“Merikona, how nice to see you,” Thaxton said. “Where have you been keeping yourself?”
Gene, Linda, and Snowclaw were watching, mouths agape. The other Guests smiled and went back to eating.
“I found an aspect opening onto a world somewhat in phase with mine. I spent some time there. It was pleasant to have spatiotemporal intercongruence with one’s environment again. But I missed my friends here, and … as you can see —”
“How nice,” Thaxton said. “Tea and scones, as usual? Some over there, I think.”
“What’s on the agenda today?” DuQuesne asked brightly.
Linda had recovered from the shock of Merikona’s entrance enough to ask, “How did … how did Merikona get back from the world she went into? I thought someone said the doorways or whatever you call them shifted around.”
“I’m for tennis. Up for a few sets, DuQuesne?” Thaxton called.
“I’d rather golf today, if you don’t mind,” DuQuesne answered, and immediately went on speaking to Linda: “Marikona traversed an aspect, of which the castle has 144,000, or so rumor has it.”
“Ah,” Jacoby said. “A number pregnant with mystic significance.”
“Quite so.”
“Best of three sets, then,” Thaxton proposed.
“Not today, Arnold, thank you. As I was saying, my dear, many of the castle’s aspects are stable. One may pass to and from those worlds without trouble. Unfortunately, most are very unstable. They appear and disappear with disconcerting irregularity. Lord help you if you wander through one. It could close up and leave you stranded on the other side. That could be most unpleasant.”
Thaxton wouldn’t give up. “How about you, Dalton, old boy?”
In the middle of lighting a cigarette, Dalton said, “And drop dead after the first set? No thanks. Golf’s my game too.”
“Bother. Well, golf it is, then.”
Linda asked, “Don’t these unstable aspects ever open up again?”
“Possibly. No telling,” DuQuesne said. “And there’s no telling where in the castle they’ll appear if they do open up.”
“It’s catch as catch can, I’m afraid,” Jacoby said.
Linda sat back and smiled wanly. “I suppose the aspect leading back to our world is one of the unstable ones.”
“I’m afraid it is,” DuQuesne said.
“Isn’t there any way of finding it? Can’t we search for it?”
“No one we know has found a way back,” Jacoby said.
“But that doesn’t mean that a way back to our world won’t eventually be found, by somebody,” DuQuesne protested. “Or that somebody, some Guest, at some time, may not have found one and gone back to the world we know. This castle is thousands of years old.”
“Then …” Linda’s right hand went to her face. “We’re stranded here.”
“Temporarily,” DuQuesne said gently. “That’s the way it’s best to think of it.”
Gene had finished his plate of ham, sausage, scrambled eggs, smoked whitefish, buckwheat cakes, lox, and herring in sour cream. He looked around the table and noticed there were serving plates of food more commonly appropriate for lunch or dinner. He helped himself to chicken cordon bleu, stuffed cabbage, rigatoni in meat sauce, and sauteed mushrooms, with an artichoke salad and a plate of coleslaw on the side.
Snowclaw was munching the last of the candles, which he had been dipping in Thousand Island dressing first. Addressing Thaxton, he said, “What’s tennis? Sounds interesting. I’d like to take a try at that.”
Linda gave a surprised squeal, and everyone looked.
“Oh, this is it,” she said, shaking her head in wonder. “This takes the cake.” She was looking at something cupped in the palm of her hand.
“What is it, Linda?” DuQuesne said.
“A Valium. See?” She held it up between thumb and index finger.
“Yes, Linda. What’s wrong?”
“Just a minute ago I was thinking that I really needed a trank — a tranquilizer. I used to take them … a lot of them. Kicked the habit, but when you told me about us being stuck here, I was thinking to myself, God, what have I got to lose, I wish I had one right now, right in my hand. And I had my right hand clenched … and just now I opened it and looked … and, well, here it is.”
Significant looks were exchanged around the table among the seasoned Guests.
“Materialization,” DuQuesne murmured. “Interesting.”
“How long have you been in the castle, did you say?” Jacoby asked pointedly.
“Huh? Oh … uh, two nights. Yes. Two nights and a day.”
“I see,” Jacoby said, and sipped his demitasse thoughtfully.
Keep — King’s Redoubt
Incarnadine strode around a railed arcade overlooking a high, expansive chamber, the entirety of which was occupied by an immense and astonishingly detailed simulacrum of Castle Perilous itself, showing the tumult of activity that now stormed about its southern perimeter. In scaled miniature the simulacrum displayed the new belfries that the besiegers had constructed, mammoth wooden towers whose tops rose above the thirty-story-high battlements of the inner curtain wall. From their perch atop the belfries Vorn’s archers now commanded the inner ward. With most of the parapets cleared of defenders, Vorn had brought up his siege engines to work at close range. A hail of boulders now pummeled the inner ward, flung from gargantuan versions of trebuchet, mangonel, and arbalest.
Incarnadine made the circuit of the arcade, gaining every possible angle. He could see no alternative but to counterattack immediately. If the belfries were not destroyed forthwith, the inner gatehouse would fall to enemy hands and the castle’s reduction become an inevitability. The keep was possessed of its own fortifications — ring walls, turrets, bulwarks, and other structures — but Vorn would hardly let these daunt him now. Once the portcullis of the gatehouse was raised, Vorn’s soldiers would come pouring through to the grassy expanses of the ward, there to prepare for the final assault on the keep. Although the keep’s immensity would prevent it from ever being completely taken — even Vorn could not muster enough invaders to penetrate its every recess and sanctum — its penetration would complete the fall of Castle Perilous. This, then, was the final battle.
Lines of soldiers protected by wheeled wooden barricades were hauling the last of the giant belfries into position. They were under light fire from the defenders, who had withdrawn to the flanking turrets of the inner wall. From there they could barely annoy the enemy, subjected as they were to a withering barrage of arrows from the belfry-mounted archers.
Incarnadine stopped pacing and watched. The simulacrum filled the three-story-high chamber, the parapets of the keep almost touching the domed ceiling. Even at this scale individual figures were minute. He raised his right arm and with one finger traced a simple pattern in the air. The murky area at the edges of the simulacrum quickly grew to overshroud the whole scene, then parted, revealing a much closer perspective. In silence, the battle raged on. Incarnadine flicked his wrist once, and the scene focused on a single belfry. It was a gigantic construction, barely able to hold up its own weight without substantial buttressing in the form of an elaborate trelliswork of timber fanning out and down like a pyramidal skirt from the tower’s midpoint. It had taken months to put together out of thousands of precut and partially assembled pieces. Vorn must have expected the tactic of undermining to fail, and had come prepared to take the castle by escalade if necessary. In fact, the battles in the mines, though they had cost Vorn dearly, might only have been a delaying tactic.
A figure approached, walking along the gallery. Incarnadine turned to look.
“My lord …”