Chapter Three:
A Day in the Life of an Ordinary Girl
Rachel flew her steeplechaser through the gatehouse, shivering with relief.
The arched tunnel that ran through the twenty feet of the outer curtain wall was cool, but the cold mountain breeze did not blow here. She chafed her still-cold arms and urged her broom forward. Emerging into the light again, she found herself in the bailey. It was warmer here, though still chilly. The sunlight was bright, and the outer walls provided protection against the bite of the wind.
Within the bailey were the formal gardens she remembered from the previous day. Or had it been only a few hours ago? In the bright glare of the sun, it was hard to remember that it was still the middle of the night back in New York.
With a second shiver, she realized she was flying over the very spot where the ghost of her Uncle Myrddin—or Thunderfrost’s Boy, as she thought of him—had stood earlier in the evening. By this very wall, he had watched her speak his name, activating the spell his father had cast decades before—the spell to bind up the demon who had murdered him, turning him into a ghost.
Toward the middle of the gardens, Rachel halted and hovered Vroomie. Beneath her was the stone altar where Azrael had laid her family and her two friends, while he had tried to compel Rachel to kill them. Beside the altar were the remains of the great bonfire the demon had used to call the tenebrous mundi. Her escape had been so close last night. One false step and she—and maybe the whole world—would have been destroyed.
Despite the lack of chill, Rachel shivered again.
With a last glance at the site of her earlier adventures, she flew onwards. Other than the presence of the altar and the burnt-out bonfire, the gardens were unexceptional: a pleasant vista with sprawling fig trees. Statues, half covered in ivy, stood next to yews that had been clipped into fanciful chess pieces. To either side, fountains gurgled.
Beyond the gardens loomed the gray, ivy-covered keep. This rectangular structure also had rounded towers at its four corners. Narrow, double-arched windows and t-shaped arrow slits breached its otherwise solid basalt walls. The structure reminded her of home. It was similar to the Old Castle—the oldest section of the massive, sprawling mansion that was her family’s home. At Gryphon Park, however, one of the towers—the one that held her grandfather’s library—was significantly taller than the rest. Here the corner towers were of a matching height.
Rachel arrived as the others entered into the inner keep. She darted after them, the wake of her broom rustling the branches of a nearby shrub. The sides of the keep were not as thick as the outer curtain wall, meant to protect the entire fortress, but the passage inside still went through a good twelve feet of stone.
Once within, she shot through a mottled yellow room into the great hall, where the others stood ooing and ahing, their voices echoing in the emptiness. It was a handsome chamber with rugged ceiling beams. Diamond-shaped medallions of burgundy and gold covered the walls. Stone benches lined the east and west side. The place was rather dim. Little sunlight made it down the four-yard long arched tunnels through the thick castle walls that served as windows.
Valerie snapped pictures, her camera whizzing. Her flash illuminated heraldic crests and the occasional poleaxe. Joy and Xandra stood together in the middle of the chamber, gesturing up at the odd, triangular chandeliers dotted with small globes for will-o-wisps that provided the main lighting for the dim hall. Nearby, Zoë leaned against a wall with her arms crossed and a bored expression on her face.
Toward the far end, Siggy poked around the giant hearth, urging Lucky to breathe fire into the grate. The dragon did, causing the whole chamber to smell of ozone and soot. But Rachel noticed that Sigfried’s eyes were unfocused, his attention elsewhere. She guessed he was busily examining the rest of the keep with his magical, all-seeing amulet.
Skirting the edges of the walls, Rachel peered through the side doors. Like the Old Castle back home, this keep had been built before the invention of hallways. Rooms spilled directly into other rooms, with no central walkway to separate them. The other chambers on the first floor were much smaller. Most were empty, except for the occasional open cabinet or stone bench. One had a huge bas-relief across the wall, showing a battle between knights on horseback and fulgurators with their conical helmets and their lightning-throwing staffs. Another contained nothing except a standing candelabra and a music stand.
The rooms at the north and south end of the hall were square. In the corners, where the towers stood, the chambers were hexagonal. Three of these hexagonal spaces contained spiral staircases. The last had stairs leading downward to a pool surrounded by white tile. Reflected in the blue-green water, Rachel could see the three stories of hexagonal, roofless tower above it.
“The evil castle has a swimming pool?” Joy came up beside her.
“No, that’s a well.” Rachel pointed upward. “See how the tower is open to the sky. That’s so rainwater will fall in—to add to the water supply. No castle could survive a siege without a good water supply.”
“And if I were going to build a house, I would definitely want it to withstand a siege,” giggled Joy. “Unless it was Siggy besieging…then, I would throw open the doors.” Then she bit her lip, recalling who Rachel had previously described as being fortress-like. “I wish the princess would come in. I hate thinking of her out there in the cold, all by herself. What if we find something, and we need her advice? It doesn’t seem right that our leader is all the way outside.”
Rachel nodded, but as she floated her broom back toward where the others were congregated, she frowned in annoyance. Leader? When was the last time Nastasia made a leadership decision about anything? That was unfair. The princess had made a decision: that they should stay outside. But no one had listened to her. Which, whispered a little voice in her mind, was the same as not leading.
Rachel wondered if she should explain to Zoë and Xandra that, Joy and Sigfried’s fawning aside, their nameless group was not run by the princess. It was a collection of like-minded individuals, eager to find adventure and save the world.
With a sigh, she decided not to trouble them.
It did occur to her that the group was not going to remain nameless for long. If Siggy kept inventing crazy titles, one of them was bound to stick—most likely, the worst one. They needed to pick an official name before that happened.
“What were these for?” Valerie lowered her camera and pointed up at some deep slots appearing at regular intervals in the stone of the walls. “Rachel?”
Rachel flew over and hovered beside her, examining the wall. She recognized them. The Old Castle at Gryphon Park had the same grooves. “For lighting. They held cressets—fire baskets mounted on poles, which would have been stuck into these grooves. This keep was built before the domestication of will-o-wisps. Wild will-o-wisps are unreliable and very hard to catch—and thus very expensive.”
Valerie snapped a picture of the grooves. “When did the World of the Wise start using will-o-wisps?”
Rachel searched her memory, calling up an encyclopedia and a number of magazine articles she had read. “The Chinese domesticated the kitsunibi—Japanese will-o-wisps that burn a fox red color—sometime during the fourth or fifth century. Marco Polo brought a sack of them back from his travels to the Far East. These were bred with our European variety to produce the soft buttery glow we know today.”
“Learn something every day,” Xandra murmured.
“I lived in a castle once,” Zoë drawled, her silver sandals leaving prints on the dusty floor. “But it was not nice like this. It was outside of Cannes. You could see the Mediterranean from my window.”
“You were living in a castle on the Riviera, and you are complaining,” cried Joy. “I live in a room the size of some people’s closets, which I share with my sister Charity. In Ohio. Did you know Ohio got voted ‘Most Boring Place in the World?’”
Zoë shrugged. “Sure the weather was gorgeous, and the food was to die for
. But it’s creepy to live in a structure that might fall on you. There were whole sections we could not enter because they might collapse at any time. They were cordoned off by red velvet ropes—like we lived in a museum or something. Luckily, my father was only away a few weeks that time, and I got to go home before the cold weather came. That place was drafty! There was a crack in my room so big that one night I woke up staring into the face of a rat the size of a small dog.”
Xandra had bent over to examine a bench. She straightened. “Why were you there?”
“My mother died some years ago. Her mother was a Moth. So I have…”
“A lot of relatives. Got it.” Xandra gave a curt nod of her hooded head. “I hear the Moths are the largest family in the world.” She paused. “So…forgive me if I am behind here, but…the lawns are well-kept—someone’s trimmed the giant yew chess pieces—yet nobody lives here?”
“Not at the moment,” Rachel frowned thoughtfully, “though Egg’s cohort, Serene O’Malley, is still out there. She jumped away last night.”
“Wait, you mean, she might come back here?” Joy looked around nervously. “Um…”
“Don’t worry,” Siggy slashed at the air with his poleaxe. “She wouldn’t dare come back while Lucky and I are here. Right, Lucky?”
“Right, Boss,” the dragon replied, “else her hair will be fiery red for real!”
A thought struck Rachel. She floated up beside the hooded upperclassman. “Xandra, why were you standing in the darkness after midnight, waiting for us?”
“The Voices told me to.” Xandra shrugged. “Cruel taskmasters that they are. They show no concern for unimportant things like sleep or flouting rules. On the good side, at least this time, they didn’t tell me I had to go naked. Or with a duck on my head.”
“I could have helped you with the duck,” promised Lucky.
“You mean the voices that come out of your mouth?” Siggy thrust at an invisible enemy with the top point of his poleaxe.
Xandra nodded.
“When they speak through you, do you hear them?” asked Valerie, her flash illuminating the chamber.
“No,” said Xandra, “but they also speak to me. Usually in the middle of class, right when the tutor calls my name, and all my fellow students are staring at me. They’re helpful that way.”
“Should we be worried?” asked Valerie. “I mean, that these Voices asked you to come with us? Does that suggest that we’re going to be in danger?”
“I like to think that if a catastrophe were in the offing, the Voices would have instructed me to tell you not to go,” Xandra said dryly. “Usually, they are quick to tell me when I am doomed. They’re helpful, that way, too.”
“That’s comforting,” said Valerie. “They wouldn’t send you into dire danger, right?”
“I’d like to think…” Xandra murmured again.
• • •
They stomped up the spiral staircase to the next floor, their feet clacking against the stone steps, except for Rachel, who was still flying. The tower was cool and damp and smelled of wet rock. It was dark as well, but Xandra had used the lux cantrip to create a ball of dancing lights that hovered above their heads. Rachel floated on her broom, just to the side of the rail-less staircase, angling upward. At one point, she shot ahead too quickly and ended up with her head stuck in the midst of the dancing ball of light.
“Why do you wear a hood over your face?” Siggy asked Xandra. “Were you burned by acid?”
Xandra chuckled. “No, it’s just that hoods are terribly comfortable. I think everyone will be wearing them in the future.”
“Really? Are they comfortable?” Rachel peered at Xandra’s hood, blinking. Her eyes were still dazzled from the ball’s brightness. “Don’t they get hot?”
Zoë snorted with derisive amusement. Rachel’s face remained calm, but inside she cringed, uncertain what she had done to warrant mockery.
Xandra gave Rachel a compassionate smile. “Wise-born, are you? Me, too. Those of us who are raised entirely in the World of the Wise sometimes miss out on some pretty cool stuff. You should ask your parents to let you watch more movies.”
“Gaius likes movies,” Rachel murmured dreamily.
“Gaius Valiant?” Beneath the hem of her hood, Xandra lips twitched with amusement. “Are you two really dating, then? He’s in my class. We’re upper school seniors. Isn’t he a bit old for you?”
Rachel blushed. “He came a year early, so he’s only sixteen.”
“Sixteen to fourteen,” shrugged Xandra. “That’s not so bad.”
Rachel stared straight up the stairs. She did not explain that she herself had also come a year early and was, therefore, only thirteen. Still, it was a pleasure to talk about Gaius without the princess’s constant glare of disapproval.
“No…I was not burned by acid.” Xandra turned back to Sigfried. “When I get possessed, sometimes, I make really stupid faces. Remember what I said about them talking to me right when everyone’s looking? It’s not that I mind being made a fool of occasionally, mind you. But, after a while, it can get dull.”
“Why do we all wear robes?” Siggy asked suddenly, as he stopped upward. “At school, I mean? Are we constantly in a state of graduating?”
Zoë snorted.
“Because that is the way all scholars dressed back in 1624, when the school first opened,” Xandra replied simply. “Originally, that was the only uniform students could wear, but when Oxford allowed subfusc for formal occasions, Roanoke decided to allow it, too.”
“Is there a school of sorcery at Oxford?” Siggy asked in surprise.
“Of course,” replied Xandra. “Isn’t there a school for everything at Oxford?”
“Returning to your hood…you’re not even ugly?” pressed Siggy, who apparently had forgotten that he and Rachel had once seen Xandra’s face.
“You’ll never know,” Xandra quipped back.
• • •
The second floor, high above the first, was a collection of musty rooms. Tapestries covered the walls of the central room. A side room held an office. Valerie looked through the drawers of the file cabinet. She found papers written in Hungarian, but they were old and yellow. Rachel glanced at each one, in case she wanted to have them translated later; however, she suspected that they were laundry lists and the bills for gardeners rather than clues as to lost adventurers or demon cabals.
She flew over to where Siggy and Lucky were guessing how quickly the tapestries would burn.
“Have you looked around the whole place?” she murmured. “No one’s here, right?”
“Um…nope,” Siggy whispered back, absentmindedly tapping the spot on his robe under which hung his all-seeing amulet. “Not yet. I was searching the dungeons downstairs for gold and loot. I found some cool torture implements, but they’re rusty. You don’t need torture, if you have magic, I’m guessing. I’ll look upstairs soon, but first cover for me. I’m going to take advantage of the fact that the others have wandered off, to sneak into the office and smooch my G.F.”
Sigfried snuck into the office and closed the door. From inside came a squeal, and then a sound like mmmmm. Rachel rolled her eyes. She hovered before the door for a time, on guard, but as the others seemed caught up in their own activities—and Rachel didn’t think they would care anyway—she abandoned Siggy and Valerie to their fate and continued examining the room.
She could not help feeling a bit envious.
She wished her boyfriend were here, too.
A cloud covered the sun, casting a gloom over the chamber. So long as she kept her attention trained on absorbing details, she felt fine. The moment she let up, however, her eyelids began to sink. Fatigue was catching up with her. Back home, it was the middle of the night of one of the most difficult days of her life. Not to mention that even a simple healing enchantment could be exhausting.
No wonder she was tired.
But her friends still seemed chipper; she would have to find a way to soldier on.
Now that it was over, it felt if the fires had sputtered out in the furnace of her soul. It was only a matter of time before her limbs stopped moving. Once, she slipped sideways and nearly fell off the broom.
At least the horror was over.
A shiver ran up Rachel’s spine. She gripped her broom tightly. The castle, which had seemed cheerfully mundane, suddenly seemed ominous. She could not put her finger on why. Was it the disappearance of the sunlight? The question of Darius Northwest’s unresolved fate?
She flew closer to the tapestries with their fanciful unicorns and hippogriffs. They reminded her of some of her favorite of Northwest’s books. She remembered the first time she heard of “Daring” Northwest. She had been curled up in her grandfather’s lap, half asleep, while he read in one of the great winged armchairs in his tower library. Smoke from his pipe, far more pleasant than the odor of cigarettes, formed lopsided rings or fanciful castles and dragons. She had not known what he was reading at the time, but examining her memory now, she could see that the book was Polybius’s History of the Punic Wars.
Half asleep in his lap, her gaze had fallen upon A Field Guide to Gryphons and their Southern Cousins. Pointing a stubby finger, she had cried, “Look! Gryphons! Like us!”
“Right you are, my child.” Her grandfather’s majestic eyebrows had risen in amusement.
Rachel and the Many-Splendored Dreamland (The Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 3) Page 4