“Very well,” Trent said. “I’ll not object to any of the mummery if I get a quick reply to my proposal.”
Hivelt said, “I think we have a deal on that, at least. We … Your Royal Highness, is anything wrong?”
A rivulet of sweat was making its way down the line of Trent’s jaw. He gave his head a brisk shake. “Not a thing. I have to go. Messenger your decision to me as soon as possible.”
“You will be where, sir?”
“Club Sheila. I must leave the castle for a while, but I’ll be back.”
Trent got up and strode out of the room. The door slammed shut behind him.
Baldon said, “The curse. He can’t stay in the castle for long.”
“And he wants to be king!” Tragg looked around. “Will no one back me?”
“Back you in what?” Hivelt said.
“In thwarting the bastard, of course!”
Lord Renalto put his fingers to his lips. “Tragg, curb your tongue!”
“I care not whose spies are eavesdropping. The man must be stopped.”
“How?” Hivelt asked.
“By whatever means at our disposal!”
Hivelt groaned, shaking his head. “I share Trent’s aversion to squabbling and intrigue. I’m inclined to cave in to him just to avoid all that.”
“Then you are a coward, sir!”
Hivelt smiled weakly. “A seasoned one. I have spent three hundred years perfecting my talents.”
Baldon said dolefully, “The legal fees will be ruinous.”
“A pox on the legal fees!” Tragg shouted.
“If we challenge Trent’s claim, the fees will be extracted from our personal salaries,” Baldon said grimly. “And if we don’t challenge, Trent will be king, not just regent.”
Hivelt said, “It seems, my lords, that we are between the rocks and the whirlpool. I vote for the rocks. I say we go for Trent’s deal. Last time: Are there any other objections?”
“I am in debt to my ears already,” Baldon muttered. He had commiseration around the table.
Tragg looked left, then right. He banged the table, rose, and stalked out of the room. The door slammed again.
Everyone leaned back and exhaled. There was a sense of relief, however dour the upshot.
“Somebody yank the bell pull, please?” Hivelt said.
“Let’s wait till after lunch,” Morrel suggested. “We have that much face to save, at least. Make him sweat a little longer.”
“Very well,” Hivelt said, rising. “I eat a lot when I get depressed. When I eat a lot, I eat Oriental. How about you guys?”
“That suits me,” Morrel said brightly.
The sundry ministers of the King’s Privy Council began to file out of the room.
When the door closed again, only Lord Yorvil was left.
He was still cackling to himself, smiling craftily, drumming the table with one wrinkled, skeletal hand.
Eight
Spot Quiz No
Fill in the blanks:
• The setting of the story is Castle ___________.
• The master of this strange, enchanted castle is Lord _______.
• The magical doorways in the castle, leading to other worlds, are called ________.
• The opening scene in this story takes place in the _______ Hall.
• In the opening chapter, four characters are playing bridge. They are ________, ________, ________, and ________.
• In the game of contract bridge, partners sometimes signal the strength or weakness of their hands by means of bidding conventions. One of these is known as the ________ convention.
• In contract bridge, a contract in which no suit is specified is known as a ________ contract.
• Lord Peter Thaxton, a minor character in this story, was elevated to the peerage (got his title) because he was instrumental in solving the ________ Castle murders.
• Jousting tournaments are usually fought with a long, spearlike medieval weapon known as a ________.
• Adults who read fantasy novels are thought by some psychologists to be in a phase of arrested adolescent ________.
True or False?
• The characters in this book are lifelike and convincing. ___
• Gene likes action and adventure. ___
• Snowclaw is a very good bridge player for a nonhuman. ___
• Flinging-toads are specially bred for competition. ___
• Castle Perilous has exactly 143,999 magical doorways. ___
• The average commercial tuna boat is 40 feet from stem to stem. ___
• The chief export of Tierra del Fuego[7] is hemp. ___
• Linda is an adept sorceress. ___
• Osmirik is a bit on the anal-retentive side. ___
• The price of this book is outrageous for a cheesy paperback. ___
Essay Questions (Keep your answer under 500 words.)
• Discuss some of the methods the author employs to make a totally fantastic tale believable. Does he succeed? If not, where does he go wrong? Relate all of this to what Aristotle says about verisimilitude in his Poetics.
• The chapters featuring the person walking across the featureless plane — what is all that about? Is it fair for an author to be so vague and sketchy and keep the reader in suspense? Discuss ways of dealing with this problem.
• Discuss the possible meaning of the epigraph of this book. (The epigraph is the poem-fragment quoted just before the text of the book begins.) Relate it to the story, then comment on how well-read and erudite the author must be.
For Group Discussion
• Explore the possible animal-rights issues involved in the concept of a “toad-fling.”
• Is bridge an elitist game?
• Have significant contributions to Western culture been made by non-Italians?
Nine
Mine
The door hissed shut behind them.
When he saw it begin to close, Gene began a desperate lunge to catch it, then stopped short. Before he took two strides the darkness had closed in.
“Great,” he said. “Right out of a B movie.”
“A what?”
Before he could get his penlight out of its pouch in his utility belt, a pale halo of luminescence relieved the gloom. The source, he was interested to learn, turned out to be two luminous strips on the front of his companion’s blue-and-silver pressure suit. They emitted a strange greenish glow, cold and faint, but provided enough light to illuminate the surroundings: a large wedge-shaped chamber with lots of empty racks and shelves. A second door was set into the inside wall.
“Handy gadgets, those,” he commented.
“Standard,” she said. “Are you going to keep claiming that it was magic that got us in here?”
“Not if it annoys you.”
“Not at all. It’s just not a very convincing cover story for the obviously advanced circuit-scanning implant you have. It is a bionic chip, isn’t it?”
“If you insist. Now where can we find that security system?”
“Use your implant to trace it to the master computer.”
“Yeah.”
She looked around. “No alarms are going off, and I find that rather strange.”
“Well, the facilitation spell is still working. Actually, I supplied the lock with the correct security code, so the system probably thinks that we have a right to be here.”
“Then we’d better stop talking about it. The system is intelligent enough to learn from our conversation that it was fooled.”
“As I said, the spell’s still working, and will continue to do so for a bit longer. It’ll smooth our way, make things happen in our favor. But it’ll wear off eventually. So, let’s get busy.”