Agatha H and the Voice of the Castle

by Kaja Foglio

  Gil snorted. “If she’ll let me.”

  Van, meanwhile, had been collecting the lanterns, extinguishing them, and storing them on a rack similar to the one in the wine cellar. He turned to the others now. “All right, folks, one last gauntlet and we’re out.”

  Gil looked apprehensive. “What, more monsters?”

  Van shook his head. “Tourists.” He opened the door and a pulsing wave of sound boomed outwards. It was a driving polka beat that vibrated the floorboards and rattled the tableware. Gil and his party found themselves in another bierstube, but this one was brightly lit and hung with garish Jäger trophies and pictures that inevitably portrayed the Jägers as buffoons and dimwitted clowns.

  The place was packed with tourists, drinking and dancing, along with teams of saucy girls barely dressed as Jägers.

  Van put his mouth next to Gil’s ear. “This is the Mamma Gkika’s you’ve heard about,” he yelled.

  Krosp had clapped his paws over his ears. “No wonder nobody can hear the Jägers fighting down there.”

  Gil nodded. “Let’s get out of here. I have an idea, but we’ll have to move quickly and quietly.”

  As he spoke, a meaty hand grasped his collar and hauled him up onto the stage. It was a large, drunken patron, who waved Gil around in the air and bellowed; “Hey look! It’s Gilgamesh Wulfenbach! The guy who saved the town!”

  Immediately the hall erupted into cheers. Vanamonde sagged against the wall. “So much for quietly.”

  Krosp shrugged. “So we’re doomed. Cope.”

  “No, really, we’re doomed,” Moloch moaned. “No one’s ever been in this part of the Castle.”

  “The map says to go this way,” Agatha said confidently.

  “But the traps aren’t marked.”

  Agatha nodded. “Then that pink harridan won’t follow us.”

  “WRONG.” A ghastly voice echoed through the cavernous room they had been traversing. Moloch whimpered and hugged the tools tighter. The voice of the Castle continued, “This is very interesting. They want to kill you so much that they are killing each other.” It sounded amused. Then its tone became aggrieved: “Why is that? Don’t they know that killing all of you is my job?”

  Agatha took a deep breath. Another personality fragment. This one, at least, sounded…different. More complex. “They want to kill me because I am the rightful Heterodyne, and the girl leading them is a usurper.”

  “Oh, really?” The Castle was obviously interested now.

  “Yes, really. I spoke to you in the crypt. You told me to get to the library.”

  There was a pause. When it spoke again, the voice was thoughtful. “The Crypt? I don’t remember any crypt, but the library is where you should go…”

  “I know you have trouble with your memories. You don’t control as much territory as you know you should. It’s one of the reasons I’m here to repair you. The other girl is a false Heterodyne. She wants to shut you down and kill me. The people after me are her minions.”

  “Ah. That I understand.” This was followed by a snap and a scream from behind Agatha. She whirled and found Moloch stuck in a trapdoor in the floor, saved only by having wedged himself with the pack he had been carrying.

  “He’s with me!” Agatha said, as she helped haul him up.

  “Ah,” the Castle admonished. “Then you should have said, ‘the people after us.’ If you are a Heterodyne, you must remember that words are important.”

  Moloch yanked his feet free just as the opening in the floor resealed itself. “I hate this place,” he gasped.

  The Castle chuckled. It then made several helpful suggestions regarding where they should go and thereafter kept up a stream of idle, if slightly disturbing, chatter as they navigated the hallways. Agatha took the time to look around a bit. The damage to this part of the castle seemed superficial, though parts of the floor were slightly off-kilter.

  Windows were cracked, furniture was tipped to the side, and there was a thick coat of dust everywhere. Cobwebs hung thick, and rotted drapery and tapestries hung from the walls. The air was thick and silent.

  “It’s obvious no one’s come this way since the explosions,” Agatha muttered.

  “Technically, that’s not true,” the Castle replied. “Master William visited the library before he left. He told me to guard it, that it was the most important room in the entire castle. But since then, you are correct.”

  They turned a corner and saw a gigantic wooden door, labeled with tarnished brass letters that spelled out “BIBLIOTHECA.” To either side of the door stood a statue of a solid-looking young lady carrying an axe in one hand and a large lantern in the other. Evidently the artist had thought that these accoutrements were stylish enough that the ladies could skip any other semblance of clothing.

  Agatha smiled. “Well, I appreciate you letting me get here so easily.” With that, the lanterns the statues carried began to glow along with their eyes, and with a grinding sound, the two statues turned their heads to look at them.

  The Castle chuckled. “It will only be easy if you are an actual Heterodyne.”

  The statue on the left hefted its axe. When it spoke, its voice was eerie and whispered. “One must die—”

  The other statue continued smoothly, “—so another may pass.” The axes were lifted and the blades began shifting back and forth between Agatha and Moloch. The statue on the right whispered, “You must decide who must die—”

  The statue on the left continued, “—so that one of you may pass.”

  Moloch shrieked and dropped to his knees. Agatha thought furiously. “I choose…” Then she pointed to the statue on the right. “Her!”

  Instantly, the blade of the left-hand statue flashed out and smashed the head of the other statue. Ceramic and clockwork exploded into fragments. The right-hand statue shuddered once and then slumped into stillness. The statue on the left then paused. “Wait a minute…”

  Agatha nodded. “Excellent. That secures passage for my companion.” She indicated Moloch, who was staring at the smoking stature with an open mouth. She then stepped forward. “Do we have to play the same little game to secure my passage?”

  The eyes of the statue flicked from Agatha, to the other statue, to Moloch, to the other statue, to its axe, to Agatha… and then it stepped back and the shaft of its axe slammed into place on the floor.

  “Test passed!” it declared, and then its eyes went dark.

  “Well,” Agatha said, “that was a lot easier than I thought it would be.”

  Moloch shuddered. “The horrible thing is that I know you’re serious.” He then walked up to the large double doors. “So this is the library. How is this going to help? It’s just a bunch of stupid books.”

  The Castle was clearly offended. “These books contain the secrets of the Heterodyne family.”

  “What, like A Thousand and One Ways to Kill People?”

  The Castle chuckled, “Oh, there’s far more than that.”

  Agatha, meanwhile, had been tugging and pushing at the great brass and onyx handle with no success. “The door’s locked.”

  The Castle paused. “The door is not locked.”

  Moloch put down the supplies and gave the handle a twist. It clicked but nothing happened. He looked for hinges, and seeing none, gave a shove with his shoulder. The door shifted slightly.

  “That’s your problem,” he announced. “I’ll bet the doorframe’s warped. The door is just stuck.”

  “It always sticks a bit,” the Castle agreed.

  Something about the way the Castle said this set off an alarm bell in Agatha’s mind. Nothing she could put her finger on, but…

  “Stand back,” Moloch said, hunching his shoulders, “One good smack oughta do it.” He then launched himself at the door.

  “Wait,” Agatha yelled. It couldn’t stop him, but Moloch did manage to check himself in mid-rush, which is why he grabbed hold of the great handle as the door burst open. This prevented him from sailing freely out into open
space. It did not, however, prevent him from screaming.

  “Impressive, isn’t it?” the Castle chuckled.

  “There’s no library here!” Agatha looked down onto a rubble-strewn courtyard several stories down. “There’s nothing here at all!”

  “Yes!” Von Zinzer yelled. “Lots of nothing! Help me!”

  Agatha leaned out and managed to get a tenuous grip upon some of the door’s brasswork. She braced herself and slowly began to swing it closed with her fingertips. Finally Moloch got close enough that his feet could touch the stone sill and he lunged back inside, sprawling onto the floor and taking deep breaths. Agatha stared out at the open area.

  “This is another test.” She waved her hand outwards. “The library is here, isn’t it?” “Very good,” the castle said approvingly. “The door you seek is right in front of you.”

  Agatha stared out again and squinted. Nothing. Suddenly, her depth of focus shifted slightly and she saw, tucked into the far wall approximately fifty meters away, a small, unassuming opening. She pointed. “That’s it? Over there? What, am I supposed to fly to it?”

  Again the Castle chuckled. Moloch pulled himself into as small a ball as possible. “Flying is not necessary. But I do insist on a leap of faith.”

  Suddenly, there was a rattling of stone upon stone, and before Agatha’s astounded eyes, the rubble on the ground shifted, wobbled, and slowly floated upward. A vast cloud of bricks and paving stones drifted upwards, rotated in place for several seconds, and then condensed into a narrow, irregular path of stones that floated in mid-air between the two doorways.

  There was a final “clink,” and the Castle spoke. “There. Our own little ‘Bridge of Trust.’ Anytime you are ready, ‘My Lady.’”

  Moloch stared at the floating path in horror. “Ready to die, you mean. There is no way I’m going—”

  “Correct.” The Castle was serious now. “The Heterodyne must enter alone.”

  Agatha nodded. She pointed to Moloch. “Please don’t kill him while I’m gone.”

  Moloch looked appalled. “Hold on—you’re not actually going, are you?”

  Agatha took a deep breath. “Of course I am.” And she stepped out upon the pathway. She expected it to give slightly or to sway, but the stones beneath her feet were as solid as if they were resting upon rock. She had listened to enough of the stories that the circus’ aerialists had told around the fires at night to know not to look down, though this was proving difficult to adhere to. She took a step. Then another…and another after that. She was about to release the breath she had been holding, when a clunking sound caused her to freeze. She turned as quickly as she dared and looked back in time to see the stones that were positioned against the doorway begin to wobble and then fall, one by one, to the courtyard below. Slowly the disintegrating edge moved towards her.

  Agatha sighed, turned back, and continued onward.

  “You’re very trusting,” the Castle remarked.

  “And you’re very annoying.”

  “Aren’t you afraid I’ll drop you?”

  “No.”

  Now the Castle sounded peeved. “Why not? I could, you know.”

  Agatha continued moving. “You’re like the people in Mechanicsburg, I think. You want a Heterodyne. You keep threatening to kill me, but you’re not sure, so you’re herding me towards the library where I might actually be able to repair you, if I am who I say I am.”

  She took a deep breath and continued. “Besides, from how much fun you’re evidently having from these games, I imagine you’d be disappointed if I didn’t survive long enough to take whatever test there is to prove my legitimacy.”

  “Games? I don’t know what—”

  Agatha gestured downwards. “This path, for one. You could have easily made it three meters wide and as straight as a ruler.”

  A note of embarrassment crept into the Castle’s voice. “Yes… well…”

  “So, thank you.”

  The Castle clearly hadn’t been expecting this. “For what?”

  Agatha stepped off of the bridge and into the doorway. As she had surmised, a dark passage twisted off to the right and vanished into the darkness. “For getting me so annoyed that I didn’t have a chance to get scared or disoriented. You did that.”

  The Castle was silent.

  “Now no more games,” Agatha said.

  Behind her the last of the stones pattered to the ground. “Agreed,” the Castle said. Then the floor opened beneath Agatha’s feet and she dropped out of sight.

  A fall, a jolt, a disorienting slide in the darkness. With a cry of shocked surprise, Agatha crashed through a wooden lattice and landed upon the floor of a new room. She took a minute to catch her breath and rub at her painful hindquarters. “I thought I said—”

  “SILENCE!” With the Castle’s roar, iron shutters slammed back, revealing a magnificent stained glass window. Through this, the afternoon sun washed the room with bright shades of red, yellow, and purple. Agatha stared.

  The room was large and high ceilinged. Directly beneath the window was an unadorned altar of black stone. The walls and the ceiling were lined with bones. Human bones, inset and tessellated in patterns that caught the eye and always brought it back to the altar.

  Agatha had heard of churches decorated like this, walls and furnishings supplied by victims of plague or war, but reading alone had failed to prepare her for the actual experience. She took a small step and almost fell over. The floor was paved with skulls.

  “This is no longer a game,” the Castle said. “This is where you will prove your claim, or where you will die.

  “Over the centuries, there have been other times when my masters have gone missing. You are not the first stranger who has come to me claiming the family name. Sometimes they strode in leading armies. Sometimes they skulked in on moonless nights. One flew in on wings made of bone and brass. All claimed to be lost Heterodynes, and all found their way here to this room to be tested.

  “Sometimes they were delusional. Sometimes they were…false men. Puppet things of shadow and dead meat. Sometimes they were simply…honestly…wrong. They never left.

  “Now it is your turn. Take comfort in knowing that if you fail, there will still be a place for you here, forever.”

  Agatha took a deep breath. “Then let’s get started.”

  A rumble emanated from beneath her feet. The vibrations swelled until the room shook and Agatha lost her footing, landing atop the pavement of juddering skulls. Before her, the floor bulged upwards. Skulls rolled off, bouncing away as a vast mechanical claw thrust its way up into the light. Another appeared. They bent, and slammed into the ground, levering a vast serpent-like form up from the depths. Corroded brass covered by cracked dials writhed upwards. Agatha could see furnaces glowing within the thing’s structure. A great head shot upwards, paused as it reached the ceiling, and then swung down towards Agatha.

  As opposed to the utilitarian gears, springs, and dials of the rest of the mechanism, the face had actually been sculpted. It took the form of an enormous gargoyle—all fangs and spines. Nervous as she was, Agatha had to admire the workmanship that went into its creation—it actually seemed to change its expression as it hovered less than a meter from her.

  “Yes,” mocked the Castle’s voice. “Do let us get started.” The gargoyle’s great jaws, easily two meters wide, split open in a great gap-toothed grin. “Place your hand in the mouth.”

  Agatha stared into the dark recess. There were…things moving in there.

  “…And?”

  The mouth drifted open even wider. “And if you are of the family, I will know.”

  Agatha squared her shoulders and slipped her left glove off before gingerly inserting her hand between the great teeth. “I am a Heterodyne,” she declared. The mouth gently closed down, trapping her hand. “I…I know I am,” Agatha said gamely. “How will you know?”

  The eyes widened innocently. “Blood.”

  Agatha had steeled herself for pai
n, but she screamed nonetheless.

  Gilgamesh Wulfenbach gritted his teeth as he felt Krosp climbing up his back. The cat had evidently decided that he liked the height that Gil’s shoulder provided, and Gil (correctly) assumed that the pain and inconvenience this gave him was considered a bonus.

  Krosp dipped his head so his whiskers were tickling Gil’s ears. “So,” he said—one eye on the road ahead, “just for laughs, you wanna share what this great plan of yours was?”

  Gil brushed a whisker away. “To quietly find my father and explain the situation.” Krosp gave a snort. “And if that didn’t work, drug him into insensibility until I could sort things out.”

  Krosp raised an eyebrow. “His doctor would allow this?”

  Gil snorted. “If your reports about what my father is doing are correct? Dr. Sun would hand me the syringe.”

  Krosp considered this. “That’s…not a bad plan.”

  Gil shrugged. “Thank you.”

  Krosp looked around at the huge crowd of revelers that seethed around them, yelling, cheering, playing musical instruments, and chanting various slogans as they stumbled towards the Great Hospital. “Got another? Preferably one that instead of stealth, involves half the town?”

  Gil nodded seriously. “I’m working on it.”

  The appearance of an apparently genuine Heterodyne had brought forth a tremendous wellspring of excitement and jubilation in the populace of Mechanicsburg. This was only slightly dampened by the fact that no one was sure which Heterodyne girl was the genuine article and both of them were still in the Castle, but it was the considered opinion of the populace that the real Heterodyne would shortly appear, preferably with the fake’s head on a pike.

  Once Gil had been identified by the denizens of the tavern, he had quickly become the focus of all the pent-up bonhomie and Spark-associated goodwill.

  Thus wherever he went, he was accompanied by an ever-growing crowd of boisterous well-wishers.

  He found this very odd as usually whenever people in general discovered a person was a Spark, the crowd tended to run in the other direction.

  He shook his head. This is Mechanicsburg, he reminded himself.