“He’ll get over her,” Melanie said. “Just like I got over the father of these little joy-bundles.”
“You don’t still think of Chad?” Linda asked pointedly.
Melanie gave a wan smile. “Oh, every once in a while. Sometimes, at night, when the castle is quiet …” Melanie suddenly frowned. “You know, Linda, for months now I’ve been telling you all the secrets of my love life, and just now it suddenly struck me that I know zero about yours. Fair is fair.”
Linda snorted. “Me? What love life?”
“Oh, come on.”
“I’ve been ditched so many times I’ve thought of buying a backhoe.”
“I think you did mention a boyfriend once.”
“Yeah, I had one or two of those, and even a fiancé. But it all came to zilch zip.”
“I feel as though I’m eavesdropping,” Dalton said, eyes on the chessboard.
“I got no dirt to hide, no scandal,” Linda said. “Kind of wish I did.”
Melanie struck a pose. “Meanwhile I must struggle with the stigma of the Unwed Mother,” she said, giving the line a dramatic reading.
“Aw, nobody cares about that any more,” Linda said.
“I do. I still believe in marriage. Call me old-fashioned.”
“Like sex,” Dalton said, “and love, for that matter, marriage is beyond the realm of fashion. It’s a necessary institution. Always was, always will be.”
“You’re an old fogey, Mr. Dalton,” Linda said.
“My dear, you are quite right. And I glow with pride of it.”
Snowclaw asked, “Just what is marriage, anyway?”
There was an awkward silence.
Dalton began, “Well, it’s …”
There was a commotion in the corridor. Shouts, then murmuring voices.
“I wonder what’s up?” Linda said.
“I’ll go see,” Melanie said and hurried to the open door.
“Maybe it’s the excitement Gene was looking for,” Dalton speculated. “In Castle Perilous, you don’t have to wait very long for some.”
“I don’t like excitement,” Deena said nervously. “I like it when it’s quiet.”
Linda said, “I kind of get nostalgic for the calmer periods myself, sometimes, especially when the sludge starts hitting the whirling blades.”
“Yeah, I can do without that sludge stuff,” Deena said, scowling. “Ever since I come here it’s been flyin’. First it was the Blue Meanies invadin’, then it was demons, then crazy people comin’ out of mirrors scarin’ everybody.”[2] Deena shook her head. “I don’t need that.”
“It does get interesting around here at times,” Dalton admitted. “But it’s good for the circulation. Gets the blood racing. It’s always good to —”
“Hah hah!”
Dalton regarded his chess opponent, from whom the outburst had come. “What on earth has got into you?”
Lord Peter sat back, a triumphant smirk on his lips. “I moved!”
“Well, congratulations. What did you move?”
“Bishop to queen’s three. There. You’re in check.”
Dalton studied the board. “So I am.”
“You always manage to squirm out of it, but this time I’ve got you. You’re hemmed in on all sides. You must either move your king or take the bishop with the queen, but doing the latter will put your queen in jeopardy. And if you move your king, it’s only a matter of time before I corner you.” Lord Peter folded his arms and gloated.
“What a jam,” Dalton said appreciatively. “Quite a nice little trap you set for me.”
“And have just sprung mercilessly.”
“So you have, so you have. Unless …”
Lord Peter sat up. “Unless?”
“Well, if I’m not mistaken, if I take your king’s bishop with my queen’s, you’re in check … and — unless I’m entirely misapprehending the strategic situation — that’s mate.”
Lord Peter saw with horror that Dalton was right. “Impossible!”
“I would not kid his lordship.”
Lord Peter looked ill. “I think I’ll go to my room and blow my bloody brains out.”
“Here, here, that’s hardly called for. Besides, you’ll have the chambermaids all upset.”
Lord Peter thought it over. “You’re right, they’ll refuse to step into the place and there’ll be no end of mess.” He gave the matter more consideration. “I’ll throw myself off the King’s Tower.”
“Now you’re being reasonable.”
The giggling from Deena and Linda quickly faded as Melanie came running into the room. They saw the look on her face.
“Melanie, what’s wrong?” Linda asked uneasily.
“It’s the servants,” Melanie said grimly. “They’re saying something happened to Lord Incarnadine. Word came through from the aspect he’s in.”
“My God, what —?”
“They’re saying …” Melanie swallowed hard and tried again. “They’re saying he’s dead.”
Two
Keep — Near the Queen’s Tower — Lower Levels
Lugging a huge sheaf of fan-folded paper — a computer printout — Gene trudged the hallways of Castle Perilous, looking for a doorway into an interesting universe. His explorations of the past two weeks hadn’t turned up a portal worth spitting into, and this outing was no exception.
He stopped. Before him stood an anomaly, an archway that opened onto a pleasant landscape of trees, grass, shrubs, and bright sunlight. The anomaly consisted in the fact that this innocuous scenery did not lie outside the castle in the normal sense. It was part of another world, one belonging to a universe entirely separate from the one that the castle occupied. In the castle nomenclature, this doorway to a strange cosmos was an “aspect.”
He consulted the printout. It was a list of aspects with names and descriptions, grouped according to location in the castle. Gene thumbed through the pages covering the 14th floor of the keep. There were hundreds of listings, and the locations were somewhat vague. For instance: “Twelve paces east, along common bearing-wall between Tinker’s Stall and Queen’s Ladies’ Sewing Room: to right of foliated pilaster.”
Big help. There were hundreds of empty rooms on this floor. No one knew which had been what a millennium or two ago, when this catalogue of aspects been compiled (the data had come out of an ancient book in the castle library and had recently been sorted by the castle’s mainframe computer).
But Gene thought he had this aspect pegged.
““Arcadia,”” he read aloud from the printout. ““Clement, peaceful; salubrious climate. Fauna: small and inoffensive. Population: by all indications uninhabited. Flora: extensive, variegated. Otherwise undistinguished.””
Another parklike aspect, of which the castle had thousands. Pleasant, good for picnics and outings. Hills, trees, and grass. Of little interest to a man hungering for high adventure.
Gene moved on.
He had changed from castle clothes — the usual neo-medieval attire — to an all-weather one-piece outdoor suit that Linda had conjured for him, at his behest and to his specifications. Fashioned of a sturdy synthetic material and dyed in camouflage, it featured numerous zippered pockets and a wide utility belt. The belt had pouches holding compass and other accouterments, along with a hunting knife and scabbard. With hiking boots and backpack, he was set for any climate and terrain, within certain limits, from high desert to subarctic tundra. Very hot and very cold climates would be problematical — but of course the choice of world was his.
He simply couldn’t decide.
The backpack bulged with a week’s rations, and his canteen held a three-day supply of water. The trouble was that he didn’t know quite what he had in mind. Was this a recreational outing? Just a backpacking trip? If so, perhaps he merely wanted to spend a week alone and watch fish break the crystalline surface of a mountain lake, or observe a canopy of silent, alien stars slowly wheeling, or look for fossils in the uplifted limestone beds of ancient seas, or maybe just contemplate the involuted folds of his navel.…