Castle Perilous (22 page)

“Gene! In here! Everybody!”

It was Linda, huddling in the alcove. Gene leaped, tripped over a charging cougar, and fell against Jacoby, knocking him into the alcove and on top of Linda. Kwip jumped in, and suddenly all was dark.

There came a muffled protest. “Mr. Jac — ”

“What happened?” Jacoby warbled.

“Get . . . off me!”

“Terribly sorry.”

A light came on. Gene looked up at the Coleman lantern hanging by a chain from the ceiling, then saw that the alcove was now sealed off by a wall.

“Linda? Are you okay?”

She sat up and blew air upwards to brush the wisp of hair off her eyes. “Yeah. Now the ropes. Any suggestions?”

“A simple knife, maybe,” Gene said.

“Okay, catch.”

Gene felt the handle in his hands. “You're getting great at this.”

“Life and death situations make for good practice. You try that, I'll try my Cuisinart.”

“Huh?”

“Without the plastic cover. See? Those are the chopping blades. I cut myself on them once or twice trying to wash them. Now if I can just do it without — ”

Linda got free first and cut Gene's bonds, then Jacoby's and Kwip's.

“Those big cats?” he asked. “Why didn't they bother us?”

“I created them with a real craving for fresh soldier meat.”

“Nasty.”

“Those bastards were going to kill us.” She held her head and shook it woefully. “Look what this place has done to me. Those men are dead.”

“As cat food, they had their finest hour. Don't fret about it, Linda. You did what you had to do. By the way, I loved the saber-tooth. Nice touch.”

“Oh, if I had thought, I might have come up with something that wasn't lethal.”

“And you would have gone to heaven for being a nice person.”

She sighed. “I guess you're right.” She looked around. “Now what? I guess we go out through the other side.”

“Unless you can conjure Marlin Perkins.”

Linda materialized a small opening. Kwip cautiously peered out. It was a tunnel paralleling the one they'd been in.

“We have to go back and get Snowy,” Gene said. “You can dematerialize the cage, and then — ”

“Wait,” Linda said. “I don't think I can do that. My talent is creating things out of thin air, not making things disappear. Hold on.” She looked at the Cuisinart and wriggled her nose. “No soap. I can't make it go away.”

“How come you can create doors and openings? After all, they're sort of negative quantities.”

“I don't know. A door is something to me. You can see it.”

“Well, anyway, there's only one more soldier. And there're four of us.”

“You're forgetting Super-Bitch.”

“Yeah. Do you think you can handle her?”

Linda looked inward for a moment, then said, “I don't know. She's up to something. And she's powerful.”

“So are you, and you're getting stronger by the hour.”

 

 

 

Middle Levels

 

osmirik stopped in his tracks when he saw the giant creature sitting in the middle of the large domed chamber. Something told him it was a creature, although it looked in some respects more like a vegetable garden. On the whole it was of such complexity that the eye was at pains to make sense of it. Leaves, claws, stalks, legs — these appendages and more protruded from the beast at haphazard angles. Green and yellow fronds covered the body in most places, save for a few areas where strange feathers grew.

Osmirik backed off. It was a long way around the thing.

“Greetings,” came a voice emanating from an appendage resembling a cabbage head. It appeared to have a mouth.

Astonished, Osmirik halted.

“We bid thee greetings,” spoke another vegetable mouth.

Osmirik bowed stiffly. “A good day to you, sir . . . er, sirs.”

“It is polite,” the first head observed.

“Ask it what place this be,” suggested a third.

“Capital idea. Kind stranger, canst tell us how this place is called?”

“You are in Castle Perilous,” Osmirik answered, “the master whereof is Lord Incarnadine by name.”

“Might ye know, then, how we came to be here? We are unclear on the matter ourselves.”

“Unfortunately, I do not know. My apologies.”

“Tis nothing. Thou hast done us a kindness.”

“Ah, tis beyond hope,” lamented a fourth head.

“By the heavens, I think thee right,” said the first. “We shall never leave these walls.”

“Your pardon,” Osmirik said. “I have a question.”

“Yes?”

“How long have you been here?”

“A very long time. We think for at least a hundred cycles of the stars, albeit none are here to be seen.”

“And you have spoken to no one in all that time?”

“Thou'rt the first who deigneth to speak to us.”

“A pity,” Osmirik pronounced. “And an injustice.”

“Truly, for we have in that time composed nigh on two million lines of a new poetical work.”

Osmirik was somewhat taken aback. “You don't say?”

“Yes. It is lyrico-pastoral in nature, with overtones of romantic melancholy. Likely as not, it would please thee greatly.”

Osmirik looked off, searching for the nearest exit. “Under ordinary circumstances, I would fain hear it. However — ”

“We would be honored to perform it for thee,” the first head intoned. “Chorus, assemble!”

The cabbage heads rearranged themselves.

“Very well. Begin.”

All heads then chanted in unison:

 

“Hear us, O Demiurge, whose spirit deep abides

In soils which giveth life to each and all,

And bless these humble lays, that they may be

As seeds cast on fertile ground to germinate

And bear the fruit of Universal Love . . .”

 

“Mother Goddess, blank verse!” Osmirik murmured as the chorus droned on. He began sidling his way through the narrow space between creature and wall, smiling pleasantly and nodding enthusiastically. At length he made it to the other side, stood and listened a polite moment, bowed, and walked through an exit.

“Uncultured dolt,” came a voice at his back.

Osmirik exhaled, then shuddered. What next? he thought. After an outsized cabbage garden with a penchant for high-flown poesy, what could follow?

The floor opened up and swallowed him.

He slid, endlessly, down a dark spiraling pipe. He tried halting himself, but the angle was too steep and the walls inordinately slippery. He extended his arms and legs and let his body go as loose as possible, praying that the pipe would soon level off.

It did not. It widened, then tipped to vertical. Screaming, Osmirik plummeted in darkness.

The pipe ended and he shot through into open air. He was briefly conscious of falling through a great semidark chamber. Then came a violent shock —

He was underwater. Warm currents pulled him this way and that as he thrashed his way upwards, his lungs burning and his heart slamming against his breastbone. Just at the moment when he thought he could no longer keep himself from inhaling water, he broke the surface and gulped air.

He gagged and choked as the intolerable stench of raw sewage assailed his nostrils. He was swimming in the stuff. He looked around. The chamber was huge and generally spherical, a vast stone cesspool, and from the roof protruded the ends of numerous pipes.

He searched the darkness at the edges of the chamber. There appeared to be a bank or at least a ledge bordering the lake of offal. He began swimming toward it.

As he neared shore, something seized his right foot, briefly, then let go. He splashed and kicked furiously until his strength was at an end and the ledge was an unbridgeable arm's reach away.

An arm reached for him, and he was pulled from the foul waters like the rotting carcass of a great fish.

“Fine day for a swim!” said a jolly voice. It belonged to a short, balding man wearing tights and a simple gray tunic.

After getting his breath, Osmirik wheezed, “I owe you a great debt.”

“Think nothing of it. I like company now and again. Tis aching lonely down here at times.”

“You are . . . ?”

“Dodkin, Master of the Castle Waterworks, is what I'm called to my face. Shitmaster Dodkin, to other parts of me.”

“You have my perpetual gratitude, Master Dodkin. But tell me — ” Osmirik coughed and spat. “However do you put up with the smell down here?”

With a puzzled frown, Dodkin sniffed the air. “What smell?”

 

 

 

King's Study

 

The room was a clutter of bookshelves, strange artifacts, alchemistic paraphernalia, and other oddments. A large astronomer's orrery sat on a table in one corner of the room. Star charts lined the walls in that area. A large, detailed globe of the world occupied another corner.

He sat at a table that held a number of curious instruments constructed of wood and metal. He scrutinized one in particular, a box with a window through which a copper needle could be seen. He observed the position of the needle on a calibrated scale and made a notation with a quill pen. His attention shifted to another device, this one a glass globe, inside which hung two pieces of metal foil joined at one end. He noted the extent of their separation, dipped the point of the quill in an inkwell and scratched more numbers on a sheet of foolscap. He turned then to a third device, a loom of interwoven strings threaded with hundreds of small colored beads which clicked and clacked as he manipulated them, singly and in groups. He did this for a good while, then ceased and contemplated the results. He recorded more data, taking careful readings from each of the instruments. A candle on the table burned steadily, limning his face in soft shadows. A film of fine sweat sprang to his forehead as he worked. Several sheets of foolscap, acrawl with numbers and symbols, fell to the floor in quick succession.

Finally he put down the quill and mopped his brow with a kerchief he had taken from inside his gown. Bearing the last sheet of foolscap, he rose from the table and crossed the room to a low multitiered desk. On it sat a personal computer with a compact keyboard terminal, a color CRT, a twin floppy-disk deck, and a hard-disk drive. He seated himself and made a simple hand pass. The screen came to life, showing an AO> prompt. With quick accurate strokes he punched a series of keys, then waited for the screen to go through an elaborate display of graphic pyrotechnics.

“Damned showy off-the-shelf software,” he muttered.

Using his right index finger, he traced another pattern in the air, observed the results on the screen, made another hand pass. Then, with his eyes on the sheet of figures, he entered data on the keyboard.

When he had completed data entry, he punched a few more keys, sat back, and let the program run.

A line of figures came up on the screen. He read it.

“Impossible,” he said. “But there it is. Now all I have to do is locate it.”

He commenced a set of elaborate hand motions, accompanying these with a low, monotonous chanting. Presently the CRT screen began to glow spectrally. Milky images ghosted across it, gradually sharpening. Voices. At length the picture focused to unmistakable clarity.

Completing the incantation, he regarded the faces on the screen. None were familiar, although that was not unusual. He would have to observe for some time, he supposed, before he could act. He had no idea, now, what he would do, if anything.

He positioned himself more comfortably in the chair. He watched, and listened.

 

 

 

Lower Levels

 

“I'm just not strong enough,” Linda was saying. “She's frighteningly powerful. I could tell.”

Gene said, “I think you're right about her being up to some kind of dirty work. No telling what. It must have something to do with that jewel, though.”

“Well, we can rule out stealing it. So she must want to tap the thing's power.”

“Obviously,” Jacoby said.

“To do what?” Gene wondered.

Jacoby's smile was strange. “To do anything she wants to do.”

“She's in cahoots with the besiegers, that's for sure,” Gene said. “So, it might have something to do with completing the final takeover of the castle.”

“She wants to take control of the jewel,” Linda said. “To take control away from Lord Incarnadine.”

“A good guess,” Gene said. “I wouldn't be surprised if you've hit it right on the head.” He looked around, then pointed to the intersection of tunnels up ahead. “I'm pretty sure that's the corridor we were in when the big cats hit.”

“Let's face it,” Linda said. “We're lost again.”

Jacoby let out a long sigh. “Oh, dear, I must sit down.” To no avail he searched the corridor for something to sit on.

“It's just a little farther,” Gene said.

It wasn't. They stopped to rest again, sitting down in the middle of the bare stone passageway.

“I don't know how long it's been since I slept,” Gene said, then yawned.

“Don't start!” Linda said. But she caught it too.

A low rumbling sounded. The floor shook, and the walls seemed to become rubbery and pliant. It lasted for about twenty seconds, then stopped.

“No telling what that was all about,” Gene said.

Linda looked off, as if hearing or perhaps sensing something.

“Funny,” she said.

“What?” Gene asked.

“I'm beginning to develop a sixth sense, or something like it. She's started whatever it is she's up to.”

“Yeah? Any idea of what she's doing?”

“Something magical. Probably putting a spell on that big jewel.”

“Maybe she wants to have it set in a nice eighteen-carat gold ring.”