to come down backwards. Keep close to the wall and whatever you do, don’t let go.”
“Genius,” I heard him mutter as he manoeuvred himself around with difficulty.
“Take it easy,” I said in alarm as he wavered.
“Stop worrying,” he called back to me and slid down to join me, grimacing as he gripped at the ledge.
“Okay, Colonel Peters,” I called. “Your turn.”
Of course it was far easier for him, he simply floated out of the window and hovered on the ledge beside Silvan.
“My goodness. It’s a long way down.” Archibald tilted his whole body and stared into the dark valley.
“That’s not helpful, Colonel.” I swallowed a wave of nausea.
“You’d be able to sing the first verse and a chorus of God Save the Queen on your way down there,” Archibald, continued, undaunted.
“Colonel!” I snapped.
Silvan shivered beside me.
“That’s the trickiest bit done,” I lied. “Now we need to make our way over to the corner.”
Archibald interrupted me. “Might I make a suggestion, Madam?”
“I suppose so,” I said, a tad irritably. Now we were out of the castle and risking our lives I just wanted to get on with it. “Shoot.”
“We should seal the window up again. That will confuse them.”
Why hadn’t I thought of that? “That’s a great idea, Colonel,” I enthused. “If you two could squidge along a little, I’ll do that.”
Silvan edged sideways, to allow me to stand in front of the window once more. I pushed it closed as hard as I could, praying that the shadow guards standing in front of the door wouldn’t hear the commotion, then pulled my wand out of my pocket. Carefully I retraced the magick I’d performed earlier. “Hoc claudere stricta. Adhæsit hic erit,” I repeated my mantra over and over again, weaving threads of unbreakable magick from the tip of my wand. The only problem being that I couldn’t reach the top of the window now that I stood four feet below on the ledge.
Not to worry. I’d done my best.
“Okay.” I breathed noisily, pocketing my wand once more. “Let’s go.”
<
br /> What I hadn’t taken into consideration were the lack of hand holds.
This wasn’t really a problem to begin with because we could hang on to the window ledges. There’d been two windows in my room, and the room next door to me—evidently the corner suite—also had two. At any one time, either Silvan or I were able to hold on to a ledge while supporting each other—we did this by hooking elbows so as to alleviate the strain on poor Silvan’s fingers. But after we’d passed the final pair of windows there was a longer expanse of wall with no holds at all.
I worried about this as we edged slowly onwards. Every foot of area we covered seemed to take us an age. Occasionally I glanced back at the window we’d climbed out of, expecting to spot someone emerging after us at any minute, ready to give chase.
We were running out of time. We needed to move more quickly. And yet the section of wall without handholds loomed large in our future.
I paused once we were all safely under the final window.
“Problem?” Silvan asked, and I could hear the strain in his voice. I couldn’t begin to imagine how much pain he was in.
I leaned my shoulder gently against his, attempting reassurance. “Nothing a parachute wouldn’t help with,” I joked.
“I think they confiscated mine along with my wand,” he returned.
“Hmm. That does cause us a small problem then.” I blew my cheeks out and examined the wall. The castle had been made with hand cut blocks of stone centuries before, but the surface appeared remarkably flat. Quite an achievement. I rubbed the palm of my hand out in front of me. I could just make out the join, and in places weeds and grass grew out of the minutest of ledges.
“What would Tom do?” I asked aloud, more to myself than anyone else.
“Tom who?” asked Silvan.
“Cruise.”
Colonel Peters, on the other side of Silvan, looked bemused by the turn the conversation had taken
“You mean Tom Cruise the actor?” Silvan asked.
“I mean Tom Cruise the actor who does all his own stunts, including parachuting and rock climbing.”
Silvan snorted gently. “Yes, but still has a team of safety experts on hand, just in case.”
“We could do with that sort of team.”
“And he puts in hours and hours and hours of training,” Silvan reminded me. “We haven’t. Is that the Tom Cruise you mean?”
“That’s the one.” I had a quick giggle at the absurdity of two witches and a ghost huddled together on the ledge of an old castle trying to emulate a movie actor. “Sadly I forgot to attend the castle wall climbing workshop the last time it ran.”
“Me too.” Silvan shivered in the cold while I considered our options.
Finally I broke the silence. “In that film with the big glass building he has a sticky glove.”
Silvan nodded, remembering. “He climbed the Burj Khalifa, that’s right.”
With a sudden realisation I gripped Silvan’s upper arm. “Could we do that?”
Silvan’s brain worked as quickly as mine. “That was glass. This is stone.”
“But is there a spell that would work?” I asked.
Silvan considered this for a moment. “I’m not sure anyone has ever had need of one. We’d have to adapt one. We could try the sticky spell.”
I’d used a sticky spell in the past. I was dubious about its strength to stick us to rock, but we were rapidly running out of time.
“Give me a time check, please, Colonel.”
The ghost plucked out his watch fob and narrowed his eyes in the dim light. “Eleven sixteen, Madam.”
“Already?” My heart lurched. We didn’t have a choice.
Sticky it would have to be.
“If we both say it together?” I asked Silvan and he nodded. “We can make it stronger.”
“Intent is everything, Alfhild. You know that.”
“Well I certainly intend to hang onto this rock for dear life,” I told him. “Are you ready?”
“Ready.”
I lay the palms of my hands flat against the rock surface in front of me, then focused hard on both hands at once—not easy to do. I willed them to push into the face of the wall, be as one with the rock. “Three. Two. One.” A flash of energy lit up the air around us. “Tenax!”
Something shifted beneath my hands. I wobbled, thinking I might fall. My stomach lurched queasily. But when I tried to release my hand from the window ledge I found I couldn’t detach it at all. Momentarily I panicked, but beside me Silvan exhaled softly, and I heard an amused grunt.
“You see the power of the magick we can create when we work together?” he asked, and I couldn’t disagree. With him by my side, I always felt I could overcome the odds. “You’ll need to focus to release each hand,” he continued. “Think of it as a snapping action.”
I recalled the way Tom Cruise had peeled each hand away from the wall in a rolling motion, before some kind of magnetism had snatched each hand back. Effective until he’d lost one of the gloves.
Eww. I hadn’t needed to remind myself of that.
I didn’t intend to lose a hand though.
There could be no practicing. I was in the lead therefore I had to play the part of Guinea pig. I rolled my hand away from the castle wall and took a step before slapping my palm back against the surface. It clung there the way a barnacle clings to the bottom of a boat.
“It works!” I laughed in delight.
Above us, a light went on the window. Somebody had entered the room.
We froze. Had the shadow guards discovered our absence? Had they started to search?
We pressed into the wall, hardly daring to breathe, but we couldn’t stay there. The likelihood of someone thinking to check was too high. We had to keep moving and navigate the corner.
“Come on,” I whispered. “Let’s keep going.”
I’m not sure why, when I originally climbed out of the bedroom window, I decided to head right. I think it was the closest corner, so it made sense to get out of sight. However, once we made it to the corner we encountered a new problem. Castle Iadului was enormous. And now as I poked my head around the edge of the wall, the new side of it—as far as I could tell given the lateness of the hour and the lack of light—seemed to go on for miles and miles.
In addition to that, we would now be heading into the wind. It stung my eyes as I blinked into the distance.
I edged around the corner, focussing fully on my hands.
Roll and slap. Roll and slap. Roll and slap.
Once I’d safely manoeuvred my way around—and had a measure of the full force of the wind—I peeled one hand away and held tight to Silvan’s elbow as he edged round to join me.
“Careful,” I said, glad that my body would shield him from the worst of the strong current of air. “It’s a little breezy this side.”
“We’ve got this,” he replied, his tone chipper, but I could see the strain etched on his pale face.
I glanced down the length of castle wall once more finding dozens of sets of windows, some of them burning brightly. Silvan must have followed my gaze.
“Do we have a plan yet?” he asked.
That would be a no.
“What time is it?” I asked Archibald again.
“Eleven forty-eight, Madam.”
I bit my lip. They had to know we were missing by now. Or if they didn’t, they soon would.
“Let’s press on,” I said, more confidently than I felt. I led them forwards, fighting against the wind the whole time. Inch by inch we moved. My toes numb as they pressed into the ledge, for the most part my face hovered just centimetres from the rough surface of the castle’s walls. Every time I relinquished a hand hold my stomach would flutter with nerves.
Roll and slap. Roll and slap.
Whatever else I did, I refused to look down into the vast crevice behind me. I found myself almost envying Silvan his semi-blind state. Occasionally I would feel him falter next to me, and I would pause. Knowing he would become i
rritated if I kept asking him how he was, I would instead assure him we were making good progress.
But that progress seemed dangerously slow to me.
One particularly vicious gust of wind came out of nowhere and for a moment I pushed back against Silvan. His sharp intake of breath alerted me to his discomfort, and I paused once more, allowing us time to take a breath and refocus.
“We can do this.” I spoke aloud the mantra I’d been silently repeating for what seemed like hours.
“It may be the craziest thing I’ve ever done,” Silvan volunteered, wincing as he straightened his back. “And I thought time-travel was up there.”
“Is there anything I can do to help you?” I asked.
“Or me, good Sir?” Archibald asked from behind him.
Silvan shook his head slowly. “You’re doing—both doing—a great job.”
On occasion, lights appeared in windows above us and every time they did my nerve would falter. They must have been searching the whole castle for us by now, imagining that somehow we had slipped past the guards. If I had been them I’d have started with the bedrooms. How long would it take them to cotton on to the fact that the locked window was a ruse?
I could imagine the furore rapidly followed by Prince Grigor’s fury. His wrath would be pretty devastating if we were caught.
So it made sense not to be.
I set my jaw and we continued to creep forwards. Above us, the waxing moon shone down on us but only intermittently. Clouds moved speedily across the sky, driven by the easterly wind. Occasionally we were plunged into near darkness, but it rarely lasted long, and holding onto the wall for dear life as we were, we were hardly going to take a wrong turning.
When we rested once more, I glanced back at Archibald. He didn’t even have to wait for me to ask. “Twelve thirty-two, Madam.”
My soul lifted momentarily. We were passed the witching hour, and nobody had located us thus far.
“So far, so good,” Silvan said.
But for how long? This side of the castle seemed endless. We couldn’t carry on circumnavigating the castle endlessly. At some stage we would have to find a way to get down or get off the ledge. I had imagined that we would climb in through a window and hide out in a bedroom, but every time I spotted light streaming from a window above my head, I realised this was not such a good idea.
Vengeful Vampire at Wonky Inn: Wonky Inn Book 8 Page 13